The Gulf Conspiracy (22 page)

‘
Stable but not out of the woods by a long way. They’re prepping a theatre for him. He needs quite a bit of surgery,’ replied the A&E consultant. ‘Are you a friend? A relative?’

‘
Neither,’ replied Steven.

‘
Then what?’

‘
Steven showed the man his ID.

‘
You’re a doctor. So it was you who applied the paperclip?’

Steven nodded.

‘
Well, if he lives, that’ll be the reason. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what this is all about?’

‘
I’m not really sure myself,’ said Steven. ‘I was on my way to interview the man when a gunman decided to end the conversation before it had begun. I think it only fair to warn you that there might be another attempt. I’ve asked for a police guard to be mounted.’

‘
What is he? Some big-time criminal?’

‘
Far from it,’ replied Steven. ‘He’s a gifted scientist who, from what I hear, wouldn’t say boo to a goose.’

‘
Why would anyone want to kill him?’

‘
I’d like to ask him that when he comes round,’ said Steven. ‘I need to stay with him.’

‘
You’re a doctor,’ said the consultant, ‘So I won’t give you the standard spiel about my only interest being the patient’s welfare and then tell you to fuck off out my department like they do on TV but you’ll appreciate just how fragile he is. Go easy.’

‘
Thanks,’ said Steven. He left the emergency room and called Sci-Med on his mobile to inform the duty officer what had happened. He kept an eye on what was going on inside through one of the windows in the swing doors while he spoke.

‘
Do you want me to wake Mr Macmillan?’ asked the duty man.

‘
Yes,’ replied Steven flatly.

Macmillan called back within five minutes. ‘Is he still alive?’

‘
Touch and go,’ replied Steven. ‘I’m going to stay with him but I’d like him moved as soon as it becomes possible.’

‘
You think they may try again?’

‘
Common sense says so.’

‘
They may think he’d dead of course,’ said Macmillan.

‘
Too many people at the flats knew he was still alive when the ambulance took him away.’

‘
Right, I’ll arrange it. We have to speak. I have some news.’

‘
As soon as D’Arcy’s safe,’ said Steven.

It was three in the morning before D’Arcy was brought from the operating theatre to the Intensive Care Unit. Steven spoke to the surgeon while D’Arcy was connected to the monitoring equipment. ‘What d’you think?’

‘
He was in a right mess - I’d take a guess at a soft-nosed bullet judging by the state of the exit wound – but, providing there are no complications, he should get back to something approaching normality unless he happened to be a left-arm spin bowler, in which case he’s just retired.’

‘
He wasn’t,’ Steven assured him with a smile.

‘
A&E sent up the paperclip. He may want it to show his grandchildren one day,’ said the surgeon turning to look up at the clock. ‘The charge nurse has it.’

‘
Any idea when he might come round?’ asked Steven.

‘
He’ll be out for at least three hours,’ said the surgeon. ‘Maybe longer. You look as if you could do with some rest yourself.’

Steven satisfied himself that the two, armed officers outside the entrance to ICU understood that no one was to be allowed in without his say so before settling down in a chair beside D’Arcy’s bed and allowing himself to cat nap. The stifling warmth of the unit and the soft muted lighting from the consoles made it easy.

Steven was lazing on a sunny beach. Jane was tricking a handful of sand on to his back while Jenny played happily among nearby rocks when something touched his arm and the dream vanished in an instant. The speed of his recovery to full wakefulness alarmed the nurse who’d touched him and she took a startled step backwards and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ she said. ‘I just thought you should know Dr D’Arcy is showing signs of coming round.’

Steven was equally apologetic. There had been occasions in the past when such a response to any strange sound or touch when asleep might have saved his life and old habits died hard.

D’Arcy was asking all the usual questions of a nurse who was used to answering them. Her soft gentle voice assured him that he was warm and safe in hospital and there was no cause for him to worry about anything.

‘
Want to know . . .’ murmured D’Arcy.

‘
All in good time,’ soothed the nurse. ‘You must rest.’

‘
You were shot, old son,’ said Steven, attracting a critical look from the nurse. ‘You’ve undergone surgery but you’re going to be all right.’

‘
Shot? But who? . . .’

Steven gave the nurse what he hoped was a reassuring look to signify that he would not overtax D’Arcy and she withdrew with a less than convinced expression on her face.

Steven told D’Arcy who he was and waited for a response.

‘
Sci-Med . . . I know Sci-Med.’

‘
Good. I know that you are going to find this all a bit much to take in, old son, but I have to make you understand what’s been going on.’

D’Arcy grunted his understanding.

‘
A few weeks ago an old colleague of yours, George Sebring was murdered by the same people who tried to kill you last night. They wanted to stop you talking about something that happened many years ago when you were both working at Porton Down.’

‘
That’s . . . crazy . . .’

‘
Something happened,’ said Steven. ‘Something that was kept secret, something that not even the government were told about.’

‘
Dr Crowe . . . told them.’

‘
No, he didn’t,’ said Steven. ‘They were never informed. It was a problem with a vaccine, wasn’t it?’

D’Arcy gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘They wanted HIV gene envelopes . . . George made . . . a mistake.’

Steven felt a sense of excitement well up inside him. He had to concentrate on keeping his voice calm as his throat tightened. ‘What kind of mistake, Michael?’

‘
He gave them an early version of the agent we were working on,’ said D’Arcy.

‘
What agent was that?’

There was a long pause, which strained Steven’s nerves to the limit, before D’Arcy said, ‘Special project; we were to design a new biological agent . . .’

‘
Not a vaccine against AIDS,’ said Steven.

‘
No . . . that was just the team’s cover story . . . The Government wanted an agent that wouldn’t kill . . . but weaken and demoralise . . . infectious but not detectable . . . also had to be curable.’

‘
And that’s what went into the vaccine?’ said Steven, trying to sound matter of fact but feeling shocked.

‘
Yes . . .’ said D’Arcy. ‘But Crowe thought it wouldn’t be . . . a problem.’

‘
Not a problem,’ Steven repeated, unable to stop himself as he thought about the war veterans. He wanted to ask D’Arcy where the hell he thought Gulf War Syndrome had come from, but from what Maclean had said about D’Arcy he suspected that the man would have accepted the official view of things without question.’

‘
Did you continue working on this agent after the accident?’ he asked quietly.

D’Arcy gave a little shake of the head. ‘No, all work on it was stopped. I left Porton after that.’

‘
The agent you were working on, it involved genetic engineering, didn’t it?’

A nod. ‘Yes.’

‘
What did you do exactly?’

‘
Tired . . .’ said D’Arcy. ‘Very tired . . .’

‘
I know, Michael,’ said Steven. ‘Just tell me which genes were involved and then you can sleep.’

‘
M . . .’

The nurse appeared as if by magic at Steven’s shoulder and said, ‘That’s enough. He has to rest and I think you know that.’

Steven accepted the rebuke. The nurse was right. He was a doctor and he knew very well. But by God, he had come so close to getting out of D’Arcy what he needed to know. He couldn’t resist the single expletive that whispered across his lips as he left the room to call Sci-Med to ask about arrangements for D’Arcy’s transfer.

‘
We’ve been restricted by intensive care requirements,’ said the duty man. ‘The safe houses have been ruled out so Mr Macmillan’s arranged for private facilities in St Thomas’s Hospital without anyone being told who he is. When do you want him moved?’

‘
Not my call,’ said Steven. ‘But I should think we’ll be given the okay around lunch time.’

‘
We’ll send an ambulance and an escort?’

‘
I’d like to keep things as low key as possible,’ said Steven. ‘Plain clothes armed escort, unmarked police cars.’

The surgeon who had operated on D’Arcy finished his examination and gave the all clear for the move just after eleven o’clock. He’d been assured by Steven that IC facilities would be available at the new location without his actually telling him where that would be. The man handed over D’Arcy’s case notes. ‘Can’t say I’m that sorry to be seeing the back of you all,’ he said, glancing at the armed policemen by the door.

‘
Can’t say I blame you,’ said Steven. ‘Thanks for all you did for him.’

‘
I still came second to a paperclip,’ smiled the surgeon. ’Good luck.’

D’Arcy was transferred to St Thomas’s Hospital in London without incident. Steven thought he would take the opportunity to go to the Home Office and speak with Macmillan while D’Arcy was settled in to his new environment and was still under sedation. First, he called Jane in Leicester to say that he wouldn’t be coming up after all. He told her what had happened.

‘
Oh my God,’ she said. ‘This is a nightmare. Are you still down in Kent?’

‘
No, we didn’t think it was safe to leave him there. We’ve moved him as Mr Jones to a private room in St Thomas’s Hospital in London.’

‘
Has he come round at all?’ asked Jane.

‘
He was able to tell me quite a lot last night but not quite everything. I’m hoping to talk to him again after I’ve seen Macmillan.

‘
But you managed to get an idea of what they were working on at Porton?’ said Jane.

‘
The AIDS vaccine story was a cover,’ said Steven. ‘They were designing a new biological agent that would disable and demoralise rather than kill.’

‘
Why?’

‘
Social control I suppose,’ said Steven. ‘But that’s only half the story. A prototype version of it found its way into the troop vaccines by mistake. I gather George was to blame.’

‘
God almighty,’ said Jane. ‘No wonder he was so alarmed about plans to use the old vaccines again.’

‘
Quite,’ said Steven. ‘It seems that neither the government of the day nor the present one has any record of this ever happening. If they did they couldn’t possibly have considered using it again.’

‘
But now you can tell them?’ said Jane.

‘
I need D’Arcy to tell me more about the agent and how it was constructed. Part of their brief was to make it undetectable.’

‘
What a world,’ said Jane. ‘No wonder George kept having nightmares. He deserved to!’

‘
Don’t be too hard on him,’ said Steven. ‘People tend to accept anything that has official approval without question. George probably believed that he was just doing his job at the time. If every soldier was to stop and consider the implications of his actions every time an officer yelled, ‘Fire!’ we wouldn’t have an army. Most just pull the trigger and get on with their lives.’

‘
I suppose,’ agreed Jane reluctantly. ‘Call me when you can.’

Macmillan was sitting at his desk, his head slightly to one side, fingers steepled under his chin and looking very worried when Steven entered. ‘How’s D’Arcy?’ he asked.

‘
The medics think he’ll pull through. He suffered no ill effects from the transfer, which was my big worry. He should surface from the sedation in a couple of hours and I’ll be able to talk to him again.’

‘
What a mess,’ sighed Macmillan. ‘What a bloody mess.’

‘
You said you had some news?’ said Steven.

Macmillan looked at him thoughtfully and Steven saw in his eyes that he was in need of sleep.

‘
After our last conversation I asked a friend in high places about special project teams at Porton,’ said Macmillan.

‘
And now you wish you hadn’t?’

‘
Something like that,’ said Macmillan. ‘You were right. It goes back a long way – to the days of the Second World War, in fact – when a group of scientists was asked to investigate the possibility of infecting cattle feed with anthrax. The idea was to drop it on German fields. They were called the Beta team and a special budget that by-passed the normal reporting and accounting procedures was assigned to it. In the end the stuff wasn’t used but the infrastructure supporting the team was never completely dismantled . . .’

Steven could see that there was more to come. ‘Go on,’ he said quietly.

‘
My informant tells me that at some point in the eighties the Beta team appears to have been re-activated. Accounts were rendered for its support using the old procedures and paid without question.’