Astrid slipped a hand under my arm and sat there quietly, very close, listening carefully.

I said: “Sour cream makes all the difference in the world. Till now, I was only half sure, though perhaps I had enough to make me certain. But now...now all those elusive thoughts jell together, and I know exactly what’s going on. And it’s terrifying.”

Fenrek said: “And I’m still waiting.”

“All right then. Listen carefully. There’s scarcely a country in Africa where there’s any kind of constant peace. In Nigeria, until recently the most stable of all the emerging countries, the Ibos are slaughtering the Haussas, and the Haussas are slaughtering the Ibos. In the Congo, even though we don’t hear much about it anymore, there’s still a major guerrilla war being fought. In Angola, Mozambique, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Mauretania, Senegal, Rwanda, Zambia, Malawi, Gabon and the Sudan—God dammit, in almost every single one of the new countries and half of the old ones—Africa is at war with itself. Wherever you turn, there’s a rebel force of some sort fighting against the government, or one tribe trying to seize power so that it can wipe out all the other tribes. And with the exception of the Sudan, where the Egyptians are methodically exterminating the Northern Sudanese, the only really efficient fighting force on either side, however small, is the force made up of white mercenaries. Almost every single country is employing them, for the sad reason that the whites have a long history of more efficient wars than the blacks. You can argue that the Africans are more savage, if you like, and I’ll deny it. But you can’t argue that the European professional soldiers are not a hell of a lot better than the people who are employing them out there. Wherever the mercenaries turn up, the tide turns in their favor. It’s axiomatic that whichever side has the best mercenaries is the side that wins—because they’re much more efficient than the Africans can ever hope to be. They fight for money, they fight for the love of it, or they fight because they’re simply born killers; but wherever they’ve been fighting, they’ve been winning. Until recently. Can I pour myself another cognac?”

“Your house, Cain.”

I helped myself, and said again, the crucial point: “Until recently. But now, the major powers are pumping modern weapons into Africa so fast that what used to be tribes of primitive Africans with obsolete weapons they didn’t really know much how to use, now turns out to be heavily-equipped, European-trained armies. Only five years ago, there was hardly a tank in Nigeria. Now, Britain is pumping modern equipment in there for the Federal Army so fast that the Biafrans have been almost, but not quite, wiped out. The white mercenaries are still holding out with a few Africans under their command, but they’re losing the battle, fast. They’re licked, and they know it. You want me to tell you which of the major powers are supplying arms to Mali? Or to Ghana? Or to Zambia?”

Fenrek said wearily: “No, it’s not important, I get the point.”

“Do you? Make sure you get it well. The picture’s the same all over Africa. Some of those mercenaries are smart men, born leaders, savage and absolutely ruthless. Under other circumstances, they’d turn into Stalins or Hitlers, and in their own fields they’ve got just about as much power. But they’re losing, wherever they go. Some of them have become well known, like Rolf Steiner in Nigeria, or Bousson in Malawi, or Black Jean Schramm in the Congo. There are dozens of them. And all it wants is for one of them to come to the obvious and inevitable conclusion and to do something about it. And that’s what we’ve got on our hands now. Loveless has realized that for survival and now for more than mere survival—the mercenaries need a new weapon.”

Fenrek sat up straight in his chair and stared at me.

I said: “Nuclear bombs? Of course not, they haven’t the capability of making or using them. But what about chemical warfare, Fenrek? America, Russia, England, France, Germany...we all know that they’ve stockpiled chemical and bacteriological weapons, it’s common knowledge. We know that our own people are using mild forms of them in Southeast Asia and the Egyptians have been using them in Yemen...So what about Africa? Conditions are ideal there. Six men with one small vial each of Bacillus anthracis could infect the whole of Nigeria with fatal septicemia in a matter of three or four days. Properly inoculated, they could move around through the bush contaminating water supplies or fields, and move out with complete impunity to await the results a few days later. What about Brucella melitensis? Spray this from a light plane and a pound of it will incapacitate every man, woman and child within an area of anything up to a couple of thousand square miles. One ounce of that is enough to infect two billion people, though not usually fatal. But Loveless has got hold of botulinum toxin, hasn’t he? And shall I tell you about that?”

Astrid’s face, beside me, was white. A tight line was setting around Fenrek’s mouth. I said:

“Just under a year ago, in a Naval exercise, a Swedish destroyer sailed upwind along the coast of Sweden, releasing, from a single aerosol canister, a yellow cloud of smoke made from olioethyldiacine, a substance which is quite harmless but happens to have the same persistence factor as botulinum in the specified concentration. The idea was that for as long as the yellow cloud was visible to the naked eye, just so long would the botulinum it was simulating be fatal to anyone coming in contact with it. Of course, they had the sensors out measuring it too, but...Do you know that it remained faintly visible for four days, and in that time covered seventeen thousand square miles? But the sensors were still picking up a simulated lethal concentration four weeks later, as far away as the east coast of Finland, a matter of five hundred miles downwind. That means that in those four weeks, the entire population of Sweden would have been wiped out—eight million men, women and children—if that yellow cloud had been the real thing. That was a single aerosol canister, Fenrek, containing less than a pound of simulated toxin. And I’d have you know that this stuff is being manufactured, and stored in quantity, by the Americans, the British, the French, and the Russians as well. Under the tightest possible security, of course, but...How tight can that be to a really determined man? And can we entirely discount human carelessness?”

In a hushed voice, Astrid said: “There was a case in the States, in Utah, some sheep were killed.”

I said: “Sixty-four hundred sheep killed overnight by an accident for which no one ever admitted responsibility...A place called Skull Valley, twenty-five miles from one of the Military Research Centers. That was probably one of the anti-cholinesterase nerve gasses, most likely a derivative of the old German Sarin. It is relatively harmless when you compare it with botulinum. And that’s the stuff that Loveless has got hold of. And I wonder how much of it he’s got?”

In a strained voice, Fenrek said: “Any of these things look like mussel poisoning, Cain?”

I told him: “There’s an island off the Scottish coast called Guinard. It’s been off limits ever since World War Two, and that’s more than twenty years now. For why? The British ran a limited disease-warfare experiment there in 1944, small-scale stuff, they merely dropped a bit of spore on the beach. But the last survey showed that the whole of Guinard will probably be infected for the next hundred years. The next hundred years, Fenrek!”

“Spores? What kind of spores, Cain?”

I said: “Botulinum. Very similar symptoms to those caused by your red tide.”

“And the sour cream?”

“A question of techniques in production. If you’re already making yeast, or yogurt, or sour cream, you’re already halfway to manufacturing botulinum toxin. There’s one consolation. If he’s planning to manufacture it, it’s obvious he hasn’t got hold of very much, and therefore...” I stopped to think about that for a moment. Reading my thoughts, as ever, Fenrek said:

“He doesn’t need very much, does he?”

“As much as you could put on the head of a pin would be enough to wipe out a small army. Provided he knows how to cut it and distribute it reasonably well.”

“Does he have any technical training?”

I said: “No, he’s a self-educated man, he probably doesn’t realize just how potent his new weapon is. He can’t possibly have insufficient for his needs, it’s just not feasible. But if he doesn’t know that, and feels he’s got to make some more...that gives us time to catch him, doesn’t it?”

Fenrek said tightly: “I can have a hundred men round the Lateria Agosta within fifteen minutes. Five hundred, if necessary.”

I said: “We might find there’s nobody there at all except a few cows.”

“And we might find the Angolan detachments of Loveless’ army of mercenaries, armed to the teeth with...”

“Botulinum toxin. And if one man gets away with a vial the size of a ballpoint pen, he’ll still have enough for the biggest slaughter in history.”

“No one will get away, I promise you that.”

“And there’s an all-important point to remember. A psychological difference between them and us. They don’t mind taking risks. Not only are they unaware, probably, of just how deadly dangerous this stuff is to handle, but they also don’t give a damn. Not about anything. About you, or me, or the rest of the world. Not even themselves; it’s the creed they live by. Loveless is at war with God, Fenrek, and sooner or later God’s going to get him. And I don’t suppose he gives a damn when that’s going to be. Let’s go.”

CHAPTER 6

That night, the street lights in the Alfama failed, which I thought was very fortuitous; until Fenrek told me he’d arranged to have them go off at just the right time.

The darkness was not quite absolute, and when the obscuring clouds drifted away from the bright moon, we could see the outline of the arcaded lodge that formed a bridge above our heads and traversed the incredibly narrow alley toward the door to the Lateria where they used to make sour cream and now, perhaps, were embarking on other schemes. Beco da Mosca, they used to call it, the Alley of the Fly, since only a fly, they said, could scale the steep slope of the tiny street, no more than a few yards long. It’s now called St. John’s Alley, and though its name is now more prosaic, the ancient charm is still there.

To our left, the winding staircase of Chafariz climbed up into the skies where the Generals house was, on top of the hill, and to the right the ground fell sharply away again down to Trigos Terrace, so steeply as to give the feeling that we were perched here on a narrow ledge, a ledge on which someone had had the audacity to build a row of tiny houses, walled with diamond-pointed bricks back in the sixteenth century when this was a ghetto.

In the darkness, it was easy to imagine all the twisting, turning, winding staircases and narrow alleyways that covered the slopes of the old quarter and made it one of the most picturesque corners of Europe.

We waited, the two of us, standing in deep shadow under the overhang of a three-storied house that on the other side was only one story high, with a balcony that projected so far out onto the street, a balcony only three feet wide, that it almost touched the building opposite, leaving just a narrow gap through which we could see the clouds and the deep night sky.

There was the sound of a train coming in to the station of Santa Apolinia which lay a few hundred yards to the east of us, at the end of the Street of the Tobacco Garden, and there were voices calling out in the darkness, calling for candles which soon lit up in dark windows everywhere. A phonograph was playing somewhere; a child was crying for its mother.

We beard the slight sound of rubber-soled footsteps, and a shadow moved in beside us, a shadow in police uniform. It spoke very low: “A man coming, Senhor Colonello, up from the terrace.”

Fenrek nodded, and the shadow glided away. We waited.

Soon, we heard the sound of the hesitant feet, saw the flash of a light shining on the house numbers, and then the footsteps stopped. The beam of the light swung round, and we withdrew deeper into the shadows, the recess of the lintel hiding us from anything out there on the road. The light moved past our doorway, traced a pattern on the opposite wall, and then we heard the footsteps again and a man walked past us, not hesitating but moving on as though he had found what he was looking for. He was wearing white shoes, and was carrying a small bag.

The spot of the light held on the tiny gate and moved up to the sign over it: Lateria Agosta. And then the man moved forward and knocked twice with the wrought-iron knocker, a gentle, not-too-overt sort of sound. We heard the creak of the hinges as the door swung open, and we heard a whispered murmur, too far away to be more than a susurration in the silence.

I said to Fenrek, very quietly: “He saw us.”

“Yes, I think so. But he can’t know we’re watching the place.”

“Can’t he? With no one else on the street?”

“All right.”

He moved out quickly, stepping briskly forward and whistling once, quite shrilly. From somewhere to our left, high above the steps, a police whistle sounded, drawn out and piercing, and the whole quarter was suddenly bright with a score of pinpoint lights, like cats’ eyes in the darkness, flashing here and there over the walls, the recessed doorways, the trailing vines and the flowerpots. There was the sound of hurrying feet, and Fenrek and I ran up to the man who had knocked on the door, and suddenly he was inside and the door was slammed shut in our faces.

I said to Fenrek: “Just give me room...”

I put my foot up against the lock, felt for its point of most resistance, drew back my leg and shoved hard forward, putting all of my weight into the blow. The door crashed off its heavy iron hinges and hung askew there for a moment, then twisted over and toppled to the ground. Three policemen brushed past us, filling the tiny courtyard with their lights; one of them was the shadow who had approached us out there in the archway, a soft-spoken young Lieutenant named Loureiro. I was up by the inner door already; a small wooden door that led into what we knew to be the main curing room of the little Lateria. I heard the heavy bolts being slammed home behind it, top and bottom, and Fenrek nodded to the Lieutenant, who knocked loudly and called out: “It’s the police, open up there!”

The walls around us were heavy with the tread of policemen’s boots as they clambered down into the courtyard, down the steep steps, down the high walls, down the drainpipes, down the grape vines even...On the other side of the building, we could hear the shouts as a sergeant checked the positions of his men. The place was surrounded, and on Fenrek’s orders they were making enough noise to make this obvious. There was the sound of a shot inside, a single shotgun blast, reverberating in the confined area and sounding like a mighty roar of thunder at such close quarters.

The young Lieutenant said quietly: “Com licencia, Senhor Colonelle...” and blew a short, sharp signal on his whistle. Immediately, three more police poured into the courtyard, armed with rifles. They began to batter hopelessly with their rifle butts on the door, and I said: “For God’s sake, let me do that.” I got ready to batter it down with my foot, but the Lieutenant said courteously: “Better not, Senhor, someone has a gun in there.”