‘Halliwell arrived a quarter of an hour ago,’ Rob said, as they climbed into his unmarked car. ‘I’ve got back up from the Atlanta Police Department but I kept them at a distance until I knew how you wanted to play this one.’ Two dark blue patrol cars with the familiar red stripe of the Atlanta Police Department had taken up positions some distance from the entrance to Halliwell Pharmaceuticals. Rob Bauer was well aware the entrance was under continual surveillance. ‘You know better than I do that if we arrest this guy the shit’s going to hit the fan big time,’ Rob said, as he swung out of the VIP arrivals area at the airport.
Curtis nodded. The trust between the two was rock solid. ‘That’s putting it mildly, buddy, but you’re going to have to trust me on this one. Halliwell is not the only high flyer mixed up in criminal activities here, but we need to get there in a hurry, Rob. I’ve a feeling that the life of one of my officers is on the line.’
Rob Bauer put a portable flashing blue light on the roof of the car and switched to the frequency of the two patrol cars. The time for subtlety had long disappeared, both men gambling that the sounds of sirens might make Halliwell think twice.
Deep in the tunnel underneath the Halliwell Tower, neither Dr Halliwell nor the two women he was shepherding towards the hot zone at the far end heard anything other than footsteps echoing eerily off the reinforced cement walls.
Halliwell pointed his Luger menacingly at Kate. ‘You first! Get on the trolley!’ he demanded. Keeping the pistol pointed at Kate’s head, he clipped and tightened the straps around her ankles with one hand, then anchored her wrists.
‘You’re next,’ Halliwell snarled, turning his attention to Simone. Simone fell off the trolley at her first attempt, the stainless steel gurney running into the far wall of the preparation room with a loud clang. Halliwell put the pistol back in his pocket, retrieved the trolley and manhandled Simone onto it. ‘A pity you let your curiosity get the better of you,’ he sneered as he wheeled the trolley into a waiting bay. ‘From the research I’ve done, Ebolapox works even better on humans than it does on the chimps, but we can always do with a healthy specimen like you to confirm it. It’s one of the cornerstones of scientific research.’ Simone’s red hair was in disarray and her green eyes reflected her fear of Halliwell. She had always known Halliwell to be ruthless, but even she had not detected the mind of the monster standing over her. ‘Any hypothesis requires very rigorous testing before it is proven and the tests must be able to be replicated many times,’ he snarled.
Simone fought against the nylon straps holding her down as the effects of the alcohol started to wane. There had been many times when she’d witnessed Halliwell exercise charm to control people, but now he was showing he was equally at home with violence. Simone shuddered. A psychopath, running for the highest office in the United States.
Halliwell left the curtain open. ‘You should watch this,’ he said, as he moved back to the other trolley.
He ran his hand slowly up the inside of Kate’s thigh.
Kate spat at him as he caressed her crotch. ‘You filthy deranged bastard. Get your hands off me.’
‘You’re going to regret that,’ Halliwell said coldly, as he wiped his face and went in search of some tape.
Rob Bauer screeched to a halt at the Halliwell guardhouse. The sirens of the two Atlanta Police Department patrol cars died as they stopped behind.
‘FBI. Open the gate,’ Bauer said, flashing his badge.
The guard hesitated and turned towards his supervisor, who was trying to reach Halliwell on the phone. The supervisor shook his head as Halliwell’s phone rang out. The man’s orders were explicit, no one got in without authority and he would need to hold the police until he could get in touch with the boss. Curtis could see Halliwell’s red McLaren sports car parked in front of the Tower entrance.
‘He’s here and he was in a hurry,’ Curtis said calmly as the senior security guard came over to the window.
‘You can’t-’
For as long as Curtis cared to remember, Special Agent Rob Bauer had shared his own preference for the Ruger. 44 Magnum as his weapon of choice. ‘Open the gate or you’ll spend the next fifteen years of your life in a penitentiary protecting your butt from some very nasty inmates.’
Curtis forced himself to focus on what he had to do and detached himself from his feelings for Kate as the lift shot up to the reception area on the thirty-seventh floor. Finding the combination locked, Curtis drew his revolver and blasted it off the door. Seconds later they were in Halliwell’s office. A mobile was ringing on the desk where Halliwell had left it. The guardhouse was still frantically trying to reach him.
‘A couple of your guys might like to check the floor below,’ Curtis said to Bauer. ‘Dr Braithwaite’s office is at the far end, but I’ve got a feeling she won’t be there,’ he added and he strode over to the walnut-panelled lift doors on the far side of Halliwell’s big office. Simone had not been the only one to leave the key in place and deep below the lift doors closed silently.
Kate spat at Halliwell again and he slapped her face.
‘Mustn’t do that,’ Halliwell said, slowly and deliberately. ‘Naughty girls get injected with Ebolapox and you’re being very, very naughty.’
Despite her bravado, fear filled Kate’s gut with ice. Halliwell’s grey eyes were devoid of emotion and she came to the same conclusion as Simone. Not for the first time in history had a dangerous psychopath, driven by a lust for power, got close to obtaining leadership of his country. Richard Halliwell was just a few primaries away from winning the Republican nomination for the White House. Kate winced as he stretched the thick industrial tape over her mouth.
‘Perhaps this is best done to Beethoven’s Fifth?’ Halliwell said, switching on the stereo. ‘Such majestic music. Da da da dah… Da da da dah…’ he sang along with the opening stanzas.
‘Very nice,’ Halliwell leered, his erection growing. His hands wandered inside Kate’s bra then slid down inside her pants. Kate willed herself to remain calm so that she didn’t choke on the bile rising in her throat.
CHAPTER 94
CAPITOL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, BEIJING
‘B usiness or pleasure, Mr Ferraro?’ the young Chinese immigration officer asked, her English greatly improved. The Chinese government had introduced an English program for everyone likely to be involved with international visitors almost as soon as they’d won the Games. Nothing was going to stand in the way of the Beijing Olympics being ‘the best games ever’. The Games were China’s passport into the twenty-first century.
‘Business,’ Ferraro replied politely.
She smiled again as she checked his face against the photo in his American passport. ‘Enjoy your stay.’
The Beijing arrivals hall was packed with thousands of people coming in for the Opening Ceremony of the Games, due in just six days time. al-Falid headed straight for the car park at Terminal 2 where one of Khalid Kadeer’s men was waiting for him.
‘Everything is in place?’ al-Falid asked, taking the bag containing the Walther P38.
His driver nodded. ‘All of our people have been briefed and all of them have access to the airconditioning systems. We picked up the vaccines from the docks at Qingdao and they are being distributed to those who need them here and in Xinjiang,’ he said as they drove out of the airport.
It was nearly midnight by the time they arrived but Peng Yu, al-Qaeda’s sadistic bear farm manager was up and waiting for them.
‘Has Dolinsky arrived?’ al-Falid asked.
‘He a’seep, Mr ’Flid,’ Peng Yu replied.
‘And the staff?’
‘Bear farm crosed for two weeks, just as you request, Mr ’Flid and staff given day off for Games.’
‘What about Dolinsky’s luggage?’
‘Many trunks, Mr ’Flid. In storehouse behind bears.’
‘You have done well, Yu. You can have the holiday as well but I will need your keys,’ he said as he turned to the driver. ‘Pick me up tomorr
ow.’ For what al-Falid had in mind, he wanted to make sure there were no witnesses.
After the manager and his driver had left, al-Falid returned to his room and took the Walther P38 from the small khaki bag. He checked to see that the magazine was loaded and smiled as he fitted the silencer. Khalid Kadeer was wrong, al-Falid thought. Like Osama bin Laden before him, the Uighur microbiologist had become a rallying point for many in the downtrodden Muslim world, but Kadeer was mistaken in thinking that you could negotiate with the West, just as he was wrong in thinking someone like Dolinsky should be spared. al-Falid feared that once the Georgian scientist realised the utter devastation of the virus he’d created there was a danger that, like those who’d worked on the Manhattan project and the nuclear bomb, he would talk. Anything that might lead back to Amon al-Falid’s identity in the United States had to be eliminated.
He crept up to Dolinsky’s room and inserted the manager’s master key. The door squeaked as he opened it but he need not have worried. The Georgian scientist’s snores were rattling off the thin walls. al-Falid placed the end of the gun barrel centimetres away from the back of Dolinsky’s head. The Walther kicked savagely – twice.
CHAPTER 95
HALLIWELL LABORATORIES, ATLANTA
H alliwell stood near the stainless steel bench seat. He picked up his biosuit and waved it at Kate in time with the symphony, a sinister smile playing around his thin lips as he mimicked squeezing a needle with his free hand. Kate felt sick as Halliwell moved towards her, unzipping his fly.
As soon as Curtis and Special Agent Bauer, together with two of the patrolmen, got out of the lift they could hear the sounds of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Gun drawn, Curtis sprang into the opening of the tunnel. It was empty. The music was coming from beyond the half-open door some 800 metres away, echoing loudly through the tunnel.
Fitter than the other three men, Curtis was nearly 20 metres in front when he slowed, using the cover of the music to approach the door. What looked like a receiving bay was empty but beyond it another vault door was wide open. Halliwell had his back to Curtis and his hand was on someone strapped to a stainless steel trolley. Curtis realised that someone was Kate. As the first movement of the famous symphony came to a close, Halliwell applied the wheel brake and started to climb onto the trolley. Curtis approached silently, wishing he had a short length of wire to garrote him. In one movement Curtis wrenched the precariously balanced Halliwell from the trolley, throwing him to the concrete floor.
‘You’re a dead man, O’Connor,’ Halliwell snarled as the surprise on his face was quickly replaced with unbridled hatred. Halliwell sprang from the floor with surprising agility but Curtis’ boot smashed into his jaw. Seconds later Halliwell was face down, roaring like a wounded lion as the patrolmen snapped his wrists into cuffs, subduing Halliwell’s wildly flailing legs with the roll of industrial tape Curtis found on the trolley next to Kate.
‘I’ll join you in Halliwell’s office shortly,’ Curtis said to Kate and Rob Bauer, after Kate and Simone had both refused Curtis’ suggestion they be examined for shock. Curtis donned Halliwell’s biosuit, which was baggy on him, but it would protect him from whatever was on the far side of the vault-like door.
As he plugged his regulator in to the air hose and went through the airlock the hardened CIA man was sickened by what he found. For no reason other than unfortunate circumstances, these three human beings had been taken from the streets of a civilised western city. All three were still alive and strapped to their trolleys, but with no morphine or other medication they were suffering excruciating pain. Curtis stared at what appeared to be an eleven-year-old girl with a feeling of helplessness. With a body temperature of 37°C, the human species was the perfect host for a filo virus and the man-made virus she’d been injected with was multiplying at an astounding rate. He could see the dark blotches underneath her skin as the Ebolapox turned her organs to mush and her lungs slowly filled with blood and foul fluids. Curtis knew that unless they could find the missing vials, hundreds of millions of people were going to die the same horrible death as the filo virus was released into the wider world.
He checked a freezer beside the trolleys. Inside he found frozen packets of bear bile from the Qingdao Bear Farm. A more thorough search of Halliwell’s dark world would later reveal a supply of anthrax spores with a sophisticated coating of silicone particles engineered down to microns. The spores would prove to be identical to those found in the Daschle anthrax.
The door to Halliwell’s office opened and one of the patrol officers came in to report that Halliwell had been taken away under heavy police guard. The security guards were being taken in for questioning and the Chief of the Atlanta Police was on his way up the drive.
‘Split personality schizophrenic?’ the young patrol officer asked, genuinely shocked that such a dark side could exist in a man running for the Presidency of his country.
‘It’s too early to make that judgement,’ Curtis said. Young patrol officers like this had to learn on the job, and even in the middle of a crisis Curtis found a few seconds for his education. ‘No doubt Halliwell’s highly paid lawyers will come up with a defence along those lines but don’t be too shocked when people in powerful positions turn out to have fatal personality flaws,’ Curtis added, accurately reading the look of disillusionment on the young officer’s face. ‘Power and corruption often go hand in hand.’
While Kate sat on one of Halliwell’s couches with Simone, her hands no longer shaking as the Chivas calmed her, Curtis sat at Halliwell’s desk, waiting for his connection to the CIA’s internal computers to spool in. He turned to Rob Bauer.
‘For the moment it will be best if the administrative areas and pharmaceutical laboratories of Halliwell are allowed to operate normally,’ he said, ‘but I want the entrances to both of the Level 4 laboratories sealed off.’ When the pound man returned with two more vagrants the following day he would get a nasty shock, but the vagrants would be given another chance at life. ‘You’re going to have to trust me on this one again, Rob, but there’s another activity in Washington that we’ve yet to close in on and if any of this becomes public, that might be at risk.’
‘You got it, buddy,’ Rob replied, and as Simone was led away for questioning by one of the patrol officers, Special Agent Bauer disappeared to meet the Chief of the Atlanta Police Department.
‘You sure you don’t want a medical examination?’ Curtis asked Kate as the results for the checks on Alan Ferraro’s movements appeared on Halliwell’s computer, together with movements of the George Washington .
‘I’m fine,’ Kate said as Curtis scanned the movement schedule from the Port Authority of Savannah. The west coast port of Georgia was the nation’s sixth largest container port, and Curtis knew the departure of the ocean-going tug two weeks earlier would not have raised a ripple. Despite the demands for imagery over Baghdad and the border regions of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Hindu Kush, the Administration kept a very careful watch on the growing threat from China, and the latest US satellite surveillance of Chinese ports had found the George Washington not far from the headquarters of the Chinese Northern Fleet in the harbour of Qingdao.
‘I’ve got to get going,’ Curtis said. ‘The packets of frozen bear bile in Halliwell’s freezer came from the Qingdao Bear Farm but I’ve got a hunch there’s more to that bear farm than meets the eye.’
‘Why don’t you get the Chinese to raid it?’ Kate suggested.
‘Because they’d keep the Ebolapox for their own research. This virus needs to be destroyed, and that goes for the world’s stocks of smallpox as well. I’m almost certain that I’m going to find al-Falid at this bear farm and probably Dolinsky as well. There’s no guarantee that Kadeer hasn’t infiltrated the Chinese police force and that they’ll be tipped off. I won’t be happy until I’ve got these vials back in our Embassy in Beijing and in the black bag.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Kate said firmly.
Curtis
shook his head. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Haven’t I earned my spurs yet,’ Kate snapped, but then her anger subsided quickly. She could see that Curtis was only trying to protect her, and for that she was grateful.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘we haven’t seen enough of each other for me to have had time to tell you this, but much to my father’s annoyance I used to be a member of a pistol club. I can handle that. 44 Magnum of yours probably better than you can.’
Curtis grinned and raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘really?’
‘You and I both know there’s a very strong chance that if those vials are at the Qingdao Bear Farm, they’re headed for a Beijing crammed with three million extra people from God knows how many hundreds of thousands of towns and cities around the world. You might know a bit about polymerase chain reactions,’ Kate said, her green eyes recovering their sparkle, ‘but I’m the expert on viruses and I’m coming with you.’
‘What about Imran?’ Curtis suggested in a last but futile attempt.
‘Because he’s a man?’ Kate responded.
‘I’ll need to use the secure phone in your office,’ Curtis said, not entirely disappointed Kate would be accompanying him. ‘Tom McNamara will need to hold off the Wunderkind and getting a CIA jet to Beijing is a bit above my pay grade, although it might have a double bed!’
Kate punched him in the shoulder as they made their way to the floor below.
CHAPTER 96
CAPITOL HILL, WASHINGTON DC
P resident Bolton was surprised to find the Speaker of the House, Davis Burton, waiting for him as he arrived on Capitol Hill to address a history-making joint sitting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. He’d been briefed that procedures would be identical to those employed when a President delivered a State of the Union address and that he would be escorted by the Sergeant at Arms. No President could enter the House Chamber without first being issued a formal invitation and being escorted to his place at the podium.
The Beijing conspiracy Page 38