‘You have an impressive resume, Doctor.’ Curtis O’Connor had decided he would play the feisty Australian by the book. No first names until he had gained her confidence. As he was about to find out, it would be a wise strategy.
‘What I’m about to tell you is classified above top secret, so I’m going to need your agreement that regardless of your decision it doesn’t go out of this room, and that you don’t mention it to anyone without my permission.’
‘You’re calling the shots here, Mr O’Connor.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes,’ Curtis said, flashing another disarming smile.
It was hard not to warm to this guy, Kate thought, but as Curtis outlined the real reason for her secondment to Halliwell Pharmaceuticals any softening of her opinion of him disappeared. Kate waited until Curtis had finished. Yet again she had to fight to control her anger over the stupidity of this Administration.
‘Have you any idea of how dangerous this sort of meddling with viruses is?’
Curtis O’Connor looked at her and nodded.
‘I don’t think you do, Mr O’Connor!’ Kate said, her exasperation coming to the fore. ‘I doubt that you people in your cloistered little world have ever heard of polymerase chain reactions, but let me tell you what that technique might produce in the wrong hands.’
He held back a grin. Fascinated by the mysteries of DNA, Curtis O’Connor had done his honours thesis in biochemistry on the very subject he was about to get a lecture on, albeit a lecture from one of the world’s most promising virologists and a very angry one at that. Curtis O’Connor did have strong sympathy for Kate Braithwaite’s views, and her gorgeous looks hadn’t escaped his notice either. He wisely decided against letting her know too much about his background. He wanted her on the program. For the moment it was better to let this explanation run. It might even pay dividends later on, he thought mischievously.
Kate reached across his desk and took the blank yellow pad and pen that were lying near Curtis’ in-tray. She drew the helix for DNA. ‘Deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA, Mr O’Connor, is made up of four nucleotides – adenylate, guanylate, thymidylate and cytidylate.’ Kate’s pencil flashed down the page as she drew the complex structure of phosphodiester bonds and pentose rings that made up the exquisite helix that Watson and Crick, with the help of some others, had discovered in 1953.
‘Otherwise known as A, G, T and C. A always pairs with T, and G always pairs with C. That’s important because if even a minute amount of India-1 strain of smallpox ever gets into the wrong hands, a single strand of smallpox DNA will always pair off with its complimentary sequence, and the bioterrorists can use a probe of known DNA to analyse that sequence. Not only that, Mr O’Connor, using a technique known as polymerase chain reactions, or PCR, means that we only need tiny amounts to produce all of the original DNA. In short, we are getting very close to being able to manufacture the complete genome of smallpox or any other deadly virus.’
Curtis O’Connor listened with wry amusement as Doctor Braithwaite filled three pages, making extremely complex chemistry look simple. She explained the PCR laboratory techniques that would enable a bioterrorist to manufacture new DNA using enzymes that would replicate sequences between primers bound to highly specific sites on the original DNA strand, much the same as DNA replicated itself within a normal cell. As she finished outlining the chilling possibilities of the ‘brave new world’ of biochemistry, her green eyes flashed at him with fury. Doctor Braithwaite would, Curtis thought, make an outstanding Professor if she ever chose to go down that route. Right now he wondered how he might get her on side. He needed her expertise in what would be the most lethal laboratory on the planet.
Kate finished her ‘lecture’ with a final and simple diagram. ‘It’s now possible, Mr O’Connor, to replicate deadly viruses like Ebola, Marburg and smallpox by taking a single strand of nucleic acid and joining it to another to make a double.’
Listening to Kate, Curtis O’Connor almost kicked himself. Of course! Where the single strand meets its double. The chilling words of Khalid Kadeer had suddenly become very, very clear. The final attack would be biological, involving the synthetic manufacture of a virus whose DNA the terrorists had access to.
Curtis O’Connor was only half right. Throughout history science had always had a dark side, and Kadeer was close to harnessing a power that would crush the human race.
CHAPTER 40
K halid Kadeer reached for a date in a bowl on the low table, listening intently as al-Falid outlined his plans for the first warning attack.
‘My original plan was to detonate a large amount of explosive on the bottom of the harbour, to be delivered at night by rolling 44-gallon drums off the back of a slowly moving fishing trawler. The infidel has changed the rules and trawling at night is no longer possible. I’m still hoping that we can get some explosives into position, and we’ve been carrying out tests with small aluminium pontoons that have inflatable airbags attached to them. The main attack will have to be carried out on the surface using HEAT – high explosive anti-tank rockets. But don’t worry, Khalid,’ al-Falid said with a sinister smile. ‘I’m having the trawler modified into a floating shaped charge, and it will follow the HEAT rockets to the target, although the timing will be crucial as it can only happen at high tide.’ al-Falid pushed one of the mats aside and drew a diagram of the target city on the dirt floor, using two candlesticks to mark the extremities of a world-renowned icon. ‘Even though they’re minor, the preliminary attacks on the shore will still cause the infidel untold grief. The land attacks are all scheduled to occur just minutes before the major seaborne attack. If the first ship fails for any reason, a second ship will be following in reserve. The reserve ship’s target is here,’ al-Falid said, pointing to another well-known landmark.
‘The crews for the two ships are in place?’ Khalid Kadeer asked.
‘It’s taken more than four years to bring this to fruition, Khalid, but we have a man on the Ocean Venturer and the tanker makes regular trips from the Middle East to the target. If Allah is willing he will succeed. The plan for the reserve ship is also well advanced. We’ve secured a long lease on the Jerusalem Bay, a 7500-ton container ship. It’s only small but it will suit our purpose.’
Khalid smiled. The name of the second ship held a powerful irony. ‘And the fertiliser?’ he asked.
‘We have a contract with the UN to deliver fertiliser to Liberia. The infidels weren’t interested in such a small contract, so it has worked out perfectly.’ It had indeed been a masterstroke. ‘We’re also in the process of having the Jerusalem Bay registered in the target port. As a regular visitor to the port the harbour authorities will get used to it coming and going and they will relax the need for entry with a pilot.’
Nearly 9000 kilometres away, the Jerusalem Bay was to the north of the port of Monrovia, maintaining a steady 12 knots in the pre-dawn darkness. The cargo had been provided by UN funding for the struggling war-torn nation of Liberia. In amongst the badly needed water pumps and generators were twenty containers of fertiliser from the target country. Not all of the contents of the containers would be delivered to the farmers who desperately needed it. Five very special containers would be filled with fertiliser explosive in a heavily guarded warehouse on the outskirts of a Muslim ghetto in Paynesville, 16 kilometres down the coast road from the capital, Monrovia.
‘The regional seed and fertiliser company that we purchased in the target country two years ago is producing everything we need, and we’ve also started up a small trucking company in the city itself. It’s not making much money though,’ al-Falid smiled ruefully, ‘because the infidels are corrupt and the big contracts are always worked out in advance.’