“I had barely settled in. I planned to get things ready and then bring Emily over for the two-year appointment. When I flew home to get her after three months, she was sick—chickenpox of all things. So, I left her with my parents and flew back alone. About two weeks after that, I came down with Emily’s bug.”
“Chickenpox is very dangerous in adults,” Twitch commented absently.
“Yes. I had to be hospitalized after I fainted at a diplomatic event. After that, I returned home to recuperate and resigned the post. The doctors were worried about complications from the virus. Barbara Coffer, the current Secretary of Health and Human Services, took my place.”
The group was still absorbing this information when Twitch turned troubled blue eyes to the group. “Add another box.”
“What?” Nathan asked warily.
“On the whiteboard. A highly disreputable private investigator, Mac Ferguson, was found murdered in an alley in Midtown last week. Cause of death was injected cyanide. He was also stabbed post-mortem. Any guesses as to where?”
“Right eye, right ear, throat,” Tox surmised.
“Give that man a cigar.”
“Fifty bucks says Ferguson found you.” Tox pointed his sandwich at Emily.
“That explains how they were able to coordinate so quickly after the news of Emily’s identity was leaked.” Nathan gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“They already knew,” Finn agreed.
Emily barely had time to process the information when Chat entered calmly but urgently.
“We have a situation.” Chat handed the tablet to Nathan. Nathan read the information and passed it to Ren, who set his novel aside and took the file.
“Damn. I was hoping this was all some sort of black-market lore.”
Emily stayed where she was on the small couch, but this was all too much. “What’s going on?”
Nathan gave Ren a quick nod and he began the explanation with the calm tone of a professor delivering a history lecture.
“During World War II, the Japanese had a facility in a remote part of Manchuria, officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department.”
Tox snorted as Ren continued.
“It was actually a massive bio and chemical warfare research laboratory known as Detachment 731, run by the notorious Surgeon General Shiro Ishii, the Dr. Mengele of Japan. They experimented on prisoners using any number of pathogens: anthrax, smallpox, cholera, botulism, venereal diseases. Prisoners were infected, studied. Women were impregnated then exposed. It was a level of inhumanity nearly beyond comprehension.” Ren took a moment to shake off the images he had no doubt conjured. “When the Red Army was on the move and the war was all but lost, the government ordered Detachment 731 be destroyed. General Ishii had the remaining prisoners executed, as well as low-level workers with knowledge of the facility, burned down the building, and ordered his staff to scatter and never mention the true purpose of Detachment 731.”
Emily had her eyes closed and both hands covering her mouth. Nathan sat beside her and gathered her up.
“Fast forward to a year ago. A group of construction workers in Manchuria unearthed human remains while they were digging a foundation. Along with the skeleton, there was some sort of unidentified package. The information is sketchy. It was dated 1945, and the Japanese writing indicated the contents were from the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department. The workers reported it to the locals, but before anyone knew what they had, the men were duped into surrendering the package to a group of men impersonating government officials. Now bear in mind, the perpetrators of Detachment 731 went largely unpunished—some people even go so far as to say Ishii went to work for the U.S. after the war—and the vast majority of their victims were Chinese, so even today China has a vested interest in condemning the atrocities. Rather than face the wrath of higher-ups for losing such potentially damning evidence, the locals simply ‘lost’ the report.” Ren put air quotes around “lost.”
Nathan jumped in. “Which means, there is the distinct possibility that someone smuggled an engineered biotoxin or some sort of pathogen out of Detachment 731 that, if properly contained, could still be viable.”
Ren took the volley. “And judging from the rumors of testing done for months since the discovery, we have to assume that whatever was in that package, stuffed in the jacket of a dead man, and buried in the middle of Manchuria, was something extremely valuable and extremely deadly.”
“I talked to one of the original construction workers who discovered the remains.” The group looked up at Nathan’s announcement. “Cerberus sent me. After the chatter that a bioweapon was going up for sale, he wanted to know exactly what was in that package.”
“Any good intel?”
“Not much. The one guy I tracked down was nervous to talk to me. Said the package felt solid. The writing was Japanese. He was the guy who found the body, mentioned there was a bullet hole in the skull of the remains. They never opened the package, and they were happy to hand it over to the first person who showed up wanting it. When I asked him how big it was, he said probably the only English word he knew, ‘Xbox.’”
“So, yea big.” Tox held his hands about eight inches apart.
“That it?” Chat added, seeming to sense there was more to the story.
“Small detail. After I left, two guys in a Humvee ran me off the road. Flipped my Jeep. When I fired at them, they took off.”
“That worker’s got someone watching his back. Explains why the bad guys didn’t just kill him.”