Lethal by Design

By David Boggis

Three dead at a remote farm, killed by a horrific haemorrhagic virus. Three more close by. Then another, in a crashed car. But when young Professor Danny von Kasper, world expert in virus genetics, investigates, his helicopter gets shot down, killing his bodyguard and nearly killing him. Simon Shearer, taking over as BG, finds only questions – starting with: What causes Danny’s raving nightmares? Top detective Dagmar Paulini, leading the inquiry, views Shearer with suspicion: Why? Danny proves the rogue virus was genetically engineered: who engineered it? A Baltic island, once used for sinister East German microbiology tests, is out of bounds: but is the island really contaminated? Shearer saves Danny as a hitman shoots: but which of them was he really trying to kill? Danny finally admits that his father, dead, and mother, vanished, were part of the 1970s-80s Baader-Meinhof terrorist movement. He is terrified of his own genetic legacy. Mystery deepens as two new top players join Dagmar’s inquiry. One is from German foreign intelligence, one is a CIA officer with clearance so high that he needs his own special liaison office with his boss. But the German spook acts suspiciously, while the American officer wants CIA to take over the whole inquiry. The hunt takes Danny and Shearer to Israel and another shoot-out. And it’s Shearer’s Israeli contacts who alert him to a mole in Dagmar’s inquiry and warn Shearer of an impending attack, using the haemorrhagic virus – now proved by Danny to have been genetically engineered into a bioweapon. Caught in the midst of the intrigue, Dagmar Paulini gets sacked – and the American officer, who has been cultivating top politicians in Berlin, takes her place in charge of the investigation. His own subsequent actions raise even more questions: is he really answering to his CIA boss, or is someone or something else involved? By this time, Danny has identified the bioweapon. It’s a monster of genetic engineering – can it really be stopped? Answers lie in a secretive lab in Botswana. Dagmar convinces herself of Shearer’s bona fides. But when she gets sacked as lead investigator, Danny and Shearer are forced to go on the run to track down the suspect lab. And in the showdown in Botswana, Danny comes face to face with the last person he’d ever have expected to meet. Baader-Meinhof terrorist mother comes face to face with virology professor son. But the spark of love that the encounter might have kindled dies quickly when each of the two, at ideologically opposite poles, proves ready to kill the other. This story has roots in the darkest days of the Cold War. To the days when Checkpoint Charlie really was a haven for a whole clan of rabbits.

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