'What is it?' the apprentice asked, panicking. 'What happened?'

The other chefs came running. The kitchen was like a well-organised factory in which each worker carried out a particular task. One was responsible for game, another for sauces, a third for pates, a fourth for salads, a fifth for patisserie and so on. For a moment everything was thrown into confusion. Then Jérôme lowered his hands and pointed a trembling finger towards the work surface next to the stove. A thick transparent substance was dripping from his hair. Blobs covered his face and a stream ran down his neck. 'It – it exploded at me,' he gasped.

His apprentice took a step forward and looked with revulsion at the lobster fragments. Only the legs were still intact. A claw lay on the floor and the jagged edges of the shell gaped open. 'What did you do to it?' he whispered.

Jérôme's face was distorted with disgust. 'I didn't do anything!' he yelled. 'It just burst!'

They fetched towels for him to wipe himself clean. The apprentice touched the substance with his fingertips. It felt taut and rubbery, but it disintegrated easily, dispersing over the worktop. Without stopping to think, he took a jar from the shelf and spooned in clumps of the jelly. Then he swept some of the liquid over the top and twisted on the lid tightly.

Pacifying Jérôme posed more of a problem. In the end someone poured him a glass of champagne, and eventually he recovered some of his poise. 'Clean up that mess,' he commanded. 'I'm going to wash.'

Immediately the kitchen staff started putting his workplace back to rights. They scrubbed the stove and the surrounding area, disposed of the lobster remnants, cleaned the pan and threw away the water in which the lobsters had spent the last hour of their lives. It went the way of all waste water – down the drain and into the sewers where it mingled with the other fluids that the town had flushed away.

The apprentice took charge of the jar with the jelly. He hadn't thought what to do with it so he asked Jérôme, who had returned to the kitchens in clean chefs whites.

'Good idea to save some,' Jérôme said. 'God knows what it could be. Send it somewhere where they test that kind of thing. But don't mention the incident. It never happened. Not at Troisgros.'

The story never left the kitchens, which was just as well as it would have shown the restaurant in an unjustly negative light. Troisgros wasn't to blame, but nothing was worse for a top-class restaurant than whisperings about its hygiene.

The apprentice kept a close eye on the substance in the jar. When it started to disintegrate, he added more water because it seemed the right thing to do.

It looked like pieces of jellyfish, he thought, and jellyfish needed water – in fact that was pretty much all they were made of In any case it seemed to do the trick. For the time being the substance remained stable. Troisgros made some discreet telephone enquiries, and the jar was immediately sent for analysis at the nearby university in Lyons. Two hours later, it landed on the desk of Bernard Roche, a professor of molecular biology. Even with the extra water in the jar, the jelly was disintegrating again. Only a few small clumps remained. Roche began to test it straight away, but the last blob dispersed before he could examine it in detail. He'd seen enough, though to identify some molecular compounds, whose presence surprised and bewildered him. One was a highly potent neurotoxin, but he couldn't be certain whether it came from the jelly or the water in the jar.

The liquid, he discovered, was saturated with organic matter and all kinds of chemicals. Since he didn't have time to analyse it immediately, he decided to return to it in a few days' time. He put the jar in the fridge.

THAT EVENING JÉRÔME FELL ILL. At first he felt nauseous. The restaurant was full, so he tried to forget about it and carried on as usual. The ten intact lobsters were exquisite, and there was no call for any more. In spite of the unpleasant incident that morning, everything went smoothly – as was expected at Troisgros.

It was getting on for ten o'clock when the nausea worsened and was coupled with a headache. Then Jérôme noticed he was losing concentration. He had omitted to put the finishing touches to one of the dishes, and had forgotten to tell his apprentice what to do next.

Jean Jérôme was enough of a professional to know when to pull the plug. He was feeling truly awful. He handed responsibility to his deputy, an ambitious and talented chef who'd learned her trade in Paris under Ducasse. He was just popping outside, he told her. The kitchens backed on to the garden: when the weather was good, diners were taken there on arrival and served their aperitif with canapés. Later they were led into the restaurant through the kitchens, catching a glimpse of the proceedings and sometimes a demonstration by a chef. Right now the discreetly lit garden was deserted.

For a few minutes Jérôme paced up and down. Through the large windows he could still see the bustle of the kitchens, but he was having trouble focusing for more than a few seconds at a time. He couldn't get enough air, and there was a weight on his chest. His legs felt like jelly. He sat down at one of the wooden tables. His thoughts returned to the events of that morning. His hair and face had been splattered with the lobster's insides. He was sure he must have inhaled a bit or swallowed some fluid. He'd probably caught a drop on his tongue when he licked his lips.

Perhaps it was the thought of the lobster, but before he knew it, he was vomiting violently over the plants. As he sat there, bent double, retching and choking, he thought it was probably for the best. At least he'd got rid of it. Now all he needed was a glass of water, and he'd feel much better.

He dragged himself to his feet. His head spun. His forehead was burning and he was gazing into a spiral. He sat down again. You've got to get up, he told himself You need to check that things are all right in the kitchen. It was vital that nothing went wrong. This was Troisgros, after all.

He managed to stand up and take a few dragging steps, then darkness overwhelmed him.

18 April

Vancouver Island, Canada

Anawak could feel his eyes reddening and swelling, while the skin round them creased. Struggling to keep his head upright, he stared at the monitor. Ever since Canada's west coast had been plunged into chaos, his eyes had barely left the screen, yet he'd sifted only a fraction of the data – electronic evidence that owed its existence to one of the most groundbreaking inventions in animal behavioural science. Telemetry.

In the late 1970s, scientists had come up with a revolutionary new method for monitoring animals. Until then there had been no accurate means of collecting data on a species' distribution or its patterns of migration. How animals lived, hunted and mated, what they needed or wanted were all matters of speculation. Of course, thousands of animals were being watched around the clock – but almost always under circumstances that made it impossible to predict how they would normally behave. Monitoring an animal in captivity was like observing a man behind bars: there was no way of telling how it lived when it was free.

But attempts to observe animals in their natural habitat were similarly unsuccessful. The creatures either took flight or failed to show up in the first place. Animals tended to see more of the scientists than the scientists did of them. Some of the less timid species – chimpanzees or dolphins, for example – put on shows for their observers, displaying aggression or curiosity, and sometimes even flirting or striking a pose, making objective conclusions all but impossible to reach. Once they'd tired of performing, they'd disappear into the jungle, take off into the sky or dive into the depths, where they'd resume their natural behaviour – except no one could see them.