“Are you saying he’s innocent after all?”
“Hardly that — those corpses in Cherbourg wouldn’t have said so, but —”
“But if he hasn’t acted against the State as such, why didn’t he come clean earlier?”
“Didn’t trust us,” Shard answered briefly. “Scared, too — on account of his own law-breaking. But I’ll come back to that, Hedge. Here’s the point: O’Riordan’s boys were the cat’s-paws … they’d come in, got in deep in fact, from an early stage. For one reason: they’d got to hear about the blood run and Katie Farrell and they intended to operate a very, very big double-cross of the terrorists. Later, they got the word about the threat to Porton and its satellites. Being already on the inside as it were, they fancied their chances of putting the stopper on all by themselves. They didn’t want the filth to cross the sea to Ireland — they made that very point to me when I was taken to them from King’s Cross, though they used a reference to the Provos to make it. If they’d only told me more … but they didn’t, Hedge. I say again, we don’t inspire trust in the Irish, any of them.”
Hedge nodded. “The terrorists, the real ones. Do we know who they are?”
Shard said, “Yes, we do now. They call themselves Power of Islam, Hedge.”
“Power of Islam?” Hedge’s voice rose high, squeaking. “Good gracious, Shard, we’ve —”
“Met before — yes! The threat to London’s underground. You’ll remember Nadia Nazzarrazeen died in custody. There’s a new boss now, a man. In the movement he’s known as the Mullah.”
“A religious significance?”
“Broadly, perhaps. I suppose the Middle East can always give itself a religious justification if it wants to — like the Irish. I’d say, nothing deeper than that.” Shard sipped his brandy, relishing the glow. “O’Riordan doesn’t know his identity, and I accept that as the truth seeing he’s out to help now.”
“Really out to help?” Hedge sounded bitter. “Wasn’t his lot responsible for the kidnap of my wife?”
“Yes —”
“Yes you say!” Hedge threw up his arms.
“And again, yes. Just listen, Hedge. They wanted to have the charge of any hostage just because that in itself gave them the power to withdraw the hostage-blackmail handle — don’t you see? Your wife was never in any real danger until —”
“But they shot at her!”
Shard nodded. “As I was about to say: at that particular stage, I guess they had to. I did make the point that their hands aren’t lily white and they’ve behaved like terrorists themselves but it was all in a good cause, the way they saw it.” He paused. “I know it takes some getting used to, and I realise the personal angle —”
“Thank you!” Hedge snapped. He gulped brandy, shaking all over. Then he took a grip. “What you’ve said adds up, does it not, to this: Ireland, either north or south, is not involved?”
“Not directly, no. You can leave them out of it. This is wholly Middle East, from Katie Farrell on. The Arabs want her for what she know’s, for the help she can give in the future to further their little schemes of disruption. Which was one reason why O’Riordan was determined she wouldn’t stay on the blood run. The other reason was personal to his mob — old scores to be settled —”
“But the Arabs, Shard?”
“Serving both sides at once, but all along they’ve had just the one object in view: never mind Ulster, never mind the Republic, they’re simply out to throw Britain into direst bloody confusion, and for why?” Shard slammed a fist into his palm. “Our oil, Hedge. You underestimated that, though it seems the PM didn’t. As producers. Hedge, they’re facing the end of the road within a generation. They want to keep their pre-eminence, they want to keep the whip-hand, they want to keep their prices up while it all lasts. We are the big threat, and to stop us they’re prepared to wipe us out if they have to. But they’d rather work through cat’s-paws, hence they’ve given us an alternative. A suicidal one.”
Hedge put his head in his hands. “When you were taken to that house from King’s Cross, Shard. Those men! Did they not themselves point the finger at the Middle East?”
“Yes. That was precisely why they wanted to talk to me, to make certain sure we were aware of the reality of the big threat and who was uttering it — that, and to try to find out about Katie Farrell … having made a cock of hooking her off the blood run. They’d lost her again, Hedge.”
“Yes, yes. But about the Middle East … you believed them, so why —”
“I believed them, yes. But they didn’t in fact add anything to what we had already thought of for ourselves, did they?” Shard added, “There was just one thing they deliberately fooled me on — I admit that. The body in the water-tank. They knew about that. They knew Katie was supposed to be dead but in fact was very much alive. They hoped to get something out of me so they could catch up with her again themselves —”
“But they told you she was the key. They urged you towards her. Why — if they wanted her?”
“Hedge, they knew we wanted her anyway, what they said made no difference. Except in this respect: if we got her back, we wouldn’t be likely to shove her on the blood run again, not after what they’d told me about the Middle East. And now we know it’s Power of Islam —”
Hedge, giving the impression of being out of his depth, pounced on that. “Yes, Power of Islam. You say O’Riordan didn’t know the identity … how was contact made?”
“Through agents. This mullah can never be contacted direct — it’s always he, in fact, who initiates any contact, and the meeting place, when a meeting’s indicated, varies — but is most often in Kensington.”
“Kensington?”
“It’s happened in the public library, in St Mary Abbots’ church, in Kensington Gardens by the Round Pond, at the corner of Kensington Palace Gardens, and in the Catherine Wheel public house. Get it, Hedge?”
Hedge gaped, wiped at his pink cheeks with a linen handkerchief. “Mrs Morton —”
“Exactly. Some sort of clerk, she said, from one of the embassies in Kensington Palace Gardens. That could check — couldn’t it, Hedge? I think she told us all she knew, but she could be worth some more effort. I’d like to leave that to you, while I’m busy on other things. All right?”
“Yes, of course,” Hedge said. He blinked, seemed at a temporary loss, as though mention of Mrs Morton had suddenly pointed up his currently wifeless, lonely state, the state in which a top civil servant had to be his own butler, cook and housemaid. He made an effort. “What other things?”
“The anti-measures, Hedge. I told you — I have dates and places. To be more precise, one date, one time: tomorrow at 2100 hours. Psychologically timed, to coincide with the TV news broadcasts.” Shard smiled bitterly. “Just a little Middle Eastern twist of the screw!”
Hedge seemed to shrivel. “God! A shade over twenty-four hours!” His voice dropped to scarcely more than a whisper, as though he feared all sound. “What’s to happen then, Shard, tell me that!”
“Nothing unexpected, except size-wise. The whole of the South of England is to be affected, from a line drawn between the Bristol Channel through London to the Essex coast. From there, of course, it spreads north by natural means — contacts, winds, that sort of thing.”
“And the means?”
“Explosions at Porton Down, the stowages around Wiston House and the South Downs outside Worthing, and at Nancekuke.”
“Explosions, how?”
Shard said, “That I didn’t get. My man didn’t know. Just explosions.”
“Air attack, bombing?”
“I would assume so. That would be the safest way for the villains. If they tried to penetrate … if they did manage to get in they’d be the First victims. But there’s another possibility, Hedge: Lavington.”
“How’s that?”
“He’s had the entrée to all the establishments, and he’s recently been inside them all — except Nancekuke. He could have set devices —”
“Blowable by a timing mechanism?”
“Or remote control. It’s a theory and a good one in my book, the best — and I intend to follow it.”
“But you said Lavington didn’t matter, Shard.”
Shard gave a short, grim laugh and shook his head. “Oh, no, I didn’t, Hedge! I said he’d keep. He will — till 2100 hours tomorrow night. I have till then to get him, and to do that I’m going back into the field. I prefer the field work in any case — it’s better than being the spider at the centre of the web. That’s more your line, Hedge. Now I’m going to tell you what I want from you —”
“Just a moment — just a moment. What about Katie Farrell?”
“In France, with Kenwood tailing. She’ll be stopped at Marseilles. When she is, we may, just may, get more leads.”
“But the body on Chanctonbury!” Hedge was almost wringing his hands.
“Hedge, it was in Lavington’s interest that Katie Farrell shouldn’t be picked up by us, and it was in O’Riordan’s interest that Lavington should never suspect that his mob weren’t right behind the Middle East. Katie Farrell was still the key — to both sides. When she got away from O’Riordan, she just vanished — where to, is still a mystery. O’Riordan believed Lavington when he said he didn’t know. Anyway, Lavington decided to kill two birds with one stone: it suited him to have us believe Katie was dead — and he wanted a human guinea pig before he went into the final act. He got one: a girl from Belfast — O’Riordan doesn’t know the details except for this: she had abdominal scarring similar to Katie Farrell’s and the birth-mark was impressed with a specially-cast branding iron. Lavington supplied the germs or whatever of the bloating sickness, and he took this girl up towards Chanctonbury with an escort of Arab thugs. The thugs got cold feet about catching the disease themselves, and they scarpered. Lavington stayed to watch the girl die. He didn’t stop her when she went into the water-tank looking for the antidote. He knew she was too late, Hedge, much too bloody late! And needless to say, he never reported that the tank had been vandalised.” Shard had broken out in a sticky sweat. “I’m going to put all my heart and soul into catching up with friend Lavington! Now — here’s what I want done. First requirement is, an inch by inch check of all the stowages, a search for explosive devices —”
“I’m not sure we shouldn’t clear them out after all, Shard.” Hedge took up a phone. “I’ll talk to Defence Ministry —”
“I don’t advise that, Hedge.”
Hedge looked up. “Why not?”
“We’ve discussed it before. You made the point yourself —”
“But now the situation’s different.” Hedge went ahead with his call and asked for Henry Carver. When he got him, Carver asked for Shard.
“Your views, please, Mr Shard.”
Shard gave them, forcefully. “My theories could be wrong. If they are, we’re putting the stocks at great risk unnecessarily. To disperse them into open country, even to put them on the road in convoys — they’d be too obvious. And temporary, basically unsuitable stowages raked up at short notice — they’d be much too vulnerable. It’s just not on, sir.”
“I think I agree. I’ll —”
“I’d like it left to me, sir. Lavington’s the fuse. I’ll render him harmless.”
There was a humourless laugh along the line. “I wish you every success, Mr Shard! Do your best. Now give me Hedge, will you?”
Shard passed the phone back: Hedge bridled into it, slammed it down huffily after a short exchange. “On your head be it, Shard,” he said. “We must just pray we find the devices, if they exist.”
*
The army’s South-West District command at Taunton, already on an alert, was given the fresh facts by Whitehall; the Major-General Commanding, London District, was ordered to bring his forces to a state of readiness just short of the actual implementation of Martial Law: he was to be prepared at virtually a moment’s notice to reinforce the police authority on the streets of the capital. The Commander-in-Chief, UK Land Forces, was warned to be ready for troop and transport movements and deployment of guns and medical convoys and armour nationwide. Similar warnings went to the various RAF commands: Southern Maritime Air Region at RAF Mount Batten in the Plymouth area prepared to cover any intrusion across the Channel; 38 Group at Benson in Oxfordshire, 46 Group at Pewsey in Wiltshire, 11 Group at Bentley Priory in Stanmore, were those immediately concerned with air cover for the germ dumps themselves. A directive went out to Devon and Cornwall Police and to the troop commanders operating in the West Country generally, that Lavington was to be found at all costs — but was only distantly to be contained, tracked, watched and not lost again, was not to be put into a position where he would be likely to crunch what he carried in his mouth: this, as Shard stressed to Hedge, was vital. Lavington must be left with a visible and viable way out: it would be a devil of a task for the troops and police to reconcile possible escape with continued surveillance but it was, it had to be, paramount: Shard’s theory of a remote-controlled blow-up was just a theory. A live Lavington could yet provide the real answer. When all requirements had been passed via the Head of Department, Shard took over a departmental radio-equipped car and went home to Ealing: he felt guilty about even a small delay, but he was human, and if this thing didn’t work out then he wasn’t likely to find home much of a place to come back to afterwards; comfort lay in the fact that Ealing was near enough on his way to RAF Northwood whence he would be helicoptered west.
It was midnight when he let himself into the house: Beth hadn’t gone to bed, nor had Mrs Micklam. It seemed Beth had been worrying about him and was overjoyed to see him: but Mrs Micklam, prised away from her aunt, attacked.
“I think it’s monstrous. We’re not a police state yet, are we? Mind you, there are some funny things going on in Worthing, that I don’t deny.”
“What things?” Shard asked, all innocence.
“People being taken ill, Simon,” Beth put in. “I’ve been worried — the police who brought Mother back said —”
“Said I’d been there?”
She nodded. “Yes. Anyway, you’re back now —”
“Did the police mention the illness?”
“No,” Mrs Micklam said, “but Aunt Edith did, on the telephone. I rang her when I got back here, and again this evening. People dying like flies was what she said —”
“Oh, Mother!”
Mrs Micklam fluffed a hand around tightly-set white hair. “It’s all very well for you, dear. You’re not down there.”
“Nor are you,” Shard said, and at once realised he’d been stupidly indiscreet: Mother-in-law was as sharp as a needle, and like a needle, she probed.
“So that’s why you had me seized,” she said, staring at Shard. “Well! I must say I’m surprised. I thought you usually wished me dead, Simon.” Beth looked unhappy; Shard, brutally, gave no denial. Mrs Micklam went on, “I don’t know what all this is about and I do think you ought to tell us, Simon. Am I going to come out with this illness, for one thing?”
“No,” Shard said firmly. “You were never in contact at all, and —”
“And you?”
“Me?” Shard reacted to accusation with a flushed face: he hadn’t been in contact either, except in Katie Farrell’s case after which he had been decontaminated at Wiston House, but Mrs Micklam would never take that. Nevertheless, he tried. “Not me. No way! I’m clean.”
“You may not be. How do you know? I think it’s abominable, taking a risk with your family.” Her voice shrilled like an out-of-tune bagpipe. “You’re so selfish, Simon. I’m sure that Scotland Yard of yours could have found you a bed —”
“Look, I’m not staying —”
“— and yet back you come, breathing germs, undoing the good work you might have done by having me taken away — oh, yes, I admit that possibility though it was very high-handed and you had no right — risking Beth’s life and mine and all because you wanted to come and gloat over having me manhand
led back to London …” Mrs Micklam panted herself to a stop. Shard, driving away for Northwood soon after, had the rattle of her voice in his ears for most of the way. He wondered if any young PC on the beat would believe it possible that a Detective Chief Superintendent, no more than two grades removed from Metropolitan God, could be driven out of his own house by his mother-in-law. Until self-control cut her off like the flick of a tape switch, Shard drove badly, not concentrating, knowing that if things went wrong in the next few hours his last memory of his home and Beth would be totally overshadowed by Mrs Micklam’s tongue.
*
Helicoptered fast through the night, after an infuriating mechanical delay at Northwood, Shard reached Exeter at 0415 hours. He was put down at the Police Training College off the by-pass, preferring to be on the ground at this stage. He was given a plain car, equipped with radio. He drove at speed along the by-pass; it was almost empty at this hour, free and open, and he made good progress westwards, consumed with impatience and his nagging worries, his mental eye constantly on the clock. Clearing the outskirts of Exeter, he headed on for Okehampton, driving under a haze brought by the approaching dawn. The farther west he went, the more activity he found: police, troops, air cover high up, road blocks. For now it was still being done, so far as it could be, discreetly — still a major joint exercise, a general advance preparation against any unformulated acts of terrorism that might occur in the future. Before Shard had left London, the Head of Department had given him the official word from Downing Street: at this stage, no Martial Law. The time of declaration would depend upon his own further reports, and if it so happened that nothing was heard from him to the contrary by 1900 hours that evening, then a proclamation would be made and the civil population totally immobilised in their homes throughout the southern half of the country. In the meantime, although full warning had been passed to the various concerned Area Health Authorities who had filtered it down to their districts and consultants and admin staffs, no overt measures to combat the diseases were being taken and the ambulance crews had not yet been put on any special alert. Antidotes were on their way by air and road from Porion and the South Downs to all areas, but everyone knew, as Shard himself did, that even with the medical columns of the RAMC they could be no more than a drop in the ocean and once the thing spread and multiplied there would be positively no holding it. The dead and dying, the bloating, the shrivelled husks, would lie everywhere.
Blood Run East Page 17
