Malcolm returned Turq’s gaze while taking out a pen from his jacket. He scanned the paper again and then signed. Turq took back the document.
“Thank you, Malcolm. Sorry for the formality but you’ll understand our caution shortly,” soothed Planner. “What we discuss here must not be repeated to anyone. Refer any inquiries to this number.” Planner wrote down a number in his filofax and tore off the sheet to give to Malcolm.
“Ok,” said Malcolm looking at the number uncertainly.
“We’re here to secure material for an urgent operational requirement. It is a matter of National Security,” said Planner.
“I assumed as much. By material, you mean a biological agent, right?” said Malcolm.
“Yes,” said Planner reluctantly.
“What kind?”
“Anthrax,” Planner said.
The scientist shook his head and sighed. “Really?”
“Yes. That’s our orders,” said Planner calmly.
Malcolm squirmed again before settling into a reluctant professional attitude. “Well, I guess that’s what we’re here for,” he said deliberately.
“Well, we signed up for this sort of stuff, right?” Planner said.
“Perhaps you can describe the mission a bit,” Malcolm said with a sigh. “Anthrax, as you are probably aware, is a particularly nasty biological weapon but it can be delivered in a number of ways; it can be tuned for different objectives. Can you describe the mission to me in general terms?”
“Delivery by letter. It doesn’t have to be effective. Just recognisable as anthrax for a scare campaign,” said Planner.
Malcolm exhaled and appeared physically relieved. “How many letters?” he asked.
“Between 5 and 10,” said Planner.
“Ok. When do you want it?”
“Two months time. But sooner, if possible.”
Malcolm performed some mental calculations, “Hmm, I have a presentation I made up last fall for the Pentagon brass which might aid our discussion…”
Ten minutes later, Malcolm was projecting a set of powerpoint slides inside the darkened room. Malcolm was explaining the modification of anthrax with magnified images of spores. “We can weaponized the material in various ways for different delivery mechanisms and levels of lethality. We can mix various coatings onto the anthrax spores. Silica, for example, make the spores airborne so more likely to inhale and so can infect a large number of people. Other times you may want the spores to attach to just a single person and it can be personalised by various chemical attractants. Others chemicals provide a catalyst to aid absorption to effect its lethality. We can add a chemical to speed the absorption through the lungs, which pretty much guarantees death within two days. However that is not fast enough for some objectives so there are other chemicals that promote absorption through other areas, the nasal lining, for instance. That kills much more rapidly. So you can see there is quite a few variations. Do you have a preference?”
“Not really. We will not require the most lethal variant but can you mix it up?” said Planner.
“Sure. We can provide, say, 10 separate sachets with handling and disposal instructions62,” said Malcolm.
“Can you provide the instructions verbally? We do not want any written document, no requisition forms, no delivery notes, no instruction notes. We don’t want anything to track back to us,” Planner said.
Malcolm switched the lights on and sighed. “Ah. That may be a problem. Not on the writing side, that’s easy enough. But as for traceability, there may be a problem. You see, each Anthrax spore has a unique DNA signature. All the US controlled anthrax can be traced back to one or other of the labs. Sometimes down to individual batches.”
Planner looked from side to side, to Turq and Bates.
“What would we need to do make the spores untraceable?” mused Bates.
“We could destroy the batch records… um… take the sample from a known strain and then destroy all details of the records”, pondered the scientist. “For example, we have a library of anthrax spores over at the CDC at Iowa State University. We could use one of their strains and then lose the records63.”
“Would that do it?” asked Bates.
“Possibly. You’ve may have moved it into plausible deniability. You wouldn’t be able to fool an expert in the matter, though.”
“This must be a pretty narrow field of expertise,” observed Planner.
“Oh, it is,” said the scientist. “There is probably less than twenty people in the whole of the USA that know one end of an anthrax spore from the other.”
Bates looked over towards Planner and Planner nodded. They knew that their psyop memes were cultivated in the space between facts and opinion, and anything that was a shade of gray could made either black or white as far as the public consensus was concerned.
Chapter Seven: Carrot
Planner, Bates and Turq flew back to New York early evening.
Onboard the aircraft, sitting in the first class cabin next to Turq with Bates across the other side of the aircraft, Planner noticed the checklists used by the Flight Attendants checking passengers onto the aircraft.
Turq noticed Planner grinding his teeth, “Something wrong, Boss?”
Planner shifted uncomfortably on his seat, as he casually looked around to make sure that no-one could hear him; there were few other passengers in First Class. “I’m just wondering about the back stories of the passengers and crew?”
Turq said incredulously, “You want me to go through that now? Each one?”
Planner grimaced, “No, no-no. I was wondering how about the relationships between, say, friends and relatives and media. How is that being handled? Especially if the media gets too interested in the victims… or if any of the relatives are contacted. I’m just trying to stop blowback. It’s ok, we won’t be overheard.”
Turq looked around and sprung her manicured fingers together clearly irritated, “It’s against protocol to talk about this outside the office.”
Planner gave a wry smile.
Turq huffed then preceded to explain, “Well, we have three classes of, er… legends64 for both passenger and crew. First, are the virtual. These are new identities, created from our covert operations department so they will have the right backgrounds, tags and history. The department creates these identities at consistent rate for CIA field operatives. It’s a slow process and we do not want to alert them of our demand so it has remained slow. Fortunately they have a backlog of unused identities and we have grabbed that pile. Secondly, we have er… staff wishing to transfer into WITSEC. There is only limited scope to expand the numbers going into that program; it is already max-ed out. Thirdly we have innocents, people that will be caught up in events. We’re proposing to harvest victims…” Turq looked around to make sure no-one could hear, “…from road traffic accidents. Apparently this method has been used before, I’m not familiar, as yet, on the hand-over process between ambulance crew and airport staff. So in answer to your question; the media need to be diverted from the virtual victims, the relatives need to be managed for the WITSEC victims. But the key to Stage C, will be the innocents; they will be the main method of distraction. They will provide the cover that the other identities will effectively hide behind.”
Planner cleared his throat, “So that was plan? Take road traffic victims?”
Turq said, “Sure. Have our own ambulance and clean up crew to pick up the innocents from the roadside and transport them to the airport. I’ll be there to load them into the aircraft. Hack their email accounts and send a note to friends and family: hey we’ve decided to go off on vacation. Or use voice actors to leave messages. Load the bodies into the drones or take DNA samples and dispose rest as biohazard.”
“This’ll all be done the day or two before the Big Event?” asked Planner.
“Yes,” said Turq, transfixing Planner with one of her hypnotic stares.