Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

Shirley Cleary re-appeared, wearing a smile. She directed her eyes back upstairs and said, ‘He’ll fit you in between… engagements.’

‘Nice place,’ said Steven, trying to fill the silence.

‘We like it and the kids absolutely love it,’ said Shirley. ‘A bit cold in the winter but a lot going for it in the summer. We lived in London before.’

Steven nodded as the sound of a toilet being flushed upstairs reached them.

‘Kids will be at school, I guess,’ said Steven.

Shirley nodded. ‘Ten and seven. Boy and a girl.’

The bathroom door opened upstairs and feet padded along the landing. ‘Why don’t we talk up here, Dr Dunbar,’ came the voice at the head of the stairs and then, with a weak attempt at humour, ‘Might be safer.’

Steven climbed the stairs and Cleary dressed in a plaid dressing gown and slippers led the way into what was obviously his study. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said as he slumped down into his desk chair. ‘I’m all washed out.’

Steven could see that Cleary appeared drawn but he could also see that his eyes had a haunted look. It was a look he’d seen many times before: It was fear. Cleary was afraid of something.

‘What can I do for you?’ asked Cleary.

‘You can tell me what Timothy Devon was working on and what the escaped animals were really carrying,’ said Steven without the hint of a smile.

‘I told you,’ protested Cleary. ‘Flu virus.’

‘You’re not shitting yourself over flu virus,’ said Steven, pressing on with his offensive and keeping Cleary fixed with an unblinking stare.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ said Cleary holding his head in his hands and taking slow deliberate breaths.

Steven let him suffer in silence.

‘I wasn’t lying. Tim was working on flu virus and the animals were inoculated with flu virus…’

‘But?’

Cleary made the effort to pull himself together. He sat up straight in his chair and cleared his throat before asking, ‘How much do you know about flu?’

‘A viral infection,’ replied Steven. ‘Cyclical. People get in winter. More serious than a cold and can even be fatal in the old and infirm but as a general rule, it’s something that confines you to bed for a week or so and then you get over it.’

Cleary nodded. ‘That’s the view held by most people and one which may work against us in the end.’

‘How so?’

‘The influenza virus appears every winter: that’s why people are so familiar with it and, like the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. But every year it is in effect a different virus because of changes in its antigenic structure. As a consequence it’s more dangerous in some years than in others. 1957 and 1968 were bad years for instance but nothing like what happened in 1918.’

‘Not too many people remember that, I imagine,’ said Steven.

‘Another thing that works against us. The 1918 pandemic is history: only the facts and statistics remain in the history books. In 1918 the flu virus killed between 20 and 40 million people across the globe. Think about it. The 1918 strain killed more people in one year than the Black Death did in its four-year rampage across the known world in the fourteenth century and it wasn’t the infirm and aged it went for. It was the twenty to forty age groups that suffered worst.’

‘Go on.’

‘In the past few years scientists have uncovered the structure of the 1918 virus in an effort to find out what made it different.’

‘How could they do that?’

‘They obtained nucleic acid remnants of the virus from the bodies of dead soldiers who succumbed to the virus in 1918.’

‘They re-created the 1918 virus?’ exclaimed Steven. ‘What the hell for?’

‘I think the truthful answer to that might well be, because they could,’ replied Cleary.

‘But of course, they wouldn’t admit to that,’ said Steven.

Cleary shrugged and said, ‘The rationale was that by re-creating the deadly 1918 strain they could design a vaccine against it.’

Steven looked incredulous. He said, ‘They created a virus in order to design a vaccine to fight against it?’

‘Does sound a bit suspect when you put it like that,’ agreed Cleary.

‘Jesus,’ said Steven. ‘Isn’t science wonderful?’

‘Science did learn from the study though,’ said Cleary. ‘They learned just how similar the 1918 strain was to some of the avian strains of flu virus we’ve seen emerge over the past few years. So much so, that many workers believe that the 1918 strain actually arose from a bird strain. A small mutation is all it would require for bird flu to turn into the pandemic strain.’

‘Where does Devon’s work come in to all this?’ asked Steven.

‘The World Health Organisation have been aware of the situation for some time. Almost every year avian flu breaks out in the Far East. The WHO swings into action and tries to keep the lid on the situation through mass culls of birds and the like. ‘You’ve probably seen pictures on television of hens being carted off in cages to be slaughtered in Hong Kong.

Steven nodded.

‘The big fear has been that someone suffering from the early stages of human influenza would also come into contract with an avian strain and there would be a genetic cross-over between the viruses.’

‘And we’d end up with the 1918 virus.’

‘Just so. Well, this year there was an outbreak in Cambodia of an avian flu strain that resembled the 1918 virus more closely than ever before. This has convinced the WHO and major western governments that it’s only a matter of time before we have a 1918 situation all over again, a world-wide pandemic. I’m sorry.’ Cleary got up from his chair and made to go the door.

‘Just before you dash off,’ said Steven. ‘Are you about to tell me that that’s the strain Timothy Devon was working on?’

‘More or less,’ said Cleary, breaking off to make a run for the bathroom.

When he returned, Cleary plonked himself down in his chair with a sigh and said, ‘Some lab work was carried out on the Cambodian strain in the lab before it was sent to Tim.’

‘The last step in the mutation?’ asked Steven.

‘From what I could determine from his notes, that’s what it looked like,’ said Cleary. ‘To all intents and purposes, Tim’s strain is the 1918 virus.’

‘I can understand why you are spending so much time in the lavatory,’ said Steven. ‘How much did you already know about this?’

‘Nothing,’ replied Cleary. ‘I swear it. I found this out when I was going through Tim’s papers. I recognised the strain designations from having read about them in the scientific literature and there was a letter from a university in the USA listing induced base mutations in the viral genome.’

‘Is anyone else aware of what you know?’

‘I didn’t tell anyone, not even my wife.’

Steven thought for a moment before saying, ‘Well, at least this explains why the man, Lees, from the Department of Health turned up so quickly on the day of the murder. DOH must know all about this. Did you have any contact with him? Did he say anything to you?’

Cleary shook his head. ‘I met him and he knows I went through Tim’s desk and reached the conclusion that he had been working on flu virus. I didn’t say anything more than that but he may suspect that I know more than I let on.’

‘Just like I did,’ said Steven, ‘But no one from DOH has questioned you since?’

‘No.’

‘I thought you told me that the Crick didn’t have BSL-4 labs for handling high-risk pathogens?’ said Steven.

‘We don’t. BSL-3 is the best we have.

‘So Devon and whoever asked him to carry out the work — probably DOH — were in breach of regulations?’