Harley shook Paul awake, his hand on his shoulder.
‘Uh. Kate …?’ Paul’s eyes were glued shut with sleep and his back and neck ached from where he’d slept sitting up in the passenger seat, his chin on his chest. Outside the car, the moon was full and bright and a chorus of cicadas throbbed in the background.
‘Sorry, Paul. I’m your less attractive partner.’ He handed Paul a polystyrene cup of steaming, flavourless coffee that Johnston, the prison guard, had fetched for him while they waited. ‘But I’ve got good news – clearance for Diaz to be released has just come through. Johnston’s bringing him out now.’
‘Finally! Thought we’d have to hang around here for ever.’ Paul sipped the coffee. He needed to pee, badly. ‘Have you heard anything about Kate? Have they found her?’
‘No – not yet.’
They had agreed that their first priority should be to get Diaz working on the vaccine, rather than joining in the search for Kate and Junko. Not that Paul felt up to doing much of anything right now. It was as if something nasty had crawled into his mouth while he slept and made a nest in his throat. He swallowed and it hurt, and his nose felt bunged up. His head throbbed.
‘You OK?’ Harley asked, eyebrows scrunched with concern.
‘Yeah.’ Just tiredness. Please let it just be tiredness. ‘Feeling like crap after a night in this luxury accommodation.’
Harley smiled then looked over his shoulder. ‘Here comes our man.’
Half an hour later, the three of them were sitting in a diner. They were the only customers. They had driven past half a dozen closed diners and restaurants and a deserted McDonald’s Drive-Thru before finding this place. The sole member of staff, who Paul guessed must be the proprietor, appeared to be trying to carry on as if everything was normal.
‘None of my staff turned up this morning,’ he said before taking their orders. ‘None of my regulars neither. But life goes on, huh? What can I get you folks?’
Diaz, who was close to drooling as he perused the menu, ordered the biggest breakfast available. Harley opted for granola and yoghurt. The only thing Paul wanted was a decent cup of coffee. He was feeling increasingly rough as the morning went on. But he tried to ignore it, to focus.
‘Tell us about Mangold,’ Harley said as they waited for their food. That had been Diaz’s second demand: that they take him to see Mangold. Paul had almost punched the air – this old man knew where Charles Mangold was. He had been following the right trail.
‘Down to business. I like that.’ Diaz laughed and clapped his hands as the proprietor put their drinks on the table. ‘You already know, I assume, that Mangold and I worked together at Medi-Lab? We were partners. But when the company got closed down, Mangold put all the blame on me. He said I had been solely responsible for conducting the research. That I was the one who had breached bio-security protocols and let the virus escape from the lab. All bullshit. But Mangold was the man with the money, the reputation, the connections. Not some Mexican lab-monkey like me. So when they needed a scapegoat, naturally they targeted me.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Paul said.
Diaz leaned forward. ‘There were things in that lab … valuable research. Knowledge. Things that the US Government wanted to get hold of.’ He tapped the side of his nose.
Paul looked at Harley, expecting him to scoff at this, to refute the conspiracy theories, but instead he nodded.
His voice shaky, Paul said, ‘Including Watoto and its cure?’
Diaz grinned. ‘No, no – that was our secret. Project Hadza. There were other viruses, a whole cocktail bar of designer diseases. We were breaking new ground all the time. We were the best.’
Paul felt himself go cold inside. This would have been around the time that Gaunt was running the labs at the Cold Research Unit, using it as a cover for his secret experiments with deadly viruses – research that had been financed by Mangold. The CRU and Medi-Lab were almost like twin labs, one on each side of the Atlantic. And now Diaz was saying that the US Government had been involved in a cover-up.
‘So … what? They hired Mangold and put all the blame on you?’
‘Exactly,’ Diaz nodded, pointing a gnarled finger. ‘And they sent me away so I couldn’t talk about it. That’s why they gave me such a long sentence.’
‘Mangold was working for the Government?’ Harley said.
Paul turned to him. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t know that already.’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
Paul stared at him. He didn’t know who, or what, to believe.
‘Do you want to hear the rest of it, or are you going to keep sniping at each other all day?’ snapped Diaz. He paused to make sure he had their undivided attention, then continued: ‘I didn’t hear from or about Mangold for several years. Then, out of the blue, he called me. Asking for help.’
The diner’s proprietor came over with their food. The benefits of being the only customers: hyper-fast service.
‘Help?’ Harley asked. ‘With what?’
Diaz savoured a mouthful of egg, served sunny side up. ‘This is the best meal I’ve had in years. You’ve no idea—’
Impatient, Paul tapped the table with his fork. Kate was out there, in danger, maybe even dead already – please, God, don’t let that be true – and this old man was more interested in his breakfast.
‘OK, OK. Mangold was experimenting with a virus, something called Pyrovirus. And it had gone wrong – he had contracted it himself, and he had no vaccine. He was so desperate that he called me, begging for my assistance. Of course, I told him to fuck off.’
‘But he survived?’ Paul asked.
‘Yes. But the rest of his family – his wife, his daughter – caught it and died. All except his granddaughter.’
‘And what was her name?’ asked Paul.
Diaz took another mouthful of his breakfast. He didn’t answer straight away.
‘Watoto broke out on an Indian reservation, didn’t it? That’s where Mangold will have unleashed it, knowing that visitors to the casino would catch it and spread it far and wide. I checked on a map after I first heard about the outbreak: that reservation is very close to the town where Mangold’s daughter Tara lived, a place called Feverfew. It can’t be a coincidence. That must be where Mangold is living.’
They rose to leave, Harley paying the bill on the way out.
‘You didn’t tell us the granddaughter’s name, the one who survived,’ Paul said.
‘Oh – didn’t I? Pretty little thing, she was, when she was a kid. Her name was Angelica.’