"Statistically, a female born in America fifteen years ago has a better chance of being a high school drop-out, unmarried and raising children on her own, than she does of eventually finishing school, obtaining a college degree, and finding a professional career. The males fare no better. And leave it to the current culture to create a new anomaly: the malnourished obese teenager.
"The examples and statistics I've cited thus far are for our own supposedly wealthy country. Once you leave these borders, as I have in my career, with the exception of a few truly enlightened countries, the prognosis for the children is far worse.
"That," Kreitzmann emphasized dramatically, "is the life we have stolen from our subjects. Instead, they are fed perfectly balanced meals prepared by nutritionists. They receive the finest health care available. They are educated, in some cases, due to the uniqueness of their acquired skills, to a level far exceeding that which is available or even possible out there. They all participate in a daily regimen of exercise and physical activity, developed and monitored by experts in the field of physical education. They have never seen a moment of television, with the incumbent messages contained in both the entertainment and the advertising. They've never once in their lives seen a cigarette or cigar. Not one breath that they take is ever polluted with first- or second-hand smoke.
"Their diet is that of a vegetarian, with all of the fruits and vegetables locally grown and organic, so they have been spared the growth hormones, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers which you and I were raised ingesting."
"Whoa!" Elias exclaimed, holding up his hands in mock surrender. "I see your point. I really do."
Kreitzmann took a deep breath, calming down from the frenzy he had worked himself into. With a wry grin, he began to speak softly. "I'm sorry. As you can well imagine, the topic is a tender one for me as it has been the source of so many attacks over the recent years."
"I understand. My only concern, when I broached the issue, was the treatment of the subjects. Obviously, they are well cared for, and their overall development is a high priority."
"It is. Very much so. Does that address your concern?"
Hesitating first, Elias gently asked, "What is your…source for the newborns?"
Kreitzmann, rather than becoming tense or defensive, chuckled. "If you envision unmarked vans backed up to the maternity wards of hospitals where paid-off staff are secretly carrying babies out the back door to waiting men in dark sunglasses, I am sorry to disappoint you. There has been no baby stealing, no kidnapping. There have been no erroneous reports of infant mortality, while the newborns are transferred to us. We have multiple sources, Patrick. All of them are voluntary, with the full knowledge and consent of the parents or, in many cases, the mother, who is the only available parent."
"I'm sorry to belabor this point, but I'm having a difficult time imagining the establishment of the supply chain, so to speak. Are you running advertising?"
"We have, in the past, done exactly that in other countries. It was that practice which brought the unwelcome attention to our work. We have since discovered that there is no necessity for such an overt practice. But there honestly isn't any reason to expand upon the specifics because our need for maintaining the supply chain, as you so bluntly put it, has diminished to the point where it is almost not an issue."
"Why is that?"
Kreitzmann waved his arm to encompass his surroundings. "This facility, Aegis, has reached a point of self-sustainment. We have so many subjects within the program who have been with us for so long that they are now, as Doctor Boehn mentioned a moment ago, procreating. Their children are now part of the program. Additionally, the misfits, losers, and terminally depressed who come through that front turnstile have no compunction about engaging in the act with anyone who consents and, in many cases, those who do not. And, for the most part, these people have no interest in parenting. If they did…if they had any sense of responsibility for their families…would they have abandoned them to enter Aegis? No, Patrick, our days of securing subjects from the outside are essentially over.
"And the day will soon come where one hundred percent of our subjects are second, or later, generation. When that day arrives, the accusation of working with infants who have been torn from the loving bosoms of their mothers will no longer be valid, as the mothers and fathers will be right here with them, participating and helping them to develop."
While they had been speaking, Elias noticed that Doctor Bonillas had entered the lab and was standing patiently, waiting.
After Kreitzmann finished, he turned to her. "Yes, Doctor Bonillas?"
Nervously, she said, "Doctor Kreitzmann…if I could have a minute."
As she said this, Elias noticed her eyes dart to him for a brief moment before returning to Kreitzmann.
"Of course. If you would both excuse me."
He walked away from them, and Elias could hear him ask what she needed. Her response was nearly a whisper; he was not able to make out her words. But upon hearing her reply, Kreitzmann glanced over his shoulder at Elias, and then the two of them moved out into the hallway.
Assuming that somehow his cover had been blown, Elias began planning his next move while refining the mental map of the hallways that he and Kreitzmann had covered, and deciding upon his escape route.
If there had been any doubts in Elias' mind about the purpose for Bonillas' visit, those doubts were dashed when Kreitzmann returned alone. Gone was the friendly, collegial expression on his face. It was replaced with a look of anger and distrust. His eyes bored into Elias' eyes, as he rejoined him and Boehn.
"Doctor Boehn," he said, his voice taut, "if you would excuse us, please."
Boehn, catching the inflection, became suddenly nervous. "Of course," he replied as he turned to Elias and extended his hand. "Doctor Brightman, I hope that you decide…."
"That won't be necessary," Kreitzmann interrupted harshly. "Please…."
Boehn's arm dropped quickly back to his side and he nodded, saying nothing else.
Kreitzmann turned to Elias. "Come with me."
With perfectly manufactured inflections of curiosity and confusion, Elias asked, "Is something wrong?"
The scientist did not reply. He merely restated, "Come," and turned toward the hallway, clearly expecting Elias to follow, which he did.
They retraced their steps in the direction of Bonillas' lab in silence. Elias made two additional attempts to engage him verbally, as the real Patrick Brightman would in this situation. His comments were ignored as they continued to walk. Rounding a corner, he saw Bonillas standing outside her lab, accompanied by another person Elias did not know. He noted that Bonillas was repetitively bunching and releasing the pocket on her lab coat with her right hand, turning that small part of the fabric into a crumpled mess. They walked directly to the two of them, and Kreitzmann, saying nothing, looked at the stranger, waiting.
The stranger took one quick look at Elias and turned to Kreitzmann. It was obvious this was a person who knew the real Brightman, as he curtly shook his head to indicate that Elias had failed the test.
Kreitzmann spoke, his voice stern and somber. "Thank you, Doctor Pannectuck. Thank you, Doctor Bonillas."
They both nodded and retreated to the lab, leaving Elias alone in the hallway with Kreitzmann.
"Who are you?"
Giving it a final try, Elias sputtered, "I'm Patrick Brightman. You already know…."
"Sir, that gentleman who just left knows Patrick Brightman. He worked with him for two years. Now, I'll ask one more time. Who are you?"
Without hesitating, Elias answered, "Elias Charon."
Kreitzmann's reaction was instantaneous. "Charon! They sent you?"
Elias said nothing, waiting. He watched the scientist's face and saw that the anger was gone. But it was not replaced with fear; rather, confusion momentarily flickered across his countenance.
Elias took advantage of this by asking, "How did Bonillas figure it out?"
In a m
atter-of-fact voice, Kreitzmann answered, "You either didn't know about or underestimated the psychic children."
Not all that surprised, Elias said, "The girl behind the glass read my mind."
He nodded. "And she is one of our speakers. After we left, she told one of Doctor Bonillas' assistants what you were thinking and that you were pretending to be someone you were not. The assistant told Doctor Bonillas who took the initiative to contact our HR people. At first, she believed she was simply documenting another lab result from the children for the case file. But after HR told her we had someone on staff who had worked with Brightman, and that person, upon hearing your physical description, was fairly certain you were not the man you pretended to be, she summoned me.
"It was only a matter of time until you encountered someone who knew the real Brightman. You must have assumed that. Therefore, Mr. Charon, the only conclusion I can draw is that whatever you had planned to do, you were going to act quickly, and that your masquerade, after it served its initial purpose of gaining entry, was only to gain some insights into our work first."
Elias said nothing.
"My question is the obvious one. What is it you were planning to do?"
Shrugging, Elias answered, "I came into Aegis for the same reason everyone else does. Well, almost everyone, apparently. I'd had enough out there."
Kreitzmann was closely studying Elias' face as he spoke. "I had heard that you lost your wife."
Elias nodded.
"I don't believe you, Mr. Charon. But, for the sake of conversation, if this is true, why the Patrick Brightman charade? Why infiltrate my labs?"
"When I was active…when I was engaged in, well, things…you and your activities were always near the top of my pile. I didn't know you were in here until after I arrived. It seems there aren't too many secrets in this facility. I heard that you had set up shop inside the very place I had chosen for my self-imposed exile, and the coincidence was too great to ignore. I was curious."
"But the Patrick Brightman ruse? That must have been planned."
"Not at all. Brightman had come to my attention as one of my last issues before I retired. I knew the details of his life and thought I could wing it long enough to get a look around. It was hasty and it was ad-libbed. As you said, I knew it was a short-time cover. But I only wanted a peek, anyway."
One side of Kreitzmann's mouth curled up in a half smile. "You are quite persuasive, Mr. Charon. Really! As I stand here and talk with you, I find myself wanting to believe what you say."
"It's true."
"So you say. And perhaps it is. In the days prior to my work, I would have been forced to make a value judgment, a gut decision, as it were. Fortunately, that is no longer the case."
He turned and opened the door to Bonillas' lab and Elias saw the doctor, as well as the young girl from behind the glass. They had been standing just inside the door. Kreitzmann glanced questioningly at Bonillas, who bent down and put her ear close to the girl's lips. Elias watched while the girl whispered something. As Bonillas heard the girl's words, Elias saw her face knit into an expression of fear. He did not need to see anything else.
Before she could communicate the girl's comment to Kreitzmann, Elias swung, clipping Kreitzmann on the jaw and sending him to the floor with one punch. Bonillas, seeing what had happened, immediately pulled the young girl back and slammed the door to the lab in the same motion.
Pivoting, Elias turned and ran in the direction of the reception area, hoping his weapons were still there and not stored away. There was no attempt by the workers he dashed past to restrain him, his actions only causing curious stares and the hasty withdrawal of a few of the technicians into the nearest doorway.
The final hallway, which would lead him to the receptionist, was coming up next. Elias made a snap decision to maintain his pace, rather than stop before the intersection to peer around the corner, counting on the fact that only a minute or two had passed since he had made his move. He hoped that the time it would take Bonillas to sound any sort of an alarm and the security staff to respond would be more than long enough to allow his escape.
Rounding the last corner, he noticed nothing but the forty yards of empty hallway between him and his goal. Putting on an extra burst of speed, Elias sprinted to the finish line, running into the room where he saw the same young woman still seated at the desk. Her eyes swung in his direction as he abruptly entered.
Skittering to a stop, nearly losing his balance as the rug under his feet slid, Elias looked at the side table where she had placed his Beretta and AK-47 earlier. It was bare.
"Where's my…?"
Before he could finish, something slammed into him from behind, knocking him to the ground. Elias tried to push himself over, while twisting his head around to see who his assailant was, when he suddenly felt a flash of pain at the back of his head, followed by an instant blurring of his vision, which dissolved into blackness.
CHAPTER TEN
Despite the pain, the experience of years of working in the field caused Elias to keep his eyes closed as he returned to consciousness. A person's first impulse if hurt and rendered unconscious would be to stir, groan, or make any number of other forms of attention-gaining gestures upon awakening. He remained still and silent, listening.
As he waited patiently, the throbbing in his head subsided a bit as he forced his racing metabolism, a normal bodily reaction after emerging from the darkness of being knocked out, to calm.
He began taking inventory of all that his senses observed. From his position, which was horizontal, and the feeling that he was lying on a mattress, he could not determine whether he was restrained in any way, without either looking or moving, neither of which was advisable at the moment. His nose detected a panoply of scents. There was a faint hint of ozone, accompanied by a stronger level of machine oil. His ears heard a steady thrumming/whooshing sound, mechanical in nature. They also perceived the faint rustling of movement that seemed to be approximately a dozen feet away. It sounded as if there was a single person walking about, handling or rearranging some items unseen by Elias. With the absence of input from his eyes, his mind automatically conjured an image that matched the sounds. It was an image from his past: a peaceful, pleasant moment when he had awakened from a nap on the couch to find Leah hard at work dusting her knick-knack shelf in the den.
The rap to his skull had not diminished his recollection of where he was and what he had been doing. Elias knew that if he opened his eyes, he would not find his wife carefully lifting and dusting the beautiful items she had collected from their travels, and placing them back on the display shelf. He knew that he was in a hostile environment, occupied by uncongenial people, and that these moments, while his captors waited for him to regain consciousness, were more than likely his last moments of peace.
He had deduced that since he felt no physical restraints on his wrists or ankles and was on what seemed to be a mattress or padded cot, he was probably in some sort of cell, and that the sounds he heard were coming from his jailer.
Satisfied that he had gathered all of the information he could about his surroundings from the available input, he slightly opened his eyes, immediately directing his gaze toward the sounds of movement. He saw…a woman, standing with her back to him, holding what appeared to be a carved wooden bookend with her right hand and dusting it with her left.
Elias was momentarily shaken. He involuntarily opened his eyes wider. She was about ten feet away and was wearing dark green cargo pants, a camouflage T-shirt, and white athletic shoes. Her red hair was cut short, very short. As he silently watched her clean, he noticed that she was in excellent shape. The musculature on her arms was defined without being bulky, the T-shirt snug enough to show the ripples of toned muscle beneath.
Tearing his eyes away from her, Elias saw that they were in a mechanical room, filled with sheet metal ductwork and an array of process piping. They were not the type in the electrical raceways where his base camp was established, but color-co
ded pipes of larger diameters, obviously designed to carry water, steam, and high-pressure coolant loads. Mixed in with the jumble of ducts and pipes were an assortment of chairs and tables, a bookcase, and a sofa. He determined that he was indeed occupying a small bed. The area appeared to be the woman's living quarters.
The juxtaposition of mechanical gear and an apartment's worth of furniture was unusual enough, but the effect was hyperbolized by the abundance of decorative objects carefully arranged on nearly all of the available horizontal and vertical surfaces. There were ornate vases on the floor with peacock feathers arcing upward, lacy and jeweled fans mounted to the walls, small brass castings of wild animals such as lions and panthers, a shadow box mounted on the side of a support column and filled with miniature wedding accessories, including a tiny wedding gown pinned to the back panel. The most unusual area was a large section of sheet metal, clearly a main trunk line for the air conditioning system. It was essentially covered with hundreds of small refrigerator magnets: candy bars, kitchen appliances, all kinds of fake food like cheeseburgers and slices of pie, and a large assortment of other colorful and delicate items.
Elias saw his Beretta and AK-47 perched on the edge of a coffee table, the rest of which was filled with decorative objects. Quietly lifting his head slightly, he found that he was not restrained in any way. The back of his head ached from the blow that had knocked him out earlier, but otherwise he was fine, as far as he could discern.
"You're awake," she said, the tone of her voice friendly and casual.
Elias noticed that she had finished dusting the bookend and was holding a mirror set into a gold-leaf frame. She had obviously seen him in the mirror when he raised his head.
"I am. Where am I?"
She carefully placed the mirror onto its resting place in the filigreed plate-holder on the shelf and turned to Elias. "You're in my place."
Attempting to sit up, Elias paused as a wave of dizziness coursed through him, and he fell back onto a supporting elbow. "Your place? This looks like a mechanical room."
The Aegis Solution Page 18