CHAPTER 19
P resident Harrison broke the silence. ‘So if you think CDC and USAMRIID might leak, where does that leave us?’ he asked.
‘There is another option, Mr President,’ Vice President Bolton said smoothly. ‘You will recall that we agreed that from time to time, Halliwell might have to work on Level 4 pathogens and the classified contract for Halliwell Pharmaceuticals included the construction of a full Biosafety Level 4 laboratory.’
Esposito’s jowls trembled alarmingly as he jerked his head up from his folder of notes. A surge of white-hot anger pulsed through his veins. He seethed, wondering why he hadn’t been told. It wasn’t the first time the arrogant and ambitious Vice President had kept him in the dark on classified projects. As Esposito brought his fury back under control he made a mental note to remind the President that his electoral advisor needed to be aware of absolutely everything that crossed the President’s desk – everything. There had been a great deal of resistance from the Vice President, but one of the reasons Esposito had insisted on being present at meetings of the war cabinet was to ensure that the Republican Party’s re-election strategy wasn’t threatened by foreign policy decisions. Bolton’s day would come. The Vice President’s chances of gaining the Oval Office lay somewhere below zilch and fuck all.
President Harrison nodded. The Vice President had informed him that the Halliwell laboratory was now protected by security guards, motion alarms, triple fencing and CCT cameras that were monitored 24 hours a day from Halliwell’s main operations centre.
‘That area is completely secure but we need to keep things small,’ Vice President Bolton said, a quiet insistence in his voice. ‘The scientists will have to be leaders in their field and we’ll have to disguise the funding, but I’m sure Richard Halliwell can be trusted to keep access to an absolute minimum. If there is a leak, any scientist on the project will know we won’t be looking very far.’
Dan Esposito’s piggy little eyes narrowed even further. He already had a separate long-range plan for Richard Halliwell. As the Vice President outlined the proposals for bioweapons research, another idea quickly took shape in his agile mind.
‘The funding will have to be black, Mr President,’ Esposito said calmly, looking at the Vice President, giving the impression he already knew about the Halliwell construction.
‘CIA?’ the President asked.
Esposito nodded. ‘It has to be deniable. It can be funded out of O’Connor’s budget and that way you’re at arms’ length.’ Dan Esposito felt a surge of satisfaction at his stroke of genius. This way all the risk would be carried by O’Connor and if anything went wrong he could hang him out to dry.
‘And what do we do about this Dolinsky guy?’ the President asked.
The Vice President had already ensured the Secretary of Defense was on side and he let him make the running.
‘I’ve had my people check him out independently,’ the Secretary of Defense replied authoritatively. Not satisfied that the other agencies that had served the United States for decades were giving him the answers he wanted to hear, the Secretary of Defense had set up his own top-secret cell that provided more palatable intelligence. It would prove to be another disastrous mistake.
‘He’s a brilliant molecular biologist and virologist, Mr President,’ the Secretary of Defense continued, ‘and quite frankly I’d rather he were on our side than al-Qaeda’s. If he wants to defect we should ensure he comes over to us, and the CIA should be told to make that happen.’
‘I agree, Mr President,’ Vice President Bolton said, sensing that even if the President might still be against the development of bioweapons, he would be reluctant to allow al-Qaeda and the Islamists to get their hands on someone like Dolinsky; not to mention that Dolinsky also held the key to his plans for the Beijing Olympics and the dominance of the United States as the world’s only superpower. ‘If you approve the re-introduction of research into biological weapons and I don’t think we can afford not to in light of the latest intelligence reports,’ Bolton pressed, sensing that the President was not yet convinced, ‘Halliwell is going to need the best.’
Vice President Bolton was determined to back the intelligence that best suited his aims of maintaining US supremacy – and his own personal power. Little did Bolton realise what he was unleashing on the world.
CHAPTER 20
‘S hit!’ Kate Braithwaite looked up at her wall clock, grabbed her notebook, locked the door to her office and hurried off to her first meeting with the new Colonel, annoyed that to have any chance of being on time she would have to run.
Two minutes later Kate slowed to a deliberate stroll as she turned the corner of the drab green corridor that led to the conference room, only to find that the door was guarded by a tall, thin Marine Corps Captain with pimply skin, nervously tapping a ridiculously polished boot on the cement floor.
‘Quickly,’ he hissed as Kate approached. ‘The Colonel’s coming.’
Bully for the Colonel, Kate thought, as she smiled sweetly, rolling her eyes and guessing this was the new J ‘what’s-his-number’. Imran caught her eye and winked as she took her place with the advisory group of scientists sitting along one wall. ‘I’ll get you for that,’ she mouthed at him, her eyes twinkling as she made a show of silently sucking in a breath through pursed lips.
Kate exchanged glances with a couple of her closest colleagues. Clearly there was an undercurrent of conspiracy running, and she wondered what ‘Colonel Cluster’ might have in store for them. If the stakes hadn’t been so high it would have been comical. Another Captain was sitting bolt upright against the opposite wall. Kate surmised he was the duty briefer and she shuddered at the prospect of a mind-numbing expose on some obscure mad mullah in outer Baluchistan. The young Captain from the Pentagon was probably too shit-scared of the Colonel to offer anything other than the military line that the United States was winning the war in Iraq, she mused. After Imran had left her office earlier in the day, a colleague had confided in her that not only had Imran’s nickname for the new Colonel caught on, but while she’d been away at the CDC her fellow scientists had enhanced it. She’d been assured that Colonel ‘Clusterfuck’ was infinitely more appropriate and the scientists were running a book on who would get the vote at the end of the year for the most incompetent; the military moron who’d taken over command or the pimply-faced jerk of a captain he’d brought with him as his sidekick. At the moment Captain Crawshaw was marginally in front, not least for his bizarre habit of saluting the Colonel from as far as 100 metres away while at the same time yelling ‘USAMRIID Sir!’ Kate reflected that ‘Panic Palace’, as the scientists called the headquarters, had been taken over by dumb and dumber. Dumber was now hovering nervously inside the conference room doorway.
‘Atten..hun! The Colonel Commanding!’ Captain Crawshaw saluted as Colonel Wassenberg strode into the room. ‘All present and accounted for Sir! USAMRIID Sir!’