From Filth & Mud (26 page)

Dima worked harder than any of the interns though he did not do any coding. He worked his fellow interns, at first, and then moved on to Collier Analytics’ employees. Within a couple of weeks, he was inviting a strong contingent of young programmers to the best happy hour spots in town, though he’d only known San Francisco for a few weeks longer. Dima was a skilled flirt. He never made the mistake of showing overt favoritism to any of his targets. He knew how to work one against the other without crossing the line that would cause everyone to turn against him. There were at least ten employees who would do anything for him, and one whom he set his eyes on as the most likely mark, Brian, a twenty-five year old guy who liked his men cute, athletic, stylish, and foreign. Dima was his dream-come-true.

Dima convinced him that all of his heterosexual bravado with the ladies was just a front. They were his
beard
. He came from a sexually repressed culture that persecuted gays, and he’d feared for his life since his early childhood, and so he’d adopted an overly masculine persona to conceal his innermost desires. Dima confided in Brian that he could express his true self with him. Brian was hooked, and Dima was in!

Soon Dima had access to a treasure trove of highly-classified information that included possible terrorist threats to the U.S., and quite unexpectedly, an unfathomably large database of naked pictures of millions of Americans. These he’d found were the focal point of a ‘hot or not’ game played by Collier Analytics’ employees. Dima feigned amusement for a few minutes while he stood behind Brian’s workstation, gently but purposefully leaning into him to get a closer look at the screen. Brian enjoyed the physical contact, but he was nervous about being so obvious at work.

“So what else are you working on super-spy?” Dima panned.

Brian dearly wanted to impress Dima, and he’d never been in a position to impress anyone until now, so he played up his role. He promised he’d tell him everything if Dima came over to his apartment for some drinks and a Big Bang Theory marathon. Dima accepted the invitation. As they sat on the couch, Brian decided to make his move.

“Dima check this out.”

“What is it? Are you going to show me something really super-secret?” Dima swiped at Brian’s back like he was doing something naughty.

“I’ve been coding some lines for this program. It’s my baby.”

“Brian! You coded this? This is amazing,” Dima gushed.

“Yeah, it’s my project,” he exaggerated tremendously. His was but a small role, but he didn’t mind letting on. “You see, this is a top secret program called,
Yente
. It’s designed to detect possible terror threats. Once targets are identified, we just back track all of their history and connections until we narrow down any likely accomplices and things like that. It’s like discovering a terrorist’s social network. Like, if you know one drag-queen you probably know a few,” Brian snorted at his own joke, the wine was getting to him, and he felt a little loosey-goosey—
God, Dima was so hot!

“So who does the program track down?” Dima pressed.

Brian felt a slight pang of worry. He didn’t want to reveal too much, and in fact he’d tried to take as many precautions as possible. He wasn’t even showing the live Yente version because there were so many safeguards built into the company’s security that any breach would be automatically detected. He was using an old set of data batches that had been processed, and subsequently stored on backup servers two weeks prior. The fact was that Yente 2.0 created so much data that it quickly overran the server’s capacity, so the programmers had just started to back up the data in excess servers which were not tied to the main server. They’d requested help to resolve the issue, but management told them that they’d have to make do with the capacity they had, and so they’d just created a workaround. Once cleared, the old data was stored on backup servers—useless files thatno one ever bothered to review
.
The worthless data worked well for Brian’s purpose of courting hunky Dima. Brian took a last long sip of wine from his glass, and smiled longingly as Dima leaned in and kissed him gently.

Dima held Brian firmly in his arms as he waited for the high dose of flunitrazepam to take effect. Thirty-minutes later, Brian lay unconscious on his couch, oblivious to Dima’s actions. Dima worried that he may have used too much sedative, but he needed to ensure that he was not disturbed. He inserted a flash-drive into Brian’s laptop, copying all of the files quickly. With that done, he now had the rest of the night to peruse the contents of Collier Analytics’ most secret machinations. After a few hours of diligent study, one file caught his eye, that of a red-headed woman who definitely looked out of place in the list of mostly brown-skinned, sixteen to forty-year-old men. She was also labeled a high threat. He opened the file, and reviewed her impressive resume. Attached to the file was a threat category that read:
other
. It appeared that she was distinguishable here as well. The file also included a tab labeled:
Network
, and unlike most of the other threats, her network only included one person, a Dr. Emmanuel Monte-Alban. Monte-Alban resided in San Jose, and worked in Silicon Valley as a lead scientist for biological projects at a company called BioSyn. Dima didn’t immediately see any relevance to their current task, but he knew that this was important. He gathered his things, wiped down all of the surfaces that he had touched, and dragged the still unconscious Brian off of the couch, and carried him into the bedroom where he unclothed him, and threw him under the covers. It was late, and he was eager to share the information with Alexi.

- - - - - - -

Alexi was floored by his protégé’s discovery. “I’ve reported your findings to Golovkin. He nearly shat himself when I mentioned BioSyn.”

“Why? I thought the big game here was Collier and the girl?”

“Well, apparently not. PRYAMO has long suspected that BioSyn is an intermediary for CIA activity such as drug running, and cash payoffs to help create sources within the Russian and Chinese governments. Thanks to your work, PRYAMO now has that proof. The FSB has been running covert operations to try to intercept some of these shipments over the last year in an effort to disrupt BioSyn.”

“Shishka! Do the Chinese know?”

“It doesn’t look like BioSyn is currently on their radar. The relationship is protected by several high-level, People’s Party ministers.”

“We’ve been ordered to abandon our mission with Collier and the girl, and to follow this BioSyn lead to ground to figure out what they want with Mayfield and Monte-Alban. Golovkin wants us to gather some intelligence regarding one of BioSyn’s shipments so that they can take one down, and beat the FSB to the punch. That will score a huge win for the hardliners in the Kremlin.”

Dima looked perplexed. Alexi scoffed, “Fucking politics, Dima. We play cloak and dagger for national defense, but our superiors play to one-up each other. You’ll do well to remember that. No doubt this goes no higher than Golovkin! That politician would love nothing more than to put a feather in his cap by embarrassing the FSB, and bringing in one of these shipments would be the perfect opportunity to do so.”

Dima shook his head in disbelief.

“You shake your head now, but moments like these will play a large role in determining whether or not you get a senior staff assignment in St. Petersburg, or Moscow, or if you remain a field agent well into your fifties, working the Steppes, running border incursion operations against the Chinese.”

“For fuck’s sake, Alexi!” the younger officer’s constitution had soured. “Thanks for the words of encouragement.” The two stared at each other imagining themselves as old men combing the wide expanse of foreboding countryside looking for Chinese infiltrators and they suddenly burst into laughter.

“Keep laughing Dima, but I knew an officer when I first started with PRYAMO that had been stationed in Siberia for ten years on a mission to uncover whether, or not, the Americans had been running incursions from Alaska in order to decimate our native reindeer populations. He got this insane assignment because he’d slept with a senior officer’s wife and daughter on subsequent weekends, and then decided to show naked pictures of them at the officer’s club! The senior officer couldn’t admit that they were his wife and daughter because he would’ve been a laughing stock forever, so he shipped the poor bastard off!”

“Wait…wait stop!” Dima tried to catch his breath through the pangs of painful laughter that were creasing his face. “How did no one know that they were the wife and daughter?”

“The pictures weren’t of their faces!” Alexi laughed heartily as he collapsed to the floor. “This calls for celebration,” Alexi yelled as he ran to the fridge to remove an icy bottle of Grey Goose from the freezer. He poured two shots quickly. “Here’s to never being assigned to Siberia or the Steppes! Davai!”

- - - - - - -

“Suka!” Dima yelled as he bandaged his arm.

“You’re a fucking drama queen, Dima! The round barely grazed you!” Alexi laughed at his comrade who was crumpled on the floor of the bullet-riddled SUV as it careened through an unpaved access road deep within the Canadian forest. The driver jumped a drainage ditch at high speed, and the ensuing crashing thud felt as if it would dislodge the steering column from the vehicle. The howling wheels miraculously didn’t sheer away from the suspension as the SUV impacted the rocks and frosted, muddy bank of the now dried stream through which it carved its escape.

Alexi yelled at the driver to slow down, “Suka! You’ll kill us all! We aren’t being followed!” It had all gone to plan until that infernal Osprey had appeared out of nowhere, skirting the trees, and opening a barrage of heavy fire that had destroyed several of their vehicles and ambush points. For all of the damage that they had incurred, they would have been in graver danger from Golovkin had they not secured Katerina and her case. Katerina struggled to stay seated in the SUV amid the reckless driving. Alexi looked into her panic-stricken eyes. She was otherwise uninjured. She had narrowly dodged certain death, as she had run directly through the most intense fire of the battle. Alexi did not believe in fate, or the divine, but luck was an inarguable truth, and today they had all been lucky.

He studied the plain looking case in his lap, knowing that inside lay something extremely valuable and dangerous. A biological weapon of some sort, the very thought of which shook him to his core, and though he hated the idea of its very existence he feared what such a weapon would be used for in the hands of the Americans, or worse yet, the Chinese. He had no doubts that it would be used for untold horrors, probably by his own government, but the alternative was unimaginable and could not be allowed. Just as with nuclear weapons, there were things on this Earth that were too powerful for one man, one nation, or one group to control and to lord over the world. His actions today would even the playing field by giving the Kremlin a check on Washington and Beijing. Alexi radioed the three vehicles that had survived the attack. They had lost a dozen men, and were carrying several more wounded back to their forward operating base on a remote airfield outside of Chambord, about a half-hour west of Saguenay. He had no doubt that no one outside of PRYAMO and a select few high-ranking officials would hear of their exploits today, but they were all patriots, and the world was better off for their sacrifices.

The family celebrated Luke’s birthday by Nathan’s bedside in the pediatric oncology ward. Jacob hoped that they would at least be able to celebrate Nathan’s ninth birthday in three months, but he was preparing for the likelihood that they wouldn’t. He held Nathan in his arms throughout the night while Luke slept tight, enveloped in Sarah’s. At this point, they were all hanging on. The doctors had informed them that they had exhausted all of their options. They were dismayed because most children responded well to the treatments, but Nathan’s cancer was persistent.
His
was in that small percentage of aggressive cancer cases that did not. As his tumor grew, it began to affect his speech. The effect was hardly noticeable at first—until the seizures started. Those were frightening, and mercilessly tore at what remained of his tired, little body. Sarah cried in agony, and held onto him once the seizing had subsided to rock him back to sleep.

Jacob tried his best, but he couldn’t be strong and brave for his family, and he wailed alongside of them. His heart had been torn from his chest, and what little had remained of his soul was stripped away in the operating room during the third unsuccessful surgery, the week before. When he woke up, Jacob gently kissed Nathan’s bare scalp, the skin, cold to his lips. Nathan’s slender body had lost mostly all of his fat layers, and his muscles had been eaten away by the cancer, the radiation, and the chemo. He shivered uncontrollably day and night. Jacob hugged him warmly one last time; careful not to let his tears drop on him for fear that it would bring him additional cold. Jacob wrapped his leather, riding jacket around Nathan, the one he used to wear in his wannabe biker days when he first left the Marine Corps, and joined a small riding group at the local VFW post. Nathan loved the jacket. He thought motorcycles were cool, and he wanted to buy one when he had saved up enough allowance money. The big EGA emblazoned prominently on the back of the jacket now shielded Nathan.

Jacob walked quietly over to the pullout futon where Sarah and Luke slept, and kissed both of them before he departed. John had come through on his promise to get him a high-value mission. It would hopefully pay enough to allow Sarah to take an extended leave from work, and it would allow him to spend what was left of their time together with Nathan. When Jacob reached the lobby of the hospital, he leaned against a tall, Doric-style column in the foyer and collapsed. He looked to it for support, but found none as its vertical concrete shafts slid dully up his back. He lay on the cold, marble floor balled up like a discarded fetus. He had abandoned all hope. He was numb to all feeling. He was a hollow shell. After some time, he passed through the sliding doors, soulless, hell-bent, and with one mission in mind.

- - - - - - -

Jacob arrived at the Roanoke facility a few hours later. Doug and Tim were already waiting for him in the command center. John walked in right behind them.

“How are you holding up?” John knew the answer. He hadn’t seen his friend this dark since their finals days together in Iraq, not since Mendes’ death.

“Fine,” came the terse reply.

There was no use in following up. “Hey, Jacob, our client would like to meet with you personally for this one.” John was concerned, and not just about his friend’s troubles.

“Why?”

“You asked for a mission so I got you one. You’re going to retrieve our newest client’s property, and it’s the most sensitive kind. You’ll be meeting Paul Eckert, CEO of BioSyn. Apparently his property is pretty much irreplaceable, and he answers to a board that is in the dark about the fact that it has gone missing. He’s in a huge bind because there are rumors that the company is going public with a massive initial public offering. The IPO is set to debut in six months, and the underwriters and investors are going through the company’s finances and product lines with a fine-toothed comb. This is why he’s paying us a shit-ton of cash to get his property back. He wants to meet the guy who is going to lead the team. He’s a really untrusting guy which is why he probably got to where he is, so he wants to check you out.”

“Alright, whatever it takes. When do I meet this Eckert?”

John nodded to the operations center window facing the airfield. “The Gulfstream is ready to take you to New York City now. You don’t have time to waste. He expects to see you in a couple of hours.”

Within minutes Jacob was in the air, flying to meet a man who was providing him the opportunity to be with Nathan in his final days. His job was to sell him on his ability to complete the mission, and retrieve his property no matter how difficult it appeared, or what danger he or his team faced. He would be successful. The Gulfstream touched down on a small, private runway. He disembarked, and the pilot pointed toward a whirling helicopter fifty yards away. “It will take you the rest of the way!” His voice was muffled by the whoop of the blades. Jacob jogged toward the waiting helicopter, ducking his head instinctively under the rotating blades. His feet had barely contacted the skids, and his body was barely in the cabin before the helicopter lurched skyward. Jacob deftly grabbed hold of the internal bay handrails and adjusted himself into his seat. The copilot peered back over the seat and motioned for Jacob to place a pair of headphones over his ears. He did so and the noise of the cabin was drastically reduced.

“Mr. Harrington. I’m glad that you could make it.” The voice of the pilot spoke into the headphones. “I’m going to take us over the Hudson. Have you seen the city like this before?” Jacob admitted that he hadn’t. “I’m going to take us right above the water. Technically I’m not cleared to do it.” The pilot peeked over at the copilot who shook his head in disapproval. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”

The pilot suddenly dipped the helicopter within arm’s reach of the water. Jacob didn’t know who this guy was, but he did know that he was nuts. Most helicopter and Osprey pilots that he’d known back in his days in the Corps were nuts. The helicopter continued toward the city, winding its way up the Hudson and barely skimming the bridge-tops. It broke to the center of the city, passing landmark after landmark, finally coming to a still hover over a landing pad that was perched atop a magnificent skyscraper. The helicopter plunged down unnervingly, momentarily exposing the passengers to weightlessness caused by the negative G’s. The copilot squirmed audibly over the headphones. For all of the drama, the helicopter landed softly, as a downy feather, touching the ground after being released from a light breeze.

The pilot smiled and turned to the copilot, “She’s all yours.”

The copilot still frazzled, tried to gain his composure. “Thank you, Mr. Eckert. It was a pleasure flying with you, Sir!”

Jacob thought that he had misheard the exchange. He looked at the pilot again who was grinning broadly behind his dark-tinted aviator sunglasses.

“Follow me, Mr. Harrington we have lots to talk about.” The pilot hopped out of the helicopter and landed with an agile grace, turned back to Jacob, and waved for him to follow. Jacob obliged and dismounted, jogging to catch up to the quick-moving pilot whose black, pinstripe suit fluttered in the propeller wash. Jacob finally caught up to him in a covered doorway just as the helicopter ascended into the heavens with the flight summoning cacophony of rotor blades and turbines.

“Amazing machines aren’t they?” The pilot pointed to the helicopter. “Eckert! It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Harrington. Can I call you Jake?” Eckert’s hand speared out from his body at a ninety-degree-angle with quick draw accuracy, his elbow firmly tucked against his body.

“Jacob is fine, Mr. Eckert,” he replied, as the two shook hands firmly.

“I prefer, Eckert. I don’t like to waste time with formalities. I am your employer not your superior.” Eckert led Jacob through a large set of sliding doors into a magnificent open office suite.

“Would you care for coffee, Jake?” Eckert pointed innocuously toward a shimmering silver tray and coffee pot. “Perhaps something stronger?”

“A coffee would be fine. And Jacob will do.”

Eckert’s annoyance was instant and obvious. Jacob noticed Eckert’s eyes break contact momentarily, and his body recoil ever so slightly.

“Look Jacob, I am a serious man. I need to know that you are a person that I can count on. I have been very successful, and I hang that success on my ability to pick talented individuals to work for me. I don’t like hiding behind the money or the power dynamics of the relationship. Both are obvious from the outset. I’m not trying to be anyone’s friend, either. I just like getting to know my employees on a person-to-person basis. I feel that this is the best way to find the measure of a man.”

Jacob’s ears picked up on the rehearsed rhythm of the words. It was politician and executive officer speech, delivered to sound like the speaker understood the daily toils of the listener. Its purpose was to suck the listener into a grand objective, that he alone, would bear the burden of executing.

“I’m not your employee. I’m a contractor, Mr. Eckert. I’d like to keep the distinction clear and professional.”

“Agreed,” Eckert’s annoyance resurfaced.
“I’ve been successful, but it has all come through hard work I assure you. I’m not one of these silver-spooned kids who grew up with a trust fund.” Eckert turned back to the silver coffee tray, paused, and smirked.

“Poor timing, Mr. Eckert,” Jacob wanted Eckert to know that he was not going to let him off the hook.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy those spoils currently. Take this coffee for example, it’s called Black Ivory. It’s made from the finest handpicked Arabica beans from Thailand. The beans are fed to elephants that are rescued from exploitive circuses. They are then harvested from the elephants’ droppings, and are minimally roasted to preserve that certain
je ne sais quoi
.” Eckert paused, took a melodramatic sip, and closed his eyes as he absorbed the aroma of floral notes and chocolate accents. His eyes opened, one at a time, above his ever-present grin. “I don’t get it. It’s just fucking coffee! It’s not worth the thousand dollars per kilo that I paid! Would you care for some?”

Jacob accepted, but he would have gladly traded the taste and company for a black coffee dripped through a forty-dollar machine and served in an old, ceramic mug.

Eckert sat down across from him and turned to business. “Let’s get down to why you are here. I’m going to be completely honest with you. My company, BioSyn, is in a tenuous position.” His hands visibly tightened around the delicate cup. “We have lost a very important item that is at the very heart of our company. It is a pre-patent, prototype drug that will revolutionize medicine, and will wipeout cancer as a scourge of humanity.”

Jacob pulled his cup from his lips, attempting not to spill the contents onto the marble-topped coffee table that separated them. He failed miserably.

“Pardon me. Did you say cancer?” Jacob recovered his poise quickly.

“Yes. Our company has been working on this research for a few years now, and after numerous heartbreaking failures we have finally been able to crack the cancer code. And I am not talking about a treatment I am talking about a
cure
! I am talking about no one else in the history of humankind will have to die of this disease. It will be something akin to a kid stepping on a rusty nail in a park, and being given a tetanus shot, and going on his merry way with a stern talking to from his mom.”

“But how?” he managed.

“I’m afraid the specific function is all proprietary, and I can’t tell you though honestly even if I could tell you how it really functioned, I don’t understand it well enough to try to explain. Our best scientists have only recently come to understand the exact mechanisms, and even for them this is very cutting-edge stuff! All I know from what I’ve seen and been told by the scientists, is that on the day prior to the first round of treatment, a test subject will be on death’s door with tumors throughout the body, and on the day after the first treatment, the subject’s tumors recede by ten percent. The healing is evidently exponential, and within two weeks the subject is cancer free. Every last cancer cell appears to be destroyed.”

Jacob was incredulous, unable to contain his emotions as tears began to well in his eyes. He fought them back with all of his might.

“I see the emotion, Jacob. Have you lost someone to cancer?”

“My son, Nathan, he is currently undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. He was just recently diagnosed, six months ago.”

“I am sorry to hear it. So you have firsthand knowledge of what a crapshoot cancer treatment is, and why new science and research is so very important. The greatest thing about this discovery is not just the cure itself, but also the fact that we are planning to give it away for practically nothing. Don’t get me wrong, we will make a profit on it, but that will go into tackling another disease. There are many out there, and I am in the business of cures, not treatments. I’ve always rubbed people the wrong way with that kind of talk and I don’t know why. It appears that many of my competitors are just interested in building their stock prices at all costs, even if it means extorting the sick.

“But enough about all of that, here is where you come in. We had been looking to start human trials with this treatment here in the United States, but we were denied by the Food and Drug Administration because they frankly don’t have smart enough scientists to understand the cutting-edge science behind our cure. Frankly, I’m glad that we were denied because on average the FDA approval process takes seven years for a new treatment to reach the market. Imagine that,
seven
years, meanwhile someone who could be saved by this revolutionary cure dies because of government red-tape.”