‘How much did you tell her last night?’
‘The bare bones of what you told me.’
Steven was pleased to see that there was a lack of politicians present in the meeting room at Albert Embankment. Apart from the Home and Foreign secretaries the others present he recognised — with a couple of exceptions — as coming from either the intelligence communities or the police — professionals who knew what they were doing.
The Prime minister called the meeting to order and gave a brief preamble.
‘As some of you already know, I asked Dr Steven Dunbar of the Sci-Med Inspectorate to investigate independently a particularly disturbing situation which has attracted the attention of all of us in recent months, albeit in various ways and to varying degrees. Dr Dunbar has a track record of success in investigating complicated crime scenarios in science and medicine and I hoped that he might be able to bring together all our efforts in exposing something which appeared to involve the murder of brilliant scientists, millions of dollars emanating from Russian expats living in London, corruption among global aid agencies and epidemic disease caused by deadly viruses. I am pleased — and indeed terrified — to say that he has succeeded. Steven...’
It took Steven less than ten minutes to paint a brief but coherent picture of what had been going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, who had instigated it and why. What he had to say was met with stunned silence. He sipped water while he waited for the first question.
‘The bastards are deliberately starting epidemics for financial gain?’ exclaimed an American voice.
‘Yes.’
‘You’re seriously saying that they are prepared to cause thousands of deaths for profit?’
‘It could end up being worse than that,’ said Steven, ‘they could wipe out humanity by mistake. People run from epidemics in all directions: they spread the disease. There’s no guarantee when it will stop.’
‘Is that what is happening in DRC?’
‘People are running at the moment, others are trying to stop them. It’s still spreading.’
‘From what you say, this technology could be used to cause outbreaks of any deadly disease?’
‘We saw the proof of that at Porton when capsules containing Marburg disease were ruptured by mistake.’
‘This could be worse than any tsunami or Chernobyl-like incident the world’s ever had to deal with.’
‘It could,’ Steven agreed.
The Prime Minister thanked Steven and took over, saying, ‘Now that Dr Dunbar has told us what all this is about, perhaps I can ask the police and the intelligence people to report on progress they have been making in their areas of interest in this dreadful situation.’
Steven and John Macmillan found themselves feeling encouraged by what they heard. Special Branch were ready to act on the Russian expats responsible for providing funding: they were waiting for Malenkov to make his next visit to London before raiding Dimitri Petrov’s house and simultaneously picking up all others concerned. The combined intelligence services of several countries were making good progress with rooting out the bad apples in aid organisations. It would take a while for all the small-time opportunist crooks to be exposed, but, more importantly, they were pretty sure that the big fish recruited by Malenkov had all been based in Geneva and most had already come to a sticky end thanks to Chinese investor involvement.’
‘Have any of the Chinese killers been brought to justice?’ asked the Prime Minister.
‘No, Prime Minister.’
‘Probably for the best, we really don’t want the sort of publicity that would generate.’
‘Ideally we don’t want any publicity at all,’ said Steven. ‘The merest suggestion that vaccination is being used for mass murder could cause enormous damage in the fight against world disease.’
‘There’s already growing opposition to vaccination in many countries,’ said the foreign minister.
‘It wasn’t helped in our own country by a charlatan scaremongering about MMR,’ added Steven.
‘Mass vaccination against viral disease is the best hope we have for the future,’ said John Macmillan, who emphasised the point by staring directly at the Prime Minister until she acknowledged with a nod and a slight raise of her hand. ‘Thank you, Sir John, I think your views on the subject are well known.’
The meeting broke up with the PM making a point of touching Steven’s arm and taking him to one side to thank him personally for what he’d managed to come up with.
‘We are not out of the woods yet, Prime Minister,’ said Steven.
‘No, but thanks to you we know what’s been going on in the woods,’ replied the PM with a smile. ‘I’m told your lady is still in DRC?’
‘I’m hoping she’ll be home soon.’
‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do.’
‘Thank you, Prime Minister.’
Tally was beginning to think Helga wasn’t coming when her Land Rover drew up outside in a late afternoon dust haze. ‘Sorry, there was a problem with some villagers, I had to sort it out.’
‘I thought you’d got lost,’ said Tally.
‘Not much chance with these trackers,’ Helga replied, tapping her wrist where all the new area managers had been fitted with sat nav trackers when they arrived in DRC to ensure that they wouldn’t get lost. She immediately wondered why Tally appeared to have turned to stone and the blood was draining from her face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ Tally stammered, trying to regain her composure, she couldn’t remember being so suddenly afraid before. She’d forgotten about the little bubble under her skin? Surely it couldn’t be what Steven had described, a tiny reservoir of Ebola virus waiting to be released, something that could end her life in the most horrible way possible?
She fought to convince herself it wasn’t, while Helga continued to wonder what the matter was. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe you should sit down...’
Tally knew it was quite common for people to have tracking implants fitted if conditions warranted it. People working for large organisations and in security environments often had implants fitted with tiny chips to enable them to do such mundane things as open doors without keying in security numbers. It was part of everyday life, but remembering that it had been Marcus Altman who had presided over the fitting of trackers to the volunteers was pushing her over the edge. She immediately sprang into life and started hunting around for something. When she finally turned around, she had a scalpel in her hand, causing Helga to take a step back in alarm.
‘We must get rid of these trackers,’ said Tally, ‘I’ll do yours, you do mine, I’ll explain after we’ve done it.’ She resumed her search for some more bits and pieces and a small bottle of surgical spirit, which she used to clean and sterilise the area around the implant on Helga’s arm before opening the skin with the scalpel and removing the implant with forceps. ‘There, all done,’ she said, placing the implant carefully in a small dish. ‘Your turn.’
Helga removed Tally’s implant and Tally allowed herself a sigh of relief before saying, ‘We have to destroy these... by burning, I’m not going to trust disinfectant, it won’t get through the plastic.’
Although Helga had gone along with everything, she was clearly wondering if Tally had gone mad. ‘Right,’ she said, sounding unconvinced and looking wide-eyed.
Tally looked at her and understood, she said, ‘You asked me yesterday what was going on... there’s a lot to take in... but here goes, Marcus Altman and some of his friends have been deliberately causing outbreaks of Ebola by giving people sophisticated implants under the guise of vaccinating them... not everyone, just selected groups of people who would some time later be targeted to go down with the disease and then it would spread naturally as contacts became infected. The implants are harmless until they are caused to rupture by ultrasound... they then release live virus. I don’t know if ours are genuine trackers or two of the other kind, but we can’t afford to take chances... especially judging by the way Hans was looking at us.’