‘Hello Steven, haven’t seen you in ages.’
‘That’s why we’re still friends, Jane.’ He was rewarded by some semblance of a smile.
‘What can I do for you?’
‘We asked the University of Beer Sheva what Samuel Petrov was working on at the time of his murder and they took a long time to come back with “vaccine design”. I wondered if you folks might know a bit more?’
Jane Sherman smiled and said, ‘I don’t think the university is holding anything back, they’re just feeling embarrassed. As it turns out, they’ve no idea what he’s been doing.’
‘What?’ exclaimed Steven, feeling a stab of genuine alarm. ‘How could that happen?’
‘When Beer Sheva University learned that Petrov had expressed a desire to come and work there and that money from WHO would be forthcoming to support him, they provided him with a lab kitted out with what he would need for carrying out molecular biology on dangerous organisms — the haemorrhagic viruses. His stated plan was to disable them by altering parts of their genome so that they would no longer be able to infect people but would still produce antibodies which would act against the real thing when injected into people.’
‘Makes sense,’ Steven said.
‘Apparently there aren’t too many people working on that sort of thing because many of these diseases don’t affect people living in the affluent countries of the world. They’re largely confined to countries which have very little money. Support for research has to come from philanthropy and large charity concerns like WHO and the Red Cross. Beer Sheva was happy to be associated with the work but couldn’t afford to offer Petrov any technical assistance so he had to work alone while he was there. He seemed happy with that, saying that, at least, no one else would be in danger.
‘After the murder, the university had to get together a skilled team to enter Petrov’s lab, disinfect everything, make it safe and recover what they could of Petrov’s notes on what he had been doing and how successful he’d been, only the team didn’t find what they expected. They reported that Petrov must have been planning to leave. There was no trace of what he had been doing although it was clear the apparatus had been used. He had been using restriction enzymes and running acrylamide gels as you would expect for someone cutting and pasting nucleic acids, but everything had been sterilised and cleaned. The fridges and freezers had been emptied of virus stocks and their contents autoclaved so that there were no cultures of live viruses left to work with. There was however, a large circular container containing lots of packing material to protect one small sealed glass flask. The container was addressed to someone at WHO in Geneva and was obviously waiting to be sent off. The team didn’t want to open the flask without having any indication of what was in it so, after discussion with the university authorities, it was decided that WHO be contacted and asked what they would like done with the container. I understand that WHO said they would arrange for its pick-up.’
‘Did the university ask them what was in the flask?’
‘WHO said they didn’t know,’ said Jane.
‘So, why did they arrange for its pick-up?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why didn’t they just ask for it to be put through the steriliser like everything else?’
‘Wanting it back suggests they did know, don’t you think?’ Steven asked.
‘I do, Steven,’ said Jane in condescending fashion, ‘but an alternative explanation might be that the person at WHO being asked the question might genuinely not know, but might also feel that they did not have the authority to authorise its destruction without referring the matter to a higher authority. Haven’t you noticed? People don’t make decisions any more, they avoid them by referring them to someone else. The higher authority will be equally uncertain and call for a meeting, the purpose of which will be to share the blame involved in actually taking the decision. Corporate responsibility I think they call it.’
‘Blame-free guilt,’ said Steven.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, you may very well be right, Jane,’ said Steven, ‘but, as my granny used to say, where there’s doubt... check it out.’
Jane’s demeanour changed. She held out the palm of her hand, a gesture designed to stop Steven who was getting up to leave. ‘Is that what you intend to do?’ she asked.
Steven sank back down slowly, looking for some clue in Jane’s facial expression, but not finding any. ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘is that a problem?’
‘Would it suffice to say we at MI6, would rather you didn’t?’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Steven. His facial expression had become as unyielding as Jane’s. ‘I want to know what Petrov was doing at Beer Sheva. It’s important to my investigation and it looks like I’ll have to go to Geneva to find out.’
‘There’s a danger you will trample all over something we are interested in.’
‘Then I suggest you tell me what that is and I will do my best to avoid doing any such thing.’
‘It’s more important than your... scientific interest,’ said Jane.
‘You missed out the words “little” and “unimportant”,’ said Steven getting to his feet.
‘Wait.’
Steven turned, but kept his hand on the door handle.
‘Please sit down.’
‘Please don’t tell me WHO has weapons of mass destruction,’ said Steven resuming his seat.
‘I’m sorry if I seemed to belittle Sci-Med’s interest. There is more than one investigation going on here and there’s a danger of paths being crossed and many months of work being wasted.’
‘I only know of one and I intend to pursue it.’
‘I can see that. I can even understand why you want to find out what your Ruskie expats have been up to; it’s intriguing, but there’s always a bigger picture...’
Once again, Steven made a move to leave.
‘What do you think of the World Health Organisation?’ Jane asked.
‘Big respect, a huge organisation that has done tremendous good in the world — they wiped out the scourge of smallpox for a start. I’m sure it will have its faults, but all big organisations do.’
‘And the Red Cross?’
‘Much the same.’
‘Med Sans Frontierès?
‘Yes, where are you going with this?’ Steven asked.
‘Nearly all of us think that way... and we’re right, but recently it has become apparent that these organisations have been infiltrated by organised crime and I’m not talking about the occasional wrong un.’
‘Why?’
‘Just think about it, access to hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, not seen by them as vulnerable people, but as a ready supply of drug mules, prostitutes, you name it, an easy way of advancing the interests of crime empires on a big scale.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Unfortunately, yes, the behaviour of some of these interlopers has been giving the game away of late and, if public trust is lost in big aid organisations and funding disappears, it could mean absolute disaster for so many.’
‘Point taken,’ said Steven. ‘How am I going to get in the way?’
‘Phillipe Lagarde,’ said Jane, ‘one of your murder victims.’
‘The WHO strategist.’
Jane nodded. ‘For some time now, he has been a person of interest to the intelligence services, shall we say, a selfless hero who risked life and limb to help the poor unfortunates of the world, and someone we think was doing quite the opposite. He was up to his neck in organised crime.’