I nodded, acknowledgement or apology, he could take it how he liked, and opened the fibre case. I straightened, gas-suit in hand, and felt my arm gripped. Dr. Oregon. The dark eyes were intense behind the thick glasses, the swarthy face tight with worry.
"Don't go in there, Mr. Cavell." His voice was low, urgent, almost desperate. "I beg of you, don't go in there."
I said nothing, just looked at him. I liked Gregori, as did all his colleagues without exception. But Gregori wasn't in Mordon because he was a likeable man. He was there because he was reputed to be one of the most brilliant micro-biologists in Europe. An Italian professor of medicine, he'd been in Mordon just over eight months. The biggest catch Mordon had ever made, and it had been touch and go at that: it had taken cabinet conferences at the highest levels before the Italian government agreed to release him for an unspecified period. And if a man like Dr. Gregori was worried, maybe it was time that I was getting worried too.
"Why shouldn't he go in there?" Hardanger demanded. "I take it you must have very powerful reasons, Dr. Gregori?"
"He has indeed," Cliveden said. His face was as grave as his voice. "No man knows more about number one lab than Dr. Gregori. We were speaking of this a short time ago. Dr. Gregori admits candidly that he's terrified and I'd be lying if I didn't say that he's got me pretty badly frightened, too. If Dr. Gregori had his way he'd cut through the block on either side of number one lab, built a five foot thick concrete wall and roof round it and seal it off forever. That's how frightened Dr. Gregori is. At the very least he wants this lab kept closed for a month."
Hardanger gave Cliveden his usual dead-pan took, transferred it to Gregori, then turned to his two assistants. "Down the corridor till you're out of earshot, please. For your own sakes, the less you know of this the better. You, too, Lieutenant. Sorry." He waited until Wilkinson and the two men had gone, looked quizzically at Gregori and said, "So you don't want number one lab opened, Dr. Gregori? Makes you number one on our suspect list, you know."
"Please. I do not feel like smiling. And I do not feel like talking here." He glanced quickly at Clandon, looked as quickly away. "I'm not a policeman — or a soldier. If you would—"
"Of course." Hardanger pointed to a door a few yards down the passage. "What's in there?"
"Just a store-room. I am so sorry to be so squeamish-"
"Come on." Hardanger led the way and we went inside. Oblivious of the "No smoking" signs, Gregori had lit a cigarette and was smoking it in rapid, nervous puffs.
"I must not waste your time," he said. "I will be as brief as I can. But I must convince you." He paused, then went on slowly. "This is the nuclear age. This is the age when tens of millions go about their homes and their work in daily fear and dread of the thermo-nuclear holocaust which, they are all sure, may come any day, and must come soon. Millions cannot sleep at night for they dream too much — of our green and lovely world and their children lying dead in it."
He drew deeply on his cigarette, stubbed it out, at once lit another. He said through the drifting smoke, "I have no such fears of a nuclear Armageddon and I sleep well at nights. Such war will never come. I listen to the Russians rattling their rockets, and I smile. I listen to the Americans rattling theirs, and I smile again. For I know that all the time the two giant powers are shaking their sabres in the scabbards, while they're threatening each other with so many hundreds of megaton-carrying missiles, they are not really thinking of their missiles at all. They are thinking, gentlemen, of Mordon, for we — the British, I should say — have made it our business to ensure that the great nations understand exactly what is going on behind the fences of Mordon." He tapped the brickwork beside him. "Behind this very wall here. The ultimate weapon. The world's one certain guarantee of peace. The term 'ultimate weapon' has been used too freely, has come almost to lose its meaning. But the term, in this case, is precise and exact. If by 'ultimate' one means total annihilation."
He smiled, a little self-consciously.
"I'm being melodramatic, a little? Perhaps. My Latin blood shall we say? But listen carefully, gentlemen, and try to understand the full significance of what I'm going to say. Not the General and Colonel, of course, they already know: but you, Superintendent, and you, Mr. Cavell."
"We have developed in Mordon here over forty different types of plague germs. I will confine myself to two. One of them is a derivative of the botulinus toxin — which we had developed in World War II. As a point of interest, a quarter of a million troops in England were inoculated against this toxin just before D-Day and I doubt whether any of them know to this day what they were inoculated against."
"We have refined this toxin into a fantastic and shocking weapon compared to which even the mightiest hydrogen bomb is a child's toy. Six ounces of this toxin, gentlemen, distributed fairly evenly throughout the world, would destroy every man, woman and child alive on this planet to-day. No flight of fancy." His voice was weighted with heavy emphasis, his face still and sombre. "This is simple fact. Give me an airplane and let me fly over London on a windless summer afternoon with no more than a gramme of botulinus toxin to scatter and by evening seven million Londoners would be dead. A thimbleful in its water reservoirs and London would become one vast channel house. If God does not strike me down for using the term 'ideal' in this connection, then this is the ideal form of germ warfare. The botulinus toxin oxidises after twelve hours exposure to the atmosphere and becomes harmless. Twelve hours after country A releases a few grammes of botulinus over country B it can send its soldiers in without any fear of attack by either the toxin or the defending soldiers. For the defending soldiers would be dead. And the civilians, the men, the women, the children. They would ail be dead. All dead."
Gregori fumbled in his pocket for another cigarette. His hands were shaking and he made no attempt to conceal the fact. He was probably unaware of it.
I said, "But you used the term 'ultimate weapon', as if we alone possessed it. Surely the Russians and Americans…"
"They have it too. We know where Russia's laboratories in the Urals are. We know where the Canadians manufacture it — the Canadians were leaders in the field until recently— and it's no secret that there are four thousand scientists working on a crash programme in Fort Detrick in America to produce even more deadlier poisons, so hurried a crash programme that we know that scientists have died and eight hundred of them fallen ill over the past few years. They have all failed to produce this deadlier poison. Britain has succeeded which is why the eyes of the world are on Mordon."
" Is it possible?" Hardanger's tone was dry but his face was set. "A deadlier poison than this damn' botulinus? Seems kind of superfluous to me."
"Botulinus has its drawback," Gregori said quietly. "From a military viewpoint that is. Botulinus you must breathe or swallow to become infected. It is not contagious. Also, we suspect that a few countries may have produced a form of vaccine against even the refined type of drug we have developed here. But there is no vaccine on earth to counteract the newest virus we have produced — and it's as contagious as a bush-fire."
"This other virus is a derivative of the polio virus — infantile paralysis, if you will — but a virus the potency of which has been increased a million times by — well, the methods don't matter and you wouldn't understand. What does matter is this: unlike botulinus, this new polio virus is indestructible — extremes of heat and cold, oxidisation and poison have no effect upon it and its life span appears to be indefinite, although we believe it impossible — we hope it impossible— that any virus could live for more than a month in an environment completely hostile to growth and development; unlike botulinus it is highly contagious, as well as being fatal if swallowed or breathed; and, most terrible of all, we have been unable to discover a vaccine for it. I myself am convinced that we can never discover a vaccine against it." He smiled without humour. "To this virus we have given a highly unscientific name, but one that describes it perfectly — the Satan Bug. It is the most terrible and terrifying weapon mankind has ever known or ever will know."