Fallston Airport wasn’t what one might consider a booming hub, which meant there wasn’t a professional transportation service, so they opted to use a ride-sharing company. The drive to the Edgewood facility was only twelve miles but promised to take twenty minutes. Mason told the driver of the black Crown Victoria, a skinny man in his early fifties named Anthony, who both looked and smelled like a direct descendant of the Marlboro Man, that he’d double the fare if he could cut that time in half. The driver had been so committed to the proposition that he’d been forced to add the caveat “if you get us there without killing us first.” How Gunnar managed to work with his laptop balanced on his thighs and the car seemingly hurtling toward certain doom was beyond Mason, who could barely keep up with the trees and fields whipping past.
“Royal Nautilus Petroleum is one of the oldest multinational corporations in the world, so its history is pretty well documented,” Gunnar said. “Formed in 1907 in an effort to compete with Thomas Elliot Richter’s Great American Oil. It’s currently the largest company, by revenue, in Europe and the sixth largest in the world. It has interests in everything from petrochemicals to biofuels, a presence in nearly every country on the planet, and owns drilling rights to some of the most lucrative reserves in the entire world, including those in Iraq and the North Sea.”
“How does a company like that end up working out of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal?”
“Nautilus Petroleum first entered the chemical business in 1929, when it formed a partnership with Centrum Steelworks, which produced commercial ammonia as a by-product of its steel-manufacturing process. Under the Nautilus Chemical Company banner, they commenced production of ammonia from natural gas and expanded into chemical solvents, synthetic rubber, liquid detergents, and, later, industrial pesticides, the foundation of what would become chemical weapons.”
“What about this guy Mikkelson?”
“All right,” Gunnar said. “Andreas Mikkelson served as managing director from 1978 to 1994, after which he assumed the role of deputy chairman of the board of directors, a position he still holds to this day, along with managing a handful of special projects.”
“So he still has a large role in the company.”
“Maybe not in its day-to-day operations, but he definitely helps shape the course of its future. He’s the third-highest-ranking official, next to the chairman of the board and the CEO, and by far the most tenured among them.”
“What puts him at the SLIP Assembly in Copenhagen and brings him into contact with Chenhav and Mosche?”
“Nautilus would have had a large stake in any energy-based economic reform, for starters, and while a petroleum company may sound like a strange bedfellow for any socialized-medicine initiative, you have to remember that most active pharmaceutical ingredients are produced by chemical synthesis. In fact, early antidepressants were actually by-products of the oil-refining process. A government-run single-payer model would allow it to lean on the elected officials it already owned to secure contracts and fix prices.”
“That still doesn’t explain what Mikkelson has in common with two Israeli scientists who’d just lost their children.”
“Like I initially said, the picture looks like your standard PR photo op. As much as I loathe coincidence, we have to consider the possibility that there was no preexisting relationship between them.”
An ornate sign composed of mortared slate and adorned with bronze placards featuring the logos of the U.S. Army, U.S. Army Materiel Command, and U.S. Army Installation Management Command blew past, announcing their arrival at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.
“What was Mikkelson’s role prior to joining the executive council?” Mason asked.
“Give me a second,” Gunnar said.
The driver pulled up to the security gate and rolled down his window. Two soldiers in camo fatigues and tan boots stepped out from behind the smoked glass of the guardhouse. The taller of the two approached the vehicle and asked to see their IDs, while the other walked a German shepherd around the car, allowing it to sniff for explosive materials underneath the carriage and inside the wheel wells.
“Here we go,” Gunnar said. “Bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and doctorate in cognitive neurosciences from Radboud University in the Netherlands. He was lured away from a neurosurgical residency at the university’s medical center by Nautilus Chemical Company and sent to the Emeryville Research Center in Houston, where his team pioneered a class of materials called block copolymers, whose medical applications include artificial heart valves. He was rewarded with a more prominent role in the R and D department, which included supervisory duties at both the Rocky Mountain and Edgewood arsenals.”
“And he leveraged whatever he did there into a promotion to managing director,” Mason said.
The guard raised the gate and saluted them as they passed. Long industrial buildings with peaked aluminum roofs intermittently appeared through groves of barren trees. The driver wended through the forest and pulled up to the curb in front of the Visitors Center, a squat building with tinted glass and a corrugated roof.
“Thanks for the ride,” Mason said, and handed a stack of twenties to the driver. “And for getting us here in one piece. Mind sticking around for a while? I don’t think I’m going to be inside for very long, and we’re going to need a ride back to the airport.”
“Same deal?”
“Plus your time.”
“You got it,” the driver said. “And hey, I know they frown upon us eavesdropping on our passengers, but I couldn’t help overhearing you guys talking about Royal Nautilus. You need to be careful dealing with those guys. They helped finance the rise of the Nazis before World War Two.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“I come from a military family. My granddad stormed the beaches of Normandy. Lost two brothers and a lot of friends that day. Said he’d sooner push his car ten miles through the desert than buy a single gallon of gas from people like them, who stirred up that shit in the first place, just to make a quick buck. And having personally dealt with those guys in the Iraqi oil fields during Desert Storm, I’ve got to say I wholeheartedly agree with him.”
Mason turned to face Gunnar.
“Is that true?”
“I can vouch for Nautilus’s picking up the drilling rights to most of Iraq following the war, but I’ll have to look into the rest,” Gunnar said.
Mason climbed out of the car and watched it swing around and park in the closest space. He was halfway up the front walk when a soldier wearing a Class B uniform with a navy skirt and a black cardigan emerged from the sliding glass doors and strode straight toward him. She had blue eyes, an abundance of freckles, and auburn hair drawn into a tight bun at the base of her skull. The insignia on her shoulder identified her as a specialist.
“Special Agent Mason?” she asked.
He held up his badge for her benefit. She scrutinized it for several seconds, nodded, and proffered her hand.
“Brenda Peele, public affairs specialist and command historian. I’ve assembled what I believe to be a solid collection of artifacts from the time frame you requested. I hope it will be of some use in your investigation. Now, if you’ll come with me…”
Mason followed her inside and into a small museum, where she guided him through a veritable maze of displays featuring educational and historical signs, pictures, and relics.
“President Woodrow Wilson authorized the construction of the U.S. military’s first large-scale chemical-production facility right here on the Gunpowder Neck Reservation on October sixteenth, 1917. It was renamed Edgewood Arsenal the following year and commissioned as the Gas Offense Production Division of the Chemical Warfare Service, under the command of Major General William Sibert. As you can see from the aerial photograph on your right, at that time there were four production plants for chlorine, chloropicrin, mustard, and phosgene, as well as three seventy-five-millimeter-shell filling plants, the testing of which occurred to the north at the Aberdeen Proving Ground.”
They breezed past a banner celebrating the base’s centennial anniversary, a detailed time line stenciled on the wall, and Lucite cases containing early gas masks, containment glove boxes, and field detectors.
“When we entered World War Two,” she said, “we learned that our stockpiles of toxic gasses and chemical agents were woefully inadequate compared to the new stable of German nerve agents, which we officially tested here during the war. We determined that sarin, also known as GB, would be the best addition to our arsenal, although we didn’t commence with the pilot program until 1952. Mass production was established at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado two years later. The sixties brought extensive challenges for the Chemical Corps, which was forced to essentially justify its existence following wars fought in Europe and Korea without the aid of chemical weaponry. In response, we shifted our focus from production to research and development. We designed the M17 gas mask, the M8 automated gas detector, and the M11 decontamination sprayer and pioneered what was known as the Incapacitation Program, through which we attempted to produce an agent capable of rendering our adversaries inoperative without violating the tenets of the Geneva Protocol.”
Peele led Mason through a closed door, down a ramp, and into a conference room with a podium and projector screen at the front. Several cardboard boxes with inset handles and lids had been stacked on one side of the long table, their contents spread across the polished wood.
“While we don’t house personnel files on the premises, we do curate a fairly extensive library of photographs, memorabilia, and declassified research. You see, the history of an installation like this one is every bit as important as its future. The work performed here is critical to our understanding of modern warfare, the defense of our troops abroad, and, God forbid, the safety of our citizens at home.”
“Thanks for preparing all of this for me,” Mason said.
“It’s no trouble at all,” she said. “If this information can be of use to you in an investigation with national security ramifications, I’m only too happy to help. The time frame in question is what we consider the dawn of modern chemical warfare and, in my opinion, one of the most interesting times in our history. For nearly thirty years, we were primarily concerned with blister agents like mustard gas and lewisite, for which we developed antidotes and designed protective gear, and then all of a sudden we were faced with the possibility of the Nazis using nerve gasses against us. Our research here was not only integral to understanding the threat posed by these G-series agents but in developing the means of counteracting their effects in a very short period of time.”
Mason walked the length of the table, studying the old black-and-white pictures as he went. There were men in lab coats, white shirts with black ties, traditional uniforms, and hospital gowns.
“You tested on your own people?”
“This was a different era, you must understand,” she said. “Soliciting volunteers from within our own ranks was routine procedure. Even the chief of Clinical Research at the time, Dr. Tobin von der Nuell, understood how this might be perceived, and he subjected himself to all procedures before allowing them to be conducted on others. That’s him right there.”
She pointed at a picture of a heavyset man with bushy white hair in a hospital bed. He inhaled from a device held by a man in a white lab coat, while men with ties took notes in hardbound journals.
“What were these volunteers exposed to?”
“Low doses of G-series agents, V-series agents, experimental cures, and psychoactive drugs like BZ and LSD. All under the direct supervision of a highly trained medical staff.”
“Speaking of the staff, do you happen to have any pictures of them?”
She walked around to the spread of photographs on the opposite side of the table. There was a group picture of men in uniform, seated in bleachers, all of them young and male, presumably the volunteers. There were nurses in crisp white uniforms and paper hats tending to patients, drawing liquid into syringes, and serving meals. Massive bare rooms filled with beds and primitive vital-signs monitors. Doctors with neckties and lab coats, interviewing test subjects, taking notes, and one of all of them posed as though for a class picture. She picked it up and handed it to Mason.
“This was our primary treatment staff,” she said. “The majority of the doctors were civilians and wore lab coats to distinguish themselves from the other specialists.”
Mason studied the fifteen young men, only a couple of whom could have been out of their twenties, searching their faces for any identifiable features. None of them looked familiar. He flipped over the picture and glanced at the back, where someone had written in pencil “A-Team Members, 1975.” The names of each of the men were listed from left to right and by row. He recognized two of them right away.
He turned it over again and studied two of the men standing in the back row. With their flattops and baby faces, they were hardly reminiscent of the men they would become so many years later.
Charles Raymond and Andreas Mikkelson.
The current managing director of Research and Development and the deputy chairman of the board of directors of Royal Nautilus Petroleum.