to get us down there,’ said Kate.
Nearly an hour later, Kate leaned back from one of the computer screens and stretched her neck wearily as she received confirmation of the online booking. ‘We’re on the XPT to Melbourne,’ she said to Curtis, ‘but I feel really bad about leaving these guys.’
‘We’d only be in the way,’ Curtis assured her. ‘You’re far more valuable back at Halliwell. What time does the train leave?’
‘8.40 p.m.’
‘Single or double beds?’ Curtis asked, eyes dancing. Even in the middle of a crisis he hadn’t lost his sense of humour.
‘First Class, but they’re seats. We don’t run to an Orient Express here,’ Kate said with a smile.
‘Pity, I was looking forward to a nightcap,’ Curtis replied, winking at her.
The Vice President, Secretary of Defense and Dan Esposito accompanied the President up to the Oval Office. The Secretary of State had not been invited.
‘It might be a good idea if you were to pay a flying visit to Australia, Mr President, to show the Australian people that we’re grateful for their support,’ Dan Esposito offered, moving the focus away from Kadeer’s video threats.
‘For fuck’s sake, Dan, the Australians have only got three men and a dog in Iraq and Australia’s at the bottom of the bloody world. Even if the President only stays there for 24 hours, it’s a three day round trip at least,’ the Defense Secretary added pointedly.
‘It’s not how many they’ve got there, Mr President,’ Esposito responded, giving the Defense Secretary a steely glare, ‘it’s the fact that there’s another flag on the coalition flagpole. Right now this coalition of ours is shaky and the Australian Prime Minister is looking pretty rattled. He’s stubborn and he’ll ignore any protests but on his past form, if he thinks something’s going to cost him an election, he’ll do a U-turn. We can’t afford for the Australians to cut and run like the bloody Spanish or Italians. That would look pretty bad in the run up to the next election,’ Dan Esposito concluded, pushing the meaning of ‘hypocrisy’ to new heights.
‘I think Dan’s right, Mr President,’ Vice President Bolton said in a rare display of support for the President’s advisor. ‘They need to stay with us and if that means a little arm-twisting, now’s the time.’
CHAPTER 73
B eijing might have been designed in accordance with an ancient feng shui grid, but to al-Falid’s disgust the city pulsed like any other decadent city in the West. Twenty floors below his room in the five-star hotel on Wangfujing Avenue, not far from QianHai Lake, Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, Beijing’s equivalent of Fifth Avenue and the Champs Elysees throbbed with the heartbeat of a capital that was keen to match the avarice of the West. As the city’s nightlife gathered pace, the bars and restaurants with their or sanpei xiaojie, the ‘ladies of the three accompaniments’ began to fill up.
Tomorrow al-Falid would travel east to Shandong Province and the Qingdao bear farm where he would brief his team leaders on what was required for the final solution, but later tonight he would go online to receive reports on the arrangements that were in hand for the second and third warnings. al-Falid couldn’t understand why Kadeer didn’t move straight to the final solution, release the deadly virus and eliminate the Chinese and Western infidels, but he went along with Kadeer’s warning approach out of a grudging respect for the Islamic philosopher. Kadeer might be going soft, he thought as he went over the arrangements he’d put in place. The success of the second warning attack would depend on al-Falid having cells in sites close to where the alpha rotated if the opportunity arose. It was an opportunity that didn’t arise very often. al-Falid had chosen locations in five countries to maximise the chances of being able to take advantage of it if it did.
The British al-Qaeda cell had rented an apartment close to where the infidel had been on 18 November 2003, but that had been the first time the infidel had been there since 1982, so the chances of it happening again any time soon were probably remote.
The Frankfurt am Main cell, al-Falid knew, had overcome their earlier problems with the Rhein-Main military base. That was now closed, which left Schonefeld as a possibility and the cell members had rented an apartment with good coverage of the area.
For the Moscow cell Sheremetyevo was unlikely; when they were there in November 2006 both infidels had preferred Vnukovo.
The Chaoyang District cell was also ready, but again the sightings had been a long way apart. The first had been on 21 February 1972, and at the time it had caused headlines around the world. The last one had occurred exactly thirty years later on 21 February 2002, which left the fifth cell.
The small cell in Australia, al-Falid knew, was reconnoitering the final attack locations but again, the chances of a successful attack there were slim. The infidel had visited just three times in the country’s entire history: on 23 October 1966, on 19 November 1996, and again very briefly on 23 October 2003, exactly thirty-seven years after the first visit. On the last occasion the local residents had been left holding a $30 million bill for damages. al-Falid and the leader of the Australian cell, Ahmad Rahman, a solidly built young man with a neatly trimmed beard, were of like mind. The chances might be slim but if Allah wished it, they would surely get another opportunity. Al-Falid smiled. ‘When the alpha rotates for the first time.’ Kadeer’s coding had been exquisite.
Ahmad Rahman stood at the lookout and immediately ruled it out. Although this spot commanded sweeping views of the target, if the chance to strike arose, the infidel’s puppets would almost certainly put patrols in this area. Ahmad scanned the target area and then swung his binoculars towards another smaller hill further to the south. It offered even less opportunity as it was located just above a military barracks.
Ahmad drove back down the narrow winding road that provided access to the mountain and turned left onto a highway that connected the main city with a satellite city to the east. He followed the road until he came to the sign he’d been looking for. The Air Disaster Memorial was near the top of a hill in the middle of a pine forest, but when Ahmad tried to drive up the dirt track he found the way blocked. A sign reading ‘Wilson Security’ and a telephone number had been erected beside the heavily padlocked barrier that was blocking the way. Ahmad parked his older model black Jeep Cherokee and set out on foot, taking his map and binoculars. If anyone challenged him he would claim he was bushwalking.
Forty minutes later, he reached a site among the pine trees that was also less than perfect. The range was fine but the visibility wasn’t good and, worse still, the pine forest was a little more open than he’d expected. If the infidel were patrolling this area, he might be discovered. Ahmad scanned the mountain range on the far side of the target area and then stopped and focused his binoculars on a vineyard on the side of hill about 5 kilometres away.
As he walked back to the jeep, Ahmad reflected that of all the targets around the world, this one was surely the most open and the hardest for the infidel to defend. To the south, the foothills of another mountain range came into view where he’d already selected a position if the weather necessitated an attack being made from there. He was in good spirits as he headed back to the highway. If the weather dictated a strike from the north, the hills above the vineyard looked promising. al-Falid poured himself a mineral water and turned his attention to the third warning, for which caesium chloride would be critical. It was not easy to obtain in its highly radioactive form, but Khalid Kadeer had overcome that problem.
Teletherapy used radioactive sources to irradiate and treat tumours and it was very common in developed countries, with over 10,000 machines worldwide. The later machines used cobalt 60 as the radioactive source. Cobalt 60, being a metal, could not be used in an aerosol attack but Kadeer had pointed out to al-Falid that the early machines had been manufactured using caesium chloride and it was these discarded machines he had ordered al-Falid to get hold of. Many of the early machines had been donated as part of well-meaning aid programs for third world countries with ineffective record systems, and even less effective records of disposals. In the late 1990s in Goiania in Brazil, over a hundred thousand people had been tested for radiation exposure after scavengers had broken into an abandoned building that housed an old teletherapy machine. After smashing it apart they distributed a powder that was glowing a deadly blue. The powder was caesium 137.
