19.

ALL FOR CHARITY.

THE GUARDS HAD SERVED COFFEE and McCain had lit a cigarette. Watching the gray smoke trickle out of the corner of his mouth, Alex was reminded of a gangster in an old black-and-white film. As far as he was concerned, the habit couldn't kill McCain quickly enough.

McCain stirred his coffee with a second silver straw. The night had become very still, as if even the animals out in the bush had decided to listen in. The breeze had dropped and the air was heavy and warm.

"There are two ways to become rich," McCain began again. "You can persuade one person to give you a lot of money-but that means finding someone who is wealthy and stupid enough in the first place, and it may involve criminal violence. Or you can ask a great many people to give you a little money. This was the thought that obsessed me while I was in prison, and it was there that I came up with my idea. It was easy enough to fake my conversion to Christianity. Everyone likes a sinner who repents. And it certainly impressed the parole board. I was released a long time before I had completed my sentence and I immediately set up my charity, First Aid. The aim, as I described it, was to be the first organization to respond to disasters wherever they took place.

"I would imagine that you know very little about international charity, Alex. But when a catastrophe occurs-the Asian tsunami in 2004 is a good example-people all over the world rush to respond. Old-age pensioners dip into their savings. Ten dollars here, twenty dollars there. It soon adds up. At the same time, banks and businesses fight to outdo each other with very public displays of generosity. None of them really care about people dying in undeveloped countries. Some donate because they feel guilty about their own wealth. Others, as I say, do it for the publicity-"

"I don't agree with you," Alex cut in. He was thinking of Brookland School and the money they had collected for Comic Relief. There had been a whole week of activities and everyone had been proud of what they had achieved. "You see the world this way because you're greedy and mad. People give to charity because they want to help."

"Your opinions mean nothing to me," McCain snapped, and Alex was pleased to see that he was annoyed. The anger was p.r.i.c.king at his eyes. "And if you interrupt again, I'll have you tied down and beaten." He leaned forward and sucked at his coffee. "The motives are irrelevant anyway. What counts is the money. Six hundred million dollars was raised for the tsunami in the United Kingdom alone. It's very difficult to say what a charity like Oxfam raises over a period of twelve months, but I can tell you that last year they raised the same figure-six hundred million in Great Britain. That was just one office. Oxfam also has branches in a dozen other countries and subbranches in places like India and Mexico. You do the math!"

McCain fell silent. For a moment, his eyes were far away.

"Millions and millions of dollars and pounds and Euros," he murmured. "And because the cash comes so quickly and in such large amounts, it is almost impossible to follow. An ordinary business has accountants. But a charity operates in many countries, often in appalling conditions-which makes it much less easy to pin down."

"So basically you're just a common thief," Alex said. He knew he was treading close to the line, but he couldn't resist needling McCain. "You're planning to steal a lot of money."

McCain nodded. Surprisingly, he didn't seem to be offended. "I am a thief. But not a common one at all. I am the greatest thief who ever lived. And I do not need to take the money. People give it to me willingly."

"You said you were going to create a disaster."

"I'm glad you were listening. That is exactly what I am going to do . . . or perhaps I should say it is exactly what I have done. What we we have done. The disaster is already happening, even as we sit here in this pleasant night air." have done. The disaster is already happening, even as we sit here in this pleasant night air."

He stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

"People need a reason to give money, and my genius, if you will forgive the word, has simply been to work out that the reason can be created, artificially. I can give you an example. A serious accident took place last year at the Jowada nuclear power station in Chennai, southern India. You may remember reading about it in the newspapers. That was a fairly simple matter, a bomb carried into the plant by one of my operatives. I have to say that the results were disappointing. The full force of the blast and the resulting radioactivity were contained and did less damage than I had hoped. But even so, First Aid was the first on the scene and received more than two million dollars in donations. Some of it, of course, we had to give away. We had to buy large quant.i.ties of some sort of antiradiation drug, and we had to pay for advertising. Even so, we made a tax-free profit of about eight hundred thousand dollars. It was a useful dress rehearsal for the event I was planning here, in Kenya. It also helped us with our operating costs."

"And what are you planning here? What do you mean when you say I started it?"

"We'll come back to you in a minute, Alex. But what I am planning here is a good old-fashioned plague. Not just in Kenya, but in Uganda and Tanzania too. I am talking about a disaster on a scale never seen before. And the beauty of it is that I am completely in control. But I don't need to describe it to you. I can show you. I am, as you will see, one step ahead of the game."

McCain opened his laptop computer and spun it around so that Alex could see the screen. "When the disaster begins, a few weeks from now, other charities will rush to the scene. In a sense, all charities are waiting for bad things to happen. It is the reason for their existence. We need to be faster than them. The first on the ground will scoop the lion's share of the money. So we have already prepared our appeal . . ."

He pressed the Enter b.u.t.ton.

A film began to play on the computer. Slowly, the camera zoomed in on an African village. At first, everything seemed normal. But then Alex heard the buzz of flies and saw the first dead bodies. A couple of cows lay on their sides with bloated stomachs and rigid, distended legs. The camera pa.s.sed an eagle which seemed to have crash-landed, slamming into the dust. And at the same time, he heard a voice speaking in a soft, urgent tone.

"Something terrible is happening in Kenya," the commentary began. "A dreadful plague has. .h.i.t the land and n.o.body knows how it began. But people are dying. In the thousands. The oldest and the youngest have been the first to go . . ."

Now the camera had reached the first child, staring up with empty eyes.

"Animals are not immune. African wildlife is being decimated. This beautiful country is in the grip of a nightmare and we urgently need money, now, to save it before it's too late. First Aid is running emergency food supplies. First Aid is already on the ground with vital medicine and fresh water. First Aid is funding urgent scientific research to find the cause of this disaster and to bring it to an end. But we cannot do it without you. Please send as much as you can today.

"Call us or visit our website. Our lines are open twenty-four hours a day. Save Kenya. Save the people. How can we ignore their cry for help?"

The final image showed a giraffe stretched out in the gra.s.s with part of its rib cage jutting through its side. A telephone number and a web address were printed over them with the First Aid logo below.

"I am particularly pleased with the giraffe," McCain said. He tapped the keyboard and froze the picture. "Many people in the first world just look away when a child or an old woman dies in the street. But they'll weep over a dead animal. A great many giraffes and elephants will die in Kenya in the next few months. It should double the amount we receive."

Alex sat in silence. Everything that McCain was saying sickened him. But it was worse than that. He knew exactly what he was looking at. The African village on the screen. He had been there. He had stood in the same village when he had broken into the Elm's Cross film studio. The only thing that was different was the backdrop. The green cyclorama was gone, replaced by swirling clouds and forest.

"You've made it all up," he gasped. "It's all fake. You built the village. It's a set."

"We were merely preparing ourselves for the reality," McCain explained. "As soon as the first reports of the Kenyan plague hit the press, we will come forward with our television appeal. There will be advertis.e.m.e.nts in all the newspapers and on posters. This will happen not just in England but in America, Australia, another dozen countries. And then we will sit back and wait for the money to flood in."

"And you're going to keep it! You're not going to help anyone!"

McCain smiled and blew smoke. "There's nothing anyone can do," he said. "Once the plague begins, there will be no stopping it. I can tell you that with certainty because, of course, I created it."

"Greenfields . . ."

"Exactly. I wish my good friend Leonard Straik was here to explain the science of it, but I'm afraid he met with an accident and won't be joining us. You could say he choked on a snail. Except the snail in question was the marbled cone variety and deadly poisonous. I have a feeling that Leonard's heart had exploded before I forced it down his throat."

So McCain had murdered Straik. Presumably, he didn't want to share his profits with anyone. Alex filed the information away. He had to find a way to contact MI6.

"It works like this," McCain explained. He was enjoying himself and he didn't try to hide it. "You don't seem to have spent a lot of time at school, Alex, but can I a.s.sume you've heard of genes? Every single cell in your body has about thirty thousand of them-and they are basically tiny pieces of code that make you what you are. The color of your hair, your eyes, and so on. It's all down to the genes.

"Plants are made up of genes too. The genes tell the plant what to do . . . whether to taste nice or not, for example. Now, what Mr. Straik and his friends at Greenfields were doing was changing the nature of plants by effectively adding a single gene. Plants are more complicated than you might think. For example, the information required to make a single stalk of wheat would take up one hundred books with one thousand pages each. And here's the remarkable thing. If you added just one paragraph of new information-the equivalent of an extra gene-you would change the entire library. Your wheat might still look like wheat, but it would be very different. It might not be quite so tasty, for example, if eaten with milk and sugar for breakfast. It might, in fact, kill you.

"Do you see where I'm going with this? I'm talking about taking something very ordinary and agreeable and turning it into something lethal. And this actually happens in every kitchen in the world almost every day of the week! Only, in reverse. Let me try to explain it to you.

"I'm sure you enjoy potatoes. Young boys like you eat them all the time . . . as chips or as fries. It probably never occurs to you that you are actually eating a poisonous plant. Not many people realize that the potato is closely related to deadly nightshade. Its leaves and flowers are extremely toxic. They won't kill you, but they would make you very sick indeed. What you actually eat is the tuber, the bit that grows underground.

"The tubers, of course, are delicious-but they can also be made to harm you. If you leave them out in the sun, even for one day, they turn green and taste bitter. If you eat them after that, you will be sick. And why has this happened? There's a gene-a genetic switch-hidden inside the potato tuber. It's completely harmless and almost invisible-but the sunlight seeks it out and turns it on. And once that happens, the potato tuber behaves differently. It goes green. It becomes poisonous. You have to throw it away.

"For the last five years, Greenfields Bio Center has been supplying seed to grow wheat in several African countries. The wheat has been genetically modified to need less water and to produce extra vitamins. But what n.o.body knows is that Leonard Straik used his particle delivery system to add an extra gene to the package. Like the potato gene I just told you about, it's harmless. A loaf of Kenyan bread made out of home-grown Kenyan wheat will be fine. But once the genetic switch has been activated, although the wheat will look exactly the same, it will begin to change. It will quietly produce a toxin known as ricin. Ricin normally grows in castor beans and is one of the most lethal substances known to man. A tiny capsule of the stuff would kill an adult. And very soon it will be growing all over Africa."

"That stuff I found in your office," Alex muttered. "In the test tube . . ."

"You're very quick," McCain said. "The more I get to know you, Alex, the more I like you. Yes. That is our activating agent. It is a sort of mushroom soup. And this is very important. It's not a chemical, it's a living organism-which is to say it can reproduce itself.

"Again, I can explain this to you by taking you back to the kitchen. If you place an ordinary mushroom on a piece of paper and leave it overnight, you'll notice a blackish sort of dust covering the surface the next day. What you are looking at are spores. If they are released outside, the spores will spread-a little bit like the common cold, traveling from one field to another. It may interest you to know that the Irish Potato Blight of 1845, which caused the death by starvation of almost a million people, was caused by a spore attacking the potato crop.

"I can see from your face that you're beginning to understand the exact purpose of the flight that you took this morning. You were kind enough to help Dr. Beckett by pulling a lever inside the Piper Cub, and when you did this, you sprayed a single field of genetically modified wheat with the activating agent. Leonard Straik told me that it would take exactly thirty-six hours for the reaction to occur. So, at sunset tomorrow, the genetic switch will be thrown and the wheat in the field will begin to produce ricin. But that will only be the start of it. Once the spores have done their work, they will move on. The wind will carry them to the next field and to the one after that. Nothing will be able to stop them. Nothing will stand in their way.

"The birds will be the first to die. A little peck of poisoned wheat and they'll look like the plastic eagle you saw in that film. Then it will be the turn of the people. It's hard to believe that a loaf of bread in the local baker's or wrapped in plastic on a supermarket shelf will contain enough poison to kill an entire family. But it will. It will have become a slice of death. Animals will die too. It will be as if G.o.d has pa.s.sed judgment on the whole of Kenya.

"Except that it won't stop at the borders. Greenfields has sold millions of seeds to the African people . . . in Uganda, Tanzania, and all around. Soon the contamination will have spread across the whole continent."

"They'll realize," Alex said. "People will know that the wheat is poisoned and they'll stop eating it. They'll burn the fields."

"That's exactly right, Alex. It will all be over very quickly. It won't even make a great economic difference to Kenya. They only grow 135,000 tons of wheat a year, and a lot of their food is imported. But that's why First Aid has to act fast. It'll be in the initial panic, the first weeks, that we'll make our billions. First Aid will publicize the catastrophe to the world, and people will rush to give money without thinking. And what do you think they'll do when they discover that it's only the wheat that has mysteriously developed this sickness, that the plague can be contained? Do you think they'll ask for their donations back? I don't think so.

"And anyway, it will be too late. By then, I will have moved to Switzerland. I already have a new ident.i.ty waiting for me. I will have plastic surgery . . . this time, I think, more successfully. I will reemerge as a slightly mysterious billionaire businessman, but I don't think people will ask too many questions about who I am or where I've come from. I already discovered this when I was partying in politics. When you are rich, people treat you with respect."

McCain fell silent. He had completed his explanation and sat back, almost exhausted, waiting for Alex to respond. There was a sudden hiss as one of the logs in the fire collapsed in on itself and a flurry of sparks leapt into the night air. The guards had disappeared from sight, but Alex knew they would be watching and would come in an instant if they were needed. He felt sick. It had been a final twist, a little act of extra cruelty to make him pull the lever that had released the spores. There had been no real reason for it. It was just how McCain and his fiancee got their kicks.

"So what happens next?" he asked. "What do you want with me?"

"Is that all you want to know? Haven't you got anything to say about my plan?"

"I think your plan is as sick as you are, Mr. McCain. I'm not interested in it. I'm not interested in you. I just want to know why I'm here."

Perhaps McCain had been expecting applause or at least some sort of reaction from Alex; he was clearly disappointed, and when he spoke, his voice was sullen. "Very well," he said. "I might as well tell you."

He had finished his second cigarette. He ground that out too.

"I have been thinking a great deal, Alex, about how you managed to cross my path on two occasions. The first time was at Kilmore Castle in Scotland. You were with the journalist Edward Pleasure. Why were you there?"

"I'm a friend of his daughter." Alex couldn't see any harm in admitting the truth. "He invited me."

McCain considered for a moment. "Pure coincidence, then. Unfortunately for you, I was concerned about Pleasure," he continued. "I had been warned that he might be dangerous and I wondered how much he knew about me. I only agreed to be interviewed by him because to have refused might have raised his suspicions. And then, when I heard the two of you talking about genetic engineering-"

"You thought he was talking about his article?" Alex almost wanted to laugh. "I was telling him about my homework! He'd asked me how I was doing at school!"

"I believe you, Alex. But at the time, I couldn't take any chances. If Pleasure had found out about my involvement with Greenfields, he would have put this entire operation in jeopardy."

"So you decided to kill him. You had one of your people shoot out his tire."

"Actually, Myra did it for me. She was there too that night. Of course, there was a certain risk attached. But as I have already told you, I am something of a gambler. Perhaps that's why I allowed myself to lose my temper when you managed to beat me at cards."

He lifted a hand and waved. It was a signal. Two guards, both carrying rifles, began to approach the table. Beckett was with them.

"The first time we met may have been a coincidence," McCain said. "The second time most definitely was not. You were sent to Greenfields by MI6. There is no point in attempting to deny it. You were carrying equipment that allowed you to jam the surveillance camera, and you also exploded a chimney on the recycling unit roof. It is therefore absolutely critical for me to discover how much the intelligence services know about me and in particular about this operation. In short, I need to know why you were at Greenfields. How much of my conversation with Leonard Straik did you overhear? What were you able to tell MI6?"

Alex was about to speak, but McCain held up a hand, stopping him. Beckett and the two guards had reached the table. They were standing behind Alex, waiting to escort him back to his tent.

"I do not want to hear any more from you tonight," McCain said. "It is already clear to me that you are brave and intelligent. It is quite possible that you would be able to deceive me. So I want you to consider the questions I have asked you. I will ask them again in the morning.

"But the next time I put them to you, it will not be over a pleasant dinner." McCain leaned forward, and Alex saw the ferocity in his eyes. " 'Behold, I have the keys of h.e.l.l and death,' as it says in the book of Revelation. Tomorrow, I intend to torture you, Alex. I want you to sleep tonight in the knowledge that when the sun rises, I am going to inflict terror on you such as you have never known in your life. I am going to strip you of your courage and your bravado so that when you open your mouth and speak to me, you will tell me everything I want to know and won't even contemplate lying. Over this table, you have made some jokes at my expense, but you will not be making jokes when we meet again. You must be prepared to shed tears, Alex. Leave me now. And try to imagine, if you will, the horror that awaits you."

Alex felt the two men grab hold of his arms. He shrugged them off and stood up.

"You can do what you like to me, Mr. McCain," he said. "But your plan will never work. MI6 will find you and they'll kill you. I expect they're already on their way."

"You're right about one thing," McCain replied. "I can do anything I like to you. And very soon I will. Good night, Alex. I'll leave you to your dreams."

Alex was taken away. The last thing he saw was Myra Beckett standing behind McCain, ma.s.saging his shoulders. McCain himself was leaning forward with his elbows on the table, his hands in front of his face. He looked very much as if he was at prayer.

20.

PURE TORTURE.

THE SUN ROSE ALL TOO SOON.

Barely able to sleep, Alex watched the sides of his tent turn gray, silver, then finally a dirty yellow as the morning light intensified. He had lost his watch and he had no idea of the time, but being so close to the equator, he suspected the sun was up early here. When would they come for him? Exactly what sort of torture did McCain have in mind?

He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to fight off the demons of fear and despair. The fact was that he was completely in McCain's power. And McCain wasn't taking any chances; two Kikuyu guards had stood watch outside his tent all night. He had heard them murmuring in low voices and had seen the occasional flare of a match as they lit cigarettes. Once, he thought he had heard a plane flying low overhead, but apart from that there had been nothing except the usual eternal sounds of the bush. Alex had been left entirely on his own, unable to sleep. Right now, he was close to exhaustion. He could see no way out.

The sun was getting stronger by the minute. Alex thought of it beating down in the Simba Valley, just two miles to the north. The wheat would be growing taller, turning gold. And the deadly spores that he himself had released would be activating themselves. By the end of the day, they would have begun to spread, lifted by the breeze, carrying poison and death all over Africa. Alex's eyes flicked open and suddenly he was angry. Why was he wasting time and energy worrying about himself when, in a few hours, an entire continent might begin to die?

Without any warning, the flap of the tent opened and Myra Beckett stepped inside, dressed in white with a round straw hat-the sort of thing a schoolgirl might have worn a hundred years ago. She had clipped two dark lenses over her spectacles to protect herself from the sun's glare. They made her look less human and more robotic than ever.

She was obviously surprised to see Alex lying on the bed, seemingly relaxed. "How did you sleep?" she asked.

"I slept very well, thank you," Alex lied. "Have you brought my breakfast?"

The woman scowled. "I think you will find you are are the breakfast." She gestured at the exit. "Desmond is waiting. Let me show you the way . . ." the breakfast." She gestured at the exit. "Desmond is waiting. Let me show you the way . . ."

It was another beautiful day with just a few wisps of cloud in an otherwise perfect sky. There was a familiar chatter above Alex's head and he looked up to see that at least one monkey had dared to come back, looking down on him with shock-filled eyes as if it knew what was about to happen. Birds with long tails and brilliant plumage hopped along the pathways. There would have been a time when tourists would have woken up to this scenery and thought themselves in heaven. But one sight of the glowering guards reminded Alex. McCain had turned it into his own peculiar version of h.e.l.l.

"It's not very far," Beckett said. "Please, follow me."

She led him out of the camp, away from the landing strip, and also away from the open area where he had eaten the night before. Alex was still wearing part of his school uniform-the shirt, pants, and shoes. Even with his sleeves rolled up, he was still too warm and sweaty, but they hadn't bothered to give him any fresh clothes. He had just one crumb of comfort. The gel-ink pen was in his pants pocket. Even now he might get a chance to use it. He had no other surprises left.

With two guards behind him and the woman a few steps ahead, he was taken down a path that followed the edge of the river. The camp disappeared behind them, and looking ahead in the far distance, Alex saw a family of elephants washing themselves in the sparkling water. It was an extraordinary sight, but Alex couldn't enjoy it. Not when it might be the last thing he ever saw.

Desmond McCain was waiting ahead of them, dressed comfortably in a well-tailored safari suit with a white silk neckerchief. It seemed they had arrived at their destination. Alex looked around him. He didn't like what he saw.

A steep slope ran down to a stretch of sandy shingle, a narrow beach at the very edge of the water. There was a stepladder, about twenty feet high, standing on the beach, and above it a metal pipe that had been fastened to the branch of a tree. The pipe ended with two handles and reminded Alex of a periscope in a submarine. A wooden observation platform had been constructed at the top of the slope. This was where McCain was standing.

Alex had already worked out what might be going on here and was making calculations. If he walked down to the beach and climbed the ladder, he would be able to reach the handles. Then the ladder could be taken away and he would be left hanging from the pipe. He would be close enough to the platform to be able to talk to McCain and to hear what he had to say-but not close enough to reach him. Because the pipe was rigid, he wouldn't be able to swing back and forth. In other words, he would simply have to stay there until his arms grew tired and he dropped.

The question was-why? What was the point?

"This will not take very long, Alex," McCain said. He had watched Alex taking everything in. "I will talk to you a little bit, and then, I'm afraid, we will begin. As I have already told you, I need most urgently the answer to three questions. What was it that brought you to Greenfields? Why did MI6 send you? And how much do the intelligence services know about Poison Dawn?"

Alex had already decided what he was going to say. "You don't need to play your s.a.d.i.s.tic games, Mr. McCain," he said. "I'll tell you what you want to know anyway."

McCain held up a hand. "I don't think you were listening to me last night. Of course you will tell me what I want to hear. That is the point I'm trying to make. You will tell me anything to protect yourself. But I have to be one hundred percent certain that you are telling me the truth. There cannot be even the tiniest margin of doubt."

"And you think torturing me will achieve that?"