Bad Intentions Page 12

  'Which do you think is more likely, Jack?' asked the Chairman with a smile.

  There was little choice but to admit it. 'Me,' Jack replied. 'You let me walk into that situation, knowing that she was working alongside the counterfeiters. So there are two more possibilities. Either you are being very foolish. Or you wanted me to be captured by the counterfeiters.'

  'Do you imagine I am foolish, Jack?' the Chairman said.

  'Not for a moment,' replied Jack immediately.

  'Then what would be my motive?'

  'To enlist me in the counterfeiting ring,' announced Jack.

  The Chairman shook his head. 'That would be an aim, not a motive,' he whispered.

  It was, Jack suddenly realised, blindingly obvious; if he had

  not been so entirely unsuspecting he was sure he would have reached the answer much quicker. 'You run it, don't you,' he replied. 'The counterfeiting ring. You are in charge.'

  The Chairman smiled. 'Kizog is a very diverse enterprise.' Jack walked to the back of the office, sitting down on the black leather sofa at the far end of the room. For now he felt as if he wanted to put some distance between himself and the Chairman. Physical proximity was making him feel uncomfortable. 'It's a kind of initiation process, Jack,' said Finer. 'There are many aspects of this company that are handled very discreetly. You should be pleased, you know. You have been admitted to the upper echelons of the company. Only people who are destined to reach the very top are trusted with this information. It's a privilege.'

  'What happens to me now?' asked Jack.

  The Chairman walked towards him, his limp more pronounced than ever. 'You carry on working for us,' he said. 'Just at a higher level. You are still a special assistant to me, just as I explained. Your duties will become quite clear.' The Chairman shook his head, and a thin smile played across his lips. 'You are a smart young man,' he replied. 'You will soon realise where your best interests lie.'

  Where should I begin? wondered Tara. She was used to investigations. The laborious and persistent business of sorting her way through hundreds, sometimes thousands of different molecules, was work she was already well used to. The endless process of creating a hypothesis and then discarding it once the facts no longer fitted held no terrors for her. The disappointment and frustration of chasing dead ends would not deter her. And the thrill of finding new evidence was a sensation she had felt before.

  But this was an investigation of a different sort. And she hardly knew where to start.

  The train pulled into Birmingham New Street station at just after eleven that morning. Tara had taken the rest of the day off work, her second. Menstrual problems, she had told Dr Scott's secretary as she left the laboratories, confident that the research director was not the sort of man who would care to ask any further questions. She walked out of the station and into the city, the first time she had been to Birmingham. Her first impression was not favourable. The squat concrete buildings, stained and tired by the weather, shadowed the skyline, summoning up an atmosphere of drab, ungainly viciousness that seemed to suffocate the town.

  At the rank, she took a taxi and asked for the University. The taxi driver tried to strike up a conversation, asking Tara where she was from, commenting on her accent, then tackling the state of the traffic and the weather, but he soon found Tara's monosyllabic answers a trial and gave up. Her mind was elsewhere, and she was happier when they could complete the rest of the journey in silence.

  Tara paid the driver and walked into the University. She was dressed casually this morning, wearing black jeans, a Harvard University T-shirt and a blue jacket. Her hair was tied up behind her head, held in place with a pin. Try to look as much like a student as possible, she told herself. Inside. she asked where she could find Professor Appel. The woman at the desk gave her the directions towards the biochemistry department, and Tara began walking through the corridors. The directions were not precise, and she lost her way after the first couple of courtyards. She asked her way again, eventually finding a student who knew where the department was, and within five minutes she had located the right corridor. She made her way down the long, bottle-green hallway, checking the names on the doors as she went.

  The door was open, and she looked inside. It was empty. The room was typically academic; a desk and a couple of old chairs, a bookshelf running the entire length of one wall, packed tight, and stacks of folders, binders and loose papers piled high in the corners of the room. On the desk she could see an ashtray overflowing with the remains of burnt pipe tobacco. Tara checked her watch. It was eleven-thirty. There was little choice but to wait.

  Fifteen minutes passed. Tara paced up and down the corridor, idly reading the notices on the walls, wondering about her line of attack. She noticed him ambling down the hall, dressed in brown slacks, plus a blue open-necked shirt, Hush Puppies and a tweed jacket. He could see her standing outside his door, and was looking at her quizzically. Definitely a student, Professor Appel decided. But he was damned if he could remember her name.

  Over the years he found they all looked more and more the same, particularly the Orientals. Fortunately, he found you could usually get through quite a long conversation without having the slightest idea who they were. 'Good-morning,' he said cheerfully. 'Do come in.' Tara was slightly surprised. She couldn't recall ever having met the Professor before, and he surely could not know who she was. She followed him into the office, whilst he sat down and started filling his pipe with tobacco. 'What seems to be the problem?' he asked.

  'My name is Tara Ling,' she began. 'I work at the National Institutes of Health. In America.'

  'You're not a student here?' Tara shook her head.

  'Just as well,' said Appel, his expression brightening. 'You must have done well to get into the National Institutes. Where did you study?'

  'Harvard,' answered Tara, wondering if he might have heard of her.

  'Don't suppose there is much I can teach you then,' said the Professor.

  'I was hoping you could help me with a research project,' said Tara. She was nervous about broaching the subject, but she was sure of her ground. Appel was fifty-eight now, and had been at the University since completing his doctorate at Cambridge in 1967, according to his entry in Who's Who. That meant he would have worked here alongside Zmitt for six years until he retired in 1973. 'I have been working on leprosy, and its transmission mechanism,' she began. 'I came across some papers by a former colleague of yours, Josef Zmitt. They were fascinating but strangely incomplete. If I put what he was doing together with what I have been doing, I felt, I could make some real progress in my studies.'

  'Zmitt, heavens,' exclaimed Appel. 'I haven't heard that name mentioned in years. He's dead you know. Died some time in the early eighties.'

  '1979,' replied Tara.

  'You've obviously done your homework. I'd practically for gotten about him. He was a strange old character, kept himself to himself pretty much. He was just a Reader you know, so he didn't participate very much in the life of the University. Hard to imagine anyone being interested in his work now. There wasn't much of it, as I recall, and what there was was pretty esoteric stuff.'

  'Viruses are a much bigger subject now than they were in the sixties.'

  'True,' replied the Professor. 'We thought we'd beaten all the major viruses back then. Very little left that was interesting to look at. I always thought Zmitt was years behind the times, but now you mention it, perhaps he was ahead of his time after all.'

  'His published work only gave glimpses of what he might have been working on,' persisted Tara. 'I thought there might be private papers he left behind, something that would give a fuller picture of where his work was taking him. Perhaps here at the University.'

  Appel lit his pipe with an old, oil-fired lighter. 'Heavens, you came all the way from America just to look at old Zmitt's papers?'

  Tara smiled. 'I happened to be in England for a conference. It probably won't be worth anything, but a small detour doesn't do any harm.
Besides I haven't been to Birmingham before.'

  'Don't suppose you'll come again,' Appel laughed.

  Tara laughed with him. 'Would the papers still be here?'

  'I'm sure the library can dig them out for you. I'll have a word with them.'

  Tara thanked him. The Professor offered to take her down to the library, and stood up to leave the room. Tara followed him, and together the pair paced their way down the corridor. 'Did you know Zmitt well?' she asked.

  Appel shook his head. 'He was a loner. He had an office and space in the lab and he pottered around doing bits and pieces of work. Nobody paid much attention to him.'

  'He must have had a hard life,' said Tara. 'With the war and so on.'

  'Was he mixed up in the war?'

  'He would have been thirty-seven when the Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. Quite old.'

  'True. Funny, he never talked about his past very much. Must have had some good stories. But he wasn't the sort of man to stop and chat.'

  'Did he ever say anything about what he was doing in England?' asked Tara. 'After all, that was in 1964. I don't think you could just decide to get up and move from Czechoslovakia to England in those days.'

  'True,' replied Appel. He look lost in thought for a moment. 'I think he did quite a bit of project work for the Ministry of Health. Reports and so on. Maybe they helped him.'

  They had arrived at the entrance to the library. Professor Appel spoke with the librarian, and told Tara she would find what she needed in the archives. He wished her luck. Tara smiled, and shook his hand warmly. 'You've been really helpful,' she said.

  'Heavens no,' replied the Professor. 'Drop round to my office if you need anything else.'

  Simon Cornfield was a small, tubby man, with thinning black hair and a pale complexion. He introduced himself to Tara as the assistant head librarian. Tara explained that she wanted to look at Josef Zmitt's private research papers. Cornfield had never heard of him, and she told him when he had worked at the University. The librarian said he would look through the archives, but warned her that it might take some time.

  There was a coffee room next to the library, and Tara bought herself a cup, sitting down by herself in a corner to drink it, and to mull over her progress. The room was full of students; more in here than in the library, sipping coffees, smoking cigarettes, reading the music papers, and gossiping amongst themselves. A much nicer life, she reflected to herself. She finished her first coffee, and was starting on the second when Cornfield waved to her from the library. Tara walked through. On the desk he had put a large, musty box, its lid open. Inside were a pile of papers and files. 'There are two more inside,' said the librarian.

  It could take days to read through all this, thought Tara. Particularly when you weren't sure what you were looking for. She asked him if she could photocopy the documents. Of course, Cornfield replied. While he went to retrieve the other two boxes, Tara went back to the coffee room and asked a group of four students if they wanted to earn some money. They agreed to help her with the photocopying for £10 an hour each. Cash. Students, as Tara well knew, were always short of money.

  Between the five of them it took an hour and a half to complete the photocopying. She settled up the bill with the librarian, and gave each of the students £20. Two of the boys helped her to carry the pile to the door, and she ordered a cab. She managed just to connect with the one-forty train back to London. It would get in just after three p.m. There might just be time to complete everything she wanted to pack into the day.

  During the journey, Tara began flicking through the haul of documents. She knew it would take days of close analysis before she knew whether she had anything of substance. But even a cursory glance was illuminating. Josef Zmitt, to judge by the quality of his private work, was clearly a very able scientist. Much better than his desultory academic output would suggest.

  Already tired, Tara watched the rolling green countryside give way to the rougher outskirts of London. She felt drowsy, and for a few moments she leant her head against the window and drifted off to sleep. The sky overhead was grey and sullen, matching her mood. She had been pleased to find the papers, and felt sure that somewhere within the decaying pile of documents she would find answers. But now she just felt overwhelmed by the size of the task ahead.

  In London Tara took a taxi straight for Kew in south London, and climbed out in Ruskin Avenue. Checking her watch she headed into the Public Records Office. The library closed at five. There was not much time.

  Thirty-two years, thought Tara. Under the thirty-year rule, any documents relating to Zmitt's emigration to the UK should have been released for public inspection. Only if they touched on national security could they be held back for another twenty years. Possible, she decided; There was as yet no way of knowing with whom or on what Zmitt had worked.

  Tara filled in the form, and handed it in at the desk. She had requested any Home Office files relating to Zmitt from 1963 and 1964. The clerk took the slip, and put it into the system, telling Tara to wait. She sat in the corner, patiently, casting her eye over the other researchers. They were mostly students, many of them young, presumably historians working on their doctorates. None of them paid any attention to her. Nor did she pay any attention to them. Her mind was too full of speculation and conjecture.

  It was a half-hour wait. The clerk returned with a file containing three sheets of paper. Tara walked straight across to the photocopier, feeding money into the machine, and positioning the first sheet in place. She wanted to make sure she had copies before the office closed for the evening.

  Tara took the file back to the clerk, and returned to her seat. She still had a few moments before the office closed, and she picked up the first document and began to read. Across the top ran the Home Office heading, and beneath it the words 'Immigration Department'. Below was a copy of a memo received from the Ministry of Defence.

  Re: Dr Josef Zmitt. Date: 27/5/63

  Recommendation: Immediate grant of citizenship.

  Status: Strictly classified.

  Dr Zmitt was born in Prague in 1908, and graduated in chemistry from the University there in 1928. He completed his doctorate in the same city in 1932, after filing a thesis on the genesis and transmission of viruses. Between 1932 and the German annexation of Czechoslovakia in 1938, he worked at the University as a junior lecturer in molecular chemistry. Following the annexation, he continued to work at the University, before being transferred in 1942 to the advanced research department of IG Farben, the largest of the German chemicals cartels during the Nazi regime. During that time he worked on German plans to develop biological weapons. However he has insisted in subsequent debriefing sessions that his work there was fruitless, since the German government was more interested in poison gases rather than in Dr Zmitt's speciality of viruses.

  In 1944 he was allowed to return to Prague, where he remained until the liberation of the city by the Soviet Red Army. His wife and daughter had died during his absence, and Dr Zmitt worked at the University until 1946, when he moved to the Moscow Academy of Natural Sciences. The Academy in those years was primarily concerned with developing biological weaponry, and Dr Zmitt was extensively debriefed on the work he had seen in Germany during the war. He also continued his own work on viruses. In 1950 he was transferred to the University in Bratislava. He maintains that the Moscow Academy lost interest in his work on viruses. In the subsequent twelve years, Dr Zmitt continued to teach and to develop his own research projects. He maintained contact with the Moscow Academy, visiting at least once a year, and was a permanent adviser on viral transmission. In 1960 he became aware that the Academy was studying viruses with renewed vigour and his expertise was requested more frequently. He was asked to visit the Academy several times in 1960 and 1961, with some of the trips lasting several weeks. He became convinced that the Academy was by now developing a range of viral weapons.

  Dr Zmitt claims that by now he was a convinced opponent of the Soviet regime, and had no wish
to work on weaponry. Late in 1961, Dr Zmitt made contact with a representative of the British Embassy in Prague, and he requested political asylum in the UK. In light of his knowledge of Soviet weapons research, it was decided by the Ministry to grant this request. Dr Zmitt was not considered a high-level security priority, and his departure was managed through the Embassy. He arrived in the UK in 1963. In view of his knowledge of biological weaponry, the Ministry has resolved that it is in the national interest that he be allowed to remain permanently in the UK. Dr Zmitt has expressed a desire to give up weapons research, but has agreed as a condition of his residence in the UK that he will continue to advise the Ministry on Soviet weapons development, including regular assessments on the state of their biological capability, and contributions to our own defensive research. The Ministry will secure him a medium-level academic position and maintain low-level security surveillance. Dr Zmitt has no dependants. Immediate citizenship is recommended as a priority.

  Tara neatly folded the third sheet of photocopied paper and slipped it into her carrier bag. It was already ten past five, and the room was being cleared. She collected her bags and began to walk towards the door. She felt sorry for Zmitt. The brief documentation made it sound as if he had lived a hard and bitter life. And as she felt sorry for him, she also felt sorry for· herself.

  Outside, a light drizzle was falling, and it was already starting to get dark. Tara knew she had had enough for today, and she asked the minicab driver from the office opposite to drive her directly back to Hertfordshire.

  Across the road, the man in the silver-grey Mercedes put down the small hand-held camcorder. he had been holding in his fist, and turned the ignition, firing the car into life. It had been a long wait, and much of it had been tedious, but it had been worthwhile. She was going home and there was no need to follow her there. Nothing else was needed. Angus Shane decided he had already seen as much as he wanted to that day.