Cerberus tugged on the leashes guiding the three Belgian Malinois around the corner onto the quaint strip of Main Street. Bruno had been blinded in one eye. Petrol was missing his right back leg, and Daisy—well, physically Daisy was fine. Mentally, not so much. His wife, Maggie, called her Crazy Daisy and threatened to leave him if Daisy destroyed another piece of furniture in a thunderstorm or attacked another visitor.
He ducked into the small public park and, after seeing he was alone, let the dogs off-leash. Mrs. Baker at the B & B across the street would give him an earful if she caught him “letting those attack dogs run wild.” She didn’t seem to care that they had served their country as bravely as any soldier. Daisy stayed by his side, but Petrol and Bruno took off after a wayward seagull. He sat on a slatted wooden bench and pulled a section of the print version of the local paper out of his jacket pocket. Keeping the paper folded in half, he glanced at an article on lead levels in the drinking water in a nearby county. He didn’t care about the article. Ten minutes later, a smartly dressed woman walked briskly toward him. She perched on the bench and pulled out her phone.
“You’re showing your age, my friend. This isn’t how it’s done anymore.”
“Maybe it should be.”
“Well, you certainly make a point, considering recent events. I’ll give you that.”
Cerberus snapped his newspaper to straighten it.
“You asked to see me. The dogs needed a walk.”
The dogs had returned to his side without their quarry. He withdrew a bowl and a canteen of water from the cloth bag he carried and poured water for the dogs.
“Living out your golden years feeding pigeons in the park, is that it?”
He chuckled. “If Maggie had her way.”
“Our man inside got a look in the lab. Not a good one, unfortunately. Not too much to see. One scientist who was,” she quoted directly from the report, “‘eating fried plantains and examining something under a standard microscope.’”
Cerberus waited, scratching Daisy on the small black patch of fur on her chest.
“Something’s off.”
“You mean what he didn’t see more than what he did.”
“Exactly. No protective gear, no clean room.”
“Could be a fairly stable toxin. Or it needs to be combined with another component.”
“Maybe he discovered it’s no longer viable.” He withdrew a gnawed tennis ball from his pocket and tossed it across the grass. Petrol and Bruno took off after it.
“He’s lining up buyers. He has something of value.”
“Anything coming out of Pingfang is a top priority.”
“Agreed.”
“The construction workers who discovered the remains and the package, are they still breathing?”
“I assume so. After they handed over the package to the imposters, they went about their business.”
“I want to send North over to talk to them.”
“Why?”
“Because we are making a lot of assumptions, and it would be nice to have some facts when potentially hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line.”
“I think it’s unnecessary. We know it’s a weapon. We know it’s from Detachment 731. It has to be a bioagent of some sort.”
“But what sort? There’s no such thing as too much information.”
“True. All right, let me know if he discovers anything useful.” The woman stood, pocketed her phone, and walked back toward an idling SUV.