The R.E.M. Project_A Thriller

by J. M. Lanham

  “How was he weird?”

  “You know, man. Like he would always be up all night hacking or whatever.” His eyes widened. “I mean, not like illegal stuff, just—you know, on the computer all night.”

  Dawa anxiously shook his head. Move it along, young stoner. Time is of the essence.

  “Then he was in some drug trial,” Teddy said. “He was having these nightmares—said it was because of the drug company. So he started trying to go without sleep. Man, that guy looked like a walking zombie for weeks. Was saying shit like people were out to get him. Then one day he just disappeared. Haven’t seen him since.”

  “No idea where he would have gone?”

  “Dude, didn’t I, like, just tell you?”

  “Actually, you didn’t.” Mockingly, “You, like, just told me you hadn’t seen him since.”

  “Whatever, man. You’ve got the box. That’s all I know, okay?”

  That was one thing Dawa could agree on. He thanked Teddy for his time, then walked back to the empty elevator bank on the seventh floor.

  The private ride down gave Dawa a moment to check out the shoebox. He opened the lid and looked inside. It was a jumbled mess. Old hard drives. Batteries. Precision screwdrivers. Photos and papers and three packs of sunflower seeds. It appeared to be little more than a box of junk. He sorted through the contents and found the bottom. He felt something hard and rectangular under a wad of papers.

  A flash drive.

  Dawa looked it over, then slipped it into his shirt pocket as the elevator chimed and opened. He walked back to his car and debated whether or not he should head home. A homicide had kept him up most the night, and he was only a couple of miles away from the office. He could catch a quick nap there before his shift, or risk sitting in traffic for the next two hours trying to get home. It was a decision he had to make far too often—especially when people decided to shoot one another in the middle of the night.

  By the time he got to his car, his mind was made up. Even if he hit traffic, he rationalized, a few hours in his own bed beat a yoga mat behind his desk any day of the week.

  He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window as he unlocked the door. Boy, did he look tired. He hadn’t shaved in three days, the gray hairs on his head crowded out the black, and dark circles under his eyes looked painted on. His spiritual temple was crumbling. Between work, his students, and harboring a fugitive, life was taking a heavy toll.

  The shocks sank a little more than Dawa would have liked as he got in the car. He had always been a stress eater. And for the last six months, he’d had plenty to be stressed about. He sat staring through the windshield at the blur of traffic whooshing by the apartments, and thought about the fourth precept.

  I vow to avoid false speech.

  Technically, Dawa had not violated the precept by hiding his friend. But the way things were going, it was only a matter of time. He thought about a story his mother had taught him growing up. How a young man was called into his village to testify about his knowledge of a crime. Rather than elaborate on the details, he resolved to state that either he had knowledge of the crime, or he did not. By omitting the truth, he walked the technical line of the fourth precept, but stopped short of being a reliable steward of honesty.

  This was no path to enlightenment. Living by the fourth precept meant speaking with honesty and promoting trust; avoiding the kind of false speech that bred hostility and affliction; having the strength to speak out in defense of the truth—even when it meant putting one’s own life and well-being in harm’s way.

  Did that mean he was in serious violation of the very precepts he had devoted his life to? For the first time in his life, Dawa wasn’t sure. He knew the world wasn’t black and white; that the veracity of stories was like a layer of an onion, the truth usually revealing itself once the skins of fear and greed and aggression were shed. And the more Dawa was able to peel back the layers of Donny’s story, the more Asteria Pharmaceuticals seemed to be involved in activities that had to be brought to the light.

  That didn’t change the simple fact that Dawa was sworn to protect and serve based on laws that were very much black and white. He’d taken an oath to uphold the law, and every day he hid Donny away in his monastery was another day he failed to do so.

  As he turned the key to the ignition, he had to remind himself to stay focused on the big picture. The absolute truth. The simple fact that breaking man’s law in the pursuit of what was right and just far outweighed the spiritual consequences he would face if he turned Donny over to the police. That would have been the quick fix; a selfish solution to his internal conflict. Ford would be arrested, tried, and likely sentenced to life (or worse) for two murders he most certainly had not committed, all while Asteria went free to distribute its poison to the masses.

  Turning on Donny wouldn’t be the pursuit of the truth. It would be an act of cowardice.

  Dawa was no coward.

  Chapter 11:

  Tough Choices

  If the pressures of governing on the federal level weren’t enough to test the mettle of every legislator on Capitol Hill, the summer heat was sure to bring representatives and senators to the brink of their boiling points. But inside the office of newly appointed CIA Director Margaret Lancaster, heads were relatively cool and collected. She sat behind her desk and listened to Atlanta Station Chief Stephen Cline fill her in on the Asteria situation while Colin Kovic sat next to Cline, his head in the clouds.

  Things had certainly changed since the last time Kovic had been in the director’s office the year before, starting with the nation’s new leadership. 2020 had been the year of a contentious presidential election, with a referendum on the previous administration that was swift and indiscriminate. Most appointees from the previous administration had been given marching orders, regardless of their competencies. CIA Director James Bennett had been one of the first to be axed.

  It was a new era at the agency, and Margaret Lancaster was leading the way. Tall, lean, and in better shape than most women her age, Margaret could work a room full of misogynists and leave with a pocket full of allies. Her wits were as sharp as the streak of silver cutting a vertical line down her jet-black, shoulder-length hair; her olive skin was rhino-thick from surviving years in Washington politics; her diamond face and thin, almond eyes would have made her an excellent swallow in her prime, but seducing enemy agents in the field was never an interest. She had worked her way up from within the agency stateside, starting as an analyst straight out of college and putting in twenty-two years before her confirmation. She was experienced, qualified, and tough. And she sent a message things at the CIA were going to change.

  The director wasn’t the only change in the room. A traditional oak desk had been replaced with a black, high-gloss workstation, centered in the back of the room. Cup lights in the ceiling were brighter than Kovic remembered, the bluish LED bulbs replacing the soft yellow incandescent lights that used to give the room its welcoming glow. To the left, smoked glass panels replaced wood interior walls, mounted a half inch off the wall and casting rectangular shadows on the light gray wall behind them. To the right, the reinforced window casings had changed, but the view remained the same: Washington, D.C. in the distance, just over the Potomac, with the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial standing prominently in the center of a panoramic view.

  Kovic panned around the room while his bosses talked, looking for some semblance of the Agency of Old. Finally, his eyes stopped on something that hadn’t changed: the large gold-framed American flag hanging on the wall behind Lancaster. His mind wandered as he gazed at the flag, counting the stars, admiring its craftsmanship. It was the same flag the previous director had had hanging in the office before the massive renovations. The seams were stressed and the edges were tethered. It must have been at least thirty years old—

  “I’m sorry, Colin,” Lancaster said, fingers intertwined and resting on her desk. “Are we boring you on this fine afternoon?”

&
nbsp; “No, ma’am. Not at all.” He reengaged and cleared his throat.

  “Well, then,” Lancaster said, “I think Stephen’s done a fine job of bringing me up to speed on the dissolution of the joint venture with Asteria Pharmaceuticals from the agency’s side. Tell me how things went yesterday in Atlanta.”

  “Could have gone better.”

  “Okay,” Lancaster gestured, “This is the part where you elaborate.”

  “Well, for starters, he’s not keen about a buyout.”

  “Did we make him an offer?”

  “Didn’t have a chance. Said no amount was worth it, then immediately got on the phone, started making calls.”

  Lancaster leaned forward and propped her chin on the heel of her hand. “That’s not much of a surprise. Although, a buyout would have made things a lot easier.” She turned to Cline. “Are we prepped for tomorrow’s Senate hearing?”

  “I believe so,” Cline said. “Given that it’s a routine review, I compiled a list of line items that are likely to be put under the highest scrutiny, with Project THEIA topping it off.”

  “And what’s our official stance on that?”

  Cline shuffled papers in his lap and found the summary, then read it aloud. “Project THEIA was an exploratory program carried out in cooperation with Asteria Pharmaceuticals to determine the efficacy of antisense therapy to influence the neural pathways of biological systems. Studies were conducted in clinical settings using volunteers provided by Asteria Pharmaceuticals. After nine months, results of the studies were deemed inconclusive and the project was terminated.”

  Lancaster pondered the language, then said, “Let’s take out the part about influencing and replace it with something a little less indicative of a mind-control project. Something like, ‘a program to determine the effects of antisense therapy on neural pathways.’ We don’t want this thing to look like another MK Ultra.”

  “At least that didn’t happen on your watch,” Kovic said.

  “That may be true,” she said. “But you know as well as I do how much the ripple effect can stonewall intelligence spending for years on end. The Senate Intelligence Committee leaks worse than a screen door. We don’t need the details of this little arrangement getting out, regardless of who was in charge at the time. Something of this magnitude could tarnish the entire agency.”

  Lancaster stood and walked to the window, arms crossed. “Which brings me to the next issue,” she said. “The situation with Asteria is beyond complicated. A source at the FDA contacted me last night to inform me that George Sturgis was digging for intel, trying to find out if the CIA had any unspoken leverage over at the FDA. The man can’t be bought, and it doesn’t look like he’s going down without a fight.”

  “He won’t,” Kovic said.

  “Then there’s the obvious problem—national security. Less than a dozen people in the entire world know how dangerous Ocula is, present company included. I don’t think I have to tell you how devastating this product can be. Every day it’s on the open market is another day a catastrophe could happen without any way to gauge where or when it could occur, or on what scale. Women knocking off cheating boyfriends is one thing, but an outlier influencing a government official? Would be an absolute disaster, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.”

  She turned and faced the two men sitting in front of her desk. “We’re going to have to make some tough calls in the coming days, and I need to know you two are all in.”

  “Of course,” Cline said.

  Kovic nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lancaster returned to her desk. “Now before we leave this room today, I want to know what our options are. Cline, we’ll start with you.”

  “Well, we’ve got a few,” he said, shifting in his seat. “The first is to run a smear campaign warning the general public about the effects of Ocula. Social media, press leaks, high-traffic blogs, the works. We’ve done it before, with measurable results.”

  Lancaster said, “You’re talking about the MMR operation carried out in the late 90s. The op that put Sturgis and company on the radar.”

  “Precisely. Vaccine safety was immediately called into question. We could run a similar campaign here. A few convincing write-ups in a handful of prominent medical journals will drastically reduce the amount of product prescribed.”

  “I love the irony,” Lancaster said, “but I think we’re tackling a completely different animal here. First, even a highly effective smear campaign would take months to catch on, while leaving more Ocula on the market than I’m comfortable with. Second, the anti-vax paper you’re referring to was quickly debunked, putting most people’s minds at ease. It did wonders for Asteria’s competitive line of vaccines, but provided few long-term results. We have to remember: this isn’t about keeping some of the product away from consumers. This needs to be a complete and total elimination of access to Ocula to the general public.”

  She turned to Kovic. “What’ve you got?”

  “We focus on the national security risk. Tomorrow’s hearing is closed doors—”

  “That doesn’t equate to confidential,” Lancaster said.

  “Still, we shouldn’t take coming clean off the table. With the FDA and DEA in Asteria’s pocket, swaying the Senate Intelligence Committee could be the best chance we’ve got to get the drug pulled from the market.”

  “By saying what, Kovic—that Ocula is giving people superpowers? Making their dreams come true?” Lancaster shook her head. “First, they’ll laugh us out of the room, then they’ll pull this year’s budget request, then they’ll have our jobs. Sorry, Colin, but in this case taking the honest approach is about the worst thing we can do.”

  Cline looked over at Kovic while speaking to Lancaster. “There is another option.”

  Kovic’s eyes urged Cline to shut up.

  “I’m listening,” Lancaster said.

  “Project THEIA. It hasn’t been completely shuttered yet. Everything is still in place at Skyline, excluding the participants. Once we have them transferred back up from Guantanamo, we can have the project back up and fully operational within the week.”

  Lancaster’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly are you suggesting, Stephen?”

  “We use Ocula 2.0 to influence the head of the FDA to issue a recall for the formula on the market. If we can’t sway opinions over at the drug administration, we’ll go to the head of the DEA and convince him to classify it as a Schedule I drug.”

  Lancaster looked over at a concerned Kovic. “What are your thoughts?” she asked.

  “I don’t like it. Synthesizing the drug is one thing, but actually using it is something else entirely.”

  Cline looked over. “What good is the weapon if we can’t ever use it?”

  “You could say the same thing about the nuclear arsenal.”

  “That’s completely different. You’re comparing a weapon of mass destruction to a sniper rifle.”

  “A sniper rifle is as accurate as the operator using it. Ocula is a shotgun at best. And I’ve seen you shoot, Stephen.”

  “Okay, gentleman. That’ll be enough.” Lancaster rocked a pen between her fingers and thought. She had to agree with Kovic—from a moral standpoint, anyway. She’d known Project THEIA had the potential to be catastrophic the moment she had been debriefed on the venture, which was exactly why she had ordered the project terminated. In the last several months she had worked to sever ties with Asteria; shut down the Skyline facility in Virginia; stockpile what remained of Ocula 2.0 under heavy lock and key; and put away any memories of the Costa Rican connection—the latter of which still remained a thorn in her side.

  She didn’t like the idea of bringing Ocula back, but when it came to actionable solutions, she was drawing a blank. And here was Stephen Cline, right in front of her, offering up a state-of-the-art weapon that could solve their problems within the month. Her moral compass was swerving.

  She asked, “Who would run the operation?”

  “I would,” Cline sai
d, “with Roberto Ramírez in charge of clinical intervention.”

  “You mean Doyle’s assistant?” Kovic couldn’t believe it. “That guy’s a bigger sociopath than Dick ever was.”

  “I think you forget your place,” Cline said. “Besides, no one knows the program better. No one who’s still alive, anyway.”

  “And why did we lose so many people in that operation, Cline? Have you already forgotten about Doyle and Tanner’s inability to control the outliers? One slip up, one mistake, and BOOM! This time it could be you eating a bullet from your own gun.”

  Lancaster said, “That’s why I want you there, Kovic. Working with Ramírez. Making sure everything runs smoothly.”

  Kovic went slack-jawed.

  Lancaster continued, “Cline will handle the Costa Rica situation from here on out. You need to get to Skyline as soon as possible. Get everything operational within the next forty-eight hours. Stephen can handle your asset in San José.”

  “She’s never going to go for that.”

  “She doesn’t have a choice. And just so we’re clear, Kovic, neither do you.”

  Kovic swallowed hard. He wanted to tell her Cline was dead wrong to bring Ocula 2.0 out of storage; that she knew better than to revive a dangerous weapon the agency had worked so hard to cover up; that using Ocula 2.0 as a means to eliminate the original made about as much sense as stopping a country’s nuclear program by firing off a dozen warheads. Unfortunately, Kovic had used up all of his political clout for the day. He kept his mouth shut and played the good soldier.

  “Will that be all for the day?”

  “That will be all,” Lancaster said. She checked her watch. “You’ve got a busy week ahead of you. I suggest you get started.”

  Kovic stood to follow Cline out the door. Lancaster stopped him halfway. “One more thing,” she said. “About the situation in Costa Rica: do you think we can trust this in the hands of a journalist?”