Bioweapon

by James Barrington

  None of that information seemed to any of the three men to be particularly sensitive, or even very interesting, so they stayed silent and waited for whatever else was to come.

  ‘About six months ago, and almost by accident, I discovered information relating to a trial that was carried out in Britain a couple of decades ago. The objective of the research was somewhat unusual and would have been unacceptable if the proposal had been made today. I researched it purely out of scientific interest, not least because I did not believe that the core concept of the programme was scientifically viable for at least two reasons. Within the documentation held at Porton Down I found the contact details for a scientist that I didn’t know personally, but I was familiar with his published work on other matters. Rather than plough through reams of paper, or to be more accurate to study the scans of reams of documents contained in the archive on my computer screen, I decided to give him a call and ask him directly about the project before I did anything else.’

  Richter was almost certain that Vernon was talking about the TRAIT trial, but he said nothing, preferring to let the scientist explain things in his own words before revealing his own knowledge of the subject. Both Masters and Moore were looking at him enquiringly, and he microscopically shook his head, silently conveying to them his wish for Vernon to continue.

  ‘When I spoke to the man – his name was Hubert Jefferies and he was then working at one of the laboratories attached to Cambridge University – he barely remembered the trial until I reminded him, and even then he couldn’t recall too much about it. After all, he’d worked on it about twenty years earlier, so it wasn’t particularly recent. But my call must have interested him, because he rang me a few days later and told me he had accessed the scientific archive where the documentation was kept to refresh his memory. And he told me that he had discovered something rather curious, something built-in to the software that ran the archive.

  ‘Somebody had apparently installed what Jefferies described as a tripwire, a software routine that would alert a third party whenever that particular part of the archive was accessed and copy the contact details of the scientist making the access request to a particular website. A website that could not be found by a conventional search engine because it was located on what is commonly referred to as the Dark Web. He also told me that he had disabled the tripwire so that no details of further access requests would be transmitted to that website. That meant I could access the files held in the archive without my details being noted, except in the standard user record. And that is not accessible to anyone outside the scientific community.’

  Vernon paused for a few seconds and glanced at each of the men in turn, perhaps to ensure that they were still paying attention. They were, so he continued.

  ‘Apart from the presence of the tripwire, which was clearly some kind of unauthorised addition to the software, that’s the kind of conversation that could take place between any two scientists working in different laboratories. But what made it different was that three days after that conversation Hubert Jefferies was killed in a road accident in Cambridge. There were several witnesses to the incident, and all the reports I’ve seen clearly show that it was a deliberate crash, not a hit-and-run using a stolen vehicle that went tragically wrong, though that appears to be the consensus view of the Cambridge police, probably because that’s the easy option for them.’

  Again Vernon paused in his narrative and took a sip of his cooling coffee before he resumed.

  ‘When I talked to Jefferies, he quite clearly believed that the trial had been inconclusive and had been abandoned because the results obtained did not support its continuation. After Jefferies’s death, I looked much more carefully at the archived documentation, and what I found was an appalling shock. I had always had faith in the British Government and in the remit given to Porton Down, but what I discovered clearly showed how utterly mistaken I had been about this.’

  Before Vernon could say anything else, Richter held up his hand, because it looked as if they were going to get the long version of the story, and he wasn’t entirely sure that they had time for that.

  ‘Let me stop you right there, Professor,’ Richter said, ‘just to save you going over old ground. I presume that you’re talking about the TRAIT trial?’

  The shock on Vernon’s face as Richter said that was almost comical.

  ‘You know about TRAIT?’ he asked. ‘How?’

  ‘There have been quite a few developments since you hopped a flight from Heathrow to Toulouse, Professor,’ Richter said. ‘And one reason why we were so keen to find you – and perhaps why the Syrians or the Russians were so keen to kill you – is because we need your help in working out what’s happening and how we’re going to stop it. But why were you so keen to find out our security clearances? As far as we know, the TRAIT material has been declassified. It’s not exactly in the public domain, but it pretty much could be.’

  ‘You’re right. TRAIT is now unclassified, which is probably a mistake, but I just needed to make sure that if I discussed anything with you that was classified I wouldn’t be breaching the Official Secrets Act and find myself even deeper in the shit than I probably am already.’

  Richter nodded. ‘Just one question, for the moment, if I may.’

  Vernon looked at him, waiting.

  ‘Why did you leave such a confusing trail back in England before you boarded that flight? The inflatable doll, changing the number plates on the car, all that sort of stuff to muddy the waters?’

  ‘I was trying to attract attention,’ Vernon said. ‘I didn’t want to end up like Hubert Jefferies, as an unresolved road accident or something of that sort. I wanted people to know my name. I wanted to read in the newspapers and hear on the news about the renegade professor offering to supply weapons of mass destruction to anyone who could pay for them. I thought that if I managed to achieve a certain level of notoriety, when I exposed the appalling results of the trials linked to TRAIT people would actually listen to me because they would already know my name. I grant you I would be notorious for the wrong reasons but offering to break the law is not in itself an offence. And as I’ve already told you, I had not the slightest intention of delivering any kind of a weapon to anyone. I was just looking for publicity because with publicity comes protection.

  ‘And the reason I was trying to muddy the waters, as you put it, was that if I could leave everybody guessing about whether I had defected or had been abducted, then the British security establishment would be certain to send people out after me, to haul me back to England to face prolonged questioning sessions, and that of course was exactly what I wanted. Once I was safely in the bowels of MI5 or MI6, I would be able to reveal what I knew, and have a fighting chance of saving my life at the same time. I was quite certain that whoever killed Hubert Jefferies would have me on their list as well, and assassinating an elderly man like me, a man nobody outside a fairly small part of the scientific community would ever have heard of, at my home or on the way to or from work, would be comparatively easy. Knocking off the renegade biochemist while under the protection of the security services would be much more difficult.’

  ‘You could have just gone to your bosses at Porton Down and explained what you found, surely?’ Richter asked.

  Vernon shook his head.

  ‘First of all, I wasn’t sure how deep the conspiracy went. One of the scientists employed there until recently was in many ways the prime mover behind TRAIT. If I’d simply blown the whistle I suspect I would have met with a fatal accident that little bit sooner, and everything that had already been buried about the trial would just be buried that little bit deeper. And, second, outside the world of chemistry and biochemistry nobody knows who I am, and any claims that I made about TRAIT could easily just be dismissed by the scientific community as the ramblings of an old man who has lost the plot. And shortly afterwards, I expect I would also have been involved in unfortunate motor accident or something of that sort. That was why I needed the pub
licity, so that my name and the information that I’ve obtained would just not simply be buried along with my body.’

  It still sounded to Richter as if there might have been easier ways for Vernon to achieve what he wanted, but at least what the man had said did make sense and explained what had happened. What they had to do now was get the scientist to a safe place and then try and work out a way of countering the threat that Martin Wilmot had described so explicitly in the note he had left in his study.

  ‘Time to get things moving,’ Richter said, and took out his mobile phone.

  He dialled Simpson’s direct line, not really expecting his boss to still be in the building at that time of the evening, but in fact he picked up almost immediately.

  ‘Yes, Richter?’ he said.

  ‘We have Charles Vernon, but we’re still in Spain and we need to get him back to England as quickly and safely as possible. Can you lay on an aircraft to pick up four passengers, ideally at an airfield not too far from Tarragona and preferably tonight?’

  ‘You didn’t really have to tell me where you were, Richter. If you turn on Sky News or the BB bloody C they’re full of reports about terrorist atrocities at Cambrils. Two civilians dead at the last count, one badly injured, and a kind of Gunfight at the OK Corral thing that’s been going on there for most of the evening. I suppose there’s not even the slightest chance that you and your two American boyfriends weren’t involved?’

  The way Simpson said it made it clear that it was a question.

  ‘We may have had something to do with it,’ Richter admitted, ‘but as usual the media have managed to get the whole thing arse backwards. Unless something else has happened, the two dead civilians were actually a pair of Syrian hitmen who turned up waving nine mil Brownings and a Škorpion sub­machine gun, and the injured civilian was the third man in the trio. Apart from those three, the damage we caused was to motor vehicles, not people. You may also be interested to learn that we encountered two separate groups of Russians, each a four-man team, and all of them carrying weapons.’

  ‘Syrians?’ Simpson sounded puzzled. ‘Why would the Syrians be involved?’

  ‘First, they may not be Syrian, and they might be travelling on forged passports, in which case they could be from any of the Middle Eastern countries. Second, my guess is that they were just a hit team, being paid to find and eliminate Charles Vernon, so I’m not reading too much into it.’

  ‘Okay. No doubt things will become a bit clearer later. In the meantime, get yourselves over to Reus Airport. There’s a Learjet on its way there right now from Ramstein in Germany, courtesy of the Company, and that’s going to ferry you to Northolt. According to the last estimate I was given, it should be there in about half an hour, so look sharp. When you get there, don’t go to departures, just take the first exit off the roundabout and head for the Real Aeroclub de Reus building. Somebody will meet you there.’

  ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Not really. The moment we heard about the first shots fired we figured it was you and kicked the exit plan into operation. We had three aircraft we could re-task, and the Lear out of Ramstein was the closest. When you get here, come straight to the office. We need to pick Vernon’s brain right now.’

  Chapter 42

  Hammersmith, London

  Thursday

  The Learjet landed at RAF Northolt with a total absence of drama just after one fifteen in the morning. Northolt is a useful airfield not far from Heathrow on the western outskirts of London where flights can arrive and depart with the minimum of formalities, and often witnesses government officials, Members of Parliament and the like, as well as people who do not wish to be recognised, such as officers from the security services, passing through on their way to or coming back from undisclosed destinations.

  There are, of course, other airfields where a rather less than rigorous attitude can in certain circumstances prevail, when it may be felt by most of the interested parties that no particular advantage is likely to be gained by employing a bunch of officious little men in peaked caps to scrutinise the passengers and/or the cargo of certain inbound flights. If you consult the En Route Supplement or ERS, an official British air traffic control publication, you will discover that most military airfields in the country can provide customs inspection facilities and immigration checks for arriving aircraft on request, but if no request is made, that is more or less the end of the matter. What the eye doesn’t see, and so on. RAF Northolt is special, but mainly for its convenient location, close to fast roads into London, rather than for what goes on there.

  Because of the nature of this flight, there were neither customs nor immigration officials present – Simpson had obviously given specific orders to ensure this notable lack of official attention – which was just as well in view of the small armoury Richter and the CIA agents offloaded from the aircraft. One of the regular drivers from Hammersmith was waiting there with a seven-seat Chrysler Voyager MPV, and he drove them smoothly through the almost-deserted streets of West London to Hammersmith, where he waited until the armoured steel gate had slid to one side and then drove down the ramp and into the parking garage.

  ‘The boss is waiting for you in Conference Room One,’ he said, as he switched off the engine in the parking bay, ‘and he’s a bit twitchy tonight. I can take all that stuff to the Armoury if you want. Save you the trouble and a bit of time.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Richter led the way to the fire door and up the staircase into the building.

  Masters started complaining after the second flight.

  ‘You guys never heard of elevators?’ he asked.

  ‘In this country we call them “lifts”,’ Richter replied, ‘and there is one near the front entrance but the staircase is a more convenient way of getting into the building from the garage. What you have to do is look on the bright side.’

  ‘There’s a bright side?’

  ‘Yes. Climbing up and down all these stairs gives you a good cardiovascular exercise. It keeps you fit and saves you completely wasting your time pounding a pointless treadmill in some high-priced gym surrounded by a flock of narcissistic gits in patterned leotards admiring themselves in the mirrors.’

  ‘You’re not a fan of gyms, then?’

  ‘Not so’s you’d notice, no.’

  On the third floor Richter pushed open the stairwell door and led the group along a narrow, cream-painted corridor towards a set of double doors. Outside, a small plaque on the wall announced ‘CR1’ and above the doors were two lights, one green and the other red. Neither was illuminated, probably because the building was virtually empty.

  He knocked twice and pushed the doors open. Dominating the room was a longish oblong conference table made of some dark wood like mahogany, surrounded by about a dozen wooden chairs with padded leather seats, two of which at the far end were already occupied. On the table were sheets of writing paper and pencils, a handful of pink Secret files and a collection of somewhat varied cups and mugs, three insulated coffee pots, a milk jug and sugar bowl, and a round melamine tray that held a small and rather dull selection of biscuits in individual packets. At the far end of the room was a drop-down screen on which videos or other images could be displayed by a projector mounted on the ceiling. The other part of projection system was a lectern to one side of the screen that was provided with an HDMI connector to attach to a computer. The screen was not illuminated, but there were a couple of laptops on the table.

  On the long wall opposite the door were three large windows, part of the original building. Because of the sensitive nature of the discussions held in the room, all three were fitted with external custom-made wooden shutters that were mirrored by internal shutters that looked like wood but which were actually a composite material designed to block both sound and electromagnetic emanations. Both sets of shutters were closed, as was confirmed by a small glowing green light beside each window. The room had a high ceiling and bland white-painted walls devoid of all forms of decor
ation. Concealing a microphone or camera was always much easier in a picture frame or something of that sort, so nothing of that sort was permitted.

  As Richter led the way inside, the two men at the table stood up and he made the introductions.

  ‘The smallish man in the sharp grey suit looking irritated is Richard Simpson, who runs this outfit,’ he began, pointing towards the end of the table, ‘and the bloke wearing the dark blue suit next to him is the Intelligence Director. Knowing his name won’t mean anything or help you in any way, so I won’t bother telling you. We just call him the ID. These guys,’ he went on, gesturing to the two Americans and now addressing Simpson, ‘are TJ Masters and Richard Moore from the CIA over at Langley. And finally, the man with the slightly suspect hair standing right beside me is Professor Charles Vernon, who’s been hitting various headlines over the last few days.’

  ‘Less of the sarcasm, Richter,’ Simpson said. ‘Sit down, all of you. Glad you made it.’

  They all shook hands and then sat down, Moore and Masters immediately reaching out for two of the coffee pots and pouring themselves cups. It had been a somewhat dry flight out of Reus for coffee-lovers, with only soft drinks and sandwiches available in the tiny galley of the Lear.

  ‘I’m very pleased to see you here, Professor,’ Simpson said. ‘Before we discuss what’s happened here in Britain, let me just find out what mayhem Richter managed to create on the Costa Brava, just so I know how many ruffled feathers I have to smooth.’ He pointed a forefinger straight at Richter. ‘Go for it,’ he said.

  ‘We were, I think,’ Richter said, ‘really quite restrained. We got the location from Baker and his gnomes by phone and left the hotel in a bit of a hurry. On the way out we spotted four men who didn’t look like businessmen. One of them took a telephone call just a few seconds after Baker had called me, and he was speaking Russian so it was pretty clear where they’d come from. Then the four of them immediately hustled outside and jumped in a car parked on the street. It wasn’t exactly rocket science to work out that they were probably on pretty much the same mission as we were, and had just been given the same location, so that meant we had to stop them. TJ here obliged by pumping a couple of nine-millimetre rounds through two of their tyres, just to give us a bit of breathing space while we headed off to find the prof.’