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205 pages

English

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'If you hanker for fast-moving adventure novels look no further. Clearly Mr Granger is a name to watch'Barry Forshaw, CrimeTime MagazineA FOREIGN CHEMICAL AGENT IS FOUND ON BRITISH SOILCAN IT BE STOPPED IN TIME IN A RACE AGAINST BIOTERROR?When film director Nathalie Thompson is commissioned to make a programme on bioterrorism, a sudden Ebola outbreak takes her on a dangerous detour to Central Africa. Posing as a Western activist and campaigner for the rights of Africans, Nathalie must investigate the involvement of a Zimbabwean terrorist group.But when a young colleague unearths a suspicious laboratory in eastern Java that may be producing biochemical weapons, Nathalie is immersed in a violent world of corruption and bioterrorism, which is closer to home than she thinks.

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Thriller

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Publié par	RedDoor Press
Date de parution	08 août 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781839780967
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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DRUGS TO
FORGET
Also by Martin Granger
Manila Harbour Oceans on Fire
DRUGS TO
FORGET
RACE AGAINST BIOTERROR
MARTIN GRANGER
Published by RedDoor www.reddoorpublishing.com
© 2018 Martin Granger
The right of Martin Granger to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Cover design: Megan Sheer
Typesetting: Tutis Innovative E-Solutions Pte. Ltd
To Jacqueline
One
The explosion could be heard five blocks away. In the cafés of downtown Harare people steadied their spilling coffee. They were not the first to feel the blast. The German Ambassador was given a brief warning by a flash of light, then a muffled sound, and then silence. A few minutes later he slowly opened his eyes to see a cloud of dust swirling through a large hole in the once-tiled roof. He was on his back, legs pinned to the floor by some sort of concrete object with iron bars sticking out of it. A man in a flak jacket wearing a black beret shone a torch into his eyes and mouthed something. It took a while for him to realise the man was shouting, but he couldn’t hear a thing.
The embassy was a small unassuming building with ornamental porticos and art deco styled bay windows. It had a yellow German plaque on the wall bearing the familiar black eagle. That was now all in the past tense. The plaque had disappeared along with half of the front wall. Special Forces climbed over the rubble to pick through the debris. Three members of the clerical staff, two of them African, were dead, buried under bricks and mortar. Those in the back offices had survived; some just covered in dust, others like the ambassador with broken bones. They carried him out on a stretcher.
Within hours a forensic team were picking over the details. A crude bomb, an effective one but crude nevertheless. Probably did more damage than intended. It had been placed under a structural pillar, one under investigation by the embassy’s surveyor. A crack had been reported several weeks ago. But even if the bombers had not meant to bring down half the building, it was no consolation to the dead.
Lloyd Bamba showed his ID to a uniformed officer. Journalist, Zimbabwe Times. He was waved away with a threatening gesture of an M4 machine gun. After taking some surreptitious pictures with his phone he retreated and went back to his office. The files on bombings in Harare were sketchy. The mid-eighties, a huge explosion blamed on South African covert forces rumoured to be targeting the liberation movement in exile. The late nineties, a blast in the Sheraton, the venue for a Commonwealth summit. Closer to home, two attacks on his rival newspaper The Daily News in 2000 and 2001. Allegedly instigated by Zimbabwean security forces for its anti-presidential propaganda. Seemingly no connective thread with any of them. Lloyd turned to his editor.
‘Can’t seem to find a common lead, I’ll have to go back when the dust has settled.’ He suddenly realised the pun. ‘I mean that metaphorically; when those twitchy guys with guns have relaxed a bit. Any ideas?’
The editor turned his screen towards Lloyd. ‘Only this on WikiLeaks; from their Global Intelligence Files. Some sort of chatter about that bomb blast in Harare Central Police Station around election time. Police blamed the opposition party, others citing ZANU-PF. One common theme though.’
Lloyd peered at the text on the screen. ‘Which is?’
‘All of the authors, including the US Defence Intelligence Agency, agree that there are no active militant groups in Zimbabwe.’
Lloyd went back to his desk and started downloading the photographs from his phone. One caught his eye. He enlarged it and examined the image on his laptop.
‘By the look of this, I think that might have just changed.’

Lloyd waited until dusk to make his way back to the embassy. This time he went via the grounds of the polytechnic. He entered the main building and climbed the staircase to the top floor. From here he had a view across Prince Edward Street and towards the roof of the damaged embassy. The area had been cordoned off and an armoured car sat at the entrance. He could see that if he approached the site from the girl’s high school there was a small gap in the perimeter where he might gain access. He descended the stairs, strode across the street and through the high school as if he belonged. To a passer-by he would be taken as a teacher. Parts of the embassy were draped in orange striped tape, a few disinterested soldiers hovered around. Lloyd crossed one of the lawns confidently as if taking a short-cut home. No one seemed to notice. As he had anticipated the vigilance level had dropped and it was getting dark so he cast few shadows. He took out his phone, studied the picture and made his way to the spot. There it was. Under a piece of rubble a charred piece of paper. He was bending down to pick it up when he was startled by a shout.
‘Halt, don’t move. Put your hands on your head.’
Lloyd was wondering how he was going to put his hands on his head without moving when a steel barrel was thrust into his back.
‘On your head, I said,’ snapped the voice.
Lloyd slowly crumpled the paper into a ball and put his hands into the air.
‘Turnaround!’ The order was shouted.
Without lowering his arms Lloyd gradually rotated his body to face an intimidating soldier who was aiming his gun at him.
‘Oh it’s you,’ barked the soldier. ‘The journalist. I thought I told you to disappear.’
‘Only doing my job,’ said Lloyd quietly.
‘And my job is to shoot intruders,’ retorted the soldier.
‘I’m sorry, I thought that…’
‘I’m not interested in what you think. Get out, and if I see you here again I’ll shoot first and ask questions afterwards.’
Lloyd deliberately lowered his arms, keeping his fist tightly closed. ‘I’ll go, but if there’s anyone that can give me an interview…’
‘You’re pushing it son. Get out of my sight or the only interview you’ll get is in a prison cell.’ The soldier gestured to the exit with his weapon. ‘Now!’
Lloyd picked his way across the masonry, the concrete and dust crunching underneath his feet. He didn’t look back. He had what he had come for in his right hand. A leaflet left by the bombers. One of probably many that they had placed to promote their cause. The only problem for them was that the explosion had been so immense that the pamphlets had been scattered to the winds. A bombsite wasn’t the place to read it so Lloyd made his way to the Book Café on the corner of Sixth Street. The café was a place for actors, musicians and writers. A space where artists liked to exchange ideas. It had been shut down for a while but now had relocated to a building near the Holiday Inn. It was the one place where Lloyd felt comfortable. There was a show on that night and people had started to gather in the bar. He ordered a beer and sat at a small table in the corner. The ball of paper in his hand was badly damaged. He slowly unwrapped it and smoothed it out on the table top. It was charred and torn but he could still make out the cheap printing. The grammar was poor but the message was clear. The West should stop exploiting African resources or they would get more of this. Lloyd assumed ‘this’ referred to the destruction by the bomb. The top portion of the pamphlet was missing but he could just about make out a logo. A capital E was followed by a large X, the strokes of which extended above the letters either side of it. Lloyd put two and two together and guessed at the acronym. WEXA; the Western Exploitation of Africa. The name was not unfamiliar to him. Despite the claims of WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files Lloyd had heard rumours about this group in this very café. The gossip was that this was neither a pro or anti-government lobby, but an extremist group with a grudge against Western involvement in African affairs. No clear-cut agenda apparently, just a small group of very angry young men. They were thought to be harmless malcontents. Well they weren’t harmless now. Lloyd folded up the paper and made his way back to the office to write up his piece.

Three thousand kilometres away in Brazzaville a Zimbabwean nurse sat in her hotel room. To all intents and purposes she was a volunteer there to help the overloaded Congolese health service. She had travelled incognito and wished for no publicity. The Ebola outbreak was not meant to be talked about. But her experiences in Sierra Leone had made her the perfect candidate. She knew how to diagnose the disease and cope with the grieving relatives of the dead. Burying the contaminated bodies without contracting the virus was one of the keys to preventing it from spreading further. She had arrived a week ago and been through the local induction course. Now she was preparing for her first site visit away from the banks of the Congo. She was on the top floor and could see Kinshasa in the distance over the vast brown river. Many people confused the two regions: the Republic of the Congo on one side and the Democratic Republic on the other. Salina was not one of them. Her brief had been very clear. She turned away from the window and reached into her canvas medical bag. A smooth black object, something like a glasses’ case, nestled in one of the pockets. The metal hinge creaked slightly as she opened it. Inside a glass vial and a plastic syringe. She screwed the long needle onto