Gray Redemption (Tom Gray #3) (25 page)

“How on earth did you end up with these three?”  Harvey asked, and
Vick told him that it was a long story.

“That’s fine,” Harvey said.  “It’s also a long drive back to
Pretoria.”

They split themselves between the vehicles, with Len driving the BMW
carrying Vick, Tom and Andrew, the rest taking the lead in the Jeep.

Harvey turned to Gray once they’d set off. 
“And the
mysterious Sam Grant, the complete stranger who seems to know me.
 
What’s your story?”

Even as he asked the question, his attention was drawn to Gray’s eyes, and
when the penny dropped he couldn’t believe what he’d stumbled upon.

“Tom?  But you’re…”

“He gets that a lot,” Len said, before Vick could get the words out.

“I was actually coming to look for you,” Gray told him, “but as you’re
here, how about I tell you our story and you decide if you’re willing to help
us?”

*
* *

“
Just leave it!
”

Uddin grabbed the bag containing
the family ornaments and hurled it onto the bed.  “We can only take the
bare essentials,” he told his wife, Fatima.  Their luggage already
exceeded the baggage allowance for the flight, and there simply wasn’t room for
sentimentality at the moment.

“But why do we have to
leave?” she asked yet again. 

Fatima had been preparing the
evening meal when her husband had arrived home agitated, and broke the news
that they would be taking a flight later that night.  When asked how long
they would be away, he’d told her that it would be a one-way trip.  Her
subsequent protestations had been met with anger, and she went about the task
of packing with a sense of dread.  She knew her husband’s work was
shrouded in secrecy, and his behaviour told her this had something to do with
the laboratory.

“I was given instructions and
I...disobeyed them,” he told her.

Fatima knew Munawar was an
honourable man, so whatever order he had refused must have been in stark
contrast with his principles.

“Surely the pharmaceutical
company will understand,” she said, but the look she received told her this was
something more than a squabble with a supervisor.

The steps he’d taken had, he’d
told himself, been for the greater good of mankind, but he knew that the
driving force behind his decision had been the welfare of his family.  Having
driven them into hiding, the least he could do was explain why.

“The laboratory I work for
doesn’t make cold remedies,” he said, sitting her down on the bed. He explained
who his ultimate boss was, and the kind of product he was tasked with
manufacturing.

“The virus they asked me to make
was almost ready when a newcomer changed everything.  He told me Al-Asiri
had changed his mind about the agent to be delivered, but on reflection it
didn’t seem probable.  It was the leader’s pet project, and when we met he
seemed more than happy with my projections, yet this Mansour was determined to
use another, more virulent strain.

“The only one we had was too
unstable, with no cure.  If it was released before we had a means to
control it, ninety percent of the world’s population would be annihilated
within months.  Only the most remote regions of the planet would escape.”

“So you refused to give it to
him?”  His wife asked.

“Whether I gave it to him or my
replacement does, it makes no difference,” Uddin told her.  “What is
important is that he not be allowed to use it.”

The look Uddin gave her
suggested there was more to come, and when he eventually told her the rest of
the story, Fatima knew there was no way they could ever return to their
homeland.

Chapter
13

Tuesday
May 8th 2012

Tom sat across the desk from
Veronica Ellis and laid out the plan, just as he’d explained it to Harvey
during their journey from Durban back to the UK.

They’d made a brief stop at the
Durban office where a doctor took a look at Gray’s arm and declared him fit to
fly.  He’d also given the others a once over and found no lasting
damage.  After Tom and Vick had their passport photos taken and emailed to
the Johannesburg office, they had driven north to collect their diplomatic
passports and airline tickets.  During the journey, Tom had given Harvey a
full rundown of the last four weeks, starting with Farrar’s unannounced visit
to his Manila home and culminating in their two-week no-frills cruise.

Harvey had reciprocated, giving
his account of their successful effort to locate Campbell and Levine before
Farrar could dispose of them.  Gray had been concerned about his friends’
conditions, but Harvey assured him that both men were responding well at a
private clinic, and the women were bearing up.

The conversation had turned to
Farrar, and Tom had shared the plan he’d been working on for the last
fortnight.  After Harvey explained that all the evidence they had was
circumstantial backed up with hearsay, they’d agreed that Tom’s idea was the
only way to make Farrar accountable for his actions.

Ellis had been as shocked as
anyone when she’d learned that Tom Gray was still alive, and what had started
out as a bid to bring Farrar to task had escalated to the point where it that
could bring down an entire government.  There was no way she could have
foreseen this a fortnight earlier, and the decision to help Gray hadn’t been an
easy one to make.

It had been a battle of
conscience over pragmatism.  When this broke, any trust the people had in
Parliament would be destroyed.  The Home Secretary would certainly be the
first to fall, and it might even reach as high as the Prime Minister himself.

If the current government fell,
the opposition wouldn’t fare much better.  It was they who had made the decision
to lie to the world, spiriting Gray away and ordering his subsequent
death.  That left the fringe parties, none of whom were — in her opinion —
capable of running the country.

That said, it
was either leave the country in political turmoil, or allow
them to
continue their dark practices and execute citizens at will, and that
simplification had made the decision a lot easier.

Ellis smiled when Tom wrapped
up.  She liked the way he thought, and given the planning that had gone
into his last escapade, she had every confidence in him pulling this one off.

Farsi handed Tom a piece of
paper.  “Here’s the number you asked for,” he said, as he left the room.

Gray nodded towards Ellis’s desk
phone.  “May I?”

“Be my guest,” she smiled.

Gray dialled the number and
asked for Paul Gross.  When asked who was calling, he said: “Just tell him
it’s Icarus.” 

It took a minute before he was
put through, and the voice that came on the line sounded curious. 
“Hello?”

“Hi, Paul.
 
Remember me?  It’s Tom Gray.”

“I’m sorry, I haven’t got time
for pranks,” Gross said.

“Would it help if I said I once
sent an email to your personal email account, and that I threatened to take the
story to a rival channel when you pestered me to go on the air?”

There was silence for a while as
Gross recalled the incidents.  “Say I believe you.  What do you want
from me?”

Gray gave him a condensed
version the events of the last year and explained what he wanted from the
producer of the BBC news channel.

“That’s a great story, Tom, but
what you’re asking is far too risky.  Besides, I have a DA order which
prevents me featuring any story about you still being alive.”

“Doesn’t it feel a little
strange that the government doesn’t want you to let people know I survived the
explosion last year?  What possible motive could they have?”

Gross was silent again as he
considered the question.  Ellis looked at Gray and offered to take over
the conversation, but he shook his head, confident he could wear the man down.

“You make a compelling case,
Tom, but the DA notice —”

“Is an advisory notice, or so
I’ve been informed.  If you ignore one, you cannot be prosecuted.”

“Perhaps not,” Gross agreed,
“but it could be career-defining.”

Gray wasn’t convinced. 
“Only if your superiors came out and said they disagreed with your
actions.  The Director General would have to go on record as saying the
BBC fully supports the government’s practice of killing innocent civilians.”

Both men knew it would never
happen, but Gross still needed more.

“What if I do as you ask, but
there’s no confession?”

Gray once more explained the
plan, and while not as confident as Ellis had been, Gross did think it
workable.

“When is this going to
happen?”  He asked.

“Tomorrow,” Gray told him. 
“There are a few technical aspects to work out, so you’ll be getting a call
from someone called Gerald Small in a few minutes.”

He thanked the producer and hung
up.  “Can I tag along with Gerald?”  He asked Ellis.  “I’d like
to try out the equipment once it’s in place.”

“Sure,” She said.  “Andrew
can take you —”

Hamad Farsi knocked on the door
and walked in without waiting for an invitation.  “Something you should
take a look at,” he said, handing a file to his boss.  She read quickly,
her expression giving nothing away, before she put the papers down and turned to
Gray.

“Sorry, Tom, but you’ll have to
excuse us,” she said, holding up the file. 
“Business as
usual.”
  She showed Gray to Small’s office,
then
led Harvey and Farsi to the conference room and asked when the news had come
in.

“Just a couple of minutes ago,”
Hamad said. 

Ellis read it through again,
this time aloud for Harvey’s benefit.

“Abdul Mansour will be
travelling to England via Heathrow airport in the next few days with the
intention of releasing a malevolent variant of the Ebola virus.  His
target has biological defences against an external attack and he is hoping to
use this to contain the virus within the building itself.  There is
currently no known cure for this particular variant.”

“Short and sweet,” Harvey
noted. 
“Origin?”

“The British
High Commission in Islamabad.
  A kid delivered it along with those
images.”

Ellis looked through them but
couldn’t make head
nor
tail of the information. 
It appeared that someone had taken pictures of documents explaining the genetic
make-up of the virus, through the hieroglyphs meant nothing to her.

“Is anyone verifying
this?” she asked Hamad, who told her that copies were on their way to the
Health Protection Agency.

Small knocked and entered the
room, explaining that he’d spoken to the BBC technical controller and there
would be no problems setting up for the next morning.

“Thanks, Gerald,” she
said.  To Hamad: “The facial recognition at Heathrow should pick him up
when he tries to get through immigration. Check through the logs to see if
there are any near hits.”

“Yeah, right,” small murmured,
catching Ellis’s attention. 

“Something
wrong with my instructions, Gerald?”
  She asked, wearing her most
indignant face.

“No, it’s just...”

Ellis urged him to continue,
knowing how little he thought of the technology. 

“If I was to go through
immigration wearing the most basic theatrical prosthetic, such as a fake nose,
it would throw the system off by at least forty percent.”

“Possibly,” Hamad agreed, “but
make-up would easily be spotted by the border guard.  Besides, you said
yourself that it was the eyes that gave the biggest indicator.”

“Exactly, and eyes can be
covered up with glasses, eye patches, veils, anything that you would see if you
walk down any high street.  These things don’t raise suspicion and can
easily be overlooked.

“Check the logs by all means,
but I’m just saying, don’t be too reliant on them.”

Ellis thanked him for his input
and Gerald left them to discuss the latest events.

“Bear that in mind,” Ellis told
Hamad.  “I want people watching all of his old haunts, plus a team at
Heathrow in case he hasn’t arrived yet.  Also, get onto every informer we
have and see what they’ve heard.”

She turned to Harvey.  “Dig
around and see which buildings have the bio-defence mentioned in the
note.  There can’t be that many, but start with high-profile targets.”

“The US Embassy has one,” Harvey
told her.  “Perhaps we should give them the heads-up.”

Ellis nodded.  “I’ll let
them know,” she said, standing and tacitly ending the meeting.  “Hopefully
they’ll share any chatter they’ve had in the last forty-eight hours.”

They split up to take care of
their respective tasks, with Harvey doing a search for bio-defence
installations over the last fifty years.  The list that came back was not
substantial, but it did include some high-profile targets.  He was
prioritising them when Ellis came over to their desks, her face like thunder.

“Cancel the Heathrow team,” she
told Hamad, “he’s already here.”

“We’ve got him?”  Harvey
asked, but her look told him otherwise.

“It seems our American friends
have a new policy: You scratch our backs, we’ll piss on your chips and call it
vinegar.”

Both men were confused, but let
her continue in her own time.  “It seems they received a card handwritten
by Mansour himself, delivered to their embassy this morning.  Fingerprints
confirm it was handled by him, and ink analysis shows it was written only a few
hours earlier.”

“Did they tell you what the
message said?”

“They told me they couldn’t
share that information until they’d followed up on it, but we’d hear about it
soon enough.”