The translator repeated the question, and Fazel responded in a rambling monologue. The translator nodded a lot and asked his own questions. ‘He says he was travelling to Kabul from the north, and he was dropped by a truck driver at a crossroads near the village. This is just east of the Nuristan Forest, near the Pakistani border. He walked into the village around four-thirty a.m. and used an old cistern to wash himself. He didn’t drink the water from the cistern because he had his own bottle. He was going to wait for the village to wake up and try to buy food, but after waiting for an hour he felt very sick. He’d washed his face with the cistern water and he assumed it was a bad supply. His sickness got worse and he vomited three times. He didn’t see it at first, because it was dark, but as dawn came he realised he’d vomited blood. He panicked and went into the village, but no one was around. He knocked on doors, no reply. He looked in a window and saw three people, including one child, lying on the floor in a circle of blood. He pushed the door open and went in, and found they were dead, bleeding from all orifices. He realised he might have the same illness and drank all his bottled water. By now he couldn’t walk very well, he had diarrhoea and it was blood. He checked other houses but everyone was dead. Massive blood loss from the mouth, nose and rectum. He was feeling weaker and unable to move and he must have passed out. He was woken by foreign soldiers at what he thought was around six-thirty or seven.’

‘What then?’ asked Frasier.

The translator asked and Fazel responded.

‘He says he remembers thinking that the soldiers weren’t American or Australian, so maybe they were French. He thought he was dying and then he woke up here, just now. He wonders what the date is. He thinks he’s lost some days?’

The intelligence section of Villacoublay had its own secure communications system and SCIFs, and the DGSE team adjourned to the serviced offices where the DO team was waiting. Frasier conferred with the lead scientist, took a sheaf of papers and returned to the group who were sitting around a meeting table.

‘It’s clostridium,’ said Frasier, shaking his head. ‘Now where have I heard that name recently?’

‘This is the bacterium the Russians think is being made at the MERC?’ asked Briffaut. ‘This is what it does to people?’

Frasier raised his hand slightly, as if asking people to slow down. ‘Clostridium can be naturally occurring, outside of bioweapons labs. We’ll do more tests and see exactly what we’re looking at.’