Pandemic

enough travellers to avoid any dishes that might cause them problems abroad. They’d been careful to make sure that Elias stuck to simple food as well, not wanting any problems until after he’d completed the crucial dive.

When Krywald shook his head, Stein persisted. ‘You drink something, then?’

‘A coupla beers last night, same as you. Coffee this morning. That’s all.’

Stein looked over at him. ‘Well, you’ve sure as shit caught something,’ he muttered.

Krywald’s face wore a scared and hunted look that Stein had never witnessed before. He’d worked with him half a dozen times previously, and Stein well knew that his partner wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. ‘What is it?’ he pressed.

Krywald turned to look over at him. ‘The case,’ he said, his voice wavering weakly. ‘I took a look in the case this morning. I think I must have caught whatever killed those Greeks.’

‘Oh, shit,’ Stein muttered, unconsciously leaning away from Krywald and pressing his foot down harder on the accelerator. ‘What did you find in it?’

‘That’s the stupid part,’ Krywald said, his voice now so weak that Stein had to concentrate hard to hear what he was saying. ‘There’s a classified file, and spaces for twelve small flasks – but it contained only four. Three of them are still sealed and somebody’s cut one of them open. I didn’t touch the flasks… just looked through the file.’

‘What was in it?’ Stein asked, overtaking three cars apparently travelling in convoy.

‘Medical stuff.’ Krywald was breathing very slowly. ‘I didn’t understand too much of it. The file title read “CAIP”, and I’ve still got no idea what that stands for. I only looked,’ he added, ‘in case it contained something we needed to know about before we handed it over to McCready – and there was.’

‘What?’ Stein asked.

‘This CAIP thing,’ Krywald muttered. ‘You have to read it, Dick. I’ve been with the Company ever since I left college, and I’ve never read anything like it. For starters, it was classified “Ultra”, and I’ve never seen a file with that classification outside the secure briefing-rooms at Langley.’ Krywald broke off and coughed, clutching a handkerchief to his mouth. When he pulled it away, the handkerchief was stained bright red.

‘You OK?’ Stein asked, immediately aware of how stupid this question was.

‘Of course I’m not OK,’ Krywald wheezed. ‘Listen to me. If that file ever gets made public, it could destroy the Company.’

‘What?’ Stein inadvertently jerked on the steering wheel, swerving the car across the fortunately empty road. ‘Christ, Krywald, that file’s over thirty years old. Whatever the Company was doing back then can’t be important today. So what the hell’s in it?’

Krywald shook his head. ‘You have to read it but, believe me, I’m not exaggerating. It could shut down the Agency and maybe even topple the US administration.’ Krywald fell silent, slumped back in his seat.

Stein wondered if his colleague’s ramblings were some kind of a side effect of whatever he was suffering from. But Krywald had always been outstandingly level-headed, so Stein realized he was going to have to read the file himself to try to make any kind of sense of what the man was now saying.

‘There must have been some kind of infectious agent inside the case,’ Stein suggested after a few seconds. ‘Something you didn’t even notice – like dust, a liquid, something?’

‘There was some powder on the cover of the file,’ Krywald said, ‘but I blew it off before I opened it.’

Bingo, Stein thought, but said nothing further. Eighteen minutes later, having removed the SIG pistol from Krywald’s waistband and the two spare magazines from his pocket, Stein helped him through the double doors of the hospital and watched helplessly as his partner was rushed away for emergency treatment.

Hammersmith, London

‘Oh, shit,’ Simpson muttered, and tossed the signal flimsy over to the Intelligence Director, who stared at it in incomprehension.

‘What’s the problem?’ the ID asked, having read it through to the end. ‘OK, the signal’s from Richter. He’s explained what happened when he dived on the wrecked Learjet, he’s acknowledged your instruction to investigate further and he’s confirmed he’ll take care of it, so presumably that’s exactly what he’ll do.’

‘It’s not what the signal says,’ Simpson snapped, ‘but what it means. I don’t like the way Richter takes care of things. Buildings get destroyed, aircraft get blown up, and the body count gets higher the more pissed off he becomes. And as somebody’s just detonated a bunch of plastic explosive directly underneath his little rubber boat, I’m guessing that he’s very pissed off right now.’

‘You’re exaggerating.’

‘Yes, I am, but not a lot.’

‘He’s under your orders, so he’ll do what he’s told.’

‘You wish.’ Simpson laughed mirthlessly. ‘He was supposed to be under my orders out in Italy. I instructed him – not once but several times – not to touch Lomas. Six minutes later Lomas was lying on a gravel drive while two Italian policemen tried to shovel his intestines back inside his abdomen. Don’t talk to me about Richter being under my orders.’

‘Well,’ the Intelligence Director suggested, ‘if he’s such a loose cannon, then get rid of him. Give him to the Italians. I’m sure they’d be only too happy to stick him in the oubliette, so to speak.’

‘No way.’ Simpson shook his head. ‘For all his faults, Richter’s probably the most useful man I’ve got – and I’ll tell you why. He’s like a Rottweiler with attitude. Once he gets his teeth into a problem he simply never lets go until he’s fixed it.’

‘But if he won’t follow your orders?’

‘I can live with that, as long as he gets the job done – which he always has up to now. Of course, the day may come when he’ll outlive his usefulness and then I’ll have to get rid of him, permanently, but until then I’m prepared to cope with the problems he causes.’

‘But what he did to Lomas—’

‘What he did to Lomas,’ Simpson interrupted again, ‘was a hell of a lot less than I’d have done if I’d had the same chance. And Richter was probably right: all the Italians would do is stick Lomas in a nice comfy safe house for a year or two, give him three square meals a day, and ask him politely if there’s anything he’d like to tell them. From what we know of that bastard they’d get the square root of sod all out of him. And anything they did get would probably be disinformation that they’d then spend months wasting their time checking out.

‘In fact, Richter may actually have done us a favour. While Lomas is recuperating and dependent, the Italians are probably more likely to get something useful out of him. They can fiddle with the drugs, feed him a little sodium pentothal or scopolamine, and give him the third degree while he’s still woozy. All Richter has to worry about is what Lomas will do once he’s recovered.’

‘He’ll go after Richter, you mean?’

‘Like a shot. Richter, of course, is looking forward to that. He doesn’t like unfinished business.’

HMS Invincible, Sea of Crete

‘Invincible, Invincible, this is Fob Watch, over.’

‘Fob Watch, Invincible, you’re loud and clear. Go ahead.’

‘Invincible, this is Fob Watch with a transport request, and a message for Lieutenant Commander Richter. Ready to copy? Over.’

‘Ready to copy.’

‘Roger. Message reads as follows. “From Tyler Hardin, CDC, to Lieutenant Commander Richter, HMS Invincible. Third suspected case reported within last few minutes. Subject is surname Curtis, first name Roger. Nationality, American. Profession, reporter. Status, emergency admission to Chania hospital. Request helicopter transport from Kandira to Chania ASAP. Suggest Richter accompanies.” Message ends.’

‘Fob Watch, Invincible, all copied. Listen out this frequency for aircraft callsign and estimate for Kandira. Out.’

The communications rating pulled off his headset, read over what he’d written, then handed it to the duty Communications Officer who scanned it quickly. ‘Three copies,’ the officer said crisply. ‘One for Air Operations, one for Commander Richter, and file the other.’