Majority Leader, Tom Daschle. Two mail workers in the Brentwood mail-sorting facility in Washington had died and epidemiologists from the CDC had frantically tested over 5000 employees from Capitol Hill for exposure to the deadly spores.
‘Whoever mailed that stuff, Tom, not only had a very high degree of professional expertise, but he or she had access to some pretty sophisticated laboratories.’ The perpetrators had been able to achieve what Aum Shinrikyo and other terrorist organisations had not. They’d been able to refine the anthrax to the point where it was lighter than air so that it would float like an aerosol mist. ‘That anthrax was not only very pure and concentrated but whoever did it found a way to coat the spores.’
‘Is that hard?’ the DDO asked, deferring to his younger colleague’s earlier years as a biochemist.
‘Very difficult. The Daschle anthrax would have had to come from a state-run facility. Outside of here and some of our allies, there are not too many labs that have that capability,’ Curtis added pointedly, suspicious that the attack had originated from somewhere within the United States. ‘Anthrax spores are ovoid, like a headache capsule, except they’re measured in microns or millionths of a metre,’ he explained. ‘You can’t see them with the naked eye but someone found a way to coat them with even smaller superfine particles of silicon dioxide.’
In a chilling discovery that had been kept under wraps, the scientists at USAMRIID had discovered that the tiny anthrax spores used in the Daschle attack had been coated with microscopic particles of glass that were thousands of times smaller again than the spores themselves. It was the equivalent of being able to place a grain of sand on an apple, but in dimensions that an ordinary compound light microscope would not be able to detect. It would take the extraordinary resolution power of an electron microscope to even see it.
‘It was the silicon dioxide that caused the spores to break up and crumble. If you can achieve that, the anthrax not only becomes lighter than air, it can pass through the holes in the paper of an envelope.’
Tom McNamara whistled. Both men knew that while Bacillus anthracis occurred naturally in cattle and could lie dormant in the soil for years, once anthrax was inhaled by a human, the spores broke open, germinating into energised bacilli – rod-shaped cells – that multiplied with astonishing rapidity, migrating to the lymph nodes in the chest. The first symptoms would be deceptively similar to flu – headache, fever, cough, chills, sometimes vomiting, and a deadly attack was easy to miss. If treated for flu, the patient would begin to feel better but that would happen even if they weren’t treated. Anthrax had a characteristic ‘ellipse’ and for a while the deadly anthrax bacteria would retreat to re-group. When they returned, blood vessels would burst in the brain, the victim’s skin would start to turn black and the chest cavity would fill with fluid. Victims had been known to drop dead mid- sentence.
‘I will read the report on Olympic security with interest,’ Tom said, reaching behind him for another crimson file. ‘In the meantime do you remember that single source report we had on Eduard Dolinsky? The White House wants him on our team.’
‘You’re kidding, Tom.’ Curtis O’Connor shook his head in disbelief, his expression matching that of McNamara’s.
‘I wish I was. I suspect this is another little gem being pushed by the Vice President. He wants Dolinsky in our tent rather than in the Russkies’ or Kadeer’s. I don’t think the President was convinced at first but he’s suddenly come around big time.’
‘Esposito?’
‘I don’t think so. That little turd’s still shit-scared of something leaking before the next election. Iraq’s been bad enough, but this would be the last straw and the Democrats would have a field day. My spies tell me, and I suspect they’re right, that the President changed his mind after he had a message from God via that whacky evangelist.’
‘I don’t get it, Tom. Apart from the Georgian source I haven’t seen a single piece of intelligence that would indicate al-Qaeda have got the means to launch a biological attack. The way the Secretary of Defense and his neocons are carrying on, you’d think it’s already a clear and present danger. You and I both know it’s a long way short of that.’
‘I know, but the President’s convinced that apart from China’s growing economic clout and the Beijing Olympics, the biggest threat to the United States is a biological attack, and he’s worried that if we don’t get Dolinsky out, Kadeer and his mad mullahs will.’
‘We?’
‘You to be precise.’ Tom smiled. Koltsovo was very remote and neither man was under any illusions as to just how dangerous such a mission might be, if not impossible, but somehow humour served to relieve the tension. ‘You always said you’d rather be back in the field.’
‘Yeah but I’m fond of living too,’ O’Connor replied, his mind going back to another desert years earlier. The rescue of US hostages in Tehran, ordered by President Jimmy Carter, had been a disaster and it had sealed the fate of his Presidency. He lost to Ronald Reagan in a landslide in 1980. ‘Siberia’s never been at the top of my list of assignments.’
Tom McNamara was still smiling. ‘We’re in the process of buying a Russian Mi-8T transport helicopter on the arms market in the hope that the Russians will mistake it for one of theirs, although we’ll have to recondition it.’
Curtis pulled a face. He’d flown in Russian helicopters before.
‘Once that’s done,’ Tom continued on, ignoring him, ‘a couple of our special forces pilots will be trained up. They’re working on getting a route in over at the Department of State, which will probably be a bit tricky,’ he said in a masterful understatement. It would involve flying out of Canci Air Base, rented by the United States, in Bishek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan would have to be provided with enough incentive to allow Curtis’ rescue helicopter to refuel and fly along Kazakhstan’s 500 kilometre border with China to where the Kazakhstan, Chinese, Russian and Mongolian borders converged high in the Altai Mountains south of the Siberian steppe. It was some of the most mountainous, isolated and dangerous flying territory in the world.
‘I imagine you’ll want to go in and make contact with Dolinsky first?’
‘I’ll have a think about that,’ Curtis responded, the vaguest of plans starting to take shape, a plan that had flashing red lights all over it, ‘but I’m still not convinced about Dolinsky’s defection. Getting him out of fucking Koltsovo won’t be a cakewalk and I’d feel a lot more comfortable if we knew whether this intelligence could be relied on.’
The DDO could only nod his head in agreement. Both men had years of experience and were well equipped to tackle the most dangerous of missions, but there was something about Dolinsky’s defection that made them both very wary.
‘And just to make your day,’ Tom said, reaching for another crimson file, ‘the Director tells me that Halliwell wants two scientists to assist Dolinsky, once you get him out of Koltsovo.’
This time the file was marked ‘Top Secret – NOFORN – Limited Distribution’. The ‘No Foreigners – Limited Distribution’ caveat was not surprising. The Administration was about to disregard one of the most important international treaties the United States had ever signed – the Biological Weapons and Toxin Convention. The consequences of a biological weapons attack were considered to be so devastating to the wider world that the Biological Weapons and Toxin Convention had been signed and ratified by nearly 150 countries. Like so many other conventions, including the Geneva and United Nations conventions against torture, this one was going to be disregarded because of this war on terror.
‘The Halliwell lab is pretty isolated,’ McNamara continued, ‘but even so, they want the number of scientists working on the genetic engineering of the viruses kept to a minimum.’
‘Have the scientists been nominated?’
‘The Colonel Commanding USAMRIID, a guy by the name of Wassenberg, was asked to provide two of his top people, although he wasn’t told the real reason. He was asked to provide Level 4 qualified scientists to work with the pharmaceutical industry on vaccinating the public against smallpox. You’ll need to check his nominations out. They look okay on paper but I remember Wassenberg when he was a lieutenant. Complete fuckwit and a god- botherer to boot.’
‘I didn’t think you allowed fuckwits in the Marines,’ Curtis said. When it came to the Marines, O’Connor never missed an opportunity to jerk his boss’s fiercely patriotic string.
‘We don’t!’ For a moment, Tom was serious, then he grinned, realising that Curtis was having a lend of him. ‘Wassenberg’s grandfather was an admiral and his father was a four-star general, which probably explains how he got into the Marines, although I don’t know where they got Wassenberg number three from. I think his mother
