Ravenous Dusk (92 page)

"Now, for the bad news. The inconceivable has begun in California. The Radiant Dawn colony has set into motion a plan to go infectious and spread globally. Our observers there have reported that the numbers arriving at the site in an industrial area at the southern edge of Los Angeles County are far higher than anticipated, which suggests that this is the end strategy our analysts predicted could not occur for another year without the satellite as a vector. Assistant Director Wyler, this was your bailiwick. Why were we so blind to this?"

Cundieffe bit the tip off his tongue. Every eye in the room fell on them. AD Wyler punched a few buttons on the console before them, and the monitors showed video footage of the battle in Idaho. Who shot this? Cundieffe wondered. "Our eyes on the ground were limited to Agents Macy and Mentone, who had their hands full with pacification of the local law enforcement—"

"And your protégée was there, as well," one of the Committee added. "Agent Cundieffe?" They were no easier to tell apart than before, but he noticed this one was sitting in Brady Hoecker's chair.

"Agent Cundieffe was present in relation to another investigation."

"He was inserted into the situation by my predecessor," the Mule said, "and seemed to be operating at cross-purposes with the designated field agents, and seeking to undermine your policy mandate out there— whatever that was."

Wyler squirmed in his seat. "You said yourself, Agent Cundieffe was led out there under false pretenses. I take full responsibility for his actions, of course, but I decline the inference that this was a point of policy."

"You allowed him to go. Either by negligence or complicity, you negatively impacted the execution of your mandate."

Sweat popped out of Wyler's forehead, plopped on the desk like tropical rain. Cundieffe found himself shrinking back behind Wyler, but his boss was withering under their gaze, aging weeks with every second they studied him. He started to open his mouth to rise to Wyler's defense, but Wyler pushed him back and stood up. "I shouldn't have to demonstrate my alliance with our current policy mandate any more than I already have. For the new Secretary of Internal Security to infer that I was an active participant in his predecessor's heterodoxy is outrageous and opportunistic, at this late stage, and I will address those charges
in toto
once this briefing is concluded. I don't need to remind the Committee who voted to bankroll the estimable Lt. Col. Greenaway, a loose variable who might have made become a sizable tack on the Institute's collective seat, had our agents not neutralized him?"

Cundieffe wondered, not for the first time, how much his boss really knew about what happened. Did he know he was lying? Wyler sat down and knitted his hands in front of him, looking straight ahead, like so many defendants Cundieffe had seen in court. The ones who know they're going to burn.

"Please, let us continue," said the Chairperson. "The Secretary of Enforcement will now review our options for domestic containment, as well as readiness issues which may or may not become important in the near future.

A Committee member who, absurdly, in this room, wore a toupee, stood and paced around the table as he made his remarks. "To be sure, the advanced state of the outbreak has caught us up somewhat short, but we don't anticipate any further complications with the domestic issues. We are in possession of a sufficient quantity of the Mission's lysing agent to cleanse the Wilmington colony, which is standing by at Los Alamitos Naval Reserve Air Station, less than five miles away, and ready to be delivered on the target on a moment's notice. Battle damage assessment of the Idaho site indicates this is an effective agent against the colony's homogenized germ line, but we have Army Reserve units on standby across the county."

"What about the possibility of already infectious agents in the air as we speak?" a hawkish lady Mule at the desk beside theirs shouted. "Have you shut down the airports, public transportation out of the hot zone? Have you closed down the freeways?"

The Secretary pointed to the monitors, which showed the unmistakable chemistry set skyline of the Wilmington refinery jungle as seen from a shoulder-held camera on the 405 Freeway. Another view, of a parking lot filled with buses. A woman with long black hair darted across the street and disappeared among them.

"We've placed LAX, Burbank and John Wayne Airports on high alert, and have people on the ground. If the situation demands, we can shut them down, but there's no question of closing the freeways. The situation is well in hand, I assure you. They're clustering together as closely as possible, as if they want to make a neat target for a surgical strike."

"And that doesn't worry you, Secretary?" someone else snapped. "When has anyone ever successfully overestimated Dr. Keogh's propensity for eluding containment? Should we assume this is simply another tactical feint to scare us, and not the end game strategy some of us advocated years ago?"

There it was. He looked sidewise at Wyler, whose face was utterly blank.

"Let's hear the preparedness strategies, Mallory," the Chairperson nodded to the Defense Secretary.

"As you're all well aware, the domestic issue is not our principal point of execution. The Iraqi threat is our cause, whether or not the Russians contain it.

"At zero hour, we will move SAC/NORAD down to Defcon 2, and the Vice President will board a second Kneecap plane. Mobile command posts with the power and communications lines to launch nuclear missiles will take to the roads across America, which will, of course, be nationalized and closed to civilian traffic. This will be a very delicate phase. Keogh wasn't supposed to have any groups meeting in the United States, but even this can be made to serve our purposes. Helicopters armed with spray tanks of lysing agent will fly over the stadium in LA and cleanse it, while the rest of the world will be selectively overrun. The world will look to America to save them. Here at home, long after the Russian threat has evaporated, Americans will look to us to restore order, protect them from the plague just outside their borders, and lead them into a brighter future. Thus will the current unrest only hasten the implementation of the master mandate, and the fulfillment of all that we have worked for." He sat down. More than a few of them actually applauded.

Cundieffe felt like running. What
have we worked for?
He wanted to scream. They'd stood up and said it, spelled it out. The ground seemed to tilt under him, but the sense of being in a dream had finally burned off. This was swiftly becoming more awful than anything he could have imagined.

Cundieffe scribbled out a note on a pad and shoved it under Wyler's nose. WHERE'S HOECKER?

Wyler stood again and said, "And now, if the briefing is concluded, I'd like to present a document which merits the Committee's immediate attention." The Chairperson nodded. Wyler pressed a few buttons, and half of the monitors in the room flashed snow for a few frames, then a discolored but unnervingly clear digital video image.

It came to him in a sickening, migraine-intensity flash: the death of Socrates.

More than a few heads turned Cundieffe's way. He shrank further behind Wyler, until he was peeking over the Assistant Director's shoulder at the screens.

Sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates willingly drank hemlock and, surrounded by his disciples and enemies alike, declaimed his immortal thoughts until the moment of his death. Hoecker's accusers made him do it alone in his room, and send them a tape. Cundieffe wished he had a bowl of poison, himself.

Wyler stopped the tape. It probably just stayed that way for quite a while, Hoecker only turning blue and blowing bubbles while the tape rolled, until Agent Macy dropped by to collect it.

Cundieffe felt as if an engine block had settled on his chest. He leaned back in his chair until it teetered on the edge of dumping him. He stared at the ceiling and asked it,
Why am I still alive?
They killed Durban, Hoecker, Greenaway's army, Heilige Berg, Storch. Why let him live?

Because they were all just dime-a-million gendered humans, and he was one of Them. And hadn't he been? What had he done, really, besides follow blindly along, doing research that opened a door for them here, letting himself get kidnapped and leading them there. He'd been nothing but a good Mule, up to now. His half-hearted moralizing and tangential wanderings had been only a minor annoyance as he went down their trail.

The Chairperson looked around the silent room, sounded a gentler tone that seemed to let slack into the strings holding everyone upright. "We'll adjourn here for a fifteen minute recess to collate data from the ground. When we return, we will observe full ceremonial protocols for what promises to be a memorable event."

Cundieffe snatched Wyler's arm. "Sir, is there a place, where we could—?"

If he expected Wyler to look shaken by what he'd just shown the Committee, he was rudely taken aback by the grim excitement animating his droopy features. "Martin, pull yourself together. None of this reflects on you."

"Sir, I—it's not about…that. There's something else that I have to understand, and I think now is the time."

Wyler led him up the steps past rows of Mules raptly picking at laptops and desk consoles. Cundieffe saw many screens replaying Hoecker's suicide tape, pausing it, taking notes.

At the top of the stairs, they went down a dim black corridor to a row of conference rooms. Wyler held the door for him, shut it behind them, and sat on one corner of the immense smoked glass table that dominated the room. "Now, what seems to be the trouble?"

"Sir, I suppose the Institute already knew that Lt. Durban was duped into turning NSA intercepts pertaining to the events of July, '99 over to Greenaway—"

Wyler only made a get-on-with-it gesture with one hand.

"What do you know about a project called ROYAL PICA?" Cundieffe asked. The words came out of his mouth like balls on a string, pausing after each to gauge some reaction from Wyler. "Maybe
we
have a different name for it, sir, but it…well, the evidence conclusively links the Institute with—with—"

AD Wyler pressed a touch-sensitive monitor built into the conference table. "Regina, could we trouble you for a moment of your time?"

"I'll be right there, Wendell."

Until she came in, Cundieffe just stood there, unable to form words. Wyler touched the screen a few times, reading something and nodding approval. He didn't look up when he finally spoke. "Martin, I like you. I've admired your work for years. Your father was an exceptional agent, almost good enough to have been one of us, and when we learned about you, we were none of us surprised. You're a purebred, but more, you've always exemplified what we believe, to the point where we knew you had internalized our ethic. You've always worked as if you get it, you know what's at stake, here. This is bigger than all of us. You know that. Hoecker understood it, at the end."

He almost shook, trying to swallow this one without choking. The look in Hoecker's eyes as he made his hollow confession, the look of utter defeat they were still studying out in the war room
—
that was the message he'd wanted to send.
You're wrong
, his eyes said,
you're so completely, utterly wrong that I can't live in the same world with you. I tried to make you see—

The door opened, and a balding Mule agent who might have been Macy's first cousin scoped out the room, then ducked out to make way for the Chairperson.

Wyler stood as she entered and shook hands with him, then turned and beamed at Cundieffe. He retreated a step from the force of her charm. Telling himself that "she" was a neuter, like himself, and that her gender assignment was as much of an arbitrary disguise as his own, did nothing to make her seem less motherly. He felt cowed by her probing eyes and disarming smile. She knew all the proper cues and played them, so that he could only hang his head before her.

"You've been through so much, Martin. Wendell has kept me apprised of your tribulations, and we're all very sympathetic. We've all been where you are right now, but it's been a harder road for you than most."

Cundieffe risked a glance at her. She took his hands in hers. It was so hard to stare at her, but he had to meet her eyes, if only to remind himself that this was not his own mother. "Madame Chairperson—"

"Pardon my bad manners, Martin. My name is Regina Stapleton."

"I—"

"Wendell tells me you have questions. You're troubled by something you've read."