Callsign: Bishop - Book 1 (An Erik Somers - Chess Team Novella) (2 page)

No answer.

Aziz looked at his friend, who nodded.

“Go,” Muhaddar said. “Whatever is down there is sure to be better than what is up here.”

Aziz agreed. He grabbed the rung of the ladder and started down. Muhaddar followed just after him.

The ladder descended about twenty-five feet below the door, and the lower they went, the cooler the air became. Aziz couldn’t contain a relieved sigh as his feet touched the floor of the building. He marveled at how wonderful the cool air felt on his skin. “I could stay here for a week,” he said.

“I may never leave,” Muhaddar replied.

Aziz looked around. They stood in the center of a large chamber filled with machines and computers. To his right stood a bank of monitors showing what he assumed to be other areas of the structure as well as a few that showed the area outside the entrance. Banks of electronics blinked and beeped all around him, and on the far wall, a set of steel doors led deeper into the building. Just to his left was a large map of the facility. It showed the entrance, as well as the room they were standing in, and more. The facility was much larger than he thought it would be, and he wondered who had built it here and how they did it. The map might have held a clue, but all the words were written in American. Everything was labeled, but he could not read any of it.

Then something on the map caught his eye. A small blue square with a picture of a fork and a spoon in the middle. He knew what that meant: food. And if there was food there, there would probably be water, as well.

“Aziz,” Muhaddar said, “Is that what I think it is?”

Aziz nodded. “It looks like a cafeteria or a break room.”

“I wonder if there is any food there,” Muhaddar said.

“Let’s find out.”

They walked further into the facility, waiting for someone to stop them and demand to know what they were doing there, but no one did. Here and there, Aziz spotted a few dark brown stains on the walls and floor, but he couldn’t identify them. He was just beginning to wonder what had happened to the people who built this place when Muhaddar stopped and pointed at a glass window.

“Look!” Muhaddar said.

Aziz looked through the glass into a small, square room lined with shelves and documents. Glass jars of every shape and size cluttered the shelves, although many were empty or broken. Some of the documents had been ripped from the wall, and more of the brown stains spotted the room. One of them, in the shape of a hand, sent a chill up his spine. He realized then what the brown stains were: blood. He wondered again what had happened to the people who built the place.

But Muhaddar did not seem to notice any of it. His attention was fixed on a large white refrigerator in the middle of the far wall.

“Do you think there is something to drink in there?” he asked.

Without waiting for an answer, Muhaddar pulled open the door to the room and ran to the refrigerator. On the front of the refrigerator door was painted the same triple moon symbol Aziz had seen on the outside of the building. What did it mean? He wished he could remember.

“Wait,” Aziz said. “I do not think it is safe.”

“Praise Allah!” Muhaddar shouted, ignoring him.

Inside the refrigerator were rows and rows of plastic bottles, each of them filled with clear, cold water. Muhaddar grabbed two and threw one to Aziz, and then he opened his and started gulping down the water so fast Aziz could hear him swallowing from ten feet away.

Aziz examined the bottle in his hands. The label was white, with black writing, but in the center was that same symbol.

He looked at it closely, not knowing what it meant but sure it was not good, especially given the many bloodstains all over the facility. But the bottle in his hand was so cold. Condensation had already started to form on the outside, and moisture dripped over his fingers. His dry, raw throat begged him to take a drink. He unscrewed the cap and brought the bottle to his lips.

Muhaddar’s scream startled him, and he almost dropped the bottle.

“Who are you?” Muhaddar asked, his voice tight and his eyes wide. He was staring right at Aziz as though they had not known each other their whole lives. “What are you doing here? Where is Aziz?”

“Muhaddar? Are you well?”

“Where is Aziz?” Muhaddar shouted, his face twisting in anger. A line of drool dangled from his lower lip, but he didn’t seem to notice. His face looked flush, his eyes bloodshot, and his whole body trembled. “What have you done with Aziz?”

“What are you talking about?”

Muhaddar launched himself forward, grabbing Aziz by the throat and knocking him to the ground. The bottle of water flew from Aziz’s hand as he and his friend toppled over onto the concrete, spilling its contents across the floor as it rolled away.

Aziz’s head banged on the floor, causing his vision to go white with pain. When it returned to normal, he found himself staring up at his lifelong friend and fighting for breath under Muhaddar’s crushing grip.

“Muhaddar,” he gasped. “What are you doing?”

“Where…is…Aziz?” Muhaddar shouted, banging Aziz’s head on the floor with every syllable. “What did you do with him?”

“Muhaddar,” Aziz croaked. “I
am
Aziz. Don’t you know me?”

“Lies!” Muhaddar pistoned his arms back and forward, bashing Aziz’s head on the floor again and again, choking the breath from his friend’s body.

Aziz tried again to reason with Muhaddar, but he couldn’t find the breath to speak. He was starting to feel woozy and tired.

The last thing he saw was the crazed, furious face of his lifelong friend as his head hit the floor one last time, then everything went dark.

1.

Pinckney, NH.

The small, single engine Cessna rolled to a slow, rough stop. The potholes in the asphalt caused the cabin to bounce and jerk, spilling the passenger’s drink in his lap. Cold coffee, several hours old and barely touched. On either side of the pocked runway, a short grass field extended for fifty or so yards before giving way to a huge green forest of maples, birches and assorted evergreens. The scent of pine filtered in through the plane’s vents, mixing with the smells of coffee and aftershave.

“Son of a bitch,” the passenger said, trying to dry his pants with a napkin with little success. “Good thing it wasn’t hot.”

“Small favors,” said the pilot.

“Yeah, yeah. Thank God for ‘em.”

The pilot chuckled. “As well you should, Mr. Duncan.”

“Don’t start, Billings.”

Billings turned his face away, but not before Duncan saw the smirk on his face.
Sanctimonious SOB
, he thought.

“Looks like your ride is here,” Billings said, pointing out the starboard window.

Tom Duncan, former President of the United States, shifted in his seat to look right. The Cessna didn’t have much for windows—or passenger space, for that matter—but he was able to spot a single black SUV rolling its way up a thin gravel road toward the plane. Other than Billings, only one other person on the planet knew Duncan was coming to Pinckney.

Jacobs, Duncan thought. Let’s see what’s so important.

Eli Jacobs headed Duncan’s cleanup team at the site of the old Manifold Genetics lab nearby. Jacobs and his men were responsible for going through Manifold’s records, storage facilities, computers and anything else they found to try to figure out just what the hell Ridley had been doing. With all the strange genetic experiments Manifold was involved in, it was often difficult to keep track of everything. Judging by the spotty record keeping in the Manifold
Alpha
lab, even the Manifold employees had had trouble sorting through all the data.

But Jacobs had found something. He wouldn’t have called Duncan if it wasn’t important. Not long ago, Duncan would have had to fly to the site in a large private helicopter. Two fighter jets would have flown escort and it would have been impossible to hide his presence from the locals. Those days were long gone. He had even waived his right to a Secret Service detail. Now he was as anonymous as it gets, sitting on an overgrown, pothole-filled runway in the backwater of New Hampshire. The tiny Cessna would have fit easily inside the belly of Air Force One.

Duncan smiled a bittersweet smile, then moved toward the door.

It’s better this way,
he told himself.
The chains are broken.
He was free now to pursue his role as Deep Blue, Chess Team’s handler, mentor and operations eye-in-the-sky, without the constraints of his former role as President getting in the way.

He stepped out of the plane and into the field just as the passenger door on the SUV opened. Eli Jacobs, a balding, pudgy man with black horn rim glasses, stepped out of the truck and waved. Jacobs wore his usual white coat over black pants. His breast pocket bulged with a wide assortment of pens, at least six of them. As he waddled over, Duncan was struck by the idea that Jacobs was the poster boy for the American nerd. Short, socially inept and brilliant.

“Mr. President,” Jacobs said, saluting. “I—”

“Please,” Duncan interrupted, “I’m not the President anymore. And stop saluting me, Eli.”

Eli’s hand dropped. “Perhaps, but people still call Bill Clinton ‘Mr. President,’ and he’s been out of office for years.”

“Different circumstances.”

“All right, Mr. Duncan. I need to show you something back at the lab.”

“I’m fine, Eli. How are you?” Duncan asked, trying not to smile.

Eli missed the subtle attempt at humor. “I’m not well, Mr. President. Not well at all. And you won’t be either. Not after I show you what we found.”

***

Duncan followed Jacobs into a sterile lab deep underground. Like most of Manifold’s bases, the
Alpha
facility lay almost completely buried inside a mountain, making it invisible to satellite photos using the visible spectrum. Fortunately, modern satellites were equipped with a wide array of cameras, including infrared, radar, x-ray, gamma, and a few others that only Duncan and a handful of others knew existed. These technologies made it possible to map at least the top levels of the facility from the safety of the Thermosphere.

Prior to leaving for Pinckney, Duncan spent some time going over the maps of Manifold
Alpha
produced by ground-penetrating radar. The illustrations revealed the facility was hundreds of feet deep—and that was not counting the natural cavern underneath it. But Duncan had a feeling they had yet to truly uncover the scope of the expansive base. How it was built on U.S. soil without being noticed was beyond him, but he suspected a good number of New Hampshire officials made large deposits to their bank accounts. While those officials would normally be investigated and prosecuted, this time secrecy demanded they be left alone. None of that bothered Duncan as much as the facility’s still-unexplored depths.

What was Ridley doing down here?
As Jacobs motioned him over to a large, flat screen computer monitor, he realized he was about to find out.

“Look at this,” Jacobs said.

Duncan stepped around and looked at the computer screen. It showed a picture of a wheat stalk. Near the top of the stalk was a pair of dark, roughly triangular masses, which looked almost like a fungus. “What am I looking at?” Duncan asked.

“The sclerotial stage of
ClavicepsPurpurea
, otherwise known as ergot.”

“Sclerotial? What does that mean?”

“Not important. You should be focusing on the ergot.”

“I thought that was part of a horse’s hoof,” Duncan said, confused.

“Different ergot. This one is a fungus. A dangerous one.”

“Explain.”

Jacobs punched a button on the keypad and the screen shifted to an illustration. To Duncan it looked like a random grouping of hexagons and tiny circles.

It took him a moment to realize he was looking at a large and complex molecule.

“What is that?” Duncan asked.

“That is the molecule of
ergotamine
, a complex alkaloid found in ergot, and just one of the many such alkaloids contained in the fungus. The effects of ergotamine on the human system are wide and varied, but include vivid hallucinations, irrational behavior, convulsions and even death. Mankind has been using it as a poison for thousands of years. The ancient Assyrians used it to poison the wells of their enemies as far back as 2400 BC.”

“What was Ridley doing with it?”

Jacobs pulled up another screen. This one showed a molecule similar to the first, with one difference.