The Lupin Project

by Allan Leverone

  “Don’t give me your line of bullshit, Frank. We go back a long way, and as dedicated as I know you to be, I can’t recall you ever working on a Saturday night before.”

  “Oh, that. Well, I’ve allowed myself to get distracted by the day-to-day operations of the facility, and as a consequence I’ve fallen behind on my official paperwork. You know, research status reports, budget requests, personnel evaluations, that sort of thing. I’m sure you under—”

  “I told you once already, Frank, to cut the bullshit. I don’t expect to have to repeat myself to you.” The voice remained cultured and erudite, but the message came through loud and clear, and along with anger and the immediate rise in Toler’s already-high blood pressure came a thread of fear worming its way through his bowels.

  “Well then tell me what you want, Lee. Be specific. Don’t bullshit me and I won’t bullshit you. How does that sound?”

  “Fair enough. I’m sure you recall that Central Intelligence is one of the primary interest-holders in the Tamerlane Research Facility. Although relatively small as these types of places go, Tamerlane is home to a couple of projects we’ve been following quite closely. I’m sure you’ll recall also that you were installed as facility director largely at our behest.”

  “Of course I’m aware of all that. I’m also very busy. Would you mind telling me where you’re going with this?”

  “I’m getting there, Colonel. Undoubtedly you also recall that the CIA was heavily involved in the construction of the physical plant eight years ago.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, we’ve been involved in plant and equipment maintenance over the years. Kept our hand in the cookie jar, so to speak.”

  “A hand in the cookie jar.”

  “That’s right.”

  The thread of fear Frank had felt a few seconds ago began growing, wriggling through his insides like a parasite. He was beginning to get a glimmer of understanding as to the direction of the conversation and he didn’t much like it.

  He cleared his throat. “Please, Lee, continue.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of computer keystroke monitors, Colonel?”

  “Of course. They allow administrators to review every keystroke an employee makes on his or her work computer. Many businesses and most government agencies employ them.” The thread of fear began metastasizing. Businesses and government agencies did not begin to wield the power and behind-the-scenes influence the CIA could muster.

  “Well, Colonel, as you probably suspected, keystroke monitors have been in use at Tamerlane since the facility’s inception.”

  “I didn’t ‘suspect’ it, I’ve been well aware of it. So?”

  “So, rather than storing the resulting data in a hard drive and reviewing it only after evidence of a problem has emerged, proprietary agency software has been actively monitoring data from Tamerlane using algorithms developed in-house. This program operates in real-time, as the data is received. On the rare occasions the algorithms identify a potential problem, the data is then reviewed by one of our analysts here at Langley.”

  Frank’s temper threatened to overwhelm him. Had he been speaking with almost anyone else, he would long-since have begun screaming into the phone, threatening and blustering. He struggled to overcome the shakiness he heard in his voice—the result of anger, he told himself, not of fear—and when he felt sufficiently under control, he said, “Don’t you think that’s the sort of thing I should been made aware of, as facility administrator?”

  “Frank, secrecy is what we do. It’s the cornerstone of our operational philosophy. I would have assumed you knew that by now.”

  He blew out a breath forcefully, hoping Collins caught the sound on the other end of the line. “Let’s get on with it. Obviously, your analysts have identified a problem, which is why we’re having this conversation.”

  “And I suspect you’re at least generally aware of a problem as well, Colonel, which I further suspect would account for your presence in the office on a weekend evening.”

  Frank was suddenly and fully aware of a certainty: his career and his freedom were soon coming to an abrupt end. “Let’s not waste any more time dancing around it. What problem has been identified, Lee?”

  “The man you chose to head up the Lupin Project. Dr. Jason Greeley is his name, correct?”

  “You know his name as well as I do.”

  “Indeed. I also know—and perhaps you are not aware of this fact—that Dr. Greeley is, even as we speak, compiling an inordinate amount of classified information relating to the Lupin Project on his office computer.”

  “What?” Frank wasn’t sure what he had expected to hear come out of Collins’s mouth, but that wasn’t it. “Greeley’s getting ready to burn us?”

  “It certainly appears that way, Colonel. Dr. Greeley is including in his computer file names, dates, experiment notes, critical details dating from the very beginning of the project, everything from the implantation process of the microchips into the brains of his animals, to the…events…of the last couple of days. And while I can assure you it all makes for fascinating reading, I think you’ll agree none of it is appropriate for consumption by the general public.”

  “Greeley’s going to burn us,” Frank repeated. His mind swirled as he tried to process the information. His attempt to coerce the researcher into keeping his mouth shut had backfired, and in the worst possible way. He wouldn’t have thought the mousy little bastard had it in him.

  Jesus Christ, doesn’t Greeley know he’s cutting his own throat? He’ll face life in prison, if not a firing squad. Frank realized that in his shock and confusion he was half-mumbling his thoughts into the phone, into the ear of one of the most dangerous men in the CIA, effectively cutting his own throat, and he clamped his mouth closed hard enough to rattle his teeth down to the jawbone.

  Collins spoke, and it sounded to Frank like the discharge of firing-squad rifles. “Focus, Colonel. Dr. Greeley is moving quickly, creating this damaging dossier as fast as he can. It seems clear from this end that he intends to detonate the bomb he’s assembling sooner rather than later. It is up to you as Tamerlane administrator—and Central Intelligence representative—to put a stop to this man’s destructive actions and end the threat.”

  “Oh, I’ll handle it,” Frank said ominously. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “Get your house in order, Colonel Toler.”

  There was no “or else” appended to the statement, but then, there didn’t have to be.

  Collins hung up without another word.

  29

  Jason pressed “send” on the Facebook message. A jolt of nervousness fired through his system like an electric current as he did so, mostly out of fear that despite his best efforts, Robert Senna would never notice it, or if he did that he would simply ignore it.

  But Jason had done what he could, and now there was at least a chance that Toler would get what was coming to him. There was at least a chance the world would understand Dr. Jason Greeley had undertaken his research with the best of intentions; that he had meant well despite the unmitigated disaster the Lupin Project had become.

  Maybe it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Maybe he was kidding himself that anyone would give him the benefit of the doubt.

  His hands were shaking and the electric current continued to buzz through him. He wheeled the chair back from his desk and stood, cracking his back and stretching his legs. His work tonight wasn’t finished, far from it, but he’d made a decent start.

  He wandered out of his office and into the lab, ostensibly to check on his wolves but in reality lost in thought, trying to determine his best next move. Often his most productive thinking was done outside the office, when he would busy his hands and body with some menial task—feeding or watering the wolves, say, or brushing their coats—thereby freeing his mind to tackle complex problems intuitively.

  During the eight years of his employment at Tamerlane, Jason had performed this exact ritual hund
reds of times, but in not one single instance had he ever seen anything like the animals’ activity tonight. The wolves, who had been gnawing relentlessly on their wire cages earlier, were taking their efforts at gaining freedom to another level.

  All six of them attacked the cage with a terrifying fury, snarling and snapping their powerful jaws, flinging blood and saliva astonishing distances in all directions. They slopped it onto each other and onto lab equipment in thick crimson streams. Their mouths were covered in blood, it matted their fur and ran freely from deep gashes in their gums and lips. The animals were slipping and sliding as they backed to the rear of the cage and then leapt forward to attack the wires anew.

  It was simultaneously awe-inspiring and chilling.

  Jason watched, frozen to the spot, eyes wide. All conscious thought was swallowed up by an unreasoning terror. The animals growled and yapped, weaving and stumbling, knocking each other down and slashing at their neighbors’ throats before returning their attention to the wire cage.

  After maybe ten seconds, during which his neural circuits reset as completely as a computer rebooting, Jason shook himself and stepped further into the lab. He had to take immediate action, try to restore order in the pack.

  “Halt!” he shouted, putting as much authority into his voice as he could muster, which at this point wasn’t much. It was a simple command, one of the first he had taught his pack, and for years that one word was enough to make every wolf immediately stop whatever he or she was doing—eating, hunting, tracking, it didn’t matter, even if the pack was about to tear into a freshly killed steer—and sit at rapt attention, stiff as soldiers at inspection, awaiting their next command.

  It didn’t work.

  It didn’t come close to working.

  Jason had known it wouldn’t work even before he spoke.

  Degradation of the “Halt” command had been what alerted Jason to the fact that his project was falling apart weeks ago. Initially the problem had been nothing more serious than a short delay in the animals’ responses, but as time passed, their actions became more and more ragged. More and more uncertain.

  Even more alarmingly, the wolves began turning more randomly aggressive. Their actions became unpredictable, the pack difficult to control.

  The deterioration was incremental, changes that to a casual observer might be barely noticeable. But to Jason, who had raised the wolves from pups and worked with them intensively day after day until he felt he could relate to them better than he could relate to any human being alive, the slide was clear.

  And mystifying.

  And frightening.

  ***

  Jason’s concern regarding the pack’s increasingly erratic and aggressive behavior had eventually reached the point where he felt he had no choice but to recommend suspending the project. His official letter to Colonel Toler had suggested—reluctantly—euthanizing the pack and rebooting the Lupin Project.

  New wolf cubs, new experiment, fresh start.

  It had been the hardest decision of his life but also, he was certain, the appropriate one. But of course Toler wouldn’t hear of it. He ignored Jason’s warnings that the wolves were becoming unmanageable, saying Jason was being melodramatic, that as project supervisor he was nearly as involved in day-to-day operations as Jason and he could see no changes in the test subjects.

  Jason hadn’t had the guts to cross Toler. And now it was too late.

  ***

  Maybe one or two of the animals hesitated at Jason’s shouted “Halt!”

  Maybe not, too. If they did, it was only for the briefest of moments before they resumed their frenetic escape attempt.

  All control had been lost.

  The most frightening part of this new nightmare was that the wolves were actually making progress. To Jason’s utter shock, some of the cage wires were beginning to snap after being ground down to the breaking point by the predators’ razor-sharp teeth and relentless attack.

  His heart raced as he watched the assault on the cage. For the first time, he realized there was a very real possibility of these out-of-control animals escaping into the facility.

  He had prepared long ago for this possibility, while never really expecting to have to deal with it. He spun on his heel and hurried to a bank of cabinets containing much of his rarely used equipment, including—he hoped—a tranquilizer gun. He hadn’t tested the damned thing in ages, couldn’t remember the last time he had even removed it from storage.

  He wasn’t even sure he could find it anymore.

  Jason began pulling equipment out of cabinets and tossing it onto the floor, searching for the tranquilizer gun, becoming increasingly frantic as it continued to elude him. Behind him, some of the wolves had begun to bark and howl, short, terror-inducing outbursts that demonstrated perfectly the animals’ state of mind.

  A muffled ting signaled the destruction of another cage wire, and in rapid succession, two or three more tings followed it. Jason no longer doubted the wolves’ ability to escape. They had proven not just that it was possible, but that it was inevitable. It was now only a matter of time before it happened.

  He continued to search, swearing under his breath and emptying cabinets onto the floor. Why had he been so cavalier about safety measures, especially given the fact that the wolves’ condition had been deteriorating for weeks?

  He yanked out smocks and threw them to the left, pulled out spare headsets and tossed them right. Surgical equipment—trays of scalpels and clamps, sterilized but long unused, clattered onto the floor as Jason brushed them off a shelf.

  And still he could find no tranquilizer gun.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he mumbled under his breath as the yelps and barks and howls grew steadily louder and more frenzied.

  Ting, ting, ting. He could barely hear the noise over the ruckus in the lab. He wondered whether it was his imagination playing tricks on him and then realized it didn’t matter. He had seen the wires snapping, so whether he could actually hear them being breached or not was irrelevant. It was happening, and that was the important thing.

  The temptation to give up was almost overwhelming He could just slump to the floor right here in the middle of his lab. Sit on the cold tile and wait for the animals to escape their cages, to cross the floor and leap on him and tear him to pieces. It would be no less than he deserved. He had been responsible for the death of that poor boy last night, just as surely as if he had pulled out a gun and shot the young man in the head. It had been his hubris in thinking that he could control the uncontrollable, that he could harness the instinct for slaughter in animals who had evolved over the course of millennia into perfect predatory machines.

  But if he gave in to his temptation to surrender to the inevitable, his plan would go unfinished, and that was unacceptable. He had more work to do. Not a lot of work, that was true, but still, the scientist in him could simply not abide the notion of giving up before the job was complete.

  So he continued searching for the trank gun he knew had to be here somewhere.

  And that was when the lab door opened.

  30

  Colonel Toler’s face was as crimson and furious as Jason Greeley had ever seen it, and given his boss’s seemingly unlimited capacity for crimson-faced fury, that was saying something. He held a pistol in one hand and he loomed in the doorway like the angel of death.

  Toler ignored the cacophony of the shrieking wolves and trained his gaze—but thankfully not yet his gun—across the lab at Jason. He raised his weapon and flicked his wrist, making his wishes crystal clear.

  “Your office,” Toler said. “Now.” He didn’t raise his voice and his words were almost impossible to hear over the din inside the lab, but Jason knew what he said anyway.

  He raised his hands like he had seen people do in movies, knowing that showing the colonel he was unarmed would make absolutely no difference to Frank Toler. If he intended to shoot, he would do so when he was ready. Whether Jason’s hands were raised or lowered or he was
waving them around in the air like a goddamned symphony orchestra conductor would be irrelevant.

  He kept them up anyway.

  Ting, ting, ting.

  More wires gave way to the lupine assault, accompanied by ever-more rivers of blood overflowing the mouths of the animals and a steadily increasing frenzy of barking, howling and yelping. If Toler noticed, he kept it to himself. His focus was solely on Jason, his eyes dark and angry and hooded.

  As Jason passed the big wire enclosure housing the bleeding remnants of his failed Lupin Project, the ragged condition of the cage was obvious. Breached wires stuck out in random directions, causing untold damage to the wolves, who were flinging their powerful bodies against the deteriorating side of the cage, sensing its weakness.

  The amount of blood staining the area was staggering. Clumps of silver-grey blood-soaked fur littered the floor and Jason noticed with horror that one of his wolves had been stabbed in the eye with a wire, tearing the eyeball out of the socket and leaving it hanging like a tiny, bleeding marshmallow on a stick.

  Jason felt the bile rising through his gullet. He choked back a retch and kept walking. Toler fell into step behind him, shoving the barrel of his gun into Jason’s back in an utterly unnecessary display of aggression. His intentions seemed perfectly clear to Jason.

  Ting, ting ting.

  He stepped through the open doorway into his office, Toler right on his heels. The colonel brushed past him and stalked behind Jason’s desk, taking the position of authority as Jason briefly considered making a run for safety. He came to the immediate conclusion, however, that to do so would be to sign his own death warrant, because Toler kept his weapon trained on Jason the entire time, gun hand steady, angry eyes missing nothing.