“No, sir. I don’t think his body has been found yet. Anyway, as far as we can tell he just showed up on his own in Ireland, so it’s unlikely anyone will miss him. I think he was just trying to escape from prosecution in Japan. He insisted that he was just planning to lay low and be anonymous in Ireland.”
“In Ireland? Are you kidding?” the general asked, “I would think he would stand out there like a sore thumb.”
“Oh, no sir,” John said somewhat uncomfortably. He didn’t like contradicting generals; it almost always turned out to be the wrong thing to do. “Ireland has become extremely cosmopolitan in the past few years. He would have blended in with no problem at all.”
General Baker simply stared at John without saying anything.
“We were both very surprised, sir,” John added quickly, “I mean… who knew, right?” He looked over at Tom for reassurance but found none there.
General Baker continued staring at him for a few more seconds then slowly nodded once. “Very well,” he said, “good job men. Now, why don’t you join Roger here for a tour of the bioresearch laboratory? I’m sure you’ll find it interesting. You can leave the mammoth material here with me. I’ll see that it gets to the right people.”
John and Tom turned to Roger who had just entered the room. He was wearing a long white lab coat and cap, much like surgeons wear in hospital operating rooms. Disposable protective coverings covered his shoes, while a light blue surgical mask dangled from his neck.
“Come along with me gentlemen. We’ll get you suited up and then I’ll give you the quick tour of our facility. I’m sorry it can’t be too in depth; you need a special security clearance for that, but you’ll get a good idea anyway,” he said with a smile. “Trust me.”
He turned and walked out the door with John and Tom trailing closely behind. General Baker remained behind, and after the door closed he simply stood and stared at the suitcase with the mammoth tissue for several minutes, thinking. Then, with a last look – a mixture of disgust and fear – at the suitcase, he picked up the phone and made a call to the bioresearch lab area.
“This is General Baker,” he said to the technician on the other end, “send someone over to conference room delta immediately for a pickup of material for the bio-mining group.”
Roger walked John and Tom down the long corridor away from the conference room to a corridor intersection where a sign indicated that Lab 1 was to the left, Lab 2 was towards the right, and Lab 3 was straight ahead.
“There are only three labs?” John asked as Roger began to open the door to the left. “I thought there would be a lot more given the size of the project.”
Roger stopped and turned to him with a slightly condescending smile, “The signs don’t mean ‘laboratory’,” he said, “The word ‘Lab’ means ‘Labyrinth’.” With that he opened the door fully and motioned for them to enter.
Neither John nor Tom had ever seen, or even imagined, anything like the scene that now lay before them. Directly in front of them was a brightly lit, gray and pink corridor that extended off into a distance so remote that the end could not be discerned by the eye. Far away from them the two walls, and the floor and ceiling, all simply converged into a single, brightly lit point of pinkish gray light. Perpendicular to this hallway, intersecting corridors could be seen at periodic distances. Bright red or green pulses of light were radiating into the hallway at several of the intersections.
As vast as the scene in front of them was, a much more stunning and fearful sight lay directly below them. They could see that they were standing on a large section of a completely transparent material that spanned the first thirty feet of the corridor floor.
“It’s glass,” Roger said, enjoying the look of fright on their faces. “Don’t worry, it won’t break. It’s over a meter thick and it’s stronger than steel.”
John and Tom gazed downward, hypnotized by what they saw. Below them was a shaft of unimaginable depth. Like the corridor in front of them, the brightly lit shaft seemed to stretch downward into infinity, with only a brightly glowing reddish colored point at the bottom.
“How deep is it?” John asked quietly, almost in a reverent whisper.
“Miles,” Roger replied, unable to hide his amusement at the men’s reaction. “That red glow you see at the bottom? Lava.”
“Lava!” Tom replied.
“Yes, there is a large magma chamber directly below us, and our project engineers were able to drill several shafts, including this one, all the way down to it.”
“Why?” John asked, still in awe of the sight.
“Two purposes. Security and, perhaps more mundane, trash disposal. See, the corridor floor you are standing on is retractable – sort of like a drawbridge. In the event of an enemy attack it provides a final layer of defense.”
“Oh,” John said, nodding his head, “but why trash disposal? Seems like a pretty expensive way to throw out the trash.”
“Two reasons again,” Roger said with a smile as he started walking down the corridor. “Follow me, I’ll take you to one of our labs. You see, some of the materials we generate here are extraordinarily toxic or dangerous. There is simply no safe way to dispose of some of our experiments, except to just drop them into the molten lava far below where they are safely incinerated at extreme temperatures. Secondly, as I’m sure you know, some of our work is done at the highest possible levels of classification. A lot of it has to be destroyed when it becomes outdated or for other reasons. This provides the safest possible method of classified document disposal. The deepest and darkest secrets of Project Omega never leave here.”
“Good idea,” Tom said. “It must have cost a lot of money and taken a long time though.”
Roger stopped at the doorway to a room marked Bio-observation Room 13-1A. “Come on in. Yes, the budget for the operation has always been enormous, but it’s about to pay some enormous dividends too - thanks in part to your work in the field. As far as time goes, well, construction activities started here just after World War Two and they never stopped.”
“Never? That was over fifty years ago!”
“Yes, that’s right. In fact construction work has increased during the past ten or twenty years. What you see here is really nothing compared to the newer structures, Lab Two and Lab Three.”
“Really?” John said, his eyes wide in wonder. “What’s being done in those?”
“Sorry,” Roger said with a smile, “can’t tell you. You need a different clearance for that.” He motioned for them to take a seat among the three rows of chairs that faced one of the walls and then pushed a button beside the door. Immediately the wall opposite the chairs slid away and a glass partition was revealed that allowed them to see into a very large laboratory where more than a hundred people wearing biohazard suits could be seen working at lab benches. Each bench had a bewildering assortment of electronic devices and video and numeric displays. Many of the benches had exhaust hoods and a few had cages that held what appeared to be white laboratory rats.
“This is the Stage One disease research facility. It’s where we begin to analyze and create our products.”
“I see,” John said, “so I guess this is where you’ll start looking at the mammoth tissue.”
“Exactly.”
“And then you’ll extract enough of the virus so you’ll be able to start mass production.”
Roger smiled in amusement. “No. Not exactly... In fact, not at all.”
“What do you mean ‘Not at all’? I thought this disease was going to be weaponized!”
“Oh, it is. Just not the way you think. Let me explain. Our real interest in the disease is in sections of the viral DNA itself – not the virus per se. You see, if we analyze the DNA – and we are very, very good at that – we will be able to determine the molecular combinations that provide this virus with the ability to create a disease with certain characteristics. That’s what we are looking for – characteristics.”
“You want characteristics?”
“Absolutely. For example, one of the things that intrigues us about this beautiful virus is its ability to spread so easily. It’s really quite remarkable how it seems to be able to survive on surfaces for days or even weeks and how it seems to spread by all sorts of means. It appears that you can contract it if it is airborne or on a surface like a doorknob. It also seems to be spread by bodily contact, in food, in just about anyway you can imagine. It’s just amazing.”
“Yeh, I guess so. But what about the way it kills. Aren’t you interested in that too?”
“Mmmm. Maybe. We have other types of DNA instruction sets that do a pretty good job of that too.”
“DNA instruction sets?”
“Yes, coded DNA. See, what we do here is we design diseases. We use bits and pieces of DNA codes we gather, or manufacture, and put them together into new, uh, things. Like viruses or bacteria or something else.”
“What do you mean ‘something else’?”
Roger smiled conspiratorially, “I shouldn’t be telling you I suppose, but in light of your contribution, and, uh, the circumstances, I will. I don’t think it will hurt. Here’s where we are right now in our research: we think we can create an extremely potent, uh, thing now. It’s a combination of a bacteria and a virus that has the best properties of both. Nothing could survive an attack by this new thing we are calling a ‘bacterius’. No living thing would have any immunity to it. It would be an entirely new creature never seen on earth before.”
John and Tom looked at each other in astonishment, and then Tom said, “That’s amazing! So you also make the cures for the diseases here too?”
Roger gave him a cold, hard look. “Cure? No. Of course not…we don’t do cures.”
“Uh, so how do we protect ourselves, then? I mean won’t this thing just take over the world?” Tom asked.
“Ha, ha, ha,” Roger laughed at the earnestness of his question, “Oh, no. We’re more responsible than that!” He chuckled to himself again. “We also include in the genetic code of the bacterius a DNA instruction set that introduces aging. Its lifespan will be about two weeks. Furthermore, the bacterius is also designed so that it cannot reproduce. It’s made for a one-time, short duration application. That’s all. All we need to do is to stay out of the contaminated area for that amount of time and it will be safe for anyone to enter afterward.”
“How long do you think it will take to develop the bacterius?” John asked.
“Well, we are already pretty far along. In fact all we needed was some of the DNA building blocks from the mammoth tissue you brought us. We should have a completed prototype in about a month!” he said with a smile. “And a good thing too! I heard the President is extremely anxious for this to be ready. I guess they already have a target somewhere.” Roger walked over and pressed the button to close the window covering and the men got up from their seats.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “if you would come with me to the room next door we have a surprise for you. We want to honor you with the nation’s highest award for clandestine service. Of course you won’t be able to tell anyone about it,” he said with a laugh. “But you’ll know just the same that a grateful nation appreciates all of your hard work.” He led them out of the room across the corridor into a sparsely, but rather elegantly furnished, waiting room. The walls were painted a very light shade of pink while the floor was a soothing off-white color.
“If you’ll take a seat, men, this won’t take a minute.” He walked out of the room and the men sat down in the two very comfortable leather armchairs to wait. Less than a minute later a large screen dropped down on the opposite wall and the lights dimmed. A photograph of a benignly smiling President Cranston appeared on the screen and the strains of America the Beautiful were soon heard through the speakers. “A Grateful Nation Salutes You” appeared in large red letters on the screen.
“Gentlemen, welcome.” They heard the voice of President Cranston say from the speaker in the ceiling as the music continued in the background. “I am truly grateful to you for your efforts in retrieving the materials that we so desperately need. I understand that this was not your primary mission, but a secondary mission of opportunity that you embarked upon. We shall make good use of this material. Rest assured. Despite the fact that you have failed in your primary mission we would still like to award you with the Legion of the North Star medal for you fine efforts in the clandestine service. As you know when you joined the special services branch of the Omega Project we have an ironclad code of conduct and a complete and total dedication to our mission, even to the death. Which is why the simple motto of the clandestine branch of Omega is ‘Do or Die’.”
The two men turned to each other and smiled.
“Gentlemen, my congratulations for winning this award; however, in light of your overall mission failure, I am sorry to inform you that, in accordance with our unwavering policy, the award in your case will have to be a posthumous award.”
The photo of the President faded away and the room became even darker. Seconds later, a reddish glow began to fill the room as the final strains of America the Beautiful filled the room and the floor began to change color and then glow red as well. Then the hard surface changed from an opaque red to the clear transparence of glass. It was then that the men saw the utterly deep shaft below them with an incredibly distant single point in the center that glowed a deep red.
John and Tom looked at each other for a moment. “What the…” John started to say, but before he could say another word the floor below them abruptly opened and the men and their comfortable leather chairs dropped breathlessly into the abyss.
Twenty-One
It was an unusual meeting that was being held in the White House situation room. Unusual because there were only four high ranking people present; none of the usual assistants and aides had been invited. The subject matter was too sensitive to be discussed, or even heard, except by the heads of the agencies involved. President Cranston sat at the head of the table and glared at each of the others in turn without saying a word. Each of them, General Baker of Project Omega, Dr. Charles Goodfellow of UNAPS, and Dr. Harry Fields of the Centers for Disease Control looked at the other uneasily, almost the way grade school students do when being reprimanded by their teacher.
“Look at this,” President Cranston said quietly as he tossed a newspaper onto the table. “You have each failed me.”
The headline of the New York Times was printed in letters six inches high:
Asian Fever Strikes New York, Paris, and Rome
“There are at least hundreds of people already dead in each of these cities, and this disease is spreading fast. Who knows where it will turn up next?”
“Sir,” General Baker said, “begging your pardon, but I don’t see how I, or anyone at Project Omega, could have failed you. This is not our concern.”
“General Baker, I know you don’t know how you have failed and that is part of the problem. You are too out of touch. I have heard from the CIA that your people captured and killed a Japanese researcher named Stephen Itagaki. He was the man who was responsible for unleashing this disease on the world. Didn’t you know that?”
“No sir, not at the time. However, our agents did retrieve some of the original virus-contaminated material, and that will be great asset to our research. Besides, in the end, Dr. Itagaki only got what he deserved.”
The President paused a moment and then said quietly, “Did you also know that he was working on a vaccine for the disease?”
“No! I mean no, sir. Uh, how do you know, sir? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“He had a female assistant who was arrested by the Japanese police as she was trying to leave the country a while ago. She told them everything.”
General Baker thought about this for a few seconds and then said, “Did she give them the information on the vaccine too?”
“No, she couldn’t. He held that information very close. Now, thanks to your over zealous men, that information is
, no doubt, lost forever.”
“Yes, sir. I am sorry. As you know those agents have already been punished severely.”
President Cranston nodded, “Yes, I know.”
Then he turned to Dr. Goodfellow, “Charlie, that information you gave me about Caucasians having immunity to this disease was pure crap.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, I realize that now, but that information didn’t originate with me. That came from a CDC field agent.”
“What?” Dr. Fields practically shouted, “My agents would never say such a thing without clear evidence – and there is none to support such a conclusion. Only an idiot would say such a thing!”
“Now, now,” the President said, “Calm down. Let’s not point fingers at each other. Charlie, I don’t care where the info came from – you told it to me. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now, Dr. Fields, tell me why doesn’t the CDC have a cure or a vaccine for this disease yet. What the hell are your people doing in Atlanta anyway?”
“Sir, I think we are making very good progress. However, these things take time and this disease is new, very new. We’ve never seen anything like it. We need at least a month before we will have anything ready to test.”
“A month?” President Cranston said, “That’s a long time, Harry. I don’t know if we have a month. This thing seems to spread very fast. General Baker, have your people been tracking this disease?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. That’s part of our job.” Dr. Fields stared at the General intently but said nothing.
“Well, what’s your estimate?” the President asked, “Do we have time for the CDC to fool around for another month?”
“Sir, if I may say so,” Dr. Fields interrupted, “it will probably take a month for a prototype vaccine, but frankly, I have no idea when a cure might be found. Moreover, even if the vaccine were found to be initially effective it would still need to undergo thorough testing. Then, of course, the vaccine companies would have to start production. Using the standard method of vaccine production that employs eggs as the culture medium, I estimate we will need at least a year before we have significant quantities of vaccine available. Distribution and inoculation of the population would take at least six more months.”
The Viral Epiphany Page 13