For Beeman, exotic sexual practices were no more interesting than a common cold, but the power to alter a living being fundamentally was a worthy goal. He would morph Antonio from an overgrown child, crippled by his own self-loathing, into a wanton death machine. The distant promise of an even more wondrous transformation also teased him from the horizon of his imagination. The slender blonde displayed signs of inner steel, steel they might yet forge into something marvelous. Beeman pictured her strangling Antonio with this very whip, perhaps avenging the death of her friend—
The contentment blossoming within Beeman’s mind vanished abruptly. He felt a warm, tingling sensation in his cheeks and at the small of his back, just as he’d experienced at his cabin.
Glancing about, he saw that a man had appeared silently behind him.
Beeman turned to face a tall Asian man who looked to be in his thirties, dressed in loose-fitting jeans and a designer golf shirt, with sunglasses resting atop his head, buried in a tuft of black hair. The man’s flat black eyes gazed unflinchingly at him, and the corners of his mouth turned slightly upward to match the half-smile on Beeman’s face.
Taking a step to his left, the man pointed at the whip in the glass case. His brow raised in childlike innocence. In an intimate whisper, he asked, “A bit harsh, don’t you think?”
Beeman moved to step away. The man stayed with him.
“How are your patients faring, doctor?”
“Excuse me?” Beeman looked at the man, seeing danger behind the humor in his dark eyes.
“How are your houseguests holding up?”
“What?”
“Are they still alive?”
Beeman froze for a moment and then looked past the man, his eyes scanning the store. Aside from an old woman tending a cash register at the opposite counter thirty feet away, they had the store to themselves.
“Who are you?”
The man held out his hand. “My name is Jimmy Kim, Dr. Beeman.”
Beeman refused the handshake. “What do you want?”
Kim dropped his hand, and his smile vanished. “To meet a brilliant scientist.”
“I see,” Beeman said flatly.
What now? Arrest? Blackmail? Something else?
Kim smiled once more, sheepishly now, and asked, “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”
Beeman sent back a mocking imitation of that furtive grin.
He followed Kim to the Starbucks a few blocks down Main Street, thinking quickly, scientifically. That he was not facing arrest narrowed the probabilities. Blackmail? It was possible. Someone had devised a scheme to acquire Black Sunrise.
He had developed it in the underground DataHelix labs in Colorado to be the supreme bioweapon system, consisting of an engineered virus and companion software.
Black Sunrise was a candle that lit itself.
This was the biological magic Beeman had genetically engineered.
He had given the world a virulent plague with an adjustable R0.
Pronounced “R naught,” it was the reproduction number that predicts just how contagious an infectious disease will be. As an infection spreads, it reproduces itself. R0 represents the average number of people who will catch it from one infected person. If a disease has an R0 of 18, a contagious person will transmit the virus to an average of eighteen other people, assuming a lack of vaccination. The longer a disease takes to incapacitate or immobilize someone, and the longer the pathogen itself remains viable in the host, the greater the reproduction number. Beeman’s technology could control both of those variables. He had designed it to incapacitate enemy states without running rampant beyond the geological and chronological boundaries set by strategic military doctrine.
When coupled with a cyber warfare assault, the bio attack would be even more devastating because a companion cyber-attack would hobble any effort to impose quarantine by cutting communication lines. So the Black Sunrise weapons package included cyber-warfare modules.
When deployed, Black Sunrise would spread rapidly—but only for a set interval. It would quickly flare and burn out, leaving enemy forces and infrastructures decimated and incapable of resistance, without destroying cities, with no nuclear fallout or permanently contaminated water supplies or croplands. Secondary infections could arise from heaps of decaying cadavers, but the more virulent Black Sunrise virus would be gone, and conventional biohazard precautions would protect invading forces.
Assuming an invasion would even be necessary.
It would have been a truly effective solution to ISIS, for example, if it were to have become a globally threatening caliphate with its own borders and WMDs, weapons of mass destruction.
The software and hardware were just as important as the pathogen itself, if not more so. Given the data files stored on the subterranean DataHelix servers—isolated from any network connections—anyone with access to the technological specifications of the required genetic sequencing equipment and software platforms could cultivate and deploy the weapon.
Beeman had developed the biological virus; he had not designed the analytics and cyber-warfare aspects of the computing technology, though he had access to all of it.
Of all the countries that would want to possess the virus if they knew of it, potential Black Sunrise targets themselves—North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Israel—were the nations most likely actually to try to obtain it. Beeman had been briefed on this scenario many times, but he’d never considered the threat as anything other than theoretical.
Though it was his first successful effort to control the fundamental machinery of life and death, AR-117 would not be Beeman’s last. His research in the lab, and here in the mountains, would propel him to entirely new vistas.
Now there was an unintended and unwanted connection between his two experimental worlds.
This had been inevitable, he realized. It had only been a matter of time, though the timing could not have been worse.
Or perhaps it could not have been better.
Beeman chose to move from this universe into another, from his past into his future. It was his way of controlling reality with his mind. He glided into a new plane. His mind began to whirl, weaving solutions and braiding them together like the strands of the whip he’d been admiring. The brutal simplicity of sheer will. New dimensions, seen and unseen, continuously evolving and changing in the quantum realm.
They ordered coffees and seated themselves at an outdoor table.
Kim stirred his with a stick, saying nothing.
Beeman finally broke the silence. “Who are you, Mr. Kim?”
“I’m a talent scout.”
Beeman waited, his mouth a thin line, his eyes as dead as Kim’s. After a moment, Kim spoke again, raising his coffee.
“To the Wild West: a rugged culture—rough and tumble, where everybody does what they want.”
Beeman spoke with hooded eyes. “You’re an admirer of the West?”
Kim smirked. “Dude. I’m from SoCal.”
“I doubt that, dude … more like NorKor?”
Kim leaned forward, slipping the sleeve from his paper cup. “Take this thing, for example. A stroke of genius, this way to hold hot coffee. Cheaper than a second cup. The guy who invented it should be worth millions.”
“The rewards of ingenuity,” Beeman said.
Kim removed his sunglasses. “At the very least, one would think he’s earned the right to do what he wants with his spare time. To pursue his interests—whatever they may be—in privacy.” Kim smiled before continuing. “With financial freedom and the means to handle any travel needs that might arise suddenly. This sleeve—so simple, yet so useful. A way of safely handling something extremely hot. The inventor of such a thing should be rewarded … no matter what he does in his spare time.”
Kim set the sleeve on the table and lowered his cup into it. When he’d spoken the words “no matter what,” Beeman had detected a trace of Asian accent: no matta wat. Foreign born. But the flaws in Kim’s obviously rehearsed approach di
d not prevent Beeman from appreciating the dangers, and the possibilities, he represented.
Beeman probed. “Travel? To where?”
“Smart men with exotic hobbies need to be able to move out at the drop of a hat.” Kim evaded, pressing his palms together as though praying.
“I’ve traveled the world,” Beeman said. “Some places are better than others.”
“Perhaps,” Kim parried, “but it’s important to have options, don’t you think?”
“Options,” Beeman admitted, “are always desirable.”
“As opposed to not having any.”
Beeman smirked. “One always has options,”
“The trick is picking the right one,” Kim countered. “The safest one.”
Beeman took his first sip. “To do that, Mr. Kim, one must know a host of things. Your country—”
Kim cut him off with a sharp wave of the hand. “Hey, I’m a California boy.”
“Right,” Beeman cooed.
He wondered what the North Koreans, assuming that was who had sent Kim on this errand, planned to do with Black Sunrise if they acquired it. Were they prepared to use it? Was an invasion of South Korea on the horizon? The entire world had been holding its breath for half a century, waiting for that to happen again.
Beeman felt the Primal Ecstasy coursing: he might now hold the power to spark a world war! It seemed so fitting. This was his new reality.
A merciless god.
If an invasion was their plan, they would need more than just a sample of the virus. To use Black Sunrise to its full tactical potential, they would need to know how to replicate it in bulk, how to deploy it properly and how to protect their own forces from the biological backlash of the retrovirus. They would need all of Beeman’s knowledge and expertise, together with the essential data.
Kim remained silent for a full minute before he finally spoke. “Men have different priorities. One man might pay dearly to see the sunrise. Another might take it for granted.”
How clever this little man thinks he is, Beeman mused. He waited while a girl in a filthy green apron cleaned a nearby table. When she was gone, he said, “And how much, exactly, would one pay for the sunrise?”
“In addition to freedom itself?”
Beeman nodded.
“Millions.”
Beeman considered the possibility of actually receiving the money against the probability of ending up in a ditch with a bullet in his head—or rotting in prison.
“Perhaps as much as fifty million?” That is how many people I will help you kill, he thought to himself.
Kim shook his head slightly. “Perhaps as much as five million. With freedom to pursue one’s interests, in peace and privacy, in a new home.”
Beeman said nothing.
Finally, Kim stood and tossed his cup into a trash bin. “Perhaps we could meet here again, the day after tomorrow? At seven a.m.? We’ll have another cup of this excellent western coffee, and I’ll have a gift for you.”
“A gift?”
“A sign of good faith, Dr. Beeman.”
Beeman nodded. “I’ll be here.”
“Two days, then.” Kim turned to walk away and then stopped. “Go buy your whip.”
Chapter 18
Beeman shaved the skin from an apple with his knife. On the wooden table before him lay two purses. His mind was rolling through dozens of possibilities, chewing on the ramifications of his meeting with Kim, working on revisions to his plan.
The knife slipped, cutting deeply into his left thumb. So intense was his concentration and so sharp was his knife that he did not immediately notice the deep slit in his flesh. Only when he saw his blood spread across the white meat of the apple did he realize he was cut. Squeezing his thumb, he smeared a wide streak of blood across the fresh surface he had peeled and took a bite.
A small smile formed on his thin lips. There was no pain, so he put the apple down, opened the cut, and the pain came. He contemplated it. Wondrous thing, pain. It became its own reality. He sucked the cut until it stopped bleeding.
He picked up the larger purse and poured its contents onto the table.
A few cosmetic items, a package of birth-control pills, an empty cell phone case—the phone lay crushed at the bottom of a sewer drain in Denver—and a leather wallet, the folds of which contained credit cards, several post-it notes stuck together like a miniature notebook, and a driver’s license.
Jaqueline Rosalie Dawson.
The one Antonio had nicknamed Kitten. How banal, his need to rename them, to strip them of their identities
Two snapshots lay among the credit cards. One was of an elderly couple who might have been the girl’s parents. The other pictured an older black man, at least fifty, with gray sprouting at his temples.
Who would this be?
He pulled the photo from its plastic sleeve and looked at it more closely. The man was smiling, yet there was a glimmer of strength in his soft brown eyes. Beeman turned the snapshot over. There was writing on the reverse side.
Jax—Moments and memories—R.S.
A romantic relationship? Quite an age difference here. A wealthy man? Beeman smiled. Now the little Kitten has nothing but fear; her moments and memories would soon contain little else.
Beeman replaced the items and picked up the second purse.
It too contained a leather wallet, but one a man rather than a woman would carry. Business cards from many different people stuffed it on one side, and the other held a few credit cards. After a moment of rummaging, he found the driver’s license.
Christine Ann Jensen.
Antonio called her Dove because she was slender and graceful.
Her license said she was an organ donor.
She also had a concealed weapon permit but no gun in her purse.
Interesting.
Beeman examined other items, which included a collapsible hairbrush, a tube of lipstick, a few bills and coins, a jade heart and a folded brochure for Cirque du Soleil. Replacing the items, he put both purses in a drawer and then stepped into the bathroom to wrap a bandage around his thumb.
He returned to the kitchen to make sandwiches.
The first meal for the women.
It was time to begin their indoctrination.
Of course, he had considered aborting this adventuresome experiment; but the idea was repulsive to him. These new developments could become part of the experience, and he would not allow Kim to control him or deter him. Other more profitable possibilities would emerge, he was sure.
As he puttered in the kitchen, Beeman contemplated Kim and his unseen comrades. Of course, Kim might not be what he appeared—an agent of the North Korean government—but what else could he be? An American agent? Very unlikely. A false-flag operative of some other nation? Certainly possible. A corporate contractor? Far less likely.
If North Korea were preparing an invasion of South Korea, a biological weapon would be a far more practical means of preemptively crippling the republic than a nuclear attack. That would likely result in the total destruction of both Koreas. It would thus defeat the goals of Korean unity and the liberation of North Korea from its unsustainable confinement within the prison of international sanctions imposed by UN Security Council resolutions.
Insane as it was, a biological attack on its neighbor to the south was North Korea’s only option—a Hail Mary gambit: unleash a Black Sunrise plague, timed and modulated like a controlled forest-service back-burn, and wait for it to spread. Soon after the first symptoms began to appear throughout South Korea, massive casualties would occur practically all at once, producing mortality statistics beyond imagination. Without warning of any kind, a substantial segment of the South Korean population would fall ill and die in a couple of days. In the panic and chaos that would follow, South Korea, a small nation about the size of Arkansas, would be easy pickings for the massive “built-to-invade” DPRK military.
A simple tip to the press would trigger congressional investigation under the mi
croscope of UN oversight. They would quickly trace the plague back to America’s biological weapons program. America would lose international influence and face threats of retaliation from all corners of the globe. Worldwide confusion and panic would work in the North’s favor, at least for a crucial period, while its conventional army—two million strong—flooded steadily over the border. In four weeks or less, the whole thing would be a fait accompli before America could disentangle itself from world scorn and mount a workable full-scale military response.
The ruler Kim could even stack world opinion in his favor by simulating a small biological attack on his own people—killing starved peasants who produced almost nothing—before the much larger South Korean casualties began to mount. This would give him the pretext to cross the border in what he could claim was self-defense.
It would be like stealing candy from a baby, as long as China stood still. And it would, for it would see the Korean invasion as an opportunity to snatch back Taiwan and most of the contested islands in the South China Sea. China would reap fantastic bounty with much less sacrifice than it would require to repel the surging North Korean army, which in turn would require China to invade both North and South Korea. A tacit agreement of sorts would arise, a trade-off, changing the face of Asia forever. A new and eventually more stable Asian axis of power would emerge.
So, yes, the most likely scenario was that Kim was a deep-cover North Korean agent, blackmailing Beeman to hand over the key to a military coup that was the only means of survival for his desperate rogue namesake dictator. Beeman could envision the chubby little tyrant grinning like an idiot beneath his ghastly cat-as-a-hat hair-nest when his emaciated, sycophantic military advisors laid the plan before him.
But it could work. A new world would follow, a new life for all—especially for Beeman—fueled by death on a massive scale, engineered by his genius.
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