James Barrington - Pandemic

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Westwood interrupted, with an appalled expression. ‘Is he saying what I think he’s saying?’

Richter nodded. ‘Yes, but I can hardly believe it. What this bastard means is that in the nineteen seventies some rogue element in the fucking American Army developed AIDS to depopulate the Third World – and a bunch of CIA fanatics filled the syringe for them. It’s no wonder those files were sealed by the authority of the President. If this ever became public knowledge, the CIA would be finished – possibly the American Government too.’

‘Jesus Christ almighty, what the hell do we do now, Paul?’

‘What you do, Westwood,’ Nicholson said, his voice stronger as some of his previous fire returned, ‘is get me proper medical attention to get this leg fixed. Then you give me those flasks and the file. I’ll make sure that the evidence is destroyed permanently. That’s the only option that makes sense. We cannot, under any circumstances, allow word of this to leak out. The damage to America would be incalculable.’

Westwood glanced at Richter, who shook his head and motioned him towards the door. Westwood moved across there and stood watching as Richter picked up the silenced SIG and gazed down at the wounded man.

‘There are a couple of things you should know, Nicholson. This room is soundproof and airtight. The reason we haven’t all suffocated so far is because there’s a closed-circuit air-conditioning system that keeps the air fresh. But because it’s a closed-circuit system it means that any particles that are present in the air stay in the air: only the carbon dioxide is allowed to escape. That’s the first thing.’

Richter put the SIG down on the desk, then dragged the small table across the room and positioned it about three feet from where Nicholson was propped against the wall. Then he moved across to where Henderson’s body lay and picked up the CAIP flask. He held it in his left hand and peered at it for a few moments, as if seeing it for the first time, then he placed it on the table.

‘The second thing is that I believe in responsibility and blame. If your organization was responsible for deploying the AIDS virus in Africa and starting the present pandemic, then your organization should take the blame, either in private or in public. Whether it does or not won’t be my decision, but the evidence should certainly not be simply destroyed. It’s just barely possible that some of the information in the CAIP file, maybe even the concentrated virus in the flasks, might help find a cure for AIDS, and no matter how slim that possibility, that alone is sufficient justification for not destroying it.’

‘But you don’t understand,’ Nicholson protested through his pain. ‘The damage that you could do is—’

‘I’ll tell you,’ Richter cut across Nicholson’s protest, ‘about damage. Anything anyone might do with this information is totally insignificant compared to the damage your repellent scheme has already done, and not just in Black Africa. You simply don’t understand, do you? AIDS could exterminate the entire human race, and it would be your doing.’ His last words came out as a bellow and again he kicked Nicholson hard in the leg.

‘Get out of here, John.’ Richter’s voice was suddenly low and controlled. He waited until Westwood had left the briefing-room and picked up the SIG.

Nicholson was howling with pain, his hands clutching desperately at his bloody leg, but Richter’s face was without pity or remorse. ‘If you have a god,’ Richter spoke in a voice as cold as death, ‘I hope He can forgive you, because I can’t. You are responsible for creating AIDS, so it’s only right that you should die from it.’

‘No, no! Please! We can work this out,’ Nicholson cried out. ‘I’ll hand over everything, I’ll tell you everything I know.’

Richter ignored his sudden pleading. He walked over to the door, then turned and took careful aim. The pistol coughed once and the steel flask on the table bounced into the air. Its side ruptured where the bullet had struck, scattering a dirty brown cloud down towards the injured man. Richter pulled the door closed immediately.

The last thing he heard before the soundproof door slammed shut was Nicholson’s despairing wail as the viral spores began to fill his lungs.

Monday

Browntown, Virginia

John Westwood seemed almost in a state of shock as he drove the Chrysler away from the safe house. He’d said nothing since Richter had ushered him out of the place and slammed the door shut behind them.

Richter had left a note for the caretaker, warning him not to go into the briefing-room but to wait for a decontamination team to arrive. He would have to consult Tyler Hardin again, so that the expert could advise what procedures were needed before the room could be safely opened. But all that could wait for a day, at least.

‘It’s not my call, John,’ Richter commented eventually. ‘Ultimately, this is your mess and you’re the ones who are going to have to clean it up. But I do feel very strongly that you can’t just bury it. Going public wouldn’t achieve anything except to pillory the CIA and America itself, and you can certainly do without that. My advice is that you take the remaining flasks back to Langley to brief Walter Hicks and suggest that they’re handed over to the boffins at Fort Detrick. They just might help in the search for an eventual cure.’

‘What are you yourself going to do?’ Westwood spoke for the first time. ‘Will you tell Simpson?’

Richter nodded. ‘Yes. I don’t really see I’ve got much option. If the circumstances were reversed, you’d do the same.’

‘I guess so,’ Westwood murmured, then straightened slightly in his seat, as if he’d come to a sudden decision. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the next few days are going to be mayhem over here. I’m going to be spending all my time at Langley explaining what the hell happened back at the safe house – that’s the easy bit really – and trying to find an answer to the harder question: why a bunch of rabid neo-Nazi lunatics in the CIA decided thirty years ago that killing off half of the population of Africa seemed like a good idea.

‘You probably want to get back home anyway, so why don’t we just pick up your stuff at my house and then I’ll run you out to Baltimore International?’

Haywood, Virginia

Richter replaced the Clancy novel in the bookcase – he’d seen the film, knew exactly where the ‘Red October’ had finished up. He took another look around John Westwood’s guest bedroom to ensure he’d left nothing behind that he didn’t intend leaving, picked up his overnight bag and Stein’s briefcase, and pulled the door closed behind him.

‘John,’ he explained, as he walked into the kitchen where Westwood was sitting at the breakfast bar, a blank expression on his face, ‘I can’t take the pistols with me so I’m going to have to leave them here. You can keep the SIG – call it a gift from the late Richard Stein – but if you could get the Browning Hi-Power sent over to the US Embassy in London in the diplomatic bag so I can pick it up, that would be a great help. You have no idea how many forms I’ll have to fill in if I don’t hand the fucking thing back. I’ve left both pistols upstairs in the guest room, unloaded and with the magazines out, on the top shelf of the built-in wardrobe. Your kids won’t be able to reach them up there.

‘You can have this, too,’ he said, putting a bulky heavy-duty carrier bag on the kitchen table. ‘It’s got Murphy’s mobile phone and laptop in it, just in case you need to show Hicks the sequence of emails you exchanged with Nicholson. There might also be some other information there that could help you.