The Doomsday Box

by Herbie Brennan

  Carradine shook his head. “That could be tricky, all right, although I think the chances are he’ll buy it. The Montauk complex wasn’t built until 1967, but by sixty-two Cobra would have heard rumors about Project Rainbow, even though he wasn’t working for it then. No, my worry is the time element. We’re asking him to commit to something that won’t happen for more than twenty years. Think about it, Danny. I ask you to do something in twenty years’ time and you could be happy to promise today, but you’ve got two decades to change your mind. You’re a different person in twenty years. And even if he accepts your approach as genuine, he may not believe what we tell him about the outcome of his germ warfare mission.”

  “Why wouldn’t he believe us? Why would we go to the trouble of traveling through time”—and speaking of belief, Danny couldn’t believe he’d just said that—“to tell him lies?”

  “You could be working for the Russians. Or the Chinese. Or somebody who wanted to sabotage America’s biological weapons program.”

  “What about your note?”

  “I could be working for the Russians too.”

  “So he may not trust you either?”

  Carradine shrugged. “This is the CIA. We’re trained not to trust anybody.”

  Danny stared at Mr. Carradine briefly, then said, “When you were talking to us, when you were telling us about Cobra, you kept saying we. Like, we did this and we did that.”

  Carradine stiffened visibly. “What’s your point, Danny?”

  “You seemed to know an awful lot about it. I was wondering if you were part of it.”

  “Part of what?”

  “Part of Cobra’s nasty little undercover team. You said there were others involved. Were you one of them?”

  He thought Mr. Carradine might get angry, but all that happened was he stayed silent for a long moment, then said slowly, “No, Danny. No, I wasn’t. I didn’t agree with what they were doing and I wasn’t a member of the black-op team.”

  “But you knew what they were up to?”

  “Yes.”

  “In detail?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you blow the whistle on them?”

  To his astonishment, Mr. Carradine gave a wan smile. “Good question, Danny.”

  “What’s the answer?” Danny pushed.

  Carradine said, “Agent Cobra is my father.”

  Danny suddenly became aware of his heartbeat, ticking off the seconds. Eventually he said, “I’m sorry.”

  Carradine sighed. “I suppose I should have come clean right at the start. You can tell the others when you see them. Or not. I don’t suppose it matters, really. I was just . . . You know, it was just that . . .”

  It had been a while since Danny felt sorry for anybody in authority, but he felt sorry for Mr. Carradine now. “I understand,” he said. “Blood thicker than water and all that, never mind the regulations.” Frankly, he’d have done the same if Cobra had been his old Nan.

  “I let him go too far. I know that now. But we all have twenty-twenty hindsight.” He slid one hand into his jacket pocket. “Danny,” he said, “you’re different from the others. They’ve never had to survive among the lowlifes like you did. You couldn’t trust them with something like this, could you?”

  “Something like what?” Danny asked.

  “Danny,” Carradine said. “I want you to do your best to persuade Cobra—your very best. But if you can’t persuade him, or even if you have any doubt in your mind that he’s really, genuinely persuaded, I want you to kill him.”

  Danny stared, saying nothing.

  “You can do the math, Danny. If Cobra sends the samples through, millions die. One life; millions of lives.”

  Danny still didn’t speak.

  “You’re the only one capable,” Carradine said. “The others couldn’t. I wouldn’t even ask them. But you’re a realist. You’ll know if it has to be done.”

  Danny felt so cold inside he was positively numb. Suddenly he found his voice and, to his intense surprise, it sounded calm. “You’re wrong, Mr. Carradine. I couldn’t do it either.”

  It was as if Carradine hadn’t heard him. He drew his hand from his jacket pocket, and Danny saw it was holding a small, scuffed, leather-covered box, looking for all the world as if it might contain an engagement ring. “I want you to take this,” Carradine said, holding it out to him.

  “What is it?” Danny asked suspiciously. He drew away from the outstretched hand. Somehow he didn’t think this was a marriage proposal.

  Carradine flicked the box open with his thumb. Inside, nestling on the worn velvet padding, was an antique gold ring set with a large polished amethyst. He put the box down and took out the ring. “See this catch?” He used his thumbnail to press on what looked like a decoration in the setting. The amethyst sprang open like a lid, revealing a depression filled with powdery white crystals. A faint smell of almonds filled the air. “Two hundred fifty milligrams of potassium cyanide,” Carradine said. “It’s what the Nazis used to kill themselves after the war. Fastest-acting poison known. Swallow this and you’ll collapse immediately. You’ll lose consciousness in ten to twenty seconds. A minute or so after that and you’re dead from cardiac arrest.” He pressed down to close up the amethyst. “It’s soluble in alcohol or water, or you can sprinkle it on food.”

  Danny stared at the ring in horrified fascination. “You want me to feed this poison to your father?”

  “Hopefully you won’t have to,” Carradine said. “I pray to God you won’t have to. But there are millions of lives at stake. Literally millions. Call it insurance.”

  Danny had started to feel sick to his stomach, sick and dizzy. “You’re asking me to kill your own father!” he hissed.

  “Take the ring,” Carradine said quietly. “You don’t have to tell the others if you don’t want to. Just take the ring. You decide when to use it, if ever. Your decision, absolutely. And only if you’re sure—you’re sure, nobody else—there is absolutely no other way. Insurance, like I said. Take it, Danny.”

  Danny watched his own hand reach out to take the ring.

  Chapter 17

  Fuchsia, the Transportation Chamber, the Montauk Project

  The equipment was sort of retro—all eighties brushed aluminum and banks of sliders—but sort of futuristic too. Mr. Carradine had switched on the power, and the chamber was filled with a gentle hum.

  The others were already there. Michael looked okay, which could just be because he hid his feelings so well. Opal looked nervous, like you’d expect, but Danny was looking positively sick. He was a much more sensitive soul than he pretended, and he was probably worried about what would happen if they couldn’t complete their mission. All those people dead from some horrible germ warfare mutation: it was a huge responsibility. Although oddly enough, Fuchsia wasn’t afraid, because she had a good feeling about the mission. Not one of her actual flashes, but just a generalized good feeling, as if everything was going to be all right.

  She moved across to stand beside Danny. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.”

  The control equipment seemed to take the raw edge off the rift, so that it no longer looked like an impossible void leading into nothingness. Fuchsia was glad of that: it made the whole thing less scary. She wondered what the sensation of traveling through time would be like. It was actually really hard to imagine. The sensation of traveling through space varied from nothing much when you were taking a walk, to really exciting when you were riding a roller coaster. Maybe traveling through time was something like that: it depended on how fast you went and how far. Or maybe it wasn’t. But she’d soon find out.

  “Everybody ready?” Mr. Carradine asked in that sort of hearty, Everything’s under control and perfectly all right voice adults seemed to put on when they were worried sick.

  They all muttered yes. All the same, he asked, “Got the packs I made up for you?”

  They nodded. The packs were wallets of maps an
d things to help them until they got to Mr. Stratford. Not much to be taking on a time trip. Not even an overnight case with a change of underwear and toothbrush, but Mr. Stratford was supposed to arrange everything for them so there would be no anachronisms—nothing out of place in 1962.

  “All wearing your badges?”

  Again the collective murmur of assent. The badges, Mr. Carradine had explained, were actually miniaturized communications devices that would be used to report the completion of their mission.

  “Okay,” Carradine said. “Let’s get started—and good luck.” He pushed three of the sliders, and the hum in the chamber racked up quickly into a high-pitched whine. To Fuchsia’s surprise, the rift between the two huge magnets changed color and began to emit a pleasing violet glow.

  “That’s pretty,” she murmured.

  Mr. Carradine glanced across at her. “Matter-antimatter collisions generate violet photons,” he told her.

  “Cool,” Fuchsia said.

  “So what do we do now?” Michael asked.

  “I’d like to send all of you together,” Carradine said. “It’s a bit safer that way. If you send people sequentially—one after the other—there’s the risk of slight variations in the particle flow. When that happens, it means you all arrive at different times. It’s usually only a matter of seconds, or minutes at most, but it can sometimes be as much as an hour or two, which would be confusing and inconvenient. I’d rather send you together if you can all fit between the pillars.”

  “I imagine we can,” Michael told him.

  “We’ll snuggle up close,” Fuchsia said to Danny, grinning. She reached out and took his hand. She noticed Michael had already taken Opal’s, which was nice. They walked forward and stood between the magnetic pillars. There was, in fact, plenty of room for all four of them.

  “Okay,” Carradine said. “Here we go!” He made some final adjustments and threw a switch. The hum that had become a whine increased in volume, then went off the scale. The lights in the chamber flickered, then their whole environment dissolved into a maelstrom of conflicting energies.

  Just before she blacked out, Fuchsia suddenly felt uneasy.

  Chapter 18

  The Team, Somewhere in America, 1962

  This can’t be right,” Opal said, frowning.

  She and Danny were standing with Michael and Fuchsia in what looked like a well-tended garden, or possibly a park. The sun was shining, in stark contrast to the harsh strip lights in the Montauk complex, and the grass underfoot had more the look of a lawn than a meadow. They had materialized—there was no other word for it—between two large, sheltering bushes, and emerged, after momentary disorientation, onto a narrow path beside a flower bed.

  “I thought we’d be in a city,” Opal said. “Isn’t Langley—?”

  “Mr. Carradine wanted us to arrive somewhere we wouldn’t be seen,” Michael told her.

  “I know, but I thought that meant a back alley or an empty room or something.”

  From the corner of his eye, Danny noticed that Fuchsia, still in the shelter of the bushes, was bent over as if she was about to be sick. “Are you all right?” he asked urgently.

  Fuchsia raised her head and looked into his face with an expression of bewilderment. Her eyes were round and the pupils dilated. “Everything’s all wrong,” she whispered. “I don’t see you properly.”

  “What, like I’m blurred?”

  Fuchsia shook her head. “I didn’t say I couldn’t see you. It’s more that I’m not seeing you properly. It’s as if you’re stretched out, like a worm. Actually everything looks stretched out.”

  “Look, maybe you’d better sit down.” He reached out to take her arm. “Fuchsia’s not feeling well,” he called to the others.

  Opal came over at once and put her arm around Fuchsia’s shoulders. “Are you going to be sick?”

  “It may be a reaction to time travel,” Michael remarked. “I found it a bit disorienting myself.”

  “Me too,” Danny said. But the feeling had passed quickly. He looked worriedly at Fuchsia, wondering what they would do if she really was sick with a bug or something. Did they have antibiotics in 1962?

  “I’m not ill,” Fuchsia said. “I’m different.”

  “What way different?” Opal asked her gently.

  “It’s the way I see things.” She screwed her eyes tight shut, then opened them again. “That’s better. A bit. Maybe if I . . .” She did the eye thing again. “That’s nearly normal.”

  “This isn’t to do with your precog talent, is it?” Michael asked her.

  “Yes,” Fuchsia said. “Yes, I think it is. It’s as if something’s changed it.”

  Opal said, “Mr. Carradine never really told the rest of us much about you. What exactly is your talent? Or can’t you talk about it?”

  “Oh, it’s not a secret or anything—it’s just that there hasn’t been much to talk about. I’m not special like the rest of you: I couldn’t leave my body even when they tried me with the helmet. But ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had these weird feelings about things that were going to happen, and some of them came true. When I turned twelve, I started to get blackouts, and the doctor couldn’t find a reason. And actually they weren’t blackouts, not really: I saw visions, flashes—”

  “Flashes of the future?” Michael asked.

  “Yes,” Fuchsia said matter-of-factly. “Only some of them didn’t come true—”

  “But some did?” Michael interrupted again.

  “Oh, yes, of course. Actually most of them did, although there weren’t very many. And there were some blackouts where I didn’t remember anything afterward but I talked during them and described things, and my father wrote them down. He’s a university professor and he wanted to have me properly tested at Edinburgh—they have a parapsychology department there. But then the Shadow Project got wind of it and recruited me for training. Except that the training hasn’t worked very well up to now. But the strange thing—” She stopped, staring into the middle distance.

  “What’s the strange thing, Fuchsia?” Danny prompted her.

  “Just now,” Fuchsia said, “when you thought I was being sick, I was seeing the future, but not in flashes like I used to.”

  “Can you describe it?” Danny asked. He was starting to feel excited. It wasn’t every day you found somebody who could see the future.

  “I think I can bring it back,” Fuchsia said. She closed her eyes and jerked her head sharply, like a nervous twitch. She opened her eyes briefly. “Nearly.” She shut them again and gave another twitch. “Got it!” she exclaimed as she opened her eyes again. She stared around her as if examining the scene for the first time, then slowly smiled. “This is cool!” The smile disappeared. “Losing it . . .” She turned back to Danny. “Gone.”

  “What did you have? A picture of the future?”

  “Yes, sort of,” Fuchsia said. “Just for a second, but I definitely had it. I think with practice I might be able to hold it longer, maybe turn it on and off when I want.” She looked at them, wide-eyed. “It’s not at all like I expected.”

  Opal said, “What’s it like, Fuchsia?”

  “It’s as if I can see time.”

  Danny pushed in again. “You can see time?”

  “What’s it like?” Michael asked.

  “It’s like looking across a broad plain and there are roads running through it. Only some of the roads are misty and not quite there, but others are very solid and real. Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not a lot,” Danny said.

  “Look,” said Opal gently, “we can talk about this later. If you’re really all right, Fuchsia?”

  Fuchsia grinned. “Yes, definitely. And I’d like to think about it anyway.”

  “The thing is,” Opal said, “we need to find our way to Langley and meet up with Agent Stratford, and I’m not sure I know exactly how to do that. Where are we? Does anybody know?”

  “Have you looked at your map? There’s one in
the packs Mr. Carradine gave us.”

  “Yes, I have,” Opal said. She produced her map. “I think we may be on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, but I can’t find Langley anywhere.”

  “Can you find McLean?” Michael asked.

  Opal peered at her map. “Yes, it’s to the left of the parkway.”

  “That’s Langley,” Michael said. “At least, Langley’s a part of McLean. A neighborhood, as they call it over here.”

  Opal folded her map. “All right, we think we know where we are now, but how do we get ourselves to Langley and CIA headquarters?”

  Fuchsia said, a little hazily, “We take the bus that’s coming any minute. It will drop us at the gate.”

  Chapter 19

  Danny and the Team, CIA Headquarters, Langley, 1962

  CIA headquarters at Langley was a new-looking, flat-roofed, pale-colored building fronted by a stretch of well-kept lawn. It looked more like a university campus than the home of the country’s most important intelligence service.

  “How did you do that?” Danny asked Fuchsia quietly as they walked into the enormous lobby.

  “Do what?”

  “The bus. How did you know it was coming? How did you know it would get us here?”

  Fuchsia grinned a little smugly. “I could see it coming and us riding in it.”

  Danny decided to leave the questions until they had a bit more time together. But however confused he felt just now, one thing was sure: using the time gate at Montauk seemed to have stimulated Fuchsia’s precog ability and even given her some control over it. That was going to be very useful. Very useful indeed.

  There was a biblical quotation at the entrance to the lobby: AND YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE—JOHN VIII.XXXII. The lobby itself was dominated by an enormous circular granite seal, which must have been easily sixteen feet in diameter, inlaid into the flooring. It showed an eagle’s head above a shield with a sixteen-pointed star in the middle. Around the outer circle were the words Central Intelligence Agency United States of America.