The Ganymede Project

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  Katrina’s cheeks reddened with rage. “You’re all idiots.” A speaker on a makeshift stage pointed an angry finger at her, like a prophet conferring damnation. “You are a purveyor of lies! You are a killer of children! You are...”

  “Mad!” she yelled.

  She hit him in the groin with a protest sign, kicked one side out of the platform, and dropped him to the ground.

  The crowd attacked.

  Yuri pressed through, diving over the top of the human wall, shielding Katrina with his body, toppling people like duckpins. When he could get a clear shot, he drew his gun and fired into the air.BOOM !BOOM !BOOM !

  * * *

  Representative Harold Gladpeak listened to what sounded like a triple backfire, shook his head, and continued to walk. He pondered the implications of what he had been told, as Billy Stanton escorted him back to the Capitol.

  “When my predecessor died in office, I had no idea he was involved in a committee this exciting. But I must tell you, I feel like I’m drinking from a firehose.”

  “We’ll get you up to speed PDQ,” Billy said. “We have to. You’re the only elected official who’s been completely read in. We’re pretty discriminating.”

  “I’m honored. I just hope I can—”

  “You have an important duty—an obligation to your country. The technology represents great power. A power whose source can’t be revealed. A power that future leaders, such as yourself, must help guide.”

  “Future leaders? I barely have a toehold in Congress, Dr. Stanton. I agree the technology is pretty amazing, but not very practical—yet. There must be others better equipped to help you.”

  “Nobody who’s good at keeping secrets,” Billy said. He smiled quickly, then painted a vision he knew Harold Gladpeak would appreciate. “Think of the good we can accomplish with this. The technology is a non-intrusive way to feel the pulse of the electorate. The government will be a lot more responsive. Or consider our relations with foreign powers. We’ll know for certain what their leaders are doing and thinking. And terrorism won’t be a problem, because there will be no place to hide.”

  “That would be something,” the Congressman said. “Truly something. All that, and a weapon, too.”

  “We just need your help to put the pieces together.”

  Harold Gladpeak nodded firmly, shook Billy’s hand and slapped him on the arm. He turned back toward the entrance with a feeling of confidence.Yes. I can put all the pieces together, he thought, with a wistful sigh.

  There was a biblical phrase—was it Jeremiah? The first time he heard it, the words fascinated him with their power and portent, delivering chills to his spine—just like Billy’s vision. Now the Congressman whispered that phrase softly to himself as he climbed the Capitol steps.

  “With you, I break nations in pieces.”

  * * *

  Gallagan peered through steel security bars in a conference room window. In the street below, a police crowd control unit dispersed militant environmentalists.

  “I shall put you in for a hero’s medal, Ms. Fontanova,” he said. “It will read:Madness in the Line of Duty .”

  He turned to look at Anderson, Vladimir and Katrina, seated at a conference table. Smoke from three Russian cigarettes cloaked the room in a pungent, surreal haze. Light from the window, like a doorway to an alternate dimension, silhouetted Gallagan’s hulk. The room echoed with sounds of movement. Gallagan took his place.

  “Back to business.” His eyes became slits. “Did you find the materials we gave you interesting, Doctor Anderson?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are dumping untreated toxic materials in open pits.”

  “Yes.”

  “There is more.” Gallagan slowly exhaled a lungful of smoke. “Doctor Anderson... I have permission from my government to provide you with analysis that has been classified up to this point. Katrina?”

  She flipped photos onto the table.

  “This is recent coverage of Groom Dry Lake Base, taken with the KVR-1000 satellite imaging system. The dry lake shows some evidence of vehicular traffic. Most of the traffic leads from this circular pattern to this research complex. If I were to guess, I would say the circular pattern represents some sort of test site.”

  Anderson studied the photo, then nodded.

  “The facility... over here... is a Top Secret site.”

  “How do you know that?” Anderson asked.

  “It has a controlled perimeter and other features unique to a U.S. Class A security facility. By definition, these buildings house something Top Secret.”

  She flipped a second photo, overlaying the first. “The size of the transformer yard located on another part of the base tells us there is an unusually high requirement for power. That requirement could be explained by what appears to be a small-scale particle accelerator... here... and a light manufacturing facility... here.”

  Anderson looked closely at the photo.

  “And what is this?”

  “That is most peculiar,” she said. It appears to be a biological hazard and containment area.”

  Anderson became animated. “I’m right back to the germ warfare theory. One of my associates retrieved something from the site—a dead animal.”

  He paused, aware of where the conversation was leading—disclosure of probable classified information to a foreign power. “Before we go on with this, I want you to level with me. What interest does the Russian government have in this?”

  Gallagan laughed, flashed a smile and ground his pearl-white teeth.

  “We are interested on several levels. Under the Open Skies Treaty recently signed by your government, we have a right to photograph military installations in the USA. However, this facility was never identified as a military installation. That is not a nice way to do business, do you agree? In addition to resolving the treaty problem, we see an opportunity to advertise the capabilities of our space systems and our scientists and to gain hard currency revenue for Russian entrepreneurs.”

  “How?” Anderson asked.

  “By benefiting in a class action environmental lawsuit. We supply intelligence to a law firm that initiates the suit. If they win, we get a percentage. A fee for services rendered.”

  “I see.”

  “It is win-win, right?”

  Anderson hesitated, then nodded. “In addition, it makes good PR—Russia exposing the U.S. as an environmental criminal.”

  Gallagan shrugged.

  “And any information that falls out about U.S. classified projects at Groom becomes public domain. An intelligence coup. You get information for free.”

  Gallagan shrugged again.

  “Iam dealing with the Devil,” Anderson said. “You want my soul.”

  Gallagan smiled again and ground his teeth. Then he said softly, “Doctor Anderson, I already have your soul.”

  He stood up.

  “I must attend other business, but I pray for your success.”

  Anderson stood. “I also have to leave.”

  Gallagan slapped him on the back. “Well, then, I’ll walk you out. We’ll talk the Devil’s catechism.”

  As they departed, Gallagan gave a two-fingered salute to Katrina and Vladimir, then closed the door.

  Katrina leaned over to Vladimir. “While they were talking, I noticed something. Look at this.”

  She shoved the spy satellite image toward him.

  Vladimir inspected it with a magnifying glass. “I see what you mean,” he said.

  Katrina removed her shoe and scratched a bare foot along the carpet, trying to assuage an itch. A short distance away, directly behind her foot, was a ventilation grill. Behind the grill, a pair of eyes—like beads of dark coal—scanned the room. The animal fluffed its fur. It cocked its ears. It listened.

  “It’s not in the previous satellite coverage,” Katrina said.

  “You’re right.”

  “I want you to enhance this area—use statistical sampling. See if we can re-task one of the cur
rent missions to get more coverage.”

  Maybe we can task the digital system,” Vladimir said. “It will be faster and we’ll get better resolution.”

  “Right.” Katrina put the imagery in a special orange envelope, which she handed to Vladimir.

  Behind the ventilation grill, a brown-furred animal briefly bared its teeth, then scampered back into the ductwork.

  * * *

  Outside the embassy, Yuri talked to a police officer who was filling out a report about the protest incident. Yuri worked on his own incident report. They compared notes. It was friendly and professional—two law officers, helping each other out. The crowd and most of the police had departed. The flow of people along 16th Street NW returned to normal.

  It was only a behavioral quirk that caught Yuri’s eye. While most of the pedestrian traffic moved briskly in the north and south directions, Yuri spotted a man loitering close to the iron fence delimiting the embassy compound. He carried a rectangular wire cage. He glanced furtively toward the embassy, then placed the cage on the sidewalk, with the door open. A small brown animal ran through the embassy fence and into the cage. The man closed the door. He turned his face, looking beyond the flow of pedestrians. Yuri recognized him. It was the thug who pursued Katrina. The man he chased out of the alley where Jack died.

  Their eyes met.

  “Sir!” he yelled.

  The man grabbed the cage and ran.

  “FBI! Stop!”

  Yuri sped after him. They knocked aside people in their path. The runner entered a Metro station with a long, descending escalator. He used the cage as a shield and plowed through people in front of him, stepping over their toppled bodies.

  Yuri jumped on the polished metal surface between the up and down escalators and slid down. He arrived at the bottom at about the same time as the runner.

  The runner raced ahead, turned, then hurled the cage like a bomb into a crowd. The rat screeched as the cage hit the ground. The door flew open.

  The rat tunneled through the mountain of humans.

  People screamed. A panicked crowd blocked Yuri’s path.

  Yuri saw the runner on a lower level of the station. They locked eyes.

  The runner vanished into the crowd.

  Someone yelled, “Got the bugger!”

  Yuri saw a seventy-year-old woman holding a dead rat by the tail. She walked to a garbage can and dropped it in.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Yuri walked toward the cage of the ‘Bulky Room’—a place in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Field Office which catalogs and stores evidence from crimes under investigation by the FBI.

  Screw the homicide task force, he thought.They can’t tell me what to do on my own time .

  Jack’s body was clean when police discovered it—no wallet, no keys, not even a scrap of paper in any of his pockets. Someone had taken great care to remove any possible trace of Jack’s last moments, last objectives, last thoughts.

  Most of the evidence in the Bulky Room came from Jack’s apartment. There were plastic bags containing clothing, a ticket to a ball game, charge slips and other artifacts. Mostly minutia—miscellaneous pieces of flotsam and jetsam of the kind that people shed in the course of their normal lives.

  Yuri systematically went through the material and made notes. Jack’s appointment book included haircuts, staff meetings and preliminary plans for a future vacation. Yuri would check into all of those. There was a yellow sticky note with the name ‘Chisholm’ and a telephone number. A possible lead. A business card for a travel agency—probably associated with Jack’s vacation plans.

  Milo, the diminutive BR clerk, brought in more plastic bags. “Don’t say I never did you no favors.”

  Yuri pulled an odd-looking brown paper bag from the pile, opened it, and extracted a sandwich. “What’s this?”

  Milo took it back. “Sorry. My lunch.” He bit into the sandwich while Yuri went through the other plastic bags. With cheek pouches full of food, he said: “You’re lucky.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If you was here an hour later, all this evidence would be locked up tighter ‘n a drum.”

  “Why?”

  Milo swallowed. “Special team’s gonna look at it.”

  “Well, I’m not surprised.”

  “It surprises the hell out of me! This guy Stone wasn’t even Bureau until yesterday. He’s leading the charge.”

  “Who’s Stone?” Yuri snatched an oatmeal cookie from Milo’s bag and nibbled.

  The clerk looked annoyed, as if the stolen item represented an irreplaceablepièce dé resistance . “You’re welcome,” he muttered under his breath as he searched the bag for something of equal caloric value. Finding a chocolate mint, he smiled. “Stone’s a big gun they brought in from outside. He’s got special connections and credentials. Ya’ know?”

  That’s encouraging, Yuri thought.The crew they’ve got working it now is dumber than rocks. Maybe NSA insisted. Someone damaged their goods. They want justice .

  Yuri wrote until his hands were cramped and every possible shred of information retrieved, then returned the plastic bags to the clerk. “Jack was a good man. Thanks for your help.”

  Milo, who by now had finished eating the mint, a full bag of Cheetos and a box of gum drops, returned to the sandwich, taking another bite. “Ya’ know,” he said, cheeks brimming...

  Yuri waited for the completion of the thought.

  Instead, Milo grimaced, then extracted food from his mouth, holding the cud in his hand, inspecting it. Without looking up, he said, “You’re tasking this pretty personal. Ya’ know?”

  “I think Jack was caught in the middle of something.”

  Milo flicked the partially chewed food into the trash. “Yucko. A rotten sandwich.”

  “Yeah. And I’m going to follow the smell. Like a little mouse.”

  43. SOULS OF ANIMALS

  4 May 1994

  Jill Sommer, propped up in a hospital bed, tugged unconsciously at two umbilical cords—an intravenous fluid dispenser and a cardiac monitoring device. A fortyish, balding doctor entered and took her pulse. News played on a TV mounted to the ceiling.

  “Stranger than fiction,” the news anchor said. “That’s what people are saying about a man believed to have been raised by animals in a Russian forest. Officials say he’s responsible for killing and eating an estimated twenty people over a three year period. Animal rights activists claim that in the absence of civilization, he was just another animal—with a different set of values. He should be protected and studied.”

  Jill reached for the newspaper. The TV continued.

  “One week ago, Russian officials said they would give him the same protection as bears and other wild things that feed on humans. Today, a firing squad shot him dead for his deeds, ending what officials called a minor dispute about animal rights.”

  She clicked the TV off.

  “Way to go, Peter. My kind of story.”

  “A pretty gruesome story,” the doctor said. “Reminds me ofMerchant of Venice .”

  Jill looked puzzled. “Excuse me?”

  “You know!” He cleared his throat, gestured theatrically with his hand, then said, in a Shakespearean voice:

  “Souls of animals infuse themselves

  Into the trunks of men.”

  He grinned. “Shakespeare. I’m studying it.”

  “Never would have guessed,” she said. “It’s pretty catchy.”

  “Just trying to make a literary impression. You’re a journalist, right?”

  “Ha!” she said. “The last time someone asked me that, they tried to kill me.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “My malpractice insurance would goway up. By the way, I’m Bill Deacon.”

  “Doc Deacon. I don’t know whether to get ill or pray.”

  He ignored her comment, fascinated, instead, by the numbers on the clipboard. He finally put it back on the end of the bed.

  “Well,” he said, “you’re lookin
g pretty good.”

  She batted her eyes. “Why thank you, Doc Deacon.”

  “We’ll let that surgery heal in a place that doesn’t have quite this many plugs and wires. Maybe tomorrow we’ll move you.” He examined her bandages. “I’ll have a nurse get a new dressing.”

  Walking to the sink, he washed his hands with soap. There were paper towels in the sink—and wet towels on the floor. “They need to clean up this trash!”

  He opened a drawer, found some surgical gloves and put them on. With studied caution, he picked up the wet towels, dropped them into the waste canister, then polished the sink with dry towels. “This is filthy!” he said.

  Turning, he spotted a rat dropping in a puddle of water on the floor.What the hell? he thought. He rang a bell on Jill’s bed tray, then yelled out the door. “Nurse!”

  No answer.

  The doctor now noticed other rat droppings leading toward a small crack in the wall. Snatching more towels, he returned to wipe up the mess. As his gloved hand reached toward the crack, a rat crawled up his sleeve.

  Deacon yelled out.

  Then dozens of rats emerged.

  He tried to get up, slipped, cracked his head on the sink basin and fell to the ground in a swarm of rats.

  Rats climbed a sheet onto Jill Sommer’s bed.

  She screamed. On the floor, she could see Deacon’s hand, stripped to the bone, wiggling under the tug of teeth, his white coat alive with the interior movement of feeding rodents. The swarm covered him.

  A rat climbed onto Jill’s leg.

  She yanked the sheet and threw it—and the rats—onto the floor. The action toppled the drip solution connected to her arm. She screamed again, then attempted to recover the drip apparatus.

  A rat climbed the catheter hose.

  She ripped it out of her arm and threw it down, arm gushing blood. She grabbed a newspaper on the bed, rolled it up and swatted rats as they scrabbled up the bed frame. With the other hand, she hit the call bell—DING! DING! DING!