The Martyr’s Curse

Chapter Forty-Eight

Ben was taken aback by this question so out of the blue. ‘I know what my pay grade in the military allowed me to know,’ he replied after a beat. ‘That some people say it’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. While others say that despite all the scaremongering, it’s never resulted in a single successful attack or a single fatality anywhere in the world. A paper tiger.’

Oppenheim nodded gravely. ‘Paradoxically, one might say that both of those statements are true,’ he said. ‘By a combination of vigilance and sheer good old-fashioned luck, we’ve so far managed to avoid disaster. But it’s not been for lack of trying on the part of our enemies. And it would be a serious misjudgement to regard it as a paper tiger. In fact, there exists a long history of private individuals attempting to release biological attacks on the public at large, using agents that can be dispersed through the air, through water or by other means. The first significant attempt took place in Chicago in 1972, when a shoestring “terror” group calling themselves RISE tried to contaminate the city’s drinking water with typhoid virus stolen from a hospital lab where one of them worked. The attack was thwarted before it ever happened. Then there was the 1984 incident in Oregon, an attempt to cause widespread food poisoning from salmonella, which resulted in several cases of illness.’

Oppenheim paused, then went on. ‘Nine years later, in July 1993, a liquid suspension of Bacillus anthracis — that’s anthrax — was aerosolised from the roof of a high building in Kameido, Tokyo, by a religious enclave called Aum Shinrikyo, a potentially devastating attack that only failed because they mistakenly used an attenuated and relatively harmless strain of the disease agent. Then in 2001, anonymous letters mailed to officials in Washington, DC and Santiago, Chile, were found to be contaminated with anthrax spores. Again, thankfully, nobody was hurt. But it gets more serious. The following year, US military and intelligence officials obtained a secret dossier from the Afghanistan home of a Pakistani nuclear physicist and then associate of Osama bin Laden, containing evidence that Al-Qaeda was targeting the Biohazard Level Four facility at Plum Island near New York as a potential source of bio-warfare materials. Then in 2008, the Pakistan-born and US-educated neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to eighty-six years in prison for conspiracy to commit acts of bioterrorism.’

‘The Grey Lady of Bagram,’ Ben said. ‘Otherwise known as Prisoner six-five-o. There are plenty of psychopathic mass murderers who’ve been put away for just a fraction of that time. Not what you might call entirely fair.’

Oppenheim shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘You could say the Americans treated her a little harshly, overreacting in the wake of nine/eleven. Then again, you could say that a known associate of Al-Qaeda caught in possession of significant quantities of highly toxic substances and plotting mass-casualty attacks on US soil wasn’t exactly a minor offender.’

‘Did it ever occur to these scientists that they’re asking for trouble, creating and stockpiling the damned things in the first place?’ Ben said.

‘It’s certainly a point of view,’ Oppenheim said with a dry smile. ‘The potential threat of a serious bioterror attack is in direct proportion to the number of government laboratories worldwide handling, storing or manufacturing deadly disease-causing agents, which continues to increase year on year, along with the number of security lapses and un-answered calls for tighter regulation. That being said, as you rightly pointed out, to this day there still has never been a single attempted biological terror attack in Europe. Now …’

Oppenheim paused to lean his gaunt frame over the edge of his chair and reach down into an open briefcase at his feet. It was made of shiny black leather, like his shoes. His long fingers lifted out an A4-sized manila envelope, which he laid on the tabletop and skimmed over the polished surface towards Ben. ‘Everything I’ve said thus far is just to set the scene. I want to focus now on this man.’

Ben picked up the envelope. It was unsealed and contained a single glossy photo print, which he slipped out. It was a grainy three-quarter shot of a tall, slim man in early middle age, taken from a distance with a long lens. He was standing by the door of a car, in conversation with another man whose back was turned to the camera. The photo had been taken during the cold months, judging from the way they were dressed. The man was wearing a long dark overcoat that looked expensive, maybe cashmere, and tan leather gloves. He was neat and clean-shaven with even features and a high forehead from which his hair was swept thickly back, a touch of grey around the temples. Half the car number plate was visible at the bottom of the photo. It was a Swiss registration.

‘Is this who I think it is?’ Ben said, laying the photo back on the table.

Luc Simon nodded.

‘The last few decades have seen the rise of a strange and perplexing phenomenon,’ Oppenheim said, leaning back in his chair and pressing his fingertips together, as if he were praying. ‘A very particular neurosis of the human mind whose sufferers, overcome by their belief in a dark and uncertain future, are consumed by the need to do everything possible to prepare for it. Such forms of behaviour can assume a religious significance, marked by evangelical fervour, often with the desire to preach their apocalyptic convictions to all who’ll listen. Such as the belief in floods and tidal waves of epic biblical proportions, set to sweep humanity away. Or the belief that God is imminently about to manifest his wrath against us, as in the Old Testament’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to punish us for the sinful and debauched ways of modern society. Of a more secular nature are beliefs concerning the coming of natural disasters such as super storms, solar magnetic flares that will destroy the fabric of civilisation and plunge us back into the Dark Ages, and so on and so forth.’

Oppenheim paused, moistened his thin lips with the tip of his tongue in a way that made him look oddly reptilian, then continued. ‘For many, these are genuinely terrifying prospects that they hope never to have to face in this lifetime. But there are some who secretly or perhaps even openly wish for the chance to witness these apocalyptic events first-hand. Perhaps simply to vindicate the personal convictions for which people have scorned and laughed at them all these years. Or perhaps just because they’ve been watching too many American TV shows about the dead rising to walk the earth, and think it would be a great game to go charging about blasting bullets everywhere with impunity.’ Oppenheim smiled. ‘We generally don’t take that kind of person seriously. Their psychological profiles tend to indicate a cowardly streak that would have them running and hiding in terror at the first real sign of their fantasies coming true. But then,’ he said, ‘there are the serious ones. Those who would genuinely love nothing more than for the whole of human civilisation to be plunged into chaos and darkness. Who relish it so much, in fact, that they’d jump at the chance to be part of the process.’

‘And Udo Streicher is one of those,’ Ben said. ‘That’s what you’re saying, correct?’

Luc Simon refilled his own coffee and Ben’s, and savoured a long sip. ‘Streicher’s first appearance on our radar was eleven years ago, when Interpol operatives monitoring the Deep Web picked up talk of a new organisation calling itself Exercitus Paratorum. Roughly translated, “The Army of the Prepared”. Now, as you might already know, our boy was born into wealth. Cosseted upbringing, the best private schooling Switzerland has to offer. As a teenager he received a top-notch classical education. Hence, presumably, the Latin name he later went on to choose for his group. But after a year he seemed to decide that Exercitus Paratorum was too much of a mouthful, or maybe sounded too elitist or intellectual, so he changed it simply to the Parati. The Ready or Prepared Ones.’

‘Agent Valois told me,’ Ben said. ‘But ready for what? The end of the world? Armageddon? Is this a religious group, like Aum Shinrikyo?’

Luc Simon shook his head. ‘From what we can gather, Streicher’s a committed atheist. There’s no apparent religious motivation behind his ideals.’

‘This is an individual who fantasises day and night about the coming of a new era for mankind, Mr Hope,’ Oppenheim said. ‘The Parati website, buried deep in the dark side of the internet and accessible only via specialised software, has described a future where the global population is reduced by seventy-five per cent. No more government, the monetary system gone, the rule of law no longer applicable. In his sick and very minutely detailed fantasy, the human race would be broken down to small, disparate, leaderless and helpless groups of people worldwide who had failed to prepare for the coming disaster, whatever form it might have taken. All except him and his followers, needless to say, who thanks to their strategic foresight and planning would now be in a position to unite them, and dominate them.’

‘To dominate them?’ Ben said.

‘Streicher sees his future role as some kind of feudal overlord,’ Luc Simon said. ‘A king, you might say, with autocratic power over a huge army of followers in what he describes as the “afterworld”. It’s an all-consuming obsession. And the clock is ticking for him. Like all these Doomsday-preparation types, he’s been waiting and hoping for years that some global crisis might bring him the opportunity he craves. At the age of forty-six, we can easily speculate that he’s no longer content to wait passively. He wants it to happen while he’s still young enough to enjoy and make the most of it. He desperately needs to control the situation. Hence, to find a way to actually make it happen, and soon. These factors are what make him such a prime concern to us.’

‘Bullshit,’ Ben said.

‘You don’t believe what we’re telling you?’

‘It’s what you’re not telling me,’ he said. ‘The part that would explain how some nutjob Doomsday fantasist managed to become Interpol’s public enemy number one, justifying an operation on this kind of scale. It didn’t make sense to me before, and it doesn’t make sense to me now.’

Luc Simon and Oppenheim exchanged glances. Oppenheim’s seemed to signify, Are we okay divulging classified information to this man? Luc Simon’s quick affirmative nod said, Go ahead, he needs to know.