‘It’s significantly more potent than VX gas and works in the same way. Briefly, the chemical used in the human body to transmit nerve impulses to muscles is the neurotransmitter acetylcholine – ACh – and as soon as the muscle contraction has been completed this is broken down by acetylcholinesterase – AChE – into acetic acid and choline. What VX gas, Sarin, Soman and Novichok all do is to block the action of AChE, causing a build-up of ACh. The result of that is constant muscle contractions leading to convulsions, paralysis and respiratory arrest. And last week that was what we were talking about most of the time with Charles.’
‘I presume that wasn’t all you were doing,’ Richter said, after a moment. ‘I know that Charles Vernon was a very highly qualified scientist and I’m quite sure the both of you have similar expertise and qualifications. I also know that Novichok is a bit of a new boy in terms of its recent exposure, so I would have thought that your discussion about it and your attempt to determine exactly which strain of the chemical was used against the Skripals was only one part of your workload.’
McCarthy nodded.
‘Yes, of course. We all have a number of projects and studies for which we are individually responsible. I don’t suppose you’re in any way interested in what Walter and I are working on, but I can tell you something about what Charles Vernon was doing. His interests and his workload were quite wide ranging. If you provide me with access to his notebooks and computer, William—’ he glanced at Poulson as he said this ‘—I can tell you exactly what he was looking at, but I do know that he was studying everything from several new biochemical reactions that had been recently been reported internationally, working not just on Novichok but studying all of the other known acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, and also investigating the work done on possible vaccines intended to combat filoviruses, and particularly Ebola. Remember that Vernon is both a chemist and a biochemist, and his areas of interest and competence are extremely wide-ranging.’
That helped, slightly.
‘I think we would all like to know more details about the precise studies that Vernon was involved in looking at,’ Poulson said to McCarthy. ‘I’ll get his notebooks released to you so that you can provide a summary for me and for Mr Richter, if possible by close of business on Monday. Will that be long enough?’
McCarthy nodded.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem,’ he replied, then glanced at Richter. ‘I presume you’ll just want a general description of what he was doing, but we can always provide more detail about specific topics on request. But could I just remind you that because of the classification of his work, whoever is going to read even the summary will have to have a high-level security clearance, at least up to Secret. And there may be some documents that require a further clearance based upon the need to know principle.’
‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Richter said, ‘but you can leave that aspect of the matter to us.’
And that was more or less that. Neither man claimed to have noticed anything unusual in Vernon’s behaviour in the week prior to his disappearance; he had not said anything that struck them as odd, and they had been surprised when he hadn’t appeared for work on the following Monday, and more surprised that he still hadn’t turned up a week later. As far as they knew, he had planned a quiet weekend at home, just like almost every other weekend.
So what had happened on that Saturday morning?
Twenty almost entirely unproductive minutes later, Keele and McCarthy stood up, shook hands all round, and left the room.
‘I think that’s about all we can do to help,’ Poulson said. ‘The answer to this conundrum obviously lies with Charles Vernon himself. Once he has been found and questioned, we’ll obviously discover exactly what his motives were for walking out. I’m sure he had a good reason for what he did.’
‘Hopefully he has,’ Richter agreed, ‘but we’re not quite finished with you yet. A forensic team from MI5 will be arriving here pretty soon to find out what Vernon has on his work computer and in whatever office he uses here at Porton Down. Perhaps you’d be good enough to give them the summary of projects and workload that McCarthy was talking about.’
Poulson didn’t look impressed at this piece of news, at the idea of a bunch of strangers rooting around in his establishment and immediately said so.
‘There may be security implications,’ he finished. ‘Almost all of our work here is highly classified.’
‘I think you’ll find the team that arrive here will have much higher security clearances than you or any of your scientists,’ Richter said. ‘And this isn’t optional. Until Vernon’s found we’ll be exploring every possible avenue to try to find out what he’s up to.’
‘Oh, very well. When will they be arriving?’
‘I don’t know,’ Richer replied, standing up ready to leave. ‘I haven’t requested them yet. Good day to you.’
Somebody at Porton Down, he reflected as he walked the short distance to his car, had to be telling porkies about something, but right then Richter had no idea who it was, or what they were covering up, or why they were doing it.
Chapter 12
Porton Down, Wiltshire
Friday
For a couple of minutes after Richter had left his office, William Poulson sat in silence behind his desk, apparently deep in thought. Then he roused himself and appeared to come to a decision. He leaned forward and depressed a key on the telephone console in front of him. The response from the speaker was almost immediate.
‘Slade.’
‘My office, now, please,’ Poulson said.
A few minutes later there was a brisk double knock on his door, then Margaret pushed it open and announced the name of his visitor.
‘Mr Slade to see you, sir,’ she said.
A heavily-built man wearing a dark blue suit over a white shirt but without a tie strode into Poulson’s office, then stood a few feet in front of the desk, waiting for instructions. George Slade was fifty-two years old, though he appeared about five years younger, just over six feet tall and with a craggy face that looked as if it had been sculpted by someone who knew what they were doing but who’d run out of time or enthusiasm partway through. He’d worked at Dstl for nearly a decade longer than Poulson, arriving at Porton Down as a security guard following a short but moderately distinguished career in a county police force, He’d risen to occupy the post of chief security officer primarily by being utterly reliable, totally loyal and completely dependable. He still looked like a plainclothes police officer, wary, observant and constantly aware of his surroundings.
‘Thank you, Margaret,’ Poulson said, as his secretary backed out of the office. ‘No calls unless it’s urgent,’ he instructed, and gestured Slade to sit in the chair recently occupied by his unwelcome visitor.
‘A problem, sir?’ Slade asked.
‘I’m not sure yet,’ Poulson replied. ‘You obviously know about Vernon, and I presume you’ve had no further news about where he is?’
Slade shook his head.
‘According to the official channels, he flew out of Heathrow to Toulouse in France and he’s not been seen since. Unofficially, listening to gossip and rumours, nobody here has any idea why he’s left the country or what he intends to do in France, if France is his ultimate destination, which clearly we also don’t know. Everyone I’ve talked to has told me it’s completely out of character, so we may be looking at some kind of abduction rather than a defection, which might be good news. Or not, depending on your point of view.’
Having delivered a brief summary of what he thought of the situation, Slade lapsed into silence.
‘I have no further information,’ Poulsen said, ‘but what I have had is a busybody, a man named Paul Richter, who claimed to be from the Ministry of Defence, sitting in the same seat you’re occupying, drinking my coffee and eating my biscuits.’
‘Do mean he was an impostor?’ Slade demanded. ‘I can get him checked out if you want.’
‘No, George, I’m sure he w
as the real deal, but I doubt if he was an MoD rep. I think it’s much more likely that he was a spook, probably from MI5 or affiliated to it, and as you know I don’t like people from outside meddling in our business here. Anyway, we discussed Vernon and I pulled Keele and McCarthy out of their labs to come here and talk to him, but what concerns me is that this man Richter told me he’ll be sending a forensic team here to go through Vernon’s office and his computer system to try and find what made him skip the country. And I particularly don’t like that.’
Slade nodded.
‘I’ve already searched Vernon’s office, sir, twice now, as I told you previously, and there’s nothing in it that gives any kind of clue about why he left. Or nothing that I could see, anyway.’
‘It’s not his office that I’m bothered about,’ Poulson said. ‘The one thing that’s really worried me ever since we found out Vernon had gone was his reason for leaving. I really didn’t know the man but as I understand it he was virtually a recluse with no social life whatsoever. He just came to work, did his job, went home and got up the next morning to do everything all over again. And what this man Richter homed in on was the assumption that Vernon left Porton Down and the country because of something to do with his work. The trouble is, I think he might be right. My worry is that something did happen in his laboratory or with one of his colleagues that we don’t know about, but which was enough to make him decide to leave. Nobody I’ve spoken to has reported any kind of argument or dispute, apart from the usual professional discussions about the work we do here. Have you heard anything?’
‘No, nothing, and I think I’ve spoken to everyone here who had any contact with Vernon in any capacity over the last month or so.’
‘That’s what I expected,’ Poulson said. ‘The reason I called you over here is that this MI5 forensic team will also be looking at Vernon’s computer. Realistically, that’s about the only place I can think of where he might have left a kind of clue as to where he was going or what he was doing, or the reason why he left. What I want you to do is check his entire hard drive and any backup directories he used as soon as you can and let me know the moment you find anything that could explain what happened. I want that done before this MI5 team get here, so that we can manage the situation. I definitely don’t want them walking in and finding something on his machine that we don’t know about.
Slade looked slightly uncomfortable.
‘I assume his computer will be protected by a password,’ he pointed out, ‘so I’m not sure how—’
‘That’s the easy bit,’ Slade said, nodding. ‘Go and talk to Lewis in IT. All users of the classified intranet system here have to change their passwords on a regular basis and let him know when they’ve done so and what the new password is, so in his safe he’ll have a sealed envelope with a date and the reference number of Vernon’s computer written on the outside and a piece of paper inside with the password written on it. In fact, tell Lewis to go with you to Vernon’s office to make sure you can access his machine.’
That seemed straightforward enough, and Slade nodded. Then another thought struck him.
‘I don’t really understand what the boffins here are doing or what they’re looking for—’
‘Nor do I, George, nor do I,’ Poulson murmured.
‘But my guess is that Vernon’s computer will be full of scientific stuff that will mean nothing to me at all, so wouldn’t it be better to get one of the other scientists to run an analysis?’
‘I’ll probably have to do that anyway,’ Poulson agreed, ‘but right now what I’m more interested in is any emails or text files or other documents that might contain any clues about where he’s gone and why. If there is anything there, then it’ll be written in plain English. If you don’t find anything, then we will have to start looking at all the data files including those directly relating to his work. So this is really just the first step, I don’t want anyone else involved at the moment apart from you and Lewis.’
‘Understood, sir,’ Slade said, nodding and standing up. ‘I’ll go and see Lewis right now and get started. I’ll call you the moment we find anything relevant.’
Poulson raised his hand.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Don’t call me, whatever you discover, and don’t discuss anything you see with Lewis. His job is to get you into the machine, and once he’s done that he can go back to his normal work. Your job is to run the analysis, and right now I don’t want anyone else being involved, and that includes somebody overhearing what you’re saying on the telephone. Whatever you find, just come here and tell me face-to-face. Nothing in writing.’
‘So you think this is really serious?’ Slade asked. ‘And you think somebody here might be involved in Vernon’s disappearance?’
Poulson shook his head.
‘Right now, George, I don’t know what’s going on or how serious it is. And I certainly don’t know if Vernon has skipped because of something he’s done, or if some other person is also involved. But what I don’t like is the idea of MI5 crawling all over this place looking for someone to blame. So check everything you can, and do it quickly, because I don’t know how long it’ll be before we have unwelcome company.’
After Slade had walked out of his office, Poulson asked Margaret to bring him another cup of coffee while he tried to decide what else he should be doing. If anything.
He hadn’t known Vernon that well personally, and apart from exchanging greetings if they met, and seeing him when they had coffee mornings or events of that sort, he’d probably only spoken with him a few dozen times. So he obviously had no useful insights into what the man was like or what his possible motivation could be.
Poulson leaned back in his chair and cast his mind back over his tenure as the effective head of the Dstl at Porton Down, trying to identify any project or event that could possibly have caused Vernon to flee the country. But there was nothing that came to mind.
Of course, the unit had been involved in some questionable events in the past – the creation of VX Gas which the man Richter had mentioned was an obvious example – but that was almost inevitable bearing in mind the unit’s remit and field of operations. Biological and chemical warfare and the production of antidotes and treatments to counter such agents inevitably led to a certain dichotomy: you couldn’t devise antidotes to an agent unless you had some of that agent to work with, so Dstl had always been involved in the production of small amounts of lethal nerve gases and biological weapons. But that was all part of the job, and part of Vernon’s job as well, so there had to be something else.
There was only a single project that Poulson could recall that had really made his flesh creep when he’d learned about it, but that was a long time ago, and it had already been wrapped up and the records archived. Everything about it had been sanitised, as far as he knew.
But maybe it would be as well to check, just in case.
There was a safe in Poulson’s office on the wall behind his desk where he stored classified documents and publications. Tucked away in one corner of the bottom shelf was something that was completely unclassified but still sensitive: his work address book.
Like most people involved in any kind of business, almost all the details of Poulson’s official contacts, their email addresses, work and mobile numbers and so on, were held on his computer and his work mobile. But they were the current contact details, the people he dealt with regularly. And, again like most people, Poulson maintained a separate written record of most of those details, just in case the computer ever crashed or the backup failed or something of that sort. Address books were liable to be lost, to get stolen, to be damaged by water or fire and faced all sorts of other hazards, but they never, ever crashed. And that was why he maintained a small leather-bound volume in his neat, tiny handwriting that not only duplicated his electronic records but also contained dozens of numbers and other details that he had long ago purged from his computer.
He opened the safe, took out the address book and flick
ed through it until he reached a particular name. Then he used his personal mobile to dial the number listed.
It wasn’t a long call, but even before he’d finished it left him almost breathless with worry.
‘What do you mean, it’s not over? It finished years ago,’ he asked.
The reply didn’t go anywhere near to satisfying him.
‘That’s not good enough and you know it. Get it sorted right now. If Vernon picked up on this it would explain everything. I don’t care how you do it but end it. End it so that there’s no trace left anywhere.’
Chapter 13
Zahedan, Iran
Saturday
It had been, by any standards, a long and complicated project.
When Saloun Talabani had been summoned to an unmarked building near the centre of Tehran four years earlier, a summons that was both peremptory and impossible to ignore, and the concept had been explained to him, he had sat in stunned silence in front of the three men who had been in the room on the top floor waiting for him. They had not introduced themselves, but Talabani had recognised one of them from his occasional appearances on Iranian television when taking part in religious discussions, and although he did not know the other two he realised they had to be very senior members of the government.
Talabani was a scientist, which is why he had been selected. He was also a man with something of a reputation for being able to devise unusual solutions to problems, and the three-man panel had begun by telling him that he would need to use both his scientific ability and his wits to bring the project to a successful conclusion. His immediate reaction had been a form of polite denial, though even as he mouthed the words he had known he was wasting his time. A decision had been taken far above his level and his role was simply to implement it, despite what he believed was the literal impossibility of doing so.
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