Beautiful Disaster

by C. J.

  Humberto had found his glass cleaner and wipes and was in a much better mood. He put on his clean glasses and replied, “Yes, we know that’s what Joe and Suzanne’s little visit was all about. Laying the blame and then eliminating us to make the governments look good, like they were on top of the situation and were handling the crisis.”

  “Mr. Millwood has some unusual friends apparently, and he was able to take part in these meetings, and record said meetings,” Bond informed. “They thought they were careful, but the society of sociopaths got pretty graphic in what it wanted to be done and how to go about it. During one of these meetings, heck, during most of these meetings, there were screaming arguments about what should be done and how large segments of the population should be annihilated, and high-level names were dropped as well as what countries to start with. People are going to be extremely eager to make sure these recordings never get out in full. According to Mr. Millwood, all your family members will be protected as part of the deal regarding holding portions of the recordings back. Mr. Millwood has been worried about everyone’s safety for some time now. It was Mr. Millwood’s team that came to Maggie’s rescue. They had been in the general area in case they were needed. He also says he has a yet unnamed person who will take the fall for this whole mess regarding the leak of the formula and the fact that it was poorly tested. Apparently, the first responders at the house found some poor schmuck they caught red-handed with evidence in hand.”

  “Who could that be? All our people are accounted for. What do you guys think? A few of us could go to the main house and feel things out, I suppose. I will go. Who else wants to go with?” Melissa asked and heard...

  Deafening silence

  “Oh my God, stop, all of you. One at a time, I can’t hear because all of you so-called friends are volunteering all at once.”

  “It just occurred to me, love of my life, glorious creature with whom I could not live without, whose beauty rivals.” Kevin began.

  “Oh for God’s sake, Kevin, just spit it out!” shouted Melissa.

  “Yes, well then. Something occurs to me about what Bond said earlier about Mr. Millwood knowing the location of all our houses. If that is true and if Mr. Millwood had nasty intentions, he would’ve had people waiting for us here or dispatched here by now to eliminate us. I say we bring along necessary precautions and head on over to home sweet home. Cathy, you have been watching the monitors and listening in, have you heard anything sinister at the house? Cathy! Cathy, why are you drooling?”

  “They are just about to sit down in your dining room to have steak, ham, garlic potatoes, pasta salad, and Caesar salad. Wait, I’m zooming in. And it, also looks like rolls fresh out of the oven and pretzel bread.”

  Joshua and Anthony, who had been sitting in the video playing chairs, were nearly trampled by the hungry herd racing for the circular staircase.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

  AT THE MAIN HOUSE...

  After a very emotional reunion with Humberto, Cathy, Joshua, Anthony and their team members, everyone swarmed into the dining room, causing a mini-collision just inside the entryway. Muffled and not so muffled cries of “Get the hell out of the way!” were drowned out by a chorus of “What the fuck are you doing here?” from Danny, Kevin, and Maggie. Kevin and Maggie were forcefully pushed forward into the room by the hungry mob behind them. Once inside the dining room, the group was torn between the strong aroma of the food-laden table and an intense looking and impeccably dressed black man and the man behind him. The impeccably dressed man spoke first, and as he did, he made an incredibly quick and graceful move which caused the man who had been hiding behind him to spin in a half circle and flail his arms about.

  “For those who do not know me, I am Franklin Millwood, Head of R&D at Lexi Corp and.

  “What the fuck is he doing here?” Maggie burst out, pointing at the man behind Millwood.

  “We’ve been under a bit of a strain, explosions, shooting, that sort of thing, sir,” Danny said apologizing for Maggie’s outburst while he and Kevin dragged Maggie away from Mr. Millwood.

  “Yes, it’s a wonder she is coherent at all,” added Kevin.

  “Don’t forget impalement, Danny.” Maggie said. “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Millwood, for everything you did. If it hadn’t been for your team showing up at the house, I don’t know what would’ve happened to me given that ridiculous injury I sustained.”

  “I see everyone is eager to meet our other guest, but let’s sit down to this wonderful feast. As hard as it may be for some of you to believe, Gerald has been a great help to our project.”

  “Great help?” Maggie nearly screamed. “Are you out of your ever loving mind? Seriously, have you taken some of the unknown formula and snorted it? ‘Great’ and ‘Gerald Jacquess’ have only ever been used in the same sentence to mean ‘great pain in the.’”

  Maggie was unable to finish her sentence as Danny took this opportunity to stuff a giant roll into her mouth. She yanked the roll out and was about to unload a torrent of abuse on her beloved when she spied what Kevin had slid in front of her. “Oh my, is that a honey glazed ham? Yes, please, Kev, two slices. And Danny, if you are through hogging those garlic potatoes, send them my way.”

  After thirty minutes of uninterrupted eating, Mr. Millwood saw that the feeding frenzy had slowed. He also noticed that Danny and Kevin had been exchanging glances. “Is there something you wished to say, gentlemen?” Mr. Millwood inquired.

  “Sir, Mr. Millwood, sir, Kevin and I were wondering how you became involved in all this. I mean, I know the formula is Lexi’s property and all, but the tact team and finding us and dealing with “the Boss.” I mean that’s sort of going beyond your job description, isn’t it? Sir?”

  Drinking glasses froze in midair, and knives and forks clattered onto plates and the wooden dining table. All eyes turned toward Mr. Millwood.

  Mr. Millwood cleared his throat, gently placed his knife and fork onto his empty plate, and dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin, carefully folded it into a perfect triangle, and set it alongside his dish. “Ladies and Gentlemen, in the beginning.”

  “Oh God, he isn’t going that far back, is he? OW!!” yelped Danny in response to a kick under the table, which felt like a familiar Maggie kick.

  “No, Danny, I’m not going quite that far back. Now to continue, if I may?”

  “Yes, sir, sorry, sir,” Danny apologized to his plate, not daring to look at Mr. Millwood.

  “While you were at Lexi and shortly after the formula had been appropriated by Teaberry, I felt it was prudent to keep an eye on both you and Mr. Montgomery, to ensure your well-being during your EAP absence. After that, I continued with the surveillance to be sure of your continued safety. During the surveillance, it became clear that other parties were also interested in your activities. I gathered my intelligence through contacts I had acquired from my previous employment.”

  There were murmurs, but Mr. Millwood ignored them. “You may ask, but you will not get a satisfactory answer. It also became clear that Ms. Penny was involved with a formula, but not necessarily Lexi’s or Teaberry’s. I was very interested in that discovery. Ms. Penny, Mr. Kensington, and Mr. Montgomery eventually led me to Mr. Zhang Lei aka Bond, and a Chinese version of the formula that was very similar to Lexi’s. At this point, however, I was more interested in Theodore Boston, Humberto’s contact and the man he knew only as “the Boss.” Mr. Boston is part of the dark, nasty underbelly of our government, with which I, unfortunately, have more than a passing acquaintance.” Mr. Millwood and Humberto exchanged a look, after which Humberto sighed deeply and regarded his now clean plate.

  Millwood cleared his throat slightly and continued. “Mr. Boston reached out to others of his kind across the globe, plans were formed, and tests were made. With the help of Gerald.”

  “What? I don’t?” blurted out Maggie.

  “Yes, I know, but let me continue. One of my old friends with whom I used to work in my previ
ous life, shall we say, contacted me and told me there had been some chatter regarding Boston. He had a reputation for being a loose cannon, one unconcerned, morally or otherwise, with collateral damage. There were rumors he was involved with a group of like-minded individuals of power around the globe who were meeting to talk about how and when to scale back the population by the millions. With the help of Gerald, (rude noise from Maggie’s side of the table) and some contacts I have cultivated over the years, along with a favor that was called in, I impersonated one of these individuals. Preserving the formula for Lexi was no longer paramount; keeping these individuals from diminishing the planet was. After Humberto’s meeting with Mr. Boston, I started surveilling Humberto (garbled choking noise from Humberto’s end of the table) and found out that he met with you at the decoy house to warn you of Boston and his plan. Also, Humberto ferreted out a spy in his house, which gave us a little extra time to prepare.

  “Dipple, that bastard! It was him, wasn’t it, Humberto? That’s why he wasn’t with us. He didn’t have a family emergency, did he?” came a quavering voice across from Humberto. The voice came from Joshua, who started to stand up and pulled part of the tablecloth with him and nearly upset his water glass. When Joshua saw all eyes upon him, he quickly sat down and nearly overturned his water glass again. “Sorry for the outburst, it’s just that I knew something was up with Dipple.”

  “Yes, its true, Joshua,” Humberto said. “Jeremy Dipple had been in contact with the other side. I kept catching him on the phone, and he gave ridiculous excuses, saying he was talking to his girlfriend or making dinner reservations. If any of us had any type of social life, we wouldn’t be in the Alpha group. He was obviously lying. So I started tracing his calls and found out he was in contact with the wrong type of people. I told him we were headed out to help you and gave him coordinates to a house slightly north of here. I thought it would slow them down a bit.

  “Where did he end up?” Cathy asked

  “Nain, Newfoundland. It’s only accessible half the year by plane and you can only fly in and out via one airline. However, there’s enough of a population to keep them busy for a while.

  Mr. Millwood cleared his throat, and all eyes turned to him. “There was originally a much larger team headed your way, but they had to divide into two groups. One headed north to check out Dipple’s coordinates and the other team, led by Joe, proceeded to your decoy house. Everything was happening very quickly. Joe and Suzanne were dispatched to your house, and it was only a matter of a month or few weeks before Boston would decide to depopulate the earth. The man was unstable, and I was not positive that the turn of events would sway him from his plan. Even if he had aborted the plan, I couldn’t count on the others in his group to also call off their de-population plot. I have sent the recordings and transcripts of those meetings to all the major media outlets throughout the world.” Mr. Millwood leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers. “I think Mr. Boston and his co-conspirators will be very busy hiding or deflecting the storm that is upon them to even think of acting on any plan. I’m sure their budgets will disappear, and high-level clearances will disappear right along with them. They won’t be able to order a hamburger from the cafeteria let alone start a pandemic.”

  “Okay, now about him,” said Maggie, pointing to Gerald Jacquess who was trying to make eye contact with everyone in the group and thus appear friendly. Instead he seemed to be watching a high-speed Ping Pong match.

  “Yes, Mr. Jacquess was instrumental in taking down his step-brother by paying the occasional visit to his office and leaving small but highly powerful gifts that aided me in my effort to gain insight into his plans.”

  “Huh?”

  “Theodore Boston, and Gerald are step-brothers. I take back everything Maggie, and I ever said about you, Gerald. You planted a listening”

  “I would stop right there, Mr. Kensington. I would not say anything that would place Mr. Jacquess in any legal difficulties. There is nothing wrong about one brother visiting another brother at one's workplace.”

  “He didn’t find it odd that you visited him? I can’t see you two hanging out,” Maggie told Jacquess.

  “No, not at all. I visit Theodore periodically to allow him to vent. For some reason, he finds it therapeutic to discuss his problems with me. Well, not ‘discuss’ he mostly screams. When you had him fired for embezzling from the university, Ms. Penny, that rant went on for hours. I promised Mom that I would always look after Theodore, and I will not break that promise since Mom always knew there was something wrong with him. I am used to cleaning up his messes. I’m the reason no charges were pressed against him when he left the university over the misuse of funds. I have been cleaning up Theodore’s messes for years. Right now he needs to be cared for in a federal facility of some sort. I believe the psychopath gene comes from our mother’s side of the family. I remember Mom talking about Grandma being put away, and it was all hushed up. Theodore’s dad and mine were very similar; I guess Mom had a type. I don’t remember my dad, but his dad was unusually good looking in a cologne ad sort of way, but dumb. Oh my God, dumb as a box of rocks. And a narcissist. There wasn’t a reflective surface that man didn’t stop to admire himself in. Glad that never rubbed off on me,” he said as he combed his few strands of hair back into place with his fingers while looking in a mirror across from the table.

  “Well, I’m not sure what to think. Thank you for your help, Gerald.” Maggie paused for a moment and grabbed Danny’s arm. “God, I think hell just froze over. Oh, by the way, Mr. Millwood, how exactly did you find this house?”

  Mr. Millwood lifted his wine glass, swirled its ruby red contents around and gazed into its depths. “You are not going to like the answer, Ms. Penny.”

  “Well, sir, I haven’t liked much of anything that has happened today, so if you don’t mind, give it up, sir.”

  A faint gasp could be heard from Danny and Kevin, and they attempted to retreat from the table as quickly and silently as possible.

  “Stay where you are, gentlemen,” Mr. Millwood said and two chairs slid to a stop with slight squeaks. “Yes, well, I noticed back when a search warrant had been served on Mr. Montgomery’s and Mr. Kensington’s apartment that Lexi’s property had been appropriated by one or both of you.” Mr. Millwood raised his hand to stem the tide of denials about to come from Danny and or Kevin, since both their mouths were open. They immediately shut their mouths, turned to each other, and glared.

  “To continue, I felt that this practice of “borrowing” equipment and supplies from Lexi might continue after you two returned from your EAP sabbatical, so certain tempting items were placed in your lab. These items contained long distance tracking devices, which I must say worked out quite well. It would’ve taken us much longer to find this lovely house without them.” With that statement, Mr. Millwood leaned back in his chair and let the pandemonium start.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

  AS SOON AS MR. MILLWOOD’S press release hit the news, the government acted swiftly, especially the agencies that were not included in the rebuilding group, which were the majority. Mr. Boston was arrested by every organization in Washington from the Capitol Police to Homeland Security to government agencies Mr. Boston had never heard of and had no idea what their acronyms stood for. All, however, were heavily armed and extremely angry.

  A second press release was in the process of being issued a few days after the bombshell regarding Mr. Boston’s plans for reshaping the world. Mr. Millwood arrived at Danny and Kevin’s house and told them they were going for a little drive. Danny and Kevin exchanged looks of panic. Before either of them could speak, Mr. Millwood put his index finger to his lips and said, “I will do the talking for a moment, understood?”

  Two rapid nods answered him.

  “What you two gentlemen are going to do is assist me in turning around this formula and revamping it for the good....”

  “Yes, yes, we started to do that but kept running into problems. Do you still
have those binders? Those are our mistakes, but there are some salvageable ideas too,” Danny blurted out.

  “Oh God, yes ever since this mess started we were trying to figure out how to undo this, hence the horrible mistakes in those binders.” Kevin added

  Millwood stared at the two men silently for a moment. “I’m glad to see you are as passionate about fixing this mess as about getting rich off of it. He pulled out his iPad and turned it toward Kevin and Danny. “There is one more item that needs to be addressed. I have no tolerance for disloyalty, which brings me to the problem that cropped up in your department.”

  “Our department?” Danny squeaked.

  “Yes, there were quite a lot of budgeting irregularities, especially in the training budget. It seems that either everyone in your department went on a first-class, month-long training trip to Hawaii and then bought all new equipment for all the labs, or there were several hundreds of thousands of dollars unaccounted for.

  “What, um, well, training, you see it’s very, what’s the word, Kevin?”

  “Hmmm, I can’t breathe.”

  “Gentlemen, get a hold of yourselves. I’m not accusing you.”

  “Well of course not...” Wheeze. “Silly, silly...” Gasp. “To make mention of it at all,” Kevin was finally able to articulate.

  “There was only one person that had full access to the labs and its never-ending stream of paperwork and its bookkeeping. The one and only person who never called in sick or, from what we can tell, even took a vacation. That is always a red flag. Embezzlers can’t risk anyone else looking at their cooked books.”

  Kevin nudged Danny and grinned. Cross your fingers for it to be Conner.”

  “No kidding, wouldn’t that be a scream. Hey, is that our decoy house on that monitor?”