Still carrying one of the volumes, Steven walked over and tapped Liam on the shoulder, saying in a low voice, ‘I thought it was you. How are you doing?’
Liam turned and looked up. ‘Oh, hi. I’m okay. What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you, actually,’ Steven confessed. ‘Do you think we could have a word?’
Liam looked vaguely uncertain. ‘Maybe this isn’t the best place for a conversation?’
The look being given to them by a serious-looking young girl in the neighbouring carrel added weight to this assertion. Steven offered up an apologetic smile and said to Liam, ‘C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch.’
Once out into the noise of the traffic, he asked if Liam knew a good pub in the area.
‘The Talisman’s okay.’
‘Lead on.’
It was early; they had no trouble finding a corner table where sunlight played on a painting up on the wall of Nelson’s ship at Trafalgar. Steven sipped a Czech lager and asked, ‘Any word about your future?’
Liam wiped the Guinness froth from his top lip and replied, ‘It’s all a bit of a mess at the moment. I was really into the project I had with Tom so I’m reluctant to stray too far from it but I can see the point of other supervisors who’d want me to work on something they’re interested in. Apart from that, funding’s going to be a problem. I’ve used up a whole year of my three year grant and there’s no way of getting that back if I were to start out on something new.’
Steven nodded. ‘How about the others in the group?’
‘At the moment, we’ve been told to carry on as normal but that's just to give the suits time to decide what they’re going to do about us. Mind you, I heard one of them say to Dan Hausman that his position had been "stabilised" whatever that meant.’
I’ll bet it has, thought Steven. The intelligence services would have seen to that.
‘So what is it you wanted to see me about?’ asked Liam.
Steven paused to let the waitress put down the plates she’d arrived with. She smiled. ‘Can I get any sauces for you?’
Steven shook his head. Liam asked for ketchup.
‘Do you remember telling me where Dan had sent the blood samples I was interested in when he had a… lapse of memory?’
‘Sure.’
‘You remembered the name of the person he’d sent them to, Dr Neville Henson.’
‘That’s right. I saw the label.’
‘Did you see the address?’
Liam smiled and put down his fork. He’d been eating American style with fork only. ‘So that’s what this is about. Sure I did. It was Porton Down.’
‘I take it you know what that place is all about?’
Liam smiled. ‘It’s our defence establishment… keeps us all safe.’
‘Didn’t it strike you as odd?’
‘Lots of things struck me as odd in Tom’s lab. That was just one more.’
This was music to Steven’s ears. ‘Good. I want to hear about all of them, starting with what you thought when you saw the Porton address.’
Liam sighed before saying, ‘I suppose I thought the blood samples must contain something dangerous if they were being referred to a place like Porton.’
‘Did you have any other reason to think that?’
Liam moved his head from side to side to indicate uncertainty. ‘I’ve thought for some time that something strange has been going on in the lab, ever since Dan arrived.’
‘Like what?’
‘Dan didn’t behave like your usual new post-doc — I mean a bit deferential and that. It was as if he was Tom’s equal, if you know what I mean. The pair of them definitely had something going on.’
‘And you’ve no idea what?’
Liam shook his head. ‘No, but I got the impression that Dan had discovered something important and the pair of them were keeping it a secret from the rest of us. Normally, we would have had a group meeting about who was doing what and we’d all have our say but that didn’t happen. Outsiders used to come to the lab, though guys in suits, and talk to Tom and Dan in private. The rest of us used to josh Dan about it but he never said what it was all about.’
‘Dan is CIA,’ said Steven, judging the moment to be right.
Liam paused while taking a mouthful, leaving his fork in mid-air. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ he whispered. ‘You’re kidding me.’
‘He came to you via a fake pharmaceutical company used by our American cousins after having worked at Fort Detrick — the American Porton.’
Liam lost interest in his food and sat shaking his head.
The waitress appeared. ‘Is everything all right for you?’ she inquired.
Steven gave her a quick smile. ‘Very nice.’
Liam looked up at Steven. ‘And now the million dollar question: why are you telling me this?’
‘I need your help. I want to know what’s been going on in the North lab and, if you’re right, I want to know what it is that Dan has discovered.’
Liam chose to resume eating while he considered and Steven did likewise.
‘All finished?’ asked the waitress. Both men sat back to let her clear the table. ‘Will you be requiring any sweets or coffees?’
‘Espresso for me,’ said Steven.
Liam opted for the same. He could see that Steven was waiting for a response but he was struggling to put his thoughts into words. ‘If Dan is CIA and Porton Down is involved, then surely our governments know exactly what’s been going on. I mean, it’s their thing. Where exactly do you come in? What’s it got to do with Sci-Med?’
‘I need you to trust me.’
The cloud of suspicion darkened.
‘Our government thinks it knows what’s been going on… but it doesn’t. I think they’re being played for a patsy.’
Liam took a deep breath and sat back as the coffee arrived. ‘And so they need Dr Steven Dunbar of the Sci-Med Inspectorate to put them right?’
‘I also have a personal interest,’ said Steven, putting his final card on the table, hoping it would capture Liam’s interest. ‘Somewhere in this whole mess someone thought it was a good idea to murder my friend Simone Ricard, the aid worker who sent you the blood samples. It’s my intention to show them… it really wasn’t.’
Liam took note of the look on Steven’s face. ‘Well, I’m fucking glad it wasn’t me,’ he murmured before taking a sip of his coffee. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. ‘Count me in.’
Steven relaxed a little and sipped his own coffee. ‘I can’t promise you the PhD placement of your dreams,’ he said, ‘but you won’t have any grant money problems, I promise. Sci-Med will see to that.’
‘Cheers. Sci-Med doesn’t exactly do things by the book, does it?’
‘Let’s say we cherish our independence.’
‘What is it you want me to do?’
‘I’ll need access to your lab out of hours and I need advice about where to look to get information about what Hausman has been up to. I’m assuming Tom North’s stuff will have been cleared out?’
‘The suits did that quite quickly. Why don’t you let me have a sniff around? I’m better placed than anyone else.’
‘Because I don’t want you doing anything that could damage your career… or worse.’
Liam was left to dwell on what ‘worse’ might be for a few moments. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he agreed, ‘but I’ll keep my ears and eyes open. By the way, it may be irrelevant but blood samples weren’t the only thing your friend Simone sent in the package to the lab.’