Within minutes, Jordan and McCabe had the information that had eluded them for so long. The CIA, indeed, specific individuals within the CIA, had deliberately misled the FBI by falsifying the names of the men who had died in Oklahoma. These false names had effectively and very efficiently led her and McCabe on a two-year long wild goose chase.
In the hope of deflecting UNSCOM's attention from the ricin documents, Al-Qaedi suddenly became extraordinarily helpful. When it became obvious that Jordan and McCabe were particularly interested in the role that the United States had played in setting up Iraq's bioweapons' programme, the dyspeptic colonel, the registrar, and his assistants all but fell over themselves providing the inspectors with what McCabe described as the mother load.
The Consortium had successfully managed to deconstruct much of its history, but it had been unable to reach all the way back to the late 1960s to the meticulous records at the University of Baghdad. Nor had they been able to delete or doctor any names associated with the dead men and the projects that they had been working on-including the US sanctioned use of BW during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
What Jordan and McCabe now had was a virtual membership list of the Consortium. It included French nationals who had helped train the now deceased Iraqis in the development of BW, high-ranking members of the French military, and a number of Russian scientists who had worked with Netyosov-the man who had developed the Ebola-smallpox chimera.
Many of the US citizens were also top-ranking individuals in the military, FBI, DIA, DOD, including Robert Williams and Robert McCabe, and the CIA, including the person who had falsified the names of the Iraqi scientists and lied to the FBI: Brad Montgomery.
Williams had covered his tracks, but many of those listed were too high profile to scurry for cover. Inside the Unimog that evening, Chuck Long helped Jordan and McCabe transmit copies of everything directly to now Deputy Director of the FBI, John Reynold, the office of the Vice President of the United States, the US Attorney General's office, and the United Nations.
-Chapter 39-
New York, February 22, 1998
Jordan and McCabe's discovery of the records in the University of Baghdad remained a tightly guarded secret. This was made easier by the furore that resulted over UNSCOM's unearthing what would later become known as the Al-Qaedi ricin files, the confiscation of which instantly sent Saddam into a frenzied rage. In defiance of the UN Resolution, he reacted by declaring all of his presidential palaces off-limits. The standoff threatened to escalate until Kofi Annan flew in to personally negotiate with the Iraqi leader. At the same moment the meeting with Annan and Hussein ended in Baghdad, Jordan sat down for dinner with Nate Sturgess in New York.
"I've just had three weeks eating maize and more maize, flavoured with freeze dried vegetables." Nate tossed her a self-deprecating smile. "I swore I'd had it with field trips after Mathew, but here I am, at it again."
"The more things change, huh?" A crisp white napkin appeared on Jordan's lap, courtesy of the mâitre d'.
"Less bureaucratic infighting, more money, but the mud and bugs are the same." Nate perused the menu and beamed. "Steak, rare."
When the mâitre d' had finished taking their orders and left, Nate added, "What's the story with the Security Council? Why are they trying to railroad Richard Butler?"
"Thereby hangs a tale. The Security Council consists of a pasty-faced French woman who hates Richard's guts, an overbearing Russian who thinks he's an ex-KGB heavy, and a pompous little Chinese official who dresses badly and suffers from chronic halitosis. To date UNSCOM has shown that Iraq produced ten billion doses of anthrax, botulinium toxin, and aflatoxin. They also found evidence of VX gas-"
"Didn't the French labs fail to confirm that?"
Jordan began poking a saltshaker with a breadstick. "Yeah. The very same labs that failed to confirm your Mathew Island beastie was anything other than dengue." Nate was still under the impression that the chimera had been manufactured in Russia and sold to a Middle Eastern terrorist group. He had knowledge of the Consortium, but, like everyone else, he also knew that France had substantial economic ties with Iraq.
Frowning, Nate said, "The French government has always insisted that Mathew suffered a 'particularly virulent strain of haemorrhagic dengue'. The doctors and lab workers at the Pasteur Institute, some of whom I considered to be friends, not merely colleagues, wanted nothing to do with me after Mathew. As far as the French government is concerned, I'm the only one who survived, so I'm a coward. Or worse." He shook his head. "You know all this. Don't let me interrupt."
"Nothing much more to tell." Her stabbing grew a little more enthusiastic than was good for the bread stick. It broke. She brushed the crumbs to one side. "Every time UNSCOM sees smoke, whenever we try to get evidence of the fire the Special Security Operations make it disappear. Then they call in journalists to disprove our 'ridiculous' allegations."
"Meanwhile," Nate said sourly, "the shortage of medical supplies and humanitarian aid to Iraq continues. I'm not criticizing you," he added quickly, raising an apologetic hand.
"Let me tell you something," Jordan said, carefully keeping her rage in check. "It's public, if not common, knowledge that, while our ships-and yes, I mean Australian Naval ships-are in the Gulf busting a gut to intercept illegal smugglers, millions of gallons of oil are being shipped by tanker convoys from Iraq into Lebanon, Iran, and Turkey, our ally . You do realize that China is the single largest consumer of Iraqi oil? In exchange, using the same back door route, Russia, China and France are sending in anything- everything -that Hussein wants! Now do you see why they hate Richard? And what the press is not saying is that Iraq's earnings from contraband oil could clothe and house and feed and provide first class medical services to every last goat-herding citizen, and each of the Bedouin tribesmen! Instead, Hussein's using the so-called 'sanctions' to tighten the noose around his people's throats, proving to the world that the UN are the bullies."
She shook her head angrily. "Saddam may be a psychopath but he's a bloody cunning one with a hell of a flare for PR. If he ever defects, someone on Madison Avenue will snatch him up."
"Have you ever found out for sure who-" Nate stopped and looked around before added, "Mathew?"
"They're blaming Iraq."
"Jordan," he said with a frown. "What if…what if they're wrong? What if someone else has it? What if next time," he added, sitting forward and lowering his voice even further, "it's not a truck bomb in a building, but a sudden, unexplained outbreak of 'haemorrhagic dengue?'"
Giving herself time to think, Jordan chewed the end of the broken bread stick. Although it would take time, two to three years to carefully pull all of the pieces together, the legitimate powers in the US government now had the evidence that would ultimately bring down the Consortium. While the discovery of the Baghdad university files had given her a sense of great satisfaction, she realised, even before she'd caught the next flight out to the States, that her world-view since joining UNSCOM had altered radically. As much as it sickened her to admit it, in its own twisted way, the Consortium had been right. Dealing with the moral lepers who made up the Iraqi regime had taught her that BW now presented the single greatest threat to mankind's existence. Saddam's bioweapons' capabilities had to be destroyed.
"I know Nate," she replied tiredly. "That's why we can't give up. It's why I won't give up."
Someone was at her shoulder. Jordan instinctively reached into her short black jacket for a weapon that had become as much a part of her as her wristwatch.
Nate's expression just stopped her in time. "Josh!" he declared, standing from the table. "Hey, glad you could make it. When you said you were tied up I thought… What is it?"
Turning around, Jordan saw the artificially calm look on McCabe's face, and her heart began to pound. "What?" she demanded.
"Kofi Annan has just kneecapped UNSCOM," he replied, his voice stiff with tension. At Nate's incredulous look, he added, "Not deliberately; he's had the wool pul
led over his eyes. Annan signed a new Memorandum of Understanding between the UN and the Republic of Iraq. It prevents us from accessing anything that Hussein wants to call a Presidential Palace."
Then she saw the documents in his hands. "Josh?" she said softy.
Wordlessly he pulled out the chair, sat down and handed her the sheets. They were a printout from a website run by the Arabic newspaper, Al-Quds al-Arabi . The text was in Arabic. "Osama bin Laden," he said, "has issued a fatwah declaring a war on the United States and all of its citizens and interests."
Nate's eyebrow arched inquiringly. "What's a fatwah?"
"A ruling on Islamic law," Jordan replied, watching McCabe. She knew he'd most likely memorised the content, but she handed the document back to him. "What does it say?"
Barely glancing at the paper, he replied, "' In compliance with God's order, we issue the following fatwah to all Muslims: the ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, including civilians and military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it .' It's endorsed by bin Laden and one of his top lieutenants and leader of the Al-Jihad organization in Egypt, Ayman Al Zawahiri, run under the banner of the International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders."
It was the first time in US history that an ideology, not a country, had declared war on the United States. And over the following days, not one US newspaper, radio or television station would report it.
The waiter arrived with the steaks. "You want to order dinner?" Nate said. McCabe shook his head. When the waiter was gone, Nate added, "I thought those two, bin Laden and Hussein, hated each other's guts?"
No longer hungry, Jordan sat back in her chair. She'd made the same objections to McCabe two years ago on the flight from Oklahoma. God, how naïve she'd been back then. "They do, but bin Laden's extraordinarily opportunistic and has a specific, long term goal, one he believes may take up to a century to fulfil."
"Which is?" Nate prompted.
"The establishment of a worldwide Islamic state," replied McCabe. "One based on fundamentalist principles that make the Dark Ages seem scandalously progressive."
"Sounds like your typical nutcase terrorist with delusions of grandeur," Nate said dismissively, but as he brought the small chunk of pink flesh to his mouth, he froze. Putting his fork down, he said, "What? What did I say?"
"If UNSCOM can't disarm Iraq," McCabe replied, "the United States will. And if the US invades Iraq then Hussein, the very same dictator who brought new meaning to the term 'scorched earth', will do as promised and give bin Laden the keys to Armageddon."
"The chimera!" Nate paled and pushed his plate aside.
"After what Kofi did today," Jordan said in a strangled voice, "UNSCOM is on borrowed time."
Iraq didn't have the chimera, but Hussein had other pathogens, more than enough for a fundamentalist like bin Laden. The Saudi might not operate under quite the same principles as Aum Shinrikyo, but it was no exaggeration to think they might all be on borrowed time.
*
The attack came seven months later, and this time, there was nothing ambiguous about who was responsible. Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh admitted that they had been under direct orders from Osama bin Laden to bomb the US Embassies in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam. The bombing of the embassies achieved what the chimera had not. Congress was finally sitting up and taking notice of what the-now departing-President and his key advisers had been saying for the past six years.
Terrorism, specifically fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups like al Qaeda, not nations like Iraq or Iran, was the new enemy. This twenty-first century war was not about politics or lines on maps, it was about ideologies. By the same token, the US could not risk a disaffected Saddam maintaining bioweapons. Clinton ended the matter decisively in December 1998 with Operation Desert Fox. McCabe and Jordan had been right, UNSCOM's days were numbered, but the inspections had served their purpose. Saddam's WMD arsenal had been dealt a fatal blow. He would likely regroup in time. After all, as one inspector put it, destroying a heroine junkie's stash does not cure his addiction. But for now the US administration's attention was focussed on the growing danger of al Qaeda.
-Chapter 40-
Washington DC, December 22, 2000
The disbanding of UNSCOM in the summer of 2000 meant that in order to build the prosecution of the case against all members of the quasi Masonic like tendrils of the Consortium, Jordan and McCabe would need a new cover. They were assigned, along with hundreds of other agents and operatives from a dozen agencies, to trace the convoluted financing of al Qaeda and affiliate organisations. It was a legitimate cover, for the lessons of Mathew Island had not gone entirely unheeded. Hussein had been hobbled but Bin Laden might be developing his own BW arsenal.
Following the terrorist paper trail, Jordan and McCabe crossed paths with other, older trails that led to further evidence against the Consortium. Slowly, systematically, the FBI and Justice Department built the cases against hundreds of US and French nationals, all highly placed within their respective bureaucracies. The links between these men and women demonstrated that a rogue element within the US government had been given advance warning of the Oklahoma bombing. They failed to act on this foreknowledge in order to neutralise the five Iraqi BW scientists who could blow the whistle on the Consortium's covert involvement in developing BW in Iraq between 1969 and 1989. Like Russia, France, China, and North Korea, the Consortium had seen the 1972 BWC treaty as an excuse to continue their BW experiments under a veil of secrecy. It was not restricted to a handful of renegade scientists and generals; it was a fully funded secret US government policy buried in so many layers that every White House administration after Nixon could genuinely claim ignorance. Williams hadn't just been trying to protect the Consortium's programme, which appeared to have been dismantled in 1990-the same year he left the military and joined the FBI-he'd been trying to protect secrets that operated outside of, and independent to, Democratic or Republican regime changes. Realising that they'd handed Hussein the keys to the Pandora's Box of bioweapons, the Consortium had decided to shake up their respective administrations with a demonstration of the efficacy of a bioweapon on Mathew Island. The fact that they used a chimera that could, given the technology of the day, not have been developed prior to 1994, meant that the Consortium had still operated a viable BW's programme until at least December 1995.
If the US government's-albeit unsanctioned-role in the development of weapons used on the Kurds and disaffected Iraqis who opposed Saddam's murderous regime ever became known, men now in top US political and military postings would, rightfully, be dragged before an International War Crimes Tribunal. It would make the Watergate, Iran-Contra, and Lewinsky scandals look like a minor playground spats. The Consortium had become a secret bureaucracy in its own right, one that wished to both perpetuate and protect itself. And rightly or wrongly, it simultaneously sought to protect the core structure of the United States government.
While the investigative team had names and places and dates, the trail linking it to Oklahoma was still missing one vital clue. What had Agent Adams stumbled across to provoke Robert Williams into acting as he had?
As Joshua McCabe had suspected, the evidence had been right under their noses all along.
The pounding of the pavement beneath McCabe's feet was hypnotic. The feel of the leather strap of his ankle holster was a comfortable reminder of security. Tiny silver lights had turned the park, usually a dark and somewhat dismal place, into a winter fairyland.
His step faltered when he realised he was running towards Spinner's apartment. No need to analyse what that meant. He abruptly turned and headed back. Spinner had made it clear that she wanted this week alone, to unpack and settle into her new DC home. Unpack what? he'd asked. She only owned a couple of suitcases. Hadn't she sent everything else back to Australia? Her closed expression had told him otherwise. He'd said nothing, done nothing to imply that he kne
w exactly what she would be doing with her time alone.
In truth, he wasn't entirely certain what she was doing. Jordan Spinner had erected defensive walls around her emotions years ago. The closer they had become as partners, the more they had come to trust one another professionally, the tighter she had closed her grip on her deepest feelings. He once thought he knew her better than she did herself. He now wondered if that was the problem. Sometimes it seemed Spinner acted contrary to his expectations just because she could.
Just as he left the park, the cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled off his glove, and, slowing down, glanced at the number. "Yeah?" The lights turned green. He stepped off the icy curb to run across a wide intersection. When there was no reply, he lifted his watch cap from his ear. "Spinner? What is it?" Halfway across the road, his step faltered. Worried now, he stopped running. "Spinner!"
"I'm fine, McCabe." Her flat, measured tones told him otherwise. "Do you think you could come by?"
Ignoring the flashing red pedestrian light, he turned, and ran back across the road, reaching the gutter just as the first car shot past him with a muddy, half frozen splash. "I'm about five minutes away. It's snowing and I'm drenched. I'll come if you promise me a hot toddy."
"McCabe…" Her voice trailed off into a vaguely annoyed sigh.
"I said toddy, not teddy," he added, trying on some humour. It failed. "Spinner?"
"I'll see you in five."
He made it in three.
When she opened the apartment door, McCabe carefully examined her face. "Don't tell me you called me all the way over here to fix your heater," he quipped.
She walked inside without speaking.
Glancing down at his running shoes, he said, "Unless you want your new apartment's carpet ruined…"
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