The Lucifer Sanction

by Denaro, Jason

  “But of course, that was the specific assignment.”

  “And these two guys,” Blake said, scratching at his chin, “they’re still back there?”

  “Now we get to the bad news,” Danzig said as he flicked through his files, intentionally avoiding eye contact.

  “Bad news,” Blake queried. “You mean to say all of that was the good stuff?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Persinia Cull

  Dal stood by the slightly open window and looked down at the grinding morning traffic on Wilshire. He lit up a Marlboro and lifted his eyes to the cloudless sky, recalling similar days, days spent in the ocean off Santa Monica pier.

  Carson Dallas came close to engraving his name in the annals of American sport when in 1990 he competed in the national surfing championship. Surfing in California exploded in the 1980s and the state became part of the World Pro Tour schedule. Dal saw the potential and, as an athletic ‘twenty something’ year old, he immersed himself fully in the California Surfrider foundation which had launched in 1984. Unfortunately, Californian surfers such as Brand Gerlach, Tom Curren and Christian Fletcher were at the pinnacle of the surfing world, leaving Carson Dallas to paddle into surfing oblivion. He’d often take an old long-board out past the pier to float about, thinking of better times, thinking of how it could have been.

  Together with Drew Blake, Dal shared the record within the American Interpol Division for the most kills. Within the division they were referred to as the ‘killingest team,’ not a title to be proud of but certainly one that earned the team the highest respect. Now-a-days he was just an average surfer, but with a twist – he’d accepted the element of fortune found in almost every sport. He’d also accepted the types of waves nature would ‘deal him’ on any given day, the competition format, the human judging. They each played their part. For Dal, there would always be room for speculation – time to speculate on excellent surfers who’d never won a title – or of those who should have won more

  - had an eternity to think about it.

  As Danzig gathered up his briefing papers, he gestured toward Dal, “Our Swiss facility developed genetic structure of a bacterium. Our environmental mathematicians estimate that if the population of the 14th century was allowed to go unculled, by the year 2000 the planet wouldn’t be able to sustain the growth, unless...” He paused; aware he again had one hundred percent of the group’s attention. “Libra transported Dominic Moreau to Asia in the mid-13th century. He released a bacterium into the Yangtze. Today, that bacterium is known as the bubonic plague. Its introduction directly resulted in the culling of the planet’s occupants, which resulted in a far lower world population today.

  “We returned Moreau to Europe in 1347. He stayed longer than intended and saw the results of the virus. The Yersinia pestis bacterium spread from China at an amazing rate. Unfortunately Moreau saw the carnage and tried terminating the spread.”

  ***** Dominic Moreau

  Calais, France

  October 21, 1347

  6.08 A: M

  Gulls circled the mainsail of the Genoese trader as the canvas hung lifelessly from the mizzenmast. Dom Moreau allowed his eyes to track the gulls as they avoided swooping onto the deck in their familiar search for scraps

  - the great white scavengers were tentative, as though an inner sense alerted them of the death ship.

  Two large seamen, each wearing masks, blocked anyone from boarding.

  Moreau grinned and thought - dead men. Their peculiar behavior held his interest as he leaned back and reflected on the ship moored just thirty feet away

  – noticed each of the men as they let out an occasional cough. He was a shadowy figure – observing the scene. More coughing and he again thought, so very dead. The gulls sensed a peculiarity and instinctively flew off in search of safer places to satisfy their hunger. Five minutes later the wharf was a hive of activity as masked civilians, accompanied by white jacketed medical personnel, boarded the Italian ship. Cart loads of the dead awaited the arrival of lime carts. Minutes later three masked men hastened to shovel the contents onto the puss infected corpses - a vain attempt to isolate the contagion. The diseased sailors shared a common malady – suspicious swellings in the groin and armpit areas and black blotches and lesions flowing freely with puss and blood. Moreau caught a glance from one of the crewmen limping on by. The man stopped, aware of the figure lurking in the shadows. He staggered, leaned into a wall and coughed furiously into his free hand, his face adopting a duplicitous expression as he stared blurry eyed at the spit tainted blood spraying from his mouth.

  Moreau turned away and instinctively covered his face. The pneumonic plague spread directly from man to man just like the common cold, and this man’s breath and sputum would certainly add to the spread of the bacilli. The man had less than three days before the Black Death would claim him.

  Moreau pulled away as the man broke into a more intense burst of coughing. The sailor would shortly begin to sweat heavily, spit more blood, and then he would die. Moreau thought, might as well just crawl onto the cart, lay by the other guys, and get the lime shoveled onto you.

  Another seaman oblivious to his ailment relieved himself against a wall, his bloody urine forming a red stream.

  When the cart was stacked with corpses sparingly covered with lime, a strange silence befell the dock. A priest vigilantly issued last rights; his eyes raised to God, avoiding the endless flow of corpses, his hand making jerky never-ending blessing movements - one blessing merging into the next.

  From the corner of his eye, Moreau caught a glimpse of a large black rat darting from the alley, a furtive dash toward the wooden plank leading on board.

  Moreau’s eyes widened and the consequence of his visit to China ripped at his chest, but it was too late for redemption. He thought, I’ve gotta end it right here, they’ve done enough - those goddamn physicists at Libra.

  He conjured up images of the Zurich facility, of the transfer chamber. Thought of the wardrobe room with its range of medieval attire and of the promise made – “we’ll bring you home safely, bring you back to 2015.”

  He peered about the dock, took the small disc from his tunic and checked the coordinates: Fifty degrees, fifty six minutes twenty three inches east. He thought come on Denis. Where the hell are you, man? Campion, you’ve gotta be here.

  Two hours later Dom Moreau shrugged, held his hands out at shoulder level and felt the light drizzle. To this point he’d kept impatience at bay, but now his frustration was beginning to spill over. Campion had missed the rendezvous and it was now time for Moreau to make his way out of Calais.

  The salty spray ripped into his face as the breeze kicked up. He turned away from the dock, moved along an alley stepping over maggot riddled corpses and rats eating at what little flesh hadn’t already been ripped away by snarling dogs. He cussed deliriously and shivered in the cold and damp that had quickly transformed the warm Calais sunrise into a stinking mortuary.

  Calais, France October 21, 1347 6.47 A: M

  A nervous horse faithfully stood by its deceased owner as two massive mongrels gnawed on what remained of the man’s thigh, his genital area already consumed. One of the beasts gave Moreau a moment’s thought, a look that suggested this intruder could be fresh meat.

  Moreau pulled his sword, beat it against the wall and was surprised to see the dogs ignore his threat; apparently hunger took precedence over fear. He moved cautiously, his back to the wall, skirting the dogs, sword on the ready. The smaller of the pair turned, growled, with its teeth locked onto a chunk of the man’s inner thigh and unprepared to relinquish its pound of flesh. The other, the larger of the two, snarled at the new shadowy figure. Moreau shortened his footsteps. Stopped. The larger dog took five bounds and launched itself at Moreau. The shadowy figure made a swift thrust with his broadsword, catching the beast midriff, eviscerating it before its body touched down. Moreau pressed himself hard against the wall and stared as three more large hounds sprinted toward
him. He placed one boot beneath the intestines of the first attacker, flicked the entrails into the air toward the approaching pack and they stopped dead and began feasting.

  Dom Moreau glanced at the horse, could see it was ragged but still saddled. He skirted the blood soaked hounds and cautiously mounted the steed. He rode through a hellish landscape on his journey from Calais to Paris. From time to time the sound of wailing women broke the silence as family members carried fresh bodies from shacks, and carts continued a ceaseless shuttle service, feeding open trenches as the body count quickly outnumbered those able to load the carts.

  He rode through the night, despair eating at him with each village he passed. The morning light revealed new piles of corpses that had been dragged from their homes and laid in doorways alongside trash, the stench creating an inescapable taste in his mouth and placing a higher appreciation on the worthiness of mouthwash. For a nanosecond he wished for anything to lessen the taste of death. He covered his mouth, shielding himself from the stench as bodies lay putrid along each road he traveled, carcasses awaiting their turn to be carried to graveyards or dumped into massive unmarked pits, the less fortunate being devoured by animals, dogs once owned by the very people on whom they fed.

  He saw weeping families dumping relatives as others with sufficient strength shoveled dirt and beat off dogs scrapping among themselves and dragging corpses from too shallow graves, one-time pets had become rabid wolves hastily devouring the dead.

  On arrival in Paris he thought this has to be the equivalent to a thermonuclear war for these people. What the hell has Libra done here?

  Faced on one hand with the megalomania of possessing the post-experimental Lucifer ampoules, and the stupefying effect of Yersinia pestis, he considered the arrogance of the Libra scientists, Danzig, Bosch, Schroeder, and even the articulate La Blanc.

  His decision was a clear one. His vindication was to stop the spread. He thought I need to kill off the rats. I’ve gotta burn ‘em – destroy their breeding grounds.

  The thought repeated over and over, until he dismissed it as lunacy. He looked about at the Parisians living in filthy, unsanitary, crowded dwellings and attempted to justify setting fire to the hovels. But even so, torching the dwellings still wouldn’t eliminate the open sewers that were rife with epidemic diseases, rife with rodents feasting on body parts torn from rotting corpses. It triggered nausea, and Moreau’s gut retched as he leaned against a wall and heaved repeatedly until his stomach ran dry of bile. He turned toward the orange light to his left, to a group huddled over a raging fire.

  He saw it as a message from God. Fire, he thought, gotta burn ‘em.

  He considered the consequences.

  Made his move.

  ***** American Interpol Division Wilshire Boulevard Los Angeles

  March 22, 2015

  11.18 A: M

  “…knowing that flea bites passed the virus along, and since rats at the time were the largest carriers of fleas, Moreau needed to destroy the rodents,” Danzig said. “The best way to kill off the rat infestation was through fire. Consequently Moreau torched areas of Paris, wiping out at least two hundred and thirty thousand Parisians. By 1350 the plague had reduced the population of Europe from one hundred and twenty-five million to sixty million.”

  Blake thought about that for a moment. He joined Dal by the window, pulled two cigarettes, passed one to Dal, tapped his own several times on the rear of the pack and lit up each. He eyed the traffic below and kept his back to Danzig.

  “You’re saying you reduced the head count back then - and your reason was what exactly?”

  “Agent Blake, can you begin to equate the implications of a world today if we had not reduced those numbers? We would have no food supply, no oil, no rice . . . no wheat.”

  Danzig made a shrugging gesture, put on a forced smile. “We would be on doomsday’s doorstep if in fact we even survived to the present time.”

  Sam could feel his blood pressure rising. He glanced at Bell then to Dal and Blake. His head made a slight shuddering move and came to rest in his hands.

  “During our Libra research,” Danzig said with an apologetic shrug, “one of our top physicists passed away after an infected cat sneezed on him. This unfortunate incident triggered off immediate research to decipher the plague genome. Our physicists began intensive comparisons of other killer bacterium, such as water-borne gastrointestinal pathogens and leprosy. So you see Mr. Ridkin, experiments by one physicist that could be perceived as evil, could ironically result in another physicist being awarded the Nobel Prize.”

  Dal took a final drag on the Marlboro, exhaled, and followed the thin stream of smoke as it snaked its way through the cracked window to join the Los Angeles pollution. He ignored the glare from Sam, moved back to the table, stubbed the butt into a Cinzano ashtray, sat, and raised a querying eyebrow. “So basically,” Dal said, “your guys lost control of the source and actually spread the virus.”

  “Correct, Agent Dallas. Unfortunately the best laid plans of mice and – no pun intended. Regrettably for us and for the world, Moreau developed a conscience.”

  “Are you all fuckin’ crazy?” Blake snapped, straining to keep some self-control.

  Danzig twitched. “I fully appreciate how it is shocking to those such as you, Agent Blake. Libra has always had a conscience – together with great foresight.” He kept his eyes on the paperwork. Another twitch drew a smirk from Dal. “I understand I am a guest, Mr. Ridkin,” Danzig said with an awkward smile, “but you are aware of the authority with which I am empowered. The Triumvirate does not commit lightly to perilous undertakings. Admiral Bates’ team categorically condoned the means by which we are solving the food shortage problem of the world.”

  Sam groaned and clapped his hands in one thunderous outburst of frustration. Blake placed his mouth close to his boss’s ear and whispered, “I can see your blood pressure reaching two hundred over two hundred. I recognize the signs. Just tell the motherfucker to get this over with.”

  Danzig didn’t catch the words but certainly caught the distaste. He raised an eyebrow at Blake, cleared his throat and continued in a nonchalant way, “In a very short space of time in evolutionary terms, the disease evolved to the point where it lived in the bloodstream.”

  “Is there a treatment?” Sam asked in a deflated tone.

  Danzig leaned back in his chair, thought for a few seconds. “There is a treatment if caught very early. India had a major outbreak during 1994. It killed nearly nine hundred Surat residents. A woman in Suffolk, England, died as recently as 1913.”

  “What are the early symptoms?” Bellinger asked.

  “Painful swelling beneath the arms and around the groin, exhaustion, fever and chills. The lymphatic system becomes overwhelmed, resulting in rapid blood poisoning as bacterium spreads to the main organs.”

  Bell asked, “Is it airborne or is it spread solely through flea bites?”

  “Both. It is highly contagious and results in death within days. Although it is no longer a major health problem in Europe, it still surfaces around the world.”

  “What about the world health police,” Blake said, “you know - the guys with their fingers on the pulse.”

  Danzig turned his head, rolled his eyes. “The World Health Organization receives in excess of three thousand reported cases annually. Increasing globalization has caused fear that it could re-emerge in the developed world. In fact the bacterium’s hosts have recently reappeared in some parts of Great Britain.”

  “So where are the two guys you sent back?” Bellinger asked.

  Danzig was running thin on patience. “Denis Campion transmitted a very weak signal informing our people he had suffered an accident of sort, that he may have incurred a serious infection, perhaps from the bacterium. The transmission ceased after a matter of seconds. Our last contact from Moreau holds little hope for Campion. He failed to keep a pre-arranged Venice meeting with Dom. His last reported coordinates placed him in...”

>   His cell phone played a tune. Danzig groaned at the interruption, groped impatiently, got the phone from his inside jacket pocket, flipped it open and glanced at the caller’s name. “Excuse me,” he groaned, “I must take this call.”

  He spoke in German for several minutes.

  Bellinger accompanied Blake to the window as each seized on the opportunity to stretch their legs. They gazed down on Wilshire Boulevard, a virtual parking lot as commuters endured their snail’s pace journey through a constipated city suffocating in smog.

  “City of the fuckin’ angels,” Blake grumbled gesturing at the less than inviting example of too many people in too little space.

  Bell pointed down at the antics of a panhandler frantically washing windshields of unwilling motorists. Before Blake could respond, Danzig finished the telephone conversation and returned to the table.

  “My associate will join us shortly. He asked that I apologize for his delay. It appears our situation has worsened. As ironic as it may sound, time is of the essence.”

  “Time – am I missing something here?” Blake asked. “I was under the impression time is something you people have the ability to play God with.”

  “You must appreciate the seriousness of the situation,” Danzig snapped defensively. “In 2000 the United Nations estimated the population of our planet was growing at the rate of seventy-five million people annually. In the last few centuries the number of people living in our world has increased many times over. In 2000 there were ten times as many people on our planet as there were in the 18th century. CIA records in their 2006 World Factbook show the human population is increasing in excess of two hundred thousand daily. The 2015 records show an increase of nearly five hundred thousand each day.” Danzig pulled another file from his attaché case, opened it, and tapped on the front page.

  “Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East has increased beyond earlier expectations.” He traced a finger down the page as he spoke, settling on one item. “In Central and Eastern Europe there is negative population growth. The introduction by Libra of the HIV virus kept a lid on the southern African nations.” He smiled a cold selfindulgent grin. “It also says here,” and he swiveled the file around to face the group. His finger coming to rest on one item and a look of satisfaction adding a laconic touch to his smile, “It says right here sub-replacement fertility rates will account for negative population growth in Western Europe and Japan. Human growth exceeds the carrying capacity of our planet.”