It was obvious to Dewar that Tariq had translated an Arabic word he’d heard as ‘pieces’ where ‘fragments’ would have been more correct but Tariq wasn’t a biologist. He’d had no idea what they’d been talking about. The ‘pieces’ just had to be DNA fragments of the smallpox virus. There was no other plausible explanation. The question now was, how many fragments did the Iraqi government men have access to and what had happened to them?
When Tariq had overheard Ali protesting that what they wanted him to do was too dangerous, had he been talking in general terms about the whole idea or specifically what they were asking him to do? Had Ali been approached as one of a number of people in a chain of events, each perhaps doing part of the virus assembly or had he been the final link in the chain, the scientist who would finally join up all the fragments? Whatever it was, it had been enough to push him over the edge into suicide. Could the Iraqis really be at that stage? Was the resurrection of live smallpox really that close?
Another worrying question swam into Dewar’s head. Had Ali committed suicide because he couldn’t face doing something so heinous or because he’d already doneit? The action could have been dictated by guilt. He tried convincing himself that someone in the Malloy lab would have been aware of what he was doing if he’d been working on it in the open lab but the truth was that DNA in a test tube was a colourless liquid regardless of where it had come from. You couldn’t really tell anything by looking at it. You had to establish its sequence to start to make sense of what it was. Even then the code would have to be fed into a computer and compared to the many known DNA sequences held in international scientific databases. Only then could its real identity be established.
Would Hammadi really have risked reconstructing live smallpox virus in the open lab beside his colleagues when he knew that it would have put them all at grave risk? On the other hand, if he had used the high containment facilities in the institute for dealing with dangerous viruses, people would have been aware of it and asked questions about it. This might have forced him to take such a risk. It was not a comforting thought. It was however, the worst possible scenario. Hammadi might have refused to do anything at all. The only thing for sure was that he had killed himself. Guilt or a brave attempt to save his family for pressure?
Thinking back to what Tariq had said before they’d been interrupted, Dewar recalled him saying that Ali had not wanted to take the ‘pieces’, He had not however, suggested that he refused to take them. If Ali had accepted them he must surely have taken them into the institute for storage if nothing else. There was a chance they were still there, sitting in some rack in some fridge, probably innocent looking little plastic tubes. There would have to be a proper examination of the storage space used by Ali Hammadi in Steve Malloy’s lab. and a detailed analysis of the contents.
Dewar’s first instinct was to call a full scale alert but then he reconsidered and thought better of it. As yet there was no proof of the existence of illegal virus fragments or how far the Iraqis had come along the way to reconstituting smallpox. Perhaps the fact that the Iraqi ‘advisors’ were still in the city suggested that they had not got what they wanted otherwise they would surely have been long gone. That was a point, why were they still there? Surely they weren’t hoping to recruit someone else for the job?
Dewar decided to make finding out more about these ‘advisors’ a priority. He’d see Grant about that. He would not push the alarm button just yet. He would wait to see what Grant and Malloy for that matter, could come up with and continue to play it low-key for the moment. He called Karen at her flat when he got in and apologised for not having visited her mother, saying that something had come up.
‘I’ll believe you, thousands wouldn’t,’ said Karen.
‘Believe me,’ said Dewar. ‘I would much rather have spent an evening with your mother, than the one I’ve just had.’
‘Your fears are coming true?’
‘It’s not looking good,’ said Dewar.
‘So you won’t be back tomorrow night then?’
‘I doubt it.’
EIGHT
Grant looked at Dewar long and hard before saying, ‘Are you absolutely sure it’s necessary to tangle with that lot?’
‘I’m sure. What’s the problem?’
‘I know we don’t have full diplomatic relations with Iraq these days but foreigners with any kind of diplomatic status are bad news and these two must have some kind of a deal going. I’ve been down that road before. ‘Bastards can do just about anything they like and get away with it. Maybe one day we’ll get a government who can at least figure out that not all countries fill up their diplomatic corps with gormless, public-school pillocks. We’re the exception rather than the rule. There are some bad buggers out there hiding behind CD plates.’
‘I agree, it’s difficult and I’m not sure what their status is either but I need to find out as much as I can about them. Their names are, Siddiqui and Abbas. The pair of them put pressure on Ali Hammadi to do something for them. I’ve an idea what it was but I need to know whether he did it or not.’
‘And you can’t tell me what it was. Right?’
‘Not right now.’
Grant nodded and sucked his teeth slowly. ‘And if I say no?’
‘I’ll have to go above your head.’
‘Beats me why you didn’t do that in the first place,’ said Grant.
Dewar leaned towards him and said, ‘I thought we could work together. I don’t want to make waves right now in what is a very delicate situation. If I make a mistake and cry wolf where there isn’t one there could be all sorts of unpleasant repercussions, international ones. I could end up being hard-pushed to find work washing dishes.
But you won’t tell me what it’s all about?’
‘Officially I’m here to check that some routine regulations are being complied with. Ali Hammadi’s death was a complicating factor which is leading me to suspect that they have not been complied with. To what extent I’ve yet to find out. Officially, you would be helping me with this.’
‘Regulations,’ said Grant. ‘What sort of stakes are we talking about with these “regulations”?’
‘ On the one hand there could be nothing to worry about. On the other, we could be dealing with something that could affect the whole damned world, cause another war and wipe out millions.’
Grant let out a low whistle.
‘Are you up for it?’
‘I’m in. Can’t see me making superintendent any other way, the way I rub up folks the wrong way round here.’
‘Good. See what you can come up with on Siddiqui and Abbas. I’ll leave you my contact numbers. Get in touch as soon as you have anything. I’m going back to the Institute of Molecular Sciences.’
Dewar didn’t bother going through official channels this time. He simply entered the building behind a group of students and walked past the man on the desk with an air of authority that defied challenge in the untrained. ‘God,’ he thought to himself as the lift started to rise. ‘My grandmother’s coal cellar was more secure than this.
He knocked on the door of the Malloy lab and entered.
‘Hello,’ said Sandra Macandrew. She was alone. ‘I didn’t expect to see you again. Something you forgot?’
‘Is Steve around?’ asked Dewar, choosing to ignore her question.
‘He’s working at home this morning. He took his disks home. He had some paperwork to do for Professor Hutton and the gas board were coming to read his meter. Do you want me to call him?’
Dewar hesitated for a moment before saying. ‘Maybe I’ll go visit him at home. Can you give me his address?’
Sandra hesitated for a moment and Dewar saw her dilemma. He said, ‘If you’d rather, I‘ll go through the proper channels with Professor Hutton. I should have thought.’