by A. G. Riddle
“Are there any others?” Kate asked. She saw a lean-to, a ragged shelter about fifty yards away. Was there a child lying there? She started for it.
“Do not go there, Dr. Warner.” He tightened his grip on the child. “There are no others… to take back. Please help me.”
She took the child’s other arm, and they escorted him back to the vans. They gathered the research team, then retrieved the child that had been tied to the beam, who they learned was named Adi. The child from the forest had no name, and they knew they would never find his parents or anyone who would ever own up to what had been done to him. Kate named him Surya.
When the research team assembled at the van, Kate cornered her translator. “Now I want you to tell me what you did back there—exactly what you said.”
“I think maybe you do not want to be knowing, Doctor.”
“I think I do definitely want to be knowing. Now start talking.”
The man sighed. “I told them you are a humanitarian organization who is doing child welfare—”
“What?”
The man straightened. “That is what they are thinking you are anyway, so it makes no difference. They do not know what this clinical trial is. They have never heard of such a thing. Look around you; these people live just as they did a thousand years ago. I tell them you have to see their children and that you will help any that need help. Still they do not trust us. Some believe they will get in trouble, but many simply worry word will get around. Here, it is a dangerous thing to have a child with problems; people keep them out of sight. If word gets around, the other children will have problems finding a mate—they will say, ‘maybe you have his child and he is a problem like his father’s brother.’ They will say, ‘it is in his blood.’ But the children tell the truth when I ask them to name their brothers and sisters. Children do not yet know to lie about this.”
Kate considered the man’s story. It had certainly worked. She turned to the team: “Okay. This is our new approach.”
Dr. Helms stepped toward Kate and the translator. “I won’t do it. Lying to a parent to enroll a child in a clinical trial violates basic medical ethics and is, simply, morally wrong.” He paused for effect. “Regardless of their circumstances or the community’s social norms.” He stared at Kate and then the other staff.
Kate interrupted his revelry. “Suit yourself. You can wait in the van, and so can anyone else who wants to leave these kids here to die.”
The doctor turned to her to fire another volley, but Ben cut him off. “Well, I’m in. I hate waiting in the van. And killing kids, for that matter.” He turned and started packing up the gear, only pausing to ask the other staff for help.
The remaining three assistants reluctantly began to help, and only then did Kate realize how on the fence they had been. She made a mental note to thank Ben, but the pace of the day soon picked up, and she forgot.
At the next village, the team tossed out the trial booklets, but when the villagers began collecting them, the team shifted to handing the booklets out—as insulation for the villagers’ homes. The act of goodwill helped to corroborate their story as aid workers, and it was nice for Kate to see the booklets she’d spent so much time on go to good use.
Dr. Helms continued protesting, but the rest of the staff ignored him. As the vans filled up with children, his protests tapered off, and by the end of the day, it was clear to everyone that he regretted his actions.
Back in Jakarta, he approached Kate in her office after the other staff had left. “Listen, Kate, I’ve been meaning to speak with you. After, um, some consideration… and to be frank, after seeing some of the effects of this work, on, uh, the children… I have to say I’ve decided that we are well within the norms of medical ethics and my personal comfort zone and thus, I am, well, quite comfortable leading this trial.” He moved to sit down.
Kate didn’t look up from her document. “Don’t sit down, John. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well. Out there in the field, you put your safety—your personal reputation—ahead of those children’s lives. That’s unacceptable. We both know I can’t fire you. But I simply can’t work with you on a trial where children’s lives are at stake. If something happened to one of them, if you put them in danger, I couldn’t live with it. I informed the trial sponsor, Immari Research, that I would be leaving, and the funniest thing happened.” She looked up from the paper. “They told me they wouldn’t fund the trial without me. So you can either resign or I will, in which case you’ll lose your funding, and I’ll simply start the same trial with a different name. Oh, and by the way, the movers are coming to pack up your office tomorrow—so whatever you decide, you’ll have to find a new lease.”
She walked out of the office and left for the night. The next day, Helms left Jakarta for good, and Kate became the project’s sole investigator. Kate asked Martin to make a few phone calls, some favors were exchanged, and the study became the legal guardian of every child enrolled.
When Kate finished her story, the interrogator stood and said, “You expect me to believe that? We’re not savages, Miss Warner. Good luck telling that story to a judge in Jakarta.” He left the tiny room before Kate could respond.
Outside the interrogation room, the small man walked up to the rotund police chief, who put his sweaty arm around him and said, “How did it go, Paku?”
“I think she’s ready, boss.”
14
Secure Comms Room
Clocktower Station HQ
Jakarta, Indonesia
Josh looked out of the glass room at the concrete walls beyond as he tried to digest what David had told him. Clocktower was compromised. Several major cells were already fighting for their survival. Jakarta Station would soon be under attack, and on top of that, there was an imminent terrorist attack on a global scale.
And David needed Josh to unravel a code to stop it.
No pressure.
David returned from the filing cabinet, and sat down at the table again. “I’ve been working on a theory I formed ten years ago, just after 9/11.”
“You think this attack is connected to 9/11?” Josh asked.
“I do.”
“You think this is an Al Qaeda operation?”
“Not necessarily. I believe Al Qaeda only carried out the 9/11 attacks. I believe another group, a global corporation called Immari International, actually planned, funded, and benefited from the attack. I think it was a cover for various archaeological digs Immari conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a very sophisticated heist. A robbery.”
Josh looked at the table. Had David lost it? This sort of 9/11 conspiracy-theory stuff was fodder for internet forums, not serious counterterrorism work.
David seemed to recognize Josh’s reluctance. “Look, I know it sounds farfetched, but hear me out. After 9/11, I spent almost a year in a hospital and then rehab. That’s a lot of time to think. A lot of things about the attacks made no sense to me. Why attack New York first? Why not hit the White House, Congress, the CIA, and the NSA simultaneously? Those four plane crashes would have crippled the country, especially our defensive capabilities. It would have thrown us into utter chaos. And why use only four planes? Surely they could have trained more pilots. They could have hijacked thirty planes that morning if they simply took planes from Dulles and National Airports in DC, from Baltimore, maybe Richmond. You’ve got Atlanta pretty close; Hartsfield-Jackson is the busiest airport in the world. Who knows, they could have probably crashed a hundred planes that day before passengers started fighting back. And they had to have known that crashing planes was a one-time-only tactic, so they would have maximized the impact.”
Josh nodded, still skeptical. “It’s an interesting question.”
“And there were others. Why strike on a day when you know the President is out of town, in an elementary school in Florida? Clearly the goal wasn’t to remove our fighting capabilities—sure the Pentagon was hit and many brave Americans died, but the overall effect w
as to really, really piss the Pentagon and the armed forces off—the whole country for that matter. After 9/11, America had an appetite for war the likes of which it had never seen before. There was one other striking effect: the stock market crashed, a historical crash. New York is the financial capital of the world; hitting it makes sense if you want to do one thing: crash the stock market. The attacks did two things really well: ensured there was a war, a big one—and crashed the stock market.”
“I never looked at it that way,” Josh said.
“Things look a lot different when you spend almost a year in a hospital, learning to walk by day and asking why by night. I couldn’t do much research on terrorists from a hospital bed, so I focused on the financial angle. I started looking at who the big winners were from the financial collapse. Who was betting against American stocks. What companies were shorting the market, who owned puts, who made a fortune. It was a long list. Then I started looking at who benefited from the wars, especially private security contractors and oil and gas interests. The list got shorter. And something else intrigued me: the attacks nearly guaranteed a war in Afghanistan. Maybe whatever this group wanted was there and they needed a cover to go in and search for it. Or maybe it was in Iraq. Maybe both. I knew I needed to get out in the field to find some real answers.”
David took a breath and continued. “By 2004, I was back on my feet. I applied to the CIA that year but was turned down. I trained for another year, got turned down again in 2005, and trained some more. I thought about joining the Army, but I knew I would need to be part of covert ops to get real answers.”
Josh looked down, taking it in, seeing David in a completely different light now. He had always thought of the station chief as this invincible super-soldier, had always assumed that was all David had ever been. The idea of him lying broken in a hospital bed for a year, of him being turned down as a field operative—twice—was slightly jarring.
“What?” David said.
“It’s nothing… I just… assumed you were a career operative. That you were with the agency on 9/11.”
An amused smile crossed David’s lips. “No, not even close. I was a grad student, actually. At Columbia, if you can believe that. Might be why the CIA kept rejecting me—didn’t want anyone overthinking things in the field units. But apparently the third time’s the charm—they took me in 2006. Maybe they had lost enough operatives or enough had joined the private contractors; whatever the reason, I was glad to be in Afghanistan. I found my answers. The short list I had, the three companies, were all subsidiaries of one company: Immari International. Their security division, Immari Security, coordinated their operations, but the funds from 9/11 went into several of their front companies. And I found something else. A plan for a new attack, code-named Toba Protocol.” David pointed at the file. “That file is all I have on that attack. It’s not much.”
Josh opened the file. “This is why you joined Clocktower, to investigate Immari and Toba Protocol?”
“Partly. Clocktower was the perfect platform for me. I knew back then that Immari was behind 9/11, that they had made a fortune from the attacks, and that they were actively looking for something in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan and Pakistan. But they got to me before I could figure out the big picture. They almost killed me in northern Pakistan. I was officially listed as killed in action. It was the perfect opportunity to exit. I needed a new identity and somewhere to continue my work. I had never heard of Clocktower before I was in-theater in Afghanistan, but I took refuge here. It was perfect. We all come to Clocktower for our own reasons; it was the key to my survival at the time and the tool I needed to finally learn the truth about Immari and Toba. I never told anyone my real motivation, except the director. He took me in and helped me start Jakarta Station four years ago. I hadn’t made much substantial progress on the Immari question until a week ago when the source contacted me.”
“That’s why the source picked you.”
“Apparently. He knows about my investigation. He knew I would have this file. It may hold the key to decrypting the code. What I know is that Immari Corporation is somehow involved in 9/11, maybe in other terrorist plots before and after, and that they’re working on something much, much bigger: Toba Protocol. It’s why I chose Jakarta—the closest major city to Mount Toba. I think it’s a reference to where the attack will start.”
“A logical assumption. What do we know about Toba Protocol?” Josh said.
“Not a lot. Apart from a few references, there’s one memo about it. It’s a report about urbanization, transportation infrastructure, and the potential to reduce the total human population. Whatever Toba is, I believe that’s the goal: to drastically reduce the total human population.”
“That limits the possibilities somewhat. A terrorist attack that could reduce the global human population would have to be biological; maybe a drastic change in the environment, or inciting a new world war. We’re not talking about suicide bombers; it’s something bigger.”
David nodded. “Much bigger, and probably something we would never expect. Jakarta is the perfect place to start an attack—the population density is high and there are tons of expatriates here. The start of an attack would send wealthy foreigners in Jakarta to the airport and from there to almost every country in the world.”
David motioned to the bank of computer screens behind Josh. “The computers behind you are connected to Central, to our own servers, and to the remaining cells. They have everything we know about what’s going on around the world, the various terrorist groups and organizations we now know are fronts for Immari International. It’s not much. Start there, get up to speed, then move on quickly to the latest local intel. If there’s anything going on here in Jakarta, we have a responsibility to investigate it first. We will need to hand off what we know in case Jakarta Station falls. Think outside the box. Whatever is going on, it may not fit any normal patterns. Look for something we wouldn’t suspect—like Saudi nationals taking flying lessons in Germany, then moving to the US; like someone in Oklahoma buying tons of fertilizer, someone who isn’t a farmer.”
“What’s in the rest of the folders?” Josh said.
David pushed a folder across the desk. “This folder contains the rest of the information on Immari that I collected before I joined Clocktower.”
“It’s not in the computer?”
“No. I never turned it over to Clocktower either. You’ll see why. The other envelope contains a letter, from me to you. You should open it when I die. It will provide you with instructions.”
Josh started to say something, but David interrupted. “There’s one last thing.”
David stood and retrieved a small case from the corner of the room. He set the case on the table. “This room and the outer chamber will give you some protection, and, I hope, enough time to find something and decode the message. Clocktower HQ is the last place they’ll be looking for you. Nevertheless, I doubt we have a lot of time. Send whatever you find to my mobile. The top right monitor shows a camera feed. That camera is over the door, looking out into the server room, so you’ll know if someone is trying to get in here. As you know, there are no cameras in the main HQ, for security reasons, so you may not have much notice.” He opened the case and took out a handgun. He slid the magazine into the handle of the gun and placed it on the table in front of Josh. “You know how to use this?”
Josh eyed the gun and leaned back in the chair. “Uh, yes. Well, I had basic training when I joined the agency twelve years ago, but I haven’t used one since. So… no, not really.” He wanted to say, “If covert ops forces get in this room, what kind of chance do I really have?”, but he didn’t; he knew David was showing him the gun to make him feel safer. Not being scared to death would clear his mind and help him do his job, but Josh felt that was only half of the chief’s motivation.
“If you need to use it, you pull the slide back. That chambers a round. When you’re empty, you click here, the magazine slides out. You put ano
ther one in and press this button, the slide returns and chambers the first round from the new magazine. But if that door is breached, there’s something you have to do before you use the gun.”
“Wipe the computers?”
“Exactly. And burn this folder as well as the letter.” David pointed to a small metal wastebasket and handed him a small butane torch from the gun box.
“What else is in the box?” Josh thought he knew, but he asked anyway.
The Jakarta Station chief paused for a second, then reached into the box and took out a small capsule.
“Do I swallow it?”
“No. If the time comes, you bite into it. The cyanide works pretty quick, maybe three or four seconds.” David handed Josh the capsule. “Keep it with you. I hope you won’t need it. This is a very hard room to get into.”
David put the gun back in the box and returned it to the corner of the room. “Let me know as soon as you have something.” He turned and walked toward the door.
Josh stood and said, “What are you going to do?”
“Buy us some time.”
15
Interrogation Room C
West Jakarta Police Detention Center
Jakarta, Indonesia
Kate looked up as the interrogation room door opened, revealing a fat, sweaty man. He carried a folder in one hand and extended his other hand to her. “Dr. Warner, I am Police Chief Eddi Kusnadi. I ho—”
“I’ve been waiting here for hours. Your men have interrogated me about useless details of my study and threatened to imprison me. I want to know what you’re doing to find those kidnapped children.”
“Doctor, you don’t understand the situation here. We are a small department.”
“Then call the national police. Or—”
“The national police have problems of their own, Doctor, and they don’t include finding retarded children.”