The Lucifer Network (41 page)

St Stephen's Hospital, Stepney, London

07.40 hrs

Considering that the ward had six empty beds in it, the night shift had been unusually busy for Sandra Willetts. It hadn't helped that she'd been bog-eyed from lack of sleep when she'd arrived for work twelve hours earlier, nor that two of the patients had developed chest pains which wouldn't respond to their angina medication. Now, just before handing over to the day shift, she'd finally managed to complete the toilet round.

The one good thing about being so busy was that it had left her little time to think. But as she sat in the ward office updating the patient notes and preparing for the handover to the day team, her worries about Rob began to bite again.

Twenty minutes later with the new shift settled in, Sandra pulled on her raincoat and set off for home. She'd heard the rain beating against the windows in the ward and was glad of the telescopic umbrella she kept in her bag. It was a seven-minute walk to the flat, against a trickle of bleary eyes coming the other way, people living on the estates heading for work. The people who
had jobs, that is. It unnerved her that Rob had stayed unemployed for the last eighteen months. He could have found something if he'd tried, but it wasn't
any
job he wanted. It had to be back in the City, a high-rolling post that would let him look his old mates in the eye.

She and Rob were both East End kids. They'd known each other since school but only started going out three years ago, following a blind date. A good piece of matchmaking which, three months later, had seen her moving into his classy Docklands flat with its picture window views down the river.

She reached the foot of the grim tower that had replaced it as their home and had to wait a couple of minutes for the lift. When it came, a black girl emerged with three children under five. Sandra smiled wanly at her. Seeing the joyless struggle of most of the mothers in this block was putting her off having kids.

The door to the flat was double-locked, which meant Rob was out. She heaved a sigh of relief. She'd been dreading having to look him in the eye.

‘Blimey!' she breathed when she got inside. The bed had been made. The place was tidy. His breakfast things had been washed up.Then she saw the note.

Her heart flipped as she picked it up from the small table in the kitchen, her instant thought being that he'd left her.

Out
for
the
morning.
Back
2ish.

Howsabout we go out for a pizza before your shift?

See ya. R.

She felt unbelievably relieved. He was making an effort. He wanted to communicate for once. Recently it had been down to her to engineer the occasional meaningful conversation.

A chance to talk.

Then a dreadful thought occurred to her. That his sudden wish to speak was because he'd found out she'd read his e-mail. Found out and wanted to sort her out for it.

HMS
Truculent

Commander Anthony Talbot read the new signal from London in the privacy of his cabin. They'd been given just under twelve hours in which to prepare and it would be no mean feat to achieve the deadline. The last time the submarine had trained for such a mission was six months ago and there was much brushing up to do. He looked at his watch. Twenty minutes to his Heads of Departments meeting in the wardroom when the responsibilities for the mission would be defined. But before that he needed to talk to the men. There was bitter resentment at the loss of shore leave and he needed to fire up the crew for the task ahead.

He walked the half-dozen paces to the control room where the First Lieutenant was in command, standing by the chart table. Hayes looked up expectantly.

‘We're go for tonight,' Talbot told him. ‘What's happening up top?'

They'd moved well to the west of Palagra island to use their communications mast. Now they were heading east again to continue their reconnaissance. But daylight was making it difficult for them.

‘Looks like there's a sailing flotilla up ahead, sir. About a dozen yachts. I've altered course to the north to try to
keep clear of them, but there are small boats all over the shop.'

‘It's vital we're not detected,' Talbot reminded him unnecessarily. ‘One of those craft could have our Russians on board.'

They'd detected no further activity on the island since spotting the powerboat leaving it last night. The radio channels the Russians had been using had remained silent.

‘I'm going to do a pipe,' Talbot announced, stepping over to the command seat and unhooking the microphone that hung on a rack behind it.

‘D'you hear there,' he began. ‘This is the captain speaking. I have just received our new orders from the Ministry of Defence.'

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Arthur Harris emerge from the trials shack.

‘As you know, the CTs recorded some VHF comms from the island of Palagra and one of the voices belonged to a Russian biological warfare specialist. Defence Intelligence in London thinks he may have set up a germ warfare factory on the island. With trouble brewing in Kosovo and with a heavy contingent of NATO forces in Bosnia, the commanders-in-chief are very concerned. If BW stocks are being produced on Palagra, then they're a potential threat to our servicemen and women.

‘In just under twelve hours' time a special forces team will parachute into the sea about thirty miles west of the island. We will bring them back to the waters off Palagra and insert them some time in the early hours of tomorrow morning.

‘That's a tight schedule. But understandably tight considering the nature of the threat being investigated. I realise we're all pretty rusty when it comes to this sort
of op, so once the heads of department have been briefed, all the relevant sections of the crew will close up for training.

‘The next twenty-four hours will be some of the most testing and challenging any of us have ever faced, gentlemen. But it's the sort of job we all joined the Navy for. I know you will all acquit yourselves brilliantly. And remember, if our efforts help prevent some Balkan madman murdering our troops, then we can be justly proud of the personal sacrifices we've all made to achieve it.

‘That is all.'

The First Lieutenant nodded his approval. ‘Well put, sir.'

Suddenly there was a shout from the watch officer at the search periscope.

‘Surface contact bearing
that.
Looks like a small ferry.'

The bearing he indicated was to the west. Coming up behind them out of the haze.

Talbot took his decision. They had enough data on the island to furnish the marines with landing information. Continuing the observation in daylight in a tourist area was a mug's game. He touched the First Lieutenant on the arm.

‘Take us to thirty metres and keep us out of trouble until sunset. We'll have time for a last recce in darkness before heading west for our RV with the special forces.'

Hayes nodded. ‘Yes, sir.'

Arthur Harris watched the goings-on in the control room with an intense feeling of satisfaction. So much of his working life was spent sucking up trivia for others to analyse. This time he'd made things happen all by himself. But he felt anxious, and humbled too. As a
result of what he'd done, other men would soon be risking their lives.

Vienna, the British Embassy

Patrick de Vere Collins's cratered face was anxious and solemn when he collected Sam from the embassy reception desk. He led him in silence up to the SIS suite which was separated from the rest of the diplomatic quarters by a door controlled by a swipe card.

‘Malcolm tells me it all blew up on you last night,' he said, offering Sam a chair in his chronically untidy office. ‘Hope to God the fallout's not going to blow my way.'

‘You're safe enough,' Sam replied, ‘thanks to Julie telling Schenk she was intending to blackmail him. Did Malcolm catch up with him?'

‘Eventually. Your target fled Vienna and took off at a rate of knots to his family seat near Klagenfurt. That's at least four hours away. Malcolm's sleeping it off somewhere. Now . . . what
exactly
do you have on the man?'

Sam placed a plastic bag on Collins's desk. ‘Here's the kit.' He put his hand in and extracted the recorder. ‘This is the piece that matters.' He ran through in detail what it had picked up.

‘Fascinating,' Collins muttered when he'd finished. ‘I'll get a transcript done for my Austrian friends.' He frowned. ‘What state's the poor girlie in today?'

‘Recovering,' Sam told him. ‘On her way back to London.'

‘Safest place for her.' He rubbed his lumpy forehead.
‘You think Schenk believed her story about the bugging device being for blackmail purposes?'

‘Initially yes, but the sight of me turning up may have changed his mind for him. Which could be why he got out of Vienna in such a hurry.'

‘Hmm. He didn't say
what
it was he bought from Jackman, I suppose?'

‘Unfortunately not. Julie's questioning of him rather fell apart at that point.'

‘Understandably.'

‘But Max Schenk is a specialist in the mutation of viruses, Pat. The Russians were up to their necks in that type of research. It is utterly possible that Jackman's cargo contained viral material of some sort and that Schenk was the customer.'

‘Oh we certainly can't ignore that possibility,' Collins replied cautiously, ‘but it's still a hell of a hop, skip and jump to tie it in with the bug that hit those two EU officials in Brussels. And I'd have preferred something firmer to go on before trying to persuade my Austrian colleagues to pull the man in for questioning.'

Sam snorted with frustration. ‘Well if they won't quiz him then
I
bloody will.'

‘No you bloody won't,' Collins retorted. ‘This is a sovereign country. We can't go around interrogating Austrian citizens. Have to use the proper channels, squire.' He tried in vain to flatten his haystack hair. ‘But don't worry. They should bite. There's enough circumstantial stuff in Schenk's past to make them curious.'

‘Meaning?'

‘That the Security Police have been looking a bit further into his family background. They've found a strong tradition of Fascism there. Max's father Heinrich was an active anti-Semite. Served in the SS. When the
Jews were driven out in 1938 he took possession of a couple of their houses – Julie told you this, you said.'

‘Yes. Max volunteered it.'

‘Well, what he didn't tell her was that the houses were stocked with significant works of art. The original owners perished in the gas chambers, so old Heinrich thought he was sitting pretty. But twenty years after the war, some Jewish relatives turned up to demand their property back. Old man Schenk managed to produce documents showing that the houses and their contents had been legally acquired and a court dismissed the relatives' claim. But the whole affair left a bit of a smell – and, once the paintings were sold, enough capital in the family coffers for Max and his brother Hans to set up one of the swishest clinics in the city.'

‘Interesting.' Sam locked his hands together and flexed the joints. ‘What do they know about Max's own politics? Any evidence that
he's
been involved in racism?'

‘He's a member of the conservative Volkspartei, which doesn't mean much. Political organisations in Austria are like masonic lodges in Britain. People join for the sake of their businesses. And no – he's never done anything that's overtly racist.'

‘What's known about his immediate family? His wife's called Cara.'

‘And he has two children. She's from Croatia. Zagreb, they think. The link between her family and the Schenks is an old one, dating back to the Habsburgs when Croatia and the rest of Yugoslavia belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire.' Collins flattened his hands on the desk. ‘Look, let me have a word with my friends at the Interior Ministry. In the meantime use the link to Vauxhall Cross. Duncan Waddell's eager to talk to you.'

Sam was shown into the shielded communications room with its secure channels to SIS headquarters. Within a minute he was through to his controller.

‘Take me through it, Sam.' Waddell sounded distant. Thoughtful.

Sam told him everything that had happened and everything that had been going through his head. When he'd finished there was a prolonged silence at the other end.

‘You still there?' Sam checked.

‘Very much so,' Waddell muttered. Then after a short further pause, he added, ‘You know, what you're suggesting about the nature of Jackman's cargo is not altogether preposterous.'

Sam's eyebrows shot up. Waddell was usually deeply suspicious about hunches.

‘I'll tell you a little story,' Waddell went on. ‘It's about seafaring folk. One of Her Majesty's submarines has been bugging some Russians on a tiny island in the Adriatic. One of the voices picked up belonged to Igor Chursin, a senior scientist with VECTOR. The suspicion is he's been paid a wad of dosh to set up a biological warfare lab on this little piece of Adriatic rock.'

Sam sat bolt upright.

‘Picture a map of that area,' Waddell went on.

‘Doing that.'

‘Then you'll quickly realise that from Rome, where Harry Jackman's famous shipment supposedly ended up, it's only a few hours' drive to the east coast of Italy. And only a short hop from there by powerboat to the islands of the Adriatic.'

‘Indeed it is,' Sam purred. The pieces were falling into place.

‘There is an investigation under way. Being run by
Defence Intelligence. Their own spin on the BW lab – if that's what it proves to be – is that it could be producing germ stockpiles for one of the Balkan military factions. Serbs, presumably. The NATO military committee fears that if they have to put soldiers into Kosovo in the coming months, they could face attacks with anthrax and botulinum toxin.'