Ken McClure - Lost causes

Steven shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to be a party pooper. If I’d had any idea why they’d disabled the bug I would have, but I haven’t. You?’

‘No,’ said Macmillan. ‘Islamic terrorists don’t do kindness. Doesn’t make sense.’

‘I’ve asked John Ricksen to come over. We need to talk.’

Macmillan raised his eyes.

‘Waseed Malik was an MI5 informer. His real name was Assad Zaman. He was found hanging from a tree in Scotland in the early hours of this morning.

Macmillan slumped back in his chair. ‘I’m beginning to think a cruise might be a better option.’

‘MI5 think he was converted to the opposition. He ran the first attack but chickened out of the second and made the call that stopped it.’

Ricksen arrived and Jean Roberts brought in coffee.

‘No calls please, Jean,’ said Macmillan.

‘Very good, Sir John,’ she replied, winking at Steven on the way out. Normal service had been resumed.

‘I’ve told Sir John what 5 thinks about the man we know as Malik and you know as Zaman, but I got the impression that you might have some other ideas,’ Steven began. Ricksen seemed uneasy, and Steven guessed it was because Macmillan was present. ‘Everything said here stays here,’ he added.

‘Something’s not quite right,’ said Ricksen.

‘That’s exactly the impression we have.’

‘People are desperate to come up with plausible explanations for implausible happenings. We get a warning of a bio-weapon attack but we don’t know where from. None of our sources know anything at all about it. Same goes for Special Branch. We’re told the terrorists are home-grown — and they are — but no one knows anything about their masters. Zaman’s involvement is not only a surprise to us, it’s a surprise to the fundamentalist groups. Then his body is found — unmutilated. He still had his tongue. Very strange.’

Steven told Ricksen about the disabling of the cholera strain. ‘They didn’t want to kill too many people.’

‘And our conclusion must be, gentlemen?’ asked Macmillan.

‘It wasn’t an Islamic terrorist attack at all,’ said Steven slowly.

Macmillan nodded. ‘It’s the only explanation. Some unknown faction recruited disaffected Muslim youths in our cities and groomed them to carry out the attacks, telling them they were acting for the Islamic fundamentalist cause.’

‘Then they shopped them to the police to bolster the impression that it was Islamic terrorists who were responsible,’ added Steven.

‘But what on earth for?’ asked Ricksen. ‘And why use a weapon that’s deliberately been blunted, if what you say’s true?’

‘To create the right conditions for… something else to happen,’ said Macmillan. ‘The people who died were expendable… collateral damage.’

‘Working-class people in old council blocks of flats?’

‘Oh, shit,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be the Schiller Group.’

Ricksen’s expression suggested that he did not see this as good news.

‘It’s another Northern Health Scheme. They’re setting out to reshape the population.’

‘Reshape the pop-’ stammered Ricksen.

‘It’s a long story, going back twenty years,’ said Steven, unwilling to break his stride. ‘They’ve been manipulating events to set it up all over again. That’s what the killings in Paris were all about. It was a take-over bid. A new hierarchy with new ideas is in charge.’

‘So what are they planning to do?’ asked Macmillan.

‘The mass vaccinations,’ said Steven. ‘It has to be that. The entire population is about to be vaccinated.’

‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Macmillan. ‘It does have to be that. The very young have been receiving what cholera vaccine stocks we had but the over-sixties are about to get the stuff that was bound for the Third World.’

‘Or not,’ said Steven.

‘Are you suggesting they’re going to kill everyone over sixty?’ asked Ricksen, as if he were in the throes of a bad dream.

‘Nothing so unsubtle, if the Schiller Group are responsible.’

‘So how do we stop them? The whole operation is up and running with full government approval and we don’t even know who “they” are.’

‘Indeed,’ said Macmillan. ‘And what is particularly worrying is that it would be much easier for them to stop us.’

‘And they must know we’re onto something because of the alert 5 put out for Zaman,’ said Steven.

‘It must have been them who killed him to stop him talking,’ said Ricksen. ‘That’s why it didn’t look right.’

‘We know from the cover-ups of twenty years ago that the Schiller mob was well represented in the police, so maybe informing them is not an option.’

‘They must have a presence in 5 too,’ said Ricksen, thinking about the National Front infiltrator who’d ended up in the Thames.

‘Let’s define our objectives,’ said Steven. ‘We have to stop the “vaccine” from getting to the mass-vaccination clinics all over the country. Its starting point is…’

‘Lark Pharmaceuticals,’ said Ricksen. ‘They’re diverting their overseas supplies.’

Macmillan hit the intercom button on his desk. ‘Jean, we need to have everything you can get on Lark Pharmaceuticals as quickly as you can.’

‘Lark may not be involved, of course. There might be a plan to swap shipments somewhere along the line,’ said Ricksen.

‘Then it’s important we stop them setting out if we can,’ said Steven.

‘Easier said than done,’ said Ricksen. ‘Any word of such an attempt getting back to the Schiller mob and they’ll simply change their plans.’

A knock came to the door and Jean entered. ‘Something to be going on with,’ she said, placing a thin file on Macmillan’s desk.

Macmillan read in silence for a few moments before speaking out loud for the benefit of Steven and Ricksen. ‘Lark Pharmaceuticals was formed in 1990 as an offshoot of Lander Pharmaceuticals but has never been listed on the stock exchange. It’s a private company. Although the expertise came from Lander, private money from a body called the Wellington Foundation was used to set it up. It’s run as a non-profit-making concern. What profits it does make from the sale of its pills and potions and diagnostic kits and so on is ploughed back into its vaccine programme for Third World countries.’

‘So it’s a charity?’ said Ricksen.

‘Not with a parent company like Lander,’ said Steven. ‘Lander supplied pharmaceuticals to the Northern Health Scheme.’

Macmillan continued. ‘The head of Lark is Dr Mark Mosely, a previous associate of Dr Paul Schreiber, head of Lander Pharmaceuticals at one time.’

‘Schreiber was deeply involved in the scheme. He ran the pharmacy at Newcastle College Hospital personally,’ said Steven.

‘Mosely, a brilliant molecular biologist, was recruited by Schreiber after getting his doctorate from Cambridge. He rose rapidly in Lander and was given the job of heading up Lark when it was formed. He’s been there ever since.’

‘Being funded by the Schiller Group,’ said Steven.

‘So it’s Lark we’re after,’ said Ricksen.

‘An outwardly respectable company, doing its level best to help Third World countries and commanding the admiration of all…’ said Macmillan.

‘Currently about to provide the vaccine necessary to protect some of our most vulnerable citizens,’ said Steven.

‘We need proof,’ said Ricksen. ‘Cast-iron proof before we can touch them, and that could take time…’

‘Which we haven’t got,’ said Steven. ‘We’ll have to get the proof another way.’

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘Hereford,’ said Steven. ‘We don’t waste time with polite requests and bits of paper: we hit Lark head-on with an SAS assault.’