Red King
Presidential Palace, downtown San Dorado
The Presidential Palace was resplendent as ever. Its decorative jewel-like glass and steel crown flickered with the rebounding rays of the noon sun, a tribute to the finest Art Deco architecture. Wisps of clouds drifted along the cathedral-like windows of the Presidential study near the top of the building, the vaulted, electrically lit roof arching away from the massive wooden desk behind which the President himself was working.
Currently President Hank was pouring over the text of the Frequesue Neutrality Pact and the recommendations attached by Helena Skye’s people at DEPICOR. They boiled down to ‘sign this, it’s a good deal’, but Sidney Hank liked to make sure he knew what he was getting into. Still they were right, it
was a good deal. Assistant-Sub-Director Christian Graham, who had taken over when Sub-Director Charlie Duquesne was promoted to ambassador to the CSR, had done a good job. Hank made a note to put in a good word for Graham should he encounter his name anywhere else.
A soft bell sounded on the communications panel grafted into the desk, and the President was treated to the voice of his personal secretary. “Miss Sinclair is here to see you sir”, as always George Walsh managed to keep his voice neutral. He was one of the few people who knew the relation between the President and Director Sinclair was more than strictly business. “Shall I let her in?”
The President swiftly signed the note telling Skye that he was agreed with the Treaty and asking her to inform him when the signing ceremony would take place, then pushed the piece of yellow paper away. “Yes please George, let her in”, he then said.
Two Presidential Security Service aides opened the bronze doors leading into the study and in came Daphne Sinclair, of the General Directorate for Education, Law Enforcement and Justice, and one of the five most powerful people in San Dorado. Much to the President’s concern however she looked distinctly restless as she paced into the office, waiting until the sound-proof doors had closed again before she spoke.
“We’ve got a problem.”
Oh, there we go again, the President thought as he sank back in his chair.
Never a dull day. He responded airily though, hoping that whatever had come up wouldn’t be as serious as she sounded. “Relax, Daphne. Take a seat. What seems to be the difficulty?”
Sinclair sat down on the edge of one of the leather-clad fauteuils on the opposite side of the desk, took a moment to compose her thoughts, puffed her cheeks, and shrugged. “Sidney, Red King is missing a shipment.”
President Sidney Hank merely stared at her for a moment.
The codename
Red King had been assigned by the President himself. It was the name of a character from
Through the Looking Glass. No-one in this world had read that novel, but in Lewis Carroll's fantasy story the Red King character was fast asleep, and Alice theorized that she was part of the Red King's dream and would “go out—bang!—like a candle” should he wake.
It seemed an ironically fitting name for San Dorado’s top-secret biowarfare laboratory, run by Sinclair’s SinTEK, and tasked with the creation of what amounted to doomsday weapons.
But now Red King was missing a ‘shipment’.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me”, the President’s voice was ominously flat.
“I wish I was Sidney, but-”
“How the
fuck did this happen?”
Daphne Sinclair knew the President well enough to recognize the thinly veiled anger in his voice. This wasn’t the time to appeal to Sidney Hank’s softer sides. “The lab on Isla Sorna – one of its shipments down south was hijacked on Chauki Lake. The pirates took the vessel down to Gortinez Harbour on the Costa. I… Well, we arranged an immediate response, Citidef and SDA took back the ship within twelve hours… But when my people retook possession of the ship, as it turned out, twelve cylinders were missing…”
“Twelve cylinders containing
what?”
“A hallucinogenic agent… A powerful psychoactive gas, we haven’t got a name for it yet. It’s derived of the poison secreted by a critter from the northern jungles. It induces, ah, it induces uncontrollable rage in those subjected to it. Turns them into vicious, bloodthirsty psychopaths, for a time. The effects are… Well, they effects are quite profound.”
“And you’re missing
twelve canisters of this stuff?”
“Only eleven now. One turned up yesterday in a village in the northern Costa.”
“What happened?”
“Well, Sidney, pretty much everyone in the village died.”
“Sweet lady, an entire village? Are you for fucking real?” The President slammed his fist into the desk. “Fortune faded Daphne! Do you… Do you have any idea what will happen if word of this gets out? Do you have any idea of the extent of the
damage? No-one, not even Helena will be able to spin this! We’ll be fucking crucified!
“It gets worse.”
“I bet it does! What happens if a cylinder of this shit pops open downtown?”
Daphne ignored him. “I think Sam has a hand in this.”
Hank closed his eyes and massaged his temples. “Sam? Sam Ralson? What the fuck does Ralson have to do with this?”
“Think about it Sidney. Why do you think there wasn’t a bigger guard aboard that ship? How many ships have been hijacked on Chauki Lake in the last decade? I’ll tell you:
none. Piracy on the great rivers is a thing of the distant past. And then when someone restarts the practice they just so happen to hijack
this vessel? Someone paid the pirates to take the cylinders, and then double-crossed them by releasing some of the gas on the docks before our troops got there. And as head of CORDEF and CEO of Ralson Concerns only Sam Ralson has both a high enough clearance to know when the laboratory conducts its shipments, and the means to commandeer the ship. The village was a test, someone wanted to see what the stuff does. That’s something Sam would do, he doesn’t give damn how many people die. It’s got to be him, he’s the biggest weapons manufacturer of the damned city, Ralson Arms is bound to want to weaponize it…”
“Weaponize it? You mean it’s not a damned weapon yet?”
“No. It’s too thin, too diffuse. To be a truly effective agent it needs to loiter longer, it has to be thickened.”
“Bloody fucking great. So it’s a gas that kills an entire village even though it isn’t properly weaponized yet, we’re missing a dozen cylinders of the stuff, and my own Director of Corporate Defence is unleashing it on hapless innocents just to see what happens? What else? You better have some good news for me…”
“Two things. We’ve so far managed to suppress word of the whole clusterfuck and we think we’ll be able to continue to do so – provided no more villages get gassed, that is. And secondly, EIA thinks it has a lead on the stuff. Looks like that rivalry with the MIC is finally about to pay off.”
“I don’t want to know.” President Hank looked extremely irritated. He impatiently tapped his fingers on the desk. “I’m leaving for Jerusalem this evening for the FASTA launch. When I get back one week from now, I want this mess settled, and I want it settled nicely and quietly. I don’t care how you do it as long as I hear of no more dead villages, no more ‘accidents’, and no more fucking weapons of mass destruction getting ‘lost’, you hear me?”
“Yes, Sidney, I hear you. I just-”
The President stood up. “Save it for later. Just… Get our gear back, and whatever you do, make sure none of your actions can ever be traced back to San Dorado.” He paced to the door, then turned around at the last minute. “Because I like you Daphne, I really do, but I swear to the Good Lady that if word
does get out, I’ll throw you to the wolves.”
Result: A catastrophic fuck-up has occurred during the transfer of hazardous materials from San Dorado’s bioweapon facility in Chauki Lake to an undisclosed location: Eleven cylinders full of a highly dangerous psychoactive gas have disappeared somewhere on the Costa. Owner SinTEK and the state’s External Intelligence Agency are in hot pursuit, but the cylinders are now in possession of Ralson Concerns Ltd, one of San Dorado’s largest megacorporations, or a third party paid by Sam Ralson. President Hank is really pissed off about this, but he is also leaving San Dorado for Byzantium in a few hours, so won’t be able to do much about it himself.
[OOC: Since the resolution of this plotline is probably fairly important to the future standing of San Dorado in the international community I’d appreciate if people, should they want to involve themselves, checked with me first.]
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- PeZook
