The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 39

K ate Braithwaite fought to keep her anger in check as the government car that had been sent for her sped along Route 123 into McLean, Virginia, but she kept reflecting on the day’s events. The jerk of a Colonel in charge of USAMRIID had refused point blank to see her. After she’d got his letter of reassignment as a liaison officer to Halliwell Pharmaceuticals she’d demanded an interview but she hadn’t got past ‘J what’s-his-number’.

‘The Colonel is very busy with matters of state, Dr Braithwaite, and he regrets he’ll be unable to see you,’ Captain Crawshaw had said very seriously, standing in front of Colonel Wassenberg’s sandbagged door and barring her entry to the inner bunker.

‘Did you have to rehearse that, Crawshaw, or does that sort of official bullshit just come naturally,’ she’d replied, before storming off. Sycophantic fuckwit, she thought. She’d felt like decking him and if it hadn’t been for Imran’s counsel to ‘go with the flow’ to see what the system was up to, she would have resigned on the spot. Kate had enormous respect for the Professor’s judgement; perhaps there was a need to stay and fight the system from within but for the life of her she couldn’t see much chance of changing things. Halliwell Pharmaceuticals, she knew, concentrated on one thing, and one thing alone – profits. Kate Braithwaite’s sense of foreboding increased as the government car slowed, turning into the main entrance to the Central Intelligence Agency.

‘Why are we turning into the CIA?’ she asked the driver.

‘Sorry Ma’am?’

‘This is the Central Intelligence Agency. Why are we stopping here?’ Kate demanded.

‘I’m sorry Ma’am, my instructions are to bring you here.’

Kate said nothing. No point in taking her frustrations out on the driver, who was only doing his job. Her anger was not diminished by the speed with which she was ushered through security, only to find a rugged and impossibly good-looking man she judged to be in his late thirties to early forties waiting for her just past the main reception desk.

‘Dr Braithwaite. Hi, I’m Curtis O’Connor.’

Kate shook his hand, taken aback by the warmth of his smile and intrigued by the touch of Irish brogue in his voice, but considering the events of the last 24 hours she was not about to be beguiled by anyone. She glared at Curtis, saying nothing.

‘I can understand that all of this will be somewhat of a surprise, Doctor, but I promise all will be revealed shortly,’ Curtis said easily, ushering her across the 5-metre wide granite seal of the CIA that was set into the floor.

‘Can I get you a coffee? It’s brewed, my own machine,’ O’Connor said with a boyish grin, indicating the Faema espresso machine that he’d somehow squeezed into a corner of a bookcase. ‘The Agency stuff’s undrinkable.’

‘Black, thank you,’ Kate replied, relaxing a little. Curtis O’Connor was charming and she felt her anger subsiding. The few Agency people she had encountered had been excruciatingly boring and bound by regulations, but this man seemed very different. Kate quickly reminded herself that he was probably part of the same team that the Colonel was on, and she remained on her guard.

‘You have an impressive resume, Doctor.’ Curtis O’Connor had decided he would play the feisty Australian by the book. No first names until he had gained her confidence. As he was about to find out, it would be a wise strategy.

‘What I’m about to tell you is classified above top secret, so I’m going to need your agreement that regardless of your decision it doesn’t go out of this room, and that you don’t mention it to anyone without my permission.’

‘You’re calling the shots here, Mr O’Connor.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Curtis said, flashing another disarming smile.

It was hard not to warm to this guy, Kate thought, but as Curtis outlined the real reason for her secondment to Halliwell Pharmaceuticals any softening of her opinion of him disappeared. Kate waited until Curtis had finished. Yet again she had to fight to control her anger over the stupidity of this Administration.

‘Have you any idea of how dangerous this sort of meddling with viruses is?’

Curtis O’Connor looked at her and nodded.

‘I don’t think you do, Mr O’Connor!’ Kate said, her exasperation coming to the fore. ‘I doubt that you people in your cloistered little world have ever heard of polymerase chain reactions, but let me tell you what that technique might produce in the wrong hands.’

He held back a grin. Fascinated by the mysteries of DNA, Curtis O’Connor had done his honours thesis in biochemistry on the very subject he was about to get a lecture on, albeit a lecture from one of the world’s most promising virologists and a very angry one at that. Curtis O’Connor did have strong sympathy for Kate Braithwaite’s views, and her gorgeous looks hadn’t escaped his notice either. He wisely decided against letting her know too much about his background. He wanted her on the program. For the moment it was better to let this explanation run. It might even pay dividends later on, he thought mischievously.

Kate reached across his desk and took the blank yellow pad and pen that were lying near Curtis’ in-tray. She drew the helix for DNA. ‘Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, Mr O’Connor, is made up of four nucleotides – adenylate, guanylate, thymidylate and cytidylate.’ Kate’s pencil flashed down the page as she drew the complex structure of phosphodiester bonds and pentose rings that made up the exquisite helix that Watson and Crick, with the help of some others, had discovered in 1953.

‘Otherwise known as A, G, T and C. A always pairs with T, and G always pairs with C. That’s important because if even a minute amount of India-1 strain of smallpox ever gets into the wrong hands, a single strand of smallpox DNA will always pair off with its complimentary sequence, and the bioterrorists can use a probe of known DNA to analyse that sequence. Not only that, Mr O’Connor, using a technique known as polymerase chain reactions, or PCR, means that we only need tiny amounts to produce all of the original DNA. In short, we are getting very close to being able to manufacture the complete genome of smallpox or any other deadly virus.’

Curtis O’Connor listened with wry amusement as Doctor Braithwaite filled three pages, making extremely complex chemistry look simple. She explained the PCR laboratory techniques that would enable a bioterrorist to manufacture new DNA using enzymes that would replicate sequences between primers bound to highly specific sites on the original DNA strand, much the same as DNA replicated itself within a normal cell. As she finished outlining the chilling possibilities of the ‘brave new world’ of biochemistry, her green eyes flashed at him with fury. Doctor Braithwaite would, Curtis thought, make an outstanding Professor if she ever chose to go down that route. Right now he wondered how he might get her on side. He needed her expertise in what would be the most lethal laboratory on the planet.

Kate finished her ‘lecture’ with a final and simple diagram. ‘It’s now possible, Mr O’Connor, to replicate deadly viruses like Ebola, Marburg and smallpox by taking a single strand of nucleic acid and joining it to another to make a double.’

Listening to Kate, Curtis O’Connor almost kicked himself. Of course! Where the single strand meets its double. The chilling words of Khalid Kadeer had suddenly become very, very clear. The final attack would be biological, involving the synthetic manufacture of a virus whose DNA the terrorists had access to.

Curtis O’Connor was only half right. Throughout history science had always had a dark side, and Kadeer was close to harnessing a power that would crush the human race.