by Fiona Quinn
Gage tipped his head, his eyes far away as if he were imagining this in the field. “The beacon is something that the pilots can track?”
“No, it’s too small, it can’t put out enough power. But once the airstrike, or other means of interception begins, the pilot can send the wasp to find its egg. That’s what I call the beacon. And the pilot can verify the location. The wasp can travel up to two miles on each flight. It gets juiced up while the biomarkers are being run, and then can fly another two miles.”
“Then what happens? It just stops?” Gage asked.
“It uses the acid to self-destruct with its last burst of energy. I can’t let them fall into anyone else’s hands.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt. This is an absolutely mind-boggling concept, and I can think of hundreds of times when it would have made all the difference in the field,” Brian said. “Do you have to destroy it? For example, if we had eyes three-sixty and no way for this guy to escape, would you have to destroy the WASP? Or could you use it again?”
“Each WASP can obtain only one blood sample, and then it can’t be used again. The biomarker test is highly sensitive and the WASP would be contaminated. A micro drop could change the outcome on subsequent blood samples. If, however, we were dealing with a known mark and a biomarker test wasn’t required, then the WASP could be used to mark the subject with an egg and track that person. It would still need to be called back by the pilot to recharge.”
“I’m sure they cost a freaking fortune. You’d better be right when you’re piloting to the mark. I don’t know that I could do that.” Brian said.
“Agreed. I developed software that’s supposed to help. When Gage killed the men in my apartment…” Zoe instantly regretted recalling that scene. Her body went right back into panic mode. Gage reached over and drew a steady hand from her elbow to her palm then laced their fingers together.
“You’re doing fine,” he encouraged. “Take your time.”
“If a photo was taken with ears or with faces, those data points could be put into the system. Height really helps. Gender, of course. The wasp tries to help the pilot. There’s a scale that shows up on the screen to facilitate pilot decision making. It runs red to blue. Hot to cold, like the children’s game.”
Titus slid forward in his seat. “Okay, I have a question for you. I’m going to leap in a different direction. How did the CIA know that you were in the hospital? How do they play into this WASP story?”
Zoe’s gaze searched over the floor. If anything made her feel vulnerable, it was explaining what the CIA, she, and WASPs had in common.
Chapter
Thirty
Zoe
Do not kill a single wasp; for then a hundred will come to its funeral.
~ Russian Proverb
“How did the CIA know about me being in the hospital? I don’t know.” Zoe’s nose tingled, and she squeezed it to stop the distraction.
“Do you know Grossman and Parker?”
Now her lips were going numb. Brian moved over and set a bottle in front of her. It was a chocolate protein shake. Zoe thought he’d probably hit on something, her system was burning through some energy, like she’d been running a marathon. “Thank you,” she said as she twisted off the top and took a sip. “Parker and Grossman? Yes. I know them.”
“How do you know them? Were you doing something for the CIA?”
“Yes, the CIA activated the BIOMIST data. But Grossman and Parker weren’t part of that. I refused to work for them.”
“They were in your hospital room the other night, and said they were on a time crunch,” Gage said.
“They are, but that’s not my worry.”
“Can you tell us what they were asking you to work on?”
Zoe filled her cheeks with air and blew it out. “If this goes outside of these walls, I could go to prison. I’m probably breaking a bunch of espionage laws. My contracts all have non-disclosure statements and stuff about treason. Now I’m caught between giving you the information to save lives, including my own, or shutting up. I’m not a hero. I don’t want to be shot full of drugs and dragged somewhere to do things against my will.”
“Zoe, we deal in State secrets every day,” Titus said. “Our job is America first. None of us is going to take this beyond the tightest possible circles. But you’re right. There are choices to be made. And lives on the line. Yours, others. Innocent others, like Lily.”
“Lily.” Zoe still couldn’t believe her friend was dead. Murdered. Yeah, she’d have to keep telling them about her work. She didn’t really have a choice. “Parker and Grossman want my help getting to a guy in Pakistan. It’s high stakes, the next Osama Bin Laden, they said. I’m okay with them using my identification processes—that could save innocent lives. That’s been my goal all along. Keep innocent people out of jail, keep innocent people off death row, keep innocent civilians from being targeted by drones.”
Gage’s eyes darkened.
“They approached me about building a RoboSphecius because they wanted me to extend my research.” Zoe took a big glug of her protein shake. She could feel the sugar working in her system.
“In which direction? Zoe, Are you okay?” Gage asked.
“I think I’ve used up most of my word quotient for the week.” Zoe forced a little laugh.
“A little bit more, okay?” Gage’s eyes were green now, soft and comforting.
“Yes, that’s fine.” She paused, wondering how to explain this to those outside of the scientific community. “Science is accumulative. There are no new ideas. Any idea that is sparked by anyone else’s is simply a next step.” She grimaced and tried to come up with an example. “Do you know how Post-it Notes came to be?” She looked around at the shaking heads. “Back in the late sixties, Spencer Silver was a 3M chemist. He developed a “low-tack” adhesive. It was strong enough to hold paper to a surface, but the genius of it was that it was also weak enough that it wouldn’t tear the paper when it was removed. Silver worked for a good long time trying to figure out how to make this adhesive marketable, and he wasn’t able to. One day, Silver’s colleague, Art Fly, uses it in his choir book because he thought it would make a great book marker. Ta-da. Post-it Notes were born. Having something already, and changing it slightly to meet a need, that’s the basic story of Parker and Grossman and me.”
Gage said nothing. Waited.
Zoe considered how every word out of her mouth made the circle of people who had the information wider, and she felt that the mere concepts were potentially lethal. Already had been lethal. Lily, three men that the Panthers called “tangos”, and maybe, possibly, the reporter. She pulled her hand away from Gage’s. She wished she had time to consider her actions further. But inaction at this point seemed dangerous too. “Parker and Grossman were on the trail of Osama Bin Laden. They were accessing BIOMIST to try to track down Bin Laden’s children. Recently they discovered my WASP project. They never told me how that got leaked to them.”
“Who knows about it besides Montrim?” Titus asked.
“Montrim doesn’t know what I’m working on. They just rent my lab space to DARPA.”
“Weird,” Brian said.
Zoe saw the men passing looks around and wondered what they were telegraphing to each other.
“As for who knows at DARPA? I’m not sure. Colonel Guthrie is my contact,” Zoe finished.
“No one else? No bookkeepers or another staff at Montrim?”
“This is supposed to be above top secret—I don’t know how they deal with that in terms of their accounting.”
“Lily wouldn’t know?”
Zoe searched the men’s faces again. They were focused hard on her. This point meant something to them. “I don’t know how Lily would come across the scope of my work.”
“But somehow the CIA did. Did you tell Guthrie the CIA knew?”
“Yes, I told him right away that they wanted me to change the trajectory of my research. I was worried that they’d pile that on my lap t
oo, because I was already on the tight deadline Guthrie had set for me. And I wasn’t willing to do what they wanted anyway. Colonel Guthrie seemed pretty pissed about it. He told them to stand down, that I was working on a military contract. I was there and heard his side of the phone conversation.”
“But Parker and Grossman pushed you anyway. What were they pushing you to do?” Gage asked.
“Back in the 1970s, the CIA had a secret weapon used for assassinations. A dart was used to shoot a small amount of poison into their target. The dart would dissolve almost instantly, leaving the tiniest of red dots. The substance would cause a heart attack that, at that time, couldn’t be thwarted. I’m not sure how that poison would stand up to modern medical interventions now. But at the time, it was very effective. It also had a short half-life that meant that any traces that might be found in post-mortem exams would come up as naturally causative. Which is why, if this reporter had documentation that brought a CIA SNAFU to light, then I’m not sure, and no one will ever be sure, if Bunsinger’s heart attack was a natural event or if it was triggered by the CIA’s use of this poison.”
“I’ve seen videos of those old Senate hearings, and everything Zoe’s saying is true. But that initiative was nixed. They put that program aside,” Prescott said.
Zoe shook her head, and the men turned to look at her. Their concern was growing palpable, and Zoe dearly wanted to leave. “The person who is hit by the dart may not feel anything at all or possibly just a bug bite or sting. Sound familiar? The CIA wanted me to develop a RoboSphecius with the capacity to detect a beacon implant and to, via proboscis, sting the person, administering a lethal dose of poison. The poison from the seventies. They have it in hand. That I can tell you with certitude.”
“Did you take on the project at any point?” Prescott asked.
“No, of course not!”
“Can I ask why not?” he pushed back.
“Imagine the ramifications. Anything we have in terms of science is just leading the race, but eventually all dedicated runners cross the finish line. Everyone would have this technology, especially if it was already functional and the “other” got hold of the wasps or my designs and software. They could reverse engineer the thing, send the poison to their chemists. Can you imagine the ease with which our government could be taken down? How could anyone prevent senators from being stung as they exited the Capitol? I’m not having any part of that. I’m okay with identifying the players so that we can separate the innocent from the culpable, to the extent that it’s possible. But my science will not be used to actually kill people.”
“But the CIA won’t take no for an answer.” Titus’s voice was a low growl.
“No. They won’t leave me alone.”
Prescott held up his finger. “I just got a text from the morgue. Colin Bunsinger had a phone, a wallet, and a set of car keys in his pocket, but there was no envelope on his person when his body was transported. They still have Lily Winter’s, they’re expecting the funeral home to transport her body later today. My team has signed chain of custody paperwork and is bringing her purse and her watch here to Iniquus. I hope that’s okay.” He turned to Titus. “We didn’t discuss it, but I think this will be the most efficient route. Of course, they’ll need to maintain that chain of custody, so they’ll need to remain in your forensics department with the potential evidence.”
To Zoe it seemed not quite a challenge. It was almost like Prescott wanted eyes on the inner sanctum, and this was his play. Iniquus was Zoe’s protector, and she didn’t like that the FBI was snooping around. Zoe thought that her aversion was probably do to her interaction with the CIA. She didn’t dislike Prescott. But in this moment, she didn’t like him either.
“That happens all the time. We’re set up to accommodate you,” Titus said evenly. He wasn’t ruffled. Probably Zoe shouldn’t be either.
Prescott tapped a response into his phone.
“Zoe.” Brian moved to sit next to Gage. “Your work on the WASPs is amazing. I love sci-fi. It’s all I read and most of what I watch on screen. I see how these things are possible in the future. But right here and now, you’re describing things that can be of so much help and you’re right, they have so much potential for harm. I like hearing you talking about the ethics of your research. It never occurred to me that scientists would be put in such difficult places. In the military, Gage and I make decisions like that on a minor scale. You’re making them with a wider scope. Do you have someone you can talk to, to debate these issues as you make your decisions? Is there someone’s advice you seek out? Perhaps that’s how this information is getting out.”
“The only person I’m allowed to discuss this with is Colonel Guthrie. None of this can get out to the wider scientific world. Mostly I try to be true to my own inner voice. Sometimes I follow through with the colonel, sometimes not. Colonel Guthrie told me to keep my head down and get the WASPs ready for intelligence, and then we’d talk about what happens next with RoboSphecius. On this, though, I’m not swayable. I could see our president being stung. I won’t have any hand in that.”
“But have you seen some good in your work? Do you feel uplifted by what you’ve accomplished?” Gage asked.
“I don’t often get to know how my work is being used. I told you about the failed attempt to use it to find Osama Bin Laden. I was able to help with the Paris attacks though, and yeah, that felt good. A few stories have siphoned back to me and really touched me, gave me courage, kept me working toward future advancements.”
Brian asked, “Was this with your WASPs?”
“No, BIOMIST.”
Brian went quiet, and Zoe could see him thinking hard. He shook his head. “I can’t put it together. Can you explain how BIOMIST helped in the Paris attacks? Would it breach security to share?”
Zoe opened her arms wide. “Everything I’ve said to you has breached security. I can’t see how one more item will make that much difference. After the Paris attacks, President Obama told the CIA that they were to do everything in their power to help Interpol. There was a short list of people the CIA thought might be involved. They ran the blood samples found on scene through BIOMIST.”
“What? But you said they were gathering the census markers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.”
“Montrim, under CIA direction, expanded its humanitarian efforts when Europe started to be overwhelmed by refugees fleeing the war zone. Montrim’s humanitarian arm set up medical stations at refugee centers to try to document everyone coming in from the Middle East and Northern Africa. Once Montrim was in the field, gathering data in the Middle East, they thought there was a glitch in my protocol because different names were coming up as matches. It turned out the patients were changing the names they were telling the relief workers. Montrim added a fingerprint identification screen to the intake. When the patients are processed, before the blood sample is taken, the finger is rolled on the digital pad, and it’s stored as a name and a fingerprint with a unique number sequence. That change happened fairly early on.
“Of course, they’re not Montrim in the field. They have several other names they use, like WorldMed International, and WorldCares. In the attempt to get the biomarkers, people are being given basic medical interventions. That’s a wonderful thing. Another good thing is that the software I wrote groups people into families—families in this instance are defined as parents and their children. A grandparent won’t lead to a grandchild. But a brother can lead to a sister. A father can lead to a child. If a child came in without supervision—the adult died in passage, for example—the medical workers would flag it. They’ve told me that dozens of families were reunited this way. I think that’s pretty cool. I had to sign off on that use for a set period of time. Montrim is giving the data to the field workers, who then do the leg work. It’s their charitable outreach, and they receive a great deal of goodwill in the communities for doing this kind of thing. The whole hearts and minds initiative. They say it’s name recognition software, putting people t
ogether.”
“Wow.” Brian sat back in his chair. “Wow,” he said again, then scrubbed a hand over his short military cut. “That must be an amazing feeling.”
Zoe offered up what Gage called her Mona Lisa smile. Yeah, it did feel good. It made her proud to know she was helping to make the world a better place. Then she sighed. “And now my science is responsible for four, maybe five deaths. I don’t know if one side of the scale balances the other.” She rubbed her hands together.
“I’m sorry, but I’m still stuck on the Paris attacks. How did your research help?” Gage asked.
“At first, the authorities had a blood sample they found at the scene where one of the terrorists exploded himself, and that’s how they found the name of Brahim Abdeslam in BIOMIST. Then the authorities worked to find his family. They also found a fingerprint that pinpointed Salah. The CIA, of course, didn’t identify the means by which they made the identification. And they even tried to stay off the radar as the entity that identified him.”
“But the Abdeslam family was from Brussels,” Prescott pointed out.
“In 2015, Brahim Abdeslam travelled to Turkey, intending to go to Syria, but Turkish authorities deported him back to Brussels. That’s when the sample was taken. Authorities had him pass through one of the Montrim sites for a health check. I really have very little information on the subject—there was an addendum to the contract I needed to sign so that the CIA could give the information to Interpol, that’s the only reason I have this much. I’m sure that their media briefings disguised the true facts, because my index isn’t supposed to exist. As soon as it’s a known entity, our government will no longer have the freedom it has now to expand the database.”
“Have you ever considered selling a copy of BIOMIST to Israel?” Prescott asked.