‘Then they weren’t short of a bob or two,’ said Steven. ‘What did they get up to exactly?’
‘Apart from feeding rumour and innuendo about Labour politicians to the media and generally underpinning right-wing causes, we don’t know too much about them,’ said Macmillan. ‘There were suggestions about links with the National Front but then there always are about groups like that. There was nothing ever concrete. It could even have been the other side’s rumour machine having a go at them.’
‘If Donald Crowe was the leader of the Beta team at Porton maybe he was one of them?’ said Steven.
‘You may well be right,’ said Macmillan.
‘George Sebring and Michael D’Arcy were definitely under the impression that they were working for the government during their time there,’ said Steven. ‘Maybe these two…’ Steven reached over for the two ID cards to examine the names. ‘Are under a similar sort of delusion?’
Macmillan thought for a moment before saying, ‘I’m going to the Home Secretary with this. We can’t risk aiming any lower.’
‘Let’s hope he’s not a pal of Gardiner’s too,’ said Steven.
‘Wrong party,’ said Macmillan.
‘Bit hard to tell them apart these days,’ said Steven.
‘But as a priority, I’m going to have him ask the Leicester Police to hold on to these two until we at least know where their instructions came from?’
‘Good,’ said Steven.
Macmillan clicked on the intercom and asked Rose Roberts to set up an urgent call to the Home Secretary ‘What will you do in the meantime?’ he asked Steven.
‘Did Rose have any success coming up with a molecular biologist?’
‘Macmillan opened his desk drawer and took out a small card, which he slid across to Steven, saying, ‘Professor William Rees of the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology at Cambridge is expecting your call. He’ll actually be in London today and tomorrow at the MRC’s head office in Park Crescent. He said that it would be all right if you wanted to speak to him there.’
‘That might save some time,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll call him and see if I can fix something up for this afternoon.’
‘Why don’t we meet back here later and exchange notes?’ asked Macmillan.
Steven agreed. They settled on 6pm.
Steven set up a meeting with Rees for 2pm that afternoon and then went back to the safe house to check on Jane, using a bus and two taxis in a roundabout route just in case he was being followed. He didn’t think he would be but where Jane’s safety was concerned he didn’t intend taking any chances. He told her about Macmillan going to the Home Secretary.
‘I still can’t believe this is happening,’ said Jane. ‘It’s as if everything I’ve ever believed in has been swept away and I’m floating around in a sea of suspicion.’
‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Steven, gathering her in his arms. ‘I know what you’re going through.’
‘Do you?’ challenged Jane. ‘Do you really?’
‘Yes,’ said Steven. ‘I felt exactly the same way the first time I crossed swords with the establishment and realised what they were capable of. The world suddenly stopped being black and white. The clear distinctions I’d imagined existed between right and wrong, good and evil became blurred and everything was etched in shades of grey.’
‘So how do you cope?’
‘I support the lighter shades,’ smiled Steven. ‘I try to do what I believe to be right — that’s a much more difficult thing to do than you might imagine. The right thing to do is not always the wise thing, the safe thing or even the legal thing. It can be a hard road to travel.’
‘If you say so,’ said Jane. ‘What happens now?’
‘I’m going to talk to a scientist this afternoon about how we can identify the agent your husband and Michael D’Arcy were working on and then I’m seeing Macmillan again at the Home Office to find out what’s happening.’
‘In the meantime I will thrill to the magic of daytime television,’ said Jane.
‘It won’t be for long,’ said Steven.
‘Better not be,’ said Jane. ‘If it comes to a choice between a bullet in the head and watching Countdown, it’s going to be a pretty close-run thing.’
Steven smiled and kissed her on the cheek. ‘I’d best be off.’
Steven was shown into one of the committee rooms at the headquarters of the Medical Research Council and offered coffee while he waited. He declined and took a seat at the long, polished wooden table, surrounded by portraits of past secretaries of the council looking down at him from the walls. Not the happiest looking bunch of people, he concluded in the silence before turning his attention to an assortment of periodicals lined up on a shelf next to the period fireplace. Predictably, they were either scientific or medical. He flicked through the pages of Nature and Molecular Microbiology before the door opened and a short, stocky man with wiry dark hair and wearing a tweed jacket entered. His first utterance betrayed the fact he was Welsh.
‘I’m Rees, sorry I’m late.’
‘Not at all, I’m grateful to you for seeing me at such short notice,’ said Steven.
‘I never put off till tomorrow what I can do today,’ said Rees. ‘Unlike some of them round here who make a career out of “asking for clarification” and “deferring decisions” in the hope that the question will go away if they sit on the bloody fence for long enough.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been asking for funds,’ said Steven with a smile.
‘For a new unit,’ said Rees.
‘A lot then,’ said Steven.
‘The Americans will be conducting field trials by the time we lay the foundation stone,’ said Rees. ‘Some things never change.’ He shook his head and looked down at the floor for a moment before appearing to remember why he was there and breaking into a smile, saying, ‘I’m sorry; excuse my rudeness. What can I do for you?’
Steven explained the problem.
‘Well, we certainly don’t need to sequence the entire genomes of these things,’ said Rees.
‘That’s a relief,’ said Steven.
‘The fact that you suspect that the foreign genes might come from the HIV virus means that we can construct probes and check for any homology in the host DNA.’
‘Is that a big job?’ asked Steven.
‘It’s no walk in the park,’ replied Rees, ‘but nothing like sequencing the entire chromosome would be: that’s a non-starter. You say you have three dozen of these cultures?’
‘All normal body commensals according to the man who isolated them,’ said Steven. ‘No pathogens.’
‘This man’s a doctor?’ asked Rees.
‘A medical technician,’ said Steven.
‘Maybe I could have a look at the list?’ said Rees. ‘It would be nice to narrow the field down if at all possible.’
‘I thought you might want to see it,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve brought it with me on disk.’
‘Excellent,’ said Rees. ‘I have my laptop here. Let’s have a look, shall we?’
Rees set up his computer and Steven handed him the disk that Gus Maclean had given him.
Rees brought out a pair of half-moon spectacles from his jacket pocket and perched them on the end of his nose but still had to tilt his head back slightly to be able read down the list of bacteria that Maclean had isolated from himself.
‘Certainly no pathogens,’ he murmured. ‘But…’
‘You’ve found something?’ asked Steven, feeling excited at the prospect.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Rees. ‘It’s certainly a bit unusual… to find three different isolates in any one individual…’
‘Sorry, I’m not with you,’ said Steven, looking over Rees’s shoulder.