by Ken McClure
‘Mine too,’ said Steven after a similar search.
Macmillan confirmed that his phone had gone too. ‘This is crazy,’ he said. ‘Why bring us here and then just walk away and leave us? They take our phones but nothing else…’
‘Maybe we’ve been mugged for our phones,’ suggested Steven, tongue in cheek. The fact that they were alive and apparently free to go was making all three of them feel a whole lot better about life.
‘Did you see them, whoever they were?’ asked Macmillan.
‘No. We came round just before you,’ said Steven. ‘We saw the two fake paramedies at the park but didn’t pay them too much attention; we thought you were dying at the time. There’s been no sign of anyone since we came round and it’s beginning to spook me out. Monk has to be behind this and he was holding all the aces. With us three out of the way, there’d be no one left to ask awkward questions…’
‘So why just abandon us? Why let us go?’ asked Macmillan.
‘What do you use this particular room for, Lukas?’ asked Steven, who had recovered enough to be taking an interest in his surroundings.
‘This is our biohazard lab,’ replied Lukas. ‘We have three labs but this is the one we’d use for handling dangerous things.’
‘What’s special about it?’
‘It has two isolation chambers,’ said Lukas, pointing to two glass-fronted boxes with stools in front of them. ‘We don’t have to handle many pathogenic organisms, but when we do we use these. The worker is protected by a glass screen and uses the armholes in the side to carry out manipulation of what’s inside the chamber. Apart from that, the whole room is constantly under negative pressure so that air comes in but doesn’t flow out. In addition to that, there’s an airlock system on the door. We also have UV irradiation lamps to sterilise the room when no one’s in it.
‘Are we locked in?’ asked Macmillan.
‘We can’t be,’ said Lukas. ‘They didn’t keep my card. It’s a master key.’ He took it from his wallet and started to go towards the door.
‘Stop!’ yelled Steven.
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Don’t touch the door,’ said Steven. ‘You said the room was under constant negative pressure but listen… the ventilation system isn’t running at all.’
‘We turn it off at the weekend,’ said Lukas, and then had immediate second thoughts. ‘But on the other hand, it should have started up automatically when someone came in here…’
Steven, who had been wandering round the lab, inspecting the benches, held up two glass petri dishes, one in either hand, and asked Lukas what they were.
Lukas looked puzzled as he walked over to join Steven. ‘We don’t leave cultures of micro-organisms lying around ever,’ he said. He took one from Steven and examined it closely. ‘It’s like some kind of fungus,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand it. This has nothing to do with us.’ He looked at the other paraphernalia on the bench, more petri dishes, racks of test tubes, flasks. ‘We haven’t been working on anything like this. I’ve no idea how any of this got here…’
‘I have,’ said Steven. ‘Monk’s been setting the scene for one of his “accidents”.’
Macmillan, who had now joined the other two at the bench, surveyed the scene and could take little comfort from the look on Steven’s face. ‘Go on,’ he said.
‘I don’t think this is just any fungal culture,’ said Steven. ‘It’s the organism they used on John Motram. The cultures have been left here to make it look as if we were investigating the organism when we had our accident. At least, that’s what the authorities are supposed to think when they find us with our brains turned to mush.’
‘But how?’ asked Macmillan. ‘We’re not going to contaminate ourselves with these.’ He eyed the cultures on the bench. ‘Are we?’
‘No,’ said Steven thoughtfully. ‘They’re window dressing. We were supposed to come round, thank our lucky stars we were still alive and then walk out of here… and that’s when it’ll happen.’
The other two followed him over to the airlock exit where he stopped and turned round to look up at the ceiling, in particular the rectangular wire grating above them.
‘That’s for the positive pressure airflow into the room,’ said Lukas, following Steven’s line of sight. ‘Air leaving the lab has to go through the filter system over there, maintaining a pressure differential.’ He pointed to a series of extractor units on the other side of the room.
‘It’s my bet the system’s been loaded with toxic spores of this organism,’ said Steven. ‘As soon we trigger the door release, the fans will spring into life, flooding the room with fungal spores instead of the fresh air they’re supposed to pump in. Monk will have jammed the door on the other side of the airlock so we can’t get out.’
‘So we’re trapped,’ said Macmillan, reaching a conclusion no one felt inclined to argue with.
‘Unless we can come up with a way of getting out of here without triggering the ventilation system,’ said Steven, looking at Lukas, who shook his head.
‘There are half a dozen safety systems in place to make sure that it does turn on whenever it looks as if the lab is going to be open to the outside world,’ he said. ‘There’s even an auxilliary back-up if mains electricity should fail.’
‘Shit.’
‘What happens if we just sit tight and wait?’ asked Macmillan. ‘I mean, I know it could be a long weekend for us, but when one of Lukas’s people arrives on Monday morning…’
‘They’d trigger the fans; we’d be dead by the time they figured out how to open the door and it would still look like an accident. Besides, Monk isn’t going to let that happen. He’s going to come back to check on things and unjam the door mechanism so his “accident” looks perfect.’
‘If you’re right about all this and we should breathe in these spores, how long have we got?’ asked Lukas.
‘Depends how long it takes us to kill each other,’ said Steven, to the horrified looks of the other two. ‘I’ve thought a lot about what happened to John Motram. I’m sure the Public Health and hospital people up in Scotland identified the fungus correctly, but they weren’t to know that it had been genetically modified. John Motram’s symptoms had Porton Down written all over them… the madness, the aggression. This bug’, he held up one of the dishes, ‘has been designed as a bio-weapon. The clever thing to do these days is not to design weapons that kill but to come up with ones that will cause maximum disruption and create a huge drain on your enemies’ resources. Something that drives your victim mad and turns him into a homicidal maniac, intent on killing his comrades, would be seen as the perfect weapon. The fact that the victim doesn’t die himself but develops breathing problems and liver disease, demanding expensive and intensive medical care as well as restraint, would be seen as the icing on the cake.’
Macmillan shook his head. ‘How would Monk get his hands on something like that?’
Steven shrugged. ‘The old pals act again?’ he suggested. ‘A friend of a friend at Porton thought they might like to see how their latest project worked in practice? The tomb opening at Dryburgh would have been seen as the perfect scenario for a test run.’
Macmillan looked ashen and Steven knew why. Sir John was of the old school and, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary over the years, couldn’t bring himself to believe that the UK would involve itself in such things. He’d never quite embraced the concept that you had to be as bad as the bad guys in order to survive. ‘This is still all supposition,’ he said, without much conviction.
‘Then let’s hope I’m wrong.’
‘What d’you think Monk will do when he comes back and finds us still alive?’ asked Lukas.
‘Trigger the fans,’ said Steven.
‘Stupid question,’ Lukas conceded.
‘As I see it,’ said Macmillan, ‘we’ve no evidence that what Steven is suggesting is right but we can’t take the risk of putting it to the test. We have to find a way of getting out of here without tri
ggering the ventilation system.’
‘Easier said than done,’ said Steven, who was becoming edgy. He was very conscious of the fact that time was ticking by and Monk would be coming back.
‘Surely we could afford to trigger the system as long as we could get out quickly enough afterwards?’
‘We’d have to hold our breath for as long as it took.’
‘What I was thinking of was an explosion,’ said Macmillan. ‘If we could blow a hole in the wall, we could escape to the outside. Do you have the wherewithal to do that, Lukas?’
Lukas looked doubtful. ‘It’s a biology lab, Sir John,’ he said. ‘We don’t have much call for things that go bang…’ He looked to the glass-fronted chemical cupboards without much conviction.
‘What’s in the red cylinder?’
‘Hydrogen. We use it for creating anaerobic conditions for bacteria that don’t like oxygen.’
‘I seem to remember you can get a pretty fair bang with hydrogen gas, can’t you?’
‘You certainly can,’ interrupted Steven, who was losing patience. ‘There’s no doubt we have the ability to blow ourselves to kingdom come, which might be quicker than the fungal route, but as for blowing a hole in the wall, forget it. Unless Lukas can come up with something like nitro-glycerine — or anything else that we could create a controlled, localised explosion with — we can forget the big bang theory.’
‘Sorry,’ said Lukas. ‘No can do.’
‘So where do we go from here?’ said Macmillan.
Steven looked at his watch. ‘We came round about twenty minutes ago. Monk would expect us to have walked into the trap and be fighting each other to the death by now. He’ll probably be back here some time within the next hour to… tidy up loose ends.’
‘Christ,’ said Lukas. Macmillan said nothing.
‘As I see it, there’s no possibility of disabling the ventilation system for the reasons Lukas gave earlier — too many safety mechanisms — so that just leaves one option. We’ve got to remove the spores from the system. Monk and his pals couldn’t have had that much time to set this up so it’s my guess it will be something fairly simple inserted in the trunking above us. I’ve got to get up there to see if I can find it. What d’you think, Lukas? Is there room?’
Lukas looked unsure, glancing first at Steven and then at the grating above them. ‘Could be a tight fit. You certainly won’t be turning round much once you’re in there.’
‘Let’s do it,’ said Steven with an air of finality that spurred them into action, collecting lab furniture to make a platform below the grating. ‘I’ll need a screwdriver, a torch, maybe some wet cloths, wire cutters if possible but scissors or a knife at a pinch.’
‘We’ve got a torch,’ said Lukas, breaking off from platform building to open a series of drawers, one after the other, making them bang on their stops and remind everyone of the urgency of their situation. ‘And a screwdriver… no wirecutters, I’m afraid… shit, where are the scissors?… plenty of scalpels… no cloths; we use disposable towels, but I can rip up a lab coat…’
Steven acknowledged the growing inventory with grunts as he undid the screws holding the grating on the ceiling.
‘What happens if the grating’s wired to the ventilation system?’ asked Macmillan, holding the platform steady while looking up at Steven.
‘We’re fucked,’ replied Steven without stopping.
Macmillan looked away. ‘Can’t complain about a nice clear answer, I suppose,’ he murmured.
Steven removed the grating and lowered it to Lukas, who had returned to the platform with the bits and pieces he’d collected. In exchange, he took the things Lukas handed up to him and put them inside the open hatch. There was no point in putting anything in his pockets because there wouldn’t be room to move his arms behind him once he was inside the trunking. He did, however, slip a couple of the scalpels between his wrist and his watch strap. He’d have to nudge everything else along in front of him. Finally, he took off his sweater and shirt and dropped them to the ground. With a last look below, he gripped the edges of the hatch, bent his knees and muttered, ‘Up we go.’
THIRTY-NINE
There was a moment, after heaving himself up through the opening, that Steven thought it was not going to be possible. There had been just enough room for him to launch himself headfirst into the trunking, but he was left with his arms pinned behind him and no means of propelling himself forwards or backwards. He felt trapped like a cork in a bottle.
He had to fight off panic. Panic only ever made things worse. Uncoordinated wriggling was getting him nowhere. He focused only on his right arm, harnessing every bit of movement he could manage into bringing it underneath him and then wriggling it up past the side of his face until he could push it out freely in front of him. This instantly gave him confidence and more room to repeat the procedure with his left arm. With both arms in front of him, he found he could get some purchase. He was on the move.
He switched on the torch and looked at what lay ahead: a stretch of trunking running straight for about six metres but then meeting a T-junction, which would call for his first decision. He turned off the torch to save the batteries while he covered the six metres, something he did painfully slowly, his throat becoming dry and sweat running down his face in the hellish heat of the confined space.
He discovered there was no decision to make at the junction at all. The spur to the right led only to a blank plate about a metre away with bolts protruding through it, suggesting it might be some kind of inspection hatch. Steven’s spirits soared momentarily when he thought that this might actually be a way out for all of them if the hatch led to a different room in the building, but further examination brought him back to reality. He could only see long threaded shafts of the bolts: the heads were on the outside of the plate. There was no way of turning them from the inside.
He turned his attention to what lay to the left and saw the large, motionless fan. It filled the trunking about eight metres back from the junction. The torch he was using wasn’t powerful. It picked out the blades of the fan well enough and he could see its supporting framework, but he couldn’t see what he wanted to see, the mechanism to inject fungal spores into the airflow. Did it exist? Steven felt his confidence wobble.
If the mechanism did exist, it would have to be located on this side of the fan for him to do anything about it. Should it turn out to be on the far side, he would have no way of reaching it. He’d be left looking at it through the mocking blades of the fan. He started wriggling forwards again.
By now he was blinking constantly to clear away the sweat that was running freely into his eyes, but at least the perspiration from his body was reducing friction and allowing him to move more easily through the metal trunking. He stopped after three metres to turn on the torch again but still couldn’t see anything rigged in front of the fan. He turned off the torch and rested his head on his arms. Despair was threatening and was only being kept in its place by thoughts of a training sergeant of long ago, shouting at him in the mountains of North Wales when sleet was falling and winter winds were howling. ‘When you think you’ve got nothing left to give, Mr Dunbar… you fucking well have, so get off your arse and let’s do that all over again, shall we?’
Steven stopped about two metres from the fan and clicked on the torch. There it was, the most beautiful sight in the world, the protruding top of a round, pressurised container, by the look of it. It had been inserted in front of the fan from the room below. The trigger mechanism appeared primitively simple, a wire from the container attached to one of the fan blades. When the fan started turning, a valve would be ripped out of the top of the container and the contents would spray out into the airflow.
Steven moved closer and examined everything thoroughly to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, but as far as he could see he wasn’t. He slipped the plastic guard off one of the scalpels he’d brought with him and cut through the wire leading to the fan.
‘And that�
��s all there is to it,’ he murmured, letting his head fall forward on to his outstretched arms. He lay there motionless for fully a minute, waiting for his breathing to subside until it became as shallow as a sleeper’s. The sweat continued to trickle down his face but it didn’t bother him any longer, he even took childish pleasure in charting the path of each drop as it sought the easiest contour of his face to follow. It was over; he’d done it; they were safe. In a few moments he would start the long wriggle backwards and return to the lab. Once down there, they could press the door release with impunity, enter the airlock space and batter their way through the jammed outer door.
Feeling physically exhausted but filled with enormous relief, Steven summoned up the energy to start the retreat. As he’d feared, wriggling backwards proved to be even more difficult than going forwards: a different undulating motion was called for, a more unnatural movement that had him gasping for breath by the time he’d backed up to the junction. He started to lose his temper when he encountered difficulty in trying to make the ninety-degree turn backwards: his legs seemed too long.
He had exhausted his entire vocabulary of swear words, used in every combination he could think of, when he finally succeeded in making it round the corner. He had to rest for a few moments to recover his equilibrium, the merest suggestion of a cool breeze caressing his cheek…
The breeze became a hurricane; the fan had been switched on. Steven yelled out but had to bow his head against the blast as the implications hit home like stab wounds. Monk had returned; he was down there. Christ, he’d been in sight of the finishing line and this had to happen… Monk was going to win: he would still be able to set up his accident and get away with it.
For the second time in a few hours, Steven found himself facing the prospect of death without any hope of a reprieve. As she grew up, Jenny would tell her friends that her daddy had died in an accident when she was young, but at least Tally wouldn’t have to tell people she was a widow. ‘I’m so sorry, love,’ he murmured. ‘You were right, I was wrong.’
