Day 50 (The DMT Series Book 2) (7 page)

As long as Dr Drecker had a heartbeat they would keep him alive though. Carter smiled. An idea had started to form in his head. It was a dangerous one, but everything was dangerous these days. He would get some of the agents to prepare a report. To take into account everything that could go wrong and provide an estimate of probability for success versus failure. It all usually came down to numbers. You were best off removing emotions from the equation when dealing with the bigger picture items.

Emotions never led to good decisions.

15

Adam lowered the dinghy into the calm ocean. He was only wearing a pair of sun-bleached boardies. His hair was long and messy, his beard, seven months in the making, had started to get a shade of grey. “I won’t be long, Cam,” he said, before boarding the dinghy. He pushed the bright-coloured dry bag up to the front of the dinghy, and dropped the black garbage bag in the middle. It would probably have been smarter to get rid of the evidence by dumping it in the ocean, but spending time on the water had changed Adam. He had never been a greenie. And who could blame him? When one was a part of the great Uncle Sam’s war machinery one quickly realised that one couldn’t care too much about the environment if one wanted to get the job done, or stay alive for that matter. One made choices to save people, not to minimise one’s carbon footprint. Living on a boat was different though. At home in New York Adam had been carrying out a massive garbage bag from his apartment every second day of the week. Here on the boat he and Cameron probably spent three weeks accumulating the same amount of waste. And that awareness had done something to him; Adam didn’t worry too much about global warming. Most humans couldn’t get the temperature right in their own office so it seemed a bit of a stretch to get it right on Earth. Nevertheless he figured a global warming was a lot better than the alternative anyway; a global cooling with the effect that could have on world peace and the fight for energy and scarce resources. Adam put it down to a much simpler term; global pollution. Humans didn’t have a global warming problem, they had a global pollution problem. If they solved the global pollution problem then everything else, global warming included, would probably solve itself. If people were really serious about thinking about the welfare of the Earth they would have to stop discussing the benefits of electric cars versus petrol cars, and how much carbon dioxide a factory spewed into the atmosphere. If people started to make small changes, if they started to walk to the shop instead of driving, if they started to bring their own bag instead of purchasing a plastic bag at the supermarket, if they started to eat less meat and more vegetables, then all those changes would accumulate to a lot more than all the greenies of the world, jetting around discussing carbon license trading schemes and other taxes, could ever hope to achieve.

A small wave hit the front of the dinghy and pulled Adam out of his moment of solving world problems. He had started to do that on a more frequent basis lately. There weren’t that many things to do on-board a sailboat, the biggest decision was sometimes to decide what to have for dinner. And as you gradually got used to not making decisions everything got harder. Several nights Adam and Cameron had gone to bed hungry. They simply hadn’t been able to decide what to have for dinner.

And that was why Adam had decided they needed to go ashore. The life on the boat had made them soft and slow, and that could be dangerous if Cody and his followers were hunting them. It had been easier to hide from the CIA and MKULTRA. They couldn’t operate freely in a foreign country, and their agents stood out like sore thumbs - they weren’t particularly hard to spot.

It was different with hired assassins. They could be anyone and everywhere, and Adam couldn’t just keep killing people who made a suspicious move. He had been correct in his assessment when it came to the fake cops though. Initially he had worried that they had just been corrupt cops attempting to extort money from Adam and Cameron. The guy’s reluctance to answer any questions had been proof enough though.

They had been professional hitmen.

Andrew turned off the engine and pulled the motor up so that the propeller didn’t get stuck in the sand when he approached the beach, and then he simply let a wave push the dinghy up onto the sand. He jumped out and pulled the dinghy a few metres farther up onshore, before grabbing the black garbage bag with both hands. It contained the towels he had used to clean up the blood on the boat, and the fake cop uniforms. He would make a small fire and burn them, remove any shred of evidence that they had ever set foot on
Mimi
.

And then he would have to have a long chat with his daughter.

There was only one way they could get out of the mess they were in, and that was by fighting back.

The hunted had to become the hunter.

16

James Carter observed Agent Fowler as he walked up the escalator. Agent Fowler was a bright young man; he could have reached far in the agency if he hadn’t been recruited by MKULTRA five years ago. He had probably seen it as an opportunity, to work in the most secret department of the CIA, the MKULTRA that the rest of the world believed had ceased to exist in 1974. The truth was that your career ended the day you joined MKULTRA.

On that day you became a liability.

Eventually you would get to know too much about things you would be better off having no knowledge about. You could never ascend to an executive position in the mainstream CIA after having seen and done what they did in MKULTRA. What if some congress member decided to put you on the stand to testify about your entire life? No, your career ended when you joined MKULTRA.

But it was all worth it.

“Good morning, Director,” Agent Fowler said. He was neatly dressed in a black suit, even though it was thirty-two degrees outside.

“Good morning, Russ,” James Carter replied.

For a moment Agent Fowler lost his train of thought. It was the first time, in the almost three and a half years he had known the Director, that the Director had called him by his first name.

James Carter placed his hand on Agent Fowler’s shoulder and led him toward a Japanese restaurant inside the mall. “I have a special assignment for you, Russ,” he said.

17

Cameron shot a long last look at
Mimi
, her home for the last three years. When Adam had asked her where she wanted to go after they had escaped the MKULTRA prison, she had just said
the ocean
. She had always felt comfortable on the ocean; she had spent so much of her adolescence on the high seas that it was the only place that felt something remotely like home. And she had always felt closer to her mum on the water.

Before parting with the surviving Vietnamese soldiers in New York, she had been given an envelope by one of them. It was a parting gift from her biological father, he had said.

It turned out her real father had made her the sole heir in his will, and he hadn’t exactly been poor.
Patient F
had lived a frugal life in the tunnels of Cu Chi, but had also understood the power of money. Without money one was vulnerable, and
Patient F
had sworn to never again be vulnerable. So he had stashed away millions in tax havens for a rainy day. The money had been cash confiscated from drug dealers in the Cu Chi region over a period of twenty years. Cameron had used some of it to buy
Mimi
, but most of it was still intact. That was good, because they would need money to execute Adam’s plan.

Adam had explained that the boat was no longer a safe place. If Cody was hunting them there would be no places to hide on the ocean. The only option they had was to fight back, to fight back so hard that Cody eventually backed down.

And the only reason for Cody to ever back down was if he feared his secret would be revealed to the world if he didn’t.

“So you want us to break into one of the most secure hospitals in Mexico?” Cameron asked.

“Think about it, Cameron. Cody is afraid of you because you are like him, because you know his secret. If we make that secret public, then you are not a threat anymore.”

“But what would be the consequences of letting the world know about a cure for death? That there is a way for rich people to become immortal?”

“Exactly, we can’t do that. The risks are too great and the consequences too unknown. But what we can do is to create the illusion that there are more of you. I had a long conversation with Drecker when we caught up in Mexico City. This was his plan if the deal with Marconi ever fell through. The Hospital of Mexico City has one of the best chemical labs in the world, and the very best chemists. Drecker said that no chemist in the world would ever attempt to synthesise DMT again; the mandatory minimum sentencing, if ever getting caught, is just too severe. But if he were to choose one person to synthesize DMT for him, it would be Professor Carlos Herrera.”

“So you want to abduct this Professor Herrera, and force him to synthesize DMT for us?”

“Yes,” answered Adam.

“That makes us just as bad as MKULTRA, just as bad as Cody. This professor Herrera hasn’t done anything wrong, but the very second we abduct him we put him and his entire family at risk.”

“That is correct. But there is no other way. If we do nothing we will either be captured by MKULTRA or killed by Cody within the next six months. That’s the reality.”

“I would rather be killed than put an innocent man and his family at risk.”
“Professor Herrera is unmarried. He has no children.”

“That doesn’t make him worth any less as a human being. He is somebody’s child, he is somebody’s brother.”

Adam nodded. There was no point in arguing. Cameron was of course right.

“So what’s your suggestion, Cameron? Keep running until we get caught? Because we will get caught, Cameron. It is just a question of time.”

“I don’t know, dad. Just let me think about it. There has to be a better alternative.”

“OK, we will work on coming up with another plan. But we have to do it quickly.”

18

“So you want me to blow up hospitals and blame it on Codyism?” Agent Fowler asked.

James Carter nodded. “There doesn’t have to be any civilian casualties. Call in bomb threats before you detonate the charges. All we want to do is to change the tide. Codyism is riding on this wave of positivity and optimism. Nobody talks about Islam as the
Religion of Peace
anymore; thousands of petty criminals willing to blow themselves up to become martyrs have changed that forever. And the Vatican with all its paedophiles and its stance on same sex marriage makes Christianity seem like an antiquated religion compared to Codyism. What Codyism has going for it at the moment is that their supposed prophet was born in the 1990s. Jesus was born two millennia ago and Mohammed only a little bit later. When you compare the religions that fact becomes blatantly obvious. Now, I want to change the public perception of Codyism, to make it look as backward as the other two.”

“And you want to do that by blowing up hospitals?”

“I want to do it by stereotyping the believers. In the minds of the general population the extreme Christians are paedophiles, and the extreme Muslims are terrorists. And in the minds of the general population the extreme Codyists will be druggies. They blow up hospitals because they want to force the government to ease its stance on psychedelics, to ease its war on drugs.”

Agent Fowler smiled. “I see your point. I see it clearly now.”

19

Alejandro placed the plastic box on top of the metallic table. He was eager to move ahead. But he knew the time wasn’t quite right yet. Cody had explained how all the MKULTRA death row prisoners had died by their own hand immediately after being administered the DMT injections based on Phi. The same had happened to Cody, some guy called Kovacks, and a nameless test subject.

They had all died, died by the hand of DMT.

And then the miracles had happened. Exactly three days after dying, everyone had resurrected.

The problem was that something had changed. The people who returned weren’t the same anymore.

The death row patients had returned with extraordinary abilities. They never grew old, and they could heal themselves.

As with everything there had been exceptions to the rule. One of the death row prisoners for example had never resurrected; the original
Patient F
. And although Cody had resurrected, he seemed to age normally, and his body was slow to recover from any illness. If anything Cody was an extremely fragile person. If he cut his skin it took months to heal. Cody’s curse was that instead of being able to heal himself he had acquired the ability to heal others. And that was the only reason he was still alive. Truth was that Alejandro didn’t know what would happen the moment he injected the DMT into his own veins. Would he become an immortal like the death row prisoners? Or would he become a fragile shell of a human like Cody? If Alejandro belonged to the latter group, then Cody could still be of use.

Alejandro opened the plastic box and studied the content. He was standing inside the compound’s freezer. Nobody could say the old Nazis hadn’t been far-sighted; the compound had been fitted out with a freezer large enough to store food for twenty people for five years. Alejandro didn’t need to store that much food, but he needed the freezer to keep his most precious asset secure. The DMT he had acquired before governments across the world had started to crack down on production. He contemplated pushing the timetable forward, he simply couldn’t wait to become an immortal, but he decided to stick to the plan. There was no point rushing it. MKULTRA was crippled after their failed attempt to kill Cody and Cameron at Marconi’s camp a year ago. The US had received a strong reprimand from Mexico for unauthorised operations on their soil, and the relationship between the US and most Central and South American nations was more strained than it had been for decades. There were also rumours that if a new president was elected in the US in two months, then the senate would have its way in asking for a grand jury to look into all current and ongoing Black Operations at the CIA. MKULTRA would probably avoid being dragged into the investigation, some things were too ugly to stand the light of any investigation. But they would probably have to scale back their operations.