EXOSKELETON II: Tympanum

by Shane Stadler

  He walked to the center of the tubular corridor and stood on a pair of worn orange footprints. Seconds later, a door opened on the far side, and he walked out of the load-lock and into a large, marble-floored atrium teaming with people. The clacking of hundreds of shoes resounded from the surfaces of the structure. The southeast wall of the grand foyer was constructed entirely of windows, through which sunlight illuminated lush plants distributed amongst benches that lined the center of the floor. With all of the bustling, one sound was conspicuously absent: voices. Talking of any sort was forbidden in this part of the building, and that included phones.

  Daniel weaved his way through the hurried crowd of well-dressed pedestrians to an elevator, and rode it up to the eleventh floor. He emerged in a large reception area, and approached a graying woman dressed in a dark suit-jacket. She was seated behind a long counter.

  “Good morning,” she said and glanced at the ID badge clipped to the lapel of his jacket.

  “Good morning, Sandy,” he replied. “Weekend went too quickly.” It was nonsensical small talk. The day of the week was irrelevant – they worked every day – and “Sandy” wasn’t her real name.

  The woman stood and walked over to a bank of locked drawers embedded in the wall behind the desk. She entered a code on the number pad on Drawer No. 7 and removed a package labeled in red print: Eyes Only. She handed it to Daniel along with a receipt.

  He signed the receipt and gave it back, put the package under his arm, and started walking down the hall to his office. After just a few steps he found himself practically running.

  He arrived at his office door, shifted the package tightly under his left arm, punched in the access code on the electronic lock, and entered.

  Morning light shone through the southeast-facing window, illuminating the mess that was his work area. Stacks of files of various heights littered every flat surface like the stumps of a harvested forest. Musty classified documents, and books dating back to the 1920’s, lay open on the chairs, coffee table, and windowsill. Sticky-notes of all colors were stuck to everything and fluttered like leaves in the air that flowed through the vent in the ceiling. It was cluttered, but every page strewn about the large office was crucial to his current project. He knew exactly where everything was.

  He put the package on the table, sat as his desk, and logged onto the computer. He scanned his email – nothing important – and returned his attention to the package. He cleared some space on the large couch against the wall on the far end of the office and sat.

  Using wire cutters, he snipped the steel wires that bound the cardboard package, and then sliced through the excessive packing tape with a utility knife. He opened the box, removed the contents, and placed them on the coffee table.

  He reached for the top of the pile, but then sighed and withdrew his hand. He recounted the events that had brought him to this point. He’d been approaching the final stages of another research project, but was then ordered to stop his work and start his current one. It was highly unusual for someone in his position to get a change of orders under a priority directive. It had never happened to him.

  His type of research couldn’t be accomplished without access to the most sensitive information. To this end, he and others in his special group had been given the ultimate clearance. It was a type of access that only a few people even knew about: Omniscient Clearance. It meant he had unlimited access to everything possessed by every government agency – NSA, FBI, CIA – everything. Even the President didn’t have such clearance, and wasn’t even supposed to know about it. The only people who had it were the Director of CIA and the Omniscients, or Omnis, like Daniel.

  The Omnis were under the auspices of the CIA. They wrote in anonymity on sensitive intelligence issues, and their works were, of course, not published in the traditional sense. Daniel had been recruited in part for his performance as a CIA reports officer, a job that had required him to collect information from multiple intelligence sources, identify connections, and formulate the “big picture” for complex intelligence-gathering environments.

  Being a single man in his mid-twenties at the time, he hadn’t hesitated to commit to the Omniscients. Now, in his late forties, he knew he’d made the right choice. Every day was filled with intrigue and excitement sans the danger that came with being a CIA operative.

  Since the inception of their secretive organization at the end of World War II, there had always been 8 to 12 active Omnis, where active meant alive. Omnis didn’t know each other’s identities. Their finished works, referred to as monographs, were identified on their covers by a title, the date of completion of the project, and the date of induction of the particular Omni who had authored it. The names of the Omnis were omitted to maintain anonymity. The oldest induction date of an Omni that Daniel had come across was 5-12-1945.

  Omnis were well-compensated, but the job came with drawbacks, the most difficult of which for Daniel was being forbidden to travel outside the contiguous 48 states. As a former CIA operative, this limitation was stifling. But the excitement of the job made up for it. The information to which he had access was better than traveling anywhere in the world. But that same information sometimes had negative effects. He’d had many sleepless nights in the past twenty years; in some cases it was a thrilling conundrum that had kept him awake. Other times he’d learned something so deeply disturbing that he’d been afraid to close his eyes.

  Before his recent reassignment, he’d been researching a project called Red Wraith that was classified as black top-secret – meaning it was a crime to admit that it existed. It was the most frightening of all of the 18 assignments he’d had during his employ as an Omni. It made his dreams so unsettling that any sleep he was able to manage during those nine months had been ineffective. At the end, he’d been so sleep deprived that he’d become physically ill. One morning he’d dozed off at the wheel on the drive to work and ended up in a ditch.

  Red Wraith was a continuation by the American government of an ancient Nazi project called Red Falcon. The Nazis had started the sinister program sometime before World War II. The timing, in relation to the Holocaust, had made him prickle with suspicion.

  The Holocaust had been the perfect landscape for Red Falcon. Too perfect. The nature of the hideous actions carried out as part of the operation weaved seamlessly with those that had occurred in the concentration camps under the guise of medical experiments. Red Falcon and the Holocaust were connected, and Daniel was unable to determine which had started first. His gut told him that Red Falcon was the origin – it was the reason for the Holocaust. But he had no proof.

  The horrible tortures inflicted upon concentration camp prisoners in Auschwitz, Treblinka, and others had been well known to the public for decades. However, the motives for these experiments had been written off as medical research for the benefit of the Nazi war effort. There was an enormous volume of documentation on the experiments themselves, as well as written communications between the scientists, the SS, and Hitler himself. But there were informational voids and inconsistencies that made the whole picture just not sit right with him.

  The Red Falcon files were riddled with references to an undefined term: separation. Phrases such as “we’ve seen marginal evidence of separation” or “progress towards our goal of achieving separation” had appeared sporadically in the documents without explanation. The Nazis had not succeeded in obtaining separation, whatever it was, but that was the underlying objective, and, by extension, the goal of the American Red Wraith project.

  The documents he’d collected on Red Wraith had been incomplete, and he’d often hit a wall when he requested information that could fill the gaps. Sometimes he was told certain files didn’t exist. Other times he got no response whatsoever. Nonetheless, he’d been able to establish a direct link between Red Falcon and Red Wraith. It was this connection, and the insidious details of Red Wraith, that had brought on the nightmares. But the meaning of the term separation had eluded him, and it antagonized
his mind continuously.

  The timing of his reassignment was also suspect. He believed that some event related to Red Wraith had led to the removal of the former CIA Director two months earlier. The possibility that the project might still be active disturbed him.

  Two unique events had occurred in the past three weeks. First, his research on Red Wraith had been put on hold. Second, he’d been reassigned to a new project that was deemed urgent. The subjects of all of his previous research had been old and dormant; the new project was undoubtedly active in the present. That was unusual.

  His attention went back to the new pile of documents. He’d been given only two words to start his new research: Operation Tabarin. He grabbed the first folder on the top of the pile and started reading.

  3

  Thursday, 7 May (6:30 a.m. CST – Chicago)

  William Thompson glanced back just as the hooded figure turned the corner a block behind him. His nose burned from breathing the exhaust of the morning traffic for two hours.

  Convinced the man was following him, Will climbed the three concrete steps to his right, and moved out of the cold Chicago air and into the busy café. The thick aroma of freshly ground coffee filled his nostrils, and voices and espresso machines produced a drone that gave him a sense of anonymity.

  His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting as he crossed a line of people placing orders. He spotted a sign for the restrooms and headed toward the rear of the establishment. He weaved around a cart with a tub of bussed dishes, and entered a narrow hallway. He passed the restrooms on his left and a door labeled “utilities” on the right. The hallway then turned 90° to the left and terminated at a large metal door. He extended his hand to actuate the press-bar handle but stopped an instant before he made contact; at eye level was a red sign that read “Emergency Exit Only – Alarm Will Sound.”

  Damn. He had a minute at most. His pursuer had been only 100 yards behind him and would have picked up pace as soon as Will entered the café. He concentrated on what he’d learned during the past weeks. Every operation had elements of improvisation. His attention turned to the smell of food.

  He took off his jacket and retraced his path past the utility closet and restrooms. He picked up a half-full cup of cold coffee from the tub of dishes on the cart at the mouth of the hallway and poured it on his left arm, soaking his left sleeve. He walked into the main room and approached the end of the drinks counter, near a set of double doors that led to the kitchen. He caught the eye of one of the baristas and waved her over.

  The young woman approached and looked at his coffee stained sleeve with an expression of concern.

  “I think I burned myself,” Will said, wincing. He cradled his left arm. “Someone’s in the restroom; can I get a wet towel from the back – maybe with some ice?” He nodded towards the kitchen.

  The woman seemed to read the desperation in his face, nodded, and walked into the kitchen. She didn’t object when he followed.

  She led him past two women in white aprons preparing food to a stainless steel utility sink against the far wall. He rolled up his sleeve and rinsed his arm with cold water as the barista disappeared into a nearby room. He heard her scoop ice, and a few seconds later she emerged with a plastic cup and a thin towel. She placed the towel over the mouth of the cup and turned it upside down, filling the towel with ice. She finished by twisting it to form a makeshift icepack.

  “This should do it,” she said and handed it to him.

  Will put it on his arm and thanked her as she exited the kitchen. The busy cooks seemed to hardly notice him as he looked for an exit. He walked into the small room from which the barista had retrieved the ice, and discovered an ice machine and a door with an illuminated exit sign above it. This one had the same warning sign as the first one he’d encountered, but a sliver of light shone between the door and its frame. It was propped open.

  He pushed it open and peered out. It led to a narrow alley between the café and the adjacent building. He set the icepack on the ice machine, put on his jacket, and stepped out, onto a small concrete porch. His nose alerted him to a bucket of sand mixed with hundreds of cigarette butts located just off the stoop, next to the building. To his left, the alley terminated with a red brick building: a dead end. In the direction of the storefront, a dingy green dumpster partially blocked the view of the street. The sweet-sour stench of its leaking contents nearly overwhelmed him as he stepped off the porch and crouched behind it, keeping his eye in the direction of the street.

  A clicking sound alerted him that the door had closed behind him. Big mistake. He should’ve made sure it remained propped. Now he was trapped.

  He pulled out his targeting device and started the “snapping” program. At that instant, his stalker stepped into view and looked down the alley. Well concealed, Will remained perfectly still and held his breath. He hoped his pursuer wouldn’t decide to check out the dead end.

  To his relief, the hooded figure continued toward the store entrance and was soon out of view. When Will was confident that the man wouldn’t double back, he stood and walked quickly toward the street, stopping at the edge of the building. He peered around the corner to the right just as the man removed his hood and peered into the window of the café.

  Will held the device around the corner and, through its view-screen, centered cross hairs on the side of the man’s head. He pushed a button, withdrew the device, and looked at the screen – a perfect headshot. He waited for a few seconds and then looked around the corner just as the man entered the café. Perfect, he thought. Got him without being seen.

  Will turned left out of the alley, and walked quickly. At the next block he turned right, crossed the street, and entered a small public park. He sat on a bench and used his phone to send the picture to his instructor.

  A minute later, he got a call.

  “Well done, Thompson,” the gruff-voiced man said with a tone of approval. “Now I’ve got one for you.”

  Will’s phone vibrated, indicating that a message had arrived. He pushed a button and opened the incoming file. His heart sank. It was a picture of him with cross hairs superimposed on his head.

  “What the hell?” Will asked, annoyed.

  The man chuckled. “There were two this time,” the man explained. “We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Will hung up. He slapped his knee and cursed under his breath.

  Five minutes later, a gray SUV pulled up. Its brakes squeaked as it stopped.

  Will climbed into the back seat and sat next to the man he recognized as Renaldo, his pursuer from the café. One of his pursuers. Someone he didn’t recognize, a fit man in his mid fifties with short gray hair and sunglasses, sat in the passenger seat.

  The man turned around and extended his hand behind the seat. “Nice to meet you, Dr. Thompson. I’m Roy,” he said. “I got you at the art building on the corner of Milwaukee and Kimball.”

  Will remembered the six-way intersection. “Call me Will,” he said and shook the man’s hand.

  “This was an important exercise,” Will’s instructor, Perry Dunlap, said from the driver’s seat. “Never overlook the possibility of there being more than one pursuer.”

  “It also illustrates the effectiveness of a coordinated team,” Roy added. “Losing two people is tough. Surveillance and pursuit is often done in teams of two, or more – up to a dozen.”

  “We’ll analyze the exercise in detail later,” Perry informed. “Your psychiatric evaluation isn’t until 10 a.m., so we have time for breakfast. Anyone object?”

  Ten minutes later they were in the café, sitting in a booth next to the front window – the same one through which Renaldo had peered 15 minutes earlier.

  “Your limp made you easy to track,” Roy explained as he took a sip of coffee. “That permanent?”

  Will thought the limp had gone away, but he’d been working it pretty hard. He rubbed his right thigh even though the aching was in the bone and therefore unreachable. “No, a fractured femur,�
� Will replied. “Healing quickly.”

  “How’d it happen?” Roy asked.

  “Motorcycle accident,” Will lied. “Four months ago.”

  Roy nodded.

  He could tell Roy didn’t buy it.

  Renaldo shook his head. “How did you double back on me?” he asked.

  Perry put up his hand indicating that he’d answer that question for everyone. He took a laptop out of the leather knapsack that never left his person and started it. A minute later a map of the area appeared on the screen along with three moving, colored dots. “The green one is Thompson, and the red is Roy,” Perry explained. “You’re the yellow one, Renaldo.”

  Perry fast-forwarded to the point where Roy snapped Will, and then stopped it. “You should never expose yourself on a corner like this – you’re extremely vulnerable here,” Perry said as he traced an area on the screen with his finger. “This is why you were snapped.”

  Will nodded. Watching it all unfold from above was revealing.

  Perry forwarded to the point where Will ducked into the café. He switched to a display mode that exposed a rough layout of the building’s interior so they could see Will’s movements.

  “How did you get into the kitchen?” Perry asked.

  Will described his coffee trick.

  “Not bad,” Renaldo said.

  “And he followed the rules,” Roy added. “We do exercises here often, and I know this place well. You could’ve bolted out the back door, but that would have set off the alarm.”

  “Then it would’ve become a foot race – something you always want to avoid,” Perry chimed in.

  Roy huffed. “Especially since you’re currently lame.”

  Will nodded. “I need practice.”

  Perry shook his head. “This was your last exercise. You’re as ready as you need to be for relocation.”