Steven had taken to using standard precautions when under threat. He would enter and leave the Home Office at varying times and by using a number of different access and exit points. Although Macmillan hadn’t said as much, he knew that he was under police surveillance although not overtly so. He had spotted his minders on occasion, as was inevitable as he was keeping his own look-out for possible problems. He chose not to acknowledge their presence — something that might be construed as insulting.
Steven closed the door of the flat and stood with his back against it, embracing the silence at the end of a bloody awful day. Only, it wasn’t the end; he still had to explain to Tally why he hadn’t answered her call last night and then bring her up to speed with what had been going on. He feared it would be a conversation they’d had before.
‘Thank God,’ said Tally when Steven answered immediately. ‘I’m thinking something must have gone very wrong yesterday?’
‘It did,’ said Steven, sounding as tired as he felt. ‘Our Russian friends decided that I and MI6 had to be discouraged from interfering in what they are up to.’
‘Was violence involved?’
‘Yes.’
‘Serious?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’d rather not talk about it?’
‘Not right now.’
‘Understood,’ said Tally softly, ‘There’s no real need for me to tell you to take care, but I’m going to do it anyway.’
‘And on this occasion, I have to say that to you too. ‘Has anything changed?’
‘I can’t say that it has, there is very little information that can be trusted emerging from Kivu Province although the government is insisting that the outbreak is being contained.’
‘Let’s hope they’re right.’
‘You asked about the names of people involved in a vaccination schedule that went terribly wrong according to my friend, Monique. The WHO official in charge was someone named Lagarde... Hello, are you still there?’
‘Yes, sorry, you took me by surprise. Lagarde was the murdered WHO official in my investigation.’
‘I thought the name was familiar, but hearing it out of context, it didn’t ring a bell.’
‘His last posting was to Afghanistan but I remember reading that he was in DRC a few years before that at the time of the big Ebola outbreak.’
‘Steven, you haven’t told me what was in the flask that Porton were going to analyse?’
‘Salt water.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘ ’Fraid so.’
‘Oh dear, things are really not going well, are they?’
‘You could say. By the way, I looked up the report you asked me to. Officially there were no deaths attributed to the experimental vaccine back in 2014-16.’
Tally sighed and said, ‘I can’t say things are going wonderfully well for me either. Monique is a bright girl and she’s adamant the vaccine killed several members of her friends and family.’
‘I know she maintains they were perfectly healthy when they got the vaccine, but it could have been a close-run thing; they could have been incubating the disease at the time and it had just gone a bit too far for the vaccine to work.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Tally after some hesitation. ‘That would be the simplest explanation.’
‘Then go for it.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Take a day off,’ said Steven, ‘head for a beach, take a long walk.’
Thoughts of Phillipe Lagarde decided to accompany Steven on his south coast beach walk. On the face of it, it seemed a bizarre coincidence that his name should crop up in connection with Ebola vaccination in DRC in Tally’s neck of the woods, but the more he thought about it, the more unsurprising it became. Whatever else the man became involved in, he was working as a WHO vaccination strategist in DRC at a time when Ebola was rampaging through the country. He remembered reading that in the impromptu CV that Jean had composed for him a few weeks ago and feeling admiration for the man. He’d gone from the hell of fighting one disease in DRC to combating another, Polio, in the towering mountain passes between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But then, came his murder and the news from the intelligence people that Lagarde was implicated in the infiltration of major aid agencies by organised crime. He might be dead, thought Steven, but he had ruined an otherwise decent beach walk.
Tally decided to drive over to the regional aid headquarters for Equateur Province to see if she could get some clear indication of what was happening in Kivu as none of her nearest fellow area managers seemed to know. She arrived to find that Marcus Altman, the WHO regional manager was currently travelling round Equateur to make sure that they really were clear of the disease and wasn’t expected back for three days. She explained that she was seeking information about the situation in the north and was met with shrugs and apologies. One Red Cross man said, ‘It’s every bit as bad as we thought: the last reliable figure we had was 130 deaths around the city of Beni and people were fleeing south.’
A familiar voice said, ‘Hi.’ And Tally turned to find Hans Weber, Altman’s assistant and the young man who, along with Mary Kelly, the MSF nurse, had escorted her through her first few days in DRC.
‘Hello, nice to see you,’ said Tally. ‘You’re not out on the road with Marcus?’
‘No, I stayed to look after the next batch of vaccine due in today. Was there something you needed?’
Tally shook her head, ‘No, I was looking for information about what’s happening up in Kivu. I heard the outbreak was being contained, then I heard it wasn’t, then someone said it was spreading at an alarming rate.’
‘It’s incredibly difficult to get information out of what’s virtually a war zone,’ said Weber. ‘People are afraid of the disease, but they’re also afraid of the rebels. On top of that they’re afraid of foreigners coming into their lives and doing things they don’t understand so they start doing things like hiding their dead.’
Tally’s eyes opened wide.
‘They’ve heard tales of foreigners — us — coming in and taking away loved ones and burning them so they hide them and, of course, end up infecting themselves. If time is not on your side and people don’t speak the same language, there’s a complete lack of communication and people doing what is exactly the right thing to do can look absolutely dreadful.’
‘Of course.’
‘Many are fleeing — or trying to flee but many will be killed by rebel groups if they come across them. If they make it to the south, people there don’t want anything to do with them and some have started fleeing themselves, alarmed by the rumours of mass invasion from the north. The mines are grinding to a halt as the miners decide it’s not worth putting their lives at risk by hanging around.’
‘You said rumours of a mass invasion, do really you think that’s likely?’
‘No one can say for sure. Perhaps rumours are worse than reality. The government school of thought is that the outbreak will be over within three to four months.’
‘So, the bottom line is that no one knows?’
‘Correct.’
‘There was one thing I wanted to ask Marcus about, perhaps you can help me. The official WHO report on the big outbreak in 14–16 said that no one died through use of the experimental vaccine.’
‘That’s right,’ said Weber. ‘It’s the same one we’re still using.’
Tally adopted a pained expression. ‘It’s just that Monique Barbet, the teacher in the village you took me too when I first arrived, is sure that the vaccine was responsible for the deaths of several friends and members of her family.’