Agent Omega: You Only Live Forever

by Schaffer, Bernard

  He turned the pipe over to empty out the burnt tobacco inside and as he tapped it against the mantle, he saw the corner of a small slip of paper peek out. He tugged the rest of the paper out gently, careful not to rip it, and unfolded it with the tips of his fingers. There was a pencil drawing of several stick figures in various poses. Several were holding flags, while others were drawn in groups, apparently at random. Some stood alone. Some were posed the same way, and others that were doing something completely unique.

  Price popped the pipe into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully on the endcap as he looked down at the drawing. "Well, well," he whispered. "A substitution cipher pictogram."

  "I know we have an entire department for cipher analysis, but I thought I would start with you," Price said. It went against his better nature, but he patted the eagerly smiling man on the arm and said, "Being that you are our resident expert on the situation."

  Desmond Llewellyn bent forward to peer closer at the paper, whispering, "I haven't seen one of these in years. My goodness, what a delight."

  Price turned to look at the rest of the workers testing out equipment in Llewellyn's division. The room took up the entire lower level of the building, built deep enough underground that if one of their damned experiments blew up, it wouldn't kill everyone in the offices above. Just about half of them, Price thought.

  The walls were bullet-proofed and flame-proofed and sound-proofed and padded with thick bed mattresses just as an added precaution.

  At the farthest end of the room, one of the testers lifted a megaphone to his mouth, but instead of projecting the man's voice, a long spurt of flame shout out the front of it. Price smiled with amusement and said, "Now, that is crowd control."

  In another section, a man was standing over a makeshift garden of green turf and plastic flowers, watering it with a long hose. He suddenly turned and squeezed the nozzle at a cardboard cutout of a man and the hose erupted in automatic gunfire.

  "For those pesky gophers that keep eating mother's carrots, I presume," Price said.

  Llewellyn looked up from the cryptogram at the various devices and said, "Yes, yes. Everything you see is still in the developmental stage, though. We're always testing out new ideas to assist you agents in the field."

  Price grunted and said, "Perhaps someday you'll even invent something that's worth a damn."

  "Oh, come now, Commander. Just last year you used my exploding pen microfilm camera to great effect," Llewellyn said.

  "You want to see something useful?" Price said. "None of your fancy umbrella swords and parachute top hats can match this. It is both simple and effective. No laser beams, no jetpacks, just a good old fashioned pistol that shoots big holes in people."

  "In a moment," Llewellyn said, looking back down at the cryptogram. He set a large, dusty leather book on the desk and started flipping through the pages until he found one that bore a series of similar drawings to the ones on the paper. "Holmes deciphered a similar series of drawings in one of his little adventures. The process was fairly simple. Using a basic frequency analysis, Holmes took the most commonly found figure and assigned it to the letter E. From there, he built an alphabet and cracked the cipher."

  "Is that all?" Price said. "So are you going to tell me what it says or did you want me to figure it out myself?"

  Llewellyn made several notes on a piece of paper and muttered, "In a moment, Commander, don't be impatient. Why don't you go amuse yourself in the firearms department? I hear they're testing out ballistic toaster ovens. When the bell dings that your toast is finished, so are you."

  Price rolled his eyes, "Maybe I'll show them Emily's Webley and see what they make of a real gun."

  "Her what?"

  "Her Webley. It's a Mark IV, probably from the Boer War." The older man's eyes widened and Price reached into his waistband and pulled out the revolver to show it to him. "Here, this is what a useful field instrument looks like."

  Llewellyn picked up the handgun and caressed it, saying, "My God man. This is the Webley that fires .455 cartridges of 220 grain, flat-nosed, wadcutters, complete with its original finish and wooden grips. Wherever did you get it?"

  "Dr. Watson's granddaughter gave it to me at 221B."

  Llewellyn stared at Price and said, "You're joking. Do you realize this might be the same gun Watson referenced in some of his stories? This…this gun belongs in a museum, Stuart! And here you are carrying it about like some kind of cowboy in the American West!"

  "Tell you what," Price said. "If you stop messing about and translate the cryptogram for me, I'll let you hold onto the damn thing as long as you like. Just don't, you know, turn it into a helicopter or anything."

  Llewellyn smiled wildly and then bent over the drawing, translating more enthusiastically than ever.

  Price opened the door to Knight's office and said, "I have good news and bad news, sir. The good news is you were right. She's in America, and I have to get there at once."

  "What is the bad news?"

  "She's a deceitful bitch and I should have shot her when I had the chance."

  "One thing at a time, Commander," King said. "Start at the beginning."

  Price showed Knight the cryptogram, "According to downstairs, the Apiary Society is apparently planning to poison a polio vaccine being developed by a doctor named Jonas Salk. I did some checking, and Salk is planning on testing his new vaccine on two million schoolchildren in Pittsburgh next week. These beekeeping bastards are going to poison it using either Emily Watson or someone named Arsenal."

  "Arsenal?" Knight said.

  "I've never heard of an operative using the codename Arsenal, but you never know. Perhaps the cousins have."

  Knight nodded grimly and said, "You're lucky that woman didn't slit your throat while you were sleeping, Stuart. Go find this Emily Watson person and bring her home. In fact, find her, and don't."

  Price exited the airplane at Newark International Airport and entered the long line at customs. It had been a long flight and they'd watered down the whiskey. Blighters.

  As he stood in line, a man in a suit walked past and called out, "Excuse me, is there a Commander Stuart Price present?"

  Price turned and looked around at all the other passengers, just as they were looking at him and the others. He kept his mouth shut and waited.

  The man in the suit did not give up. He had a photograph in his hand that he was matching to faces and he finally came to Price and said, "Ah, there you are, Commander Price. I guess you didn't hear me. Come this way, sir."

  People stared as Price picked up his bag to follow the man. As they headed into the terminal, Price lowered his voice and said, "Normally I prefer a little more anonymity when travelling on official business, sir."

  The man stopped and thrust his hand at Price, saying, "Chuck Regis, CIA. Right this way, sir. Here we go." Regis pulled open a nondescript-looking door in the terminal's wall and lead him down a short hallway. "We can talk in here," Regis said. He unlocked a small room with two metal chairs and a steel ring bolted to the wall. Price stopped at the doorway and looked inside disapprovingly. "Nothing to fear," Regis said. "This is sort of an emergency interrogation room for us. We share it with all the other agencies. Except for Newark PD. Christ alive, they'll turn the place into a goddamn horror show the first time somebody doesn't give them the exact right information. You ever try to get blood off a ceiling tile, Mr. Price?"

  Price looked at the man and said, "Is that what you intend to do? Interrogate me, Mr. Regis?"

  Regis hitched up his pants, "Nope. This is just a friendly conversation. We got a call from Washington that you were coming to find some Watson-chick. We've got her passport flagged. She isn't in the US, but if she does show up, we'll grab her for you, no sweat."

  Price nodded and said, "Well, that's better news than I'd hoped for anyway. What can you tell me about this Arsenal character?"

  "The what, now?"

  "I'm looking for an operative that calls himself Arsenal. We don't
have any known identifiers that match that name, so I was hoping you might."

  "Doesn't ring any bells," Regis said. "But I'll call Langley later on and see if they have anything."

  "Have you received any information about a threat against Jonas Salk or the vaccine? Anything at all?"

  Regis chuckled and shook his head, "Listen, Price. You came all this way to America to protect us from some big international threat against a bunch of little sick kids, and we sure do appreciate it, but your intelligence is way off base. I hate to break this to you, but you boys wasted a whole lot of time coming here. Jonas Salk is a goddamn hero. Nobody is getting within five miles of hurting him. Just how in the hell did you come up with this crazy theory in the first place?"

  Price thought of Llewellyn and his stupid dancing stick figure reading and said, "It was solid. Solid as rock."

  "Well, that's just how this stuff goes sometimes," Regis said. "You know how these kooks are. Always plotting some big scheme to take over the world, but when it comes time to actually try it, nobody can come up with cab fare to make it more than a few blocks. Am I right?"

  "Indeed," Price said. He took a deep breath and tried to relax. "Well, it seems you have the situation well in hand. How does one go about renting a car, here, anyway?"

  "What do you need a car for?" Regis said, forcing himself to smile. "I figured you'd be desperate to jump back on a plane and fly home to your tea and crumpets."

  "I have some friends I thought I might visit, if you must know," Price said.

  "You do?" Regis said. "You mean like the one you let get fed to a shark down in St. Petersburg?"

  "Excuse me, Mr. Regis?"

  Regis leaned close to Price and said, "Now, I tried to make nice with you and leave my own personal feelings out of it, but Jack Ivor was a good friend of mine. We were at The Farm together in Camp Peary back when we both came out of the Army. I heard all about your little adventure together down there, limey, straight from Jack himself. The way he explained it, you screwed up something fierce and my buddy has to spend the rest of his life as a goddamn freak. So, maybe you can understand why I don't really appreciate you back on my turf, trying to cause more trouble."

  Price looked at Regis and said, "Listen to me, it wasn't like that. What happened to Jack was a terrible, terrible accident. I'm sure he's upset, but there was nothing I could have done."

  "Save it, pal. Just turn around and get on the next airplane and go back to your Queen and your cricket. Let the professionals handle this." Regis slammed the interrogation room's door open and left Price standing there, still holding his bags.

  Price made his way down the empty hallway feeling stunned. He waded through a large group of confused-looking travelers trying to find their terminals.

  There were no flights back to London available until the next day.

  Price found a room at a nearby hotel that sold liquor in the lobby. It was going to be that kind of evening. He tossed his bags on the bed and picked up the phone, dialing a long sequence of numbers in and waiting for someone to answer.

  "Price here. Message for the home office. Tell them the package has not arrived. The local supplier is closed for reasons unknown." He paused. "I'm returning home tomorrow."

  The whiskey from the hotel was garbage and the sandwich he'd ordered from room service was even worse. He took another bite of his greasy sandwich and wiped off his fingers, reaching for the briefcase on his bed. It was one of Llewellyn's designs, complete with a hidden zipper in the front compartment that he had to fumble around with to try and find.

  I hope I'm not accidentally unlocking a cyanide gas canister trying to find this thing. That would be just my luck. Bumbling British agent kills self with own gadget after getting his best friend eaten by a shark.

  He found the zipper and tugged it open to reveal a thick file containing MI-6's analysis of the Jonas Salk Polio Vaccine. He swallowed the rest of the whiskey in his glass in one shot and gagged.

  King wanted you to read this file before you boarded the plane. Instead you wait until after you arrive and the mission is cancelled. This is why you wind up in situations like this, Stuart. This is why good people like Jack get hurt and bad people like Emily Watson get away.

  He leafed through several graphs and charts that described the impact of polio around the world, but it was the color photograph of a young girl walking with one leg bent the wrong way at the knee that gave him pause. He found several others showing even younger children, all with severely deformed limbs. Price took another gulp of whiskey and decided he did not need to see any more photographs.

  "Polio has been in existence for thousands of years, but major epidemics began in 1910. Summertime in both the US and Europe became known as "Polio Season." Two years ago, the worst outbreak in American history infected 58,000 people. 3,145 died. 21,269 were left paralyzed," the report read.

  Price turned the page to a photograph of a thin man with dark, receding hair and thick glasses, with the name Dr. Jonas Salk written in pen along the border.

  "All sources indicate Dr. Salk has neutralized the viral disease. Salk is currently planning widespread testing of the serum on 1.8 million school children. MI-6 estimates this vaccine will eliminate the disease worldwide within the decade.

  Salk has openly stated he will not patent the vaccine so that it can be made cheaply, making it available to anyone who needs it."

  What an astonishingly great man, Price thought. He poured another glass and drank it. The whiskey was going down easier now.

  Jack Ivor would have been better off with him as his best mate.

  The phone rang.

  Price grabbed for the receiver and fumbled with it, knocking it to the ground first before he picked it up and said, "Yes?"

  A pleasant sounding woman said, "Mr. Price, please?"

  Price cleared his throat and tried to focus, "Uh…speaking. This is Mr. Price."

  "How are you feeling today, sir?" she said.

  Price closed his eyes, saying the words in his mind before he spoke them, knowing it was important he got them right. "A bit tired. I went to the zoo earlier, but the bear exhibit was closed, so I came home."

  "That's a shame," she said. "The package you inquired about earlier has been located. There must have been a mix-up with the person you spoke to at the local supplier. The front office is asking you to inquire at the nearest way station."

  Price's eyes narrowed on a small spot on the wall. He could feel hot anger coursing through his body now, burning away the haze of alcohol. "In that case, I will need a new shipping manifest," he said.

  "Let me check and see if we have on available." She covered her phone and Price heard muffled voices, no doubt repeating his request to the roomful of people surrounding her and waiting for them to finish debating the answer. Finally, she came back and said, "We'll have one to you by tomorrow, early afternoon."

  "Thank you, love," he said.

  The line went dead.

  Price laid down on the bed and folded his hands behind his head. You and I are going to have a very long, very thorough conversation soon, Mr. Regis. Very thorough, indeed.

  Chimes twinkled gaily as Price pushed the Washington DC Crown Jewel Tea and Gift Shop's front door open. He winced at the sight of a ridiculously clad man standing behind the counter, a small chap in bright red suspenders and a tall black Beefeater hat, who tipped his hat and cried out, "Top o' the mornin' teh ye, guvnah! Feelin' roight chipper ah we this foine mornin', lad? Spot o' tea, m'lord?"

  Price took off his sunglasses and said, "Stop it, Damon."

  Albert Damon had been commander of Station A in the States for two years. It was his idea to hide in plain sight as a broker of knick-knacks and cheap trinkets to Anglophiles. The shop was a perfect front for sensitive shipments from Station A to MI-6, but the common consensus was that Damon was getting carried away with the idea. From where Price was standing, that seemed all too apparent.

  Damon's eyebrows raised and he said, "P
rice? Blimey, I didn't think they were sending you. It must be bad."

  "It may be. Do you have my package, yet?"

  The men locked eyes for a moment. Damon stuck out his chest and said, "First thing's first, old chap. I'm sure you understand."

  "Fine," Price sighed. "Go ahead."

  "Welcome to Washington DC. Would you like to see the sights while you're in town?"

  "That would be lovely, but only after we've eaten," Price replied.

  Damon snorted with laughter and said, "Thank God you said that. I couldn't remember the challenge question for an improper response." He took off his Beefeater hat and set it on the counter, "Sorry about the theatrics, chum. The Yanks love it! Helps loosen their wallets, a bit of showmanship does."

  "Right," Price said. "So, has it arrived?"

  "It's right down here," Damon said He walked to a staircase and headed down the steps into the dark basement. "When did you arrive in Washington?"

  "I drove in from Newark this morning," Price said. He lost sight of Damon in the bottom of the dark basement and touched the knife in his belt, keeping it close to his fingertips as he started down the stairs.

  "Here we are," Damon called out from a back room. He grabbed a chain on the ceiling and a bare light bulb in the center of the basement flickered to life. Among the boxes of dishes bearing portraits of the Queen and porcelain tea sets and scandalously cheap-looking statues of Big Ben, Price saw a plain, unstamped parcel sitting on the floor. He drew his knife and flicked the blade up just as the chimes upstairs sounded again. Damon looked up the steps and said, "A customer! Got to go!"

  Price watched the man bound up the steps and bent down to slit the packing tape covering the box. There was a handwritten note inside that read, EW being held at Langley. Adhere to Unwelcome Visitor Protocols.

  There was a wooden box under the note and Price cut open the tape securing the lid and opened it, smiling at the sight of his black, large-frame Beretta 418 sitting within. There were two magazines next to the gun and both were fully loaded.