Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

Steven found that he could imagine only too well what had happened to the missing monkey but didn’t say it.

‘Let’s go to my office,’ said Cleary. ‘I’ll call from there.’

Steven looked out of the window while Cleary made the call. Looking at the institute surroundings, he found it hard to believe that such a genteel place had been at the centre of such recent violence and intrigue. He smiled wryly as he saw it as the sort of place that Agatha Christie might place a body in the library, but as for an al-Qaeda attack and the theft of lethal viruses… that was the stuff of nightmares from a different world. He heard Cleary slam the phone down and turned round.

‘Bronington insists that six animals were delivered and signed for but they can’t make out the signature on the driver’s delivery note. It’s a scrawl they say. Sounds to me like the driver might have been doing a little business on his own.’

‘Maybe,’ said Steven. ‘I think I’ll call Leila in Washington about this before we start making any accusations.’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘A bit early for the States, I’ll do it later. In the meantime, thanks for your help.’

‘I’m sorry we couldn’t clear this up,’ said Cleary. ‘Give Leila my best when you speak to her.’

Steven decided to call in on Giles on the way back.

‘I didn’t expect you back,’ said Giles. ‘I thought you’d just phone.’

‘They ordered six monkeys but only recorded delivery of five,’ said Steven. ‘Bronington Life Sciences insist they delivered six.’

‘And you think the sixth one was the monkey that was put out for the army to find?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘It would be stretching coincidence too far to think anything else,’ agreed Giles. ‘But they must know who ordered the monkeys?’

‘Leila… Dr Martin,’ replied Steven.

‘Did she say why?’

‘She’s gone back to the States. I’m going to phone her later.’

‘Who took delivery of them?’

‘That’s really why I came by,’ said Steven. ‘They say the signature is a scrawl: they can’t decipher it. There’s a possibility the driver might have done some kind of deal on his own and hoped that the paperwork would slip through without anyone noticing…’

‘But he reckoned without Sci-Med,’ said Giles. ‘I take it you’d like me to have a word?’

‘I’d be obliged.’

‘Who could say no to a man with a silver Porsche?’

Steven rang the university in Washington and asked to speak to Leila Martin in the Department of Immunology. He didn’t have her direct line number because of the agreement that she would call him first.

‘You’re through to Immunology, caller.’

‘Hello. My name is Dr Steven Dunbar. I’m calling from England. I’d like to speak to Dr Leila Martin please.’

‘I’m sorry. Dr Martin is currently in Europe.’

‘No, she returned to the States on Tuesday.’

‘One moment please.’… The minutes seemed to pass like hours before the woman came back on the line to say, ‘I’m afraid that’s news to everyone here, Doctor.’

But I saw her off at the airport myself.’

‘One moment please.’

Another wait.

‘I’ve just spoken to Carla Brunner, Doctor. She’s a post-doc who’s been staying in Leila’s apartment while she’s been away. Carla hasn’t heard anything about Leila’s return either.’

Steven put the phone down feeling utterly bemused. Leila hadn’t turned up at either her apartment or the university. There had been no indication at the airport that she intended going anywhere else first so what the hell was going on? It made him wonder about her insistence that she should call him rather than the other way around. If it hadn’t been for the query over the animal order she’d placed, he wouldn’t even know that she wasn’t back in Washington. ‘Oh, Leila,’ he murmured softly. ‘Leila… Leila, my beautiful Leila, what are you playing at?’

Steven wondered whether Leila’s apparent lack of frankness was personal and had something to do with some other relationship she might be engaged in — but maybe this was personalising the problem too much. However difficult he found it, he must try to avoid that and make his head rule his heart. It was however, possible to reconcile both with his first decision. He had to find out where she’d gone. Although her work might be over for the moment, Leila was still a major figure in the fight against any attack involving the use of Cambodia 5 virus. He called the duty man at Sci-Med and asked him to get on to Heathrow and find out as quickly as possible which flight she had boarded and where she’d gone.

While he waited for a reply, Steven called John Macmillan and told him what had happened.

‘Maybe she decided to take a holiday first,’ suggested Macmillan. ‘She’s been working round the clock for the past few months.’

‘She didn’t say anything about taking a holiday to me,’ said Steven.

‘Should she have?’

‘We are friends… we had a relationship.’

‘I noticed,’ said Macmillan. ‘Maybe you imagined that it would be on-going and she didn’t?’

‘Nothing like that,’ Steven assured him. ‘If I’m honest, I hoped that might be the case but Leila made it quite clear that her career came first and that she was going back to the States to continue it. She couldn’t wait to get back to the university in Washington… she said.’

‘So why not be honest about what she was planning…’ mused Macmillan, as if trying to decide whether or not the deception was big enough to cause Sci-Med concern.

‘I’m trying to see things objectively,’ said Steven. ‘But emotional involvement is getting in the way. I find myself thinking she’s gone off to France or Spain to meet up with some secret lover.’

‘Which of course, would be of no concern to Sci-Med,’ said Macmillan.

‘Quite,’ agreed Steven. ‘But there may be another reason she’s gone missing and that’s why I need an objective view.’

Macmillan took a few moments to compose his thoughts before taking a deep breath and saying, ‘Dr Martin has been — is — more than a bit player in all of this. She is the designer of our main hope of defence against a potentially disastrous biological weapon. It is essential we know exactly where she is at all times — especially if it should be somewhere other than where she said she’d be.’

‘I suppose that was what I wanted to hear,’ said Steven. ‘I’ve put the wheels in motion to find out what flight she boarded and where she was going when I said goodbye to her on Tuesday.’

‘Good. I have to say in any other circumstances I’d replace you with one of the others because of your personal involvement but you’re in this too deep and you’ve already brought us a long way. You’re probably still our best chance of finding out what al-Qaeda are really up to. I won’t give you a lecture about steeling yourself to be objective but you must continue to think round all the angles, Steven — whoever it concerns. You’re good at it, maybe the best: continue to be.’

Macmillan had already hung up but Steven murmured, ‘Yes, Boss,’ before switching off his phone and slumping down into his chair by the window. The light was almost gone and the traffic on the river was lit up like pearls on velvet. He concentrated on the one star he could see in the sky as he forced himself to think round all the angles where Leila was concerned. The trouble was he knew so little about her. There just hadn’t been time to say much to each other about their past lives because of the demands and sense of urgency of the situation they’d found themselves in. It had been a bit like a wartime romance with no time for considerations past or future; only the ‘now’ had been important. This was a situation that had to be remedied. He called the duty man at Sci-Med and said, ‘I’ve got another job for you. I need you to find out everything there is to know about Dr Leila Martin and her career. Get on to her university in Washington and see if you can get them to send a full CV. If they prove difficult, get John Macmillan to put the request through the CIA chief of station in London. If the worst comes to the worst he’ll be at the meeting of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee tomorrow.’