Chapter 7: Some Assembly Required
The Next Morning, 6AM
Gary, IL
Nicky didn't take any pain killers that night and had some insane dreams, culminating in a trip to Wonderland only reimagined by Salvidor Dali. At the end she was captured by the Queen of Hearts who ordered her hands to be cut off. She woke up after the huge ax came down on them as she watched, the two bloody stumps grew talking caterpillars that replaced her hands and quickly started a lively debate over the cause of the American Civil War.
Knowing sleep was now a moot point and being in agony, she got up and struggled to get dressed. Byer had ordered a wardrobe for her and while it was nice and probably fit well, she couldn't work any of the zippers. She also couldn't apply make-up, do her hair, and found it difficult to even brush her teeth. She gave up and resigned herself to looking like a refugee for what was probably going to be the most important presentation of her life. She pulled on sweatpants, a hoodie, and hit the door.
Sitting across from her room was the teenager from the plane. She looked like she was dressed for court; she was in a sky blue suit that matched her eyes and was immaculate. She had been playing a handheld video game. "Good morning," she smiled gently.
"Oh, hi Ashley. I was just going for breakfast."
She grinned, "Liar. Do you need clothes; we are about the same size?"
"No. They sent me clothes; they all have little zippers…" Nicky noticed the huge armchair she was sitting in, "Where did you get that?"
"The lobby. I had the bellboy bring it up. What use are eyes like mine if they can't inspire a little free manual labor? Come on, let's pimp your ride…" Ashley had her ready in short order, she helped her with her hair and make-up as well, and they grabbed a quick bite from the lobby.
"You look really nice Ash…"
"Thanks, I figure that if I'm going to be representing you, I'd better look the part."
Nicky laughed, "I didn't realize I need an attorney."
"No, but you need an assistant, in the short term anyway. Here take this. It's a thousand milligram ibuprofen. I'm guessing you didn't take painkillers, so your mind would be sharp."
"Umm… thanks."
Ashley drove them to the meeting site, an AMC movie theater. "Seriously?"
"Yes. It is sound proof, sturdy, out of the way, and not a government building. They rent them for conferences all the time. We rented it for a month. No-one will think to look for us here."
"How many people will there be?"
"God, I don't know? A few dozen…"
"Someone got coffee right?"
"Err… I really don't know." She felt incompetent as normally this would've been something she considered.
"Okay, well there is a Panera over there. If we have a minute, let me run in a get a couple of gallons?"
"Okay, yeah. We are way early."
When they pulled up to the rear of the theater, to one of the screens emergency exits, Byer was standing at the door testing the magnetic lock they had added to the rear emergency door.
Ash got out and ran around the car and opened Nicky's door. "Now just sit here until you're ready. I'll take the coffee in." She grabbed two gallons and started to brush by Agent Byer, "Good morning."
"Wait, who are you?!"
"Oh, I'm Ashley- I prefer Ash."
"Let's try this again. Who are you?"
"Oh, I'm Dr. Parson's personal assistant." She tossed her hair in his direction, brushed past him, and took the coffee inside. Nicky couldn't help but laugh at Byer's face.
"I'm glad you think this is funny Parson's," he barked as he stormed to her side of the car.
"Calm down Mr. Byer. She's Allen Goens daughter."
"Calm down? This isn't Daddy Daycare." He saw her hands as she climbed out of the car; they were wrapped and padded so heavily that they looked like boxing gloves. "What the hell! Bourne said you hurt your hands!"
"I did."
"No, it looks like you're maimed. How bad is it?" Nicky was surprised that he genuinely looked concerned.
"I lost the end of the right pinkie and broke it and the right ring finger. The left middle two fingers are gone and there was damage to the bones in the hand. The right should be a lot better in a day or two; the left is going to take some time."
"Jesus." He motioned to the bandages, "If you put blades on the ends of those you'll be ready for Thunder-Dome."
"Two men enter- one man leave…" Ash piped in as she got the second round of coffee and went inside.
"Hey, I got in a shoot-out with an asset and only lost two and a half fingers. I'll take that trade."
"Well, I'm glad to have you back. That still doesn't explain her…"
"You said that I was to ensure that anything these people need, they get. I need an assistant."
"I can get you an assistant."
"Good. I want her."
He seized her by the upper arm in a Bourne like fashion and walked her around the corner of the building. "Let me see if this registers to you. This- operation, can't get out. Not ever. If she starts running her mouth- if anyone does, they will have to be put down. I don't like killing teenage girls; my daughter should be her age. Are you going to put two bullets in her head when she calls her boyfriend or goes to the Times?"
Nicky swallowed hard. "Look, it won't go down like that. I looked at her phone when she went to get the coffee. She has ten contacts: her father, her mother- who is dead, a lawyer, and seven restaurants. She doesn't have anyone to tell. Her father is the problem and you know it. She's the parent in that relationship and might be able to shut him up. If she wasn't here he would call her and tell her first thing- then you would have to kill them both anyway."
"Perhaps I need to reiterate: Are you going to put two bullets in her head if she talks?"
"I agree I will kill her if she talks."
Byer stared her in the eye for a long moment "Do a security check on her and get her in the system anyway. Do it by the book."
"I'll get her started on it first thing…"
"Cute. Get to work."
Several people were already on the inside, but Nicky didn't know any of them. Ashley had procured a folding table and had set it up and was placing everything out on it. Almost everyone was early and when Bourne arrived, Nicky was already busy doing a hundred things and he quietly sat off to the side, alone.
The lights in the theater were blazing and besides the coffee table there was a bank of computer stations at the front, three of the six stations were significantly more complex than the others mainly due to their six screen displays.
At 7:45 two people Bourne pegged as Detectives brought in a woman who clearly wasn't an asset, she didn't meet the weight requirement. She couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds. They had Byer sign for her and Nicky tried to direct her to Bourne until a girl whom appeared to Nicky's protégé brought her over.
"Mr. Bourne, Dr. Parsons asked that you watch her; she's- elusive." She didn't wait for a response, but went back to the computer Nicky had her working at.
"…slippery. She said I was slippery," she corrected but the girl was already gone.
Bourne motioned her to sit. "You don't look like a cop."
"I'm not. How long since you lived on Maui?"
She did a double take, "I get that you know that I'm Hawaiian, but my island?" She had a jacket folded in front- in her hands and he knew that it was covering handcuffs.
"People from the big island are more elusive and you don't take me as a small island type of girl. You need me to take those off?"
"No, I'm rather attached to them." She sat next to him quietly and thankfully didn't ask any questions.
Bourne was surprised by the conglomeration of people and saw members from every branch of the military, including a female Air Force major in dress uniform and what he thought was the Australian navy. Several appeared to be career criminals and there was even a man in a straight jacket in the back row.
The last person to be let in was a tall man of Arabic descent with three minutes until eight. As he passed Bourne he froze and did a double take, "Webb?! I heard you were dead!"
Byer started speaking before Jason could respond, the man walked behind Bourne and sat a row behind him. "I appreciate your presence here today, especially if it wasn't entirely voluntary. Now I know some of us have tried to kill each other in the past," Ashley started to laugh until Nicky scolded her and she realized Byer wasn't kidding, "…but hopefully we can put that behind us."
"Now I can't emphasize enough the level of classification of this project and it is deemed to be beyond classified. No-one outside of this room is to be told anything about this- ever. What is revealed here today shouldn't be discussed outside of these walls. This is under the penalty of death, including whomever you tell. To be clear, if you call your spouse and tell them to get the hell out of a city: we will kill you, them, and anyone they tell. Please raise your hand if this is absolutely clear." He waited until everyone's hand was raised, until he saw everyone was looking behind him. He squeezed his eyes shut, "Mr. Goens, let me also emphasize that you and your daughter are a package deal. I swear your hand had better be up."
He turned and everyone's hand was up. He looked at Ashley, "You are the only one able to leave right now, no questions asked. You want to go back to the hotel and do crosswords for a few weeks no one here will fault you for it."
She nervously shook her head, "No, sir. I'd rather stay."
He looked at her a long minute, "Okay. Pass these out to everyone. You can read along with Nicky. These are NOT to leave the room. Make sure you collect them all later."
"Inside you'll find brief bios on everyone in the room, along with suggested team break downs. There will be four field teams of four. There also four- make that five support members whom will be based here. Two teams will be concentrating on locating and apprehending a person. The other two will be looking for a device. However, against my superior's wishes, everyone will have full operational knowledge in case you are looking for one but happen to find the other."
"This is a huge operation and this will be a long briefing. Please feel free to stretch as needed or get coffee. We are all adults here. I know some of you came from the far side of the world and are jet-lagged, but please stick with us here. Mr. Goens- lights please." He lowered the lights via his computer and started a slide show on the big screen.
"I think it best to start at the beginning, chronologically. In 1921 the newly reconfigured National Socialist German Workers' Party abbreviated in English to the Nazi Party, nominated Adolf Hitler as their leader. Twelve years later, in 1932, he was named the Chancellor of Germany. He achieved this and maintained power by eliminating his political opponents which later became the first victims of the 'work camps'. Communist and religious opponents were targeted for execution first. Hitler at some point turned this tactic on the Jewish people, on whom he intended complete extermination."
"For the better part of a decade they worked on the single elimination method by targeting each Jewish person individually. Eventually they realized the death camps had worked great for their political opponents, but wasn't effective enough for wholesale genocide. It was costly in manpower, resources, and time. They also subscribed to the cockroach theory, in that if you saw one Jew, there were ten more hiding somewhere- breeding. Realizing that the 'Final Solution' was anything but final he commissioned for 'other methods' to be found."
His voice became raspy and he looked around and Ashley was already holding out a bottle of water. He nodded reluctantly in thanks, "Studying History someone realized that we Americans stumbled onto a marvelous idea when we started giving new blankets to people dying of small pox and then taking the blankets and selling them to Native Americans, knowing that they had no immunity to it."
"Unfortunately- for the Nazis, they weren't able to find a disease that killed the Jews while not killing 'Aryans'. So, being an industrious people, they decided to make one. They started with a rare strain of small pox that only a small number of people developed, but it had a much higher kill rate: Black Small Pox." He cleared his throat, "At this point Dr. Shearing will take over and be able to answer any and all viral related questions."
"Yes, thank you Eric. You'll find a brief description of the two known forms of black small pox in section three of your books. This is in plain English, courtesy of Wikipedia. Afterward there is a whole Journal Article on the subject for the more scientifically inclined."
Marta read the passage aloud,["Doctors separate Black Pox into two forms: flat smallpox and hemorrhagic smallpox."
"In a case of Flat Smallpox, the skin remains smooth and doesn't postulate; it darkens until it looks charred. It can slip or fall off the body in sheets, sometimes all of it, causing instant death; although that is very rare."
"In hemorrhagic smallpox, black, unclotted blood oozes or runs from the mouth and other body orifices. In the hemorrhagic cases, the virus destroys the linings of the throat, stomach, intestines, rectum, and vagina, and these membranes disintegrate. This version can destroy the body's entire skin — both the exterior skin and the interior skin that lines the passages of the body."]
"Either strain of Black Pox is close to one hundred percent fatal. If any sign of it appears in the body, the victim will almost certainly die."
She continued, "The lovely Nazi's weren't satisfied there though. They combined the two Black Pox strains and then sought ways to make it more virulent and to target a select group of genes. They spliced it again with regular Small Pox to try to increase the virulence. They also succeed in making it more resilient by encapsulating it, which protects it until the proper conditions are met, namely by being in a host- or a hot humid environment, before 'hatching' and becoming active. The encapsulation is basically a 'nut' that protects the virus until the proper time. This has the added effect of delaying the onset time of the virus."
She looked up and for a moment thought half the room was asleep until she saw that Aaron was rubbing the bridge of his nose and realized that they were in various stages of disbelief. "Go ahead, keep going…" Byer whispered.
"So, they were able to create a hybrid of the virus but were about forty years too early on getting the virus to selectively target specific strands of DNA."
"So, you're saying we are able to do this now- selective targeting groups?" Cross asked.
Marta suddenly looked very nervous, "I guess the official answer is: that's classified. But, that answers your question doesn't it Mr. Cross?"
"Well," Byer coughed as he took the reins again, "the point being is that they failed to create a virus to target select groups, but they knew that they had one hell of a super virus."
"Initially Hitler ordered that samples of the virus be sent to Holland, Japan, and South America for safe keeping."
"A German submarine- U-864, was loaded with top secret weapons and supplies vital to Japan. Also included were parts and engineering drawings for German jet fighters. The official story is that while returning to Bergen, Norway to repair a misfiring engine, U-864 was detected and sunk on 9 February 1945 by the British submarine HMS Venturer, killing all 73 on board. It is the only instance in the history of naval warfare where one submarine intentionally sank another while both were submerged. *
The reality is that the crew found out about the virus, mutinied, sabotaged the engines, and radioed their coordinates to the British, whom they requested assistance. The Captain of the HMS Venturer was told that there was some type of contagion on board and opted to sink the vessel."
Reina coughed politely, "I heard about this; that is the sub that was carrying tons of mercury right? It's biological time bomb…"
Byer glared at her and suddenly she felt like the most naive person on the planet, "Do you really think there is Mercury there? No, that's a cover story to keep people from disturbing the site." Goens slapped his knee as if he had stuck gold, which Byer ignored.
"Two months later on April 29th 1945 at around 1AM, prior to Hitler's wedding to Eva Braun and their subsequent suicides, two of Hitler's inner circle: Ritter von Greim and Hanna Reitsch departed Berlin by air. As they left they observed a Ju-52 sitting near the runway and a pilot waiting for something. Reitsch was later interrogated by American intelligence- for eighteen months. They were initially concerned over the possibility that she had flown Hitler out of Berlin.* They concluded that she had done no such thing," Allen Goens scoffed loudly at this.
"What it was waiting for was one of the last orders issued by Hitler. He had previously ordered special canisters to be created to serve as the delivery system for our little friends."
"In the last hours, the Fuhrer ordered operation Der Letzte Mann- the Last Man to be implemented. Previously, it had been decided that the canisters would be used as the ultimate fail safe. If the Nazi's were ever faced with complete and utter defeat four specially designed canisters would be armed and sent to far corners of the world."
"The concept being, that if the Third Reich failed, if no one was left alive that knew of the plan, the five year timer on the device would stop being reset and the virus would be released. The Nazis would then achieve victory even in death by wiping out their enemies. This in their minds allowed the evolutionary clock to be reset; hopefully a 'more perfect' Aryan Race would rise from the ashes and lead the way into a Utopian future."
"In the 1920s aircraft already existed that could cross the Atlantic…" Bourne saw Nicky give an uncharacteristically broad grin as a picture of the Spirit of St. Louis flashed by on the screen. "Germany possessed several giant Junkers Ju-390's; they were ultra-modern, fast, 4-engined and capable of flying 6000 miles. One was stationed in Holland and was waiting for the other plane to arrive. This plane could have reached Japanese Manchuria or, with a refueling stop, South America. It did both…"
"So, the canisters were flown from Berlin to Holland where they were then spread to different points of the global to ensure the maximum distribution of the virus. Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and South America were to all receive the pleasure of being selected."
"The Department of Defense first caught wind of the virus from a Soviet defector who spoke of this super virus that the Russians had recovered research on- but not the actual virus. They were able to recover Nazi film footage that was made for Hitler's eyes only." He paused and then advanced the slide show to a film reel where there was no sound other than that of the original projector clacking as the film played.
Byer reached out and spun Ashley's chair to face the crowd, "You don't want to see this." He stared out at the audience himself, having already seen it. He spoke with her quietly as the film played.
It took a few minutes before the crowd started showing signs of discomfort.
Marta cut in, "The first sixty seconds of footage is edited over a period of two days. The last two minutes are live and unedited. These were captured Russian soldiers that were in top physical condition before exposure."
"Oh God," the woman next to Bourne leapt to her feet and he grabbed her arm in a vise like grip. "I'm going to throw up…"
He quickly led her outside, where she vomited up an empty stomach. "I've never been so thankful to be fasting."
"You weigh like eighty pounds… Why the hell are you fasting?"
"I'm in training for a job."
Something about the way she said 'job' keyed him into her role, "You're a burglar?"
"Allegedly…"
"The weight is a pressure plate thing?"
She nodded, "I need to be less than eighty pounds. The stuff you see on TV about a feather landing on the floor and a alarm going off is crap. Most manufactures default their weight settings to eighty pounds in case their client ever employs dogs."
"…and if the default setting has been changed?"
"Then I threw up a lot of meals for nothing. I'm Malana by the way…"
"…Jason. Come on." He noticed on the way out that she had removed the handcuffs and he was expecting her to make a run for it, but she tried nothing of the sort.
Nicky ducked outside a moment later, as the other woman entered, thankful for a break. "Hi…"
"Hey…" he said awkwardly. He felt very exposed for the first time he could remember.
She smiled slightly, "They're taking a break… I wanted to thank you…"
"For what?" he said, honestly miffed.
"For arranging this," she nodded to her sling. "I don't know how you did it, or what you told them, but I know I would have lost my hand otherwise."
He nodded curtly and stared at the ground, "I never realized how difficult 'logistics' is. I had to do a lot of things I never had to think about."
She nodded just as curtly and looked absently at the ground as well, "Well I'd hug you but I really can't… I can never express how grateful I felt- when Marta told me that you arranged everything and had made my wishes known. The past year I thought I be killed and left in a ditch as a Jane Doe, no one knowing everything I'd been through. Just… thanks."
"What happened anyway- how did you get hurt?"
"Oh, I was shooting at one of them and he shot my hands and my gun. The bullet took off some fingers and part of it continued through my finger and tore my hand up. I'm real lucky… Marta's a damn good driver by the way. The girl has some skills."
"Thanks again Jason…" she quickly kissed his cheek nervously, turned to dart away, only to turn back around blushing, "I can't open the door." He laughed pushed the button, waited for Goens to buzz them in, and then opened the door for her. Most people were now milling around with a few notable exceptions.
Nicky made her way back to the front of the theater where Byer was speaking to the Air Force Major. Reina, Allen, and Alex were configuring their workstations to conform to their liking.
Something about the way the Major was standing made something click. She strode over quickly and coughed politely, "Are you the Paige? His former Paige?"
The Major laughed, "I've never heard it put that way, but yes. I feel like one of your- what do you call them Eric? Squires?"
"Minions," Byer said tersely, unsure of what Parsons was up to.
"That's right, it's Major Paige Tyler, and you are?"
"Nicky Parsons, we spoke on the phone…"
She recoiled slightly and then understood, "Oh! How did the salary negotiation go?"
"Well we never actually got around to pay. Mr. Byer, I am getting paid for this right?"
Byer glared at Nicky, but now he understood Nicky hadn't told her she was a girlfriend as she had indicated, "Yes, everyone will be paid."
Nicky nodded to the theater seats, "We should really talk…"
"Oew, gossip!"
The two walked off together and he heard Nicky say, "Wait- so your married name was Major Paige Byer?"
She cackled, "I know right? Sounds like what newspaper editors would call a car dealership."
Byer heard Allen Goens mutter from under a desk, where he was moving cables around, "Wow, cock-blocked by a woman. That is either incredibly hot or utterly pathetic. Judges?"
Reina looked at the two women, "Hot…"
"So, hot," his daughter muttered and all three joined in a golf clap.
"Shut up. Alright people, break time is over. Time for the second part of our operation..." Byer barked.