The Lucifer Network (36 page)

Talbot saw Arthur Harris standing by the door to the trials shack. ‘You win, Chief Harris,' he grinned. ‘We're going back for your Russians.'

Arthur Harris allowed himself a smile.

Vienna

12.25 hrs

As Julie Jackman walked from the Marriott Hotel to the café where she'd agreed to meet Sam, she was in a state of perplexity. Stuffed into her shoulder bag was a copy of that morning's
Daily
Chronicle,
bought at the stall in the hotel lobby.

The midday sun beat down strongly, but she hardly noticed it. After a night of bad dreams, she'd woken this morning in a cold sweat at the thought of what she'd agreed to do. Deciding that delaying the dreaded phone call would only make it harder, she'd rung Max at the clinic soon after nine to tell him she wasn't sure she wanted to end their relationship after all. Sounding remarkably unsurprised by her change of heart, he'd suggested they meet for a drink in the late evening ‘to talk things through'.

Julie had agreed to set up the meeting with Max partly because she owed it to Sam after making such a mess of his life, but more importantly because in the restless small hours she'd come to the conclusion she was definitely falling in love with him. But now as she approached the café everything was up in the air again. This latest
article in the
Chronicle
painted him as a thoroughly suspect character, a man just as untrustworthy as all the others she'd fallen for over the years.

When Sam saw Julie walk into the café, her appearance touched him. Her face was ashen with worry. Her glasses had slipped a little, giving her the forlorn look of a fresher student still trying to work out where the library was. She was dressed in a pale grey T-shirt and her dark trousers were baggy with cargo pockets. He felt an urge to hug her, until he reminded himself of the havoc she'd caused him.

As she approached the table, he stood up. It was an old habit from his Navy days.

‘Hello,' he smiled.

She nodded a greeting but avoided his eyes.

‘Is it fixed with Max?' he asked softly.

‘Tonight at ten,' she whispered, putting her shoulder bag down on the floor. ‘Sort of.'

She cast a glance around the café, looking anywhere but at Sam. The place was large and open and only half full. There were hat stands in the corners, big windows onto the street and black-jacketed waiters ignoring the customers.

The ‘sort of' had worried him. Sam saw the newspaper poking from Julie's bag and guessed why she was reluctant to meet his gaze. He cleared his throat.

‘I gather your media friends have been having fun again.' He spoke aggressively, deciding to confront the problem head-on.

Julie rounded on him. ‘They're not my friends!' She didn't like the way he was staring at her. Not the bruised look of someone cruelly misrepresented in the media, but the calculating glare of a manipulator. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, as if to sharpen
the focus of this different view she was having of him. She straightened her back. His catty gibe about her relationship with the press had decided things for her.

‘I've changed my mind,' she announced, returning his glare. ‘I won't be seeing Max this evening after all.'

Sam gritted his teeth. He should have expected something like this. The woman was as dependable as a chocolate teapot. He waved an arm at the waiter and ordered two beers without bothering to enquire what Julie wanted to drink.

‘May I ask why you've decided that?' he demanded, when the waiter was gone.

‘I have to return to London this afternoon,' she insisted stonily, her resolve strengthened by his chauvinism over the drinks order. ‘I spoke to the lab an hour ago and they need me urgently.' She lifted her chin, daring him to challenge her veracity.

‘Your ticket's for tomorrow,' Sam countered, determined to make her change her mind again. ‘It's an unchangeable reservation.'

‘They're paying for a new one,' she retorted. It was a lie. All the lab had said when she'd spoken to them that morning was that they would welcome her back as soon as she could make it.

‘And why do they need your presence so urgently?' he prodded. ‘I thought you'd been suspended.'

Her face reddened. ‘Because of the Brussels virus. They're working flat out to identify it and develop a vaccine.'

‘Brussels virus?' Sam asked, slow to make the connection.

‘You must have read about it. It's been in the papers. Two EU officials ill with a brain disease nobody's ever seen before.'

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Yes, I've read about it. But the story I saw only mentioned one official.'

‘There's been another taken ill this morning. A woman – the European Commissioner for Racial Equality, or something . . .'

Sam felt a buzz of alarm. Something very nasty was developing, making it more important than ever to discover whether there was a Jackman connection.

‘If the problem's in Brussels why's your lab involved?'

‘Because Professor Norton is big in genetic engineering. The theory they're working on is that someone's combined rabies with another virus so that it gets into the brain faster.'

Combining viruses . . . Wasn't that the same as viral mutation, the subject Dr Max Schenk gave a paper on a year ago? Sam rubbed his forehead. ‘Explain that bit, would you?'

‘Human skin is an effective barrier to most viruses,' she explained. ‘But when there's a break in it – a cut, or whatever – then rabies can enter. It gets into a nerve fibre and makes its way up to the brain, moving very slowly. It can take weeks before it gets there and destroys cells. But combining rabies with another infection which reaches the brain through the blood instead of a nerve means it could be got to work within a couple of days, before any vaccine has a chance to fight it. That's the theory, anyway.'

‘Devilish,' Sam murmured. ‘What sort of skills would a person need to do that?'

‘I don't know. Somebody who specialised in genetic engineering, I imagine. Viral mutation, all that sort of stuff.'

‘Someone like Max Schenk.'

Julie's jaw dropped. ‘That's ridiculous,' she gasped.

‘Is it? We don't know what your father shipped out
of Russia, Julie. Nuclear, biological . . . All we know is that the whole shipment was shrouded in secrecy, with a cover story floated saying it was red mercury.'

‘But Max never met my father. I'm sure of it.'

‘Ask him, Julie. This evening. It's important.'

Julie felt her resolve crumbling, but she was still furious with him. The nub of the issue was that he hadn't been straight with her. Not at all. Not when they'd first met. Not when he'd come to get the letter in Woodbridge. Not last night. All this time he'd pretended to be someone else and she wasn't going to stand for it.

‘Look. I know it's my fault all this stuff about you has come out in the press, but what the hell am I supposed to believe?' she blazed, pulling the
Chronicle
from her bag and slapping it on the table. ‘I mean, it turns out you're not called Simon Foster at all but Sam Packer. And it says here your father spied for the Russians, for heaven's sake! And your sister seems to hate you so much she's prepared to tell the whole world what a two-faced rat you are.'

Sam didn't answer. He sensed that she didn't want to believe what had been written about him, but convincing her wouldn't be easy.

‘I mean, I just don't know what to make of you,' Julie went on, her fears about him pouring out. ‘I . . . in my own life I work with
normal
people who don't have to lie about what they do. But
you
. . . I mean, first you lied to me about being a businessman – okay I never really believed you on that one. But now I find that your name was a lie too and that you come from a long line of liars and cheats.'

‘Hold on a minute,' Sam protested. ‘If you think bad blood is passed from generation to generation like red hair, then you'd better worry about your own salvation.'

‘Okay, okay,' she conceded, ‘we all know about my father. What I don't know about is
you,
Simon –
Sam.
You're asking me to spy on Max. But who's it for? What
are
you, for God's sake? You've got to be straight with me.'

Sam knew he'd have to bend the rules. Knew he would have to open the door into his life. Just a crack.

‘Okay. My real name
is
Sam Packer, and I do work for the government. And that stuff you've read this morning about my father having been recruited by the Russians has some truth in it. But you've got to understand there are many, many things I simply can't talk about.'

‘Why not? Everybody else is,' she goaded.

‘There are laws . . . Official Secrets Acts.'

Julie bit her lip. She
wanted
to believe in him. Still wanted
him,
but she had to be able to trust.

‘There is something I need to know, Sim––' She shook her head at her confusion. A wisp of hair settled on her lips and she brushed it away.

The waiter came with the beers and surlily suggested they order food while he was there. They chose omelettes and salad.

Julie waited until he was out of earshot then repeated her demand. ‘There's something I must know if I'm going to help you.'

‘What?'

‘The full truth about why you were in Africa with my father.'

Sam felt her eyes bore into him. He remembered Waddell's warning not to give interviews.

‘
You
need to know? Or is it your friends in the press?'

Julie closed her eyes momentarily, wondering what she had to do to convince him she wasn't in league with the media any more. She took in a deep breath.

‘Is it true or not that you paid my father to supply guns to the Bodanga rebels?'

Sam ground his teeth.

‘I really can't get into that . . .'

‘Look. If you're not prepared to be straight with me, then I
am
going to stand Max up tonight.'

Her mouth set in a thin line. Sam felt a silly urge to kiss it into a more friendly shape. He leaned forward, his brow furrowing as he prepared to concede more ground.

‘The things your father wrote to you about MI6 and Bodanga,' he said in little more than a whisper, ‘that's only half the story.' He glanced round to check no one could overhear and to underline the confidential nature of what he was about to tell her. He described the background to the Bodanga coup attempt, carefully pointing out that if it had succeeded people would have been singing the government's praises instead of damning it. Then he told her how her father had been using his inside knowledge of the coup to blackmail Whitehall into giving him immunity from prosecution for a whole host of unnamed crimes.

Julie listened intently. When Sam had finished, she rubbed her forehead. It all fitted. What he'd said had an awful ring of truth about it. She guessed that whatever deceptions Sam/Simon may have indulged in during his life, it was small beer compared to what her father had got up to.

‘Thank you for telling me all that,' she whispered. ‘It won't go any further. I promise.'

Sam trusted her as much as he trusted a wet paper bag, but if it made her deliver Max Schenk to him this evening then the risk of telling her these things would have been worth it.

Their food arrived. The omelettes were undercooked but the surliness of the waiter deterred them from sending them back.

‘I'm sorry,' Sam murmured, indicating her untouched
beer glass. ‘I didn't have the courtesy to ask what you wanted to drink. Was that all right for you?'

‘It's fine,' she replied taking a sip.

He left it for a few moments before asking her what her arrangement was with Max.

‘Ten o'clock tonight. He's got a dinner to go to first, but he'll pick me up from the Marriott. I've asked to go somewhere quiet for a chat.'

‘How did he sound?'

Julie lifted one eyebrow. ‘I got the impression he thought it perfectly natural that I'd come crawling back to him.' She shivered.

‘You'll be okay,' Sam reassured her. ‘We're going to protect you tonight.'

‘How?'

‘I want you to wear a wire.'

‘A
wire
? What's that?'

‘A small microphone the size of a pinhead attached by cable to a little box hidden in your clothes. It'll relay your conversation with Max. We'll be in a car nearby.'

Sam saw that he'd terrified her. Her composure crumbled before his eyes.

‘It'll be okay, I promise.'

‘I can't do this. Any of it,' she whispered. ‘I'm no good at pretending things.'

He grunted in astonishment. ‘You did all right in that café in Chiswick.' He wasn't going to let her off the hook. He noticed that she had the grace to blush.

‘But what on
earth
am I going to say to him?' she whined. ‘He thinks I want him back.'

‘Up the stakes to a level he won't go for,' Sam suggested. ‘Tell him you want to go on seeing him but only if he divorces his wife.'

She looked aghast. ‘Suppose he agrees? No way.'

‘It's just for one evening, Julie.'

‘What else am I going to talk about? I can't just plunge straight in and say, “Were you involved with my father in something smuggled out of Russia which he called red mercury.”'

‘He's talked to you about his work in the past?'

‘Yes. From time to time.'

‘Well, get him to do it again and then pop the question about what sort of business he was doing with your father.'

‘
Pop
the
question.
Anyway it's only your paranoid suspicion that he was connected with my dad.' She was desperate to devalue the plan. ‘I'm far from convinced.'