by Edgar, C. P.
He checked and then rechecked the network access logs and noted that no one had attempted to access the main systems while he was out. James made some modifications to the server climate controls having noted a slight increase in the internal temperatures and then moved on to other concerns.
Contact with Douglas was way overdue. James understood the complexities of traveling the globe incognito, but they had established communication protocols for periodic status updates, and Douglas was in violation of all of them. He should have checked in already using the simple messages left on obscure internet message boards that they had agreed upon.
James clicked on the web icon and typed in the web address for the Artist’s Forum and then opened the discussion string on Contemporary Artists. Douglas should have left an obscure announcement for an upcoming contempo-art showing in Youngstown, Ohio using the moniker ArtNMotion115. The date and time of the event was supposed to signify his arrival on Ginger Island.
James read through the string and found no posts. Even if Douglas was in trouble he should have left a notice canceling the art showing.
He slammed his fist down upon the table causing him pain. He relished the burning and pulsing sensation that coursed through his arms. It brought him closest to humanity even if it lasted only for brief moments. He mused over the idea of Douglas having been captured while en route. He fought to control his paranoia.
Douglas was a seasoned operative. He wouldn’t provide information willingly. He pushed the paranoia back down. He knew they couldn’t stop what he had just released upon the world. It was too late for them to save it, let alone for them to find him and stop him.
James rose and walked softly over to the large fireplace centered on a wall separating the study from a large sitting room deeper within the cabana. He absentmindedly caressed his right fist as he brainstormed Douglas’ predicament. The pain now just a dull throbbing, but pain nonetheless. Maybe I should finally have Douglas eliminated.
The fireplace rose to about mid-chest on James. It was made of rough cut stone with jagged edges protruding outward. James placed his hands on two stones and depressed them slightly. A muted whirring sound was only barely audible from behind the cherry finished wooden bookcases surrounding the fireplace on all sides. After a moment, a resounding click and the bookcase on the right popped slightly forward revealing a soft light from behind.
James grasped the outer edge of the bookcase and swung it open enough to allow himself to slip behind it. Once within, he pulled the secret door shut which automatically sequenced its locking mechanism.
Turning to his left, James found the top of the railing and began descending the spiral staircase. His hand caressed the iron railing and his mind danced to the beat of his rhythmic metallic descent.
At the bottom, the area opened slightly. Against the wall on the left was a series of metal gun safes, all of which were closed. A medium-sized wooden table stood before these. At the moment, it was bare.
To James’ right was a heavy metal door inset into a half-circle vestibule. He walked up to the door and swiped his index finger across yet another biometric scanner and then punched a five-digit code into the keypad. The locking mechanism spun wildly, its manic whirling echoing within the confines of the small, hardened area. James pushed past the door into a large working area when the chorus ceased suddenly.
Inside, he was greeted by two laboratory technicians who had taken a moment to look up from their research projects just to acknowledge the entry of James. Upon seeing him they both immediately went back to work, not wanting to invite him to approach them or worse.
James breathed in the room for a moment. It was rated to Biosafety Level 1 and allowed the laboratory technicians the ability to conduct some limited experimentation but mostly this area was an administrative area as well as a staging area for the more aggressive labs further within.
James had meticulously designed the state-of-the-art facility housed underneath the island’s main house. It was built directly into the island bedrock. Past this area were Level 2 and Level 4 biosafety chambers. Also, a corridor off to the left housed the technicians and doctors that worked within.
He walked past the two technicians that were fast at work and peeked into the viewing port for the decontamination chamber separating this room from the other labs. It was empty and the light overhead the door was shining green. He entered the chamber, closing the door behind him.
The chamber held equipment racks for various biohazard suits, respirators, and positive-pressure apparatus. Three sets of doors were spaced out on the far end of the chamber. Each door contained safety glass from top to bottom allowing line of sight inside and out. James knew the door on the far left led to the Biosafety level 2 labs and the door on the right led to the larger Level 4 lab. The door directly ahead, in the middle, led to James’ private area and was secured by systems only he knew how to overcome. Also, it was the only door in the chamber that was mirror tinted. He looked at himself briefly in the reflection, wondering momentarily who it was that stared back at him.
James walked over and opened the door to his private suite after having run through the various security protocols. Once inside the lights automatically began to turn on, showcasing a narrow but vastly deep inner sanctum. On both sides were one-way viewing windows allowing him to observe firsthand the work being performed by the lab technicians and the doctors. He walked up to a large desk, similar in layout to the one above in his study but made of a non-porous glasslike material.
Without sitting, he logged onto the main terminal as he had done previously upstairs. Again, as was his constant habit, he quickly reviewed the network access logs. Satisfied still that he wasn’t being cyber attacked, he moved to a small refrigerator set against the side of the desk and pulled out a glass bottle of Coke. He twisted off the cap and took a long pull while drifting toward a series of viewing windows on the right side of his private chamber.
He stood for a moment or two taking in the view while sipping away at his cold soda. After a few more moments, he reached up and clicked the intercom control, “Take her blanket off.”
Inside the Level 4 containment area, two figures straightened up and faced the glass panels. It was hard to discern who they were behind their masks. Both wore identical blue positive-pressure suits with full respiration hoods. Their masks were tinted with similar reflective materials with a mirrored finish preventing James from recognizing them.
They stood frozen for a moment until James restated his original command through the intercom system connected to the remote radio systems within their helmets. They moved slowly to the figure on the examination table and then removed the thin blanket covering her.
Judith moved slightly, pulling against her restraints when the blanket was removed. She was completely naked. She had deep bruising around her shoulders where she had apparently dislocated them trying to free herself.
James was amazed that although she was clearly changed, her naked body still made him aroused. He was momentarily sickened with himself, but recovered quickly enough to enjoy another pull from his Coke. He let the now empty bottle slip from his fingers onto the hard floor.
He watched as she opened her eyes staring directly at the ceiling above her. Blood streaked out of the left eye slipping along the side of her face before it fell to the stainless steel table she lay upon. Blood also seeped from her inner ears among other places.
Her fingernails and toenails were blackened and the veins running the length of her neck and inner thighs were crimson and blue and wildly inflamed. She began breathing rapidly and turned to face the closest technician. She roared in response to the sight of her own reflection, screaming and fighting against her restraints with renewed energy. Obviously, the tranquilizers are wearing off rapidly.
He pressed upon the intercom talk button again, “What is the status of Antiserum Seven?”
The taller of the two individuals reached up with a yellow gloved hand to a radio control box
mounted on the exterior of his suit at chest level. Although James couldn’t see him talking the man’s voice rang out from the intercom speaker mounted in the wall.
He spoke with a slight European accent, “She is not responding to Seven. We administered the drug over two and a half hours ago, with no apparent increase in antibodies or decrease in prion replication, sir.”
James placed his hands on his hips and lowered his head. He maintained that stance for at least two minutes, catatonic, frozen in his thoughts and trying desperately to control the raging inferno burning within him. He had been lied to.
He was explicitly told that the Pilgrim Strain had been delivered as ordered. That is, although weaponized, it also had both a vaccination to prevent contraction and an antiserum for treating those who had already contracted the disease. He had watched the videos of the clinical human testing in the mountain facilities and had made sure that it had included multiple rounds of live human testing.
The writing was on the wall though. He should have seen the potential for this well before. He had pushed the researchers to the point of breaking. He had killed quite a few of them to keep the others going at the pace he demanded. Although they had managed to solve the weaponizing problem many months ago, they had hit the proverbial wall on solving the antidote issue.
James watched as Judith continued to thrash about on the table. He suddenly felt grateful for having the forethought to test the vaccination out on her first. God help him if he had given it to the children or he had taken it himself already. That would have proven to be an awful ending to the beginning of his conquest. They had lied to him to be done with the specter of their own imminent deaths because there was no cure, there never would be and they knew it.
He chuckled a few times aloud, reared back and kicked the Coke bottle across the room, then reached once again for the intercom. “Do not sedate her again. I want her body clear of anything that may be preventing the antiserum from functioning properly. Start another round of doses beginning with Antiserum One and double the dosages until you see a positive response or she dies. Also, reanalyze the strain to see if it has mutated.”
“Yes sir,” was the response he got but it never registered in James’ mind.
He had already drifted off to contingent planning. She would die, and there would be no cure. He was fine with the Judith dying part, but not having a cure was going to seriously restrict his ability to control the outcome of the global pandemic. Control was the key. He would not be able to colonize the New World without control and oversight.
James decided he would have to begin human trials again using another patient just to be absolutely sure that both the live virus vaccination and all of the antiserum lots were bogus. He walked over and sat at his desk turning his full attention to the terminal. He typed a series of commands and brought up the surveillance camera feeds from the perimeter of the island. The feeds were tiled across the large screen so that he could view about twelve feeds at once. He found the camera he was looking for and double-clicked on it to bring it up full screen.
His son and daughter were playing on the beach. His son had a bucket of water meticulously balanced between his two hands as he labored up the beach to the sand castle he had constructed with the help of his sister. James’ daughter was standing guard, pointing at the spot within the sand castle compound where she wanted the water to be dumped.
Sitting next to her was the young caregiver. She had brown, tanned skin and long brown hair. She was wearing a one-piece bathing suit and still had on her khaki shorts. James had already considered that she would be the likely replacement for Judith in his bed now that Judith was unavailable. He tapped his finger on the hard surface of the desk. In a low whisper he began, “eeny, meeny, miny, moe…”
***
Kuwait/Iraqi Border
Ed looked over Merissa’s shoulder as she typed. She was sitting in the front passenger seat of the battered SUV. They were heading north on Shaikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah Road, also known as Route 80, and were only a half kilometer from the Safwan border crossing into Iraq.
“How is it going?” he asked her.
“Good. I think I have most of the relevant details documented,” she said looking back over her shoulder at him with a smile. Ed could see why his brother was so in love with her, she could melt you with her smile.
Ed had given Merissa a small laptop computer to type out a synopsis of the infection and what they had learned from their interrogation. He made it clear for her to leave out all details of her involvement, Rainer’s team, and any mention of the name Brewster. He wanted her to simply write a medical diagnosis from her experiences and the knowledge of what the infection might be.
He also asked her to conclude it with her recommendations. Ed planned on sending this information via cable through his intelligence channels and he had promised her he would send a copy via email to WHO Director Ivey.
Kef, who was driving the lead vehicle, had to hit the brakes hard again. He swore and thumped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand trying to find the horn that was no longer functioning. “Sorry, I hate fucking Iraqi traffic.”
They were in a three SUV column, tucked between an endless line of tractor trailer trucks heading into Iraq from the Kuwait port.
“Yeah, well this is nothing. This border crossing has three inspection bays we’ll have to pass through. We’ll be here for a good two and a half hours before they clear us through.”
Ed looked back to make sure the other vehicles were still tuck up with them. He was in the lead vehicle behind Kef and held the diplomatic credentials they would need to pass through. He had only brought one other black team through this border crossing using this technique and that had been a complete clusterfuck. But he needed access to a black site if he was going to be able to manifest them back to the United States through Europe.
There was no other way to make the arrangements and to quickly create the necessary paperwork without the systems contained at the secret site. Otherwise he would have to call another party to arrange which would generate questions or they would have to use their real identities and personal funds. Big red flags.
Several hours later, and after Ed nearly tore an Iraqi border supervisor’s head off, the team pulled into the small compound walls of the black site just east of Basrah International Airport. It was night and temperatures had dipped below sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
The SUVs came to a stop inside the compound and just about every vehicle door opened all at once. Daggan emerged from the second vehicle like a Sasquatch, with his arms high above his head he yawned and punched his chest. Merissa smiled as she walked past him following Ed to the closest building.
The sign, written in both Arabic and English stated that this was the office location of the al-Hattan Shipping Corporation. Ed pulled his smartphone out of his cargo pant pocket and logged into the security system. He accessed the Medeco Logic Key program and entered in the appropriate passcode. Merissa watched with amazement as the door locks automatically unlocked and Ed opened the door. He noted her look and said, “Like magic.”
“Yeah, boys and their toys,” she said with a wink.
“Bathroom is in the back on the right. You probably should get in there before the line of goons get wise to its location.”
“Thanks,” she said heading off in that direction.
Daggan came barreling in, “Where’s the head?”
“See?” Ed shouted as Merissa disappeared into the recesses of the building. “She beat you to it big man, go outside like the dog you are.”
Daggan turned and pitched Ed a middle finger over his shoulder as he headed outside once again, brushing by Rainer and Kef who were hauling some of their gear inside.
“Nice place,” Rainer stated dropping a gear bag on the floor. “Weapons?” he asked looking around.
“No cache at this location.” Ed continued, “This place is more or less just a holding station for bagged prisoners en r
oute to other less hospitable locations or at least that’s what I’m told. I’ve personally only used this place a couple times in the past just to dump off our gear and clean up before we hopped onto a bird out of country.”
Kef was inspecting the walls, “Comms?”
“What kind? Secured or unsecured?”
“Unsecured. I wanted to take a look at the news feeds out of Africa,” Kef said standing, having abandoned his search for any modern network access panels.
“There is an unsecured wireless internet router hidden inside one of these walls. It uses one of the public internet providers in Iraq, I think maybe ATS. You can access it using your laptop and it automatically masks your MAC address, so don’t worry about it. Just don’t log onto any private email accounts while you are in here.”
“I won’t, thanks.” Kef said retrieving an iPad mini he had stowed in his bag.
Ed continued, “As far as secured comms, I’ll be sending some traffic using my satellite phone but other than that I’d prefer if you guys stayed off any comms that can be traced back to you for now. I can live with leaving a footprint with my sat phone, but I want you guys squeaky clean. Sound good?” he said looking at Rainer for approval.
Rainer, however, was fixed on Ed’s last words. Replaying them in his mind. Just a few of the words had resonated within him. He could see them, they floated in the air.
Ed could see Rainer working through a problem. “What is it?” he asked putting a hand on Rainer’s shoulder. Merissa had just rounded the corner having returned from the restroom. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Rainer’s expression. She felt like she shouldn’t disturb him, like he had something on the tip of his tongue and if she rushed in it would be gone forever.
“You said you didn’t want anything to be traced back through your satellite phone.” Rainer was reliving the past. He was back on the mountain overwatch in Papua New Guinea.
“Brewster’s handler called me direct on this.” He reached into his pocket and retrieved the Iridium 9555 sat phone.