Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
‘Our assessment, Luke, with a high degree of probability, is that Moscow is behind this outbreak. We conclude that the GRU has been secretly testing a new biological weapon up on Svalbard.’
23
Near Braintree, Essex, England
Wednesday, 9 March, 1121hrs GMT
THE MEETING WAS held in an attractive converted barn. Red-tiled roof, black wooden slatted walls, a quaint covered porch. True, there was an unpleasant smell of silage outside, wafting over from the adjacent farm, but once doors were shut and the meeting was under way it was soon forgotten. Mobiles were left outside in a box, guarded by one of the trusted members, while another kept watch beside the gate at the end of the drive. This meeting was strictly by invitation only.
When everyone was assembled indoors they sat in a semi-circle on chairs whose metal legs scraped abrasively on the stone flooring. All eyes were on the man who stood facing them. He was large, heavily built, with sideburns and a receding hairline. His paunch protruded unapologetically from behind the flaps of his Barbour jacket. Below that, he wore baggy cargo pants with bulging pockets and a bunch of keys on a chain attached to his belt. A man with important responsibilities. A man of standing. A man with the right connections.
When he spoke, his voice was low and authoritative. It carried the gravitas of an Oxford don or perhaps a lawyer-turned-politician. Yet his words dripped with venom and vitriol as he reminded them of the numerous enemies they faced: the Jews, the Muslims, the freeloading migrants from Africa, the Chinese with their disgusting wet markets … The list went on. Heads were nodding vigorously as people turned to each other and smiled in agreement. There were no dissenters here.
And now his voice was rising in pitch as he reminded them of the solution at hand, of the very reason they were all there on that March morning. He raised a nicotine-stained finger in the air and held it there as everyone fell silent, waiting for his next words.
‘The wheels of the machine are turning,’ he told them enigmatically. ‘Deliveries will soon be arriving, and you’ – he stopped and jabbed a finger at no one in particular ‘– you all have a role to play in what is coming. This is your future,’ he told them. ‘This is your destiny. And nothing’ – his voice rose now in a crescendo – ‘nothing is going to get in our way!’