Outbreak by Frank Gardner

Author:Frank Gardner [Gardner, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781787632387
Google: _NL4yQEACAAJ
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2021-05-26T23:00:00+00:00

60

11,000m above Siberia

Monday, 14 March, 1000hrs GMT, 1300hrs local

COLONEL ARKADY PETROV twisted around in his cramped seat and stared out of the frost-encrusted window of the Ilyushin Il-96 airliner as it lumbered eastwards across the skies over Siberia. Far, far below, in the sub-zero air, unobscured by any cloud, lay the vast white expanse of the endless Siberian taiga. Mile after mile of frozen forest: it had been nearly an hour since they had flown over anything even resembling human habitation. Colonel Petrov was not someone to spend a lot of time dwelling on the man they had pegged out in the cellar of that apartment block back in Moscow’s Cheryomushki district. What was his name? Konstantin Makarov? Yes, that was it. Well, they had what they needed from him and the man had already been temporarily reassigned – once they released him from the GRU’s own sanatorium – to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle and just east of Archangelsk. Konstantin Makarov had eventually proved most forthcoming with information, once they had used the industrial bleach on him.

Information was power and Colonel Petrov had wasted no time. Using his GRU credentials, he had boarded the first official flight available from Moscow to the city of Novosibirsk, four time zones to the east, close to the Mongolian border and deep in the heart of Siberia. He was heading for the State Research Institute of Virology and Biotechnology, better known as VECTOR, a place infamous during the Cold War for its work on the Soviet bio-warfare programme, Biopreparat. Today it was one of only two places in the world – along with the CDC in Atlanta in the US – with declared stocks of the smallpox variola virus, and it was regularly inspected by the WHO as part of Russia’s accession to the Bioweapons Convention. All was not well at the VECTOR facility in the suburb of Koltsovo. That much Petrov knew. In late 2019 there had been a mysterious explosion on the fifth floor, in the decontamination room where scientists changed out of their protective suits. Windows were blown open, a fire had taken hold, and there were fears at the time of a possible global viral outbreak. Petrov, and many of his fellow officers in military intelligence, suspected then, and still did, that the explosion was a deliberate act of sabotage.

The temperature was minus 13°C when the GRU colonel stepped out of the arrivals building at Novosibirsk’s Tolmachevo airport. His breath frosted in the still air and his eyes stung from the pollution that still belched from the nearby factories, along the River Ob. The car was exactly where they had told him it would be, unmarked, discreet, a vetted driver in front, personal security in the back. This was to be a low-key, fact-finding visit, not an official inspection. The drive across town to the wooded suburb of Koltsovo was short, the conversation minimal. When they pulled up at the identical dormitory-like research buildings on the edge of town, Colonel Petrov knew exactly where to go: this was hardly his first visit to VECTOR.

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