family …’
Tariq moved meekly towards the two Arabs and didn’t look back. Dewar felt helpless but he had the feeling he’d only make things worse for Tariq by making a scene. He caught the eye of the bearded Arab and hoped he could suggest with a look that should anything happen to Tariq it might be bad news day for him but the man remained impassive. After a short, muted exchange in Arabic Tariq was ushered upstairs with the other Arab leading the way.
Dewar, filled with frustration, hit the palm of his hand against the end of a bookshelf causing the girl by the till to look up sharply. ‘If we don’t have what you’re looking for, we can always order it,’ she said helpfully.
Dewar looked at her then realised what he’d done and apologised. He made for the stairs and left. He started to walk back to his hotel, knowing that he needed time to calm down and get his thoughts in order. He walked up Chambers Street and followed GeorgeIV Bridge up to the Royal Mile which led from the castle down to the royal Palace of Holyrood. He crossed and paused at the head of The Mound, the steep thoroughfare that joined old Edinburgh to its so-called Georgian new town. The lights of Princes street were strung out like pearls below him. To his left, the floodlit castle sat high on its ancient rock. Surely such a beautiful city could not really be host to a plot hatched in hell.
It was obvious to Dewar that Tariq had translated an Arabic word he’d heard as ‘pieces’ where ‘fragments’ would have been more correct but Tariq wasn’t a biologist. He’d had no idea what they’d been talking about. The ‘pieces’ just had to be DNA fragments of the smallpox virus. There was no other plausible explanation. The question now was, how many fragments did the Iraqi government men have access to and what had happened to them?
When Tariq had overheard Ali protesting that what they wanted him to do was too dangerous, had he been talking in general terms about the whole idea or specifically what they were asking him to do? Had Ali been approached as one of a number of people in a chain of events, each perhaps doing part of the virus assembly or had he been the final link in the chain, the scientist who would finally join up all the fragments? Whatever it was, it had been enough to push him over the edge into suicide. Could the Iraqis really be at that stage? Was the resurrection of live smallpox really that close?
Another worrying question swam into Dewar’s head. Had Ali committed suicide because he couldn’t face doing something so heinous or because he’d already done it ? The action could have been dictated by guilt. He tried convincing himself that someone in the Malloy lab would have been aware of what he was doing if he’d been working on it in the open lab but the truth was that DNA in a test tube was a colourless liquid regardless of where it had come from. You couldn’t really tell anything by looking at it. You had to establish its sequence to start to make sense of what it was. Even then the code would have to be fed into a computer and compared to the many known DNA sequences held in international scientific databases. Only then could its real identity be established.
Would Hammadi really have risked reconstructing live smallpox virus in the open lab beside his colleagues when he knew that it would have put them all at grave risk? On the other hand, if he had used the high containment facilities in the institute for dealing with dangerous viruses, people would have been aware of it and asked questions about it. This might have forced him to take such a risk. It was not a comforting thought. It was however, the worst possible scenario. Hammadi might have refused to do anything at all. The only thing for sure was that he had killed himself. Guilt or a brave attempt to save his family for pressure?
Thinking back to what Tariq had said before they’d been interrupted, Dewar recalled him saying that Ali had not
Tariq moved meekly towards the two Arabs and didn’t look back. Dewar felt helpless but he had the feeling he’d only make things worse for Tariq by making a scene. He caught the eye of the bearded Arab and hoped he could suggest with a look that should anything happen to Tariq it might be bad news day for him but the man remained impassive. After a short, muted exchange in Arabic Tariq was ushered upstairs with the other Arab leading the way.
Dewar, filled with frustration, hit the palm of his hand against the end of a bookshelf causing the girl by the till to look up sharply. ‘If we don’t have what you’re looking for, we can always order it,’ she said helpfully.
Dewar looked at her then realised what he’d done and apologised. He made for the stairs and left. He started to walk back to his hotel, knowing that he needed time to calm down and get his thoughts in order. He walked up Chambers Street and followed GeorgeIV Bridge up to the Royal Mile which led from the castle down to the royal Palace of Holyrood. He crossed and paused at the head of The Mound, the steep thoroughfare that joined old Edinburgh to its so-called Georgian new town. The lights of Princes street were strung out like pearls below him. To his left, the floodlit castle sat high on its ancient rock. Surely such a beautiful city could not really be host to a plot hatched in hell.
It was obvious to Dewar that Tariq had translated an Arabic word he’d heard as ‘pieces’ where ‘fragments’ would have been more correct but Tariq wasn’t a biologist. He’d had no idea what they’d been talking about. The ‘pieces’ just had to be DNA fragments of the smallpox virus. There was no other plausible explanation. The question now was, how many fragments did the Iraqi government men have access to and what had happened to them?
When Tariq had overheard Ali protesting that what they wanted him to do was too dangerous, had he been talking in general terms about the whole idea or specifically what they were asking him to do? Had Ali been approached as one of a number of people in a chain of events, each perhaps doing part of the virus assembly or had he been the final link in the chain, the scientist who would finally join up all the fragments? Whatever it was, it had been enough to push him over the edge into suicide. Could the Iraqis really be at that stage? Was the resurrection of live smallpox really that close?
Another worrying question swam into Dewar’s head. Had Ali committed suicide because he couldn’t face doing something so heinous or because he’d already done it ? The action could have been dictated by guilt. He tried convincing himself that someone in the Malloy lab would have been aware of what he was doing if he’d been working on it in the open lab but the truth was that DNA in a test tube was a colourless liquid regardless of where it had come from. You couldn’t really tell anything by looking at it. You had to establish its sequence to start to make sense of what it was. Even then the code would have to be fed into a computer and compared to the many known DNA sequences held in international scientific databases. Only then could its real identity be established.
Would Hammadi really have risked reconstructing live smallpox virus in the open lab beside his colleagues when he knew that it would have put them all at grave risk? On the other hand, if he had used the high containment facilities in the institute for dealing with dangerous viruses, people would have been aware of it and asked questions about it. This might have forced him to take such a risk. It was not a comforting thought. It was however, the worst possible scenario. Hammadi might have refused to do anything at all. The only thing for sure was that he had killed himself. Guilt or a brave attempt to save his family for pressure?
Thinking back to what Tariq had said before they’d been interrupted, Dewar recalled him saying that Ali had not
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