The two men had already established a working routine – first weigh; then external examination; dissection; internal examination; take samples for specialist histological and toxicological examination – followed by discussion, conclusion and verbal notes spoken into the tape recorder.
‘The liver shows some signs of cirrhosis, but at a comparatively early stage, and certainly not life- threatening,’ Hardin said as Evans removed the organ in question from the cutting board in front of him. ‘Probably cheap Cretan wine. Normally the liver appears bright and shiny, but in this case it’s dull and a fairly dark red. The organ contains rather more blood than would be normal, and there are some signs of blood weeping from the minor vessels of the liver, which is most unusual and could be indicative of haemorrhagic fever.’
The spleen is one of the likeliest places in the body to find the infectious particles characteristic of victims of this type of virus, so Hardin examined that organ with particular care, and again cut out several pieces for further examination. He checked the stomach, small intestine and large bowel, then took samples of both the contents and the structure of each section of the digestive tract. As Evans had spotted during the autopsy, the contents of each were noticeably darker than usual.
Aristides’s bladder and rectum were next sectioned and examined; both showed clear evidence of blood inside them, which served to confirm what the external examination of the body had indicated – the Greek had bled from every orifice. The kidneys, like the liver, appeared basically normal, but again showed signs of weeping blood vessels.
Hardin then turned his attention to the brain. There were no obvious external signs of anything abnormal there, but when Hardin bisected it laterally the two men spotted the same indications of weeping capillaries and veins. ‘It’s the same thing, Mark,’ Hardin said. ‘The minor blood vessels in particular show signs of seepage through the walls. That’s a classic sign of Ebola or some other viral haemorrhagic fever, caused by the damage done to the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels.’
‘But you still don’t think it’s actually Ebola?’ Evans asked.
‘It’s definitely not Zaire or Sudan, which means that if it is Ebola it’s a new and unknown strain,’ Hardin replied. ‘The effects on the body itself, and on the organs we’ve examined so far, are certainly consistent with the early to middle stages of an Ebola infection, or the terminal phases of an attack by Lassa Fever. That’s an arenavirus not a filovirus, of course, though the whole family – apart from the commonest form, lymphocytic choriomeningitis, which is a Level Three Agent – are still classed as Level Four Hot Agents. But nothing we’ve seen up to now could actually have caused death. Discomfort and pain, yes, but not death itself. Something else must have killed this man.’
Hardin took samples from six areas of the brain for further investigation, then wiped down the cutting board while Evans replaced the brain in the steel dish. ‘The brain appears generally normal, apart from the same sort of capillary bleeding that we’ve noted in the other internal organs.’ Hardin watched as Evans lifted the large steel dish containing Aristides’s lungs, placed it on the scales to be weighed and wrote down the result.
Hardin positioned the lungs on the board and for a few moments just looked down at the specimen while Evans weighed the steel dish and calculated the actual weight of the organs.
‘They’re
Hardin nodded. ‘Full of blood, I suspect. OK, external examination first.’ He studied the lungs for some minutes, noting carefully their colour and feeling their texture as well as he could through the multiple layers of gloves he was wearing. ‘The lungs appear larger than normal for a man of this age, but that is probably a function of his lifestyle. Divers, like athletes, tend to develop larger lungs than most people. Their colour is darker than normal, and there is evidence of external bleeding from both major and minor vessels on the outer surface. This is a subjective observation, especially through these damn gloves, but his lungs feel very pulpy, as if the alveoli are full of fluid.’
He took a fresh scalpel, positioned the tip of the blade carefully at the top of the left lung, and slid it down smoothly. The two halves of the lung separated and almost fell apart and, with a rush, about half a pint of blood slopped over the board and onto the rubber sheets that covered the floor.
‘OK,’ Hardin said, ‘now we know what killed him.’
Murphy waited until dusk had fallen before carrying the Dragunov down the hotel’s back stairs and stowing it in the boot of his hire car. As a precaution, he’d removed the loaded magazine, but would keep that with him at all times. With the weapon stored out of sight, and with the Daewoo still tucked into the rear waistband of his trousers under his light summer jacket, Murphy left the hotel car park and moved away down the street.
To a casual observer, he would have looked like any other aimless tourist out for his pre-dinner stroll, but Murphy actually had a specific destination in mind. He’d already picked up a hotel map of Rethymno and, despite not yet having Nicholson’s go-ahead, had decided to reconnoitre the area where he was likely to find his targets.
When Murphy reached the hotel where Krywald, Stein and Elias were staying, he glanced up and down the pavement and then selected a cafe on the opposite side of the street. At a table offering a clear view of the hotel, he ordered a beer, then opened his copy of an American car magazine.
He didn’t anticipate actually spotting any of his three targets – he knew they were somewhere else on the island completing the second phase of their tasking – but Murphy had always found, in his grisly trade, that time spent checking out his area of operations was never wasted. There was no such thing as too much preparation.
Despite his apparent absorption in his motoring magazine, Murphy was actually figuring the angles. His major problem was to be facing three CIA agents. The fact that they were fellow Americans and CIA employees didn’t bother him in the slightest: what concerned him was the reaction of the remaining two once he’d eliminated the first one.
They were going to be operational agents, probably armed and certainly experienced. If he were to simply set up his sniper rifle and shoot the first target as he walked out of the hotel, Murphy knew the other two would then do their best to hunt him down. He’d be lucky to escape with his life if he didn’t account for all three. No, what he needed here was cunning and a couple of
There were no private cubicles or anything like that in the Communications Centre on Five Deck, next to the Operations Room, and Richter was particularly keen that anything he said on the telephone to Simpson should be heard by Simpson and by no one else. After discussion with the Communications Officer, Richter retreated to his cabin on Two Deck and waited for the crucial call to be patched through to him there.
Once the telephone rang, Richter picked up the receiver. Behind the crackles he heard a voice. ‘Commander Richter? This is the CommCen – we’re connecting you now. Go ahead, sir.’
There was a loud click, followed by a moment of echoing silence, then a distant voice spoke. ‘Richter? Richter? Can you hear me?’ Simpson’s voice was faint, but perfectly clear.
‘Yes.’ Richter sat down on his day bed. He’d made some notes while he was waiting for this call to be connected, and he scanned them quickly.
‘Where are you?’ Simpson asked.
‘Right now,’ Richter said, ‘I’m in my cabin on board the
‘And what have you found out?’ Simpson demanded. ‘It had better be good to justify all this buggering about with secure lines.’
‘It’s not good,’ Richter said. ‘In fact, it’s bad. What caused the deaths of the two victims here on Crete is, in the opinion of the CDC specialist, either an unknown but naturally occurring virus, or a manufactured bioweapon. Whatever it is, it kills its victims within about twelve hours of infection, and so far it’s proving one hundred per cent lethal.’
‘How does he know?’
‘He doesn’t. He’s just making assumptions based on the evidence that’s available to him.’
Richter explained concisely what Hardin had found in Kandira, the American’s deduction about the sealed container, and finally the suggestion that Spiros Aristides might have found the virus in the remains of a sunken
