‘You may take it,’ Simpson said, ‘that the faeces have impacted the air-conditioning. A lot of shit, with a lot of force and straight into a very powerful fan. We still don’t know where Vernon is, but we do now know what he intends to do. I had Baker more or less waiting outside the door of my office this morning when I got in, chafing at the bit.’
James Baker was the resident IT specialist employed at Hammersmith, so Richter had a pretty good idea of the kind of thing that was coming next.
‘You probably know more about this than I do,’ Simpson went on, ‘but Baker has set up what I suppose you could call monitoring stations or tripwires or something that alert him and his staff when certain things happen on the Internet. When certain information is posted, or some event takes place, that kind of thing. And obviously he watches the radical Islamic sites pretty much all the time, because everybody except a few politically-correct dickheads in London who object to racial profiling and manage to completely ignore the reality of the situation knows that’s where the next terrorist threat is going to come from.
‘Yesterday afternoon a whole clump of alarm bells started to ring after a new post appeared on one of those sites. An unnamed individual posted what amounted to an advertisement, offering to professionally concoct a bioweapon or a lethal chemical cocktail, basically for the highest bidder. Delivery could be arranged for any part of Western or Eastern Europe in return for a cash payment. It even listed the type of weapons available, which was basically the usual suspects, things like Anthrax, botulinus toxin, ricin, Soman, Sarin and VX. And, as a matter of interest, Novichok, I guess because it’s been in the headlines recently.’
The question was obvious, but Richter asked it anyway.
‘What were the contact details?’ he asked.
Simpson shook his head.
‘I suppose when I called it an advert I was slightly shading the truth. In fact, the post is more of a teaser, just listing the products available and the professional qualifications of the supplier which are, by the way, a really close match for Vernon. Almost identical, in fact. Anyone interested is supposed to stick a post on the same website giving their contact details and what they want and then, presumably, they will be contacted separately to discuss prices, quantity, delivery and all the rest of it. And,’ Simpson added, guessing what Richter was going to ask the next, ‘Baker has already drafted a response which I’ve approved, and he’s posted it.’
‘Pretending to be what? Or who?’
‘We’ve left it vague. Just a request for a price for fifty kilograms weight of liquid Sarin and the shortest possible delivery time to Turkey. That seemed about as far east as we needed to go and implies that the purchaser could be intending to use the stuff in Syria or somewhere in that neck of the woods. Baker created an anonymous email account on a web-based system, and now he’s just waiting for some kind of response.’
‘And Baker reckons the poster was Vernon, does he?’ Richter asked.
‘He can’t be sure, obviously, but it does seem to be stretching the long arm of coincidence more than a little if within a week of a professor of biochemistry, the kind of person who could build these types of weapons more or less in his sleep, going missing, this advert appears. So unless we have another equally qualified renegade academic running around France or Germany or wherever, this does look remarkably like the work of Charles Vernon. And, needless to say, that means we have to stop him.’
‘So where do we start looking?’ Richter asked.
Simpson shook his head.
‘That is a bloody good question,’ he said.
‘But do you have a bloody good answer?’
‘No, I don’t,’ Simpson admitted. ‘You won’t be surprised to learn that the French have been no help whatsoever. As usual. I don’t even know if they’ve done anything at all to try to find out where Vernon went once he walked out of the arrivals hall at Blagnac in Toulouse. All we do know is that he hasn’t used his credit cards since he bought his ticket at Heathrow, but that’s not too surprising bearing in mind the amount of folding money he had in his trousers. So whatever he’s doing and wherever he is, he’s obviously paying cash for everything.’
Richter didn’t respond for a few moments, and Simpson looked at him sharply.
‘What?’
‘I’m not entirely convinced that this is Vernon,’ Richter said. ‘I admit that I don’t know much about the man, but what I do know doesn’t suggest that he’s the kind of person who would have anything to do with ISIS or radical Islam, which I assume would be the organisations most likely to be interested in these kinds of weapons. And what he definitely doesn’t need is the money. He’s not rich, not by modern standards, but he’s certainly quite well off. His house is mortgage-free, he doesn’t have expensive tastes and is hauling in a good salary. He doesn’t even seem to spend what he’s got or earns, as far as I can tell. So why would he do something like this? It’s a risky strategy and if he followed it through it could well end up with him being murdered by ISIS or whoever once he’d delivered the goods. I just don’t see what he could possibly achieve by doing this except to end up dead, and that really doesn’t make sense.’
Simpson looked unconvinced.
‘You may be right. You may be wrong. I have no fucking idea one way or the other. But what I do know is that this advert, for want of a better word, has got Five and Six climbing the walls and screaming at me, mainly, to do something about it. Even the bloody Americans are trying to stick their noses in.’
‘Why? This is our problem, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, obviously, but don’t forget they’ve had those attempts on senior officials using Anthrax over the last few years, and they’ve obviously got markers out for any event even indirectly related to chemical or biological weapons. The Company, I gather, is taking a very keen interest in what’s going on over here on this side of the Pond, and the Fibbies are increasing their domestic surveillance as well, just in case Vernon or some weapon he’s concocted pitches up in the States. There’s not a huge amount we can do until either Vernon pops out of the woodwork or Baker gets a hit on his new email account that might show us where to start looking. But we need to do something. We can’t just sit around here waiting for something to happen.
‘Toulouse was the last place where we know Charles Vernon went, though we have no idea where he might be now, obviously. But we have to start somewhere, so you need to pack your bags, grab a diplomatic passport from the admin section and a pistol and ammunition from the armoury and get yourself over to France no later than yesterday. This has gone a long way beyond the theoretical did he or didn’t he. You are to find Vernon, no matter what it takes, and either bring him back here in one piece or shoot the bastard if you can’t do that. Try to avoid causing too much collateral damage – I know what you’re like when the shooting starts – but one way or the other you are to find and stop Vernon. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Crystal,’ Richter said, stood up and walked out of Simpson’s office.