Pandemic

Richter glanced both ways as he emerged from the doorway, pistol in one hand and a cumbersome bunch of Uzis, Glocks and magazines clutched to his chest by the other. He nodded to Westwood, dropped the weapons and mags on the floor, and stepped away towards the kitchen. He returned a few moments later with a steak knife, and sliced through the tape binding Westwood’s wrists and ankles.

‘You OK, John?’ he asked, and Westwood nodded. ‘Didn’t anybody ever tell you never to open the door to strange men?’

‘I didn’t open the door to anyone,’ Westwood protested. ‘This door was bolted on the inside, but somehow they must have got in at the back.’

Richter nodded. ‘My fault,’ he said. ‘The back door, off the kitchen, is secured by an electric lock with an external keypad, and obviously Nicholson’s men knew the code. It hasn’t got internal bolts, but I should have jammed a chair against it or something.’

‘What happened down below?’

‘We had an exchange of views, and the CIA will be sending out three letters of condolence next week.’

‘So who’s that still yelling down there?’ Westwood demanded.

‘Nicholson,’ Richter replied. ‘I had to take his mind off grabbing a Uzi and ventilating me, so I popped a round through his leg. He’ll be walking with a limp for a while.’

Nicholson was lying where he’d fallen, both hands clutching his wounded leg just above the knee. The floor around him was soaked with blood and Richter knew he would die from blood loss if something wasn’t done quickly about the bullet wound. He knelt beside him and tied a rough tourniquet around the man’s thigh, then applied a broad bandage, taken from a first-aid kit in the kitchen, around the wound itself.

‘Now,’ Richter said, after Westwood propped Nicholson up against the wall, ‘as I was saying before we were interrupted, we want to know more about CAIP. Tell us, and we’ll call for an ambulance so you can be in hospital within the hour. If you refuse, then you can probably guess what we’ll do.’

Nicholson looked from Richter to Westwood, but just shook his head, his face a mask of pain.

‘I don’t believe this, Paul,’ Westwood murmured. ‘It’s a covert operation that’s over thirty years old and he still won’t tell us what it was about?’

‘He will eventually. He just needs to be encouraged a little.’ Richter stood up, leaned against the wall of the briefing-room and rested his right foot very gently on Nicholson’s left shin. ‘I’ll ask you again,’ he said. ‘What was CAIP?’

The injured man shook his head once more, and Richter could see him tensing for the pain he knew would come. Richter pressed down harder, then moved his foot backwards, rolling the wounded leg sideways. Nicholson’s scream cut through the air as he grabbed frantically at his shin, desperate to immobilize it.

‘What was CAIP?’ Richter repeated, as the howl died away into a moan. ‘I can go on all day, Nicholson. You can’t, unfortunately.’ And he pushed sideways once more, watching the injured man’s expression closely for signs of capitulation.

And then Nicholson spoke, almost imperceptibly. ‘Stop,’ he said, his voice weak and wavering. ‘For God’s sake, stop. I’ll tell you.’

The other two men crouched down in front of him, listening intently.

‘I’ll tell you,’ Nicholson repeated, sweat glistening on his brow. ‘I’ll explain what CAIP was – and why we did it.’

‘OK,’ Richter grunted, ‘let’s hear it.’

As Nicholson began speaking his voice was so low that they had to lean forward to catch what he was saying. ‘First, you need to understand the background. What do you know about Weltanschauung and eugenics?’

Richter glanced at Westwood, who shrugged his shoulders in incomprehension. ‘Not a lot,’ Richter replied, ‘though I do know what the words mean. Weltanschauung is a High German term meaning a world view or philosophy. The fact you’ve mentioned eugenics suggests you’re thinking about Hitler’s perverted vision of the future of Germany and the Third Reich. His Weltanschauung was that only the strong should survive, and that the toughest of those would become the rulers of the rest, first of Germany, then of Europe and finally of the world. Every other race and nation would be reduced to second-class citizenship, used as a slave-labour force or, in the case of the Jews, exterminated. Basically, the Nazis used the idea as a justification for the Holocaust.

‘Eugenics is pretty much the same, but without the jackboots and concentration camps. Refinement and enhancement of the race through selective breeding. It’s a discredited, foul idea.’

Nicholson shook his head. ‘Not so,’ he said, his voice strengthening. ‘The idea of eugenics is no different in concept to what farmers and biologists do with plants and animals. They try to breed the hardiest crops, the fastest horses, the most intelligent dogs or whatever. Eugenics is no different.’

‘Except that you’re talking about human beings,’ Westwood interrupted. ‘That makes it different. The concept is unacceptable.’

‘The government of Singapore would argue with you,’ Nicholson said. ‘They started a eugenics programme back in 1986. They offered pay increases to female university graduates who had children and at the same time paid grants for property purchase to women who hadn’t been to university, as long as they agreed to be sterilized after they’d had one or two children.’

‘That’s the first I’ve heard of it,’ Westwood said.

‘Your ignorance doesn’t alter the reality of the situation. The government of Singapore made no secret of their programme, and it was entirely voluntary. If it’s successful, the result should be an overall increase in the intelligence level of that nation, and at the same time a reduction in the rate of population growth. Which is,’ Nicholson added, ‘the second factor.’

‘I’ve no idea where you’re going with this,’ Richter said.

‘You’ll see, I promise you. Let me ask you something else – what’s the population of the Earth?’

‘We don’t have time for twenty questions, Nicholson. Get to the point.’

‘This is the point. The present population of this planet is around six billion, and it’s doubling about once every twenty-five years – that’s an exponential increase. That means about twelve billion by twenty twenty-five and twenty-five billion by the middle of this century. Some time in the next century the figure would reach half a trillion.’

‘So what?’ Richter demanded.

‘So a global population of that size would mean standing room only, everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. That’s a population density of about the same as Manhattan over the entire surface of the Earth, including areas that are presently uninhabited, like the Arctic, Antarctic, Siberia, Amazon Basin and the deserts. Actually, it couldn’t get that big, because the food supply would run out long before – you can’t build cities on the same land you grow crops on.’

‘What’s that got to do with the CIA and CAIP?’

‘Everything,’ Nicholson said. ‘In the late sixties and early seventies a bunch of studies were carried out here in the States, and they all came to more or less the same conclusion. Something had to be done to slow down the rate of population growth, and if possible to reverse the trend. Most of the studies suggested that the ideal size for the world’s population was between about two and a half billion and five billion people. Even the higher figure is a lot less than we’ve got right now.

‘The most immediate problem was food. Some analysts were predicting that if the population boom in certain countries continued, within the foreseeable future, in just a few decades, the whole world’s food supply wouldn’t ultimately be enough to feed everyone. America would end up having to supply wheat and other staples, but even that relief would only delay the inevitable. Even with all our resources, there simply wouldn’t be enough for everyone to eat, and whole sections of the world’s population would end up starving to death.’

‘They do now,’ Westwood objected.

Nicholson nodded. ‘Yes, but that’s usually for different reasons. In politically unstable countries the food that we and the voluntary organizations supply often doesn’t get through to the people who need it. It’s stolen by government officials who sell it, or it gets dumped in warehouses to rot, that kind of thing.’

‘This is fascinating, but irrelevant,’ Richter snapped. ‘Get to the point.’

‘It’s not irrelevant,’ Nicholson responded sharply. ‘It’s crucial, because it explains the idea behind CAIP. The