Snakehead by Peter May Page B

faint yellow electric light of the interior, he saw colourless faces looking up at him. Margaret, Fuller, Major Cardiff in his Air Force blue. Someone handed him a helmet with a built-in headset, and strong hands pushed him down into a canvas seat. The door was pulled shut as he slipped on his helmet and heard Hrycyk’s voice. ‘What’s all this about, Sam?’ They lurched to one side as the helicopter lifted off into the night.
    Fuller shouted above the roar of the engine, ‘They’re flying us up to a little town in Maryland called Frederick. The army base at Fort Detrick.’
    ‘What the hell’s there?’ Hrycyk demanded to know.
    ‘USAMRIID,’ Fuller said, and when Hrycyk looked blank, spelled it out for him. ‘The United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases.’
    ‘Jesus!’ It was the first time Li had seen Hrycyk overawed by anything. ‘That’s the biowarfare defence place.’ He thought about it for a moment, glanced at Li, then turned back to Fuller. ‘Christ, and they’re going to let a foreign national in there? A Chinese ?’ Fuller just shrugged. Hrycyk was completely nonplussed. ‘For God’s sake, Sam, what is going on here?’
    ‘You’ll find out when we get there, Mike,’ Fuller shouted.
    Li looked to Margaret for some kind of elucidation. She gave the merest shrug of her shoulders. And he saw that Steve Cardiff, sitting next to her, was pale as a ghost.
    * * *
    By the time their chopper touched down on the landing pad at Fort Detrick, the rain had stopped. Stars twinkling in a very black sky, were periodically obliterated by occasional scurrying clouds. An almost full moon cast its silver light across the landscape, and in the distance you could see the outline of the Catoctin mountains of western Maryland traced against the sky. The group was driven across the base in two army jeeps, and Li saw the flashing orange lights at the security gates, before they turned into the car park outside the USAMRIID building. It was a collection of ugly, windowless concrete blocks, designed to contain the most dangerous organisms on earth. It wouldn’t win any prizes for its architecture.
    In the front reception area they had to fill out forms and were in turn handed guest security passes by a silver-headed security man. A young uniformed woman with hair neatly plaited up the back led them along a wood-panelled corridor. Portraits of past USAMRIID commanders followed their progress to the Joel M. Dalrymple conference room, where a large oblong table had been set up with more than twenty seats around it. There were already a dozen other people standing about in groups talking, several of them in uniform. Li took the opportunity of whispering to Margaret, ‘What are we doing here?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ she said grimly. ‘But I have a real bad feeling about it.’
    Steve brought over an older man in a dark suit to meet Margaret. Li drifted away.
    ‘Margaret, this is Dr. Jack Ward,’ Steve said. ‘Dr. Ward is the Armed Forces medical examiner.’
    Dr. Ward shook Margaret’s hand solemnly. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Campbell. I’ve heard a very great deal about you.’
    Margaret glanced at Steve then back to Dr. Ward. ‘Have you?’
    ‘Yes,’ said the doctor. ‘You have…’ he chose his words carefully, ‘…something of a reputation.’
    ‘Really?’ said Margaret. ‘Reputations can be good or bad. I hope it’s not the latter.’
    ‘I’m far too much of a gentleman to say,’ the doctor said, and allowed himself the most distant of smiles.
    Margaret looked to Steve to see if he had shared in this obscure joke. But he was standing with a glazed look in his eyes, staring into the middle distance. He became aware of her looking at him and quickly refocused. ‘What?’
    ‘I didn’t say anything,’ she said.
    ‘Oh.’ He seemed flustered. ‘Sorry. Stuff on my mind.’
    A commanding voice cut above the hubbub in the conference room. ‘Ladies and