The conference room was full of people, who were not just occupying the seats around the long table but were also sitting on folding chairs at the end of the room opposite the screen, and about half a dozen who had found standing room only at the far end.
As well as Simpson and the Intelligence Director, Richter, Charles Vernon, Richard Moore and TJ Masters, the other people were specialists and operatives drawn from the ranks of employees at the section, all of whom had some form of expertise that Simpson had decided might potentially be useful. The screen had been lowered to its fullest extent and displayed on it was the best image they had of the building at the southern end of the Iranian town of Zahedan, the structure that they believed was most likely to be the laboratory where the bioweapon had been fabricated.
As well as the people physically in the room, the briefing was going to be listened to by CIA staff at the American Embassy in London, and there were audio and video links to the Secret Intelligence Service at Vauxhall Cross, to the Security Service at Millbank and the Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, out at Cheltenham.
At that moment, Simpson was speaking in a low voice to the Intelligence Director who was sitting on the opposite side of the table, while the other people in the room talked quietly together, the combined voices creating a low hum of conversation. Then he nodded, checked his watch, glanced around the room and then rapped his knuckles sharply on the table three times. Instantly everyone fell silent and turned to look at him.
‘Right,’ Simpson said. ‘First things first.’ He looked towards the double doors and at the man standing closest to them. ‘You’re nearest, Connolly, so make sure we’re not disturbed.’
The man he was addressing, about six feet tall, heavily-built and with a nearly bald head, nodded, opened a small metal box bolted to the wall and reached inside it. He flicked up the single switch that the box contained, and immediately a red light illuminated on a caution panel above the box, the light signal being duplicated on the panel in the corridor outside the room and above the door. At the same moment everyone in the conference room heard a kind of metallic snicking sound as four electrically driven bolts were driven into the steel-lined double doors from the reinforced metal frame that surrounded them.
‘Well,’ somebody murmured from the back of the room, ‘let’s just hope there isn’t a fire.’
It was an old joke that most of them had heard before, but a couple of people chuckled at the remark.
‘Right,’ Simpson said again, ‘let’s get the admin out of the way first. The subject matter of this briefing is classified as Secret with some parts that are Confidential and one section that is Top Secret, so the overall classification is Top Secret. Additionally there is a WNINTEL caveat that applies to some sections, meaning that intelligence collection methods may be compromised if details of this briefing were to be revealed to a third party. Practically speaking, what all that means is that if anybody in this room talks out of turn, even within this building, I will personally see to it that they will be singing as a soprano for the rest of their lives because I will be using their testicles as cufflinks. Is there anyone in this room who does not understand that, or who does not have a Top Secret or better security clearance?’
Simpson scanned the faces of everyone there, but nobody responded until Vernon tentatively lifted his hand.
‘Forget it, Professor,’ Simpson said. ‘If we can’t trust you, then we’re completely buggered. And while we’re on the subject,’ he added, raising his voice slightly and pointing a finger at Vernon, ‘for those of you who don’t know, this man is Professor Charles Vernon. He’s a biochemist and he’s here to provide technical and scientific expertise and to answer any questions that we might have about what we’re dealing with.’
Simpson stood up and outlined everything that had happened since Charles Vernon had driven away from Porton Down what seemed like weeks earlier, though it was only a few days, and concluded with the Keyhole spy satellite images that had been supplied, only slightly reluctantly, by the CIA unit based in the American Embassy in London.
‘This is a long way from being confirmed,’ Simpson said, using a red laser pointer to indicate the image on the screen at the end of the room, ‘but as things stand at the moment our best guess is that the bioweapon was created inside that building in a BioSafety Level 4 laboratory in a town named Zahedan near Iran’s eastern border. If we’re wrong about the precise location,’ he added, ‘that doesn’t really matter because what we do know for sure is that the lab is somewhere in that town.’
‘Are we absolutely certain that this bioweapon exists?’ one of the men seated around the conference table asked. ‘We couldn’t possibly be dealing with some kind of a disinformation exercise?’
‘What Simpson didn’t say,’ Richter said, stepping into the breach to answer the question, ‘is that we had suspicions that something was going on and we managed to identify the senior Iranian illegal in London. We took him somewhere nice and quiet and pumped him dry. Before you ask, he’s no longer walking amongst us. He confirmed the plot as far as he could, and the information we gleaned from him suggested that he was one of the prime movers, maybe even the genius who came up with the idea in the first place. The circumstances of his interrogation mean we believe he was telling us the complete and unvarnished truth.’
A couple of people around the table grimaced slightly, knowing full well what Richter was implying but not saying.
‘Taking all that as a given,’ Simpson went on, ‘the problems we face are considerable. We don’t know exactly what the bioweapon is in terms of what it is intended to do to the target population, though realistically that’s not our major concern. Whether the weapon simply kills the victims in a matter of minutes or induces some kind of terminal disease that kills them ten years later is irrelevant at the moment. Our focus is obviously on stopping it being deployed in the first place. And at the moment all we can really do is make some educated guesses about how the Iranians intend to accomplish that. And that’s a subject that the Professor here knows far more about than I do, so I’ll let him do the next bit. Over to you, prof.’
‘I’m a scientist,’ Vernon began, standing up as Simpson resumed his seat, ‘and that means I deal in certainties, with facts. Unfortunately, in this case the available facts are somewhat thin on the ground. We know that the Iranians obtained copies of several files dealing with an experimental programme here in Britain. They described a way of tailoring a particular vector – in this case a type of bacterium – so that it would only affect one particular racial group. I don’t want to get bogged down in detail here, but because of their history the genetic profile of the Jewish people is so insular that markers could be identified and used to turn them into targets for this vector. That meant the bioweapon could be administered to Israeli citizens as well as Palestinians, Jordanians or Egyptians or even everybody in this room, and the only group that it would affect would be the Jews or those people with a Jewish ancestry.’
‘So are you saying that if the Iranians modified the bacteria that causes the common cold and then administered it to a room full of people from the Middle East, the only ones who’d catch a cold would be the Jews?’ The questioner was seated at the far end of the conference table.
Vernon looked across at him and shook his head.
‘No, because the common cold isn’t caused by a bacterium but by a virus, the Rhinovirus to be exact, from the Picornaviridae family. But otherwise yes, that’s exactly what I mean.’
‘So what bacteria are you talking about?’
‘The options are literally endless,’ Vernon replied, switching to lecture mode. ‘The Earth has existed for well over four and a half billion years, and bacteria have been around for roughly three quarters of that immense period of time. They were one of the first life forms to appear and today they are by far the most pervasive and dominant living organism on this planet. Since they appeared they have occupied and colonised virtually every possible ecological niche. They are found everywhere from the bottom of the deepest oceanic trenches to the tops of the highest mountains, and they are all around us and inside all of us right now. The vast majority are entirely harmless and in most cases are actually beneficial to the creatures whose bodies they inhabit.
‘For any nation wishing to create a bioweapon the choices are more limited, because they’d need to select a bacterium that would either kill or so seriously incapacitate a human being that their chances of survival would be virtually nil. Two obvious candidates would be Yersinia pestis, responsible for the plague and Mycobacterium tuberculosis which causes tuberculosis. A third possibility is Clostridium botulinum, the bacterium that produces botulinum toxin, one of most powerful poisons known, but that acts in a different way. It doesn’t cause a disease but instead the botulinum toxin attacks the autonomic nervous system by preventing acetylcholine to be released. That leads to paralysis and the sufferers die from paralysis of the respiratory muscles. They become unable to breathe and suffocate.’
‘If you were the architect of this scheme, Professor,’ Richter asked, ‘what would be your preferred choice?’
Vernon thought for a few moments before replying.
‘If our deductions are correct,’ he said, ‘then what the Iranians are trying to do is to create a massive loss of life in Israel within the Jewish community. That’s the first thing. The second factor is that the last thing Iran will want, is to be blamed for that loss of life, so they would probably pick a bioweapon that creates or replicates a serious or terminal disease. It would be far easier for the Israelis to accept that their country had suddenly been struck by an unusual but natural pandemic than, say, a sudden massive outbreak of botulinus toxin. That would be a lot less likely.’
‘An injured animal will always fight back,’ Richter pointed out, ‘and if the Government of Israel knew that they were looking at the dead or dying bodies of half of the country’s population, say about four million people, and they had even the slightest inkling that Iran had been responsible, I have no doubt that within a matter of hours Israeli fighter jets and bombers would reduce Tehran and every other major centre of population in Iran to a smoking radioactive ruin. And that’s why I said we should keep Israel out of the loop,’ he reminded Simpson. ‘And it might not just be Iran that Israel would flatten. They might decide to inflict serious damage on Egypt and Jordan and Iraq and Syria, just to complete the set, as it were, and because at that stage they really would have nothing to lose.’
‘Exactly,’ Charles Vernon said. ‘So for Iran to pull this off without being suspected, it would make perfect sense for them to use a disease-creating bacterium as their weapon of choice.’
‘Plague, for example?’ Simpson asked.
‘Possibly, but probably not. Or not if I was directing this scheme. I’d go for something that already has an established role in biological warfare, and that has the ability to form resistant spores that retain their infective capability for years. It’s also cheap, readily available – it’s found in soil all over the world – and very versatile. The spores can be produced quite easily and then turned into either a liquid or a powder, so they can be stored and can also be used in several different types of weapons and delivery systems.’
‘You’re talking about Anthrax?’ Richter suggested.
‘Exactly. Bacillus anthracis. That would be my weapon of choice.’
‘Oh, shit,’ Simpson said.
‘I thought you said the Iranians would pick a naturally occurring bacteria,’ Connolly said from his position by the door. ‘Isn’t Anthrax a manufactured weapon?’
‘Weaponised Anthrax is,’ Vernon agreed, ‘but it’s caused by a naturally-occurring bacterium that’s been around for a very long time. The name Bacillus anthracis is derived from the Greek word for coal, the same root as anthracite, because a sufferer classically develops a sore on their skin that has a really black centre, as black as coal, in fact. This is such a distinctive characteristic of the disease that we can trace its history back to the Bible because there’s a mention of it in Exodus. Most of the Greek and Roman writers described epidemics occurring in antiquity that were almost certainly caused by Anthrax. There were other epidemics in mediaeval times and in the period between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries it was fairly common in the southern part of Europe, killing both farm animals and human beings. It wasn’t until the second half of the nineteenth century that the bacterium was finally identified and a vaccine against it was produced in 1881 by Louis Pasteur. So the reality is that an outbreak of Anthrax would be unusual in today’s world, but certainly not unknown.’
‘So would the Iranians use weaponised Anthrax, or the naturally occurring bacterium?’ Simpson asked.
‘If they’re clever,’ Vernon replied, ‘they’d use the natural strain and just modify it so that it will only function if it detects the genetic markers inherent in the Jewish race. That way it would appear to be a natural mutation, albeit an unusual natural mutation, and not any kind of a weapon. And they’d probably tweak it so that no known vaccine would be effective against it.’
‘What about the delivery mechanism?’ Simpson went on. ‘If you’re right and they are using a mutated natural strain of Anthrax, could they still deliver it as a liquid or powder that would be completely soluble in water, assuming that that would still be the preferred delivery system?’
‘That’s what still makes sense to me and, yes, all forms of Anthrax can be stored and delivered as a liquid or a powder. The only other point, I suppose, is that we still don’t know exactly how they plan to introduce it into the Israeli water supply. This is not really my field, but I would assume that the security forces there would be unlikely to allow a group of non-Israelis to drive up to their main reservoir and start emptying drums of an unidentified liquid into the water. I suppose it’s even possible that their reservoir might be guarded, or at the very least there’ll probably be a fence around it. But even if for some reason the reservoir was unguarded and an Iranian team could gain access to it, just upending a few drums of contaminated liquid or powder into the water would be too dangerous for the people doing it, unless they were wearing full NBCD suits and face masks, and also too uncertain. The contaminant needs to be dispersed evenly to ensure the correct concentration.’
‘I had a thought about that,’ Richter said.
‘Let’s hear it,’ Simpson instructed.
‘The Iranians have spent about the last four years preparing for this,’ he said, ‘or at least that’s what we believe based upon the information we have. The one thing they wouldn’t leave to chance would be the delivery mechanism. They must have worked out a way of getting the bioweapon into the water supply without anyone being any the wiser. Realistically, that would have been one of the first things they did because otherwise there’d be no point in developing the bioweapon. Building the thing and then deciding how to deploy it would be completely arse backwards.’
‘So how do you think they intend to deploy it?’ Simpson demanded.
‘As far as I can see, there’s only one method that could possibly work, given the restrictions and parameters they have to be operating under.’
And for the next three minutes, Richter described the method, the only method that made sense to him, that would permit the introduction of a lethal bioweapon into the Israeli water supply without anyone having the faintest idea what was going on. In fact, better than that, the idea he had formulated would mean that the Iranians would have nothing to do with the pollution of the water system at all, because the Israelis would be doing it for them.