Beautiful Disaster

by C. J.

  “Yes, most of our assignments are confidential,” Boston answered while casually leaning back in his chair. He paused, then a look of confusion flashed across his face. He rose slightly in his chair, hovered above the seat, and slammed his palms down onto his blotter, smashing a pen in the process. “Alleged unit? What do mean by alleged, useless and redundant?”

  “For one thing we already have a similar organization in place. U.S. Aid From the American People, USAID, which makes you and your unit...” (Skerry made little quotation marks in the air), “...redundant. Also, your unit consists of you and one other person. The rest are mercenary types you hire on a job by job basis. The salaries and benefits for your little unit of twenty non-existent employees funnels, I assume, to your Swiss bank account with a cut to your sole employee. You are aware The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence oversees the intelligence community of which you are a part? The Committee can reign in, shut down, and in some cases imprison those who misuse, or in your case, blatantly steal from, their allotted budgets.” She leafed through a thick file and added, “I see this appears to be a pattern for you throughout your employment history.”

  Skerry sat back in her chair with a small smile on her face, thinking, This is when they all start pleading and making excuses.

  Boston, however, just stared at her with those cold silvery eyes. Who had silver eyes? Why isn’t he saying anything? I’m not sure he’s even breathing. Why do I feel uncomfortable? This is not going as planned. Skerry cleared her throat slightly and said in what she thought was a straightforward, clear voice, “Well, Theodore do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Boston had stopped hovering over his chairseat and suddenly stood up, which made Skerry back away slightly.

  “First, my unit is nothing like the UNICEF clone USAID division. My division is boots on the ground, get your hands dirty, do the job, and leave no trace. In and out, bam!” Boston punctuated this by slamming his fist down on the desk. “Yes, I hire outside the government payroll. Everyone human resources sent me had, how can I say, a....”

  “A conscience?”

  “Yes. That’s it exactly! Boston thundered pointing at Skerry. “You know exactly what I mean.”

  “Which is the reason for my visit to your little office today. You have been selected by someone higher up than me to give you a choice. You and your second in command, Joseph, either go down in flames regarding your appropriation of government funds, or do what you do best and stamp out the storm that is upon us regarding that sent from hell formula. We originally felt that Teaberry was the best target on which to place the blame. Teaberry was perfect, but they had to be noble and go public on how their company was to blame, and that for every jar of the formula turned in, they would triple people’s money back. They also threw a consultant under the bus, some nobody who’d assisted in coming up with the formula. Teaberry handled that nicely: ‘Yes, we will take the blame, but this guy, was the one who really poisoned you.’ Now, we can’t use Teaberry as a scapegoat, and Tranwrach was just too pathetic to use. Blaming him would be like throwing a brain-damaged hamster to the wolves.”

  “So what’s the plan?”

  “It’s two-pronged. Find scapegoats we can use. A similar formula was produced at the same time. Find those bodies. Not the corporation, the people. It’s much easier to hate faces. That’s the second part of the plan, so put it on the back burner. The most important part of your assignment is to come with scenarios on how to control the ever-expanding population. Get me stats on how much time we have, how many bodies we have cluttering up the planet. Also, include projected life spans with and without the formula and how to get a controllable number of bodies on this rock ASAP. You can hire people, but I want actual government workers, not crazed mercenaries. By the end of this year, the formula will have been out for four years, and our number crunchers estimate the planet will be carrying eight billion people. Verify that figure as well. This is getting serious. If you are successful, I understand there are a few openings at the NSA in its collection division. Don’t fail, or your perfect little world will end. Do you understand?”

  Boston stared silently at Skerry for a full ten seconds. Then he reached out his hand to shake hers said, “I understand. I will get to work immediately and inform my sole employee of the change in direction the unit has taken. There will be no problems. You can count on it. I have a division in mind for the number crunching. I believe they have less than twenty in their department and there is a task force of sorts for this very problem,” he said with a grin.

  After Skerry had left, Boston looked down and saw he had started to tear his desk blotter in half without realizing it. “My ‘perfect little world’? Oh yes, I do indeed have a perfect world in mind, and you and your kind, Skerry, have no place in it.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  IN AN OFFICE, MUCH like all offices around the world, a man sat at a desk, trying to make the most vital decision of the day, what to have for lunch when a phone on his desk rang. He sat frozen, staring at the red phone with no buttons, only a single ominous flashing bulb. After three flashes, the phone began to buzz, and then vibrate. Like an incorrectly centered washing machine, it started walking across the desk toward the open-mouthed man. At the same time, his cell phone began to vibrate. With more than a slight tremble in his hand, he picked up the handset, took a deep breath, and from the deep recesses of his mind tried to remember the passphrase he had been given when he had been appointed Special Agent in Charge ten years ago. “Oh hell,” he said into the handset.

  “That’s not it. Try again,” a cold, detached voice answered.

  Special Agent Humberto Fuego pulled out his middle desk drawer so violently it punched him in his stomach. “Oof!”

  The monotone voice continued, “Wrong yet again.”

  Humberto felt underneath the drawer for the note he taped there years ago, ripped it off, and blurted out without really reading, “Penguins could fly if they really wanted to. God, what a stupid passphrase." Humberto read the entire note into the phone, forgetting he had added the last sentence as sort of fuck you to the system.

  The eerie voice on the other end hissed, sending shivers up Humberto’s spine, “Correct at last. Except for that last bit. We don’t care about your editorializing. Get your team together. It’s code brown. I repeat code brown. This is what you and your select group have been training for all these years. I hope you won’t disappoint. Coordinates will be sent to your secure phone shortly. Meet me at this location tomorrow at 0700 with some preliminary data. This is it. This is not a drill.”

  Humberto heard the hang-up click and stared at his phone, hoping for more information to materialize. This is it, not a drill code brown. Now, what was code brown again? That seemed rather harmless, Humberto thought to himself as he drummed his fingers on his desk. Of course, that voice from Oz appeared to have a hair up its ass about something. Maybe they heard that while all the other groups trained by late-night poker games, Alpha team actually did their training and kept abreast of world events. Humberto was all about being prepared. Well, might as well notify the troops. Humberto cleared his throat several times and then realized he had already pushed his intercom button, and his assistant Cathy heard quite a bit of phlegm over the air. “Sorry, Cathy. Cathy, alert my group that we have a code brown and tell them to drop whatever they're doing and meet in conference room C. I’ll need you to bring the Alpha binder with you.” Humberto hadn’t realized it, but he had been holding his breath while speaking to Cathy and now let out a whoosh of air which blew his neat and orderly desk of notes in disarray.

  Conference room C was actually in the sub-basement where Alpha team did all their training. It was where all the teams were supposed to train, but over time, the other teams slowly lost interest and moved their preparation excercises to various locations, such as Bennigans, Hooters, and a rotation of different team members’ homes for poker tournaments. Alpha team was the only team to remain c
ommited to the cause due to social inadequacy (no friends), free access to state of the art computer equipment, and to personal data that no one should have access to, not to mention a chance to wear cool, all black clothing. There was no reason to wear BDUs, but the majority of the team felt it was necessary to wear cool battle dress uniforms. The eight members of Alpha team fell into one or more of these categories. Humberto fell into all of them.

  Humberto would’ve made a perfect spy. He could blend in anywhere as he was totally non- descript. Average height and weight. Possibly Hispanic, of Native American heritage, or maybe a Caucasian with a good tan. He had impeccably styled, short dark hair with a neat mustache that looked almost painted on, and wore round, wire-rim glasses that he polished on his shirt when he got down to business. He had a head for numbers and a body for chess.

  The only thing that stopped him from a career in the spy biz was his total dislike of dirt and his borderline agoraphobia. He loved offices, the comfort of cubicles, and the buzz of fluorescent lights. He would often daydream of designing a tube of some sort that would zip him from his apartment to the office and bypass the horrible, weather filled unpredictability of the outdoors.

  If Alpha team were activated, they would have to come up with scenarios and the probabilities of what would occur if the population went into overdrive or was severely under populated for unforeseen reasons. The team would then form theories how to best handle such occurrences. None of them felt these events would ever occur, but they loved statistics and problem solving, and they got to design their own outfits. (“Uniforms” for the guys. God forbid anyone call one the male members of the Alpha team uniforms an “outfit”; they would have a stroke, except for Carl who put purple piping on his outfit and had matching shoelaces in his combat boots.)

  When Alpha team had all gathered in conference room C, they had the happy look of grade-school kids who have just learned class was canceled due to a last-minute school assembly. All except Cathy, that is, who looked like a pop quiz had just been announced.

  “What’s up, Cathy? Why so sad?” asked Humberto

  Usually, Cathy was the happiest of Humberto’s team and typically had something to say to cheer him up. Cathy was Humberto’s assistant and the go-to person for virtually everything. She was also everything Humberto wasn’t. She hated to be cooped up indoors and went outside for all her breaks and lunches. She went on extreme vacations. Spelunking all over the world, skydiving, cave diving, the more extreme, the better. Humberto preferred libraries and museums, while Cathy did all the things that he read about at the library. And like the rest of the group, numbers and statistics were another one of Cathy’s passions. Her high IQ and low tolerance of ignorance made her a perfect fit at work, but nowhere else. Due to her hobbies, she was incredibly fit and lean. She stood five foot nine and weighed 133 pounds of lean muscle. Her nervous energy made others fidget along with her. She kept her ash blonde hair short in a wave cut, which made it look as though her hair was moving even if she wasn’t which wasn’t often. She once came to work at the height of the rollerblade craze wearing a pair of hot pink roller blades and ran down the Fed Ex guy in the hallway to intercept a package. Humberto had to tell her to take them off or risk being sued.

  “Code brown,” Cathy now said slowly, as if talking to someone who did not speak English as their primary language or to a very young and somewhat backward child.

  “Well, it’s not like code red. Code brown's gotta be way down the list right?” Humberto replied completely missing Cathy’s tone.

  “No. Code brown is the worst possible ever, it’s worse than red. Red happens, and then you brown your pants. Brown is bad.”

  “Crap.”

  “Exactly. Now you are getting it?”

  “It’s because of this youth cream stuff, isn’t it?”

  “It wasn’t so bad when it was just a cosmetic product, but now, in addition to improving one's looks, the stuff has actually slowed down the death rate. The Grim Reaper has taken a holiday. We either have to discredit the source, contaminate the product, or worst-case scenario...” Cathy gave Humberto a meaningful look.

  “What? Did you just brown your uniform? You don’t mean plan TOTH? “

  “If the population doesn’t correct itself naturally, then unnatural steps will have to be taken. That’s why you got the call from the red phone. Isn’t that right, Humberto?”

  “Geez, what do you do, you do, listen at the keyhole?” This came out much whinier than Humberto had intended.

  “You're our team leader, Humberto, man up!” snapped Cathy.

  “Right. Of course. This is for real. Let’s crunch the numbers and see what we have for the worst case scenario, and then, God forgive us, start TOTH scenarios. Let’s first start with that idiot responsible. If he goes down in flames, this may all die a sweet, diet of the month death.”

  “Literally or figuratively?” Carl asked, looking confused.

  “Whichever works!” snapped Humberto, and began madly polishing his glasses on his shirt.

  “Uh oh, Humberto just put on his big boy boots. Party is over,” sang Carl

  Humberto shot Carl a look. “Like I said let’s get to work. No distractions, nothing else matters. I have to deliver some sort of game plan tomorrow at 0700.”

  Everyone scattered to their work area, and screens begin popping up so Humberto could see what everyone was working as they progressed. Carl, however, went to the binder and looked up TOTH. Thinning of the Herd. “Oh, Sweet Mother of God” Carl said and made the sign of the cross.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  07:00

  Humberto stood outside the meet spot hoping he was at the wrong address. In fact, he went around the block several times looking in vain for a pleasant, antiseptic modern building. Unfortunately, he kept returning to the address specified as the meet spot. The building he stood before looked like it was slowly melting in on itself. Humberto counted four stories, but it seemed much shorter. From the front, it appeared to have sprouted bushy eyebrows; at both corners, the top portion of the building was pushed out. The center of the building, from roof to sidewalk, sagged inward like it had just sucked on some sour candy.

  As Humberto approached the front of the crumbling brownstone, he could smell the odor of decay before he even touched the grayish rectangles he assumed had once been doors. He donned gloves he planned on incinerating as soon as was clear of this nightmare of a building and pulled open one of the grayish doors. He heard a high- pitched scream, let out one of his own, and released the door. As the door closed, another cry came, and he realized it was the old, rusty door hinges shrieking. Only slightly reassured, he giggled nervously, opened the door again, and entered the building.

  As much as he hated the outdoors, Humberto wished he was outside now, which scared him to the core. A man in a suit, in a hue somewhere between beige and gray, who was even more nondescript than Humberto, met him in the lobby and asked if he wanted to go get some coffee. After his first impression of Mold Central, Humberto almost grabbed Mr. Nondescript and told him that he was buying until he realized this was the passphrase. He then blurted out his response, “No thanks, I had a latte on the way over.”

  God, why did this seem so incredibly moronic instead of thrilling? Here he was, meeting at a clandestine place with unknown people, hearing passphrases and giving counter phrases. Yet instead of having the time of his life, all he could think of was how silly a way this was for grown people to act, and maybe they should really go have coffee somewhere. While all this was traveling through Humberto’s head, Mr. Nondescript was being leading him upstairs. Of course upstairs, this thing couldn’t be held on the ground floor, thought Humberto, and why should we take the elevator when we can enjoy inhaling all this delightful dust and mold.

  With every step, a cloud of dust blew up toward Humberto’s face. He tried to hold his breath while climbing the stairs to avoid breathing in the filth, mold, and oh my God possibly asbestos. OK, Humberto, get a grip, as
bestos isn’t found in carpeting. Asbestos is found in ceilings and walls. He glanced upward and saw pieces of the ceiling hanging above his head; the stairwell’s walls were covered with flaking hideous purple and orange wallpaper. Humberto stopped and peered closer at the wallpaper. “Are those cupids or flying pigs? God this is like something out of a nightmare,” he muttered.

  “Did you have a question?” Nondescript man asked.

  “Er, I take it the elevator is out of order?” gasped Humberto, unable to hold his breath any longer. He paused in the middle of the staircase and tried to take in the smallest breaths possible to avoid contamination from the mold filled air or the flaking wallpaper,

  Mr. Nondescript stopped several steps ahead of Humberto and turned to him, “Limited electricity in the building, just for our purposes upstairs. In fact, it’s scheduled for implosion soon. Better get moving. The boss is a stickler for time.”

  At the fourth floor, Mr. Nondescript heard a rattling, wheezing sound coming from behind him. Curious, I didn’t think the HVAC was operational, he thought, turning to spot the source of the noise. “Oh it's you, I thought the heating system had just turned on.”

  Humberto had dropped his iPad, taken off his jacket, and was wheezing while grasping both sides of the doorway to keep from falling over.

  “Oh, God, this is awful. I didn’t realize how out of shape I was. I think I’m having a stroke or possibly a heart attack.”

  “No you’re not, and even if you are, we don’t have time for it. Now get a move on. We are pressed for time.”