The Secret

The current situation there was worse than ever. The legacy of Bush’s war on terror had left Afghanistan without any credible government save for a bunch of puppets who were being assassinated on a regular basis by the Taleban, and on the other side of the border the Pakistani government was so corrupt that it made a corkscrew look like a spirit level thanks to an ill-advised release from prison of more than nine thousand crooks in an amnesty in 2007. Against that background, attempting to find out why two young doctors whose only ambition had been to help and protect children had been murdered was not going to be easy, but he would give it his best shot.

His starting hypothesis had to be that Simone and Aline had come across something other than the fact that one of the aid teams on the ground — probably more — were fake. They were American intelligence-gathering units but in imitation of genuine teams they had a Pakistani element to them. The CIA man at the meeting he’d just attended had mentioned a Pakistani doctor in the team whose work Simone and Aline had come across and there would probably have been an interpreter too.

According to Aline, the team had come across a village where people were falling ill and children’s polio vaccination schedules hadn’t been completed. This had alarmed Simone... wait. What had? He, like the others, had been assuming that it was the problem with the children’s vaccinations that had given her cause for concern, but it could have been the fact that people in the village were ill. What was wrong with them? Had they contracted polio? Simone and Aline would have known if that had been the case, but Aline had just said that people were ill... and that she and Simone had taken blood samples!

This could be the break he was looking for. They had taken blood samples for lab analysis but what had they done with them? Where had they sent them? The lab reports might answer a whole lot of questions.

Twelve

Steven recognised that he was about to ask the first question, the one Macmillan had highlighted as having inevitable repercussions, but he couldn’t see any way round it: he had to know where the samples had been sent and what the lab had found. The only thing he had to decide was whom to ask. A moment’s thought pointed him at Guy Monfils at Médecins Sans Frontières in Paris: he would know exactly where his teams would send lab samples and maybe, as a bonus, he wouldn’t have to tell anyone he’d been asked...

‘Guy? It’s Steven Dunbar in London.’

It only took Steven a few moments to conclude that Monfils had swallowed the official line about Aline’s involvement with drug traffickers. ‘A tremendous shock,’ he called it. ‘She must have succumbed to temptation, poor girl.’ If he believed that, thought Steven, he would almost certainly be happy with Simone’s death’s being recorded as an accident and had probably accepted the CIA’s apology for their tactics along with the other major aid agencies. There would be no point in even attempting to recruit Monfils as an ally. It wasn’t that he was uncaring or a fool; he was just used to seeing the best in people and placing his trust in authority.

‘I have a question, Guy.’

Steven asked about lab facilities for aid workers in the field. ‘It must be really difficult?’

‘It can be a nightmare, Steven. Even keeping the vaccines cool is a major headache.’

‘So what do you do about actual lab work in the field... blood grouping, biochemistry, microbiology, that sort of thing?’

‘We have technicians out there who perform basic tests, but for major things the teams have to send samples back to Europe.’

‘To France?’

‘Or London.’

C’mon, c’mon, thought Steven, just a bit more...

‘The teams working on polio eradication would use Dr North’s lab in London. Virology is not something you can do in the field.’

‘Of course not,’ said Steven, as if he hadn’t just received a crucial piece of information when in reality he felt like a lottery winner.

‘May I ask why you want to know this?’

Steven had anticipated the question and had given his answer some thought. He said, ‘I’m giving a talk to medical students about the practice of medicine under testing conditions. I’m aware of course, from my own experience how the military go about things, but it struck me that your people must face similar problems every day. I thought I’d check with someone who knew and I’m very much obliged to you. You’ve been a great help.’

‘Don’t mention it. I hope it goes well for you... Maybe you could point some of your students in our direction? We’re always on the lookout for committed young people.’

‘I’ll certainly mention it.’