The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 86

I n the large office she shared with Imran, one floor below Halliwell’s office, Kate listened with a sense of foreboding as Imran briefed Curtis on the secure STU phone the CIA had installed.

‘The single strand has not only met its double, Curtis,’ Imran said, his voice grave, ‘but it’s working every time. You and I both know that one of the major problems in genetically engineering a super virus is that once the RNA is incorporated into a bacterial plasmid, the reverse transcriptase enzyme often makes errors. That doesn’t occur in nature because living cells contain proofreading mechanisms. Dolinsky is using reverse transcriptases that have much higher fidelity. Every chimpanzee that has been injected with Ebolapox has died within four days.’

At the memory of the experiments Kate fought to control her anger. When she’d assisted Imran with the necropsies, both of them had been sickened by the viciousness with which the Ebolapox had attacked every organ in the bodies of the chimps, turning their hearts, livers, spleens, kidneys and lungs into a dark, bloody mush. None of them knew that Halliwell had produced identical results on the vagrants.

‘And Dolinsky’s progress on vaccines?’ Curtis asked, his voice reflecting the worry he shared with Imran and Kate.

‘That’s the chilling part, Curtis. Normally it would take over a year, perhaps more to develop an effective vaccine, but since he’s arrived he’s produced several, although only one of those is effective.’

‘One is enough to give this administration the confidence to use this as a weapon,’ Curtis replied.

‘Halliwell has directed that several thousand doses be prepared, which I find very odd, but Dolinsky’s rapid progress is even more disturbing. The Russians might have removed him from this sort of program but looking at the way he’s worked, you get the feeling we’ve not so much been involved in research here as helped to put the finishing touches to a program Dolinsky might have already been close to finishing. If the White House wanted proof that this could be done, I could have explained that on a whiteboard,’ Imran said, frustrated.

‘I agree,’ Curtis said. ‘I think perhaps it’s time you and Kate came to Washington to bring Tom McNamara, the Deputy Director of Operations up to date. When do you and Kate get back from Singapore?’ he asked, disappointed that pressures of work would prevent him from going to the International Bioterrorism Conference this time around.

‘We’ll be away for a little over two weeks,’ Imran replied. ‘The World Health Organization has a conference in Kuala Lumpur two days after Singapore.’

‘Swing by Washington on your way home. Enjoy,’ he added wistfully.

The day after Imran and Kate left for Singapore, al-Falid arranged to meet Eduard Dolinsky inside the Halliwell Laboratories. With Halliwell away campaigning there was even less chance of being disturbed.

‘The ocean-going tug, the George Washington is berthed at the ocean terminal in Savannah,’ al-Falid said quietly, pulling up the overhead photographs of the port that had been published on the internet. ‘It is just here, east of the oil terminal and not far from the maintenance dock. After the surveillance team clocks off, a vehicle will pick you up from your apartment tomorrow night. It’s going to take two weeks to get there, and even though it is summer in China, it can still get very cold where you’re going so pack some warm clothes.’

‘The vials of Ebolapox, Amon?’ Dolinsky asked, worried. ‘They are extremely dangerous.’

‘You are to crate the liquid nitrogen trolleys and mark them ‘medical supplies’. They’re to be in the loading bay at precisely 4 p.m. tomorrow afternoon. I’ve arranged for one of Halliwell’s vehicles to pick up the crate. The drivers will be instructed to make sure it’s securely fastened to the floor of the truck but on no account are they to be told what’s in it. The paperwork being prepared will release the vaccines and the trucks will be met outside the port, as you will be, and I’ve arranged for your paperwork as well. Familiarise yourself with what is in this and destroy it,’ al-Falid commanded, handing Dolinsky a brown envelope. ‘This contains your new identity papers,’ he said, handing Dolinsky another smaller envelope. ‘Keep them on you at all times.’

The moonlight was reflected on a placid Savannah River as the George Washington, her cargoes safely loaded, eased away from the Ocean Terminal. Eduard Dolinsky felt some satisfaction at having achieved what many scientists a few years before thought was impossible; he also felt a strange sense of foreboding. He was confident in the vaccines in the hold but very worried about what might happen to the deadly vials stored in the big freezers alongside them. As they passed the Tybee Lighthouse and the tug’s massive bows rose to meet the swell of the Atlantic beyond, Eduard Dolinsky’s foreboding increased.

Sixteen days later, as Kate and Imran flew back into Washington and with just one week before the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, the captain of the George Washington eased the twin throttles back and the tug steamed slowly into the Chinese port city of Qingdao. Situated on the Yellow Sea roughly 800 kilometres east of Beijing, Qingdao was the sixteenth largest port in the world with vast warehouse storage and loading facilities capable of handling more than 100 million tons of cargo and containers each year.

Dr Eduard Dolinsky scanned the shoreline, contempt in his dark eyes. In the city of seven million people the western influence was unmistakable. Terracotta tiles dating back to the days when the city was run by the Qing dynasty in the seventeenth century were overshadowed by crowded apartment buildings and soaring high-rise office blocks. Further to the north-east, clouds obscured the top of the 915-metre Mount Lao, the highest mountain on the Chinese coast. The Qingdao Bear Farm nestled in the foothills below the mountain’s ancient Tao palaces and temples.

The captain of the George Washington felt relaxed and confident. al-Qaeda tentacles reached into hundreds of large cities around the world, and given the Chinese government suppression of the Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, an al-Qaeda presence in Chinese cities had been inevitable and Qingdao was no exception. The sealed silver trunk with the vials of lethal Ebolapox was stored at the bottom of the tug’s big freezer near the galley. With over 100 million tons of cargo coming in every year, the authorities focused on containers, and even then they were only able to physically check a fraction of them. Like their western counterparts, Chinese customs officials relied on intelligence and tip-offs for interceptions of drugs, pornography and any western publications that might be considered harmful to the State. al-Qaeda’s finances ensured that both Dr Dolinsky and the trunks marked ‘medical supplies’ were driven out off the wharves in a Qingdao Port Authority four-wheel drive without inspection. After a simple vehicle change in nearby Mengzhang Road, Dolinsky and the Ebolapox were taken north through the big Renmin Road roundabout and then east towards the Qingdao Bear Farm 30 kilometres away at the base of Lao Shan in rural Shandong Province.