Devil’s Harvest (7 page)

Outside, his breath soon frosted in the air from the exertion. As he turned the corner, he spotted an ash-stained rubbish bucket and uncurled his fingers to toss the herbalist’s card away. He glanced at the bent piece of cardboard as he thrust his opening palm towards the wastebin.

Oh God, Gabriel groaned.

* * *

Gabriel flopped down into Brian Hargreaves’s leather armchair. The fabric had been worn to a sheen on the arms, and the beading along the sides sprouted threads that gave it a herbaceous appearance. Hargreaves contemplated his friend and colleague while resting his double chin portentously on his fist, one eyebrow raised.

‘The intellect is dead, long live the intellect,’ Gabriel said, his words accentuated by the hiss of air escaping from the cushion as his weight dropped into the seat.

‘Surely not that bad?’ Hargreaves gave a nervous smile, his round lips lifting and pulling facial fat across his cheeks. ‘Sorry I didn’t make the lecture, I came in a bit late today.’

Gabriel felt his usual annoyance rise. Hargreaves had allowed a sharp mind to wallow in a morass of social mediocrity and physical excess. When they’d first met, the man had been half the size, a portly but focused young scientist working on gene-sequencing in spirulina mutations. The work had been groundbreaking, and Gabriel had entered into energetic conversations with him around his research. Their friendship was cemented around nucleotide disparity rather than anything more personal. It had remained that way ever since.

‘As bad as that. Good grief, Brian, there’s a parasitic dearth of intelligence out there, bloated from rational inactivity.’ Gabriel found his references inevitably drifting towards metaphors of obesity in his friend’s company, the uncomfortable issue of his weight unspoken save for these parried blows. He moved on to safer territory. ‘What news from your source at Zhejiang? What the hell are the Chinese up to?’

Hargreaves sucked at his lower lip like a lozenge, letting the flesh pop back from the bar of his teeth. ‘Apparently they’ve hit a glitch. Something to do with the SXRF microprobe. Some kind of setback, that’s all I’m told.’

‘And you believe your mysterious mole?’ Gabriel felt warm with excitement.

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’ Hargreaves had a rather pained expression, suggestive of a digestive impasse more than anything else. ‘It’s got the smell of Copenhagen all over again. A diversion. To set us off course.’

Gabriel knew what his colleague was thinking, even before he saw Hargreaves avert his eyes. ‘Brian, you know as well as I do that collaboration with the Chinese on this involves me bending over to give them a pedestal to stand on, waving their flags, and a bum to wipe their shoes on.’

Hargreaves’s lack of ambition would have them sidling up to the competition, only to be left on the back benches of scientific progress. Gabriel closed his eyes in an effort to centre himself. They sat for a while in silence, each contemplating the unspoken recriminations that academics harboured in their hearts.

‘Well, old chap,’ Hargreaves broke the silence, ‘assuming it’s not a Copenhagen switch, the information is that they’re being delayed by the X-ray fluorescence probe. That would mean they could surely only be ready for submission by the end of the year, at the soonest. That leaves the field wide open. You’ll be ready way before then at the rate you’re going. And with that, well, I imagine full professorship is a certainty.’

‘Perhaps one should be aiming higher than that …’

‘You mean with Symington retiring?’ Hargreaves’s podgy eyes narrowed. ‘Do you want the position though? God, think of the distractions, the abominable admin.’ He chewed his lip some more, making quiet popping sounds, before bringing his hands together in a parody of anguished sincerity. ‘Gabriel, old fellow, is this research … is it going to be big enough?’

Gabriel resisted the urge to curse out loud. He had to acknowledge that this was a senior associate posing the question. Not like Jane, who only two weeks previously had asked a similar question, looking up from her magazine and seeking to challenge him as if he nurtured some esoteric obsession – a passion for small scooters or a belief in a conspiracy against the Crown. She asked not to gain an answer, but to articulate her own view that his endeavours were misguided, or at least unserious when viewed against the greater travails of the globe. Her questions lacked the innocence of his mother’s bland queries over Sunday lunch: ‘But dear, can one cook with it?’ The response – ‘No, you cannot fucking cook with it’ – had caused a family rumpus that required an afternoon of filial placating as recompense. Jane was too bright to query from naivety and her questions were loaded. But she was wrong; this was how one advanced in his world. And Hargreaves’s reference to the departing Symington confirmed it. The question deserved a measured reply: was it big enough?

‘Brian, I’m telling you, it’s not
Arabidopsis thaliana
. It’s not some mutant that’s adapting to desertification. This is the real thing. An evolutionary prototype that explains how a germinating embryo can withstand the toxicity stress of a concentrated iron medium. It’s our best chance to understand the role of ferritins in buffering iron hyperaccumulation in the first hours of life. It may be the most significant step in decades in the research of plant homeostasis and the origins of life itself. The wonder of it is that it’s been quietly reproducing in some godforsaken corner of the world, waiting for discovery. The bioengineering angle is just a bonus to keep the bunny-huggers at bay; it’s about a new subspecies.’

‘So not so much
Arabidopsis thaliana
as
Arabidopsis cockburn
, then?’ Hargreaves smiled widely at his jest, but the fleshy folds around his mouth fell as he observed the determined look on his colleague’s face. He stifled a smirk in the back of his hand instead. ‘You’re not serious, are you?’

‘Well, why the hell not?’ Gabriel’s cheeks glowed. ‘I identified it. I ascertained its importance. So why not take the credit?’

Hargreaves chuckled. ‘God, the Chinese will be livid.’

‘Well, precisely, some Oriental displeasure will temper my own vengeful spirit. They have no vision, Brian, no sense of the bigger picture. Beavering away with X-ray fluorescence, never bothering to look up and consider a holistic view. It’s like my research assistants, diligently trimming gene sequences, but quite unable to gather the adaptation itself. That’s why I deserve this, Brian, and they don’t. Stuff them!’

Hargreaves clapped his hands together like a delighted child. Gabriel believed it all: it was his project; he was its master. He was driven by something purer than personal ambition. This was about truth and unencumbered discovery. Jane would never understand that.

‘On the subject of Symington,’ Hargreaves said, leaning back again with a loud sigh, ‘I take it you’ve forgotten the college dinner tomorrow night?’

Gabriel felt momentarily unbalanced, confused by the change of gear from his lofty idealism to the mendacity of an institutional meal with the senior staff. He hadn’t forgotten, but had planned to avoid it, perhaps blaming Mrs Thebes for failing to remind him. But now Hargreaves had raised it, he knew there could be no reprieve. Hargreaves pulled a face as if in apology for obliterating the strategy. Gabriel muttered an expletive under his breath. Administration, lecturing undergrads, funding, the whole gamut of departmental obligations reared up: it felt like a wall seeking to obstruct his path, forcing him into detours and time wastage. It all sapped at his resolve. How he loathed it.

‘Old chap,’ Hargreaves said as Gabriel extricated himself from the chair, ‘you appear to have something underneath your nose …’

Chapter 4

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, CANARY WHARF, LONDON

The Thames looked oily and saturnine, the low-hanging clouds adding to its gloom. The surface had a grey-green slick covering it, as if stagnant, though beneath it no doubt still flowed ponderously towards the Channel. The wind had raised the swells, scalloping their edges with white foam, leaving scummy trails as the waves pushed upstream. A few crafts battled their way along, spray thrown across their battered cabins, nothing but a huddle of shadows inside. But most were secured to their bollards, left to the elements as their skippers escaped the waterway for familiar bar stools and warm hearths. Occasionally, a seagull, lost on the squalls, plunged and banked as it tried to make headway. Otherwise the river had been abandoned.

The hotel dining room by contrast was crisply white and warmed to a desirable ambience by unseen heaters. The windows gave guests an unrestricted view of the turbulent river without allowing any of its intemperate discomforts to impose. But the vast room was almost empty now; it was already midmorning and most patrons had completed their breakfast. The more slothful were probably still in their postcoital double beds, picking at scrambled eggs delivered by room service while they lazily watched the tumult outside.

Khalid Hussein sat relaxed at his table, wearing a loose jacket and open-necked shirt. There was something playboyish about his informality, as if he’d just slipped into whatever had been thrown over the back of his chair, and it happened to be finely tailored and extremely expensive. A gold Rolex peeked out from the edge of the coat sleeve, the other wrist also adorned with a gold interlocked chain. His moustache was clipped and the remainder of his face freshly shaved. He had dark eyes, a brown that on occasion bordered on black, making the distinction between the iris and pupil difficult to discern. It was unnerving, the way his eyes darkened the moment he turned or looked down, the light no longer direct enough to pick out the colour. Sometimes it seemed that his eyes changed even without movement, just from the tenor of his voice or in reflection of his mood.

The Saudi was sipping fresh orange juice from a champagne glass, a warm plate of eggs benedict, heaped in mounds like dual Welsh mountain peaks, awaiting his attention. The juice left some cells on the bottom edge of his moustache and he dabbed his mouth as he watched his fellow diner pick at a cold piece of toast on the other side of the table.

‘You English call it the most important meal of the day and then you sit and nibble like a mouse. You should drink less beer in the evening and eat good food earlier in the day. It’ll do wonders for you, I assure you.’ Hussein patted his stomach, which, though not obviously protruding, was not quite the torso of a man in the prime of health.

Bartholomew winced as another cramp seared across his own abdomen and dived down into his left groin, if not his testicle. His ailments seemed to be worsening, but he still hadn’t made an appointment to see the gastroenterologist. Lilly would be furious if she knew; he’d assured her that he had been given the all-clear by Maurice. But meeting with Hussein in public made him nervous and his symptoms were aggravated by his anxiety. He preferred as little contact with the Saudi as possible, but was increasingly being drawn into the brokering of the deal. In truth, his position was untenable: his rash decision to invest in an apartment in Corfu on promises of a rental income had placed heavy financial pressure on him as the Greek economy remained in free fall. Now he found himself in the clutches of a man who was not subject to the rank of the military, or the rules of civilian society. Instead, he operated in the shadows of diplomatic and international relations.

Bartholomew wondered quite how he had reached this point. He could neither flee nor realistically take the negotiation to its conclusion. He was trapped in a no-man’s land, like an adulterer who can neither terminate his unhappy affair nor leave his increasingly suspicious spouse. He was drifting towards disaster, target-fixated and without the control to avoid it. At times he felt angry towards Lilly, as if her disinterest in his career had destined him to travel down this cul-de-sac. But her indolence was as much a product of his own domineering manner as it was of her inherent personality. There was always a danger of blaming every personal disappointment and failed expectation on one’s spouse. He knew that. But he had the desperate sense of time running out, of his life slowing down, and that soon he would be redundant, the discarded warhorse on its way to the glue factory.

Hussein’s deal was meant to be his panacea, his opportunity to claw back something for himself. Yet all he wished was for the man to disappear, for the meeting to be over, for his extrication. The Saudi, however, seemed to revel in his discomfort, insisting on meeting in the open, determined to make small talk and draw out the breakfast. Neither one of them had said a word of business, despite being together for close on half an hour. The conversation had meandered from the weather (dire) to the state of the British economy (equally dire) to some petty dissatisfaction that Hussein had experienced when checking into his luxury room upon his arrival several days before.

The man attacked his eggs with relish, bringing a large forkful of muffin up to his mouth, dripping yoke and Hollandaise sauce. Despite his sartorial appearance, Hussein was a messy eater and soon his chin was smeared with food. Bartholomew buttered his piece of toast from corner to corner, without actually taking a bite, and waited for the gluttonous frenzy across from him to subside.

Only once the last remnants of egg had been cleaned from the plate, and his chin wiped using no fewer than three napkins, did Hussein raise the first of the issues at hand.

‘I’m assuming that the last outing for the Reaper Project was successful,’ he said, sitting back in his chair. ‘I haven’t had word from my client, but silence is sometimes the message we like best.’ He gave the air marshal a dark wink. Before Bartholomew could answer, mulling over the safest response, Hussein turned his attention to a passing waiter. ‘Coffee, George?’ When Bartholomew shook his head, the Saudi took some time ordering coffee for himself, with elaborate instructions concerning temperature, cup size and accoutrements on the side. By the time he had finished, it seemed that the topic had moved on.