Peter May - Snakehead

Steve nodded, oblivious. ‘See you later,’ he told Margaret. And she watched him walk stiffly along the corridor with the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, and she could not imagine what kind of hell he must be going through right now. An arm slipped through hers and she found herself being steered toward the door. Professor Mendez smiled at her affectionately.

‘So much catching up to do, my dear, and so little time to do it,’ he said. And her heart sank, for the catching up could only mean a confrontation with a past she would rather forget.

Li watched from the door of the conference room as Margaret disappeared with Professor Mendez. His sense of loneliness and alienation was immense. Hrycyk pushed past him. ‘Where are you going?’ Li called after him, feeling that he knew what the answer would be.

Hrycyk turned his now familiar glare on Li. ‘What’s it to you?’

‘If you are going for a smoke, I will join you.’

Hrycyk frowned. ‘I thought you didn’t.’

Li confessed, ‘I have been trying to stop. But I could do with one right now.’

Hrycyk snorted his derision. ‘And I suppose you’ll be wanting to bum one of mine?’

‘Good of you to offer.’

Hrycyk glared again. ‘That’s the second time today you’ve got me with that,’ he growled. He paused, then, ‘I figure I can spare one,’ he said, ‘but we’ll have to go outside.’

The camaraderie of the smoker, even between two men who disliked each other so intensely, was irresistible — and increased by the sense of exclusion created by the need to stand out in the cold and wet to share their habit.

The break room was quiet. Margaret recognised a handful of faces from around the table in the conference room. There were one or two others, mostly women wearing camouflage fatigues, on a break from the night shift. She hit several buttons on the drinks dispenser and got her coffee black and sweet. ‘How do you take yours?’ she asked Mendez.

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘Never have. Got an allergy to the damn stuff. Plain water’ll do me.’

She got him a cup of cold water and they wandered over to a free table. There was a bleak desolation about the place. The smell of stale carry-out food hung in the air, the harsh glare of fluorescent light reflecting back off hard melamine surfaces.

‘This place has one of the few level four laboratories in the world,’ Mendez said. ‘They can deal with the most virulent and nasty bacteria and viruses known to man. In fact, they nurture and feed them in little glass petri dishes. Have you been here before?’ Margaret shook her head. ‘I have,’ he said. ‘Several times. And I always spend the next day and a half washing. Not that washing is going to stop the Ebola virus from turning my organs to mush, or anthrax from filling my lungs with fluid. But I always feel…’ he chose his word carefully, ‘…contaminated.’ He smiled. ‘The windows that look into the level four labs are very small, and the glass is several inches thick. They have a notice on the windows that says No Photographs. Not because you could photograph anything particularly secret or incriminating. They’re just scared the flash on your camera might startle the guy in the space suit working inside, and he might just drop one of those little glass dishes. Then the shit would really hit the fan.’

‘How in God’s name do they keep that stuff contained?’ Margaret asked.

Mendez shrugged. ‘You want to see the huge decontamination showers they have just for the monkey cages. Poor little things get pumped full of every disease they figure Bin Laden is preparing to use against us. And then all the water and waste from levels three and four go into a separate sewage outlet for decontamination before rejoining the main sewage supply. The air is taken in through a high-efficiency particulate air filter and passed out through another two. In fact, when you go out you’ll see a row of chimneys at the back. That’s effectively the exhaust system for the labs.’ He chuckled. ‘But you know, no matter what they say, I wouldn’t like to live in Frederick. If anything ever goes wrong here, that nice little German town with its antique shops and church spires is going to be the first to know about it.’ He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘And, you know, they say this place is used for defence only. But the government lies to us about so much else…’ He sat back and let Margaret draw her own conclusions. He shrugged again. ‘Who really knows?’ he said, and sipped at his water. Then without warning he changed the subject. ‘I read about your appointment in the Houston papers. Kept meaning to look you up.’

Margaret said, ‘I had no idea you were at Baylor. Last time I heard you were still in Chicago.’

‘Oh, it’s quite a few years since I moved, my dear. But, then, you’d have known that if we’d kept in touch.’ There was the faintest hint of an accusation in this. ‘How is Michael?’

‘Dead.’ She hadn’t meant to be quite so brutal. But that faintest hint of an accusation had stung her. Mendez had been her late husband’s mentor at the University of Chicago before Michael had graduated and taken, against Mendez’s advice, an unfashionable post lecturing in genetics at the Roosevelt. Margaret never knew exactly what had happened between them — Michael had never confided — but there had been some kind of falling out.

The colour drained from Mendez’s face, and he appeared to be genuinely distressed. ‘Poor Michael,’ he said. ‘I had no idea. You hear nothing in Texas about what’s going on in the rest of the union. I have often thought they still believe themselves to be a separate country down there.’ He paused. ‘What happened?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘Honestly, Felipe, I’d rather not talk about it. At least, not now. Some other time, maybe.’

He put a hand over hers. It was warm and comforting. ‘I am sorry, my dear. I have no wish to resurrect painful memories. I am just so…shocked. Such a brilliant mind, such a bright future.’

Yes, Margaret thought bitterly, and a libido he could not control. She said, ‘You took early retirement?’

A little colour returned to his face, and an edge to his voice. ‘I’m afraid my retirement was forced rather than voluntary. I had a good few years left in me, I think.’

Margaret was taken aback. ‘What on earth happened?’

For a long time he seemed lost in his own thoughts, before becoming aware of her watching him. He must quickly have replayed her question, because a sad smile crept over his face. ‘I was based at the Michael E. DeBakey Center for Biomedical Education and Research at the Texas Medical Center. It was a wonderful position. We were working at the cutting edge of gene therapy, on the verge of some extraordinary breakthroughs.’ He paused to draw a deep breath and steady himself for his revelation. ‘And then a couple of my patients died during the course of clinical trials.’

Margaret put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered.

Resentment now crept into the voice of the old genetics professor. ‘I, or at least my department, had failed to obtain adequate informed consent. There was a major scandal. A lawsuit. It was suggested to me, as a remedy, that I take early retirement. The alternative was the humiliation of dismissal. Not being particularly drawn to the prospect of humiliation, I opted for the former.’ He sat back, forcing himself to smile. ‘A premature end to a promising career.’ Then he leaned forward again, in confidential mode. ‘Of course, the government conveniently chooses to forget all that every time it wants my help.’

Margaret knew how hard it must have been for a brilliant mind just to switch itself off, for a man like Mendez to find suddenly that his talents were no longer required. He had never been the easiest of men to like, but she felt genuinely sorry for him now. ‘That must have been a nightmare, Felipe,’ she said.