The Storm Protocol

by Iain Cosgrove

  ‘So this whole thing came about by accident?’ asked the communications director.

  ‘Don’t all the best discoveries?’ asked the agent. ‘Anyway, once Major Walker had hooked his fish, he had no intention of letting it go. When Nigel woke up, he found himself back at his house with an unexpected guest. Over the next week, Major Walker managed to convince Nigel that he was a died-in-the-wool communist; it was the only way he could think of to keep Nigel onside. And besides, just because Nigel was a communist, didn’t mean he was a pacifist, or worse, a fascist sympathiser; far from it in fact, especially later in the war. He wore his patriotism openly, another anomaly of his adopted doctrine.’

  ‘So what happened then?’ asked the director.

  ‘The whole operation from then on was scaled up. The lab at Nigel’s house was retained, but the building became MOD property. Nigel was delighted when they offered to buy the place from him; at that stage, he cared only for his compound, his drug, his baby. Their offer, ostensibly to free up capital to pump back into the research, seemed too good to be true. They had offered way over the market value. But the real reason was obviously control and containment; they just wanted to keep a lid on things. Major Walker moved himself in and brought a staff of research graduates with him. Both men were careful to let those graduates only work on isolated aspects of the drug, for confidentiality and safety reasons. And then, one day in late 1944, they made the breakthrough.’

  Chapter 6 – Concealment

  21st February 2009 – Two years before the Storm.

  Truth fears nothing but concealment. – Proverb.

  He let the sentence hang in the air for a while, before continuing.

  ‘They spent the next six months or so honing and improving. All the tests they did on lab animals with the new drug seemed to be positive, but the ultimate test was obviously on human subjects, and that meant human clinical studies. Now today, we have so many regulations around clinical studies; good clinical practice is ruthlessly enforced by agencies like the FDA around the world. But this was a country at war, remember?’

  He stopped again to take a breath.

  ‘So here again, they had a spot of luck. There was a German POW camp just down the road from the lab. The majority of the POW’s were working on farms and in factories, but given his war office connections, Major Walker was able to divert a number of men to the lab, ostensibly to work on the small kitchen gardens they had, but ultimately as human subjects.’

  ‘Were they aware of their role?’ asked the deputy director.

  ‘An interesting question, and one where you would have thought the answer would be no. But both Nigel and Major Walker were extremely open with the men; seems they wanted them to know exactly what it was they were taking on, so they could give some honest feedback. And having read the contemporary reports from the time, it seems they were remarkably co-operative. To a man, they wanted to give something back; maybe do their bit to accelerate the end of the war; who knows?’

  ‘So what happened then?’ asked the communications director.

  They could all hear the slight catch of excitement in her voice.

  ‘The six men were treated simultaneously; four subjects were given the drug, with two getting a placebo each as a control. They were then monitored in a special surgical ward adjacent to the lab; one that had been constructed especially by Major Walker. All the observations were reported in six separate journals, and were recorded by six individual technicians. Each monitored their subjects from specially constructed isolation booths above the ward. I have read each journal and the reports are quite startling.’

  ‘Don’t leave us hanging man, spit it out,’ said the director.

  ‘Oh, the expected results were indeed quite amazing; the drug worked beautifully. Each of the subjects in the first test became compliant almost immediately. They could be directed to do things they normally would not do quite easily; generally with little or no knowledge that they had just done them. And obviously the two with the placebos noticed no change. But there was a side effect that had not been immediately obvious in the animal tests.’

  ‘Was it bad?’ asked the deputy director.

  ‘Completely the opposite,’ said the agent. ‘It gave the four men who took it, an immense and almost overpowering euphoria; so much so that they begged for more almost immediately.’

  ‘But not addictive?’ asked the deputy director.

  The agent held up his hand and studied his fingernails carefully, as he considered his answer.

  ‘They continued the tests; the subjects reported the same thing; they were not aware of their compliancy, all they wanted was to experience the high.’

  This time, he turned to the deputy director.

  ‘But you’re right; after three or four rounds of the trial, the subjects wanted it, and wanted it really badly. But here’s the kicker; it was not chemically addictive. There were no unpleasant withdrawal symptoms or anything like that. This was a real and total mental craving; they lived, slept and ate their next dose; literally dreamt about it.’

  The agent stabbed his finger, to make his point.

  ‘They didn’t realise it at the time, but this was the nirvana for modern day drug dealers; the zenith of drug development. Think about it; the ability as a drug user to attain unimaginable highs. No chemical addiction, no painful withdrawal; no risk at all really, with the only craving being mental, the most difficult one to overcome. Imagine controlling the supply of that drug in today’s market; a sobering thought.’

  ‘So what is the issue?’ asked the communications director.

  They all looked at her.

  ‘Come on, think about it, gentlemen?’ she said. ‘Would we be here if there wasn’t an issue?’

  ‘Very astute of you, ma’am and quite right too,’ said the agent. ‘Let me explain. About three weeks into the trial, Nigel and Major Walker decided to up the ante and do the last big trial before declaring it a qualified success; or a successful first step at the very least. This was going to be a volume test; to see if the amount of the drug taken had any negative connotations.’

  He paused and licked his lips for a second.

  ‘Unfortunately, none of the subjects survived; I’ve actually visited their graves. There are six of them, still marked with simple wooden crosses.’

  ‘But you said....’ said the director.

  ‘Yes I did, and indeed in the early tests, it looked like they were onto something.’

  He looked at them carefully, one after the other.

  ‘But on that last test, the fateful test, something went badly wrong. Incidentally, it was the only volume test done on humans to date, and at around the seventh hour mark, things took an unexpected turn. The four men became agitated at first. This escalated through annoyance and then, within five minutes, had transformed into full scale rage. They trashed the ward in seconds, thrashing around the room like miniature hurricanes, with the two placebo takers cowering in the corner.’

  ‘It was frightening and so out of character,’ he continued, ‘that Major Walker was about to send in the troops to subdue them, when all motion ceased.’

  The agent selected a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table and snapped it in two. The crunch was surprisingly loud, but then, you could have heard a pin drop in the room.

  ‘Then, as one, the four men turned to a bedside locker halfway down the room. A nurse had inadvertently left a single pill on the table.’

  The director snapped his fingers.

  ‘The rats from earlier; the pill dropped into the dish....’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the agent. ‘The rats were dosed seven hours ago with a large volume of the drug.’

  He brushed cookie crumbs from the front of his shirt, absently.

  ‘But here is the odd thing. In the individual recording journals, all four of the recorder-stenographers who were tracking the men, used the same word. They did not write saw or smelt, they wrote sensed. We don’t know which sense it
is; maybe a combination of all of them, but after a split second, the room became a bloodbath. The men literally ripped each other apart, and turned on the terrified placebo takers too, who they seemed to regard as competition. Major Walker was the first of the observers to react, managing to tear himself away from the macabre spectacle. He ran to the entrance of the ward and threw open the door.’

  The agent reached for his attaché case and extracted a single printed foolscap sheet.

  ‘I’d like to quote from the major here,’ he said, before clearing his throat.

  ‘Facing me was a creature that would not have been out of place in Hell. The face was a bloodied mask, one eyeball pulped, the other hanging down from the empty socket like a grotesque ornament. The creature’s breathing was coming in agonised rasps; I think some ribs were broken, and it was shuffling toward me. One foot was turned out at an impossible angle; multiple broken bones for sure. As I watched, it smiled a self satisfied smile; more a bloodied grimace really, and slipped the prized pill into its mouth. And then, without warning, it sprang. I had my Enfield service revolver drawn, and I had to empty the full six rounds before the creature dropped. I have not been able to stop the nightmares since that day.’

  The agent looked at the faces. They were slightly shocked, but only slightly. It looked like his decision to run the demonstration at the start had elicited the results he was looking for. They could picture the effect on humans, for they had already seen it in action.

  ‘What happened then?’ asked the communications director.

  ‘It was the last hurrah,’ said the agent. ‘Fate intervened and the Axis powers surrendered. The old guard in Britain was swept aside by post war elections, and the new government had no need for a magic bullet. The project was hurriedly closed down and shelved, but not before Major Walker and Nigel were both tragically killed in a road accident; the major’s Morgan sports car was involved in a head on crash with a petrol tanker. There was nothing left that could be identified, apart from the chassis number.’

  ‘Was it a hit?’ asked the deputy director.

  The agent snorted and turned to face him.

  ‘Of course it was; the Allies were getting very nervous of any suspected communists, and Nigel had been a marked man for a number of months. Also, from the middle of 1944, the American Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, was jointly involved with MD1. The closure of the project seems to have been almost their last shared act; both MD1 and OSS wanted to get rid of the loose ends, and Churchill was more than happy for us to take responsibility for what he felt was a useless waste of resources. He also did not want anyone to know of his or MD1’s involvement in chemical or biological weapons.’

  The room was silent for a long time; each wrestling with their own thoughts. And then a single word was spoken.

  ‘Destabilisation,’ said the communications director, into the silence.

  They all looked at her.

  ‘What?’ she asked defensively. ‘I’m only putting words to what everyone else is thinking. Imagine being able to get a substance like this into Osama Bin Laden’s compound. The only thing you would need to clean up the mess is a hose.’

  ‘We have only perfected the tablet form at the moment,’ said the agent, seemingly aware of where the communications director was going. ‘But initial indications are good for gas-airborne versions.’

  ‘So, an addictive death sentence,’ said the director. ‘A cheery thought, if ever there was one.’

  ‘That is its fatal flaw,’ acknowledged the agent, ‘or as Major Walker states in his report, a sinister and unexpected result, but I think I prefer the term fatal flaw. And isn’t it ironic that the fatal flaw is the very aspect of the drug that we can use and exploit. Because, once the drug reaches a certain tolerance level; either in the quantity you take, or in addition to the residual amount left in your body, then two things happen. As I said before, it is mentally addictive rather than physical, but a trigger in your brain fires, and the substance and the desire to acquire more of it becomes overwhelming; you’ve seen the effects yourselves first hand. The second thing....’

  He indicated the opaque two way mirror.

  ‘It is literally, as you say; a death sentence. You will do anything, and I mean anything, to get more, even if you die in the process. It does more than just remove your freewill, it removes your humanity. You become feral, savage and ferocious, and the process is irreversible. Once you are there, you are never coming back to conscious humane thought.’

  The silence stretched on for a bit longer this time, as the room digested the rest of the information.

  ‘So who owns the technology now?’ asked the director, vocalising what everybody else was thinking.

  ‘Good question,’ answered the agent. ‘The long answer is that the patents were registered in Nigel’s name originally. These patents were transferred, along with all the documentation and resources associated with the project, to OSS. When OSS was dissolved, the project reverted to the Central Intelligence Group, or CIG, after it was created by Truman in 1946. It then reverted to the agency that replaced it in 1947.’

  The agent paused for effect.

  ‘The short answer is that you do, sir.’

  The silence in the room was deafening.

  ‘Who else has seen this?’ the director asked.

  ‘Only the four of us in this room have seen the demonstration. No one else has even a whiff of its potential. James White, the lab technician who has been helping me with the refinement of the drug, has also seen the full potency of it now, but I already have measures in place to neutralise any likely leaks. And a contract lab have been synthesising the drug compounds, but they have no idea what the substance is or what it does, and all documentation has reverted to me.’

  The director was never a man to stand on ceremony; he was famed for making quick decisions.

  ‘Here’s what we are going to do,’ he said. ‘This is now a formal CIA project; but on a strictly need to know basis. I want all the usual protections established. The only people in the know at the moment are the people in this room. You mentioned a contract lab and a lab technician....’

  ‘The contract lab is owned and run by one of our ex staff members sir,’ said the agent. ‘He has been involved in most of our black projects. He is extremely trustworthy, even if he had the faintest idea of what this drug does, which he doesn’t. You don’t have anything to worry about there.’

  ‘What about the lab technician?’ asked the communications director.

  ‘White?’ responded the agent. ‘He’s just a harmless company man, trying to make his reputation. I’ll make sure he is handled in the correct manner.’

  The agent indicated the three white folders, arranged in a star in the middle of the table.

  ‘I have only given you a potted history today. I would like everyone to read the story for themselves. And I have removed the section about the unexpected result number two, the fatal flaw, from your copies; I don’t want to cause widespread panic, if any leaks should occur.’

  He looked at the director and handed him one of the folders personally.

  ‘Apart from yours of course, sir,’ he said hastily.

  The director banged the table with his fist, making everyone jump, including the agent. He thought he was about to be reprimanded for suggesting there might be leaks, but his face relaxed as he listened.

  ‘Remember,’ said the director forcefully, as the other two reached for their binders, ‘If this drug gets out into public circulation....’

  He left it hanging; he didn’t have to say any more.

  The agent paused and considered carefully, before asking his final question.

  ‘So what do we call it sir, this new project?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a perfect storm,’ said the communications director.

  ‘Storm,’ said the Director. ‘Let’s call it the Storm Protocol.’

  #

  James White was not happy. He knew he was only a lowly l
ab technician; not exactly high up in the food chain, but he was still smarting about the demonstration. On his way to his car, he passed the compactor and scowled. He had worked long days and nights designing that maze, and after years of graft on the periphery of the lab, his efforts had been spotted, or so he’d thought.

  The agent who had sought him out, was able to quote back to him all of the second rate projects and protocols he had been involved in. Looking back on it, he should have known something was wrong; should have realised his ego was being stroked. But the agent was very persuasive, especially when he said that he had something big; something so huge, that it required a demonstration to the director himself. Something that would have such an impact, it would bring both of them to prominence. Even better, the agent was prepared to share the recognition that would accrue from such a high profile success. The only caveat had been some proposed changes to the lab equipment.

  The demonstration itself had sickened him. He had an affinity with his lab subjects and he had not for a moment realised they would all die. The agent had not explained his experiment in any terms, other than a vague outline. James was naive in the extreme, but somehow he had put two and two together and got five. He was not an animal rights campaigner, but he did care about his animals, even if they were only rats.

  The agent had not even tried to describe his meeting with the director. He had come back to the demo room and had been unable to make eye contact. The agent instructed James to remove all traces of the maze and then left the room. He returned a few minutes later from the janitor station with a cleaning trolley. James had already dismantled the maze into its component parts.