Could that be what the numbers were for on the back of those photos?
Casper seemed to have the same idea as he punched the numbers in the sequence Ashley had gotten on the photos.
Nothing.
“Try it backward,” Ashley suggested.
He did and a cover popped open.
Casper stepped back. Ashley’s nerves tingled. “What is that?”
“I think it’s a security device based on facial recognition.”
Ashley took two steps back. Who was her father, really? A facial scanner? In a cabin in the woods? Someplace she felt like she’d been before.
A viridian set of eyes looked back at her with three flashing red words.
Ready to scan.
“You first,” Ashley said. “Then if it’s a booby trap maybe I can save your life.”
“That’s ridiculous. They don’t work that way.”
“All of a sudden a man who can’t remember who he is becomes an expert in facial scanners and booby traps?”
“It’s just like a camera. No lasers. It won’t hurt you.”
“You were almost beat into an early grave. I saw a good friend get shot right in front of me. I called Horace. The next risky move is all yours.”
“Fine.” Casper stepped in front of the screen. Within a few seconds it flashed. Access denied.
Ashley shuddered. It was cold and this was creepy. What had she gotten herself involved in? This was straight out of a James Bond movie.
Before she could change her mind, she walked up to the window and stood stock-still until the device flashed.
Access granted.
There was a faint pop of a door releasing and Casper walked quickly through the back porch door. The interior was dark but they could see another doorway at the end. Leading the way, she walked forward and they were met with another punch code lock.
Ashley entered the numbers backward. No luck this time. She tried forward.
Another window popped open. Ashley repeated the same maneuvers.
Access denied.
She stepped away from the door. “Now what do we do?”
Casper stepped forward without acknowledging her question. After scanning Casper’s face, the door released.
What did that mean? That they only would have been given entry if they were together?
Casper stepped through the threshold and motioned her forward and turned on a series of light switches as he walked.
The interior of the cabin was an entirely different story. It didn’t look old and untouched, but fairly modernized.
Had her father been here sometime in the past two years? Did her mother remember this place?
The first thing that stood out was the movie projector in the middle of the room facing a white wall.
“Should we turn it on?” Ashley asked.
“Seems like we’re meant to.”
SIX
Casper’s feet were heavy, his hunger forgotten, as he neared the projector. What could this be? After a quick inspection, he turned the dial and the projector was set in motion. Ashley sat down on a worn leather love seat. Casper remained standing. He wanted to be able to turn the video off if something too disturbing came on the screen.
There was no sound, just grainy images with streaked black lines running through the frames. Color but faded. The first shot was of an island taken a good distance away. Next, men were loading sheep into a small boat—a wooden boat with oars.
If Casper had to guess the time frame, based on the dress alone, he’d say 1930s to 1940s. In the next few scenes, the sheep were being placed in small metal pens. Each animal was individually locked in these cages. Then a tan, canvas-type hood was placed over the sheep’s head.
A long view then showed several of the crates on a hillside.
Men in biohazard gear. Orange suits. Canvas hoods. Old-style respirators. Close to the style of gas masks worn by WWI soldiers.
A queasy feeling hit Casper. He was starting to feel light-headed and decided it might be best to sit next to Ashley on the couch. This was not a first-date kind of movie night he expected to take any woman on.
Another long view of the hillside. The sheep remained in the crates. A plane flew over dropping something from its cargo hold.
A bomb.
That didn’t explode.
A plume of brown smoke wafted over the hill.
Casper’s throat thickened. It was difficult to breathe, as if the mysterious smoke was filling the small cabin.
Next few screen images. The sheep were unloaded from the crates and tied to long metal poles anchored in the ground. Time passes. Three days according to an informational placard.
The sheep all died.
Then necropsies. Ashley shielded her eyes. Sometimes, even medical doctors had a limit as to what they could watch. Casper hustled to the film and turned it off.
“What was that?” Ashley asked, slowly revealing her eyes from the protective cover of her hand.
“Gruinard Island...if I had to guess,” Casper said.
“This film footage...was a real event? Not some cut of a low-budget horror movie left on the editing floor?”
“There have been a couple of islands known to be used for military experiments of bioweapons. The Brits had Gruinard Island. The Russians had Rebirth Island. I think this is Gruinard because the Russians favored using monkeys in their testing.”
Ashley leaned her head against the back of the love seat. “Your memory seems to be improving.”
Casper nodded. He was remembering more, but it was like a fast unloading of this life. He could clearly remember high school, his family and going through college. Microbiology. He had a clear picture of holding an acceptance letter to medical school in his hands.
He’d been fascinated by bioweapons—the destructive power of something infinitely smaller than its foe.
“Yes, I am remembering more,” Casper said.
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
“We’ve been busy.”
“We were on the road for hours... You couldn’t find one moment?” she asked, her tone accusatory.
Casper’s hackles rose, but before he responded with the same tone he considered her perspective. There was likely a trust issue at play here. Her father had abandoned her family, and yet he was, more likely than not, still alive. If her father was alive but not engaged, why couldn’t he just be honest with her? It seemed to Casper that Ashley wanted the truth more than anything else—despite the pain it might cause.
It was always the hidden things that drove people crazy. The truth, though hard, at least could be managed, rebuilt from and moved past.
Casper inhaled to ease the tinge of anger in his chest. Ultimately, they had to trust one another. If there was suspicion between them, it was only going to hurt them in the long run.
“I’m sorry. What I was remembering didn’t seem to have any particular significance until now.”
She looked at him, a softness to her face. He’d been forgiven even if she couldn’t say the words. “What did we just watch?”
“In my college years, I was pretty fascinated by this stuff. I’d done some reading about biological weapons programs and knew about these islands. There were reports that footage of Gruinard Island had been declassified, but I’d never seen the footage.”
“You think this is the original?”
Casper shrugged. “Hard to know. I would guess a copy. Not sure why it hasn’t been converted into something digital. Or maybe it has, but your father didn’t want to risk a digital footprint by having it on a computer.”
“What biological agent was that?”
“That was anthrax. Inhaled anthrax spores are fatal in 90 percent of cases.” Casper rested his hand on top of the projector. “You can see from the film they want
ed to ensure inhalation of the spores to determine lethality. That’s why the sheep’s heads are covered. The hoods diminish cross-contamination between the animals. The crude necropsies verify the cause of death. Really, though terrible, this is a perfectly designed experiment. Even the time of day they dropped the bomb.”
Ashley’s eyes glanced up to the ceiling. “Dusk?”
“Yes. Minimal sunlight. Some pathogens will die when exposed to UV light, but nightfall is when it’s more likely that cool air will cover warm...inversion. It keeps the spores from being blown away by wind currents. By the slight breeze as seen in the taller grasses, the plume is carried toward the sheep as the men stand upwind.”
Ashley leaned forward and rubbed her forehead with her fingers as if staving off a headache. “It always amazes me.”
“What?”
“Man’s desire to kill one another.”
He couldn’t offer a counterargument.
“Why do you think my father left it for us?”
“To start us down the right path. Bioweapons. One or both of us has information that this Jared Fleming is probably involved in, or something along these lines. Your father left us a film reel dealing with a biological weapons experiment. Why? I don’t know...yet. Let’s look around and see what else we find.”
* * *
Ashley stood from the couch on shaky legs and headed for the desk. Casper looked through cabinets in the kitchen. Didn’t seem like the best place to find clues to their current predicament, but she was also getting hungry.
She pulled open a drawer that held a series of files. Grabbing the first one, she set it on the desk and flipped it open. It was filled with a series of codes.
“Ravioli?” Casper asked. “There’s nothing but canned goods here. I can add green beans.”
“In it?” Ashley asked. Her stomach clenched at the thought. She wasn’t a food snob, but neither did her stomach have the same stalwart intestinal fortitude of her youth. Yet canned ravioli had been one of her favorite things. Was this an olive branch extended by her father for her arrival? Having the cabinets stocked with some of her favorite foods from her childhood?
“Really? You have to ask me that?”
His smile lightened Ashley’s spirits. “Just checking. My brother is known to eat some pretty interesting things that he’s tried to innocently pass off to me.”
Ashley turned back to the papers as Casper continued in the kitchen, looking for something to warm up their dinner. She heard the whine of an electric can opener. After a few dishes were shuffled, she heard Casper program the microwave and the faint hum of it starting.
Whatever this place was, someone was paying to keep the power connected.
Casper walked next to her. “Find anything?”
“These codes.” Ashley pointed to the stack of documents. “Do you know what they might mean?”
Casper lifted the paper from the top of the desk. “These are the Soviet classification codes for their bioweapons program. Each number and letter combination represents an agent.”
“How would you know that?” Ashley asked.
“A Russian scientist who defected to the US after the fall of the Soviet Union wrote a book about it. He was a high-ranking military scientist that was in charge of their weapons program.”
Ashley took the paper from his fingers and set it back on the desk. “Decipher them for me.”
“Well, I didn’t memorize them from his autobiography, but the Russians had a love affair with the most virulent pathogens. There wasn’t anything they didn’t consider or try weaponizing—smallpox, Ebola and anthrax were just a few they tinkered with. In fact, they had an accidental release of anthrax that killed quite a few citizens.”
Accidental? Could it really be called that if the government was testing something that was against international law? Criminal seemed to be the more appropriate term.
Casper continued, “And even a second round of deaths when they tried to clean it up.”
“How could something like that happen?”
“Anthrax spores are very hardy. In the film we saw, Gruinard Island was considered a biological wasteland for decades. To clean up the spores, they sprayed the soil with a combination of formaldehyde and seawater before it was considered anthrax free. Regular cleanup, like spraying an area with water and soap, can just disperse the spores into the air, where they can turn around and infect additional people.”
The microwave pinged drawing Casper back to the kitchen. “See what else you can find and I’ll get dinner set up.”
Ashley put her attention back to the file cabinet to the right of the desk and thumbed through the tabs. Variant U. India 1967. Anthrax 836. Unit 731. What were these and why had her father been stockpiling information on them?
There was a small hope chest against the wall to the left of where she sat. Ashley left the desk and kneeled next to the intricately carved camphor trunk. They came from China if she remembered correctly. This one was etched with complex designs—dragons, pagodas and sailing ships. Ashley trailed her fingers over the wood. She remembered her father bringing one of these home to her mother after a lengthy trip and it was one of her mother’s most treasured gifts.
Ashley lifted the lock and was greeted by a smell that reminded her of the ointment her mother used to spread on her chest as a child with the cursory placement of wax paper over top to keep the substance from saturating her pajamas. Her mother claimed the smell was like rosemary but Ashley disagreed. A tear slipped from her eye and she quickly wiped it away.
Lord, Casper seems to believe in You and that You’re the ultimate composer of life. That everything has a time, a place and a purpose. I don’t know why these things are happening to us, but I’m scared. Keep my mother and brother safe. Continue to allow Casper to regain his memory. Help us decipher these clues so that we can find my father...alive.
She pushed the lid fully open. The first thing that caught her attention was a gray-and-black toolbox. Her father used these to make up complex first-aid kits. After she pulled it out, she set it next to her on the floor and opened it up.
The top tray held smaller items—Band-Aids, cotton balls, antibiotic ointment, ACE wraps and one tightly folded Mylar blanket. How those things could keep anyone warm was questionable. She lifted the top of the tray and found two bags of IV fluid, several packages of IV tubing and IV catheters of various sizes. More bandages and different types of medical tape took up the remainder of the space. She lifted out some of the larger bandages and found three prescription bottles tucked underneath. Grabbing them, she turned back toward the desk light to read the labels.
Her father’s cryptic block lettering had fashioned a homemade label.
Tetracycline. Penicillin. Streptomycin.
Three potent antibiotics.
All used to treat diseases that could result from a biological weapons attack.
SEVEN
Casper lit the last of a trio of small tea lights he found in one of the cabinets and surveyed the table setting in front of him. A plate of ravioli and green beans...from a can. He was definitely failing on all levels of any first-date criteria.
Is that what I’m trying to do here? Impress Ashley...romantically?
He looked at her across the room as she rummaged through the old chest that sat next to her father’s desk. Surprisingly, she didn’t look as disheveled as he thought she would under the circumstances. Her ponytail had been transformed into a messy bun. Small wisps of her dark brown hair fought the confines of the holder and framed her face. She could use some sun; her skin was as light and pale as paper, with a hint of pink at her cheeks. No makeup marred her complexion and she was still stunningly beautiful. Those blue eyes always inquisitive yet tentative—like she didn’t want to let any man get too close.
“Dinner’s ready,” Casper called to her, his heartbeat upticking as
she stood and faced him. She took two steps and stopped. She held something in her hands but he couldn’t tell what it was.
Her head tilted in question as she began to walk to the table. “Candles?”
Casper pulled the torn vinyl seat, straight from the ’70s, out for her to sit down on. “Probably not wise for us to turn on a bunch of lights,” Casper said. “We are trying to keep a low profile.”
She positioned herself in front of the chair and Casper gently pushed it underneath her. He took two steps to her side and unfolded a thin paper napkin and placed it on her lap. “Just because we’re on the run from some nefarious people doesn’t mean we need to live uncivilized.”
Ashley chuckled and the pressure eased from his chest. “No, of course not. I guess.”
Casper reached for her hand across the table and Ashley returned hers in kind, resting her fingers lightly in his palm. He gripped them gently. His memory was slowly coming up to the current time period. He remembered his residency and then choosing to specialize in infectious disease. From that time span, he couldn’t remember a girlfriend and was beginning to wonder if he’d had a serious love interest in this life before.
“Dear Lord. We don’t understand the circumstances under which You brought Ashley and I together. Each of us seems to hold pieces of a puzzle and we need Your help to see the big picture. Give us the tools to decipher and see clearly what is before us. Please return the use of my memory, but only if it is Your will. Amen.”
Casper slid his hand out from underneath Ashley’s and found her blue eyes locked on his as soon as he looked up. He reached for his face, thinking he had a spot of spaghetti sauce running rogue somewhere from eating one extra ravioli.
“There’s nothing there,” Ashley said.
“It’s just that...you’re staring,” Casper said. “I’m feeling a little scrutinized.”
Ashley picked up her fork and waved it in front of him as if to brush the thought aside. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I’m a little intrigued by your prayer.”
The nervous tingle returned to Casper’s chest. Was Ashley always this way? So direct? Perhaps it was a skill developed in the ER. If you weren’t to the point, lives could be lost. “In what way?”
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