Mark Edwards - All Fall Down

‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘we’re out of time, so I will leave you all to start building your bunkers and never venturing outside again without face masks and biohazard suits on.’

Polite laughter ensued, and the same short, hirsute professor who’d introduced her shambled back on to the stage to thank her and lead a half-hearted round of applause.

As the students filed out, Kate started putting away her laptop. The professor sidled up to her, scratching his beard. He was a full head shorter than her, and seemed to address his comments to her briefcase. Kate thought he looked as though he lived in Middle Earth.

‘Wondered if you would like to, er, come for a coffee, Dr Maddox? I would love to discuss your research into the Watoto virus in more detail. It’s absolutely fascinating. I could give you a lift?’

Kate had a brief image of them getting on the back of a donkey tethered to the railings outside, the professor with all his possessions tied in a handkerchief to a knotted ash stave that he carried over his shoulder.

‘Thank you so much for having me, but I’m actually really tired – and anyway my car is – oh !’

Her hand flew to her mouth as she suddenly recognised the remaining person in the lecture theatre, a stocky man in a baseball cap and tatty suede jacket. For a moment she thought her legs were going to give way, and a multitude of emotions and memories flooded through her: this man had been there as she’d looked through the porthole door of the lab and seen the bodies of Stephen and Dr Gaunt locked in there, writhing and dissolving into a pool of black blood on the floor before her eyes, instant victims of Pandora, one of the most deadly viruses on the planet. Then the despair of knowing that the one vial of antivirus that could save her son was also in the same room …

What on earth was he doing here now?

‘You remember me, don’t you, Kate?’ asked Harley, holding out his hand. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you. But I wondered if we could have a word, if you’re not busy.’

Although outwardly she retained her composure, Kate had turned pale. She shook his hand, and he felt the smooth contact of her skin. ‘Yes, of course I remember you. I’m terrible with names, though …?’

‘Jason Harley,’ he said, holding her hand a second too long. The professor looked distinctly annoyed.

‘Is everything all right, Dr Maddox?’

‘Thank you, Professor, it’s fine. This gentleman is an, um, old colleague of mine. And thank you again for hosting the lecture. I do hope your students enjoyed it.’ She turned back to Harley, somewhat reluctantly. ‘Let’s go for a drink, then.’

They drove in convoy out of the campus, Harley following Kate in her shabby red Golf. He could see her eyes darting anxious glimpses at him in the rear-view mirror when they stopped at traffic lights, and felt sorry for her. She pulled into the car park of the nearest pub, and he parked next to her.

‘I can’t stay long,’ she said as she got out and locked the door. It was still raining, more persistently now.

‘I won’t keep you.’

Once they were sitting across from one another on slippery leather sofas in a deserted corner, a glass of Scotch in front of each of them, Harley opened his mouth to explain.

Kate interrupted him before he got the words out. ‘Are you here to give me a warning because I mentioned the threat of bioterrorism? I mean, I didn’t think that would contravene the Official Secrets Act, I’m really sorry, but everyone knows that it’s a danger, look at the anthrax attacks, it’s common knowledge—’

He held up a hand. ‘That’s not why I’m here. Although it’s a good thing you didn’t mention Gaunt, or the Pandora virus – as you know, we prefer that those particular topics don’t become common knowledge …’ He didn’t want to let on to her that his colleagues had kept her and Paul under surveillance for the past two years, and they would certainly have known about it had either of them ever let anything slip.

‘Oh. Good. I don’t ever. Trust me. So why are you here?’

‘I’ll tell you, if you’ll let me.’ He smiled as he said it, trying to put her at ease. A strand of slightly damp hair twisted down below her collarbone, and he felt an urge to reach out and tweak it, before upbraiding himself for behaving like a lovelorn schoolboy. It was clearly too long since he’d had a girlfriend.

‘We need your help.’

‘Me?’ She looked away, but her instant reluctance was imprinted all over her features. You’d make a lousy spy, Dr Maddox, thought Harley, amused.

‘A situation has arisen in the US. California, to be precise. A new strain of virus that we haven’t seen before. It’s known as Indian flu, because it has broken out in a Native American reservation.’

Kate nodded and took a big swig of whisky, her interest immediately piqued.

‘It’s nasty. Really nasty. The first victim was thirty years old, fit, no underlying health issues. He got up one morning, complained to his wife that he had a sore throat and a runny nose. Went to his job on the reservation and apparently spent the whole shift sneezing over his co-workers, so they sent him home. Three days later, he was dead.’

‘Go on.’

‘A few days after that, his wife was dead too, along with three other people who worked with him. They’ve contained it, though. The whole reservation has been quarantined, no one in or out. There are no reported cases outside of it, so it seems it’s under control.’

Harley felt uncomfortable, misleading Kate in this way, but he had his orders: to recruit her to the team using any means he could, whether ethical or not. If he told her that the first victim worked in a casino, that several men who had been at that casino had died or were in intensive care and that the virus had spread beyond the reservation, she would be immediately aware of the risk faced by any visitor to California.

‘What kind of virus is it?’

‘I’m not a scientist, Kate. But from what I understand it’s a new strain of Watoto.’

Kate’s glass almost slipped from her grasp. ‘Watoto? In America? Why haven’t I heard about this?’

‘Because the US authorities are keeping it quiet at the moment. They don’t want to panic anyone. Anyway,’ he lied, ‘like I said, it’s not too serious, because it’s contained. Thank God it didn’t break out in Manhattan … My brief is to help the World Health Organization put together a team to create a vaccine in case of future outbreaks.’

‘Easier said than done. I’ve been trying to find a vaccine for Watoto for fifteen years.’

‘But with very limited resources, am I right? Now Watoto is seen as a … potential threat to the West, things are different. We’re assembling this team, to be based out in California at a state-of-the-art lab, the best equipment, money no object. All the top brass in your field. Well – not quite all of them. They want you to join them too.’

‘What?’

Harley repeated it in a level voice. ‘They – we – want you to fly out there and join the team. As soon as possible. They need you. You’re one of the world’s leading experts on Watoto. You had it. You survived. You’ve spent years researching it. The WHO contacted MI6 and asked us to recruit you.’ Another lie. But he knew she would never agree if she knew the whole truth.

Kate felt numb. Twice in her life she had almost been killed by a virus – Watoto itself and, at the Cold Research Unit, a mutated version of it that Gaunt had created. Two years ago she had discovered the truth about that, almost died at the hands of a psychopath and, worse, almost lost Jack.

She was still recovering from the trauma, seeing a therapist, the weekly reassurance of steepled fingers across a coffee table and the soft pull of tissues from the box next to her when her emotions spilled out; trying to live a ‘normal’ village life, growing odd-shaped vegetables, three-legged races at Jack’s school sports day, hay fever, nights out in the local pub with Isaac and Shelley and the local farmers. And now she was being asked to disrupt her life again and fly across the world.