‘We can’t find him at the moment.’
‘He’s one of yours and you can’t find him?’
‘He’s not a staffer. Turns out we’ve used him in the past. I’m told he was one of our insiders in the fundamentalist scene in Leicester a year or so ago.’
‘So maybe he’s been turned.’
‘The fundos don’t turn agents they catch; they cut them into little pieces.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘In view of what you’ve said, I’ll put out a major alert for him.’
‘I’ll call you in the morning.’
Steven attended what was announced to be the last COBRA meeting for the time being. He couldn’t help but feel he was the only one there who wasn’t basking in a glow of self-satisfaction over being ‘on top of things’ as the deputy PM put it. No new cases of cholera had been reported in the past twenty-four hours, security at all reservoirs and water installations was tight, and vaccination of the infant population had already begun at surgeries across the country. Norman Travis took over to say that vaccination of top-risk people would begin in three days, and Merryman were on course to provide new supplies in three weeks’ time for the remaining population.
Steven left the meeting with that now familiar hollow feeling in his stomach. There was something terribly wrong about… everything, but he couldn’t say so. Norman Travis, who had been accepting the congratulations of some of the others over the health department’s handling of the affair, detached himself and came downstairs with Steven.
‘Isn’t it strange how much things can change in such a short time? A week ago I wouldn’t have put money on anyone’s smiling today.’
‘We’ve been very lucky,’ said Steven.
‘I know there can be no guarantee that there won’t be another attack, but with Merryman coming on stream with new vaccines we should be in a much better position to defend ourselves.’
‘You’re right, and I understand your contribution to that has been invaluable,’ said Steven.
‘Some things are more important than party politics — as I think the coalition is demonstrating. If you see something needs doing, you should get your head down and damn well do it.’
‘Indeed,’ said Steven with a smile.
‘It was good to see John Macmillan at the meeting the other day, but we didn’t get a chance to speak afterwards. Is he back full time?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Give him my best.’
Steven felt the need for fresh air and a walk. He needed to experience a sense of normality, see people going about their business, be assured that all was right with the world despite feeling sure that it wasn’t. He was leaning on a rail watching the river traffic chug past when John Ricksen rang.
‘They’ve found Zaman.’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Not a lot. He was swinging from a tree in the Clyde Valley.’
Steven closed his eyes. ‘What’s the thinking?’
‘The brains think he must have started to feel guilty about working for us — maybe seeing the fuck-up in Afghanistan — and was really converted to fundamentalist philosophy. He was one of those chosen to run the cholera attack, but when he realised how many were going to die after a second hit he got cold feet and blew the whistle. It wouldn’t be hard for the hierarchy to work out he’d been the one who’d done that so they strung him up.’
‘Is that what you think?’ asked Steven.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘We should talk. Can you come over to the Home Office?’
‘Give me an hour. There are a couple of things I have to do.’
John Macmillan asked Steven how the COBRA meeting had gone.
‘Everyone was happy except me.’
‘Did you tell them what Lukas came up with?’
Steven shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to be a party pooper. If I’d had any idea why they’d disabled the bug I would have, but I haven’t. You?’
‘No,’ said Macmillan. ‘Islamic terrorists don’t do kindness. Doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’ve asked John Ricksen to come over. We need to talk.’
Macmillan raised his eyes.
‘Waseed Malik was an MI5 informer. His real name was Assad Zaman. He was found hanging from a tree in Scotland in the early hours of this morning.
Macmillan slumped back in his chair. ‘I’m beginning to think a cruise might be a better option.’
‘MI5 think he was converted to the opposition. He ran the first attack but chickened out of the second and made the call that stopped it.’
Ricksen arrived and Jean Roberts brought in coffee.
‘No calls please, Jean,’ said Macmillan.
‘Very good, Sir John,’ she replied, winking at Steven on the way out. Normal service had been resumed.
‘I’ve told Sir John what 5 thinks about the man we know as Malik and you know as Zaman, but I got the impression that you might have some other ideas,’ Steven began. Ricksen seemed uneasy, and Steven guessed it was because Macmillan was present. ‘Everything said here stays here,’ he added.
‘Something’s not quite right,’ said Ricksen.
‘That’s exactly the impression we have.’
‘People are desperate to come up with plausible explanations for implausible happenings. We get a warning of a bio-weapon attack but we don’t know where from. None of our sources know anything at all about it. Same goes for Special Branch. We’re told the terrorists are home-grown — and they are — but no one knows anything about their masters. Zaman’s involvement is not only a surprise to us, it’s a surprise to the fundamentalist groups. Then his body is found — unmutilated. He still had his tongue. Very strange.’
Steven told Ricksen about the disabling of the cholera strain. ‘They didn’t want to kill too many people.’
‘And our conclusion must be, gentlemen?’ asked Macmillan.
‘It wasn’t an Islamic terrorist attack at all,’ said Steven slowly.
THIRTY-TWO
Macmillan nodded. ‘It’s the only explanation. Some unknown faction recruited disaffected Muslim youths in our cities and groomed them to carry out the attacks, telling them they were acting for the Islamic fundamentalist cause.’
‘Then they shopped them to the police to bolster the impression that it was Islamic terrorists who were responsible,’ added Steven.
‘But what on earth for?’ asked Ricksen. ‘And why use a weapon that’s deliberately been blunted, if what you say’s true?’
‘To create the right conditions for… something else to happen,’ said Macmillan. ‘The people who died were expendable… collateral damage.’
‘Working-class people in old council blocks of flats?’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be the Schiller Group.’
Ricksen’s expression suggested that he did not see this as good news.
‘It’s another Northern Health Scheme. They’re setting out to reshape the population.’
‘Reshape the pop-’ stammered Ricksen.
‘It’s a long story, going back twenty years,’ said Steven, unwilling to break his stride. ‘They’ve been manipulating events to set it up all over again. That’s what the killings in Paris were all about. It was a take-over bid. A new hierarchy with new ideas is in charge.’
‘So what are they planning to do?’ asked Macmillan.
‘The mass vaccinations,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be that. The entire population is about to be vaccinated.’
‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Macmillan. ‘It does have to be that. The very young have been receiving what cholera vaccine stocks we had but the over-sixties are about to get the stuff that was bound for the Third World.’
‘Or not,’ said Steven.
‘Are you suggesting they’re going to kill everyone over sixty?’ asked Ricksen, as if he were in the throes of a bad dream.
‘Nothing so unsubtle, if the Schiller Group are responsible.’
‘So how do we stop them? The whole operation is up and running with full government approval and we don’t even know who “they” are.’
‘Indeed,’ said Macmillan. ‘And what is particularly worrying is that it would be much easier for them to stop us.’