‘I’m still convinced Simone and Aline Lagarde were murdered for the same reason,’ said Steven.
‘I thought you’d see it that way,’ said Macmillan, sounding less than overjoyed. ‘The odds against our being able to do anything against the combined opposition of MI6, the CIA, and possibly even the French intelligence services if they were responsible for setting Dr Lagarde up, are overwhelming.’
‘True,’ Steven conceded. ‘But that doesn’t stop us thinking about it, probing where we can, and working out what they’re up to and why someone thought Simone and Aline had to be killed.’
‘The very first time you ask a question of anyone they’ll know we didn’t buy their version of events,’ Macmillan warned him.
‘Yes,’ said Steven flatly.
Macmillan smiled. ‘Have a care,’ he said, ‘and keep me informed.’
Steven left Macmillan’s office and paused to speak to Jean Roberts. He produced a copy of the participant list for the Prague meeting and asked her to check affiliations.
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Anything that doesn’t match up. Check out the stated university connections. Anyone listed as being attached to a university which turns out to have never heard of them I’d like to know about. Anyone with known connections to the intelligence community… anyone known to the police… and perhaps more importantly, anyone who looks dodgy to you, Jean.’
Jean smiled, pleased as always to be credited with the capacity to spot pieces that didn’t belong in the jigsaw — a talent developed through many years with Sci-Med. She’d been with John Macmillan since its inception. ‘Will do. Anything else?’
‘I’d like a contact number for a man named Bill Andrews: he’s on the list as the man who deals with American charity money.’
Steven was about to leave when Jean reached into her desk drawer and withdrew a folder which she handed to him. ‘Sir John thought you might like to look this over at your leisure, just to keep you up to speed with what’s going on in the world of ME.’
Steven accepted the file with a small smile but without comment and went to his office. He was wondering what it would be like right now along the north Pakistan border, an area he knew reasonably well, having visited it on more than one occasion in his Special Forces past. He remembered the feeling at the time that he could have been on the moon, so lonely and desolate was the region. It also had a history of being bad news for any country stupid enough to imagine they could control and bring stability to it — not that that had ever stopped them trying.
The current situation there was worse than ever. The legacy of Bush’s war on terror had left Afghanistan without any credible government save for a bunch of puppets who were being assassinated on a regular basis by the Taleban, and on the other side of the border the Pakistani government was so corrupt that it made a corkscrew look like a spirit level thanks to an ill-advised release from prison of more than nine thousand crooks in an amnesty in 2007. Against that background, attempting to find out why two young doctors whose only ambition had been to help and protect children had been murdered was not going to be easy, but he would give it his best shot.
His starting hypothesis had to be that Simone and Aline had come across something other than the fact that one of the aid teams on the ground — probably more — were fake. They were American intelligence-gathering units but in imitation of genuine teams they had a Pakistani element to them. The CIA man at the meeting he’d just attended had mentioned a Pakistani doctor in the team whose work Simone and Aline had come across and there would probably have been an interpreter too.
According to Aline, the team had come across a village where people were falling ill and children’s polio vaccination schedules hadn’t been completed. This had alarmed Simone… wait. What had? He, like the others, had been assuming that it was the problem with the children’s vaccinations that had given her cause for concern, but it could have been the fact that people in the village were ill. What was wrong with them? Had they contracted polio? Simone and Aline would have known if that had been the case, but Aline had just said that people were ill… and that she and Simone had taken blood samples!
This could be the break he was looking for. They had taken blood samples for lab analysis but what had they done with them? Where had they sent them? The lab reports might answer a whole lot of questions.
TWELVE
Steven recognised that he was about to ask the first question, the one Macmillan had highlighted as having inevitable repercussions, but he couldn’t see any way round it: he had to know where the samples had been sent and what the lab had found. The only thing he had to decide was whom to ask. A moment’s thought pointed him at Guy Monfils at Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris: he would know exactly where his teams would send lab samples and maybe, as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to tell anyone he’d been asked…
‘Guy? It’s Steven Dunbar in London.’
It only took Steven a few moments to conclude that Monfils had swallowed the official line about Aline’s involvement with drug traffickers. ‘A tremendous shock,’ he called it. ‘She must have succumbed to temptation, poor girl.’ If he believed that, thought Steven, he would almost certainly be happy with Simone’s death's being recorded as an accident and had probably accepted the CIA’s apology for their tactics along with the other major aid agencies. There would be no point in even attempting to recruit Monfils as an ally. It wasn’t that he was uncaring or a fool; he was just used to seeing the best in people and placing his trust in authority.
‘I have a question, Guy.’
Steven asked about lab facilities for aid workers in the field. ‘It must be really difficult?’
‘It can be a nightmare, Steven. Even keeping the vaccines cool is a major headache.’
‘So what do you do about actual lab work in the field… blood grouping, biochemistry, microbiology, that sort of thing?’
‘We have technicians out there who perform basic tests, but for major things the teams have to send samples back to Europe.’
‘To France?’
‘Or London.’
C’mon, c’mon, thought Steven, just a bit more…
‘The teams working on polio eradication would use Dr North’s lab in London. Virology is not something you can do in the field.’
‘Of course not,’ said Steven, as if he hadn't just received a crucial piece of information when in reality he felt like a lottery winner.
‘May I ask why you want to know this?’
Steven had anticipated the question and had given his answer some thought. He said, ‘I’m giving a talk to medical students about the practice of medicine under testing conditions. I'm aware of course, from my own experience how the military go about things, but it struck me that your people must face similar problems every day. I thought I’d check with someone who knew and I’m very much obliged to you. You’ve been a great help.’
‘Don’t mention it. I hope it goes well for you… Maybe you could point some of your students in our direction? We’re always on the lookout for committed young people.’
‘I’ll certainly mention it.’
Steven wondered for a few moments if he’d got away without arousing suspicion. He thought there was a fair chance he had, but questioning Tom North about blood samples from Afghanistan might turn out to be a whole new ball game — but one that would have to wait until tomorrow. First, he wanted to follow a hunch. He opened his wallet and took out the card the French policeman, Le Grice, had given him when they had discussed the sharing of information. Philippe Le Grice had impressed him as being bright — perhaps too bright to succeed in a profession where kissing the right arses and doing things by the book tended to pave the way to the higher echelons. It would be interesting to hear his take on developments in the Aline Lagarde case.