Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1)

by A. G. Riddle

  Despite the whole world going crazy, life settled down for me at home. My teenage years were a sharp contrast to the turbulent first twelve years of my life. Mother and Father, as I had come to refer to Sarah and Robert, were loving to me, fair but firm, and never were there two parents who cared for a child more. They didn’t dote on me, but they gave me every scrap of spare time and energy they had. Mother was adamant about my keeping up with chores and my schoolwork. Father always had a project he wanted us to do—usually science-related. I knew early on that he imagined me following in his footsteps. To him, science was the noblest endeavor, and physics towered above all other sciences.

  But like every child becoming an adult, I learned the limits of my abilities. Where science and math were concerned, those boundaries didn’t extend nearly far enough. I would never be a great scientist, or even a bad one. My mind just wasn’t wired that way. I did excel at languages, however. Perhaps it was a gift from my biological mother. Picking up a foreign tongue was a piece of cake for me. And I loved history—military history in particular. I read everything I could about the Third Infantry, the division in which my biological father had served and died. I devoured histories of Germany and the British Empire.

  University came and went, and my only notable accomplishments occurred in the boxing ring. I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. Like so many others with the same problem, I joined the army. It seemed a noble pursuit and a good place to get my bearings and maybe see a little of the world.

  It was the right decision. In the army I learned leadership and how to manage people. University had stuffed my head full of facts and knowledge and had taught me how to think and solve problems. But I had only ever managed myself. The army was a boon to me in that respect. It also gave me perhaps the greatest gift of my entire life: it revealed who I was. It tested me in ways school never had. And I found I was at my best during a crisis. In clutch situations, when I had to make fast decisions, I never faltered. And I lived for those moments, just as I had looked forward to the boxing ring. But more so—for in real life, there was no referee to pull you apart, no bell to ring.

  To this day I believe a person’s ideal first job is the one that reveals the most about them. Knowing who I was helped me avoid a lot of dead ends in life. A lot of opportunities look good, but I’ve found that sometimes success and happiness are about knowing when to say no.

  I avoided routine. I liked moving around, doing something different every day. Maybe it was because of how I grew up during the war, being shuffled around, but it became my way of life. I moved from post to post, always the first to volunteer for a transfer. I never wanted my feet to go to sleep.

  Just before my first tour of duty ended, a man came to see me. He asked if I was interested in a new type of opportunity, a way to serve Her Majesty’s government in a far greater capacity than I currently was. They had me with the patriotic pitch. The job interview was a complex, bizarre process that would fill a book. I imagine it was a little different for each of us who joined in those days. They vetted me, tested me some more, then began my real training. A year later, in 1959, I became an employee of the Gibraltar Trading Company.

  On the surface, I was an antiques dealer. My job entailed a lot of travel, exchanging large sums of money with foreigners and foreign governments, recovering relics lost in the war. But in truth, I was an agent for Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, as it was predominantly known then. I had never been so filled with purpose. Or happier.

  My mother had been worried about me when I joined the army. My position with Gibraltar Trading soothed her nerves considerably. My father’s reaction was quite unexpected: a mixture of amusement and appreciation. He seemed to know exactly what I was up to. And our relationship actually improved. We began to have long conversations—philosophical in nature. I discovered a whole new side of him. In short, he opened up to me, taking an interest in me as he never had before—or at least, not since before university, when it became clear that I was never going to be a scientist. I knew that had disappointed him, though he never voiced it and never showed it. Like all parents, he just wanted me to value the things he valued. In some way, he wanted me to carry on his work.

  When I visited home from my trips, I brought small trinkets, which my mother displayed in the parlor and my father placed on shelves in his study. He asked me about the trips with an amused look on his face, as if he knew what had truly taken place.

  On Easter weekend in 1965, I learned just how much he knew.

  I sat in his study, completely unprepared for what he was about to tell me.

  “I’d like you to come with me to Hong Kong next week.”

  “Can’t. I have a meeting with a new client in Warsaw.”

  He stood, walked to a shelf to the left of his desk, and moved a few items out of the way. He pushed the shelf’s back panel; it clicked and sprang open, revealing a small safe, which he opened. He drew out a picture and handed it to me.

  “Twenty years ago, I helped create that device.”

  I had seen the image before, many times. This was a photo—an original, printed by someone who was there at the first atomic bomb test. I had never known Father was involved.

  “I have regretted it every day since. Do you know how many nuclear warheads exist today?”

  Still studying the picture, I said. “Thirty-seven thousand, seven hundred and forty-one. Give or take.”

  “And they’re far more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan.”

  He paused, waited for me to look at him.

  “Communism isn’t humanity’s greatest enemy. Indeed, we are the greatest enemy we now face. For the first time in history, we have the means with which to destroy ourselves. I helped give that deadly weapon to the world. I’ve spent the years since trying to ensure it is never used again.”

  “How?”

  “I’m part of an organization that’s creating a new device, a device that will change the human race. Its reach will be unlimited. It will affect every person, of every nationality and race and religion. It will save us. It may well be our only chance of survival.”

  I was skeptical. In fact, I half wondered if the long hours in his lab had finally gotten to him.

  “What sort of… device?” I asked.

  “I’ll tell you that in due time. You of all people know the importance of secrecy.”

  I was sure of it then: he knew I was a spy.

  “The Looking Glass is the culmination of my life’s work. It’s in danger now. We’re entering a phase of the project where our work will be more exposed. There’s greater risk. I need someone to protect it. I think you might be that person.”

  He stared at me a moment. “Will you come with me to Hong Kong?”

  I agreed instantly. I felt pride that day—that he had asked me, that I had grown into someone who could help him, after everything he had done for me.

  Hong Kong in 1965 was booming. The streets were clogged with people, and factories were springing up at every turn. More than half the population were young people about my age, in their mid-twenties and early thirties.

  Walking the crowded sidewalks, with double-decker buses zooming by, belching heavy black smoke and releasing passengers every few blocks, I realized that Hong Kong in so many ways was an Asian facsimile of London: British-style government and capitalism, but with a fusion of culture from the East and West.

  That night, my father and I strolled through the city, lit not by yellow streetlights like the London of my youth, but bathed in red and blue neon signs that stretched from street level to high above, featuring words written in Cantonese. Disco music wafted into the street as strongly as the scent of roasted pig and beef from the eateries. We’d had a drink at our hotel and another at dinner. I’ve forgotten the names of the hotel and the restaurant, but I remember how I felt about Hong Kong that night: as if I were seeing the future, as if every city would one day be like this blooming metropolis, a melting pot of human cu
lture. Young people were flocking in from China and the rest of the world.

  Hong Kong was the first trip I had taken with my father as an adult. Our relationship had changed, and that was evident now, as we embarked on this adventure together.

  In the harbor lay the vessel that would change my life—and perhaps soon the world. It was a submarine, the largest non-military sub I had ever seen. It was nuclear-powered, with a diesel-electric backup. The tour of the vessel lasted an hour. I was shocked by what I saw: it was a massive laboratory capable of circling the globe. I paused at the nameplate, which read:

  RSV Beagle

  Hong Kong

  1 May 1965

  Ordo ab Chao

  I translated the Latin words in my head: From chaos comes order.

  My line of work had taken me behind the Iron Curtain routinely. Order existed there, but the price was high: freedom. I wondered what this vessel’s builders demanded for the order they sought. And what that order was.

  Back in our hotel that night, my father told me the role I was to play.

  “The Beagle’s mission will require it to travel to dangerous places. Some are hard to reach physically. Others are dangerous politically.”

  “The Soviet Union. China.”

  “Among others,” he said.

  “I was in the army, not the navy.”

  “Your role will be securing operations on the shore. That’s where the true danger lies. The sub will dock at ports all over the world. You’ll need to think fast, be ready for anything, negotiate with customs, get our people out of sticky situations.”

  He paused, letting me consider the words.

  “I know your current work is very important. But so is this. If I’m right, it’s the most important thing the human race has ever done. The world may well avoid a nuclear holocaust, but there will always be another device, another war. We are the enemy we face. The human race is on borrowed time. We are far too uncivilized to possess the weapons we do. We’re racing the clock, just as we were during the Manhattan Project. Will you help us?”

  I agreed then and there in that hotel room. I wondered what sort of device the Looking Glass was. I assumed the answer would be revealed in those first days aboard the Beagle. What I found was far more intriguing.

  Chapter 80

  In the small cottage in Shetland, the sun had risen, driving the fog away. The wind still whipped across the stone, rattling the ancient windows every few minutes.

  Desmond stood to stretch his legs. At the corkboard he scanned an article about the Invisible Sun Foundation donating ten million dollars to a genetics project at Stanford.

  Peyton moved toward him, but he turned and motioned her back to the couch. “Let’s keep going.”

  As he sat down, an object caught his eye. It was in the corner of the room, where the wall met the ceiling. It was well hidden by several trinkets at the top of a bookshelf, but there was no mistaking what it was: a camera. At the bottom, a small light glowed red.

  Desmond hoped the camera was simply a left over security measure the cottage owner had installed. There wasn’t much he could do about it at the moment except run, and that would tip off anyone watching. He focused on the pages of the story and began reading again.

  The Beagle was an incredible vessel, but most impressive to me were the people aboard. They were drawn from all over the world: American, British like myself, Germans, Chinese, Russians, Japanese. They were nearly all scientists, except for the staff who operated the submarine and me and my three security personnel. I must say, we non-scientists felt a bit out of place at first; on the mess deck, all the talk was of the experiments. I had expected there to be just one experiment. On that point, I was very wrong.

  The Beagle was in some ways a floating university with multiple departments, each with specialists in the field, all of them conducting different research. We took ice core samples in Antarctica, collected soil samples from the ocean floor, and took on animals from all over the world. Human test subjects were common—people from all nations and races—and were taken to labs that were off-limits to non-essential personnel. All this activity baffled me. How could all of this be related to one project?

  Of course, nothing inspires curiosity like a secret. Like the sailors, I did my share of speculating and prodding the scientists about what they were researching. I knew the vessel’s namesake, the HMS Beagle, had carried a young Charles Darwin on the voyage around the world that helped him form his theory of natural selection. I wondered if the scientists on this vessel were testing a theory as groundbreaking.

  I have never been claustrophobic, but my time on the Beagle tested my comfort level with confinement. The crew quarters were small and separated by gender. The bunks were stacked three tall, with twelve of us to a berth. We shared a shower the sailors called a rain locker (they called the bunks racks or bunkies). Indeed, the men who ran the sub seemed to have a language all their own, mostly comprised of curse words. Sailors not pulling their weight were called bent shitcans. Sailors who only looked out for themselves were check valves. Surface ships and sailors were skimmers (a derogatory term, apparently). Passageways were p-ways. Radiation was zoomies. Marine life spotted on sonar—dolphins and whales—were called biologics. Clear your baffles meant to look behind you. Poking holes in the ocean meant we were underway. There was a locker dedicated to holding porn, known as the smut locker.

  On the whole, I felt more of a connection to the sailors than to the scientists. That changed when I got to know my bunkmate, Yuri Pachenko. Yuri was thirty-three, about two years older than me, and smaller. But his size belied his strength, which lay mostly in his mind. He was the most intense person I’d ever met. His story revealed why.

  He had been a child in Stalingrad when the German Sixth Army had arrived in August of 1942. I had read about the battle, of course; it was one of the deadliest battles in the history of warfare, with millions of lives lost. Hearing his story firsthand made my experience during the war seem like a holiday in the country. The evacuations had largely spared Britain’s children the horrors of the war, but in the Soviet Union, there had been nowhere to run. Yuri had fought for his land and scraped to survive.

  And now, he wanted to create a world where Stalingrad never happened again. I have never seen anyone so focused on anything. His field was virology, and he was learning from the best in the world, who apparently were on board the Beagle.

  In August of 1967, we docked in Mombasa. Yuri and a team rushed to Uganda to investigate a viral outbreak. They brought samples back. Containment was instituted in the labs, and for good reason: I later learned the virus they’d brought on board was Marburg, a hemorrhagic fever close in nature to Ebola (which was discovered in Zaire about ten years later).

  I found one scientist much more interesting than the others: Lin Keller. She was the child of a Chinese mother and a German father, and she had grown up in Hong Kong during the war. She described, in vivid terms, living through the fall of the island. On the same day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, they also attacked the British colony of Hong Kong. Local troops, as well as British, Canadian, and Indian units, fought hard for the island but lost to the overwhelming Japanese forces. They surrendered on Christmas Day in 1941—what the locals would call “Black Christmas.”

  The Japanese occupation of Hong Kong followed. From the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon, the Japanese ruled with an iron fist. Lin and her mother were separated from her father, who was in Germany, forced to work for the German government. Though he could have brought his family to Germany, he had felt she was safer in Hong Kong, despite the conditions. They barely scraped by during the “three years and eight months,” as the occupation came to be known.

  The situation on mainland China was far worse. The Japanese had invaded in July of 1937, beginning the Second Sino-Japanese War. The conflict was massive in scale and loss of human life; it would account for the majority of civilian and military casualties in the Pacific War and claim the lives of ten
to twenty-five million Chinese civilians and over four million Chinese and Japanese military. The war in China exemplified a fact often forgotten about the Second World War: globally, more non-combatants perished than uniformed participants. Civilians in China and the Soviet Union suffered the most, but hunger and violence were a fact of life around the world in the early forties.

  That was the world Yuri, Lin, and I had grown up in. It was a world we didn’t want our children to grow up in. We were going to change it, no matter the cost. And in each other, we found kindred spirits, linked by a shared childhood across thousands of miles and two continents.

  Lin’s field was genetics, and the subject was an obsession for her. Her father was also conducting genetic research on the Beagle, which meant that in addition to the research opportunity, her time here was a chance to reconnect with him. This was something Lin and I shared in common: the Citium was an opportunity to connect with our fathers, to share in their life’s work, and perhaps even to fill in some of the years of our childhoods we had lost.

  Genetics was a booming field. Watson and Crick had figured out that DNA was arranged in a double helix in 1953, and the discoveries had accelerated after that. When Lin talked about the promise of genetics, she lit up. She was unlike any woman I had ever met. Physically, she was an anomaly, the embodiment of Hong Kong itself: distinctly Asian features with a mixture of British mannerisms and behavior. She was unassuming, utterly without ego. Perhaps that was what attracted me the most. She was hardworking to a fault; often I found her in the cramped office outside her lab asleep with her head on her desk. I would lift her small body up and carry her through the p-ways. Sailors stood against the walls to make room for me to pass, never missing an opportunity to heckle me.

  “Finally bagged her, eh, Willy?”

  “What’d it take, Will, tranq dart or a shot of tequila?”

  “Make way for Prince Charming, boys!”

  I endured the jabs without a care in the world. I deposited her in her bunk, pulled the covers up, and turned the small noisemaker on—they were good for helping folks stay asleep; the berths weren’t separated by shifts, and bunkmates were constantly coming and going. The hard surfaces throughout the vessel made for a noisy existence.