The Zeno Effect Page 7

  When she reached the end of her account, from which she had carefully omitted any details of the Zeno element, he whistled softly under his breath.

  “That’s some story,” he said, “so what can I do to help?”

  “Well, I need to get to Edinburgh as quickly as I can but I don’t dare go on any public transport, so I wondered if you could get me there?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m due to take the weekly delivery up to Jess in the shop tomorrow, but I can easily go today. The van is pretty much packed. We’d just need to load a bit more in and we’d be ready.”

  “That would be great,” Ali said, with a sigh of relief. “And could I use your phone? I need to warn the office that I’m on my way and have to see the boss urgently, and I also need the technical people to make my CommsTab safe before somebody finds it.”

  “No problem. You do that and I’ll finish loading up.”

  He passed her the battered old phone which, along with an equally ancient computer, was the cottage’s only bow to modern technology. She called Ravi Panesar, with whom she shared an office, gave him an abbreviated version of events and asked him to try to arrange a meeting with the head of their department for that evening.

  “Oh, and Rav,” she added, “could you contact the duty technicians and get them to brick my CommsTab. Tell them it’s been lost. I’m hoping to reach you before six so wait around for me please.”

  Ravi assured her that he would be there, and relieved to have finally made some progress by contacting Edinburgh, Ali went out in search of Uncle Bill. She found him just closing the rear doors of a grey hybrid van, on the side of which large green letters spelled out ‘Turnbull Organic Border Produce’ – the enterprise to which Bill and his partner Jess had turned when they retired from academic life.

  “OK. It’s done. I’ll just call Jess, then lock up and we can be away.”

  Ali clambered into the van where she was greeted enthusiastically by Skye, Bill’s Border Collie, who was already in her accustomed place behind the front seats and who planted her chin firmly on Ali’s shoulder, snuffling happily.

  “Hello Skye,” Ali said, fondling the dog’s ears and scratching her head. “You’ve no idea how pleased I am to see you.”

  “Och, I expect she knows very well. She assumes that everyone is pleased to see her. Even the sheep,” Bill said as he joined her in the van. “Road will be quiet. We’ll be there inside an hour, tractors and stray beasts permitting.”

  There proved to be neither tractors nor stray beasts to delay them, the journey remaining entirely uneventful until they joined the main A68 at Carfraemill and headed along the straight road towards the climb up Soutra Hill.

  Bill tapped her shoulder. “Look up ahead, Alison. There’s police cars and a shuttle at the side of the road. And the passengers are all out on the verge.”

  Ali, who had already seen them, sank deeper into her seat so that she was all but invisible from outside.

  “Just follow the traffic normally.” She was almost whispering. “They’ve no reason to stop us.”

  Once the van was past she risked a look in her wing mirror. The passengers were re-boarding the shuttle and, standing with the others by the police car, she caught a brief glimpse of Richard’s figure as it receded to a dot in the mirror. They were safely through. In what seemed like an eternity to Ali, but was in fact no more than fifteen minutes, they came over the hills and could see Edinburgh laid out ahead. The Pentlands striding away to the left, the Firth of Forth shining in the afternoon sun behind the city, the hills of Fife beyond, and Arthur’s Seat crouching protectively over her home. At last, she thought, taking a deep breath and leaning her head against Skye who nuzzled gently into her neck. Bill glanced across at her and smiled.

  “Nearly there,” he said.

  At the luxurious Reebok Sports Club in Vila Olímpia, São Paulo, a young woman on a treadmill was struggling for breath. She had only just returned from an extended European holiday on the previous day and was determined to overcome her jetlag-induced lassitude by vigorous exercise. But instead of feeling better as she ran, she was feeling distinctly worse, and with a sudden lurch she grabbed for the machine’s handrail, missed it, and tumbled hard to the ground. She lay there wheezing and coughing, desperately trying to catch her breath, as concerned gym users gathered around her in a doomed attempt to help.

  6

  Deep in dark dreams that featured Richard, betrayal and pursuit, Ali heard the knocking on her door as if from a great distance. It crossed her mind that it must be morning since even with her eyes closed much more light than usual was filtering into her bedroom. It’s either very late or it’s an exceptionally sunny day, she thought, as she tried to make sense of the continued knocking which was now supplemented by an insistently calling voice.

  “Come on Ali. Out of there. We have business.”

  The voice mingled, merged, with Richard’s voice in her dream. Suddenly she was terrified. Oh god no, he’s here. He’s followed me to Edinburgh. After all that effort to give them the slip, they’ve still caught up with me.

  Overcome by a wave of panic she sat up in bed, opened her eyes, and, at last properly awake, realised that the room around her was not her own bedroom and the voice that she was hearing was not Richard’s, it was Ravi’s. Now she remembered. The previous night, after telling her story to the Chief Scientific Adviser and a security officer who had waited on her arrival, they had agreed that, although Richard would probably not dare to pursue her into the heart of Edinburgh, it might be safer for her not to stay alone in her flat that night. So she had gone home with Ravi, played computer games with his young son, dined with him and his partner Eleanor, and finally collapsed exhausted in their spare room.

  “OK, I’m coming,” she called. Ravi was right, they did have business that morning. The CSA was arranging a meeting for Ali with the minister for public health and with anyone else from the Scottish administration whom he thought would be useful and could be mustered at short notice on a Saturday morning.

  “The Chief’s been in touch,” Ravi shouted back. “He’s arranged a meeting with the health people for eleven o’clock so we need to get ourselves to St Andrew’s House as soon as you’ve had some breakfast.”

  It was a pleasant enough walk along Leith Street and round Calton Hill in the sunshine, while Ravi did his best to divert her with the latest departmental gossip. By the time they arrived at the monumental government building sitting below the tourist attractions scattered on the hill, Ali felt more cheerful, sufficiently so even to take her customary pleasure in the strange combination of grey pomposity and art deco frivolity that distinguished St Andrew’s House. She was always pleased to get back to Edinburgh from her London duties, and, in spite of the stresses of the past few days, she could feel her return home having a positive effect. For a moment she even forgot the seriousness of the Zeno threat, pretending to herself that it would be just another stupid self-imposed problem that would be overcome by humanity’s seemingly limitless ingenuity.

  The mood didn’t last. Once she found herself in the minister’s office and being quizzed in detail about what had happened, her anxiety returned.

  “There was really no hint as to what family of viruses we might be dealing with here?” the minister asked for the second time.

  “No, I’m sorry.” Ali shrugged apologetically. “As I’ve said, Sarah suggested a list of possibilities and I’m sure that if Irene had known she would have told me. I suppose she might know more by now.”

  “Unless she’s being deliberately kept out of the loop for security reasons. She obviously thought she was under surveillance so that might well be so.”

  This observation came from the same security officer who had heard Ali’s account the night before and to whom Ali had not yet been introduced.

  The minister gestured towards him. “Sorry, I should have explained about Dou
glas here. Douglas MacIntyre. He’s our security liaison on this matter. Perhaps you could tell us what you’ve found out, Douglas?”

  “Certainly.” He looked first at Ali. “Naturally, we had to check the veracity of Dr MacGregor’s somewhat improbable story.”

  Ali stiffened in her chair, but before she could say anything the CSA laid a restraining hand on her arm.

  “It’s all right, Dr MacGregor, nothing personal,” the security officer continued, smiling in her direction. “We would do it for anybody. We’ve spoken with our own border police who confirm the details that you’ve given us about your pursuit. Interestingly, they were provided with electronic authorisation from the office of the Lothian and Borders Procurator Fiscal to apprehend you and to hand you over to a Mr Richard Osborne. However, when we checked with the Fiscal’s office they had never heard of you or of Richard Osborne and had certainly never issued such an authorisation.”

  “Jesus!” The minister was clearly taken aback. “They actually went as far as to forge a Scottish legal document?”

  “I’m afraid they did,” Douglas replied. “Two forgeries in fact. Mind you, the border police should have cross-checked with the Fiscal before taking off across the countryside like gung-ho heroes in an action movie. We’re issuing new standard instructions today and the officers in question will be disciplined. But the fact that whoever did this could produce the forgeries corroborates Dr MacGregor’s story. The men with Osborne in Berwick had English Military Intelligence IDs. That they were willing to go to these politically risky lengths to stop her does suggest that they thought she was in possession of significant information. I think we have to take this Zeno business very seriously.”

  “We’re doing that,” the minister replied. “I spoke briefly with the first minister early this morning and we’ve set in train contingency planning in the event that we might have to quarantine ourselves by closing the border with England. But it’s difficult to know what further action to take without knowing exactly what virus we’re dealing with. Symptoms, incubation period, how it spreads, and so on.”

  “Shouldn’t we approach the English government directly?” the CSA asked. “They’ve clearly breached all sorts of protocols, not to mention broken several laws, so we could pressure them for more information with the threat of going public about their actions.”

  The minister shook her head. “It’s an option we’re considering but we’re not convinced that it would produce reliable information. They could spin us all sorts of stories and we’d have no way of checking. If it is such a serious breach it’s unlikely that they would simply tell us the truth. Of course, we will raise objections through back channels about the forgeries and Dr MacGregor’s pursuit, but they’ll no doubt officially deny all knowledge.”

  Ali was becoming impatient. “But shouldn’t we be making a public statement anyway? People need to be warned if there’s a serious health risk.”

  “But what could we say? That we think there might be a dangerous virus around, though we don’t know what it is or how best to protect against it? We’d just cause unnecessary panic.” The minister rapped the table for emphasis. “No, we need much more information before we can make anything public.”

  “Perhaps, then, we need to contact Alison’s two sources,” the CSA suggested, “just in case they now know more. Is there any way that we can bypass whatever surveillance is in place?”

  “Yes, I could probably fix that,” Douglas said. “If Dr MacGregor could handwrite a note to each of them I can arrange for our agents in England to deliver the messages and collect any replies. It won’t be easy, and it will take a little time, but it’s probably the only line of communication that we can trust.”

  The minister nodded agreement. “Let’s go for that then. In the meantime we’ll do what we can to push along the contingency plans for dealing with an epidemic. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

  The meeting over, Ali was left alone with Douglas to write the letters to Irene and Sarah.

  “Put something private in each that will confirm for them that the note is actually from you,” he said, “and tell them that the person who delivers the note will arrange to collect a reply.”

  Ali took some time over the letter writing, encouraged by Douglas to include in each a graphic account of her experiences of the day before. His view was that those details would confirm for Irene and Sarah that they were under active surveillance and that the agencies responsible were to be feared. In Irene’s case, in particular, he hoped that this affront to her sense of justice would make her more likely to provide the information that they needed.

  “This isn’t going to put them in danger, is it?” Ali asked, as she sealed the envelopes and handed them over.

  “No more than they already are,” came the reply. “Their security people will take what happened yesterday as confirmation that Professor Johnson really did pass information to you and that you have conveyed it to her daughter. Besides, all being well we’ll get these letters to them without anybody knowing. But whatever you do, don’t try to contact them directly. I’m sure all their standard communication systems will be bugged.”

  “I don’t have a CommsTab any more anyway. You remember, I left it on the shuttle as a decoy.”

  “Ah yes,” Douglas said. “That was a smart move. But…” He reached into his briefcase and, with a conjuror’s flourish, drew out her CommsTab. “My people collected it from the Border Police last night. Luckily someone saw sense and didn’t allow Osborne to take it away. It’s still bricked of course, but if you give it to your techies they’ll sort it out, set up a new CommsLink code and install some additional cryptographic software that we’ve passed on to them. Better than new and, for a while anyway, difficult for the English security people to track or bug.” Looking pleased with himself, he gathered his things together and added, “We got your suitcase too. I’ll have it sent over to your office. And Alison – I may call you Alison I hope – I thought that you did remarkably well yesterday.”

  With that he was gone, leaving Ali a little taken aback at the sudden compliment but also rather pleased. At least somebody appreciated her efforts, she thought, and he had given her a delightful smile. She sat for a while longer before leaving, mostly thinking about Irene and the risk that she had run in sending that message. If they had been prepared to chase Ali halfway across the country, what might they do to Irene and Sarah? It was not a comforting thought.

  In his Soho office that Saturday morning thoughts of Irene were also occupying Jonathan Hart. A disconsolate Richard Osborne had arrived back from the north and provided Hart with details of the previous day’s events. Overnight Richard had convinced himself that Ali had to be something more than a Scientific Liaison Officer. How else could she have eluded them not once, but twice? His view – of which he tried to persuade his Director – was that she must be from Scottish intelligence, fully aware of their surveillance of her and double-bluffing them.

  Hart could see that his erstwhile undercover agent was disturbed by the whole business, angry that he had apparently been taken in by this young woman. He had to believe that she too was an agent, otherwise yesterday’s failure undermined his sense of his own professional identity. And beyond that, perhaps not fully recognised by Osborne himself who was not given to extensive self-analysis, there was a deeply felt affront to his masculinity. To be outmanoeuvred by a mere woman, one whom he had thought to have mastered by seducing her and drawing her into his own web of lies – that was utterly unacceptable.

  Hart was quietly amused by Osborne’s inability to see the irony of the situation: the deceiver deceived. Even if Ali was a Scottish intelligence officer – which Hart did not for a moment believe – she would only have been practising much the same deception as Osborne himself. But like many people with a strong sociopathic streak, Osborne lacked the empathy necessary to put himself in Ali’s place or to see the situa
tion from any kind of moral point of view. It was why he was a useful undercover agent, but also why he would never progress to a more responsible position in the intelligence world. Hart had sent him on his way with a “Never mind, these things happen,” and then comforted himself with the thought that, when necessary, much of the blame for yesterday’s fiasco could be deflected onto Osborne rather than finding its way to his own door.

  Even so, if blame did not attach itself to him personally, it would be his organisation that had failed in the eyes of his government superiors and he would have to find ways of contending with that. This was why he had returned to thoughts of an alliance with Irene Johnson. Even leaving aside his agreement with her about the need for immediate action if there was to be any chance of limiting the spread of the Zeno virus, he knew that as the crisis developed – as it surely must – sides would be taken and nuances lost. For Hart there would be some longer-term benefits in lining up with the cross-departmental network of Scientific Advisers, especially when it emerged that their early advice had been rejected by the politicians. At the appropriate time he would be in a position to leak that information into the public domain independent of the government’s formidable propaganda machine, something which the Scientific Advisers certainly could not manage on their own. If he could convince Irene that he genuinely agreed with her views on a Zeno strategy and, more important, that he was the only ally she had who was willing and able to do something about it, then in the long run his own position would be strengthened.

  Timing is the key, he thought, if that’s wrong then it all goes wrong. In pursuing and detaining Ali he had wanted to attract public attention from the Scots and thus put pressure on his own government. But now that she had reached Edinburgh, that was unlikely to work. She would certainly have told her superiors what she knew, but she couldn’t know very much. She was on her way north before any details were shared other than the fact of the Zeno breach itself. In those circumstances the Scottish government was unlikely to act precipitately without having more solid information. They would make what the diplomats liked to call ‘strong representations’ to UK officials, but they would not yet do so in public.