“No.” Duncan shook her head. “The Black Death was Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague. It was spread by fleas on rats.”
“Yes, that is how it was spread,” Yakov agreed, “but what caused it? What started it? Where did it come from? Historians still aren’t certain. The first Western recorded instance of the plague was during the reign of the Emperor Justinian in A.D. 542. Why did it not devastate the world then as it would eight hundred years later? I believe that someone was experimenting, working with the organism that causes the plague. Plus, they might not have had orders to use it then.”
“They?” Turcotte asked,
“The Guides. The Mission. It is most commonly accepted that the Black Death as we call it in human history started in China in 1346. China, my friends. How did it get from Rome to China in those intervening years? And I believe we all agree that the Airlia had a presence in China. Some of you were inside of Qian-Ling. I think there was more going on with the Airlia in China, though, than just the guardian in Qian-Ling. I think there was a presence from both sides of the Airlia civil war in ancient China.
“The Black Death spread from China along the Silk Road through Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. In January of 1348, the plague reached Marseille in France and Tunis in Africa. By the end of 1349 the Black Death’s deadly fingers had reached all the way to Norway, Scotland, and Iceland, blanketing Europe and reaching even into my own Russia.
“Less than ten years after it started, it had killed over half of Europe’s population. The mortality rate of those infected ranged between seventy-five and ninety percent. The final toll is estimated to be 137 million dead. This is at a time when the entire world’s population was less than five hundred million people. Can you imagine the devastation? The Black Death was probably the greatest event in mankind’s history.”
“But man survived,” Turcotte noted.
“Maybe the goal then wasn’t to wipe mankind out,” Yakov said, “but simply to clean out the ranks. Historians acknowledge that while devastating in death toll, the Black Death was very instrumental in getting Europe out of the Dark Ages. It is very simple economics. There were fewer workers, the wages had to go up, and conditions got better for workers. Poor farm areas were abandoned as the surviving farmers took the better land. Oh yes, it was a great boost for civilization. Maybe that was the goal.”
“A rather brutal means to an end,” Larry Kincaid said.
“Do you think these things, these aliens, care anything for us other than as a means for their own end?” Yakov asked. “I believe they use the Black Death — biological warfare, if you like — whenever they see a need to control the human populace. I think destroying Aspasia and his fleet has told them that they not only need to control us, but need to wipe us out completely this time.”
“This isn’t the Dark Ages,” Duncan said. “Using just—”
“The Black Death in history books isn’t the only time a Black Death was used against mankind. I just came from South America,” Yakov said. “An ancient city called Tiahuanaco. The heart of a great empire — the Aymara — that stretched across the continent for thousands of miles and had a population in the hundreds of thousands. The Aymara empire disappeared around A.D. 1200. It was simply gone. What happened? No one knows. But I went there, deep into the Pyramid of the Sun, and found high runes, written by the last priests.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a photograph. He tossed it on the conference table.
“The Black Death. That’s what those runes in the center stand for. I know because I’ve seen it in other places. The Black Death killed everyone in the Aymara Empire, wiped it off the face of the earth.
“Before South America I was in Southeast Asia. In Cambodia. Historians have always wondered what happened to the ancient Khmer Empire. From the ninth to fifteenth centuries it was the greatest kingdom in Southeast Asia. Then it, too, suddenly disappeared.
“Did you know that Angkor Wat, the temple in the center of the ancient Khmer city of Angkor Thom, is the largest temple in the world? There’s more stone in that temple than was used in the building of the Great Pyramid. It was a great empire, a great civilization. I traveled there, braving the mines, the Khmer Rouge, the warring parties. And deep inside a hidden chamber in Angkor Wat, I found a panel with high rune carvings. The last record of another dying culture. And at the center was the same symbol — the Black Death.
“I think that whenever the guardians are tired of the humans around them, or need to stop our development in a certain direction, or direct it, or simply need a tactical victory in their civil war, they use the Guides to develop a biological weapon that cleans the slate, as you say in English. I think they are now ready for such another time, except on this occasion, I think they are ready — and have the technology — to clean off the entire planet.”
“I don’t understand,” Duncan said. “You say on one hand the Guides want to move society forward even if they use rather brutal means, and on the other they want to destroy it. Which is it?”
Yakov raised his hands in a helpless gesture. “I do not know what their ultimate goal is, so I cannot explain their actions. I agree that they do not make sense at times.”
“You say The Mission — the Guides — are behind this,” Turcotte said. “How do you know?”
Yakov shrugged. “It is, how do you say, a theory of mine.”
Turcotte sensed the other man was holding back. “What makes you think the Black Death is back?”
“This village being destroyed.” Yakov tapped the last imagery. “This tells you something is killing people. Majestic-12 was infiltrated by Guides. Your facility at Dulce was part of Majestic-12; in fact, it was the place the guardian computer that took over your Majestic people was brought to. And what went on there?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “You had some of your Operation Paperclip people. Nazi scientists. But those at Dulce were the biological and chemical warfare people. The ones who made the gasses in the camps. Who tested diseases on prisoners.”
None of the Americans in the room said anything, knowing that what Yakov was saying was one of the ugly legacies of the Cold War.
“General Hemstadt,” Yakov said. “Is that name familiar?”
“He was the German who was at Dulce,” Duncan said.
“But he did not die when Dulce was destroyed,” Yakov said.
“How do you know that?” Turcotte demanded.
“The digging at Dulce has been stopped, hasn’t it?” Once more Yakov didn’t wait for an answer. “Maybe someone doesn’t want what was going on there to be discovered,” Yakov said. “But not because of what was there, but because what was there is now at The Mission with General Hemstadt.”
“I know of no Majestic facility in South America,” Major Quinn said.
Yakov shook his head. “Don’t you understand? This is not about America. Or Russia. These Guides care nothing for countries. In fact, they like the fact that humans fight among themselves and have split the world into portions and stare across imaginary borders at other humans with distrust. Very convenient, don’t you think?
“This is a world problem. The Mission — I don’t even know exactly where in South America it is. All I know is that your Dulce facility was not the only one working on diseases. We had our secret labs in Russia. And who knows if someone from there isn’t now at The Mission along with Hemstadt and others.”
“How do you even know there is a place like this Mission?” Turcotte asked.
“It is no coincidence that General Hemstadt ended up there,” Yakov said. “I believe The Mission was founded many centuries ago. It is not a specific place, because what little I have learned says it has changed location over the years.
“When our troops overran Berlin at the end of the Great Patriotic War, we uncovered many documents. I have spent the last two years trying to find those documents and other material recovered. Some of it the KGB kept, and I have not been able to get access to it. But some of it I was able to find, and I uncovered some mention of The Mission. What I found strongly indicated that The Mission was involved with the Nazis during World War Two.