turning back. He swallowed and looked away. ‘So that’s it, then,’ he said.
Vance cleared his throat unnecessarily and said, ‘Not quite, I’m afraid. There is one other problem.’
Grossart felt as if he were already on overload. He badly needed to go to the lavatory. ‘What other problem?’ he croaked.
‘The routine blood samples you sent in from the people working on the Snowball project…’
‘What about them?’
‘Jerry here re-tested them for our little problem as soon as he knew about it. Two came back positive.’
‘You’re telling me that two of my people are at risk from this damned thing?’
‘It’s a possibility,’ said Klein.
‘So what the hell do we do?’
‘We can’t risk them falling ill here and people putting two and two together,’ said Vance. ‘With your co- operation, we’ll transfer them immediately — just as a precaution, you understand. They’ll have the best of care, should they need it. I promise.’
‘And what do they tell their families?’ asked Grossart.
‘Simply that their project demands that they carry out some work at one of our field stations, say the one in North Wales. We’ll invent something for them to do in order to keep them there, out of the way, until we know they’re in the clear. We’ll sweeten the deal with money — double their British salary for the duration, if you like. That’s the least we could do.’
‘The very least,’ said Grossart. ‘Who are these people?’
Klein looked at his notes. ‘Amy Patterson and Peter Doig.’
‘Know them?’ asked Vance.
‘Of course I know them,’ snapped Grossart, his nerves getting the better of his natural deference. ‘Patterson’s been a post-doc with us for the best part of three years. Doig’s a medical technician who joined us from one of the local hospital labs about nine months ago. Both are good people.’ He got up. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I really must
ONE
British Airways Flight, Ndanga-London Heathrow
Humphrey James Barclay had not been feeling well for the past few days, and it was making him irritable. Not even the fact that he was flying home, after what had seemed an interminable working visit to Central Africa, could compensate for it.
‘Ye gods!’ he muttered under his breath as the stewardess discovered that she had run out of tonic and mouthed her request with exaggerated lip movement to a colleague further down the aisle, followed by the standard British Airways smile. ‘Won’t be a moment, sir. Ice and a slice?’
Barclay nodded, biting his tongue as he seethed inwardly that she could run out of the stuff after serving only three rows.
Half a dozen small tins of tonic were duly delivered by a colleague, and the stewardess handed Barclay his drink. He took it without acknowledgement and hurriedly snapped open the tonic to splash a little into the gin. He downed it in two large gulps and put his head back on the seat to close his eyes for a moment. The burning sensation of the alcohol in his throat was helping, but he still felt unpleasantly hot and ached all over. The muscles in his arm hurt when he reached up to increase the airflow from the overhead vent, causing him to grimace and beads of sweat to break out on his forehead. He tugged angrily at his shirt collar and found that the button defied his attempt to undo it. This brought on another wave of frustration and he yanked at it so hard that the button shot off and hit the back of the seat in front before spinning off somewhere. But he had achieved his objective, and he didn’t bother looking for the button before putting his head back on the rest. The smartly dressed woman in the seat next to him concentrated unseeingly on her magazine and studiously pretended that she hadn’t noticed anything amiss.
Don’t make it flu, Barclay prayed silently as he closed his eyes again. Please don’t make it flu. If I don’t have my report on Sir Bruce bloody Collins’s desk by tomorrow teatime I can kiss my bloody career goodbye. From Foreign Office to dole office in the blink of an eye; now you see him, now you don’t. Sweet Jesus, Marion will just love that, her and her poxy stuck-up family.
Barclay rolled his head from side to side, fighting against growing nausea and dizziness. ‘Christ, give me a break,’ he murmured, as he persistently failed to find a comfortable position. Just a couple of days, dammit, and then I can take to my bed for a week — a bloody month, if necessary. He tried concentrating on what he was going to say in his report, mind over matter. Don’t bloody go, he concluded bitterly. No one in their right mind should go to that bloody hellhole called Ndanga. The whole damned country is run by a bunch of two-bit crooks who are more interested in opening Swiss bank accounts than in doing anything to help the people they pretend to represent. Foreign aid would turn into Mercedes cars and Armani suits before you could say Abracadabra.
That was what Barclay wanted to say, but of course he wouldn’t. It wasn’t the job of a junior official at the Foreign Office to formulate policy. That had already been decided for Ndanga. HM Government was extending the hand of friendship and good fellowship. It was offering aid, not for the usual reason that Ndanga had oil or vital minerals that we wanted but because it had an airstrip and associated facilities in a strategically important position. The Ministry of Defence had decided that HM forces might find that very useful if things were to get out of hand in countries to the south, as they seemed destined to in the not too distant future. A generous financial package had been agreed, and the Foreign Secretary himself would be going there in the next few weeks to give the new regime the UK seal of approval. Barclay had been sent out to Ndanga to smooth the way and make sure that the arrangements for the visit were progressing satisfactorily. Mustn’t have the Foreign Secretary running out of toilet paper in darkest Africa.
Barclay tugged open another button on his shirt as he felt a trickle of sweat run down his cheek.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ came the quiet, solicitous enquiry from the woman next to him.
Barclay turned his head to look at her but had difficulty focusing. She seemed to be framed in a halo of brightly coloured lights. ‘A bit of flu coming on, I think,’ he replied stoically.
‘Bad luck,’ said the woman, returning to her magazine, but almost visibly shrinking away from him, and putting her hand to her mouth, more as a psychological barrier than any practical one. ‘Perhaps you should ask the stewardess for an aspirin.’
Barclay nodded. ‘Maybe I will.’ He gave a symbolic glance over his shoulder and added tersely, ‘When she’s ready.’
Still struggling against the odds, he opened his briefcase with great effort and took out a sheaf of papers. He felt he had to jot down some points he wanted to stress in his report. ‘Security at Ndanga’s main airport is poor,’ he wrote. ‘Recommend that-’ He stopped writing as a large drop of blood fell from his nose and spread on the page. He was mesmerised by the sight of scarlet on white for a moment, before murmuring under his breath, ‘Shit, what bloody next?’
He brought out a tissue from his pocket and held it to his nose in time to catch the next drop. He kept the tissue there as he put his head back again on the rest. God, he felt ill. Pressure was building up inside his head and making his eyeballs hurt and now another sensation… dampness… He felt wet; his trousers were wet. He put his hand slowly between his legs and got confirmation. Oh my God, the humiliation of it all. Oh my God, not that — anything but that. The flush that came to his cheeks did nothing to help lower his already climbing temperature. But how could he have wet himself without knowing it? He pondered this through a haze of discomfort. He contracted his sphincter muscles and found that he still seemed to have power over them, so how could he have done? God! He was never going to live this down. He started making plans to limit his embarrassment. When they landed he would stay in his seat until all the other passengers had disembarked… Yes, that was what he’d do. With a bit of luck the cabin crew would not even remember who had been sitting in that seat.
His jumbled train of thought was again interrupted as the pain in his head became almost unbearable, but through it something registered about the wet feeling between his legs. It wasn’t just wet, it was… sticky. He withdrew his hand and half opened one eye to look at it. It was covered in blood.
The sight of Barclay’s bloody hand spurred the woman next to him into action. She gasped and her hand shot
