The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 33

W hen will the contingency plan for a terrorist attack on the Beijing Olympics be ready?’ Tom McNamara asked O’Connor, turning the focus away from what Richard Halliwell might be up to.

‘We’re still developing the possible scenarios and our responses, but the head of the Olympic Task Force will have a draft for you within the next couple of months,’ Curtis replied.

‘How’s it shaping up?’ McNamara asked, keen to get the views of an agent he knew to be a straightshooter.

‘The biggest worry is a biological attack. Genetic engineering of viruses is a very real threat and we may not have the right vaccines. I haven’t seen anything to confirm my suspicions, but if someone like Kadeer can get hold of a bioweapon and we don’t take notice of his warnings to start negotiating, I think he’ll use it.’

‘At the Olympics?’

‘The Beijing Olympics are particularly vulnerable because for two weeks in August over three million people from hundreds of thousands of different places around the world are going to be concentrated in the one spot. Once they leave the area, if they’re carrying a deadly virus it would be like exporting a far more deadly bird flu all over the world. Although it’s not as simple as the media make it sound, Tom. You and I know that in the 1980s and 1990s Aum Shinrikyo were successful when they put plastic bags full of sarin on the Tokyo subway trains and punctured them with umbrellas, but you might remember they carried out at least nine other attacks and the only one of those that was successful was another sarin attack. The anthrax and botulinum attacks all failed.’

Tom McNamara nodded grimly. ‘Shoko Asahara. Another fucking crackpot who thinks the world’s about to end. He and that raving lunatic Buffett make a good pair,’ he grumbled. ‘What gets me is that otherwise sane and intelligent people believe all this shit. If the Japanese police hadn’t tumbled to these whackers, they might have killed a lot more than nineteen people and what was it… 1000 wounded?’

‘Plus another 4000 “worried well”; although I guess we can’t blame them for being worried. When you see hundreds of people lying on the ground with blood pouring out of their noses and mouths, it’s not a pretty sight. And you’re right, if they’d had more time and if their university whiz kids had isolated the virulent strain of anthrax rather than the vaccine strain, it might have been a very different story.’

‘Hmm,’ the DDO grunted, ‘but did you see the final report on the Daschle anthrax?’

Curtis nodded. ‘I’ve got my own theory on that and that was a different story. That stuff was weapons grade.’

Curtis O’Connor and Tom McNamara had both been startled when, just six days after September 11, someone in New Jersey had mailed anthrax to the New York Post, to CBS, ABC, NBC and the offices of Senate Majority Leader, Tom Daschle. Two mail workers in the Brentwood mail-sorting facility in Washington had died and epidemiologists from the CDC had frantically tested over 5000 employees from Capitol Hill for exposure to the deadly spores.

‘Whoever mailed that stuff, Tom, not only had a very high degree of professional expertise, but he or she had access to some pretty sophisticated laboratories.’ The perpetrators had been able to achieve what Aum Shinrikyo and other terrorist organisations had not. They’d been able to refine the anthrax to the point where it was lighter than air so that it would float like an aerosol mist. ‘That anthrax was not only very pure and concentrated but whoever did it found a way to coat the spores.’

‘Is that hard?’ the DDO asked, deferring to his younger colleague’s earlier years as a biochemist.

‘Very difficult. The Daschle anthrax would have had to come from a state-run facility. Outside of here and some of our allies, there are not too many labs that have that capability,’ Curtis added pointedly, suspicious that the attack had originated from somewhere within the United States. ‘Anthrax spores are ovoid, like a headache capsule, except they’re measured in microns or millionths of a metre,’ he explained. ‘You can’t see them with the naked eye but someone found a way to coat them with even smaller superfine particles of silicon dioxide.’

In a chilling discovery that had been kept under wraps, the scientists at USAMRIID had discovered that the tiny anthrax spores used in the Daschle attack had been coated with microscopic particles of glass that were thousands of times smaller again than the spores themselves. It was the equivalent of being able to place a grain of sand on an apple, but in dimensions that an ordinary compound light microscope would not be able to detect. It would take the extraordinary resolution power of an electron microscope to even see it.

‘It was the silicon dioxide that caused the spores to break up and crumble. If you can achieve that, the anthrax not only becomes lighter than air, it can pass through the holes in the paper of an envelope.’

Tom McNamara whistled. Both men knew that while Bacillus anthracis occurred naturally in cattle and could lie dormant in the soil for years, once anthrax was inhaled by a human, the spores broke open, germinating into energised bacilli – rod-shaped cells – that multiplied with astonishing rapidity, migrating to the lymph nodes in the chest. The first symptoms would be deceptively similar to flu – headache, fever, cough, chills, sometimes vomiting, and a deadly attack was easy to miss. If treated for flu, the patient would begin to feel better but that would happen even if they weren’t treated. Anthrax had a characteristic ‘ellipse’ and for a while the deadly anthrax bacteria would retreat to re-group. When they returned, blood vessels would burst in the brain, the victim’s skin would start to turn black and the chest cavity would fill with fluid. Victims had been known to drop dead mid-sentence.

‘I will read the report on Olympic security with interest,’ Tom said, reaching behind him for another crimson file. ‘In the meantime do you remember that single source report we had on Eduard Dolinsky? The White House wants him on our team.’

‘You’re kidding, Tom.’ Curtis O’Connor shook his head in disbelief, his expression matching that of McNamara’s.

‘I wish I was. I suspect this is another little gem being pushed by the Vice President. He wants Dolinsky in our tent rather than in the Russkies’ or Kadeer’s. I don’t think the President was convinced at first but he’s suddenly come around big time.’

‘Esposito?’

‘I don’t think so. That little turd’s still shit-scared of something leaking before the next election. Iraq’s been bad enough, but this would be the last straw and the Democrats would have a field day. My spies tell me, and I suspect they’re right, that the President changed his mind after he had a message from God via that whacky evangelist.’

‘I don’t get it, Tom. Apart from the Georgian source I haven’t seen a single piece of intelligence that would indicate al-Qaeda have got the means to launch a biological attack. The way the Secretary of Defense and his neocons are carrying on, you’d think it’s already a clear and present danger. You and I both know it’s a long way short of that.’

‘I know, but the President’s convinced that apart from China’s growing economic clout and the Beijing Olympics, the biggest threat to the United States is a biological attack, and he’s worried that if we don’t get Dolinsky out, Kadeer and his mad mullahs will.’

‘We?’

‘You to be precise.’ Tom smiled. Koltsovo was very remote and neither man was under any illusions as to just how dangerous such a mission might be, if not impossible, but somehow humour served to relieve the tension. ‘You always said you’d rather be back in the field.’

‘Yeah but I’m fond of living too,’ O’Connor replied, his mind going back to another desert years earlier. The rescue of US hostages in Tehran, ordered by President Jimmy Carter, had been a disaster and it had sealed the fate of his Presidency. He lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980. ‘Siberia’s never been at the top of my list of assignments.’

Tom McNamara was still smiling. ‘We’re in the process of buying a Russian Mi-8T transport helicopter on the arms market in the hope that the Russians will mistake it for one of theirs, although we’ll have to recondition it.’

Curtis pulled a face. He’d flown in Russian helicopters before.

‘Once that’s done,’ Tom continued on, ignoring him, ‘a couple of our special forces pilots will be trained up. They’re working on getting a route in over at the Department of State, which will probably be a bit tricky,’ he said in a masterful understatement. It would involve flying out of Canci Air Base, rented by the United States, in Bishek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan would have to be provided with enough incentive to allow Curtis’ rescue helicopter to refuel and fly along Kazakhstan’s 500 kilometre border with China to where the Kazakhstan, Chinese, Russian and Mongolian borders converged high in the Altai Mountains south of the Siberian steppe. It was some of the most mountainous, isolated and dangerous flying territory in the world.

‘I imagine you’ll want to go in and make contact with Dolinsky first?’

‘I’ll have a think about that,’ Curtis responded, the vaguest of plans starting to take shape, a plan that had flashing red lights all over it, ‘but I’m still not convinced about Dolinsky’s defection. Getting him out of fucking Koltsovo won’t be a cakewalk and I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we knew whether this intelligence could be relied on.’

The DDO could only nod his head in agreement. Both men had years of experience and were well equipped to tackle the most dangerous of missions, but there was something about Dolinsky’s defection that made them both very wary.

‘And just to make your day,’ Tom said, reaching for another crimson file, ‘the Director tells me that Halliwell wants two scientists to assist Dolinsky, once you get him out of Koltsovo.’

This time the file was marked ‘Top Secret – NOFORN – Limited Distribution’. The ‘No Foreigners – Limited Distribution’ caveat was not surprising. The Administration was about to disregard one of the most important international treaties the United States had ever signed – the Biological Weapons and Toxin Convention. The consequences of a biological weapons attack were considered to be so devastating to the wider world that the Biological Weapons and Toxin Convention had been signed and ratified by nearly 150 countries. Like so many other conventions, including the Geneva and United Nations conventions against torture, this one was going to be disregarded because of this war on terror.

‘The Halliwell lab is pretty isolated,’ McNamara continued, ‘but even so, they want the number of scientists working on the genetic engineering of the viruses kept to a minimum.’

‘Have the scientists been nominated?’

‘The Colonel Commanding USAMRIID, a guy by the name of Wassenberg, was asked to provide two of his top people, although he wasn’t told the real reason. He was asked to provide Level 4 qualified scientists to work with the pharmaceutical industry on vaccinating the public against smallpox. You’ll need to check his nominations out. They look okay on paper but I remember Wassenberg when he was a lieutenant. Complete fuckwit and a god-botherer to boot.’

‘I didn’t think you allowed fuckwits in the Marines,’ Curtis said. When it came to the Marines, O’Connor never missed an opportunity to jerk his boss’s fiercely patriotic string.

‘We don’t!’ For a moment, Tom was serious, then he grinned, realising that Curtis was having a lend of him. ‘Wassenberg’s grandfather was an admiral and his father was a four-star general, which probably explains how he got into the Marines, although I don’t know where they got Wassenberg number three from. I think his mother must’ve been having it off with the pool man. We put him ashore from a submarine one night on a clandestine insertion, only to have him find there was a bunch of television cameras waiting for him with lights blazing on the beach. That wasn’t his fault but then he turned around and gave a fucking press conference. Moron!’ Tom McNamara shook his head at the memory of it. ‘I was in the ops room on the Abraham Lincoln watching it unfold. Got half his platoon wiped out as a result, and he was wounded so we packed him off to the Medical Corps.’

‘How did he finish up running a place like USAMRIID?’

‘I suspect the Secretary of Defense thinks he’s a bright cookie. Takes one to know one,’ Tom said. ‘Have you heard of a Professor Imran Sayed?’

‘If it’s the same Imran Sayed I think it is, they’ve at least got that nomination right. I met him a few years back. Sayed’s one of the best virologists in the world, although it’s a bit odd that Wassenberg would give up a scientist of that calibre, no matter how sensitive the liaison job. It’s even odder that the Professor would accept it.’

‘He hasn’t yet,’ Tom replied. ‘ Neither has the other scientist. Part of your job will be to remind them both of their duty to their country.’

‘Who’s the other one?’

‘A Dr Kate Braithwaite. Both their details are in there,’ Tom said, handing Curtis the file.

‘Pretty easy on the eye,’ Curtis said with a grin, looking at Kate’s photograph on the inside cover.

‘Sometimes, O’Connor, I think your brains are in the end of your dick,’ McNamara said, a resigned look on his face. ‘I need hardly remind you that the system hasn’t quite got over your little contretemps with the Russian.’

‘She gave me some very useful information,’ Curtis protested, still grinning.

‘That’s not all she gave you,’ the DDO replied, looking over the top of his glasses. ‘I want you to run these two in the same way you’d run a couple of agents out of Moscow.’ O’Connor smirked and Tom immediately regretted the analogy. ‘Or Baluchistan, which is where you’ll be sent if you fuck this up. Once you’re convinced they can do the job, and looking at their background there’s probably not much doubt about that, bring them into the compartment and make it happen.’

‘It’s the funding that’s black, Tom,’ O’Connor replied, more serious now. ‘If I try and run these two in the same way you and I have run agents out of Moscow I’ll finish up meeting them separately in Lafayette Park and they’ll freak. I think we ought to do this with as much normality as possible. It’s not exactly a secret that I talk to a lot of scientists about biological threats. I go to conferences with them for Christ’s sake.’

Tom McNamara grunted. ‘I’ll leave that up to you as long as what goes on at Halliwell is watertight. As far as vaccines are concerned, the Vice President seems particularly keen on ensuring that the athletes and officials in our Beijing Olympic team are protected, so without disclosing what we’re on about, you’ll need to liaise closely with the US Olympic Committee.’

‘Do we have a codeword yet?’

‘Operation P LASMID and this one is about as tightly held as it can get. Apart from you and I and wunderkind on the seventh floor, not even the Secretary of State’s been told – just the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and that little turd Esposito.’

‘What about Halliwell?’

‘From what you’ve told me about him, if there’s a buck in it he’ll come on board.’

Dr Richard Halliwell had been on board the day the top-secret laboratory had been certified as safe, but not in a way that either Tom McNamara or O’Connor could ever have imagined.

Back in his office Curtis scanned the files on the two scientists. Given the White House’s wildly unreasonable demands for the program to be up and running yesterday, he would need to get them in tomorrow and he pondered his approach. Both of them had been staunch opponents of the retention of the smallpox stocks, and talking them into being part of the top-secret Operation P LASMID might not be easy although his own sympathies lay with the scientists. Unlike an Administration that had no idea how dangerous this could be, the two scientists would know what they were letting themselves in for.

Curtis O’Connor looked at his watch and prepared to drop and lock after another long day at the farm. The photograph of Kate Braithwaite reminded him of how long it had been since he’d been in the company of a beautiful, intelligent woman. His line of work made it difficult to have a longstanding relationship with anybody and he knew that too much emotional involvement with someone could make him lose focus on the job he had to do. Fleetingly, he wondered what it might be like to live a more normal life; one that was not dictated by work and would allow him to have someone to go home to. He ran his hand through his hair and let out a deep sigh of frustration, his thoughts turning back to the other part of his mission. ‘While you’re at it, O’Connor, could you rock over to Koltsovo in Siberia, and hole up in the Altai Mountains where it gets down to minus 40 degrees fucking Celsius and give this Dolinsky guy a lift back to the States? Sure. The Russians might get a bit pissed about it, and there’s no guarantee it won’t all turn into a shit box, but you’ll manage, you always do.’ O’Connor shook his head and spun the combination on his safe.

‘We never seem to learn,’ he muttered. Hot extractions were inevitably messy, as Oliver North and Ronald Reagan had found out after the Ayatollah Khomeini had overthrown the Shah of Iran in 1978. The following year, sixty-six hostages had been taken prisoner in the US Embassy in Tehran. O’Connor again reflected on a rescue attempt that had been an unmitigated disaster. One of the Marines’ Stallion helicopters had crashed into a C-130 transport in the Iranian desert and, in the panic to get out, top-secret plans which identified all of the CIA’s agents in Iran were left behind. Curtis knew that it had taken years to recover from that disaster and here was another one on the cards, but rescuing Dolinsky from the clutches of the Kremlin would have to wait until he sorted out Halliwell and the scientists, he thought. As he headed towards the security desk at the main entrance and out into what was left of the night, he reflected on a world that was going barking bloody mad.