by Ken Kroes
Olivia agreed. They called the foundation using Diane’s phone as they weren’t sure how much of the company computer networks and phones were monitored by Mikhail. She left a message stating there was a critical issue at hand with Virtuesh and to contact Olivia directly without informing Mikhail.
They returned to the cafeteria having decided to spend the rest of the night in a public setting.
*******************
“I thought you were a professional!” Mikhail said to Hope. She had gone to Mikhail’s trailer after starting the fire and at first both of them thought that the job was done. However, within a half an hour, they got word that there was no one in the trailer that burnt down.
She insisted Olivia and Diane were asleep thirty minutes before the fire. “I don’t know what could’ve made them get up and leave in the middle of the night.”
“We need to rethink this,” he said. “We can’t make up another accident now. Keep an eye on them, and I’ll let you know what action to take next.”
After she left, he thought about his options. Though he liked Hope, she had made several mistakes and her usefulness had now come to an end. He had more important things to concentrate on so decided to just keep her occupied for the next few weeks, and he would need to make sure that Olivia and Diane didn’t do anything stupid as well. They need to disappear for a while and I can take care of that myself.
Olivia and Diane woke up the next morning to the activity in the cafeteria. After a small breakfast, they made plans to stay in touch throughout the day then went about their normal schedules as they waited for Richard to contact Olivia. Shortly after her arrival at the lab, Olivia noticed that one box of the Virtuesh-B vaccine was missing. Thinking that she should let Diane know, she turned towards the exit to the lab and was faced with a pair of security guards.
The guard nearer the door stepped forward. “Mikhail has asked to see you,” he said.
There was no choice but to follow them, and she realized they were leading her to the helipad. As they approached, she could see Diane and another guard. Mikhail arrived a few minutes later.
“Good! For once both of you are where I want you to be.”
“What’s the meaning of this?” Olivia demanded.
“Don’t take me for a fool,” he said, “I know that both of you are up to something with the virus and the vaccine. But I don’t need to listen to your chatter. Guards, tie their hands and tape their mouths.”
His instructions were carried out quickly and then they boarded the helicopter.
Olivia noticed they were not taking the normal route to the foundation headquarters. About an hour into the flight, Mikhail gestured to the pilot to land in a meadow in the middle of the mountainous forest. He ordered the women out while instructing the guard to take their cell phones.
“I don’t have the knack for killing in person but need to make sure that both of you stop meddling in my plans. In only a few more weeks, they’ll be completed, and I can’t afford you two messing things up. We’re in the middle of a large state park, and it’ll take you at least that long to walk out of here; that is, if you even survive.” Without looking back, he signaled the guard and they climbed back into the helicopter and took off.
As soon as the helicopter took off, Olivia and Diane worked at untying their wrists and removing the tape from their mouths.
“What’re we going to do now?” Olivia asked. She tried feverishly to scrape mud from her shoes.
“I’m not sure,” Diane said. “I’m just glad to still be alive. If he had any backbone, he would’ve killed us here. I wonder why he didn’t take Hope along to finish the job she tried to do last night. Maybe she’s in trouble for botching up that fire.”
“She’s not the only one in trouble. I’m afraid I may have been a big mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“I was so paranoid back at the foundation about the new virus and vaccines that I coated all the bottles of Virtuesh-B vaccine that I brought back with the original Virtuesh virus to protect them in case they were stolen. I thought it was a smart idea at the time, but now I’m not so sure.”
“You did what? What happens while we’re out here and someone touches it?”
“Nobody should—I’m the only one who is supposed to be working on it but before we were picked up for this little trip, I was in the lab and noticed that a box of the vaccine was missing. I was on my way to tell you when the guards picked me up.”
“So that means that Virtuesh is now in the open at Percipience, and no one has been vaccinated yet.”
“I’m afraid so. If we don’t get back there in a day or two, the whole village may be infected.”
18 - Plans Taking Shape
Mikhail’s mood had improved when he landed at the foundation headquarters. He liked to take care of things personally, and with Olivia and Diane out of the way for the time being, he finally felt as though all the pieces of his plan were coming together. He headed into the building and called Hope.
“I’m on a quick visit to the foundation headquarters to deal with some business for Richard. I’ll return in a week with the vaccine. In the meantime, keep an eye on our two troublemakers.”
“As soon as I can find them,” she replied. “They’re not where they’re supposed to be. Maybe they’re scared and hiding out after the fire.”
“The only way that they can leave the complex is by helicopter or by car. I’ll call security and make sure that they double up on their inspection of outbound vehicles. They can’t be too far away, just find them!” There, that should keep her occupied for a while!
When he got to his office, Mikhail was pleased to see that his shipment of vaccine for Virtuesh-B had arrived that morning. This meant that the rest of the vaccines had been shipped and should be delivered worldwide within a week. “Right on schedule.” Mikhail thought. He was already inoculated from a small batch of vaccine that came with the new virus, but a second dose could not hurt he thought as he gave himself an injection.
********************
After their conversation, Hope was fairly certain that she was not going to see Mikhail again. She realized that time was running short and there were several things she wanted to do before he executed his plan. She made a call to arrange for a private helicopter to pick her up and was disappointed to find that the soonest one available would be available would be in two days. With the only other option of leaving being walking out, she decided to charter it anyhow. Though the timetable would be tight, she would still have enough time to get done what she had planned to do.
********************
Sue sat across from the director’s desk in his office. “Are you sure this plan of yours is going to work?” he asked.
“No, I’m not. But nobody has come up with anything better.”
“True— but we have everyone’s attention now since the preliminary results from the CDC lab finally came in. We now know that the virus outbreak is the same as the sample from the foundation. At least it’s only contagious through contact. If it were airborne, I don’t know what we’d do.”
“The key is the Foundation. We still don’t know what their ultimate plan is, and if we hit them now, they may trigger it early. We need to watch them carefully, especially Richard and their head of research, Mikhail. When they make their move, we’ll make ours.”
“I’ve taken this all the way to the top,” he said. “Several other countries are informed now as well. I certainly hope you’re right.”
“Me, too. We have physical surveillance at many locations and I have several people monitoring the Internet for anything related to the foundation and the virus. I just hope it’s enough.”
“Have you seen anything yet?”
“Nothing important—but if there’s anything out there, we’ll find it. I’m especially impressed with Spencer. He’s been putting in countless hours on the search.”
She had grown fond of Spencer and started to think of him as
the son she never had. He tried hard to please her but was still a rookie and made mistakes. Another DIR member brought to her attention increased network activity regarding viruses in one country that Spencer had missed. When she pointed out his mistake, he appeared embarrassed and promised to be more careful. Several days later, he submitted a detailed report on the activity and had determined it had lessened in the last couple of days.
“So you’re going to keep him?”
“Of course. For these first few months on the job, he’s handled everything we’ve thrown at him very well. Heck, if it wasn’t for his quick thinking of stealing the virus when he was at Percipience, we wouldn’t have known about any of this!”
19 - Hopeless
Richard arrived at Percipience just after dusk and asked the heliport security guard to point out Olivia’s trailer.
“That’s the one that burned down last night,” the guard replied. “Nobody was hurt, but I have no idea where she’s staying now.”
Richard flipped open his phone and barely waited for an answer. “Mikhail, why didn’t you tell me there was a fire at Percipience last night?”
“I didn’t think it was that important. How’d you find out?”
“I’m in Percipience. Where are you?”
“Back at headquarters. You should’ve let me know, and I would’ve been there to meet you.” What’s he doing there?
“Yesterday you told me to be careful about Olivia, that you would take care of her and now her trailer has burned down and she’s still alive. Combined with everything else I’m wondering if you’re able to run this or not.”
“Richard….”
“Listen, get it together, and I mean now. If you can’t, I’ll find someone that can.” He closed his phone before Mikhail could reply and went to his trailer to sleep.
Richard awoke several hours later with a weight on his chest and a cloth forced over his mouth and nose. He tried to open his eyes, but something was covering them. He struggled for a moment, but that accelerated the effects of the chloroform-soaked cloth and he soon lost consciousness.
When he woke up again, he found himself strapped to a chair in what looked like a storage room off of the greenhouse cavern. He was about to yell for help until he realized there was tape over his mouth and his efforts to get out of the restraints were futile. The back of his body felt damp, and he figured he had been brought to where he was via the wet wheelbarrow that was a few feet away.
From behind him, an unfamiliar female voice spoke quietly. “He’s awake now.”
The woman came around so that he could see her and then she put several electrodes on his arms and forehead. She then spent a few minutes apparently adjusting a machine that was just out of his range of vision. Finally nodding with approval, she gave him an injection “A little concoction I’ve developed to aid you in telling me the truth.”
“I’m going to remove that tape from your mouth now. If you choose to scream or do anything equally stupid, I think you can figure out what’ll happen to you.” She pulled the tape roughly from his mouth.
“Who are you? Are you the one that sent me the message?” he asked.
“I’ll ask the questions. Depending on your answers, I will either release or kill you.” she said without emotion. For the next thirty minutes, she grilled Richard and with each response, she paid close attention both to him and the machine behind him. “Are you working with Mikhail?” “Do you know about Virtuesh-B?” “Have you ever ordered someone to be killed?”
Richard was sweating profusely and hoped that he did ok. He knew the basic principles behind a lie detector and did his best to be nervous when he lied during the control questions, making it much harder to tell when he was lying during the questions that mattered. The electrodes were pulled off and his questioner gave him a long stare.
“I think you lied on several questions, but I believe you when you say you know nothing about Virtuesh-B,” she finally said. “But before I release you, I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
He was shocked to see Olivia walk into view.
“I want you to meet Diane, a good friend of mine,” Olivia said, pointing to his interrogator.
“The reason you’re strapped to the chair is because I have no idea who I can trust anymore,” Diane said. “In the last several months, my brother has been murdered, I think there’s an assassin after us, and yesterday, Mikhail abandoned us in the middle of a forest a hundred miles from here. Then there’s this whole business of Virtuesh.”
They released him. He stood and turned to look at the machine behind him and saw all the wires from the electrodes attached to a large sack of seeds.
“I don’t know anything about lie detectors, but you didn’t know that, and I thought it was worth a shot to judge your reaction under stress,” Olivia said. “I got the idea from Spencer. Didn’t you interrogate him in a similar fashion?”
“That wasn’t me, at least not directly. But what’s all this about you being shipped a hundred miles from here. How’d you get back?”
“It was Mikhail. I’m not sure what, but he is up to something,” Olivia said. “Something horrible—with a different strain of our virus called Virtuesh-B. He didn’t have the guts to kill us himself, so he had us tied up and then flew us out to the middle of nowhere. He said we’d be out of the way long enough for him to finish whatever plan he had in the works. The only reason we’re back here now is due to the DIR.”
“The DIR? How’d they get involved?”
“I guess they’re keeping a close eye on us,” Olivia said. “They noticed that the flight from Percipience up to headquarters didn’t take its normal path. They were curious enough to fly out to see what might have happened during the brief stop the helicopter made and found us.”
“Once found, we contacted Spencer, the DIR agent who visited Percipience a while ago,” Diane added. “After all that had happened, we were both pretty scared so told him that Mikhail had a lethal virus and was planning on releasing it worldwide in a few weeks.”
Richard listened and didn’t answer immediately. Just a few weeks for Mikhail to put his plan in motion and the DIR now knows about it too! I’m going to have to work fast if I don’t want to see everything that I have worked for crumble apart.
“Spencer wanted to bring us both to Washington to get all the details,” Olivia said. “But we finally convinced him that it would be better if we could sneak back into Percipience and then report regularly back in to him. He had their helicopter fly us to a few miles away from here and we walked the rest of the way.”
“What was in that shot you gave me?” he asked.
“Like I said, I don’t know anything about interrogating, so Diane just gave you a shot of the new vaccine I developed that should work on both strains of Virtuesh.”
“How much of that vaccine do you have?”
“Not much, I’m afraid.” Olivia replied. “Enough for the residents of all of the villages with a bit to spare. Diane and I will take care of Percipience and I will give you the rest to distribute. Have you been vaccinated for the original strain of Virtuesh?”
“Yes, a few of us have—Mikhail and the few of you who were working on it at headquarters. Why?”
She told him the story about the Virtuesh-B vaccine bottles being coated with the original virus strain.
“Then we need to find that stolen vaccine right away and get residents in this village vaccinated at once. Since we don’t have enough, I’ll start to evacuate the builders right away”
It was the middle of the night by the time they got back to the lab and gave Richard the vaccines for the other villages. He said he would stay in touch and then left in a rush. “Now, let me get you vaccinated,” Olivia said to Dianne. “One shot is good for both Virtuesh and Virtuesh-B, but it’ll take at least ten days to build up enough anti-bodies. Meanwhile, keep this pack of disposable gloves with you and be careful what you touch around here until we figure out more about who stole the new vacc
ine and where they’ve been. Now we have to get a plan in place to vaccinate Percipience.”
“We could set up the village-wide vaccination at the cafeteria and catch people in the morning,” Diane said. “Everyone has heard of the deadly flu that is going on outside of Percipience, it’ll be easy to convince them that we are inoculating them for that.”
Olivia agreed and looked up at the clock. “I guess sleep is out of the question for us tonight,” she sighed.
“Yeah, I guess we could use these few hours before sunrise to find that missing vaccine,” Diane said, “and I’ll give you one guess who I think stole it.”
“Hope, naturally, and I’ll bet she’s staying in Mikhail’s trailer now that ours burned down.”
“Exactly. Let’s stop at my RV before we go looking for her. I have a handgun there, and I’ve got a feeling we may need it.”
They collected the gun and headed to Mikhail’s trailer. There was no answer when they knocked on the door. No lights were visible through the windows. With her revolver drawn in one hand, Diane used her other gloved hand to open the door.
They entered and found Hope lying on a cot. She was covered with sweat and struggled to open her eyes when they called her name.
“She’s been infected,” Olivia said in a low voice. “From what I have read, Virtuesh works fast. She doesn’t have much time left and there’s nothing that I can do.”
She pulled out two small bottles from her pocket and gave Hope two shots. “I thought I may need these. One is morphine to kill the pain, and the other is a very strong sedative to help her rest.”
“How long does she have?”
“I’m not sure.” Olivia watched as the drugs took effect. The tension on Hope’s face eased, her breathing became less labored and her eyes closed. “Maybe less than twenty-four hours.”
Olivia glanced around the trailer and then picked up Hope’s jacket that lay on the end of the cot. There was a small box underneath. “This is the vaccine she took,” she said with relief.
Diane ran her gloved hand over the jacket and gently patted the blankets around Hope. “There it is,” she said, reaching under the blanket and pulling out Hope’s cell phone. “Great! It’s still unlocked. She must’ve been in the middle of a call.”