Codename: Omega (feat. The Apiary Society) (12 page)

Price walked up the flight of stairs, inspecting the doorjamb.  He found the strand of hair he’d spread across the door and frame, and it was still in place.  All of the furniture within the room was overturned.  Stuffing from every piece of furniture littered the floor and all of the linings cut to pieces.  Loose floorboards were pulled up.  Framed pictures, ripped from the walls and smashed on the ground.  Price suddenly felt angry for the intrusion.  He suddenly felt rather fond of the nostalgia of the old place and irritated that anyone would so wantonly ruin it. 

Price checked the bedrooms, which were in similar states of destruction.  Feathers from the pillows littered the floor and dresser drawers were yanked out and thrown across the room. 

There was no clothing, no paperwork. 

Price sighed, crunching glass as he moved toward the front door, when he stopped.  An antique pipe rested on the mantle.  Price picked it up and admired its wicked curve and strong mahogany bowl.  It looked well-used.  He turned the pipe over and saw a folded piece of paper stuffed down inside the bowl, and when he fished it out, saw a series of crudely drawn stick figures in various dancing poses.  Several of the figures were holding flags.  They were drawn in groups, apparently at random.  Some stood alone.  Some were identical, and others unique.    

Price folded the paper and tucked it into his jacket pocket.  Whoever searched 221B Baker Street had obviously never seen a substitution cipher pictogram before. 

***

“I know we have an entire department for cipher analysis, but I thought I would start with you,” Price said.  “Being that you are such a fan.”

Llewelyn slid his glasses on, and bent forward to peer over the paper.  “Ooooh hoo,” he said, “How delightful!” 

Price turned to look at the workers toiling in Llewelyn’s division.  At one end of the room, a flame thrower erupted from a megaphone.  Rapid-fire machine gun rounds spat out of a garden hose at the other. 
Fancy stuff,
Price thought. 
None of it worth a damn.
  He pulled out the Webley he’d taken from Emily the day before.  He snapped the barrel forward and checked to make sure it was empty.  He blew dust out of the cylinder and thought,
this was all you needed.   Six-shots at an honest distance from your opponent.  Not a pen that shot laser beams.  Not a wristwatch that turned into a jetpack. 

Llewelyn opened a dusty leather book and began flipping through the pages, finally coming to one that bore a similar looking series of drawings to the one in the cryptogram.  “Holmes deciphered the very same series of drawings in what his biographer called, ‘The Adventure of the Dancing Men.’  It’s quite simple really, using a very basic frequency analysis.  You take the most commonly found figure, assuming that it is the letter ‘E’, and taking it from there.  Holmes himself describes fully how to crack the cipher within the story.” 

“So can you read it, Llewelyn, or do you want me to do it?”

Llewelyn bent down, looking at the figures and muttering to himself.  He stood up and announced triumphantly, “It says that—My God, Sean!  Is that what I think it is?”

Price flinched involuntarily and struggled to regain his composure.  “What the hell are you shouting about?  I’m surrounded by lunatics building toaster ovens that turn into bloody jetpacks!  Don’t startle me like that.”

Llewelyn came around the table, pointing at the handgun in Price’s hand.  “It is!  My Lord, it’s a Webley Mk IV.”  Llewelyn took the handgun from Price’s hand and caressed it, “This fires .455 cartridges of 220 grain, flat-nosed, wadcutters.  Wherever did you get it?”

“Dr. Watson’s granddaughter gave it to me at 221B.”

Llewelyn stared evenly at Price and said, “You’re joking.” 

“I will let you hold onto it if you stop messing about and translate that cryptogram for me.”

Llewelyn tore himself away from the gun and hunched over the drawings on the page, more intent than ever.  

***

Price opened the door to Knight’s office and said, “I have to go to America.”  

“Why?”

Price held up the cryptogram, “The Apiary Society is planning to poison the new Polio Vaccine.”

“The one being developed in Pittsburgh?”

“Yes,” Price said.

“I just read about that today.  They’re planning on testing it on nearly two million schoolchildren.  How do you know the Beekeepers mean to poison it?”

Price spread out the paper.  “We translated this drawing that I found on Baker Street.  It reads,
Salk Serum Targeted.  The Arsenal or Watson
.”

“Arsenal or Watson?” Knight said. 

“It’s obviously an assignment for either Watson, or someone calling themselves The Arsenal.  I’ll have Station A check for anyone using that name in the Americas.”

Knight nodded and sat back in his chair, taking a deep breath before he spoke.  “Find Emily Watson and bring her home, Commander.  Or find her, and don’t.”

***

Price exited the airplane, entering the sparse terminal of Philadelphia International Airport.  The long line at customs did not look promising. 

A man in a suit looked directly at him and said, “Commander Sean Price?”

Price tried to mask his surprise, “Yes?”

The man waved to the customs officers and pulled Price out of line.  “Follow me, Commander.”

People stared as Price picked up his bag to follow the man.  “Normally I prefer a little more anonymity when travelling on official business, Mr.—”

“Chuck Regis, CIA.  Right this way, Price.  Here we go.”  Regis opened a nondescript door in the airport hallway that lead to a small room with only two metal chairs and a steel ring bolted to the wall.  Price stopped at the doorway and looked inside. 

“Nothing to fear,” Regis said.  “This is sort of an emergency interrogation room for us.  We share it with all the other agencies.  Except for Philly PD.  They turn the place into a goddamn horror show.  You ever try to get blood off a ceiling tile, Mr. Price?”

Price shook his head.  “Is it your intention to interrogate me, Mr. Regis?”

Regis hitched up his pants, “No.  Not yet, anyway.  We got a call from Washington that you were coming to find some Watson-chick.  We’ve got her passport flagged.  She isn’t in the US, and if she shows up, we’ll grab her.”

Price shut the door behind him.  “I admit, that’s better news than I expected.  What about the Arsenal?”

“The what?”

“The Arsenal.  Our office checked for any known enemy agents using that codename, but nothing came up.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.  I’ll call it into Langley later and see if they have anything.”

“Have you received any other threats against Jonas Salk, or the polio vaccine?”

Regis chuckled, “Absolutely not.  You came all this way for a big wild goose chase if you ask me.  Who the hell would want to tamper with a vaccine, anyway?  Just how solid is your intel?”

A child-like drawing of dancing stick figures
, Price thought.  “It’s as solid as what we normally get,” he said.

“Well, if it’s the same as what we normally get, it’s a bunch of crap.”

“True indeed,” Price said.  “So how does one go about renting a car, here?”

“What for?” 

“I have some friends to visit,” Price said.  “Seeing that you have things well in hand here, I might as well make the most of it.”  

“Friends, huh?” Regis said.  “You mean like the one you let get fed to a shark down in St. Petersburg?”

“Pardon?”

Regis leaned closer, “Jack Ivor was a good friend of mine, Sean.  We went to The Farm together at Camp Peary.  I heard all about your little adventure down there, limey.  You got my buddy turned into a freak.”

“I don’t know who you got your information from, but it wasn’t like that.”

“Save it, pal.  Just turn around and get on the next airplane and go back to your Queen and your cricket.”  Regis pushed the interrogation room’s door open without speaking.  Price picked up his bags and headed out, entering a large group of confused travelers looking for their terminals. 

No flights to London were available until the next day.  Price checked into a room at the Sheraton and tossed his bags on the bed.  He picked up the hotel room’s phone and quickly dialed a sequence of numbers. 

“Price here.  Message for the home office.  Tell them the package has not arrived.  The local supplier is closed for reasons unknown.”  He paused.  “I’m returning home tomorrow.”

***

The whiskey in the hotel was garbage.  Price took a bite of his greasy sandwich to dull the taste and pulled apart the flaps of his briefcase to locate a hidden zipper.  He pulled a file from the compartment that read
MI-6
Analysis of the Jonas Salk Polio Vaccine.
   

He leafed through several colorful graphs and charts, but stopped on a Photostat of a young girl walking with one leg bent the wrong way at the knee.  After that, more photographs of young children with deformed limbs.  He took another gulp of whiskey and decided he did not need to see anymore photographs. 

Polio has been in existence for thousands of years, but major epidemics began in 1910.  Summertime in both the US and Europe became known as “Polio Season.”  Two years ago, the worst outbreak in American history infected 58,000 people.  3,145 died.  21,269 were left paralyzed. 

Price turned the page to a photograph of a thin man with dark, receding hair and thick glasses listed as Doctor Jonas Salk. 

All sources indicate Dr. Salk has neutralized the viral disease.  Salk is currently planning widespread testing of the serum on 1.8 million school children. 

One great man,
Price thought. 
Certainly better than anyone who gets his best mate eaten by a shark.
  Price drained the rest of his glass, then poured another.  The taste was getting better.    

The phone rang. 

A pleasant sounding woman said, “Mr. Price, please?”  

“Speaking.” 

“How are you feeling today, sir?”

Price recounted the words in his mind before he said them, making sure the whiskey would not muddle them.  “I’m a bit tired.  I went to the zoo, but there were no bears, so I came home.”

“The package you inquired about has been at the local supplier since yesterday, sir.  You’re supposed to check in at the nearest way station.”

“I’ll need a new shipping manifest,” he said. 

The woman covered the mouthpiece to her phone and Price heard muffled voices, no doubt debating his request.  “It will be there by early afternoon.”

“Thank you, love,” he said.  “If you don’t mind, have Llewelyn whisper something in my ear, would you?”

The line went dead.

***

The door chimes clanged as Price entered the
Washington DC Crown Jewel Tea and Gift Shop.
  A small man in red suspenders waved to him from behind the counter and bellowed, “Top o’ the mornin’ to ya, guvnah!  Feeling right chipper are we this fine mornin’?”

“Stop,” Price said.

The man’s eyebrows raised.  “You must be him.”

“I am.  Do you have it?”

The men locked eyes for a moment.  The shopkeeper puffed out his chest and said, “Would you like to see the sights while you’re in town?”

Really?
Price thought. 
Your challenge question is six months out of date, mate, but I’ll humor you anyway.
 “That would be lovely, but only after we’ve eaten.”   

The shop keeper told Price to follow him into the basement.  “Sorry about the put-on, chum.  The Yanks love it.  Helps them feel like they’re getting something exotic, I suppose.”

“Has it arrived or not?” Price said. 

“It’s right down here.  When did you arrive in Washington?”

“I drove in from Philadelphia this morning,” Price said.  He looked down the dark stairwell, waiting at the top of the steps for the other man to descend.  He touched the knife in his belt, keeping it close to his fingertips as he started down the stairs.   

“Here we are,” the man said.  He handed Price a plain-looking, unstamped parcel and promptly turned around to return upstairs.  Price drew the knife and slit the packaging open.  There was a telegram and wooden box inside the parcel.  The telegram read:
EW w/ Cousins at Langley.  Adhere to Unwelcome Visitor Protocols.

Price folded the telegram and put it in his pocket.  He slit open the long piece of tape binding the box and removed the empty Beretta 418 from inside the box.  He checked both of the magazines beneath it, making sure they were fully loaded. 

The last item inside the box was a long, thin tube with tooled ridges at one end and an extended gun sight at the other.  Price screwed the butt end of the silencer into the Beretta and lifted the gun, listening to the muffled click inside the frame as he pulled the trigger.      

***

The woman sitting at the front desk looked up at him and said, "May I help you, sir?"

The greeting area for walk-ins at CIA Headquarters in Langley was filled with people, most of them hustling in and out of the building, but at least a dozen others who were now looking at him.  They had bulges under their suit coats from weapons holstered to their hips or strapped under their shoulders.  Price smiled warmly and said, "I’d like to see Emily Watson, please."