I wondered why Reuben was telling me this. His information seemed rehearsed and readily given, a little too pat. Irrationally, I had the sudden sick sensation of being played. Resisting the temptation to speak for a second time and with a deep, growing sense of unease, I nodded patiently for Reuben to continue.
‘You knew nothing of this?’ he said, a sharp edge to his voice.
I shrugged my ignorance. It was Reuben’s turn to go silent. I realised what he was driving at. ‘You think I had a hand in Ford’s murder?’ Suddenly I saw the connection to Wilding.
He did not answer straightaway. He studied my face with the same penetrating gaze as a man shining a spotlight into my eyes. I hoped that he was satisfied with what he saw. I am a gifted liar, but I wasn’t lying this time. ‘It was a particularly inept piece of work,’ he admitted. ‘I would have been disappointed in you.’
‘When was this, exactly?’
‘Spring 2000.’
My mind reeled back. I was twenty-four. Russia. My first gig for Mikhail Yakovlevich, a Russian thug. ‘Nowhere near. I can prove it.’
Reuben sipped his drink, nodded in agreement, accepting my explanation at face value. Glad we’d cleared it up, I was less happy that I’d fallen under suspicion. ‘You think there’s a pattern, someone bumping off scientists?’
‘Perhaps.’
Shit, and now the security services were on my tail. ‘You were saying,’ I said, trying to lose the thought and get him back on track.
‘Certain groups of people have individual genetic characteristics. As you probably know, there is an entire industry devoted to the creation of drugs to target specific genes responsible for certain genetic disorders.’
I nodded.
‘An entirely commendable endeavour, of course, it involves the precise sequencing of DNA. But there is a less benign application. By a rigorous process of selection, there are those who hope to develop pathogens to attack targeted individuals based on either their racial orientation or their sex.’
‘Hope? You mean it’s been developed?’ I said.
Reuben’s accompanying smile was claustrophobic. What was once a sick dream had assumed a reality of nightmarish proportions and, well out of my normal sphere of operation, I confess it shook me. ‘Think how such a thing could be turned into a military weapon,’ he continued, without missing a beat. ‘So obsessed with the threat of nuclear destruction, most politicians retain a blind spot for other more diabolical possibilities.’
I had no tremendous interest in politics, but I was certain this wasn’t true. Governments knew, all right. Only the general populace remained ignorant. And thank God for that. Reuben picked up on my dismay. With cool, he disregarded it.
‘Which is why there are secret departments to counter the possibility of such an odious attack.’
‘You think Wilding was involved in this type of research?’
Reuben shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Never a good idea to jump to conclusions, but it is credible.’
I blinked and cursed my stupidity. Even for a man like me there’s a big moral distinction between slotting bad people one at a time and annihilating innocent individuals en masse. What if such a weapon fell into the hands of a rogue state or terrorists? Aside from what they could do with it, it would provide the perfect means for blackmail. Christ, you could hold entire countries to ransom with that kind of leverage.
‘You think this was why she had to die?’ Already I was thinking her death politically motivated and unconnected to organised crime. For sure, the security services would be after my hide.
Reuben did not answer, just looked. I scratched my ear. ‘The U.K. is a melting pot of races. Which target group are we talking about?’
‘That I can’t tell you.’
‘Can’t?’
‘Because I genuinely don’t know,’ he spread his hands.
‘But, surely, there are treaties and agreements…’
‘Which can be broken.’ He leant towards me once more. ‘Government exists to protect its people. One has to fight any threat, however vile, accordingly.’
I didn’t speak. Not for a moment did it occur to me that Reuben was mistaken. Whatever Reuben said about being out of the game, my old mentor had always been the kind of man who kept his ear close to the ground. There was no reason for me to suspect that this had changed. What scared me more, instead of coming to Reuben to pick his brains and borrow money, I’d discovered a conspiracy of unimaginable proportions. And I was at the centre of it.
‘Let me show you something,’ he said, climbing to his feet. He gestured for me to follow and retraced his steps through the kitchen and back out into the long hall. On his left, a wooden door, which I’d assumed led to a cupboard under the stairs. Taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door, opened it, flicked on a light, and descended a short flight of wooden steps to a basement room where, against the farthest wall, there was a sofa. Facing the sofa, and fixed to the wall nearest the stairs, a fifty-inch plasma screen sitting astride an antique desk, the remaining walls lined with books.
Reuben invited me to take a seat. I obeyed and watched as he touched a catch underneath the drawer in the desk revealing a false compartment from which he removed a brown sealed envelope that he placed to one side. Sliding the back panel of the dummy drawer to the left, he revealed a secondary hiding place. From this, he picked out a DVD with skull and crossbones drawn crudely in black marker pen along the spine. Reuben slipped off the cover and fed the disk into the DVD player. Nothing much happened. A lot of flicker. No sound. Lots of grainy moving images like the flaky footage you find on a pirate video. Then Reuben switched off the lights and it felt as if I was being swallowed whole. I blinked, fused in concentration.
Picture the image: a cavern, sides made of solid rock, wide metal ducting as if to pump fresh air into the bowels of the earth. At ground level, men dressed like astronauts walking slow-limbed. Some, who wore thick gloves and held clipboards, had their attention fixed on a chamber with transparent walls around twelve metres wide by twelve metres high, although difficult to tell. A metal tube fed into the domed glass roof. Inside, a group of people: an emaciated-looking white guy and a young teenage couple holding hands alongside two other men and women who stood separately. If I had to take a guess I’d say the non-whites were Chinese, Korean maybe. Their tattered clothes hung on them like shrouds, their expressions one of mute rank terror, the like I had never seen and I’ve seen a lot of fear in my time.
A cursory nod from one of the ‘astronauts’ or rather scientists, as I now believed them to be, signalled that something was about to happen, but I didn’t understand what. I pitched forwards, straining to comprehend, rapt by the figures in the glass dungeon. Within seconds all seven cupped hands over their faces and fled to the outer extremities of the see-through prison. The young couple herded desperately together, eyes agape with fear. Within a minute, two of the women were vomiting. One man, with blood issuing from his nose and mouth, crashed to the ground. Another turned purple, leaking through every orifice, body in spasm. The white guy, unaffected by the spreading contagion, collapsed to the ground and, with hands over his head, knees to his chest, rocked in despair. Blood and bile, faeces and vomit spattered the floor and glass. They were shouting, screaming, but I heard no sound, only a chorus of unheard voices. I am rarely moved, but my fists curled and found their way to my mouth. I longed to look away, to escape, and to empty my mind but I remained