Steven raised his eyes to the ceiling and silently mouthed, ‘There is a God.’
As an alternative to shouting yippee, he said, ‘That makes sense,’ as calmly and seriously as he could.
‘The good thing is that there are large stockpiles of vaccine ready to be used, starting with contacts of cases in the city of Mangina where the new outbreak started with 13 confirmed cases,’ Tally continued, ‘but the plan is to create a circle of immunity to cross all likely exit routes from the province while maintaining a safe distance for the volunteers. There’s no question of sending in people to hunt through a wild landscape riddled with groups of lawless bandits to offer vaccination.’
‘Good,’ said Steven... ‘I hope the bottom line is you’re still coming home?’
‘I think it does,’ Tally replied. ‘There are enough volunteers here with the skills needed to vaccinate people and, with no need for targeted area management, I still plan on coming home.’
‘Wonderful,’ said Steven.
‘There is something I’d like you to do for me,’ said Tally.
‘Ask away.’
‘Could you lay your hands on a copy of the 2016 WHO report on the last Ebola outbreak in DRC and check if anyone who received the experimental vaccine at the time died because of it?’
‘Will do, are you going to tell me why?’
‘I’ve become fond of a young teacher here — a very nice intelligent girl — who insists that friends and members of her family died after being given the vaccine, but I seem to remember reading than no deaths had been attributed to the vaccine.’
‘Maybe they already had the disease?’
‘Monique assures me they were perfectly healthy.’
‘And you think there may have been some kind of a cover-up.’
‘I don’t know what to think, the vaccine was very new at the time, but surely they wouldn’t have tried to hide something going awfully wrong like that.’
Unable to offer any reassurance, Steven said, ‘Okay, I’ll check it out... Actually, I thought you already had a copy of that report — you were going to study the spread of the previous outbreak?’
‘I gave it back,’ said Tally, ‘and I don’t want to ask for it again. It’s a long story. Are you going to tell me how your investigation is going?’
‘Some progress,’ said Steven, ‘it looks like Petrov had finished whatever he was doing in Israel before he was murdered. When the Israelis opened up his lab to make it safe, they found everything already sterilised and cleaned up. There was however, a sealed flask awaiting transport to WHO in Geneva, something he had been doing from time to time. Anyway, Israeli Intelligence managed to intercept it before it was collected and pretty soon the guys at Porton Down are going to analyse the contents.’
‘Sounds exciting.’
‘It’s hard to see how that is going to tell us why so many people have died over it.’
‘That’s what makes it exciting.’
‘Maybe you could do something for me, will you be seeing your teacher friend again?’
‘I said I would let her know if I found out anything about the vaccine given to her family.’
‘Did she say who administered it?’ Steven asked.
‘She just called them the aid people.’
‘Ask her if she remembers any names of those involved.’
‘Will do, can I ask why?’
‘It’s a long story...’
‘Touché,’ said Tally.
‘We can exchange our long stories when we’re together again... soon.’
‘A nice ring to it, stay safe.’
‘You too.’
If Steven were not absolutely fed up with the world and his dog declaring that they were on an emotional roller coaster in every other interview on radio or television, he might have been one of them. His fears surrounding the possibility of Tally staying on in DRC and putting herself in yet more danger had largely been dispelled, but the relief he should have felt was being denied to him by the twists and turns of his own investigation expanding to include the infiltration of major world aid agencies by organised crime. He was no longer looking at Russian oligarchs financing a project for which it had been necessary to bring top scientific brains on board, it now involved rogue elements embedded in world aid organisations, one of them a top WHO strategist. Steven rubbed his temples as he tried to figure out how this changed things.
On the positive side, he was no longer working alone. MI6 had given him valuable information on Phillipe Lagarde — the man he had been respecting for his selfless work in the fight against world disease. The fact that he was some kind of criminal had to be fitted into the puzzle. MI6 and the other intelligence services would continue to investigate the involvement of criminals in the ranks of aid providers, particularly in the exploitation of vulnerable people across the globe whenever and wherever disease and disaster struck, but it was still going to be up to him to shine a light on the scientific aspects of what had been going on within his small group.
Not for the first time, he found himself feeling grateful for a personal relationship, in this case his association with Jane Sherman. Their paths had not crossed that often but they respected and trusted each other in a world where that was far from the norm. What was more important was the fact that they understood each other’s jobs and accepted that only a minimum could be shared.
Jane had not really wanted to tell him about the problem with WHO and the involvement of Lagarde, but in the ensuing game of verbal chess, she had accepted that his determination to pursue his own investigation could impact adversely on MI6’s interests and compromised. This was the best and most pragmatic outcome and both understood that. He hoped that Jane’s agreement to keep him in the loop might extend to him being present at Porton when Petrov’s flask was opened.
He had to admit that it did seem likely that US Intelligence would be proved right and a new addictive, synthetic drug, the backbone of modern-day slavery, would be making an appearance. There was one thing however, that he wasn’t comfortable with and made him start looking through his notes for dates until he found what he was looking for.
By the time the people at Beer Sheva had opened up Petrov’s lab with the intention of making it safe, Phillip Lagarde had been murdered so who had the Israelis spoken to at WHO when they called to ask what should be done with the flask? Someone at WHO had told them that the parcel would be picked up, but the intelligence services had beat them to it and stopped that happening
Steven remembered hearing that Petrov had sent material to WHO on more than one occasion so it sounded as if people there must have known about the relationship between Lagarde and Petrov. Lagarde had also been instrumental in securing WHO funds for Petrov, ostensibly to continue his work on vaccines when he decided to move to Beer Sheva, so, it couldn’t have just been a secret arrangement between the two of them... unless of course, there was a difference between what Petrov was supposed to have been doing — designing vaccines — and what he’d actually been up to.
Petrov had worked alone at Beer Sheva, none of his Israeli colleagues had ever had occasion to enter the high security lab he worked in, believing him to be working with deadly viruses, but what about Geneva? Was Lagarde the only one to know what was in the containers sent to them by Petrov and what had happened to the contents after that?