‘Still restless. I can’t put my finger on it, Imran, but Maverick in particular seems to sense something’s about to happen.’
‘The alpha male?’
Kate nodded. ‘Because he’s restless, it’s keeping the whole group off balance. It’s crazy, Imran. We’re going to subject these wonderful creatures to insane doses of the virus, yet in all the centuries that smallpox has ravaged the planet there’s never been a single case of that virus infecting the animal kingdom. It doesn’t make sense.’
Imran nodded. ‘I agree, but making sense is not this Administration’s long suit right now. Next time you go down to CDC I’ll come with you to see for myself, although I’m not holding out much hope of stopping this. You will have heard about the new Colonel?’ Imran asked, raising his eyebrows. ‘He’s just sent around a memo demanding key scientists sign an endorsement for the retention of our stocks of smallpox. No doubt they want that as ammunition for the Secretary to wave at a bunch of journalists next time he gets quizzed.’
‘I got mine while I was in Atlanta but I’m not going to sign it. I sent it back with a strong argument for those stocks to be destroyed.’
‘Good for you. I haven’t signed mine either and I’m going to have one last try this morning to get them to see sense. The new Colonel has a daily meeting now,’ Imran said, rolling his eyes.
‘I’d heard that,’ Kate said with a grin, feeling some of her anger dissipate. She would always be grateful that no matter how tough things appeared, Imran invariably managed to make her laugh.
‘For Heads of Departments and senior scientists who have charge of particular programs, so shelve whatever you had planned this morning and we’ll have another go at them.’
‘You want me there? I’m hardly a senior scientist, Imran.’
‘You know more about Variola major than anyone else in this complex, and you can back me up. Besides, it will be good for your education,’ he said with a smile.
‘Do these meetings really include intelligence briefings on the enemy?’
‘Lurking under everyone’s bed apparently and we have to stay alert. Even the lab technicians may not be what they seem.’
‘Sounds like the Colonel was brought up in the Stasi.’
‘Ex-marine. Although I’ve got my doubts about how “ex”. He’s had his office sandbagged. It looks like something out of Desert Storm.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Kate said, shaking her head.
‘Colonel Cluster is a man’s man.’ Professor Sayed’s nickname for their new boss was destined to stick. ‘And single too. A drop-dead gorgeous blonde like you should be a shoe-in.’
Kate made a face. ‘If he’s even remotely like his reputation there’s a reason people like him are single, Imran.’
‘Ah, but you haven’t met his J3.’
‘Have you all gone barking mad while I’ve been away. What the bloody hell’s a J3?’
‘The Colonel’s new right-hand man, Captain Donald Crawshaw. He’s pretty hot. If things don’t work out with the Colonel, perhaps you two should get together.’
Kate could hear her irrepressible Professor still chuckling as he walked back to his office. She hadn’t had a serious relationship since she’d left her husband, Malcolm, after he had found God or God had found him, she wasn’t sure which. Shortly after his ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion, Malcolm had been elected President of the Young Liberals in her home state of New South Wales. Kate shuddered at the memory of a brief marriage turned into a nightmare by a dangerous mix of religion and politics. To get away she had moved from Sydney and thrown herself into her post-doctoral studies at Yale. Despite a couple of flings ‘Mr Right’ had been elusive. Not that she really wanted another marriage, just a decent partner. ‘J what’s-his-number’ didn’t seem like he was about to break the drought, although if he was as hot as her professor made out, she mused, her love life might be about to pick up.
CHAPTER 16
CIA HEADQUARTERS, LANGLEY, VIRGINIA
C urtis O’Connor reached for the report on ‘The Netherlands: Dyke Vulnerability’ and began to read through it again, looking for anything he might have missed. Could the Dutch be one of the targets? O’Connor knew that the deployment of over a thousand Dutch troops to Iraq’s southern Muthanna province after Saddam Hussein had been toppled had infuriated some sections of the Arab world. He was also privy to the details of the resultant terrorist threats to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and the Dutch parliament, as well as the reports on the murder of the Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh, whose criticism of Muslims had enraged the Islamists. Despite his contempt for the Secretary of Defense, O’Connor was a true professional who never let personal animosity cloud his judgement; he had already accepted that a failure of the Netherlands dyke systems would lead to nearly half the country being flooded. He reflected that the last time that happened had been in 1953, when a catastrophic North Sea storm surge had breached the dykes in over 500 places.
O’Connor leaned forward in his chair and took another look at the Maeslantkering, the engineering marvel that had been opened by Queen Beatrix in 1997. In the event of another storm surge like the one in 1953, two massive gates the size of the Eiffel Tower and weighing four times as much would be swung towards one another. The Nieuwe Waterweg – the new waterway canal connecting the port of Rotterdam with the North Sea – would be sealed off until the danger had passed. O’Connor rested his chin in the palm of his hand and thought again about the Secretary’s preoccupation with the Dutch and their windmills. It had obviously been some time since the Secretary had visited the low countries, he thought wryly. With the invention of diesel and electricity, the windmills that had kept the vast reclaimed polders dry since the thirteenth century had been replaced by sophisticated pumps. Curtis frowned. ‘Beneath Eternity where the windmill has been stolen.’ Was the Defense Secretary right for the wrong reasons, he wondered. Was it perhaps the role of the windmills that had been stolen? He shook his head in frustration. Between Osama bin Laden and his mad mullahs on one side, and the neocons on his side who saw every Muslim country as a potential threat, planet Earth had become a lot less safe.
The satellite imagery from the National Reconnaissance Office KeyHole and Lacrosse satellites, some of which were the size of a bus and orbited as high as 36,000 kilometres above Earth, was over four years old. Had one of these satellites been footprinted over Rotterdam just eighteen months earlier, O’Connor could have been provided with the images of three massive ocean-going tugs that he would come to realise were of extraordinary importance. With disaster upon disaster unfolding in the Middle East all of the KeyHole and Lacrosse satellites had much higher priorities over Iraq, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Hindu Kush and Iran, not to mention North Korea.
The Winston Churchill, the Montgomery, and the Wavell had each undergone extensive engine refits at one of the huge shipyards in the second busiest port in the world. Like three large ugly ducklings they left Rotterdam line astern, passing the old Verolme Botlek shipyard. This vast complex was a hive of activity as the welders and shipwrights worked on a huge oil rig in the widest graving dock in Europe. The tugs were heading towards the Maeslantkering. From there they would keep company through the English Channel before turning east through the Strait of Gibraltar, across the Mediterranean, through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea and across the northern Indian Ocean to the teeming Pakistani port of Karachi. The Montgomery and the Wavell had been tasked with collecting and delivering missiles for the first and second warnings. The Winston Churchill had a mission of a different nature that would come into play if the third and final warning was necessary. She was tasked with visiting third world countries where regulations governing the disposal of old radiotherapy machines were less than stringent. al-Falid had not only been relentless in his sourcing of the obsolete machinery, he had also been aware of the tiniest of details, giving instructions that the tugboats were to be renamed with British names when they had been purchased.
He calculated that the names might cause precious indecisiveness when the tugs appeared in the binoculars of any western port authorities who might be wondering what they were up to. A fourth ocean-going tug re-named the George Washington was undergoing a refit in Rotterdam. al-Falid had a different purpose in mind for her and then it would be the American authorities he would want to lull into a false sense of security.
Curtis O’Connor racked his brain trying to crack the secret meaning of the code. Across the Potomac in the Oval Office, the hawks in the Administration were about to try and convince President Harrison to elevate the war on terror to a frightening new level.
CHAPTER 17
THE OVAL OFFICE, THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON DC
P resident Harrison leaned back into one of two long, cream-coloured couches that faced each other in the Oval Office. A large blue and gold Presidential seal was woven into the caramel carpet between them. Dan Esposito sat at one end of the President’s couch, and the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense sat opposite. Three trusted advisors who all thought along the same lines; it was an arrangement that this President had long been comfortable with. A sort of inner ‘kitchen cabinet’ whose time was not wasted in dealing with opposing views that came from people like the Secretary of State.
‘So what are we going to do about the production of smallpox vaccines?’ President Harrison asked.
‘I’m looking into that, Mr President,’ the Vice President responded smoothly. ‘I’ll have some recommendations to you later in the week, but the development will need to be done by a pharmaceutical we can trust that has a proven track record. One with the right facilities because they’ll need access to the smallpox we’re holding in CDC and they’ll need to produce this on time and on budget.’ The Vice President knew well that the only pharmaceutical with Biosafety Level 4 facilities outside of CDC and USAMRIID was Halliwell.
The President nodded approvingly. The contract would be worth nearly half a billion dollars and would require the production of 300 million doses of vaccine for the American people. The prospect of it being done ‘on time and on budget’ was the sort of uncomplicated news the President liked to hear.
‘Which brings us to the related issue of today’s agenda, Mr President,’ the Vice President continued. It was not an agenda that would ever be recorded on paper.
‘Quite frankly we were caught with our pants down on 9/11 and we took a lot of hits over the anthrax attacks afterwards. If we’re attacked with anthrax again and, heaven forbid, with smallpox as well, and if it ever gets out that we had prior warning, your presidency will be history. As far as Kadeer goes, I’m with Dan, I think the bastard’s bluffing, but Eternity and stolen windmills have got the media’s attention. The public is worried and we need to get into a position to reassure them.’
The Secretary of Defense nodded. ‘This town leaks like a sieve, Mr President,’ he said. ‘If the report warning of another anthrax and smallpox attack surfaces, the media and those bastards up on the Hill will have our balls in a vice.’
‘I agree.’ Vice President Bolton seized his chance to push the argument on the development of biological weapons to restore the United States to a position where they were leading the world in the deadly research that could only be carried out in hot-zone laboratories. ‘We need to fight fire with fire, Mr President, and to do that we need to reintroduce our own bioweapons research program so that we’ve got some idea of what these little Muslim bastards might be up to. And it’s not only the threat from the Islamists we should be worried about, Mr President. The Chinese have massively increased their spending on defense, and just like the Russians in the 1970s, I wouldn’t put it past them to develop biological weapons.’
‘We’re a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention, Mr President,’ Dan Esposito interjected. ‘That prohibits us from developing the kind of weapons we’re talking about here.’ It wasn’t the ethics that was bothering Esposito; he was more concerned that the President obey one of the first maxims of a successful modern day politician, ‘thou shall not get caught’. The other two had missed the point.
‘For fuck’s sake, Dan!’ Vice President Bolton’s anger was never far from the surface and it always erupted when anybody dared to disagree with him. ‘The report on Dolinsky is more than credible. You and I both know the fucking Russians started a huge bioweapons program before the ink was even dry on that convention. When that fellow Alibek defected from Russia in 1992 we discovered that at the same time the Russians were telling us and the rest of the world they wouldn’t develop any biological weapons, they were actually building Biopreparat!’
‘Chuck’s right, Mr President,’ the Defense Secretary said. ‘Not only did they move their stocks of smallpox to Koltsovo without telling us but after they signed the 1972 convention, they employed tens of thousands of bioweapons experts in fifty different laboratories.’
‘And just in case you might think it odd that the Russians are employing a Georgian like Dolinsky, Dan,’ the Vice President continued, building on the unsolicited support from the Defense Secretary and pre-empting Esposito, ‘I’ll remind you that Alibek is Asian. He was born in Kazakhstan for fuck’s sake! This is war, and if the Russians ignored the convention, do you think a bunch of backward bloody Muslims are going to take any notice of any paper agreement? If they can get their hands on biological weapons, they will, and they’ll use them against the American people. Our own research stopped when that little shit Nixon canned it in 1969. Right now we haven’t got a clue what these bastards might be up to because we’re the only turkeys playing the game!’
‘You’re missing the point, Mr Vice President,’ Dan Esposito responded coolly, speaking from a position of power that infuriated Bolton. Esposito turned towards the President. ‘I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be in a position to strike first, Mr President, far from it. The point I’m making is that we need to make damn sure this doesn’t leak. The two organisations that have Biosafety Level 4 laboratories most capable of this sort of research are the CDC and USAMRIID. USAMRIID employs over 700 people, including 200 Doctorate level scientists, and the CDC employs even more.’ Dan Esposito absorbed facts and figures like a steel trap, something that hadn’t been lost on the Vice President.
For Vice President Bolton knowledge was power. The Vice President had briefed the Secretary of Defense but as yet, he hadn’t allowed Esposito into the compartment dealing with the top-secret construction at Halliwell. To the construction workers it was just another laboratory complex and only a handful of engineers with a need to ensure the hot-zone laboratory met strict tolerances were in the compartment – and even they had only been given a bare outline of the laboratory’s ultimate purpose.
Esposito glared at the Vice President, determined to protect his man and the Republican Party’s interests. ‘Not only that,’ Esposito said, ‘but the Colonel Commanding USAMRIID is on the public record as wanting the stockpiles of smallpox destroyed for hell’s sake, so if you think we can keep this quiet in USAMRIID, Mr Vice President, you’ve got more faith in them than I have.’
‘The Colonel Commanding USAMRIID has been replaced with an officer who shares the Administration’s views and, more importantly, who will do as he’s told,’ the Secretary of Defense responded bluntly. A silence descended on the Oval Office.
President Harrison was normally absolutely sure of his mission in the world but his trusted electoral advisor had put him in two minds. His Administration had taken a lot of hits and Denver Harrison knew that the American people would probably be against this. To authorise the development of biological weapons, even if they could later claim it was in self-defense, was a huge step into uncharted territory. Perhaps O’Connor was right. It might be prudent to go with the development of the vaccines and wait for confirmation of the threat. After all, he reasoned, no one in the media or on the Hill was likely to criticise him for not wanting to develop biological weapons. For a moment he let his mind wander, distracted by a higher missio
n. The one thing President Harrison was sure of was that at a time like this God would guide him. All the great Presidents had been god-fearing men, he reflected, and none more so than his hero Abraham Lincoln. As the Reverend Jerry Buffett, the charismatic televangelist from Atlanta, had often said, in this war on terror God was on the side of those who believed in freedom and democracy. The Reverent Buffet had reminded the President that it was no coincidence that America’s motto was ‘In God We Trust’. Discussions with Jerry Buffett always gave Denver Harrison a sense of purpose and resolve. Perhaps the debate that was swirling around him might be clearer once he’d had a quiet chat with the evangelist.
The Vice President was equally thoughtful, although not in any religious sense. Despite the seeming uncertainty of the President, Bolton felt a sense of satisfaction over the direction in which the conversation was heading. Although it was by no means a done deal, at least the President’s advisor had taken the bait on CDC and USAMRIID. If the proposal to get back into research on biological weapons got up, CDC was a logical choice for the assignment, but earlier in the day he’d casually floated the idea of the dangers of media leaks from USAMRIID and CDC with Esposito. Bolton smirked inwardly. He would shortly play another card and bring Esposito up to date on the Halliwell construction, but for the moment the little advisor hadn’t disappointed him. Esposito was only too well aware that lately several highly sensitive top-secret documents, including the FBI’s surveillance on ordinary American citizens, had become public and the damage to the Republicans’ chances of retaining both houses in the mid-term elections had been considerable. Any development of biological weapons at either CDC or USAMRIID in defiance of the international Biological Weapons Convention would be a very high-risk strategy.
The Beijing conspiracy Page 7
