The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller (9 page)

Kate considered the man’s story. It had certainly worked. She turned to the team: “Ok. This is our new approach.”

Dr. Helms stepped toward Kate and the translator. “I won’t do it. Lying to a parent to enroll a child in a clinical trial violates basic medical ethics and is simply morally wrong.” He paused for effect. “Regardless of their circumstances or the community’s social norms.” He stared at Kate and then the other staff.

Kate interrupted his revelry. “Suit yourself. You can wait in the van, and so can anyone else who wants to leave these kids here to die.”

The doctor turned to her to fire another volley, but Ben cut him off. “Well, I’m in. I hate waiting in the van. And killing kids for that matter.” He turned and started packing up the gear, only pausing to ask the other staff for help.

The remaining three assistants reluctantly began to help, and only then did Kate realize how on the fence they had been. She made a mental note to thank Ben, but the pace of the day soon picked up, and she forgot.

At the next village, the team tossed out the trial booklets, but when the villagers began collecting them, the team shifted to handing the booklets out: as insulation for the villagers’ homes. The act of goodwill helped to corroborate their story as aid workers, and it was nice for Kate to see the booklets she’d spent so much time on go to good use.

Dr. Helms continued protesting, but the rest of the staff ignored him. As the vans filled up with children, his protests tapered off, and by the end of the day, it was clear to everyone that he regretted his actions.

Back in Jakarta, he cornered Kate in her office one night, long after the other staff had left. “Listen Kate, I’ve been meaning to speak with you. After, um, some consideration, and, to be frank, after seeing some of the effects of this work, on, uh, the children, I have to say I’ve decided that we are well within the norms of medical ethics and my personal comfort zone, and thus, I am, well, quite comfortable leading this trial.” He moved to sit down.

Kate didn’t look up from her document. “Don’t sit down, John. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well. Out there in the field, you put your safety — your personal reputation — ahead of those children’s lives. That’s unacceptable. We both know I can’t fire you. But I simply can’t work with you on a trial where children’s lives are at stake. If something happened to one of them, if you put them in danger, I couldn’t live with it. I informed the trial sponsor, Immari Research, that I would be leaving, and the funniest thing happened.” She looked up from the paper. “They told me they wouldn’t fund the trial without me. So you can either resign or I will, in which case you’ll lose your funding, and I’ll simply start the same trial with a different name. Oh, and by the way, the movers are coming to pack up your office tomorrow — whatever you decide, you’ll have to find a new lease.”

She walked out of the office and left for the night. The next day, Helms left Jakarta for good, and Kate became the project’s sole investigator. Kate asked Martin to make a few phone calls, some favors were exchanged, and the study became the legal guardian of every child enrolled.

When Kate finished her story, the interrogator stood and said, “You expect me to believe that? We’re not savages, Miss Warner. Good luck telling that story to a jury in Jakarta.” He left the tiny room before Kate could respond.

Outside the interrogation room, the small man walked up to the rotund police chief, who put his sweaty arm around him and said, “How did it go, Paku?”

“I think she’s ready boss.”

CHAPTER 14

Secure Comms Room
Clocktower Station HQ
Jakarta, Indonesia

Josh looked out of the glass room at the concrete walls beyond as he tried to digest what David had told him. Clocktower was compromised, several major cells were already fighting for their survival, Jakarta Station would soon be under attack, and on top of that, there was an imminent terrorist attack on a global scale… and David needed Josh to unravel a code to stop it. No pressure.

David returned from filing cabinet, and sat down at the table again. “I’ve been working on a theory I formed ten years ago, just after 9/11.”

“You think this attack is connected to 9/11?” Josh said.

“I do.”

“You think this is an Al-Qaeda operation?”

“Not necessarily. I believe Al-Qaeda only carried out the 9/11 attacks. I believe another group, a global corporation called Immari International, actually planned, funded, and benefited from the attack. I think it was a cover for various archaeological digs Immari conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq and a very sophisticated heist. A robbery.”

Josh looked at the table. Had David lost it? This sort of 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff was fodder for internet forums, not serious counter-terrorism work.

David seemed to recognize Josh’s reluctance. “Look, I know it sounds far-fetched, but hear me out. After 9/11, I spent almost a year in a hospital and then rehab. That’s a lot of time to think. A lot of things about the attacks made no sense to me. Why attack New York first? Why not hit the White House, Congress, the CIA, and the NSA simultaneously? Those four plane crashes would have crippled the country, especially our defensive capabilities. It would have thrown us into utter chaos. And why use only four planes? Surely they could have trained more pilots. They could have hijacked thirty planes that morning if they simply took planes from Reagan and National Airports in DC, Baltimore, and maybe Richmond. You’ve got Atlanta pretty close; Hartsfield-Jackson is the busiest airport in the world. Who knows, they could have probably crashed a hundred planes that day before passengers started fighting back. And they had to know crashing planes is a one-time-only tactic, so they would have maximized the impact.”

Josh nodded, still skeptical. “It’s an interesting question.”

“And there were others. Why strike on a day when you know the President is out of town, in an elementary school in Florida? Clearly the goal wasn’t to remove our fighting capabilities — sure the Pentagon was hit and many brave men died, but the overall effect was to really, really piss the Pentagon and the Armed forces off, the whole country for that matter — after 9/11, America had an appetite for war the likes it had never seen before. There was one other striking effect: the stock market crashed, a historical crash. New York is the financial capital of the world; hitting it makes sense if you want to do one thing: crash the stock market. The attacks did two things really well: ensured there was a war, a big one
and
crashed the stock market.”

“I never looked at it that way,” Josh said.

“Things look a lot different when you spend almost a year in a hospital, learning to walk by day and asking why by night. I couldn’t do much research on terrorists from a hospital bed, so I focused on the financial angle. I started looking at who the big winners were from the financial collapse. Who was betting against American stocks. What companies were shorting the market, who owned puts, who made a fortune. It was a long list. Then I started looking at who benefited from the wars, especially private security contractors and oil and gas interests. The list got shorter. And something else intrigued me: the attacks nearly guaranteed a war in Afghanistan. Maybe whatever this group wanted was there and they needed a cover to go in and search for it. Or maybe it was in Iraq. Maybe both. I knew I needed to get out in the field to find some real answers.”

David took a breath and continued. “By 2004, I was back on my feet. I applied to the CIA that year but was turned down. I trained for another year, got turned down again in 2005, and trained some more. I thought about joining the Army, but I knew I would need to be part of covert ops to get real answers.”

Josh looked down, taking it in, seeing David in a completely different way now. He had always thought of the station chief as this invincible super soldier, had always assumed that that was all he’d ever been. The idea of him lying broken in a hospital bed for a year, of him being
turned down
as a field operative — twice — was slightly jarring.

“What?” David said.

“It’s nothing… I just, assumed you were a career operative. That you were with the agency on 9/11.”

An amused smiled crossed David’s lips. “No, not even close. I was a grad student, actually. At Columbia, if you can believe that. Might be why the CIA kept rejecting me — didn’t want anyone over-thinking things in the field units. But apparently the third time’s the charm — they took me in 2006. Maybe they had lost enough operatives or enough had joined the private contractors; whatever the reason, I was glad to be in-country in Afghanistan. I found my answers. The short list I had, the three companies, were actually subsidiaries of one company: Immari International. Their security division, Immari Security, coordinated their operations, but the funds from 9/11 went into several of their front companies. And I found something else. A plan for a new attack, code-named Toba Protocol.” David pointed at the file. “That file is all I have on that attack. It’s not much.”

Josh opened the file. “This is why you joined Clocktower, to investigate Immari and Toba Protocol?”

“Partly. Clocktower was the perfect platform for me. I knew back then that Immari was behind 9/11, that they had made a fortune from the attacks, and that they were actively looking for something in the mountains of East Afghanistan and Pakistan. But they got to me before I could figure out the big picture. They almost killed me in Northern Pakistan. I was officially listed as killed in action. It was the perfect opportunity to exit. I needed a new identity and somewhere to continue my work. I had never heard of Clocktower before I was in-theater in Afghanistan, but I took refuge here. It was perfect. We all come to Clocktower for our own reasons; it was the key to my survival at the time and the tool I needed to finally learn the truth about Immari and Toba. I never told anyone my real motivation, except the director. He took me in and helped me start Jakarta Station four years ago. I hadn’t made much substantial progress on the Immari question until a week ago when the source contacted me.”

“That’s why the source picked you.”

“Apparently. He knows about my investigation. He knew I would have this file. It may hold the key to decrypting the code. What I know is that Immari Corporation is somehow involved in 9/11, maybe in other terrorist plots before and after, and that they’re working on something much, much bigger. Toba Protocol. It’s why I chose Jakarta — the closest major city to Mount Toba. I think it’s a reference to where the attack will start.”

“A logical assumption. What do we know about Toba Protocol?” Josh said.

“Not a lot. Apart from a few references, there’s one memo about it. It’s a report about urbanization and the potential to reduce the total human population.”

“That limits the possibilities somewhat. A terrorist attack that could reduce the total human population, it would have to be biological, maybe a drastic change in the environment, or inciting a new global war. We’re not talking about suicide bombers; it’s something bigger.”

David nodded. “Much bigger, and probably something we would never expect. Indonesia and Jakarta is the perfect place to start an attack — the population density is high and there are tons of ex-patriots here, the start of an attack would send wealthy foreigners in Jakarta to the airport and from there to almost every country in the world.”

David motioned to the bank of computer screens behind Josh. “The computers behind you are connected to Central, our own servers, and the remaining cells. They have everything we know about what’s going on around the world, the various terrorist groups and organizations we now know are fronts for Immari International. It’s not much. Start there, get up to speed, then move on quickly to the latest local intel. If there’s anything going on here in Jakarta, we have a responsibility to investigate it first. We will need to hand off what we know in case Jakarta Station falls. Think outside the box. Whatever is going on, it may not fit any normal patterns. Look for something we wouldn’t suspect — like Saudi Nationals taking flying lessons in Germany, then moving to the US; like someone in Oklahoma buying tons of fertilizer, someone who isn’t a farmer.”

“What’s in the rest of the folders?” Josh said.

David pushed a folder across the desk. “This folder contains the rest of the information on Immari that I collected before I joined Clocktower.”

“It’s not in the computer?”

“No. I never turned it over to Clocktower either. You’ll see why. The other envelope contains a letter, from me to you. You should open it when I die. It will provide you with instructions.”

Josh started to say something, but David interrupted. “There’s one last thing.”

David stood and retrieved a small case from the corner of the room. He set the case on the table. “This room and the outer chamber will give you some protection, and I hope, enough time to find something and decode the message. Clocktower HQ is the last place they’ll be looking for you. Nevertheless, I doubt we have a lot of time. Send whatever you find to my mobile. The top-right monitor shows a camera feed. That camera is over the door — looking out into the server room, so you’ll know if someone is trying to get in here. As you know, there are no cameras in the main HQ, for security reasons, so you may not have much notice.” He opened the case and took out a handgun. He slid the magazine into the handle of the gun and placed it on the table in front of Josh. “You know how to use this?”