The Doomsday Carrier Read online

  LOADED AND LETHAL—A LIVING TIME BOMB LOOSE IN THE WESSEX COUNTRYSIDE . . .

  THE

  DOOMSDAY

  CARRIER

  Charlie is a specimen chimpanzee maintained by the Ministry of Defence for dubious experimental purposes. Soon after he has been injected with a devastating plague bacillus, he escapes. At first an innocent wanderer under summer skies, in only twenty-one days he will become infectious, and a population of millions will then be in hideous danger.

  Discreetly the authorities mount a full-scale search; but fearing the political and international consequences, they dare not reveal the sordid truth. As a result the search is compromised at every turn, while risks and tensions mount—to the very dawn of doomsday.

  The Doomsday Carrier

  VICTOR CANNING

  FOR ADRIA

  WITH LOVE

  Copyright © 1976 by Victor Canning

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Canning, Victor.

  The Doomsday carrier.

  I. Title.

  PZ3.Cl636Dn3 [PR6005.A486] 823’.9’12 76-47662

  ISBN 0-688-03162-5

  The Doomsday Carrier

  CHAPTER ONE

  AS JEAN BLACKWELL turned away from closing the window of her sitting room some loose petals fell from the yellow roses in the bowl on the table at her side. She picked them up to drop them in the waste paper basket. George had given her the roses some days before and on the hand that held the petals was the engagement ring he had placed there four months ago, a platinum ring with a large topaz set in a circlet of small diamonds.

  Standing there, idly crumpling the yellow scallop shells of petals, a tall, good looking, dark-haired woman in her early thirties, she smiled to herself at the thought of George; dear George, the giver of unexpected gifts, simple and expensive . . . a painting she had admired at an exhibition smuggled into her flat to be found hanging in just the place she would have chosen, a large smooth pebble with a hole in the middle, beach-combed, to use as a paper weight for her desk, a china mouse with daisies for eyes and using its tail as a bow to play a violin to add to her collection of odd animals. When he had given her the ring he had said, “And remember—when we are married there’s no bloody larking about any more with all this micro-whatever-it-is caper. I want a wife and I want kids. Just a plain old-fashioned set-up.”

  There had been no argument. It was what she wanted more perhaps than George could ever know; George a knight in shining armour to rescue her from her work and a too often troubled conscience. She dropped the petals into the basket and felt the slow, familiar tremble of her body that the touch of his hands could bring, and with it came the impulse to give George a surprise gift.

  She went to her desk and began to write him a letter. The night before she had told him that she would be tied up all this day. They were beginning a new project at the Research Station and she would have to sleep there because she had been drawn first on the night duty roster. A rearrangement of the timings had given her an unexpected few hours’ freedom this afternoon and she had driven back to town to do some shopping and to tidy her flat.

  She wrote swiftly and impulsively, writing what she knew he would want to hear, picturing him coming in late from his business trip and finding it on his pillow . . . Dear George, who wanted no bloody larking about, wanted a wife and kids . . . wanted her.

  George lived in a block of flats on the northern side of the town. Jean parked her car in the forecourt, smiled at the porter as she went through the hall and took the lift to the top floor which held two flats. Turning the comer of the corridor which led to his flat door she stopped, as she often did, to look out of the window. The world outside lay under the heat of a fierce June afternoon. Far below her, rising clear above the huddle of houses and streets, the great spire of the cathedral thrust like a rapier into the sky, grey against a smoky blue with a moving, ragged garland of pigeons circling it. Beyond it, clear of the town, a loop of the river showed through tall poplars like a silver horseshoe, and distantly the land rose into the great folds and curves of the downs.

  She opened the door with her key of the flat and went in, her feet sinking deep into the lush carpet. Lush and good, she thought. George had had his early struggles but now that his business was successful and fast growing only the best was good enough. She hesitated at the door to the lounge. Should she leave the letter there so that when he came in late and sank into an armchair with a nightcap he would see it? No, he might miss it. She went along to the main bedroom and took the letter from her bag. She would turn his bed down and lay the letter on his pyjamas.

  The door was a few inches ajar. She pushed it half open and it swung noiselessly on its oiled hinges. George was an engineer and everything he owned was scrupulously maintained in first-class order. The inner smoke-grey silk curtains were half drawn and a great bar of sunlight fell across the room. She stood in the doorway and was invaded by an ice-cold numbness, all feeling robbed from her.

  A woman’s clothes were sloughed in a heap at the side of the bed. . . a summer dress, scarlet poppies on a yellow background, the stitching broken away for two or three inches along part of the hem, a pair of shoes, one lying on its side, the polished fawn sole only faintly scuffed. Her eyes marked the details but the coldness in her barred all emotion. George lay on the bed sleeping. His mouth was slightly open, his dark hair tousled and sweat-damp, and he wore nothing except a pair of short grey silk socks. His breathing was heavy, breaking into a snore now and then. One of his hands lay lax over the naked woman’s navel. She slept without sound, fair hair in disorder over the crumpled pillow.

  Jean watched them for a moment or two and then, as thought and reason, bereft of all emotion, came back to her, she let the letter drop from her hand to the floor and turned away.

  Leaving her flat key on the heavy silver tray on the hall table, she closed the door silently behind her and went down to her car and drove off, taking the road to the Research Station. Some time or other she knew that real feeling would come to ravage her, that the icy coldness which she inhabited would thaw and free a new Jean Blackwell. For the time being she had no interest in that person.

  As she pulled up at the main gate of the Research Station, the guard gave her a routine smile and flicked his eyes at her identity card with its Ministry of Defence embossed stamp franked across her photograph. He nodded her through and the red-and-white barrier pole rose, sweeping a slow quadrant against the cloudless summer sky. She drove to the car park, past the low, precisely set buildings and the freshly hoed, neat beds of flaming geraniums, and found a vacant place in the shadow of the water tower. She sat for a while, untroubled by the heat, her body—like her mind—insulated against all normal feeling. From the tower a stretch of rough, summer-browned grass ran to the high-wired perimeter fence. Beyond it the downs fell away to the far valley of the River Avon. Although the city of Salisbury was hidden from view the top part of the cathedral spire just showed against the brazen sky. The rough grass at the foot of the perimeter fence was marked here and there with the scarlet of poppy blooms. George was wearing his socks in bed. He very often did. And the hem of the dress needed stitching. They would make love again when they woke. She knew George. The giver of surprises.

  She got out of the car and walked to the laboratory and project building. No bloody larking about with all this micro-whatever-it-is caper. She unlocked the heavy entrance door and watched it swing back to self-lock be
fore she went into the cloakroom to wash her hands and tidy her face. Once you came through the entrance door then Armstrong’s law ruled.

  When she went into the administrative office Boyson was sitting sideways at his desk with his feet propped up on the wastepaper basket. He was reading an old copy of Nature. The window was partly open at the top and the blue drift of his cigarette smoke was coiling through it in slow trails. He looked up, a man in his late thirties, long-faced, mild surprise showing on it briefly at the sight of her. A lock of lank fair hair fell over one eye. His white laboratory coat rode high and untidily about his shoulders. Boyson always looked as though he had been loosely and hurriedly assembled.

  “Hullo, Jean.” He glanced at the wall clock. “You’re a bit early, aren’t you?”

  “A little. How’s the patient?” Her voice was normal, betraying nothing of the cold emotion still frozen deeply within her. And that, she thought, was helpful. When you came in here you left the warm, normal world behind you. Forgot it. It was easier that way.

  “Charlie’s all right. You’re not due to take over for half an hour yet. I was just going to do my last round.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll do it for you.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, thanks. That’s a bonus. I promised to take the kids swimming as soon as I got back. I can’t wait to get in the water either.” He sighed. “Flaming June . . . The weather never does anything by halves in this country.” He nodded at the desk. “The check list is there. Armstrong is coming in around six. No need, but you know him. Just can’t keep away once the green light goes on.” Standing up and slipping off his white coat, eyeing her, he said gently, “You all right?”

  Jean nodded. “Yes.”

  Boyson smiled. “I know the feeling. The first day of a new project always brings up the old problems. Moral indigestion. But it passes quickly. Thank God.”

  As he went by her he paused briefly and laid the back of his hand against her cheek. It was a rare touch of physical comfort. Nobody liked the first day.

  Alone, Jean went to the desk and picked up the check list for Charlie. It was headed Monday, 21st June, and the page was ruled in blue lines marking off the half-hours. The first entry had been made at ten-thirty that morning and there were entries for every half hour since. The last five had been made and signed by Boyson. Jean read them through absorbing them clearly but mechanically.

  She heard Boyson whistling softly as he went down the corridor and then the long sigh of the outer door closing; Boyson the happily married man with a boy of three and a girl of five, both with their mother’s dark hair, a tight little family. She and George had gone swimming with them the previous weekend. I want a wife and I want kids. Just a plain old-fashioned set-up. She saw without emotion the woman’s body, sun-tanned, the breasts large-nippled and flattened by their own weight as she lay on her back.

  Going back to the cloakroom she took her white coat, rubber gloves and a new mouth mask from her locker and then, check list and the key of Charlie’s quarters in hand, she went down the corridor.

  Charlie’s quarters were at the far end of the building. They were entered through two spring-loaded, self-locking doors operated by the same key. The first door was of wood with a small circular observation window of security glass at head height. Ten feet beyond it was an iron-barred door with the bars set a few inches apart. The space between the two doors was empty except for a wooden cupboard against the lefthand wall. In this cupboard were kept brooms, brushes and pails and other odds and ends used for cleaning the quarters.

  Jean looked through the circular window, checking that the space between the two doors was empty. She unlocked the door and went in, standing and waiting until the door swung back to self-lock. Going up to the open bars of the next door she looked into the quarters. There was no sign of Charlie. She unlocked it and entered. The door swung back and locked itself. She was in the main section of the quarters, a large solarium with a glass roof. Three of the four blinds were unrolled behind their protecting iron framework. Above the door the air-conditioner hissed gently, and at the side of the door the wall thermometer behind its iron grill read 75 degrees Fahrenheit.

  Jean entered the temperature on her check board, and then crossed the solarium to Charlie’s sleeping cubicle. The door was open and clamped back against the wall with a strong padlock. The bed—a low wide crib—was against the far wall and Charlie lay on it sleeping. There was no other furniture in the room. The ceiling light was protected by a strong grill. The guarded thermometer in the wall showed 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Jean entered this on her list. It was two degrees above Armstrong’s stipulated temperature. When she left the quarters she would have to adjust the thermostat control in the corridor. The regulator on the air conditioner had given trouble before. The station electrician would have to be telephoned to come and look at it. Pleasant as Armstrong could be—he was a stickler for details. From this day on not the slightest risk could be taken with Charlie. Thinking this and looking down at Charlie, Jean knew that the thought came from a stranger . . . the ice-cold Jean Blackwell, carrying out her duties automatically and efficiently.

  Charlie was lying with his head buried in his forearms. He could be sleeping or, as he often did when not in the mood for company, feigning sleep. At the door, as she was going out, she turned her head quickly and looked back. Charlie’s right forearm had slid a little from his face and one open brown eye watched her. Almost immediately the eye closed and the forearm re-covered it. Going out into the solarium there was no familiar smile on her face at this familiar ritual. . . nor even the sudden, sharp but quickly suppressed stir of conscience because of the way they were using Charlie.

  Charlie lay on his straw-filled bed, listening to the sound of Jean Blackwell moving in the solarium. Charlie was a seven-year-old chimpanzee. He had been born in a forest on the eastern shores of Lake Tanganyika. At some time in his young wild life his left ear had been bitten or tom in a fight, leaving a large nick in it. When he was four years old, barely weaned and still with his milk teeth, he had been illegally trapped on the fringes of the Gombe National Park and taken from Tanzania. Over the years he had moved from public to private zoos and finally to the Fadledean Research Station, high up on the Wiltshire Downs in the South of England where, because he was the closest living relative to man in the animal world, he was a creature of particular importance and value to the Ministry of Defence at this moment. Man and Charlie’s kind had probably shared a common ancestor in the past, but since the things Man will do to Man are without limit, Charlie and his kind in other scientific laboratories merited no special concessions even though they shared the same number and form of chromosomes, the same blood protein and the same circuitry of the brain. That Charlie’s kind had thirteen ribs instead of Man’s twelve was not significant. Plenty of men had thirteen and behaved far worse than chimpanzees. The main point was that Charlie was important to Man. He had been since ten-thirty that morning when Armstrong, the Scientific Coordinator of the Fadledean Research Station, had injected him in the upper right forearm.

  Charlie rolled over on his straw and lying on his back raised his left arm and slowly beat with his hand against the boarded wall of his room. Most animals in captivity develop stress mannerisms. This was Charlie’s. When he was upset or unsure of things about him he would thud or drum against a wall, sometimes with a fast tattoo. Normally, because they treated him well and he liked them, he would be eager for company when any of the laboratory people came in. He liked to play games with them and to be scratched or quietly groomed. But today, in order to give him his injection, he had been treated with a short-lived anaesthetic to immobilize him. He still felt the after effects of it and there was no desire in him for company. . . not even the company of Jean Blackwell, who, of them all, was the one to whom he gave the most friendly and trusting responses. As he thudded at the wall, he pursed his broad upper and pendulous lower lips together into a pout and almos
t inaudibly made gentle hooing sounds.

  Outside in the solarium Jean crossed to the low-set drinking fountain. She kept her finger on the porcelain press button until the water ran from lukewarm to cold, its coolness reaching through her rubber glove. Suddenly aware of a faint prickle of heat on her forehead she cupped some water in her hand and dabbed it on her brow. She heard Charlie’s drumming almost as though it were a faint thudding inside her own head.

  Going back to the open-barred first security door she looked sideways and saw Charlie lying on his bed, one hand slowly pounding the wall. There had been a time when this kind of work had seldom troubled her. But in the last years the seldom had become often. Boyson had guessed that. Maybe Armstrong had, too. The wall thermometer now read 76 degrees. The moment she got out she would telephone the electrician, and then Armstrong. Any irregularity whatsoever and I must be called.

  As she reached into her pocket for the door key she felt a sudden fierce prickle of sweat at the base of her throat and between her breasts. She thought of Boyson and his family swimming. It would be good to be stripped and in the water. The last time she had swum with George and they had sunbathed afterwards he had put out a hand and let it rest, cool and lax, on her navel . . . George the giver of gifts, the knight in shining armour who would have rescued her from all this. She put the key in the lock.

  Pulling the door open, she felt the beaded sweat on her throat break and run between her breasts, and suddenly her head began to swim so that she was forced to lean back against the half open door to steady herself. Then, as she fought the swimming in her head and a fast growing weakness in her legs, she knew with a swift panic what was going to happen . . . remembering the times, distant now, when she had come round to stare stupidly up into the faces of other girls, her mother and father or complete strangers.