Episode 13: A Lost Odyssey
Part 3
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
It was raining that Sunday afternoon, but Dr. Rough was warm and dry inside his temporary lair. He had rented the house — a cozy yellow cottage with a red roof — for its convenient location rather than its colorful appearance, although the purple front door in the photo had caught his attention when he’d clicked on the Airbnb listing. The cottage didn’t have all the comforts of the FANS headquarters, but it would have to do until his work here was done.
Sitting in a big red armchair with Dr. Twitches curled up in his lap, he watched the funeral service on the screen of his laptop, which sat open on the side table he had pulled in front of him. The live stream was courtesy of his undercover agent, who stood alongside the mourners from Himitsu Takana, secretly capturing everything with a hidden camera embedded inside his suit coat.
“This is how we do it from now on, Dr. Twitches,” Dr. Rough told his ferret as he leaned back leisurely in his chair. “We make the decisions and then delegate the dangerous missions to our minions. After all, delegation is the key to effective leadership.” He let out a sinister laugh as he scratched Dr. Twitches behind the ears. “It also keeps us safe, and that’s what really matters. The other minions are expendable, but FANS would fall apart without the two of us. Isn’t that right, my sweet?”
Dr. Twitches squeaked in reply and rolled over onto his back, exposing his belly for Dr. Rough to rub.
After surviving two near-death experiences — first the helicopter crash, then the literal cliffhanger at the winter Olympics — Dr. Rough wasn’t taking any more chances. (Nor was he crossing the Canadian border again. Nothing good ever came from Canada — except for Celine Dion.) In recent months, watching the minions do his dirty work had become his favorite form of entertainment. It was like reality TV. He missed the wall of monitors he used to spy on all of his minions back home, but for now, his sole focus was on the feed from his mole.
He leaned forward as the pastor finished his sermon and the mourners formed a line to pay their last respects. His mole hung back, allowing those who knew Ashavari Desai best to go ahead of him. Dr. Rough recognized Jay and K amid the other high-ranking agents of HimTak, including his nemesis 00Carter. A smile spread across his face as he watched the men bow their heads solemnly beneath their umbrellas while the women blotted their eyes with tissues. He wished he could drink the sweet milk of their tears, but just seeing their sorrow gave him strength.
The camera angle shifted, following Carter and K as they approached former CIA Officer Brian Littrell, who stood alone at the foot of his girlfriend’s grave. The mole didn’t get close enough for the camera’s microphone to pick up the words they exchanged, but that didn’t matter. Their body language was enough. Dr. Rough could see the despair in Brian’s hunched shoulders, the pain and anger in his expression as he turned toward K, his face streaked with tears and twisted with grief. He could feel K’s frustration as the older man lay a comforting hand on his cousin’s shoulder, only for Brian to pull back from him as if he had been burned. Yet he also knew how Brian felt: betrayed.
Dr. Rough was all too familiar with that feeling. Betrayal, like rejection, led to the desire for revenge. If Brian had become disenfranchised with both the U.S. government and his cousin’s agency, then perhaps he could be lured to the other side, like so many forgotten agents before him. His experience and knowledge of the inner workings of the CIA would make him a valuable asset to FANS. Plus, HimTak considered him an ally. Dr. Rough was eager to exploit that partnership if he could. The Rok would be his greatest acquisition since Drums.
“Patience,” he said softly, stroking the sleek fur of his ferret’s belly. “We must be patient, my sweet, and bide our time until the right opportunity presents itself. When it does, we’ll be ready.”
His smile grew as he returned his attention to the screen, watching the grieving government agent walk away from the vantage point of his mole. So many of his previous plots had failed, but it finally seemed as if everything was falling into place for him and FANS. Their successful infiltration of Himitsu Takana was his greatest triumph to date. Having one of his own minions on the inside, hidden in plain sight, had made all the difference in the world. Dr. Rough had done what he had to do in order to protect his mole’s cover, and he had no regrets.
“That’s right, Dr. Twitches,” he said as the ferret chattered in response, writhing with pleasure in his lap. “We won’t let them thwart us again. With this new technology we’ve obtained, we’ll finally be able to defeat HimTak once and for all!”
***
Seven Days Earlier
Dr. Rough glowered into the camera of his laptop, trying to look as menacing as possible. He could feel his left eye twitching madly as a dull flush crept up his neck, but he struggled to keep his emotions under control.
“I won’t ask you again,” he said, dropping his voice to a deathly whisper. “If you don’t deliver the information within one day’s time, I will go public with this.”
The faces of the FBI agents filled his screen as they leaned closer to their own camera, trying to hear him clearly.
“Do you want the world to know the truth?” Dr. Rough went on, his voice rising again. “That the U.S. government has indeed been hiding the existence of extraterrestrials from its own people, covering up an alien plot that could threaten the survival of our species? The conspiracy theorists will have a field day with it! Finally, the general public will be forced to admit that they were right all along!”
He saw the two agents turn to look at each other. The red-haired woman raised her eyebrows at the sullen-faced man, who squared his jaw before shifting his gaze back to the camera lens. “Like we’ve already told you, we don’t have any information to give you. We’re still trying to decode the alien language, which we believe is the key to unlocking their technology. Until we do that, it’s completely useless.”
“Useless?” Dr. Rough scoffed. “Then you’ll have no problem with me playing that high-pitched frequency I found on the flash drive my associate acquired from your department. Perhaps I’ll play it at the upcoming royal wedding, which the whole world will be watching. If it’s so ‘useless,’ it won’t have any ill effects. Isn’t that right, Agent Mulder? Agent Scully?”
“Don’t,” the woman said softly. “It could be dangerous. It appears to cause changes in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that’s responsible for problem-solving, decision-making, and self-control.”
“Ah… so you do know something about it.”
Mulder frowned at Scully, then focused his attention on Dr. Rough once more. “The FBI doesn’t respond well to threats, Rough. But if you’re willing to work with us rather than against us, maybe we could combine forces to uncover the rest. Because you’re right: we do know some things, and clearly, so do you. Return what you took from our department and hand over the device you stole from Himitsu Takana — a device they never should have had in the first place — and we might be willing to share what’s been decoded so far.”
“Give me the information first,” Dr. Rough countered, “and I might refrain from going public with it.”
The FBI agents glared at him. Dr. Rough smirked back, knowing he had the upper hand. He had already caught them off-guard by hacking into their system after his right-hand man had proven just how weak their defenses were. Apparently, Drums had broken into their office in the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover building by impersonating a computer technician from the IT department.
Dr. Rough was confident that his own fortifications were impenetrable. Here he was, hiding in a tiny cottage less than ten miles away from the FBI’s headquarters, safe in the knowledge that they would never be able to trace his location. He had even hung a black drape on the wall behind him to hide the conspicuous yellow striped wallpaper from the camera’s view, having learned his lesson in Vancouver, where 00Carter had managed to track him down after recognizing the logo of the lodge he was staying at on his coffee cup. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. This time, he had made sure no one could find him.
But at the very moment that thought crossed his mind, there came a knock at his door. Dr. Rough’s heart leaped into his throat as he heard the lock click and the doorknob turn. Someone was breaking into the cottage!
“Howard?” called an unfamiliar voice.
He hurriedly clicked his laptop, disconnecting the video call just as a strange man jogged into the living room. Dressed in a green striped rugby shirt and pleated khaki slacks, the intruder didn’t look like a threat, but Dr. Rough instinctively reached for the handgun hidden in the inside pocket of his jacket.
“Hi!” the man said, smiling. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s me, Steve! I’m your host! I’m so glad you’re here! I actually live in the house next door, so I thought I’d drop by to introduce myself and see how you were doing.”
Dr. Rough stared at him. “I’m fine,” he growled, his hand tightening around his gun.
Steve’s brown eyes lit up. “You are? Great!”
“Yes. Now go away.”
“Okay!” His goofy grin never wavered, as if it were permanently affixed to his face. “Just let me know if you need anything, Howard!”
“It’s Dr. Rough.”
“Doctor, huh? Wow! You must be in town for the proctology conference!”
Dr. Rough’s eyes narrowed. “No. I’m not that kind of doctor.”
“Oh! I’m sorry! I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important,” said Steve, looking around the living room. As his eyes shifted from the black sheet hanging behind Dr. Rough to the laptop sitting open in front of him, his smile finally faded. “Oh… were you watching pornography?”
“What?!” Dr. Rough’s face flushed with outrage. “No!”
“It’s okay if you were,” said Steve with a shrug. “We all have needs, I know. If you could just keep your cum off my thinking chair, I’d really appreciate it!”
“Your thinking chair?” Dr. Rough repeated, his eyes dropping to the overstuffed red armchair he was sitting in.
“Yeah!” Steve’s smile returned. “It’s really special to me! I’ve done some of my best thinking in that chair!”
Dr. Rough blinked, wondering if “thinking” was code for something else.
“Well, I guess I’d better get going now. Bye-bye!” said Steve, waving as he turned to leave. “See ya later!”
“No, don’t come ba–!” Dr. Rough started to call, but the door closed before he could finish his sentence. Cursing, he went to the window and pulled back the curtains to watch Steve jog past the purple mailbox by the curb. Then he jerked the curtains closed and locked the door with a huff.
“Yo, who was dat whitebread mothafucka?” asked Drums, coming out of the yellow kitchen with a box of graham crackers tucked under one arm and his phone in his hand.
Dr. Rough rolled his eyes. “Our host, Steve.”
“Oh. Well, next time he come back, tell him we outta milk. I want some milk in a cup wit a straw to go wit these graham crackers, yo!”
“He won’t come back if he knows what’s good for him,” muttered Dr. Rough.
“Oh, hey — while you was talkin’ wit da feds, our informant called.” Drums handed him the secret communicator Dr. Rough usually wore around his wrist. “You left dis lyin’ by da sink from when you was washin’ dishes earlier. Give him a call back; you gonna wanna hear what he gotta say.” Biting off half a graham cracker, Drums walked back into the kitchen, crunching loudly.
Dr. Rough slipped on the wrist cuff and slid back its hidden panel to reveal a touchscreen. He tapped it a few times until his mole’s face appeared in the small window. “Tell me you have good news.”
“I do, Dr. Rough,” the double agent replied. “I heard it through the HimTak grapevine that Professor Pearl and that CIA cryptographer have succeeded in cracking the alien code.”
“Really?” He felt his frown fading away as his face relaxed into a triumphant smile. “Not according to the two feds assigned to the case. They acted as if they knew almost nothing. Clearly, they were lying.”
“They may not know yet. Pearl’s still angry at them for confiscating all the alien technology at the Playboy Mansion, and there’s been tension between Opal and the FBI ever since they accused her of stealing those books from the Library of Congress. It wouldn’t surprise me if the two women were holding their cards close to their chest, if you know what I’m saying.”
Dr. Rough nodded. “Of course. But it doesn’t matter,” he replied, his mind racing to formulate a new plan. “Why continue dealing with the feds when I could go directly to the source of information? Or, better yet, bring one of them to me.”
“You’ll never get to Pearl. She’s too well protected here at HimTak. Her lab’s been on lockdown ever since I broke in and stole the device. Your best bet is Opal.”
“Then Opal it shall be,” Dr. Rough decided. “Give me all the intel you have on her.”
When he got off the phone with his mole, he summoned Drums back into the living room. “DRUMS!”
“What up, D-Rough?” Drums said as he sauntered out of the kitchen, wiping graham cracker crumbs from the corners of his mouth.
“I have a new mission for you,” Dr. Rough told his right-hand man, reopening his laptop. “Bring me the cryptographer Ashavari Desai, otherwise known as Opal Odyssey.”
“Dead or alive?”
“Alive.” He clicked on the folder containing the confidential files from the flash drive Drums had stolen. “Her body is useless to me,” he said, his eye twitching eagerly as he pored over the strange symbols. “It’s her mind I want.”
Drums nodded. “I’m on it, Dr. Rough.”
***