The Hurst Chronicles | Book 4 | Harbinger

by Crumby, Robin

  “When did you get here?” asked Zed, patting his friend Anton on the shoulder.

  “I transferred to Ventnor at the beginning of the month.”

  “Strange that Hardy never mentioned you were involved.”

  “He’s too proud to admit anyone’s helping him.” Anton seemed on-edge, reluctant to say anything else so close to his place of work. “Meet me down at the pumping station,” he said, pointing to a building on the sea front with a covered pavilion. “Five minutes.”

  Zed wandered down Shore Hill, wondering why Anton was being so mysterious. While he waited, he puzzled at the mosaic plaque attached to the building depicting the goddess Hygeia, Ventnor’s adopted coat of arms. A voice behind him made him start.

  “Hygeia, Greek goddess of health and wellbeing. You see her everywhere in town. In Queen Victoria’s time people came here for treatments. They even named a local beer after her.”

  Zed nodded disinterestedly. “Come on, Anton. Why are you really here?”

  “I’ll have you know that mine was the second name on the list when Hardy picked the team,” he replied in mock irritation. “Who else knows more about vaccines? Russian vaccination programmes were light years ahead of the West.”

  “You shouldn’t believe your own propaganda,” scoffed Zed.

  “It’s true. Soviet Union scientists developed the first oral vaccines for several communicable diseases, including smallpox,” claimed Anton with pride. “We also pioneered the dissemination of aerosol vaccines over target population zones.”

  Zed laughed at the Russian’s pragmatism. “I suppose aerosol has its advantages. I mean, why bother with vaccinating individuals when you can inoculate tens of thousands at once without consent?” he joked. “I can see why the Iraqis were so interested in the technology Russia developed.”

  “Why is it you British always had a blind spot when it came to Russia? You struggled to believe that the same country that manufactures Lada cars could possibly produce state-of-the-art vaccines.” Anton took one last drag and flicked the butt into the wind.

  “I suppose we were all hoodwinked by the scale of deception undertaken by Biopreparat,” admitted Zed. “Even Yeltsin and Gorbachev didn’t know the truth.”

  “They were deceived like everyone else. Soviet Union generals and scientists always denied that such biological research programmes existed but we wanted the world to know about the vaccine technologies we had created. We offered to share our vaccine research several times, but the West always refused our offer of partnership.”

  “Because everyone assumed it was some trick. There was a lack of trust all round. No one believed that Russia would give up its technical advantage, unless there were conditions attached. The West feared that any help we did offer, through investment or collaboration, would be channelled into covert military operations, beyond the reach of the inspectors. And then with the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union, they realised the risk of these technologies falling into the wrong hands.”

  “Sharing our vaccine research was a fail-safe to combat the threat of novel pathogens that only we had the vaccine for,” admitted Anton. “Our offer of collaboration was, I suspect, tempered in part by remorse.”

  “Politics and science are never easy bedfellows. We assumed the Russians were laughing into their sleeves, mocking the West.”

  Both men fell silent as an excited group of young mothers left the building behind them by a side door. They waited until they were out of earshot before continuing their conversation.

  “Colonel Abrahams told me you wanted to ask me about my time in Stepnogorsk.” Anton let out a long sigh as if the memory troubled him.

  “If you’re happy to answer questions. It’s come up a few times in my Wildfire research.”

  “Over a drink, perhaps?”

  “You mean you can still get a drink round here with the Sisters in charge?”

  “Of course. The nights here can be very long. What else is there to do? All the scientists go to a local called The Volunteer. You’d like it. The beer there is warm and flat. Say 8pm?”

  “The Volunteer?” Zed smiled to himself, thinking the name sounded strangely fitting. “I’ll see you there. Eight o’clock.”

  After dinner, Zed asked Doctor Simms where he could find this fabled drinking spot, half expecting to be told he was the victim of one of Anton’s practical jokes.

  “You mean the Volly? It’s on Victoria Street. Five minute walk from here, up the hill.”

  With the sea behind him, Zed climbed Shore Hill, torch in hand, passing boarded up shops and a Baptist Church used as a daycare centre for older children. Albert Street was lined with pretty cottages and seaside accommodation. Outside the doctor’s surgery, a uniformed nurse looked up suspiciously, chaining her bicycle to the railing, perhaps more through habit than fear of theft.

  The half familiar sounds of glasses being stacked, piped music and the hubbub of conversation carried down the street before he turned the corner. The crowd spilled out on to the pavement, standing room only inside. Tables and bench seats thronged with men and women in the dim light from upright candles, one on every table. The air was heavy with the sweet smell of tobacco. He nudged his way through the main bar towards the quieter section at the back where Anton was playing darts with another bearded scientist, cigar between his teeth.

  “Let me get you a drink.”

  The heavily-tattooed woman behind the bar had an impressive collection of piercings. She pulled a pint like a professional, setting a glass of dark frothy liquid on the counter. Anton retrieved a dark blue casino chip from his chino pocket, placing it in her outstretched palm.

  “Damn that’s good,” said Zed, licking the froth off his lips.

  “They make it just up the road. In Newchurch,” added Anton. “This one’s called Redemption. They restarted production a few months back.”

  Zed smiled at the name. It was full-bodied, rich with hops and malt. “First proper pint I’ve had in weeks.”

  They took their drinks back to a table in the corner furthest away from the other drinkers where they could talk without being overheard. Anton nudged Zed’s foot under the table. “Guy at the bar trying to blend in. Been watching you since you arrived.”

  Zed dropped a beermat, reaching down to pick it up. To his relief, Daniels silently nodded back, over the top of his paperback. “He’s with me.”

  Anton shrugged. “Good. So Stepnogorsk. What was it you wanted to know?”

  Zed unpacked his note book and thumbed through the handwritten pages until he found what he was looking for. “I read the transcript of your debrief when you first defected. I was curious to learn more about your time there. There’s almost nothing written about the place in the archive, yet it was one of the six principal Biopreparat research sites.”

  “Stepnogorsk was secret, not even listed on any maps. Biopreparat went to great lengths to make it look decommissioned, derelict. It was really just a postal address. Miles from anywhere in what’s now Kazakhstan. You call it Renaissance Island.”

  “Which is where Biopreparat undertook all the tests with airborne pathogens?”

  Anton encouraged Zed to lower his voice. “Correct. I spent an unbearably hot summer on that island. Starkly beautiful, no birds or animals, totally barren. Right in the middle of the Aral Sea. Nothing to do at night but work and drink vodka. Even fishermen didn’t go near the place. It was so toxic we had to wear protective equipment whenever we went outside. You needed a whole barrage of vaccinations.”

  “How far from your lab at VECTOR?” continued Zed in barely above a whisper.

  “Not far in summer, but in winter the roads are impassable. You have to remember that, back then, Biopreparat employed more than thirty thousand workers, consuming billions of dollars of investment. The industrial might of the Soviet state turned over to weapons production and research.”

  “How many of those were at Stepnogorsk?”

  “Perhaps seven hundred technicians
and scientists. By the time I got there it was a shadow of its former self. Its scale was still breathtaking. Colossal buildings the size of football fields laid end to end. Row after row of fermentation vats standing almost four stories tall.”

  “Designed for what purpose?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Anthrax production and storage, or so they say. My team worked in Building 600.”

  Zed checked his notes. “The debriefing transcript suggested Building 600 housed the aerosol chambers?”

  “Correct.”

  “What pathogens were you testing?”

  Anton shrugged. “Marburg, Ebola, anthrax, plague, smallpox.”

  “Did you ever use human subjects?”

  “Sometimes, but mostly just monkeys, rats, mice. Everything was primitive by today’s standards. Many industrial accidents, explosions caused by static electricity were common. They installed grounding strips everywhere. The chambers had a chair in the middle where we secured the test subject. It was the smell of the place I remember. No amount of bleach could mask the stench of death and excrement.”

  “How good was the security?” said Zed, thinking back to the break in at the biocontainment unit at Porton Down and the attack on Gill.

  “Nothing special. No CCTV or electrified fences, but then we were in the middle of nowhere. Not like VECTOR. I don’t think they even bothered to patrol the place at night. Pathogens were stored in refrigerated underground bunkers.”

  “Any break ins you can remember?”

  “It’s possible, the whole place had only low-level security.”

  “What about the test subjects? Were they all volunteers?”

  “Why do you think they built it in Kazakhstan?” Anton laughed. “Russians think Kazakhs are expendable at the best of times. Most of the subjects were social rejects: criminals and vagrants. We kept them in cages.”

  Zed shook his head. “I wonder what animal rights protesters would say if they knew.”

  “No questions were ever asked. We could do whatever we liked, but no one spoke about it. We were terrified what would happen if the locals ever found out.”

  “What became of the island after the fall of the Soviet Union?”

  “Like all the other sites, they closed them down. Too many accidents. Unexplained symptoms in local population centres, spikes in secondary conditions like cancer, heart disease, kidney failure or birth defects. Not good for public relations.” Anton shook his head with a knowing smile. “A few years ago, I heard they sent a clean-up crew to make the site safe. It was a ghost town, a relic from another era. Storage containers full of toxic material left to rust.”

  Zed turned the page in his notebook and pointed to two names circled in red.

  “I understand you worked with Andrei Pomerantsev and Nikolai Staritsin?”

  “They worked at VECTOR, but we were not on the same team. Why do you ask?”

  “Because when Alibek defected he claimed that Pomerantsev and Staritsin were working on a range of viruses, said to combine Ebola and smallpox. Is that true?”

  “Yes, but they were going nowhere fast. I think they abandoned the entire project. Sergei Popov was the only one who had any real success with modified viruses.”

  Zed recognised the name but was less familiar with Popov. He turned the page and starting making notes.

  “Popov defected before me. Last I heard, he was living in Dallas, working for the Americans. He was one of the first people I worked with at VECTOR. Biochemistry doctorate, like me. His thesis got a lot of attention from the military. How to turn the body’s natural defences against itself, to trick the immune system into self-destruction.”

  Zed leaned forward in his seat. “Does Ephesus know this? There’s nothing about Popov in the archive.”

  “You seem surprised the archive is incomplete? Perhaps Porton has more secrets than you know.” Anton smiled mischievously, teasing his British counterpart. “Popov’s team at VECTOR discovered a way of reproducing degenerative diseases. Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or multiple sclerosis. The mortality rate was off the charts, close to one hundred percent. It only took a few cells to infect a victim. The potential military application was exciting.”

  “You mean by turning the body’s defences against itself?”

  “Exactly, Popov was obsessed with harnessing chemicals found naturally in the human body to trigger, say, psychological changes or mood swings, but the military wouldn’t fund those projects. They transferred Popov to augment weaponised versions of prototype pathogens, like anthrax or plague virus. His techniques were deployed to make them faster acting, triggering fever, headaches or nausea to debilitate a soldier and tie up resources in treating him.”

  The colour must have drained from Zed’s face. “It’s the same reason medieval archers dipped their arrow tips in poison,” continued Anton. “Russia was not the only country undertaking this type of research. Our job as scientists is to think about what is possible. We’re not politicians. We were told the application of these technologies would make our country safer. Our research, like our predecessors in developing the atomic bomb, would provide a deterrent against attacks by the West.”

  “But did you never stop to think about whether this research should be done in the first place?”

  “If we refused to complete the research, they would find someone else. We were not the only ones working on similar projects. There was a new arms race. Genetic research was in its infancy. Popov was a genius. He was the first to create a virus capable of expressing itself in distinct phases.”

  “Why?”

  “To throw off attempts to contain it.”

  “Sorry, I’m not following you,” admitted Zed.

  “Look, health authorities are trained to respond in preset protocols. Containment, quarantine, vaccination and so on. But military scientists realised we could use misdirection to conceal the true scale of a pathogen.”

  “Like a Trojan Horse?”

  “If you like. First symptoms resemble seasonal flu, then in the second phase of infection, the disease reveals itself as something far deadlier.”

  “You’re talking theoretically?”

  “No, scientists had the technology to do this years ago.”

  “In Russia?”

  “Yes, why do you think Major Donnelly was so keen to interview Popov when he defected.”

  “You mean Doctor Hardy?”

  “No, Donnelly was far more involved back then. He came to VECTOR twice on inspection visits. That’s where I first met him.”

  “When was this?”

  “Before he took over from Doctor Kelly. I thought you knew all this.”

  Zed was puzzled. He had read all the Porton personnel files many months ago, but he couldn’t recall seeing Major Donnelly’s service record.

  “Another one?” said Anton, draining his glass before heading for the bar.

  Chapter 18

  Anton supported Zed arm-in-arm back towards the boarding house allocated for the night, both a little unsteady on their feet. There were no working street lights in this part of town. Zed’s pocket torch guided the way. Anton put an arm around Zed’s shoulder. “You should stay. You might like it here.”

  “I need to get back to St Mary’s,” he slurred. “Some of us have work to do.”

  “You’ll find nothing there but more lies.”

  “You’re probably right. Sometimes, it’s like staring into an abyss. No hope of finding answers.”

  “There’s too much at stake. Why would anyone talk now?” Anton pulled Zed in close, whiskey on his breath. “I was like you once. An idealist searching for answers.” His voice trailed off.

  “We must expose the lies. Secrecy is the enemy of truth, Anton.”

  “If you value your life you will return to your castle and forget about the whole thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve already lost too many comrades. People who dared stick their head above the parapet.”

  “Men l
ike Kelly?”

  “Ironic, really. I thought I left behind totalitarian rule, but it’s just the same here.” Anton stopped outside the bed-and-breakfast. He bid Zed good night with a drunken wave.

  Zed climbed the narrow stairs and crashed into the room, almost knocking over the bedside table. He pulled off his trousers and climbed into bed, his thoughts still racing from what Anton had revealed about Major Donnelly. On a whim, he booted up his laptop and, after three failed attempts, logged into the encrypted external drive where he kept the classified Porton Down document cache. He scrolled to a password protected folder and pulled up Major Donnelly’s personnel file. To his dismay, an error message confirmed what he had feared. He clicked on several other documents, but all the human resources information had corrupted.

  He closed his eyes and began working through what he could remember. Donnelly’s PhD in Biochemistry, stints at several government departments including DERA, the Defence Evaluation, and Research Agency, and DSTL, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. There had been no specific mentions of Russia or joint inspection visits anywhere else. Any direct links to UNSCOM would have triggered instant yellow flags. In a post-digital era, Zed was finding having almost instant recall still had its uses.

  He scanned his notes from initial interviews with senior Porton staff members. The major’s responses were general. They provided scant detail. Was it possible the colonel had underestimated Donnelly? Written him off as some jumped-up bureaucrat who ran Porton like his own personnel fiefdom. If Donnelly had once been Doctor Kelly’s understudy, was it also plausible he was his rival? Someone had deliberately redacted Donnelly’s service record. Zed wondered whether Ephesus or even Gill could shed more light. They might even have access to a paper copy to cross-reference against.