The Doomsday Box (8 page)

“It isn't the Black Death either,” Carradine told her.

“Then what is it?” Michael asked.

“It's complicated,” Carradine said.

Fuchsia, who had a knack for getting to the heart of things, said, “Mr. Carradine, did you work on the original Montauk project—Project Rainbow?”

It was almost a relief to say yes. “It was back in the eighties,” Carradine told them. “Not long after I joined the CIA as a young man. I was given the option of transfer to Montauk. They were short on details about what was going on here—need-to-know and all that—but it was obviously an important assignment, and I thought it would be good for my career, so I said yes. Even after I went to Montauk, it was nearly three months before I discovered they were involved in germ warfare.”

There was a long moment's silence in the room before Danny exclaimed, “Bloody hell!”

“I thought biological warfare was outlawed,” Opal said.

Carradine shrugged. “There was a Geneva Protocol as long ago as 1925 that banned the use of biological agents in warfare, but it didn't stop the Japanese from using them in China during World War Two. Then in 1972 America and the Soviets both signed the Biological Weapons Convention. That was a treaty prohibiting all biological weapons outright: production, stockpiling, or development. It also required the destruction of existing stockpiles. The trouble was, it was a treaty without teeth. No provision for inspection, no penalties for breaking it. The Soviets had had an active bioweapons program for years and so, frankly, had we. The difference was, we stopped ours after the treaty, and they didn't. They were still running theirs when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.”

“But we didn't really stop ours, did we?” Opal asked mildly. “The American program, I mean.”

Carradine sighed. “We did for a time. President Nixon held to the letter of the treaty for maybe a year, eighteen months. We even destroyed some of our stockpiles. But then the intelligence services began to accumulate evidence the Soviets were ignoring the agreement. What else could we do?”

“You started it all up again?” Danny asked, incredulous.

“What else could we do?”

“Mr. Carradine,” Michael said, “what has this got to do with Montauk? I thought you told us Project Rainbow was about teleportation and time travel?”

Carradine had always thought of himself as a hard-bitten CIA man, who did what was necessary for the sake of the country and tried not to think too deeply about some of the consequences. But in the past he'd always been surrounded by fellow operatives who were just as hard-bitten. He took a deep breath. “You're too young to remember the Cold War. Two superpowers . . . the constant threat of nuclear Armageddon . . . proxy wars . . . the arms race . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis . . . America was the only country strong enough to stand up for democracy and freedom, and sometimes, in our enthusiasm, we made mistakes.”

“Doesn't answer his question,” Danny said.

Carradine said, “The official policy on germ warfare was to keep pace with the Soviets—just keep pace; no more than that. But there was a rogue element in the CIA who believed keeping pace would never be enough. They thought we needed
more
biological weapons than the Soviets,
better
biological weapons than the Soviets. They couldn't influence the number of weapons we had—not if they wanted to keep their activities secret—but they believed they
could
influence the quality.”

“Quality?” Opal murmured. “You mean, how many people they could kill.”

Carradine ignored her. “I'm afraid certain members of that rogue element infiltrated Montauk. Actually, what I should say is that the rogue element quietly took it over.”

“What?” Danny asked. “Turned it into a germ warfare lab? Stopped messing around with time travel?”

“Nothing quite so obvious as that.” Carradine shook his head. “And actually, time travel and germ warfare aren't a million miles apart.”

Fuchsia's hand went up to her mouth. “Oh my God!” she exclaimed. “You don't mean—?”

Carradine nodded. “We had an operative, code-named Cobra, who wormed himself into a position where he was virtually running the practical operations at Montauk—not the whole project, not the admin, but the whole experimental side. This gave him and his team control of the time travel experiments, meant he could do more or less what he wanted and fake the reports if necessary.” He hesitated, partly from reluctance, partly to see if the others had caught up, then said bluntly, “Cobra decided to investigate the possibility of using the Black Death in germ warfare.”

“You mean he wanted to bring back Black Death samples from the Middle Ages or something?” Danny asked, eyes wide.

But Michael was frowning. “Why would he need to? There've been recent outbreaks of bubonic plague in Asia.”

“And I would imagine there are laboratory samples with the World Health Organization or somewhere,” Opal said.

Carradine shook his head. “Actually, the Black Death
wasn't
bubonic plague, as Fuchsia seems to have guessed. Some scientists are beginning to suspect that from historical evidence, and I can confirm it. Bubonic plague is a bacterial infection. The Black Death was a filovirus like Ebola. But Cobra wasn't satisfied with that. He was obsessed with the idea of a mutation—something more virulent that would spread even more easily.” He hesitated, then said, “Cobra used the Montauk time gate—quite illegally—to search history for that mutation. Now it looks as if he found it.”

“You mean that's what was in the box?”

“I told you Project Rainbow ran into problems in 1988—all that was true and had nothing to do with the germ warfare activities, which were very much a black op. I also told you President Reagan closed the whole place down in 1989. What I didn't tell you was that it happened very quickly: Reagan was a decisive man. At the time we pulled the plug, Cobra was supposed to be on vacation. But that was just his cover. Only a handful of people knew he was actually on one of his time trips. The thing was, we didn't know where, and there was no way to call him back. We couldn't even
try
to stop the closure without revealing what he'd been doing. All we could do was hope he got back in time. But he didn't. When the project closed, it left him trapped.”

“Wow!” Danny exclaimed.

Carradine said, “The sample box that came through when we reactivated the machinery was identical to the ones we were using in the eighties. I wasn't expecting it, so I couldn't warn the colonel in time. When he opened it, some of the vials were broken, which meant the virus was loose inside. The colonel caught it at once. After that, it was too late.”

“Back up a minute, Mr. Carradine,” Danny cut in. “The rest of us were in that chamber too—how come we haven't all got it?”

Carradine smiled weakly. “That's where this meeting started. That's why I told you we weren't going to die of the plague.” He sighed. “It's the only good thing to come out of this whole mess. When Cobra and his black-op team first planned their little field trips, they realized how potentially dangerous they would be. So the first step in their plan was to develop a supervaccine that would stimulate the immune system so strongly it would fight off
any
infection. To this day, only a handful of CIA operatives know about the existence of that vaccine. I happen to be one of them. I've made sure it was included in the routine vaccinations of every active Shadow Project operative—a sort of atonement, I suppose. Have you noticed you haven't gotten sick since you joined the team?”

Opal was staring at him with a look that combined shock and bewilderment. “If you have a supervaccine, can't you use it to stop what's happening now?”

“I wish I could,” Carradine told her. “First of all, a vaccine is designed to prevent a disease, not to cure it. Secondly, we don't have nearly enough supplies to vaccinate an entire population.”

“Can't you make more?” Danny asked.

Carradine shook his head. “Not in time. The mass manufacture of any vaccine from its development stage takes about six months on average. This one contains some very rare ingredients, which would slow the process down even further. The existing stockpiles would protect a few hundred people at most. The virus is currently spreading like wildfire. A global pandemic is a day or two away at most.”

“So there's nothing we can do?” Opal was beginning to panic. “This Cobra person has sent some sort of superbug through time to help the American germ warfare program, and now it's going to wipe out half the world?”

“That's about the size of it, but there
is
something you can do,” Carradine said firmly. “If you're prepared to accept the mission, you can go back in time and stop Cobra before he sends through the doomsday box.”

A
ll of us?” Opal asked.

“Yes.”

“Including you?”

Carradine shook his head. “I'll have to stay here and operate the time-gate machinery, otherwise you have no way of getting back.”

Danny looked at him intently. “You want us to go back to the Middle Ages?”

They were moving toward the critical question already, and Carradine wasn't sure he was prepared to answer it. “I don't think so,” he said simply.

But Danny, of course, wasn't going to leave it alone. “So how do we stop him?”

“Well,” Carradine told them, “the first thing to say is that Cobra isn't a mad dog—he's not some sort of Joker character fighting Batman. He might be misguided, but he didn't plan to infect the world. So I figure—”

Fuchsia interrupted to ask, “What was Cobra's real name, Mr. Carradine?”

It was something he didn't want to get into at the moment. “He used different names. He spent most of his life undercover.” He glared impatiently at Fuchsia. “Anyway, I figure what we need to do—what
you
need to do—is get to him
before
he sends through his little doomsday box, let him know the results of his actions, make sure he understands what will happen if he goes ahead. Once he realizes he's about to put the entire world in danger . . .” Carradine spread his hands. “As I said, he's not a mad dog. He'll never send the samples through after that.”

Danny asked, “So you
do
want us to go back to the Middle Ages?”

Carradine shook his head. “Forget the Middle Ages, Danny. First off, we don't know where to find him in the Middle Ages—he could be anywhere from China to England—and we don't even know exactly
when.
Once the project closed, we lost our lock on him. Second thing is, if you
did
go to that time frame, you wouldn't survive a week. You don't have the right clothes; you couldn't even understand medieval English, let alone speak it. You don't know the customs of the period, don't know how to behave, don't have any money. You'd have to steal food or starve, and the second time they caught you, they'd hang you.”

“What would they do the first time?” Danny asked.

“Cut your hand off,” Carradine said bluntly.

Danny held up his hand and stared at it fondly. “You've convinced me.”

But apparently he hadn't convinced Opal, who said, “Cobra managed to survive. Obviously.”

“Cobra spent months—actually over a year—preparing for his first trip to the fourteenth century. He studied Middle English, Latin, and Old French. He read social histories of the time. He had clothes specially made in the style of the period. He had a purseful of genuine coinage. He carried medieval weaponry—sword and a dagger, as I recall—for his own protection . . .
and
he could use it: he went through a course of special weapons training. He had time to make his preparations and the resources of the CIA behind him. We have neither. Just about everybody at Montauk is dead or dying now, and there's nobody on the outside riding to the rescue.”

Danny shrugged. “So if it's not the Middle Ages, then when?”

Carradine placed both palms on the tabletop and leaned forward. “In theory, any time before he collects the samples. In practice, it has to be a time period where you can survive and move freely, where we know Cobra's whereabouts, and ideally it should be a period where you can find a little help when you need it. And believe me, you're going to need all the help you can get.”

“You obviously have a time period in mind, Mr. Carradine,” Michael said.

“The one year that checks all the boxes is 1962,” Carradine told them. “Or at least most of them.”

Opal echoed, “Nineteen sixty-two? Wouldn't it make more sense to send us back to 1988 or whenever it was, just before Cobra made his trip to the Middle Ages? We know where to find him—here at Montauk, obviously—and the whole plan would be fresh in his mind.”