The Dragon Factory jl-2

by Jonathan Maberry

  Hu wheeled on her. “Of course they do! Who wouldn’t want such a disorder eradicated? Any sane and compassionate person would agree—”

  “And if the greater good were really the end goal of eugenics then I’d be campaigning for it,” Grace cut in. “But—”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Bug said. “You lost me two turns back. Why are you getting so wound up?”

  But Hu ignored him. “Don’t tell me you’re trying to make the case that all attempts to remove genetic defects have a master race agenda. That’s unfair. A lot of solid genetic research is intended to prevent disease, increase health and strength, and lessen human suffering. And it’s not just Big Pharma and Big Medicine that are behind it. Early funding for serious eugenics research was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kelloggs, the Carnegies—”

  Grace looked like she wanted to spit. “Well, some of that was probably very well intentioned, I’m sure, but surely, Doctor, you can’t be so effing naïve as to believe that everyone involved in medical research is altruistic and has the greater good at heart.”

  “Okay, let’s try to keep our focus here,” I interjected, holding my hand up like a traffic cop. “We don’t have time to debate bioethics.”

  “No,” said Church, “we don’t, and this is beside the point. The research in those records wasn’t intended to prevent harelips or autism. The Cabal was working to provide data that would justify state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization of persons deemed genetically defective, and the killing of institutionalized populations.”

  Grace’s face was alight with triumph. “That’s what I bleeding well said!”

  Bug leaned toward me. “This is . . . what? Like trying to create a master race?”

  It was Church who answered him. “Yes. We’re talking about the ethnic-cleansing research of the Nazis in the hands of scientists who had access to advanced research and development methods and who wanted to see the eugenics program succeed.”

  Grace said, “And your lot—the List—sorted them out?”

  “Yes,” said Church.

  Bug nodded. “So . . . the stuff from Deep Iron. Is that the eugenics research?”

  “Not entirely. There is quite a lot of data from experiments in forced trauma—beatings and other abuse—as part of Mengele’s study to determine the limits of physical endurance under traumatic circumstances. Ostensibly this was intended to help the German soldiers in the field, but few rational people believe that.”

  I noticed he cut a significant look at Hu when he said that, and for once Hu kept his mouth shut. Grace, to her credit, did not break into a smug smile.

  Church said, “The experiments that Mengele performed, and those by other doctors in the various camps, were never intended to benefit the German soldier. They cared nothing for the man in the field. Jerome Freund did extensive interviews with camp survivors as well as those members of camp staff who were not executed after the Nuremberg Trials. What Mengele did—everything Mengele did—was fueled by his insanity and driven by his need to participate fully in the eugenics program.”

  “Why?” asked Bug. “What was his deal?”

  “Mengele believed in the master race concept. Through his experiments he tried to determine the physical vulnerabilities of the different races. It’s one of the reasons he and his masters picked Jews and Gypsies for much of their work, because those groups married within very limited family bloodlines. It allowed Mengele to work with a group who shared many common physiological traits, and that in turn allowed him to make intuitive jumps. The collection of statistics is more than just how the body reacts to trauma but how the bodies of specific races reacts. Think about the use for that when waging a war on what they believed were the lesser race. They believed that by researching common bloodlines they would find vulnerabilities that would give them weapons against the entire race.”

  Grace growled out a comment that would have shocked a stevedore, then said, “Yes . . . and we can thank God that Mengele was not a geneticist.”

  “Why?” asked Bug.

  Hu fielded that one. “Because there are diseases and disorders that affect certain genetic lines. Tay-Sachs, for example, is a genetic disease that affects Jews whose bloodlines can be traced back to a certain region. Predominantly the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. ‘Ashkenaz’ is a word from medieval Hebrew that refers to the Rhineland in the west of Germany.”

  Hu was starting to show off, so Church stepped in. “If Mengele had known about Tay-Sachs and had access to genetic science . . . there’s no telling what kind of mass slaughter he might have perpetrated. It’s not inconceivable that, given time, the Nazis might have developed genetic weapons that could indeed wipe out all of the world’s Jews.”

  “Holy God,” said Bug, looking aghast.

  I had a very bad thought and I looked at Church. “The Cabal records that you destroyed . . . what were their lines of research?”

  Church was silent for so long that I knew the answer would be bad.

  “They were working on a way to weaponize genetic diseases. And, yes, that included Tay-Sachs. They wanted to create a version that could be given to people rather than inherited.”

  Grace shook her head. “Bloody maniacs.”

  Church punched some keys that put the letter I’d found up on the screen side by side with the English-language translation I’d written out during the flight back from Denver.

  “This was written during Mengele’s tenure at Auschwitz. The reference to ‘Herr Wirths’ would be to Dr. Eduard Wirths, the chief SS doctor at the camp. He was Mengele’s superior and was a fiercely dedicated Nazi. Wirths was a highly trained physician who specialized in communicable diseases, and his appointment to the camp was made so that he could try and stop the typhus epidemic that was affecting SS personnel at Auschwitz. He was successful in that and stayed on to oversee other areas of research. We don’t have complete records of what he did, but we know from camp survivors that he was particularly interested in any prisoner who demonstrated symptoms of communicable diseases. It was Wirths who recommended Mengele for promotion to a senior doctor at the camp.”

  “Sounds like a right charmer,” said Grace.

  “Strangely,” Church said to her, “Wirth had a reputation for protecting inmate doctors and even improving some of the health care provided to inmates at Auschwitz.”

  “Which is on a par with giving a man a nice cold glass of water before shoving him into a pit of fire,” I said.

  Church nodded. “Wirths was a complicated man. He insisted that the deaths at the camp were ‘natural deaths’ and not state-sanctioned executions. Jerome Freund viewed him as a villain because of Wirth’s unflinching dedication to the three spheres of Nazi ideology: the goal of revitalizing the German race, the biomedical path to a perfected master race, and the belief that the Jews were a significant threat to the immediate and long-term health of the Germanic race. So, he was no hero by any stretch, even if certain inmates praised his compassion during the trials.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He was taken into British custody in 1945 but shortly thereafter hung himself. Whether to escape punishment or out of remorse is anyone’s guess. However, it is because of men like Wirths and Mengele that we now have the Nuremberg Code of research ethics and principles for human experimentation.”

  “What’s ‘noma’?” I asked.

  “It’s a disfiguring gangrenous disease that was sweeping through the camp,” said Hu. “It’s triggered by malnutrition and is still a significant threat in Africa and other third world countries. Anywhere you find poor food sources, inadequate health care, and unsanitary conditions.”

  I asked. “Okay, and what’s ‘zoonosis’?”

  Hu took that one, too. “It’s the category for any infectious disease that’s able to be transmitted from animals to humans. HIV, bird flu . . . that sort of thing. Usually there isn’t a species jump, but sometimes contamination, a botched experiment, or someone getting jig
gy with the livestock will do it.”

  “Sorry,” I asked, “how’s that tie into Nazi research?”

  “It’s rumored that they experimented with it,” said Hu, “but luckily, nothing much came of it.”

  “The Cabal were doing a lot of research in that area,” said Church. “Their scientists were investigating zoonoses like measles, smallpox, influenza, and diphtheria to see if reintroduction to animals would strengthen the diseases so that they could then be weaponized and used against humans.”

  “Christ on the cross,” said Grace. “I’m very glad your ‘List’ put those pricks down.”

  If they did, I thought. I had my doubts.

  “What about the reference to ‘twins’?” Grace asked.

  “Mengele was obsessed with twins,” said Church. “He removed them from the general population of the camps, gave them better treatment . . . though few actually survived the camps. No one really knows what the ultimate point was of those experiments . . . if Mengele even had a point.”

  “He was probably just batshit crazy,” suggested Bug.

  “He was evil,” said Grace.

  Hu gave her a condescending look. “Evil is an abstraction.”

  Church turned slowly toward him; there was a weird vibe in the air. “I assure you, Doctor, evil exists. Everyone here at this table has seen it. My friend was murdered by a dart filled with Ebola. Insanity would have manifested differently: a bomb, a knifing, even abduction and murder, but to carefully craft a pathogenic weapon, hire an assassin, and deliver that weapon to a target shows a cool, perhaps cold, mind and a clear intent. That’s evil.”

  “What if the killers believe that their ideology is sound?” Hu countered.

  “Like the Nazi Party?” Church asked quietly.

  “Sure. Like the Nazi Party. Your friend was German. Nazism emerged in Germany. Surely you’re not saying that a huge chunk of the German people suddenly became ‘evil.’ ”

  “Of course not. Most people—in Germany as in every other country—are easily led, and easily corrupted by an extreme few. We’ve seen that with Muslim terrorists. Islam is neither evil nor corrupt, but it takes the rap for what some people do in the name of that religion. We can see that here in the states as well. And don’t misunderstand, Doctor; I’m not calling every extremist ‘evil.’ I don’t even use that term to label most terrorists. Many believe that what they are doing is the only means to a better end, or they believe in the words of their leaders, or in a specific interpretation of scripture. There are countless reasons why people take arms and do violence against one another. No, when I label someone like Josef Mengele as evil, I am speaking of a level of corruption that is fueled by self-awareness. Mengele wasn’t a fanatic blindly following a cause. He was a monster. If he had not been born into Nazi Germany, then he might have become a serial murderer or some other kind of monster.”

  Hu looked unconvinced, but he didn’t pursue the point.

  Church selected a cookie and bit off a piece. “Now, as for the rest of the material you found, Captain Ledger, most of it is in code and we lack the code key. Our cryptographers are working on it now, but that could take days or weeks. However, from diagrams and charts it’s clear that a third of the boxes deal with some aspect of genetic research, which means that it is information from well after the war. We have to face the very real possibility that the material includes copies of the material the List destroyed.”

  “Swell,” I said. “And the bruisers who trashed the Russians made off with most of the microfiche copies and probably the damn code key.”

  Church nodded. “The book Jerome Freund was working on mentioned Heinrich Haeckel. The Haeckel family has had an association with biological science for over a century. Ernst Haeckel, who died in 1919, was a noted biologist who made significant positive contributions to natural science. However, his brother’s son, Heinrich, was a monster. He was also a scientist, but his interest was eugenics, and through his research Jerome was able to determine to a great degree of certainty that Heinrich Haeckel was the scientist who sold Adolf Hitler on the concept of Lebensunwertes Leben.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I breathed, and when Grace and Bug looked at me with a frown I translated it for them. The words hurt my mouth.

  “It means ‘life unworthy of life.’ ”

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  The Deck

  Sunday, August 29, 5:32 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 28 minutes E.S.T.

  “Why haven’t we heard anything yet?”

  Otto looked up from his computer. “Give it time, Mr. Cyrus.”

  “It’s been more than enough time,” Cyrus snapped. “Are you sure that they have the right location?”

  “Of course we do. Everything’s been verified and the team is probably on the ground now. This is a field operation, a covert infiltration, and that demands care and caution. We have to let them do their jobs.”

  “I want to know what’s happening. And I want to be informed the minute that either Paris or Hecate has been killed. The minute, Otto.”

  Otto nodded but didn’t respond. It was an unreasonable and irrational demand. A sure sign that it was time for a fresh set of pills. That would be tricky, because suggesting it while Cyrus was in this frame of mind was sure to spark a murderous rage. Though Otto was not physically afraid of Cyrus Jakoby, there was a very real danger to the plan. In the past few years Cyrus’s rages had resulted in damage to crucial equipment and the murder or maiming of key staff members, all of which impacted the smooth flow of production. That, in turn, harmed the launching of the Extinction Wave.

  The upcoming date of September 1 had been selected during one of Cyrus’s whimsical phases and celebrated the discovery of the asteroid Juno by German astronomer Karl L. Harding. Cyrus insisted that the asteroid had not been discovered prior to that date because it had not come into existence until God put it there as a sign. The previous date for the launch of the Wave had held far more personal significance for Otto—May 20, the anniversary of the beginning of construction of Auschwitz. Before that it had been April 30, the anniversary of Hitler’s suicide. Otto was determined to make the September 1 deadline, even if the astronomical connection meant less than nothing to him.

  The second and third Extinction Waves were already lined up, and both would be ready well before their initial planning dates. If they stayed with this schedule, then the global release of ethnic-specific pathogens would reach critical saturation by May of the following year. The computer models predicted that by September of next year the death toll among the mud people would be closing in on 1 billion. In five years there would only be a billion people left alive on the planet, and unless they possessed some currently unknown immunity, none of the survivors would be black, Asian, or Hispanic. The thought of that gave Otto a sexual thrill far more intense than anything he ever got from a woman. The New Order was not only a perfect plan; it was also within their reach.

  Unless Cyrus went too long without his pills.

  Once they seized the Dragon Factory, Cyrus would likely calm down. He would have so many new toys to play with. But while the likelihood of accomplishing that goal was still fluid, then Cyrus’s moods would swing further out of balance.

  Otto would have to think of something to get Cyrus to take his pills. If it came down to it, Otto could always hit him with a dart gun. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  The Warehouse, Baltimore, Maryland

  Sunday, August 29, 5:33 A.M.

  Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 78 hours, 27 minutes

  “Life unworthy of life,” Bug said slowly. “Man, that has an ugly feel to it.”

  “It’s the core of Nazi eugenics,” Church said. “It refers to those people—or groups of people—who they believed had no right to live.”

  “If these assholes have their way,” Bug said softly, “half the people at this table won’t make the cut. We’re not ‘master race�
�� material.”

  “Is anyone?” asked Church. “The idea of a master race belonged to the Nazis . . . it was not and is not part of the cultural aspirations of the German people.”

  “So that’s why Haeckel was corresponding with an asshole like Mengele,” Bug said, putting it together now. “They were all playing for the same team.”

  “But how did his records ever make it out of Germany?” demanded Grace. “Wasn’t Haeckel considered a war criminal?”

  “No,” said Church. “His involvement with the Nazi movement was never fully established even after the war. He was supposedly a dealer in medical instruments and even did work with the International Red Cross. He was sly enough to stay off the political radar, and it’s very likely that he fled the country when things started going bad for Germany. A lot of Nazis were able to read the writing on the wall. They were losing the war, but many of them were so dedicated—or perhaps fanatical—that they wanted to lay the groundwork for their research so that it could start up again somewhere else. Haeckel might have gone to South America or even come directly here.”

  “How the hell could he swing that?” asked Bug. “No way a Nazi could just come waltzing into the U.S. during the war.”

  Grace shook her head. “Don’t be naïve, Bug. There was active communication and even some under-the-radar commerce between Germany and some U.S. corporations during the war. Very low-key, but definitely there. There are people who always have what they call a ‘big picture’ view that basically lets them justify anything because they know that wars end and countries usually kiss and make up. Nowadays you Yanks are chums with Germany, Russia, Japan, even Vietnam.”

  “It can’t be that easy,” Bug said stubbornly.

  “It’s not,” said Church, “but when there’s enough money on the table a way is always found. Heinrich Haeckel disappeared from the public before the end of the war. Either he never made it out of Germany and was among the nameless dead or he came here and set up under a different identity. I’d place my money on the latter. From the way things have played out, it’s likely he died here before passing along the records in his possession; otherwise the Cabal would have sought them out decades ago. My guess is that his nephew recently uncovered some reference to it among family papers and that started the race to Deep Iron.”