they’ll be tipped off. I won’t be happy until I’ve got these vials back in our Embassy in Beijing and in the black bag.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ Kate said firmly.
Curtis shook his head. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘Haven’t I earned my spurs yet,’ Kate snapped, but then her anger subsided quickly. She could see that Curtis was only trying to protect her, and for that she was grateful.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘we haven’t seen enough of each other for me to have had time to tell you this, but much to my father’s annoyance I used to be a member of a pistol club. I can handle that. 44 Magnum of yours probably better than you can.’
Curtis grinned and raised his eyebrows as if to say ‘really?’
‘You and I both know there’s a very strong chance that if those vials are at the Qingdao Bear Farm, they’re headed for a Beijing crammed with three million extra people from God knows how many hundreds of thousands of towns and cities around the world. You might know a bit about polymerase chain reactions,’ Kate said, her green eyes recovering their sparkle, ‘but I’m the expert on viruses and I’m coming with you.’
‘What about Imran?’ Curtis suggested in a last but futile attempt.
‘Because he’s a man?’ Kate responded.
‘I’ll need to use the secure phone in your office,’ Curtis said, not entirely disappointed Kate would be accompanying him. ‘Tom McNamara will need to hold off the Wunderkind and getting a CIA jet to Beijing is a bit above my pay grade, although it might have a double bed!’
Kate punched him in the shoulder as they made their way to the floor below.
CHAPTER 96
P resident Bolton was surprised to find the Speaker of the House, Davis Burton, waiting for him as he arrived on Capitol Hill to address a history-making joint sitting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. He’d been briefed that procedures would be identical to those employed when a President delivered a State of the Union address and that he would be escorted by the Sergeant at Arms. No President could enter the House Chamber without first being issued a formal invitation and being escorted to his place at the podium.
‘I apologise for the break in procedure, Mr President, but a matter of the utmost importance has arisen that you need to be briefed on.’
‘Can’t this wait, Burton, I have a speech to make,’ President Bolton replied irritably.
‘No it can’t, Mr President. I need to brief you in my office before you enter the chamber.’
‘This better be good, Burton,’ President Bolton snapped.
The Sergeant at Arms followed at a discrete distance, determined to do his duty, but still struggling to come to terms with the enormity of the conspiracy to attack the world in Beijing and his President’s involvement. A short distance away, an unusual silence had descended on the packed and normally vocal chamber.
‘Are these yours, Mr President,’ Davis Burton asked, pushing a document across his desk towards President Bolton seated on the other side. The document contained details of the nearly $50 million in bribes that had been deposited in Bolton’s account under the name of Charles Boardman.
‘How dare you!’ President Bolton exploded. ‘I’ll have you flung out on the street for this.’ The President had turned a peculiar shade of pale.
‘I don’t think so, Mr President.’ Right to the last, Davis Burton adhered to the protocol of calling the disgraced and criminally negligent President by his title. Speaker Davis Burton pressed a button on the high fidelity recording the CIA had provided of the conversation between Bolton and Richard Halliwell in his office. As the tape finished, President Bolton had become paler still. ‘A super virus is no respecter of international borders, Richard. I don’t give a shit how many millions of these slanty-eyed Chinese we wipe out, the more the better, but we’d want to make damn sure we had a vaccine to protect Americans, especially our athletes before we released it.’ ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head, Chuck. Dolinsky is one of the few people, and perhaps the only one who could develop both the virus and its vaccine quickly. I can look after the distribution in Beijing, but I’d need your help to get the virus in through the black bag.’
At the last moment, Tom McNamara and the Speaker of the House had briefed both the Director of the United States Secret Service and the Director of the CIA. Two Secret Service agents normally charged with protection stood outside the Speaker of the House’s office, ready to assist the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms, the only man empowered under the Constitution to arrest the President. The Director of the CIA had been apoplectic at not being told but McNamara had looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I’ve seen a lot of Directors in my time, but you’re arguably the worst and if you want proof, just look up the file on Bill Crawford. He was decapitated because you refused to give young agents enough training to equip them to operate in some of the godforsaken places we send them. By the time we get to the bottom of this cesspool, you’re the one who’s going to need re-training because your mates in the White House aren’t going to save you.’
The Sergeant at Arms need not have worried about having backup. The last of the evidence on the tape was not as damning as the plans for Beijing, but it would be enough to put the President behind bars for a very long time. ‘The fewer people that know about this, the better, Chuck. Genetic engineering’s come a long way and provided they’re at the top of their field, two scientists will be enough. You think you can sell it in Washington?’ ‘I sold the idea of a new $500 million bio-level four complex for you, and I’ll be working on the contract for the production of smallpox vaccines as well, which comes in at half a billion; and the last time I looked, your contracts in Iraq this year topped $300 million.’ ‘You will find there will be $10 million of that in your Bahamas account by the end of the week.’
The President of the United States of America slumped in his chair.
‘I intend to see to it that you face the full force of the law, Mr President,’ demanded Davis Burton. ‘For the moment that will be restricted to the bribes you’ve taken over the years. The members of the Senate and the House have only been given enough detail to ensure their cooperation and silence on this extraordinary conspiracy in Beijing. You’ve been a party to one of the most sinister plots in the history of mankind. My colleagues and I agree that it is in neither America’s nor the world’s interest to make this public, but that will depend on whether or not we can recover the vials.’
President Bolton’s eyes widened in horror.
‘No, Mr President, they have not, as you previously authorised, been delivered through the American Embassy’s diplomatic bag to Halliwell’s paid thugs. Two weeks ago they were stolen from Halliwell’s laboratories by Dolinsky, the man you insisted we give assistance to defect. Dr Eduard Dolinsky works for al-Qaeda. Curtis O’Connor is going to attempt to recover these vials. If he doesn’t, I can’t think what the outcome might be, except for one certainty. You will die in the electric chair. Either way, may the Lord have mercy on you for your betrayal of the high office to which you were entrusted.’
The President nodded in a daze.
The Sergeant at Arms, accompanied by the two Secret Service agents escorted the President to a side door where a car was waiting. Davis Burton had insisted that the images of a President under arrest not be beamed around the world by the mass of media waiting for the President to re-emerge after his speech on the Hill. With a grim determination, Burton walked towards the chamber to deliver a history-making speech of his own.
‘It is with a deep sense of sadness that I announce to my fellow Americans, and to the world that the President of the United States has been arrested.’
Gasps of disbelief could be heard in the visitors’ gallery.
‘As Vice President, and as our chief executive, President Bolton has been involved in serious criminal activities, including the acceptance of millions of dollars in bribes.’ The carefully worded statement allowed for further elaboration on those activities should the Beijing conspiracy ever become public.
‘I expect many in the wider community will want to know why impeachment proceedings have not been brought. In this case, the crimes are so serious and the evidence so compelling that when confronted with that evidence a short while ago in the Office of the Speaker, the President had no defence.’ Davis Burton waited while
