Wilmot walked into the bar at five minutes to four, the specified time, and saw Michael was there already, sitting by himself in a booth against the back wall. Wilmot collected and paid for half a pint of bitter at the bar, then walked over and sat down opposite him.
‘What you want with me this time?’ the professor asked, his irritation showing.
‘Do I really have to answer that?’ Michael said. ‘Can’t you guess?’
‘I have no idea,’ Wilmot said.
‘I’m talking about Charles bloody Vernon. You have heard about him, I suppose?’
Wilmot nodded.
‘I don’t know the man,’ he said, ‘but I know of him. Why?’
‘Because according to one of my other sources, he’s done a runner, which is bad enough, but what we really need to know is what triggered it. Specifically, did he have access to the TRAIT files, or is this something completely different?’
For a few seconds Wilmot just looked at the man sitting opposite him. Then he leaned back and took a sip of his beer.
‘Why do you mention TRAIT?’ he asked. ‘That’s ancient history.’
‘Maybe it is to you, but it’s not to me. What I want to know is why Charles Vernon decided to leave the country.’
‘I don’t know,’ Wilmot replied.
‘I know you don’t know,’ Michael snapped. ‘You’re here because I’m telling you to find out. That is now your highest priority. If Vernon had some kind of brainstorm and just walked away from his job, that’s fine. But if he dug out the files relating to TRAIT and put two and two together that’s a completely different situation. You need to find out if that’s what he did.’
‘I’m not sure that I can. I’m a scientist, not an administrator. I don’t have access to the acquisition history of the files in the archive, or anywhere else for that matter. And I don’t even work at Porton Down any more.’
‘Then you’d better work out a way of getting it. Maybe if you request the files yourself you could see who looked at them last. I don’t care how you do it. I’m just telling you to get the information. You told me before that there’s a kind of central science archive where information relating to trials is held. You can start by checking that.’
‘But why do you think this is anything to do with TRAIT? That’s ancient history,’ Wilmot said again.
Michael stared at him for a long moment, then nodded.
‘The programme took place a long time ago, yes, but it was clear from the first that it had the potential to be successful. It worked, in simple terms. We can even see why you tried to develop it. No doubt whoever came up with the idea genuinely believed that it would ultimately benefit mankind. But we decided that its scope was too narrow, too genetically limited, and above all it was too slow in action. So our scientists took the extremely detailed information that you so kindly and helpfully provided five years ago and modified it. The variant we have produced has an entirely different target, and the payload is completely different. The original TRAIT is now just being used really as a delivery vehicle, and we’ve even heavily modified that.’
As Michael explained the concept as casually as if he was discussing the menu he was planning for a dinner party, Wilmot genuinely felt himself turning white with shock.
‘I gave you details of TRAIT just as background information,’ he said, almost stammering. ‘But the project was abandoned. I told you why we had to stop development, why it was a mistake even to have started working on it. You cannot possibly, you cannot ever—’
‘You would be amazed what we can do given the right encouragement,’ Michael said, ‘and events in the Middle East, recent as well as historic, have been all the encouragement we have needed. TRAIT provided an excellent starting point, but the weapon we have developed is very different. It’s so different, in fact, that we’ve even given it a new name. But that’s not important. What is important is finding out if Vernon knew or found out about the original trial, because if he did and that’s why he’s left the country, that could alert the British authorities to what’s been going on. And we don’t want that to happen. It’s important that there are no disruptions to our plans.’
Wilmot sat in silent despair for a few seconds, staring down at the scarred wooden table in the booth. Then he lifted his head and stared at Michael. One particular phrase the other man had used had stuck in his memory.
‘You said you thought TRAIT was too genetically limited,’ he said. ‘So what have you done with it?’
Michael shrugged.
‘You’re obviously aware of the original target,’ he said, and Wilmot nodded. ‘We have no particular interest in that genetic subgroup, so our scientists spent a couple of years studying the human genome and the various different genetic markers. And then they modified the weapon. I’m not a biochemist or a scientist of any sort, and I’m sure you would understand the technicalities of the matter much better than I do. But the result is that the original TRAIT weapon can now be aimed at an entirely different part of the world’s population.’
Wilmot hardly dared ask the obvious question.
‘Which part?’
Michael told him.
Less than a minute later Wilmot stumbled out into Dean Street and staggered away towards the Tube station, barely aware of his surroundings, his thoughts racing.