Chapter 14: The Mole
Jack placed his elbows on the briefing room table and propped his head up in his hands. He was not looking forward to this next conversation, but knew it had to be addressed. One of his people at the SGC was a spy…possibly even a Goa'uld. And they needed to deal with him or her before any more damage was done.
He looked warily at Sam, knowing from her expression that her investigation had been successful. She knew who the mole was. "Carter…any progress on who our mole might be?"
Sam fidgeted slightly beside him and her countenance darkened as she informed him, "Yes sir. The last person to handle the drug sample in the medical labs was Doctor Brightman. She checked it out a couple of weeks after the Gate was stolen by the Trust… just before I was injured in the earthquake off world."
At this news, Jack buried his face in his hands in disillusionment. This was not the news he had been hoping for. It looked as though the doctor he had come to respect and trust in the past year - the woman who had saved his wife's life - was the very evil they had been trying to unearth. She had been hiding right under their noses all along. He spread the fingers covering his face and peeked out at Sam from between them.
"So…Brightman is our mole?" he mumbled through his fanned-out fingers. He then rubbed his hands roughly over his face and groaned, both exhausted and troubled at this news.
Sam did not answer, but merely nodded silently. From the look in her eyes, Jack knew that Sam was just as devastated as he was at this information. Sam and Brightman had become close friends over the past few months, especially after Brightman had taken such good care of her after her injuried, and the fact that Brightman had been a member of the Trust was the worst form of betrayal imaginable.
After meeting with Sam, Jack had ordered a group of SFs to restrain Doctor Brightman and escort her to a holding cell. A few minutes later, Sam, Jack, and Daniel gathered in the observation room overlooking the holding cell to watch Teal'c conduct the interrogation.
At first, Brightman sat in the middle of the room behind a large table, appearing small…almost fragile. She continued to cling to her innocence, refusing to cooperate or even acknowledge that she had been working with the Trust at all. But Teal'c was a master at interrogation. If Brightman was a member of the Trust, and especially if she had been implanted with a Goa'uld, he would be able to get her to expose herself sooner or later.
After a couple of hours of ceaseless questioning, and continuing denials from the prisoner, Teal'c finally had some success when he directed a particularly pointed insult in Brightman's direction.
"Your comrades within the Trust are dead," he sneered derisively. "Your cause has been defeated. You have failed. Your lord will be most disappointed in your incompetence."
Unable to control her rage and infuriation any longer, the doctor finally lost her cool and her eyes flashed gold. "We may have failed this time, Shol'va, but we will not fail again. You and your pathetic friends, the Tauri, will fall."
"Whom do you serve?" Teal'c demanded, pleased that he was finally making some progress. They now had proof that the doctor was indeed a Goa'uld.
"Do you think I would actually tell you anything, Shol'va?" she replied with scorn.
"It would serve you well to cooperate," Teal'c advised. "Your master will not save you, your allies are dead."
The doctor once again maintained her stony silence and refused to divulge any more, while the observers continued to patiently watch from the room above.
A few minutes later, after failing to make any more progress, Teal'c left her alone in the room. As planned, it was Daniel's turn to interrogate the prisoner…this time with a gentler hand. It was an old but extremely effective technique. Teal'c had been given the role of 'bad cop.' Daniel, in turn, would play the 'good cop.' They hoped that this time-honored interrogation method would work.
Daniel entered the room quietly and placed a glass of water on the table near Brightman's bound hands. The Goa'uld did not thank him, but merely glared at him contemptuously.
Daniel sat down across from her and stared at her compassionately. "You know… you're not getting out of here alive," Daniel began softly, trying to appear sympathetic. "Perhaps if you were more willing to cooperate, we could work something out."
Surprisingly, this seemed to spark the Goa'uld's interest. "How so?" she asked.
Daniel smirked as the snake jumped at the bait he offered. "Perhaps we could arrange for you to go free…we could let you go through the Stargate. That is…if you provide us with enough information."
"Why should I trust you?" the Goa'uld muttered accusingly. She then stared pointedly up at the observation room, making direct eye contact with the man sitting there. The question, it seemed, was not so much intended for Daniel, but more so for General O'Neill.
Daniel shrugged noncommittally. "Well now…you don't have much of a choice, do you?" he reasoned. "You can talk…or we can turn you over to the NID where you will probably become part of a scientific experiment. They will probably keep you locked up in one of their facilities for decades…if not centuries."
The Goa'uld, knowing now that she had little choice, bowed her head in acquiescence. She knew she stood a better chance with the people of the SGC than with the NID. She was more than familiar with what happened to prisoners that fell into the NID's hands.
"What do you wish to know?" she asked cautiously.
Daniel turned to look up at his friends in the observation room, a slight smile of triumph on his face.
"Doctor Brightman…" he began, "how did she come to be your host?"
"This host was a member of the organization you call the Trust. She was strategically placed at the SGC to provide vital intelligence to the members of that organization. She had access to medical records, drugs, research, and even direct contact with SG field team members."
"When did she become your host?"
The Goa'uld shook her head slightly, continuing to glare at Daniel in anger. She was reluctant to divulge the information, but knew she had little choice. It was not so much giving up the information that bothered her. It had more to do with being in a position of powerlessness.
"I do not know precisely…" she answered his question. "It was a few months ago, after members of the Trust returned to Earth. They brought many symbiotes with them and began the process of implanting symbiotes in most of the members of the Trust. I was one of the symbiotes they brought with them."
Daniel nodded then stared at the woman before him pointedly. "If you have been a Goa'uld all of this time, how did you manage to remain at the SGC undetected?"
The Goa'uld again seemed reluctant to answer this question. She turned her face away from Daniel and refused to meet his gaze. This time, she appeared to have no intention of revealing her secret.
Daniel, in turn, played his part perfectly. Once it was clear that she was not going to cooperate, he rose and turned as if to leave the room and announced, "Well, thanks anyway. Say 'hi' to the guys at the NID for me…"
Brightman looked panicked for a mere second before calling out to him, her voice almost pleading, "Stop….I will answer. I obtained a sample of a drug stored at the SGC that masked the naquada in my blood. My comrades were able to reproduce the drug in small quantities."
Daniel, still facing the door, smiled slyly and slowly turned around to look at the prisoner. He walked back over to the bound woman and leaned over, placing both of his hands on the table in front of her. His face was mere inches from hers, his posture almost threatening. "So…Colonel Carter could not tell that you were a Goa'uld?"
"Precisely."
Daniel then sat down once more and continued his questioning. "Okay…what was your mission here at the SGC?"
After this little altercation, it seemed the Goa'uld inside the doctor was now fully willing to cooperate. Her host, having been a member of the Trust, was fully aware of what the NID was capable of, and thus so was the symbiote. It was amazing to Daniel that the fear of confinement and experimentation was enough to scare this creature into submission. But then again, the Goa'uld were known for their arrogance…not their bravery.
The woman then began to describe her mission at the SGC, "I was instructed to begin implanting symbiotes…first in the medical staff and then in the field team members. Eventually, the entire SGC would have been controlled by the Goa'uld."
"Did you implant any members of the staff with symbiotes?" Daniel asked apprehensively, realizing for the first time that there might be Goa'ulds still freely running around the base.
The Goa'uld frowned, anger seething beneath the surface of her placid demeanor. "No… our plans were delayed."
"Why?" Daniel asked in curiosity.
"There was not enough of the drug to supply the entire base for an extended period of time. There was just enough for me and maybe one other. Before we could begin implanting members of the staff, we first needed to implant the one person who would be able to detect us."
Daniel tried to maintain his composure through this whole ordeal, and for the most part he has succeeded. But with this revelation, he finally let his mask slip. He glared defiantly at the woman in front of him as he whispered, "Sam…"
The woman did not answer vocally, but merely smiled malevolently as she nodded her head in confirmation. Sam had been their first target.
As the interrogation continued, another conversation was taking place in the observation room.
Sam turned to Jack, a disconsolate look on her face. Their suspicions had just been confirmed – the whole Trust setup in Florida was designed to get a symbiote into her. Jack, unnoticeable to anyone else in the room, took her hand in his and gave it a comforting squeeze, telling her without words that everything was all right and that she was safe now.
"So the goal was to implant me first because I can sense the Goa'uld…then the medical staff because they do all of the CAT scans and MRI's for the SG teams," Sam reasoned, her voice almost inaudible. "The nurses and doctors could cover up any evidence of infiltration by altering the records."
"What about Teal'c?" Jack asked in confusion. "He can sense a Goa'uld…"
Teal'c looked at Jack, his eyebrow raised inquisitively. "I cannot, O'Neill. I have not been able to do so since I lost my symbiote and began taking tretonin."
Jack let out a large sigh of frustration, "I swear I am not getting all of my memos."
Grinning slightly at Jack's joke, the three people then turned their attention back to the holding room below.
Daniel was once again addressing the Goa'uld. "So…the whole plan with Shanahan taking Sam to Florida…it was just a way to get her away from the base so she could be implanted away from prying eyes?" he asked.
"Yes…but when the plan failed, we had to seek other methods to achieve our goals."
"Hence the whole plan with Kinsey," Daniel surmised. "By implanting him, you made it look as if the U.S. government was compromised. The original plan, I presume, was to get your people at the SGC and in the Russian military to create a nuclear war that would destroy the Earth."
The Goa'uld laughed derisively, amused by the assumption Daniel had made. "Not exactly, Doctor Jackson. If we had been successful in our plans for the SGC, the Earth would have been much more valuable to us intact. We would have used the American and Russian militaries to take over your world. From there, we would have been able to deal crushing blows to the rebel Jaffa and the Tok'ra."
"Why did your plans change?" Daniel inquired curiously.
She immediately answered, "Once my superiors discovered that SG-1 knew of some of their plans to infiltrate the SGC, they abandoned their original strategy."
"So, Kinsey and the nuclear destruction of Earth was Plan B?" Daniel noted.
"Yes. It was decided that Earth was too much of a threat. If we could not control it, it was deemed best to destroy it."
In total, the interrogation had lasted over ten hours. Much of that time had been spent in silence as Teal'c and Daniel slowly and painstakingly extracted information from the Goa'uld. In the end, they had their answers. And the Goa'uld merely waited for the SGC to uphold its end of the bargain by letting her go through the Stargate.
But not everyone had the answers they needed. That night, as most of the base slept, Sam went to confront the Goa'uld for herself. Something had been bothering her all day since the interrogation…something she needed to know for her own peace of mind.
She crept quietly into the holding room, practically undetected. The Goa'uld was lying on a makeshift cot at the back of the cell, pretending to sleep. As Sam approached, the prisoner looked up, sensing the naquada in Sam's blood.
The Goa'uld stared at Sam questioningly, waiting for her to make some kind of move. Sam merely stared back at the woman, dumbfounded, and after a few silent seconds quietly announced, "There's one thing I don't understand…you needed to get me out of the way so you could start implanting personnel with symbiotes. You could have killed me any number of times and left no traces. You could have let me die after I was buried in the earthquake. You could have killed me in the infirmary and made it look as if I had died of natural causes. No one had better resources or opportunity to do so than you. Why in the world did you keep me alive? Why did you save me?"
The prisoner grinned smugly, almost as if proud that her actions had caused Sam some distress.
"You were considered too valuable," the entity inside Brightman answered in deep, distorted voice. "Not only did the Trust want your mind at their disposal, they also knew that your knowledge about the SGC – especially about its operations and history - would be most helpful. They deemed you indispensable. And so…I was ordered to make sure that you survived."
"Do you expect me to be grateful…" Sam asked contemptuously, "that you saved my life?"
The woman stared at Sam condescendingly, as if Sam's life and existence were inconsequential to her, which they were. "I expect no such thing, Colonel Carter. I was merely doing my duty to my lord." The Goa'uld then smiled maliciously, "In fact, I would have been most pleased to watch you die."
No more words were spoken between the two women. Sam rose from her chair and abruptly left the room, never turning back to look again on the prisoner…the woman she had once considered a good friend. She no longer felt anything whatsoever for the being infesting the woman who had betrayed them all. There was no longer any need to feel guilt or pity for the being who had saved her life…for it had not been done out of compassion, but out of a desire to exploit and manipulate her knowledge and talent.
Early the next morning, a group of SFs escorted the prisoner to the Gate room to send her on her way. Awaiting her there to see her off were SG-1 and General O'Neill. The Goa'uld immediately knew something was wrong when she noticed how SG-1 was attired. They were geared up as if they were going on a mission.
Upon her entering the room, Teal'c grasped the Goa'uld's arm and propelled her forward towards the ramp. Sam and Daniel followed behind, both with weapons at the ready in case the prisoner made any moves to escape. A few seconds later, the wormhole flared into life.
As they walked towards the activated Gate, the Goa'uld asked agitatedly, "Where are you taking me? I thought you were going to let me go..."
From the bottom of the ramp, Jack called out to answer her question, "You're going to the Tok'ra for a little visit. Hopefully they will be able to remove your snaky ass from the doc and return her to Earth for prosecution."
The Goa'uld began to struggle in Teal'c grasp. He allowed her to turn around to face the General, but maintained a strong grip on her bound arm. "But…you promised to let me go through the Stargate."
Jack eyebrows rose in amusement, as he smirked deviously and admitted, "Yes, I did…and you are. I didn't say that you could pick the address. And I don't recall mentioning that we would let you just go free and allow you take Brightman with you. You see...although I have nothing against letting you go, your host was a member of an illegal organization and has violated several federal laws here on Earth. I would be aiding and abetting a criminal if I helped you to escape with her."
Upon hearing this, the prisoner's eyes flashed in fury. She began struggling more and more against Teal'c strong grasp, trying to do something, anything, to avert what was in store for her. But it was to no avail.
"Take her away, SG-1," Jack ordered. "Don't want to keep the Tok'ra waiting."
And with that, Teal'c pushed the figure of Doctor Brightman into the open wormhole and followed closely behind.
Just before stepping into the event horizon, Sam turned slowly back around to provide a farewell smile and nod to her husband.
Upon seeing this, Jack nodded back and called out to her, "Good luck, Colonel. And say 'hi' to Dad for me."
Sam's responding smile lit up the Gate room. "Yes, sir. See you when we get back." And then she stepped into the Gate and disappeared in a wash of blue light.
TBC