Pandemic (67 page)

From the moment Richter had tossed the flask into the air, less than four seconds had elapsed.

In the hallway above, John Westwood heard three rapid shots and a scream of pain. He summoned a smile as he gazed up at Blake. ‘You sure your buddies have everything
under control down there?’ he asked.

‘Smart guy.’ Blake kicked Westwood in the stomach again, then picked up his Uzi and headed cautiously down the hall.

Richter moved quickly over towards Nicholson, picked up both Uzis, pulled out the magazines and tossed them and the weapons to one side, well out of the man’s reach. Then
he span back to Henderson and Ridout. He knew both were wearing Kevlar vests, so he guessed that at worst the breath had been knocked out of their bodies.

Henderson had already dragged himself into a sitting position against the wall, and was pulling his own Glock from its shoulder holster. Without hesitation, Richter swung the pistol up, sighted
and squeezed the trigger. Henderson’s head snapped back as the 9mm copper-jacketed slug punched half his brains through the back of his skull and splattered them onto the wall behind him.

Richter swung his pistol around further, covering Ridout this time. Then he lowered the weapon on seeing that his first shot had missed the Kevlar jacket and had hit Ridout just below the navel.
He was clutching his stomach and moaning, and was obviously no threat.

Just then Blake pushed the briefing-room door open and Richter saw the muzzle of a Uzi swinging towards him. He dived sideways, over the top of Ridout, and somersaulted across the floor, landing
in a crouch and with the Glock extended in front of him.

Blake pulled the trigger and a ten-round burst screamed across the room towards Richter. Three of the bullets smashed into Ridout, two hitting the Kevlar jacket but the third ploughed into his
head, just above his right ear, and killed him instantly. The other rounds pursued Richter’s rapidly moving figure, crashing into the wood-panelled walls. As happens with all submachine-guns
on automatic fire, the muzzle of the Uzi had lifted, and Blake was lowering it to adjust his aim, when Richter fired twice with the Glock.

His first bullet hit the Uzi’s pistol-grip, severing Blake’s middle finger, and the second passed over the weapon and hit his neck, half an inch above the protection of his Kevlar
jacket, and he fell back, dead.

John Westwood had just managed to struggle to his feet, leaning his back for support against the wall, when he saw the door leading to the cellar swing open. He’d
intended hopping down the hall to the kitchen, to find a knife to cut the tape binding his limbs, but as the door opened he realized he needn’t bother.

Richter glanced both ways as he emerged from the doorway, pistol in one hand and a cumbersome bunch of Uzis, Glocks and magazines clutched to his chest by the other. He nodded to Westwood,
dropped the weapons and mags on the floor, and stepped away towards the kitchen. He returned a few moments later with a steak knife, and sliced through the tape binding Westwood’s wrists and
ankles.

‘You OK, John?’ he asked, and Westwood nodded. ‘Didn’t anybody ever tell you never to open the door to strange men?’

‘I didn’t open the door to anyone,’ Westwood protested. ‘This door was bolted on the inside, but somehow they must have got in at the back.’

Richter nodded. ‘My fault,’ he said. ‘The back door, off the kitchen, is secured by an electric lock with an external keypad, and obviously Nicholson’s men knew the code.
It hasn’t got internal bolts, but I should have jammed a chair against it or something.’

‘What happened down below?’

‘We had an exchange of views, and the CIA will be sending out three letters of condolence next week.’

‘So who’s that still yelling down there?’ Westwood demanded.

‘Nicholson,’ Richter replied. ‘I had to take his mind off grabbing a Uzi and ventilating me, so I popped a round through his leg. He’ll be walking with a limp for a
while.’

Nicholson was lying where he’d fallen, both hands clutching his wounded leg just above the knee. The floor around him was soaked with blood and Richter knew he would die
from blood loss if something wasn’t done quickly about the bullet wound. He knelt beside him and tied a rough tourniquet around the man’s thigh, then applied a broad bandage, taken from
a first-aid kit in the kitchen, around the wound itself.

‘Now,’ Richter said, after Westwood propped Nicholson up against the wall, ‘as I was saying before we were interrupted, we want to know more about CAIP. Tell us, and
we’ll call for an ambulance so you can be in hospital within the hour. If you refuse, then you can probably guess what we’ll do.’

Nicholson looked from Richter to Westwood, but just shook his head, his face a mask of pain.

‘I don’t believe this, Paul,’ Westwood murmured. ‘It’s a covert operation that’s over thirty years old and he still won’t tell us what it was
about?’

‘He will eventually. He just needs to be encouraged a little.’ Richter stood up, leaned against the wall of the briefing-room and rested his right foot very gently on
Nicholson’s left shin. ‘I’ll ask you again,’ he said. ‘What was CAIP?’

The injured man shook his head once more, and Richter could see him tensing for the pain he knew would come. Richter pressed down harder, then moved his foot backwards, rolling the wounded leg
sideways. Nicholson’s scream cut through the air as he grabbed frantically at his shin, desperate to immobilize it.

‘What was CAIP?’ Richter repeated, as the howl died away into a moan. ‘I can go on all day, Nicholson. You can’t, unfortunately.’ And he pushed sideways once more,
watching the injured man’s expression closely for signs of capitulation.

And then Nicholson spoke, almost imperceptibly. ‘Stop,’ he said, his voice weak and wavering. ‘For God’s sake, stop. I’ll tell you.’

The other two men crouched down in front of him, listening intently.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Nicholson repeated, sweat glistening on his brow. ‘I’ll explain what CAIP was – and why we did it.’

‘OK,’ Richter grunted, ‘let’s hear it.’

As Nicholson began speaking his voice was so low that they had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. ‘First, you need to understand the background. What do you know about
Weltanschauung
and eugenics?’

Richter glanced at Westwood, who shrugged his shoulders in incomprehension. ‘Not a lot,’ Richter replied, ‘though I do know what the words mean.
Weltanschauung
is a High
German term meaning a world view or philosophy. The fact you’ve mentioned eugenics suggests you’re thinking about Hitler’s perverted vision of the future of Germany and the Third
Reich. His
Weltanschauung
was that only the strong should survive, and that the toughest of those would become the rulers of the rest, first of Germany, then of Europe and finally of the
world. Every other race and nation would be reduced to second-class citizenship, used as a slave-labour force or, in the case of the Jews, exterminated. Basically, the Nazis used the idea as a
justification for the Holocaust.

‘Eugenics is pretty much the same, but without the jackboots and concentration camps. Refinement and enhancement of the race through selective breeding. It’s a discredited, foul
idea.’

Nicholson shook his head. ‘Not so,’ he said, his voice strengthening. ‘The idea of eugenics is no different in concept to what farmers and biologists do with plants and
animals. They try to breed the hardiest crops, the fastest horses, the most intelligent dogs or whatever. Eugenics is no different.’

‘Except that you’re talking about human beings,’ Westwood interrupted. ‘That makes it different. The concept is unacceptable.’

‘The government of Singapore would argue with you,’ Nicholson said. ‘They started a eugenics programme back in 1986. They offered pay increases to female university graduates
who had children and at the same time paid grants for property purchase to women who hadn’t been to university, as long as they agreed to be sterilized after they’d had one or two
children.’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ Westwood said.

‘Your ignorance doesn’t alter the reality of the situation. The government of Singapore made no secret of their programme, and it was entirely voluntary. If it’s successful,
the result should be an overall increase in the intelligence level of that nation, and at the same time a reduction in the rate of population growth. Which is,’ Nicholson added, ‘the
second factor.’

‘I’ve no idea where you’re going with this,’ Richter said.

‘You’ll see, I promise you. Let me ask you something else – what’s the population of the Earth?’

‘We don’t have time for twenty questions, Nicholson. Get to the point.’

‘This
is
the point. The present population of this planet is around six billion, and it’s doubling about once every twenty-five years – that’s an exponential
increase. That means about twelve billion by twenty twenty-five and twenty-five billion by the middle of this century. Some time in the next century the figure would reach half a
trillion.’

‘So what?’ Richter demanded.

‘So a global population of that size would mean standing room only, everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. That’s a population density of about the same as Manhattan over the entire
surface of the Earth, including areas that are presently uninhabited, like the Arctic, Antarctic, Siberia, Amazon Basin and the deserts. Actually, it couldn’t get that big, because the food
supply would run out long before – you can’t build cities on the same land you grow crops on.’

‘What’s that got to do with the CIA and CAIP?’

‘Everything,’ Nicholson said. ‘In the late sixties and early seventies a bunch of studies were carried out here in the States, and they all came to more or less the same
conclusion. Something had to be done to slow down the rate of population growth, and if possible to reverse the trend. Most of the studies suggested that the ideal size for the world’s
population was between about two and a half billion and five billion people. Even the higher figure is a lot less than we’ve got right now.

‘The most immediate problem was food. Some analysts were predicting that if the population boom in certain countries continued, within the foreseeable future, in just a few decades, the
whole world’s food supply wouldn’t ultimately be enough to feed everyone. America would end up having to supply wheat and other staples, but even that relief would only delay the
inevitable. Even with all our resources, there simply wouldn’t be enough for everyone to eat, and whole sections of the world’s population would end up starving to death.’

‘They do now,’ Westwood objected.

Nicholson nodded. ‘Yes, but that’s usually for different reasons. In politically unstable countries the food that we and the voluntary organizations supply often doesn’t get
through to the people who need it. It’s stolen by government officials who sell it, or it gets dumped in warehouses to rot, that kind of thing.’

‘This is fascinating, but irrelevant,’ Richter snapped. ‘Get to the point.’

‘It’s not irrelevant,’ Nicholson responded sharply. ‘It’s crucial, because it explains the idea behind CAIP. The areas where the population was growing the fastest
were identified. Not surprisingly, the Third World was one of them. Africa had always had a high level of infant mortality, but better food and medicines were beginning to reverse that trend:
modern science was actually helping create the problem. In the opinion of many analysts, Africa was on the verge of a population explosion, and somebody was going to have to do something about it,
soon. And we
did
do something about it.’

‘What?’

Nicholson ignored Richter’s question. ‘Voluntary birth control had been tried in Africa, but that didn’t work. The men refused to use free condoms, and the women didn’t
bother to take contraceptive pills. So a group of senior Company agents was tasked with finding a covert method of keeping those populations in some sort of check, just to slow down this dangerous
growth.

‘We tried impregnating the wheat and other crops we supplied with drugs that would reduce fertility levels, but that seemed to have little effect, so we looked around at other things. Then
the Department of the Army came up with what seemed at the time like a possible solution. It was radical, so we needed high-level Government approval before we implemented it.’

‘How high up?’ Westwood asked.

‘The Department of State,’ Nicholson answered.

‘And that was CAIP?’ Richter suggested. ‘What was it?’

‘CAIP was the most important operation the Company got involved in throughout the whole of the nineteen seventies. In fact, it was perhaps the most important covert operation of the whole
century, and one day the world will be thankful for what we had the courage to do.’ There was almost a ring of pride in Nicholson’s voice as he uttered these words.

‘What were you bringing out of Africa?’ Westwood probed.

Nicholson looked at him, and shook his head, grimacing. ‘I said it before, your ignorance is total. We weren’t bringing anything out. We were taking something in.’

‘But the aircraft,’ Richter objected, ‘was flying westwards across the Mediterranean, away from Africa.’

Nicholson nodded. ‘Yes, but it was at the end of the mission, not at the start. We knew even then that we needed to cover our tracks, and that’s why we had to order the escorting
fighter to shoot it down. The Learjet was supposed to end up in deep water and be lost for ever, but instead it veered off course. I’ve been waiting since nineteen seventy-two for somebody to
stumble across it.’

‘So what was it you were taking into Africa?’ Richter demanded. ‘And what does CAIP stand for?’

Again, Nicholson’s voice rose and strengthened. ‘We needed to find a simple name that would be meaningless to anyone not involved. It stood for Central Africa Inoculation Program,
and that’s exactly what it was.’

There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch for an eternity as the two men stared at Nicholson. Then Richter glanced at Westwood, noticed his look of incomprehension. ‘I think I
can see where this is going,’ he said, ‘but I just pray that I’m wrong. Tell us what you were injecting.’