Third World War (54 page)

West's eyes changed from dull defeat to curiosity. 'Still in charge?'

'As we headed out from Beijing,' said Campbell, 'I was able to log the different units deployed towards the centre of the city. They are still under satellite surveillance and the embassy compound has still not been breached, meaning that someone is holding them back. In fact, the Chinese troops are further away now than when we were there. On the flight from Mongolia to here, I got the Pentagon China desk to run an analysis on the Chinese military units. The main move against President Song is coming from a place known as the Second Department of the People's Liberation Army. It's the leading force behind China's expansion of intelligence gathering, and has moved into Myanmar, the Paracel Islands and Laos. It built the listening station in Cuba and was responsible for the deal that ended up with missiles being shipped there. Their office is above ground in North Andeli Street, Beijing. That building, sir, is surrounded by troops and police loyal to President Song. There are more soldiers there than around our embassy. What we don't know is what is happening in the main command and control centre in the Western Hills. I imagine they are keeping their options open, and waiting to see which way the political wind blows.'

West listened hard, forcing himself to absorb what Campbell was saying. He was both in control of himself and on the point of exploding rage. While the smallpox virus might be floating in the air around them, Campbell was talking in a cold, unflinching and purposeful way, on a topic which was so removed from the immediate catastrophe that West saw how it might be a solution, albeit one that had come too late.

'The police and emergency services in Beijing remain loyal to Jamie Song. The Mayor of Beijing is not under arrest and is making radio broadcasts. The self-financing military units are with Jamie Song as well. They cannot afford the economic collapse of China. The problem is coming from the Second Artillery unit, which runs the missile programme, and military command areas in the north, closest to North Korea and Japan. There is also rebellion in Fujian across the straits from Taiwan.'

'Can you get me Jamie Song?'

'Yes, sir,' said Newman. 'The Mayor of Beijing is on standby. We'll call him. He'll patch us through to Song. I have already spoken to Andrei Kozlov. He'll come across too.'

'OK. Let's do it,' said West, standing up and glancing down at Lizzie. 'Meenakshi, do you think your father would do a worldwide broadcast for us?'

Meenakshi looked up, startled. Her mind had been somewhere else. 'What do you mean?' she asked cautiously. 'I'm not sure Dad's in any state to talk to anyone.'

'As far as I can make out, Vasant Mehta is the only decent man among all of us. He took the risk for peace and lost. Why? Because we didn't do our jobs properly. In a few days, maybe a few hours, we're going to have a smallpox epidemic. There is no way we can cordon off Washington, New York or wherever else they've struck. That virus is going to spread. It's going to be down in Mexico, then through Latin America. It'll turn up in Europe, Africa and Asia. We cannot fight the virus and fight each other at the same time. We cannot afford to exact revenge. We have to contain the epidemic, eradicate it, and only then, if we really want to, should we pick up on the war.'

Newman was on her feet, taking off her glasses, with her hand to her chin. 'Mr President, you are not advocating a ceasefire on the Korean peninsula?'

'North Korea's the exception. Once Park Ho and his henchmen are neutralized, yes, I do propose a ceasefire. And if Jamie Song still has power, I think we can do it. If we fail, this world has only got one place to go, and that's on to the shit heap.' He put his hands affectionately on Newman's shoulders.

Forgetting where he was for a moment, and not caring who else he was with, 'Thank God you're back safely,' he said, kissing her on the forehead.

****

66*

****

Fort Detrick, Maryland, USA*

Only an expert scientist's eye would recognize what Caroline was looking at - a genetically engineered bioweapon supervirus. On a computer screen in a level-four biocontainment laboratory at Fort Detrick, she examined the image being sent to her from the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta. She identified the familiar contours and shades of variola major, its graceful near-figure-of-eight curves, wrapped in its usual host-cell membrane, giving off grey shades, with faded pink and blue on the edges like an aura. She was looking at the most complicated type of animal virus, yet against what she had in the other microscope it was horribly simple.

In her own microscope was the same virus, but with the interleukin-4 gene. It had created an extra layer across the top lateral body, minuscule to the untrained eye, but deadly in its simplicity. Caroline saw immediately how it would be resistant to standard vaccine.

It was not difficult to buy interleukin-4 and put it into a virus. Yet Park Ho had jumped a number of stages by taking the samples from the Australian laboratory, whose scientists had done much of his work for him.

Caroline lifted her head and wanted to rub her eyes, but the mask and biohazard spacesuit prevented her. She should have anticipated this. There should have been a warning years ago. Pox viruses were wide open for genetic engineering, and any rogue state would know how to do it. What did they care that millions could be wiped out? They had different minds. Different motives. The argument was dead that no nation would do anything as horrific as deliberately to introduce a killer disease with no antidote. There was no longer any logic of restraint. But the reality was that the United States, let alone the rest of the world, had no drug to stop this disease.

Caroline, alone in the laboratory, absorbed this stark truth. Up at Camp David, she had got it so, so wrong. Six months, she had told Jim West. Yet Park Ho had had it already prepared then. America's vaccine, though, was no closer to being ready. And the standard vaccine, for all she knew, would, far from curing them, make people more susceptible to the disease.

She picked up the phone and called Tom Patton. 'It's confirmed,' she said. 'We don't know what we're dealing with.'

'OK,' said Patton slowly. 'We have more cases now. One checked into a clinic near Reagan National and is now at GW Hospital. Two cases in New York, three cases in Pittsburgh, one in Colorado, two in California - Sacramento and San Francisco.'

'You mean confirmed cases?'

'No, sorry, Caroline. These are symptoms.'

'Right, Tom. Symptoms,' she repeated. 'But damn certain to be actual cases. All health workers have already been immunized with the vaccinia anti-smallpox vaccine. Let's leave them as they are--'

'Even if it doesn't work?'

'Hold on. Let me finish.' She was too brittle. It had been a long day. A long week. 'The vaccinia vaccine does not contain the variola virus. It's a calf-lymph derivative. We need to try some quick experiments with reformulated vaccines. We can now get a DNA sequence from the IL-4/variola major virus. We should get all strains of the vaccinia virus - Temple of Heaven, Copenhagen, NYCBOH. We need the DNA sequences to all the variola major that we've mapped - India-1967, Yamata, Bangladesh-1975, Aralsk and whatever else they have done in Russia - to determine which, if any, we can draw from for the IL-4 element. Have we got anything in from Moscow yet? Remember I talked about it? The Soviets created a cloned library of variola DNA fragments. They have a complete analysis of the smallpox genome since it could be used as a biological weapon. We need all that data, right now. And we should start with Cidofovir as a new test vaccine. It's brilliant. It gets absorbed by the host cell and then converts into an agent which kills rogue cells. They've added a molecule of lipid or fat and it kills cowpox in mice. It's not so effective with monkeypox in macaques--'

'Stop,' shouted Patton. 'Caroline. Stop. You're losing me. I don't know what the hell you're talking about. And hold . . . I have another call coming in.'

Caroline drew a breath. Yes. He was right. She was gushing, trying to empty her mind all at once; trying to find some reason for optimism.

'Juliet Mary Diamond died with a seizure shortly after being vaccinated,' said Patton.

Caroline felt distant from the news, somehow disconnected - in the same way she had tried to make herself in the days following Peter's murder. 'She was our first patient? George Washington Hospital, right?'

'That's right,' said Patton tiredly. 'Juliet Mary Diamond. The first.'

'Then we have no antidote, Tom. In fact, it's worse,' she said slowly, hearing her own uneven breathing through the apparatus. She wished she could rip off the damn mask and take in air properly. 'She should have survived at least a week after admission. The vaccine strain killed her more quickly. We have no antidote, Tom.'

'I know.'

'So from now on, every patient who checks in will be our guinea pig.' Caroline was thinking as she was speaking, spacing her words, so they weren't rushed, and both she and Patton knew exactly what she was saying. 'We will test on them every variation of every vaccine we can create until one works. It might kill them. It might save them. We don't tell anyone. We don't tell anyone about IL-4.'

'As soon as we announce smallpox, they'll be queuing up for vaccines.'

'We inoculate them, but give the healthy ones water,' said Caroline. 'Because if we use the vaccinia vaccine we'll be killing people who might otherwise survive.'

****

67*

****

Dukchun Palace, Pyongyang, North Korea*

The air was becoming contaminated with the stench from above ground. Smoke heavy with tiny particles of debris leaked through the outdated ventilation system and was being pumped into the laboratories beneath. The bombing had been so concentrated that Park Ho doubted the structure would withstand another wave. His only communication outside the country was through the fibre-optic link to the Chinese command and control centre at Shenyang across the northern border. They were choosing what to tell and what to show him. They told him that North Korean forces had broken through South Korean and US defences; that Camp Bonifas had been overrun; that his agents were causing terror in Seoul, with car bombs, assassinations and drive-by shootings; that the airport was in flames; Tokyo was destroyed; Sato and his mistress Kiyoko were dead, and Yamada had fled to the US base in Okinawa; that Ahmed Memed was in Beijing under the protection of the new government; that Hassan Muda's bomb had devastated Times Square, and that West was expected to beg for peace within the hour; that Park Ho would be victorious.

Park Ho thanked Shenyang for the news. He wondered if Ahmed Memed had told them about the variola major experiments. In all the planning, Ho had never mentioned it, knowing that, even by Chinese standards, he might be seen as going too far. Qureshi had not known either. For Memed, an epidemic that could wipe out the human race would have a religious dimension. God would decide who lived and died; therefore God would recreate the world. Memed's belief was so strong that he expected the virus to distinguish between the chosen and the godless. And Park Ho had let him think that. After all, it was Memed's bombers who were waiting for the signal all over the United States and Europe.

But he had not told Memed about the vaccine. Only Li Pak and his team knew about that, and about how powerful a weapon a simple syringe and vaccine would become.

By now Park Ho was used to the different grades of biological warfare production. He stopped in a small chamber, totally quiet except for the hum of the pressurized air flow, and put on a biohazard suit. Behind the glass, he saw Li moving towards him through a complex network of rooms. Li was alone, and there was something hesitant about the way he moved.

The last time he had been here, Park had seen an array of animals - rodents, sheep, primates - each in its own cubicle into which was pumped air laced with the smallpox virus.

What Park Ho now saw made him stare at Li in complete anger. Not because the virologist was incompetent. He was far from that. But any talent, however great, could not be tolerated in the face of insubordination. Park Ho had expected to meet the recovered British ambassador, Bob Robertson. Instead, he was faced with fresh prisoners from the labour camps, both men and women, covered in oozing pustules, some of which were so close together that it was impossible to see the skin between.

Li's terrified eyes faced him through the mask. 'We need more time!'

'Robertson? Where is he?'

'Dead, comrade,' stammered Li, trying to find sanctuary in the old Marxist form of address.

'Jozsef Striker?'

'Dead.' He pressed his finger against a glass cubicle where a figure lay shivering on the floor. The pustules covered so much of the skin that he couldn't tell the sex of the victim. 'That is why I have to resort to using them again.' Li's head was lowered, his voice through radio communication quivering and pleading. 'We need more time, General. Science is not exact--'