The Conspiracy II

by Laurence OBryan

  “Is Gong Dao staying here?” said Rob.

  “Well done, Sherlock,” said Faith. She entered one of the elevators marked for the Millenium Hotel.

  There were virus warning signs in the elevator and, after it had risen to the twenty-eighth floor, where the hotel started, they were confronted with an empty lobby, a bank of hand sanitizing equipment and a smell of disinfectant.

  “There’s a suite booked,” said Faith. “Someone will come with a room pass in the next few minutes. They know we’ve arrived.” She nodded at the security camera pod high up on the wall.

  “What room is Gong Dao in?” he said.

  “Near us,” she replied.

  He sanitized his hands and read other notices pinned to the walls. The hotel offered breakfast bagels and fruit, delivered to your room, and discounted laundry services for first responders.

  A staff member arrived and placed two key cards on the main reception desk, near a bottle of hand sanitizer. The woman was black, tall, and elegant. She looked harassed.

  “I am sorry, we are totally understaffed today.” She blinked. It looked as if she was going to cry.

  “You’ve had it rough here in New York?” said Rob.

  She nodded. “Yeah, please enjoy your stay. I’m sorry, I have to leave you. Your breakfast will be delivered to your room if you order it by midnight.”

  They headed back to the elevators.

  “The two of us will stay in one suite?” said Rob, looking at the cards he’d picked up and cleaned with the sanitizer. He handed one to Faith.

  “It’s a two-bedroom suite. They all are on that floor,” said Faith. “It’s all they had left.”

  “How soon can I knock on Gong Dao’s door?”

  “She’s not in the building now. We’ll order room service and wait until she arrives before knocking on any door.”

  “She’s definitely staying here?” said Rob.

  “Yep, we have eyes on her.”

  “When will she be back in her room?”

  “I don’t know, Rob.” Faith sounded irritated. “Whenever she finishes her business here, I guess.”

  “What business?”

  Faith didn’t reply.

  45

  Washington DC, June 5th, 2020

  Vladimir waited at one of the hot desks in the Russian Embassy. They were reserved for senior visitors from the motherland. There were six desks, separated by thick wooden screens. Only one other person was at a desk; a young man who looked to be on his first assignment.

  Vladimir watched CNN on his phone, then RT, the Russian station for people who speak English. He wanted to see if the American TOTALVACS company had announced their partnership with McNeil’s institute in Oxford yet. There was a possibility they were still negotiating the terms, but he had to assume that TOTALVACS would not be deterred by simple things like legal agreements. There was too much at stake.

  He was surprised they hadn’t announced the partnership already. Did that mean the marriage was not going as well as they’d hoped? He needed someone on the inside. McNeil had to be that person.

  His phone buzzed briefly. He switched to his message app.

  A video had dropped into his phone. It had arrived earlier than he expected. He looked around; no one was nearby. He started the video.

  “Hello, Rob,” said the woman on the screen.

  She paused, nodded, then said. “Rob, I haven’t much time, please listen.” The woman looked around, as if she was being watched, then said angrily. “Wait, Rob, just listen.”

  Vladimir smiled. It was perfect. It assumed McNeil would be trying to get her to respond to him. They were genius with such messages back in Moscow. And there was no possibility of a trace this way, from State Department tech geniuses. The video could be stored on a server in New Jersey, and there’d be no doubt that the person they were watching was real.

  What helped, of course, was when you actually had some real video.

  Getting people to do what you wanted only required one thing. Leverage. Not much had really changed.

  46

  Manhattan, June 5th, 2020

  Rob rocked from side to side in the shower stall. Being in New York had brought back memories of the time he and Jackie had visited the city a few years ago. The video Vladimir had shown him went around in his head, in a mental loop. She looked almost the same as she’d looked in the video they’d made that weekend.

  He closed his eyes and said a prayer to a God he didn’t really believe in. Please, make Jackie be alive, please.

  He knew though that it was a long shot, but it was one that couldn’t be ignored. If she was alive, they’d have to convince him it was true. The only thing that would do that was if he and Jackie had a real conversation. And if she was alive, they would not give up because he didn’t believe them.

  They would keep coming back. Which meant they’d probably be contacting him soon.

  He dried off, looked at himself in the mirror. Jackie would have wanted to cut his hair if she’d been with him. He rubbed his chin. He would let his stubble grow. There was a new toothbrush in its wrapper on a shelf. He had no idea who’d put it there, but he used it, then dressed and went into the main room of the suite. Faith wasn’t there.

  He turned on the news. Every TV channel was talking about death rates and telling harrowing stories about people who’d died. Everyone was trapped in a collective nightmare they couldn’t wake up from. How stupid so many people had been, thinking the world could avoid a pandemic, just because we’d come so far with our medicine and our not-so-clever safeguards, which were only part implemented anyway.

  And now death was all around.

  He got an urge to email TOTALVACS and see how the production process was coming. He opened his email, blinked.

  There was an email from Jackie, from her email address.

  Rob,

  I’ll call you this evening.

  Please, please do what they say.

  Jackie.

  His heart was beating fast. He groaned. Could this be real? Or was he being tortured? He almost threw the phone at the wall in frustration. But he didn’t. He looked at the email again and replied instead.

  Jackie,

  I need to talk to you properly.

  Call me.

  Rob.

  As he sent the email, Faith came out of her room. Her face looked pinched.

  “We’re supposed to go back to Washington,” she said.

  “What?” he said.

  “There’s something going on. I can’t say any more.”

  Rob opened his phone and turned it to her.

  “Wow,” she said, after reading the email.

  “I’m being tortured,” he said. “Do none of you give a damn about what’s happening to me? What am I supposed to do, ignore it all?” He raised his hands in front of him as if he was grappling with something.

  Faith looked at her watch. “I want it all to stop it, Rob, and I’ll do anything I can to stop this bullshit. But we’re being picked up at eight, it’s the soonest a driver can get here,” she said. “The pandemic is messing it all up.” She raised her hands. “We’ve been ordered out of here.” She looked frustrated.

  Rob looked at the time on his phone. “What can we do in three hours?”

  Faith was silent, her lips pressed together, as if assessing something. Then she spoke. “We do what we were going to do—eat.”

  “What?”

  She pointed at Rob’s feet. “Put your shoes on,” she said. She put a finger to her lips.

  He put his shoes on and they left the room without saying any more. The door clicked behind them.

  “What the hell, Faith? Are we being listened to?” said Rob.

  “I assume every room that TOTALVACS books for me is bugged,” said Faith. She started down the corridor.

  “Where are we going?” said Rob. “To find Gong Dao?”

  “Yes.” She was walking fast. She passed the elevators and kept going.

  Rob
was at her shoulder. “What room is she in?”

  They turned a corner. A service cart with a pile of towels on it stood to one side of the corridor. Beyond it, the corridor ended with the gray door of a service elevator. Faith pressed the button to summon the elevator. Nothing happened.

  She walked back along the corridor to a room where the door was open. She knocked on the door.

  A maid with her hair pulled back and wearing a face shield and mask appeared. She was carrying a bucket.

  Faith flashed her badge. “Please open the service elevator,” she said. “We need it.”

  The maid stared at her, then at the badge again, then went to the elevator. She used a key on a chain to get the button to work. Then she turned away and left them, as if afraid of standing near them for too long.

  After they stepped inside, Faith pressed the basement button. “This is the best guess one of our staffers had for where Gong Dao was earlier,” she said. “Her signal was in the same place, but getting weaker. Then it disappeared.”

  “She’s in the basement?”

  “We found out there’s a connecting tunnel to a set of underground meeting rooms under the UN plaza. They’re used when officials from one state want to meet other officials without being seen coming and going.”

  “Won’t it all be closed up?”

  “It should be, but countries who use it regularly can probably request access if they have a good reason.”

  “You think this Gong Dao has access?” he said. “And we’re just going to walk in? I thought that the UN building was considered a separate territory, not part of the United States.”

  “Nope,” said Faith. “Not true. They effectively waved all that separate territory stuff for our fire, police, and maintenance support, though we don’t make it obvious.” She tapped the pocket in the black trouser suit where she kept her badge. “This will get us in anywhere.”

  The elevator stopped and the doors opened. Ahead was a wide corridor with room service trolleys in a line down one side. It was brightly lit, and the only noise was the hum of the fluorescent lighting. Another corridor led straight ahead.

  “Either way looks right to me,” said Faith. “What do you think?”

  Rob closed his eyes and imagined where they would be if they were on the ground floor. “I reckon we go straight ahead. The passage should lead under the plaza.”

  They walked down the corridor until they reached a steel turnstile that filled the passage from top to bottom.

  “This must be to block people the hotel doesn’t want getting in,” said Faith.

  Rob pointed at a small metal plate on the wall beyond the turnstile. “I bet our room cards will let us back in too.”

  “We’ll soon find out,” said Faith. She pushed through the turnstile, then tapped the metal plate. The turnstile clicked and allowed her to push it, as if she wanted to go back into the hotel.

  Rob went through and they walked on. The corridor beyond was not well lit. It disappeared into gloom.

  A grinding noise could be heard now. Faith looked at him, her eyes wide.

  “Have you heard about the slaughterhouses that used to be on this spot?” she asked.

  “No.” Rob looked at the walls. They weren’t concrete here. They were thin red brick.

  “Yeah, they’re overrun with rats. The tenements that surrounded the slaughterhouses had a bad reputation. A lot of people used to get ill.”

  Parts of the brick walls were stained yellow and green. They kept going. Soon the walls were covered in concrete again. The grinding noise disappeared behind them too. They reached a T junction in the corridor and stopped.

  “You think Gong Dao came this way?”

  “Yes,” said Faith. “You want to go back?”

  Rob shook his head. “No way. We have to find this Gong Dao,” he said.

  “OK, let’s keep going,” said Faith. She looked down one corridor, then the other.

  “It’s all a bit James Bond, isn’t it?” said Rob.

  “Do you want me to show you the plans for their underground submarine pens?” said Faith.

  Rob shook his head. He was thinking about the email he’d received. Was he wasting time on a wild goose chase? Was Jackie alive somewhere, waiting for him? Doubt gnawed at him.

  “Don’t believe that email,” said Faith.

  She must be a mind reader.

  “Which way are we going?” said Rob.

  “Your call. I’m doing this for you,” said Faith.

  Rob looked up at the curved roof, tried to figure out where they might be in relation to the street above. “Left,” he said, confidently, though he didn’t feel it.

  They headed down a well-lit corridor until they reached a gray metal door. It was locked. As they were trying the handle, they heard voices behind them, in the distance. Then laughter.

  47

  Manhattan, June 5th, 2020

  Wang ended the call. The embassy had booked a room for him in a hotel in midtown, one of the few still taking guests. He’d also sent a message to Beijing. His assistant at the Ministry was tasked with finding out which room Gong Dao was staying in.

  Now he had to wait until he was called back. He walked around the block. He would stand out like a dead dog if he hung around near her hotel.

  Bitterness grew inside him, like a teacup filling to finally overflow, as he thought about how Gong Dao had used him, and how she might even now be in the arms of her lover, the senator, smiling at what she’d done to him. His teeth gritted. He had to separate his mission from his feelings. He had to be careful. Then an image of her smiling face came to him. A noise distracted him.

  His phone was buzzing. A message had come in on his Ministry message app.

  Return to Washington. Your driver will come for you. He will message you.

  He turned his phone off and put it back in his pocket. He could be free. He could say he’d never seen the message. It would be a few hours before they even noticed. The summons had been abrupt, but what really got under his skin was that Gong Dao’s mission was clearly more important than his.

  What could be more important than bringing the WHO more closely under Chinese control?

  He walked on. Perhaps he had enough time to get into her hotel. And she had flaunted herself to him. That could be a deliberate challenge to him. She was testing him, seeing if he would fight for her. And if she wasn’t, could he let some stupid American take her? No, he couldn’t.

  He might risk everything, but he didn’t care. He passed an all-American diner; it was shuttered, then a Lebanese restaurant, then a Chinese restaurant, also shuttered. A hand-written note on the door requested customers to order at a telephone number for local delivery. He could order to his hotel.

  And that was when it came to him. The Yellow Dragons could help him. Their people who he’d met at the Eye of the Ocean in Beijing would be able to connect him with their people here in Manhattan.

  He turned his phone on. A message from the driver had arrived.

  Pick up in one hour.

  There was another message with a number waiting for him too. The message was a number. His colleague in Beijing must have found out Gong Dao’s room number.

  He didn’t have long before they’d be looking for him.

  He pulled up the number the woman at the restaurant in Beijing had given him and called it. All he would ask for was a contact at a friendly Chinese restaurant that was still open in midtown. This way, even if his superiors in Beijing were listening to his calls, nothing untoward would go on. He wanted a Chinese meal before going back to Washington. What could they say?

  “I need to order some food,” he said, when his call was answered.

  “Where are you, Wang Hu?” said a young woman.

  “Near United Nations Plaza in New York,” he said.

  There was a long silence, so long he wondered if the woman had gone. Then she replied.

  “Please go to the Eye of the Ocean on 42nd Street. Rap three times on the d
oor, then twice. The food there is glorious. Thank you for calling.”

  48

  Washington DC, June 5th, 2020

  “This will stop him in his tracks,” whispered Vladimir to himself, as he looked at the latest video to arrive from Moscow.

  It showed Rob’s wife, crying.

  “That would stop an elephant.”

  He would tell Rob to be at the park in the morning and then give him the task. The risk of contamination was the key reason only a few people were allowed to visit a vaccine manufacturing facility. But Rob would be allowed anywhere at TOTALVACS.

  And he could order a test of the vaccine product. Even the smallest detectable contamination would be sufficient to force TOTALVACS to start again.

  All Vladimir’s work would be vindicated then. Even if his mission was deniable, his masters in Moscow would know that he had succeeded in everything they’d asked, again. The Russian vaccine would be released first. Dozens of world leaders would order it from Russia. The West would be beaten in the great vaccine race.

  He headed for the staff restaurant in the basement of the Russian Embassy. He didn’t like mixing with embassy staff. There was always a chance he might bump into someone who knew him, someone who remembered him from some previous mission and could guess why he was here. But he’d looked at the telephone extension list of Russian staff at the embassy—none of the names were familiar. There were a few other Vladimirs on the list, products of the popularity of their president twenty-five years ago, and a few western first names, but no names he recognized.

  He sat on his own and ate a surprisingly good Beef Stroganoff. As he was finishing, a young Russian woman sat opposite him.

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “The Beef Stroganoff will be off the menu next week. Our beef supplies from the motherland are nearly all gone and our chef will not use American beef. No way.” She made a dismissive noise.

  He shrugged, looked away.

  “Are you the agent from Moscow everyone is talking about?”

  He shook his head. “No. I am a plumber,” he said.