The Zeno Effect Read online

  “Irene is our expert in this area, sir. I suggest we consult her.”

  The Secretary of State inclined his head towards Irene. “Professor Johnson, the floor is yours.”

  Irene paused to collect her thoughts before replying. “Dr Curbishley is absolutely correct to say that we cannot assess the virulence of this particular strain until it actually begins to spread.”

  Curbishley nodded self-importantly.

  “However,” Irene continued, “the geneticists who engineered it were aiming to do two things. One was indeed to try to make it as virulent as possible in as much as the current state of scientific knowledge allowed them to do so. The other – more important in the long run – was to use the Zeno techniques to massively accelerate the pace at which the virus will mutate. On the first count, Dr Livermore has ensured that the real world is now the laboratory in which the virus’s efficacy will be tested. We shall see. But it’s the second feature that most concerns me. A Zeno-engineered virus is an extremely dangerous unknown quantity.”

  Curbishley was becoming increasingly agitated as Irene got into her stride, and at this point he interrupted her. “Mrs Johnson,” he said, emphasising the prefix as if to underline his determination to deny her the academic honorifics of Dr or Professor. “Your opposition to the Zeno project, however misguided, is well known, and there is really no need for you to rehearse it here.”

  “Oh but there is, Dr Curbishley,” she responded mildly. “It’s precisely the Zeno element which should be of most concern to us.” She turned towards the Secretary of State. “May I continue?”

  “Yes, Professor Johnson, please do. But concisely if you will.”

  “I shall be as brief as possible, sir. The problem with Zeno is that the features that make it so desirable as a potential weapon are precisely the same features that make it so uncontrollably dangerous. In the case of an ordinary virus, however infectious, there is a very good chance that with a massive application of skills and resources a vaccine will be found quickly enough to prevent total disaster. In a matter of months, say. But with a Zeno-engineered virus, the mutations are well placed to stay one or more steps ahead of our attempts to resist them, and a super-pandemic is then on the cards.”

  Curbishley interrupted again. “But a random mutation is just as likely to be less virulent as more so.”

  “True enough,” Irene replied, “and if that happens the virus will be able to lurk in its hosts without arousing suspicion that it is anything more than a mild infection, and then, after a Zeno-generated antigenic shift, flare up into a full-blown epidemic. And so on. The 1918 pandemic managed three waves, and that was without the benefit of Zeno modifications. Unless we can actually wipe it out completely, the Zeno engineering ensures that the threat continues into the foreseeable future.”

  “And could we wipe it out completely?” one of the minister’s aides enquired.

  Irene shook her head. “Not in our present state of knowledge,” she replied, “and in all probability never, given the rate at which the virus keeps mutating. We eliminated smallpox for all practical purposes but only because the virus remained relatively unchanged and so the worldwide vaccination programme was able to do its job. The whole point of the Zeno engineering is to exclude that possibility and so create the ultimate biological weapon, and therefore, it was thought, the ultimate deterrent. A non-nuclear variation on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction.”

  “But how could you use such a weapon if its consequences would inevitably run out of control?” the aide asked.

  “A question that I raised back when the Zeno project was first mooted,” Irene replied, “and I was told that alongside the Zeno engineering we would also develop an antidote which would protect our own population if the weapon was ever used. I expressed considerable doubt about that being a practical possibility with Zeno viruses, but I was overruled and the project went ahead. As far as I’m aware no antidote has been produced to counter the viruses that Porton Down has engineered.”

  The Secretary of State turned to Curbishley. “Is that the case, James?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it is. We continue to work on the possibility of course, but with no success as yet.” The Director peered around the table in search of support but succeeded only in looking like a small animal cornered by carnivores. “As you know, Minister,” he blustered, “our funding has been cut in real terms over the past few years. We haven’t had sufficient resources.”

  Irene couldn’t resist the opening. “But you’ve still remained pretty well funded, have you not, James? Surely this would have been something to prioritise given the known dangers of Zeno?”

  “Enough, Professor Johnson.” The Secretary of State was clearly becoming impatient with the squabbling. “Mistakes may have been made but, as the Americans are fond of saying, we are where we are. Thank you for making the dangers clear to us. I am going to have to consult with the PM and other senior colleagues as to what action we should take, but I would be pleased to receive any advice on that from this group.”

  Irene was unsurprised by the silence that followed, but rather taken aback when the Secretary of State turned to her once more. “I would be interested to hear your views Professor Johnson, but specifically on the future rather than on past mistakes.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought. “In the absence of a vaccine our policy would have to be one of containment. You may recall the Ebola epidemic in West Africa some years ago. That was finally ended by isolating and treating those who were infectious and, just as important, educating the population to avoid social activities that would expose them to the virus, such as their traditional funeral arrangements. Even so, there were upward of 11,000 deaths and untold misery among the survivors. With a virulent influenza virus this strategy would be much more difficult to implement. Ebola is transmitted via contact with bodily fluids. Influenza is airborne and so harder to quarantine effectively. The practical challenges would be considerable.”

  “If I understand you correctly, Professor Johnson,” Hart said, “the implication of what you are saying is that the process of containment would have to start as soon as cases emerged if we were to have any chance at all of keeping things under control.”

  “Yes, that’s right. We would need an immediate public health campaign to emphasise the seriousness of the disease and to ensure that cases were reported and then treated appropriately, isolated, and kept under quarantine conditions.”

  The Home Secretary looked aghast at this suggestion. “But wouldn’t that risk all sorts of panic? People imagining they had the symptoms and overburdening medical facilities, scapegoating of those suspected of carrying the virus whether they were or not, and, if the source was ever revealed, political crisis and public disorder. Surely we couldn’t possibly move to a campaign like this until we know that it’s unavoidable.”

  Irene shrugged. “But then it might be too late.”

  “No! No!” Curbishley was almost shouting. “You’re overstating the case. We’ve dealt with flu pandemics before when we were far less medically equipped to do so. Remember the Asian flu of the late 1950s. We got that under control.”

  “In the end, yes,” Irene said, “but 14,000 people in Britain died and many millions more were ill. And that virus wasn’t engineered.”

  “That will do,” the Secretary of State intervened. “We are going over ground already covered. Professor Johnson, thank you for your views. They have been noted and I will ensure that they are brought to the attention of those who will make a decision. I’ll convey all the information brought to this meeting to the PM and to whatever group he chooses to set up to deal with this issue. I think that we have done all that we can here today. Thank you for your contributions and, once more, I must stress that everything discussed here is absolutely confidential. There must be no leaks. Good afternoon.”

  Standing up to leave, Graham rai
sed an eyebrow to Irene. “More or less as expected,” he murmured as they headed for the door. “You did what you could but nothing concrete was ever going to come out of this meeting anyway. The real decisions will be taken elsewhere. We’ll just have to wait and see.” Outside in the corridor he added, “Hang on would you, Irene. I need a pee. Bloody prostate. I won’t be a minute.”

  While she waited, Irene stood looking at an improbably dull Victorian portrait hanging on the wall, its gloom adding to her general sense of foreboding. How could they not grasp what was really at issue? The whole business made her both depressed and angry, furious at the idiocy of approving Zeno in the first place and in some despair at the disastrous consequences that now seemed all too likely. As she stared morosely at the picture, which seemed to her to stare morosely back, she sensed someone come up behind her.

  “Not the most life-enhancing work of art, is it?” Hart joined her in apparently contemplating the picture. Speaking quietly he added, “I didn’t say so in there, but I believe there may be another reason why Livermore chose influenza rather than something more obviously lethal. He recognised that flu was so familiar to us, so seemingly run-of-the-mill, that we would not feel obliged to act with the kind of alacrity that you very properly proposed, and that by the time we did it would be too late. I want you to know, Professor Johnson, that I found your position to be cogent and persuasive. But as I am sure you are aware there are always other interests at work, other voices that will be heard. They will not take kindly to what you have to say, however well founded it may be. I’d advise you to be careful, Professor Johnson, very careful indeed.” And with that he was gone, striding off down the corridor in pursuit of his two intelligence agency colleagues.

  When Graham returned, Irene was still standing in front of the painting, at a loss to understand the brief encounter with Hart. Was that a warning, she asked herself, or was that a threat?

  Later that evening, some thirty miles to the south-west in a pleasant semi-detached house in the Surrey town of Godalming, a ten-year-old boy put aside his recently acquired Stonehenge model and complained to his mother that he was feeling unwell. She laid her hand on his forehead, which was indeed hot to the touch. “Never mind,” she said, “just a bit of a temperature. We’ll get you to bed early and I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning.”

  4

  Early the next morning Jonathan Hart was at his desk in the Soho Square building that housed his division. Not that there were any external signs to indicate the presence of the DSD. If one was to believe the brass plate on the door, the building was dedicated to the production and distribution of little-known documentary films. If you went inside, as hardly anyone did, you would be confronted with a receptionist who would politely advise you to get in touch via email since staff were out in the field with film-makers. Which was at least partly true, in as much as almost all DSD employees did indeed spend their time in the field, though not as film crew but as undercover agents adopting a variety of identities according to circumstance.

  On this particular day the only company for Hart and the receptionist were the two duty technicians who attended to the impressive array of Comms and IT equipment that filled the entire upper floor of the building, a facility which, in conjunction with GCHQ, allowed the DSD to track, bug, and otherwise keep under surveillance anyone in the UK designated as a person of interest. In contrast to those facilities, Hart’s own office was functional and unprepossessing. There was nothing personal on show to distinguish the room from any other anonymous workspace, making his occupation of it appear oddly transient. He could just as well be somewhere else. And certainly his mind was elsewhere that morning as he sat staring vacantly at the unadorned wall opposite.

  Hart was thinking. Among the intelligence community he was known as a deep thinker. He was aware of this reputation but it was not a phrase that he would have used to describe himself. Deep thinkers were the likes of Albert Einstein or Immanuel Kant – both men much admired by Hart – and he was not inclined to believe that his capacity for thought was in the same class or even the same category as theirs. Hart understood his own talents well enough. He was a tactical thinker. Someone who understood people and who could work through and with them, rather as a chess player deploys pieces into pre-planned patterns to attain a specific goal. It was this playing of the game that fascinated him and at which he excelled. The final objective – the checkmate, if you will – had always been of less interest. He was happy enough to have it defined for him by those in power, those whose function it was, as Hart saw it, to articulate the will of the State and its citizens.

  Today, however, his thoughts were carrying him to an uncomfortable place in which, perhaps for the first time, he found himself questioning the capacity of those State representatives to legitimately set his goals. The previous day’s meeting had disturbed his customary equanimity enough to ensure a rare restless night and an early arrival at his desk. Less than an hour after that meeting, he and his fellow intelligence directors had been charged by the highest authority with ensuring that not a scrap of information about the Porton Down event found its way into the public domain. They were to ‘take all practical steps to ensure this outcome’, a directive which Hart knew meant that they could do whatever they felt was necessary, however extreme, without fear of retribution.

  He also understood, therefore, that those authoritative figures on whom he had hitherto relied to set his goals were not under any circumstances prepared to consider an immediate public intervention. They intended simply to wait and see what might follow from the release of the Zeno virus and, when it became inevitable that they do so, deny all pre-knowledge of it. They were, in short, prepared to sacrifice thousands, perhaps millions of the citizens whom they represented and were expected to protect. Hart was not naïve. He knew as well as anyone that politicians were often driven as much by self-interest as by social altruism. But he considered this to be a step too far.

  As he had lain awake in the early hours, his wife and child asleep and in ignorance of his growing anxiety, he had become steadily more convinced that to wait and see was the worst of all possible alternatives. Now, sitting alone in his office, he was systematically examining the situation that he faced, the key to which, he had concluded, was Irene Johnson. The DSD had been responsible for monitoring Irene for some considerable time, inevitably so because she had access to sensitive information in the biosciences. But her vaguely radical record, going back as far as her student activities during the Thatcher years, had flagged her up to the intelligence agencies as being of more than routine interest, and so both she and various of her contacts had been subjected to extensive surveillance. This had drawn Alison MacGregor into their net. As a representative of the Scottish government, however lowly, she would have been monitored anyway, but her multiple links to Irene through work and through Irene’s daughter had ensured that she too was given special treatment.

  Her precipitately arranged lunch with Irene had therefore been of particular interest, coming as it did almost immediately after Irene was informed of the Porton Down security breach. Both the DSD and MI5 were disappointed to learn nothing from their bug beneath that conveniently vacated table in the National Gallery café, but when routine eavesdropping on Scottish Liaison Executive communications revealed that Ali’s previously established travel plans had been brought forward at the last minute to include a stop in York, where Sarah Johnson lived and worked, the gauge of suspicion rose by two or three notches. Given that both the Home Office and the other intelligence agencies had been immediately informed of this unusual behaviour, Hart knew that he would be expected to act speedily on the presumption that Alison MacGregor was a possible channel of communication to the Scottish government regarding the Zeno release.

  With that in mind, he and Carol Singleton had arranged for the search of Ali’s flat while she was diverted elsewhere. MI5 had taken responsibility for the break-in while DSD, in t
he person of Richard Osborne, had ensured her absence. As with the lunch, they had turned up nothing suspicious, although their now quite bulky file on Ali – mostly courtesy of Osborne – confirmed that she was markedly antagonistic to the UK state and would therefore be a likely courier for information contrary to UK interests should it come her way. Hart now had to act on the assumption that she was in possession of such information – not to do so would run counter to the ‘all practical steps’ order – but how could he make use of this situation to force the hand of a government that he now believed was espousing a profoundly mistaken and dangerous policy?

  All the options were risky, but he was coming round to the view that detaining Ali should be his first move. At the very least that would cause the Scottish government to demand explanations, as well as access to her, and if he could time the DSD intervention for maximum impact their pressure would be immediate and considerable. Then he could seek a private alliance with Irene Johnson in which his good intentions would be underwritten by supplying her with information about Ali’s detention and about her own and her daughter’s surveillance. That would work, Hart thought, and would still leave him some room for manoeuvre. But Ali’s rail booking from York to Edinburgh was for that very morning so he needed to act quickly. The only stop before the Scottish border was Newcastle and, although it might just be possible to intervene there, for a number of reasons Hart preferred the border itself which, on Scottish independence, had been redrawn at the river reaching the sea at Berwick-upon-Tweed. That would give him more time and would also serve to attract the immediate attention of the Scottish authorities.

  The decision made, he first called Carol at MI5 to ensure her co-operation. As he expected she was initially resistant but, recognising that there was strong pressure on both of them from government and that he would be taking full responsibility, she agreed to arrange an urgent helicopter flight north for his agent and to provide support from those of her own people who were located with the military at Otterburn in Northumberland. The next call was to Richard Osborne who was, at that moment, inhabiting his cover identity in an obscure Whitehall finance office.