Adrian dHage - The Beijing Conspiracy: Terror Has a New Weapon

Penguin Books

THE
BEIJING
CONSPIRACY

Adrian dHag graduated from Duntroon into the Intelligence Corps in 1967. He served in Vietnam and had a distinguished army career. In 2000, he was Head of Defence Planning for security of the Sydney Olympics, including defence against chemical, biological and nuclear threats. Adrian left the army to pursue a writing career. His bestselling first novel, The Omega Scroll (Penguin 2005), was voted one of the top 50 books of 2006 (Booklovers Guide) and has been published in over ten countries. The Beijing Conspiracy is his second novel.

ADRIAN

dHAG

THE
BEIJING
CONSPIRACY

Penguin Books

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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2007

This edition published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2008

Text copyright Adrian dHage 2007

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ISBN: 978-1-74-228370-8

For Robyn

W e will strike you when you least expect it, beneath Eternity where the windmill has been stolen. This is the first of three warnings. If you do not heed these warnings and if Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful wills it, we will be forced to implement the final solution.

The mood in the White House war cabinet was tense. The briefing had been hastily convened in the cramped Situation Room beneath the Oval Office in the West Wing. The video being viewed was grainy, but the features of sixty-year-old Dr Khalid Kadeer were clear enough. Like the Hydra of Greek mythology, al-Qaeda had grown another monstrous head, and the terrorist mastermind was calm and chillingly confident. Unlike his thinner and more familiar colleague, Osama bin Laden, the Muslim Uighur from the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in western China was powerfully built. He was tall and his demeanor was menacing. His dark, oval face was etched with the lines of a lifelong Islamic struggle against the West and the Han Chinese, and his narrow, hooded eyes were black and coldly calculating. An elegantly embroidered doppa, the traditional headgear of his Uighur people, covered his fine, grey hair.

Kadeer spoke quietly, inviting President Denver Harrison and the members of his war cabinet, the most powerful group of men and women in the world, to dismiss the warning attack as nothing more than rambling Islamic bravado. Agent Curtis OConnor wasnt so sure. Kadeer was a brilliant microbiologist who had trained at Harvard University. OConnor knew Kadeer was very focused.

Curtis OConnor, an expert on bioterrorism and one of the CIAs most knowledgeable agents on Islam, Central Asia and al-Qaeda, was seated in one of the advisors chairs that were placed along the dark panelled wall of the White House Situation Room. He was forty-three, fit, with a solid physique and tall, standing at 178 centimetres. His thick, dark hair was roughly brushed into place. His face was tanned and his blue eyes were mischievous, although looks could be misleading. Originally from Ireland, Curtis OConnor was very much his own man, and he had one of the sharpest minds in the CIA. Some time ago hed concluded that the President and his advisors were in a state of denial over the war in Iraq. Somehow, he thought, he would have to influence a change to the dangerous and arrogant course the Administration had charted for his adopted country and for the wider western world. OConnor had little time for presidents and prime ministers who started wars on false premises, or for sycophantic advisors and generals who did their bidding, and he had even less time for religion and the fundamentalists who misused it, whatever their creed.

The West is increasingly using this so-called war on terror to persecute Muslims all over the world, Kadeer continued. Innocent women and children are being slaughtered in Iraq, in Lebanon, and in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. Other government authorities, like those in Beijing, have followed the lead of the United States, Britain and Australia, using the war on terror to eliminate Muslim Uighurs they perceive as a threat. You dont see this in the West, but China executes more people every year than the rest of the world combined. Torture and imprisonment is at the whim of the communists in Beijing, as is the blocking of the internet. Freedom of speech is non-existent, yet you will flock to the Beijing Olympics and show support for a murderous regime. It was the same in 1936, Kadeer said, a touch of sadness in his voice. The Berlin Olympics were opened by Hitler and the Third Reich used sporting teams and the Nazi salute to glorify their regime. You seem to have forgotten that the Olympic charter is concerned with the harmonious development of man and the promoting of a peaceful society and the preservation of human dignity. With stunning irony, Kadeer warned, If you do not change course, where Hitler failed, Islam will succeed.

Curtis OConnor wondered if the first attack might be biological and if the athletes and the Games might be the target. Beneath Eternity where the windmill has been stolen didnt sound like a bacteria or a virus, but OConnor knew that among the terrorists on the United States most-wanted list, the Muslim scientist and philosopher had few peers, and no one was in a better position to exploit the dark, microscopic world of bioterrorism. Despite the disdain on the faces of President Harrison and the rest of his cabinet, OConnor had a feeling that somewhere within the coded first warning was a real and present danger that the West would ignore at her peril.

As the video drew towards to its conclusion, President Harrison fidgeted with his expensive gold pen. Hed not long returned from his ranch on the banks of the Bitterroot River in Montana, and it was clear that he would rather be back there. Instead he was being forced to sit through a video of threats from some two-bit Muslim terrorist. Harrisons square face was tanned and his jaw was set stubbornly. The constant criticisms levelled at his Administration for favouring the rich, instead of looking after the poor and an increasingly cash-strapped Middle America, hadnt bothered him in the least but the disaster that was Iraq and the war on terror was taking its toll. His once dark hair was now noticeably grey. President Harrison glared at the figure on the screen.