Drugs to Forget Read online

  DRUGS TO

  FORGET

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  Martin Granger

  Manila Harbour

  Oceans on Fire

  DRUGS TO

  FORGET

  RACE AGAINST BIOTERROR

  MARTIN GRANGER

  Published by RedDoor

  www.reddoorpublishing.com

  © 2018 Martin Granger

  The right of Martin Granger to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Cover design: Megan Sheer

  Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pte. Ltd

  To Jacqueline

  One

  The explosion could be heard five blocks away. In the cafés of downtown Harare people steadied their spilling coffee. They were not the first to feel the blast. The German Ambassador was given a brief warning by a flash of light, then a muffled sound, and then silence. A few minutes later he slowly opened his eyes to see a cloud of dust swirling through a large hole in the once-tiled roof. He was on his back, legs pinned to the floor by some sort of concrete object with iron bars sticking out of it. A man in a flak jacket wearing a black beret shone a torch into his eyes and mouthed something. It took a while for him to realise the man was shouting, but he couldn’t hear a thing.

  The embassy was a small unassuming building with ornamental porticos and art deco styled bay windows. It had a yellow German plaque on the wall bearing the familiar black eagle. That was now all in the past tense. The plaque had disappeared along with half of the front wall. Special Forces climbed over the rubble to pick through the debris. Three members of the clerical staff, two of them African, were dead, buried under bricks and mortar. Those in the back offices had survived; some just covered in dust, others like the ambassador with broken bones. They carried him out on a stretcher.

  Within hours a forensic team were picking over the details. A crude bomb, an effective one but crude nevertheless. Probably did more damage than intended. It had been placed under a structural pillar, one under investigation by the embassy’s surveyor. A crack had been reported several weeks ago. But even if the bombers had not meant to bring down half the building, it was no consolation to the dead.

  Lloyd Bamba showed his ID to a uniformed officer. Journalist, Zimbabwe Times. He was waved away with a threatening gesture of an M4 machine gun. After taking some surreptitious pictures with his phone he retreated and went back to his office. The files on bombings in Harare were sketchy. The mid-eighties, a huge explosion blamed on South African covert forces rumoured to be targeting the liberation movement in exile. The late nineties, a blast in the Sheraton, the venue for a Commonwealth summit. Closer to home, two attacks on his rival newspaper The Daily News in 2000 and 2001. Allegedly instigated by Zimbabwean security forces for its anti-presidential propaganda. Seemingly no connective thread with any of them. Lloyd turned to his editor.

  ‘Can’t seem to find a common lead, I’ll have to go back when the dust has settled.’ He suddenly realised the pun. ‘I mean that metaphorically; when those twitchy guys with guns have relaxed a bit. Any ideas?’

  The editor turned his screen towards Lloyd. ‘Only this on WikiLeaks; from their Global Intelligence Files. Some sort of chatter about that bomb blast in Harare Central Police Station around election time. Police blamed the opposition party, others citing ZANU-PF. One common theme though.’

  Lloyd peered at the text on the screen. ‘Which is?’

  ‘All of the authors, including the US Defence Intelligence Agency, agree that there are no active militant groups in Zimbabwe.’

  Lloyd went back to his desk and started downloading the photographs from his phone. One caught his eye. He enlarged it and examined the image on his laptop.

  ‘By the look of this, I think that might have just changed.’

  Lloyd waited until dusk to make his way back to the embassy. This time he went via the grounds of the polytechnic. He entered the main building and climbed the staircase to the top floor. From here he had a view across Prince Edward Street and towards the roof of the damaged embassy. The area had been cordoned off and an armoured car sat at the entrance. He could see that if he approached the site from the girl’s high school there was a small gap in the perimeter where he might gain access. He descended the stairs, strode across the street and through the high school as if he belonged. To a passer-by he would be taken as a teacher. Parts of the embassy were draped in orange striped tape, a few disinterested soldiers hovered around. Lloyd crossed one of the lawns confidently as if taking a short-cut home. No one seemed to notice. As he had anticipated the vigilance level had dropped and it was getting dark so he cast few shadows. He took out his phone, studied the picture and made his way to the spot. There it was. Under a piece of rubble a charred piece of paper. He was bending down to pick it up when he was startled by a shout.

  ‘Halt, don’t move. Put your hands on your head.’

  Lloyd was wondering how he was going to put his hands on his head without moving when a steel barrel was thrust into his back.

  ‘On your head, I said,’ snapped the voice.

  Lloyd slowly crumpled the paper into a ball and put his hands into the air.

  ‘Turnaround!’ The order was shouted.

  Without lowering his arms Lloyd gradually rotated his body to face an intimidating soldier who was aiming his gun at him.

  ‘Oh it’s you,’ barked the soldier. ‘The journalist. I thought I told you to disappear.’

  ‘Only doing my job,’ said Lloyd quietly.

  ‘And my job is to shoot intruders,’ retorted the soldier.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought that…’

  ‘I’m not interested in what you think. Get out, and if I see you here again I’ll shoot first and ask questions afterwards.’

  Lloyd deliberately lowered his arms, keeping his fist tightly closed. ‘I’ll go, but if there’s anyone that can give me an interview…’

  ‘You’re pushing it son. Get out of my sight or the only interview you’ll get is in a prison cell.’ The soldier gestured to the exit with his weapon. ‘Now!’

  Lloyd picked his way across the masonry, the concrete and dust crunching underneath his feet. He didn’t look back. He had what he had come for in his right hand. A leaflet left by the bombers. One of probably many that they had placed to promote their cause. The only problem for them was that the explosion had been so immense that the pamphlets had been scattered to the winds. A bombsite wasn’t the place to read it so Lloyd made his way to the Book Café on the corner of Sixth Street. The café was a place for actors, musicians and writers. A space where artists liked to exchange ideas. It had been shut down for a while but now had relocated to a building near the Holiday Inn. It was the one place where Lloyd felt comfortable. There was a show on that night and people had started to gather in the bar. He ordered a beer and sat at a small table in the corner. The ball of paper in his hand was badly damaged. He slowly unwrapped it and smoothed it out on the table top. It was charred and torn but he could still make out the cheap printing. The grammar was poor but the message was clear. The West should stop exploiting African resources or they would
get more of this. Lloyd assumed ‘this’ referred to the destruction by the bomb. The top portion of the pamphlet was missing but he could just about make out a logo. A capital E was followed by a large X, the strokes of which extended above the letters either side of it. Lloyd put two and two together and guessed at the acronym. WEXA; the Western Exploitation of Africa. The name was not unfamiliar to him. Despite the claims of WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files Lloyd had heard rumours about this group in this very café. The gossip was that this was neither a pro or anti-government lobby, but an extremist group with a grudge against Western involvement in African affairs. No clear-cut agenda apparently, just a small group of very angry young men. They were thought to be harmless malcontents. Well they weren’t harmless now. Lloyd folded up the paper and made his way back to the office to write up his piece.

  Three thousand kilometres away in Brazzaville a Zimbabwean nurse sat in her hotel room. To all intents and purposes she was a volunteer there to help the overloaded Congolese health service. She had travelled incognito and wished for no publicity. The Ebola outbreak was not meant to be talked about. But her experiences in Sierra Leone had made her the perfect candidate. She knew how to diagnose the disease and cope with the grieving relatives of the dead. Burying the contaminated bodies without contracting the virus was one of the keys to preventing it from spreading further. She had arrived a week ago and been through the local induction course. Now she was preparing for her first site visit away from the banks of the Congo. She was on the top floor and could see Kinshasa in the distance over the vast brown river. Many people confused the two regions: the Republic of the Congo on one side and the Democratic Republic on the other. Salina was not one of them. Her brief had been very clear. She turned away from the window and reached into her canvas medical bag. A smooth black object, something like a glasses’ case, nestled in one of the pockets. The metal hinge creaked slightly as she opened it. Inside a glass vial and a plastic syringe. She screwed the long needle onto the syringe and inserted it into the rubber membrane of the vial. Slowly she pulled back the plunger and held it up to watch the liquid draw through. The needle was extricated, and with a flick of her finger the bubble dispersed. She rolled up her sleeve and gently pushed the needle into her arm. Insurance, that’s all it was, but what she was about to do was far more dangerous than her normal practice. She replaced the equipment into the case and snapped it shut. Now for a shower and bed; it would be a long day tomorrow.

  The health district vehicle turned up at 7.00 am. It had seen better days. Bald tyres, rusted wheel arches and a smashed-in headlight. Salina threw her bag in the back and sat beside the driver. The air-conditioning wasn’t working so she wound down the window. It was as hot outside as it was in but, as the car moved into the traffic, there was at least some breeze caused by the movement. The driver didn’t have much to say for himself so she sat there in silence watching the crowded city. They passed the airport and drove away from the river along the N1 to Geula. It was humid as one would expect on the fringes of an equatorial river basin but at least it wasn’t raining. It was the beginning of the wet season and Salina had already experienced one of the apocalyptic thunderstorms that threw water from the sky. The road had become impassable and her earlier visit had to be aborted. Now the road was clear, fringed by walls of red mud and the thick dark green vegetation beyond. The journey was only forty kilometres but the vehicle was so slow that it took nearly two hours to cover the distance. Salina reached for the water bottle in her bag; it was warm but she drank some anyway.

  The driver pointed out of the window. ‘There, just beyond those trees.’

  She turned around to see a small clearing and a wooden house with two pitched roofs at right angles. It was constructed like a log cabin, only the logs were ten centimetres wide; despite this it was neat enough. The driver pulled off the road and stopped about a hundred metres from the house.

  ‘That’s as far as I go, I’ll stay in the car.’

  Salina threw him a disapproving glance before opening the door. He shrugged his shoulders as he passed her the bag. She slung it over her shoulder and marched towards the house. A young boy in ragged clothes ran out to meet her. She would have loved to have hugged him but she held up her hands for him to stop, took a mask and gloves from her bag and gestured for him to show the way. The interior was lit with kerosene lamps. A woman with tear-streaked cheeks greeted her and became effusive with thanks. Salina nodded politely and without taking the woman’s hand moved towards the bed in the corner of the room. It was the last stages; she could tell that at a glance. She had already been told about the fever, diarrhoea and vomiting. Now she could see a rash and severe bruising around the man’s face. He was moaning, doubled up with stomach pain. This was the nineteenth reported case, but the authorities wanted them to be kept quiet, or denied. Her job was to keep the patients comfortable and ensure as little contact as possible on burial. She despaired at the former; she had few drugs in her bag. As for the contact, the wife and little boy would take some persuading.

  Salina placed her gloved hand on the man’s forehead. It was dripping with sweat. A small stainless steel container with its vacuumed glass lining was in her pocket. It unscrewed easily. She placed a cotton bud into the patient’s mouth, moved it around gently and then placed the tip into the container. A few turns and the rubber seal was tightened. Her work was done but the little boy looked up at her with pleading eyes and so she took off her gloves, reached into her bag and pressed some painkillers into his palms.

  ‘Give these to him with plenty of water. Plenty of water, you hear me?’

  He nodded. By his look he knew, as she did, that these ineffective tablets would be vomited out within minutes.

  The return journey was as silent as the one on the way out. Salina was glad of it. She and the driver knew that the man would be dead within days. But it would be another nurse accompanying him for the burial. She would be flying back to Zimbabwe, a precious cargo in her hands.

  Two

  Seek assistance, seek assistance. The orange light flashed on the panel.

  It was nine-thirty in the morning and Tottenham Court Road Tube station was heaving. A queue started to build up and some of the commuters were becoming frustrated. Long sighs, mutterings and impatient body language filled the hall.

  The woman looked dazed as she turned around to stare at the crowd. A man, wearing an expensive looking raincoat, pushed his way through and glanced at the card in her hand. A slightly grubby, cream coloured business card of some sort.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re trying to put the wrong thing into the ticket barrier.’ He gently took the underground ticket from her other hand. ‘Here this should do it.’

  The ticket shot through the slot and the gates swung open.

  ‘About bloody time,’ came a shout from behind them.

  The woman walked through the barrier and stared first at the business card and then at the various exits around her. The man in the raincoat had followed and, seeing that she had some difficulty in making a decision, asked her if he could help.

  ‘I need to get to this address,’ she said staring into the distance.

  ‘Do you know this area of London?’

  She turned to look at him, this time straight into his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Who are you?’

  He saw that she was frightened, and possibly disturbed, but he had come this far. ‘That’s not important. Let me look at that card, I’ll see if I can give you directions.’

  The address showed a number in Soho Square, just around the corner. He placed his hand on the woman’s elbow and steered her towards the Oxford Street exit. ‘Look, I’m going that way so why don’t you come with me.’

  She did so without a word, from time to time moving her head to peer at the traffic or the passers-by. They turned left into Soho Street and then into the square.

  ‘Here, that’s your number. I have to get to work now. Are you sure you’ll be alright?’

  She tu
rned to him with a strange smile and then compared the number on her card with the one on the imposing door in front of them. ‘Yes thank you, you have been very kind.’

  It was the last he would see of her as she purposely strode up the steps to the offices of Bagatelle Films.

  Nathalie Thompson was trying to get her head around the science. It wasn’t easy.

  ‘So, if a bioterrorist could find a way of storing an inactive Ebola virus, they could carry it anywhere without being detected?’

  Doctor Styne stepped away from the whiteboard. He wasn’t used to such direct questioning. He had been asked to meet with this young film director to give advice on his speciality of virology. He had thought it would be for some sort of educational or pharmaceutical video. Now he was beginning to realise that this company was involved in something far more sinister and he wasn’t sure that he should be here.

  ‘Well yes, but I thought you were interested in how viruses worked.’

  ‘Just wondering. Sorry, carry on, you were describing the lipid cycle.’

  ‘The lytic cycle.’ Styne picked up a felt tip marker, and returned to the whiteboard. ‘As I said viruses don’t eat, grow or reproduce on their own. They need a host, like you or me. They’ve a protein coat which recognises and attaches the virus to a suitable cell.’ He drew a crude diagram on the board. ‘Then they insert their DNA into that cell so they can use the host to enable them to reproduce.’

  ‘What, bore a hole and shove it in?’ asked Nathalie scribbling notes on to her pad.

  He looked at her over his glasses. ‘Not quite, but you said you didn’t want an academic account, so close enough.’

  They were interrupted by a knock. Stefanie, the producer’s PA, put her head around the door. ‘Sorry to butt in but there’s a woman who says she must see you.’