The helicopter door opened, and a woman, accompanied by a man Steven could see was John Macmillan, got out and moved away from the aircraft, followed by searchlights.
‘Christ,’ murmured one police officer, ‘it is the Home Secretary.’
‘I’d know those shoes anywhere,’ said another.
The Home Secretary spread her arms as if in a scene from a passion play, then dropped them. All arms were laid on the ground.
Mosely thought he saw the chance to pick up Steven’s gun, but Steven felled him with a single punch. It was over in the wink of an eye.
‘Bet that felt good,’ murmured Tim.
The Home Secretary took over the police address system and asked that all commanders come to her immediately. After a bizarre series of introductions involving Sci-Med, MI5, the SAS and the police, she said, ‘When I was wakened by the police and told that Lark Pharmaceuticals was under attack by terrorists, I contacted Sir John and he organised a helicopter from City Airport to bring us down immediately. Thank God we were in time.’ She turned to Steven. ‘I take it your suspicions were correct?’
‘It looks like it,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll know more when the vaccine is analysed.
‘In that case, Sir John,’ she said, turning to Macmillan, ‘the jury will remain out on Tower Bridge until it has been. Now I’m going home to bed.’
It took Lukas Neubauer and his people two days and nights to come up with the answer he brought to the Home Office.
‘It’s definitely not cholera vaccine,’ he said at once, getting sighs of relief from Steven and Macmillan. ‘It’s a dodgy adjuvant.’
‘A what?’ asked Macmillan.
Steven was also looking puzzled, but for a different reason. He said, ‘Adjuvants are substances you add to vaccines to provoke a better response from the immune system.’
‘Correct,’ said Neubauer. ‘But this particular one has a bit of a bad reputation. It was banned because scientists thought it was damaging the immune system and might even be provoking auto-immune disease. At the concentration I found in the Lark vials it would certainly damage the immune system.’
‘Making the people who got it much more likely to develop a range of illnesses.’
‘And much less likely to survive them. You’d be lucky to see out the next three or four years.’
‘So people would not be living longer and longer after all,’ said Macmillan thoughtfully. ‘The life expectancy of anyone over sixty would drop like a stone, and a burden would be removed from the state
…’
‘But what a state,’ said Steven.
‘Agreed,’ said Macmillan. ‘And a good reason for you to continue with Sci-Med.’
‘We’ll see.’
The information contained on the disks recovered from the Lark laboratory led to the Schiller Group’s becoming a proscribed organisation in the UK and a wave of arrests and sudden resignations, many at quite senior level. Norman Travis was one of those arrested.
Steven and Tally made their trip to Newcastle to seek out the graves of the people who’d died in the nineties in the abortive attempt to expose the Northern Health Scheme for what it really was. Macmillan had promised that they would be given national recognition, but for the moment flowers would suffice.
After visiting the burial place of Dr Neil Tolkien they arrived at the cemetery where James Kincaid, the journalist who’d started the original investigation, and Eve Laing, the nurse who’d fallen in love with him, lay side by side. Steven felt a lump come to his throat as he watched Tally arrange the flowers. When she stood up, Steven expected to see sadness in her eyes but found something else that he couldn’t quite fathom.
‘Steven… my mother was two days away from receiving that vaccine.’ She looked at the ground before saying, ‘Your country needs you, Dr Dunbar… even more than I do, damn it.’
And then Tally reached up and gave Steven the kind of kiss not normally thought appropriate in cemeteries.