The Facility, page 10
‘Why me though! Why my name!’
Wilson cowers as though from a blow. ‘I was looking for dentists,’ he says. ‘For my tooth.’ He retracts his upper lip to reveal again his chipped incisor.
‘Dentists?’ Arthur feels his grip on Wilson’s shirt slacken.
‘That morning. The morning they came for me. I remembered your name. I don’t know why. I wouldn’t have told them anything but they . . . they . . .’
‘They made you tell them something.’ Arthur lets go of Wilson and the man staggers. He slumps.
‘You were just a name,’ Wilson says. He is seated on the ground now, gazing up at Arthur through bloodshot eyes. He reaches out a hand. ‘They broke my finger. The big one, he . . . he cracked my rib. They wanted a name. I had to give them a name!’
Arthur takes a step back and Wilson’s hand falls away. Arthur is shaking his head now. He can feel the look of disgust on his face. Roach is beside him, staring at Wilson too, and for a moment there is just the sound of the man sobbing.
‘Hey!’
Roach turns. Arthur, an instant later, does too.
‘What the fuck are you three playing at?’ The guard is striding towards them, elbows jutting from his hips.
Arthur feels Roach tugging at his wrist. ‘Arthur. Let’s go.’
Arthur looks back at Wilson. The man is snivelling. He legs are coated in mud; his face in tears and snot. ‘Get up,’ Arthur tells him. ‘Get going.’
Wilson, though, just sits there.
‘Arthur. Come on.’ Once more Roach tugs Arthur’s arm. He glances towards the approaching guard. ‘Let’s go,’ he says again. And this time when he pulls, Arthur allows himself to be led.
They file in silence back to their rooms. Neither man has spoken since they left Wilson in the grounds but Arthur reaches now and prods Roach in the kidneys. Roach glances to check no guards are watching and half turns.
‘That’s it then,’ Arthur whispers. ‘Right? I don’t belong here. Wilson knows that, you know that, I know that.’
A guard up ahead snaps her chin to her shoulder. ‘Quiet back there!’
Roach faces forwards and both he and Arthur drop their heads. They walk on.
Further along the corridor, Arthur checks to see whether the guard is looking. He prods Roach again and again Roach turns.
‘I just tell them,’ Arthur hisses. ‘Right? If I just tell them, they’ll have to let me go.’
He is speaking too loudly. The guard stops. She hollers for quiet again and stands with her shoulders to the wall, glowering at each inmate who passes by. Roach and Arthur draw close but there is time still for Roach to answer. He looks at Arthur and Arthur waits and then Roach turns away.
‘Where is it? Is it on British soil?’
Tom cannot see the man who is speaking but he knows the voice. The Sun‘s political editor has an Eton drawl entirely antipathetic to the audience he represents.
‘It’s on British soil,’ the home secretary replies. ‘That’s all I can tell you, other than to point out that the locations suggested in Sunday’s News of the World were based on nothing more than the paper’s own uneducated guesswork.’
‘But their source—’
‘Their source – whoever their source is – would not know where the facility is located because not even the people who work there could tell you that. The News of the World got two things right and two things only: first, that the medical facility exists; second, that the patients there are very sick indeed.’
‘The source did not refer to them as patients,’ the Sun man persists. ‘He did not refer to it as a medical facility either.’
‘As I say, the source was not very well informed. The facility is a fully equipped, fully staffed medical institution. It is a secure hospital, not a prison.’ The home secretary points to another raised hand. There is movement beside him and Tom sees Julia’s arm in the air. He curses and tugs at Julia’s sleeve.
‘What are you doing?’
Julia ignores him. She pulls her arm free and raises it once more. It is lost in the forest of shirtsleeves around them and anyway Julia is half hidden by a pillar. The home secretary calls on a journalist in the second row, close to the seats Tom would have been assigned had he asked for them. Instead, at Tom’s insistence, they are positioned towards the rear, in the seats Libertarian reporters would typically have been assigned just a year or two ago – before Katherine’s single-mindedness and a flurry of high-profile scoops set the publication’s readership, and reputation, on a par with that of the smaller broadsheets. Tom is relieved now that, when he gave Julia Amy’s pass, he ushered her away from the podium and did not give in to her protests. Sit still, keep quiet, don’t attract attention. He asked Julia to promise and she promised. Not that he can blame her for rescinding. Given what they have already heard, he is amazed she has managed to keep quiet for so long.
‘In your statement you described the disease as a previously unidentified sexually transmitted infection. What does that mean exactly? Can you give us any more details?’
‘Right now, very few.’ The home secretary adjusts the microphone in front of her. She is a short woman, wide too, with enough hair for several heads. Political cartoonists have united in drawing her as an over-inflated balloon, bobbing at the prime minister’s shoulder and tethered by party colours to his pinkie. It is this image that occurs to Tom as he watches her, though he is aware too that her political opponents know better than to take her so lightly. Margaret Myers is bright, shrewd and ruthless, and has positioned herself at the razor tip of her party’s right wing. ‘I can give you some anecdotal comparisons,’ she says in her saccharine, girlish voice. ‘That’s all.’
‘Comparisons with what?’ asks the journalist in the second row.
‘With HIV, for example. The chance of contracting HIV during unprotected sex is somewhere between one in three and one in a hundred thousand, depending on the manner of intercourse and, of course, which study you read. For this virus, transmission rates are demonstrably higher.’ Myers checks her notes. ‘Similarly,’ she says, reading now, ‘infection can be detected within weeks, whereas the window period for HIV is as wide as six months. Most worrying, it attacks rapidly. Even without medical intervention, by contrast, HIV can lie dormant in the bloodstream for years, decades even.’ Myers looks up. ‘With the virus we are facing now, death typically occurs within six months.’
There is a collective murmur and the journalist uses the commotion to follow up once more. ‘So this is HIV? This is some kind of . . . what? Some kind of super HIV?’
‘No, it is not. At least, we do not think so. We can treat HIV, to a degree. Against this virus no medical intervention has so far been successful.’
‘So what is it? Where did it come from?’
‘Please,’ the press officer interrupts. ‘One question, one follow-up. You know the rules, everybody.’
The journalist in the second row acknowledges the rebuke but the home secretary answers anyway. ‘It is too early to say. Our scientists, however, are exploring a range of possibilities and they are confident they will be able to pinpoint the disease’s origins relatively soon.’
‘Relatively soon? You don’t know, then. Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Hector,’ says the press officer, ‘this isn’t a one-on-one. There are other journalists present and most, I am sure, would like just a single question answered, never mind half a dozen.’
The home secretary curls her lips and gestures for the press officer to stand down.
‘We do not know yet,’ she says. ‘These things take time, Hector. HIV has plagued western society for decades but still there is no fixed consensus on where it came from. With the contagion we currently face, the matter is complicated by the fact that no other cases have so far been reported anywhere else in the world. Which is not to say,’ the home secretary adds, raising her voice above the fizz of pencil movement, ‘that the disease does not have a foothold in other countries. The likelihood is that other governments have simply been less successful in identifying pathological threats to their citizens.’
There is a show of hands but the home secretary ignores them. She raises one of her own. ‘Which brings me to the good news,’ she says, casting a reassuring smile towards the cameras at the back of the room. ‘The carriers of the disease in this country have been isolated. The risk to the general population is precisely zero. The disease has been confined to a group of men and women characterised by their high-risk behaviour and aggressive promiscuity: homosexual men, for the most part, but also a small number of intravenous drug users, as well as several sex workers and their clients, all within a sixty-mile radius of central London. Patient zero – that is, the first person to have died from the illness – was a bisexual man from Croydon: it was by analysing his immediate social network and extrapolating the contagion’s path that we have reached our current position of containment. So far, seven people in total have died as a direct result of infection. Eighty-six others have been tested and confirmed as carriers, and every one of them, as I say, is now a patient at the facility I have described.’
Myers does not signal for a question but one comes anyway.
‘What about the blood supply? Is there any chance—’
‘There is no possibility whatsoever that the UK’s blood supply has been contaminated.’ Myers affects an expression of motherly calm. ‘This is not the 1980s. In fact, the western world’s response to the HIV crisis is an interesting parallel. In the United States, Europe – even Britain, I am ashamed to say – it took us years to recognise the extent of the HIV epidemic. By contrast, in response to what could well have become a public-health crisis on a scale even greater than that of HIV/AIDS, we have acted with alacrity and resolve.’
Myers allows her hand to hover for a moment before aiming it at another journalist.
‘Can you talk us through the timings, Home Secretary? When did patient zero, as you refer to him, die? At what point did you first become aware of the disease?’
‘Patient zero’s death occurred three months ago. But we had been monitoring the disease and tracking the vectors of transmission for a month before the man’s death: since the very first reports from the medical front line that patients were exhibiting symptoms that did not fit with any known contagion.’
‘And this – ’ the journalist who holds the floor looks to his notepad ‘ – this facility. When was that created?’
The home secretary draws back her shoulders. ‘The decision to build the facility was taken long before this disease manifested itself. It has, for some time now, stood empty – but ready. The facility was a core aspect of this government’s strategy to prepare our country for any and all external threats – the known unknowns, to borrow a wise man’s phrase. Our foresight, I am sure you will agree, has been rewarded.’
‘What about the detainees? How long have they been there?’
‘The first group of patients,’ Myers says, ‘took up residence a fortnight ago, once each and every carrier of the disease had been assembled.’
Tom and Julia share a glance but the home secretary continues before either one of them can speak.
‘There will be questions, I realise, about our decision to impose a media blackout on the story until now but I make no apologies for this. This government believes in governing, not scaremongering.’
For a moment the home secretary turns away. There are six or seven people to the rear of the stage and they cluster around her. Tom recognises only a few of those to whom Myers talks: the press officer, of course, and his deputy, Annette, who is as aggressive in bed, Tom can testify, as she is with the media. Rupert Jenkins, the Home Office minister of state, is on stage too, though he seems to be excluded from the discussion. He adjusts his tie and glances towards the press and does his best to convey the impression that he does not need to hear what is being said because he knows already what to expect.
The home secretary nods at whatever she is being told. She returns to the podium. ‘Which brings me to the second purpose of this briefing. The previous administration left this country massively exposed to globalised health threats. It did not learn the lesson from HIV, nor from SARS, nor avian flu, nor swine flu. Since the general election, we have worked to dramatically strengthen our disease-surveillance systems, as I have said, and our success in this most recent crisis demonstrates just how far we have taken this country on the road towards unified public-health security.’ She pauses, allowing time for the phrase to resonate.
‘We intend on going even further,’ she continues. ‘First, we will be fast-tracking legislation that will clarify the legal situation regarding sexually transmitted infections. There have been cases in the past of prosecutions brought against carriers of, for example, HIV, who have knowingly put their partners at risk by soliciting sexual encounters without disclosing their infection. Not all of these cases have been successful, however. Our proposal is to create a legal framework that fully protects the victims of what, by any standard of decency, is a heinous and malicious crime. Furthermore,’ Myers says, lifting a finger, ‘ignorance of infection will no longer be a defence. Put simply, if you have unprotected sex with someone and you are carrying a sexually transmittable infection, you will go to prison. The British public can be assured: no one in this country is infected with this new disease who we do not know about. It is extremely unlikely that this legislation will be brought to bear in the present situation but it is good, responsible policy regardless. Those who indulge in a high-risk lifestyle have a moral obligation and this government plans simply to remind them of that.’
‘There it is,’ Tom whispers.
Julia turns her head but not her eyes. ‘There’s what?’
‘This government’s core constituency: the moral high ground. You’d never guess there was an election due next year.’
‘Second,’ Myers says, ‘and again we are looking to the future as much as to the present situation, this country’s immigration controls will be selectively tightened. We have the outbreak in this country completely under control but, as I say, it is highly probable that the disease established itself in other territories either before or at the same time as it arrived here. As soon as the first case of infection in another country is acknowledged, we will put in place stringent immigration controls. Nobody from the countries concerned will board a plane to the UK without presenting at check-in a certificate of health validated by the British embassy. What’s more, they will not leave Heathrow without undergoing both a further test and a period of quarantine, the cost of which will be borne by the individual in question, unless of course they are a British citizen. The same rules will apply with regard to any country that fails to establish comparable safeguards in their own immigration arrangements.’
Hands are raised and Myers accepts a question.
‘What about British citizens?’ says the man from the BBC. ‘Will they be subject to punitive immigration controls imposed by other nations?’
‘We are confident that won’t be necessary, Ravi. The disease is under control: let me re-emphasise that. The international community, I am pleased to say, has shown every sign of being reassured by the containment procedures we have put in place. They have every faith in this government.’
Myers points to another raised hand.
‘On the issue of the media blackout,’ says the man from the Daily Express, ‘don’t you think the public had a right to know? Should there not at least have been a public-education campaign about the disease?’
The home secretary indulges a show of irritation. ‘Do you really need me to answer that, Trevor? Do you think, if we had told you, you would have confined yourself to reporting the facts? Do you think if we had come to you without absolute assurance that the disease was under control you would have presented to the public a balanced, responsible, reassuring message?’ She flicks a finger towards a journalist in the front row. ‘Next question.’
‘Home Secretary, how can you be certain that every case in this country has been isolated? You claim the disease is most likely present in other countries but that it remains undetected. If that’s the case, then surely—’
‘No other country in the world has the unified security network that we do, Jessica. No other country has the legislative framework that, in effect, saved our own from disaster. Infection rates, I can assure you, would almost certainly have spiralled had our security services not been able to call on the powers granted to them by the Unified Security Act.’
‘That’s all very well, Home Secretary,’ the journalist says, ‘but does the use of anti-terrorism measures in the field of public health not prompt the usual questions about civil liberties? You accept, surely, that there will be criticism.’
‘You are right,’ Myers says. ‘They are the usual questions. They are questions we have answered time and time again. The utilisation of anti-terrorism measures in what was potentially a public-health crisis suggests one thing and one thing only: the Unified Security Act has made this country safer for its citizens than it has been for generations. Two more questions and then I am afraid I will have to leave you. Yes.’ She points to the PA’s correspondent.
‘You say the disease is currently untreatable. Is anyone working on a cure?’
‘The chief medical officer will be conducting her own briefing within the hour and she will be able to answer that question more fully. Suffice it to say for the time being that an extensive research budget has been allocated and that a team, led by Dr Leopold Silk, is already making significant headway. Last question, please. Yes, Ravi again.’
The man from the BBC lowers his hand. ‘Um . . .’ Ravi glances at his colleague beside him. ‘What do we call it?’ he says at last. ‘I mean, you say the disease doesn’t yet have a name. That the virus doesn’t even have a designation. But our viewers . . .’ He gestures to journalists that surround him. ‘Our readers, too. I mean, we have to call it something.’
