Authors: Ken McClure
It was after one thirty in the morning when Steven opened the door to Tally’s flat as quietly as he could and let himself in. He smiled when he saw the gin bottle and one crystal glass sitting on the table with a note that said,
Tonic in the fridge, sandwiches wrapped in cling-film
. It was just what he needed to help him wind down after the meeting with Ricksen and the long drive north. Ricksen hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know about the Schiller Group, but the fact that even MI5 might back-pedal when it came to taking them on was more than a bit unsettling.
Thirty minutes later, Steven tiptoed through to the bedroom and pushed open the door, which wasn’t closed.
‘Who’s there?’ Tally asked sleepily.
‘The Milk Tray man,’ whispered Steven.
‘Just leave them on the dressing table, will you? I’m expecting my boyfriend at any minute.’
Steven manoeuvred himself under the covers and snuggled up to Tally’s back.
‘I told you, my boyfriend is on his way.’
‘We Milk Tray men like living dangerously.’
‘Oh well then,’ murmured Tally, turning to face him. ‘I suppose if you’re quick … so be it.’
‘Breakfast is served, madam,’ Steven announced, coming into the bedroom with a tray supporting boiled eggs, toast, orange juice and coffee. He laid it on the bed beside Tally and smoothed her hair back from her forehead as she sat up, smiling.
‘God, I love you,’ she said. ‘It’s so nice to see you again.’
‘Snap.’
They didn’t do anything specific, just spent the day together, strolling by the river and holding hands and laughing a lot, eating lunch and enjoying the wine they had with it before returning to the flat and going back to bed.
‘Do you have to go back tonight?’ They were lying in dappled sunlight coming through the curtains with the sound of grass being cut somewhere.
‘I’m afraid so. John covered the last COBRA meeting but I don’t want to impose on him too much. His wife’s not happy about him coming back to work so soon. She wants him to go on a cruise.’
‘What does he think about that?’
‘He’d rather have root-canal treatment.’
Tally laughed. ‘Is he fit to take the reins again?’
‘I think so, but I’m not absolutely sure. Sci-Med is his life. He won’t give it up easily, and nor should he while he’s as sharp as he ever was. It was he who saw the significance of the missing person report up in Edinburgh.’
‘But he might give it up if he knew you were going to take over,’ said Tally.
‘That really just came up because he thought he was going to die. That’s no longer true.’
‘Have you though about what you’re going to do?’
‘I’m going to keep on the Milk Tray job,’ said Steven. ‘The perks are fantastic.’
He warded off the rain of blows that descended on him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said when Tally ran out of energy. ‘I was avoiding the issue.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Tally. ‘I haven’t changed my mind. You can’t go back to kissing corporate arse. That just isn’t you.’
‘We’ll talk again when things get back to normal.’
* * *
Steven was preparing to leave for the drive back to London when his phone rang. It was John Ricksen.
‘What the hell are you playing at, Dunbar? If you think that was some kind of joke, I’m not laughing,’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Waheed Malik: Anwar Khan’s controller, you said. Jesus, you’ve made me look a right prat.’
‘I gave you all the information I had. What’s the problem?’
‘His name’s not Waheed Malik; it’s Assad Zaman. He’s one of ours.’
Steven stammered his disbelief. ‘How can he be? What the hell was he doing in Edinburgh with Khan and a water board van?’
‘We don’t know that he was,’ said Ricksen through gritted teeth. ‘Khan was picked up in Glasgow with another guy called Patel. We’ve just been assuming the same two carried out the Edinburgh attack. Neither of them has admitted it or given any information about it.’
‘All right, what was your man doing in Edinburgh with two unknown Asians and a water board van on the day of the attack?’
‘If that’s where the picture was taken,’ said Ricksen sullenly.
Steven was angry now. ‘Look, that picture was taken in Edinburgh. I know because I’ve been there. I stood on the spot where it was taken.’
‘All right,’ said Ricksen. ‘I apologise. But what the hell’s going on?’
‘Why don’t you ask Malik or Zaman or whatever his bloody name is, if he’s one of yours?’
‘We can’t find him at the moment.’
‘He’s one of yours and you can’t find him?’
‘He’s not a staffer. Turns out we’ve used him in the past. I’m told he was one of our insiders in the fundamentalist scene in Leicester a year or so ago.’
‘So maybe he’s been turned.’
‘The fundos don’t turn agents they catch; they cut them into little pieces.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘In view of what you’ve said, I’ll put out a major alert for him.’
‘I’ll call you in the morning.’
Steven attended what was announced to be the last COBRA meeting for the time being. He couldn’t help but feel he was the only one there who wasn’t basking in a glow of self-satisfaction over being ‘on top of things’ as the deputy PM put it. No new cases of cholera had been reported in the past twenty-four hours, security at all reservoirs and water installations was tight, and vaccination of the infant population had already begun at surgeries across the country. Norman Travis took over to say that vaccination of top-risk people would begin in three days, and Merryman were on course to provide new supplies in three weeks’ time for the remaining population.
Steven left the meeting with that now familiar hollow feeling in his stomach. There was something terribly wrong about … everything, but he couldn’t say so. Norman Travis, who had been accepting the congratulations of some of the others over the health department’s handling of the affair, detached himself and came downstairs with Steven.
‘Isn’t it strange how much things can change in such a short time? A week ago I wouldn’t have put money on anyone’s smiling today.’
‘We’ve been very lucky,’ said Steven.
‘I know there can be no guarantee that there won’t be another attack, but with Merryman coming on stream with new vaccines we should be in a much better position to defend ourselves.’
‘You’re right, and I understand your contribution to that has been invaluable,’ said Steven.
‘Some things are more important than party politics – as I think the coalition is demonstrating. If you see something needs doing, you should get your head down and damn well do it.’
‘Indeed,’ said Steven with a smile.
‘It was good to see John Macmillan at the meeting the other day, but we didn’t get a chance to speak afterwards. Is he back full time?’
‘Not quite.’
‘Give him my best.’
Steven felt the need for fresh air and a walk. He needed to experience a sense of normality, see people going about their business, be assured that all was right with the world despite feeling sure that it wasn’t. He was leaning on a rail watching the river traffic chug past when John Ricksen rang.
‘They’ve found Zaman.’
‘What’s he saying?’
‘Not a lot. He was swinging from a tree in the Clyde Valley.’
Steven closed his eyes. ‘What’s the thinking?’
‘The brains think he must have started to feel guilty about working for us – maybe seeing the fuck-up in Afghanistan – and was really converted to fundamentalist philosophy. He was one of those chosen to run the cholera attack, but when he realised how many were going to die after a second hit he got cold feet and blew the whistle. It wouldn’t be hard for the
hierarchy
to work out he’d been the one who’d done that so they strung him up.’
‘Is that what you think?’ asked Steven.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘We should talk. Can you come over to the Home Office?’
‘Give me an hour. There are a couple of things I have to do.’
John Macmillan asked Steven how the COBRA meeting had gone.
‘Everyone was happy except me.’
‘Did you tell them what Lukas came up with?’
Steven shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to be a party pooper. If I’d had any idea why they’d disabled the bug I would have, but I haven’t. You?’
‘No,’ said Macmillan. ‘Islamic terrorists don’t do kindness. Doesn’t make sense.’
‘I’ve asked John Ricksen to come over. We need to talk.’
Macmillan raised his eyes.
‘Waseed Malik was an MI5 informer. His real name was Assad Zaman. He was found hanging from a tree in Scotland in the early hours of this morning.
Macmillan slumped back in his chair. ‘I’m beginning to think a cruise might be a better option.’
‘MI5 think he was converted to the opposition. He ran the first attack but chickened out of the second and made the call that stopped it.’
Ricksen arrived and Jean Roberts brought in coffee.
‘No calls please, Jean,’ said Macmillan.
‘Very good, Sir John,’ she replied, winking at Steven on the way out. Normal service had been resumed.
‘I’ve told Sir John what 5 thinks about the man we know as Malik and you know as Zaman, but I got the impression that you might have some other ideas,’ Steven began. Ricksen seemed uneasy, and Steven guessed it was because Macmillan was present. ‘Everything said here stays here,’ he added.
‘Something’s not quite right,’ said Ricksen.
‘That’s exactly the impression we have.’
‘People are desperate to come up with plausible explanations for implausible happenings. We get a warning of a bio-weapon attack but we don’t know where from. None of our sources know anything at all about it. Same goes for Special Branch. We’re told the terrorists are home-grown – and they are – but no one knows anything about their masters. Zaman’s involvement is not only a surprise to us, it’s a surprise to the fundamentalist groups. Then his body is found – unmutilated. He still had his tongue. Very strange.’
Steven told Ricksen about the disabling of the cholera strain. ‘They didn’t want to kill too many people.’
‘And our conclusion must be, gentlemen?’ asked Macmillan.
‘It wasn’t an Islamic terrorist attack at all,’ said Steven slowly.
Macmillan nodded. ‘It’s the only explanation. Some unknown faction recruited disaffected Muslim youths in our cities and groomed them to carry out the attacks, telling them they were acting for the Islamic fundamentalist cause.’
‘Then they shopped them to the police to bolster the
impression
that it was Islamic terrorists who were responsible,’ added Steven.
‘But what on earth for?’ asked Ricksen. ‘And why use a weapon that’s deliberately been blunted, if what you say’s true?’
‘To create the right conditions for … something else to happen,’ said Macmillan. ‘The people who died were
expendable
… collateral damage.’
‘Working-class people in old council blocks of flats?’
‘Oh, shit,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be the Schiller Group.’
Ricksen’s expression suggested that he did not see this as good news.
‘It’s another Northern Health Scheme. They’re setting out to reshape the population.’
‘Reshape the pop—’ stammered Ricksen.
‘It’s a long story, going back twenty years,’ said Steven, unwilling to break his stride. ‘They’ve been manipulating events to set it up all over again. That’s what the killings in Paris were all about. It
was
a take-over bid. A new hierarchy with new ideas is in charge.’
‘So what are they planning to do?’ asked Macmillan.
‘The mass vaccinations,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be that. The entire population is about to be vaccinated.’
‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Macmillan. ‘It does have to be that. The very young have been receiving what cholera vaccine stocks we had but the over-sixties are about to get the stuff that was bound for the Third World.’
‘Or not,’ said Steven.
‘Are you suggesting they’re going to kill everyone over sixty?’ asked Ricksen, as if he were in the throes of a bad dream.
‘Nothing so unsubtle, if the Schiller Group are responsible.’
‘So how do we stop them? The whole operation is up and running with full government approval and we don’t even know who “they” are.’
‘Indeed,’ said Macmillan. ‘And what is particularly worrying is that it would be much easier for them to stop us.’
‘And they must know we’re onto something because of the alert 5 put out for Zaman,’ said Steven.
‘It must have been them who killed him to stop him talking,’ said Ricksen. ‘That’s why it didn’t look right.’
‘We know from the cover-ups of twenty years ago that the Schiller mob was well represented in the police, so maybe informing them is not an option.’
‘They must have a presence in 5 too,’ said Ricksen, thinking about the National Front infiltrator who’d ended up in the Thames.
‘Let’s define our objectives,’ said Steven. ‘We have to stop the “vaccine” from getting to the mass-vaccination clinics all over the country. Its starting point is …’
‘Lark Pharmaceuticals,’ said Ricksen. ‘They’re diverting their overseas supplies.’
Macmillan hit the intercom button on his desk. ‘Jean, we need to have everything you can get on Lark Pharmaceuticals as quickly as you can.’
‘Lark may not be involved, of course. There might be a plan to swap shipments somewhere along the line,’ said Ricksen.
‘Then it’s important we stop them setting out if we can,’ said Steven.
‘Easier said than done,’ said Ricksen. ‘Any word of such an attempt getting back to the Schiller mob and they’ll simply change their plans.’
A knock came to the door and Jean entered. ‘Something to be going on with,’ she said, placing a thin file on Macmillan’s desk.
Macmillan read in silence for a few moments before speaking out loud for the benefit of Steven and Ricksen. ‘Lark Pharmaceuticals was formed in 1990 as an offshoot of Lander Pharmaceuticals but has never been listed on the stock exchange. It’s a private company. Although the expertise came from Lander, private money from a body called the Wellington Foundation was used to set it up. It’s run as a non-profit-making concern. What profits it does make from the sale of its pills and potions and diagnostic kits and so on is ploughed back into its vaccine programme for Third World countries.’
‘So it’s a charity?’ said Ricksen.
‘Not with a parent company like Lander,’ said Steven. ‘Lander supplied pharmaceuticals to the Northern Health Scheme.’
Macmillan continued. ‘The head of Lark is Dr Mark Mosely, a previous associate of Dr Paul Schreiber, head of Lander Pharmaceuticals at one time.’
‘Schreiber was deeply involved in the scheme. He ran the
pharmacy
at Newcastle College Hospital personally,’ said Steven.
‘Mosely, a brilliant molecular biologist, was recruited by Schreiber after getting his doctorate from Cambridge. He rose rapidly in Lander and was given the job of heading up Lark when it was formed. He’s been there ever since.’
‘Being funded by the Schiller Group,’ said Steven.
‘So it’s Lark we’re after,’ said Ricksen.
‘An outwardly respectable company, doing its level best to help Third World countries and commanding the admiration of all …’ said Macmillan.
‘Currently about to provide the vaccine necessary to protect some of our most vulnerable citizens,’ said Steven.
‘We need proof,’ said Ricksen. ‘Cast-iron proof before we can touch them, and that could take time …’
‘Which we haven’t got,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll have to get the proof another way.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘Hereford,’ said Steven. ‘We don’t waste time with polite requests and bits of paper: we hit Lark head-on with an SAS assault.’
‘Jesus,’ said Ricksen. ‘Can you do that?’
‘Steven is ex-Regiment,’ said Macmillan. ‘His old chums have come to our aid in the past. The question this time is … do we need MOD approval?’
‘It could be argued that this is a civilian matter …’ said Steven.
‘Which might conceivably make it a Home Office affair,’ said Macmillan. ‘But this is big. We’ll have to seek the Home Secretary’s approval.’
Steven nodded. ‘She’s heard rumours about the Schiller Group in the past. It came up in conversation.’
‘Good. Who approaches her, you or me?’
‘You,’ said Steven. ‘I’ll call Hereford.’
Macmillan was with the Home Secretary for nearly an hour. He returned looking tired and drawn. ‘She will personally see that I am hanged from Tower Bridge if this goes wrong,’ he said.
‘But it’s a yes?’ asked Steven.
‘With you hanging beside me,’ continued Macmillan. ‘But it is a yes. Have you spoken to your friends?’
Steven said that he had. ‘I had confidence in your powers of persuasion. They’ll be here at eleven this evening.’
‘Are you going with them?’
‘Yes.’
Macmillan’s eyes asked the same question of Ricksen.
‘If that’s okay?’
‘You bet,’ said Steven. He turned to Macmillan. ‘We’re going to need Lukas Neubauer and the lab to be on stand-by throughout the night. I’ll get the vaccine to him as quickly as I can.’
‘I’ll talk to him. Strikes me it’s going to be a long night for all of us. I’ll ask Jean to arrange some sustenance.’
Jean had not only come up with food and drink for them by the end of the afternoon but also some publicity
photographs
of the Lark Pharmaceuticals building. Steven was able to show these to the SAS commander who arrived at a service entrance to the Home Office at eleven p.m., one of twelve soldiers dressed in black counter-terrorist gear, travelling in four green Land Rovers. The others stayed where they were inside their vehicles.
Steven had to admit that neither he nor Ricksen had ever been inside the Lark building.
‘Great,’ said the man, who introduced himself as Tim.
‘Relax,’ said Steven. ‘I’m not looking for subtlety here. I need you to hit that building like a train and secure it as quickly as possible. I don’t think there will be too many people in the labs and offices at this time of night but if there are any, contain them but don’t hurt them. I don’t want anyone going anywhere or destroying anything. There will be people in the transport bays loading vaccine onto lorries. I don’t want them or the
vehicles
going anywhere for the time being.’
‘Understood. And if we meet resistance?’
‘Overcome it,’ said Steven. ‘Minimum force. These people will be innocents doing their jobs. I just need everything to come to a standstill until we find what we’re looking for.’
‘Which is?’
‘Let’s say I’ve reason to believe that the vaccine supplies this company are about to send out are not what they’re supposed to be. I need samples for our lab to analyse and, ideally,
information
about what’s really in the vials. Last but not least I need any information you can get about the organisation responsible for putting it there.’
‘The vials we can get from the loading bay,’ said Tim. ‘And we gather all files, disks, laptops from the exec suites?’
Steven nodded. ‘The managing director is a Dr Mark Mosely. Concentrate on his office before anything else.’
It took Tim and his men eleven minutes to occupy and secure the Lark building. The personnel on site – mainly transport and loading staff, as expected – were herded into the staff canteen, given an apology, and asked to wait there behind locked doors until further notice. No one chose to argue with the
black-suited
, armed men wearing balaclavas.
Steven and Ricksen joined Tim in Mark Mosely’s office. Tim watched while Steven made a thorough search of the room, selecting items to take back with him to London along with the vaccine samples obtained by the soldiers from the loading bay.
‘Christ, I hope you’re right about all this,’ murmured Ricksen.
‘You and me both,’ replied Steven.
‘Make that three of us,’ Tim chipped in. ‘The boss isn’t putting this operation through the books.’
‘Could get a bit busy under Tower Bridge,’ said Steven, a comment that passed over the heads of the other two.
‘Ready?’ asked Tim.
Steven took a last look round the office. ‘I’ll just make sure there aren’t any wall safes …’ He was thinking about Charles French’s penthouse.
He hadn’t really expected to find anything under the various pictures on the wall but when he moved
Ville d’Avray
slightly to the left with his fingertips he took a step back in surprise when an entire wall panel slid open.
‘What the f—’ exclaimed Ricksen. ‘What is it?’
‘A lift,’ said Steven, slightly bemused.
‘But there’s a lift just outside the door,’ said Tim.
‘Could be an executive lift,’ said Ricksen. ‘You know what these guys are like … executive this, executive that.’
Steven pressed the single button at the side and the lift door slid open. He looked inside. ‘One button. Only goes to one floor.’