‘The virus invades the endothelial cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels and causes severe haemorrhagic fever.’ Amongst the worried faces, Max detected a few blank expressions, something he was getting used to. ‘Victims essentially bleed to death from the inside as their organs turn to mush.’
‘I take it that’s the final and fatal phase?’ asked Col. Ackers.
‘It is,’ Max agreed. ‘Ebola has a very high fatality rate, about ninety-percent. But it only kills monkeys and humans.’
‘And as such it is classified as a Category A biological weapon,’ Col. Ackers explained sternly. ‘The Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult tried to develop it as one, they went to the Congo to find a sample. Thankfully, they failed.’
‘I thought you said it was zoonotic?’ one of the delegates said, the same female as before.
‘I did, and it is,’ Max confirmed. ‘But only the flu phase of the virus. The Ebola phase, however, only affects monkeys and humans.’
‘So what you’re saying is that almost everything on the planet can spread this disease, but it will only kill us humans and monkeys?’ This was from another delegate, one of the politicians. Her mouth hung open and she held her hands out in disbelief. ‘My God, this is no mere terrorist threat, this is a goddamned extermination.’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ Col. Ackers said loudly to break through the cacophony of voices that had filled the air. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Please let Max finish.’ He nodded to Max as the room quietened.
‘Ebola’s effectiveness as a biological weapon on its own is very limited,’ Max explained. ‘It kills its victims too quickly which prevents it from spreading it too widely. And in any case, it’s hard to pass on. Very close contact with a victim is required.’
‘So the threat is low then?’ This was from a bald black man in his early sixties, a delegate from the security service. ‘Isolated cases, but not a national problem?’
Max sighed and shook his head. ‘Ebola on its own would be just as you described, but this engineered virus has a solution to the transmission problem. Before the Ebola is coded for in the host, it needs the mutation to occur. This could take days to happen, weeks even, or conversely it could happen within hours of the original infection. It’s totally random. And while it waits to pounce the victims walk around spreading what they think is a cold, the flu part of the package. Then bam! All of a sudden they develop haemorrhagic fever and die in agony drowning in their own blood.’
The secretary stopped typing and looked up. An eerie silence fell upon the room. All that could be heard was the tick-ticking of the clock on the wall. Even that seemed to stop for a moment.
It was Col. Ackers who eventually broke the silence. ‘So the flu-like virus is the delivery method and the Ebola is the warhead,’ he said. ‘Very clever. Very, very clever indeed.’ Unusually, he seemed lost for words.
‘Precisely,’ Max agreed solemnly. On his presentation he navigated back to the 3D animation of the virus and played it. ‘What both amazes and frightens me is how simple it is. In fact, it is so simple it can be easily synthesised in the lab from scratch. That’s how we made it. Mass production would be easy. But it does have a weakness.’
Col. Ackers’ eyes lit up. ‘Explain.’
‘The initial flu-like virus can survive in the open atmosphere. But only for a very short period of time.’
‘How short?’
‘A minute or two.’
‘Which means?’
‘Which means,’ an exasperated Max said, ‘that it needs the initial victims to become infected in the first place, not an easy task. But the virus is hard to store in its native form, it needs to be kept away from oxygen and other reactive agents or it dies.’
‘So it’s difficult to weaponise?’ Col. Ackers said, ever hopeful.
‘Yes and no,’ replied Max. He removed his glasses and rubbed his face.
‘Come on, Max,’ Col. Ackers said shaking his head. ‘We’ve no room for ambiguity here.’
‘Look,’ Max continued. ‘Can you stuff it into the end of a missile and launch it towards London? Yes, but it wouldn’t be very effective, most of the agent would be destroyed. Can you explode a bag of it on the underground? Yes, but again, the explosion would damage the agent and you’d only infect a small number of people who would, in no doubt, be rushed to isolation rooms. Better to just use the explosives with a few nails in it if you want to make the headlines. You can’t paint it on door handles or on fruit in a shop like you can with ricin. I suppose you could go around infecting people one by one with a syringe, but it wouldn’t be long before you were caught.’
‘So, pray tell, how would you deploy it?’ Col. Ackers challenged.
Max looked to the ceiling and thought for a moment before he answered. ‘I would infect as many hosts as I could in the shortest possible time, covertly. Animal or human, but humans would be more effective, they travel quicker and further. Then I’d let the hosts pass it on to everyone they came in contact with in complete ignorance. I’d target travellers. Trains and planes.’
Col. Ackers rolled his eyes. ‘Yes, but how? A spray? A liquid? We need to know if BioNet will detect it.’ BioNet was an early warning system for chemical and biological attacks. Special detectors were permanently placed in all ports, airports, major rail stations and tube stations across the country.
‘I really don’t know,’ Max sighed. ‘Putting it in water denatures it quickly. We injected it into fruit, again it killed it. Oil didn’t work, nor plastics. I seriously doubt BioNet will work with this one.’
‘Damn it!’ Col. Ackers slammed his fist on the table. ‘Don’t tell me what won’t work, tell me what will.’
Max glared at his director, he couldn’t bear the bullish military types. He chose his words carefully and delivered his reply slowly. ‘It would take a network of people. They would have to be highly organised, dedicated. The agent would need to be sealed somehow, maybe in tiny soluble capsules of some sort. Then it would need to be distributed to large numbers of people over a large area and quickly.’
‘The food chain?’ Col. Ackers proposed.
‘A distinct possibility,’ Max conceded. ‘But however it is delivered there is a serious problem for the terrorists. And this is the real key to the problem.’
The team looked at Max expectantly.
‘The terrorists would all need to be immunised,’ he said. ‘The risk of exposure would be huge. And deadly.’
‘So there must be a vaccine?’ Col. Ackers probed.
Max chuckled. ‘Oh yes, there is a vaccine. A complimentary RNA blocking sequence. It was encoded in the files we were sent along with the viral gene sequence.’
A wave of confusion washed over the delegates. Max was in danger of losing his credibility.
Col. Ackers threw his hands in the air. ‘So what the hell is the problem then?’
All eyes were on Max.
‘It doesn’t work. The protection is only temporary, it soon wears off.’
Chapter 28
1745hrs – The Dorchester Hotel, London
Stage-fright was an all too common experience even among professionals. To stand in front of a thousand people, all expectant and eager to be entertained, was a daunting task for even the strongest of characters. Some made it look easy, made it look natural, just like talking to a room full of friends, but it was far from easy.
Terry Malone had been asked to host the dinner event at very short notice. Despite feeling under the weather, he jumped at the chance. Their first choice, a big shot presenter who had enviably chiselled features and a perfect smile, had let them down. Terry wasn’t sure how many others they asked before him, but he didn’t care. A minor celebrity and DJ from a London radio station, he was also a second rate comedian. Used to small live audiences, his often drunk crowd were easy to please. This event was something else entirely. A thousand famous faces right in front of him and the public watching at home in their millions. This was his big moment, it could make or b
reak him. He was nervous as hell.
Fortunately, he had some medicine for that particular ailment. He usually took a line or two of coke before live performances. It gave him the confidence he had always lacked in normal life. “Such a quiet boy”, his school teachers had always said. But the medicine brought him out of his shell. It enhanced his talent, sharpened his mind and his wit. He never performed without it. It had helped him through the previous night and it would help him through this one.
Left alone in his dressing room, he took a moment to study his reflection in the large mirror. Impressed with what the make-up artist had achieved, he straightened his bow-tie and resisted the temptation to touch his immaculately styled hair. Annoyingly, a bead of sweat collected on his forehead. He had felt hot all day and was convinced it was getting worse. Maybe it was just the make-up, he wondered; it was probably the nerves, he conceded. Careful not to remove the make-up, he dabbed his damp forehead with a tissue.
Noting the time, he locked the door and took out his antique snuff box. Relieved that there was more than enough powder left, using a razor blade he laid out two neat lines on the desk. His dealer had called it ‘pink’ due to its colour and had said it was a new blend he’d just got in. He said it would give a better and longer lasting hit, but when Terry used it the night before he hadn’t noticed anything different. No matter, it still did the job, and it was cheaper than his usual blend.
There was a loud knock at the door.
‘Just a moment,’ Terry shouted. Using a rolled up banknote he leaned over the desk and snorted the lines. He felt the blood rush to his head, his weight seemed to lighten, his face tingled. He sat back in his chair, breathed out and grinned.
He coughed; a deep, throaty cough that took him by surprise. Spots of pink coloured phlegm were scattered on the mirror. He wiped his mouth with a tissue, there was a light red coloration left on it. He frowned and studied his face in the mirror. It must have been from the pink dye in the coke, he concluded. He collected some more tissues, pocketed them, and made his way over to the stage.
Behind the curtain the floor manager checked and positioned him while the warm-up comic finished off his gags. Terry was beginning to feel rather hot under the collar, even more so than before. His hands were clammy, his shirt felt damp on his back. The floor manager began the silent count down with his fingers. This was it, Terry thought, his big chance at real fame.
Three, two, one. Terry made his way onto the stage and up to the podium.
The excitable crowd had been worked up into a frenzy by the warm-up comedian and their applause, whistles and cheers were deafening. Smiling and nodding confidently, Terry assumed his position at the podium and tried to focus on the words that were projected onto the glass auto-cue. The crowd quietened. Words began to roll up the screen. He squinted at them, they were all jumbled up, he opened his mouth to say something but he couldn’t formulate the words. His mind raced, the silence became deafening, all of a sudden he felt dizzy.
He coughed chestily. Then again, and again. He wheezed noisily and struggled to draw breath. The crowd watched in stunned silence. With his eyes bulging, Terry took out a tissue and wiped the saliva from his mouth. The tissue turned bright red. For a moment he stared at it, confused. Then he began to cough uncontrollably. Blood exploded out of his mouth onto the auto-cue and podium. He couldn’t breathe in. Someone in the audience screamed. The crew panicked and people started to run around waving orders frantically.
Staggering across the stage, Terry dropped to his knees. Time slowed, the world closed in. He felt cold. All of a sudden a single thought hit him like a hammer blow: he was going to die. He collapsed backwards onto the floor and looked up at the blinding lights. He barely noticed the terrified faces that appeared over him. They were shaking him, but he couldn’t feel it; they were shouting at him, but he couldn’t hear them. He felt like he was falling. Everything looked distant, detached. He felt peaceful.
Then the darkness closed in.
Chapter 29
1902hrs – Aquitaine, France
Several print-outs were spread across the table in the drawing room at Château Monbazillac. Ella, William and Connegan had each been studying them intensely. Using the seemingly unlimited resources of the Internet they had printed off road maps and satellite images of the target area at varying scales. Some covered a wide area and showed the local towns, others zoomed in close showing the ground in great detail. A deciduous forest surrounded the large cross that they had drawn to mark the centre of the coordinates. Farms surrounded the forest and a small river ran through the area.
‘I’m sure that’s a small bridge that’s bang on the coordinates,’ Connegan explained looking up from one of the satellite images. ‘There’s a river, or a stream more like, and a farm track that crosses it.’
‘There’s a river and a bridge in the painting,’ Ella pointed out. ‘Unlikely to be a coincidence. Maybe it’s a clue.’
‘How far is the bridge from the old Rockcliffe Castle?’ asked William.
Shifting the papers around, Connegan scoured over the maps with the magnifying glass. ‘It’s hard to tell where it is, the forest canopy makes it hard to see the ground. But it looks like there’s some kind of rubble around here.’ He tapped his finger on the image. ‘It could be big enough to be an old castle. I guess it’s about two-hundred metres from the bridge.’
‘Let me see,’ William said, he leaned over and looked for himself. ‘That must be it. The bridge is our next target.’
Connegan gave William an odd look. Then he smiled to himself, shook his head and went back to examining the print-offs.
‘So what now?’ asked Ella.
‘We’ll have to go there, take a quiet look around,’ William stated. ‘I’ll make the necessary arrangements for early next week.’
‘All of us?’ Ella said with a quizzical look, she glanced briefly at Connegan.
Connegan looked up expectantly. ‘Well, you can’t close me out now,’ he chortled. ‘It’s just got interesting.’
‘You’ve been a great help, Tom,’ William said. ‘But I’m sorry, there’s no way I can allow it. This is a police investigation. There may be evidence there, any search needs to be handled properly and carefully. We’ll need to plan the next move back at the station.’
Connegan chuckled briefly and shook his head. ‘Come on, pull the other one,’ he said. ‘You’re no copper. Who are you? What’s this really about?’
Deadpan, William regarded the old banker. ‘Thanks for your hospitality, Mr Connegan. But we really need to be going now.’ He turned to Ella. ‘Ready?’
With a nod, Connegan accepted that he’d get no further and backed down. ‘Okay, I understand. But it’s been a pleasure. Perhaps you’ll call me after you find the book? Put me out my misery. Please?’
‘I think we can manage that,’ William replied.
Connegan gave them a warm smile. ‘He was a good man at heart, James. I suspect that there was more to his actions than met the eye. He was no thief, no criminal. I’m just sorry he couldn’t have been honest with me. I’d have given him the manuscript if it was that important.’
After saying their goodbyes, Connegan stood by the front entrance of the Château and waved as Ella and William drove off. When the car had gone he slid back indoors and returned to his office. After a quick look out of the window, he sat down in front of his laptop. He rubbed his eyes and stretched his arms; it had been a long day. He put on his headset, took hold of the mouse and double clicked on the Skype application. He selected a contact and made the call.
‘It’s me,’ Connegan said when the call was answered.
‘Dionysus,’ was the stern reply. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘No. They’ve just left. But I think we’ve finally found it.’
‘Tell me more,’ the tone had lightened.
‘You’re simply not going to believe where it is.’
*
‘What a charming man,’ Ella announced as
they sped along the country road back to Bergerac airport. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘You’re too trusting,’ William chided. ‘He knew more than he was letting on. And he knows our main suspect, which worries me.’
‘God, you’re so cynical,’ Ella shot back. ‘Not everyone is a threat you know.’
William rolled his eyes. ‘It pays me to be cautious. That’s all.’
‘It must be a lonely life,’ Ella mumbled. Resting her head on the passenger window, she stared out at the countryside. They passed by several farmhouses and acres upon acres of vineyards. Bunches of dark purple grapes hung off the vines in their billions. Above the lush green of the land the dark blue sky was dotted with a scattering of small clouds that began to glow orange as the sun set.
With his phone pressed to his ear, William went through his voice mail. The first message was from Sarah. The good news was that the research was going well, they had identified a couple of the suspects and had placed surveillance assets on them. The bad news was a warning that Pinkerton was on the warpath, something about disobeying orders. The next message he listened to was from Pinkerton himself. He chastised William for missing the evening briefing, berated him for being unprofessional and demanded that he return to the office immediately. William rolled his eyes and shook his head. The third message was again from Sarah, but this time she sounded panicky, rushed. There had been a very public death of a comedian, and speculative diagnoses by the media had been swift. The Home Office were unofficially linking it with the research from the Defence Labs. William winced when he heard her mention the word Ebola. Things had escalated, William decided on his next course of action and made a call.
‘Paddy, it’s me,’ he said. ‘I won’t be home tonight, but keep it to yourself.’
‘Be gentle with her,’ Paddy joked.
‘Look, that thing we talked about, keep a close eye on it. Something’s happening, I’m sure of it.’
‘I’ll keep my ear to the ground.’
The Secret of Hades' Eden Page 24
