C urtis O’Connor cleared Terminal 2 of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport without incident and headed across to Terminal 1 for his connecting Aeroflot flight to Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia. Every so often he paused to scan his surroundings. If the FSB was here, then they must have improved on their KGB predecessors, Curtis thought. Tourist class on Aeroflot wasn’t going to be a lot of fun, he mused, as he joined a long queue at the check-in desk, but backpackers didn’t travel business, although the boys in the passport office at Langley had done some excellent work and Brendan O’Shaughnessy had quite a nice ring to it.
H OBOC нб p CK belied its location. Split by the great Siberian River Ob, Novosibirsk was home to nearly a million and a half people and the third largest city in Russia after Moscow and St Petersburg.
The dead letter drop was in a park not far from the trans-Siberian railway station, the massive monument to Russia’s imperial architecture that still played host to the famous train. Curtis sat on a bench quietly scanning the surrounding parkland. Satisfied no one was watching he retrieved from under a bush the nondescript-looking bag containing gammahydroxybutyrate, a pistol and an M4 Carbine with a collapsible stock. Curtis walked out of the park and hailed a passing taxi.
‘ Rechnoy Voksal ’
‘ Novosibirsk ochyen kraseevily gorad.’
‘ Da,’ Curtis replied, agreeing with the taxi driver’s assertion that the Siberian capital was indeed very beautiful, but not wishing to get into a conversation. Taxi drivers in Russia were not always all they seemed.
Novosibirsk Mountain Trekking was in a small side street near the Rechnoy Voksal metro, and Vladimir Lebed, a slightly built, likeable Russian in his early forties, welcomed Curtis effusively. It was not every day Vladimir received a request to take just one client on a two-week backpacking expedition to his beloved Altai Mountains.
Curtis handed over 26,000 rubles, half the cost of the tour, and climbed into the passenger seat of the four- wheel drive Toyota. His Russian guide hadn’t thought it odd that someone who was backpacking in the Altais might have business in a place like Koltsovo, nor did he quibble about the overnight stay in the one-star hotel Curtis had selected. The Dobrily Dyen, the Good Day Hotel, was in keeping with his new identity, Brendan O’Shaughnessy, and it was only about 500 metres from the apartment block Eduard Dolinsky called home.
Allocating one star to the Dobrily Dyen Hotel might have been optimistic, O’Connor mused. Several Russian workers were playing Durak and drinking cheap vodka at a table in the corner and no one took much notice of either Curtis or Vladimir Lebed. As Curtis ordered two Kupecheskoe 1875s, Siberia’s popular beer, Vladimir sought out the men’s room. Curtis seized his chance, dropping the contents of a small sachet of the gammahydroxybutyrate, more commonly known as GHB, into Vladimir’s drink. Curtis knew that by the time Vladimir returned from the bathroom, the white powder would be completely dissolved. GHB was colourless and odour-less, which was why it had become popular as a date-rape drug in nightclubs. Uncontrolled doses had been known to cause death, but Curtis wished Vladimir no harm and the sachet he’d taken from the bag he’d picked up at the dead-letter drop had been carefully measured to make sure the likeable Russian was only knocked out for twelve or fifteen hours. Enough time for Curtis to get moving towards the designated helicopter landing zone he’d selected high in the Altai Mountains near the border with Kazakhstan. Curtis felt the exhilaration of being back in the field and away from the politics of Washington. Getting Dolinsky out from under the noses of the old enemy was an almost impossible ask, but he’d been in tough situations before and he was sure he hadn’t lost any of his skills. His mind turned to how the Secretary of State might be going with negotiations for the use of Kazakhstan air space for the flight from the big US Ganci air base in Kyrgyzstan, along the border with the Xinjiang Autonomous Region of China. No doubt there would be some incentive, he mused, as Vladimir Lebed returned from the bathroom.
‘Приятного аппетита! Good appetite,’ Curtis said, as the waiter brought the first course of shchi cabbage soup and set it down on the plastic tablecloth.
Vladimir responded with a broad smile.
Ten minutes later Curtis helped him to his room. When Vladimir woke up, he would find the 26,000 rubles Curtis owed him and quite a bit extra as compensation. ‘Who said there’s no honour among thieves,’ Curtis said softly, as he finished binding Lebed’s ankles, arms and mouth.
Leaving the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on Vladimir’s door, Curtis looked up the road towards Dolinsky’s apartment block. The two gorillas from the FSB were still parked outside. An hour earlier, Dolinsky had assured Curtis that he would be able to get out through a back entrance. al-Qaeda were not the only ones to take advantage of internet chat rooms, Curtis thought, as he felt a surge of adrenalin pulse through his veins.
CHAPTER 47
K ate followed Imran through the airlock into what would be her home for however long it took to prove or disprove the theory that smallpox could be made to jump species. If they were successful, the gentle chimpanzees would be used as a test bed for developing a vaccine for India-1, and then Ebolapox.
Although the meeting with Richard Halliwell was still a couple of days away, they had already received comprehensive briefings on the layout of the Halliwell laboratories and had been through the security indoctrination; a security that was similar to that at the Centers for Disease Control. The transfer of the viruses and the chimpanzees had gone without incident, although Kate knew that neither the vet nor the chimps were happy. It was almost as if the chimps sensed something was about to happen.
‘I take it we’re going ahead with this?’ Dr Richard Myers was shouting to be heard above the air that was rushing into his spacesuit.
Imran and Kate nodded.
The anger on Richard’s face was visible through his heavy plastic face shield. Kate could only sympathise with the Centers for Disease Control’s longest serving veterinary surgeon as he made his way back towards the animal room.
Imran and Kate shuffled over to one of two vaults that now housed one half of the world’s repository of smallpox. The other half was still in Koltsovo in the wastes of the Siberian desert. The big stainless steel vault that was clearly visible was a decoy. If anyone did manage to break in without setting off the sophisticated Variola alarms, they would find a freezer that contained nothing more than smallpox vaccines. A smaller vault behind held the critical freezer.
Imran inserted the special key that partly deactivated the alarm system to the smaller vault, then he stepped back to allow Kate to insert hers. The keys were kept apart and the vaults always had to be opened by Imran and Kate together. Imran dialed in one combination and again stepped back to allow Kate to work on the second tumbler. Kate turned the stainless steel wheel and swung the big door open. At the back of the vault, chained to the floor, was another innocuous-looking stainless steel container on wheels, about the size of a dirty dishes trolley that might be found in any canteen. Kate shivered involuntarily as she fumbled for another key that would unlock one of the huge padlocks.
Imran and Kate pushed the trolley over to the area that was assigned for preparation of the strain of smallpox they would be using on the chimps. The big heavy cylinder set in the middle of the trolley had been fuelled with liquid nitrogen which kept the temperature down to minus 300 degrees. Icy fumes wafted from the container as Kate very gently eased the cover off. Employing a pair of long forceps with the precision of a heart surgeon, Kate located the small plastic box that held the cryovials of the deadly strain of smallpox. It had first been called India-1 by the Russians after a strain that had been discovered in India in 1959 when a Russian tourist had returned to Moscow, infecting nearly 50 people before Russian doctors and scientists had been able to successfully quarantine the outbreak. India-1 was not only the most virulent strain of smallpox, it was more resistant and retained its infectiousness longer than any other, making it an excellent choice for any rogue State that wanted to weaponise it. Kate and Imran prepared the vials of the deadly pathogen for transmission to the monkeys. It was going to be a long, painstaking and very dangerous process.
Maverick, the alpha male, was vocalising loudly towards the other cages as Kate and Imran shuffled into the monkey room, Kate carefully pushing a stainless steel transfer trolley that contained the prepared batches of
