‘Not if what Esposito tells me is right, and he ought to know,’ he replied, confidently. Esposito did indeed know, and in six months time, with the Beijing Olympics a bare 30 days away, the only two to be left on the Republican side would be Halliwell and Bolton. Halliwell put his arm around Sally’s waist and pointed towards the lights of Concord, New Hampshire’s small but elegant capital. ‘What we got from the people here today is just a taste of what’s to come over the next six months, Sally. We’re on our way to the White House,’ Richard whispered, his hand beginning to wander.
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.
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.’