The Beijing conspiracy
Page 19
‘Your boots Ma’am!’ Imran handed her a pair of galoshes, smiling broadly behind the plastic of his faded blue suit. His voice was faint, even though she knew he was shouting in what was standard voice procedure for a hot lab. Kate smiled her thanks, put the rubber boots on and followed him through another air lock into the lethal laboratory.
A door at the far end of the lab opened and the animal keeper, Dr Richard Myers appeared. Even behind his face shield, Kate could see the grim look on his face.
‘I don’t like this one little bit, Imran,’ he yelled when he’d shuffled up to them.
‘Neither do I, Richard.’ The two were very old friends. ‘Are the chimpanzees ready for the trip to Halliwell?’
Richard Myers nodded. ‘And they’re not happy either!’ he answered sadly.
Kate and Imran prepared to unlock the vault where the stocks of smallpox were stored. A specially designed steel safe had been pre-positioned outside the vault. It would be the first time the smallpox stocks had ever been moved from the Centers for Disease Control. Imran had arranged for a heavy police escort and a truck that was very similar to the armoured trucks that banks used to transfer cash. Having an accident with smallpox didn’t bear thinking about.
CHAPTER 45
PESHAWAR, NORTH-WEST FRONTIER
A mon al-Falid spread a map of Beijing on the low table in the safe house cellar. ‘Most of the activity during the Games will be centred on the area known as the Olympic Green,’ he said, directing Kadeer to the cluster of venues to the north of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. ‘Over half the Olympic competition will take place here and it also contains the Athletes’ Village, the Main Press Centre and the International Broadcasting Centre.’
‘You’re focusing just on this area?’ Kadeer asked, a little puzzled.
‘The Americans, British and the Australians are very keen on their sport,’ al-Falid replied contemptuously, ‘especially the Australians. The Chinese will obviously have the biggest contingent, but the three countries who first invaded Iraq will also send three of the largest teams and it would be good if we can wipe those out.’
‘Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture, Amon,’ Kadeer replied, cautioning his lieutenant not to let his emotion cloud his judgement. ‘Of all the venues, the Olympic Green is likely to be the most heavily guarded and the most difficult to attack. You will need to get some of our own people on staff to get past the security barriers.’ al-Falid nodded, his eyes shining with hatred. ‘There will be a large cleaning and maintenance staff, Khalid; my planner in Qingdao is keeping a close eye on that. We’re also looking at the airport and the big hotels.’
‘The airconditioning systems in the hotels and the airport are the city’s weakest point, Amon,’ Khalid replied, unknowingly echoing the plans of Richard Halliwell. ‘Just as the gram negative bacteria Legionella, which causes Legionnaires’ disease, is most often spread through airconditioning water towers in buildings, so we can use the same principle for the virus, although we should also look closely at the subway system.’
‘For a big city, the subway system is not nearly as well developed as London, but I have been giving it some thought,’ al-Falid agreed. ‘Line 1 runs from west to east from to
– Pingguoyuan to Sidhuidong. That line is important because it’s the only subway running through the centre of Beijing and it has stops near Tiananmen Square and the Bajiao Amusement Park; although an additional Line 5 is presently under construction and it will run north-south under the city from to
– Taipingzhvangbei to Songjiazhuang.’ al-Falid produced a map of the Beijing subway system and put it beside the map of the city. ‘Line 2, which is known as the Loop Line, will also be important because it runs under the city’s second ring road and has four interchange stations for Line 1 and Line 13 running to the north.’
‘And the airport line?’
‘That is under construction as well, Khalid, and it will connect terminals 2 and 3 to Line 1, although only 4 kilometres is underground. It will open on 30 June 2008. The other line we are looking at is the Olympic branch line which is scheduled to open on the same day. That runs from to
– Xiongmaohuandao to Senlingongyuan – and will connect to the new Olympic Park.’
‘You’ve done well, my friend. The bear farm is ready?’ With thousands of cameras being installed, Beijing was far too dangerous a place to set up a base. When a bear farm in the western Shandong Province had come up for sale, Kadeer had arranged to buy it. A bear farm would be the last place the authorities would suspect as a planning base for an attack on the Olympics. It had two other advantages. Away from the main roads, nestled among the foothills of Laoshan mountain and surrounded by old pines, the farm was hidden from view. And Kadeer had used the bear farm to secure guanxi with the most powerful man in the Chinese Olympic movement.
‘I will visit the bear farm before the Olympics, Khalid, just to make sure but I’m told that General Ho Feng is very grateful, as you predicted he would be.’
Kadeer was once again drawn back to the brutal murder of his family at the hands of the inhuman then-Captain Ho Feng. Putting the painful memories aside, Kadeer knew well that General Ho believed that bear bile products were a way of prolonging life. Kadeer had arranged for the bear farm manager to send some of the finest products to the general, ensuring that the Qingdao bear farm would enjoy protection at the highest levels of the Chinese government. More importantly, this gave Kadeer a sense of closure to know that the final solution would be launched from the very place his old enemy protected. Should the final solution become necessary, a special delivery of bear bile soup would be made to his nemesis and it would be a very unusual soup.
‘All this will depend on whether or not Dolinsky can successfully engineer the viruses, al-Falid. Have we heard from him?’ Kadeer asked. ‘His role is key to our plan.’
‘We stay in touch through our intermediaries, Khalid. Postings to Koltsovo in Siberia are not highly sought after, and we have several of our people there.’
‘How much has he been told?’
‘Just that Islam is getting ready to strike against those who are attacking us.’
‘What was his reaction?’
‘Dolinsky is frustrated and angry about the treatment of Muslim people in Georgia, but he’s an educated man and he follows world events closely, even from Koltsovo. He has access to the internet and he’s furious about the treatment of Muslims in other countries as well, especially in Chechnya and Iraq. That said, as a scientist Dolinsky might be squeamish about the extent of what we have planned so he hasn’t been told the whole story; only that we need him to help us attack those who are attacking Islam and he seems more than willing to do what he can. By the time he discovers the extent of our response it will be too late.
Khalid Kadeer nodded. ‘Nevertheless see that we treat him well.’
‘If we can get him out and get him into a Level 4 facility, he will be an ideal recruit, although the FSB, the Russian secret police, are watching his every move. They sit outside his apartment at night.’
Dr Dolinsky was part of the Kist people, a minority Muslim group in Georgia, seen as a threat by both the Georgian and Russian governments.
‘Because he’s a Georgian the Russians have taken him off their top-secret research on smallpox and sidelined him on a project that is looking at genetically engineering a far less deadly strain of cowpox. If he’s successful the virus might kill, but smallpox and Ebola are in a class of their own and Dolinsky sees the Russian move as a serious demotion, which it is.’
Kadeer nodded. ‘Yes, Georgia and Shevardnadze are not the flavour of the month in Putin’s Kremlin right now. How far did he get with his genetic engineering?’
‘He was close but the final steps are difficult and the Russians have not yet solved the problem. Dolinsky is a very angry prisoner, and not only is he ready to defect, he is ready to live and work among the infidels and engineer a super virus to be used against them.
Khalid nodded. ‘I’ve heard of him. One of the true professionals and not to be underestimated, but we will need to keep track of this, Amon. If O’Connor tries to get him across the Altai Mountains he may need some help. Dolinsky is absolutely critical to the final solution and those mountains can be very dangerous, even for us. The Russians are not going to be too amused if they discover someone like O’Connor is in their midst.’
CHAPTER 46
MOSCOW
C urtis O’Connor cleared Terminal 2 of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport without incident and headed across to Terminal 1 for his connecting Aeroflot flight to Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia. Every so often he paused to scan his surroundings. If the FSB was here, then they must have improved on their KGB predecessors, Curtis thought. Tourist class on Aeroflot wasn’t going to be a lot of fun, he mused, as he joined a long queue at the check-in desk, but backpackers didn’t travel business, although the boys in the passport office at Langley had done some excellent work and Brendan O’Shaughnessy had quite a nice ring to it.
H OBOC нб p CK belied its location. Split by the great Siberian River Ob, Novosibirsk was home to nearly a million and a half people and the third largest city in Russia after Moscow and St Petersburg.
The dead letter drop was in a park not far from the trans-Siberian railway station, the massive monument to Russia’s imperial architecture that still played host to the famous train. Curtis sat on a bench quietly scanning the surrounding parkland. Satisfied no one was watching he retrieved from under a bush the nondescript-looking bag containing gammahydroxybutyrate, a pistol and an M4 Carbine with a collapsible stock. Curtis walked out of the park and hailed a passing taxi.
‘ Rechnoy Voksal ’
‘ Novosibirsk ochyen kraseevily gorad.’
‘ Da,’ Curtis replied, agreeing with the taxi driver’s assertion that the Siberian capital was indeed very beautiful, but not wishing to get into a conversation. Taxi drivers in Russia were not always all they seemed.
Novosibirsk Mountain Trekking was in a small side street near the Rechnoy Voksal metro, and Vladimir Lebed, a slightly built, likeable Russian in his early forties, welcomed Curtis effusively. It was not every day Vladimir received a request to take just one client on a two-week backpacking expedition to his beloved Altai Mountains.
Curtis handed over 26,000 rubles, half the cost of the tour, and climbed into the passenger seat of the four-wheel drive Toyota. His Russian guide hadn’t thought it odd that someone who was backpacking in the Altais might have business in a place like Koltsovo, nor did he quibble about the overnight stay in the one-star hotel Curtis had selected. The Dobrily Dyen, the Good Day Hotel, was in keeping with his new identity, Brendan O’Shaughnessy, and it was only about 500 metres from the apartment block Eduard Dolinsky called home.
Allocating one star to the Dobrily Dyen Hotel might have been optimistic, O’Connor mused. Several Russian workers were playing Durak and drinking cheap vodka at a table in the corner and no one took much notice of either Curtis or Vladimir Lebed. As Curtis ordered two Kupecheskoe 1875s, Siberia’s popular beer, Vladimir sought out the men’s room. Curtis seized his chance, dropping the contents of a small sachet of the gammahydroxybutyrate, more commonly known as GHB, into Vladimir’s drink. Curtis knew that by the time Vladimir returned from the bathroom, the white powder would be completely dissolved. GHB was colourless and odour-less, which was why it had become popular as a date-rape drug in nightclubs. Uncontrolled doses had been known to cause death, but Curtis wished Vladimir no harm and the sachet he’d taken from the bag he’d picked up at the dead-letter drop had been carefully measured to make sure the likeable Russian was only knocked out for twelve or fifteen hours. Enough time for Curtis to get moving towards the designated helicopter landing zone he’d selected high in the Altai Mountains near the border with Kazakhstan. Curtis felt the exhilaration of being back in the field and away from the politics of Washington. Getting Dolinsky out from under the noses of the old enemy was an almost impossible ask, but he’d been in tough situations before and he was sure he hadn’t lost any of his skills. His mind turned to how the Secretary of State might be going with negotiations for the use of Kazakhstan air space for the flight from the big US Ganci air base in Kyrgyzstan, along the border with the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No doubt there would be some incentive, he mused, as Vladimir Lebed returned from the bathroom.
‘Приятного аппетита! Good appetite,’ Curtis said, as the waiter brought the first course of shchi cabbage soup and set it down on the plastic tablecloth.
Vladimir responded with a broad smile.
Ten minutes later Curtis helped him to his room. When Vladimir woke up, he would find the 26,000 rubles Curtis owed him and quite a bit extra as compensation. ‘Who said there’s no honour among thieves,’ Curtis said softly, as he finished binding Lebed’s ankles, arms and mouth.
Leaving the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on Vladimir’s door, Curtis looked up the road towards Dolinsky’s apartment block. The two gorillas from the FSB were still parked outside. An hour earlier, Dolinsky had assured Curtis that he would be able to get out through a back entrance. al-Qaeda were not the only ones to take advantage of internet chat rooms, Curtis thought, as he felt a surge of adrenalin pulse through his veins.
CHAPTER 47
HALLIWELL LABORATORIES, ATLANTA
K ate followed Imran through the airlock into what would be her home for however long it took to prove or disprove the theory that smallpox could be made to jump species. If they were successful, the gentle chimpanzees would be used as a test bed for developing a vaccine for India-1, and then Ebolapox.
Although the meeting with Richard Halliwell was still a couple of days away, they had already received comprehensive briefings on the layout of the Halliwell laboratories and had been through the security indoctrination; a security that was similar to that at the Centers for Disease Control. The transfer of the viruses and the chimpanzees had gone without incident, although Kate knew that neither the vet nor the chimps were happy. It was almost as if the chimps sensed something was about to happen.
‘I take it we’re going ahead with this?’ Dr Richard Myers was shouting to be heard above the air that was rushing into his spacesuit.
Imran and Kate nodded.
The anger on Richard’s face was visible through his heavy plastic face shield. Kate could only sympathise with the Centers for Disease Control’s longest serving veterinary surgeon as he made his way back towards the animal room.
Imran and Kate shuffled over to one of two vaults that now housed one half of the world’s repository of smallpox. The other half was still in Koltsovo in the wastes of the Siberian desert. The big stainless steel vault that was clearly visible was a decoy. If anyone did manage to break in without setting off the sophisticated Variola alarms, they would find a freezer that contained nothing more than smallpox vaccines. A smaller vault behind held the critical freezer.
Imran inserted the special key that partly deactivated the alarm system to the smaller vault, then he stepped back to allow Kate to insert hers. The keys were kept apart and the vaults always had to be opened by Imran and Kate together. Imran dialed in one combination and again stepped back to allow Kate to work on the second tumbler. Kate turned the stainless steel wheel and swung the big door open. At the back of the vault, chained to the floor, was another innocuous-looking stainless steel container on wheels, about the size of a dirty dishes trolley that might be found in any canteen. Kate shivered involuntarily as she fumbled for another key that would unlock one of the huge padlocks.
Imran and Kate pushed the trolley
over to the area that was assigned for preparation of the strain of smallpox they would be using on the chimps. The big heavy cylinder set in the middle of the trolley had been fuelled with liquid nitrogen which kept the temperature down to minus 300 degrees. Icy fumes wafted from the container as Kate very gently eased the cover off. Employing a pair of long forceps with the precision of a heart surgeon, Kate located the small plastic box that held the cryovials of the deadly strain of smallpox. It had first been called India-1 by the Russians after a strain that had been discovered in India in 1959 when a Russian tourist had returned to Moscow, infecting nearly 50 people before Russian doctors and scientists had been able to successfully quarantine the outbreak. India-1 was not only the most virulent strain of smallpox, it was more resistant and retained its infectiousness longer than any other, making it an excellent choice for any rogue State that wanted to weaponise it. Kate and Imran prepared the vials of the deadly pathogen for transmission to the monkeys. It was going to be a long, painstaking and very dangerous process.
Maverick, the alpha male, was vocalising loudly towards the other cages as Kate and Imran shuffled into the monkey room, Kate carefully pushing a stainless steel transfer trolley that contained the prepared batches of India-1. Dr Richard Myers and his assistant, Karl Stanford, a postgraduate student, had been unsuccessful in their attempts to calm the small community of Gabon chimpanzees and the floor around the cages was strewn with the biscuits and fruit the chimps had thrown at their captors. Kate connected her suit to an air hose close to Maverick’s cage, and as she plugged the red hose into her regulator, Maverick’s eyes met hers and something passed between them. The gentle giant calmed and he slowly sashayed over to the front of the cage and grabbed the bars, keeping his gaze on Kate.