All Fall Down Read Free Page B

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,