The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 85

T here was less than a month to go until the Games; white clouds streamed off the lower granite peaks of the Tian Shan, Xinjiang’s heavenly mountains in the northern part of the autonomous region near the Chinese north-western border with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The higher peaks, the Jengish Chokusu and the Khan Tengri or ‘Lord of the Spirits’ rose above the clouds and, at over 7000 metres, they were the most northerly peaks over that height anywhere in the world. The setting sun had touched the magnificent, craggy peaks and the snow was tinged with soft hues of orange and red.

In a safe house in the heavily wooded Alatau foothills, guarded by the same fiercely loyal tribal warriors who had escorted him into Peshawar, Khalid Kadeer weighed up his options, but his mood was bleak. The infidel had taken no notice of the warnings and the final solution would now be necessary. al-Falid, his firebrand lieutenant, had given him a message in one of their chat rooms that Dolinsky had perfected the Ebolapox and developed a vaccine. The news that Richard Halliwell had ordered a trial run of several thousand vials of the vaccine was puzzling but Kadeer had determined that could be put to al-Qaeda’s use. Once al-Falid, Dolinsky and the vials of Ebolapox had reached the bear farm, there would be enough vaccine for his people in Xinjiang, Qingdao, Beijing and other selected cells around the world.

As the snow started to fall, coating the tall Alatau conifers with white crystals, Kadeer’s thoughts turned to the United States and her allies. President Bolton had turned out to be far worse than Harrison, if that was possible, and there had been no response to Kadeer’s demands for negotiation since the caesium chloride attacks. Instead, the Olympic fever that had been gripping Beijing for months had now engulfed the rest of the world. Beijing was a sea of flags and colourful bunting and with the Olympic torch just twenty-three days out from Beijing, the expectation of a nation was rising. Hundreds of millions of yuan had been spent on sporting stadiums, fireworks for test events, and opening and closing ceremonies, while the majority of people in the world didn’t have water that was safe to drink, Kadeer thought sadly. The war in Iraq was costing over a billion dollars a week and the world continued to ignore the Chinese Communist Party’s murderous persecution of the Uighur Muslims and other minority groups.

In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, and in the other cities like Kashgar, the passage of the Olympic torch saturated the news, even when the Han Chinese had made another major oil discovery. Reporting on the US Presidential election was also scant, although Kadeer had been following it very closely online. It remained to be seen what would happen if either a woman or a black Senator got up, but Bolton and Halliwell were only separated by a few percentage points and Kadeer knew he had no choice. It would be another four years before the unique circumstances of the Games came around again. With the opening ceremony timed for 8 p.m. on 8 August 2008, Kadeer knew he couldn’t afford to wait until the Presidential elections. The first Tuesday in November would be way too late.