Black Sunrise

by Brett Godfrey

  The listening devices planted in the cabin revealed that the night before had been an exciting one—at least for Antonio Pessoa. And if his admittedly shaky psychological profile of Beeman was even partially accurate, he too had experienced some twisted pleasurable sensation from his success in flushing out the sadistic urges of his young friend, whom Kim now knew to be the central object of Beeman’s sick psychological experiment. It was clear now that he was a man who used living organisms as tools for the destruction of other living organisms; that was his vocation and his avocation. Beeman derived a sense of godlike euphoria from controlling life and death in multiple realms simultaneously.

  He was a killeo meikeo, a killer-maker, with microbes and with people.

  He could quite possibly prove to be one of the greatest assets his nation could acquire. The Outstanding Leader was working hard to lull the world into a false sense of security because he knew that the Americans had finally elected someone crazier than he pretended to be. He must have known he could not possibly prevail in an outright nuclear exchange—the gradual economic collapse of the DPRK economy left him with no choice but to retake South Korea. His own personal survival—looking more than five years ahead—depended upon it. Or so the great general apparently conceived.

  A man who could quickly bring a nation to its knees, stealthily and silently, with no casualties in the North, would be worth more than his weight in gold. Being the man who brought such a weapon home would elevate Kim’s already god-like status immensely, at home and abroad.

  He glanced across the street. His men were ready and attentive, waiting in a parked car. Chul gestured, signaling that Beeman and Antonio were approaching, evidently alone. In another minute, the two appeared at the doorway of the diner. Kim waved to them.

  They sat down at his table without speaking. It was plain that Pessoa was on the verge of coming unraveled. The stress, fear and guilt he was experiencing was too much for him.

  Kim smiled. “Coffee, gentlemen?”

  Antonio glared at Kim and said nothing.

  Beeman turned to Antonio as he spoke. “This is Mr. Kim. I need to speak with him privately for a moment. Perhaps you should go and wash up.”

  “If you say so,” Antonio said breathily. He scooted back from the table and strode toward the restroom.

  “What now?” Beeman asked.

  “How much have you told him?”

  “Only that you love coffee,” he said.

  “Petulance and sarcasm, Arthur. I thought we were past that.”

  “He knows you want the virus and that you had us under observation when we took the women. I am trying to get him to believe that your involvement is a stroke of luck rather than a disaster.”

  Kim sipped his coffee before responding. “Are you succeeding?”

  “His mind is in turmoil.”

  Beeman flagged the waitress and asked for two more coffees. He asked her to hurry, smiling kindly. “I’ve been up all night, and I’m just dying for some caffeine.”

  The waitress smiled in return and stepped away to fetch the drinks. Before she returned, Kim spoke softly. “We must keep him calm and placid—prevent him from coming apart. Have you prepared for this, Arthur?”

  Beeman withdrew a plastic packet of breath strips from his pocket and held it in his hand. When the waitress deposited two more steaming mugs, he peeled one of the breath strips out of the packet and stirred it into Antonio’s coffee.

  Kim stared at him without expression. “As I thought,” he said.

  Beeman’s slit-mouth grin conveyed menacing irony. “We use similar methods.”

  “What are you giving him?”

  “Just a little something I cooked up.”

  A moment later, Antonio returned to his seat. “Thanks,” he said as he lifted his mug to his lips. “I need this.” He took several sips. “Is it flavored?”

  “Probably,” Beeman replied. “I’ll get you some cream and sugar.”

  Antonio reached across to a nearby table and snagged a small metal cream dispenser. “I got it,” he said as he whitened his coffee. “So, what’s up?”

  “Mr. Pessoa, this is your lucky day,” said Kim.

  By the time they got back to the car, Antonio’s mood had lifted considerably. The prospect of scoring fifty grand to help Beeman get his magic serum for Kim would be much safer than taking the girls had been.

  His courage had returned.

  Part of his evolution, it appeared, included becoming wealthy!

  Why had he been so skittish earlier? It just takes time to adjust when you become more powerful, he told himself. It just takes time.

  He decided not to tell Beeman about his visit to the kidnap site; Beeman would be furious with him for returning to the scene of the crime.

  Next to him, Beeman broke the silence, reading his mind as usual. “Think of the money, Antonio. I know you have always envied my financial situation. Now you’ll be just like me, in that regard at least. You’ll be able to spend what you want on anything that brings you pleasure.”

  “You think the guy is for real?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s a spy, right?” Antonio asked.

  “Yes. For a corporation—one of our competitors. They want in on our lucrative government contract.”

  “How do you know he’s not a terrorist or something?”

  “In the real world, Antonio, biological and chemical research is about money. Terrorists use homemade bombs, crash things or take hostages to decapitate on video. They don’t pay huge sums for complex biological products.”

  “Really?” Antonio wanted to believe Beeman, but what did it matter? He was a kidnapper and a rapist. So what if he helped terrorists? The only thing that mattered was getting the money and staying out of jail. “Are you sure he’s good for it?”

  Beeman nodded confidently. “Do you have any idea what the men who discovered Rogaine made from that simple little molecule?”

  “I assume it was a lot.”

  “Two dermatologists in Denver discovered Rogaine, so to speak. The University of Colorado was testing the chemical that makes it grow hair, minoxidil, as an antihypertensive, but it produced unwanted body hair on the cardiac patients tested.”

  “So?”

  “They consulted a couple of dermatologists. One of them was a resident, who asked himself what would happen if they rubbed the drug onto a man’s scalp. He performed a test on himself. He grew a patch of hair on his shoulder; then he tested it on a bald dentist. The rest is history.”

  “I suppose he’s a millionaire today?”

  “Well, that’s just it, Antonio. The drug companies tried to steal his invention. He had to hire lawyers to get his share of the money. There was a big legal battle and then years later another big legal battle, but ultimately he made a lot of money.

  “How much?”

  “For the resident? Millions. For Upjohn? Billions.”

  Antonio stole another look at Beeman as he drove. “Why don’t you use Rogaine?”

  Beeman chuckled warmly at this question. “Because I have found other ways to get women.”

  Antonio barked a laugh, slapping the dashboard.

  “I have a question, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I was just wondering. Have you—”

  “Have I had sex with either of the girls?”

  Antonio sighed. “Yeah. That’s my question.”

  “Not yet,” he said, “but let me tell you, I’m having the time of my life.”

  “You are? Aren’t you horny? Seeing them naked and all?”

  “My turn-on is different from yours, Antonio.”

  “You like watching other people do it, don’t you?”

  Beeman sighed. “Antonio, there is more to the thrill of sex than just having an orgasm. For that you could simply hire a prostitute, remember?”

  “I remember. It’s the power of being able to do anything you want to someone, giving not
hing in return. Just taking. Freedom from limits of any kind.” Thinking and talking about this was making Antonio horny again. God, he felt so much better than he had two hours ago. Beeman’s words always gave him strength.

  “So you think we can trust this guy?” Antonio didn’t want to get his hopes up when it came to the money, or risk betrayal by some greedy commercial pirate who could just as easily take Beeman’s technological achievements and then turn them in instead of paying them. But the fantasy of great wealth, well, that was pretty hard to resist, and if there was as much money available as Beeman was talking about, this really could be the start of a new life for him. He imagined what he would do if he had the cash to live the high life, to stop driving and doing other demeaning jobs just to make a living.

  “I think so,” Beeman said at length. “But we’ll be very careful—take things one step at a time.”

  “Right,” Antonio said as Beeman parked the car in the garage. “Makes sense. But for now, let’s get back to what we were doing.”

  Beeman shut off the engine, and they went inside.

  Antonio headed straight down the stairs.

  Beeman followed, gratified at Antonio’s return to the game. The drugs were invaluable—as long as no one was using them on him, but he was growing weary of Antonio. And Kim was right—his human experiment on this dullard was becoming inconvenient under the circumstances. If Kim decided to kill him, Beeman would not object.

  He would start over with another subject when things settled down.

  He trailed Antonio down the stairs, through the secret door, and into the hidden room containing the cage and its human contents.

  Antonio flipped on the light. “Oh, my fucking God,” he croaked.

  Beeman came around the corner and looked into the cage.

  The cage was empty. Its door was open, and the lock lay on the floor.

  Chapter 33

  They waited it out at The Perfect Landing, a restaurant at Centennial Airport. Hours of time, gallons of coffee. Janet talked about Christie’s childhood, but her reveries went flat, so she retreated into the current edition of Condé Nast Traveler, flipping the glossy pages without really reading, as private jets taxied past the restaurant’s enormous picture windows. Mark felt her pain.

  Finally, as the afternoon was drawing to its end, Roady Kenehan approached their table and said the words they had been waiting to hear. “We’ve got something.”

  For Mark, it was a familiar feeling, like hearing a bailiff say we’ve got a verdict. He dropped a few bills on the table and then followed Kenehan, Janet and Sand back to the motor coaches stationed on the far side of the parking lot.

  Late-day heat shimmered upward from the blacktop as the group traversed the expansive parking lot. “Can you tell us anything?” Janet asked.

  “Better to show you,” Kenehan replied, giving her a reassuring nod. “It won’t be long.”

  Within the cool, dark confines of the coach, Jensen could sense excitement in the air. He turned to Brecht and asked, “What are we going to be seeing?”

  Brecht placed a hand on his shoulder. “The results of thirty hours of supercomputer number crunching.” He turned to Takaki. “Take us through it, Jennifer.”

  Takaki’s slender fingers swept across the surface of the oversize monitor on the wall. The blue wire-frame of the parking structure reappeared. At first, Jensen was disappointed—the three-dimensional outline of the structural components of the parking facility didn’t look like much. But Takaki continued tapping virtual buttons along the side and bottom of the image, and the three security videos started playing in separate windows beside the wireframe. A few more taps triggered an interesting effect. Within each video and on the wire frame, a red hairline cube appeared. It was quickly obvious to Mark that the boxes in each of the four frames represented the same block of virtual space.

  Takaki tapped the “MERGE FEEDS” option, and after a few seconds, the three videos glided across the screen to overlap over the wireframe. The perspective of each adjusted as they became perfectly aligned trapezoids, the red boxes on each became a single merged cube and the composite image sharpened. The view zoomed, and a composite translucent box dominated the screen.

  To Mark’s amazement, it was possible to make out with surprising clarity details within the cube. He could literally see into the darkness between levels that had appeared on the original videos as nothing more than horizontal black rectangles. He could clearly make out the roofs of cars, but nothing below chest level.

  “This is the virtual composite BEAST created,” said Takaki. “As real as it looks, it is important to remember that this is the computer’s interpolated depiction of the reality that best fits the pixelated data on the videos. It has weighted the artifacts and nuances to establish mathematical confluence.”

  “You mean it’s guessing,” said Sand. “It’s made up one possible world that could explain little anomalies in the videos, but there could be other realities that would do the same and which might be closer to what really happened.”

  Jensen was impressed. Sand seemed to work hard at keeping the sharpness of his mind concealed, but it was clear he possessed a very high IQ and a substantial amount of up-to-date technological knowledge. Many people had probably underestimated this man over the years, some of whom had likely paid dearly for that mistake.

  “Sort of,” Takaki hedged. “But not just a wild guess. Hundreds of millions of data points were available, and the system forces the interpolations to satisfy statistical validation standards, so there is reliable information here.”

  “It gets better,” Kenehan added. “Keep going, Jennifer.”

  She touched a slider bar labeled “ADVANCE RATE,” and a “PLAY” triangle appeared beneath the bar.

  Mark glanced at Janet, who seemed not to understand what was coming next. He placed his arm around her waist and pulled her close.

  Brecht noticed the gesture. “This is going to be tough to watch,” he said, “but we’ve gotten something very useful data from what is—”

  “Play the motherfucker,” Sand cut in. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Takaki’s beautiful face tipped upward toward Brecht, who turned his aged eyes first to Mark and then to Janet, whose face was a portrait of dread.

  Janet took a deep breath, swallowed and nodded several times; then she repeated Sand’s impertinent command. “Play the motherfucker.”

  Takaki touched the “PLAY” triangle.

  Ten seconds passed before Jensen saw motion in the background of the image. He made out two heads, then shoulders, and recognized Christie and Jackie floating as highly detailed animations—torsos without legs floating toward the virtual camera. A lump formed in his throat, and he pulled Janet closer.

  The floating torsos stopped near the roof of a car, but from the angle of the view, it was impossible to see the entire vehicle. Only the roof was visible. Then Takaki tapped a few more items, and the rest of Sand’s Jaguar appeared.

  “She inserted a virtual XKE—a computer model of Sand’s Jaguar—at the position where it was parked,” Kenehan narrated. The women were looking down at the car and appeared to be talking. Jensen could see Jackie Dawson in profile, but her face blocked Christie’s. Takaki swept a finger across a small panel and the image rotated slightly so that both women’s faces were at least partially visible. The imagery was strikingly realistic. Their heads turned in unison away from the virtual viewpoint.

  A third head and torso appeared: that of a man.

  Jensen could make out the features of his face—he had a dark mustache and dark hair. He was much taller than the girls.

  “Your software can enhance to this degree?” Jensen said. “Or are facial features assumed?”

  “The value of massive compositing,” Takaki said. “We’re lucky to have more than one video stream.”

  The women appeared to be conversing with the man, who stooped down for a moment and dropped out of the image entirely. A few seconds later
his head and upper body reappeared. He was smiling. After a few more seconds, the man turned and moved a few paces away. The faint outline of another car glided into view. The man raised the back hatch and gestured for the women to approach.

  They did so.

  What had they said?

  “No sound,” Jensen murmured.

  Brecht shook his head. “No source data.”

  The man with the mustache turned to face the women as they approached. Christie’s gaze moved downward, but it wasn’t possible to see her face at this point.

  Jackie Dawson’s head dropped rapidly from view, and then so did Christie’s.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” Janet whimpered.

  The drama continued to play out. A second figure emerged from the vehicle in the background. It was not possible to make out his features, as he had his back to the viewer. All they could see of him was the back of his head and shoulders. He was shorter than the first man.

  The computer filled in the vehicle from which he emerged at this point. It was a dark gray or black SUV. The rear hatch was up. The two men dropped out of view and then reappeared, leaning away from one another. Jensen guessed from the way they moved that they were lifting the girls into the back of the SUV. The hatch was closed, and the man with the mustache climbed into the passenger seat as the older man vanished behind the SUV.

  The SUV glided out of the frame. The screen went blank.

  Jensen could feel a rhythmic spasm in his wife through the arm he held around her waist, and he knew she was in agony. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, three times in a row. She began to sob quietly. Tears poured down her cheeks onto Mark’s arm.

  Brecht gave them a moment to absorb what they had seen before speaking. “Quite a shock,” he said softly, “but not entirely unexpected.”

  Sand cleared his throat. “Now what?”

  “Please be patient with us for a few more minutes,” Brecht said gently. “We have more to show you.” He touched Takaki on the shoulder once more, and she tapped the screen a few more times. As she worked, Brecht continued speaking. “We were unable to read a license plate number, but we identified the make and model of the vehicle, and we got something else.” On the screen, a fuzzy close-up image of the man with the mustache appeared. “This is an enlargement from the enhanced animation you just watched.” As the seconds passed, the computer put red pinpoints on each of the man’s pupils, at the corners of his mouth and at a dozen other facial landmarks. It connected the points with thin pink lines, marking a rough topography of his features.