Steven was pleased with this line of thought because, at a stroke, he had rid himself of the spectre of politics, something which had been lurking in the background ever since MI6’s suggestion that the Chinese government might be involved. But, why would the Chinese government get so upset about a bunch of Russians coming up with a scheme to make money? They wouldn’t... Unless, of course, it was their money they were stealing?
For some reason, Steven couldn’t see this being the answer. It was too simple. Whatever else they were, Russian oligarchs were not stupid and attempting to steal from the Chinese government would be a stupid thing to do. The Chinese element in this story was more likely to be based on private enterprise. Chinese money-makers were much more likely than Chinese politicians.
Steven rubbed his eyes and decided he needed a break from theorising; he made a small list of things he needed Jean’s help with. He remembered Special Branch saying at the initial meeting called by the Home Secretary that they had been interested in getting their hands on, Jeremy Lang’s “books”. They, of course, were looking for details about the Russian, money-laundering house purchases he had been involved in. If they had managed to lay hands on any such information, he would like to see it. It might contain the names and details of Russians who had used Lang’s services, but not to buy fancy London homes.
Secondly, and now that they had established just how much money their husbands had come into, it would be worth interviewing the widows of Martin Field and Simon Pashley to find out just how much they knew about it all. He didn’t want to do this himself — he had already spoken to one of them, but this was before the figure of ten million had come to light — he would suggest to John Macmillan that another Sci-Med agent be tasked with interviewing both women. The man he had in mind was Scott Jamieson if he wasn’t already too involved in something else — if he was, he wasn’t working under a code-red — Steven had just checked. Scott was not only a friend he trusted, he was an extremely skilled interviewer. If the ladies were hiding something, Scott would sense this and get the truth out of them. Faux outrage wouldn’t stand a chance.
The days passed with Steven and Tally being careful not to upset each other, but the DRC elephant was very much in the room. Steven’s head was constantly full of the stories Simone Ricard had told him about the realities of being caught up in an Ebola outbreak, but he felt agonisingly unable to share them with Tally. He recognised that they had had the argument and that he had lost. Tally had made up her mind to go and she wasn’t going to change it. Anything he said now would be rightly construed as him applying unfair pressure and this would only create a rift between them at what would be entirely the wrong time.
Tally, for her part, felt that she could not share the details of what she had been learning and doing at the preparatory course for fear of upsetting and alarming Steven even further. She couldn’t even share her fear that much of what he had said at the outset was probably right. Her planned role in DRC was that of organisation and management of medical teams and general resources in a relatively small area, but the dangers inherent in being so near the reality of what the virus from hell could do could not be ignored, especially after days like today when she and others about to travel to DRC had spent hour after hour practicing the donning of protective clothing, boots and visors and checking each other carefully for weak points before going through the rigmarole of disinfecting each other before removing contaminated clothing and starting all over again.
Tally could not help but feel that, in full gear, she and the others looked exactly like illustrations she’d seen of plague doctors of long ago. This led to the uncomfortable thought that, when it came to treating a disease like Ebola, modern medicine could not do much more than these practitioners of long ago. Vaccines could prevent humans from contracting viral diseases in the first place, but once the virus had struck and the disease had developed inside you, you were on your own. Good nursing care from brave, volunteer nurses might just help you stay on the right side of the line between life and death, but there was little medics could do to help.
‘Any side-effects from the vaccination yet?’ asked Steven. Tally had been given the Ebola vaccine three days before.
‘No,’ Tally replied, ‘and what do you mean, “yet”?’ she added, making it into a joke.
‘Sorry, I just thought with it being an experimental vaccine there might be problems.’
‘You’re right, there have been some reports,’ Tally admitted, ‘bur nothing serious, so fingers crossed.’
‘I take it they’ll monitor antibody levels to make sure you have a good level of protection?’ Steven asked.
‘Of course,’ said Tally.
‘Good. So, what’s on the cards for tomorrow?’
‘Oh, more of the same, I guess,’ Tally replied. ‘Lectures on safety, practical classes on the handling of equipment, question and answer sessions with people who were in West Africa during the 2014-16 outbreak, and who can provide useful local knowledge.’
Tally had given a broadly general reply. She had omitted to mention that the main topic for the following day would be the safe disposal of the dead.
‘Have you been given a date?’ Steven asked.
‘To be confirmed,’ said Tally, ‘but next Thursday seems likely.’
Steven nodded.
‘Your turn,’ said Tally, breaking the ensuing silence. ‘How’s your investigation going?’
‘Jean hopes to have some new information for me tomorrow. Hopefully it will help support my working hypothesis that a small group of brilliant people were paid a lot of money by Russian oligarchs living in London to come up with something that annoyed some Chinese people a lot.’
‘But you still have no idea of the nature of what they were doing?’
Steven shook his head. ‘Scott Jamieson is interviewing the widows of the two English victims to see if they might know more about their husbands’ big pay days than they care to admit and John Macmillan is asking the PM for a copy of Special Branch’s notes on the money-laundering estate agent.’
‘That sounds promising,’ said Tally, ‘depending on how many Russians he had on his books and whether all of them bought houses.’
‘Exactly,’ said Steven. ‘The ones who used his talents for putting money through the washing machine but not to buy houses are the exactly the ones I’m looking for.’
Six
‘I’m afraid the PM’s office is proving slow at handing over the copies of the Special Branch material you asked for,’ said Jean Roberts.
‘Well, I can’t say I’m too surprised about that,’ said Steven.
‘You know what they say about things that seem too good to be true.’
‘Quite,’ said Steven, ‘but that was the deal. The Prime Minister assured us personally that we would have access to any material that the police and security services came up with. Perhaps John might help with a little memo to the PM?’
‘I’ll ask,’ said Jean. ‘On the bright side, I’ve come up with a bit more info on Samuel Petrov. He’s the son of Dmitry Petrov, a wealthy Russian expat currently living in London.’
‘What do we know about Daddy Petrov?’
‘We know that he is very rich and still controls mining interests all over the Russian Federation from his base here in London. Father and son had a big fall-out over Sam’s reluctance to join the business after he graduated and didn’t speak for several years, but we think the rift has been healed somewhat and they are known to have seen each other several times before junior’s move to Israel.’