Curtis forced himself to focus on what he had to do and detached himself from his feelings for Kate as the lift shot up to the reception area on the thirty-seventh floor. Finding the combination locked, Curtis drew his revolver and blasted it off the door. Seconds later they were in Halliwell’s office. A mobile was ringing on the desk where Halliwell had left it. The guardhouse was still frantically trying to reach him.
‘A couple of your guys might like to check the floor below,’ Curtis said to Bauer. ‘Dr Braithwaite’s office is at the far end, but I’ve got a feeling she won’t be there,’ he added and he strode over to the walnut-panelled lift doors on the far side of Halliwell’s big office. Simone had not been the only one to leave the key in place and deep below the lift doors closed silently.
Kate spat at Halliwell again and he slapped her face.
‘Mustn’t do that,’ Halliwell said, slowly and deliberately. ‘Naughty girls get injected with Ebolapox and you’re being very, very naughty.’
Despite her bravado, fear filled Kate’s gut with ice. Halliwell’s grey eyes were devoid of emotion and she came to the same conclusion as Simone. Not for the first time in history had a dangerous psychopath, driven by a lust for power, got close to obtaining leadership of his country. Richard Halliwell was just a few primaries away from winning the Republican nomination for the White House. Kate winced as he stretched the thick industrial tape over her mouth.
‘Perhaps this is best done to Beethoven’s Fifth?’ Halliwell said, switching on the stereo. ‘Such majestic music. Da da da dah… Da da da dah…’ he sang along with the opening stanzas.
‘Very nice,’ Halliwell leered, his erection growing. His hands wandered inside Kate’s bra then slid down inside her pants. Kate willed herself to remain calm so that she didn’t choke on the bile rising in her throat.
CHAPTER 94
‘B usiness or pleasure, Mr Ferraro?’ the young Chinese immigration officer asked, her English greatly improved. The Chinese government had introduced an English program for everyone likely to be involved with international visitors almost as soon as they’d won the Games. Nothing was going to stand in the way of the Beijing Olympics being ‘the best games ever’. The Games were China’s passport into the twenty-first century.
‘Business,’ Ferraro replied politely.
She smiled again as she checked his face against the photo in his American passport. ‘Enjoy your stay.’
The Beijing arrivals hall was packed with thousands of people coming in for the Opening Ceremony of the Games, due in just six days time. al-Falid headed straight for the car park at Terminal 2 where one of Khalid Kadeer’s men was waiting for him.
‘Everything is in place?’ al-Falid asked, taking the bag containing the Walther P38.
His driver nodded. ‘All of our people have been briefed and all of them have access to the airconditioning systems. We picked up the vaccines from the docks at Qingdao and they are being distributed to those who need them here and in Xinjiang,’ he said as they drove out of the airport.
It was nearly midnight by the time they arrived but Peng Yu, al-Qaeda’s sadistic bear farm manager was up and waiting for them.
‘Has Dolinsky arrived?’ al-Falid asked.
‘He a’seep, Mr ’Flid,’ Peng Yu replied.
‘And the staff?’
‘Bear farm crosed for two weeks, just as you request, Mr ’Flid and staff given day off for Games.’
‘What about Dolinsky’s luggage?’
‘Many trunks, Mr ’Flid. In storehouse behind bears.’
‘You have done well, Yu. You can have the holiday as well but I will need your keys,’ he said as he turned to the driver. ‘Pick me up tomorrow.’ For what al-Falid had in mind, he wanted to make sure there were no witnesses.
After the manager and his driver had left, al-Falid returned to his room and took the Walther P38 from the small khaki bag. He checked to see that the magazine was loaded and smiled as he fitted the silencer. Khalid Kadeer was wrong, al-Falid thought. Like Osama bin Laden before him, the Uighur microbiologist had become a rallying point for many in the downtrodden Muslim world, but Kadeer was mistaken in thinking that you could negotiate with the West, just as he was wrong in thinking someone like Dolinsky should be spared. al-Falid feared that once the Georgian scientist realised the utter devastation of the virus he’d created there was a danger that, like those who’d worked on the Manhattan project and the nuclear bomb, he would talk. Anything that might lead back to Amon al-Falid’s identity in the United States had to be eliminated.
He crept up to Dolinsky’s room and inserted the manager’s master key. The door squeaked as he opened it but he need not have worried. The Georgian scientist’s snores were rattling off the thin walls. al-Falid placed the end of the gun barrel centimetres away from the back of Dolinsky’s head. The Walther kicked savagely – twice.
CHAPTER 95
H alliwell stood near the stainless steel bench seat. He picked up his biosuit and waved it at Kate in time with the symphony, a sinister smile playing around his thin lips as he mimicked squeezing a needle with his free hand. Kate felt sick as Halliwell moved towards her, unzipping his fly.
As soon as Curtis and Special Agent Bauer, together with two of the patrolmen, got out of the lift they could hear the sounds of the first movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Gun drawn, Curtis sprang into the opening of the tunnel. It was empty. The music was coming from beyond the half-open door some 800 metres away, echoing loudly through the tunnel.
Fitter than the other three men, Curtis was nearly 20 metres in front when he slowed, using the cover of the music to approach the door. What looked like a receiving bay was empty but beyond it another vault door was wide open. Halliwell had his back to Curtis and his hand was on someone strapped to a stainless steel trolley. Curtis realised that someone was Kate. As the first movement of the famous symphony came to a close, Halliwell applied the wheel brake and started to climb onto the trolley. Curtis approached silently, wishing he had a short length of wire to garrote him. In one movement Curtis wrenched the precariously balanced Halliwell from the trolley, throwing him to the concrete floor.
‘You’re a dead man, O’Connor,’ Halliwell snarled as the surprise on his face was quickly replaced with unbridled hatred. Halliwell sprang from the floor with surprising agility but Curtis’ boot smashed into his jaw. Seconds later Halliwell was face down, roaring like a wounded lion as the patrolmen snapped his wrists into cuffs, subduing Halliwell’s wildly flailing legs with the roll of industrial tape Curtis found on the trolley next to Kate.
‘I’ll join you in Halliwell’s office shortly,’ Curtis said to Kate and Rob Bauer, after Kate and Simone had both refused Curtis’ suggestion they be examined for shock. Curtis donned Halliwell’s biosuit, which was baggy on him, but it would protect him from whatever was on the far side of the vault-like door.
As he plugged his regulator in to the air hose and went through the airlock the hardened CIA man was sickened by what he found. For no reason other than unfortunate circumstances, these three human beings had been taken from the streets of a civilised western city. All three were still alive and strapped to their trolleys, but with no morphine or other medication they were suffering excruciating pain. Curtis stared at what appeared to be an eleven-year-old girl with a feeling of helplessness. With a body temperature of 37°C, the human species was the perfect host for a filo virus and the man-made virus she’d been injected with was multiplying at an astounding rate. He could see the dark blotches underneath her skin as the Ebolapox turned her organs to mush and her lungs slowly filled with blood and foul fluids. Curtis knew that unless they could find the missing vials, hundreds of millions of people were going to die the same horrible death as the filo virus was released into the wider world.