The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (38 page)

Helena continued, "Tell me again why they might want something like Proteus."

There was a silence in the room, allowing the distant grumble of the traffic in the city to intrude. "What they were trying to do was to investigate the mechanisms involved in carcinogenesis — the development of cancer," Eisenmenger said quietly. "One of the techniques is to use a virus to introduce genes into cells to see what effect they will have. As I said, viruses are the perfect vehicle because hundreds of millions of years of evolution mean they have perfected the difficult task of injecting foreign genes into cells."

"So Proteus was … what? Something the rest of PEP could use for cancer research?"

"Presumably."

Somebody walked down the narrow mews whistling the melody of a hymn.

"Okay. A fire occurs. There's disagreement about its cause, but that doesn't matter."

"Doesn't it?"

"Well, I can't see that we need to worry about the cause."

He remained silent for a moment. Then, quite suddenly, he leaned forward. "Jesus!"

Helena, the glass to her lips, looked at him.

Eisenmenger remained crouched forward. On his face there was revelation. "I'm an idiot!"

She waited.

"Beverley was right."

Helena, looking as if she had swallowed a slug, asked, "What about?"

"National security."

"So?"

He was thinking. "Maybe we've believed the cover story."

"What cover story?"

"Models Development."

She sighed. She was used to being here. "What are you talking about?"

"Perhaps they could have used it as a model for cancer, but they didn't need to hide it away to that extent. It was innovative and it was probably sensitive, but it wasn't going to make PEP a billion dollars, at least not for a long time. Why did they go to all that trouble to site them on a small island off Scotland?"

"If not for commercial reasons, then why?"

He didn't answer directly. "The temperature-sensitive trigger … " It was a murmur, nothing more.

Helena took sustenance from the wine. She could have asked what he was talking about, but she knew that Eisenmenger was just enunciating thoughts as they came to him, that he would tell her when he knew himself.

"The trigger's not just a safeguard, it's actually the beauty of the whole thing."

He drained his wine, pouring more for himself but forgetting Helena; she took the bottle from him while he looked somewhere she could not see.

"Proteus is a weapon," he said at last.

*

Beverley sighed deeply. Luke massaged her shoulders, his strong, broad hands working her muscles, releasing the tension, allowing her to forget her troubles. He sat astride her, as naked as she, enjoying both the feel of her flesh and the reflection in the large mirror behind the head of her bed. Enjoying it very much.

She opened her eyes, saw him looking and propped herself up on her elbows, giving him an added bonus in the view. "Why is it that men like to spectate when they make love?"

He laughed, a beautifully rich, deep sound, made for relaxed reassurance. "Only if there's something worth looking at."

"And I was told women were vain."

He took her shoulders, caressed them, then brought his hands down her back. He shifted himself backwards so that he could track down to her buttocks. She made a deep throat noise, shifting as the tips of his fingers came together, then delved a little more deeply. She shifted, eyes closed, legs slightly wider.

He sighed, "My, my."

She felt him pry inside her and she gasped.

*

"Proteus would perhaps work as a generic system for cancer — transfect a cell culture or laboratory animal, wait for the tumours to develop (and we know that it's extremely effective), then you can test whatever therapy you like — and maybe that was the cover story, but it wasn't the real reason for developing Proteus."

He was pacing the small room, a feverishness sheening him, suffusing the space. Helena watched him, her eyes fixed, as if afraid that he was sickening.

"The temperature-sensitive trigger is an old trick in cell transfection systems. It enables you to control the start of the experiment, but think of it, Helena. You have a virus that infects an individual — no symptoms, no sign that they have in every cell of their body a minute grenade, primed and waiting. You could do it years in advance. Fifty years, fifty hours; absolute control is yours, because you have the ability to pull the trigger.

"Then, when the time is right, you introduce a second virus. This one is pyrogenic — its sole purpose is to induce a fever. The virus infects, propagates, the body temperature begins to rise, degree by degree, thirty-seven, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, thirty-nine point nine. Nothing happens, but the individual feels awful because of the fever. Then forty degrees Celsius and, in every cell, Proteus awakes and begins its work. Within perhaps two days, cancer consumes the victim, devours them, as effectively as the worms eat our corpses, only this time the corpses are alive while the feeding occurs."

"A biological weapon."

"Exactly. But a beautiful one. If you were mad enough, you could spread this one around the entire world. You could infect all the billions that grub out their lives on the husk of Mother Earth, then just wait. There would be no way to eradicate it once it was released. You just wait until you feel you have to use it. That Middle Eastern state proving a bit of a nuisance? A nasty little influenza epidemic ought to see to that. Nobody could point a finger. There would be no need for the usual sabre waving, the tedious emptiness of diplomatic anger.

"But there's even more. The scale is your choice. The control is yours. You can kill one or you can kill ten million; if you can adjust the second agent, limit it or spread it as you wish, you can have your godhead over as much of the world as you want."

Helena couldn't help it. She felt sick at the thought, but it was so monstrous, she found herself unable to believe it.

"But this is hypothesis, right?"

Eisenmenger stopped suddenly in his pacing. He turned his head to Helena. "Three people have either died or disappeared and are presumed dead. Turner fell to his death, ostensibly an accident until you happen to know the context. Hartmann, unlucky enough to perform the post-mortem examination on a victim of Proteus, is blackmailed into falsifying his findings." He shook his head. "I can't help feeling that this is all a bit over the top for an unfortunate laboratory accident."

She picked her way through the implications of what he was saying. "PEP wouldn't do this on their initiative. They would have a backer."

"More than just a backer … "

They looked at each other. "A national agency of some kind," she said quietly.

He nodded. "Of some kind. Maybe ours, maybe not." He looked up as a car horn sounded quite close by in the street. "A state is the only institution that takes for itself the right to deprive an individual of their life," he whispered.

Helena felt very small indeed.

*

She was whimpering, might have been begging him to stop had the gag not been in place, but this only aroused Rosenthal further. He had tied her down, blindfolded her and was, as he liked to think, "using her." He knew that she liked it really. The whimpering was all part of the game, playing a role, just as he was playing a role. He caressed her, enjoying her moistness; it was further proof that she was as pleased by this as he was.

True, there were a few bruises, and he had accidentally made her bleed when he had bitten her nipple too hard; made her squeal at that one.

He whispered into her ear, "Let me in again, Bobby."

More whimpering. She was good.

"Come on, Bobby. Let me in, like a good girl."

She struggled against the bonds. Her legs remained closed. He sighed. "Oh, dear."

Bobby smoked, probably thought it was a clever thing to do. Perhaps in future, he thought as he lit one and held it over her right groin, she'll think better of it.

*

Luke had timing; God, he had timing. For minutes that seemed like hours they stayed together, he inside her, she crouched, enjoying the feeling of completeness. He leaned forward, hands around her breasts, the movement adding to the pleasure. She opened her eyes, saw him smiling back at her.

"Enjoying yourself?"

"Kind of."

He straightened up, hands on her hips, beginning to work in earnest. She decided that this was better than any massage.

*

In the middle of the night, Eisenmenger woke Helena. At one o'clock she had gone to lie down in the bedroom, leaving him still pacing, still working things through in his head. He was sitting beside her on the duvet, gently shaking her and calling softly. She looked groggily at the clock;
four
-
thirty
.

"What is it?"

"We've got to go. I think I know where Carlos might be."

She sat up. "Where?"

"Rouna."

*

Rosenthal had to impress on Bobby that she was rather ungrateful, but he was remarkably effective at such tasks and she quickly appreciated his point. She remained unhappy — tearful, snivelling and sullen — and he had to get her something for the burns, but at least she had stopped screaming abuse.

He poured her more champagne, watching her from the arm-chair by the bed. She gulped it again, he was sorry to note. She would need a lot of training to appreciate the good things in life.

"Do you want to spend the night here?" he asked. "Or shall I get you a taxi?"

She sniffed. Even with red eyes and tear-stained make-up he found her attractive. If she wasn't careful, she wouldn't get the choice.

"I'd better go."

He nodded, rose and phoned for the taxi. As she left, he gave her two hundred. She opened her mouth to object, saw his eyes give a warning, said nothing more.

Alone, he returned to the bed and lay there in the darkness, waiting. Waiting was something he was good at. He'd waited a long time over the years; it was what soldiering was all about. Those who couldn't cope with the waiting didn't last long, for it was in the periods of quiet, of anticipation, that the preparation was done, that deeds were planned but more importantly that the body and mind were perfected.

Be patient, keep silent. That's what they'd taught him were the most important skills for a soldier. Shooting straight, learning how to kill (but never learning to like it, merely to appreciate its place in things), survival in extreme environments — all these were necessary, but all of them were as nothing without the ability to wait and the ability to be silent when silence was required.

The room took him to its soul, absorbed him, blanketed him with its void, and there was thus nothing, not even breathing.

His father had died early, but not early enough. In only six years of life Rosenthal had seen and now remembered enough of his father to prevent mourning. His father had had a liking for cruelty and that Rosenthal could not forgive; it was necessary but should never be enjoyed for its own sake, a method, not a goal.

He didn't think that he had been an exceptional child. Perhaps more reserved than usual, perhaps more intense, but not delinquent, not violent. Academically above the norm, athletically the best, entry into the armed forces, thence into Special Services had been swift, easy and rewarding.

His death, five years later, murdered in the Middle East by mercenaries had been only the briefest of inconveniences; very soon it had become a positive boon. It wasn't that life in the army had been bad, but the advantages of non-existence came as a pleasant surprise, allowing him freedom unknown to others. A career in "cleansing" — a euphemism if ever there was one — followed and as his reputation for efficiency spread, so too did his rates of remuneration. Even Her Majesty's Government found that someone who was dead had their uses. He became the ultimate freelance.

The decontamination task for PEP had followed a less direct involvement in the Proteus Project as Security Consultant. As usual, though, when things went shit-shaped, his was the first name bawled over the tannoy.

And it would have been a lot easier if the information upon which the whole operation had been founded had not been flawed. Bloody scientists. On a number of occasions during his career, it had been the scientists who had cocked up, requiring him to put things right, clean up their catastrophe. He had lost good comrades because of such incidents; good men who shouldn't have been sacrificed because of others' incompetence. Still, he reflected, eyes open, listening and alert but totally quiet, things were nearing an end. Just a few small matters to clear up, then all would be done.

The key was waiting. If necessary, waiting for days, weeks, months. Years, perhaps. He began to sleep.

The phone in his pocket vibrated and he had answered it with the one word, "Yes?" before it could do so again.

Movement
.
F
and
E
.
Travelling
north
.