by C. G. Cooper
“Anyway, along with this fiasco came the false flag operation known as Project Roadsign. It was positively elegant in its simplicity. A few plants here and there. One of the oldest tricks in show business. A paid performer in the medical field, maybe a well-intentioned doctor with poor critical thinking skills as well. You look at the latest concern among new parents, the one with the most unanswered questions, and bang, you’ve got a new boogeyman: autism. You feed your plants false information that there’s a link between autism and vaccines, and you set them free. And there it is: you’ve manufactured a controversy. Thimerosal? It’s harmless. But no one realizes that. And that’s fine because before you know it, you’ve got a hysterical constituency rallying around a cause that’s diverting everyone’s attention from the real masquerade.
“Well, science, as you know, has a way of biting back. Pasteur said that chance favors the prepared mind. Well, the minds at the CIA were ill-prepared for what was to come. There were two major catastrophes. At home, Phlogisterol somehow switched off the gene responsible for muscular development in the legs. Since it was on the X chromosome, it only affected female children. Surprise!
“On the overseas front, something even more sinister occurred. A virus, Dr. Knight: H1N1/3, the Panamanian Flu. Titan X built it, and we let it happen.
“Now we have paralyzed children at home, and a pandemic abroad threatening to wipe out the planet. All because some well-meaning patriots in the CIA felt that America was losing its foothold on the global stage.
“Where has this led us? Well, in its efforts to maintain plausible deniability, the CIA backed away from the Panamanian Flu. But they’ve backed away too far. In its absence, China stepped in to fill the void. They’ve not only created a vaccine for H1N1/3, in record time I might add, but they’ve also begun a program of mandatory inoculation for its citizens. Don’t think that China will be keeping the vaccine for itself, at least not for long. No, they’re planning to use it as – well, let’s just call it a ‘bargaining tool.’ Select groups who agree to their terms will get the cure.
“This is the new Cold War. It’s more than just a global struggle for power. This is a systematic redesigning of the global population. This is about the willful subordination of one side and the intellectual and militaristic domination of the other. The rest of us are caught in the middle. We are no longer fighting for a nation or an ideology, Dr. Knight. We are fighting for the soul of our species.”
31
Baron lifted his foamless pint and took a sip, then sat back in his chair. He stared at Knight, waiting patiently.
“Should I know what to say?” said Knight.
“No. I didn’t know what to say, and I was there.”
Knight frowned. “What do you mean, you were there?”
“Dr. Knight, do you think a man like Professor David Stone rises to the level of director of the NIH on his own? No, there was a vacancy.”
Knight squinted at the man, and the light of reason hit him. When he took a moment to think, he realized it was the only answer that made sense. It was so incredible, yet it was the only logical answer.
Knight lowered his voice to a whisper. “Dr. Jeremy Sholes?”
Whispering the name of the former director of the NIH felt as if he was incanting some magical spell.
The old man smiled.
Knight shook his head. “It can’t be. You... you’re dead...”
Baron—or Sholes—nodded slowly. “That’s right. Jeremy Sholes is dead. Eric Baron is alive and well.”
“Your face...”
“Cosmetic surgery. I even took a drug that would make me lose my hair. I have too much to lose to worry about vanity.”
“You faked your own death?”
The man licked his lips, a dry, tacky sound. “Not exactly. You see, they think I’m dead. And I see no reason to shatter the illusion. In fact, it’s in my best interest to continue the charade.”
Knight’s head was spinning. “I’m having trouble underst—”
The man put a hand on the table. “Listen, Dr. Knight. There are a lot layers to this conspiracy. I found them slowly. They weren’t readily apparent, obviously, but once I uncovered one it led me to another and then another. You’d be surprised whom you run into when you’re engaged in such an expedition. They tried to kill me. It was by the sheer grace of God and the sheer incompetence of a human that allowed me to live. The assassin they hired was, well, new on the job, I guess. He shot me once, from afar. I fell. He fled. By that point, I was already involved with the group.”
“The group?”
“The Cortex, Dr. Knight. The resistance. They helped me. They forged a death certificate in the name of Jeremy Sholes. Would you believe I actually mourned the loss of my old identity? You don’t know true strangeness in this world until you’ve gazed at your own autopsy photos. They did a marvelous job. No one suspected a forgery.”
Knight stared at the table, drinking in the sounds of the pub and the dying light, trying to digest the words coming from this odd little man. Then something hit him. A question. He looked up at the man.
“Who?”
“Sorry?”
“The autopsy photos. Who were they for?”
The man’s face took on a look of paranoia.
Knight pressed on. “You were obviously trying to prove your death to someone. Who was it?”
“Keep your voice down, for heaven’s sake,” said Baron, his gaze darting about the room. Then he turned back to Knight and said, “There is a faction within the National Institutes of Health. It is a government within a government, established just after Project Wildfire was reopened. It’s composed of a cadre of key individuals in the American military-industrial complex – high-ranking economists, generals, and scientists – about nine men in total. Not even the president knows of their existence.” Baron paused a moment before continuing.
“Dr. Knight, let me ask you something. What is the first thing you do in a murder investigation? You look to see who benefits from the commission of the crime,” he said without waiting for Knight to respond. “These nine men all have investments in projects that stand to gain astronomically huge profits in the coming biological catastrophe. The establishment of new cities, Dr. Knight. Watch for them. These will be bubbles of uninfected populations. New landscapes. New oil pipelines and other energy sources. New ways to mind-control citizens through enforced medical requirements. A benign totalitarianism with human survival as the chief currency. These nine men foresaw the redrawing of the map and have taken steps to profit from it.”
“Dr. Stone?” asked Knight. “Is he one of them?”
The man chuckled ironically. “Stone’s a pawn. I doubt if he knows which way is up in that place. He’s looking to save his own ass.”
“Then who? Who is the man behind the curtain?”
Baron looked at him gravely. “Her name is Anya Volkov. You know her as Sarah Hansen.”
Knight nearly fell off his chair. All he could manage was a weak, “What?”
“Mina did a little digging and found out you had more than a working relationship with her.” Baron must have seen his jaw hanging open, and that jaw must have spoken volumes of questions, for Baron answered the nearest one at hand. “Mina hacked into NIH surveillance and saw the two of you leaving together. Your body language told her everything she needed to know. She’s a smart girl, that Mina.” He reached into his bag, pulled out a folded-up newspaper, and placed it on top of the small table. “Page twenty-six. Always page twenty-six. Dr. Knight, we need your help.” The old man’s eyes were pleading. He slid the newspaper across the table. Without another word, he put a handful of bills on the table, rose from his seat, and ambled out of the pub.
Knight took the paper and opened it to page twenty-six. Next to the page number, written in ballpoint pen, was a series of map coordinates.
A text came through.
Hey, Baron tells me you guys had a nice chat. Next meeting is in North Burlingham. You have th
e coordinates.
He typed back furiously to Mina. It was the perfect occasion for all-caps reply. A FEW ANSWERS MIGHT HELP.
Easy, cap’n, she wrote back a moment later. Newspaper only delivered when there’s to be a meeting. Always look at page twenty-six. That’s where you’ll see the locale. There are a dozen different ones. The group moves constantly to avoid detection.
He typed back, WHAT GROUP?
The Cortex, silly pants. We have cells on both sides of the pond. Thought since you’re there you might want to check out the British side. Take a cab around town then back to where you’re staying. Then take your car to the meeting. This is of the utmost importance. YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT.
He felt almost defeated. Thanks, he typed. You’ve been a bundle of joy.
She typed back. No problem! along with an emoji of a baseball player giving the middle finger. Then, OMG I almost forgot to tell you! The meet’s at two in the morning. Don’t be late.
He let the phone drop from his hands and ordered another beer.
32
The GPS told him it would be a two-hour drive from London to North Burlingham. He set out at eleven, took a cab ride around town for about twenty minutes, changed cabs, and went back to his hotel room. Then he left the hotel at ten minutes to midnight – stopping first to visit the lobby convenience store to purchase a small halogen flashlight.
The whole thing was ridiculous. If he was being tailed, there was no reason his stalker couldn’t track his every move.
Two hours. The ride would give his mind plenty of time to wander over as much ground as his car was covering.
Sarah was alive? Really, he thought while speeding through the English countryside, tree-lined and lightless, there was no reason for him to believe Dr. Baron, aka Jeremy Sholes. The guy could’ve lost it. He was probably some paranoid schizophrenic who’d left his practice out of sheer inability to perform.
What did that say about himself? In reality, there was no reason for him to be doing what he was doing at this very moment.
But he knew why he had to. If there was a chance that this woman, this one enigmatic woman, the object of his every desire, once dead, just might be alive again… It was this one, dim hope that spurred him on.
The voice on his GPS guided him further and further into the wilderness.
It was just before two in the morning when he arrived at the abandoned building. The place sat on a plain of dank vegetation. Four cars were parked haphazardly outside, looking as though they’d been dropped there from above. The thick smell of decay seemed to close in around him. Nocturnal creatures buzzed and shrieked in the darkness. No sounds came from within the structure, a huge edifice of once-stately apartments that was now crumbling and forgotten like a derelict ship. The place loomed before him, necrotic and peeling. Perhaps it had once been an old, respected academy or institution of higher learning. Here, now, by the light of the moon, it looked cancerous.
He walked cautiously toward a large, arched doorway. He paused for a moment, listening – and hearing nothing but the sounds of blind life in the wilderness. He opened the door and entered the building.
The room he entered was a hangar-sized hall of some sort. Outside, the light of the moon had been enough to see. Inside, he clicked on the small halogen flashlight he’d purchased. When the light flashed on, Knight saw tiny movements as the beam struck the far wall. Startled spiders skittered under the sheaths of thick webbing that covered the walls like a tapestry. He heard the scratchings of tiny claws along the floors and caught the form of a galloping rodent avoiding the glare of the light as it moved along to safety.
A sign up on the wall, a huge woodcut, had once declared proudly “Hellerton School for Boys” in elegant letters. Now the disgraced sign was merely a headstone.
A glare of light threw his own shadow on the wall, and he swung around to see a man standing in the threshold of a side door, illuminated by the light of the room behind him.
“Dr. Knight?” The man spoke in nasal tones. The r was a rolling one that was not entirely British mainland.
“Yes.”
The figure took a few brisk steps forward, his free hand extended. “Welcome. We’re so pleased to have you join us. My name is Gareth.”
Knight recognized the accent as Welsh. As he came closer, the man came into definition. He was short but robustly built – hard and athletic. His head was completely bald. He had a large smile with eyes that blazed, as if he used the energy of the entire top half of his body to execute the maneuver. He stuck out his hand to Knight.
Knight took his hand. It was strong, coarse, and tight.
“How do you do?”
“Please,” said Gareth. “Come and meet everyone else.”
The adjoining room was smaller but no more hospitable. A space in the center had been recently swept, and there was a circle of six or seven chairs and the faint smell of cigarette smoke and coffee.
If AA meetings were illegal, he thought, this is what they’d look like.
A chalkboard with indiscernible writing on it stood at what appeared to be the head of the circle.
All the heads in the chairs turned toward him.
“Friends, comrades, this is Dr. Knight. Dr. Knight, welcome to your first meeting of The Cortex.”
He greeted the members of the resistance, not committing any names to memory, not entirely sure if he should commit them to memory.
“What do you think?” said Gareth.
“Who does your decorating?”
A polite and not at all genuine laugh rose from the group and died just as fast.
“Well,” said Gareth, “I think we ought to resume. Dr. Knight, please have a seat.”
Knight got an up-close and personal view of the chalkboard. On it was scrawled a short list:
1.Establish liaison between cells.
2.More weapons. Bomb-making equipment.
3.Tactical maneuvers.
4.The science/medical front.
“Now,” Gareth said, addressing the group, “I think it’s safe to say that we have item number four covered with the arrival of Dr. Knight. So, while we’ve got you, Doctor, would you mind if we picked your brain a bit?”
“Um, sure.”
“You don’t seem sure.”
“It’s because I’m not. I’m not sure about any of this.”
“You met with Dr. Baron, did you not?”
“I did.”
“And he explained to you the seriousness of the crisis?”
“He did.”
“And you understand that a serious crisis demands serious action?” Gareth’s voice was cold and direct. Gone was the convivial host who had greeted him.
“I do understand.”
“Dr. Knight,” he said, his tone softening, “we need you.” He walked to the board and circled the number four. “In this room are some of the world’s greatest minds. Each is head of his or her own division within the resistance. We have the head of the communications division, the information division, the military division, and so on. If you accept our invitation, you will be the head of our medical division. Its general. But in order to do so, you must be committed to fighting for our cause.”
There was an or else implied at the end of the sentence. Knight didn’t bother asking for it.
“Tell me,” Knight said, “what is it you want me to do?”
With a smile, Gareth said, “We need your research.”
So, this was the catch. Why did it all come back to his research? Not for the first time, Knight wondered if the entire affair was a play for his work. It was worth billions, if not trillions.
But that was the old, cynical Alex Knight talking. The new Alex Knight had seen too much. He didn’t have much left to lose.
“I’m afraid it’s in the hands of the NIH at the moment,” said Knight.
“We know that.” Gareth said nothing else.
“So...” Knight started, “I’m not sure how I can help.”
“When
we get the research back, we’ll need someone to help us implement it.”
“That’s all well and good. But how will you get it back?”
Gareth looked back at the board then back at Knight.
“Items one through three,” Knight surmised, pointing to the board. He didn’t know whether to laugh or run.
“Precisely. You will not be involved in the physical aspect of our coming battles. We know you’re not a soldier, Dr. Knight. We need that brain of yours.”
Knight didn’t like the sound of any of this. The idea of attacking the NIH was ludicrous at best, a suicidal fantasy at worst. He told them so.
Gareth laughed. “You don’t understand. We’re not going to the NIH.”
“What?”
“There’s no way we could possibly do that.”
“I don’t understand,” Knight said, shaking his head. “Then how do you plan to get my research back?”
“We are going to bring the NIH to us.”
“Come again?”
Gareth took a step closer, a blazing grin on his face. “We’ve sent an invitation: Professor Stone will be the recipient of an honorary degree from one our fine universities. He will be flown here, all expenses paid. Professor David Stone is coming here to England, Dr. Knight, as a special guest of The Cortex.”
