The Secret (Dr Steven Dunbar 10) (15 page)

Lukas
Neubauer, section head at Lundborg Analytical, the contract labs that Sci-Med called in for specialist advice and analysis was waiting outside the premises in Crompton Lane when Steven and the consultants arrived. He and Steven greeted each other warmly, their friendship having been cemented over the course many past investigations in the past. Neubauer was primarily a biologist but was in reality a polymath with a wide knowledge of just about everything. Steven had yet to discover a field that the expatriate Czech did not know a lot about. He had an insatiable thirst for learning.

Steven introduced the two consultants to him and was pleased to see
Neubauer’s outgoing personality and charm put them at their ease. Anything they needed, they only had to ask . . . including lunch.

Steven and
Neubauer exchanged pleasantries while the two others moved into their comfort zone through plugging things in and setting things up.

‘How’s business at
Lundborg?’ Steven asked.

‘Ticking over,’ replied
Neubauer. ‘People are cutting back on everything these days including contract research so we depend on our regular customers like Sci-Med. I have to admit I was hoping for a big juicy DNA sequencing job when Sir John phoned but . . . baby-sitting’s okay. He and Steven smiled, both knowing what was coming next. Together they intoned, ‘Keeps the wolf from the door.’

Steven returned to the Home Office to do what he least liked doing, waiting. There was no question of his being able to settle to anything. Instead he alternated between pacing in his office and looking out of th
e window, wondering how the day was going to turn out. The first piece of news came just after eleven o’clock, not from Crompton Lane but in the form of confirmation from Philippe Le Grice in Paris that the bullets which had killed Hausman and Liam had indeed been fired from the same gun used to execute Aline Lagarde.

Steven gave the news to Macmillan who was pleased at
hearing something positive for a change. ‘I’ll tell Charlie when he calls,’ he said. ‘It should help his blood pressure and give him a bit of breathing space,’

‘Maybe you should
warn him not to use the information unless he really has to,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll need more in the way of direct evidence to nail Khan . . . like finding the gun on him.’

‘Or
getting a DNA match from either the Paris hotel or the North lab, preferably both.’ said Macmillan.

‘He’s a pro
; chances are he wore gloves on both occasions and left nothing behind. But one way or the other . . .’

Macmillan looked at him. ‘Don’t do anything silly, Steven. You and I haven’t exactly made many friends in high places over this business and there are those who will be looking for any excuse. As I’ve said
many times before, the only thing that keeps us in business is Her Majesty’s Opposition – regardless of who they are – and the capital they’d make out of any government trying to shut us up.’

‘Understood,’ said Steven.

The conversation ended when Charlie Malloy phoned to convey news of the pressure he was under and to urge Sci-Med to be as quick as possible. Steven remained in the room while Macmillan revealed the news about the ballistics match but it was clear from the one side of the conversation he could hear that Malloy was still very anxious. He heard Macmillan say, ‘Believe me, Charlie, our people are working flat out as we speak. We’ll be out of Crompton Lane in no time. I’ll let you know the minute it happens.’

Macmillan ended the call and looked at the clock on the wall. ‘Think we should phone Lukas?’ he asked.

Steven shook his head. ‘He knows we’re on borrowed time. I told him.’

Steven noted that Macmillan’s behaviour was now mimicking his earlier own as he watched him stop fidgeting with his pen to get up and go over to look out of the window. ‘God, I hope they find something,’ he said without turning round. ‘If they don’t, we really are up that well-known creek without means of propulsion and with half the Royal Navy bearing down on us.’

Steven returned to his own office to fidget and pace on his own.

Lukas
Neubauer called at twelve thirty. ‘Your people say they’ve done all they can here. They’ve copied quite a lot for further analysis and they’d like to hang on to one piece of the confiscated equipment with your permission?’

Steven only took a moment to decide. ‘Yes, that’s fine.’

‘Good,’ said Neubauer. I’ll bring everyone and everything over to the Home Office and then take your people to lunch – on Sci-Med of course. They’ll continue their analysis in the afternoon.’

‘Wel
l done, Lukas. I’ll tell John he can let the police know we’re finished. I take it there will be no sign left of our activities?’

‘Not a trace.’

Macmillan phoned Charlie Malloy. ‘We’re out of Crompton Lane, Charlie. There’s just one small problem . . .’

‘What?’ asked a nervous Malloy.

‘We’ve hung on to one piece of equipment. The experts weren’t finished with it but I told them how anxious you were to have us out of there.’

Steven smiled at the white lie.

Malloy sighed. ‘Well, it’s not that unusual for bits of confiscated stuff to get mislaid for a while. Thanks, John.’

‘No, thank you, Charlie. I owe you.’

‘I’ll remind you.’

Steven and Macmillan were both suffused with a sense of relief. ‘That’s one hurdle over,’ said Steven.

‘Let’s hope for a productive afternoon,’ said Macmillan.

Steven went out for a sandwich and a walk in the fresh air. This was yet another weekend when he hadn’t managed up to
Scotland to see his daughter and thoughts about this had finally worked their way to the top of the queue. He’d phoned Sue on Friday night and spoken to Jenny for a while but this only made him reflect on how often he’d had to do this in the past. But while feeling bad about this he started to wonder whether he was feeling sorry for Jenny or himself.

The truth was that Jenny was perfectly happy – she’d been bubbling with enthusiasm about her part in a new school play – and Sue and Richard were perfectly content with the situation. It was he who had misgivings and, if he were totally honest, it was because he could sense a distinct feeling of fading away into the background, of not really mattering. Was this the price that had to be paid for the sort of life he led? A failure to form secure and lasting relationships?

There was certainly precedent, he thought when he considered the ‘new lives’ of some of his former comrades in Special Forces when they returned to civvy street, the failed attempts to run pubs in the country, the short-lived marriages, problems involving the police. Maybe it was never truly over. Once you’d walked the tightrope between life and death there was no chance of truly settling down on terra firma. He was lucky; he hadn’t had to give up the high wire. Life with Sci-Med had its moments, like knowing that somewhere, not a million miles away from where he was currently standing, someone named Ranjit Khan was coming after him.

Steven returned to the Home Office to be told that the computer people were hard at work upstairs. ‘No results as yet,’ he was told. ‘Are you all right, Steven?’ Jean Roberts asked as an afterthought.

‘Sure, fine,’ he replied.

An hour later, Macmillan looked round his door. ‘I’ve got Scott Jamieson on the phone. He’d like a word with you. I can never transfer these damned calls.’

Steven went through to Macmillan’s office while Macmillan chatted outside to Jean.

‘Hello Scott, how are you? Long time no see.’

‘Yes, it’s been a while. Look, I’ll come straight to the point. You know that I took over the ME investigation from you?’

‘Yes, how’s it going?’

‘That’s the thing . . . I’ve caught one of the buggers. He was vandalising a car outside the home of a microbiologist who works on ME.’

‘Good for you, old son . . . but isn’t that the job of the police?’

‘Yes, well, you could say that. Let’s say I was alleviating the boredom.’

Steven laughed. He liked Scott Jamieson a lot; he was a good investigator and there was no one he’d rather have beside him in a tight spot. ‘Fair enough. What can I do for you?’

‘I’d like you to come and see this guy.’

‘Are you kidding?’ Steven exclaimed. ‘I’m up to my neck. I’m on a code red.’

‘I know you are,’ replied Jamieson calmly. ‘I’d still like you to come and see him.’

Steven bit his tongue and read between the lines. There had to be a very good reason for Scott’s request, one that he obviously didn’t want to reveal over the phone. ‘Where are you?’

‘Ayton Hill Farm.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘On the North Yorkshire moors.’

Steven had to work hard at stifling his reaction. No, Scott wasn’t having a laugh and yes, he did know how bloody far that was from
London, He must have a good reason. He simply asked, ‘Do you have a grid reference?’

Jamieson read it out and Steven hung up.

‘Everything all right?’ asked Macmillan as Steven rushed past on the way to his own office.

‘Tell you later,’ replied Steven. He closed the door behind him and called the internal number of the duty officer assigned to his code red status. ‘I need a helicopter.
City Airport to North Yorkshire. Fast as you like.’

‘Understood. I’ll call you.’

Steven smiled. This was the way things worked under code red. No questions, no form filling, no explanations until the code red was over.

The duty man called back in under five minutes. ‘It’ll be on the tarmac in fifteen minutes.’

‘Are they expecting us?’ asked the pilot.

‘Sorry, don’t know,’ replied Steven, looking down at the bleak moorland farm below.

‘Place looks deserted . . .
no signs of life and thankfully not much in the way of power lines . . .just one on the northern boundary as far as I can see but I’d appreciate if you’d keep your eyes peeled.’

The helicopter banked sharply to the left as the pilot began a circle of the farm below, looking for possible problems on the ground. ‘Don’t want to put her down in a bloody bog.’

He opted for a piece of flat ground to the right of a large barn next to the main farmhouse building. Still no one had emerged from inside, making Steven feel anxious. He thought Scott Jamieson might have come out to welcome them with a wave or to point to a suitable landing spot but of course, Jamieson didn’t know how or when he was coming.

The helicopter settled gently on the grass, the pilot ready to gun the engine at the first sign of any instability in the ground but it seemed firm enough. He kept the rotor blades turning while Steven decided on the best way of approaching the building. He made his decision and told the pilot to keep the engines running until he gave him a signal that all was well. Steven removed his helmet, and released himself from his seat harness and communications wiring before opening the door and dropping to the ground.

His plan was to sprint into the lee of the barn and approach the house using the barn as cover, not because of any belief that he was in danger, more a case of old habits dying hard. The plan was made redundant when the farmhouse door opened and Scott Jamieson appeared with a smile on his face and a pistol in his hand which he now let dangle by his side.

Steven signalled to the pilot to cut the engines and the beat of the rotors faded as he walked over to the house.

‘I wasn’t sure it was you,’ explained Scott.

‘I thought that might be the case. What’s with the weapon?’

‘I confiscated it from him indoors. I thought the copter might be full of his pals.’

‘The vandal?’ asked Steven sounding surprised.

‘Yep, he says he knows you.’

Steven’s face registered disbelief as he was led indoors and into a room where a man was secured to a chair with rope bindings. ‘We appear to have a conflict of interests,’ Jamieson announced.

Steven couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘Ricksen!’ he exclaimed. ‘MI5.’

‘Then you two do know each other,’ said Scott. ‘He wouldn’t tell me anything, said he’d only speak to you. I saw him slashing the tyres of a car belonging to a research microbiologist who lives about twenty miles from here so I tailed him,
hoping he’d lead me to the organisers of the
Popular Front for the Liberation of ME Sufferers
. Instead I end up holding an MI5 officer in one of their own safe houses. I was going to ask John what the hell I should do with him but chummy here kept insisting he knew you and you’d want to hear his side of things.

‘Wow,’ said Steven. ‘I think we can do away with the bindings.’

‘How are you, John?’

‘I’ve had better days,’ replied
Ricksen, appearing more than a little crestfallen.

‘Has
Five been behind all the attacks on ME researchers?’

Ricksen
nodded, adding, ‘Christ, what a mess.’

‘It’ll make a cracking story for the Sun,’ said Jamieson.

‘D notices will fall like confetti,’ snapped Ricksen.

‘So what’s it all about, John?’ asked Steven. ‘And what’s the hole you’re now in to do with me?

‘C’mon Steven, we’ve known each other a long time,’ said Ricksen. ‘We’ve even looked out for each other on occasion. Okay, there’s a bit of rivalry between Five and Sci-Med but when push comes to shove we know we can call on each other for a bit of help.’

Steven nodded. ‘True,’ he conceded, ‘but everyone’s been snubbing
Sci-Med lately and this is quite a hole you’ve dug for yourself . . . and Five. I’m getting dizzy just looking down into it.’

‘Look, there’s a lot of strange stuff going on; I hoped we might come to an arrangement . . . exchange what we know . . . pool our resources?’

Steven and Jamieson exchanged doubtful glances.

‘There’s a big secret . . .’ said
Ricksen, immediately capturing Steven’s attention.

‘Go on.’

‘That’s the thing, only people at the very top know what it is and they are going to enormous lengths to keep it that way. The Americans are involved and I get the impression that Pakistani Intelligence are in the mix too.’

‘They are,’ said Steven. ‘One of their agents, a guy called
Ranjit Khan has gone rogue. He’s killed five people so far, trying to get his hands on this secret. He killed my friend, Simone Ricard and it was him who was responsible for the deaths in the North lab, including the two the other night.’

‘Shit, we knew Khan was in the country. We thought he was working with Six.’

‘So presumably does MI6,’ said Steven. ‘Apparently he’s decided to become self-employed: he wants the secret for himself.’

‘That’s worth knowing.’

‘Perhaps you’ll return the favour. Why have you been targeting ME researchers?’

‘HMG wants research on ME to stop but no one’s saying why. It’s connected to this damned secret. Our brief is to
do what we can to stop current research on ME and discourage anyone from entering the field.’

‘By pushing them under a bus?’ said Jamieson.

‘I swear to God that was just a terrible accident: it was never meant to happen. He was just meant to appear foolish.’

‘And he ends up appearing dead,’ said Jamieson.

‘Christ, I don’t like it any more than you guys.’

‘Yeah, shit happens,’ said Jamieson without a trace of sympathy.

‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Steven interrupted. ‘Okay, cards on the table, we’ve been thinking along the lines of Porton and the Americans developing a new bio-weapon and testing it illegally in the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Americans have already been caught out putting fake aid teams into the region to help in their hunt for Bin Laden but there’s definitely more to it than that.’

Ricksen
seemed taken aback and Steven thought it seemed genuine. ‘We knew about the fake team that got DNA evidence proving Bin Laden was in the compound at Abbottabad, but the rest is news to me.’

‘There has to be a link
between a new bio-weapon and the government stopping research on ME,’ said Jamieson.

‘If HMG want to stop research on ME, it suggests they already know what causes it,’ suggested Steven.

‘And they’re developing it as a new weapon,’ said Ricksen.

All three thought about this for a few moments.

Steven shook his head. ‘Sounds all wrong,’ he murmured.

‘I agree,’ said Jamieson. ‘If scientists had discovered the cause of ME they wouldn’t have kept it secret – even if it was a government lab that made the breakthrough. They would have taken the enormous credit on offer and set about finding a cure. None of that would have prevented them from developing their discovery as a weapon in the usual way in the usual places if they’d wanted to.
There would have been no need for a huge cloak of secrecy. Steven’s right; it sounds all wrong.’

‘Doesn’t sound like much of a weapon either,’ said
Ricksen. ‘Oh, I can’t fight today ‘cause I’m just too tired . . .’

Steven ignored the yuppie
‘flu sneer and asked, ‘So where does that leave us, gentlemen?

‘We still don’t know the secret,’ said Jamieson.

No one disagreed.

‘There is one more thing you should know,’ said
Ricksen, looking at Steven. ‘Two days ago, someone put in a request to see your file.’

‘What file?’ asked Steven.

‘Ours . . . on you.’

Steven took a few moments to digest this before murmuring, ‘Just one big happy family, aren’t we. Who wanted it?’

‘A CIA guy, Bill Andrews.’

‘And you just gave him it?’

‘Personally, I didn’t give him anything,’ said Ricksen defensively. ‘I just pricked up my ears when I heard your name come up although it has to be said, you’re not exactly in the running for employee of the month right now in the corridors of power. You’re being seen as a bit of a thorn in the side if not a complete pain in another part of the anatomy . . .’

‘It was ever thus . . .’ joked Jamieson. ‘He’s mad, bad and dangerous to know.’

Steven was in no mood for humour. The hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach at hearing of his file being given to Andrews was not going to go away.

‘What are we going to do about him?’ Jamieson asked with a nod in
Ricksen’s direction.

‘Did you get photographic evidence of him vandalising the car?’ asked Steven.

‘Certainly did.’

Ricksen
looked anxious. ‘Oh, come on, guys. You’re not going to hang me out to dry . . .’

‘Maybe another couple of him s
tanding in the doorway of an MI5 safe house?’ suggested Steven. ‘And your investigation will have reached a satisfactory conclusion.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ said Jamieson.

‘You can’t be serious about giving this to the papers?’ said Ricksen, coming close to pleading.

Steven decided the man had had enough. ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘But you make sure to tell your boss that
Sci-Med knows who’s been behind the ME attacks and has proof should they need to use it.’

‘Understood,’ said
Ricksen, relieved that the prospect of him becoming national news had receded but not looking forward to explaining his capture to his superiors.

‘And open season should be declared on
Ranjit Khan forthwith. He’s not a colleague; he’s a dangerous psycho.’

‘
How about Andrews, the guy who pulled your file?’

‘
For the moment, the jury’s out.’

‘Thanks, Steven.’

‘Don’t mention it. After all . . . we’re all on the same side,’ said Steven, looking towards Jamieson to share a grin. ‘Time to go home, chaps.’

Steven ran towards the helicopter, making circular motions with a raised finger. The engines started as he climbed on board. ‘
City Airport, James, and don’t spare the rotors.’