He hadn’t really expected to find anything under the various pictures on the wall but when he moved Ville d’Avray slightly to the left with his fingertips he took a step back in surprise when an entire wall panel slid open.
‘What the f-’ exclaimed Ricksen. ‘What is it?’
‘A lift,’ said Steven, slightly bemused.
‘But there’s a lift just outside the door,’ said Tim.
‘Could be an executive lift,’ said Ricksen. ‘You know what these guys are like… executive this, executive that.’
Steven pressed the single button at the side and the lift door slid open. He looked inside. ‘One button. Only goes to one floor.’
THIRTY-THREE
Tim looked at the inside of the lift and decided they could get four into it. He called in one of his soldiers and told another where they were going.
It was a tight squeeze: Steven was very conscious of the smell of gun oil from the soldier’s automatic weapon which was only inches from his nose as the soldier held it flat against his chest. ‘Ready?’ he asked, then pressed the button.
After what seemed a very long, slow descent, the lift bounced gently on its cables as it came to a halt and the door slid back to reveal brightness.
The two SAS men leapt out, moving to opposite sides and levelling their weapons at the four white-coated people working in what was clearly a basement lab. They froze. Tim signalled to his soldier that he was going to check what appeared to be a smaller room at the far end of the lab, and Steven watched as he kicked open the door.
A man was sitting at a desk. ‘What the hell?’ he exclaimed.
‘Over to you,’ said Tim over his shoulder to Steven.
Steven presented his ID. ‘Dr Steven Dunbar, Sci-Med Inspectorate.’
‘Dr Mark Mosely. This is my research lab. This is an outrage. Get out of here.’
‘Keep an eye on him,’ Steven told Tim as he left the small office to start examining the lab. ‘Very nice,’ he murmured, admiring the quality of the equipment. ‘A state of the art molecular biology lab… and some well-qualified people, I’ll bet,’ he said, eyeing the four nervous people standing motionless under the watchful gaze of the soldier.
He opened the door of an incubator and removed one of the Petri dishes from it. He angled it to read the writing on the lid. ‘Vibrio cholerae. Well, that answers a few questions. Is this where you made that ingenious cassette?’
The way that the four scientists averted their eyes suggested that it was.
‘It’s hardly surprising that a company making cholera vaccine should have cultures of cholera, is it, Dunbar?’ Mosely called out.
Steven returned to the office. ‘Your vaccine is going to be analysed before it goes anywhere, Mosely. And if it should turn out to be something other than cholera vaccine — as you and I know it is — you and your Schiller Group are going down for ever and a day.’
Mosely’s hand shot out and thumped down on a white button set in a red mounting on his desk. Nothing happened.
‘Damn,’ said Mosely with a small smile. ‘The floor was supposed to open and drop you into a pool of hungry crocodiles.’
Steven didn’t like the smile on Mosely’s face. The man was in no position to be making jokes… but he seemed to think that he was.
Ricksen, who had been rooting around in the lab, had just come up behind Steven. He said, ‘There was one of these buttons on his desk upstairs too… I need the card that opens your safe, Dr Mosely.’
Mosely opened a desk drawer and, holding the card between two fingers, handed it over without comment. Steven followed Ricksen outside and watched him place the card in the safe’s reader slot. The door opened to reveal a glass panel. Ricksen was about to touch it when Steven yelled, ‘Get back!’ It was the same kind of panel he’d seen in Charles French’s place. ‘It’s biometric.’ He called to Tim. ‘I think we need Dr Mosely’s assistance here.’
Tim ushered Mosely out of his office and Steven took pleasure from the change of expression on the Lark executive’s face. ‘Open it.’
‘Screw you.’
Tim primed his weapon.
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘You know, Mosely, I think it just might be a night for daring…’ said Steven. ‘Open it.’
Mosely placed his hand on the glass surface and it opened to reveal a number of disks. Ricksen took charge of them and went through to Mosely’s office to scan their contents. Mosely was put under guard with the scientists while Steven continued inspecting the lab, until Ricksen returned with a broad smile on his face. ‘Bingo! Schiller membership, the lot.’
Steven said to Tim, ‘I think we have what we came for.’
Steven and Mosely were the last to come up in the lift. Despite holding a gun on Mosely and having possession of the disks, Steven was disturbed to see what he could only construe as a look of self-satisfaction on Mosely’s face. It was the expression he’d noticed in the office a little while earlier. It had slipped when the disks were discovered but it was back. Steven motioned with the Glock that Mosely get out first, and the man acknowledged with a nod. As he stepped out, he raised his hands above his head.
The scientists from the basement lab, the SAS men, Steven, Ricksen and Mosely were all now standing in the glass-fronted hall of the building, preparing to leave. Mosely moved forward and faced the glass doors, his hands now resting on his head. ‘Well, well, well,’ he said, loudly enough for everyone to hear. ‘Here we all are, the managing director of Lark Pharmaceuticals and four of my staff, being held at gunpoint by armed terrorists intent on stopping life-saving vaccine getting to the British public…’
Steven frowned, but before he could reply the world outside erupted in a blaze of lights and loudhailers.
‘Shit, the button on the desk,’ said Ricksen.
‘Correct,’ murmured Mosely. ‘A direct alarm to the police, indicating we were under terrorist attack. I think they’ve done rather well, don’t you?’
Steven could see dozens of armed response officers and rows of police vehicles outside. In his mind’s eye he could see what the police were seeing and it didn’t look good. Twelve black-clad men brandishing automatic weapons, four white-coated men huddling together in fear, and Mosely with his hands on his head.
‘We’re not carrying ID,’ said Tim.
‘I’ll go out,’ said Steven.
‘Yes, why don’t you, Dunbar?’ said Mosely smugly.
Ricksen interrupted. ‘Think, Steven. Those guys out there are itching for an excuse. Look at them. They’re running on pure adrenalin and now they have the chance to confront real terrorists face to face. They’ll mow you down as soon as you reach for your ID.’
‘Keep your guns trained on this lot,’ Tim ordered his men. ‘It’s the only thing keeping us alive.’
Steven knew that was true. The fact that he still had his gun in his hand and his proximity to Mosely were probably the only things that had stopped the police marksmen from targeting him already. ‘I’ll have to go out,’ he said. ‘It’s the only way to stop this ending in bloody mayhem.’
Mosely looked as if he might be about to ignore Steven’s gun and make a move away from him. ‘You wouldn’t really shoot me, Dunbar, would you?’
‘No, I would,’ said Tim flatly. ‘And that’s a fucking promise.’
Mosely believed him.
A new sound joined the general cacophony outside, that of the whirring blades of a helicopter, its down-lights illuminating a chosen landing spot in front of the building. The police, not sure what was going on, moved out of the way, forming a semicircular perimeter of waiting, armed officers. As the ’copter’s engines died a loudspeaker crackled into life, filling the night air with the sound of a woman’s voice.
‘Attention, attention, this is the Home Secretary speaking. You have been misinformed. The men inside the building are not terrorists: they are SAS soldiers. I want everyone to lay down their weapons.’
No one moved.
‘I am going to come out now. When I give the signal you will all lay down your weapons, both inside and outside the building.’