C urtis parked the car the US Embassy had lent him and he and Kate covered the last 500 metres to the entrance on foot. The bear farm was in darkness and Kate followed Curtis as he kept close to the pine trees surrounding the compound. Neither needed the satellite maps and imagery they’d been poring over to know when they’d reached the bear compound; the stench was enough. Curtis propped just past the gap in the mound and signalled Kate to stop.
‘Wait here,’ he whispered.
The continuous satellite surveillance of the bear farm had provided imagery of people coming and going between the administration building on the left and the accommodation building at the top of the small rise above them. The big KeyHole satellites had provided night vision of one or two guards patrolling but tonight the whole place seemed deserted, except for the vehicle outside the accommodation block. Curtis moved forward cautiously across the open ground and was nearly two-thirds of the way to the vehicle when a big set of sensor lights flooded the compound. Curtis ran towards the trees and dived into cover as three bullets whistled past his ears.
From behind the mound Kate could see whoever had come out of the building moving towards the edge of the trees and, holding her pistol against the mound to steady it, she fired off three quick shots.
Earlier in the evening, in the city of Shanghai, the residents had gone wild as the Olympic torch was paraded along the Bund beside the Huangpu River, past elegant and imposing buildings that reflected Shanghai’s colonial past. Across the river in the Pudong New Area, the viewing platforms in the Pearl TV tower and one of the world’s tallest buildings, the Jin Mao, had been packed.
Further north in a warehouse on the outskirts of Beijing, the team leaders al-Falid had trained at the bear farm were being issued with syringes.
‘Under no circumstance are the vials to be opened until you’re ready to use them,’ al-Falid’s commander in Beijing directed, picking up a cheap plastic syringe which could be bought in any drugstore. ‘The nozzles on these syringes have been modified slightly to produce a fine mist in the shape of a fan.’ He opened a vial of coloured water, filled the syringe and, holding it about 10 centimeters from the intake duct of an air conditioner, sprayed it with an even coat of the liquid. ‘Once you and your teams have completed putting the virus into the systems you’ve been allocated, wipe the syringes and vials clean of any fingerprints and dispose of them in a rubbish bin as far away from the building you work in as possible.’
Confused as to how the intruder might have got back to the bear enclosure so quickly, al-Falid fired three more shots towards the gap on the mound.
Kate winced as a bullet grazed her left shoulder. Ignoring the pain she lay on the ground and returned fire.
Curtis counted the shots as he worked his way up through the pine forest, circling back towards his quarry. He was 10 metres above the man when Kate fired again. Go girl! Curtis thought. He could see his quarry through the trees and as the man returned fire, his face was silhouetted by the sensor lights. Curtis would have recognised that nose anywhere. al-Falid fired at Kate twice more, then there was a resounding click. Less than 5 metres from the man who had set out to destroy civilisation, Curtis calmly took aim and fired. al-Falid grabbed his stomach, his pistol and the new magazine tumbling onto the pine needles.
‘Kate! It’s me, don’t shoot!’ Curtis yelled, conscious that Kate would be firing at any movement. al-Falid made a move towards his pistol but Curtis kicked it out of the way.
‘This one’s for Bill Crawford, Mr Ferraro-al-Falid.’ al-Falid’s eyes widened in fear. Curtis felt no emotion as he fired once between them.
‘Kate! Up here and stay low!’ Curtis ordered as he turned towards the accommodation block, wondering where Dolinsky was hiding.
‘Cover me,’ he said to Kate when they reached the edge of the pine forest close to the building. With his back to the wall, Curtis eased his way along the covered walkway, kicking open each door in turn. As he entered the last room, he found Dolinsky’s body on the blood-soaked bed.
‘Shot twice through the back of the head. More of al-Falid’s handiwork, I suspect. No sign of the vials. I only hope they’re still here.’
It took just one shot to blast the flimsy lock off the administration building, but a search only revealed a rudimentary sales area for powdered bear bile products and a cafe with bear bile soup featuring prominently on the menu. A soup made from bear bile powder cost a mere US$2.50, but if the bile was fresh from the bear, the soup would set you back ten times that amount or 200 yuan. Kate and Curtis both knew price would be no obstacle to those who valued it for its supposed medicinal qualities.
‘And they want a leading place in the twenty-first century,’ Curtis muttered. ‘Fucking barbarians.’ As he turned back towards Kate, Curtis noticed blood seeping through her shirt.
‘You’ve been hit,’ he said, concern in his voice.
‘It’s just a graze,’ Kate replied, almost defensively.
‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Curtis said, sitting Kate on a wooden bench and unbuttoning her shirt. Kate looked up at him and smiled. ‘Not now, darling,’ she whispered.
‘You’re right,’ Curtis said with a grin. ‘Although when we get out of this shitbox, there’s a first aid satchel in the car. The only place we haven’t searched is the bear compound.’
Kate felt sick, not so much from the stench of bear bile and excrement, but from the low howls of agony from the caged bears. She and Curtis had paused briefly at one cage where the beautiful creature was trapped in a mediaeval truss, bleeding from where metal had gouged the skin away. Like Maverick and the other Great Apes, there was a look of ‘Why?’ in the tortured bear’s eyes that neither she nor Curtis would ever forget.
‘They’re all here,’ Curtis said, after he’d counted the lethal vials, each with a plastic syringe attached, but neither he nor Kate felt like relaxing. Beijing was still 800 kilometres to the west.
They reached the first police Games checkpoint on the outskirts of Ji’nan, the provincial capital.
The young Chinese policeman waved Curtis to a stop, and was about to ask for his papers when an older policemen approached. A short exchange in Mandarin followed and the older man pointed to the diplomatic plates.
‘Very sorry,’ the younger policeman said with a smile, handing Curtis back his passport and waving him and Kate through. The next checkpoint was at the great Yellow River; again they were waved through.
The CIA jet was waiting for them when they arrived at Beijing’s Capitol Airport. Kate and Curtis boarded with a sense of relief, but only after they had both watched the embassy staff complete the paperwork for the diplomatic bag and they had supervised the loading into the hold.