The Third World War: A Terrifying Novel of Global Conflict

67

The air was becoming contaminated with the stench from above ground. Smoke heavy with tiny particles of debris leaked through the outdated ventilation system and was being pumped into the laboratories beneath. The bombing had been so concentrated that Park Ho doubted the structure would withstand another wave. His only communication outside the country was through the fibre-optic link to the Chinese command and control centre at Shenyang across the northern border. They were choosing what to tell and what to show him. They told him that North Korean forces had broken through South Korean and US defences; that Camp Bonifas had been overrun; that his agents were causing terror in Seoul, with car bombs, assassinations and drive-by shootings; that the airport was in flames; Tokyo was destroyed; Sato and his mistress Kiyoko were dead, and Yamada had fled to the US base in Okinawa; that Ahmed Memed was in Beijing under the protection of the new government; that Hassan Muda's bomb had devastated Times Square, and that West was expected to beg for peace within the hour; that Park Ho would be victorious.

Park Ho thanked Shenyang for the news. He wondered if Ahmed Memed had told them about the variola major experiments. In all the planning, Ho had never mentioned it, knowing that, even by Chinese standards, he might be seen as going too far. Qureshi had not known either. For Memed, an epidemic that could wipe out the human race would have a religious dimension. God would decide who lived and died; therefore God would recreate the world. Memed's belief was so strong that he expected the virus to distinguish between the chosen and the godless. And Park Ho had let him think that. After all, it was Memed's bombers who were waiting for the signal all over the United States and Europe.

But he had not told Memed about the vaccine. Only Li Pak and his team knew about that, and about how powerful a weapon a simple syringe and vaccine would become.

By now Park Ho was used to the different grades of biological warfare production. He stopped in a small chamber, totally quiet except for the hum of the pressurized air flow, and put on a biohazard suit. Behind the glass, he saw Li moving towards him through a complex network of rooms. Li was alone, and there was something hesitant about the way he moved.

The last time he had been here, Park had seen an array of animals — rodents, sheep, primates — each in its own cubicle into which was pumped air laced with the smallpox virus.

What Park Ho now saw made him stare at Li in complete anger. Not because the virologist was incompetent. He was far from that. But any talent, however great, could not be tolerated in the face of insubordination. Park Ho had expected to meet the recovered British ambassador, Bob Robertson. Instead, he was faced with fresh prisoners from the labour camps, both men and women, covered in oozing pustules, some of which were so close together that it was impossible to see the skin between.

Li's terrified eyes faced him through the mask. 'We need more time!'

'Robertson? Where is he?'

'Dead, comrade,' stammered Li, trying to find sanctuary in the old Marxist form of address.

'Jozsef Striker?'

'Dead.' He pressed his finger against a glass cubicle where a figure lay shivering on the floor. The pustules covered so much of the skin that he couldn't tell the sex of the victim. 'That is why I have to resort to using them again.' Li's head was lowered, his voice through radio communication quivering and pleading. 'We need more time, General. Science is not exact—'

Park Ho struck Li hard against his mask and tore out the air tube. Li flailed, trying to seal the suit again. Park drew a knife and slashed the sleeve, drawing blood from Li's arm. Li staggered, choking. Park Ho caught him, slipped the knife into his neck and dropped him on the floor. He quickly left the biocontainment area. Stripping off the suit and not bothering to shower, he put on his military uniform and walked into the underground atrium. Much of it had survived the first wave of bombing. A guard saluted him.

'Have you made an exit yet?' demanded Park Ho.

'We are still digging, comrade.'

A line of soldiers, in green hard hats, carrying pickaxes, drills, even a chainsaw, appeared at the end of the corridor. They were covered in dust from the chipped and broken concrete. Their heads hung low and they carried their tools listlessly. There was a staleness in the air, a pungent smell of burning that caught the back of the throat. Park Ho felt a tightness in his lungs. The guard dropped the salute, and he didn't care. He was ashamed that he had given in to his anger and killed Li Pak. The urge to kill was a strange instinct, and with humans it might have nothing to do with simply staying safe or eating. Often, it ended up being a necessary thing to get through the day.

'You,' he shouted to a soldier at the head of the work gang. The man looked up but did not even salute. He stayed where he was, not bothering to move towards Park. Then his gaze fell on the epaulettes and medals on the uniform, and he realized who was addressing him.

The soldier shook his head. 'Every exit is sealed,' he said. 'They have used a hardened chemical formula. It is like a foam. By the time we get to it it is setting. Very quickly. Then it is tougher than concrete.' He turned and pointed at the soldier behind him, whose drill shaft had snapped in two.

'When can you get us out?' said Park, his voice less harsh. He had built loyalty by being one of the men. If he was to die with them, that was how it would be.

The soldier pointed ahead. 'We will try up here. But I think it will be impossible. Unless there are tunnels we don't know about.'

A line of dust fell from the roof above, then a chunk of plaster.

'There are not,' said Park Ho.

The soldier coughed and spat out black phlegm mixed with blood. 'The whole structure has been weakened,' he whispered, his throat still clogged with phlegm. He spat again. 'We are trying to prop up the roof before it collapses. Then we will find a place where the foam has not reached and try and drill through to find air.'

Park Ho went into the office. The room had once had a lift up into the hotel foyer. The computer screens were frozen, but the three soldiers there were watching a television on whose screen the picture was faded but still discernible. They turned. Two had handkerchiefs over their mouths. They saw Park, but their attention remained on the screen, where Vasant Mehta was speaking against a backdrop of still pictures of the nuclear aftermath in Islamabad, Delhi and Tokyo.

'Where is this from?' demanded Park impatiently.

'The fibre-optic line from Shenyang,' said one of his men, concentrating on the pictures and showing Park Ho no respect. Never before would they have seen uncensored television, and they looked as if a secret mould had been broken. A simultaneous translation in Chinese was being run over Mehta's voice, and the soldiers, who had worked up on the Chinese border, understood the gist of what the Indian Prime Minister was saying.

'… must stop,' said Mehta. 'India has lost millions and millions of its citizens. Over the next years many millions more will die. We can no longer function as a nation. We have no hospitals, no emergency services. Nothing. Pakistan is the same. For what? A piece of disputed land? A different God? Why? Why? Why?' Mehta swallowed hard, looked behind him, pointed, smiled and rubbed his right eye. 'I challenge you to tell me which city is Delhi, which is Islamabad and which is Tokyo. Because I don't know. What is the point of trying to preserve something if it ends up being like this, being exactly like your enemy's city?'

Mehta fell silent and buried his face in his hands. When he looked up again, his eyes were full of tears. He was unshaven. He noticed his shirt collar was skewed and brought it back into place. 'I am sorry,' he said. 'I cannot leave this place without a nuclear warfare suit on. I can no longer smell the smells of India. That has gone. I am told that the nuclear dust clouds from India and Pakistan have combined as one and it is drifting east. I hear that the winds from Tokyo are blowing west, so those two big clouds will join together as well. Where? Maybe over Thailand or Vietnam, where they'll poison people who have nothing to do with our squabbles at all, people who have just tried to live.'

The room shook, catching Park Ho off balance. He steadied himself with a hand on the wall. Another raid. But somewhere else. It was like a distant earth tremor. The screen flickered and then settled.

'… President West. Jim West is a friend of mine. My daughters Meenakshi and Romila are under his care now. He is not an evil man, just as the United States is not an evil nation. Any more than India is, or Pakistan is, or Japan is. He asked me to make this address because he sees a holocaust coming, something unstoppable and totally destructive. There is smallpox in America. To us, in India, that might now seem nothing. But when the virus reaches us — and it will reach us — it will kill all those of us who are not already being killed by radiation. In America, there is vaccine. In India, we have nothing left to give.'

A crack appeared in the floor and more dust fell from the ceiling. But Park Ho ignored it. His mind was completely on what Mehta was saying. He had talked about a vaccine and made no mention of IL-4. He was lying. Or he hadn't been told. Jim West had set up the whole broadcast to lie to the world.

'… be peace, to stop the spread of this terrible disease—'

'Put me through to Shenyang,' snapped Park Ho. One of the soldiers looked round curiously, because to do that they would have to cut the broadcast. But his questioning lasted only a moment. Even now Park's presence brooked no dispute. The soldier diverted the link and pointed to a telephone.

'Can you put this line through to Washington?… No?… Why not?… I don't accept… then get this message to the Americans. I have the vaccine for the IL-4 strain of variola major with me here. If they destroy this place, they destroy the cure. These are our coordinates…'

Park Ho ended the call and did up the top button of his tunic. The tremors were getting more powerful. They were carpet bombing, using thermobaric explosive again, trying to seal off his ventilation, suck out the air and suffocate him. The lights flickered, then went out, and emergency lamps working off batteries came on. They had only been designed for evacuation. They would not last long.

'Put me through to Toksong-gun,' he said. 'Quickly, before the lines go.'

A huge shudder ran through the whole complex, breaking the glass wall in the office and throwing open the door. The structure had buckled, crushing the two sealed doors leading to the biocontainment area. There was no vaccine and the virus was out, circulating in the stale air that the trapped survivors were breathing.

'Have they struck you yet?' asked Park Ho when he got through.

'We're clear. Nothing,' said the missile engineer, Kee Tae Shin.

'Then you have your orders,' said Park. 'The juche ideal is now in your hands.'