Lethal Profit

by Alex Blackmore

  Was it strange that a pharmaceutical company should be manufacturing a health supplement? Eva wasn’t sure but she tended to take a cynical approach to those who made money from human insecurity for a living – it wouldn’t be the first time she had been surprised to discover insidious corporate links she had not been aware of that connected other businesses. Her favourite ‘quality’, ‘fresh’ sandwich company, for example, which had turned out to be owned by one of the biggest fast food giants in the world. Who really knew what kinds of corporate manipulation of the public psyche went on behind the scenes? It seemed more sensible to assume it was happening than not.

  Eva opened another document, which seemed to be one that Sophie had stolen from Bioavancement S.a.r.l. itself, setting out the genetic structure of the algae the company had developed, and which they had named ‘PX 3.’ Unfortunately, the scientific equations meant nothing to Eva so she had no way of deciphering what made the PX 3 so special. She closed the folder.

  Next she opened ‘test results’ and clicked on the first document. As soon as the document was on the screen Eva’s heart began to pound. The opened file was a scanned image and, stamped across the top in block printing, were the words ‘Highly Confidential’.

  The scanned file was actually two documents, both of which were identically laid out and part of a standard form documentation process for Bioavancement S.a.r.l.. The first form contained information on a test of the PX 3 algae on mice, showing that it seemed to have quite a dramatic effect on the liver, although Eva struggled to understand exactly what that was. The second form was identical but related to a different test which concluded that the genetically modified algae was capable of something called ‘super speed algal bloom’, which would cause it to grow at more than a thousand times the speed of a normal algae plant. In another document in the ‘test results’ folder, she found a summary of the plant’s hardiness, concluding that it was ‘utterly resilient to every type of industrial algaecide’.

  Eva closed the file and then opened the ‘Read Me’ folder, which consisted of a single document of the same name that seemed to be a collection of copy and paste reports and paragraphs that Sophie had put together herself. She stared at the screen, realising that the words suddenly looked a little fuzzy, shifting uncomfortably in her chair as she felt a twinge of indigestion in her stomach.

  The document was composed of almost incomprehensible scientific jargon. Symbols, numbers and words jumped off the page at her and Eva wished she had paid more attention to science at school. Finally, towards the end of the last page, she noticed a report with a summary written in language she could understand. According to the summary, the algae’s reproduction rate meant that it was actually capable of spreading so fast that they could not be controlled. She looked for evidence that Bioavancement S.a.r.l. recommended the use of ways to prevent the spread of the algae, but she found the exact opposite – they had actually insisted the algae must be grown in pools open to the air, despite the fact that this would effectively turn the algae loose. Eva felt a knot of tension forming in her stomach as she read on.

  The summary’s author returned to the algae’s unprecedented growth rate and concluded that, as a result of this uncontrollable population, the sites allocated as the development pools for the algae in the UK would not be able to contain the plants. The spores would be carried – on the wind or by insects or animals – outside the company’s official raceway pond sites, where they would settle in any hospitably wet surface or waterway. Suddenly Eva leaned against the hard back of the chair as a wave of pain rippled through her stomach. She rubbed a hand across her belly to try and soothe the aggravation that was most likely being caused by not having eaten all day then consuming an entire sandwich in the space of thirty seconds.

  She had to keep reading.

  As she followed the words on the page, it became clear that the breakthrough algae, that had the potential for such positive things, had not been developed as a health supplement at all. Eva found herself struggling to make sense of the scientific language but it seemed that the effect that it actually had on the liver was to increase its resistance to insulin, causing the body to create vast amounts of unnecessary insulin that interfered with the brain’s ability to detect fat cells. She stared at the screen and tried to connect what she had read about the algae’s ability to spread, and this odd effect that it had on the liver. Both of these issues seemed to present a significant barrier to a supplement like this being produced and sold to the public – didn’t this kind of thing have to be approved? – and yet she had seen just moments ago on the net that it was already out there. Was this what Sophie was talking about when she said that the people behind this couldn’t even be seen? Eva pushed a strand of hair away from the damp skin of her face and realised she was sweating heavily despite the cold of the room.

  As she reached the end of the paragraph it all started to become clear, but Eva suddenly stopped reading, pushed her chair back and staggered sideways, trying to hold on to the desk for support. She was going to be sick. Her vision started to swim and her head was spinning as if she had just got off a fairground ride. She lurched back towards the computer and tried to read the document once more. When she realised she was about to pass out, she made a grab for the USB stick.

  From her position leaning against the sink in the kitchen Valerie heard the crash as the rohypnol took effect and Eva fell crashing to the floor. She was pleased that the girl had not just slumped in her chair; it was a far better result if she had fallen and caused herself some damage. Valerie did not like Eva.

  She stood up straight and stalked over to a small cupboard on the other side of the kitchen where she extracted a black fabric square, some small lengths of plastic and a small handgun.

  She checked and loaded the gun and once she was satisfied it was prepped, she pushed it into the waistband of her jeans, nestling the cold steel in the warm hollow at the base of her back.

  In the bedroom, Eva was lying on her side where she had fallen. Valerie glanced at the screen to see what she had been looking at. The white page of a blank document filled it with only an error message about the incorrect removal of a device. She checked the side of the white screen that housed the USB points, as well as the USB extension port, looking for a memory stick, but there was nothing there. She frowned. She bent down, rolled Eva over and began methodically searching her but she found nothing. A car horn sounded outside and she realised it was too late to do anything now. She would first deal with this and then she would track down any missing items.

  Valerie flipped Eva over with the ease of someone who had trained long and hard to have a subtle strength that never compromised those winning curves. She pulled Eva’s wrists together at the base of her spine and used one of the lengths of plastic to bind her. The custom-made bands locked into place, unbreakable without a knife. As she was finishing, she heard the boy come bounding up the stairs.

  ‘She’s ready,’ she said as he came in the room.

  Once he had disabled the driver downstairs, Wiraj had taken his car keys and run up the stairs to the flat where he had observed Eva Scott arrive only half an hour before. As he walked through the door he had heard a woman’s voice say ‘she’s ready’ and then he had spotted the dark-haired British woman lying face down on the floor, her arms bound behind her back, apparently unconscious. He had quickly taken his gun to the back of the head of the redhead and she had gone down straight away, her head hitting the corner of the desk before landing face down on the floor. Wiraj noticed the shape of a gun in the waistband of her trousers as she fell forward and wondered who the hell she was.

  As he bent down to pick up the unconscious woman, he noticed the black felt hood on the floor, picked it up and shoved it in his pocket before heaving Eva over his shoulder and setting off out of the flat and down the stairs to where he had left the car with the engine running.

  On the banks of the Thames, twelve miles west of central London, in the six raceway po
nds so carefully constructed by Rob Gorben and his team, a savage act of cannibalism was taking place. As several of the algae plants began to die, the others started to feed off the nutrients deposited into the gently moving water of those oval-shaped ponds. The genetically modified algae worked at an unusually high speed to feed and reproduce its own population, which only the day before had been relatively dormant. The species had been developed to be aggressive, to ensure its survival by eliminating any other minor organism that got in its way, efficiently turning it into food by feeding on the dead cells, even if the plant was one of its own. In the twenty-four hours since the dead plants had been introduced to the water, there had been a feeding frenzy, so much so that by the next morning, the PX 3 would officially have reached its first formal milestone – ‘a rapid increase or accumulation in the population of algae in an aquatic system’: an algal bloom. And with each new organism that came into being, a new life cycle was begun, a life cycle unnaturally manipulated to move at great speed until the algae was nothing but decaying matter, floating on the surface of the water, to be recycled once again into food for the new plants. But as each algae plant died it had one last function to perform to ensure the survival of a species unrecognised and out of place in the natural world – the release of spores, the lightest in nature, so featherweight and small that as soon as they were released they were carried up into the air and out into the world beyond.

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘MR PORTER, I THINK YOU NEED to look at this.’

  At the Thames regional office of the UK Environment and Waterways Agency, Regional Director Don Porter was drawn to the computer screen of one of his newest and keenest assistants.

  ‘What is it, Fred?’

  The newcomer, Fred Humphries, had started to make a habit of trying to attract Porter’s attention on issues that Porter’s usual team knew not to trouble him with. He was in the middle of a horrendously busy day, including a battle with a new company that had set up some kind of facility within the boundaries of his geographical remit, with no thought whatsoever for local planning or environmental regulations. The company was not supposed to take over the site for another two months, until all the permits and licences were in place, but it had appeared almost overnight and none of his staff had been able to get into the site or even speak to anyone involved in the company. He was going to be completely hung out to dry on this one if he didn’t do something about it and soon. The last thing he needed was these distractions.

  Don Porter gazed at Fred’s screen. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a chat room – .’

  Porter wondered if this was a sackable offence. Humphries had obviously been browsing the internet after all and that was misuse of the company’s computer. He was in the mood for a sacking, particularly when it came to anyone unnecessarily taking up his precious time.

  ‘Yes, I can see that, Fred. Why are you showing it to me?’

  ‘It’s going mad, Mr Porter. Ever since yesterday evening there are all these posts that have started going up about algae appearing in people’s ponds. There’s even one here about someone noticing the same plants in a local river.’

  Porter thought he could at least get away with giving the boy a severe and very public dressing down.

  ‘We get this kind of thing all the time, Fred. Honestly, it’s really nothing to write home about.’

  ‘But don’t you think it’s a little odd? All of it suddenly appearing at the same time?’

  ‘Well, is it all over the country?’ There was something about Fred’s enthusiasm that stopped the Regional Director from giving him a reprimand. Not many of the Environment Agency’s employees had much of this kind of enthusiasm any more – working there for more than a year seemed to knock that firmly out of people. But Fred was new and fresh and that, Porter reasoned wearily, should probably be encouraged.

  ‘I don’t think so, Mr Porter, it seems to be only happening around London at the moment.’

  ‘Whereabouts exactly?’

  ‘Seems to be mostly concentrated just west of Richmond. There’s a lot of open water around there –waterworks, as well as a number of reservoirs and public gardens.’

  ‘Right. So it seems fairly contained?’

  Fred frowned. ‘I guess.’

  ‘Well, for the moment I suggest we monitor the situation. No point in alarming anyone – all those open waterworks are treated with algaecide so we’re not going to be overcome with a ‘red tide’ any time soon.’

  ‘It’s not red algae, Mr Porter. As far as I can tell from these posts the algae seem to be black.’

  ‘Black? Black algae normally only grow in fish tanks or swimming pools.’

  ‘I know, Mr Porter, that’s why I thought it was strange.’

  ‘They must be mistaken – it could very easily just be dark green.’

  Fred opened his mouth to protest but Don had a meeting and he’d heard enough.

  ‘Monitor the situation for me, Fred,’ he said and smiled encouragingly.

  The first thing Eva was aware of when she opened her eyes was a blinding headache. She was in complete darkness, with some sort of material covering her head, but from the pain behind her eyes she felt as if someone was shining a spotlight right into them. She tried to remove the head covering but her hands were bound and her ankles tied together, tough plastic digging into her skin when she tried to move. Eva’s first instinct was one of panic. The claustrophobic feeling of the material over her head and her bound hands and feet triggered a surge of adrenaline that she fought from escalating. I can’t afford to lose control, she told herself over and over again. If she panicked she would not be able to think rationally and, right at this moment, that was just about her only defence and her only weapon.

  She leaned to one side and felt around with her hands for several seconds and realised she was sitting on a rough, uneven floor covered in small rocks and grains of sand. She was not in Leon’s flat once again, or at her hotel. Was she even still in Paris? The last thing she remembered was sitting in front of a computer screen but she had no idea where or why. Her mind had gone completely blank.

  As another wave of panic threatened, Eva struggled briefly with her bonds but she was bound tight. Finally, she let out a short, frustrated cry and slumped against the wall, her heart beating hard. To try and release the pressure, she let herself cry and the tears spilled down her cheeks without being wiped away, hot and salty against her dry, cracked lips, soaking into the black felt of the hood over her head. The tears had the desired effect. As the anxiety dispersed enough for her to think clearly, pieces of information and images began to crystallise in her head. She remembered being at the Sacré Coeur with Sophie and her memories before that were all intact. But how had she come here?

  Suddenly a door slammed in the distance, drilling a shot of adrenaline through Eva’s system. Memories began flying faster through her brain. She remembered sprinting away from Leon and then arriving at Valerie’s flat. Opening the memory stick that Sophie gave her at the Sacré Coeur was one of the last situations she could recall, so it must have been Valerie’s computer she was looking at. Eva tried to feel for the shape of the memory stick in the pocket of her jeans, but she couldn’t move her hands and she knew instinctively that the device was not there. She realised she no longer had any idea what was on it.

  Again she felt a sense of overwhelming anxiety. She tried to ignore the chasm of possibilities opening up below her – where she was, why was she there, what would happen next? Instead she tried to focus on something inside her body – her breathing, her heartbeat – the only things she had control over.

  Suddenly the room was filled with light. Eva sat completely still. Through the thin material of the hood she could make out two figures framed in the doorway, one short and stocky and the other tall and thin.

  ‘Pick her up.’ The voice was male and accented, although Eva couldn’t place it.

  The stocky figure moved across the room towards her and grasped
her by the back of her top, pulling her, stumbling, to her feet. Small waves of panic washed over Eva; she was completely at the mercy of these two men, whoever they may be. She tried to keep herself calm and focus on regulating her breathing, keeping all her strength for any opportunities she might get to escape. It wasn’t easy – every surge of adrenaline brought a fresh urge to panic.

  ‘Bring her through.’ That clipped voice again, accent indecipherable – French? Italian?

  Suddenly Eva found herself facing the floor as the stocky man hoisted her over his left shoulder. By moving her head, she managed to loosen and then shake off the black hood as the man carried her, still bound at the hands and feet, out of the dark cell and into the light of a narrow stone corridor. Eva lifted her gaze and glanced back at the room he had taken her from. It looked very much like a prison cell and even had a small wrought-iron door with a tiny window in the centre at the top. As they walked down the corridor, Eva saw other similar doors on either side, all shut. By the time they reached the end of the corridor and turned left, she had counted six.

  Eva was carried into a room and deposited roughly into a rickety chair. Her carrier then proceeded to fasten a rough rope around her shoulders so that, with her hands and feet bound together and her body fastened to the chair by the rope, she couldn’t move at all. Eva looked around. The room was better lit than the corridor and now that she was free of the hood she could clearly see the two men in front of her. She felt the eyes of the taller man boring into her own. His skin was dark; he looked African. Eva remembered the man at her hotel, the same man that Leon had executed at the petrol station. Perhaps this was revenge. Or perhaps it was worse.