Adrian D'Hage - The Beijing conspiracy

‘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 O’Connor wasn’t so sure. Kadeer was a brilliant microbiologist who had trained at Harvard University. O’Connor knew Kadeer was very focused.

Curtis O’Connor, an expert on bioterrorism and one of the CIA’s most knowledgeable agents on Islam, Central Asia and al-Qaeda, was seated in one of the advisor’s 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 O’Connor was very much his own man, and he had one of the sharpest minds in the CIA. Some time ago he’d 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. O’Connor 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 don’t 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 O’Connor 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’ didn’t sound like a bacteria or a virus, but O’Connor 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, O’Connor 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. He’d 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. Harrison’s 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, hadn’t 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.

Kadeer’s demeanor softened, and he appeared almost reasonable as he directed his remarks towards the ordinary citizens of the West and China. ‘The people of the West and the people of China are in mortal danger. I wish it wasn’t so, but your leaders are arrogant and stubborn, and they refuse to negotiate with many of the key states in the Muslim world, such as Syria and Iran. In Iraq, the invasion by the West has resulted in the deaths of over 400,000 innocent Iraqi citizens. Your leaders dismiss these figures, but they come from your own prestigious Johns Hopkins University. Beijing maintains very tight controls over the media and the internet and many in the West are unaware of what is happening, but hundreds of my people in Xinjiang province have been murdered by ruthless Han Chinese government soldiers,’ Kadeer continued, his dark eyes now flashing with anger as he remembered the slaughter of his own family. ‘The Beijing government has been persecuting the Muslim Uighur people in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region for decades, and the West’s war on terror has provided those in authority with the excuse they need to legitimise murder and imprisonment without trial. Beijing is only doing what the West sanctions at Guantanamo Bay.’

The President’s thin mouth turned down as he struggled to comprehend Kadeer’s message. He seemed to be taking the threat to a sinister new level.

‘The Prophet, peace be upon him, predicted that the end times would be very near when you, the Mushrikeen, and the Jews amongst you “swarmed against Islam from every hill”. You are swarming against us today from every hill in all the four corners of the earth. If your leaders persist with the destruction of the Muslim people; if you continue to humiliate the Prophet, peace be upon him, your civilisations will be destroyed in the final solution, as it is predicted in the noble Qu’ran.’ The Muslim microbiologist closed his holy book.

‘September 11 was the forerunner of much worse to come. Very soon you will be given your first warning and we will attack you beneath Eternity. This will be followed by a second and a third warning, and if you do not heed these warnings from Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful, you will perish when the single strand meets its double.’