by Tim Curran
“Impressive, Bob. Very impressive,” Mason said, sucking on his pipe.
In the back of Pershing’s car, they had some eighty-year old cognac and some pre-Castro Havanas.
Mason studied his cigar. “I appreciate you having me out here, Bob. A lot of us wonder what your SOG teams are up to.” He exhaled slowly. “But, I guess there’s more to this than a pleasant afternoon of war gaming.”
Pershing smiled. “I thought we might have a little chat about this and that.”
“All right. Tell me.”
“BioGen, General. It’s a fucking mess and we both know it. It’s raged out of control. It’s simply not containable, neither politically nor realistically. The President has Costello trying to clean it up through VanderMissen and Sleshing but, let’s face the facts, it simply can’t be done. This country is in grave peril.”
“Yes, it is.” Mason looked grim. “Biggest mistake any of us made was giving the go ahead on that one. It felt wrong then, it feels worse now.”
“And the entire thing is being helmed by a President who’s fighting a losing battle with the tabloids. A man like that... a man so concerned with self-image... so morally and ethically bankrupt... how can he lead this country in the trying times ahead? He’s turned our beloved Union into an idiocracy.”
Mason smoked and thought. His features were set, dire. “What are you saying, Bob? Lay it out for me.”
Pershing did. “This BioGen business is getting bad, General. You know that. I know that. And it’s going to get a helluva lot worse before it gets better. And, frankly, a few weeks from now—maybe even a few days from now for all we know—this country is going to go through hell, through turmoil like it’s never seen before. This country is going to hit the skids unless it gets the proper leadership and right now.”
Mason stared at him with a look of cold iron. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Pershing nodded. “Yes, I am. Of everyone involved in this BioGen mess, only you and I and maybe, maybe Admiral Paulus have their head screwed on right. We’re the only ones who can fix what’s broken.”
The silence that reigned in the car was absolute. It went on for seconds, minutes.
Mason sighed finally. “Tell me more,” he said.
CHICAGO: KENILWORTH
6:31 P.M.
They spent the rest of the afternoon visiting various state, county, and federal offices. It took time as such things often do. In the process, Shawna’s confidence slowly and inexorably disintegrated. The idea of some big, career-making story was the last thing on her mind now. When they were finished checking into things, she fell into a black mood, saying nothing, just staring off into space. Nothing Harry said or did could lift her out of it.
But it was understandable.
It was tough realizing you just didn’t exist.
At the Social Security Administration, Shawna told them she’d lost her card and couldn’t remember her number. They went through the computers and could find no record of a Shawna Geddes. Harry called a friend of his at the DMV and had him trace Shawna’s license number. Nothing. No license. No registration. Neither applied for recently or in the past. Not even a voter’s registration card. Their last stop was the Hall of Records. And what they found there was the worst of all possible things: Shawna Geddes had not been born. There was no birth certificate on file for her. Her parents’ records were there, all right, but not hers.
Officially, Shawna Geddes did not exist.
Even on the Internet… her Yahoo and Facebook accounts were wiped out.
By the time they got back to Gabe’s, she started talking again. But the old Shawna was gone. The person who’d replaced her might as well have not existed.
“What does it mean, Harry?” she asked. “What does it mean when you don’t exist? When there’s no record of your birth, your life?”
“It could mean a lot of things, I guess.”
She gave him a death stare. “Tell me, Harry. Or should I tell you?”
He sighed. “It means that you nosed into something they can’t afford having you or anyone else know about. Something so incredibly secretive that they’re willing to kill for it. They’re wiping you out, figuratively,” he told her, pulling into Gabe’s driveway. “They hacked into the system and destroyed you. Your history, your credit, your finances. They don’t want you to exist on paper at all.”
“It’s more than that, isn’t it?” She laughed bitterly. “When the cops find my body in some ditch with my throat slit, there’ll be no way to tell who I am. I’ll be some Jane Doe buried at the city’s expense.”
Harry wanted to disagree, tell her she was wrong, but he didn’t have the heart to lie to her. “Have you ever been fingerprinted?”
“No.”
“Regardless, there’s still got to be something on you somewhere.”
Harry had heard of things like this before, of course, but it was usually in connection with old movies or espionage novels. There had been a few occasions—in Washington—where he’d heard State Department employees start rambling after six or seven vodka martinis. They told him about people being groomed for murder. About them being given non-person status. Once the paper trail was eliminated, they told him, the rest was easy. No body to extract DNA from, no nothing. The people who did these things had never been specifically named or to what branch of the federal government they belonged.
Harry had listened, but never truly believed.
Not until now.
“Let’s go inside,” he told Shawna, helping her from the car.
“And do what?”
“Call your mother,” he said. “She knows you exist.”
CHICAGO, RIVER NORTH:
THE WAREHOUSE, 7:13 PM
The Old Man was thinking about Shawna Geddes.
He didn’t like this business of killing innocent civilians. It made S5 dirty. The Gulf War vets were innocent, too, he knew and knew very well, but that was an entirely different scenario. That was a matter of cutting off the thumb to save the hand. The alternative was unthinkable: an entire country infested.
But Shawna Geddes.
He didn’t like the idea of having her killed. But if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be doing his job and he had to answer to superiors like everyone else. And the way his superiors were thinking was quite simple: anyone or anything that stood in the way of eradicating the parasites and their hosts was to be removed. His superiors were of the mind that this entire thing could be contained. That it could be halted and hushed up before the public was any the wiser. The Old Man was not so sure of that. They had been lucky so far, but how long could that luck hold?
Something had to slip between their fingers.
Statistically, it just had to happen.
A hundred men could stick their fingers in a dike and still a few drops of water had to escape. It was the law of probability.
He thought about Shawna Geddes.
If you don’t have her removed, he thought, someone else will. If she breathes any of this to the legitimate press and someone starts digging... well, it’ll be you that’s removed in her place. Think about that.
He had a sister in Virginia. His only family. She had a daughter about Shawna’s age. Like Shawna she was pretty, bright, and ambitious. But if it came down to it... if his niece was a threat to national security...
Yes, he thought, yes, I would have her removed.
Long ago the Old Man had dispensed with such things as guilt or morality or self-loathing. Such pristine, unrealistic virtues could hamper a man’s career and the man himself. They had to be discarded. Particularly in the business of security. There were no real friends in his game, no lovers or confidants he could really trust. There was only the state itself and his unwavering loyalty to it. It had to be this way. Cut off the thumb to save the hand? God yes. He’d done it, he’d personally cut the order a hundred times. And would a hundred more times if necessary. The lives of a few were meaningless. Just a few less ants crawling
about on the sidewalk. When you started thinking of them as human beings with lives and loves and families... then you became impotent, ineffective. The few would have to be sacrificed to save the many. It was the way things had always worked. And sometimes only a patriot could see that.
But the Old Man, blinded by loyalty and duty as he was, could not entirely dismiss the poor young woman. He was not a monster. Not an Adolf Eichmann sending thousands to their deaths with the sweep of a pen.
If there had been any other way…
Had there been more time he could’ve dealt with her less harshly. He would have had a string of red herrings planted. A trail she would follow to Philadelphia or LA for that matter. Once there, she would be arrested on some minor drug offense, held over. Cocaine in her glove compartment. Crack under the seat. Heroin in the trunk. It had been done countless times before. By the time she’d extricated herself from the whole mess, the operation would have been over with.
But there was no time.
Already he had given the order. No one was to go out of their way to apprehend her, it was an unnecessary drain on manpower, but if she was seen... if a clear opportunity was presented... no witnesses... well... then so be it. Her body was to be disposed of. There would be no physical evidence. Even now the computer hacks at the NSA were wiping her life from existence.
Maybe if she was smart, she’d just run away. No one would interfere.
If she didn’t... and she started talking... well, there was always her mother. Good bait to draw her in with.
Quit pretending, you old fool. You hate this. You hate all of it. You hate what you are, what you’ve done, what you’ve allowed your life to become. Other people celebrate life and you specialize in death. That’s exactly what you’ve been thinking. All the blood on your hands, the lives on your conscience, the people you’ve played with like toys…it’s rotted you black inside. And now, in your twilight years, you’ve become soft… sentimental… you feel guilty.
Yes, yes, yes! I do. God knows I do. All these killings to protect the secret machinery of a corrupt democracy. Was it worth it? Was it really worth it? Wouldn’t it be better if it was laid out at the feet of the taxpayers and all the scheming, meat-hungry maggots they’d put into office were exposed? Finally, ultimately?
No, no, no, he could not think that way…
What really bothered him was Shawna’s association with Harry Niles.
A file had been assembled and faxed to the Old Man at the warehouse. He didn’t know Niles personally, but apparently there were still many in Washington who didn’t care for him. He had made a major nuisance of himself stepping on important toes and nosing into everything from the House Intelligence Committee to the State Department. He’d gotten close too many times and so his termination from the Washington Post had been covertly arranged.
And now Niles worked for some foolish tabloid writing stories about the conspiracy to kill Kennedy and crashed UFOs.
How close you’d been back then, Niles, the Old Man thought with some mirth. How close you’d been to the very things you invent now. How close to those monumental truths only a few are privileged to know.
No matter. If he showed up with the Geddes woman, he would be removed as well. The Old Man knew there’d be no tears in Washington.
Cave came bounding in, shattering the Old Man’s train of thought.
“We got trouble,” he said. “Real trouble.”
The Old Man touched the tips of his index fingers to his nose. “Tell me.”
“We’ve had another major incident. It’s a real mess…”
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA:
CBT CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS
8:02 P.M.
The voice on the phone was cultured and silky, smooth as glass and just as slippery. As to who it really belonged to, that was a mystery. And maybe it was better that way.
“Tell me things I don’t know. Tell me about loyalty and disloyalty,” it said.
Elizabeth figured that was a loaded question because she did not honestly believe there was anything The Collective did not know. They kept secrets. Secrets were not kept from them.
“You’re referring to Bob Pershing?”
“Am I?” the voice asked.
She had just finished listening to the recording of Pershing’s conversation with General Mason. As one of the conspirators, nearly all his communications were intercepted and delivered to her and Gordon Parks at the NSA. “He’s doing exactly what we thought he would do. Mason’s in bed with him now and my assets tell me that Admiral Paulus is practically a certainty. It couldn’t really be going better. Everything is proceeding according to plan.”
“That’s very good to know.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“We’re all very happy that things are following the scenario. Nothing is more important than that. I don’t need to tell you why.”
“No, of course not.”
“Keep us advised, Elizabeth.”
She set her cell on the desk. It was always a relief to get off the phone with that man. There was always an undercurrent of menace to his voice. She had spent many, many years accruing the power she now wielded, but next to her caller—and The Collective in general—she was weak and impotent. They were the ones that wrote history and steered world politics. They were the makers and unmakers. She was always careful in what she said, whether that was here in her office or the boardroom, her car, her apartment, her house in the country, even out for a casual dinner. Didn’t matter. She was certain she was being listened to, that The Collective and their confederates studied her every move and listened to her every word.
A few years before, she’d been carrying on an illicit, torrid affair with Astrid Austin, an attractive—and married—CDC epidemic intelligence officer. She held a position of some influence at the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, the EIS. Astrid’s husband had no idea she was bisexual and she had been quite successful in keeping her secret secret. Elizabeth met her at a DC party and afterwards they engaged in a very discreet, very careful, yet very passionate relationship. They covered their tracks expertly. When they passed on the street, they did not acknowledge one another. When they encountered each other at social and political functions, their conversations were short and trivial.
Then one day, Elizabeth discovered a flashdrive on her desk when she came back from a meeting. On it was a video of Astrid and she making love in a hot tub at Elizabeth’s house in Brookhaven. It was not only shocking but invasive, disgusting that her most private moments were fodder for the camera.
Not two minutes after she’d finished watching it, as if on cue, her contact from The Collective called.
“Quite steamy and entertaining, Elizabeth,” the predatory voice said. “But also quite compromising. Someone in your position needs to be very careful of the company she keeps. A scornful jilted lover could prove embarrassing and we don’t like embarrassing situations. Are you understanding me on this? Need I go into detail of what the cost of exposure might be?”
She wanted to scream and shout about the invasion of her privacy, but she didn’t dare. “No,” she said, a shy well-trained squeaking mouse.
“Very good. You will, of course, break off your entanglement with Dr. Austin.”
“Yes.”
“Excellent, excellent.” There was a pause, the sound of him breathing on the other end. “And in the future, choose lovers with less credentials. The easily disposable kind. We really don’t want the CDC sniffing around CBT.”
“I’ll need time to do it properly,” she said, already hurting inside.
“And that is the one thing you don’t have, I’m afraid,” the voice informed her. “Just step away from the relationship. That’s all you have to do. We’ll take care of the details.”
A week later, after trying to contact Elizabeth again and again with no success, Astrid committed suicide. She was found in her car over in Dupont Circle with her wrists slashed open. She was parked just up the stre
et from Sushi Taro, one of their favorite meeting places. The irony of that was not lost on Elizabeth. Astrid’s car was placed there for a reason by the people who killed her.
Elizabeth tried not to think about it because when she did, she hated and she craved revenge. She knew enough to take down the dirty machine at the heart of DC politics. There was enough in her head and in her hidden files to destroy dozens of dirty politicians, corrupt military leaders, and countless lobbyists, to sink them all in the same foul swill barrel. But so far she had resisted the urge.
So far.
You should be careful of even thinking such things, she told herself. As fantastic as it sounds, there’s always the possibility that your thoughts are being listened to as well.
The ultimate in paranoia. Maybe. But that was her existence—she could trust no one and nothing. She was not ignorant of the puppet masters that manipulated world events behind the scenes like 99% of the country. She was the CEO of a powerful corporation that employed thousands worldwide. People kissed her ass and courted her favors. And each and every one of them from the lowliest janitor to the highest section head to her personal secretary, could not be trusted. Any one of them could have been reporting to The Collective and others to the CIA, DIA, NSA…the list went on and on.
Astrid had been her only real friend. Then and now.
Sometimes Elizabeth enjoyed the fantasy of quitting, of walking away and leaving the entire sordid mess behind her, but she knew that wasn’t an option. The Collective would tell her when it was time to step back. But it would be on their terms, not hers. If she tried to get away sooner, they’d find her in a car like Astrid or floating in the Potomac if she was found at all.
Like it or not, she was a slave to the system, married to it. A player in the game. And the game had many layers and few had navigated them as carefully as she.
Which made her think of Project Biogenesis.
She wondered how far The Collective would go to sanitize knowledge of it and how many people would have to die. Right from the very beginning, they had orchestrated the entire thing.