Louise Voss & Mark Edwards 3-Book Thriller Collection: Catch Your Death, All Fall Down, Killing Cupid. Mark Edwards

Fever and Rift Valley Fever from Africa and Machupo from South America. Another favourite was SARS, a coronavirus, the same kind of virus as that which caused the common cold. SARS, of course, came from Asia. This was a truly cosmopolitan collection.

      In the corner of the room, to which he made his way now, were the jewels in his crown. The influenza viruses. The 1957 vintage Asian Flu, H2N2. From 1968, here was H3N2, or Hong Kong Flu. There was the lesser-known H9N2 flu, plus H7N7, which hit Holland in 2003, leading to the slaughter of 30 million chickens.

      And here was one of the most interesting and exciting viruses, which had cost him many favours and a small fortune to acquire: H1N1, aka the Great Influenza, aka the Spanish Flu, which devastated populations in 1918, killing somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. H1N1 turned people blue as their lungs became clogged and their blood was deprived of oxygen. Their lungs filled with fluid and they suffocated, drowned from the inside. H1N1 made the medieval Black Death look like, well, the common cold. Dr Gaunt stroked the surface of the unit that stored it, wondering what the Americans who had recreated it through reverse engineering just a few years ago would think, if they had known that Gaunt would be able to copy their experiments and create his own stocks of the virus.

      Finally, Dr Gaunt stopped in front of the furthest cabinet, the one with its own double combination lock, secured by a code only he and his little helper knew. Inside was Avian Flu, H5N1, plus the virus they had acquired from the young Vietnamese woman. Here too were the goodies that Sampson, who was on his way now, had taken from the lab in Oxford.

      And on the top shelf, like a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite – the most expensive wine in the world, the one his father would have killed to own – was the virus that made him want to bow down before it like a serf. The culmination of his, and numerous others’, life’s work. For thirty years he had been moving towards this moment. There had been disasters along the way. Setbacks and many unfortunate but necessary deaths. Many of his closest colleagues and friends had died. He had sacrificed everything – family, mainstream scientific acceptance, wealth – for this. But now he knew that at last, with just one more test to complete and one more obstacle to remove, it was nearly time to unpop the cork.

      Here she waited: the Pandora Virus.

      Gaunt and his underground team had been working on it for years. In fact, research stretched back to the days of the CRU, when Gaunt had first started to experiment with flu strains. It had become his obsession. Now, after many years of sculpting this work of beautiful art, the final piece of the puzzle was in place, the breakthrough coming after Sampson liberated the AG-769 virus from Dr Twigger’s lab. AG-769 performed a clever trick, the protein in which the virus was wrapped effectively turning off the immune response of the host’s cells. Gaunt was able to emulate this effect in Pandora, massively increasing the fatality rate. Now she was complete. She was perfect.

      And when she made herself known, the world of science – no, the entire world – would gasp in awe.

      Just before they drew their last breath.

       Chapter 37

      MI6 officer Jason Harley had been working towards this moment for a long time, the culmination of Operation Castle, the first substantial war crimes case he’d been involved with, a case that had led from Serbia back to London, via a human trafficking investigation.

      It was 2.30 am, English summer rain gleaming on black asphalt in this Tottenham back street, the windscreen wipers of his car pausing, then sweeping, their ponderous rhythm at odds with his own thumping pulse. Inside the ordinary-looking terraced house, with its peeling bay window frames and crumbling brickwork, women from Eastern Europe were kept prisoner and forced to work as prostitutes. Most of them were from Serbia, from dirt-poor families, coming to England in search of a dream but finding a nightmare.

      ‘They’re going in,’ said Simon Donahoe, the SOCA agent Harley was working alongside, nodding towards the van, out of which poured half a dozen police officers. They watched them ascend the steps, bang on the door, then batter it down. Lights flicked on in neighbouring houses.