Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

‘I don’t think they can expect the company to carry the risk,’ said Steven.

‘It was the bad publicity surrounding the Crick that started the FDA and MHPRA getting cold feet too,’ confided Macmillan. Nigel Lees tells me that government is going to have to give them some assurances too if they want them to continue playing ball. No one wants to carry the can.’

‘Everyone needs someone to blame,’ murmured Steven, thinking of falling rocks.

‘Be that as it may,’ said Macmillan, ‘I think you can tell Dr Martin — or is it, Leila? — that she will not be experiencing any more obstruction from either government or commercial sources.’

‘I’ll relay the message,’ said Steven, noting again that there wasn’t much that Macmillan missed.

‘Leila, it’s Steven. How are things?’

‘I’ve just seen the result of the latest titration. By my calculations we’re going to make the deadline with a day to spare.’

‘Great. Have you told the Department of Health?’

‘I spoke with Mr Lees this morning. He told me that he’s sorted out the problems with the regulatory bodies. He’s now going to make transport arrangements to move the virus from the institute to the companies for production. He’ll make sure they’re ready to receive it and get it growing up as quickly as possible. He wants them to have teams of technicians standing by to do the egg inoculations. Round the clock if necessary. Dubois in Paris have already been in touch to say they’re all ready to go but I haven’t heard anything from Auroragen.’

‘That problem has been resolved too,’ said Steven. ‘They’re going to drop the conditions you were worried about. There will be no more demands for tests and inspections and form filling. I spoke to them yesterday: the government will reach agreement with them today.’

‘Thank you so much, Steven, you’ve been such a help.’

‘Things are finally starting to look good.’

‘I am so looking forward to this being all over,’ sighed Leila. ‘I feel absolutely exhausted.’

‘You must be,’ sympathised Steven. ‘You’ve done so well.’

‘Have the police made any progress?’

‘They found the place the three men were using as a lab,’ said Steven. ‘It was an old mill house.’

‘So they were growing the virus?’ exclaimed Leila.

‘Yes, but the place had been cleared out by the time we got there.’

‘So it might still be too late for the vaccine to be of any use?’ said Leila, sounding alarmed.

‘Maybe not. It looked like a pretty small scale operation at the mill and presumably the three men dying must have set their plans back. I’m hoping it will take time for al-Qaeda to set up a new lab.’

‘Maybe they already had,’ said Leila.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘If it was only a small scale operation at the mill, they must have already been planning a bigger one somewhere else?’

Steven found that he couldn’t argue with Leila’s logic… but he seriously wished he could.

‘I thought we might have a beer?’ said Frank Giles when Steven picked up the phone. He had been going through his notes with a view to having to write up a full report on what had gone on at the Crick Institute and the events of the aftermath. ‘Anything that gets me out of doing this for a while,’ he replied, telling Giles what he was up to.

‘Paperwork,’ intoned Giles, ‘the scourge of our times and never to be done on a Saturday night. The Green Man in half an hour?’

Giles expanded on the theme when Steven met him and they sat down with their drinks. ‘You know what really gets me,’ he said. ‘Written reports of events rarely describe what actually happened. They list what should have happened if everything had followed a logical course.’

Steven smiled indulgently.

‘It’s true,’ Giles asserted, ‘There’s no place in a report written after the event for the role of instinct, intuition or even actions based on common sense — the things that really shape an investigation. You have to pretend. You have to alter things to make it appear as if you followed a logical series of actions, so what good is that, eh? What does anyone learn from that? What’s the point of it?’

‘I hope you’re not looking to me to defend the filling of forms,’ said Steven.

‘No, I just like having a rant from time to time — I like a good rant.’

‘So, how are things with Norfolk’s finest when they’re not ranting?’ asked Steven.

‘They’ve quietened down a lot,’ said Giles. ‘Finding Ali has been taken out of our hands by Her Majesty’s public schoolboys and what happened at the Crick is now yesterday’s news. The attention of the great British public has moved on: the Chief Super can sleep easy and I can get a night off. Dare I ask if the spooks have had any success?’

Steven shook his head.

‘So we’re still in trouble?’

‘Could be,’ agreed Steven. ‘But Dr Martin at the Crick has succeeded in coming up with a vaccine strain that should protect against Cambodia 5. Her strain is due to be delivered to the pharmaceutical company tomorrow. They’ll put it into production right away.’

‘What does that involve?’ asked Giles.

‘Full scale growth of the vaccine virus in fertile hens’ eggs in Auroragen’s virus culture suite.’

‘Sounds like what they were attempting at the mill house,’ said Giles.

‘It’s the same technique only they were growing up the Cambodia 5 virus itself to be used as a weapon and thankfully, on a much smaller scale. Auroragen will get through 100,000 eggs a day with production at full swing and produce something over a hundred million doses of vaccine.’

‘Mind you, the opposition have had a head start. They may have caught up a bit by now,’ said Giles.

‘And I thought you were going to cheer me up,’ said Steven.

‘Look on the bright side,’ said Giles. ‘It gives us both an excuse to get pissed.’

‘Same again?’ asked Steven.

‘So what happens once the vaccine has grown up in the eggs?’ asked Giles when Steven returned with two more beers.

‘They harvest the amniotic fluid from the eggs — that’s the stuff which contains the virus — and then it’s put into injection vials which will be used to vaccinate people in Europe and the USA.’

‘So you’re injecting people with one virus to protect them against another?’

‘That’s exactly it,’ said Steven. ‘The body will produce antibodies against the first virus — the harmless one — which will also work against the killer because they are so similar — one is an attenuated form of the other. It’s called live-virus vaccination. They use the same technique for smallpox. They inject a virus similar to smallpox called Vaccinia into you and it stimulates antibodies which work against smallpox itself.’

‘How do you know the flu one will work?’

‘In this case we don’t,’ said Steven. ‘Normally it would be tested on animals first but there hasn’t been time. We’ll just have to hope.’

‘And if the worst comes to the worst and it doesn’t work?’

‘The public will be defenceless against a Cambodia 5 attack. If the intelligence services don’t find Ali and his pals in time and destroy the virus stocks they’ve been growing up, they’ll spray it around city centres up and down the country and we’ll have a major epidemic on our hands and by the end of the first month, probably a pandemic across the globe.’

‘But surely there must be drugs they can use?’ said Giles.

Steven shook his head. ‘There’s a common misconception that you can use antibiotics to treat virus infections — but you can’t. Antibiotics work against bacteria not viruses.’