D Carpenter - Infertile Grounds

Mike walked back into the room. “He had a driving license in his wallet,” he said throwing it on the table.

“Good,” Sarah said.

“At least they’ll know who he is when we drop him on the highway to get found,” Camilla said.

Sarah stepped forward to take a look at the license. She stared at the name on the license in shocked disbelief. “Son of a bitch.”

It was a cold, rainy day as the FBI car came to a stop in front of Mass General and just as Arthur was about to get out of the car to meet up with the Boston team, his phone rang.

“What’s up, Cecil?” Arthur asked, leaning back into the seat. Cecil was one of his best analysts.

“Lots.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“Been working this virus. We tried tracking the people but that was a dead end so I followed up on the other clues and one of them has turned into something.”

Arthur’s blood pressure and heart rate increased. Cecil was fact-based and when he said he had something you could bet he did.

“Talk to me, Cecil.”

“We did some phonetic—”

“I don’t need to hear how you did it.”

“Sorry, Ngami is a real place. A region of Botswana. Relatively sophisticated infrastructure, stable government, a success story for Africa for sure,” Cecil said. “So the virus allegedly makes people infertile, right?”

“That’s what the reports said.”

“So I called the largest hospital and want to guess what I found out.”

“Go on.”

“Births have plummeted the past few months. Right now there isn’t a pregnant woman to be found in any of their maternity wards.”

Arthur sat upright. “What? Are you certain?”

“Absolutely. The WHO is all over the place, trying to figure it out but they can’t. All they know is the sperm counts of everyone they’ve tested are well below normal, actually, well below viable.”

“Viable?”

“Not enough of the little swimmers to realistically fertilize an egg.”

“Oh my God,” Arthur said as he pressed his hand to his forehead and massaged his temples. His mind was racing. The W.H.O was the best at these sorts of crisis. “Why haven’t I heard about this? Did I miss something? Why didn’t the WHO raise any alarms?”

“They didn’t know what they were dealing with. It was very regional. I spoke with their director on the ground in Botswana. She was very helpful but also very perplexed,” Cecil replied.

“Jesus.”

“There’s more.”

“More?”

“So all of this is one big cluster of coincidences. We have the virus rumor and now some loose but compelling corroboration but still nothing concrete so I take a look at international travelers over the past year going to and from Botswana and correlate it to the names we know.”

Arthur leaned forward again and unconsciously held his breath, knowing what he was about to hear. “And?”

“And, we’ve got a David Rose turning up in Botswana almost nine months ago.”

“Who’s David Rose?”

“The pilot who was shot down.”

“Go on.”

“He turns up in Botswana nine months ago and, obviously, we don’t know if this David Rose is our dead pilot David Rose but I got this same David Rose arriving on an international flight from Botswana via Heathrow into Boston three weeks ago and then hopping a shuttle flight to Bangor.”

“Son of a bitch!” Arthur exclaimed. “Anything else?”

“Not yet but I’m sure we’re going to connect more dots shortly.”

Arthur pulled out the case file and flipped through it for a moment as he considered what Cecil had just told him. It was all circumstantial, nothing concrete but he had been in this business long enough to know that sometimes you had to run with what you had and this was undoubtedly one of those times.

“Excellent work, Cecil.”

“Thanks.”

“I need you to put everything together and get it to me immediately. I want all of these coincidences documented.”

A knock on the window brought Arthur’s head up and he turned to see who it was. Carl Moscovitz. Arthur held up one finger and said, “Let me know the second you have that all together.”

“Will do.”

Arthur disconnected and stepped out of the car.

“Thank you for coming, Arthur,” Carl said as the two men shook hands. “I’m sorry about the short notice, but he says that he’ll only talk to you. I don’t think we have much time.”

“No problem,” Arthur said as he followed Carl inside the building and toward the elevators, still trying to digest what he had just learned. It was incredible but he had to compartmentalize the different threads of this for now. Perhaps agent Pelletier could give him additional corroborative details that would be useful. People stepped aside as they crossed the busy lobby. Arthur popped a breath mint as he walked.

Irving followed the two men into an empty elevator. A woman and her son tried to follow them in, but Irving stopped them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Official business.”

The woman scowled at them as the doors slid shut.

“Has anything else happened since you sent down this report last night?” Arthur asked.

“Not much. Pell came around for a while early this morning, but all he would say was that he’d only talk to you.”

“That’s it?” Arthur asked.

“Actually, there’s one other interesting bit of information.”

“What’s that?”

“Chris Foster, the civilian who saw the plane go down up in Maine, has disappeared. We’ve been trying to find him since yesterday. He took a plane to LA, rented a car and then disappeared.”

“Any ideas?” Arthur asked.

Carl shook his head. “Could be he’s just freaked out by the past few days. We talked to his wife and she says they’re having big marital problems so that could be contributing to him taking off.”

“Is that what you think?” Arthur asked.

“It’s doubtful,” Carl said. “More likely it has something to do with this case.”

“Like what?”

“Something he learned from agent Pelletier?”

“Could it be Sarah Burns and her people?”

“Perhaps but, personally, I’d go with the he-learned-something-from-Pell theory. He very well may have important evidence. He was hanging around with that piece of shit since he reported the plane crash incident. Those two had a weird relationship, like Pell had suddenly recruited him as his partner or something.”

“Really?”

“Isn’t that how you saw it, Irving,” Carl said to Irving who nodded then Carl continued, “We just don’t know where he is. He simply vanished overnight.”

The elevator doors opened, and the three men stepped out into the hallway of the ICU. Arthur noticed the unnatural silence of the floor – as if the patients’ struggles to cling to life somehow muted the normal sounds of the busy urban hospital. Doctors and nurses moved about purposefully, but the actual noise-to-activity ratio was out of whack.

Carl strode toward Pell’s room. He had a cocky swagger for a little guy.

Agent Strange stood outside the door. His gaze darting from man to man as they approached.

“Anything?” Carl said as he walked past Steve.

“No,” he replied.

“Can we go in?”

“No, the nurse buzzed Dr. Epstein while you were on your way up.”

“Is he on his way? Arthur doesn’t have all day,” Carl said.

Arthur peered into the room at Pell asleep on the bed. He was a calm man, but the one thing that sent him through the roof was when an agent went bad. It didn’t happen often but every once in a while it did. Agents were human beings just like everyone else – they suffered from the same personal problems, insecurities and weaknesses as the average Joe. That was ok. As long as they didn’t let it affect their job or their loyalties. The Bureau tried to create strong character but people are all wired differently. His method of dealing with the ones that did turn bad had varied – jail was okay, but generally he liked a more quiet, permanent approach. Something out of the public eye – an accident while they were in the field, drug bust gone bad, heart attack, something that could really happen on any given day on The Job. They could make it look like a person died any number of ways. To him that was justice. Anyone who endangered his fellow agents, or was feeding the wrong people information, deserved the harshest punishment.