Resurrection Day (6 page)

In the confines of the underground laboratory in Maryland, Tom Murphy, the head of the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Division, felt like shit.

In fact, he'd just spent one of the worst nights of his life, staying awake through the early hours, drinking coffee by the barrel-load and trying to fend off the crushing need for sleep that threatened to take him to the edge of collapse. Before the business at the Union Station that morning he'd worked a straight fourteen hours at the FBI's Washington headquarters and hadn't seen his wife in almost two days. Shit happens, he told himself, but somehow it always seemed to happen to him.

As he stood in the glass-fronted office, sipping coffee, the door opened behind him and an FBI agent from the HMRU — Hazardous Materials Response Unit — poked his head round.

'They're almost done, Tom.'

'How much more time?'

'A couple of minutes, according to Professor Fredericks. Says he'll be right with you as soon as he's got the final result. Then I guess we can all go home and get some rest.'

'Let's hope so. Right this minute, I'd sleep in a kid's stroller.'

The agent smiled and left, closing the door. Murphy poured another cup of coffee from the percolator beside him, spooned in two sugars, and took a long sip, hoping the caffeine would keep him awake. He had passed the pain barrier about 7 a.m. and right now it seemed he was operating on autopilot, feeling a little woozy and barely hanging in there. His eyelids drooped, and his aching body felt as if a couple of toughs had worked him over.

The source of his sleeplessness and irritation was out there in the laboratory beyond the glass-fronted office: the package found in locker number 02-08 at Gate C, Union Station. Bright light flooded the lab area; it looked like a scene out of a sci-fi movie. Technicians walked around in white biohazard suits wearing glass-bubble helmets with airlines attached to them. The Biological and Chemical Research Laboratory in Maryland was one of the most frightening places in the world, Murphy reckoned.

Samples of every bacteriological strain, every gas or poisonous substance known to man, were contained there in platinum-sealed containers, kept a hundred feet below ground in pressurised vaults. And it didn't end there. The entire structure was built on spring-loaded piles, to protect the building from nuclear shock. Which wasn't really surprising when you considered that there were enough deadly samples stored in the vaults to wipe America off the map.

Murphy rubbed his eyes to stay awake. The package from the station had been X-rayed, revealing a sealed vial inside. Shaped like a laboratory test tube, four inches long, it looked as if it had nothing inside. But whatever it was, his superiors had decided that this was one for the experts. Within half an hour, a team from the FBI's Hazardous Materials Response Unit had arrived in a special transporter and taken the package away in a sealed, cushioned container. Murphy had followed in his car with two of his senior men, and almost five hours later he was still at the laboratory, patiently awaiting the analysis results. Professor Fredericks, the lab director, had told him that on visual inspection the sealed vial was made of thick shatterproof glass and appeared to contain a minute trace of brown, viscous liquid. That was all the information Murphy had so far.

The door opened and a small, gnome-like man with a heavily stooped back entered, wearing a white lab coat and carrying a sheaf of papers. Murphy drained his paper cup, crushed it in his palm and tossed it in the bin. 'What have you got for me, Professor?'

Professor Elliot Johnson Fredericks wore half-rim glasses, and his sober expression made him look like Mr Serious. When Murphy had first met him earlier that morning he knew immediately that the professor wasn't the kind of guy to linger over a beer or pass a fun evening of stud poker with. But then he guessed that anyone who was a key-holder to a Pandora's box that could wipe out half the planet wouldn't exactly have been comedian material either.

Fredericks removed his glasses and looked troubled as he held up the sheaf of pages. 'I've got the results. But first, I'd like to clarify something.'

'What?'

'You said this entire matter was to be kept absolutely secret?'

'Correct.'

'Even so, if only for the sake of my curiosity, as director of this laboratory, do you mind telling me what the hell's going on? Where did you get this vial?'

'Sorry, Professor. This goes a lot higher than me. The bottom line is everyone here keeps their mouths zipped — and I mean airtight — until you get the say-so to do otherwise. I've no doubt you and your colleagues are used to that kind of injunction. You work for a government establishment.'

Fredericks looked affronted, handed over the sheaf of stapled pages. 'Look at the last page of the report, please. It identifies the contents of the vial.'

Murphy accepted the pages. Most of the report was written in technical jargon he couldn't understand, complete with tables of analysis figures. He quickly nicked to the last page, which read like a summary of results, but written in reasonably plain English. He took several minutes to digest the lines, then looked up, open mouthed. 'You've just got to be kidding me, Professor.'

'We did three individual tests, to be absolutely certain. There isn't a shred of doubt.'

9.45 a.m.

Nikolai Gorev sat forward on the couch and flicked the TV remote to NBC news, keeping the volume low. A newsman was giving his report at the scene of a bungled filling-station robbery in Georgetown, where two youths had been shot dead by police. Gorev flicked through the other news channels, national and local, and sampled the bulletins.

Violent robberies, shootings, race-related crimes and murder: a killing spree by two students at a high school in Idaho which had left three students dead and four wounded; two white men in Alabama had knifed a homeless black man to death because he'd asked them for money. Life was going on normally, or as normally as it could in America. No panic in the streets since the taped message had been delivered, or dire warnings to Washington's citizens about an imminent threat to their capital. Which meant the people in the White House were obeying their instructions.

Gorev flicked off the set. He'd slept for barely four hours after he had returned with Mohamed Rashid from the cemetery in Floraville, but he was wide awake now, his adrenalin flowing. He heard the shower running in the bathroom. After a few minutes it stopped and Karla Sharif appeared wearing a bathrobe, the flimsy cotton straining against her hips and buttocks. 'Did you keep watch on the news?'

Gorev tossed the remote on the coffee table. 'There were no warnings.'

Karla sat down beside him. She had a face that changed from interesting to beautiful, depending on her mood, and the kind of figure that could make other women envious. Gorev knew that with its high model's cheekbones and almond-shaped brown eyes it was a face that could stop men in their tracks. But that wasn't why he loved this woman; there were countless other reasons. 'By now the Americans will have had time to digest the contents of the tape. And most probably they'll have analysed the vial.'

'What if they make the threat public, or try to evacuate the city?'

'According to Rashid, they won't, not if they've any sense. How could they empty a city under our noses, Karla? We'd see it happening. Believe me, the Americans will play this game exactly as they're told to.'

'And if they look for us?'

Gorev saw the sudden strain on her face, looked into her eyes, touched her cheek. 'No doubt they will. But Rashid's plan is foolproof. And if we follow it we'll all come out of this alive.' He let his hand fall away, looked at his watch. 'You better go, or you'll be late and Rashid will get worried.'

Karla stood. 'You don't want to come with me?'

Gorev shook his head, got to his feet. He reached across the couch, retrieved his jacket, made sure the Beretta pistol was tucked inside the pocket. 'It's better we go separately. You can bet that by now the Americans will be trying to find us. What time do we meet?'

'Noon,' Karla said, and kissed him on the cheek. 'Rashid and I will pick you up at Dupont Circle at noon.'

Washington, DC Sunday, 11 November 8.30 a.m.

The National Security Council meeting got under way on schedule in the White House situation room. It was a solemn-looking President, dressed in a suit and tie, who entered the chamber. Among those round the table were Alex Havers, the Vice-President, along with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the heads of the FBI and CIA, the Secretary of State, and the Defence Secretary. The fourteen men and two women waiting in the situation room that morning were the President's closest advisers and confidants — several among them were the heads of executive departments or senior military officers — and they all got to their feet out of respect.

President Andrew W. Booth spoke in the homely tone he sometimes liked to employ. 'First of all, I'd just like to thank you all for being here.' He paused briefly for effect. 'I'd also like to say that I earnestly hope that the crisis that has brought us all here this morning is nothing more than a madman's bluff. Because if it's not, then we've all got a very difficult and trying time ahead of us.'

The situation room itself — known as the sit-room to those working in the White House — was unremarkable: cream-painted walls and a large rectangular table with inexpensive chairs. Yet it was the core of breathtaking power. Here, plans to crush Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's occupation troops in Kuwait with operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm had been deliberated upon. At the touch of a button a massive screen came down from one wall. Another button swept aside two huge curtains, to reveal an electronic map board. Beside each seat was a secure telephone, routed through the nearby Communications Unit, where banks of electronic telecommunications consoles and television screens linked the White House to Strategic Air Command, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, and every nerve centre of government that came under the President's control.

If the Council members so wished, the Communications Unit could relay images from any US military or civilian satellite hovering in the earth's stratosphere. They could discern the face of a peasant farm-worker toiling in the fields of a remote Chinese province, or study the progress of the new villa that a senior Iraqi commander was having constructed on the outskirts of Baghdad.

A call from the sit-room could dispatch lethal firepower from any US military aircraft, army base or naval vessel anywhere in the world — from instructing the watch commander of a nuclear warhead site hidden in a Midwest silo that he was to dispatch his deadly salvo to ordering the captain on board a destroyer in the South China Seas to fire a cruise missile, and at any chosen target within striking distance.

The men and women present that morning wielded enormous collective power. But less than twenty minutes after the meeting began — once the crisis had been outlined and they had viewed Abu Hasim's video on the large screen behind the President — their reactions said it all: shock, fear, dread, emphasising a dilemma of truly serious proportions, one they had never faced before.

The President turned to FBI Director Douglas Stevens, the man whose Bureau was responsible for protecting America from terrorist threats. 'Doug, perhaps you can fill everybody in on what's been happening since we received the package this morning.'

'Yes, Mr President.' Stevens cleared his throat, addressed everyone at the table. 'We've determined that the videocassette is of German manufacture, part of a large batch exported to at least a dozen countries in the Middle East. According to our lab, the recording itself was made under non-professional conditions. There's a lot of hum and noise in the background which wouldn't have been present had it been made in a soundproofed studio. Unfortunately the background noise is of indeterminate source. And there are no fingerprints on any of the material it's completely clean. The handwritten note and the two typed pages containing the prisoner names are being examined by the Secret Service, at their behest — their paper and ink experts are among the best this country has, so if there's any evidence to be gleaned, they'll find it. We've also no indications yet as to why the Saudi diplomat should have been chosen as a conduit for Hasim's message. We're still working on the contents of the package found at the Union Station, Mr President. But I expect results within the next hour. I've given an instruction that as soon as they come through, I'm to be contacted here.'

'Have we any idea who left it at the station?'

'We got hold of Amtrak security's videotape that recorded someone depositing a package in box 02-08 at Gate C, at about eight p.m. last night.' Stevens saw he had the complete attention of everyone present. 'Unfortunately, the person in question wore a dark blue parka with the hood up, and a scarf over their face, so identification was impossible. They also wore gloves, so we couldn't get any prints.'

'Could you tell if it was a man or woman?' Rebecca Joyce, a tall, striking black woman, and one of the two female NSC members, spoke up. The product of a working-class family from Detroit, Joyce was a brilliant Harvard graduate who had a reputation for being one of Booth's most ardent supporters.

'We think it was a man, but we're not a hundred per cent certain.'

The President sighed and addressed his next question to a tall, thin man with a shock of grey hair. In his late fifties, clean shaven, with the slim build of an athlete, Richard 'Dick' Faulks was a Princeton-educated lawyer and the Director of the CIA, responsible for gathering intelligence on foreign terrorist groups which threathened the USA. 'Dick, do we have any intelligence to suggest that Abu Hasim might have been ready to try something like this?'

'Mr President, as we're all well aware, al-Qaeda has carried out serious crimes against America in the past,' replied Faulks. 'The bombings of our embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania, and the attack on the USS Cole, have been the worst so far. And al-Qaeda has made it pretty much publicly known that they intended further attacks against the US. But we've had no firm intelligence to suggest that they might try and carry out something quite as big as this.'

'What about the Saudis,' the President queried. 'Have you been in touch with them yet?'

'No, sir. In my opinion, it's a little bit early for that. Granted, they really should be in on this, as well as the other countries that are holding imprisoned terrorists on the list. But just for now, I'd like to keep it as close to our chests as possible.'

The President paused to reflect, tapping his palm on the table. 'Tell me, Dick, do we know if al-Qaeda is capable of producing a weapon powerful enough to destroy Washington?'

'No, sir, we've no evidence. We know they've tried to get their hands on nuclear material in the past, if that's what you mean, sir. And we know they've attempted to secure supplies of deadly biological and chemical agents. But then so have a lot of other A-category terror groups. We've been doing our best to monitor the situation and up to now we believe they haven't been successful. We've also kept a close watch on their bank accounts, at least the ones we know about, in Switzerland and the Far East. So far as we can tell, there've been no significant movements of funds from any of these accounts which might indicate a payment for materials to manufacture a weapon of mass destruction, or even to purchase such a weapon, ready made.'

The President turned to his right. Two seats away sat his old friend, Charles Rivermount, an adviser to the President on economic policy. A broad, bull-shouldered Mississippian who had made a fortune in private banking, mining and gas exploration, he leaned his solid frame forward in his seat, resting his arms on the table.

'Mr President, I don't mean to speak out of turn, but if you ask me, ain't we wasting our time here? We spend billions of dollars a year on defence. If we want, we can tune into one of our satellites right here and now. See anything we care to on that screen behind you. The rouge on the cheeks of a ten-dollar hooker loitering in the red-light district of Moscow. Or some Burmese peasant wiping his ass in a corner of some paddy field. Surely we can pinpoint Hasim with one of our satellites? Pinpoint him and blow the sonofabitch to hell. Or tell me that isn't possible?'

The President listened to the blunt-speaking Southerner, then nodded at the CIA Director. 'Perhaps you'd care to answer the question, Dick?'

'It isn't quite as simple as that, Mr Rivermount,' Faulks replied. 'Sure, we've got the technology. Satellites that can view a terrorist base from a hundred miles up in the stratosphere. Powerful missiles that can be launched from aircraft or naval vessels. But we've pinpointed Hasim's terrorist bases before, tried to destroy him, and failed. The reasons are simple. Air power and missiles are a blunt weapon, wholly inappropriate for use by themselves in this form of conflict. It's not easy for pilots flying low at five hundred miles an hour over terrain, or a commander on board a destroyer in the Gulf, to identify a target with exactness. Without military personnel or agents on the ground to "paint" the target — by that I mean to verify it — we can make mistakes.

'The core of it is, we'd almost need somebody within Hasim's close circle to paint the target for us, and confirm we'd got him in our sights before we launched an attack. And believe me, we've tried to recruit such people in the past. But Hasim surrounds himself with a tight circle of fanatical followers. Finding someone among his men to betray him has proven impossible. One approach we tried was to a relative of one of his followers. It ended in the Afghan agent we used being tortured to death, decapitated, and his head left in a box outside the American embassy in Islamabad.'

Rivermount's face flushed with subdued anger. 'You ask me, I'd still take the damned chance, find his camps and blow them to hell — '

The President interrupted. 'Charlie, we can't take that risk. We're responsible for the lives of the citizens of this capital, our own included. Until we learn otherwise, we have to assume Hasim has the ability to trigger his weapon remotely. Even if we did manage to destroy him, there's a chance this device of his, whatever it is, would go off in the process, causing massive numbers of deaths.'

Fury got the better of the man from Mississippi. 'But what if Hasim's bluffing, Mr President? What if he's got nothing up his sleeve but a dirty arm and we give in to his crazy demands? You ask me, a situation like this requires only one kind of response. We've got to annihilate the man — put him out of the picture for good.'

Across the table, neither man had noticed the red light flashing on Douglas Stevens's telephone, indicating an incoming call. Stevens picked it up, listened, suddenly raised his hand. 'Mr Secretary, if you could hold a moment. Mr President, sorry to interrupt — '

'Yes, Doug.'

'It's about the vial, sir. We've got the results.'

Fifteen miles away, at the Biological and Chemical Research Laboratory, Tom Murphy had moved to the privacy of Professor Fredericks' office, two floors underground and swamped in harsh neon light.

Murphy put through the call to the White House at 9.05. Within moments he was connected to Douglas Stevens in the situation room. Now Murphy turned to the bemused Fredericks, held out the phone. 'My boss would like you to explain your findings to someone, Professor.'

'Explain to whom?'

'The President of the United States.'

The call had been switched to the speakerphone on the centre of the table, so that everyone could hear the conversation. The President addressed Fredericks. 'Professor, I believe you have completed your tests?'

The voice filtering through the speaker had an unreal, metallic quality, and seemed awed. 'Yes ... yes, sir, Mr President.'

'Would you care to tell us what the vial contains?'

'A minute trace of liquid chemical. Quite an incredible solution really. We examined the component parts to determine — '

'Excuse me, Professor Fredericks, I don't mean to be rude, but we're all laymen here, not chemists. In simple terms, what is the liquid?'

'A variation of a deadly chemical agent known as VX, sir. As I'm sure you're well aware, VX is a nerve gas. One of the most lethal known to man. But this sample we've analysed is even deadlier.'

'How so?'

'The basic VX chemical formula has been altered to greatly enhance the toxicity of the nerve agent.' Fredericks sighed in frustration. 'It's kind of difficult to explain in layman's terms, Mr President, without going into technical details. But if I were to try to put it simply, think of our sample as a kind of concentrated form of VX nerve gas. Which means you get a far more fatal effect for a smaller amount of the nerve gas. More death for your dollar, if you like. It's really quite amazing. A brilliant feat of chemistry.'

The President paused, couldn't fail to discern the hint of professional excitement in Fredericks' voice. 'I'd like to ask you a question, Professor. Could a chemical like this wipe out the population of a city the size of Washington?'

Before Fredericks' voice replied he paused for a moment, as if to register his alarm at the question. 'Mr President, the power of this chemical is simply way beyond anything you can imagine. To give an example, the amount of VX you could fit on a pinhead is enough to kill a human being. The chemical we've analysed, in my estimate, could do the same job with one tenth of that amount. But to answer your question I'd have to assume there's a very large quantity of this nerve gas and it could be effectively dispersed over the capital.'

'Then assume both if you must.' There was another pause, then Fredericks' voice came back, tainted with fear. 'Sir, if that's the case, then I'd have to say yes, it could easily wipe out Washington's entire population.'