The Gulf Conspiracy (26 page)

Rees set up his computer and Steven handed him the disk that Gus Maclean had given him.

Rees brought out a pair of half-moon spectacles from his jacket pocket and perched them on the end of his nose but still had to tilt his head back slightly to be able read down the list of bacteria that Maclean had isolated from himself.

‘
Certainly no pathogens,’ he murmured. ‘But . . .’

‘
You’ve found something?’ asked Steven, feeling excited at the prospect.

‘
I’m not sure,’ said Rees. ‘It’s certainly a bit unusual . . . to find three different isolates in any one individual . . .’

‘
Sorry, I’m not with you,’ said Steven, looking over Rees’s shoulder.

‘
These
Mycoplasmas
,’ said Rees, pointing to the list with his finger. ‘Funny buggers . . . They inhabit the no-man’s land between bacteria and viruses. They don’t have a proper bacterial cell wall so they’re fragile little beasties – hard to grow in the lab - but you can still treat them with antibiotics if need be, unlike viruses.’

‘
Then they can cause disease?’ asked Steven.

‘
Lots of strains cause problems in animals but only one variant causes disease in man,
Mycoplasma pneumoniae
. It can give you a pretty nasty pneumonia but it’s not one of the ones listed here,’ said Rees. ‘There’s been a suggestion around for some time that they contribute in some way to rheumatoid arthritis but that’s controversial: the jury’s still out on that. For the main part, they’re regarded as pretty harmless - just bugs you find you find in the upper respiratory track of normal healthy human beings. The thing that caught my eye though is that we’ve got three different strains here in the one patient. That’s something I wouldn’t have expected.’

‘
A starting point?’ suggested Steven.

‘
Could well be,’ said Rees. ‘If you can get these cultures to me I think we’ll take a closer look at these three beasties before we do anything else. We’ll do some standard tests and then extract DNA from them and check them out with a series of HIV probes.’

‘
I’ll get on to that right away,’ said Steven.

‘
I’ll be back in Cambridge the day after tomorrow,’ said Rees.

The first thing Steven did when he left the offices of the MRC was walk up to nearby Regents Park and phone Gus Maclean. After initial enquiries about his health when he learned that Maclean was back at work, he said, ‘Glad to hear it. I need your culture collection.’

‘
Needles in haystacks time?’ said Maclean.

‘
Might not be as bad as we thought,’ said Steven. ‘MRC Cambridge are going to take a look at things.’

‘
Well they don’t come any more high-powered than that,’ said Maclean. How should we do this?’

‘
I’ll have a courier pick up the collection at the hospital if that’s okay with you?’ said Steven.

‘
I’ll be waiting,’ said Maclean. ‘You will let me know if they find anything, won’t you?’

‘
Of course,’ said Steven, realising almost immediately as he put the phone back in his pocket that he had replied too glibly. Telling Maclean might not be an option if Rees should come up trumps. In fact, it was difficult to see how much of the truth could ever be allowed to come out and how much would be covered up “in the public interest” as the much-abused phrase went. Even he – a confirmed advocate of openness in Government - could see that telling the nation that their soldiers in the Gulf War had been given a vaccine contaminated with a biological weapon might not be the brightest thing to do on the eve of sending them off again. Apart from the effect on morale that this kind of revelation would have, lawyers all over the country would be bound to go into a feeding frenzy, intent on bankrupting the public purse –
pro bono publico -
and doing themselves no harm at all while they were at it.

The other side of the coin was that he did not want to see the people who had genuinely suffered because of the mistake – men like Gus Maclean – continue to be ignored in their rightful claims for a fair deal. As he continued to walk in the park, wondering just how the many who had suffered could be compensated in any realistic way, Steven remembered what Michael D’Arcy had said about the agent he and the others had been commissioned to design. It had to be non-lethal but debilitating, undetectable and . . . curable. This third and last criterion was something he hadn’t given much thought to but now it was interesting.

If Rees were to succeed in finding the agent in Gus Maclean’s collection then Gus’s recurrent health problems bore testament to D’Arcy’s first condition having been met. He hadn’t been killed, he had been debilitated. The fact that the bug hadn’t shown up in any conventional microbiological screen satisfied the second criterion of being undetectable, but what about the third? He wondered. Curable? This intriguing thought stayed with him as he checked his watch and set out for the Home Office. Was it possible that so-called Gulf War Syndrome was curable?’

John Macmillan was looking grim when Steven entered his office just after six.

‘
It’s been a busy afternoon in the corridors of power,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I can ever remember anything quite like it.’

Steven remained silent but he listened in trepidation.

‘
When I told the Home Secretary about our two friends in Leicester, he got in touch immediately with the head of MI5 and demanded an explanation. He in turn, investigated and it would appear – as you suggested – that the men did believe they were carrying out orders – Government orders.’

‘
Issued by whom?’ asked Steven.

‘
Their section head, a man named Mowbray, Cecil Mowbray. He’s now been suspended and is currently being held by Special Branch. Mowbray maintains that-’

‘
Don’t tell me,’ said Steven. ‘He was only obeying orders from above?’

‘
Something like that,’ said Macmillan. ‘He’s taking the line that in his senior position he does not have to be given direct orders but is expected to use his initiative in protecting government interests. He maintains that the development of the agent at Porton
was
Government sanctioned and top secret and it was his job to keep it that way in view of what happened. He has cited Sir James Gardiner as the initiator of the project.’

‘
Gardiner again,’ said Steven.

‘
Quite so,’ said Macmillan. ‘Apparently he’s on holiday with his wife, staying at Reid’s Hotel in Madeira; he’s due back tomorrow. Special Branch will pick him up at the airport. In the meantime, they’ve also been speaking to Donald Crowe - like I say, it’s been a busy afternoon. Not surprisingly Crowe’s singing from the same hymn sheet as Mowbray. He insists the Beta Team and their work had Government approval.’

‘
What about the agent itself? Do we know any more?’

‘
Although all work on it stopped after the accident at Porton, Crowe says that the team wanted to come clean about what had happened but couldn’t because of the effect it would have had on the troops about to go to the Gulf.’

‘
Very public-spirited of them,’ said Steven. ‘Did he give any details about its construction?’

‘
Only that it was a very early attempt at designing an agent commissioned by the government of the day,’ said Macmillan.

‘
No technical details? Nothing about what it was based on?’

‘
He was very vague,’ said Macmillan. ‘He said they were just trying out a few ideas.’

Steven gave a sigh and said, ‘I’ve got an awful feeling they’re going to walk away from this.’

‘
I wouldn’t bet against it,’ agreed Macmillan.

‘
What about the two MI5 men the Leicester police are holding?’

‘
They clearly believed they were acting under orders so officially they’ve done nothing wrong,’ said Macmillan.

‘
On the other hand they murdered George Sebring and Michael D’Arcy,’ said Steven.

Macmillan nodded and said, ‘It’s difficult; a moral minefield, you might say. From another perspective it could be argued that Sebring and D’Arcy were responsible for the incapacity and death of many who served in the Gulf War after what happened at Porton with the vaccine.’

‘
And everyone was only obeying orders,’ said Steven. ‘Now, where have I heard that before?’

‘
Maybe Gardiner wasn’t,’ said Macmillan.

‘
I think I’d like to be there when Special Branch pick him up,’ said Steven.

‘
No problem,’ said Macmillan. ‘The Home Secretary has agreed that we be kept in the picture at all times. I’ll have Rose inform them of your interest. She’ll text you the details of his arrival time. How did you get on with Professor Rees?’

‘
Nice man,’ said Steven. ‘He thinks it might well be possible to identify the agent in Gus Maclean’s culture collection if it’s there. I’ve arranged for it to be delivered to him in Cambridge.’

‘
There doesn’t seem to be much point now,’ said Macmillan. ‘We know what they were doing at Porton and what happened with the vaccine.’

‘
I think I’d still like to have him go ahead,’ said Steven.

‘
Why?’ asked Macmillan.

‘
I think I’d be happier if we had an independent assessment of what they were making, just in case they left anything out.’

‘
Like what?’

‘
Just anything.’

‘
All right,’ conceded Macmillan. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t put too big a hole in our budget.’

‘
Can I take it it’s now safe for Jane Sebring to get on with her life without any more attention from MI5?’ asked Steven.

‘
Mowbray has been suspended from duty pending further inquiries and the two agents concerned have been made aware of what’s happened.’

‘
That must have been a magic moment for the pair of them,’ said Steven. ‘Sorry chaps, you weren’t licensed to kill after all.’

‘
Let me know what happens with Gardiner tomorrow,’ said Macmillan.

Steven took Jane out to dinner to Alfredo’s, his favourite Italian restaurant, located in a side street off the Strand. He was known there and the staff always took trouble to make his guests feel especially welcome. Alfredo, a short, stocky man with a bushy moustache and twinkling eyes - who looked more Turkish than Italian despite his proud Neapolitan heritage - took personal charge of ensuring Jane’s comfort, all the while insisting that a woman so good looking must have Italian blood in her.

Steven was pleased to see Jane smiling and relaxed after the trauma of the past couple of days. ‘He’s right, you are beautiful,’ he said as the candles on their table were lit with a flourish.

‘
What is this?’ laughed Jane. ‘What are you softening me up for?’

‘
How could you?’ said Steven, feigning hurt.

‘
Now tell me,’ said Jane.

Steven paused to thank Alfredo who had brought them an aperitif on the house then he said, ‘We agreed from the outset that I would tell you everything that was going on. Well, that has a downside to it.’

‘
Go on,’ said Jane cautiously.

‘
There are some things that have to remain a secret,’ said Steven.

‘
I never supposed anything else,’ said Jane.

‘
Good, but that includes things that you might actually want brought out in the open.’

‘
Like what?’

‘
There’s a real chance that it might not be possible to bring George’s killers to justice.’

Jane’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘
They believed that they were acting under Government orders,’ said Steven.

‘
The same men who came after me?’ said Jane.

Steven nodded.

‘
But surely they
weren’t
?’

‘
But they thought they were,’ said Steven. ‘Somewhere in the chain of command above them was a rogue element.’

‘
So you can charge the rogue element,’ said Jane.

‘
I’d like to think we could,’ said Steven. ‘But if you think it through it would be impossible to charge him or her without charging the two men who actually carried out the killing - and that’s where the problem lies.’

‘
You mean, they will maintain that they were only doing their job,’ said Jane.

‘
Yes.’

Jane appeared to think for a moment before saying, ‘Well, I suppose it serves George right for getting into such a messy business in the first place. And nothing’s going to bring him back now, is it?’

‘
I hoped you might see it that way,’ said Steven.

Steven remained in the background as the Special Branch officers moved in to intercept James Gardiner at Heathrow airport. They did so just after he and his wife had reached passport control. Gardiner reacted in just the manner Steven had supposed he might, given what he’d learned about him from John Macmillan. He initially adopted an air of detached amusement as if some mistake had been made and he had been confused with some ordinary mortal but this quickly changed to outrage when the officers persisted and culminated in demands to know if the officers realised who he was. When he was eventually persuaded to calm down by the two experienced officers who had seen and heard it all before, he was given a few moments to speak to his wife before finally being separated and led off to an interview room where Steven joined them.