on the way back: once to buy petrol and the second time to purchase a pack of large black trash bags.

The moment he arrived at the hotel, Stein locked the car carefully, leaving the case that Krywald had been guarding so assiduously inside it. He grabbed the room key from the desk clerk, virtually ran up the stairs to his room and locked the door behind him. He tore off all his clothes and dumped them unceremoniously into one of the trash bags. He tied the neck of it with a double knot, then stuck the bag inside another one and secured that as well. After that he walked straight into the bathroom and under the shower.

Having read somewhere that bacteria and viruses thrive in warm conditions, he set the temperature control firmly on ‘cold’, turned the tap on full and stood, shivering and teeth chattering, under the flow for five minutes, soaping his hair and whole body repeatedly. Then he brought the temperature up to warm and washed himself again, before climbing out and putting on fresh clothes.

Twenty minutes after he’d rushed up the stairs, Stein was again on his way out of the hotel, surgical gloves on both hands and holding the black bag containing his clothes at arm’s length. He walked a few yards down the street, found an open trash bin and lobbed the bag inside. Then he pulled off the gloves and threw them in as well.

Only then did he relax and start thinking clearly again. He stood on the pavement for a few seconds, then headed a hundred yards further down the street, sat down at a cafe table and ordered a coffee while he worked out what he was going to do next.

Stein barely noticed the short dark man sitting at a cafe table on the opposite side of the street, his head bent over a magazine, but the man had already positively identified him.

And Murphy was puzzled. His orders had listed three CIA agents, and now he was sitting looking at just one of them, so where the hell were the other two? And had they already completed phase two? He’d have to contact Nicholson as soon as possible and try to find out what the fuck was going on.

Merlin ‘Whisky Tango’, over Crete

Tyler Hardin stood with Dr Gravas at the edge of the landing site as the Merlin settled onto the dusty open ground. He had brought a bulky bag with him, which Gravas helped him lift into the rear compartment of the aircraft. Once Hardin and the Cretan doctor had strapped themselves in and pulled on their headsets, the helicopter lifted off and headed north towards Chania.

‘What’s in the bag?’ Richter asked.

‘My biological space suit and air filtration unit,’ Hardin replied. ‘I’m not going anywhere near this Curtis character without all the protection I can get.’

‘How do you think he became infected?’

Hardin looked at him quizzically. ‘I think you know the answer to that as well as I do, Mr Richter,’ he said. ‘Whatever this mysterious agent is, it at least doesn’t seem to be particularly infectious. Nobody else who entered either property in Kandira has suffered any ill-effects, so my obvious conclusion is that Curtis was one of the two intruders, and that he recently opened the container.

‘Our latest information from the lab in Irakleio says that in the scrapings from Aristides’s dining table they found some microscopic spore-like objects, and when these are subjected to moisture, they rupture to release what look like virus particles.’

‘What kind of a virus?’ Richter asked.

‘That’s the puzzle. We were expecting a filovirus or perhaps an arenavirus, purely because of the effects of the agent on the two bodies. But according to the senior supervisor at the lab, this agent looks more like BLV than anything else.’

Richter looked blank, so Hardin took pity on him. ‘Bovine Leukaemia Virus.’ He enunciated the words slowly. ‘It’s a fairly common infective agent that attacks cattle, often causing cancer. Anyone genuinely working for the Medical Research Council, even as a consultant, would at least have heard of it. So I think we can drop the MRC fiction, don’t you, Mr Richter? You’re obviously some kind of investigator, which is why I suggested you come with me to Chania to look at this American, but you’re certainly not employed by the MRC.’

‘OK,’ Richter said, ‘I admit it. It just seemed a convenient persona to adopt in the circumstances. So tell me about this virus – if it’s not very infectious, why has this American suddenly been attacked by it?’

‘I think the answer lies in the spores,’ Hardin explained. ‘As far as we can tell at this early stage, the spores themselves are reasonably inert, but the moment they become moist they rupture. I’m only guessing, but I think this guy Curtis probably opened the container and breathed some in, or maybe even got the spores on his fingers before touching his face. The moisture present in the mouth or on the mucous lining of the nose would be enough to make them open up and for the infection to start.’

Richter nodded. ‘But you still don’t know what this virus is?’

‘No. As I said, it apparently looks like BLV but that obviously has to be a coincidence. BLV is specific to cattle and it’s also a slow-acting virus. What we have here is something that works like Ebola or Lassa Fever, but infinitely quicker. Spiros Aristides died by drowning: his lungs filled with blood.

‘This virus seems to attack the endothelial cells in the blood vessels and the platelets. The result is leaking blood vessels, and blood that won’t clot. It starts with those vessels with the thinnest walls – typically the eyes and mouth – then gradually other organs are attacked. The gross effect is that the victim will begin to bleed, and the blood will just keep on pouring out through the walls till eventually he will die from fluid filling the lungs, as Aristides did, or maybe simply from massive blood loss.’

‘What can you do about it?’

‘Nothing,’ Hardin said shortly. ‘As far as I can see, there is no possible treatment at this stage. Oh, we could inject an agent that would make the blood clot once it leaves the body, but if the internal blood vessel walls are still leaking, that wouldn’t help us much. Remember that Ebola has been known since the late nineteen seventies. It works very much like this new virus, but nobody has yet come up with any kind of a treatment. If somebody catches Ebola, all the medics can do is stick him into a secure biological isolation facility and wait for him to either die or recover. Most victims die,’ he added, with a faint sad smile.

In the long silence that followed, the note of the helicopter’s engines changed slightly and Richter glanced out of the side door. They were in descent towards a patch of open ground at the edge of Chania, and he spotted a white vehicle waiting in the road close by. Gravas pointed towards it. ‘I asked the hospital to send transport to pick us up,’ he said.

Two minutes later the aircraft was on the ground, the Merlin’s rotors a solid blur above their heads as they climbed out of the rear compartment and strode across to the minibus.

Rethymno, Crete

Stein had made up his mind. He’d been employed by the Company for a long time, and he knew the importance that the Agency attached to the success of its every mission. He couldn’t just give up and walk away from the assignment: if he did, he’d be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. He had to deliver the case they had retrieved to McCready, but he was also determined not to take any unnecessary personal risks in doing so.

The first thing he had to do was hire another car. The Focus might be fine, might be uncontaminated, but he wasn’t prepared to chance that. He’d hire a car, transfer the suitcase containing the steel case to it, and leave the Ford right where it was currently parked. That was step one. Then he’d go back to the hotel and use Krywald’s laptop to email McCready to arrange his pick-up from Crete. He could still be on his way off this island within twenty-four hours, easy.

He dropped some coins onto the table, stood up and headed back up the street towards the hotel.

Chania, Crete

Richter wasn’t interested in actually seeing Curtis, or whatever the man’s real name was, for himself – he was quite happy to leave that to the expert, Hardin – but he was interested in knowing how he’d arrived at the hospital and what address, if any, had been given to the reception staff. Like every other foreign language apart from Russian, Greek was – quite literally in this case – all Greek to Richter, but with Gravas standing beside him to translate, he had no trouble in finding out what he wanted to know.

‘This patient Curtis,’ he asked, ‘did he arrive here by himself?’

‘Oh, no,’ the receptionist volunteered eagerly. ‘He was very, very weak, coughing and choking and with

Вы читаете Pandemic
Добавить отзыв
ВСЕ ОТЗЫВЫ О КНИГЕ В ИЗБРАННОЕ

0

Вы можете отметить интересные вам фрагменты текста, которые будут доступны по уникальной ссылке в адресной строке браузера.

Отметить Добавить цитату