The Storm Protocol (7 page)

‘How did he hope
to accomplish that?’ asked the deputy director with interest.

‘In 1912
, Henry Dale isolated a substance called Acetylcholine, and identified it as an agent for the chemical transmission of nerve impulses. This discovery was further expanded by Otto Loewi in 1921, when he showed the importance of the substance in the central nervous system. Incidentally, the two men were collectively awarded the Nobel prize in physiology / medicine in 1936.’

‘How is this relevant?’ asked a female voice
, from the shadows at the far end of the room. ‘All you’re doing at the moment is quoting techno-babble at us. When are you going to cut to the chase?’

The voice moved forward out of the shadows and
into the harsh direct lighting.

Christine Browne had joined the agency straight out of college. She was now well into her fifties
, but was still a striking woman. She had ignored the beauty treatments and cosmetic enhancements espoused by her peers, and at fifty three, she looked her age. But she had a grace and charm about her that men instantly found attractive. Her hair was long and contained no colour, but didn’t have the harsh steel wool look that a lot of grey hair did. Her skin was pale and unblemished and her eyes burned a cruel icy blue; an unfortunate physical trait that belied the cheery side of her personality. She was the director of communications; possibly more important even than the deputy director and arguably the most powerful woman in the world.

‘Bear with me, please,’
said the agent. ‘It will start to make sense soon, I promise.’

The communications director smiled; the a
gent noticed a distinct coolness in the response. He marshalled his thoughts again.

‘Scientists had long been trying to identify the areas of the brain that controlled freewill; or more specifically
, how to artificially or chemically mimic or inhibit personal choice. Nigel, given his background in both biology and chemistry, was a voracious reader of medical periodicals. I have been to his house; it is pretty much unchanged from the way it was when he died in the mid forties. You can barely move between the piles of magazines. Anyway, whatever it was about the specific research that Dale and Loewi conducted, Nigel seized on their joint discovery as the basis of his direction forward. Given what we know now about Acetylcholine, the way he managed to join the dots was truly remarkable. Whatever it was that prompted his interest in that set of discoveries, he zeroed in on Acetylcholine specifically.’

He glanced around the room, and noticed with vague amusement that he had their co
mplete attention now. Even the communications director was starting to look interested.

‘At this stage, in the late thirties, Nigel had inherited the family home and a modest income from a number of large rented small-holdings in the vicinity. He also had a minority stake in the old family brewery in nearby Tenterden. As an only child who
’d never married, he could indulge his passion to the full. He converted the stable block into a full industrial specification lab and set about turning his socialist utopian dream into a physical reality.’

‘The first results were not convincing
, but he never gave up, and as he approached the middle of 1939, it seemed that his reasoned methodology, along with a couple of intuitive leaps of faith, might be about to pay dividends. And that is when the story takes a slightly sinister twist.’

‘In what way?’ asked the deputy
director.

‘Towar
d the end of 1939, the British war office set up a unit with the grand title of Military Intelligence Research or MIR for short, which eventually became known as MD1 or more colloquially
Churchill’s Toy Shop
. Now, all scholars, students and historians believe that the work done by MD1 was on weapons and hardware; for instance did you know that they developed the limpet mine? No, neither did I, but what all the scholars and historians don’t know was that in late 1939, an Oxford graduate called Major Geoffrey Walker joined the staff of MD1. He was a direct appointee of Churchill himself, who didn’t bother to record the information anywhere. Our Major Walker was your original and definitive shadow operative.’

The a
gent stopped for a second to pour himself another glass of water from the crystal decanter in the middle of the table. Even the formerly belligerent director was waiting patiently for him to continue. But he had to admit, even though he was telling it, the story was a good one.

‘Major Walker was recruited specifically for one purpose; chemical and biological weapons.’

There was a collective drawing in of breath around the room. The agent held his hand up.

‘Yes, I know the public think it is a new thing, but we know better. We only h
ave to think back to the first Great War; to the chlorine, phosgene and mustard gases that were used. But Major Walker was not looking for mere gases; he was looking for a magic bullet. And he found it in the most unlikely of places.’

He took another sip of water.

‘Even though they were only vaguely aware of it themselves, both Nigel and Major Walker were alumni of the same alma mater in Oxford; Christ Church college to be precise. At this stage, Nigel had become a lonely, virtual recluse. His experiments were not as successful as he’d first anticipated, and he didn’t seem to be able to make the longed for breakthrough discovery. He seized on the invitation to the reunion; a chance to interact with fellow intellectuals. Major Walker just happened to be billeted close by and thought it would be worth a few pints of free ale.’

He drained the last of the water.

‘By the end of the evening, by his own account, Major Walker was pretty the worse for wear and feeling no pain. The only person in the room feeling less pain than him was our Nigel. The two of them ended up together and one of them (Major Walker doesn’t divulge who in his accounts) managed to snag a two thirds full bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label. By the time the bottle was half empty, Major Walker had just about had enough of the pinko-leftie bullshit. By the time the bottle was a quarter empty, he had miraculously sobered up, and by the time the bottle was empty, Nigel was passed out on the floor, snoring like a trooper, and Major Walker was making lots of phone calls.’

‘So this whole thing came
about by accident?’ asked the communications director.

‘Don’t all th
e best discoveries?’ asked the agent. ‘Anyway, once Major Walker had hooked his fish, he had no intention of letting it go. When Nigel woke up, he found himself back at his house with an unexpected guest. Over the next week, Major Walker managed to convince Nigel that he was a died-in-the-wool communist; it was the only way he could think of to keep Nigel onside. And besides, just because Nigel was a communist, didn’t mean he was a pacifist, or worse, a fascist sympathiser; far from it in fact, especially later in the war. He wore his patriotism openly, another anomaly of his adopted doctrine.’

‘So
what happened then?’ asked the director.

‘The whole operation f
rom then on was scaled up. The lab at Nigel’s house was retained, but the building became MOD property. Nigel was delighted when they offered to buy the place from him; at that stage, he cared only for his compound, his drug, his baby. Their offer, ostensibly to free up capital to pump back into the research, seemed too good to be true. They had offered way over the market value. But the real reason was obviously control and containment; they just wanted to keep a lid on things. Major Walker moved himself in and brought a staff of research graduates with him. Both men were careful to let those graduates only work on isolated aspects of the drug, for confidentiality and safety reasons. And then, one day in late 1944, they made the breakthrough.’

21
st
February 2009 – Two years before the Storm.

Truth fears nothing but concealment. – Proverb.

He let the sentence hang in the air for a while, before continuing.

‘They spent the next six months or so honing and improving. All the tests they did on lab animals
with the new drug seemed to be positive, but the ultimate test was obviously on human subjects, and that meant human clinical studies. Now today, we have so many regulations around clinical studies; good clinical practice is ruthlessly enforced by agencies like the FDA around the world. But this was a country at war, remember?’

He stopped again to take a breath.

‘So here again, they had a spot of luck. There was a German POW camp just down the road from the lab. The majority of the POW’s were working on farms and in factories, but given his war office connections, Major Walker was able to divert a number of men to the lab, ostensibly to work on the small kitchen gardens they had, but ultimately as human subjects.’

‘Were they a
ware of their role?’ asked the deputy director.

‘An interesting question, and one where you would have thought the answer would be no. But both Nigel and Major Walker were extremely open with the men; seems they wanted them to know exactly what it was they were taking on, so they could give some honest feedback. And having read the contemporary reports from the time, it seems they were remarkably co-operative. To a man
, they wanted to give something back; maybe do their bit to accelerate the end of the war; who knows?’

‘So what happened t
hen?’ asked the communications director.

They could all hear the slight
catch of excitement in her voice.

‘The six men were treated simultaneously; four subjects were given the drug, with two getting a placebo each as a control. They were then monitored in a special surgical ward adjacent to the lab
; one that had been constructed especially by Major Walker. All the observations were reported in six separate journals, and were recorded by six individual technicians. Each monitored their subjects from specially constructed isolation booths above the ward. I have read each journal and the reports are quite startling.’

‘Don’t leave us hangi
ng man, spit it out,’ said the director.

‘Oh, the expected results were indeed quite amazing; the drug worked beautifully. Each of the subjects in the first test became compliant almost immediately
. They could be directed to do things they normally would not do quite easily; generally with little or no knowledge that they had just done them. And obviously the two with the placebos noticed no change. But there was a side effect that had not been immediately obvious in the animal tests.’

‘Was it bad?’ asked the deputy d
irector.

‘Comp
letely the opposite,’ said the agent. ‘It gave the four men who took it, an immense and almost overpowering euphoria; so much so that they begged for more almost immediately.’

‘But not addictive?’ asked the deputy d
irector.

The a
gent held up his hand and studied his fingernails carefully, as he considered his answer.

‘They continued the tests; the subjects reported the same thing; they were not aware of their compliancy, all they wanted was to experience the high.’

This time, he turned to the deputy director.

‘But you’re right; after three or four rounds of the trial, the subjects wanted it, and wanted it really badly. But here’s the kicker; it was not chemically addictive. There were no unpleasant withdrawal symptoms or anything like that. This was a real and total mental craving; they lived, slept and ate th
eir next dose; literally dreamt about it.’

The agent stabbed his finger
, to make his point.

‘They didn’t realise it at the time, but this was the nirvana for modern day drug dealers; the zenith of drug development. Think about it; the ability as a drug user to attain unimaginable highs. No chemical addiction, no painful withdrawal; no risk at all really, with the only craving being mental, the most difficult one to overcome. Imagine controlling the supply of that drug in today’s market; a sobering thought.’

‘So what
is
the issue?’ asked the communications director.

They all looked at her.

‘Come on, think about it, gentlemen?’ she said. ‘Would we be here if there wasn’t an issue?’

‘Very astute of you, ma’am
and quite right too,’ said the agent. ‘Let me explain. About three weeks into the trial, Nigel and Major Walker decided to up the ante and do the last big trial before declaring it a qualified success; or a successful first step at the very least. This was going to be a volume test; to see if the amount of the drug taken had any negative connotations.’

He paused and licked his lips for a second.

‘Unfortunately, none of the subjects survived; I’ve actually visited their graves. There are six of them, still marked with simple wooden crosses.’

‘But you said....’ said the d
irector.

‘Yes I did, and indeed in the early tests
, it looked like they were onto something.’

He looked at them carefully, one after the other.

‘But on that last test, the fateful test, something went badly wrong. Incidentally, it was the only volume test done on humans to date, and at around the seventh hour mark, things took an unexpected turn. The four men became agitated at first. This escalated through annoyance and then, within five minutes, had transformed into full scale rage. They trashed the ward in seconds, thrashing around the room like miniature hurricanes, with the two placebo takers cowering in the corner.’

‘It was frightening and so out of character,’ he continued, ‘that Major Walker was about to send in the troops to subdue them, when all motion ceased.’

The agent selected a cookie from the plate in the middle of the table and snapped it in two. The crunch was surprisingly loud, but then, you could have heard a pin drop in the room.

‘Then, as one, the four men turned to a bedside locker halfway down the room. A nurse had inadvertently left a single pill on the table.’

The director snapped his fingers.

‘The rats from earlier; the pill dropped into the dish....’

‘Exactly,’ said the agent. ‘The rats were dosed seven hours ago with a large volume of the drug.’

He brushed cookie crumbs from the front of his shirt
, absently.

‘But here is the odd thing. In the individual recording journals, all four of the recorder
-stenographers who were tracking the men, used the same word. They did not write
saw
or
smelt
, they wrote
sensed
. We don’t know which sense it is; maybe a combination of all of them, but after a split second, the room became a bloodbath. The men literally ripped each other apart, and turned on the terrified placebo takers too, who they seemed to regard as competition. Major Walker was the first of the observers to react, managing to tear himself away from the macabre spectacle. He ran to the entrance of the ward and threw open the door.’

The a
gent reached for his attaché case and extracted a single printed foolscap sheet.

‘I’d like to quote from the m
ajor here,’ he said, before clearing his throat.

‘Facing me was a creature that would not have been out of place in Hell. The face was a bloodied mask, one eyeball pulped, the other hanging down from the empty socket like a grotesque ornament. The creature’s breathing was coming in agonised rasps; I think some ribs were broken, and it was shuffling toward me. One foot was turned out at an impossible angle; multiple broken
bones for sure. As I watched, it smiled a self satisfied smile; more a bloodied grimace really, and slipped the prized pill into its mouth. And then, without warning, it sprang. I had my Enfield service revolver drawn, and I had to empty the full six rounds before the creature dropped. I have not been able to stop the nightmares since that day.’

The a
gent looked at the faces. They were slightly shocked, but only slightly. It looked like his decision to run the demonstration at the start had elicited the results he was looking for. They could picture the effect on humans, for they had already seen it in action.

‘What happened then?’
asked the communications director.

‘It
was the last hurrah,’ said the agent. ‘Fate intervened and the Axis powers surrendered. The old guard in Britain was swept aside by post war elections, and the new government had no need for a magic bullet. The project was hurriedly closed down and shelved, but not before Major Walker and Nigel were both tragically killed in a road accident; the major’s Morgan sports car was involved in a head on crash with a petrol tanker. There was nothing left that could be identified, apart from the chassis number.’

‘Was it a hit?’ asked the deputy d
irector.

The a
gent snorted and turned to face him.

‘Of course it was; the Allies were getting
very nervous of any suspected communists, and Nigel had been a marked man for a number of months. Also, from the middle of 1944, the American Office of Strategic Services, or OSS, was jointly involved with MD1. The closure of the project seems to have been almost their last shared act; both MD1 and OSS wanted to get rid of the loose ends, and Churchill was more than happy for us to take responsibility for what he felt was a useless waste of resources. He also did not want anyone to know of his or MD1’s involvement in chemical or biological weapons.’

The room was silent for a long time; each wrestling with their own thoughts. And then a single word was spoken.

‘Destabilisation,’ said the communications director, into the silence.

They all looked at her
.

‘What?’ she asked defensively. ‘I’m only putting words to what everyone else is thinking. Imagine being able to get a substance like this into Osama Bin Laden’s compound. The
only thing you would need to clean up the mess is a hose.’

‘We have only perfected the tablet form at the moment,’
said the agent, seemingly aware of where the communications director was going. ‘But initial indications are good for gas-airborne versions.’

‘So
, an addictive death sentence,’ said the director. ‘A cheery thought, if ever there was one.’

‘That is its
fatal flaw,’ acknowledged the agent, ‘or as Major Walker states in his report,
a sinister and unexpected result,
but I think I prefer the term fatal flaw. And isn’t it ironic that the
fatal flaw
is the very aspect of the drug that we can use and exploit. Because, once the drug reaches a certain tolerance level; either in the quantity you take, or in addition to the residual amount left in your body, then two things happen. As I said before, it is mentally addictive rather than physical, but a trigger in your brain fires, and the substance and the desire to acquire more of it becomes overwhelming; you’ve seen the effects yourselves first hand. The second thing....’

He indicated the opaque two way mirror.

‘It is literally, as you say; a death sentence. You will do anything, and I mean anything, to get more, even if you die in the process. It does more than just remove your freewill, it removes your humanity. You become feral, savage and ferocious, and the process is irreversible. Once you are there, you are never coming back to conscious humane thought.’

The silence stretched on for a bit longer this time
, as the room digested the rest of the information.

‘So who owns
the technology now?’ asked the director, vocalising what everybody else was thinking.

‘Good question,’ answered the a
gent. ‘The long answer is that the patents were registered in Nigel’s name originally. These patents were transferred, along with all the documentation and resources associated with the project, to OSS. When OSS was dissolved, the project reverted to the Central Intelligence Group, or CIG, after it was created by Truman in 1946. It then reverted to the agency that replaced it in 1947.’

The a
gent paused for effect.

‘Th
e short answer is that you do, sir.’

The silence in the room was deafening.

‘Who else has seen this?’ the director asked.

‘Only the four of us in this room have seen the demonstration. No one else has even a whiff of i
ts potential. James White, the lab technician who has been helping me with the refinement of the drug, has also seen the full potency of it now, but I already have measures in place to neutralise any likely leaks. And a contract lab have been synthesising the drug compounds, but they have no idea what the substance is or what it does, and all documentation has reverted to me.’

The d
irector was never a man to stand on ceremony; he was famed for making quick decisions.