The Malthus Pandemic

by Terry Morgan

CHAPTER 54

  Back in England, Kevin Parker had just bought himself a pint of best bitter and was carrying it carefully towards a vacant seat. He had not been to The Penny Farthing in Whiteladies Road for months and had just sat down when his phone rang. It was me.

  "Kevin, it's Daniel. I'm in Cairo. Seen your MP yet?"

  "Not yet, Daniel, his surgery is booked solid."

  "Yes, on trivialities I expect. You need to try harder. Kevin. But, reason for my call - can you describe the woman you met at Doctor Mohamed El Badry's apartment in Chelsea?"

  "Mmm - big woman, Daniel. Arab dress. Black hair. Not my sort and, anyway, I was too taken by the apartment - made mine look like a cheap hostel for down and outs.

  "Anything else besides her being big?"

  In Bristol, Kevin scratched his head. "Gold rings, Daniel."

  "Yes, go on Kevin. Were they on her fingers, hanging from her ear, stuck up her nose, pinned to her cheeks? Was she a punk?"

  "On her fingers, big ones, blue stones. big bracelet as well if I recall."

  That was enough for me.

  "That's her. I've tracked her down, Kevin. She's coming to get you."

  "Don't joke Daniel. Is it true you've found her?"

  "Yes," I said, "But unless you get a move on, when I've tracked her husband down as well and found he is not Mohamed El Badry but Mohamed Kader as I suspect, it might all be too late and a pandemic will be upon us. What's more, Kevin, Mrs El Badry or Mrs Kader whatever you want to call her would also be a worthy member of the Malthus Society, Egypt Branch. Do you have a joint membership scheme for husband and wife?"

  Kevin still failed to appreciate my humour.

  "Have you ever been a burglar or a thief?" I asked Maria.

  "No, of course not," she replied.

  "Then the time has come for me to show you the rougher side of what I sometimes have to do," I said. "I hate doing it unless it's necessary. It's called breaking and entering with legitimate intentions, Maria. The intention will be to find something inside Doctor Fatima El Badry's clinic that might help us track down where her husband is and where the main Shah Medicals business is located. If the Clinic is the front for importing the equipment from Jordan then I hope we might find something. Are you willing?"

  "I cannot do it alone, Mr McCann."

  "No, and neither can I. I cannot read or write Arabic and this is where you come in. I'll do the breaking in part, you can do the translation."

  For me, what I was planning was an extreme measure with huge risk. But time was running out. I had no wish to stay on in Cairo for any length of time knowing that I had shared what I knew with Nagi and, now, Maria. They both knew about as much as I did. But neither is it my habit to leave a job unfinished.

  But, decision having been made, I phoned Colin, brought him up to date and told him what I planned to do.

  "This is right on the edge, Daniel. Go careful."

  "I know, Colin. Don't tell Anna." Then I said, "Please update Larry and ask him if he's managed to get a better description of the Doctor Mustafa from Kano."

  Ten o 'clock in the evening and, on schedule. the old Mercedes of Mahmoud drew up outside the hotel main entrance. I had already given him the destination. The Egyptian Pancake House in the Khan el Khalili night market was a busy, night-time venue for hundreds of locals and tourists and it was easy walking distance to the Shah Medical Centre. After eleven it would quieten down, but the roads and streets in the area would still be busy.

  Mahmoud dropped us on Sharia Al Azhar with instructions to return to the same place when I phoned. We then walked over the pedestrian bridge above the traffic to the edge of the market close to the square. But instead of heading for the Pancake House, Maria, who knew the area better, led the way, first down one side street and then out onto another, wider road. Where we were heading was a street in an area that had probably, once, been an expensive and affluent place to live. The block that Maria finally stopped at was, in some ways, ornate - three floors high, built of large stone blocks with big windows and wrought iron balconies overhanging the street. At ground level most were shops - a tea shop, a florist - but all were now closed. Lights were off. Between each of the shops was a doorway leading to dark, stone steps to upper floors. To the side of one doorway there was a bronze plaque in Arabic.

  Maria pointed to it: "Shah Medical Centre, First Floor, Doctor Ramses El Khoury - General Physician and Family Planning. 6pm to 9pm."

  I stood back and looked up. Lights were on in some of the adjacent windows to left and right but directly above us it was dark and lacked the balcony.

  ""Any idea what goes on above the clinic, Maria?"

  "Nothing, I think. The stairs go on up but there is a locked iron grill. Behind the grill there's rubbish."

  "So it's empty above?"

  "I think so. But there is also an iron grill on the first floor outside the clinic. It was open when I was there but perhaps it's now locked."

  "OK, stay here, I'm going up."

  "I cannot just stand here, Mr McCann. It does not look good in this area."

  Daniel smiled. "OK, come with me."

  Maria followed me up the dark, stone stairs to the first landing where the steps then turned and went up to another level. It was pitch black. I switched on a torch I had brought and shone it up the steps to two iron grills. Both were padlocked shut but only the one ahead was cluttered with accumulated debris behind it. I shone the torch through the left side grill and picked out a well swept short corridor leading to a wooden door. On the door, another sign in Arabic.

  "The clinic?"

  "Yes."

  I shone the torch up and down the grill. It was padlocked only at ground level. I then took a small piece of shiny metal from my pocket, pushed it into the lock, and twisted it. The well used lock opened with barely a sound. I took it off, shone the torch on it and showed Maria.

  "How do you do that?"

  "I made it from an empty Red Bull can," I whispered and pushed on the grill. It creaked and swung open. "After you," I said shining the torch towards the door.

  "Another padlock," said Maria, "Can I try?"

  "Sure, this is what you do." While I shone the torch on the lock, Maria picked it. It clicked and she turned the door handle. The door opened and we walked into the waiting room. It was hot and smelled of dirt and sweat and the torch picked out ten hard chairs, a scattering of magazines and a box of plastic children's toys.

  "That is the red light." Maria pointed above the door to the clinic itself as I shone the torch at the door handle and turned it. This was also locked but not with a padlock but a key. I pulled up the leg of my trousers, withdrew three small screwdrivers from my sock and held them in the torchlight for Maria to see. A minute later and the push button door lock clicked.

  "The filing cabinet," whispered Maria, clearly excited by events so far. "Shall we try that first?"

  Minutes later, with files spread on the floor and with me sitting in Doctor Fatima El Badry's swivel chair holding the torch, Maria went through the files. And it didn't take long for Maria to suddenly hold something up.

  It says "Al Zafar," she said. "Shall I open it?"

  Minutes later, with Maria translating, I had what I hoped for - shipping documents for a consignment of stainless steel containers and piping, an invoice from a French company for "media for tissue culture" and then an invoice in English for two hundred thousand "pressurised metered-dose inhalers".

  If there was a need for any more evidence of a link between Al Zafar, Shah and Livingstone, this was it - the invoice was from Livingstone Pharmaceuticals, New York. But there was more. As I tried reading the papers in the torchlight, Maria held up another file. "Majid, Mr McCan. What is Majid?"

  Still engrossed in the shipping documents and invoices, I shrugged. "Read on, Maria."

  "It's an invoice from a transport company for goods to be taken to Beni Suef."

  "Where is Beni Suef?"

  "South," said Ma
ria, "On the Nile."

  "Any more details of an address?"

  "Majid, Nahda, Beni Suef."

  "Enough, Maria. Let's take these with us. They won't notice anything's missing for a while. Tidy up and let's go."

  It was Kevin who phoned Colin and broke the news that we might be too late.

  "There was a posting on the Malthus site last night," he told Colin. "I think Daniel should know. It was Solomon. I'll read it to you.

  'No-one can stop us now. We waited long enough for the politicians. But they were never likely to do anything and would always be too late, too disorganised, too self-interested. But in the end the people will be with us - the poor, the hungry, the economic migrants, the unemployed.

  "The WHO can do nothing to stop us. The BWC and UN know nothing and can do nothing. We tested in Nigeria, we practiced in Thailand. We warned them and gave them ample time but time has run out. We are now ready - Solomon'

  Colin called me.

  I had only just returned from the break in at the clinic and it took a while for it to sink in. Then I said, "OK, I think we all knew we were running out of time. But I think we've tracked down the Shah Medicals HQ. I'm heading there tomorrow. Meanwhile, is it possible with all the technology at your disposal to track down where that posting was sent from, Colin?"

  "Yes and I already did." said Colin. "It looks as if it may have been sent from an internet coffee shop in Bangkok, Daniel."

  "Oh, Christ - and that'll explain the inhalers and the Thai cases. We need to move quickly, Colin. Bring Larry up to speed will you? And anything more on GOB? His role still bothers me."

  It was Larry who broke more bad news.

  "I've been looking into the marketing of asthma inhalers," he told Colin.

  "Did you know that you can now buy them from supermarkets and, in some places, from dispensers along with your soft drink?

  "So Is this how their distribution network is going to work? Innocent-looking inhalers with counterfeit labels with a recognised company's name on and said to be containing salbutamol for asthmatics but, instead, containing a lethal dose of TRS-CoV? The distributors would not even know what they were distributing.

  "Would this explain Daniels findings of new distributors being set up, including one who was once arrested for plotting population control methods against the wishes of the Singapore government?

  "Or perhaps, their clever scientists are planning to release their treatment as an aerosol. inhaler. After all Relenza is a flu treatment administered via an inhaler and it's already on the market. They'd need some technical skills and the right equipment but methods for spreading a virus and then selling a treatment for it are endless.

  "And let me try out another one on you Colin.

  "How many counterfeit drugs get sold on the internet these days? I just Googled 'Buy salbutamol inhalers for asthma' online and up came pages of offers. Yes, you can buy openly or, as they like to say, discreetly. And who's to stop anyone stocking up on inhalers labelled as a recognised brand name like Ventolin but containing TRS-CoV from some cowboy outfit in India, Pakistan, or Egypt for that matter, and then putting them up for sale on the internet. And just think about Thailand where the aerosol canisters were found. Thailand has some of the best counterfeiters in the world. So is it all possible? You bet."

  Colin had listened to Larry's passionate but entirely realistic scenario.

  "Yes and it would tie in nicely with Daniel finding an invoice for a quarter of a million inhalers made out to Shah Medical Centre, Larry."

  "Jesus," said Larry. "Where is all this heading?"

  "I don't know but Daniel is going to what he suspects is the Shah production plant somewhere in Egypt as we speak. Stay close.."

  "And I'm going to Washington, Colin. There's no point staying here. I'll probably hand in my notice when I'm back in the USA.

  But the next bit of news coming into Colin's red hot phone was from Jimmy in Nairobi.

  "It's not just the Pakistanis who are leaving, Colin. I think they are moving everything out of the building. I arrived for my cleaning job tonight and two trucks were outside. They were loading equipment and boxes and many things into them. But Luther Jasman was helping them so I decided not to go to work tonight as Luther knows me.

  "Instead I phoned him and asked when he needed his new students. He was very apologetic. He said they didn't want any now as they were closing down the Nairobi business and will use it as a warehouse.

  "Luther is a very polite young man, Colin. I don't think he wanted to speak to me but I also think he is afraid he won't have a job soon. But I did get him to confirm that everything is going to Cairo.

  "And another thing, Colin. The trucks were taking things out but a man in a small van was taking boxes in."

  Colin phoned Daniel. Daniel's response was swift. "Ask Jimmy if he can find out what's in those boxes." I know now I was already starting to push Jimmy too far.

  Deciding it was best to use a rented car from now on, I generously paid off Mahmoud and Maria and I headed south in a Toyota saloon towards Beni Suef. Maria was map reading.

  Approaching Beni Suef the landscape was open, rural and flat with a scattering of high date palms. "There is a University, Nahda University, on the east side of the river, Mr McCann." said Maria. "But I still cannot find a place called Majid."

  Passing the University on the right we approached a roundabout with a choice - either turn right over the river to Beni Suef town or carry on. But with the map showing nothing going further south, we turned right, over the Nile bridge and into the outskirts of the town itself.

  Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suggested a stop for tea or coffee and a few enquiries. Leaving Maria to talk to the coffee shop waiter, I relaxed. Ten minutes later we were on the road again, heading south.

  The Majid Industrial area was a dusty, sand-blown area of small industrial units and untidy shop fronts, men in working overalls, dirty with grease and stray dogs watching the action. But driving on through we then found a better, more modern end of purpose built units with company names mostly in Arabic but some in English - Tobruk Tools, Hassan Engineering, Egyptian Confection, Majid Plastics. Then, as we rounded a bend in the road that seemed to run out into open countryside, a bigger, green painted building set behind a high wire fence came into view. The wire gateway, as high as the fence, was closed. Just inside on a stony, gravelled driveway was a small building of concrete blocks - a security man's shelter from the sun.

  I stopped the car and Maria and I sat with the engine and air-conditioning running and took stock. The single storey front end had a smart-looking entrance of tinted glass, possibly a reception area. Two small saloon cars were parked directly outside on the gravelled driveway which continued around the side to a higher, two story rear end with plain, green metal cladding. There were no windows but a white van was parked next to a wide double door loading bay.

  The building was big - far larger than I had imagined. I moved the car closer and pointed to the Arabic sign over the front entrance - "Shah Pharmaceuticals," in English and Arabic.

  But around the back of rear building was something else I had not imagined. It was a garden, a miniature oasis of bushes, palms and trees with yellow laburnum-like flowers. It resembled a small, artificially created garden of the sort found in some better hotels and I wondered if there might also be a swimming pool. But no-one seemed to be around - even the concrete security shelter behind the wire gate was empty. I took a few quick photos on my mobile phone and then we sat there. I looked at Maria, Maria looked at me. Maria asked the obvious question. "What do we do now, Mr McCann."

  "We turn around and go back to Cairo, Maria. I need to think."