15.
In Which Delays Are Apologized For in Chapter Titles – Ann Arbor – Mad Scientists! - History's Mysteries – Constant Vigilance! - Porcelain Gods
Ann Arbor, Michigan
The DeGroots lived a private life, hiding in plain sight just blocks away from the University of Michigan, where they had made their career in the days before and during the Dharma Initiative. The little brick and ivy home was in the name of the university itself, though a little extra legwork from Penelope Hume (Richard hadn't asked) had shown that the property taxes and other minutiae were paid by Hanso. It seemed they still taught on occasion; were consulted now and then by aspiring scientists, and were well known by the local grocers.
Richard had been introduced to Baudelaire, the white German Shepherd, immediately on his arrival, the dog panting happily at him in lieu of being asked to bite. It was a relief; the beautiful purebred had a set of choppers on him that invited awe and proper canine respect. Alpert also suspected that not all the ivy on the home was mild kudzu; some of the bushes looked closer to poison ivy instead. Both of these factors (and almost certainly others) led to an almost offhanded tale of a recent attempted break-in. Neither DeGroot seemed concerned by the incident, although to be fair, Gerald DeGroot had examined Richard with equal parts recognition and mild interest. It didn't seem to be his way to grow easily concerned.
He had been allowed in after Gerald disappeared into the depths of the house to make a phone call – not to the police, thankfully, although Richard hadn't been told any other detail. Karen gave him coffee while Gerald stated what had been plain – that Paik sent men to buy a little bundle of stock property invested in Widmore, as had been given to the DeGroots when Widmore forced that long ago alliance with Hanso. That the break in had been tried less than three days later was underlined with a shrug and a lopsided smile under grey beard.
"Better than them have tried to harass us, Mr. Alpert. We're not interested in confrontation, but Karen has a firm belief in a good defense. Mmm." Another shrug.
"What do you think they wanted?" Richard watched Gerald's face as he glanced over to his wife.
"Mm. Paik? Hmm. A good question. I've wondered about that. We never had anything to do with Paik in the past. Strictly unrelated Widmore business. Paik's interest is relatively recent and quite sudden. Therefore, I wonder if it is, indeed, Paik."
"That's the assumption of-" Richard coughed a little, unsure of his words. Ben's bitter, distant tone still echoed in his mind. "An acquaintance of mine. Specifically, he called Paik a 'paper tiger.'"
"A wise judgment. I am not a tactician, Mr. Alpert. Mm. These matters aren't of usual interest to me, except to examine the variables, the derived outcomes, the potentiality. I don't like money; it brings emotion to mathematics and statistics where there shouldn't be such. Yet this isn't about money for you, or for your acquaintances."
"It's about the past." Richard murmured the words, feeling the accuracy of them, even as they were unfounded in anything other than hunch.
"Always. Always. Life is grounded on the cobbles of the past. The future is the child of that road. That is of interest to me. And Karen, of course. Forgive her quietness, I find she is at her most wise when she chooses to speak most carefully." He smiled over Richard's shoulder. "Ah, yes."
Richard sensed movement behind him; the woman drawing back further into the little home. He heard rustling.
"You have aged, Mr. Alpert. I'm quite surprised."
The statement startled him out of his attempt to figure out what was going on behind him. "What?"
"I never saw the island, not myself. Once we heard of the, ah, oh, forgive me if I use a foolish term, 'indigenous' population, the Initiative felt it wiser to keep the heads of the project out of the territory. But we saw the pictures. They were attached to the reports, when our people negotiated with you. In all of them, you were the same."
"I'm not offended." He wasn't. "The island's undergone a few changes in the last couple of years. I'm no longer involved."
"Yet here you are."
He felt briefly foolish at leaving an obvious opening. "Not directly, then. Loose ends for myself. And friends."
"Yes. Yes, yes. Unfinished business." Karen appeared at Gerald's side, leaving a set of thick manila folders on the table in front of him. He seemed no longer interested in Richard's few strands of grey hair. "We know all about unfinished business, don't we, my dear?"
She gave her husband a wry smile, then turned her face to Alpert. "Using a corporation as a public face to hide agendas is, unfortunately, something we're familiar with." She tapped the folders. "Do you know what happened to Alvar Hanso over the last twenty years?"
"I'm aware there was a major shakeup fairly recently. Mr. Hanso resumed direct control of his Foundation."
"Dr. Thomas Mittelwerk used the Foundation and our Initiative to further his own agenda. Unfortunately, everyone realized this far too late." She pushed a hand through golden brown hair shot through with silver. "Mittelwerk was Alvar's shining star, a brilliant protege who appeared to believe in the Foundation's goals with absolute zeal. Cancer research made grand leaps under his watch, we began dozens of programs involved in longevity research, experimental physics, fringe science... the seventies were the start of a grand era. When he overthrew Alvar less than ten years ago, it was shocking. I'm not sure Alvar has yet recovered from that betrayal."
Her tone turned bitter as she spoke. Gerald laid a gentle hand on her hip. She paused, then began again. "He was fascinated by the Initiative's goals. When we discovered the island, he worked alongside us day by day as we prepared for arrival. Designed the Stations. Some of them bore his unique touch. We didn't know how unique." She looked away.
Gerald spoke up. "The Orchid bore his mark; an elegant place of research surrounded by controlled life. We were astonished by his preliminary designs and thought little of the additions he made to other locations. And we were not told of his special project, his own brainchild of a station." He flipped open the top folder, shuffled through it, then moved to the second. He nodded to himself, then passed a stapled bundle to Alpert. "The Tempest. I'm afraid you know that one quite well."
The lair of the floating dragon we called The Purge. Richard swallowed, looking through the design packet for the chemical facility. It was an old photocopy, the handscrawled notes faded against the transferred blues and white. He flipped the pages, saw sketches and renderings, and felt more than a little ill. "It." He inhaled. "That was not our best moment." He glanced up at the DeGroots, who watched him inscrutably. "I advised against it, though my hands are not clean in the execution."
"Who ordered it? I ask for curiosity. I can no longer rage."
Richard licked his lips, dropped his eyes to the paper again. It was not being a good year for personal history. He felt like his life was becoming one big confessional booth. "Charles Widmore did." He looked up to see Gerald nodding as if resigned.
"I was afraid it was the other somehow. Thomas. I have no doubt he had all the records. He had Dr. Chang debriefed fully when he was able. It must have delighted him to see his foul little child in action." Gerald's tone grew sad. "The Initiative was meant to further the study and the protection of life." He pushed the rest of the documents across the table to Alpert.
"Instead, Thomas took everything we did and disappeared into the dark to further the study and the sale of death." He raised his bearded chin. "The papers there are a fragment of the Initiative's work, and some of what we have on Dr. Mittlewerk himself. We can't let you leave the premises with them, but you may have my study for as long as you like to read them. Return if you wish. It's been authorized." Richard didn't break in to ask by whom. He had a guess. "I am certain Thomas is your current curse. It may be useful to you to read these things." A little smile. "Mm. We have but one little request to make. This is personal."
"If I can." History's weight still roiled in his stomach. The DeGroots were being far more gentle with the topics of their connected past than they could have been, uninterested in real confrontation. It helped, though didn't cure all ills. "I don't answer to anyone in this, it just comes down to if I know anything."
"Mm." Another little smile. Karen spoke up. "When we were working on the Lamp Post, to make sure that we could keep contact and track the island, we had the help of a wonderful young man who found us through the University here. He was a brilliant physicist; grasped formulae that are still cutting edge now. But he did go to the island, and he vanished long before the chemical release. Do you know what happened to him? His name was-"
"Faraday." The weight in his stomach grew. "Daniel Faraday. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. He died at our camp in a terrible accident. He was shot, the shooter believing he was acting as a threat to me personally. It shouldn't have happened." But it had to, it seems.
Her face fell. "Oh." She looked away. "The island bore all our hopes for bringing light to our future. Why did so much of it seem so dark?"
"I can't answer that for sure. Maybe it was our mistakes. The people who tried to take charge on the island. It's a new era now, though. Maybe it'll be better this time." He lidded his eyes, thinking of Hurley. "There's new people there. Some of them are very kind."
"I suppose we can hope. Gerald's study is through the doorway there, to your left. The lamps run by touch. Please take your time. I'll bring you more coffee, if you like."
. . .
Richard sat outside a restaurant called Zingerman's, having been recommended the place by the DeGroots in an attempt to put bread and meat on an unhappy stomach. The food had been delicious, and he made a mental note to return at a time when he was less distracted. The cellphone hummed in his hand, waiting for connection. It finally bleated at him.
"Alpert." The tone, as usual, was curt and defied analyzation.
"Ben. I found some interesting information for you. About who's behind the pressure on Mittelos and the island."
"Dr. Mittelwerk."
Richard closed his eyes and swore under his breath. As usual, somehow Ben was several steps ahead. He continued anyway. "Yes. I found the DeGroots through a mutual friend of ours. They were approached by Paik as well but made a better guess who was behind it. Turns out they have a lot of reasons to suspect Mittelwerk. I got a look at the Initiative's files, his notes."
"Now you're expanding on what I knew." Interest tinged the voice. "I can confirm Mittelwerk is behind Paik's interest in us. He's brokered several arms trading and suspect research deals through Paik, although much of the data we have is still being unraveled. We know he came from Hanso, and that he left moles behind in the organization. Exeunt one poor Mr. Hicks at the hand of one such now-evolved mole. What is his connection to the island?"
"Chemical and viral research, brainwashing, stress studies. Ben, the Tempest was his baby. He used the information from the Purge to later enhance the gas that was contained on our island." The nausea returned. "He's the one that had our people abducted and tested in Room 23, so he could study the effects. He got reports on everything; infertility, longevity. According to these notes, he had an immense file on me. He wanted to know everything about us, and how to use it, and how to break it." A note of desperation entered his voice. "Ben, according to the DeGroots, he thinks the island is his personal research station. He's got a god complex, control issues. I'll bet you anything he thinks Mittelos is screwing him out of something that he thinks he has the right to. He wants us."
"You mean the island."
"I mean us, Ben. The island's done with me. He's not done with any of us, and as far as he's concerned, I'm still a part of it." He shook his head. "I've got all this information in my head, Ben. What he was going to do in Sri Lanka; what actually got him caught at Hanso..."
"My own curiosity sickens me."
"Illegal organ harvesting. That was the beginning of the end for him. He barely got away from the authorities. Hanso won't talk about it."
"Can't say as I blame him." There was a long pause on the other end. "Perhaps you're right. I can't even say that you've put yourself in this. Your involvement may well have come despite my own actions using you as bait. Hugo may have been right as well. Meanwhile, through you and others, we remain vulnerable. Where is Mrs. Hume?"
"I don't know, the family cast off a few days ago." Ben made a sound on the other end of the line that would have been a curse on anyone else's lips. "I'll keep an ear out."
"Please do. Contact anytime you need. I will be texting you a file. This, naturally, is a code. Using it will find you a set of safehouses if it becomes necessary. Be careful. We have now firmly established that they are willing to kill."
"Yes."
"Richard." Ben's tone became genuine, touched with concern. "I emphasize caution. Hugo is fragile right now, and I don't have the adept and empathic touch of past advisors. The best I have is paternity's firm comfort. He is frightened by what he is, and any danger that I cannot help him avert may be disastrous to his state of mind. He overburdens himself with concerns of morality."
"You're scared." Richard was startled by the sudden return of Ben's old trust.
"If I may be completely frank, as we once were when I led and you advised, I am fucking terrified. We have issues now between us, you and I. But further contemplation reminds me that there is also much now that is common to us both. All stems from the same history. As an advisor speaking to an advisor, I think I'm better off with this honesty to you."
"Then you're probably doing better than you think. Be as you are, do the best you can."
Another long silence. "How did you put up with me near the end?"
"I drank." He surprised himself with a wry laugh.
"To everything there is a season, and the turn, and the return." A sigh. "Speaking of, I think I've mislaid some of my whisky. Caution, Richard. And vigilance. I will call you as our current staff unravels more information, if you like."
"Please." Ben hung up after a bemused noise, leaving Richard examining his little phone in contemplation.
. . .
In the cool darkness of her cabin's small bathroom, Kyra Glaukopis knelt against the toilet and heaved now and again, dried out but still sick. The empty bottle of Ben's lost Michael Collins whisky sat disregarded on a table in the living room, next to two scavenged bottles of Dharma rum. Eventually she fell asleep there, shoulder going numb as it pressed against the white porcelain. She dreamed of staring into mirrors that reflected back no describable face and whimpered now and again as her sleeping body shivered.