Pandora's Succession (6 page)

“As long as she doesn’t wear your shoe size, I might take her.”

Hiller laughed. “I’ll remember that. My wife and I are having a barbeque next weekend. You plan on joining us?”

“You know I’m always there.”

“Cool, we’ll see each other then.” They shook hands.

Fox walked to Walsh’s Jeep as Hiller and the other SEALs got into theirs and drove away to a UH-60 Black Hawk Helicopter.

“What’s going on there, Foxy?”

Fox climbed inside as Walsh jetted off. “First of all, stop calling me
Foxy
.”

“Oh come on, what’s going on with you? You should be proud of yourself. You managed to stop a case of genocide and piss off our enemies again. This time, all at once.”

“All in a day’s work.”

“All in a day’s work? Are you kidding me? Wait a minute, let me guess. You dated and dumped another woman again, didn’t you? Come on, you can tell me.”

Fox rolled his eyes. “It’s over and that’s all I have to say about it.”

“Damn it. You know what your problem is? You let yourself get too close to women and when you have to let them go, it’s too painful for you. I mean, you change women more often than most men change their underwear.”

“Except for you, of course.”

Walsh shot a glance at him. “What’s that?”

“Just drop it. I don’t need this right now.”

“Jesus, I was just trying to make conversation.” Walsh parked the Jeep crookedly and took up two parking spaces. Fox stepped out of the Jeep, and he looked at the newly-built military intelligence facility, which was still undergoing construction in certain parts.

Walsh joined Fox and led him to the entrance. “Here we are, probably the most technically advanced and secure facility in the entire country.”

Fox didn’t comment. He got out and followed Walsh inside. They both came to the security checkpoint where Fox emptied his pockets and placed his wallet and an envelope in a basket that was put on the conveyer belt. He walked through the x-ray booth behind Walsh. When the two marines at the checkpoint were satisfied, Fox took back his wallet and walked off.

“Sir, you forgot this.” When Fox turned, one of the marines held onto the envelope. Fox thanked the marine and took it.

Walsh nodded as Fox pocketed the envelope. “What you got there, a love letter?”

“Yeah. That’s what it is,” lied Fox. It was a letter of resignation he planned to give Downing. He wrote it while he was in Chad.
I delivered Pandora and Ares would lose billions from that loss. Let the CIA take care of the rest, I’m through.

Walsh buckled his belt as he led Fox down the hall. “Tell you what. I’ll make it up to you. It won’t be long before we head back home. Why don’t we check out a Redskins game?”

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Jesus, aren’t you hard to please. Don’t tell me you’re still upset that I brought up your last fling.”

“No, I’m just not into football,” Fox lied again. He was the team’s MVP the last two years in high school. He even dabbled with rugby while on a training mission in Scotland, back in the days while he was in the Canadian Army.

“Fine, then we’ll check out the opera. How about that?”

Fox rolled his eyes to the ceiling and sighed.
He’s relentless.

Walsh pushed open one of the conference room’s double doors, and Fox followed him into the room. He saw his superior, General Paul Downing at the head of the conference table. To his right, he saw the more stoutly built, Post Commander Bell. To Downing’s left sat a blonde woman who looked up at Fox and Walsh as they entered. Fox didn’t know her personally, but could only guess her to be Dr. Tabitha Marx, from the CDC. Her name was mentioned a few times in his initial briefing before he left for Chechnya. Her violet pantsuit accentuated a certain sense of authority as it mixed with the dirty-blonde hair that hung past her shoulders. He guessed her to be in her mid-forties, at most.

Fox always pictured women with high levels of education to be a bit on the plump side when they hit their forties, due to the stresses of balancing both work and family. But not Dr. Marx, who was widowed a year after she married a wealthy industrialist. She still kept her shape and youthful appearance. Maybe it was camouflaged by her height—being over six feet tall—or maybe it was the grace in her movements when she swiveled around in her chair, exposing the length of her crossed legs. But when she looked back at him and smiled, Fox noticed her icy-blue eyes.

“You can both have a seat,” said General Downing. “You both know Colonel Fred Bell.” The Post Commander poured himself a glass of ice water from the pitcher on the table as he nodded. “Sitting in on this meeting is Dr. Tabitha Marx from the CDC.”

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Marx said. Fox and Walsh nodded.

Downing turned to Fox. “As you probably know, Dr. Marx is a specialist on the bio-weapon you’ve successfully retrieved. She has come here to see to its proper disposal.”

“I have a question, Doc. What Fox brought back was small enough to fit in a briefcase. How bad a weapon is it?” asked Walsh.

“It’s one of the deadliest weapons ever known to man,” she replied. “The small amount of the Pandora microbe Fox retrieved is enough to wipe out an entire city the size of New York. Imagine if you were attacked by a single microbe that’s virtually invisible to the naked eye. It finds its way inside you, either through your mouth, ears, or the nose, and eats its way inside, ingesting tissue and organs in order to self-replicate. All you feel is the inside of your body collapsing while the microbes increase exponentially in numbers. Huge boils appear all over your body, seconds before they erupt and spray the billions of offspring your body helped to produce. The casual observer would see fluorescent-green smoke blowing out of an infected victim. Then again, if you were close enough to see this, then you’re good as dead within minutes.”

Walsh recoiled in his chair. “Jesus, Doc. Is this your idea of a bedtime story?”

Marx looked at Walsh with a half smile. “Does the scenario frighten you?” She dropped the grin. “It should. Because this is exactly what Mr. Fox retrieved.”

Fox noticed her as she ended the sentence looking at him.
What was it about those eyes of hers? It was as though she were trying to read my thoughts.

Bell took a gulp from his glass. “Jesus Christ! You mean to say, what fit into that briefcase is enough to start World War Three?”

Marx leaned forward and placed an elbow on the table. “It’s anyone’s guess as to how far terrorists would go to attack America. Imagine Al-Qaeda agents going on suicide missions not just in New York, but also in Los Angeles, Washington, and Chicago. Add to the fact that it would be followed by a massive panic across the country. Nine-eleven would be reduced to just another paragraph in a high school history book.”

General Downing cleared his throat loudly. “Uh, thank you for the explanation, Dr. Marx.”

Fox had a sense of relief. It wasn’t just him who felt uncomfortable around Marx after all. His own boss was even freaked out over her explicitness in detail. God forbid she became one of the President’s advisors. America would be on a year-long state of emergency.

Fox noticed her stare again. She was really starting to freak him out.

General Downing turned to Fox. “Despite the loss of our informant, and some very crucial intelligence about Ares, we’ve been able to proceed with what you were able to get about other possible Pandora laboratories. I’ve put Tom in charge of handling the task force units to conduct simultaneous raids on them.”

Fox turned to him, a bit tense out of excitement. “So that’s it. We’re done.”

“Not quite,” began Walsh. “Less than three hours ago, teams were dispatched to two other laboratories, one in the northern part of the Republic of Komi, in Russia, and also in Belarus, north of the city of Polatsk. Both teams reported that nothing was left of them when they arrived. However, the lab north of Polatsk was on lockdown. The blast door wouldn’t open once we entered the codes.”

“Something happened inside,” said Dr. Marx.

Downing looked at her. “What makes you think so?”

“It’s obvious why Ares would use bunker-like blast doors at the entrance of their underground labs,” Marx replied. “It’s not to keep certain people from getting in, but in order to keep Pandora from getting out in the event of an accident.”

“An accident? I doubt that. That’s rather unlikely,” said Fox.

Marx turned to him. “And why’s that?”

“Their lab in Groznyy is destroyed. They’ve lost Pandora over there. I’d think they’d be more cautious, especially since it might be their last sample of Pandora. It just seems too good to be true that they’d be that careless as to lose such a valuable commodity by accident.”

Walsh turned to Marx. “Fox may have a point. With the timing of those raids, whether Ares was setting up shop in either of those labs, we should’ve nailed them.”

Marx leaned back, away from the table. “Another explanation is that Ares could’ve set off the accident deliberately in order to send us off course. Meaning that there’s possibly more sleeper labs.”

Fox put an elbow on the table, and he let his head drop into his hand, massaging his forehead. “I doubt it. My contact was very accurate in the intel she shared with me. She never mentioned the possibility of her intel being faulty.”

“Then how else do you explain the lab being on internal lockdown?” asked Marx.

Fox paused for a moment. He looked up at her. “I can’t be sure. Maybe...I don’t know...another disgruntled agent in Ares, like Stechina. The person or persons could’ve deliberately caused the accident.”

“That may be true, Ridley,” said General Downing. “But the intel your contact would’ve given us, had she survived the escape, would’ve helped us identify the person, or persons, who could be potential defectors.” He pushed his chair back from the table and grabbed his cane. “Are there any more questions?” No one answered. “Then this meeting’s adjourned. I believe you must go report to the CDC’s compound, Dr. Marx?”

“I told them to start without me,” Marx replied. “They should know what to do without my help.” She got up and addressed everyone before she left. Walsh, Fox, Colonel Bell, and General Downing returned the address as they also got up.

As Fox and Walsh walked to the door, Walsh whispered to Fox, “So what do you think about her? I’ll bet you haven’t had a catch like her yet, have you?”

“She’s not my type, Walsh, so lay off,” Fox angrily whispered back to him.

“Tom,” said Downing. “Could you excuse Fox and me for a minute?”

Fox looked back at his superior.
Intel your contact would’ve given us, had she survived the escape, would’ve helped us identify the person, or persons, who could be potential defectors. That was what Downing just said
. Fox knew that comment was directed towards him. And now he was going to get it.

Walsh agreed and closed the door behind him, as Fox walked back towards his boss.

Downing rested both elbows on the table and cupped his hands. “I’ve known you for about five years, ever since I first recruited you from the Canadian Special Ops. I’ve watched you make mistakes until you learned how fatal they could be. But I still can’t get around how you could’ve been so careless, to allow yourself to get caught, when you were in Chechnya.”

“I can—”

“You know I hate it when you interrupt me.”

Fox cleared his throat. “I’m sorry.”

“You were able to accomplish the mission because you got lucky. A civilian rescued you—a civilian. Your blunder could’ve caused a serious threat to national security, and possibly an international crisis, if Ares had succeeded in selling Pandora to our enemies.” Downing leaned back and took a breath. “I turned fifty-six ten days ago, I’m walking with a prosthetic leg, and I put three children through college. Over the years, I’ve dealt with all types of threats to our country while you were doing the Moonwalk in elementary school. I’ve also dealt with all kinds of people, and you’re unique, Ridley. You’re tough and you can be sadistic. But you also have a soft side that allows your emotions to get the best of you. That’s what happened in Groznyy, didn’t it?”

Fox shook his head slowly. “Not so much, sir.”

“Oh really? Then how do you explain what happened?”

“They were expecting me. Stechina confirmed it, just as I had mentioned in my report. It all points to someone setting me up.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the fact that Ms. Stechina is not here with us. My God, the intel she could’ve provided us with is invaluable. It may be months, if not years, before an opportunity like that happens again.”

Fuck. Didn’t you just hear me? We may have a mole in the agency and all you want to do is blame me for what we lost.
“Then we find out who’s the mole and get the info out of him.”

“What mole?”

“As I said earlier, I was set up. The details of my mission were tightly sealed. No one was supposed to know about it—which means that there was a leak somewhere in the ranks.”

“You
assume
there was a leak,” Downing shot back.