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“Is it me, Moneypenny, or is it hot in here?” Mallory had already removed his jacket and tie, and rolled his sleeves up, but he could hardly take his shirt off, sitting in the middle of first class in a 747.
“It does seem rather warm,” his PA said, frowning. “But planes are always too hot, aren't they?”
“Yes. It’s not like we could open a window.”
“Would you like some more water, Sir?”
“No, I’ve drunk loads already. I’d only disturb you, I’m afraid, unless you want to swap places. I’m going to try and get some sleep.”
But sleep was fitful and image filled, as the vast dark wastes of Siberia unscrolled below. Wuhan, Mallory blearily reflected as he tried to get comfortable, was a hell of a long way to go for a two day security conference…
It was a relief to stagger out onto the tarmac at Heathrow, into a rainy January dawn. Mallory took lungfuls of mercifully chilly British air, noting as he did so that Moneypenny herself looked rather clammy about the forehead.
“Moneypenny, are you all right?”
“I think I might be coming down with something, actually.”
“Air travel’s really not healthy. Still, at least it’s the weekend. See how you are on Monday. Don’t come in if you’re still feeling rough.”
“Thank you, Sir. I hope you feel better, too.”
Mallory, shattered, was relieved to reach home. He dumped his bag in the hall and without properly undressing, crashed out for what turned out to be most of the rest of the day. He woke to find his brother standing by the bed.
“Saw you were back. Brought you some tea.”
“Oh, thank you. Most welcome. I wouldn’t come too close, Roderick. Don’t feel too great. I think I picked up something in China.”
“Don’t breathe your bloody germs over me, then,” his brother said, retreating hastily. The Duke would be the first to admit to a slight propensity for hypochondria. “Still, should be all right. After all, we’re not the sort of family who are constantly hugging or anything ghastly like that.”
“Good God, certainly not.”
The Mallory family: socially distancing since 1066.
Next morning, after a rather broken night’s sleep, Mallory felt a lot better. He should do, he reflected: he was still reasonably fit, although he really ought to give up smoking, and he was rarely unwell. He seemed to have acquired a slight cough, however, which nestled into his lungs for the day as snugly as a pair of kittens. Annoying. But by Monday morning the cough had abated. Ha, take that, slight cough! There wasn’t much that tea, whisky and lemon couldn’t sort out, Mallory thought triumphantly, and proved it by walking to work.
Moneypenny, it turned out, was off sick. Same thing, apparently, poor girl. Mallory remembered to send her a get well message. Miss Tyler from downstairs came up and gave him a hand and she was perfectly efficient. By Wednesday, however, Moneypenny was still absent.
“Sorry, Sir. This has hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve turned off the video link on this phone. I’m in my pyjamas.”
“Certainly, Moneypenny,” her boss said in some embarrassment. “I have no wish to see your pyjamas.” Had that come out wrong?
“They’ve got zebras on,” said a small voice. “Sir! I’m terribly sorry. I don't know why I said that. I think I’m a bit feverish.”
“Moneypenny, I am concerned for your welfare.”
He could hear her coughing over the phone.
“That sounds like the cough I had at the weekend. Sort of a dry cough. Tedious! Whisky and lemon, Moneypenny, that’s the ticket!”
“I’ll do that, Sir. I can’t taste much but it might do some good.”
“Do you have someone to look after you?”
“Yes, my mum’s coming round.”
“That’s good,” Mallory said, relieved. “Well, get better soon. Give my regards to your mother.”
On the following Monday, however, Moneypenny was back, smiling and quite her old self.
“Maybe it was just a reaction to jet lag or something.”
“No, I think it must have been some bug or other. There’s a lot going around. But aircon on planes is always shocking.”
Life returned to what passed for normal. Shortly after this, however, the first reports began to come in from China…
*
“My lot have got an antibody test together.”
“Good work, Q. You might want to have a word with Imperial about that.”
“I’ve passed some findings onto them but, Sir, obviously we need to remember that what we decide is suitable for in-house here isn’t necessarily OK for the general public – it’s far too experimental. I’m confident about it for us but Imperial says that it will need to do rigorous tests for some time before it can be described as anything close to an accurate assessment of antibodies.”
“Oh, quite so.”
“Anyway, I’ve done your bloods and Moneypenny’s, and according to this you’ve definitely had this Covid virus. So has Commander Bond.”
Bond, when queried, looked blank and said he had no recollection of having had anything whatsoever.
“Probably couldn’t survive long in there.”
“Whatever do you mean, Moneypenny?”
“Do you recall waking up one morning – after that mission to Tibet last month, say - feeling particularly rough?” Mallory asked.
Bond blinked. “I always feel rough in the mornings.”
“Rougher than usual, Bond!”
“I don’t really rank these things. There’s before coffee and a cigarette, and after coffee and a cigarette. That’s it. Anyway, I never get ill.”
“How would you even tell?”
“Thank you, Moneypenny. Fair enough, Bond,” said Mallory with a sigh. “Anyway, you’ve had it and from what they tell me, you probably won’t get it again.”
After one has, among many other things, been shot in the leg by a Columbian drug dealer, a flu bug holds few terrors. Mallory did not, however, like the idea that he might have passed this on to other people. He was glad that he had kept his distance from his brother.
“Lawrence Durrell was right,” the Duke said gloomily, when informed of his brush with the disease du jour. “This is Pudding Island and the British really do just shuffle round in increasingly small circles breathing voluptuously into one another’s faces. Anyway, if I start running a temperature, I shall let you know, but I should think there’s quite enough going around my chambers and the Hague to keep us going for a bit.”
“It’s apparently usually mild but it has a mortality rate that’s a percent or so higher than normal flu and of course given the sheer numbers of the Chinese population and the difficulty of getting accurate data out of the country…” He rattled off a few of the stats that Q had helpfully provided him with.
Roderick looked genuinely concerned. “Can the NHS cope, Gareth? If it did get that bad here? Honestly?”
“I don’t know.” The Duke was in the confidence of some very powerful people but Mallory could not tell him that they had already held a Cobra meeting, and the disease scenario (the plague protocol, as Mallory thought of it) was already swinging into action. The authorities had been planning for it ever since swine flu. Before that, actually. Long before. Field hospitals. Temporary morgues. Secret mass coffin deliveries.
And lockdown.
A couple of months later, all those graphs and exponential curves and stats had translated into the grim reality of bereaved families and terrified, exhausted medics. The population had proved somewhat intractable – no surprises there – and a fairly comprehensive, but not draconian, lockdown, was now in place. This did not apply to Mallory or much of M16, but it did affect the big Kensington townhouse and Gareth, Roderick and the Duke’s private secretary Christian were reduced to shouting at one another down staircases for a bit before they relaxed their internal quarantine.
“Surprised you didn't go to the country,” Gareth said. “Having thrown your wife out at Christmas. I quite accept it would be intolerable otherwise.”
“Now I’m out of quarantine there might be work I can do in London,” the Duke said. “To help.”
Gareth expected no less; his brother and Christian were already shopping for the local elderly, the result of a strong sense of public duty. He said so.
“Unlike some people!” Roderick snorted.
“Sorry, who are we talking about?”
“That man – Neville Barage! First Brexit and now this. He has been on the lunchtime news, the nerve of the chap, to say that he’s been going out whenever he feels like it regardless of government instructions. Because he is a ‘free thinker.’”
“If I was still infectious,” Mallory said grimly, “I would find out where he goes, leap out from behind a bush and cough over him. Even if it’s a crime these days.”
“The man is a disgrace!”
Mallory agreed. At least Lees-Hogg had been stuffed back into the Conservative Party teapot, like Alice’s dormouse, during the last general election, and had not yet discernibly emerged.
“Even ISIS have issued handwashing instructions to its personnel,” he said.
“Maybe you could persuade Neville Barage to go and work for ISIS.”
Having several countries under lockdown should perhaps have made Mallory’s job easier. It did not. Everything was still continuing, but behind closed doors, which made it more difficult to track. It gave the espionage world a kind of retro, Iron Curtain vibe. Mallory himself, professional feelings aside, was ambivalent. He respected the medical scientists’ instructions, despite being somewhat out of the loop himself due to his earlier exposure, enjoyed the quietness of the streets and the opportunity to walk along the river largely unimpeded and through the back ways of Chelsea and Kensington, but privately mourned the temporary loss of favourite pubs, members’ clubs and restaurants. Never very social, there were a few people whom he would nevertheless have liked to have seen in the flesh, and he missed his routine. He was grateful for his family circumstances, however. Along with Roderick and Christian he took to having drinks on the roof terrace every Friday evening as the days grew longer and the daffodils bent in the wind as Easter grew nearer. It lent structure to the week, and along with Sunday lunch, broke up the inclination to work all the time. He became aware that his brother was, in an offhand and subtle way, looking after him. And the silent Christian was an excellent cook.
“At least you’re not cooped up in the house like a battery hen,” the Duke said.
“Frankly, Roderick, when one has been incarcerated in a pitch black potato cellar in County Mayo by the IRA for several months, the idea of a few weeks banged up in lofty Georgian splendor is actually quite appealing, especially given our relationship with your wine merchant. And your library.”
“Ah. Gareth, forgive me,” the Duke said in dismay. “That was exceedingly tactless. It is not as though any of us have forgotten that episode.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“However, Gareth, I’m afraid there is something about which I’m very concerned.”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to say this, and I don’t know if this has occurred to you already – it probably has, you’re usually ahead of me, but…it’s rather grim, actually.”
“Spit it out, Rod. Whatever it is, we can handle it together.”
The Duke had become pale, but resolute.
“This may mean that there is no cricket this summer!”
“Oh God, no!” Mallory clutched his brother’s arm, moved by uncharacteristically strong emotion.
“Also, there goes the Boat Race. And the Grand National.”
It was worse than he’d thought. Much, much worse.
Mallory suspected, however, that despite these repeated blows (at least the Cheltenham Festival had squeezed in under the wire), his brother was rather enjoying the enforced isolation and Gareth couldn’t blame him. He reflected on this as he was strolling across Whitehall to number 10 to drop off a document for a signature. The PM had the virus now and after a stint in an ICU was recuperating at Chequers rather than Downing Street: an event that had caused a kind of psychic sigh of relief, like an astral spring breeze, to ripple across the political establishment. Unfortunately, there were still such things as Zoom and Skype, but one had to be thankful for small mercies.
Mallory could have sent Moneypenny on this minor errand, but it was a lovely day and he was taking every opportunity to get outside. Especially since so many people were not able to do so: you should never take these things for granted. The most recent problem had proved to be the police, carrying out their duties with a rather unBritish and excessive deal (dyeing a scenic lake in Buxton black to discourage tourism* had been the nadir). There had been a lot of headshaking at Mallory Towers over that one.
He observed the flowering cherries with pleasure as he walked. Soon he was at the PM’s abode and handed the documents to the policeman on duty, still thinking about the blossom. Less lovely was the sudden scuttling figure hastening out of the back of No. 10. It was instantly recognizable as Derek Strummings, the PM’s most controversial SPAD. Never Whitehall’s snappiest dresser, Strummings was clad in a parka, jeans and bright white trainers (“like a bloody seventeen year old clubber,” Mallory’s internal dialogue supplied), and clutching a backpack. He moved in a curious hunched run, which reminded Mallory of some pangolins that he had seen on the news several nights previously. The virus was supposed to come from pangolins, according to one theory, and the sight of a lot of them killed for purposes of traditional medicine had upset the animal-loving Mallory. Perhaps Strummings was somehow channeling the origins of the illness?
Despite the fact that Strummings was perfectly entitled to be where he was, and he was an odd chap anyway, something about this burst of furtiveness struck Mallory as peculiar. Without changing his pace, he began to amble after the SPAD.
This impromptu mission took longer than expected. He had anticipated that Strummings would be heading for a waiting car but instead the SPAD veered off into the backstreets around Whitehall and soon they were out of the area altogether, heading westwards. Strummings kept glancing over his shoulder; he couldn’t have behaved more suspiciously if he’d tried. Mallory was by now thoroughly intrigued, instincts honed first in the Special Forces and then as years as a spy were now fully engaged and vibrating at top volume. If they went any further west, Mallory would practically be at home, he reflected.
But at the base of a big corporate tower, all gleaming glass and rearing metal, Strummings paused for a moment, then darted inside to be lost in the shadowy atrium.
Mallory contemplated the building. There was a shiny plaque on the front, reading GENE-EX. When he looked it up on his phone, he found that it was an apparently legitimate medical research company.
Well, fair enough. Strummings – who if weird, was known to be highly intelligent – had an interest in the sciences. He had certainly been practicing social distancing and in any case there had been confirmed rumours some weeks ago that he’d had the virus, so he wasn’t a carrier. There was no reason why he should not, as a senior governmental adviser, be moving around the city as he pleased.
So why did Mallory’s intuition continue to ping?
Mallory’s Diary (decoded), March 2020
No such thing as coincidence, as my grandmother always used to say. She said it darkly, as well. When I got back from my extended stroll, obs had sent something up to my desk. It was a text transcript, between – well, let’s call them S and B. And it mentioned GENE-EX. There wasn’t anything about the messages which should have raised the alarm, but although I am not a religious man, I do sometimes believe in the divine hand of Providence and all that, and what these messages suggested was that there had already been quite a lot of conversations between these two individuals. The transcript had the ring of a quite lengthy familiarity.
I can understand it with S. He’s into cutting-edge science and has said so. B, though, is functionally a moron. He’s cunning, but his scientific understanding is limited to switching the bloody light on and he probably thinks there’s a little man in there with a lever.
Moreover, S and B are known to hate each other.
So why are they engaged in this lengthy correspondence about something apparently quite technical? And medical?
I decided to pay a non-socially distanced visit.
*
“It’s just so boring.”
“I do understand that, Bond.”
“Bars are shut. Casinos are shut. Girlfriends are shut.”
Perhaps you could catch up with the Booker shortlist, Bond? Or the live streaming from the Royal Opera House? No, forget that. Out loud, Mallory said,
“The whole thing is immensely tedious. How would you like a little diversion? Ought really to be handled by MI5 but I’m sure they’ve got enough on their plate.”
Honestly, Mallory thought, he might as well have plugged the man straight into the mains. Bond’s eyes flashed and he sat up straight.
“Give me something to do!”
So Mallory did.
*
“Really is quite astonishingly bright tonight.”
“Yes. I must say, Rod, I’m enjoying being able to actually see some stars from London. Most unusual.”
“Yes, it just goes to show how much light pollution there is normally.” The Duke lowered his powerful binoculars. Venus was the first star out tonight and it was very close to Earth: they had looked this up. The sky was a clear, pale green: somewhat wintery still, but beautiful. Up on the roof garden, it was cold enough to need jackets, but not heavy coats. Mallory and his brother had brought up a bottle of Scotch and some glasses for an evening meet-up. “Great view of the river, too.” The Duke swung the binoculars around the panoramic vista of the city. They were not very high, on the roof of the townhouse, but high enough.
“Good God!”
“What?”
“Look at that!” Roderick passed the binoculars over. “That tower block, over there! Quite a way off. There’s a man climbing up it!”
“Really?” As he took the field glasses, Mallory had a sudden precognitive vision: he knew which one the tower block would turn out to be. Through the glasses, he could, indeed, see a tiny figure making its way up the side. Something about the quick, practiced movements were familiar. “Probably just one of those base jumpers. Like that lad who scaled the Shard.”
“Terribly dangerous, surely! And what if it is a burglar? Shouldn’t we call the police?”
“Don’t worry,” Mallory said. “I’ll, ah, alert the authorities.”
*
In the morning, Bond was waiting for him in Moneypenny’s office, flicking through the pages of a magazine. He looked quite cheerful.
“Had a good evening, Bond?”
“Excellent, thank you, Sir.”
“We’ll have to see if we can find you something else to do.”
“I’d appreciate that, Sir!”
“Now, what have you found?”
Together, in M’s office, they looked through the photographs in silence.
“Pretty damning, M.”
“Pretty unequivocal, too. There they both are. Did you get any sound?”
“Yes, but it didn't pick up very well so it’s a bit fragmented.”
“Let’s get Q to clean it up and have a listen.”
An hour or so later, this was what they did.
“…didn't know that these viruses could be so specifically targeted…”
“…must understand that this is a prototype. Intelligence communities have been working on this sort of thing for decades, of course. Mainly in countries to whom we are not supposed to be speaking.”
“But how does it work?”
“The virus targets particular neurological pathways. It’s called ‘epistemic latching’: the illness fastens onto particular thought patterns. Very clever stuff some of these boffins come up with…”
At this point the explainer must have moved out of range because the recording became fuzzy and distant. It was clearly Strummings, however, and Neville Barage. Mallory reached out and turned the device off.
“What do you think, Q?”
“It’s arrant nonsense, Sir. You can’t tie an illness into what someone’s thinking! The technology’s nowhere near this kind of level. The South African secret police tried to do something similar with Ebola a long time ago, strapping it into genetic markers – I’m sure you can imagine why. But all those attempts simply weren’t viable.”
“And you’re sure about this?” Mallory had a working knowledge of science, from years in the army – mainly relating to comms, getting vehicles started and blowing stuff up - but it wasn’t an advanced understanding and he knew it. Q, on the other hand, really was Professor Branestawm and if Q was adamant that something could not be done – then it could not be done.
So why did Strummings believe that it could? Mallory suspected a scam. Someone in GENE-EX was leading the PM’s premier SPAD down the garden path and Mallory did not like that at all.
At this point, Moneypenny appeared.
“Sir, I thought you ought to see this. I’ve been doing some digging and I’ve found out who the directorial board of GENE-EX are. Mainly scientists – but Derek Strummings is listed on a company audit as a special adviser.”
Not down the garden path, it seemed. Or perhaps the garden was more overgrown than Mallory had supposed.
He put Bond back on the case, making a mental note to alert MI5, as well. Didn’t want to hog all the fun. Bond, released, disappeared into London with alacrity and rang Mallory later that evening, as he was sitting with a whisky in front of Newsnight.
“Followed him this afternoon. Overheard a conversation. He’s meeting Barage tomorrow night, at GENE-EX. Eight p.m.”
“Well,” Mallory remarked, “Social distancing or no social distancing, I think we ought to arrange a welcoming committee.”
*
The figure loomed swiftly out of the shadows of the corridor. Mallory’s gun was up as fast as Bond’s.
“Don’t move!” he hissed.
“Oh! Who’s that, then?” said a cheerful female voice. “Is that you, Mallory?”
M lowered the weapon. “Sorry!”
“Bit late to the party, aren’t you, Jules?”
The woman – petite, early forties, blonde – smirked and said, “Maybe if your boss had let us know about this a bit sooner, James, I might have beaten you to it…I hope you’re keeping six feet away.”
“Bond,” said Mallory, “Stop winding up MI5. We have work to do.”
Together, they made their way up to the boardroom. From down the corridor, voices were faintly discernible from within. This, Mallory knew, was a reasonably sized gathering: perhaps fifteen people? A few more than a coven, not quite a crowd.
“Ladies first.”
“You’re such a gent, Mallory.” She sidled quickly and soundlessly to the door. Everyone held their breath. Barage’s pontificating, man-in-a-pub-in-Surrey tones were clearly audible now that they were closer.
“The whole idea about wrong thinking, of course, is familiar to us! Don’t want to go all 1984! But if we can target people who actually think this way…”
“Won’t people die?” said a rather doubtful voice. “I mean, Neville, of course we want this to go smoothly without any further hitches once this outbreak’s over, but you’re not suggesting we actually kill people, are you?”
“No, no, that would be terrible. I know some youngsters have sadly succumbed to this thing, but they’ve mainly been frontline workers with – what is it, Derek?”
“Viral overload.”
“Yes, quite so, dreadful, of course. But mostly older folk fall prey to it whereas younger people do on the whole survive, and anyway it’s all down to what they think, you see. So you see, if we release this modified version of the virus, which according to the scientists won’t affect most older people, just before Christmas, before the end of the transition period, and a lot of younger people are simply a bit unwell, they’re much less likely to be able to cause any problems for the great change when we really take our country back – they’ll be too ill to demonstrate, for instance. And we’d release it in certain hotspots – Islington, Cambridge, Brighton…Pity we didn’t have this a year earlier but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“So you’re saying that we should deliberately release a version of engineered Covid-19 onto the British public just before the end of the year?”
Jules whispered in Mallory’s ear, “That’s Mark. One of ours. Wanted to get it spelled out on tape. I can move now.”
And she kicked in the door.
Some time later, down in the foyer, Mallory accosted the SPAD.
“You must have known this ‘epistemic latching’ is all tripe, Strummings. What was in that vial Barage was holding? Coloured water?”
“With a bit of glitter in it. I nicked some off my ten year old daughter.”
“You set him up, didn’t you?”
“You’d have to prove that, of course. A Downing Street adviser, involved in a nefarious plot to convince the country’s leading rabble rouser that it was viable to take out the nation’s Remainers with a contagious virus so nothing further would hold up Brexit? The stuff of pure science fiction, surely?”
“MI5 will be holding onto him for quite some time, given that he’s admitted on tape to what amounts to domestic chemical terrorism.”
“I imagine they will. Might slow him down a bit. I must say, I was delighted when I saw that shadowy figure on the side of the building the other night. I assumed it was MI5. Good to know you lot were up to speed as well.”
“I would suggest,” Mallory said, “that it might be as well, however, to avoid this kind of scheming in future. Just in case you have to join Mr Barage in a locked room somewhere. Which would be a pity.” He lied.
“Oh, I’ve no intention of doing more of it. I really do have the interests of this country at heart, Sir Gareth. Just as I imagine you do.”
“Quite,” said Mallory, coldly.
As he walked out of the atrium, to where Neville Barage was being bundled unceremoniously into a van, he heard Bond saying, “So if I’ve had it and you’ve had it, Jules, there’s no reason for social distancing, is there?”
“What did you have in mind? Social liaison?”
“Well, back at the flat I do have a rather nice bottle of Chateau de…”
But Mallory did not wait to hear more. He had a rather nice bottle of Chateau de something himself, not far away in the Kensington wine cellar.
When he reached the town house, he cocked an ear as he entered the hall. There were unmistakable sounds coming from the living room on an upper floor. Surely – surely it couldn’t be?
But it was. Mallory’s heart began to beat faster as he hastened up the stairs.
“…125 needed in 9 overs. It’s Johnson into the attack now. Dhoni whips the first ball on the offside and takes a single…”
“Rod! Are you watching cricket?
Without looking up from the screen the Duke said, “You know, Gareth, I’ve never taken any interest in social media before. I suppose this situation brings out an unexpected side of people. I’ve discovered this thing – it’s really rather fun. It’s called You Tube. Do you know, you can even get old Test Matches on it?” He gestured towards the screen.
“So it’s come to this,” Mallory murmured.
“Did you say something, old boy?”
“Nothing of any importance,” Mallory said, smiling. He sat down and poured a glass of wine. “Shove over, Rod, so I can see the screen.”
The plague protocol might prove surprisingly tolerable after all.
END
*totally throwing the British law under the bus here: they did dye the lake black IRL but they do that every year as it is dangerous and they want to discourage people from swimming in it.