Kate ran a trembling hand through her hair. 'No...well, if he's in a hotel, it wouldn't be an expensive one. Vernon's so tight. They're probably sleeping in the car somewhere. I hope they're sleeping... I'd say he's most likely to have taken Jack back to London. He doesn't even know that Jack's in danger, does he; so his main objective would be to get him home. If he hasn't tried to get a flight tonight, I bet he will in the morning. Most likely from Heathrow that's the airport he's familiar with, and he's a creature of habit.'

Donahoe said, 'We've got forces out across the country looking for the car. All ports and airports have been closed in case they try to access them. If he's in the car, we'd have found him by now. We're also trying to trace him via his cell phone, even though it appears to be switched off.'

'We will find him, Kate, don't panic, we will,' said Harley, with more confidence than he felt. 'The anti-virus. Do we need to bring along a doctor, to administer it?'

'No,' Kate said, 'I can do it. Jack's phobic about injections. He'd go mad if anyone else tried to.'

Harley winced, thinking of the global consequences of one little boy refusing an injection. But how could they inject him when they didn't know where he was? 'Where's the anti-virus now?'

'It's here,' said Kate, reaching into her pocket. Her expression changed. She checked her other pocket. Then frantically checked the first one again.

'Kate, what is it?' Paul asked urgently.

'I haven't got it. It's not here.' She had gone white.

'Are you sure?'

'Yes. Oh...' She pulled the lining of her pockets inside out. Her mobile clattered to the floor.

The vial of anti-virus that Stephen had given her was missing.

CHAPTER 48.

Kate and Paul ran back inside the building before any of the agents could stop them.

'I must... I must have dropped it when you pulled me out of the lab. Or when Sampson chased me up the stairs.'

They arrived at the door that led down into the cellar but an armed police guard blocked their way.

'We need to go downstairs,' Kate said. 'Let us through.'

The officer shook his head.

Harley and Donahoe arrived, having chased Kate and Paul into the building. 'Let them through,' Harley ordered.

The guard stepped aside and the four of them descended the stairs, treading carefully and scanning the steps in case the fragile gla.s.s vial was there. What if it was smashed? Would there be more in the lab? Kate felt a wave of sickness flood through her. How could she have been so careless? What if they found Jack but couldn't find the anti-virus? It would be as if she had murdered Jack herself, through her own incompetence.

Sampson's body, along with Utada's, had been removed from the stairs and when Kate saw the empty s.p.a.ce where his body had lain her first thought was that he'd risen like some horror movie anti-hero and that he'd be waiting for her downstairs. She hoped he had suffered when the bullets ripped into him.

She would never forget the look of confusion on his face when he had pointed the gun at her but failed to pull the trigger.

The vial was nowhere to be seen on the stairwell, or in the corridor downstairs.

Kate approached the lab but Harley caught her arm. 'I don't think you should look inside there, Miss...Doctor Maddox.'

She shook him off. 'I need to find that vial. I lost it I need to find it.'

Another armed guard stood in front of the lab. Kate thought he looked a bit green. When she looked through the window she realised why, and she almost wished she'd heeded Harley's advice.

Gaunt and Stephen looked as if they'd melted from the inside; blood pooled around them. If she didn't already know it was them, she wouldn't have recognised them. Bile rose in Kate's throat and she put her hand over her mouth, using all her willpower to stop herself from throwing up. She had to stay focused. She had to find that anti-virus.

Paul, who looked as sick as she felt, pressed his face against the window.

'I can see it,' he said.

Kate joined him and peered through the porthole. 'Where?'

But she didn't need him to show her. She saw it straight away, lying on the floor a few feet away from Stephen's body.

'It must have fallen loose when you pulled me out of the lab,' Kate said.

Without thinking, Paul tugged at the lab's door handle, but of course the door didn't budge.

Harley grabbed his arm. 'What the h.e.l.l are you doing? Do you want to end up like the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in that room? Do you want us all to end up like that?'

Paul turned angrily to the agent. 'One of those "poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds" is my brother. But anyway, the door won't open.'

'Oh no...' The relief Kate had felt at spotting the anti-virus drained away. It was locked in the lab.

'You didn't see the code that Gaunt used to get into the room, did you?' Paul asked, examining the keypad beside the door. Letters and numbers a full QWERTY keyboard. That was unusual. Most security locks like this used numbers only.

Kate shook her head. 'No.'

Paul started to tap at the keypad, trying a few common pa.s.swords: h.e.l.lO, Pa.s.sWORD, the user's name. But they only used letters; the pa.s.sword was bound to use a combination of letters and numbers.

Harley grabbed him again. 'Mr Wilson, will you please stop trying to open the door. We need to seal this area. We can't allow whatever killed your brother to get out of that lab.'

'But if we don't get that anti-virus out of there, Jack is going to spread the Pandora virus around the world.'

The two men turned to look into the lab at the same time, rendered silent by the problem, their brains ticking in tandem.

Without warning, Kate ran off up the corridor.

Harley called, 'where are you going?' but she didn't reply. She threw open the door to Gaunt's office and went inside, looking around, the gold cross on the desk catching her eye momentarily. She pulled open cupboard doors and drawers. But the thing she was looking for wasn't there.

She exited the room and went back to Paul and Harley.

'I was sure he'd have one, but apparently not... We need a biohazard suit. Full body, gloves, mask, everything. You must be able to get one,' she said, addressing the MI5 agent.

Harley looked at French and Donahoe, who had joined them in the corridor. French nodded. 'We can do that.' She walked briskly away, pulling out her mobile as she went up the stairs.

'So... if we get a biohazard suit, we still need to get into the room.' Harley inspected the door and keypad. 'We need to get one of our computer guys down here.'

'How long would that take?' Kate asked.

'I don't know. An hour for them to get here, then I don't know how long to get through this door...'

Kate pulled at the roots of her hair. 'We're going to run out of time. Oh, Jack.'

'I can do it,' Paul said.

Harley looked at him sceptically. 'You should leave this to the experts.'

'I am an expert,' Paul a.s.serted. 'This is what I do. We have two options. We either find a way to disable the system, or we find Gaunt's pa.s.sword.' He inspected the keypad again. It was fused into the wall, with no wires in sight. He walked length of the corridor, then went upstairs, leaving Kate and Harley wondering what he was doing.

When he returned, he said, 'There's no sign of a control panel anywhere up there.'

He went into Gaunt's office and looked around, echoing Kate's movements of a few minutes ago. 'No sign of any control panels. So it must all be controlled by Gaunt's PC.'

The tower of the computer, which was a Mac, several years old, was under the desk. Paul stooped to turn it on, then waited for it to boot up, pressing a b.u.t.ton on the monitor at the same time. Kate paced around impatiently, while Harley picked up the gold cross, muttering, 'Interesting.'

'The computer's pa.s.sword protected,' Paul said, as a screen appeared asking him to log on.

'Of course,' said Kate, who couldn't keep still.

'But that's no problem. I can easily reset it. I just need the installation disks.'

'Just!'

Paul and Kate opened all the desk drawers and rifled through, but there was no sign of the disks.

'Is there another way to do this?'

'If I had my laptop, but I left it in the car with Vernon. Keep looking.'

Kate looked at Paul, impressed by the way he had taken calm control, trying to absorb some of his calmness. She was just about managing to suppress her panic.

'Found it!' Paul exclaimed triumphantly and holding a small pack of CD-ROMs aloft. 'It was at the bottom of this drawer.'

'That seemed too easy,' said Harley.

Paul shook his head. 'Most people keep the installation disks near their computer. You set up the computer then chuck the disks in a nearby drawer.'

He bent down, switched the Mac off then inserted a CD in the drive. Moments later he turned the computer on again, holding down the C key on the keyboard as he did so.

'They make it easy because so many people forget their pa.s.sword and can't use their own computer any more,' Paul said.

A box appeared on the screen prompting him to change the user admin pa.s.sword. He typed in the first word that came to mind brother and a minute later they were in.

Using the mouse, Paul navigated his way around the system, looking for the program that controlled the security lock on the door. It didn't take long. He double-clicked to open the program, then scoured the help menu, looking for a way to over-ride the system or disable it.

Kate watched in agony as Paul tapped away, opening the terminal and filling the black window on the screen with what looked to Kate like gibberish.

'That might work,' he said, leaning back. 'Go and try it. Don't try to open the door, just tell me if the light on the lock has turned green.'

Kate ran out of the room, returning swiftly with a look of frustration on her face. 'It's still red.'

's.h.i.t.' He tapped his fingers on the desk. 'I'm impressed. This is a really secure system.'

'Never mind his impressive b.l.o.o.d.y system. What are we going to do?' Kate said, the pitch of her voice rising.

'We're going to have to find the pa.s.sword. It's stored on here, but it's hidden look.'

He tapped away on the keyboard again and brought up a box that said 'Pa.s.sword'. But the pa.s.sword was just four black dots.

'So it's just four letters or numbers. What do we know about Gaunt? What kind of word would he choose? Or maybe it's a date.'

Kate and Paul stared at each other, then rushed back to the lab door.

'Try 1990, the year the CRU closed,' Kate suggested. But it didn't work.

Kate's hand hovered helplessly over the keypad. 'It could be anything.'

'And if you try too many times it might lock up completely.'

Kate couldn't hold back any longer. She started to cry. 'My little boy is going to die. Why did I have to bring him to England? It's all my fault.'

Harley appeared behind them. 'Listen, we'll get into that room even if we have to blow the doors off. We'll get industrial cutting equipment down here. Don't worry.'

'But we're running out of time!' Kate sobbed.

'I've had an idea,' Paul said, jogging back to the office and throwing himself down in the desk chair. He typed in more apparent gibberish and then said, 'Yes.'

'What?' asked Kate, appearing behind him.

'Remember I told you that people often forget their pa.s.sword? Well, it's like when you register for online banking or something they give you a pa.s.sword hint. It's buried pretty deep but there's a file on here containing a hint.'

'What is it?'

Paul tapped in a few more commands and a picture appeared on the screen.

A picture of a virus.

'Weird f.u.c.king hint,' Harley said, peering over their shoulders.

'No, said Kate. 'It makes perfect sense. Most people wouldn't know what they were looking at or if they did know it was a virus, they wouldn't be able to read it.'

'But you can?' said Paul.

'Of course,' replied Kate. She pointed at the screen, feeling something close to happiness for the first time in many hours. 'Three proteins. H3. And two enzymes. N2. H3N2. It's the name of a really nasty virus. And it's the pa.s.sword. H3N2.'

At that moment, French appeared, carrying what looked like an astronaut's suit. The biohazard suit. 'Here it is,' she said.