Unsavoury Business

By Tony Auffret

"We lead a quiet life. Talking to people, building up a picture. Like a jigsaw. And just like a jigsaw, we spend a lot of time sorting out pieces of sky. They may seem dull and uninteresting, but we can't leave them out." Is a virus that takes up to eight weeks for symptoms to appear, and kills only 10% of i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cranthorpe Millner Publishers
• Release date: Apr 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781803781150

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Copyright © Tony Auffret (2023)

The right of Tony Auffret to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

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

First published by Cranthorpe Millner Publishers (2023)

ISBN 978-1-80378-115-0 (eBook)

www.cranthorpemillner.com

Cranthorpe Millner Publishers

To bone marrow donors,

who quietly and anonymously save children’s lives.

Chapter 1

‘Over seven hundred people affected, nearly two hundred in hospital and four deaths.  I could hardly have missed it, Bob.’

Harry Nevile was sitting in Sir Robert Hamilton’s dreary office, in Curzon Street House, looking out over Clarges Mews and the depressing prospect of the rear of the buildings on Charles Street.  It was raining.  Britain was set for a traditional wet Bank Holiday weekend.  The buildings looked grey, the sky looked grey, even the raindrops trickling down the window looked grey.

‘Why mention it?’  Harry was curious to know why Sir Robert had brought the subject up.

‘Our colleagues who are keeping an eye on the Provisional IRA have asked for our help.’

Harry was surprised, ‘Anti-Terrorism asking for help from the Biotech boys?  Seems a little odd.’

Much was changing in the Security Service following the appointment of Stella Rimington as director general.  The Cold War was running down and the greatest threat was internal terrorist acts.  Hamilton was not directly involved in anti-terrorism but had been put in charge of the newly created group countering bioweapons espionage.  Harry Nevile’s former Food Biotechnology Assessment Group had been assimilated into the Bioweapons Counter Espionage Unit, reporting to Sir Robert.  Despite the reorganisation, Harry’s group had remained in their anonymous Tufton Street offices, behind the rather ordinary blue door.  Officially, it was because the whole of the Security Service was in a state of flux as their new headquarters in Thames House was being redeveloped.  There seemed little point in moving the group twice in the space of a couple of years.  In reality, Sir Robert preferred to keep Harry’s group separate; he wanted to have a special operations group independent of the main activities of his department.  The benefits of being insulated from mainstream activities had become apparent to Sir Robert when he had operated as an isolated unit based in the MOD, tracking a suspected spy.  Quite who was leaking secrets was never unambiguously identified, though the disappearance of Quinton Bickley-Morris, principal private secretary to the minister of defence, had confirmed the suspicions of many.  The whole experience had left Sir Robert with a healthy regard for the risks of information being leaked, even within the Security Service.

Sir Robert explained, ‘This has not come from Anti-Terrorism, this is from within the Service.  Quite high up, Harry, and they want it discrete.  The Met’s Special Ops divisions, including Anti-Terrorism are not to be involved unless we find just cause.  Yes, the Baltic Exchange, Warrington and Bishopsgate have been a wake-up call, but they were traditional bombings, if I may use that phrase.  Getting hold of large amounts of explosive chemicals, however, is getting harder, partly because of better cooperation in Europe since the Maastricht treaty was signed.  The downside is a concern that there may be a move to bioweapons.’

‘And you think food poisoning is a real risk?’  Harry didn’t really have to ask: the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak in the United States, two years earlier, had shown it was all too easy to infect a large number of people.  Even so, Harry was sceptical.  ‘If I remember rightly, that was a combination of meat contaminated with a nasty strain of the bacteria and undercooking of the burgers.’

‘Well bacteria certainly, though they do say there had been warnings about undercooking,’ Sir Robert noted.  ‘But there are other ways of infecting people.  Contaminating tinned foods, creating aerosols.’  He had been briefed well by his Security Service colleagues.

Harry pondered the practicalities of staging a mass food poisoning outbreak.  ‘You know the NCTC are hardly likely to give out the nasty strains to any Tom, Dick or Harry.’  He smiled at his own joke.  ‘You could, of course isolate one from animal faeces but you’d need a lab and skilled people.  Even more so if you want to cultivate it on a large scale.’

‘But if you were a diagnostics company?’ Sir Robert interrupted.

Harry mulled the idea over and said slowly, ‘Yes?’

‘I am given to understand,’ Sir Robert sounded formal, ‘that there is a diagnostics company in Essex that has come to the attention of the Service.  Started selling diagnostic analysis kits for the E. coli toxin.  Shiga toxin, I think it’s called.  Ring a bell, Harry?  Works the same way as those RIP proteins you keep warning us about.’ 

Ribosomal Inactivation Proteins, with the macabre acronym RIPs, were potent toxins, as Harry had so often warned his colleagues.  The Ricin based assassination of Georgi Markov had been proof enough that Harry’s concerns were legitimate.

‘I think it’s related to the dysentery toxin, isn’t it?’  Harry wasn’t really asking a question of Sir Robert; he was thinking out loud.  ‘But if these people are making test kits, I presume they have access to the real thing?’

‘That’s right.  There is concern that they may have the—’ Sir Robert, stopped, checking the notes he had in front of him. ‘The O157:H7 strain.  The one that was responsible for the Jack in the Box outbreak.’

‘May I ask why this company has raised concerns?’  Harry assumed he was having this conversation because Sir Robert had something in mind for the Tufton Street team, and when his team were involved, Harry liked to know as much as possible.  Unfortunately, Sir Robert was not forthcoming.

‘Afraid I’d rather not say, at the moment.’

‘But you have something for us to do?’

‘The way I see it, Harry, is that we need to have a look inside this company.  And your Miss Millard is rather good at impersonating a factory inspector.  Even fooled our own man, the other year.  At that company in Cambridge.  PSB, wasn’t it?  You remember?’

‘Is there anything in particular you want her to look out for?  Or anyone?’ 

Harry recalled his colleague Margaret’s visit to the Cambridge Science Park company, four years earlier.  On that occasion, her visit had turned out to be a smokescreen, the Security Service investigating a company in order to mask the fact they already had their own man in place.  For that visit, Harry had insisted on an elaborate routine to deter anyone who might be tailing his colleague.  Other people watching the company had already killed one person.  That turned out to have been an unfortunate accident, but even so Harry didn’t like taking chances with his own team.

Although Sir Robert wouldn’t be drawn into discussing any further details of why the company had been brought to his attention, he was more forthcoming about what information he was hoping to gain.  It seemed reasonable to assume the company must have a microbiology lab; their test kits were antibody based and they would need to purify the toxin in order to raise antibodies, and to provide positive controls for the test kits.  One question was: did they have the facilities to produce the toxin on a large scale?  Another question concerned their record keeping: did the amount of toxin they produced match their requirements, or could there be small surplus batches that could be diverted to a more sinister use?  Sir Robert knew that Margaret would not have time, nor likely the opportunity, to fully audit the company’s records, but he was interested in what their response would be when Margaret started asking questions.

Harry asked if Sir Robert had any background information and was not surprised at the reply.  Nicholas, the concierge at Tufton Street, who Sir Robert always called the Brigadier, would have a file when Harry got back to his office.  Sir Robert had arranged that before Harry had turned up at his office; there was never any doubt about Harry co-operating.

A gust of wind rattled the rain against the window, reminding Harry that summer was now almost gone.  It also reminded him of another matter they needed to discuss.  Huxley’s holiday photograph.

Huxley, who was employed as an intelligence analyst, was part of Harry’s inner team.  Harry, Margaret and Huxley, usually referred to as the triumvirate by the other team members, took a more positive role than simply analysing information.  A few months earlier, Huxley had caused quite a stir, claiming he had seen Quinton Bickley-Morris.

A few years earlier, Bickley-Morris, the defence minister’s former PPS, had disappeared, or rather escaped whilst under observation in a Cambridge hospital.  Men in his position did not disappear.  Bickley-Morris had been caught in a trap set by Sir Robert, in order to secure an operation based at the PSB company which Margaret had visited in the guise of a factory inspector.  Whilst trying to flee, Bickley-Morris had been injured in a road accident and taken to hospital.  A few days later, with the aid of a bogus Special Branch officer, he had evaded the police guard at his bedside, and had not been seen since.  Although Sir Robert was the first to admit that knowing something and proving it were quite different things, it was generally believed Quinton Bickley-Morris had been leaking secrets to the GDR, East Germany.  That source of income had dried up, following the unification of Germany, and it seemed Bickley-Morris had gone freelance.  When Sir Robert’s trap had been sprung, it was thought Bickley-Morris was offering his services to the Soviet, soon to be Russian, Embassy.

Harry’s assistant, Huxley, had recently returned from a holiday in Greece, during which he had taken a day trip to a small island called Aegina, close to Athens.  He had been sitting in a harbourside taverna, enjoying a cold beer and a plate of barbounia, whilst waiting for his ferry, when Bickley-Morris had strolled by.  Or so Huxley claimed.  His instinct had been to follow the man, but the waiters at the cafe thought he was trying to leave without paying and had restrained him.  By the time Huxley had extricated himself from the misunderstanding the man had disappeared into the labyrinth of small streets.  Later, after he had returned home, Huxley was looking at his holiday photographs.  In one of his harbourside photographs that he had taken earlier, there, sitting in the same taverna that Huxley had used, was someone who bore a striking resemblance to Quinton Bickley-Morris.  Harry had passed Huxley’s photographs to Sir Robert who had sent them for analysis.

‘It wasn’t the best photograph in the world,’ Sir Robert replied when Harry had asked the question, ‘but the lab boys have enhanced it, and we are about ninety percent sure it is him.  But what can we do?  It’s not a crime to disappear, or walk out of your job.  And the Greeks are hardly likely to extradite him on the basis that he crashed his car and ran away from the hospital.’

‘Are you doing anything?’  Harry’s interest was more than bringing a suspected spy to justice, Quinton Bickley-Morris had been a long-time antagonist of Harry’s, doing his best to thwart Harry’s career, even to the extent of raising doubts about Harry’s loyalty.

Sir Robert shook his head slowly.  ‘Low priority.  And the way I see it, it is a bit of a needle in a haystack.  Your man’s intelligence just added to the uncertainty.’

The most embarrassing problem Huxley had was that he had forgotten to make a note of the name of the taverna.

‘It was the one with blue chairs and tables,’ he had told Harry, who had stifled a laugh.

‘Hardly definitive Huxley,’ Harry had replied. ‘Not in Greece.’

It wasn’t as though Huxley had not tried to get more information.  He had explained, to the waiters at the taverna, that he had been trying to catch the attention of the English gentleman who had just walked by.  One of the waiters appeared to know the Englishman and had referred to him as Milord.  Huxley, pretending that Quinton was an old friend, had asked the waiter if he knew where Milord lived.  The waiter had pointed out to sea, towards the next island and said Milos, or that was what Huxley thought he had said.  Huxley did have a local map which showed the island, but it did not help.  The nearby island was called Agistri, and seemed to have three main towns, Skala, Megalochori, and Limenaria.  There were a few small hamlets, but nowhere called Milos.  Huxley had assumed that he and the waiter had misunderstood each other.

As Harry was taking his leave of Sir Robert, his colleague reassured him, ‘I have arranged for Huxley’s photographs to be sent back.  Be a shame to steal his holiday snaps, now that the boys have taken copies.’

Chapter 2

Harry stepped through the nondescript blue door, between the two ecclesiastical suppliers on Tufton Street, and into the lobby below his team’s offices.  The rigmarole of the internal security door and card reader complete, Harry stepped through and greeted Nicholas, the concierge.

‘I believe you have a package for me, Nicholas.’

‘Not sure, sir,’ was Nicholas’ reply.  There was a hint of humour in his voice.  ‘Do you have a token to help me find it?’ 

It was an idiosyncrasy of Sir Robert’s that, when he wanted to pass information over confidentially, he would give the recipient a small token which would identify to Nicholas that this indeed was the recipient.  In turn, Nicholas would be given the token which was returned to Sir Robert to confirm delivery.  In the past, when Harry and Sir Robert would meet discretely in Victoria Square, the token had been a grey trilby hat, which could be left, casually, on Nicholas’ desk as if it were simply forgotten.  Since the move to his Curzon Street office, Sir Robert now used a key ring, bearing one small Yale type key and a distinctive fob bearing the logo of Hamilton Academical football club.  It was a private joke.  Several years ago, when Sir Robert was tasked with recruiting new graduates to counter the threats of technological espionage, Quinton Bickley-Morris had referred to the recruits as Hamilton’s Academicals.  He had not intended the name to be a compliment.

The token exchanged, Nicholas duly handed over a large, unmarked, brown envelope, together with a smaller envelope, the latter bulging with its contents. 

‘The small one is for Mr Huxley, sir,’ he advised, handing over the parcels.

Upstairs, in the front office, Harry gave a hand wave of acknowledgment to the four people in the back offices and greeted Margaret and Huxley.  He waved the smaller package at Huxley. 

‘I expect these are your photographs.’

‘Thank thee, kind sir.  I give thee good morrow.’ 

Huxley’s current affectation was somewhere between mediaeval and Shakespearean, though never quite hitting either accurately.  Harry knew better than to encourage Huxley by responding.

‘Sir Robert’s sent me some reading material,’ he added, lifting the larger envelope.  ‘Give me fifteen minutes and then come and join me.’  He also nodded to Margaret to indicate that she should join the group too, and then Harry headed towards the small meeting room. 

The bands of frosting on the glass partition screened the small room without making it oppressively enclosed.  Harry sat at the standard, beech coloured office table and opened the envelope.  He took out the enclosed document wallet and noted the name on the card in the front sleeve.

‘DCM Diagnostics,’ he said out loud.

Out in the front office, Huxley opened his package.  ‘Ah, welcome back fond memories of Greece.  I had not expected to see thy kind again,’ he exclaimed, rather more loudly than he had intended.

Margaret looked up.

‘Holiday photographs,’ Huxley explained.  ‘Would you like to see them?’

Huxley and Margaret were joined by Ben and Veronica, or Ron as she was sometimes called by the team, who had overheard Huxley’s exclamation.  Ben and Veronica were members of the back-office team.  Harry, and the front-office team, by and large focussed on monitoring scientific developments, whilst the back-office team collated information and focussed on industrial developments.  Ben and Veronica’s colleagues in the back office, Andrew and Thomas, were trainees and the quietest members of the team.  It was no secret that their long-term ambition was to become information analysts at GCHQ, and they were keen to prove their worth at Tufton Street.  Huxley usually referred to them as The Two Disciples, having been rebuked, by Harry, when he had initially referred to them as apostles.  There were, Harry had said, connotations of the Cambridge spy ring, two of whom, Burgess and Blunt, had been members of the Apostles group.

Ben was a computer-based analyst whom Harry had once claimed was the only truly productive member of the team; the rest of them simply fed him information.  Within the team, Ben was universally liked for his easy going and unflappable style.  A style which seemed at odds with his uncanny ability to trace connections between apparently unconnected events, items or people.  It was Veronica who troubled Huxley the most.  She was small, bespectacled, almost geeky, and apart from an unexpected show of determination when Harry had been detained, as part of an elaborate deception, Veronica was generally socially quite awkward.  Where others sometimes made jokes at her expense, Huxley had always been attracted to her.

Following Huxley’s reinstatement, after he had resigned during the PSB affair, Huxley had once summoned up the courage to ask her out for a drink after work one evening.  Veronica had previously suggested an after-work drink, during Harry’s detention when Huxley had been under duress from Quinton Bickley-Morris, but Huxley’s attention had been elsewhere.  Their first after-work meeting had been their last.  It had been doomed; things had started to go awry even before they had left Tufton Street.

As they were heading for the door Nicholas had said, ‘Goodnight, Mrs Blakeridge.  Goodnight Mr Huxley.’ 

Veronica was married.  She didn’t wear a wedding ring, in fact she never wore jewellery of any kind, and Huxley had assumed she was single.  He had later wondered if, perhaps, she was separated or divorced.  It was a long time before Huxley discovered the truth, but it hardly mattered as the evening had not been a success.  The conversation had been rather one-sided, with Veronica questioning him about the events surrounding his resignation, claiming that the back-office staff were never included in, what she called the interesting stuff.  What had happened?  What had been said to him by Bickley-Morris, when the latter had been temporary head of the group?  What had Margaret said about the accident in Cambridge when her arm had been broken?  How had he got his job back, or had his resignation been part of the deception?

Huxley simply could not answer many of her questions, he did not know himself.  He hadn’t been aware that it was known he had resigned; the team had been allowed to believe his absence, like that of Harry and Margaret, had been planned.  Although he had been aware that Margaret had broken her arm, he had been told little more.  He knew that Harry and Margaret had been involved in some kind of operation, though he had not known what it was, or where it had taken place.  Quinton Bickley-Morris’ car accident, in Cambridge, had been reported in the press, and Huxley had guessed that it must be linked to Margaret’s injury.  He had not asked any questions.  It was strictly need-to-know, and Huxley was just grateful that the matter of his resignation had, somehow, been swept under the carpet.

At the time, Huxley had imagined there must have been office gossip during his month’s absence, but as time had gone by, he had become quite certain that some of the things Veronica had asked about that evening were not known to the rest of the team.  Huxley had guessed there was more to Quinton Bickley-Morris’ disappearance than met the eye.  The extensive, official debriefings he had been subjected to, about his meetings with the defence minister’s former PPS, really had suggested it was not a simple missing person’s case.  That had been the reason why he had raised an alarm when he saw Bickley-Morris on Aegina.  It had only been in the past month, after he had handed over his photographs, that he had been told any details about the Milanova operation in Cambridge, and Bickley-Morris’ evident disloyalty.

Veronica surprised Huxley, again, when he opened his photographs to show to the group.

‘Are these your photographs from Aegina?’ she had asked. 

Huxley made a joke out of his surprise and challenged her.  ‘How did you know I had been to Aegina?’

Veronica quickly pointed to the uppermost photograph.  ‘I recognise it.  I’ve been there.  Mum and I used to visit.  She had a…’  She hesitated and never finished her last sentence. 

Huxley had a feeling that the photograph had not been visible when Veronica had made her remark, though he wasn’t certain enough to say anything.  In fact, Veronica had taken the packet out of his hand and was sorting through them herself, though to all intents and purposes she was simply revisiting her own holidays.  Part of Huxley felt sorry for Veronica, despite the awkwardness of the one occasion they had spent the evening together.  Huxley knew her mother had passed away, a couple of years ago, and assumed his photographs were simply bringing back some memories for Veronica.

‘Oh that’s the monastery.  Did you see the saint’s body?  This is the temple of Aphaia, isn’t it?’  Veronica seemed very familiar with the island, recognising most of the landmarks.  ‘Did you go to Perdika?’ she asked, continuing without waiting for an answer.  ‘It is so—’

Huxley interrupted her before she could comment on any more photographs, reminding her that he had only been there for a day, and it had really been the temple he was interested in.  It was, he had read, one of the oldest temples in Greece, and he had wanted to go there because JMW Turner, the painter, had been there.  He had not had time to see everything. 

‘Your loss,’ Veronica replied, pulling a face and shrugging her shoulders.  ‘It’s one of those places where you can escape.  You know, leave the world behind.  Your troubles too.’  She continued to look through the photographs quietly, before handing the pack over to Ben and returning to the back office.  ‘Wish I was there now,’ she said to nobody in particular.

After Ben had gone back to his work and Huxley was putting his photographs back in the paper wallet, he remarked to Margaret, ‘Might have guessed they would keep the negatives; didn’t expect they would keep some of the photographs too.’ 

Margaret shot him a quizzical look.  ‘Any in particular?’ she asked.

‘Well the blue café photo, of course.  You know, the one with you-know-who in it.  I suppose I should have expected they might keep that.  But there’s this really cool boat that’s actually a floating greengrocers.  It’s something I wanted to show you, but it isn’t there.  Though I am sure I took a photograph of it.’

‘Any reason why they should keep that one?’ Margaret wondered aloud.

‘No,’ Huxley replied without a great deal of concern.  ‘There may well be others too, but it doesn’t matter.  The company I