Pandemic

‘Yes and no. Sarin is a nerve gas. That makes it a chemical agent, not a bioweapon. If sarin had been used and had been properly deployed it would have affected a large number of people – perhaps even the entire population of this village on Crete. It would also have affected them all at about the same time, and in more or less the same way. No, what we’re looking at here is almost certainly some kind of a biological agent, but it could also be entirely natural and nothing to do with any terrorist organization.’

‘Explain.’

‘In my opinion, this incident on Crete is one of two things. The most likely explanation is that it’s just an isolated outbreak of some already known but rare disease that the local doctor hasn’t recognized for some reason. Despite what the medical profession would like us to believe, no doctor knows everything, and a Cretan general practitioner is going to spend most of his time treating tourists for sunburn and stomach upsets. He isn’t likely to be familiar with some of the rarer illnesses, like Lassa Fever, Marburg or Ebola—’

‘Hang on,’ Simpson interrupted. ‘I know a bit about those myself, and they’re highly infectious, so we wouldn’t just be looking at a single case.’

‘That’s not necessarily true. Even if this Greek diver had contracted Ebola, the disease’s incubation period is long enough that he may have been infected with it some time ago. He could subsequently have infected other people, but they may not yet be showing any signs of the disease. Within a week or two, there might be another dozen cases.’

‘OK,’ Simpson brooded, ‘that makes sense. What’s the other explanation?’

‘The least likely, but most worrying, scenario is that it is some kind of a biological weapon, but one with a low mortality or low infectivity. Only one death has been confirmed, I understand, and unless there are a lot of other very sick people in that village right now that we haven’t heard about, it suggests the cause is an inefficient killer.’

Simpson stroked his chin in silence for a few moments.

‘Right, the problem as I see it is that there’s no way of telling at this stage which explanation is the right one. The potential causes are completely different – a rare but naturally occurring virus or other biological agent, or some kind of manufactured bioweapon – but the result at this stage is the same: one man is dead and there are possibly a number of other people incubating the virus but not showing any signs of distress at the moment.’

‘That’s a fair summary.’

‘Well, Vauxhall Cross have asked us to investigate it, so we’d better do something. What are your recommendations?’

‘There’s not a lot we can do from here. No doubt the Americans will be taking satellite pictures of the island that we’ll be granted access to, and I’m sure Sky News and CNN and the rest of the news organizations will be sending teams out to the Mediterranean if they haven’t already done so. Six have got a small presence on the island. Probably our best option is to analyse the data already in the public domain and supplement that with satellite and local intelligence.’

Simpson nodded. ‘I agree with that for background and general analysis, but I’ve a better idea. Richter.’

The Intelligence Director looked interested – puzzled, but interested. ‘Sorry?’ he asked, glancing over at Simpson.

‘Richter. He’s been taking a holiday on that floating gin palace in the Med, and when I spoke to him this afternoon he told me the ship was loitering off Crete to help with this medical emergency, so he’s right on the spot. After the cock-up he made in Italy he can bloody well start earning his money again. Tell the duty Ops Officer to signal him to find out what’s going on. Richter’s good at digging. If there’s anything we need to know about happening in Crete, he’ll find it for us.’

Kandira, south-west Crete

‘So what now?’ Dr Gravas asked. ‘I presume you’ll want to examine the bodies of the victims?’

Hardin’s answer surprised him.

‘No, not yet. I’m quite satisfied with your preliminary diagnosis of what killed these two men, at least in broad terms. It was definitely some kind of fast-acting hot agent, perhaps a filovirus, or maybe something totally unknown. Once my people get here we’ll be able to do complete autopsies, take tissue samples and so on, but if I go and look at the bodies, pretty much all I’ll be able to confirm is that they’re dead, and that isn’t a lot of help to us right now.

‘The normal procedure in an investigation is to take blood samples from anyone who may be infected. Then we separate the serum from the red blood cells using a centrifuge: there’s a small battery-powered unit in one of the cases I brought. Then we separate the different sera into aliquots, label them, pack them in dry ice and send them back to Atlanta. Our technicians there will try to confirm the virus, and even its precise strain, by identifying specific antibodies within the sera.

‘Our problem here is that the subjects are dead and their blood will by now have degraded, so will probably be useless for that kind of test procedure. This case is very different, and not simply because the only two victims known to have contracted this illness are already dead. Our first priority, I suggest, is to try to find out how and where Spiros and Nico Aristides became infected. If we can localize the source, we might be able to prevent any further casualties.’

‘And how do we do that?’ Lavat demanded.

Hardin grinned somewhat ruefully. ‘I don’t have a comprehensive answer to that, Inspector,’ he said, ‘so all we can do is apply simple logic and start from the last place the two men were seen together alive.’

‘The kafenion?’

‘Exactly. We start from Jakob’s bar and work our way slowly along towards Spiros Aristides’s house.’

‘And what will we be looking for?’ Gravas asked.

‘I have no idea. All we can assume is that somewhere along that route they saw something sufficiently interesting or unusual that they stopped and touched it, or tasted it, or otherwise allowed the infection to enter their systems. I’m just hoping that we’ll see and recognize the same thing.’

‘Suppose they picked up whatever this thing is and took it into Aristides’s house with them?’

‘Then we’ll find it there, I guess,’ Hardin replied. ‘OK, could you ask a couple of your men to take the bigger of my two cases over to Spiros Aristides’s house? I’ll need to put on a space suit before I go inside, but I don’t think we’ll need to take any precautions until we actually get there.’

‘Why? Isn’t there a risk that this agent is still outside somewhere, and still infectious?’

‘Yes, of course, but whatever the source is, I don’t think it uses airborne transmission.’

Lavat looked quizzical, but it was Gravas who answered. ‘Look at the timescale, Inspector,’ he explained. ‘Spiros and Nico were drinking in that pigsty Jakob calls a bar until around midnight, but by mid-morning next day Spiros was dead, and probably Nico as well. The two women went into Spiros’s house just after he died, and they’re still both fit and well and complaining about having to stand around in the street without their clothes on.

‘Whatever this thing is, the one thing we do know for certain is that it attacks really quickly. If the two women had breathed in any virus particles – assuming for the moment that it is a virus – I would have expected one or both of them by now to be showing some signs of physical distress. I mean bleeding, choking, vomiting or something, to show that the infection had taken a hold.’

Lavat nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That makes sense. I think you’re probably right.’

‘And,’ Gravas added, ‘I’m pleased to say that the same logic applies to us as well. We’ve been inside both properties without wearing the right protective equipment – the paper mask would help, but it’s certainly not a proper defence against an airborne pathogen – and we’re still fine.’

‘So now what?’ Stein asked, after they rounded a corner that took them well out of sight of the police manning the cordon around the village.

‘We find the house where this Greek diver died, get inside it and search it.’

‘How?’

‘Easy,’ Krywald replied. ‘We’re inside the village now, so everyone will assume that we’re supposed to be here. You speak Greek – so we’ll stop somebody and ask the way.’