The Gulf Conspiracy (13 page)

Steven brought out his phone to call the police, all too aware that he would be starting off a train of events which would lead to hurt, sorrow, bemusement and even anger among Hendry’s nearest and dearest. This was always the way with suicide deaths. The ‘if only’ complex kicked in. If only he had said something . . . If only he had talked to me about it . . . If only he had asked for help . . .

Steven was assuming that Hendry
had
nearest and dearest but there was no reason not to. He had been a first rate journalist and who had earned the respect of his colleagues over many years. He would bet on a wide circle. His fingers hovered over the phone buttons but he hesitated when he thought about why he’d come here in the first place. Hendry’s death was a tragedy but it had to be kept it in perspective. A dead man could tell him nothing so he was left with a problem. He would have to find another way of discovering what George Sebring had been so anxious to confess. If, as Gus Maclean had suggested, Sebring had decided to “come clean” about some awful secret concerning Porton Down, he had to know about it.

Hendry had come to Scotland to work on the story so there was a good chance that it must be somewhere in the cabin - either in hard copy or . . . His gaze fell on a Sony Vaio laptop sitting on the table in the room that doubled as living room and kitchen. It looked like the best bet. He turned it on and waited for Windows to open with its familiar jingle before accessing the documents list. It was empty. Not so much as a letter. He clicked on Windows Explorer and scanned the contents of the hard disk for data files. There were none.

Steven cursed under his breath. The hard disk had been wiped clean of everything but the operating system. Why should a man about to take his own life go to the trouble of erasing all the data files on his computer? The lack of any logical explanation made him uneasy but on the other hand, he had to admit that he had no idea why Hendry had taken his own life either.

There was an external Zip drive attached to the laptop by cable. He pushed the eject button on the front but no disk appeared. Steven was puzzled. Such a back-up drive would be useless without one but he couldn’t see it lying around anywhere. Feeling that this was important, he searched the cabin thoroughly - right down to emptying out the rubbish bin – but there was still no sign of the disk. Steven went back to the laptop and checked the floppy drive. There was no disk in that either. ‘Well, well,’ he murmured. ‘Do I detect that old familiar smell of . . . rat?’

While it was conceivable that Hendry could have wiped all the data off his computer and could also have erased any back-up material on a Zip disk, had it been there for him to check,
it wasn’t
. Someone else had been in the cabin. They had removed the disk from the drive and taken it away. The same someone who had wiped the hard drive, perhaps? The same someone who had . . . Steven felt a strong sense of foreboding as he returned to the bedroom to take another look at Hendry’s body. He felt he had to review the suicide scenario in the light of what he’d just learned.

He found no suspicious marks on Hendry’s head or neck and found himself murmuring apologies to the corpse as he unbuttoned the dead man’s shirt to examine his torso. Again, he drew a blank. He was beginning to think – maybe hope - that he’d let his imagination run away with him, when he rolled back the cuffs of Hendry’s denim shirt and saw the very slight marks on both wrists. They were faint and very narrow – as if thin wire had been used - but consistent with the man having been tied up. The rain continued to beat relentlessly down on the roof as Steven called in the police.

Steven closed down Martin Hendry’s laptop while he waited for the police to arrive. He disconnected the various cables before packing everything away in its leather carry case and taking it out to his car. His thinking was that if the person who had wiped the data had simply deleted the files it might still be possible to recover them although he suspected that they would have known this too and over-written them. Still, as someone - he couldn’t quite remember who - used to say about every idea that was mooted, it was worth a try. With the computer safely concealed in the boot of the Ford he called Sci-Med and spoke to the duty-officer.

‘
I want to call a code-red on the Sebring investigation,’ he said.

‘
I’ll set things in motion,’ replied the man. ‘Would you like me to inform Mr Macmillan?’

Steven said that he would. Calling a code-red was the way Sci-Med investigators signalled that a situation they had been asked to appraise should now be regarded as an official Sci-Med investigation. It was not something they were encouraged to do lightly and certainly not without being sure that there was some particular aspect of the case that Sci-Med should concern itself with. Once this was agreed, the authorities in all relevant areas would be made aware of the situation and be required to comply with any request for information or assistance that might come their way. In addition to smoothing the way locally, Sci-Med would also provide a full range of back-up services ranging from financial - through the issue of two credit cards - to the supply of a weapon should this be deemed necessary.

As Steven expected he might, John Macmillan phoned him back within the hour, asking for details. Steven explained where he was and of the circumstances that had prompted him to call a code red, in particular the link between the dead journalist and George Sebring.

‘
Have you any idea what Sebring told him? asked Macmillan.

‘
Only that it concerned the Gulf War.’

‘
That in itself does not make it Sci-Med’s concern,’ Macmillan reminded him.

‘
I’m pretty sure Sebring’s work at Porton Down comes into it,’ said Steven. He told Macmillan what the Leicester police had discovered about Sebring’s Scottish visitor and of the conversation he’d subsequently had with Maclean in Glasgow.

‘
I think Sebring was suffering pangs of conscience about something he’d been involved in at Porton. It’s my bet that he confessed all to Martin Hendry and now they’re both dead.’

‘
I see,’ said Macmillan. He said it as if he was already thinking one step ahead. ‘How . . . unfortunate.’

‘
I’m sure they’d agree,’ said Steven, mildly irked by Macmillan’s use of establishment understatement, something he had a particular dislike of.

‘
I was actually considering who might have wanted to keep them quiet,’ said Macmillan, leaving Steven wishing that he hadn’t been so hasty. He now saw what Macmillan was getting at. There was only one clear candidate for having a vested interest in the men’s silence and it looked terribly like Her Majesty’s Government.

‘
Have the MOD come up with anything yet?’ he asked.

‘
No,’ said Macmillan. ‘But if you’re intent on calling a code red I’ll speak to the Defence Secretary personally. In fact, in the circumstances, I think I’d better had anyway . . .’

‘
I don’t think you should say anything about Hendry’s death being murder. The police haven’t called it that yet.’ said Steven.

‘
Very well. Anything else?’

‘
You could ask the secretary about something called the First Field Laboratory Unit,’ said Steven.

‘
Ask him what?’ said Macmillan.

‘
Does it exist?’ said Steven.

Steven told the police when they finally arrived in the form of an inspector and a sergeant sent up from Perth that Hendry was someone – one of a number of people - he had been seeking to question in connection with an ongoing investigation. He hadn’t known the man personally or anything at all about him, other than the fact that he was a journalist. He’d found him dead on arrival at the cabin and had immediately called the police. He neglected to mention anything about the marks he’d found on Hendry’s wrists. He thought he’d let the police medical examiner do that in his own good time. For the moment, an apparent case of suicide meant that he would get away from the cabin much quicker.

‘
Well, Inspector, if you don’t need me any more . . .’ said Steven, preparing to leave.

‘
Why do they do it?’ mused the inspector, a short, portly man, who exuded the air of a park-bench philosopher. He was standing by the bed, reading the label on the empty pill bottle.

Steven shook his head.

‘
England daein shite in the World Cup wouldn’t have helped,’ said his sour-faced sergeant. Then looking at Steven, he added, ‘Nae offence like.’

Steven considered staying overnight at the hotel in Blair Atholl but suspected that the only topic of conversation in the bar would be Hendry’s death, something that would quickly become public knowledge if Blair Atholl were like any other village. Instead he drove south to Pitlochry and booked into a small hotel where he felt he could be anonymous. After a few gin and tonics he opted for early bed and spent a restless night, plagued by bad dreams of a man being tied to a chair while whisky and pills were forced down him. He was glad when morning came and he could drive down to Glasgow Airport to catch a flight back to London.

When he picked up his e-mail at the flat, Steven learned that Macmillan wanted to see him at two that afternoon ‘should he find it convenient’. He smiled at Macmillan’s turn of phrase – he’d never known the man to be anything other than polite. He phoned Rose Roberts to say he’d be there.

It was such a nice day in London that Steven decided to walk to the Home Office. The pavements were crowded but he was in no hurry and it was good to feel part of summer in the capital for a little while. Scaffolders whistled at pretty girls who self-consciously ignored them while tourists photographed and videoed just about everything in sight. Policemen were in shirt-sleeves and ice cream cones melted in the hands of children.

Steven found John Macmillan looking thoughtful. He waited until Rose had placed a tray with two coffees and a plate of biscuits on his desk before saying, ‘I spoke to the Defence Secretary last night.’

‘
And he told you to pull the investigation,’ said Steven. ‘He said it wasn’t in the national interest?’

Macmillan took a moment before saying, ‘I’d ask you what makes you so cynical about our political masters if I didn’t know already,’ said Macmillan. He was referring to a previous Sci-Med investigation in which Steven had been asked to take a look at problems connected with the planting of a genetically modified maize crop. He had succeeded in opening up a can of worms which had brought him into conflict with a dark side of government that he hadn’t even realised existed and it had nearly cost him his life. He survived but the affair had jaundiced his view of the establishment. His previous conviction that he worked for the ‘good guys’ had been seriously questioned.

‘
No such request was made,’ said Macmillan. ‘Nor would it have been complied with if it had. Sci-Med is and always has been independent – something maintained at no little cost to myself over the years, I must remind you.’

‘
I’m sorry,’ said Steven and meant it. He knew very well how often Macmillan had gone to war within government to keep Sci-Med free of the influence of other bodies. It was also widely believed to be the reason why he was still plain ‘Mr’ instead of ‘Sir John’.

‘
The minister was responding to my earlier request for information,’ said Macmillan. ‘During his time at Porton Down, George Sebring was assigned to a research group who were working on a vaccine against AIDS. Sebring was an expert on the antigenicity of viral proteins, whatever that means.’

‘
Antigens stimulate the production of antibodies in the body,’ said Steven. ‘If you can separate out a few key proteins from a virus you can stimulate the production of antibodies against them which in turn will attack the whole virus.’

‘
Thank you,’ said Macmillan.

Steven thought for a moment before saying, ‘But Sebring had a nervous breakdown.’

‘
What’s your point?’ asked Macmillan, seeing that nothing more was forthcoming.

‘
Working on a vaccine against AIDS is going to get you a round of applause in any company,’ said Steven. ‘Possibly even a Blue Peter badge and a front-row seat in heaven. Why on earth should he have a nervous breakdown while he was engaged on something so noble? Why should he suddenly decide he had to up sticks and work elsewhere?’

‘
Well, who’s to say,’ said Macmillan, looking down at his desk as if forced to agree but unwilling to acknowledge the fact. ‘There may have been other factors going on in his life at the time, things we don’t know about.’

‘
And we can’t ask him now because somebody murdered him to keep his mouth shut,’ said Steven.

‘
I don’t believe the Defence Secretary was lying,’ said Macmillan.

‘
I’m not suggesting that he was,’ said Steven. ‘But he may have been ‘advised’ wrongly. We both know that cabinet ministers are at the mercy of career civil servants when it comes to getting information. There’s a lot they don’t know and a lot perhaps – when it suits them - they don’t even want to know.’

Macmillan appeared to concede the point. ‘So what do you want to do?’

‘
I don’t suppose the minister said who the other members of Sebring’s group at Porton were?’ asked Steven.

‘
Only that it was led by a chap named Dr Donald Crowe,’ replied Macmillan. When he saw a slight smile appear on Steven’s face he added, ‘Did I say something amusing?’