The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 10

C urtis O’Connor leaned back in his chair, clasping his hands behind his head. The sun had long since departed from the placid surface of the Potomac and the lights of the New Headquarters of the CIA probed the night around the lawns and the fishpond in the courtyard. The latest threat from Dr Khalid Kadeer was not making any sense and Curtis had an uneasy feeling that Kadeer was deadly serious. The Secretary of Defense was making even less sense, he thought, and his whacky views on windmills and an attack on the Netherlands were in keeping with the low opinion O’Connor reserved for most politicians.

O’Connor swung on his chair, turning to stare out into the night, switching his attention from possible targets towards the types of attacks al-Qaeda might mount. His mind went back to a fiery cabinet meeting in the White House Situation Room a few months earlier when he’d briefed the war cabinet on two reports. The first on the possibility of another biological attack against the United States using anthrax and a new strain of smallpox and the second from one of the CIA’s agents in Moscow on the possible defection of a scientist from Russia.

Both reports had come from a single source and O’Connor had urged caution. Single source reports, especially those whose reliability was unknown, needed to be confirmed by at least one other source. It was one of the intelligence community’s cardinal rules and he had wanted to check it before informing the White House, but the new DCI had overruled him. Dan Esposito was insisting on being kept informed of each new threat as it occurred. The hawks – the Vice President, the Secretary of Defense and Esposito – had led the others, demanding a ‘fight fire with fire’ retaliation and once again, Curtis had found himself backing the Secretary of State, a lone voice of reason in a cabinet convinced that America’s overwhelming military strength would prevail. O’Connor remembered it well. The anthrax meeting had been heated almost from the start.

As that war cabinet meeting got underway, Curtis O’Connor hadn’t had to consult his notes. He could recall both the anthrax and smallpox threats that had allegedly come from al-Qaeda and the cables from Moscow, word for word.

‘We have two reports, Mr President. The first one, purporting to be from al-Qaeda, warns that the United States will be attacked with new strains of smallpox and possibly anthrax sometime in the next twelve months. Several cities will be targeted, but the threat does not indicate which ones or whether they will be attacked with anthrax or smallpox or both.’

‘Purporting to be from al-Qaeda? What do you mean by that?’ Dan Esposito demanded.

‘I will come to that in a moment, Dan,’ O’Connor replied, not phased by Esposito’s challenge. ‘The second report is connected with the first and indicates that a Georgian scientist who is working for the Russians on the weaponisation of smallpox wants to defect. Both reports should be treated with caution, especially the defection.’

‘Why?’ Dan Esposito asked. ‘You seem to forget, Agent O’Connor, that 9/11 could have been prevented if we’d taken a little more notice of what you people in the CIA and the FBI were sitting on.’

‘I agree, Mr President!’ the Vice President interjected passionately, tapping the table with his pen for emphasis. ‘If we’ve got information on possible anthrax and smallpox attacks we can’t afford to ignore it.’

The President turned towards O’Connor, his left eyebrow raised.

‘I’m not suggesting we ignore it, Mr President, just that you should be aware that we are dealing with raw intelligence here, and it can be dangerous to treat it as fact. For starters, al-Qaeda normally broadcast their threats through al-Jazeera or one of the other Arab channels but this intelligence has come from a Muslim activist in Georgia. al-Qaeda are known to be active in the Pankisi Gorge area, about 48 kilometres from the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, close to the border with Muslim Chechnya. As a matter of principle, Mr President, single source reports always need to be checked for accuracy. We need to know whether this really is from al-Qaeda or from a Georgian group that might have its own agenda, especially where stirring up trouble with the Russians is concerned.’ O’Connor knew the hawks would see the need to double check reports as weak and bureaucratic but years of experience had taught him the wisdom of the process.

‘What do we know about the scientist who wants to defect?’ President Harrison asked.

‘A Dr Eduard Dolinsky. The last time he was seen in public was in Vienna at the 2003 International Conference on pox viruses. The Georgian Muslims are claiming that he’s been sent to Russia’s Koltsovo laboratories in Siberia to work on a top-secret program weaponising anthrax and smallpox.’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time the Russians have had a crack at weaponising smallpox,’ the Secretary of Defense broke in, glaring at O’Connor. ‘I seem to remember when that Stolichnaya-swigging Yeltsin was at the helm the Kremlin was busy telling us that they had all their stocks of smallpox locked away in a freezer in Moscow.’ He turned towards the President. ‘They got caught out at a World Health Organization meeting in Geneva in 1999, Mr President, when one of their scientists let slip that the smallpox viruses had been moved to the Siberian desert for testing.’

‘That’s true, Secretary,’ O’Connor responded, ‘but this is the first time this source has contacted us and we don’t know whether or not he’s reliable. As yet we’ve not been able to corroborate his information.’

President Harrison looked confused. ‘This Eduard Dolinsky, he’s a Muslim?’

‘He is, Mr President, but he’s also one of the world’s leading authorities on the genetic engineering of viruses,’ Curtis replied bluntly, barely controlling his frustration that even here, the word ‘Muslim’ was automatically associated with terrorism and another planet. With the media continually painting every Muslim as a terrorist, what hope was there for the wider and much less informed public, he thought grimly.

‘The employment of Muslim scientists in this area is not without precedent, Mr President.’ The Secretary of State’s voice was calm and reasonable. ‘One of the most respected virologists in this country, and indeed internationally, Professor Imran Sayed, is also a Muslim. He was born in Pakistan, and he’s employed by the US Army at USAMRIID.’ Curtis O’Connor was grateful for the Secretary of State’s wise counsel, although he immediately regretted the comparison as he watched the Secretary of Defense make a note.

‘If this threat gets out, Mr President, and if the past record of some agencies is anything to go by, it will,’ Dan Esposito said, glancing at O’Connor, ‘we will need to be in a position for you as President and Commander-in-Chief to front the cameras and tell the American people that in the event of an anthrax or smallpox attack you will have the situation under control. The anthrax attacks on Senator Daschle’s office and the others just days after 9/11 unnerved the entire population.’ Esposito’s jowls were wobbling like a turkey’s wattle as his gaze shifted from the President to the other members of the war cabinet. ‘If the terrorists can get hold of bioweapons they will and if this new threat materialises we will need to be a damn sight better prepared than we were for the first anthrax scare,’ he said, looking back at O’Connor. Dan Esposito never missed an opportunity to direct the blame away from the White House towards those he disliked; everyone in the room knew that Esposito disliked the calm, confident O’Connor. That said, O’Connor saw things from both sides and he knew that Esposito was right about one thing; releasing a deadly biological weapon into the atmosphere could ultimately wipe out hundreds of millions of people. There was no doubt that the original anthrax attacks directed at Senator Daschle and others had signalled a new phase in the war on terror.

‘You will need to be in a position to tell the American public that we have enough vaccine stocks to vaccinate every man, woman and child who has not already been inoculated, Mr President,’ Esposito concluded, his face flushed and agitated. ‘That will send a powerful message that we have things under control.’

‘It might not be as simple as that, Mr President,’ Curtis O’Connor argued, ignoring Esposito’s glare of disapproval. ‘Once smallpox was eradicated we stopped vaccinating people. That was over twenty-five years ago. Vaccinations for smallpox only last twenty years, so most people are now out of date. Furthermore, the India-1 strain, which the Russians are known to possess, is the most virulent of all the smallpox viruses we’ve encountered to date. We only hold enough vaccine to vaccinate about one-tenth of the population, keeping in mind that our armed forces and emergency responders have first priority. But even then our current vaccines would most likely be ineffective against strains like India-1.’

President Denver Harrison was looking decidedly uncomfortable and he abruptly brought the meeting to an end. As Dan Esposito walked past O’Connor on his way out of the room, he stopped and leaned towards him.

‘I’m beginning to wonder whose fucking side you’re on, Agent O’Connor,’ Esposito hissed.

Curtis O’Connor swung wearily back to his desk. A stolen windmill, he mused. It wasn’t making much sense, but it would in time.

The first of Khalid Kadeer’s devastating warning strikes was planned for the target city’s most vulnerable point; cruelly designed to paralyse one of the most beautiful cities in the world.