Crisis

By Ken McClure

When three young farm workers die suddenly of a brain disease, the Medical Research Council feels compelled to investigate. Dr Ian Bannerman, consultant pathologist and expert on brain disease, is sent to make discreet enquiries. But in north-east Scotland, Bannerman finds plenty of cause for alarm - and terror.

He discovers a corpse without a brain in an Edinburgh morgue; a dead man at the foot of a Hebridean cliff; suspicious local farmers; threats emanating from the nearby nuclear power station - and more horrifying evidence of the disease. But what is the cause? A deadly virus that has crossed the species barrier - or a murderous conspiracy of men? Either way, human life is increasingly under threat. Especially Bannerman's . . .

Ken McClure is the internationally bestselling author of over twenty medical thrillers such as The Lazarus Strain, The Gulf Conspiracy, White Death and Dust to Dust. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages and he has earned a reputation for the accuracy of his predictions. McClure's work is informed by his background as an award-winning research scientist with the UK's Medical Research Council.

This book was first published by Simon & Schuster Ltd. (UK) in 1993.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ken McClure
• Release date: Mar 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301285730

Ken McClure

Ken McClure is the internationally bestselling author of medical thrillers such as Wildcard, The Gulf Conspiracy, Eye of the Raven and Past Lives. His books have been translated into over 20 languages and he has earned a reputation for meticulous research and the chilling accuracy of his predictions. McClure's work is informed by his background as an award-winning research scientist with the UK's Medical Research Council. Dr Steven Dunbar, an ex-Special Forces medic, is one of his most popular characters.

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CRISIS

by

KEN McCLURE

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd. in 1993

Original ISBN 0-671-71794-4

This edition published by Smashwords in 2013

Copyright © Ken Begg, 1993

The right of Ken McClure to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent act, 1988

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people either living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

OTHER TITLES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

REVIEWS

PROLOGUE

The Island of Barasay

The Western Isles of Scotland

19 January 1992

Lawrence Gill's lungs demanded more and more oxygen until, unable to comply, he was forced to his knees on the wet shingle. He knelt there, weakly supporting himself, until the deficit had been reduced. As soon as his breathing subsided he struggled painfully to his feet and continued trying to run on a surface that seemed hell-bent on denying him grip. The wind howled in from the Atlantic and whipped up the rain until it felt like icy rivets being driven into his face. It seemed that Nature was attempting to render him as featureless as the barren beach that so begrudged him every inch of progress.

Gill's hands were bleeding by the time he had clawed his way to the top of the cliff and started out for the old stone cottage where he planned to seek refuge. It had lain abandoned for more than two years, ever since Shona's father had given up the unequal struggle against the elements and returned to the mainland. Gill was hoping that there would be enough there to sustain him in the way of shelter until the hunt had tapered off. The rucksack on his back held enough tinned food and supplies to see him through two weeks if necessary.

Through the rain Gill could see the outline of the cottage on the corner of the headland. It still had a roof and that was something of a bonus considering its location. He had once asked Shona what had possessed her father to build a cottage on such an exposed site. Shona had said that he had felt closer to God there than anywhere else.

It was true that, when the sea was calm and the sky clear, you could see for thirty miles from the top of the cliff and watch the sun sink into the western horizon like a huge ball of orange fire. But the fact was that the sea was almost never calm and the sky seldom clear. More often than not Westerly gales whipped up the Atlantic into a frenzy and sent huge breakers crashing against the rocks below sending fingers of spray high into the air to clutch at the cottage as if to tear it from its perch.

Gill moved into the lee of the back wall and rested for a moment with his shoulder against the rough stone. The rain had sought out the vulnerable points in his clothing and he could feel the water trickle down his back as he once more gasped for breath. There was a back door to the cottage. He moved along to try it rather than expose himself to the wind again by going round the front. The handle was rusty and stiff but it did turn and Gill put his shoulder against the door to overcome the reluctance of the hinges.

The room he was in had been the kitchen but broken windows had allowed access to the elements and the sea birds and it was in a mess. With a heavy heart Gill wondered if the other rooms had fared any better. He opened the door leading to what had been the living room and stopped suddenly in the doorway. Two men were standing there. They were clad in oilskins and they looked at Gill as if they had been expecting him. Neither said anything; the guns in their hands were supposed to say all that needed said.

Gill felt a strange, sad sense of resignation come over him. It seemed ironic but it was almost a feeling of relief. He had been on the run for four days and that's all it had taken to turn his life completely upside down and make him the running victim in a living nightmare. Four days to undo everything he had worked for, career, marriage, prospects, the imagined solid foundations for success and future happiness, had been swept away with an ease that now seemed obscene. It all seemed so unfair.

One of the men ransacked his belongings while the other held a gun on him. When the man kneeling on the floor looked up and shook his head the man with the gun said, 'Where are they?'

'You're too late,' said Gill. 'They're already in the post.'

The two men looked at each other without saying anything. The man with the gun motioned that Gill should back out the door.

Gill was no longer mindful of the wind and the rain; his head was full of images of the things he would never see again. God! he wasn't ready to die! He was suddenly overwhelmed by panic. He veered off to the right and ran into the wind, hoping that his captors would have difficulty with their aim with the driving rain in their faces.

In his mind's eye, Gill imagined a path leading down from the far end of the cliff to the shore where he would run along the sand with the wind behind him and get into the boat to make good his escape. But when he got to the edge he saw that there was nothing but a sheer drop. He sank to the ground and lay full length looking over the edge at the rocks far below. He felt all hope drain from him; he was left with a desperately empty void inside. He relaxed his grip on the tufts of grass and turned slowly over on to his back to wait for his pursuers.

One of the men signalled that he should get to his feet and he did, leaning back against the wind to keep his balance. The two men put away their guns and each took an arm. For a moment Gill wondered why when there was no place for him to run to, then he understood. Almost before he could cry out the men lifted him bodily off his feet and swung him back over the edge of the cliff. For a moment his arms flailed against the dark sky then he plunged headlong to his death on the jagged rocks below, his last scream of protest carried off by the wind.

The Medical Research Council,

Park Crescent,

London

'I apologise for the inconvenience caused by the convening of this meeting at such short notice gentlemen but I have been asked by the Prime Minister to brief him and the cabinet on our findings with regard to our survey on brain disease in this country.' The secretary of the MRC, Sir John Flowers,paused and looked over his glasses at the men sitting round the table.

'The studies are nowhere near complete, you know that,' said a middle aged man with the trace of a Scots accent.'

Flowers shook his head and said, 'Won't do Hector. We as scientists know we have to have properly evaluate all the data but the government see it as sitting on the fence. They would like an assurance that there are no major problems brewing in this area.

'What they really want us to tell them is that human beings can't get brain disease from sick animals!' said another man whose ample girth was barely restrained by a waistcoat of maroon silk material which almost matched the colour of his nose.

Flowers gave a slight nod.

'Why the sudden rush?' asked Hector Munro, director the MRC Neurobiology Unit In Edinburgh.

'Ever since Mad cow disease hit the headlines a year or so ago, the opposition have been waiting for the right moment to cause embarrassment to the government. The sale of British meat and meat products to the continent has still not recovered from the bad publicity generated at the time. In fact, they fell again sharply last month and the agricultural lobby is up in arms. They are going to demand to know what the government is doing about the problem. They want positive assurances that British meat products are safe. We for our part have been monitoring the incidence of brain disease in the country and following the experimental work of the Agricultural Research Council.'

'There has been a rise in the figures,' said a thin man with the pointed features of a bird and the appropriate name of John Lark.

'But it's of doubtful statistical significance,' said Flowers.

'We can't give them a definite assurance yet because the experiments take such a long time but we could tell them that, at the moment, there is no evidence to link diseased animals with human brain disorder,' suggested Munro.

'I'm afraid we can't even do that, said Flowers and the murmur died away.

'Something is wrong?' said Lark as if the words were reluctant to come.

Flowers looked around the table at each man in turn. 'Very wrong,' he said quietly. 'I have just received a report which amounts to something of a nightmare,' he said.

'Go on,' said Munro.

'It comes from the north of Scotland, a place called Achnagelloch.'

Munro shrugged and shook his head. The name failed to register with any of the others either.

'It records an outbreak of degenerative brain disease.'

'How many people are we talking about? asked Munro.'

'Three deaths.'

The answer came as an anticlimax. 'That's hardly an outbreak, John,' said Lark.

'Unfortunately, there's more to it,' said Flowers. 'The three concerned were relatively young men. All three worked on a sheep farm, a farm which has recently been subject to an outbreak of the sheep brain disease, Scrapie.'

'Oh, I see,' said Munro slowly.'

'Could be coincidence,' said Lark but without much conviction.

'It gets worse,' said Flowers. 'The preliminary pathology report suggests that the men died from a brain disease identical to Scrapie.'

'But there's a species barrier between sheep and humans!' exclaimed Lark.

'That's what we've always maintained gentlemen,' said Flowers quietly.

Munro rubbed his forehead in a subconscious effort to avoid the implications. 'We thought a species barrier applied to cows too and look what happened,' he said.

'Has the link been established for sure?' asked Lark.

Flowers nodded. 'The ARC labs have shown that cows got BSE from eating sheep meat infected with Scrapie.'

'So why didn't they get it before?' asked Lark. 'Scrapie has been around for long enough in sheep.'

'The renderers changed their method of treating sheep carcases. The old way killed the infective agent off. The new way didn't. As simple as that.'

'So there wasn't a species barrier at all?'

'No.'

'Ye gods,' said Lark. 'But surely Scrapie couldn't cross to humans?

Flowers held up a sheaf of papers in his hand and said, 'This report suggests otherwise.'

'I have always maintained that Scrapie in sheep should have been made notifiable all along just like BSE,' said Munro.

'Well, it's too late to bolt that particular stable door,' said Flowers. 'Our problem is that not only can we not allay the government's fears about an increasing incidence of brain disease but we have to inform them of the existence of a potential disaster in the making.'

'I take it lambs can be affected with the disease too?' asked Lark.

'Yes,' said Munro. 'And to answer your next question, roasting would not kill the agent. It's one of the toughest viruses on earth. It can withstand the temperatures achieved in a hospital steam sterilizer.'

'Then I hope to God that the report is mistaken,' said Lark.

'Who is reporting for the region?' asked Munro.

'George Stoddart.'

'Edinburgh University?'

Flowers nodded.

'Have you spoken to him?' asked Lark.

Flowers said that he had.

'And?'

'Stoddart says that his man is adamant that the men died of Scrapie but there will be the usual difficulty in assigning the cause.'

'I'm not sure I understand,' said Lark. 'What difficulty?'

Flowers looked to Munro and said, 'You're the expert in this field. Perhaps you would explain.'

'Of course,' said Munro, clearing his throat. 'We know very little about the infecting agent which causes Scrapie in sheep, or BSE in cattle for that matter. The only reliable way of demonstrating the infection is by injection of infected material from one animal into another. In this way we can show that the agent is transmissible and has a similar pathology.'

'What sort of infected material?' asked Lark.

' The standard test is for macerated brain obtained at autopsy to be injected into mice to see if they develop degenerative brain disease.

'Has such a disease ever been seen in man?' asked Lark.

'Yes,' replied Munro. 'In man it's called Creutzfeld Jakob Disease. It's a brain disease of the old. It'sa relatively rare condition and thankfully it has a very long incubation period.'

'What was the incubation period in this case?' asked Munro.

All eyes turned towards Flowers. 'Stoddart says that his man reports that the patients developed the disease almost overnight and were dead within three weeks. The brain pathology was identical to Scrapie or Creutzfeld Jakob disease. They're practically indistinguishable in terms of histopathology.'

'Damnation,' said Lark. 'Three is not a big number. I still feel we may be jumping to conclusions.'

'I'd like to agree,' said Flowers, 'But three men working on a farm with infected sheep die of a brain disease indistinguishable from Scrapie? We have to take this seriously.'

This comment was digested for a moment in silence then Lark said, 'It'sstill very hard to believe that a sheep disease that's been around for years without causing the slightest trouble in man has suddenly managed to jump the species barrier and start killing people.

'Surely there would have to have been some additional factor involved. A change to the infecting agent. A mutation of some sort, an alteration, either spontaneous or induced.'

'Let's hope, if that's the case, that the mutation was induced by some local factor and that this is an isolated incident,'

said Flowers.

'Then it's of the utmost importance to establish just what caused the mutation.' said Munro.

'Agreed.'

'Are there any clues?' asked Lark.

'There is one prime suspect,' said Flowers.

'What's that?' asked Munro.

'The area around the farm in question includes the Invermaddoch nuclear power station.'

'Radiation,' said Lark.

'What better inducer of mutation?'

Flowers said, 'I need hardly tell you what a delicate position this business puts us in. 'If we suddenly announce that a highland region is reporting that people living in the vicinity of a nuclear power station are developing an infectious brain disease which resembles sheep Scrapie in every way we can expect a storm of panic and protest. Apart from public outcry we will face the combined pressure of the agricultural lobby insisting that there is no link between infected animals and human brain disease and the nuclear lobby maintaining that atomic energy is safe and clean.

'So what do we do?' asked Munro. 'And what do we tell Her Majesty's Government?'

'I think we have to treat the Scottish thing as a separate, isolated problem for the moment,' said Lark. 'In broad, general terms there is still no evidence that animal brain disease can be transmitted to man. I think we should admit that there has been an increase in reported cases of brain disease in the population but it is too early to assign a cause or say whether it is significant or not. Let the government's statisticians present the figures in whatever way they want.'

'But HMG must be made aware of the potential problem in Scotland just in case it leaks out in the press,' said Munro.

'The area doesn't get much attention from the press so we should be able to investigate quietly on our own for a while,' said Flowers.

'No disrespect to Stoddart and his people but I think we should see the pathology evidence,' said Lark.

'I've asked for it,' said Flowers.

'Did Stoddart say who the investigator on the ground was?' asked Munro.

'Yes he did,' replied Flowers, referring to his notes. 'A pathologist named, Dr Lawrence Gill.'

ONE

Dr Ian Bannerman sorted his notes before him on the lectern and waited for the hubbub to die down. He thought his audience of medical students looked depressingly familiar but quickly reminded himself that this was a cynical thought. Sometimes the borders between cynicism and realism were a bit fuzzy.

Despite a solid middle-class background with its attendant adherence to Christian ethics and values he had always failed to be convinced that human beings were 'individuals in their own right'. People, as he saw it, fell into certain discreet 'types'. There was a type of person who became a vicar, a soldier, a policeman and so on. From lecturing to medical students for the last five years at St Luke's Hospital he had come to recognise that there was a definite type of person who became a medical student.

Medicine was seen by society as a profession for winners and because of this, medical schools could demand the very highest academic entry standards. This meant that the cleverest pupils on paper were encouraged to 'try for medicine' as if entering a competition to prove their worth. Egged on by parents and teachers alike, such people would often find themselves railroaded into something they had not given much personal thought to.

Equipped with a brand new stethoscope from proud parents and a dissecting set from Aunt Mabel they would turn up at St Luke's, ready to start passing more exams because that was what they were good at. 'Doesn't anyone ask the buggers if they care about sick people?' Bannerman had asked at the last faculty meeting. The remark had been met with good humoured tolerance. This did not please Bannerman, it only confirmed his thesis on people 'types'. He reluctantly acknowledged that he himself was seen as the rough-diamond type, the kind of man who spoke his mind but was accepted because he was good at his job and when it came to pathology there was none better.

Bannerman looked at the sea of faces, trying to spot the few who might become 'real' doctors. It was practically impossible but he always tried. It was easier to spot the ones who wouldn't, the loud-mouths who would bluster their way through the course, the quiet note-takers who would copy everything down and rely on hours of study and a retentive memory to see them through exam time. There would be some who would fail, of course, and not necessarily because they were bad students. Although the course was tough and academically demanding the entry standards ensured that not many idiots reached the starting line. The 'failures' were often a case of students discovering that they were square pegs in round holes; they were simply doing the wrong subject.

Bannerman always took time to reassure such students that it was better to have found out at an early stage than to have been faced with the truth when someone's life was resting in their hands. He always had much bigger problems with the students who passed the exams yet clearly were not cut out to be physicians. The frustrating thing was that there was little he could do about it. He would do his best to instil a genuine concern and regard for the sick in them but he suspected that many would go through their entire careers without ever seeing patients as anything more than 'cases', temporary intellectual puzzles to be solved along the path of their careers.

Despite not being able to spot the 'real' doctors in his audience Bannerman knew that they would be there and saw it as his duty to deliver the best possible lectures he could for their sake.

ºToday we shall continue with our study of diseases of the central nervous system,' he announced. 'A subject I know will be close to your hearts because your essays on the subject of my last lecture suggest that many of you are suffering from one or other of them...

There was general laughter because although Bannerman had an acid tongue he was popular with the student body. He was a good lecturer, always on top of his subject and had never been known to prevaricate when asked a question he did not know the answer to. Instead, he would say so immediately and tell the student to look it up and let him know. This saved a lot of time and the students appreciated it. Too much course time could be wasted by lecturers waffling to cover up deficiencies in their knowledge. The words, 'I don't know' were too seldom uttered in the realms of academia.

'Creutzfeld Jakob disease and Kuru are the two conditions we will consider today. Both result in nervous degeneration, loss of coordination of the limbs and mental deterioration. Both are invariably fatal.' Bannerman switched on the slide projector and clicked in the first slide with a hand held controller. 'On the left is a brain section from a patient who died of CJ disease. The section on the right is from a normal brain. Note the spongiform appearance of the diseased brain and the typical SAF fibrils.

Bannerman changed the slide and altered the focus slightly with his thumb. 'This is a photograph of a patient who contracted CJ disease after corneal graft treatment. Note the vacant expression in the eyes and the lack of facial muscle tone.'

A voice from the darkness said, 'Are you suggesting that the patient got the disease from the graft?'

'Almost certainly,' said Bannerman.

'Then this is an infectious condition?'

'Yes but not conventionally so.'

There was a murmur of amusement as the student body began to believe that they had caught Bannerman about to prevaricate at last.

'Yes or no?' demanded the cocky student voice.

'Officially the diseases are said to be caused by unconventional slow viruses,' said Bannerman.

'How unconventional?'

'The truth is that no virus has ever been isolated from aninfected brain but in all other respects the material behaves as if an infectious agent is present.'

'Then the disease can be transmitted?'

'Yes.'

'Are there any other disease like these?'

'Several in animals.'

'Such as?' asked the student, determined to catch Bannerman out if he could.

'Scrapie in sheep, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle.'

'Mad cow disease?' asked the student.

'Yes, also transmissible encephalopathy in mink.'

'But surely a bit of research would determine the cause of these conditions?' said the student.

For a moment Bannerman was taken aback at the arrogance of the proposition then he said, 'Mister ...?'

'Marsh,' replied the student.

'Mr Marsh, there is a small but significant graveyard containing the careers of several top flight researchers who insisted they had discovered the cause of these diseases. Perhaps you would care to do 'a bit of research' and give me your written submission on where you think they went wrong?' Shall we say by next Wednesday?'

'Yes sir,' mumbled the student, all trace of youthful arrogance gone.

'Is there a species barrier?' asked a female student voice.

'Good question Miss ...?' said Bannerman.

'Lindsay.'

'Good question Miss Lindsay. Everyone thought there was until Mad Cow Disease caught us on the hop. Recent research suggests that the cattle got it from eating foodstuffs containing Scrapie-infected sheep brains.'

'Then it's not inconceivable that man could contract brain disease from eating infected animals.'

'It's not inconceivable but there's no evidence to support such a view.'

'At the moment,' added the student.

'At the moment,' conceded Bannerman.

'It could be that Creutzfeld Jakob Disease in man is actually derived from eating infected meat?'

'I repeat, there's no evidence to support such a view.' '

'But you would advocate a vegetarian lifestyle anyway,' said a student at the back.

There was general laughter and Bannerman joined in. 'I have no intention of becoming vegetarian,' he said.

'At the moment,' added Miss Lindsay and there was more laughter.

'What about Alzheimer's. Is it related to slow virus disease?

'There are distinct differences in pathology.'

'Is it known what causes Alzheimer's?'

'There is a genetic form of the disease but no clear proof about the more common type apart from the suggestion of some chemical involvement.'

'And aluminium?'

'There is some published evidence about the involvement of aluminium,' agreed Bannerman.

'Would it be true to say that research on dementia is woefully inadequate Doctor?' asked a confident voice.

Bannerman looked at the student who held his gaze from beneath a mop of red hair which clashed with colours of his medical school scarf. There was almost an air of insolence about him but Bannerman had seen it too often before to be upset by it. It was simply the holier than thou righteousness of the young. 'Yes I think it would,' he said evenly.

'Why?' demanded the