The Atlantis Trilogy Box Set- The Complete Series

by A. G. Riddle

  “Why?”

  “I believe they’ll wait for you to return. Given what you know, you’re a liability. Whenever they attack, you’ll be at the top of the target list. The morning briefing would be the ideal time for a strike; they’re probably waiting for that.”

  Josh felt his mouth go dry. “That’s why you grabbed me off the elevator.” He thought for a moment. “So what now, you want me to identify the threats on the staff before the briefing? We initiate a preemptive attack?”

  “No,” David said, shaking his head. “That was the original plan, but we’re past that now. We have to assume Jakarta Station will fall. If we’re compromised as badly as the other major cells, it’s only a matter of time. We have to look at the big picture and try to figure out our adversary’s endgame. We have to assume that one or more cells will survive and that they will be able to use anything we learn. If not, maybe one of the national agencies. But there’s still one question you haven’t asked, a very important one.”

  Josh thought for a second. “Why now? And why start with the analysts? Why didn’t you clean the field operatives first?”

  “Very good.” David flipped open a folder. “Twelve days ago, I was contacted by an anonymous source who said two things. One, there was an imminent terrorist attack—on a scale we’ve never seen before. And two, that Clocktower had been compromised.” David arranged a few pages. “He included a list of sixty analysts that he claimed were compromised. We shadowed them for a few days and confirmed them making dead-drops and unauthorized communications. It checked out. The source said there might be more. The rest you know: the other station chiefs and I organized the analyst conference. We interrogated and quarantined the compromised analysts, replacing them with actors at the conference. Whoever the source is, he either didn’t know about the field agents or didn’t disclose it for his own reasons. The source refused to meet, and I received no other communications from him. We proceeded with the conference and after… the purge. The source was radio-silent. Then, late last night, he contacted me again. He said he wanted to deliver the other half of the intel he promised, details of a massive attack code-named Toba Protocol. We were supposed to meet this morning at Manggarai Station, but he didn’t show. Someone with a bomb did. But I think he wanted to be there. A kid gave me a newspaper with this message right after the attack.” David pushed a page across the table.

  Toba Protocol is real.

  4+12+47 = 4/5; Jones

  7+22+47 = 3/8; Anderson

  10+4+47 = 5/4; Ames

  “Some kind of code,” Josh said.

  “Yes, it’s surprising. The other messages were straightforward. But now it makes sense.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Whatever the code is, it’s the real message—it’s what the entire setup has been about. The source wanted the analyst purge to happen so he could send his coded message at the right time—and know it would be decoded by someone who wasn’t a double agent—namely you. He wanted us focused on cleaning up the analysts and delaying the fireworks until he could send this message. Had we known how thoroughly we had been compromised, we would have quarantined the field operatives first and sent Clocktower into total lock-down. We wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  “Yeah, but why even bother with a code? Why not send the message in the open like the previous communications?”

  “It’s a good question. He must be under surveillance as well. Communicating whatever he’s trying to tell us in the open must have repercussions; maybe it would cause his death or speed up this terrorist attack. So whoever is watching him assumes we don’t know what the message says yet. That may be why they haven’t taken more of the cells down—they still think they can contain Clocktower.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “It does, but one question still bothered me: why me?”

  Josh thought for a moment. “Right, why not the director of Clocktower, all the other Clocktower station chiefs, or simply alert all the world’s intelligence agencies? They would have more far-reaching power to stop an attack. Maybe tipping them would start the attack early—just like sending the message in the open. Or… you could be in a unique position to stop the attack…” Josh looked up. “Or you know something.”

  “That’s right. I mentioned earlier that I began investigating this super-terrorist group before I joined Clocktower.” David stood, walked to the filing cabinet and withdrew two more folders. “I’m going to show you something I’ve been working on for over ten years, something I’ve never shown anyone else, even Clocktower.”

  13

  Interrogation Room C

  West Jakarta Police Detention Center

  Jakarta, Indonesia

  Kate leaned back in the chair and thought about her options. She would have to tell the investigator how the trial had begun. Even if he didn’t believe it, she had to get it on the record in case she went to trial. “Stop,” she said.

  The man paused at the door.

  Kate set her chair legs down and put her arms on the table. “There’s a very good reason why my trial adopted those children. There’s something you should understand. When I came to Jakarta, I expected to run this trial like any other trial in America. That was my first mistake. We failed… and we… changed our approach.”

  The little man turned from the door, sat down, and listened as Kate described how she had spent weeks preparing for patient recruitment.

  Kate’s organization had hired a Contract Research Organization (CRO) to run their trial, just as they would have in the US. In the US, pharmaceutical companies focus on developing a new drug or therapy, and when they have something promising, they often outsource the management of the trial to CROs. CROs find medical clinics with doctors interested in the trial. The clinics, or sites, then enroll willing patients into the trial, administer the new drug/therapy, then test them periodically for any health problems—adverse events. The CRO keeps close tabs on every site in the trial, reporting results to the sponsor/research organization, who makes their own reports to the FDA or governing body in countries around the world. The ultimate goal was a trial with the desired therapeutic effect without any negative or adverse effects. It was a long road, and less than 1% of drugs that worked in the lab ever made it to pharmacy shelves.

  There was only one problem: Jakarta, and Indonesia at large, had no autism clinics and only a handful of specialty practices focusing on developmental disorders. Those clinics weren’t experienced in clinical research—a dangerous situation for patients. The pharmaceutical industry was tiny in Indonesia, mostly because the market was small (Indonesia imported mostly generic drugs), so very few doctors were ever contacted about research.

  The CRO came up with a novel concept: engage parents directly and run a clinic to administer the therapy. Kate and the trial’s lead investigator, Dr. John Helms, met with the CRO at length, searching for any alternatives. There were none. Kate urged Dr. Helms to move forward with the plan, and finally, he agreed.

  They built a list of families within one hundred miles of Jakarta that had a child on the autism spectrum. Kate booked an auditorium at one of the nicest hotels in town and invited the families to a presentation.

  She wrote, re-wrote, and revised the trial booklet for days on end. Finally, Ben had barged into her office and said he would leave the trial if she didn’t just let it go. Kate relented, the trial booklet went to an ethics committee, then the printer, and they prepared for the event.

  When the day came, she stood by the door, ready to greet each family as they arrived. She wished her hands would stop sweating. She wiped them on her pants every few minutes. First impressions were everything. Confidence, trust, expertise.

  She waited. Would they have enough booklets? They had one thousand on hand, and although they had sent only six hundred invitations, both parents could show up. Other families could show up—there was no reliable database or registry of affected families in Indonesia. What would they do? She told Ben
to be ready to use the hotel copier just in case; he could prepare copies of the highlights while she talked.

  Fifteen minutes past the hour. The first two mothers appeared. Kate dried her hands again before shaking vigorously and talking just a little too loud. “Great to have you here—thank you for coming—no, this is the place—take a seat, we’ll get started any moment—”

  Thirty minutes past the hour.

  An hour past the start time.

  She circled the six mothers, making small talk. “I don’t know what happened—what day did you get the invitation?—No, we invited others—I think it must be a problem with the post…”

  Finally, Kate led the six attendees to a small conference room in the hotel to make it less awkward for everyone. She gave a short presentation as one by one, each of the mothers excused themselves, saying they had children to pick up, jobs to get back to, and the like.

  Downstairs at the hotel bar, Dr. Helms got drunk as a skunk. When Kate joined him, the gray-haired man leaned close and said, “I told you it wouldn’t work. We’ll never recruit in this town, Kate. Why the—hey-ho, barkeep, yeah, over here, I’ll have another, uh-huh same thing, good man—What was I saying? Oh yes, we need to wrap it up, quickly. I’ve got an offer in Oxford. God, I miss Oxford, it’s too blasted humid here, feels like a sauna all the time. And I must admit, I did my best work there. Speaking of…” He leaned even closer. “I don’t want to jinx it by saying the words No. Bel. Prize. But… I’ve heard my name’s been submitted—this could be my year, Kate. Can’t wait to forget about this debacle. When will I learn? I guess I’ve got a soft heart when it comes to a good cause.”

  Kate wanted to point out that his soft heart had certainly driven a hard bargain—three times her salary and his name first on any publication or patents, despite the fact that the entire study was based on her post-doctoral research—but she held her tongue and swallowed the last of her Chardonnay.

  That night she called Martin. “I can’t—”

  “Stop right there, Kate. You can do anything you set your mind to. You always have. There are two hundred million people in Indonesia and almost seven billion people on this tiny planet. And as many as half of one percent could be somewhere on the autism spectrum—that’s thirty-five million people—the population of Texas. You’ve sent letters to 600 families. Don’t give up. I won’t let you. I’ll make a call tomorrow morning to Immari Research’s head of funding, they’ll continue funding you—whether that hack John Helms is on the study or not.”

  The call reminded Kate of the night she had called him from San Francisco, when Martin had promised her Jakarta would be a great place to start over and to continue her research. Maybe he would be right after all.

  The next morning, she walked into the lab and told Ben to order a lot more study booklets. And to find translators. They were going out to the villages. They would widen the net—and they wouldn’t wait for families to come to them. She fired the CRO. She ignored Dr. Helms’ protests.

  Two weeks later, they loaded up three vans with four researchers, eight translators, and crate after crate of the trial books printed in five languages: Indonesian/Malay, Javanese, Sundanese, Madurese, and Betawi. Kate had agonized over the language choices as well: over seven hundred distinct languages were spoken throughout Indonesia, but in the end, she had chosen the five most commonly spoken in Jakarta and throughout the island of Java. Irony aside, she wasn’t going to let her autism trial fail due to communication problems.

  As with the hotel in downtown Jakarta, her preparations were an entirely wasted effort. Upon entering the first village, Kate and her team were amazed: there were no children with autism. The villagers weren’t interested in the booklets. The translators told her that no one had ever seen a child with these problems.

  It didn’t make any sense. There should have been at least two, maybe three potential participants in every village, possibly more.

  At the next village, Kate noticed one of the translators, an older man, leaning against the van while the team and remaining translators went door to door.

  “Hey, why aren’t you working?” Kate had asked.

  The man shrugged. “Because it won’t make any difference.”

  “The hell it won’t. Now you better—”

  The man held up his hands. “I mean no offense, ma’am. I only mean you ask the wrong questions. And you ask the wrong people.”

  Kate scrutinized the man. “Okay. Who would you ask? And what would you ask them?”

  The man pushed off from the van, gestured for Kate to follow, and walked deeper into the village, past the nicer homes. On the outskirts, he knocked on the first door, and when a short woman answered, he spoke quickly, in a harsh tone, occasionally pointing at Kate. The scene made her cringe. She self-consciously pulled the lapels of her white coat together. She had agonized over her wardrobe as well, ultimately deciding that projecting a credible, clinical appearance was the order of the day. She could only imagine how she looked to the villagers, who were mostly dressed in clothes they had made themselves from scraps taken home from the sweatshops or the remains of partially disintegrated hand-me-downs.

  She realized the woman was gone, and Kate stepped forward to question the translator, but he held up a hand as the woman returned to the door, pushing three children out to stand before them. They stared at their feet and stood still as statues. The translator walked from child to child, looking them up and down. Kate shifted her weight a bit, contemplating what to do. The children were healthy; none showed even the slightest signs of autism. At the last child, the man bent down and shouted again. The mother quickly said something, but he yelled at her, and she fell silent. The child nervously said three words. The translator said something, and the child repeated the words. Kate wondered if they were names. Possibly places?

  The translator stood and began pointing and yelling at the woman again. She shook her head furiously, repeating a phrase over and over. After several minutes of the translator’s badgering, she looked down and began speaking in low tones. She pointed to another shack. The translator’s voice was soft for the first time, and the woman seemed relieved by his words. She herded the children back inside, almost cutting the last one in half as she quickly closed the door.

  The scene at the second shack unfolded much like the first: the translator shouted and pointed, Kate stood awkwardly, and the nervous villager presented her four children, then waited with worry in her eyes. This time, when the translator asked one of the children his questions, the child said five words, names Kate believed. The mother protested, but the translator ignored her, pressing the child. When he answered, the large man sprang up, pushed the children and their mother aside, and burst through the door. Kate was caught off guard, but when the mother and children followed into the home, she did as well.

  The shack was a crowded, three-room hovel. She almost tripped walking through it. At the rear of the home, she found the translator and woman arguing more vehemently than before. At their feet, a small child, a gaunt child, was tied to a wooden beam that held the roof up. He was gagged, but she could hear low rhythmic noises coming from his mouth as he rocked back and forth, hitting his head on the beam.

  Kate grabbed the translator’s arm. “What is this? Tell me what’s going on here.”

  The man looked from Kate back to the mother, seemingly caught between his master and a caged animal whose volume and hysterics grew by the second. Kate squeezed the man’s arm and jerked him toward her, and he began explaining. “She says it is not her fault. He is a disobedient child. He will not eat her food. He will not do as she says. He does not play with the children. She says he does not even answer to his own name.”

  They were all classic signs of autism; a severe case. Kate looked down at the child.

  The man added, “She insists it is not her fault. She says she has kept him longer than the others, but she cannot—”

  “What others?”

  The translator conversed
with the woman in a normal tone, then turned to Kate. “Beyond the village. There’s a place where they take the children who won’t respect their parents, the ones that disobey constantly, that won’t be a part of their family.”

  “Take me there.”

  The translator coaxed more information out of the woman, then pointed toward the door for them to leave. The woman called after them. The man turned to Kate. “She wants to know if we will take him.”

  “Tell her yes, and to untie him and that we will return.”

  The translator led Kate to a patch of deserted forest just south of the village. After an hour of looking they had still found nothing, but they continued searching. Occasionally, Kate heard the leaves and trees rustle as game moved about. The sun would set soon, and she wondered what this forest would be like then. Indonesia was entirely tropical; the temperature was nearly constant from day to day and season to season. The Javanese jungles were dangerous, untamed areas, home to all sorts of snakes, large cats, and insects. No place for a child.

  In the distance, she heard screaming and the translator call to her, “Dr. Warner, come quickly!”

  She dashed across the dense forest, tripping once and fighting her way through the overgrowth. She found the translator holding a child, even more gaunt than the boy at the shack. Even with his dark brown skin, she could see the dirt and grime caked on his face. He fought the translator’s hold like a caged banshee.