‘Then let’s hear it,’ Ben said.
Oppenheim pursed his lips and shifted in his chair. He looked down at his long, bony hands and very carefully laced his fingers together over his knee. His dark crow’s eyes regarded Ben for a moment and then he spoke for the first time. His voice was dry and crackling.
‘The contingency we’re dealing with here can easily be summed up in a single word,’ he said. ‘But first, I feel it necessary to provide you with the relevant background information.’ Oppenheim paused for a few moments, as if weighing his words, chewing over what he was about to divulge. His eyes bored deep into Ben.
‘How much do you know about bioterrorism?’ he asked.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Ben was taken aback by this question so out of the blue. ‘I know what my pay grade in the military allowed me to know,’ he replied after a beat. ‘That some people say it’s a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. While others say that despite all the scaremongering, it’s never resulted in a single successful attack or a single fatality anywhere in the world. A paper tiger.’
Oppenheim nodded gravely. ‘Paradoxically, one might say that both of those statements are true,’ he said. ‘By a combination of vigilance and sheer good old-fashioned luck, we’ve so far managed to avoid disaster. But it’s not been for lack of trying on the part of our enemies. And it would be a serious misjudgement to regard it as a paper tiger. In fact, there exists a long history of private individuals attempting to release biological attacks on the public at large, using agents that can be dispersed through the air, through water or by other means. The first significant attempt took place in Chicago in 1972, when a shoestring “terror” group calling themselves RISE tried to contaminate the city’s drinking water with typhoid virus stolen from a hospital lab where one of them worked. The attack was thwarted before it ever happened. Then there was the 1984 incident in Oregon, an attempt to cause widespread food poisoning from salmonella, which resulted in several cases of illness.’
Oppenheim paused, then went on. ‘Nine years later, in July 1993, a liquid suspension of Bacillus anthracis – that’s anthrax – was aerosolised from the roof of a high building in Kameido, Tokyo, by a religious enclave called Aum Shinrikyo, a potentially devastating attack that only failed because they mistakenly used an attenuated and relatively harmless strain of the disease agent. Then in 2001, anonymous letters mailed to officials in Washington, DC and Santiago, Chile, were found to be contaminated with anthrax spores. Again, thankfully, nobody was hurt. But it gets more serious. The following year, US military and intelligence officials obtained a secret dossier from the Afghanistan home of a Pakistani nuclear physicist and then associate of Osama bin Laden, containing evidence that Al-Qaeda was targeting the Biohazard Level Four facility at Plum Island near New York as a potential source of bio-warfare materials. Then in 2008, the Pakistan-born and US-educated neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui was sentenced to eighty-six years in prison for conspiracy to commit acts of bioterrorism.’
‘The Grey Lady of Bagram,’ Ben said. ‘Otherwise known as Prisoner six-five-o. There are plenty of psychopathic mass murderers who’ve been put away for just a fraction of that time. Not what you might call entirely fair.’
Oppenheim shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘You could say the Americans treated her a little harshly, overreacting in the wake of nine/eleven. Then again, you could say that a known associate of Al-Qaeda caught in possession of significant quantities of highly toxic substances and plotting mass-casualty attacks on US soil wasn’t exactly a minor offender.’
‘Did it ever occur to these scientists that they’re asking for trouble, creating and stockpiling the damned things in the first place?’ Ben said.
‘It’s certainly a point of view,’ Oppenheim said with a dry smile. ‘The potential threat of a serious bioterror attack is in direct proportion to the number of government laboratories worldwide handling, storing or manufacturing deadly disease-causing agents, which continues to increase year on year, along with the number of security lapses and un-answered calls for tighter regulation. That being said, as you rightly pointed out, to this day there still has never been a single attempted biological terror attack in Europe. Now …’
Oppenheim paused to lean his gaunt frame over the edge of his chair and reach down into an open briefcase at his feet. It was made of shiny black leather, like his shoes. His long fingers lifted out an A4-sized manila envelope, which he laid on the tabletop and skimmed over the polished surface towards Ben. ‘Everything I’ve said thus far is just to set the scene. I want to focus now on this man.’
Ben picked up the envelope. It was unsealed and contained a single glossy photo print, which he slipped out. It was a grainy three-quarter shot of a tall, slim man in early middle age, taken from a distance with a long lens. He was standing by the door of a car, in conversation with another man whose back was turned to the camera. The photo had been taken during the cold months, judging from the way they were dressed. The man was wearing a long dark overcoat that looked expensive, maybe cashmere, and tan leather gloves. He was neat and clean-shaven with even features and a high forehead from which his hair was swept thickly back, a touch of grey around the temples. Half the car number plate was visible at the bottom of the photo. It was a Swiss registration.
‘Is this who I think it is?’ Ben said, laying the photo back on the table.
Luc Simon nodded.
‘The last few decades have seen the rise of a strange and perplexing phenomenon,’ Oppenheim said, leaning back in his chair and pressing his fingertips together, as if he were praying. ‘A very particular neurosis of the human mind whose sufferers, overcome by their belief in a dark and uncertain future, are consumed by the need to do everything possible to prepare for it. Such forms of behaviour can assume a religious significance, marked by evangelical fervour, often with the desire to preach their apocalyptic convictions to all who’ll listen. Such as the belief in floods and tidal waves of epic biblical proportions, set to sweep humanity away. Or the belief that God is imminently about to manifest his wrath against us, as in the Old Testament’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to punish us for the sinful and debauched ways of modern society. Of a more secular nature are beliefs concerning the coming of natural disasters such as super storms, solar magnetic flares that will destroy the fabric of civilisation and plunge us back into the Dark Ages, and so on and so forth.’
Oppenheim paused, moistened his thin lips with the tip of his tongue in a way that made him look oddly reptilian, then continued. ‘For many, these are genuinely terrifying prospects that they hope never to have to face in this lifetime. But there are some who secretly or perhaps even openly wish for the chance to witness these apocalyptic events first-hand. Perhaps simply to vindicate the personal convictions for which people have scorned and laughed at them all these years. Or perhaps just because they’ve been watching too many American TV shows about the dead rising to walk the earth, and think it would be a great game to go charging about blasting bullets everywhere with impunity.’ Oppenheim smiled. ‘We generally don’t take that kind of person seriously. Their psychological profiles tend to indicate a cowardly streak that would have them running and hiding in terror at the first real sign of their fantasies coming true. But then,’ he said, ‘there are the serious ones. Those who would genuinely love nothing more than for the whole of human civilisation to be plunged into chaos and darkness. Who relish it so much, in fact, that they’d jump at the chance to be part of the process.’
‘And Udo Streicher is one of those,’ Ben said. ‘That’s what you’re saying, correct?’
Luc Simon refilled his own coffee and Ben’s, and savoured a long sip. ‘Streicher’s first appearance on our radar was eleven years ago, when Interpol operatives monitoring the Deep Web picked up talk of a new organisation calling itself Exercitus Paratorum. Roughly translated, “The Army of the Prepared”. Now, as you might already know, our boy was born into wealth. Cosseted upbringing, the best priv
ate schooling Switzerland has to offer. As a teenager he received a top-notch classical education. Hence, presumably, the Latin name he later went on to choose for his group. But after a year he seemed to decide that Exercitus Paratorum was too much of a mouthful, or maybe sounded too elitist or intellectual, so he changed it simply to the Parati. The Ready or Prepared Ones.’
‘Agent Valois told me,’ Ben said. ‘But ready for what? The end of the world? Armageddon? Is this a religious group, like Aum Shinrikyo?’
Luc Simon shook his head. ‘From what we can gather, Streicher’s a committed atheist. There’s no apparent religious motivation behind his ideals.’
‘This is an individual who fantasises day and night about the coming of a new era for mankind, Mr Hope,’ Oppenheim said. ‘The Parati website, buried deep in the dark side of the internet and accessible only via specialised software, has described a future where the global population is reduced by seventy-five per cent. No more government, the monetary system gone, the rule of law no longer applicable. In his sick and very minutely detailed fantasy, the human race would be broken down to small, disparate, leaderless and helpless groups of people worldwide who had failed to prepare for the coming disaster, whatever form it might have taken. All except him and his followers, needless to say, who thanks to their strategic foresight and planning would now be in a position to unite them, and dominate them.’
‘To dominate them?’ Ben said.
‘Streicher sees his future role as some kind of feudal overlord,’ Luc Simon said. ‘A king, you might say, with autocratic power over a huge army of followers in what he describes as the “afterworld”. It’s an all-consuming obsession. And the clock is ticking for him. Like all these Doomsday-preparation types, he’s been waiting and hoping for years that some global crisis might bring him the opportunity he craves. At the age of forty-six, we can easily speculate that he’s no longer content to wait passively. He wants it to happen while he’s still young enough to enjoy and make the most of it. He desperately needs to control the situation. Hence, to find a way to actually make it happen, and soon. These factors are what make him such a prime concern to us.’
‘Bullshit,’ Ben said.
‘You don’t believe what we’re telling you?’
‘It’s what you’re not telling me,’ he said. ‘The part that would explain how some nutjob Doomsday fantasist managed to become Interpol’s public enemy number one, justifying an operation on this kind of scale. It didn’t make sense to me before, and it doesn’t make sense to me now.’
Luc Simon and Oppenheim exchanged glances. Oppenheim’s seemed to signify, Are we okay divulging classified information to this man? Luc Simon’s quick affirmative nod said, Go ahead, he needs to know.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Oppenheim turned to Ben. ‘In June 2011 an incident that was never released to the world media occurred in a classified location near a place called Kwanmo-Bong. You know where that is?’
‘It’s a mountain in North Korea,’ Ben said.
‘Surrounded by impenetrable forest, and believed to be the site of one of numerous military installations in that country devoted to the development of bioweapons. I’m sure you know that the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is strongly suspected of flouting both the Geneva Protocol and the Biological Weapons Convention, in addition to the chemical weapons and nuclear arsenal they’ve already admitted to stockpiling. All part of their Songun or military-first policy to arm themselves to the teeth while their people are starving in the fields. Intelligence agencies believe that dozens of facilities scattered about the country posing as ordinary military bases may in fact be disguising hidden labs for the purpose of creating and storing biological threat agents of various kinds.
‘According to intelligence reports, the June 2011 incident was an attempt by an outside group to break into one of those secret labs and obtain a quantity of such agents. Specifically what they were looking for, we don’t know. We can only speculate that their target might have been a Level Three biohazard agent, classed as extremely serious but treatable, such as West Nile virus or anthrax. More disturbingly, it could equally have been a Level Four agent, for which no known treatment exists. Ebola virus, or Marburg virus, or Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever. Take your pick. All potentially devastating.’ Oppenheim paused. ‘As to who carried out the attack – there’s very little uncertainty on that score.’
‘Streicher,’ Ben said.
Both men nodded. ‘In a nutshell, you have one unhinged lunatic attempting to steal from a whole army of other unhinged lunatics,’ Oppenheim said.
Ben saw the sneer on the guy’s face, and felt a jolt of annoyance at the hypocrisy. ‘Let’s not get too smug,’ he said. ‘The North Koreans are what they are, but they’re hardly the only ones with their finger in the pie. Don’t tell me the Brits aren’t doing exactly the same thing at Porton Down in Wiltshire. The USA and Russia are no different.’
‘You’re right about that,’ Oppenheim admitted. ‘The Russians were intensely hot on biowarfare research throughout the Soviet era. Western powers weren’t slow to lure their scientists to defect over to us and then magic them away to work in rather secretive capacities behind closed doors, developing nobody quite knows what.’ The way Oppenheim said it, it sounded to Ben as if he belonged to the ultra-exclusive club of people who knew exactly what. Maybe he really did, or maybe he just liked to give that impression. Either way, it made Ben wonder about the man’s mysterious background that Luc Simon had avoided mentioning in any kind of detail.
‘Like it or lament it,’ Oppenheim said, ‘that’s the world we live in. The raiders must have thought that the Korean facility would be an easy target. In the event, they turned out to be very wrong. The attempt was not a success.’
‘It was worse than unsuccessful,’ Luc Simon put in. ‘In fact, it was a perfect storm of failure. Streicher completely underestimated the strength of the military presence guarding the facility. Several of his people were killed and the rest only just managed to escape empty-handed by helicopter as far as the coast, from where it’s believed they fled to Japan. When the first intelligence reports about the attack began filtering through, the line of thinking among Western agencies was that this could be Al-Qaeda, or perhaps some other jihadist splinter group, renewing its stated intention to unleash a whole new kind of WMD on the infidel West. Panic buttons were being hit all over the place. Then leaked information started coming through that the bodies of the raiders killed in the incident weren’t your typical Muslim terrorists. They were white Europeans.’
‘That led to some consternation in certain circles,’ Oppenheim said, picking up the baton. ‘Discounting the various factions within Northern Ireland, who all have their own localised agenda and their own habitual ways of operating, there hasn’t been a significantly ambitious white European terror group since the days of Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army Faction, back in the seventies. With the current near-exclusive focus on Islamic jihadists, frankly, nobody knew where to look. Not until our sources in North Korea began releasing the identities of the dead. All of them, it turned out, connected to this little-known group called the Parati that European intelligence services had been keeping half an eye on for years. Until then, the Parati were only a theoretical, low-grade threat. They’d done nothing, at least nothing that we were aware of, that could justify any action being taken against them. Suddenly, it was confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that they were responsible for the North Korea raid. And there can be only one possible reason for such a raid. Streicher’s intention was to deploy biological weapons in mainland Europe.’
Ben said nothing.
‘So here’s what we’re looking at,’ Luc Simon said. ‘We know that Streicher failed in 2011 to obtain biological weapons that he intended to use to carry out his sick personal objectives. The failure cost him some of his best people, and an awful lot of money. He disappeared for a long time, and all efforts to locate him failed. It was as if he’d dro
pped off the face of the earth. Even his website disappeared, pulled down overnight from the Deep Web. Analysts came to the conclusion that the experience must have completely defeated him, perhaps driven him to drink or suicide. Or that someone within his organisation had killed him.
‘It took many months of intensive police work to discover that he was still active. Whereupon, the joint operation was mounted between French, British and Swiss Intelligence services to plant undercover operatives into the organisation, with a twofold agenda. First, to discover where Streicher had been hiding, and second, to find out what he was up to. They failed on the first count. We still have no idea where he hides out. As for the second, Streicher answered it for us when he carried out the attack on the monastery. Now we know for a fact that he’s by no means given up. All this time, he was simply lying low. Marshalling his forces, forming a new plan in the wake of the failed Korean attack. Looking for an alternative.’
‘And now, it appears,’ Oppenheim said, ‘he’s found it.’
Ben stared at the two of them. ‘You said at the start that you could sum this up in just one word. So cut to the chase.’
Oppenheim glanced again at Luc Simon, as if looking for the green light. Luc Simon again quietly nodded his acquiescence.
Oppenheim turned to Ben and came out with the one word.
It was, ‘Plague.’
Chapter Fifty
There was silence in the room. The two men were watching Ben closely for his reaction. He leaned back deeper in his chair and sipped his coffee. It was going cold and tasted suddenly bitter.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ Luc Simon asked him.
Ben waited another full minute before replying. He wanted to be sure he understood this right. ‘The two of Streicher’s men we found at the safe house, Roth and Grubitz. Were they infected with what you’re talking about?’