Ice Cold Read online

  Chapter Ten

  The Director sat across the table from the Assistant to the Director of the FBI, and a high level agent of the CIA. When the Director’s agency had been started there was one highly recognized person that could be trusted, as was the CIA agent. The reason the director of the FBI or the CIA weren’t present because they knew nothing about the agency the Director headed and couldn’t report anything they knew nothing about. Other than the Director all the heads of the others departments were appointed by the president or some other very high level person. The less people knew about the agency the better. The director of the FBI knew about the Director, but only that he would show up ever so often at a meeting or to a presidential ball or something of the sort. He’d asked several people he knew but they really couldn’t tell him anything. Not to seem stupid, the people he asked would answer in a number of ways, all different than the other. One time he had asked a Navy Admiral about the man and he answered he was told that Ice was a FBI contract worker. The FBI director had assigned a few men from time to time to find out who he was, but they could never come back with any new information. Finally the man figured Ice must be someone’s body guard or a ‘spook’ in the CIA.

  “Well Director,” George Stillwel the FBI official said. “Do we have anything at all on who has been killing these agents. Cliff Mason was the CIA representative and he shook his head implying ‘no’ as the Director made the word real.

  “No, nothing whatsoever,” the Director responded. This is very uncomfortable knowing we have someone out there and all the intelligence gathering departments around the world cannot come up with something. Even deep level informants have nothing. Either one of the country’s is lying or we have something very unusual going on here.”

  The three men met in a small Italian restaurant in New Jersey. They never met the same place or time. They never had the luncheon on their scheduled times together on their computers, PDA’s, I-phones, or anyplace else. When one of the three needed a meeting he sent an e-mail, coming from Phoenix, Arizona via dozens of foreign countries. Every thing was in code with only they knowing the code.

  “Is there any other agencies in the world like yours?” George Stillwell asked.

  The Director responded, “I have no idea, and if they didn’t they wouldn’t or shouldn’t let it be known. Just like us. My group cannot be known by anybody other then us and the agents themselves.”

  “At first we thought maybe you were behind this somehow,” Mason said with a smile. “People think we’re spooky . . . hell you guys make us to look like boy scouts in a relative sort of way.”

  “Well thanks, and no thanks,” the Director answered.

  “How do you think we should handle it Director?” George Stillwell asked.

  The Director responded, “I think the best way is to have our FBI handle everything that has happened in our country and the CIA handle everything out of the country with you two keeping contact.”

  “Shouldn’t we do it jointly?” Mason asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” the Director responded. “We can not do this by committee. There is too much at stake. We all have the ones we trust absolutely the most and should have them do the investigations. As any national and international problem goes it should remain the same way so not to arouse suspicion. And you know our agency isn’t manned to the extent that we can investigate this kind of thing.”

  George Stillwell interrupted with a smile, “Yeah it’s not like ya’ll do much investigation other than for your own missions. And you certainly don’t ever play by the rules when it comes to interrogating.”

  The Director laughed and stated with a big smile on his face, “How would you know? We never interrogated you and you have never talked to anybody who has!”

  With that George turned red, “yeah, well, there haven’t been many, but a few bodies we kind of connected to your bunch sure looked like they went through some kind of shredder.

  The Director didn’t admit anything but said, “Well we all have our own expertise working for us, and I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’ll have to check this out because I don’t know of any occasion where you would find a body.” The Director’s motto was to never to say you’re sorry, to admit to anything, or never, ever put anything in writing. He trusted the inter-net, and cell phones as much as he trusted a whore in bed with a high payer. The only reason he trusted the inter-net and cell phone was because the way it was explained to him and the impossibility of the special phones they used. It was one reason though that he would always prefer to talk face to face with his agents or anyone else for that matter.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ice felt really groggy and couldn’t get anything into focus. He had a hard time moving and when he thought he was raising his right hand to scratch his nose it was his left. When he tried to sit up he got way to dizzy and laid his head back down. He had enough sense to remember the drunken days of years past when he would hang one foot down on one side of the bed and put his hand, when he figured out which one he was trying to move, on the wall. For some psychological reason he thought it stopped the room from spinning.

  Ice laid there for what seemed quite a while then realized his sight was getting better, but stuff was still a little fuzzy. He heard the door open and saw a woman he thought he recognized, but put himself on guard not knowing what they were going to do to him.

  “Well, well, Mr. Ice it seems like you finally came around,” the woman said. “Just so you know, you are in friendly territory and you’re not here to be harmed or interrogated. You’ve been out for two days. Why so long? Because we had to insure nothing else was in your system except for what we put there, because you would not be in very good form when you woke up. We don’t need our stuff wrecked or any of our staff harmed.”

  “Whe....where am I?” Ice asked looking around still not about to focus very well. When looking around he could see that the room was set up like a hospital room except there was no monitoring system connected to his body.

  “We gave you a little something about an hour ago. You’ll be like this for about a half hour more and there will be someone in to talk to you. I advise you to drink as much water as you can and there is a full pot of coffee right there next to you with a cup and anything you might like to use in it. Mr. Atwood will be coming in. He’s in his early thirties, and wearing casual street clothes. And, to try to put you at more ease it was The Director who sent you here for us to nab while you were on a phone assignment. You weren’t tricked so don’t assume the Director has turned on you or anything of the sort. In fact he told us that if one hair on your head was missing he would have us closed down and sent to the outer northern areas of Canada with no money, no food, and no weapons.”

  The woman smiled and patted Ice’s hand and walked out. Ice could see the door automatically close, but softly. No clicks or anything so figured he wasn’t even locked in. The room looked like a hospital room and he felt the urge to take a leak but knew he had to give it a few minutes. He was able to kind of put his legs off the bed to one side and working very hard ended up in a slump. He thought his focus must be getting better because it only took him about 5 seconds to realize he was sitting on the wrong side of the bed. That put a smile on his face at least, and in some kind of new process he got himself turned around and sat in the right direction. He knew he had to be having a caffeine low, because he had a bad headache like whenever he tried to get off the caffeine.

  “Good afternoon Ice,” a medium sized man said to him as he entered Ice’s room. Ice could see quite a bit better and realized that he kind of recognized him too.

  “Hi,” Ice responded saying the first word he had in days. I feel good, but what the hell is going on here?”

  “First of all I am going by the name of Mr. Atwood, some call me Dr. Atwood. You are at a very small clinic connected to a lab. Our lab works for the CIA and experiments with gases of varying magnitudes. We’re the ones who create the new gases used in w
arfare, and also some not known about. Like you and yours we are not found anywhere in the federal budget and we report to only two people. One is high up in the government structure and the other is your Director.”

  Ice looked shocked and Atwood could see it plainly. “Don’t be shocked Ice. As you know neither of our businesses are known about except for just a few. Nobody in the this building knows who you are except for the name of Ice. I really don’t know who or what you do either. We’ve come up with some doozies so the Director chose you to be both the guinea pig and the person in your agency to be able to use the stuff we have prepared for you.”

  Ice was still in shock over the Director knowing about this and wondered why he had been tricked.

  “Sorry this all went down this way but it had to be the way it was. If you went someplace intentionally someone might be following you. We didn’t know if you had a bug or homing device on you. We had to check all that out as soon as we got your body in the ambulance. The folks back at the motel think you had a heart attack. We got your car and it is locked downstairs. We were instructed to do nothing with the car, only to drive it here.”

  “The Director knows you would not do anything without his permission as far as a mission went and we know you don’t trust anybody, so why would you trust us. And, we had to make sure our chemicals worked . . . well, not all of them. We didn’t want to have to kill you to insure that particular chemical worked. In an hour I will take you down the hall so you can have a tele-conference with the Director. Hopefully that puts you more at ease. Until then another pot of coffee is on the way along with some small sandwiches. Don’t eat too fast since you haven’t been fed anything by mouth for a couple days. Yes, we did have you hooked up until about an hour before you came around.

  After speaking with the Director and able to see him while he did so made him feel quite a bit more comfortable about the whole thing. At first he was really pissed and a second from killing somebody, even only out of frustration. For a short period of time he thought perhaps the Director had turned on him. But the Director explained his point and he understood much more.

  The Director told him there was no safe way to have him get to where he was at. First, he wouldn’t trust anybody but the Director, and if they just kidnapped him the Director felt there might be dead and dying agents laying around. Also, the chemical was there to learn about and doing testing was used to put him out. The Director told him that he would like what he would learn and kind of enjoy seeing how it worked.

  After Ice left the room where he communicated with the Director he was taken to an office of a woman who interviewed agents, gathered intelligence information, and actully was an over glorified psychologist. When walking into the office he looked around and actually saw her certifications and her degrees were in Psychology and Human Behavior. She gave Ice her hand to shake and said, “Hi, I’m Joyce Weathers” and we need to talk for a while. She sat down and waved at what Ice thought was a very nice comfortable chair. His guard dropped a little since she wasn’t trying to play head games with him, although he knew that was part of her job no matter how she acted.

  “So, what’s up?” Ice asked.

  “Well, you know the deal I’m sure. We’ve both been through this rodeo before. Prior to being who I am I did spend some time on the streets as a cop. A few years later I made detective. While a cop I took classes and got my first degree, then my second. This agency recruited me out of college and since have finished two more degrees at the governments expense,” Joyce started out.

  “This is an interview like any other one you might have after going through an experience you were probably not looking for. You and I will talk, hopefully as two friends. I know there is information you have that I don’t need to know about so don’t worry that I’m going to make or cause you to say anything you shouldn’t. All I know is that you are a federal agent of some kind, and one who flies under the radar. I’ve been told that whatever you do say to me that I will not assume anything and only address those things you may want to talk about. Tomorrow we will meet with a Dr. Mosely. He is a very good, well known scientist who was also contracted here to do research. Very interesting research that he will need to tell you everything about. You see, it’s balanced. You don’t have to tell us much but we will have to tell you everything.” Joyce smiled opening a notebook.

  “Mr. Atwood, the first man you met, is the CIA coordinator with us. You will probably not see him again. He was here already so thought we would use him to be your first contact because we felt you might be familiar with him,” Joyce stated.

  “Just because you are going to be instructed in detail in how our research can help you, we of course know that your job does have something to do with assassination and death. That’s all we need to do. You will be working closely on an ongoing test situation with Dr. Mosely. He will fine tune anything needing to change and maybe have some fun using you to see how effective it would be. Let me tell you, Dr. Mosely is not a law enforcement kind of person. I think sometimes he is mentally ill, but most of us are I guess. He’s not at all demanding or a “in your face” kind of a guy. I think you’ll like him; most people do.”

  Ice and Joyce talked for over a couple hours. Ice found himself feeling very comfortable in talking with Joyce. She was professional, but could break into “cop talk” at any time. There communication was more like a “first date” kind of thing and both found they liked the other by the end of their conversation and would probably continue seeing each other in what her professional capacity was. She didn’t show it but down deep she was a little leery about Ice, knowing what he may be capable of. She knew he didn’t belong to any of the three letter government agencies and the small amount of information she did have on him was all on one sheet, plus his physical assessment.

  The next morning Ice took his time, had his coffee and a good breakfast in the cafeteria. He ended up talking with one of the researchers at the next table over and found his conversation there interesting too. He kind of enjoyed talking with people who didn’t know who or what he was, and he didn’t need to play any kind of role with these people.

  At 10AM Ice went to Joyce’s office and found that Dr. Mosely was already there. Dr. Mosely was the kind of guy you couldn’t not like, and gave off an aura of wisdom and understanding. Probably a perfect dad or grand-dad. Ice found out later that Dr. Mosely was gay, with a life long partner. If Joyce hadn’t let it slip, Ice may have ever known the guy was gay.

  “We can talk here even with Joyce here,” Dr. Mosely said after about a half an hour of just talking and feeling each other out. Ice and Dr. Mosely knew that the relationship had to be one of trust and non-judgement. Both Dr. Mosely and Ice were professionals and did what they did because they were good at it.

  “I’ll try to explain what we have here in a way you can understand it. I myself hate it when our professionals use big words to try to impress somebody. My part in this is to make your job easier, and in ways more effective.”

  “Okay,” Ice responded waiting to hear what all this was about.

  “First, I think I can assume you are familiar with DNA. That’s the field of work I’ve done a lot of research in. Basically no two persons have the same DNA, except for twins of course. We find that even brothers and sisters, or any of there siblings have different DNA. Kids share DNA with their parents. As I assume you know there are a number of points we look at for comparison. Are my assumptions right so far?”

  “Yes, they are,” Ice responded. “I think it seems that most people think they are experts at it since they watch C.S.I. and a few more of those programs. But then too I realize the cops or investigators always get their man and they do it in an hour. People just don’t realize the time or cost element.”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Mosely said with a smile. “So let me explain this to you as simply as I can. I think you have another appointment with Joyce here this afternoon. I then would like to see you and issue you some stuff first thing in the morni
ng. I understand that they, whoever they are, are going to sneak you back into civilization in some matter. Don’t worry, we won’t put you out for that.”

  “So then,” the scientist started. “Everybody has their own DNA. What we do is a number of things. First, a person’s DNA has to been given to us. From their DNA we can discover any weaknesses they may have . . . to chemicals that is. We can tell a lot more than that but I don’t want to muddy up the waters at this point in time.

  “In short,” Dr. Mosely continued, “We can take a person’s DNA and match it with a particular chemical that will only work on them. To make it even shorter, if this chemical was released into the air, let’s say at a basketball game, only the person we are dealing with will be affected. What’s nice is that we have it perfected enough I think that we can kill an individual immediately, long term, or anything in between. We can cause them to be sick making it impossible to function properly too. In addition, if it is a chemical that doesn’t react immediate we also have it’s cure made up in the same way. If several people need to be, well let’s say treated, we just need to know all their DNA and we can include it into one release.”

  “The reason we have you testing this stuff and probably using it is because the kind of business you’re in. If something goes wrong you’ll be able to take care of the problem in a different manner.

  Dr. Mosely continued, “You will have a special telephone number and a completely clean e-mail address to send me information. Only you, Joyce, and myself know anything about this. The scientists only know what has to be known to do their job. As far as they are concerned you are a chemical analysis under contract. You are welcome here, but only with the same security as you use at any other highly secretive agency. You on board with this?”