The Zeno Effect Read online

  Ali nodded her agreement. “Especially if she believes she’s under surveillance.”

  “And it’s not just me she’s sent the message to,” Sarah added. “Her choosing you to carry it can’t be accidental. She knows you’re going on home to Scotland. I think she expects you to warn your government. And so you should. If there’s any chance of a pandemic then Scotland is right in the immediate firing line. You have to tell them so that they can make contingency plans. They might have some chance of controlling cross-border movement before it’s too late.”

  “That would be only if they believed me,” Ali replied. “I have no evidence. I’m just a junior civil servant bearing an ambiguous message. But yes, I guess I have to try.”

  Sarah was firm. “Yes, you do, however long the odds. It’s too serious not to. You need to be on that first train tomorrow.” As if to emphasise the point she stood up. “Come on then. Hugh will be collecting Charlotte from school and she’s looking forward to seeing Auntie Ali. Let’s pick up your things and go home. Don’t mention any of this in front of Charlotte. We’ll explain it to Hugh after she’s gone to bed.” She shook her head. “What a terrible mess this might turn out to be.”

  3

  At the very moment that Ali and Sarah were talking about her in York, Irene was preparing for a high-level meeting at the Department of Health. She scanned through the documents on her CommsTab, not really paying them much attention since she was all too familiar with their contents, and wondered, as she did so often these days, why she was doing this work at all. When she had first agreed to become a scientific advisor to the government she had believed that it was her chance to do some good. But over the years she had discovered that to be much harder than she had expected. There was an inertial tendency which pervaded the administration of science policy and, she was beginning to understand, ran throughout government itself. Diktats were handed down the chain of command and to challenge them, as she had on occasion, was deemed at best inappropriate and, at worst, verging on insubordination. She was not, therefore, looking forward to this meeting for she knew very well that she would find herself in a vanishingly small minority. Her boss, Graham Ball, the Chief Scientific Advisor, would support her as far as he could, but as for the rest they would mostly toe the official line whatever that turned out to be.

  Right on cue Graham arrived at her desk. “It’s time, Irene,” he said, clearly wishing that it wasn’t. “Shall we go?”

  “OK. If we must,” she replied, collecting her bits and pieces. “Have you heard any more about the breach?”

  “No. I’m assuming that we’ll get a full update today so we’ll have to figure out our position on the hop. Not ideal, but I guess there’s no alternative.”

  Irene grimaced. “Whatever new information we get we’ll still need to press for urgent action. Zeno demands it.”

  “You know I agree with you, Irene, but there will be those with vested interests who will take a different view.”

  “I know, I know,” Irene muttered. “Come on then. Richmond House is calling.”

  The ornately wood-panelled meeting room was filling up when they arrived, its impressive oak conference table equipped with place markers, glasses and bottles of water. The Secretary of State and his officials were already seated, as were a uniformed Army General and the Home Secretary, both accompanied by aides. In a huddle with his assistants in a corner of the room was the Director of Porton Down, James Curbishley. He contrived to ignore Graham and Irene as they walked past to take their seats, hardly a surprise since he and Irene had clashed more than once. Then, just as Big Ben began to strike the hour at which the meeting was due to start, a woman and two men unknown to Irene came in and sat down together at unlabelled places directly opposite the Secretary of State. He smiled a greeting to them and opened proceedings.

  “Right, we’re all here now so let’s begin. I’m sure I’ve no need to remind you that what is said here today is highly confidential, and, because the matter is potentially so serious, I’ve invited the heads of our three main security agencies.” He gestured toward the three late arrivals. “Carol Singleton, MI5; Howard Beck, MI6; and Jonathan Hart, Domestic Security Division.” The three nodded their acknowledgment and the Secretary of State continued. “I think everybody here has seen the earlier reports about the Porton Down security breach, but I understand that we now have rather more detailed information.” He turned towards Curbishley. “James, perhaps you could briefly reprise what we already know and bring us up to date on subsequent developments.”

  Shifting uneasily in his seat the Porton Down Director took a deep breath and began.

  “Last Saturday evening a man was found dead in Salisbury Cathedral. He turned out to be one of ours, Dr Charles Livermore, a long-standing researcher who had been working on the Zeno project. I think you have all been briefed as to what that is?”

  He looked round the table seeking confirmation and, there being no dissent, he continued. “In the event of anything like this happening to one of our workers there is a specific set of procedures to be followed. As soon as the police informed us of his identity on Sunday morning, our security team went to his home – Dr Livermore lived alone – and checked for any suspicious circumstances. They found some laboratory equipment – protective masks, gloves, syringes, and the like – and an unusually large number of empty bottles labelled as hay fever treatment. Dr Livermore was known to suffer from hay fever, but the quantity seemed surprising so, as a precautionary measure, they brought the bottles and the equipment back to our labs for examination.”

  The Secretary of State interrupted. “Do we have any confirmed results from that examination?”

  “Up to a point, yes, but if you will allow me I shall get to that in due course. When the local police searched Livermore’s body they found a hypodermic and an unlabelled vial, and there was a puncture wound on his arm. They immediately suspected suicide, of course, but could find no note or other indication of intent. I pressed them to accelerate their investigation and, in particular, to conduct a post mortem as soon as possible. After calling on the Secretary of State’s office to apply some pressure, I also required them to give us the vial and hypodermic so that we could make tests. I was concerned that it might be something from our labs. As it turns out it was, but not anything that would constitute a danger to anyone other than Livermore who simply used it to kill himself. The more pressing concern lay elsewhere, with the lab equipment and bottles found at his home. Examination of those suggested the strong possibility that they had contained products of the Zeno project lab, although identifying precisely which products would take some time. Meanwhile, the police had traced Livermore’s movements on his last day of life. He had visited Stonehenge and the café there, from whence he had got on a Salisbury shuttle then got off again before it departed. The supervisor remembered him getting off and said that he seemed disturbed. He then joined a later shuttle and finally found his way to the cathedral.”

  The Director stopped to take a sip of water. He was clearly feeling the strain.

  “By Monday morning we were becoming extremely concerned, and my security staff persuaded the police that, as discreetly as possible, they should conduct a joint search of both the cathedral and the Visitor Centre at Stonehenge in case Livermore had planted something there. In the cathedral rubbish, which had not yet been collected, they found an unlabelled spray bottle which was brought back to our labs for testing. They found nothing at Stonehenge, but their refuse had been removed earlier that day. The bottle from the cathedral did indeed show traces of a Zeno-engineered virus, which we have now identified as a strain of influenza.”

  Again the Secretary of State interrupted. “Is it a particularly virulent strain?”

  “That depends on how you measure virulence,” the Director replied, a little testily. “It’s a mutated derivative of the previously eliminated H1N1 strain, some variations of which have
proved rather lethal.”

  “Killing many millions of people in the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918,” Irene interjected.

  “Indeed,” said Curbishley, favouring her with a look of disdain. “Although far fewer in outbreaks later in the twentieth century when treated with modern medical science.”

  To cut short this incipient confrontation the Secretary of State raised his voice a little. “We’ll return to the matter of the virus itself in due course. First I would like to know what else is known about Livermore and his actions last Saturday. Mr Hart, I believe you have some additional information for us.”

  “Yes, I do sir. The DSD was called in on Monday, effectively taking over the investigation from the local police and suppressing any flow of information that might reach the media. We were concerned to establish a comprehensive portrait of Dr Livermore and, in particular, a motive for his behaviour.”

  “Why is that relevant?” asked the General. “We know what the man has done. Why he did it is surely beside the point. We need to move on to consider what action to take.”

  Hart glanced briefly in the General’s direction. “Ah yes. But the problem is that we don’t actually know what the man has done. The bottle in the cathedral suggests that he may have released the influenza virus there, but has he also done so elsewhere? More important, has he released other Zeno project materials that we don’t know about? Understanding him and establishing a motive will help us make an informed judgment about the extent of the threat that he intended. And that in turn will impact on any decision as to what action to take.”

  Meeting no further objection, Hart continued. “Examination of the files on Livermore, as well as a thorough search of his home, has given us some material to work with. In particular, we discovered that over the last few years he had become especially interested in environmental problems and in demography. There’s no evidence that he was involved with any environmental activist groups – as you know they have anyway been severely curtailed in recent years – but he had assembled a great deal of material documenting human destruction of the environment and linking that to population growth. Furthermore, much of that was in paper form rather than stored on CommsTab servers, so he would appear to have known that his newfound interest would have attracted attention from Security had it been detected. He kept it secret.”

  Hart paused for a moment, allowing time for his audience to comprehend the gravity of this new information.

  “Given all this, our view is that he has acted out of a desire to curtail human impact on the natural world and to do so by releasing a Zeno virus that would, over time at least, radically slow or reverse population growth. This proposition received further confirmation from an unlikely source when we interviewed the policeman who was first on the scene when the body was discovered. It seems that Dr Livermore had a book open on his lap – Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. The policeman, himself a Hardy fan, noted that it was open at what I am sure you will agree is a significant page. It’s the point in the story when Jude’s eldest son kills his siblings and himself and leaves a note which reads ‘done because we are too many’. This, I believe, was Livermore’s suicide note and his justification for whatever he has done.”

  Hart stopped speaking, clasping his hands together on the table in front of him. The assembly remained silent until finally the Home Secretary asked: “You said there was no evidence of him being associated with any activist groups. Can we be certain of that? If he was, he may have supplied others and there may be similar threats in the offing.”

  “No,” Hart replied, “we are convinced that he was working alone. He was a solitary person, the kind that might be described as a loner, so psychologically it seems very unlikely that he would have joined a group, however strong his convictions. And, as I said, there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest it.”

  The Secretary of State leaned forward across the table and addressed Hart directly. “In the light of what you have learned about Livermore, what do you conclude about his behaviour on Saturday before he reached the cathedral?”

  “Well, another feature of Livermore’s character that quickly became apparent is that he was a very systematic and meticulous person. Obsessively so, you might say. It’s one of the things that made him a good laboratory scientist. This is speculation, of course, but it seems likely that someone having those personality traits, who was set upon a course of action such as this, would plan very carefully and would want to ensure maximum exposure to the virus.”

  “So you believe that he will have released the virus at the Stonehenge locations as well?” the Secretary of State enquired.

  “I do sir. His odd behaviour there hints at it. The business with the two shuttles, his reportedly disturbed demeanour. This suggests someone who is not simply on a pleasant outing to a famous attraction.”

  For a while Curbishley had been looking increasingly impatient with the DSD man’s account and, at this point, he could no longer contain himself. “I don’t see that at all. You’re leaping to all sorts of conclusions based on very tenuous evidence. This was a man about to commit suicide. You might expect him to behave oddly. He grew up in this area. Maybe he wanted to make one last sentimental visit to Stonehenge.”

  Hart was unmoved by the Director’s ire. “Possibly so,” he said, “but we do know for a fact that a bottle contaminated with a Zeno virus from your institution found its way to the cathedral, so we have to at least entertain the possibility that the virus may have been released at Stonehenge as well. Besides, if Livermore was aiming to kill off large numbers of the human population by infecting a few who would then go on to infect the many, where would he go?”

  Hart paused and, with some deliberation, looked around the table.

  “He would go somewhere where he could find people who were in transit, who would be able to carry the infection away in all directions. I remind you that Stonehenge attracts visitors not just from the UK but from all over the world. Where better to plant the seeds of destruction?”

  His audience were stunned. Suddenly what had appeared to be a potentially containable local problem had become one of much larger proportions. After a long pause, the Home Secretary, seeming to address himself as much as anyone else, said: “I suppose we should be able to trace the foreign tourists who had visited Stonehenge via the Tourist Agency databases?”

  “Yes, we are investigating that right now.” This response came from the MI5 director who added ruefully, “But I have to say that our first enquiries have had mixed success. It would appear that the tour organisers are not as efficient as they ought to be at monitoring those overseas visitors who book with them. We will be able to identify some of them and, of course, UK visitors can be traced through the cards that they use to pay for the shuttles. But it will take time, and some will undoubtedly slip through the net.”

  At this news the various groupings around the table resolved themselves into murmuring huddles until, having consulted his own aides, they were interrupted by the Secretary of State. “Can I have some order here, please. I don’t see how we can take that issue any further until we have more information, at which point I shall clearly need to bring the Foreign Secretary into the discussion. But now I’d like us to return to what we know about the specific influenza virus that has been identified. James, earlier I understood you to be suggesting that the threat posed by this breach was not as serious as it might have been. Is that right?”

  “Yes, Minister, I do believe that to be the case.” Curbishley’s tone was confident. “First of all, given the range of possibilities available to Livermore, influenza falls at the relatively benign end of the scale. Imagine if we had been dealing with an engineered variation of smallpox.”

  “We don’t yet know that we are not,” Graham Ball interjected. “Until you have made all the tests and checked your lab records we can’t tell, so we need to keep the possibility in mind.”

  Hart
raised a hand. “If I may, sir, although Professor Ball is quite correct, given what we have established about Livermore’s character I think we can allocate a low probability to that. I believe he has chosen influenza because, as he saw it, firstly it will do the job that he required but will not involve the truly horrific suffering that would be experienced with smallpox or some of the haemorrhagic fevers, and secondly, it will not therefore immediately generate the extreme panic and public disorder that would follow when people witnessed such frightening symptoms at first hand. In that respect, at least, Livermore has been humane in his choice.”

  “I’m not sure I would describe him as humane,” the Secretary of State observed drily, “but I take your point. Anyway, until we have information to the contrary we should focus on what we actually know. You were saying, James.”

  Curbishley, relieved not to have to pursue the possibility of other viruses, returned to his theme with renewed confidence. “As I was saying earlier, unlike less aggressive strains of flu, H1N1 will certainly cause fatalities, and not only among the young, the old and the otherwise unwell. As my colleague was so eager to point out,” – gesturing towards Irene – “the Spanish Flu variant in 1918 killed at least fifty million people. However, other later strains like H2N2, known popularly as Asian Flu, had a much lower mortality rate – perhaps two million worldwide.”

  “And this particular strain?” enquired one of the Department of Health officials.

  “We have no way of knowing quite how virulent this one is,” Curbishley replied, “it’s hardly something that can be tested in the lab.”

  The official persisted: “But it has been engineered for that?”

  “Yes, it is a new variant, and a Zeno one at that.”

  “What’s your view of this, Graham?” asked the Secretary of State, turning to look at Graham and Irene.