The Tethys Report (The Rise of the Chirons Book 1) Read online

  The Tethys Report

  By Rian Davis

  Copyright (c) 2019 Rian Davis

  All Rights Reserved

  To Mike and Sean for all their support.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 1

  I was on my way back home through the crowded wet streets of southwest Bangkok, when Kraftberger found me. I was trying to get the phone to call my mother who was not alive and maybe not even self-aware, trying to avoid the knee-deep water that was overtaking the city when I first noticed him. I knew his ways, which is why I wasn’t surprised when he appeared at my usual bus stop, standing there waiting, not even looking at me. He stood in a spot in front of the bus where I couldn’t have missed him—his legs standing on an elevated platform that kept him just above the dark dirty water. He stood out of course. In the abnormally humid heat of the Thai afternoons, the air takes on properties of a sponge; car exhaust, factory smoke, street food, all swirl together in the swirl of metropolitan mess.

  I had just been returning from my work with the Thai government, consulting as a geologist on the hopeless task of protecting what little Thai farmland remained from the immense flooding that had overtaken the coast and vast farmlands with poisonous saltwater. The days of the Dutch solution were long gone. Things had escalated well beyond that.

  Despite the scorching heat and intermittent rain, he was wearing a suit—as he always did and turned toward me as I was about to ignore him, pulling a long, thin cigarette out from the vest pocket of his shirt.

  “Got a light Mister?” he asked, his head lowered downward, his dangerous eyes were somewhere behind the thick sunglasses. I avoided making direct contact with them.

  I merely slowed to a step. Others pushed me from behind, and I saw that he was not making any effort to get on the bus, so without saying anything, I made a move to go up the stairs of the bus before the doors would close. But a hand grabbed me from behind—a hand with a steel grip, and fingers like pincers. The hand of the government was an irresistible one, it seemed.

  “I just want to talk,” he said.

  “I just want to live my life—without you, and after what you’ve done to me, you can’t blame me,” I said in reply. My tone was flat. Any emotion would give him an edge, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him knowing about my pain of not being able to practice my trade. My career was in ruin, and I was stuck teaching English overseas without any hope of returning to the research that I loved.

  “We need you.” His hand let go of me, and I relaxed—just a little.

  “I don’t want to do the government’s bidding anymore. Haven’t you taken enough from me?” I said. My voice had risen to a shout, and people were starting to stare. A woman and her toddler had their eyes transfixed on us both. They were holding hands. The toddler, a little girl, had left her mouth wide open in puzzlement. Below me the dirty water was splashing against my clothes. The bus passed on making a massive dip in the water as it continued on with its massive wheels.

  I smiled, and put my hands together in a prayer gesture—a symbol of respect called a wai—and apologized in Thai before moving off in a different direction from where Kraftberger was standing. He would have none of it, however. Somehow, he got in front of me, and when I tried to move past him, he put his arm in front of me. Although he was perhaps a good fifteen years or so older than me, and despite the fact that I was in pretty good shape, and despite what I knew was his distaste for getting his clothes wet, he was able to restrain me with that one arm.

  I was about to resist—probably futilely—when he said, “They’ve got Jen.”

  I stopped in my tracks. Jen Li was a paleontologist who focused on marine life—and a damned good one at that—whom I met at Stanford. We both worked on similar research, paleontology and geology often go well together after all. She was brilliant and I quickly fell in love. Then the incident with Kraftberger happened, and a scandal ensued. Long story short, my career was ended as I took the fall. I didn’t do it for that bastard, I did it for her. She was entirely innocent, another pawn in the system of government funding, a cruel dependency where a scientist has no choice but to be a whore of the feds. It didn’t matter much that I was completely innocent too, but lives had been lost, and explanations were needed. Kraftberger, the cockroach that he was, escaped unscathed however. And so here I was; here we were.

  “Dammit Jake, I wouldn’t have said that unless you force me to. You made me tell you about her, and you know it.”

  “Where is she?” I said faintly. There was a well of complex emotions within me that perhaps I did not fully understand. I knew he was using me, manipulating the buttons of my thoughts and emotions—that’s what he always did so well—but I knew I loved her—would have done anything for her—even die. I loved her you see. My only concern was that he was lying.

  “She’s in Lake Victor,” he said in a voice barely above a whisper. “We’ve got her working down there.” If there was a crew who had bugged both of our bodies with microphones, they would not have been able to hear his voice at that moment—even with all the audio enhancement in the world. Perhaps he suspected that very scenario, for Kraftberger did not deal in the happy, pleasant world that you or I dwelt in, no, he lurked in the shadowy plains that demons and covert government agents inhabited. I was sure that he was directly responsible for at least ten deaths, and nearly certain that countless more had died or been killed indirectly by him throughout his dealings. All in the name of liberty, perhaps. It was also certain that he could have me killed if he wanted. He would never have done it himself of course. Instead, he would hire someone local to do it. Why waste money on local operatives? That was his style. Get others to do the dirty work and then go home to the wife and kids and declare another victory for justice and freedom.

  “I can’t say much. As you know, we’re in the Shadow Zone now,” he said while focusing his vision vaguely on the sky. “The Russians were working on something down there in Antarctica. They allowed her along with our team along to do some research, but we lost contact with her a few days ago.”

  “You had her spying for you?”

  He ignored the question. That probably suggested that she was in fact spying for him, but perhaps didn’t know it. She was smart enough to know what kind of man he was—and what kind of jobs he would have for her.

  “Why would the Russians want her along?”

  I already knew the answer though—she was the best, simply put. But what I really wanted to know was what was down there. Why would a Russian research facility in Antarctica want one of the world’s best paleontologists? She was the foremost expert on Cenozoic and Mesozoic Eras, the period of when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.

  “They found something,” he said. “We sent a group of scientists along with her—none were military.” I tried to look into his sunglasses and get more information, but none was forthcoming. I knew he would say no more. “Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”

  We walked down the streets in silence. It was perhaps his first time in Bangkok, but he navigated the roads and back roads as well as any native. Perhaps he had been scouting me well before this
current meeting, but I doubted it. He would have certainly had me monitored, and more than a few times I detected a few figures who seemed to share similar patterns day after day. It didn’t surprise me that he would have me monitored. What did surprise me was that he never had me killed.

  We entered a seedy bar. Perhaps a dozen semi-clad women were dancing on elevated platforms—the typical Thai fare. There were plenty of non-Thai around, but he did not sit down. Instead, he moved towards the back and the madam moved aside when we entered a door off to the back. I followed him down a long hallway. There were sounds of debauchery all around and I started to wonder where he was taking me—not because I feared him killing me for the aforementioned reasons but because it didn’t seem to be his style. Then I remembered an old saying of his. “Go where they least expect it.” I saw plenty of beautiful agents of his sent on dangerous missions, many not coming back alive, and he never once attempted anything scandalous nor did I ever see him crack a dirty joke or stare inappropriately at women like so many other government agents had. He was dedicated to his mission and more than once while working with him I wondered what made him tick.

  “We’re here,” he said before opening the door at the end of the hallway. I looked as if it would open into a closet or very small room but instead it led to a small hallway and then to a much larger room. There was an office inside in a room of perhaps twenty feet by twenty feet. Tables, papers, phones, all were going off, computers of all types in the latest technologies were displayed all around. The men and women who worked in the office were mostly of non-Thai ethnicity, but I did see a few local looking people. None of them looked at me as he led me to an office at the far end. It was the biggest and I knew as soon as I saw it that it was his.

  “Transfer to Bangkok?” I asked.

  “Only just recently,” he said. “Mainly to come see you. My superiors have the utmost interest in this project, you see,” he said offhandedly. He opened the door, and we both entered quietly. He then lowered the shades to his office and locked the door. I had my first look at the place. It was a very organized looking office that could have belonged to any professional—lawyer, banker or government official. There were two differences: the first was that there were absolutely no family portraits or even hints of family anywhere in the office. True, I reasoned, he could have just come up here temporarily, but the whole time I knew him, he never once indicated any family. I was left with the impression that he lived single and his job was his life. The other difference was that there were perhaps five machine guns lined in a row right under a portrait of George Washington. Near the guns was a small hatch where I supposed he could have escaped if the need arose. I looked at the glass and noticed that it had the look of being bulletproof, being much thicker than the usual office pedigree. Outside, all of those workers would of course have been sacrificed for the greater good but obviously this was necessary in his eyes. More martyrs in the march toward freedom no doubt.

  I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. He pulled out a long pistol from his vest pocket and put it on a rack next to the machineguns. I knew from my training that it contained fourteen 9mm bullets and a silencer at the end. Before sitting down, he removed this and put it in a drawer under the rack.

  He gave me a look, which I couldn’t read. “It wasn’t for you,” he said.

  I said nothing to this and simply waited. For some strange reason, I didn’t have any fear whatsoever. Perhaps we knew each other too well. That in of itself should have made me more afraid.

  Taking out a cigarette from a case that was on his long desk, he lit it, took off his sunglasses, and blew a smoke ring that rose just between the both of us.

  “Mind if I smoke,” he said in a voice that did not suggest a question but more like an afterthought. I did not bother to answer. Pausing for a moment, he reached behind his desk and opened a refrigerator door and picked out a bottle of beer and handed it to me. It was a tiger beer and slightly warm. I took a sip and waited.

  “I—we—the government and I have a proposition. We can take away the charges against you if and only if, you agree to our terms. We’re assembling a team as we speak to go down there and find out what happened. Now, the Russians are being coy all of a sudden. Either they know we were spying on them, or they think we sabotaged their plot. ”

  “Why sabotage? Did something happen?” I thought of Jen, and my heart raced. I guess she was all I thought about anymore.

  “First let me ask: Are you in? For me to tell you anymore means investing you with information that is classified. I can tell you this information but if you don’t take this job subsequently, I’ll have to kill you,” he said in a calm voice. His head made an ever so slight nod towards either the machineguns or the pistol—probably the pistol. Why make a mess?

  “Are you lying to me about Jen?”

  “No.”

  “Do they really have her?’

  “All I can say is that she’s down there. I honestly don’t know her condition.”

  It was as good as he would give me and good enough for me. I knew he wouldn’t lie about her being down there. What I didn’t know was whether she was in danger. He probably knew more about this than he would ever tell me.

  “I’m in,” I said. He made no response. Instead, he took another puff of his Chesterfield cigarette and pulled back in his chair, his face emitting an expression of blankness that was almost Zen-like .

  “We have reason to believe that the Russians lost contact with their research center on Lake Victor about the same time with lost contact with Jen. For whatever reason, the Russians have not sent anyone down there to investigate. That makes us suspicious. Either they expected the loss of contact, or they know something we don’t and are very hesitant to go down there and investigate. “

  “Is it possible they didn’t lose contact with the center?”

  “Very, very unlikely. Unless they’re stuffing penguins with message bottles, we’re pretty sure we’d know if they were communicating back and forth. And just to note, we did take a look at the penguins,” he said this last in a dry voice that left no room for humor. The man really did have the penguins looked at. I would no doubt be reading some National Geographic someday about the mysterious disappearance of a cluster of penguins in the near future—that is if the publishing industry continued to exist in the near future.

  “Why are the Russians down there do you suppose?”

  “Beyond their publicly stated purpose of scientific research and the unspoken possibility of exploitation of geological resources that exist there? I’d say they found something interesting. That was partially Jen’s job to find out. What are they really up to? Unfortunately, we did not learn anything conclusive. All she told us is that the lake underneath the ice is much larger than anyone imagined—much bigger than NASA’s satellite imaging indicates in fact and that there is something very, very interesting going on in that lake. That’s all we know.”

  “That’s a little vague isn’t it?”

  “Yes it is, but it’s the best we can do. As you know, Antarctica is in the Shadow Zone too. Communications are prohibitively difficult most of the time. That’s where you come in. We are assembling a small team to go down there, under stealth, so they don’t know. It’s a military team—you’re the only expert, but of course you’re trained as well. The team will go down there, under the ice to find out what the Russians—and possibly Jen—saw and to report back. That’s it.” I knew the team would be special operators from various branches. If Kraftberger had put this much trouble into it, he would go all the way to ensure success.

  “Why do you need me?”

  “We have suspicions that there is a geological reason the Russians want to look down there. Did they find something that could change the geopolitical calculus? We want to know. It’s even possible that they found something extra-terrestrial and if that is the case, we’ll need an expert like you to look at it. Or who knows what’s down there? We don’t have eyes on it due
to the recent shutdown of global satellites, and of course we’re too worried about our transmission getting hacked.”

  “You mean you need someone who is an expert at keeping his mouth shut as well—someone who has proven himself not to say anything to pesky reporters or the like—and someone with clearance, which is in ever short supply?”

  He did not reply to this and instead continued on. “The truth is Jake, we don’t know what the hell is down there. And we need you to go check it out. We need the expertise of a geologist to provide support for our team. There’re also rumors that there are minerals—more than we thought at first too.”

  “Of course you want to exploit those if they are there. No word on any raw materials or other discoveries? I’m sure it’s pretty ripe down there.”

  “No definitive reports and you know Command wants something definitive.”

  “That I do,” I replied.

  “How am I to communicate with you? If it’s Antarctica, the global communication systems via satellite are all fractured due to recent events as you know, and I’m sure any research channels will be easily hacked by hostile governments due to the inherent difficulties of being in the Shadow Zone.”

  “You are to go in and come back to deliver a report in person. There are to be no communications. We can’t trust any of it getting loose. Even if there is an emergency, you are not to contact us—any of us, New Washington or Command, is that clear?”

  “Yes, but what kind of emergencies are bound to happen? You just said this is a simple task of going down there and reporting. Is there anything else I should know.”

  “I never said it was simple,” he replied.

  I said nothing in response to this. Things were so hard with the recent fracturing of the Internet. Life was so much more complicated than it was five years before. It was almost as if we were back in the pre-Internet Age.

  “Now, we got a team ready—”

  “No more murders of civilians. Don’t make this like last time,” I said, and I knew he wasn’t happy at the interruption. I didn’t care. “I’m not going to be the scapegoat to another one of your plans to do something like last time.” My tone of voice said I was serious. And at that point, I was pretty serious—at least I thought. If Kraftberger had his doubts, I wouldn’t go. It was as simple as that. Jen was a big girl. She could survive without me.