The Mission a5-3 Read online

  “Could he have come across the guardian or The Mission?” Kincaid asked.

  “I don’t know,” Quinn replied, “but according to the CIA he was heading toward a place called The Mission when he was caught by the Bolivian Army, backed up by U.S. Special Forces troops, another little fact that’s not well known.”

  Quinn turned the page. “The CIA wanted to find this Mission, as they thought it might be a Communist front organization. Checking Che’s writings, they found he paid special attention to an ancient site called Tiahuanaco in Bolivia.” He scanned down the page.

  “The dots are connecting,” Kincaid commented, “but I can’t figure out why.”

  “Before Che, in the late forties, the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, had interest in a place called The Mission because it was reported to be a gathering place for members of the defeated Third Reich. It’s well known that there was an escape pipeline to South America for Nazis during and after the war. The OSS/CIA heard rumors that the scientists who weren’t snatched up by our Operation Paperclip or the Russians went to The Mission,” Quinn added.

  “Despite that, they weren’t able to find the exact location of The Mission. They got word from some contacts that it was originally from Spain, and that it had come over the Atlantic sometime in the fifteenth century. But beyond that, it seems like the CIA stopped the investigation.”

  “Wait a second,” Kincaid said. “Columbus didn’t discover America until 1492.” “I’m just telling you what the CIA uncovered. Perhaps those date problems are why the CIA didn’t follow through on the investigation.”

  “Or perhaps there was another reason they dropped the investigation.” Kincaid looked around the Cube. “Like they’ve stopped digging at Dulce.”

  Quinn shut the folder. “I don’t know.” He opened another folder. “But my computer whiz kid has managed to pull something out of one of the hard drives Turcotte got out of Scorpion Base and it references The Mission.”

  “What is it?” Kincaid asked.

  Quinn smiled. “You think the Che Guevara stuff is weird, wait until you read this.” He slid a computer printout over to Kincaid, who picked it up and read:

  THE MISSION & The Inquisition (research reconstruction and field report 10/21/92-Coridan-)

  Overview:

  The Papal Inquisition was instituted in 1231 for the apprehension and trial of heretics. The Mission, now established, as previous entries note, in central Italy, seized upon this opportunity to expand its power aligning itself with the church. It was to continue in this role both in the Old and New Worlds for the next four centuries until the hysteria that fueled the Inquisition waned. The Inquisition was only one of several actions The Mission undertook during this time period, but one that bears our interest.

  While the Inquisition focused on heretics, The Mission’s task in this quest was more specific. It was to weed out those individuals who posed a threat in terms of theoretical advancement.

  That they were effective in this effort can be seen by the lack of scientific advancement by mankind for the next several centuries.

  The Mission seemed to want to ride a line between encouraging economic development, to increase mankind’s numbers, and holding back scientific development, to decrease mankind’s potential. Examples:

  In 1600 Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for postulating a heliocentric system. I found direct evidence of Mission involvement in both designating Bruno for the Inquisition and forcing through his conviction and execution. More interesting is The Mission’s involvement in the case of Galileo. The 1616 Edict on Copernicanism can be laid to The Mission’s desire to keep mankind from looking to the stars, even at the most base level. As a result, in 1624, after publication of his “Dialogue on the Tides,” Galileo was brought to Rome to be tried for heresy. Again, involvement of The Mission can be found through the office of the Fiscal Proctor, one of the officers of the Inquisition. In this case, the Proctor went by the name Domeka, which I have traced to The Mission and other actions (see App. 1 for cross-references).

  That the Inquisition was not completely successful — Galileo was only sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life — indicates not the waning power of The Mission but rather the influence of TOWW.

  “What’s TOWW?” Kincaid had finished reading.

  “I have no idea,” Quinn said. “I’m having my computer guy check.”

  Kincaid handed the printout back. “Geez, if they put Galileo away—” He didn’t finish the sentence, just shaking his head.

  “I’m forwarding this to Dr. Duncan,” Quinn said. “She can figure out what to do with it.” He looked up at the red digits on the clock that glowed at one of the rooms. “Under four hours until they launch at the Cape and Vandenberg.” Quinn held the cigarette up. “Better get a carton.”

  * * *

  “I have lived many years by saying no to stupid ideas,” Lo Fa said.

  “I have lived many years also,” Che Lu said. “But there is more to life than just breathing.”

  “Ah, don’t start that with me.” Lo Fa tapped the side of his head with a crooked finger. “I have also had many people try to play with my mind over the years.”

  Che Lu laughed. “Your mind is like a rock. Who would want to play with it?”

  Lo Fa’s dark eyes were looking about the guerrilla camp. The women were gathered to one side, talking quietly among themselves, while the children played around them. The men, those who weren’t on guard, were resting. Finally his eyes returned to Che Lu.

  “I will go with you. But only me. I will order the others to move west, to get away from the army.”

  “How will we get in the tomb?” Che Lu asked.

  “I will get us in. The same way I was able to get you away from there when the army was shooting at the Russians and Americans. You get us out once you find what you are looking for.”

  * * *

  “It’s a filovirus.” Kenyon had finally isolated the bug.

  “A filovirus?” Turcotte asked.

  “A ‘thread virus,’” Kenyon said. “Most viruses are round. A filo is long. Looks like a jumbled string. Ebola’s a filo, as is Marburg.”

  “So this is a cousin to Ebola?” Yakov asked.

  “We don’t know,” Kenyon said. “This thing is an emerging virus.”

  “Emerging from where?” Turcotte asked.

  “We don’t know,” Kenyon said.

  “What do you know?” Yakov demanded.

  “Where did it come from?” Turcotte asked, glancing at Yakov. “Is it man-made?”

  “Man-made?” Kenyon frowned. “Why would anyone let something like this loose? Many viruses are simply nature’s defense against mankind’s incursions into places we never were before.”

  “What do you mean?” Turcotte asked.

  “We’re tearing up the rain forest,” Kenyon said, “and so far, most of the nastiest bugs we’ve seen — the variants of Ebola and Marburg — have come out of the rain forest in Africa. It was only a matter of time before something came out of the Amazon. Humans have upset the ecological balance, and these viruses are fighting back against humans to re-right the balance.”

  “Are you saying this virus was always there in the forest and we came in and activated it?” Turcotte asked. Yakov was shaking his head.

  “This virus,” Kenyon said, “is what we call an emerging one. There are three ways viruses emerge: they jump from one species — which usually they are relatively benign in — to another, which they aren’t benign in; or the virus is a new evolution from another type of virus, a mutation, basically; or it could have always existed and move from a smaller population to a larger population. In the last case, this thing could have been killing humans out in the jungle for thousands of years, but now it’s moved out into the general population.”

  “Is that possible?” Turcotte asked. “Wouldn’t someone have noticed?”

  “Not necessarily,” Kenyon said. “We’re now beginning to believe that the
AIDS virus might have been around for quite a while. Cases as far back as forty years ago are now being uncovered. They just didn’t know what it was back there and called it something else. And it stayed in a very small population.”

  “Isn’t there a fourth way a virus develops?” Yakov growled. “A man goes into a lab and tinkers with something, and out comes a virus that kills?”

  Kenyon stared at the Russian. “The sophistication to produce a biological agent of this order is beyond our capabilities.”

  “The key word is our,” Yakov said. “We haven’t built a ship capable of interstellar travel either.”

  “Which do you think this thing is?” Turcotte pressed Kenyon. “How did it evolve?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Kenyon said. “To find that out I need patient zero.”

  “Patient zero?”

  “Patient zero is the disease’s human starting point. If we can backtrack and find patient zero, then backtrack patient zero’s steps, we can find what and where the disease jumped from to get to humans and we would be that much further on our way to understanding not only the disease itself, but how it started.

  “A virus has to have a ‘reservoir’—a living organism that it resides in that it doesn’t kill — or at least kill as quickly as the filoviruses kill humans. Otherwise the parasite would destroy its own source of survival. If we can find the reservoir, we might find out how that organism held off the effects of the virus, and that might point in the direction of a vaccine or cure. It has to be the village that Harrison talked about.”

  Turcotte stared at Kenyon in disbelief. “Are you nuts? We don’t have any time to be coming up with vaccinations!”

  Kenyon returned the look in kind. “We’ve got to find where it came from or else this thing will burn and it will only stop burning until it kills everything and there are no more hosts for it to consume.”

  “The satellite,” Yakov said.

  “What satellite?” Kenyon demanded.

  Turcotte explained about the satellite that came down west of their location.

  “You think this came from a satellite?” Kenyon asked. “What is this Kourou place?”

  “It’s the launch site for Ariane, the European Space Consortium,” Yakov said. “It’s located on the coast of French Guiana.”

  “Why is the European Space Port located in South America?” Kenyon asked.

  “Several reasons,” Yakov said. “First, it’s got a low population density. Second, it’s located near the equator, which is advantageous for a space launch. Third, it’s right on the ocean, so rockets can go up over water instead of land. And fourth, there’s little likelihood of hurricane or earthquake in that specific area.

  “Even though it’s run by the European Space Consortium,” Yakov continued, “anyone with enough money can buy a rocket and a launch window from them. Many U.S. firms launch their commercial satellites from Kourou.”

  “Do you have proof that this virus came off a satellite?” Kenyon demanded.

  “We need to find exactly where Harrison and his crew picked up this thing from. That will help prove or disprove what Yakov says,” Turcotte said. “He said in the video that he went upriver, but there’s a lot of rivers here.”

  “What do you suggest?” Norward asked.

  Turcotte tapped the scientist on the chest. “You and I go to the boat, try to see if there’s a map or anything on board that shows where they found the dead village.”

  * * *

  Guide Parker stood on top of a dune, looking down at the encampment of the chosen. Only one hundred and forty had made the commitment to leave behind all they knew and follow him to the desert.

  This was the place. They had left the last hard surface road at Alice Springs, the center of Australia, and followed an old mining track into the Gibson Desert. Even that had disappeared hours before, but the Guide Parker had kept his people moving through the desert, the sun beating down on the roofs of the four-wheel-drive vehicles that made up the makeshift convoy.

  When he arrived at the right spot, he had just known. He’d ordered them to stop and set up camp. Then he had walked out of the camp and up this dune.

  Parker looked around. He saw no sign of life other than the tents his people had pitched. He dropped to his knees, feeling the sand shift beneath them. He looked up to the sky.

  “We are here,” he whispered to the clear night sky. “We are here. Come take us away.”

  He didn’t notice the drops of blood coming out of his nose, falling to the sand and being absorbed immediately.

  * * *

  Duncan read the report from Major Quinn once more. The Mission was real and STAAR had been investigating it. That was important, but did little to help the situation right now. It did back up Yakov’s story about the existence of The Mission and that The Mission had obviously interfered with mankind in the past. She called Quinn and told him to get his computer experts working on finding the current location of The Mission and whether there was any connection between The Mission and the Black Death.

  Duncan punched in another number on her SATPhone. The other end was picked up on the third ring.

  “USAMRIID,” the voice pulled the letters into one word.

  “Colonel Carmen, please,” Duncan said.

  “Who is calling?”

  Duncan paused — this was Carmen’s direct number. “I’d like to talk to Colonel Carmen.”

  “I’m afraid that isn’t possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Colonel Carmen had an accident.”

  Duncan’s hand gripped the SATPhone tighter. “Is she all right?”

  “I’m afraid the accident occurred on the Level Four containment facility. The entire base has been quarantined. Colonel Carmen is dead. There’s a Colonel Zenas here from the Pentagon, and he’s taken over. Would you like to speak to him?”

  Duncan pushed the off button. She stood in the shadow of the space shuttle Endeavor for several minutes, waiting until she could stop her hand from shaking.

  CHAPTER 15

  Che Lu thought it quite ridiculous, two old people crawling around in the dark. She and Lo Fa were a kilometer from the base of Qian-Ling, edging ever closer. They were moving so slowly it had taken them an hour to go the past hundred meters, but Lo Fa was in no rush. He had told Che Lu before leaving the guerrilla camp that they would proceed very cautiously. He reminded her for the hundredth time of another reason he had lived to be an old man — his ability to move carefully when it was called for.

  The rest of the camp had packed up their meager belongings and begun their trek west to the Kunlun Mountains. It was reported that large numbers of refugees were flooding into those hills, occasionally coming out to strike at the army. It had tugged at Che Lu’s heart to see the women and children pick up their satchels and fade away into the night. It seemed as if that was the story of China — the people always walking to escape one government while hoping for another.

  “Hush!” Lo Fa hissed, even though Che Lu knew she had not made a noise. There was a quarter moon that threw down a feeble light. Even on the darkest night, it would be impossible to miss the looming bulk of the mountain tomb of Qian-Ling. Che Lu heard what it was that had halted her partner. A plane’s engine, very faint but getting louder. She peered into the night sky, searching.

  Lo Fa grabbed her arm and pointed. “There.”

  Che Lu looked, but she couldn’t see what he was pointing at. The plane had to have been blacked out, as there were no lights. The sound grew louder, then she spotted it, a black cross in the dark night.

  It came in low over the mountain, then circled. As it did so, screams rang out in the night, emanating from the Chinese soldiers bivouacked all over the mountain.

  “What is happening?” Che Lu asked.

  “I don’t know, but we wait,” Lo Fa said.

  On the second time over, white parachutes blossomed in the plane’s trail. Lo Fa stood. “Now!”

  He scrambled across the cr
eek, Che Lu following. He pushed aside a heavy overgrowth of vegetation and then they were in a narrow cut in the side of the mountain, less than three feet wide and six feet deep, almost completely overgrown across the top. Che Lu felt smooth stone under her feet and she remembered scrambling down these same stairs after splitting from Turcotte and Nabinger as they escaped from the tomb the previous week.

  The stairs went up the side of the tomb, invisible unless one stumbled right into the narrow cut. Che Lu wondered why it had been made. She assumed it was for the warriors who guarded the emperor’s tomb so many centuries ago to be able to move across the mountain from one side to the other without being seen.

  Whatever the reason, the steps took them up the mountain to within twenty meters of the hole that Turcotte had blown at the end of the exit to the Airlia storeroom.

  By the time they got there, Che Lu could hear men moving in the darkness, commands shouted in foreign tongues, some of which she recognized.

  “What is going on?” she asked Lo Fa, who was peeking over the edge of the trench toward the opening.

  “I think someone else wants to get into the tomb.” Lo Fa slithered over the edge of the trench, then reached back. “Let us hurry!”

  Che Lu took his hand, and he lifted her out. Together they hustled through the dark. Che Lu could see bodies lying about — the soldiers who had been guarding the entrance.

  Lo Fa reached the small opening that had been blasted. “Come on, old woman!” Che Lu put her foot into the hole, and Lo Fa hissed. “Don’t move.”

  “What?”

  Lo Fa was turning, his hands raised. “Look at your chest,” he said.

  Che Lu looked down and saw three bright red dots of light on her khaki shirt. “What is it?”

  “Laser sights.”

  Che Lu put her hands up also as men loomed out of the night and surrounded them.

  * * *

  Turcotte looked down at the body. The walk had taken twenty minutes. He had made sure to control his breathing the entire time, trying to keep the suit’s mask from fogging up. His clothes under the suit were soaked with sweat. The dirt lanes between the buildings had been empty. Turcotte tried to imagine the streets of New York looking like this once the Black Death spread.