The Beijing conspiracy

by Adrian D'hage

  Kate fought to keep her emotions in check as she reached for a needle of anaesthetic. She waited while Richard and Karl pulled a stainless steel squeeze screen forward on its rollers, gently bringing the screen up behind Maverick and pinning him against the front bars of the cage. Kate could still feel Maverick’s eyes on her as she very carefully moved to his left side. A hot-zone laboratory was not the place to suffer a needle stick, she reminded herself. As gently as she could, she slipped the needle into Maverick’s thigh and depressed the syringe.

  No one spoke, and the rest of the monkeys became quiet. One by one, Dr Richards and his assistant rolled the squeeze panels forward and Kate anaesthetised all ten of the chimpanzees that made up the community. By the time she’d finished, Maverick was lying on his side, twitching uncomfortably under the anaesthetic and Kate shook her head as she shuffled back to the transfer trolley. She carefully counted all of the anaesthetic needles and placed them in the specially marked biohazard sharps bin, which would be subjected to extremely high temperatures before it was removed from the lab. Working slowly and deliberately, Kate began to prepare a vial of the India-1 smallpox for aerosolisation.

  Richard and Karl carried Maverick over to the aerosol chamber where Kate was waiting. Once they had Maverick on the stainless steel table, Kate closed the Perspex cover over him and switched on the aerosol spray. Maverick was lying with his head towards the nozzle, his eyelids twitching as millions of particles of India-1 drifted into his nostrils. After three minutes, Kate switched off the empty aerosoliser and stepped back to allow Imran access to Maverick. The scientists’ movements had all been rehearsed. Even though Maverick had been subjected to far greater doses of smallpox than any human would ever be exposed to, it had never taken an animal as a host. For this experiment to have any chance of success, Kate and Imran had agreed they would also administer the deadly pathogen intravenously. The intravenous needle contained millions of the Variola virions, and in the same way that the military only ever allowed one person to work on a ticking bomb, only one scientist would administer to the chimpanzee.

  Kate watched as Imran searched for another good vein on the chimp’s thigh. Maverick moved and gave out a high-pitched groan. Imran froze and waited for the big primate to settle. He slowly pushed the intravenous needle into the vein and then connected a vial of the smallpox virus to the tube and injected Maverick with India-1. When the vial was empty, Imran disconnected it and turned slowly towards the other three scientists. In a pre-arranged signal, they all nodded, indicating they understood what he was about to do. Imran very carefully turned back and slowly withdrew the needle from Maverick’s thigh. The end was dripping with blood that contained India-1. Even though all of them had been inoculated against smallpox several times, the vaccine would be no use against this strain. A needle stick would mean certain death.

  CHAPTER 48

  DOBRILY DYEN HOTEL, KOLTSOVO

  I t was getting on towards 9 p.m. and the temperature had plunged to below zero when Curtis heard the urgent knock on his door. Cocking the Browning 9mm Hi-Power pistol he’d retrieved along with the M4 earlier in the day, Curtis carefully eased the curtain away from the window. From photographs he’d studied, Curtis would have recognised the slim Georgian scientist anywhere. The man with the pencil-thin black moustache, oval face and black hair streaked with grey was clearly nervous.

  ‘Inside,’ Curtis commanded softly as he opened the door and checked up and down the ground floor porch. Further up the road the car belonging to the two FSB gorillas was still in position.

  ‘Brendan O’Shaughnessy,’ Curtis said, introducing himself. Provided they got out of Siberia in one piece, Dolinsky would come to know his real identity soon enough. For now, it was best that the introduction matched Curtis’ passport, just in case.

  ‘Eduard Dolinsky.’ Dolinsky’s voice was surprisingly soft and his handshake tentative although his English, Curtis knew, was excellent.

  ‘The vehicle’s in the car park around the back. Follow me,’ Curtis said, grabbing his own backpack and the brown bag he’d retrieved in Novosibirsk.

  Three cars followed them out of Koltsovo, but after several kilometres all three had turned off, and Curtis began to breathe a little easier. Any attempts to engage Dolinsky in conversation had been met with monosyllabic answers, which suited Curtis just fine. He was still very wary of the scientist’s motives; it would take more than an operation like this before there was any trust.

  The four-wheel drive’s powerful lights probed a long way down the road, lighting the dusting of snow on either side. Thank God Washington hadn’t asked him to attempt this in the middle of winter, Curtis thought as he pulled his parka tighter around himself. Occasionally the Toyota’s lights would pick up a fox and once he thought he saw a Siberian weasel. Around midnight, Curtis slowed for the Siberian town of Novo altajsk, just to the east of the regional capital Barnaul on the Ob. Barnaul marked the point where the mighty Ob River, which together with the Irtysh River had its source high in the Altais to the south, began its epic journey north across the Siberian steppes and on towards the Arctic Ocean.

  By the time the sun rose, Curtis had passed through Bijsk and Gorno altajsk. The traffic had been light and they’d passed the occasional truck and dilapidated utility. Heavy mists covered the alpine fields, drifting among the spruce and pine trees that clung to the ridges above as the road wound up into the towering snow-covered Altais; a vast mountain chain stretching across Russia in the north, Kazakhstan in the west, and China and Mongolia to the east and south. Curtis changed down a gear as they passed through a Buddhist Altaian village and the twisting road continued its steep climb into the Mount Belukha region. The 4506-metre high glacial massif was Siberia’s highest point and Curtis knew that the helicopters would struggle in the thin, alpine air. The spruce and pine trees had given way to aspen and birch, which later changed to the larch and dwarf conifers that could survive in the freezing altitudes. Three hours later Curtis slowed and pulled to the side of the road, which was now barely more than a track.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Dolinsky asked in his thick Georgian accent.

  ‘Piss stop and refuel,’ Curtis replied, going around to the back of the four-wheel drive and reaching for one of several jerry cans Vladimir had thoughtfully provided. He froze as he caught a movement on the track up ahead. Signalling Dolinsky to stay down and keeping the vehicle between him and whoever was up ahead, Curtis reached in and grabbed the M4 from the bag in the back seat. Using the light covering of snow to mask his footfall and the thick larch and conifers as cover, Curtis moved silently up the ridgeline.

  CHAPTER 49

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  K ate Braithwaite rolled over in the small double bed of her Atlanta apartment, but the phone on the bedside table kept ringing incessantly. She was weary from a sixteen-hour day in the lab, and the night before she’d complained to Imran of a headache and had gone to bed as soon as they’d got back from Halliwell. Kate groped for the handset.

  ‘Kate Braithwaite,’ she answered sleepily, mildly annoyed at being rung before she was awake.

  ‘Kate, it’s Imran. One of the chimps is down.’ Professor Sayed was calm but Kate caught the concern in his voice.

  Kate sat bolt upright. ‘Which one?’

  There was a slight pause. ‘I’m sorry, Kate, but it’s Maverick.’

  ‘Maverick! God no!’

  ‘I’ll meet you in the foyer in half an hour.’ Imran had an apartment one floor above Kate’s.

  ‘Make that fifteen minutes!’ She threw the phone back into its cradle and stumbled toward the bathroom, angry and confused.

  Kate found herself struggling into her blue biosuit and she slowed down. Keep calm, she whispered, reminding herself of the extreme dangers that awaited her and Imran on the other side of the airlock. If Maverick was down there wasn’t anything she could do about it, although she felt another surge of frustration at what they were being asked to do.

  When she
emerged from her cubicle, air regulator over her shoulder, Imran was waiting for her outside the airlock door. He handed Kate her boots and she nodded her thanks. Neither of them felt like voicing the concern that both were feeling. Kate snapped the face plate on her suit shut and followed Imran into the decontamination shower airlock, closing the heavy stainless steel door on the level 3 side. When he was satisfied it was sealed, Imran opened the corresponding door opposite and Kate followed him into the hot side, through the main lab to the animal room at the far end where Richard and Karl were waiting for them, their faces pale behind their heavy face shields.

  Again Kate forced herself to remain calm as she reached for one of the red oxygen hoses hanging from the ceiling near Maverick’s cage. Oblivious to the rush of air into her suit, Kate focused on him. He was lying on his side on the floor of the cage. Kate knew from the grimace of pain on his wise old face that her soulmate from the animal kingdom had suffered a horrible death. His brown, blood-flecked eyes stared back at her lifelessly. Kate could almost see the ‘why’ in their depths. Turning to Richard, she motioned for the cage door to be unlocked but Imran held up his hand. He shuffled over and retrieved a long pole from its storage position and Kate nodded in understanding. Even though Maverick was dead Imran had to be doubly sure. A tear in a biosuit from the death throes of a smallpox-ridden chimp would be fatal.

  Imran and Richard lifted Maverick’s body out of the cage and onto a stainless steel trolley, then wheeled him across to the necropsy room. Rigor mortis had begun to set in and one of Maverick’s legs remained bent as they lifted him on to the stainless steel dissection table. Both Imran and Kate knew that, of all the procedures in a hot lab, an animal autopsy was one of the most dangerous. One slip with a scalpel or cutting tool could be fatal and Kate turned towards Richard and Karl to make sure they were well clear of the table.

  Kate slipped a rubber block under Maverick’s back so that his chest was pushed up and forwards, then she forced his arms down and out of the way. Imran took a scalpel from the workbench on his side of the necropsy room and made a careful Y-shaped incision from either side of Maverick’s neck. Moving slowly, he reached for the stainless steel rib cutters and began to cut through Maverick’s ribs.

  Kate steadied herself, unprepared for what was lying underneath Maverick’s breastplate. Imran looked up and gave Kate a meaningful shake of his head. The Variola major had attacked all of the chimpanzee’s organs with a viciousness that neither Imran nor Kate expected. Maverick’s intestines were haemorrhaging. His heart, kidneys and lungs were speckled and reduced to a red mush and there wasn’t a single organ the virus hadn’t penetrated. Variola major, Kate reflected, was far more deadly than most people realised. No wonder the legendary Dr D. A. Henderson, along with hundreds of others who’d worked for decades to eradicate the virus from the planet, had wanted the stocks destroyed.

  Imran worked methodically, cutting out Maverick’s haemor-rhaged liver and placing the mushy red tissue into a plastic necropsy container. He stepped back, holding his scalpel clear, and nodded to Kate who reached across for the container so she could label it. The two had worked together for such a long time that each was acutely aware of what the other was doing, but as she turned to place the contaminated plastic container on the bench behind her she collided with Karl, who’d come into the room for a closer look. To her horror, she felt a sharp prick through her glove. Karl was still holding the scalpel he’d been inspecting and it had punctured Kate’s glove in an instant. The plastic container splattered Kate’s biosuit with blood as it dropped to the floor. Maverick’s liver slid over the white tiles, leaving a red stain of hot India-1 virus in its wake.

  Karl reeled back, his face white. Despite feeling sick, Kate’s training kicked in. Holding her gloved hand steady with the cut downwards to minimise any seepage, she reached up with her other hand and unhooked the coiled red air hose from her regulator. She glanced at Imran who was doing the same and she eased her way past Karl who was now standing back against the stainless steel workbench, the scalpel still in his gloved hand.

  ‘Please God, oh please God don’t let any get to me.’ It was an entreaty to a God Kate had not spoken to in a long time. As she turned on the decontamination shower and the blood streaked from her suit, she looked across toward Imran who was turning on the shower opposite. His face was ashen.

  CHAPTER 50

  ALTAI MOUNTAINS, SOUTHERN SIBERIA

  C urtis caught the movement again and he rested his M4 carbine against the trunk of a larch and scanned the forest ahead through the crosshairs of the specially fitted telescopic sights. As a large yak came into view, Curtis expelled the air from his lungs and eased his finger from the trigger. He paused long enough to appreciate the magnificent mountain animal, then returned to the vehicle to check his position on a small GPS receiver the size of a mobile phone.

  ‘50°’ 41", 85°’ 32". Less than 100 kilometres to go,’ Curtis said, folding up one of the CIA’s Russian 1:100,000 maps of the area. The maps were surprisingly reliable, but the GPS system was accurate to within a metre, and two hours later, as they reached the edge of the small clearing at the top of the ridge that the special forces pilots had chosen as the designated landing zone, Curtis nodded with satisfaction. At the bottom of the valley below them he could see a lake, exactly where he’d calculated it would be, one of thousands nestled in among the majestic mountain chain. With his position verified, Curtis backed the four-wheel drive into the forest and pulled out his satellite radio.

  ‘Mountain Goat, this is Antelope, over.’

  The special forces pilot responded immediately. ‘Antelope, this is Mountain Goat, we have you strength five, over.’

  ‘Antelope is in position, over.’

  ‘Mountain Goat, we’re about fifteen minutes out but we’ve had some radar traffic to your north, over.’

  Curtis scanned the horizon and then he saw it. A black dot coming up the valley, moving fast.

  ‘Antelope, wait out.’

  As Curtis focused his binoculars, the ‘black dot’ materialised into a Russian military helicopter – an Mi-8T or ‘Hip’. The Mi-8T approaching up the valley toward Curtis’ position was the same variant as the CIA was bringing in to extract him and Dolinsky. The rocket and anti-tank grenade launcher pods on the side were only too clear now. Although he couldn’t see how many men were onboard, Curtis knew the Hip was capable of carrying twenty-four fully equipped Russian soldiers.

  ‘Russian soldiers, Eduard, and my guess is they’re not too pleased at being called out on a Sunday, but this will even up the odds a bit,’ Curtis said, handing Dolinsky the 9mm Browning and three spare magazines.

  Eduard Dolinsky shook his head. ‘I don’t use guns,’ he said.

  ‘You do now, sunshine,’ Curtis replied, shoving the weapon into the scientist’s hand. ‘I’m sorry if the casualty rate is going to be a bit below the millions you aim for in your profession, but do your best to make each one count,’ Curtis added, reaching for the radio.

  ‘Mountain Goat, this is Antelope, we’ve got company down here.’ Curtis had counted sixteen soldiers scrambling out of the big Hip that had landed in a clearing near the lake, about 300 metres below Curtis’ position. ‘Hip Mi-8T, grid 853504 beside the lake. So far there’s only sixteen of them, over.’

  ‘This is Mountain Goat, I’ll deal with the Hip first, then we’ll see about you and Einstein, out.’

  Curtis smiled grimly. Einstein was their codeword for the Russian scientist. By the look of consternation on his face, Dolinsky was not going to lower the odds against the soldiers moving up the hill toward them by much.

  Thirty seconds later the CIA Hip roared over the top of Curtis’ position. The Russian pilots had made the mistake of staying on the ground and their big transport helicopter exploded in a ball of flame and flying pieces of rotor as two high-powered rockets found their mark.

  Amazing what you could buy in the second-hand arms bazaars these days, Curtis thought, but any
feeling that he might still get out in one piece was cut short as a withering burst of fire cut through the trees. One of the Russian soldiers had spotted the Toyota.

  Curtis got away three quick bursts to make the Russians think twice about storming his position, but as he watched the Russian soldiers spreading out below him, another machine gun started firing from a ridge to his right.

  ‘Shit!’ Curtis’ first thought was that the Russians had somehow managed to get a gun group into position above him, but then he realised they would have needed a second helicopter to do it so quickly. Another burst of fire from the machine gun echoed around the high mountain peaks and to his surprise, Curtis discovered that whoever was above him was firing at the Russians. A short while later he could see the Russian soldiers withdrawing back down the mountain, carrying several casualties. Through his binoculars Curtis picked out three men, high on the ridge above him, black scarves around their faces and bandoliers of ammunition over their shoulders.

  As the CIA’s big Hip flared on to the landing zone, Curtis and Dolinsky broke cover, Curtis glancing back towards the ridgeline as he doubled over to get underneath the chopper blades. The pilot hauled on the collective, and as they cleared the snow-covered pines Curtis could see three men moving back along the track towards the border with Xinjiang. He felt a chill run down his spine, wondering if the operation had been compromised and again pondering the possibility that Dolinsky might be a double agent.