The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

Kate interrupted his revelry. “Suit yourself. You can wait in the van, and so can anyone else who wants to leave these kids here to die.”

The doctor turned to her to fire another volley, but Ben cut him off. “Well, I’m in. I hate waiting in the van. And killing kids for that matter.” He turned and started packing up the gear, only pausing to ask the other staff for help.

The remaining three assistants reluctantly began to help, and only then did Kate realize how on the fence they had been. She made a mental note to thank Ben, but the pace of the day soon picked up, and she forgot.

At the next village, the team tossed out the trial booklets, but when the villagers began collecting them, the team shifted to handing the booklets out: as insulation for the villagers’ homes. The act of goodwill helped to corroborate their story as aid workers, and it was nice for Kate to see the booklets she’d spent so much time on go to good use.

Dr. Helms continued protesting, but the rest of the staff ignored him. As the vans filled up with children, his protests tapered off, and by the end of the day, it was clear to everyone that he regretted his actions.

Back in Jakarta, he cornered Kate in her office one night, long after the other staff had left. “Listen Kate, I’ve been meaning to speak with you. After, um, some consideration, and, to be frank, after seeing some of the effects of this work, on, uh, the children, I have to say I’ve decided that we are well within the norms of medical ethics and my personal comfort zone, and thus, I am, well, quite comfortable leading this trial.” He moved to sit down.

Kate didn’t look up from her document. “Don’t sit down, John. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you as well. Out there in the field, you put your safety — your personal reputation — ahead of those children’s lives. That’s unacceptable. We both know I can’t fire you. But I simply can’t work with you on a trial where children’s lives are at stake. If something happened to one of them, if you put them in danger, I couldn’t live with it. I informed the trial sponsor, Immari Research, that I would be leaving, and the funniest thing happened.” She looked up from the paper. “They told me they wouldn’t fund the trial without me. So you can either resign or I will, in which case you’ll lose your funding, and I’ll simply start the same trial with a different name. Oh, and by the way, the movers are coming to pack up your office tomorrow — whatever you decide, you’ll have to find a new lease.”

She walked out of the office and left for the night. The next day, Helms left Jakarta for good, and Kate became the project’s sole investigator. Kate asked Martin to make a few phone calls, some favors were exchanged, and the study became the legal guardian of every child enrolled.

When Kate finished her story, the interrogator stood and said, “You expect me to believe that? We’re not savages, Miss Warner. Good luck telling that story to a jury in Jakarta.” He left the tiny room before Kate could respond.

Outside the interrogation room, the small man walked up to the rotund police chief, who put his sweaty arm around him and said, “How did it go, Paku?”

“I think she’s ready boss.”

CHAPTER 14

Secure Comms Room

Clocktower Station HQ

Jakarta, Indonesia

Josh looked out of the glass room at the concrete walls beyond as he tried to digest what David had told him. Clocktower was compromised, several major cells were already fighting for their survival, Jakarta Station would soon be under attack, and on top of that, there was an imminent terrorist attack on a global scale… and David needed Josh to unravel a code to stop it. No pressure.

David returned from filing cabinet, and sat down at the table again. “I’ve been working on a theory I formed ten years ago, just after 9/11.”

“You think this attack is connected to 9/11?” Josh said.

“I do.”

“You think this is an Al-Qaeda operation?”

“Not necessarily. I believe Al-Qaeda only carried out the 9/11 attacks. I believe another group, a global corporation called Immari International, actually planned, funded, and benefited from the attack. I think it was a cover for various archaeological digs Immari conducted in Afghanistan and Iraq and a very sophisticated heist. A robbery.”

Josh looked at the table. Had David lost it? This sort of 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff was fodder for internet forums, not serious counter-terrorism work.

David seemed to recognize Josh’s reluctance. “Look, I know it sounds far-fetched, but hear me out. After 9/11, I spent almost a year in a hospital and then rehab. That’s a lot of time to think. A lot of things about the attacks made no sense to me. Why attack New York first? Why not hit the White House, Congress, the CIA, and the NSA simultaneously? Those four plane crashes would have crippled the country, especially our defensive capabilities. It would have thrown us into utter chaos. And why use only four planes? Surely they could have trained more pilots. They could have hijacked thirty planes that morning if they simply took planes from Reagan and National Airports in DC, Baltimore, and maybe Richmond. You’ve got Atlanta pretty close; Hartsfield-Jackson is the busiest airport in the world. Who knows, they could have probably crashed a hundred planes that day before passengers started fighting back. And they had to know crashing planes is a one-time-only tactic, so they would have maximized the impact.”

Josh nodded, still skeptical. “It’s an interesting question.”

“And there were others. Why strike on a day when you know the President is out of town, in an elementary school in Florida? Clearly the goal wasn’t to remove our fighting capabilities — sure the Pentagon was hit and many brave men died, but the overall effect was to really, really piss the Pentagon and the Armed forces off, the whole country for that matter — after 9/11, America had an appetite for war the likes it had never seen before. There was one other striking effect: the stock market crashed, a historical crash. New York is the financial capital of the world; hitting it makes sense if you want to do one thing: crash the stock market. The attacks did two things really well: ensured there was a war, a big one and crashed the stock market.”

“I never looked at it that way,” Josh said.

“Things look a lot different when you spend almost a year in a hospital, learning to walk by day and asking why by night. I couldn’t do much research on terrorists from a hospital bed, so I focused on the financial angle. I started looking at who the big winners were from the financial collapse. Who was betting against American stocks. What companies were shorting the market, who owned puts, who made a fortune. It was a long list. Then I started looking at who benefited from the wars, especially private security contractors and oil and gas interests. The list got shorter. And something else intrigued me: the attacks nearly guaranteed a war in Afghanistan. Maybe whatever this group wanted was there and they needed a cover to go in and search for it. Or maybe it was in Iraq. Maybe both. I knew I needed to get out in the field to find some real answers.”