And when Ogilvie told me it was empty I didn't believe him. It was only when he offered to let one of my forensic chaps look at the vault that I accepted the fact.' He looked up. 'You're a clever man. I never thought of the railway. I ought to have done. Ashton wasn't the man to fool about with toy trains.' Now Cregar had started to talk he positively flowed. I suppose he thought there was no reason to keep his silence. It was a sort of deathbed confession. I said, 'What I can't understand was how you engineered Mayberry's acid attack-and why. That's the bit that seems senseless.' 'It was senseless,' said Cregar. 'I had nothing to do with it. I didn't even know Mayberry existed until the police tracked him down. Do you remember when you appeared before the interdepartmental committee, Ogilvie said something about you "exploding Ashton out of Stockholm"? Well, I exploded him out of England.' 'How?' He shrugged. 'Opportunism combined with planning. I'd been wanting to have a dig at Ashton for a long time. I wanted to get him out of that house so I could get into that vault. I thought whatever he had would be ripe. I'd already made preparations-rented the flat and opened the bank account in Stockholm, got the Israeli passport, and so on. All I needed was a trigger. Then along came that maniac, Mayberry-most opportunely. I got Benson to panic Ashton, talking of threats to the other girl, and so on. Benson told him my department couldn't cope with that sort of thing unless Ashton got out, that we were prepared to help, and that we had a safe hideaway for him, which of course we had. And after all that the damned vault was empty.' 'But why did Benson kill Ashton?' 'Standing orders from thirty years ago,' said Cregar simply. 'Ashton wasn't to be allowed to go back to the Russians. If there was a chance of him falling into Russian hands Benson was to kill him. Benson had every reason to think you were Russians.' 'Jesus!' I said. 'What sort of man was Benson to kill Ashton after being with him thirty years?' Cregar gave me a lopsided smile. 'He had gratitude, I suppose; and personal loyalty-too' I remembered my musings in the dark room and, out of curiosity, said, 'Cregar, why did you do all this?' He looked at me in surprise. 'A man must leave his mark on the world.' I felt chilled.
There wasn't much I wanted to know after that, but, the dam now broken, Cregar rambled on interminably, and I was glad when the telephone rang. It was Ogilvie. 'There'll be an RAF helicopter on its way with a medical team. Lumsden thinks you're right about Porton and he's made the arrangements.' He paused. 'He also wants me to pass on his apologies-I don't know why.' 'I do. Thank him for me. When will the chopper get here?' 'They're assembling the team now. I'd say six hours. How's Miss Ashton?' 'I don't know,' I said bitterly. 'I can't get to her. She's in a coma. You can tell that to Lumsden, too.'
Ogilvie was inclined to talk but I cut him off. I wasn't in the mood for that. Half an hour later the phone rang again and I found Archie Ferguson on the line. 'There's someone called Starkie wants to talk to the man Carter. Shall I let him?' 'Let me talk to Starkie.' The earphone crackled and a deep voice said, 'Richard Starkie here-is that Dr. Carter?' 'Malcolm Jaggard here. Who are you?' 'I'm a doctor speaking from Porton Down. Are you one of the infected men?' 'Yes.'
'Any symptoms starting to show?' 'Not yet.' 'If Carter manufactured this bug he'll know more about it than anyone. I need the information.' 'Right,' I said. 'If you don't get satisfaction from him let me know. Are you on the line, Archie?' 'Aye.' 'Let them talk. If Carter wants persuading I'm sure you know what to do.' They came for us seven hours later, dressed like spacemen in plastic clothing with self-contained breathing apparatus. They put us in plastic envelopes whole and entire, plugged in an air supply and sealed us up. We stopped in the airlock and the envelopes and themselves were drenched with a liquid, then we were carried out to the helicopter where I found Penny already installed in her own envelops. She was still unconscious.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE A month later I was feeling pretty chipper because Starkie had given me a clean bill of health. 'For three weeks now we've inspected every damned E. coli bug that's come out of you and they're all normal. I don't know why you're still lying around here. What do you think this is, a doss house?' He hadn't always been as cheerful as that. At the beginning I was placed in a sterile room and untouched by human hand for the next two weeks. Everything that was done to me was done by remote control. Later they told me that a team of thirty doctors and nurses was working on me alone. Penny did better. For her they apparently mobilized the entire medical resources of the United Kingdom, plus sizeable chunks from the United States and the Continent, with a little bit from Australia. The bug she had was different from the one I'd caught, and it was a real frightener. It got the medical world into a dizzy tizzy and, although they were able to cure her, they wanted to make sure that the bug, whatever it was, was completely eradicated. So I came out of Porton Down a month before her. Starkie once said soberly, 'If she'd have been left another day with the minimal attention she was getting I don't think we could have done it.' That made me think of Carter and I wondered what was being done about him. I never found out. When I came out of purdah but before I was discharged I went to see her. I couldn't kiss her, or even touch her, but we could speak separated by a pane of glass, and she seemed cheerful enough. I told her something of what had happened, but not everything. Time enough for that when she was better. Then I said, 'I want you out of here pretty damned quick. I want to get married.' She smiled brilliantly. 'Oh, yes, Malcolm.' 'I can't fix a day because of that bloody man Starkie,' I complained. 'He's likely to keep you in here forever, investigating the contents of your beautiful bowels.' She said, 'How would you like a double wedding? I had a letter from Gillian in New York. Peter Michaelis flew over and proposed to her. She was lying in bed with her left arm strapped to her right cheek and swaddled in bandages when he asked her. She thought it was very funny.' 'I'll be damned!' 'It will be a little time yet. We all have to get out of our hospitals. Is four months too long to wait?' 'Yes,' I said promptly. 'But I'll wait.' I didn't ask anyone how Cregar was doing because I didn't care. On the day I came out of the sterile room Ogilvie came to see me, bearing the obligatory pound of grapes. I received him with some reserve. He asked after my health and I referred him to Starkie, then he said, 'We got the tape cassette after it had been decontaminated. Cregar won't be able to wriggle out of this one.' I said, 'Had any success with Ashton's computer programs?' 'Oh, my God, they're fantastic. Everyone has claimed the man was a genius and he's proved it.' 'How?' Ogilvie scratched his head. 'I don't know if I can explain-I'm no scientist-but it seems that Ashton has done for genetics what Einstein did for physics. He analysed the DNA molecule in a theoretical way and came up with a series of rather complicated equations. By applying these you can predict exactly which genes go where and why, and which genetic configurations are possible or not possible. It's a startling breakthrough; it's put genetics on a firm and mathematical grounding.'