Scorpia

complained.
    “There’s no fiction about it,” Dr Stephensonreplied, refusing to be intimidated. “Nanotechnology is about manipulating matter at the atomic level and it’s already out there in more ways than you would believe. Universities, food companies, drug agencies and, of course, the military are all spending billions of pounds a year on development programmes and they all agree. In less time than you think, the life of every human being on this planet is going to change for ever. There are some amazing breakthroughs on the way and if you don’t believe that, it’s time you woke up.”
    Kellner took this as a personal insult. “I don’t see—” he began.
    “Tell us about nanoshells,” the prime minister said, and it occurred to Alex that it was a while since he had spoken.
    “Yes, sir.” Dr Stephenson collected her thoughts. “I was already thinking about nanoshells when I heard about the gold particles, but Alex has made it all clear. It’s quite complicated and I know we don’t have a lot of time, but I’ll try to make it as simple as I can.
    “Injections
must
be the answer. What these people have done is to inject first the football players and then goodness knows how many children with gold-coated nanoshells.” She paused. “What we’re talking about here are tiny bullets – and by tiny I mean about a hundred nanometres across. Just so you know, one nanometre is a billionth of a metre. Or to put it another way, a single hair on your headis about one hundred thousand nanometres wide. So each one of these bullets is a thousand times smaller than the tip of a human hair.”
    She leant forward, resting her hands on the table. Nobody moved. Alex couldn’t hear anyone so much as breathe.
    “What might these bullets consist of?” Dr Stephenson continued. “Well, it’s anyone’s guess. But if you imagine a Malteser, it would be a bit like that. The inside would be what we call a polymer bead and might be made of something not very different to a supermarket carrier bag. Don’t forget, though, I’m only talking about a few molecules. The polymer would hold everything together and it would be quite easy to mix in the cyanide. When the polymer and the cyanide are released, the person dies.
    “And what stops it being released? Well, that’s the chocolate on the outside of the Malteser – except what we’re talking about here is gold. A solid gold shell, but so tiny you could never see it. All of this would have been done by Dr Liebermann, the man who was killed, using highly advanced colloidal chemistry.” She stopped again. “I’m sorry. I’m probably making it sound more complicated than it really is. Basically, what you’ve got is a bullet with the poison inside, and after that you fix a protein onto the outside, onto the shell.”
    “What does the protein do?” someone asked.
    “It guides the whole thing, a bit like a heat-seeking missile. It would take too long to explainhow it works, but proteins can find their way around the human body. They know exactly where to go. And once the nanoshell was injected, the right protein would direct it straight to the heart.”
    “How many of these nanoshells would you need to inject?” Blunt asked.
    “That’s impossible to answer,” Dr Stephenson replied. “They’d be sitting right inside the heart. Once the poison was released, it would act almost immediately and you wouldn’t need very much of it. As a matter of fact, we’ve studied the effect of nanoshells on the human body, developing them as a cure for cancer. Of course, this is rather different because Scorpia are only interested in killing, but let me see…” She thought for a moment. “There’s not very much liquid in a BCG injection. Only about a fiftieth of a teaspoon. At a guess, I’d say you’d only need to add one part cyanide for every one hundred parts of the actual vaccine.” She worked it out and nodded. “That adds up to about one billion nanoshells,” she said. “Just enough to cover the head of a pin.”
    “But you said that the poison is safe. It’s protected by the gold.”
    “Yes. But I’m afraid that’s where these people have been so very clever. The polymer and poison mix is contained in the gold. It’s sitting inside the heart and it’s not doing anyone any harm. If you leave it alone, it’ll just pass out of the system in a little while and nobody will be any the wiser.
    “But Scorpia can break up the gold. And they can do it,