Andy McNab - Dark winter

'Yes, Simon, Simon Ma-'

She held up her hand. 'Simon'll do just fine. Well, Simon, what have you got for us today?'

'May I?' His bag hovered above the table while he waited for permission.

'Of course.' Suzy was doing a good job of making him feel comfortable, but with his arse sunk down in the settee and his knees up by his chin he certainly didn't look it.

The bag went down and he took off his coat to reveal a maroon cardigan over his brown checked shirt. He still looked nervous; maybe it didn't look like an FCO brief and he was worried we'd have to shoot him afterwards.

Once he'd unbuckled his bag, he pulled out a clutch of ten-by-eight colour photographs and put them on the table. He cleared his throat.

'Simon, quick question before you start?' I always wanted to know who was giving me a brief. Not having enough knowledge to pass on is sometimes more dangerous than not knowing anything at all. 'Can you tell us where you're from?'

Suzy's chewing filled in the second or two of silence while he wondered if that would be OK.

'Of course. I'm a doctor, formerly working in Namibia, before becoming a consultant at the School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine here in London. After the US anthrax attacks I became a technical adviser on biological agents slash weapons for the Foreign Office – briefings for embassy staff, that sort of thing.'

Suzy interrupted, with a smile, 'What have you been told about why you're here today, Simon?'

'Just that I'm to fill you in on pneumonic plague and its potential as a weapon. No more than that.'

She nodded her thanks and I signalled that I had no further questions. He picked up the dozen or so ten-by-eights and passed them to me. 'This is the type of case I've tried to treat over the years.'

I looked down and found myself inspecting a series of close-ups of a bloated old man's body – head, arms, torso, legs – covered in swellings and weeping pus. His gangrenous fingers and toes looked like they'd been pushed into a food processor. I tried not to look at the one of his face, at the terror in his eyes. This guy was being eaten alive. The foil rustled on Suzy's blister pack and I knew she was trying to avoid it too.

Simon's eyes flickered between the two of us with a nervous smile, trying to establish if this was the level of information we wanted. As Suzy put the last of the scary pictures back on to the table, he took it as his cue to carry on. 'There are two main variants. Bubonic plague, you'll have heard of – it was responsible for the Black Death in the fourteenth century, killing over thirty million in Europe alone. Bubonic plague was what the nursery rhyme was all about – "Ring a ring o' roses, a pocketful of posies".'

Suzy finished it for him. '"Atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down!"'

I didn't join in. It was another nursery rhyme I'd never learned. My stepdad didn't like things like that going on in the house. My mum had to be at work at the launderette, not wasting time teaching her kids that sort of nonsense. Knowing shit like that never got anyone a job.

He cleared his throat again. 'Yes, thirty million in Europe alone, the biggest chunk of population ever killed by any epidemic. But bubonic plague is the less deadly variant of the two.' His eyes flicked between the two of us again. 'The variant I am talking about today is pneumonic plague, which infects the lungs and is so highly contagious that it's an A-class weapon. The only other two with that designation are smallpox and anthrax – that's how bad this disease is. If treatment is delayed more than twenty-four hours after infection, the mortality rate is virtually one hundred per cent.'

Suzy was leaning towards him now. 'So its supply or whatever is tightly controlled?'

He smiled fleetingly. 'It cannot be controlled. Pneumonic plague is caused naturally by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, found in rodents and their fleas on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. It occurs in humans when they're bitten by plague-infected fleas – but thankfully there are just thirty cases a year, on average, worldwide.' He tapped the ten-by-eights still on the table, and looked sad. 'Old Archibald had the misfortune to be one of them.'

I didn't really give a shit about poor old Archibald. I wanted to keep Simon on track. 'It can be used as a weapon?'

He sighed and shook his head. 'It doesn't bear thinking about. Just fifty kilograms sprayed over a city the size of London would infect as many as a hundred and fifty thousand people, nearly a third of whom would be expected to die. And those are just the primary victims. That figure would be multiplied many times if infected people carried it to other cities or countries. Pneumonic plague spreads like wildfire, transported by respiratory droplets – a simple cough or sneeze will infect anyone within range. The trouble is, there are no effective environmental warning systems to detect plague bacilli, so you wouldn't know you'd been infected until symptoms appeared.'

I realized I still had my jacket on and semi-stood to take it off. 'How long does that take then – you know, the symptoms?'

'The time from exposure until development of first symptoms is normally between one and six days, but most often two to four.'

'So, what are we looking for?'

'Well, the first indication of an attack would most likely be a sudden outbreak of illness, presenting as severe pneumonia and sepsis. If there are only small numbers of cases, the possibility of them being plague may at first be overlooked, given the clinical similarity to other bacterial or viral pneumonias – and the fact that so few Western physicians have ever seen a case of pneumonic plague. It may be up to ten days before public-health authorities recognize what's happened, and by then, anyone infected will be dead.' He pulled up the sleeves of his cardigan. 'Using this form of plague as a biological weapon would be simply catastrophic.'

'If you were a terrorist, how would you use it?'

' Yersinia pestis can be grown in large quantities and, with just a little skill, could be quite easily disseminated. The agent would have to be milled into a very fine powder so it could be dispersed in aerosol form. A crop-sprayer could be used over a town or city, or individuals could disperse it using compressed oxygen bottles, maybe large hospital bottles in a vehicle, to pump the agent out as they drove round the streets. Then again, it could be hand-held – a smaller compressed oxygen bottle concealed in a rucksack, or even a conventional aerosol can. It really doesn't matter how – once it's delivered an infectious and invisible cloud would remain suspended in the atmosphere for up to an hour, waiting to be inhaled.'

Suzy pursed her lips. 'This powder, Simon, could it be transported in a bottle? And how big an area would, say, twelve full wine bottles contaminate?' She placed her wet gum on the edge of the table before standing up and going over to her handbag.

Simon's eyes followed her. 'A bottle, yes, if it was well sealed.'

Suzy sat down with her cigarettes and lighter in her hand. He looked at me as she took out a Benson amp; Hedges, and the expression on his face told me the penny had dropped.

'That's why I'm here isn't it – some pestis has been discovered? Twelve seventy-five-centilitre bottles – nine litres. Where? What control measures are in place? Has the public health-'

Suzy interrupted him with the offer of a cigarette and, to my surprise, he took one.

'No, Simon, we don't know what control measures are in place. We're trying to find the stuff.' She glanced at me and I nodded as her disposable clicked into life. Considering where he was going after this, it didn't matter if he knew or not. She dragged in a lungful of smoke and handed him the lighter.