by David Khara
The nurse approached one of her colleagues. Eytan could see only her massive back as the woman leaned over a table covered with a white sheet. The two women spoke a few words, which he couldn’t hear, and then turned around and started walking toward him.
Eytan could tell that the older—and larger—woman was a Mrs. Bossypants. She looked determined—probably a necessity given that she looked after nearly three dozen children with no parents. In fact, she had one of them in her arms.
She gave him a head-to-toe look-over before saying hello. It was a bit intimidating, even for a man like Eytan.
“I’ve been told you work for the government?”
“Actually, to be honest…”
“Yes or no?” she pressed.
“Well, yes, in a way. But who told you that?”
“The young man behind you.”
Eytan turned around and saw Frank’s adorably guilty face. It was bright enough to melt the ice caps. The giant didn’t have time to scold the boy before the matronly nurse started talking again, drawing Eytan’s attention to the young child she was holding in her arms.
“We’ve asked everyone on board, and nobody will take him,” she said.
“That’s unfortunate, but…”
“Frank told us you were traveling alone. You must have a lot of free time. Could you at least watch this little tyke for the rest of the trip? You’d be doing us a huge favor. We already have so much to do,” she said, nodding in direction of the beds. “And after we dock in Haifa, perhaps you could find trustworthy people to take him in. It’s hard to find homes for boys so young. With your government connections, it would be a cinch.”
Her last sentence felt like the slam of a judge’s gavel.
“No, no, no, wait a minute. I’m the last person you’d want for something like this,” Eytan said, pointing at the younger boy in the nurse’s arms. “I can’t take care of him.”
He turned to Frank, who was standing next to him, proud as a peacock. The kid had cojones. “What crazy lies have you been spewing?”
“Um, I didn’t…” the boy sputtered.
The nurse had been shifting her weight from one foot to the other. The child she was holding, as frail as he looked, was getting heavy. She put him down on a nearby table and began telling off poor Frank, whose bedtime was long overdue.
As he watched the scene, Eytan felt a small, soft hand grab his index finger. The younger child could barely wrap the hand around his finger, but he held on. Eytan looked down at the boy and tuned out the nurse’s reprimands.
“What’s his name?” the giant asked, interrupting the nurse.
“Eli, sir. Eli Karman. His mother died of tuberculosis, and his cowardly father ran off long before the boy was born.”
There was a pause, as Eytan observed Eli, who was still gripping his finger. The boys eyes were filled with joy, curiosity, and a certain twinkle. Eytan looked up to the nurse.
“Listen, I won’t be able to take care of him full time, but I can make sure he gets everything he needs, including a good education.”
The faces of the two women lit up. Frank was thrilled too. “Really?” he exclaimed.
With his right hand still held for ransom, Eytan kneeled down and spoke to the child in a soft voice.
“So, Eli, how about we go for a quiet stroll, just the two of us?”
The offer was greeted with a pure and earnest smile. The deal was sealed.
So off they went on their walk together.
One that would last a lifetime.
CHAPTER 23
Prague
Elena and Eytan walked through Prague’s streets back to their hotel. A light rain was falling, and the pavement was wet. A group of teenagers emerged from beneath a canopy where they had taken shelter and dashed toward the two agents like a herd of wild colts. One of the boys bumped into Eytan. The giant didn’t budge, but the kid fell flat on his butt. Eytan cracked a smile and leaned down to give the young man a hand. Obviously perplexed by this odd bald man in a military getup, the teen hesitated before accepting the help. His friends, who had frozen and gone silent, eased up and started laughing again. The boy gave Eytan a thumbs up and joined the group, which stampeded off saying good night in German-laced English.
The whole incident baffled Elena. If the same thing had happened to her, she wouldn’t have helped the kid. And she certainly wouldn’t have given him a friendly smile. She wasn’t mean or hateful. It just wouldn’t have occurred to her. She didn’t waste time socializing with others. Playfulness and creativity had been trained out of her. She had given up her past, her parents (her father, in particular), and even her blond locks, which, as a child, she had spent hours brushing in her Brussels bedroom.
Over the years, she had carried the weight of the Consortium’s security operations on her shoulders. This job meant everything to her. It was her reason for living, a way to give back part of what had been given to her. And she was frightfully good at it.
Then one day, she heard a name, a name that spread throughout the secret organization like a mystical incantation, a name that became legendary: Eytan Morgenstern, Patient 302, the first subject to live through Professor Bleiberg’s genetic manipulations, a survivor who tracked fugitive Nazis around the globe.
From that point on, all the Consortium higher-ups became obsessed with recruiting 302 away from Mossad. If that were not possible, they’d do away with him. The idée fixe consumed even Bleiberg. Elena rarely got face time with the brilliant geneticist, but when she did, he would constantly talk about his guinea pig’s exploits. In the end, he—and therefore the others—began treating her like any other subordinate.
Patient 302 stripped her of her uniqueness and hijacked all the attention she had been getting from her new family—her real family. Elena channeled everything into reclaiming her position and status. But nothing worked. And without realizing it, she sank to the same cruel level as everyone else in the organization. Then one day she saw the solution. It was so clear, so pure, so simple.
She had to kill a legend to become one.
The opportunity presented itself at the BCI facility. Patient 302 had stood right in front of her, disarmed and more vulnerable than ever. All she had to do was pull the trigger, and the mythical monster would be fairy dust. She had wounded him twice—once in the shoulder and then in the thigh. But some unknown force had stopped her from firing a bullet into his head or heart. She had to summon up all her hatred toward this man, whom she didn’t even know, to fuel her discipline and finish him off once and for all. But she had missed her chance.
Tonight, she was walking alongside him in Prague. The more she watched him, the more she admired him, and the more her hatred grew. Eytan Morg represented the perfect nemesis. He was comfortable interacting with others, always effortlessly attentive, super professional. He reminded her of the famous poem by Rudyard Kipling, which she had read years ago:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise…
You’ll be a Man, my son!
Elena, locked inside her fortress of solitude and anger, had to admit the unbearable fact that under other circumstances, in another lifetime, the two of them…
A dull buzz interrupted her thoughts.
“Cell phone,” Eytan said. He pulled the phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear.
“We’ll call you from the hotel,” he told the caller.
“No more dawdling. Cypher has new information.”
And with that, their peaceful stroll came to an abrupt end. The two walked briskly the rest of the way.
Barely settled in
their suite, Eytan once again pulled out his cell phone.
“Are you in your room?” Cypher asked, answering the call.
“Yes, but before we begin… You know the drill.”
“Of course, here’s your friend.”
Eli reassured Eytan that he was okay, and Eytan agreed to proceed.
“As a preface, getting information from former Soviet Bloc countries is complicated.
Goes with the territory, Eytan thought. Some habits die hard.
“Still, you’re a powerful man with influence,” he said.
“You get the idea,” Cypher said. “Your source on the victims of the village guessed right. Most of the residents worked in secret labs in the Pardubice region during the Cold War. As a reward for their service and to keep them from talking, the government provided them with homes and comfortable pensions.”
“What fields did these people work in?”
“Bacteriology, psychoactive substances, poisons, all Czech specialties.”
“Was their profile in any way similar to that of the Moscow metro subjects?” Elena asked.
“No. I’m afraid those were merely civilians without any obvious ties to the village residents. Their only connection appears to be the way they died.”
“It’s hard to find a motive that would give us any kind of lead,” Eytan said.
“Yes, the motive. Speaking of which, I have good news and bad news, Mr. Morg. Which one would you like to hear first?”
“I’m not a fan of these little games, but give me the good news first, for a change.”
“We’ve translated the characters.”
“And the bad news?
“We’ve translated the characters.”
CHAPTER 24
“The characters are Japanese, and they mean ‘the children of Shiro.’ Add that information to the biological attacks, and I’m sure you grasp the magnitude of our problem.”
Eytan took a moment to digest the news. He ran his hand over his head and looked at the ceiling.
“Hell… Shiro Ishii.”
“Yes,” Cypher said.
“Do you mind filling me in?” Elena asked, taking a bottle of water out of the minibar. She held out another bottle to Eytan, but he declined.
“Mr. Morg will explain everything, my dear. As for me, I must be off. Call me back as soon as you have anything on the lab materials.”
Cypher ended the call without any formalities. Eytan made his way to the window overlooking the Vltava River. Elena followed, leaned her shoulder against the wall, and waited for his explanation.
“There was this one German concentration camp doctor I arrested,” Eytan said in a monotone. “I offered him a quick bullet to the brain, but he chose to go to trial. During his interrogation, he pretty much shrugged off the horrors he and his buddies committed. His words stuck in my head. ‘Compared to the Japanese, we were choirboys.’”
“I don’t know very much about the Pacific War,” Elena said.
Eytan sighed.
“From 1931 until the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945, the Japanese had research centers in the occupied Chinese region. The most horrific and well known of them was Unit 731. Its official name was the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. A nice little euphemism to cover up the facility’s true purpose. Under the command of Lieutenant General Shiro Ishii, Unit 731 developed an advanced biological and chemical warfare program that included experimentation on human subjects. The Kempeitai, the Imperial Army’s military police, a sort of Gestapo, provided some six hundred human guinea pigs every year the unit was in existence. Many more human subjects came from other experimentation sites. Nearly three-quarters of them were Chinese. But the rest were Russians, Pacific islanders, and Southeast Asians. It’s believed there were even some Allied prisoners of war. Once medical ethics were thrown out the window, it was anything goes. You needed a heart of steel to hear the horrors committed: vivisections, amputations, the infliction of all possible and imaginable diseases on women and children.”
“That’s insane,” Elena replied, genuinely disgusted.
“They were also frozen, gassed, and hanged upside down to see how long it would take to choke to death. Even if a subject survived an experiment, he was immediately forced to endure another one. And it went on and on until he was eventually killed. Victims were jokingly referred to as ‘logs,’ meaning lumber, and the center was called the ‘sawmill.’ Basically, all you have to do is imagine the worst abominations in the world under the most nightmarish circumstances, and you should get the picture.”
Eytan stopped. He listened to the muffled street noise below and the gentle tapping of rain against the window.
“That’s awful,” Elena said after a few minutes of silence. She took a sip of her water. “But what’s the connection between the horrors committed in the Pacific during World War II and the attacks in Czechoslovakia and Moscow?”
“I’ll get there. Let me finish first. After studying medicine, Ishii served in the army as a high-ranking surgeon. During a two-year trip through Europe, he researched chemical weapons used during World War I. This was a huge eye-opener for him. He came to the conclusion that victory over the USSR and the United States could be achieved through chemical and bacteriological warfare.”
“There were no such attacks during World War II, to my knowledge.”
“That’s partially true. At one point, the Japanese did launch thousands of incendiary balloons over the Pacific. Only a few managed to land on the West Coast. Six people died, but those balloons could have done much more harm if the plan had succeeded. The Japanese then loaded a submarine with biological weapons, but it sank before the weapons could be used. Undaunted, they devised Operation Cherry Blossom, which would have involved filling planes with fleas infected with the plague. Kamikazes were supposed to crash their planes near San Diego. That plan was thwarted when a message was sent by the US government to Japan. I’m paraphrasing, but basically it said, ‘We know where the emperor is hiding. Send your bombs, and we’ll turn him into birdfeed.’”
“They were telling the Japanese government that they’d drop an atom bomb on the emperor?”
“Yep, the Americans originally planned to hit Berlin, but the Third Reich collapsed before the bomb was ready. Unfortunately, the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t as lucky.”
Eytan turned his back to the window.
“Anyway, between the Japanese writing on the wall and the nature of the attacks here and in Russia, I’m worried there’s a Unit 731 copycat.”
“Do you think the two events are connected?”
“Your boss, Cypher, seems to think so. Two attacks in the same week. That can’t be a coincidence. The real problem will be identifying our terrorists and understanding their motives so we can keep them from striking again. I’m anxious to receive more information from your network.”
“That shouldn’t take long. Do you have any theories?”
“Too many. It’s hard to isolate the most credible one.”
“So what happened to Ishii at the end of the war?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re shitting me, right?” exclaimed Elena.
“I wish. The man gave up all the details of his operation in exchange for immunity. He died of lung cancer in 1959, a free man. He was sixty-seven. Quite a lifespan when you consider that some of his victims didn’t make it to their first birthday.”
“I’d like to know how the guy managed an exchange like that. Why didn’t you target him? I bet you would have loved that.”
“I was focused on the part of history that affected me personally. And that kept me busy enough,” Eytan said. “And besides, if I had decided to seek justice for what Ishii and his cohorts did, I would have faced a major obstacle.”
“It must have been a big one.”
“The Americans protected Ishii and his team so they could get hold of his work. His experiments were a gold mine for the United States. The wholesale d
isregard for ethics made it possible for Unit 731 to make major discoveries. For example, they sent naked subjects outside in below-freezing temperatures. It would sicken most people to know that those studies yielded critical advancements in the treatment of frostbite, treatments that are considered standard procedure today. So there was no way the United States was going to put Ishii on trial. And going after him myself and getting on Uncle Sam’s bad side in the process wouldn’t have been an especially smart move right in the middle of the Cold War.”
“And even after all that, you still consider the Consortium your enemy?” Elena asked. “We’re angels in comparison.”
“I’ve already heard that line of reasoning. The people who finance evil are as guilty as those who implement it. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference between Ishii and your Bleiberg. Both were obsessed with inflicting their repugnant visions on the rest of us. And the Consortium is continuing Bleiberg’s quest.”
“There’s no point in arguing. Neither of us is going to budge,” Elena said. “So let’s get back to business. There’s someone out there who is aligned with Shiro Ishii—perhaps ideologically. They’ve stolen biological material from a Consortium lab, and they’ve been having a grand old time testing it out in Moscow and the Czech Republic. Does that pretty much sum it up?”
“So it seems.”
She reflected for a few moments.
“But what exactly is this person or organization’s goal in creating weapons? Why Moscow? Was it because Unit 731 had been developing weapons to attack the Soviet Union? If so, why would the terrorists go after the Czech Republic?”
“The country did play an important role in similar research for the Eastern Bloc. But like you, I’m having a hard time finding a direct connection.”
Elena and Eytan heard a ding. Elena had just received an e-mail on her laptop. “Maybe that’s the information we need,” she said.
Five long minutes filled with the sound of Elena typing on her keyboard followed. Then came a brief silence.
“Morg, I think we’ve got our lead.”
