'That should make Lumsden happy,' I said. Ogilvie ate a grape. 'He doesn't know. It's still confidential. It hasn't been released publicly yet.' 'Why not?' 'The Minister seems to feel… well, there are reasons why it shouldn't be released yet. Or so he says.'
That saddened me. The bloody politicians with their bloody reasons made me sick to the stomach. The Minister was another Cregar. He had found a power lever and wanted to stick to it. Ogilvie took another grape. 'I asked Starkie when you'd be coming out but he isn't prepared to say. However, when you do I've a new job for you. As you may know, Kerr is retiring in two years. I want to groom you for his job.' Kerr was Ogilvie's second-in-command. He smiled. 'In seven years, when I go, you could be running the department.' I said bluntly, 'Get lost.'
He was not a man who showed astonishment easily, but he did then.
'What did you say?' 'You heard me. Get lost. You can take Kerr's job and your job and stuff them wherever you like. The Minister's backside might be a good place.' 'What the devil's got into you?' he demanded.
'I'll tell you,' I said, 'You were going to do a deal with Cregar.'
'Who said that?' 'Cregar.' 'And you believed him? The man lies as naturally as he breathes.' 'Yes, I believed him because at that point he had no reason to lie. He did proposition you, didn't he?' 'Well, we talked-yes.' I nodded. 'That's why you won't get me back in the department. I'm tired of lies and evasions; I'm tired of self-interest masquerading as patriotism. It came to me when Cregar called me an honest man, not as a compliment but as someone to corrupt. I realized then that he was wrong. How could an honest man do what I did to Ashton?' 'I think you're being over-emotional about this,' Ogilvie said stiffly. 'I'm emotional because I'm a man with feelings and not a bloody robot,' I retorted. 'And now you can take your bloody grapes and get the hell out of here.' He went away moderately unhappy.
CHAPTER FORTY And they all lived happily ever after. The hero married the principal girl, the second hero got the second girl, and they moved out of the poor woodcutter's cottage into the east wing of the king's palace. But this is not a fairy tale. On the day Penny came out of hospital she, Peter Michaelis and I went on a wing-ding in the East End and the three of us became moderately alcoholic and distinctly merry. On the day Gillian arrived back from New York the four of us went on another wing-ding with similar effects. That American plastic surgeon must have been a genius because Gillian's new face was an improvement on the one she had before the acid was thrown.
I was very glad for Peter. The clanging of wedding bells could be heard in the near future. Penny and Gillian were dashing about London denuding the better stores of dresses and frillies for their trousseaux, while I scouted around for a house, introduced it to Penny, and then secured it with a cash deposit against the time the lawyers had finished their expensive wrangling over the deeds. It was all very exhilarating. Ten days before the wedding I felt it incumbent on me to go back to see Starkie. He heard what I had to say and frowned, then took me into a laboratory where I was subjected to a battery of tests. He told me to go away and return in a week. On the day I went back I read of Cregar's death in The Times. The obituary was sickening. Described as a faithful public servant who had served his country with no thought of self for many years, he was lauded as an example for coming generations to follow. I threw the paper out of the train window and was immediately sorry; that sort of stuff could pollute the countryside very seriously. Starkie was serious, too, when I saw him, and I said, 'It's bad news.' 'Yes, it is," he said directly. 'It's cancer.' It was a blow, but I had half-expected it.
'How long do I have?' He shrugged. 'Six months to a year, I'd say.
Could be longer, but not much.' I walked to his office window and looked out. I can't remember what I saw there. 'Cregar's dead,' I said. 'Same thing?' 'Yes.' 'How?' Starkie sighed. 'That damned fool, Carter, was doing shotgun experiments. That means he was chopping up DNA molecules into short lengths, putting them into E. coli, and standing back to see what happened. It's not a bad technique if you know what you're doing and take the proper precautions.' 'He was taking precautions,' I said. 'The stuff got loose because of my own damned foolishness.' 'He wasn't,' snapped Starkie. 'Cregar was putting pressure on him-wanting fast results. He couldn't wait for a consignment of genetically weakened E. coli from the States so he used the normal bug. There was no biological containment at all. The stuff went straight into your gut and started to breed happily.' 'To cause cancer?' It didn't seem likely. 'I'll try to explain this as simply as possible,' said Starkie. 'We believe that in the genetic material of all normal cells there are genes which can produce tumour-forming chemicals, but they are normally repressed by other genes. Now, if you do a shotgun experiment and introduce a short length of DNA into E. coli you're in danger of introducing a tumour gene without the one that represses it. That's what's happened to you. The E. coli in your gut was producing tumour-forming chemicals.' 'But you said the E. coli coming out of me was normal,' I objected. 'I know I did, and so it was. One of the most difficult things to do in these experiments is to get a new strain to breed true. They're very unstable. What happened was that this strain began to breed back to normal E. coli almost immediately. But it was in your gut long enough to do the damage.' 'I see.' I felt a sudden chill. 'What about Penny?' 'She's all right.
That was a different bug entirely. We made sure of that.' I said, 'Thank you, Dr. Starkie. You've been very direct and I appreciate it.
What's the next step?' He rubbed his jaw. 'If you hadn't come to see me I'd have sent for you-on the basis of what happened to Lord Cregar.
This is a type of cancer we haven't come across before; at least it hasn't been reported in the literature in this particular form. Cregar went very fast, but that may have been because of his age. Older cellular structures are more susceptible to cancers. I think you have a better chance.' But not much better, I thought. Starkie spoke in the flat, even tone used by doctors when they want to break the bad news slowly. He scribbled on a sheet of paper. 'Go to this man. He's very good and knows about your case. He'll probably put you on tumour-reducing drugs and, possibly, radiation therapy.' He paused.
'And put your affairs in order as any sensible man should.' I thanked him again, took the address, and went back to London where I heard another instalment of bad news. Then I told Penny. I had no need to give her Starkie's explanation because she grasped that immediately.
It was her job, after all. I said, 'Of course, the marriage is off.'
'Oh, no; Malcolm!' And so we had another row-which I won. I said, 'I have no objection to living in sin. Come live with me and be my love.
I know a place in the south of Ireland where the mountains are green and the sea is blue when the sun shines, which it does quite often, and green when it's cloudy and the rollers come in from the Atlantic.