All Fall Down

She spoke for another half an hour, until her voice became croaky and her legs ached with the tension. Isaac can bloody well do the next one, she thought, and next time I’ll be the one who gets to swan off to a conference in California.

The university was a four-hour journey from her home in Oxfordshire, and she was glad she’d had the foresight to ask them to book her into the local Travelodge. She was looking forward to a large drink and to kicking off the high heels that were making her feet cramp up.

‘Well,’ she said briskly, ‘we’re out of time, so I will leave you all to start building your bunkers and never venturing outside again without face masks and biohazard suits on.’

Polite laughter ensued, and the same short, hirsute professor who’d introduced her shambled back on to the stage to thank her and lead a half-hearted round of applause.

As the students filed out, Kate started putting away her laptop. The professor sidled up to her, scratching his beard. He was a full head shorter than her, and seemed to address his comments to her briefcase. Kate thought he looked as though he lived in Middle Earth.

‘Wondered if you would like to, er, come for a coffee, Dr Maddox? I would love to discuss your research into the Watoto virus in more detail. It’s absolutely fascinating. I could give you a lift?’

Kate had a brief image of them getting on the back of a donkey tethered to the railings outside, the professor with all his possessions tied in a handkerchief to a knotted ash stave that he carried over his shoulder.

‘Thank you so much for having me, but I’m actually really tired – and anyway my car is – oh!’

Her hand flew to her mouth as she suddenly recognised the remaining person in the lecture theatre, a stocky man in a baseball cap and tatty suede jacket. For a moment she thought her legs were going to give way, and a multitude of emotions and memories flooded through her: this man had been there as she’d looked through the porthole door of the lab and seen the bodies of Stephen and Dr Gaunt locked in there, writhing and dissolving into a pool of black blood on the floor before her eyes, instant victims of Pandora, one of the most deadly viruses on the planet. Then the despair of knowing that the one vial of antivirus that could save her son was also in the same room …

What on earth was he doing here now?

2

‘You remember me, don’t you, Kate?’ asked Harley, holding out his hand. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to shock you. But I wondered if we could have a word, if you’re not busy.’

Although outwardly she retained her composure, Kate had turned pale. She shook his hand, and he felt the smooth contact of her skin. ‘Yes, of course I remember you. I’m terrible with names, though …?’

‘Jason Harley,’ he said, holding her hand a second too long. The professor looked distinctly annoyed.

‘Is everything all right, Dr Maddox?’

‘Thank you, Professor, it’s fine. This gentleman is an, um, old colleague of mine. And thank you again for hosting the lecture. I do hope your students enjoyed it.’ She turned back to Harley, somewhat reluctantly. ‘Let’s go for a drink, then.’

They drove in convoy out of the campus, Harley following Kate in her shabby red Golf. He could see her eyes darting anxious glimpses at him in the rear-view mirror when they stopped at traffic lights, and felt sorry for her. She pulled into the car park of the nearest pub, and he parked next to her.

‘I can’t stay long,’ she said as she got out and locked the door. It was still raining, more persistently now.

‘I won’t keep you.’

Once they were sitting across from one another on slippery leather sofas in a deserted corner, a glass of Scotch in front of each of them, Harley opened his mouth to explain.

Kate interrupted him before he got the words out. ‘Are you here to give me a warning because I mentioned the threat of bioterrorism? I mean, I didn’t think that would contravene the Official Secrets Act, I’m really sorry, but everyone knows that it’s a danger, look at the anthrax attacks, it’s common knowledge—’

He held up a hand. ‘That’s not why I’m here. Although it’s a good thing you didn’t mention Gaunt, or the Pandora virus – as you know, we prefer that those particular topics don’t become common knowledge …’ He didn’t want to let on to her that his colleagues had kept her and Paul under surveillance for the past two years, and they would certainly have known about it had either of them ever let anything slip.

‘Oh. Good. I don’t ever. Trust me. So why are you here?’

‘I’ll tell you, if you’ll let me.’ He smiled as he said it, trying to put her at ease. A strand of slightly damp hair twisted down below her collarbone, and he felt an urge to reach out and tweak it, before upbraiding himself for behaving like a lovelorn schoolboy. It was clearly too long since he’d had a girlfriend.

‘We need your help.’

‘Me?’ She looked away, but her instant reluctance was imprinted all over her features. You’d make a lousy spy, Dr Maddox, thought Harley, amused.

‘A situation has arisen in the US. California, to be precise. A new strain of virus that we haven’t seen before. It’s known as Indian flu, because it has broken out in a Native American reservation.’

Kate nodded and took a big swig of whisky, her interest immediately piqued.

‘It’s nasty. Really nasty. The first victim was thirty years old, fit, no underlying health issues. He got up one morning, complained to his wife that he had a sore throat and a runny nose. Went to his job on the reservation and apparently spent the whole shift sneezing over his co-workers, so they sent him home. Three days later, he was dead.’

‘Go on.’

‘A few days after that, his wife was dead too, along with three other people who worked with him. They’ve contained it, though. The whole reservation has been quarantined, no one in or out. There are no reported cases outside of it, so it seems it’s under control.’

Harley felt uncomfortable, misleading Kate in this way, but he had his orders: to recruit her to the team using any means he could, whether ethical or not. If he told her that the first victim worked in a casino, that several men who had been at that casino had died or were in intensive care and that the virus had spread beyond the reservation, she would be immediately aware of the risk faced by any visitor to California.

‘What kind of virus is it?’

‘I’m not a scientist, Kate. But from what I understand it’s a new strain of Watoto.’

Kate’s glass almost slipped from her grasp. ‘Watoto? In America? Why haven’t I heard about this?’

‘Because the US authorities are keeping it quiet at the moment. They don’t want to panic anyone. Anyway,’ he lied, ‘like I said, it’s not too serious, because it’s contained. Thank God it didn’t break out in Manhattan … My brief is to help the World Health Organization put together a team to create a vaccine in case of future outbreaks.’

‘Easier said than done. I’ve been trying to find a vaccine for Watoto for fifteen years.’

‘But with very limited resources, am I right? Now Watoto is seen as a … potential threat to the West, things are different. We’re assembling this team, to be based out in California at a state-of-the-art lab, the best equipment, money no object. All the top brass in your field. Well – not quite all of them. They want you to join them too.’

‘What?’

Harley repeated it in a level voice. ‘They – we – want you to fly out there and join the team. As soon as possible. They need you. You’re one of the world’s leading experts on Watoto. You had it. You survived. You’ve spent years researching it. The WHO contacted MI6 and asked us to recruit you.’ Another lie. But he knew she would never agree if she knew the whole truth.

Kate felt numb. Twice in her life she had almost been killed by a virus – Watoto itself and, at the Cold Research Unit, a mutated version of it that Gaunt had created. Two years ago she had discovered the truth about that, almost died at the hands of a psychopath and, worse, almost lost Jack.

She was still recovering from the trauma, seeing a therapist, the weekly reassurance of steepled fingers across a coffee table and the soft pull of tissues from the box next to her when her emotions spilled out; trying to live a ‘normal’ village life, growing odd-shaped vegetables, three-legged races at Jack’s school sports day, hay fever, nights out in the local pub with Isaac and Shelley and the local farmers. And now she was being asked to disrupt her life again and fly across the world.

She shook her head. ‘I can’t. What about Jack? He’s finally settled in his new school in the village. He’s made friends. So have we. And what about Paul? I can’t leave them both here, there’s no way—’

‘It sounds to me like you’re making excuses. If that’s the real reason you don’t want to do this then they can both come with you.’

Kate stared at him incredulously. ‘An epidemic of a highly infectious deadly disease has broken out. Even if it’s contained within this reservation, I wouldn’t want Jack anywhere near there.’

‘Like I said, it’s contained. But if you’re worried, Jack could stay in the UK, with your sister, perhaps?’

She shook her head. ‘Out of the question. Miranda’s husband’s recently left her, and Jack managed to give both her kids his chickenpox. She can’t cope as it is.’

‘What about taking him to Boston? That’s where his dad lives, isn’t it? It’s completely safe on the East Coast.’

‘No, he’s moved, he got a new job at the University of Dallas.’

‘Dallas is fine. Besides it’s not going to be for ever, Kate, probably a few weeks at most. I’ll be coming too – I can’t give you all the details until you agree, but a number of agencies are working alongside the WHO to respond to outbreaks like this.’

Kate was puzzled. She knew that serious epidemics and pandemics came under the auspices of GOARN, the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, which was part of the World Health Organization. This unit was made up of various UN branches, the Red Cross and other non-government bodies. Why were MI6 involved?

‘We need you, Kate.’

She shook her head. ‘We’ve only just got back into a normal routine. No, I’m sorry, it’s absolutely impossible. I’d love to go, and be part of the team that could finally crack Watoto – but I can’t. Please don’t ask me again. I’ll do what I can to help – I can put my research on hold here and work with the team via Skype, or whatever – but I’m not going out there.’

Kate rubbed her finger and thumb into her eyes, squeezing so hard that she saw stars. Once the black spots had cleared, she saw Harley gazing at her, not in an antagonistic way, but thoughtfully, patiently, as if he was waiting for her to say, ‘Oops, did I say no? I meant yes, of course. Let’s go.’

That chilled her, somehow more than if he’d insisted. She had a horrible feeling that saying no wasn’t really an option.

3

Oxfordshire

This is normality, thought Kate the next day as she stood in the rain at the school gates. Her son was often the first one out, tumbling through the doors with his hair sticking up in a tuft at the front, knees grimy and shirt buttoned up the wrong way.

Since Harley’s visit the night before, she hadn’t been able to think about anything except his offer. Her gut instinct had been to say no. After everything she’d been through, she craved a settled life for her family. She didn’t want to drag Jack halfway across the world, or leave him behind and make him feel as if she was abandoning him. But this was Watoto, which she saw as a personal enemy, and if she said yes, she would suddenly have unlimited research resources, and the chance of making the final breakthrough that she and Isaac had been working towards, on and off, for so many years. Then she tried to imagine how she would feel if the team of scientists managed to come up with an effective vaccine for the virus without her involvement – but equally quickly dismissed the thought as selfish.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a gentle poke in her side from the point of an umbrella. ‘Hello, you,’ said a voice.

‘Shelley, hi!’ Kate hugged her friend. ‘How are you? How’s Isaac getting on at the conference?’

‘Good, I think. We Skyped last night. He claims that he misses me madly, but you know Isaac, he’s such a boffin. He can’t get enough of research papers and keynote speeches and whatever else they do at these things. But he was so sweet, you know: before he left, he wrote “I love you” in jellybeans on my pillow. Good thing that Callum didn’t spot it, otherwise all I’d have had left would have been an “o” or a “v” – if that!’

‘Ah, that’s really romantic. He should give Paul a few lessons. He’s so unromantic it’s not even funny.’

Shelley’s blonde hair was all over her face, a shifting mass of curls. She pushed them back from cheeks reddened by the wind. ‘Paul adores you.’

‘I know,’ said Kate. ‘At least I think I do. He keeps proposing to me, so he must do – I wish he’d be a bit more demonstrative sometimes, that’s all.’

Shelley put her head to one side. ‘I’d say a proposal was a pretty demonstrative gesture, wouldn’t you?’

Kate laughed, realising how contrary she sounded. ‘It’s hard to explain. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it’s like he proposes because he thinks he should, rather than because he desperately wants to marry me …’

‘You’re being paranoid, you daft cow,’ Shelley said, smiling at her.

Kate thought she was probably right. She was looking forward to seeing Paul again, after the night away, but this was tempered by the prospect of his reaction when she told him about Harley’s visit. What if Paul wanted them all to go? He’d probably give her a lecture about her duty to protect the public. And, thought Kate, he’d be right to. I do have a duty.

She must have looked worried again, because Shelley put a hand on her arm. ‘Everything OK, Kate?’

‘Oh, I’m fine … It’s nothing much. Just a boring work thing. Look, here comes trouble.’ She raised her voice so that Jack could hear, as he came pelting through the puddles to fling himself into her arms. He still had a couple of chickenpox scabs but had quickly bounced back to his old self.

‘Mummy!’ he cried ecstatically, as though she’d been away for a month instead of one night. ‘I missed you so much!’

She swung him around, laughing as she kissed his pink cheeks and felt the joy of his sturdy little eight-year-old body in her arms. Having a duty to protect the public was one thing – but what about her duty to protect her son? She’d already failed at that once, and vowed she’d never let him down again.

‘Can Callum come round to play battles?’ he asked, pretending to punch Callum in the stomach. Callum stood next to his own mother, holding her hand. He was shy, small and blond like Shelley, and so different from the stocky Jack. He giggled and feigned doubling up at Jack’s swipe, then whispered in Shelley’s ear.

‘Callum wants Jack to come over to us instead,’ Shelley said, straightening up. ‘Is that OK with you, Kate? He can stay for tea.’

Jack and Callum both cheered.

Kate hesitated. She’d missed Jack and would have preferred him to be at home with her – but she also really needed to talk to Paul when he got home from work, and it would be difficult with two noisy boys charging around the place with wooden swords and shields. ‘I’ll pick him up about seven, then,’ she said, hugging Jack. ‘Be good, sweetheart.’

Kate walked back down the lane from the school, keeping an eye out for the water-filled potholes, her head down to shield her face from the brisk unseasonal wind. She unlatched and swung open the five-barred gate of their rented cottage. Paul’s car wasn’t there, and she cursed softly under her breath. He had been out all day at a client’s office in Newbury, trying to help them identify the source of a computer virus that had wiped out half their data, and his phone was switched off. Come home, Paul, I need to talk to you, she implored the empty space on the gravel. Why did he switch off his phone when she had asked him so many times not to?

Leaving the gate open for him, she put down Jack’s book bag and searched in her pockets for the house keys. She gazed up at the house as she rummaged. It was a beautiful, half-timbered, thatched country cottage. ‘Looks like it should be on a jigsaw,’ Paul had said when they first saw it. If it was a jigsaw though, she thought, it would have a few pieces missing – one of the thatch’s eaves had a chewed sort of appearance, and one of the shutters at the front window was hanging off. Still, they loved it. It felt like home.

Kate let herself in to the living room. The huge stone fireplace that dominated the room looked cold and uninviting with the dead ashes of yesterday’s fire still in the grate. Ridiculous weather, she thought, lighting fires, in June? Imagining with longing the sensation of hot sun on her skin, she went into the kitchen and flicked the kettle on, but even as she was reaching for the teabags, changed her mind and uncorked a half-drunk bottle of Merlot instead. Pouring herself a large glass, she went back into the living room and was sinking into a faded pink armchair when she heard Paul’s car rolling onto the driveway.

A moment later he came in, ducking to avoid the low wooden doorframe. His face lit up when he saw her.

‘Hi, angel,’ he said, coming over to kiss her. He was stubbly, with the dark circles under his eyes that he always got after sitting in front of a computer screen all day. ‘How did the lecture go?’

‘Not bad,’ she said. ‘Bit of a tough gig. But there’s something—’

‘Where’s Jack?’ he interrupted, calling back over his shoulder as he went to pour himself a glass of wine. He took a deep gulp, then came up behind Kate and slid his arms round her neck, nuzzling her hair, the glass held precariously, its ruby contents tipping dangerously towards Kate’s lap.

‘Gone to play with Callum. Shelley’s going to give them tea. Which is good, because I need—’

‘Me. That’s what you need. Because I need you, and—’

‘Paul! Listen, please. Something’s happened. Sit down.’

‘What?’ He sat down on the sofa next to her, scanning her face with alarm.

‘That agent guy turned up at my lecture.’

Paul looked puzzled. ‘The lettings agent? Short bloke with the hairdresser’s car?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. Not him. Harley, the MI6 guy. The one who was there when …’ She couldn’t say it. When Jack nearly died. When I nearly died. ‘… you know …’

‘Him? Thought we’d seen the last of him. What did he want?’

‘Paul, he wants me to go to California. Now. There’s a new virus, and they think it’s a mutated strain of Watoto. People are already dying. But it’s all been contained so far, on an Indian reservation, and they’re keeping it quiet because they don’t want to panic everybody. He said they need me to join a team working on it out there, that the lead scientist has asked for me.’

Paul was silent for a moment. Kate looked at his downcast eyes as he stared into the depths of his wineglass. She studied the contours of his face, the sharp planes of his cheek and jaw, so familiar to her years before they had even met. His twin, Stephen, had been the love of her life. For the hundredth time, she looked at Paul and couldn’t prevent herself wondering: is it him I love, or still Stephen? She had long ago concluded that it was a question that she neither wanted nor needed to know the answer to. Not yet, anyway, not while things were going smoothly in their lives.

And things had indeed been going smoothly – until Harley showed up.

‘If MI6 are involved, they must have formed an inter-agency operation. It must be serious. Have they asked Isaac too?’

‘No. At least I don’t think so. Perhaps they don’t realise how knowledgeable Isaac is on Watoto. It makes sense for us both to go, as research partners.’

‘But you’re the primary expert. How long would it be for?’

Kate shrugged. ‘As long as it takes to find a vaccine, I guess. Or until the powers that be decide it’s not a priority any more and the funding runs out. Though Harley said they are throwing unlimited resources at it. Isaac and I are so nearly there – if we were working with other top virologists and had a state-of-the-art lab, maybe, together, we could finally crack it. You know what, I think that’ll be my condition: that Harley lets Isaac come too. I might consider it then.’

‘Would they let me come with you, do you think? You could be gone for months.’

‘Yes, Harley said we could all go … if you wanted to come, that is. I’d hate to be out there without you.’

‘And what about Jack?’

Kate shuddered. ‘I don’t know. Jack’s been begging to go and stay with Vernon this summer – we could maybe extend his visit? He’d be OK with his dad.’

Paul drained his glass, put it on the coffee table in

front of him, and sunk his head into his hands. ‘This is a nightmare.’

Kate moved closer to Paul on the sofa, hugging his side and burying her face in his chest. He smelled of that morning’s aftershave, and it reassured her. ‘I swore to Harley that there’s no way I would go, but part of me is saying I can’t turn my back on this, not when my being on the team would give them a better shot at preventing a pandemic taking hold. I don’t know what to do. But whatever happens, I promise I won’t go without you.’

‘Why don’t you talk to Isaac, get his advice? Maybe they’ve already asked him, and he said no.’

‘He’s in San Diego at that conference, remember? He won’t be back till Tuesday. But I’m sure he’d have rung me if they’d asked him to go.’

Paul sat up, gently pushing her away so they could face one another, eye to eye. ‘Let’s be logical about it. Yes, you could make a difference. Yes, it’s your field. But listen, they could’ve asked Isaac, couldn’t they, and it sounds like they haven’t. You’re not the only virologist working in that field. There are others, maybe not as good as you – but others who haven’t been through what you’ve already been through, and who don’t have families to think about. It’s not fair that they’re putting it all on your shoulders. They’ve already got a team on it out there.’

They talked on, listing pros and cons, sometimes arguing, sometimes rationalising, swinging one way and then the other in the debate. Along the way, Paul lit the fire and Kate made toast and uncorked another bottle of Merlot. Finally Paul opened his laptop and googled ‘new virus in California’, ‘death on Indian reservation’, ‘new strain

of Watoto’, and every other permutation he could think of, but nothing came up. Kate gazed into the fire, trying to allow herself to by hypnotised by the flames – anything

for a respite from the dilemma whose ramifications were multiplying like a virus in her brain.

‘I’d better get Jack,’ she said, eventually, checking the time on her mobile. ‘I told Shelley I’d pick him up at seven.’

‘Want me to go?’ asked Paul.

‘No, it’s OK, thanks. I could do with some air.’ The heat from the fire had burned a flush in her cheeks, and Kate suddenly yearned for the cold wind to cool them down. Slipping on her coat and wellies, she set off along the lane into the village.

A weak evening sun briefly struggled through the clouds, gently highlighting hawthorn hedges and the swaying branches of trees overhead until the clouds once more overtook it. The thought of having to leave Jack with his dad for however long it took to develop the vaccine, knowing that could mean anything from six months to a year, was intolerable.

No. I can’t do it, she thought. I won’t.

But then she wavered, thinking of the thousands of lives that could be saved. Weighing up the opportunity to work in a state-of-the-art lab with resources second to none, money no object …

The image of Jack’s face when she’d picked him up in the playground flashed into her mind. He was so happy here. A normal little boy again. Nothing, not fame nor fortune nor acclaim, could persuade her to jeopardise that for a second time.