The Biofab War

by Stephen Ames Berry

  Stepping into the lift, D'Trelna sketched his action report: the alarm had been quickly sounded, the area sealed, and the ship's reaction force, under his personal command, had killed the S'Cotar and wiped out their small base. The enemy vanquished, Implacable continued her mission. And yet...

  There were some disturbing issues raised by the attack. The Captain voiced one as he sank wearily into the command chair, dialing up a fruit drink. "What are the S'Cotar doing this far out on the galactic arm, H'Nar?"

  "Perhaps they're also looking for Imperial gear." Thoughtfully, he tapped the tip of the laser stylus against his teeth. "Question is, how long have they been out here? And why?

  "Also, J'Quel, while we've been fighting, the probe's been busy." He nodded toward Survey, where K'Raoda now sat, intently reading a telltale. "Those radio transmissions are confirmed. Early cybernetic age civilization on the third planet."

  "Cousins?" asked the Captain, knowing the answer.

  "As usual, according to preliminaries. The Empire must have seeded half the galaxy."

  "Why haven't the S'Cotar enslaved or exterminated those people, as always?" D'Trelna crumbled the empty cup between thick, blunt fingers, tapping it into the chair disposer. "The force we just beat could easily have taken one backward planet."

  "Well, only one way to find out," said the XO. "If this system holds any help or any answers, that world is the place to begin."

  "Agreed.

  "Mr. K'Raoda," he said, swiveling toward Survey, "if you can break away from those readouts for a moment, I will take damage control and casualty readouts at my station.

  "Mr. L'Sura, resume original heading for planet three.

  "H'Nar, please stand down from battlestations. Maintain high alert."

  Triumphant from her first battle in five thousand years, Implacable left the molten ruins of Demos and headed in toward Terra.

  Chapter 2

  Looking up at the small TV, John Harrison groaned. Sutherland! Not now! Why couldn't he ever call? This was carrying professional paranoia too damn far.

  Impatient, the casually dressed, middle-aged man rang the doorbell again.

  "Coming, Mother," John called over the intercom. Sutherland responded with a thumb ambiguously raised to the camera.

  Padding barefoot along his townhouse's carpeted hallway, Harrison opened the door, letting in Sutherland and the smell of blooming lilac. Down the block, the first produce stands of the day were setting up in front of Capitol Hill's Eastern Market. It was only eight, but already the air was moist, the sun too hot for April. It was going to be an early spring scorcher.

  "Don't you ever sleep?" asked John, leading the way back to his office.

  "I've had myself cloned.

  "You look like hell," added the CIA's Deputy Director for Special Operations, taking in the bleary eyes, rumpled shorts, dirty T-shirt and two days' worth of beard. "The eternal dissertation?" he asked, stepping into the sunny office.

  "No." They sat, John at his desk, Sutherland on the white Haitian cotton sofa next to the fireplace. "Certain Aspects of the Interrelationship of Cartesian Dualism and Quantum Mechanics is finished.

  "Coffee, Bill?"

  "Please."

  John poured from the grimy glass pot, handing Sutherland a white and blue mug. The CIA officer glanced at the caduceus etched into the front. "You on the KGB's Christmas list, John?" he asked, sipping cautiously.

  "Christ, I hope not. No, that's from a little gift shop in McLean, William. It's run by an elderly DAR matron. A couple of your guys told her they were physicians at Georgetown and got her to special order a raft of these." He hoisted his own mug. "If she ever finds out the truth, it'll kill her." They chuckled evilly.

  "So, the thesis is finished?"

  "Yeah. And I think I survived my orals. We'll know next week."

  "So why the midnight oil?"

  John sighed. "My book. My unfinished book for which I unwisely accepted an advance." He swept his mug over the desk top litter: canary legal pads covered in an illegible scrawl competed for space with three by five cards, photos and a stale, gnawed bagel. "I've got seven weeks to finish—hell!—to write eleven chapters."

  Sutherland's eyes widened. "Out of that rubble?"

  "Yup."

  He shook his head. "Always good at getting yourself in a bind, John." He smiled. "What's it about?"

  Extracting a grainy eight by ten black and white glossy from the mess, he handed it to Sutherland. "It's about that debacle." Taken from a distance, the photo showed a charred, helmeted body amid the scattered ruins of shattered aircraft. All about, the stark Turanian Desert stood mute witness to chaos: weapons, radios, medical kits, intact choppers and code books littered the abandoned staging area.

  "It has a title?" Sutherland asked with forced casualness, flipping the photo onto the desk.

  "Thy Banners Make Tyranny Tremble. We're using that photo for the jacket."

  "That's pretty damn cruel," snapped the CIA officer. "You know what happened. They cut and they cut and they cut until there was no redundancy—" He broke off, smiling ruefully. "Sorry, John. Old wounds. I'm sure it'll sell a million copies.

  "As an alumnus you did clear this with us?"

  "Harry Rosen in Liaison approved my sources and a brief outline."

  Sutherland's eyes widened. "The Harry Rosen? 'No air cover' Rosen?" John nodded. "I'd heard he was running a catfish farm in Mississippi." He sipped his coffee.

  "Okay, Bill," said John after a pause, "you didn't come here at the crack of dawn on a Sunday to shoot the breeze or drink day-old coffee. Level."

  "I do have a small bit of nastiness that needs tending," he admitted. "As you knew when you saw my fine-chiseled face in your boob tube."

  "I'd say 'blurring toward fat,' but go on."

  "Any chance of Zahava's hearing this?"

  John smiled. "No guarantee, but I'll try." Picking up the phone; he tapped a digit. A long moment later a mumble could be heard.

  "Sorry to wake you, but Bill Sutherland's here and he wants to talk shop. Fine. Yeah, I'll tell him." He hung up.

  "She'll be done in a few minutes. She says you're meshuga."

  "Is that like crazy?" asked Sutherland, trying to kill the coffee's acridness with a dollop of cream. Even older than the coffee, it floated to the surface, small clusters of decay.

  "That's like crazy."

  Bill set the mug aside. "The cafeteria coffee's as lousy as when you left."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning, you can always have your old cubicle back. Same old gray metal desk with the 1942 coffee rings. Squeaky, green, vinyl backed chair and basic black phone. And our current secretary's into primal scream."

  "You make it sound so attractive."

  Sutherland leaned forward, easing into his pitch. "It pains me to say it, but you're the best case officer I've had since... well, since I was a case officer."

  It was, John realized as Bill continued, the classic Outfit pitch. The Russians are coming—to the wall, brothers! He interrupted with a laugh.

  "I say something funny?" Sutherland glared.

  "Bill, do you know how many times I've delivered that line? No, let me finish." He held up a hand. "I saved Uncle's ass a lot of times over the years. First with CIA in Asia, then with the outfit in Africa, and finally running your Eastern networks."

  "Like I said, you were the best."

  "Am the best. Good enough for the Outfit to pay me very well to bail it out, now and then. And when you're not in trouble, DIA or NSA is. It's a good living. I don't have to do it all the time, and I don't have to put up with bureaucratic b.s. So, William, save your pitch for the next candidate. I'm out.

  "Whose ass needs saving today?"

  Before Sutherland could reply, the door slammed back and a great white-haired bear of a man stormed in, wearing denim shirt and pants with red suspenders. Under his left arm was a star-spangled red, white, and blue motorcycle helmet.

  "Can't ride a bike in this town w
ithout getting killed," he fumed. "Some turtlebrain's limo ran the light at Seventeenth and L. Another inch I'd have greased the road with my—" He spotted Sutherland.

  "Bill! How's our merry master of mendacity?" He grinned.

  "Bob—you unrepentant pinko." Sutherland shook the big hand. "Still riding that kraut suicide rack?"

  "My daughter disapproves," the older man said with a smile. Sinking into an armchair, he plopped his helmet down on the blue-and-white Oriental. "But Jason and Melaine adore having the only grandpa in town with a two-wheeled BMW.

  "What brings you over the bridge, Bill? Some lucrative chore we can perform?"

  A lithe, olive-skinned woman in her late twenties came in, wet jet-black hair wrapped in a mauve towel, a man's red terry-cloth robe falling to her feet. Rather large feet, the CIA officer noted covertly.

  "Good morning, Zahava," said Sutherland from the safety of his chair. He knew better than to rise for a sabra in the era of women's lib.

  "Good morning," echoed John and McShane, also keeping their seats.

  "Good morning," she said, pulling up a chair and lighting an unfiltered Camel. "This had better be worth my crawling out of bed, Bill."

  "It's worth a listen, Zahava, believe me." He settled back in his chair, the center of attention. -"First, though, the usual tired protocols.'' Taking a small voice activated tape recorder from his pocket, he put it on the coffee table. "This briefing is classified Top Secret/Janissary. No one may reveal any portion of it without the prior written permission of the Central Intelligence Agency."

  Stifling a yawn, Zahava poured herself a cup of coffee. They'd all heard this at least a dozen times in the past three years. She glanced at John, toying with his letter opener. Catching her eye, he gave her a lascivious wink.

  "So much for that," said Sutherland. "Okay, here's the situation. Royal Petroleum's been trying to sink some test wells off the Massachusetts coast. The project is now a year behind. Supports for the first platforms haven't even been sunk. There may be as many as forty-eight billion barrels of oil out there, maybe five times that much in trillion cubic feet of natural gas."

  "That would cut down on the filling station brawls, comes the next crunch," McShane said.

  "And it would help hold the line till we diversify energy sources," said Sutherland.

  "The delays, before last week, appeared to be coincidental: small accidents, bad hiring decisions, organizational snafus."

  "Such as?" John asked.

  "Oh, not ordering special equipment, damage to mapping gear, endless negotiations over the clearing and dredging of a modest port facility on Cape Cod.

  "Royal's project crew is based at the Leurre Oceanographic Institute on Cape Cod. Last week they were finally set to begin seismic mapping and core sampling when the submersible Argonaut was lost with both divers. One of them was our man."

  "This is domestic security," said John. "How did your people get into it?"

  "Argonaut belonged to us. She was on loan to Leurre—Leurre's under contract to Royal. We used her last year when we raised the Ulianov.'' It had been a brilliant CIA coup, that, raising a deep-sunken Soviet nuclear sub, her weapons, navigation and communications systems intact.

  "What happened to the sub?" asked Zahava, tucking her feet beneath her on the chair.

  "Lost. And our man murdered." Sutherland quietly put his coffee mug on the ceramic tabletop. "The body came drifting ashore at Yarmouthport. A poor attempt had been made to sink it. There was a speargun shaft through the heart."

  "Anyone I knew?" asked John.

  Sutherland shook his head. "No. Joe Antonucchi. Used to be in Reports, mostly West Africa. Just transferred in.

  "He'd been investigating the delays for the past month. The night before he was killed, he met with an informant on the Institute staff. But we don't know who the informant was—Antonucchi never got to file a report."

  "Any idea who's behind it?" asked Bob.

  "We first assumed an unfriendly power, trying to restrict our energy resources. But that's changed. Take a look at this."

  Sutherland opened his attaché case. Taking out a small flat package, wrapped in ordinary brown paper, he removed a triangular-shaped piece of rock, its edges fused. "This came, addressed to me, two days after we found Antonucchi's body," he said, passing the object to Bob. "The package had the right internal mail code. Joe's fingerprints were all over it."

  McShane turned the fragment over in his large hands.

  "What do you make of it, Bob?" asked Sutherland.

  "I'm a political philosopher and historian, Bill," he replied, examining the marks chiseled into the front.

  "But your hobby's Bronze Age languages, isn't it?"

  "How much are you paying my grandchildren?" grumbled McShane, not looking up.

  "You're a distinguished scholar, sir, your career one of public record," said Sutherland, velvet-voiced.

  "Someday, someone is going to poison you, Bill, slowly," John said dryly.

  Zahava peered over Bob's shoulder. "It looks like ..."

  "It is." The professor nodded. "The language Moses learned at the feet of the Great Ramses—Egyptian. Court Egyptian. It reads, 'The Exalted One: His Dwelling.'

  "Fascinating." He handed it to John, who glanced at it, then gave it back to Sutherland. The officer carefully re-wrapped it and locked it back in his attaché case.

  "Good old igneous granite," Sutherland continued. "Found all over New England. Very rare on the Cape, though, but present."

  "Why do you think it's from Cape Cod?" asked Zahava.

  "Our resident geologists say it's from the northeastern United States. I believe Antonucchi sent it to me. He was on the Cape. I assume, therefore, that this three-thousand-year-old lettering is from Cape Cod."

  "Are you sure it's not a forgery?" John asked, disbelieving.

  "The stone and inscription are equally weathered."

  "What is something from my part of the world doing in yours?" asked the Israeli.

  "I'd have to brush up," Bob said, "but there's some evidence of pre-Columbian colonization of the Americas. Nothing as far back as this, though." He pointed to the attaché case. "But then, who knows?"

  "Again, why us, Bill?" asked John. "I'm not trying to drive business away, but why not the FBI? A federal officer's dead."

  "We're in a double bind, John. I shouldn't have sent Antonucchi in. And sure, legally it's a case for the FBI. The Bureau, though, tried to penetrate whatever's happening at the Institute for eight months. Nothing." He paused.

  "The Bureau's come a million light-years since the overdue demise of the late Director. They're good people. I know—I work with them every day. And if I thought this a case requiring the wherewithal to walk unblinking into a firefight, I'd pick the Bureau over the Outfit any day. But this one's weird and political dynamite. If the Hill gets wind of our involvement in a domestic matter, it's good-bye Bill.

  "So, I need you, the Outfit needs you, and, at the risk of being thought a jingoist, your country needs you. Or at least two of you. Zahava, think of it as indirectly helping Israel.

  "Well?"

  Bob raised his hand. "Aye."

  "Why not," said Zahava, her hand joining McShane's in the air.

  Shaking his head, John looked at the cluttered desk top. "Aye," he said with a sigh.

  "Ah, I knew you couldn't let the Gipper down.'' Sutherland beamed. Rising, he switched off the tape recorder and pocketed it. "With your help, we'll get that port facility built and some producing wells dug. Can't run an armored division on cord wood."

  He turned at the door. "I'll send a courier around with a full briefing packet.

  "Oh, and John. Throw that coffee out. You'll live longer."

  "Don't you feel Bill's just using us to get himself out of trouble?" asked Zahava over brunch the next morning.

  John shrugged, looking up from the patio to the trees surrounding the townhouse's bricked-in yard. A pair of cardinals contended noisily with a blue jay f
or the last piece of winter suet hanging from the budding cherry tree.

  "Yeah, probably. Don't complain, though. The last two assignments were easy money. Besides, it's often complex, sometimes intriguing work—even dangerous. Those are hard qualities to come by in a job these days. Especially one that pays as well as this."

  "Israel doesn't lack for danger," she said pointedly.

  "There you go, recruiting for the Mossad again." He smiled easily. Her glare vanished. "Look, again I promise—we'll live in Israel once we've enough money to be free of that horrible inflation rate."

  It was a widening gap between them. Zahava had come to the States for the summer—several summers ago. John had met her in a grad seminar, learned of her Intelligence background and hired her to help out on a case. Despite their dissimilarities, they'd worked well together, become friends— close, intimate friends, much to the ill-concealed amusement of John's occasional helper, Bob McShane. After a year of living together, Zahava had extracted a reluctant promise from John to return home with her when he graduated and if they had enough money. Well, he was graduating next month and they had enough money, but he didn't want to go.

  He'd confessed to McShane—the Mideast with its insoluble carnage wasn't where he wanted to raise a family. But it was the only place Zahava would. Next month there'd be one very ugly confrontation.

  "It's all arranged," called Bob, stepping onto the patio.

  "What is?" John asked.

  "Miss Tal's new career. Special Assistant to my old friend, Dr. Lawrence Levine. Larry's currently Director of Plankton Research at Leurre Oceanographic."

  "I don't know anything about microorganisms, Bob!"

  "Ah, but can you type?"

  Agilely ducking the napkin ring, the professor sank into one of the white iron lawn chairs. Zahava menacingly hefted a grapefruit half.

  "Peace, quarter!" McShane laughed, crossing his arms over his face. The grapefruit slowly returned to its bowl.

  "Now listen, you two,'' he continued. ''Zahava will have to type, marginally, but it's superb cover. Someone on the staff knows about that Egyptian stele and its origins. There are only about two hundred people at the Institute, and Oystertown's a small place."