Ken McClure - The Lazarus Strain

‘There’s a difference between war and cold-blooded murder,’ gasped Steven.

‘The difference is hypocrisy,’ said the man. ‘And in the end that is why you will lose. All the pretence about ‘liberation’ of oppressed peoples when all you ever wanted was our oil will be difficult to keep up and it will weigh you down just like the constant calls for internal investigations every time your own newspapers prints pictures that the hypocrites don’t like. Pretty soon the moronic lard-arses of middle America will get it through their thick skulls that their kids’ ass-kicking adventure in a place they’d never even heard of is going to come to grief. Junior’s rights-of-passage romp is going to end with him coming home in a body bag with a note from Donald Rumsfeld attached.

‘While the peace-loving forces of Islam ride on to victory in the cause of truth and justice helped by ignorant kids with explosives strapped to them because they’ve been promised a free fuck in heaven. Do me a favour.’

The man brought the back of his hand across Steven’s face in a vicious swipe that left his right ear ringing and blood pouring from his nose. ‘I was beginning to think you had a point until you did that,’ Steven gasped, amazed at his own attempt to take the moral high ground.

‘Let’s get one thing clear,’ said the man as he returned to the stairs to start dragging Leila’s body up them. ‘I will most certainly not be doing you any favours.’

‘Go screw yourself.’

The man paused on the stairs but only to give Steven a pitying look. ‘Professor Devon was very ‘brave’ too,’ he said. ‘But in the end, he told me what I wanted to know… as will you. You might care to consider that while I put Dr Martin in the car.’

Waves of pain and anguish washed over Steven as he faced up to the fact that he was now in the hands of the ubiquitous ‘Ali’, leader of the al-Qaeda team who had tortured and murdered Timothy Devon, Robert Smith and now Leila, not to mention two of his own. He also remembered that what this man had done to Timothy Devon had turned the stomach of a hardened pathologist.

Steven tried to find rational thought through the mess of competing emotions inside his head. His chances of getting out of this were close to zero. He supposed there was a possibility that Frank Giles might turn up eventually if it was noticed that he had been missing for some time but that would probably mean many hours and by that time he would be dead. He had no doubt of that: in fact, he had already accepted this and was concentrating on what he might have to endure before he was allowed to die.

As if having the last straw torn from his grasp, Steven suddenly realised that Frank Giles didn’t even know where the cottage was! He had never had cause to tell him where Leila Martin lived and he in turn had never had reason to ask… But Ali had known and he had come calling. Why?

Poor Leila and what she must have suffered at the hands of this lunatic and after all the doubts he’d been harbouring about her. He felt guilty and ashamed. Ali must have wanted to know how far she’d progressed with the vaccine against Cambodia 5. That in itself suggested that the vaccine was still relevant to the al-Qaeda mission despite his own doubts about city centre attacks.

Leila would, of course, have told him the truth — that it was already in production, but he had probably tortured her to make sure that she wasn’t lying. But what did Ali want from him? He obviously knew about Earlybird and that was disturbing in itself — another reminder that global terrorism was not entirely an external enemy. It was already embedded in the society it sought to destroy. Ali couldn’t have anticipated his coming here tonight so it would be a case of him gleaning any extra information he could before killing him. Maybe he needed it confirmed that the trail he’d gone to so much trouble to lay had been followed by the government who had — as they were meant to do — concluded there were to be city centre attacks across the UK using Cambodia 5. The best he personally could hope to do was withstand pain long enough to make divulging this appear like a genuine admission. The only secret he must keep was the fact that he believed this to be another red herring, a view he had shared with others. But as to what the real al-Qaeda mission might be… he really had no idea. Nothing Ali could do to him could make him tell what he didn’t know. A comfort? Steven thought not.

Steven was aware that his breathing had become rapid and shallow and that cold sweat was forming on his brow. Not for the first time in his life real fear was coming to call and this time there could be only one outcome; he was going to die a painful death. If Timothy Devon’s demise was anything to go by, a scalpel blade would be used to transport him to the outer reaches of agony and humiliation in a slow symphony of mutilation while all the while taking care that he remained conscious. Only he would know the final irony that there was nothing he could tell them that they didn’t know already.

To all intents and purposes, al-Qaeda’s bluff had worked. Neither he nor anyone in the security services knew what they were really up to. John Macmillan’s faith in him had been misplaced: he had failed to come up with the truth in what must surely be his last mission and there was no comfort to be found in the knowledge that he wouldn’t be around to find out just what it was that al-Qaeda had planned.

Steven’s stomach cramped when he heard Ali start to come back downstairs. He was about to face hell on earth and he hoped that he could do it without letting his daughter Jenny down. He was a doctor but he had lived as a warrior and he wanted to die like one but the dice were stacked against him. Ali knew well enough how to turn any man into a mewling, puking, jibbering wreck of his former self, a pathetic figure pleading to be put out of his misery. All the training he’d had in the past to help him resist interrogation techniques would count for nothing in this situation. This was something you could not prepare for.

‘So tell me about Earlybird ,’ said Ali. His voice seemed even and calm but there was no mistaking the cold menace in it.

‘It usually catches the worm,’ said Steven, thinking stupidly that he sounded like Roger Moore playing James Bond.

Ali looked at him, shook his head, gave a wry smile and selected the poker from a set of fireside tools that beside an old stove that appeared to have lain unused for many years. He affected an examination of it but Steven knew that he was just giving him time to think about what was to come. Physical pain was only part of the torturer’s art; the other element was psychological. Steven silently prayed that Ali would hit him over the head with it so hard that either death or loss of consciousness would intervene on his behalf but with a sudden swinging motion, Ali brought it low and horizontally into Steven’s right knee cap making him cry out in pain.

‘Want to try again?’

It was almost a minute before Steven was capable of speech but a movement of the poker in Ali’s hand helped return the power. ‘It’s a committee that assesses potential threats to national security,’ he gasped, fighting the waves of pain from his injured knee.

‘Of course it is,’ said Ali. ‘You know that; I know that. So what’s the latest threat to national security perceived as being?’

‘You are.’

‘I’m suitably flattered,’ replied Ali. ‘And just what am I going to do?’

‘You’re planning an attack on our cities using Cambodia 5 virus.’

‘All on my own?’ asked Ali.

‘Presumably not,’ said Steven. It made Ali raise the poker again and Steven gasp. ‘No!’