‘So he’s going to get away with it too?’ said Jane.
‘It would be impossible to prove beyond doubt that he did not have Government approval,’ said Steven.
‘And the good news?’ said Jane.
‘You can go home tomorrow and get on with your life,’ said Steven.
Jane smiled ruefully and said, ‘Good, I’m not sure it’s ever going to be the same again.’
‘It’s in our nature to get over things,’ said Steven.
‘Sounds like a variant of, “Time’s a great healer”,’ said Jane.
‘I suppose,’ agreed Steven. ‘Let’s go out to dinner.’
‘Shouldn’t you be feeling pleased with yourself, or is there something you have to tell me?’ asked Jane, very much aware of Steven’s preoccupation throughout dinner.
Steven smiled and said, ‘I’m sorry, no, it’s nothing like that and the only thing I have to tell you is that I am so glad I met you.’
Doubt remained on Jane’s face. ‘Then what?’ she asked.
‘There’s something about the whole thing that’s bugging me and it’s not just the fact that your husband’s murderer is not going to be brought to justice. There’s something I just can’t put my finger on.’
‘Maybe you are one of these people who just can’t let go?’ said Jane.
‘You missed out “these annoying bloody”,’ said Steven with a smile.
Jane smiled and said, ‘Are you going to come up to Leicester with me tomorrow?’
Steven said not. He was going to question Donald Crowe. He confessed that one of the things still puzzling him was the fact that there had still been no mention of any construction details about the agent the Beta Team had been making.
‘Well Crowe must certainly know,’ said Jane. ‘After all, he was in charge of the whole damned thing. Dreadful man.’
‘He must,’ agreed Steven. ‘But he managed to avoid saying anything about that when he was interviewed. Strange.’
‘Well, it was all a long time ago, I suppose,’ said Jane.
‘Mm,’ said Steven.
‘You see something sinister in it?’ said Jane.
Steven shrugged and said, ‘Maybe, maybe not. It’s hard to see why he would want to keep that a secret when we know exactly what happened.’
‘It’s hard to see why they would want to kill my husband and the others in order to keep a twelve-year-old accident a secret too,’ countered Jane.
Steven looked at her unseeingly as the hairs on the back of his neck started to rise. He had been about to point out that the financial repercussions of having to admit liability to the Gulf War veterans would have been an obvious reason when he saw an alternative explanation. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he murmured under his breath.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jane, sounding concerned at the change that had come over Steven. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘They didn’t abandon it,’ he said.
Jane appeared bemused. ‘Didn’t abandon what?’ she asked.
‘The construction of the agent,’ said Steven as his mind raced ahead of him. ‘I’d been assuming it was the accident itself that they wanted to keep secret because of the financial fall out but that’s not it at all. It’s the agent they want to keep secret. They didn’t abandon it! They went on working on it.’
‘Tell me this is just an academic exercise you’re going through in your head,’ said Jane.
‘The more I think about it,’ said Steven, the bit now between his teeth, ‘the more it begins to make sense. Disabling, undetectable and curable. They succeeded! That’s why they want to keep it a secret.’
‘But you can’t be sure about this,’ said Jane. ‘It could just be your imagination. Please God, it’s just your imagination!’
‘Somehow I don’t think so,’ said Steven. ‘If Crowe doesn’t come clean about everything tomorrow when I ask him outright that’ll be proof enough.’
‘More Government intrigue?’ said Jane.
‘Quite the reverse I think,’ said Steven. ‘I think we could be looking at private enterprise here.’
‘Gardiner and his gang?’
‘Gardiner made a big thing about his group always acting within the law,’ said Steven. ‘He said at one point that he was contemplating disbanding the group because he felt they weren’t getting anywhere.’
‘What exactly were their objectives?’
‘Oh, a misty-eyed return to England for the English, warm beer, cricket on the village green, bobbies on the beat, kids behaving themselves and everyone leaving their doors unlocked.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Jane. ‘If he can combine that with Santa Claus being real and the tooth fairy dealing with next month’s Visa Card bill I just might join up.’
Steven was still deep in thought.
‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’ said Jane.
The look on Steven’s face answered her question. ‘Maybe some other members of the group have different ideas about how they should go about achieving their aims.’
Jane’s eyes opened wide. ‘You’re suggesting that they might actually use the agent?’ she gasped. ‘But how? How would you use something like that?’
‘You’d have to come up with a way of infecting a sizeable proportion of your target population before you could begin to exert any control over them,’ said Steven. ‘Designing delivery systems for biological weapons is a hi-tech-science in itself. It’s as difficult as designing the weapons themselves. You can’t just infect one person and depend on them passing on the disease. You have to contaminate a large number of people at the same time. Saddam used missiles with non-explosive heads to create air bursts over his intended targets. Crop duster aircraft can be used in much the same way but each organism throws up different problems when it comes to turning them into aerosol mists or even powder form. Some of the most lethal organisms on earth are actually fragile little creatures in their own right. They don’t like being exposed to hostile environments and they die very quickly. Then there are the limitations imposed by the vagaries of wind and weather. A sudden change in the wind and you can end up infecting your own troops.
‘It makes me ill to think of this,’ said Jane.
‘Throwing up our hands in horror is no defence.’
‘What is?’ asked Jane.
‘Intelligence is all-important,’ said Steven. ‘Knowing what agent is being used is paramount. If you know that you can vaccinate against viruses or give antibiotic umbrellas against bacteria.’
‘But if you don’t know what’s coming…’ said Jane.
‘You’re in real trouble,’ said Steven. ‘Vaccination is not much use after the event and antibiotics will be fighting a losing battle — always assuming you can come up with a suitable one or combination in the first place. Bio-weapons are nearly always designed to be resistant to antibiotics.’
‘If you are right about the existence of this new agent and it being in private hands…’ said Jane.
‘We need to know exactly what it is and how to detect it — not easy if it has been designed to be undetectable — and finally how to treat it,’ said Steven. ‘But it was designed to be treatable…’ he added as a puzzling afterthought.
‘I can understand how something like smallpox or plague can be used as a weapon,’ said Jane. ‘They will obviously create fear and terror and will kill a lot of people but I’m not so sure about this new thing?’
‘The idea was first mooted at an international conference on biotechnology about fifteen years ago,’ said Steven. ‘If you can create conditions where the majority of the target population are ill most of the time and feel generally run down and under the weather they will start to turn against the social structure that they’re living in. They will blame their government for their miserable state and embrace any promise of radical change on offer. It’s a modern day variation on brain- washing. In that state it’s possible to change people’s whole political philosophy.’