Lexie, page 2
“And Zina?”
“Zina is our synthesist. She’s got this brain that can see connections where other people can’t.”
This was pretty much what Danni had gathered from previous meetings with the Troika.
“You said some conspiracy theories turn out to be true?”
“Sure. Theories about Operation Popeye, Operation Northwoods, the CIA’s MKUltra and Operation Mockingbird, Canada’s Fruit Machine, and many others turned out to be true.”
“What’s your fave?”
He grinned. “Got lots of faves. The loonier the better.”
“Such as?”
“Well, QAnon is particularly far-out. Its believers say the government is secretly run by an elite satanic group of pedophiles who extract adrenochrome from kidnapped children to use as a fountain of youth. Is that true? I very much doubt it. But that’s not to say there aren’t kernels of truth there. Let’s face it: The federal government employs over two million civilians, so even if you lowball the percentage of pedos in the general population to, like, half of one percent—most people who deal with them say it’s higher—you’re talking ten thousand pedos working for the government. And adrenochrome is a real substance, though it can be had without resorting to the blood of tortured children.”
His eyes all but sparkled as he spoke. She could tell he was really into this stuff.
“My current fave is the more recent theory of the Tartarian Empire, a global civilization of great builders that supposedly developed in ancient times in North Central Asia. Before it collapsed, its people built the Great Wall of China—to keep the Chinese out, they say—and the Pyramids and the Taj Mahal and any other beautiful, ornate building you see around the world. The conspiracy arises from the sinister forces of modernism doing their damnedest to erase every trace of the Tartarians and their work.”
“What do you like about it?”
“Remember how I said there’s always a kernel of truth in any conspiracy theory? Well, I can’t find a speck in this one.”
“How’d you ever get into this?”
“Luka and Zina’s father was a prominent ufologist right up there with Jim Zaleski.”
“‘Yoo-fologist’ being…?”
“Authority on UFOs, except for him there was nothing ‘unidentified’ about his flying objects. They’re manned by aliens. That wasn’t up for debate in his house. Being a cousin, I used to hang out with Luka and Zina a lot, so I was exposed to all his nuttiness along with them. But he didn’t limit his beliefs to UFOs. Oh, no. Dmitri Borisov never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like.”
“Even QAnon?”
“He was dead and buried before that one came to the fore. But it might have been too far out even for him. Anyway, he was convinced that aliens had infiltrated the government, and probably would have thought them intolerant of Satanists, which would have put the kibosh on QAnon.”
Just then Luka and Zina Borisov, the brother and sister twins who made up the rest of the Troika, came through the door.
Ilya lowered his voice. “I’d prefer if you didn’t mention my earlier…you know…”
She gave him a quick wink. “Mention what?”
“See?” he said, pointing at her. “You see why?”
“See why what?” said Zina, a shapely woman in her mid-thirties who Danni assumed to be a natural blonde but kept her shoulder-length hair dyed a pinkish purple.
“See why I think Danni is perfect for R3A.”
Danni shrugged. “We were just discussing conspiracy theories and—”
Luka rolled his eyes. “And you still have ears?” He was dressed as always from head to toe in black, wearing his long hair of the same color in a ponytail. “Get him started and he’s like a one-man MacBeth-Hamlet tag team. But as for you and R3A, we’ve been discussing that very thing and think you’d make a good fit.”
It sounded tempting, but… “No can do. You know I’m already with the FBI.”
“Not a problem,” Zina said. “We can get the Bureau to put you on loan to us.”
“I don’t know…”
“Look, Boudreau,” she said, “we’ve spent years in the Black Box as pariahs and laughingstocks. We weren’t only investigating unexplained phenomena in the outside world, we were looking into unexplained phenomena within the government. For instance, one of our investigative foci was an oh-so-secret DoD project called Lange-Tür, which is German for ‘Long Door.’ What the hell does that even mean? The fact that it was associated with Operation Paperclip back in the mid-1940s means it might involve Nazi technology. Associated with that was the equally mysterious ‘Operation Synapse.’ The fact that both are still receiving funds long after they were supposedly discontinued pinged our collective antennae.”
“I see,” Danni said, trying to look interested. R3A sounded like a major yawn.
“But that was the old R3A,” Zina said, as if sensing her rapidly fading interest. “Things have changed. All we needed was some inexplicable disaster like the AC Upwelling to totally alter the landscape. And now, with a second inexplicable disaster, R3A’s got virtually unlimited funding and all NSA’s awesome intelligence resources at our disposal. Which means all sorts of new calls on our time, which in turn means we need people. And not just go-fers and office staff. We need investigators who believe in our mission. Not delusional paranoids, but people who get it, who see the big picture. You’re one of those people, Boudreau. You’ve had first-hand experience with the entities behind the Secret History. Humanity has been manipulated since prehistoric times, maybe even back before the early hominids. I for one am sick of it and I intend to do something about it.”
“I don’t know if the Bureau will lend me out.”
Benigno, who led the AC Upwelling investigation, had told her she was an asset to his team. She knew he wouldn’t be happy about seeing her go.
“R3A has clout now,” Zina said. “If we say we want you loaned to R3A, you will be loaned to R3A, want it or not. But it’s important that you want it. You’re no good to us if you’re here under protest. So, what do you say?”
A big step. These three struck her as loose cannons, but they also knew things no one else knew—or wanted to know. R3A had a definite chance of making a difference. But what if she didn’t like their methods?
“If the Bureau will loan me, I’m in, but only on the condition that I can walk away when I want.”
Zina nodded with a crooked smile. “Well, since we reserve the right to fire your ass for any reason at any time, seems only fair we give you the same option.”
Chan entered then.
“Enter the dragon,” Luka said.
Danni knew Chan was anything but a dragon, but the remark was relevant considering his uncanny resemblance to Bruce Lee, though he totally lacked his martial skills. Sit him down at a computer console, however, and he could code rings around anyone.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he approached. “What’s up?”
“We’re trying to recruit Danni for R3A,” Luka said.
Chan didn’t seem surprised. “Have you located those children yet? That’s what Danni and I are interested in.”
Luka shook his head. “No joy on that front, I’m afraid. They seem to have vanished.”
Chan frowned as he shook his head. “All NSA’s assets at your disposal and somehow three vans of children, all piloted by hausfraus, elude you? How does that happen?”
“Because all surveillance assets were trained on that mountain after it disappeared, and by the time we looked for them, they’d gone to ground. But not to worry. We’ll find them. Only a matter of time.”
Danni hoped so. And she hoped they were all right. According to NSA, the Family had turned off all their phones—very likely destroyed the chips as well. The Family had been loaded into three GMC Savanas when they fled the mountain. That sort of mini-caravan should have been easy for NSA’s Eyes in the Sky to spot. But they hadn’t, which meant they must have parked them under cover. She’d met the woman leading the mini- caravan. Nicolette was smart and attractive, but Danni never would have guessed she knew how to make twenty-some-odd adults and children disappear so effectively. Pam Sirman was the only outsider in that company but apparently had thrown her lot in with them. Danni had a pretty good idea why.
“The cataclysm survivors are one of the many things on our plate,” Zina said. “We’re dealing with a bigger picture.”
Danni said, “Well, speaking of the big picture, the way you folks describe our world, our lives… are we really just property?”
“Does that upset you?” Zina said. “Bring you down too many pegs?”
“It’s not that. I’ve never lived in a Danielle-centric universe. It’s just that I joined the Bureau to make a difference, and if we’re all subject to the whims of the current ant-farm owner, then why bother?”
Zina nodded. “Yes. Right. Curl up into a whimpering ball in a corner somewhere. Or just eat the barrel of that Glock you carry.”
“Those aren’t my style,” Danni said.
Luka said, “We offer a third alternative: Fight the fuckers.”
Danni shook her head. “They’re too powerful, and you know that.”
“Sure they are, if you’re talking a head-to-head contest. But they’ve set rules for their Game. Sometimes they break them, but mostly they’re forced to play by them. We can fight them by learning those rules and using them to thwart them.”
Zina added, “It’s not just fencing with phantoms. We’ve got more concrete forces to contend with. The competing entities—the Ally and the Otherness—have flesh-and-blood followers here on solid ground doing their dirty work. The Ancient Septimus Fraternal Order is the Otherness’s right arm. They’re huge, with eyes everywhere, and utterly ruthless. The Ally had its own forces—they call themselves ‘yeniçeri’—and though not nearly as pervasive, they’re equally ruthless.”
“Join us,” Ilya said, his eyes bright.
Fighting them sounded good…
“Okay, then.” She stuck out her hand. “If the Bureau will loan me, count me in.”
After they shook, Zina turned to Chan. “And you, Mister Liao, what do you say? At this point you have more first-hand experience with these entities than all of us.”
“Plus you’re a sensitive,” Ilya added. “The cosmos is one big coal mine and we could use a canary.”
Chan shook his head. “Nah. Working for the government? I don’t think so.”
“You won’t be working for the government, you’ll be working with R3A. That’s more than just semantics. And don’t tell me you’ve got something better lined up because we both know that’s bullshit. We’re not asking for a lifetime commitment. Try R3A on for size. Like Boudreau, if it’s not a good fit, you walk away, no hard feelings anywhere. But then again, maybe you’re comfortable being an ant.”
Chan made a face. “Hardly.”
“So you’ve got two choices, Mister Liao: endure or oppose. Which is it?”
Chan looked at Danni and she could see he was wrestling with the decision. She wanted him along because she knew how smart he was and how relentlessly tenacious he could be.
“Hey, come on,” she said. “We make a good team.”
That seemed to clinch it.
“Okay, I’m in. And call me Chan.” After handshakes all around, he said, “But what the hell does R3A stand for anyway?”
Ilya said, “NSA is divided into directorates. They’ve got a lot of them, some so secret they never list them in their organizational chart. We’re part of its Research Directorate which, as you’d expect, is all heavy scientific research.”
“Except for us,” Luka said.
“Right. We’re the Unexplained Phenomena Branch of the Research Directorate, but the higher-ups didn’t want to advertise us—they seemed embarrassed by us until lately—so we’ve always been referred to as ‘R3A.’” Ilya grinned. “I love it because it tells you absolutely nothing about what we do. It’s—” His phone rang. “Sorry.” He checked the screen. “I better take this.”
As Ilya turned his back and moved away, Chan said, “Was that what this meeting was about? Recruiting us?”
Luca said, “Actually that wasn’t on the agenda at all. We wanted to talk to you about the missing kids from the Family.”
“I thought you said ‘no love’ on that subject,” Danni said.
“True as far as finding them goes, but we’ve had our genetics people in the Research Directorate comb the genomes of Philip Sirman and Kurt Maez with a fine-tooth sequencer and they’ve come up with some interesting results. Maybe even disturbing.”
Danni didn’t like the sound of that.
“Like why their bodies wouldn’t burn?” Chan said.
Both men had died weeks apart—coincidentally in unrelated vehicular accidents—but neither body would burn. And then each of their bodies was stolen before they could be autopsied. Chan had made the connection and passed it on to Danni and the can of worms they’d opened had completely changed their lives.
Luka smiled. “They failed to find an asbestos gene, I’m afraid. But we found germline genes that weren’t present in their somatic cells, which looks like they were put there solely to be passed on in their spermatocytes. It would seem Sirman and Maez and their fellows have been passing on qualities that they don’t have.”
“You’ll have to explain that,” Chan said.
“Germline genes are the genes, defective or not, that were present at your conception, half of which you’ll pass on in each spermatocyte or ovum, as opposed to genetic defects in your somatic cells that occurred after you were conceived. Down syndrome, for instance: The trisomy-twenty-three defect occurs after conception during development of the embryo, and so it’s not part of the child’s germline. It can’t be passed on. As a rule, every one of your germline genes can be found in your genome, but not every gene in your genome will be present in your germline.”
“But that’s not true of Maez and Sirman?”
“No, and that’s very unusual. Their whole genetic structure has been manipulated—”
“‘Enhanced’?”
“You might say that. Whoever or whatever manipulated or enhanced them intended for them to pass on genes that weren’t in their genomes.”
Chan said, “Samuel talked of creating Homo superior.”
“Homo superior,” Luka said, nodding slowly. “The concept is as fascinating as it is frightening. But whether that’s the result would depend on how those genes express themselves.”
Danni found it far more frightening than fascinating.
“You mean the kids in those vans could be a new super race?”
“I’d say more of a step toward a super race. Only their fathers were enhanced, so they didn’t receive a full complement of those genes. But if they intermarry when they grow up, their kids—”
“That’s been the Family’s intention!” Chan cried, pounding the arm of his easy chair. “That was why they kept the boys and girls apart: They didn’t want them to get too familiar with each other, start thinking of each other as siblings. None of them are blood relations, so they were planning on having them marry within the Family.”
This was getting creepier and creepier.
“The fathers’ germline genes,” Danny said, “what do they do?”
Zina shrugged. “We don’t know. That’s what concerns us. They weren’t expressed in their fathers—their fathers couldn’t use them—but they’ll be active in the kids. What effects they’ll have when they start being expressed is anyone’s guess. Even Samuel and the Squatter couldn’t predict that.”
“Why not?”
“Because the anomalous germline genes in Sirman weren’t the same as those in Maez. Only half a set of those genes is passed on in each spermatocyte or ovum, and the germline deck gets shuffled every time the genes are dealt.”
Danni said, “Which means that Pam’s daughter, if she was part of the Family—”
“She is,” Chan said. “Samuel just so much as told me.”
“Okay, then. That means Pam’s daughter has a random sample of half of Phil Sirman’s mystery genes.”
“You can bet all those kids have mystery genes from their Enhanced fathers,” Chan said.
“What effect will that have?”
Zina shrugged. “Who knows what those kids will turn out to be? They’re a total question mark. That’s why you shouldn’t think we’ve put finding them on the back burner. We want to find them as much as you do.”
Ilya rejoined them, waving his phone. “Wait till you hear.”
“You’ve found the kids?” Danni said.
“No. Sorry. That was Burbank. One of his signals is moving.”
Both Luka and Zina spoke in unison. “What?”
Danni could tell from the look on Chan’s face that he was as clueless as she as to what Ilya was talking about.
Ilya said, “I gather by your expressions that you two’ve never heard of the signals.” He leaned on the back of a chair. “Okay. Here goes. The guy who just called detected the first signal at eight fifty-six p.m. Eastern Standard Time on April twenty-third, nineteen forty-one. Since then he’s learned that there are hundreds of these electromagnetic transmissions, all over the planet.”
“What’s the source?” Chan said.
A shrug. “We don’t know. They originate out there.” He pointed to the ceiling. “From the Void. They occur at random intervals and are all below the visible spectrum; no two were the same frequency and they kept shifting within a range between one hundred gigahertz and ten kilohertz. Burbank keeps track a selection of those signals and sends out a monthly report of the frequencies.”
That must make exciting reading, Danni thought. Not.
She smiled. “And you’re a subscriber, I take it?”
“Only since May. I learned the history of the signals when I joined SESOUP and decided to subscribe.” He held up a hand. “And before you ask, SESOUP is the Society for the Exposure of Secret Organizations and Unexplained Phenomena. Seriously, with a name like that, how could I not join? Anyway, in February of ’sixty-eight, after decades of constant shifting, the signal frequencies stopped fluctuating and stabilized. They still showed wide variations between them, but each one kept to a consistent cycle. And they’ve stayed that way ever since.”
