London

1 July 1979

Peter DeVries preferred the British Museum because it was the sort of place where faces, even if noticed, were promptly forgotten. It was where he conducted meetings. The light was favourably dim, and the galleries were crowded with visitors passing through, unlikely ever to return. He stood before the panoply of African exhibits on the ground floor, the illuminated cases displaying everything from crude stone implements to finely worked bronze. He studied the artefacts without moving, using the glass to watch the faces drifting past behind him. The relics reminded him of South Africa; of a troubled homeland he only acknowledged when it suited him.

In the reflection, a second figure appeared behind him, standing just close enough to be heard.

“Still choosing your ground carefully,” the man said quietly.

“I wondered how long you’d watch before coming over,” DeVries replied. He did not turn, keeping his eyes on the reflection. He reached into his coat and produced a small object. “A reminder of Africa.”

The man — the CIA’s newly appointed Station Chief in Luanda — took the tiny Senufo horned mask, turning it between his fingers as if assessing it. The carved grin was sharp and vaguely satanic.

“This will sit on my desk,” the Chief said. “Thank you, Peter.”

He closed his hand around it, then let it disappear into his pocket.

“It’s been a long time,” the Chief added.

DeVries nodded. “You wouldn’t have come if it were not necessary.”

The Chief slid a thin envelope across the glass surface of the display case.

“There’s nobody better for this sort of recruitment.”

DeVries covered the envelope with his hand. He left it there for a moment, weighing the request. He frowned slightly. “Well, there are other, better-connected people, Chief, but they all work in Century House.” He whispered. “So, this is strictly off books, then?”

“For now,” the Chief replied. “Give me a call when you have someone in mind. No great rush.”

DeVries picked up the envelope and slipped it into his coat without looking at it.

As he vanished back into the museum crowd, DeVries caught a final glimpse of him in the glass of a display cabinet — tall, broad-shouldered, greying hair cut short, arranged into something unremarkable. Nothing about him invited a second look. The eyes were flat and calculating. The Chief was already disengaged; a glance at his watch and he was simply another tourist moving through the marble corridors. He stopped briefly at the exit to let a school group pass, using the short delay to scan the street beyond.

The Chief’s trip to London was not only to deliver DeVries his brief. There was another errand, dangerous and far more delicate. He was also here to collect a sample of a little-known substance known as an aflatoxin.

He had read years ago that Tutankhamun’s so-called curse was nothing of the kind. No magic, no vengeance from the tomb, the poor explorers’ lungs were simply infected by a green fungus, Aspergillus flavus, whose spores could kill quicker than any curse. In the right hands, cultivated on bread, maize or in a Petri dish, it became a fine yellow-green dust. Invisible, tasteless, and invariably fatal.

The Chief found his supplier sitting on a park bench near the Serpentine. An Asian man with a bottle of water, a paper bag of crumbs and a tan-coloured briefcase. The pigeons scattered. No questions. No handshake. Twenty thousand pounds in crisp notes, wrapped in elastic bands, changed hands.

“Be careful,” the man murmured.

The Chief nodded, grabbed the case and was gone before the pigeons came back for more bread.

Other poisons would have been quicker, even merciful, but this one was perfect, an invisible killer that mimicked a serious illness. In Angola, liver cancer was common. There would be no alarm bells, no investigations, no arrests. Just another slow death in a country known for its high mortality rate.

He stopped briefly at a health-food shop in Bayswater. He bought a larger packet of spirulina powder, and later, in his hotel bathroom, with a handkerchief held over his mouth, mixed the two powders. The yellowness of the toxin was completely absorbed into the green colour of the spirulina. The mixture was then carefully poured back into the original spirulina packet.

“Careful.” He cautioned himself.

* * *

Back in his flat opposite the Grange Beauchamp Hotel, Peter DeVries blinked when he read the Chief’s written instructions. He read it twice before watching the note vanish in the flame of his silver German Wehrmacht Gasoline Lighter.

He carefully took the telephone off the solid pine shelf near his front door and placed it on the floor. Although the shelf looked securely screwed to the wall, he was able to easily pull it away. He split the entire shelf along its horizontal axis to reveal four circular magnetic disks in the lower half and four metal washers in the upper half. In a recess inside the shelf, DeVries removed a well-worn address book. Leaving two halves of pine discarded on the floor, DeVries poured himself a whisky and started flicking through the address book. After an hour, he had found what he was looking for and replaced the book inside the shelf. When it was all reassembled, there was no clue to a casual observer that the shelf held a secret.

DeVries made several telephone calls that night. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. Good universities with respectable engineering faculties. He also rang contacts in West Germany, South Africa, even the United States. Like all good recruiters, he cast his net wide.

However, two weeks later, every enquiry had drawn a blank.

It was time for a different approach.

* * *

DeVries drove his gold Rover SD1 to Oxford for lunch, then on along the A40 to Cheltenham. At the Universities Central Council on Admissions — UCCA — he signed the visitors’ book and was shown upstairs to a records manager he knew. A discreet man. The decision to locate the UCCA near to GCHQ was no coincidence — it was a decision made at the highest level. It was, as Whitehall liked to call it, an intelligence recruitment pipeline.

“You’re aware we only liaise with the Security Services on clear national-security concerns,” the manager said, closing the door.

“This qualifies.”

The manager hesitated, then nodded. He had dealt with DeVries before. It was better not to ask questions.

DeVries laid a typed sheet on the desk.

The manager read it slowly.

“I’ll compile a list and call you.”

“No,” DeVries said. “I’ll wait.”

Two hours later the clouds were darkening over the Midlands as DeVries drove back to London. He briefly glanced down at the handwritten notes on the seat beside him.

“McKenna, electronics, Lanchester Polytechnic, 1978,” he murmured.

By the time he reached London he would have a number to call. A guy in Gulf Oil’s intelligence liaison still owed him a favour from years ago. The recruitment strategy was already forming in his head.

The boy sounded clever — and clever boys were rarely street-smart.

A Short Extract from The Cuckoo Asset