Originally posted February, 2002
((On of my favorite bad guys, Mr. Iguana. At this time, I had three iguanas as pets.))
The old man lit one cigarette from the tip of another. He then placed the smoldering butt in an ashtray overflowing with the remnants of past conversations and questions. Smoke hung thick in the dim, overly warm room. The room's other occupants didn't seem to mind the smoke or the heat. The dead have no feelings for such things. The living just endured it, hoping that some measure of comfort would lead the old man to reveal his secrets. The old man drew heavily from the new cigarette, taking his hand from his mouth, to press his glasses more firmly against the bridge of his nose, finally giving his head somewhere to rest.
"Used to worry about smoking," he began, his voice surprisingly smooth for the pile of ash in front of him. "I read up. Try to stay healthy. Then one of her friends," he gestured with the cigarette at Siobhan, "gave me cancer."
He took another long drag before continuing. "I lingered, in agony, for months. I didn't have to worry about cancer again, after that." One hand still holding a lit fag, he began fumbling for a fresh one. "Not that I'll ever develop immunity to bullets. Not in this form, anyway. Or alcohol, for that matter."
He scanned the room as his hands worked to free another cigarette. Reality deviants all. Norman sat at the table, one hand gently holding a slow burning Turkish cigarette. He hadn't changed that much since the last time they had seen each other. Where was that? Marrakech? The witch stood off to the side, obviously afraid, obviously trying to hide it. She leaned against the wall, as far from the old man as possible, one black stocking clad leg drawn up under her.
The dead sat at the table, the well-dressed effete snob to his left, a social and reality deviant. The rougher one sat to the right. He had fallen, too. Does he look upon the witch with a longing beyond his dead sex? The dark haired woman sat directly across from him, at the opposite head of the table. She would let the other two ask the questions. She would listen, pull together what was said, quietly draw conclusions, and plan strategy. The old man had prided himself on the destruction of the Vampire Lord as he cowered in his dank haven. The old man had made a mistake. He should have gone after this one first.
Oh, how he had fallen. Hubris, he mused, hubris brought him here. The destruction of the Vampire Prince of Chicago had finally drawn enough attention to him that he could not avoid blame when failing to hold onto Reality Criminal J57-732-A. The group here knew that target as Wang Lee Ho. He could offer no excuse when the Union charged him with negligence in the loss of an experimental stealth ship. It didn't matter that Dr. Defina had betrayed him at a crucial moment, leaving him and his team exposed.
He thought he could regain favor with a desperate measure designed to destroy an even more powerful Vampire than the Prince, a measure that found his conscience triumphing over his resolve. He had tried to do the right thing by Humanity, and found that a leech's influence had already extended too far to stop anything. He had no choice but to call upon the very bloodsuckers and reality deviants in this room to protect him when his plans collapsed.
Hubris, thought Edward Iguana, his damn pride had led him to this table. The old man lit one cigarette from the tip of another. He then placed the smoldering butt in an ashtray overflowing with the remnants of past conversations and questions. He looked over the room's occupants, the living and the dead. After a long drag on the new cigarette he asked, "What are your questions?"
Mallory leaned over the table, placing one leathered elbow on the wood veneer. "What brought you to the state you are in? You speak of reality, and yet, you yourself are somehow extra-human. Were you born this way, or were you somehow transformed, and if so, how?"
"Ah, you are looking at the one time pride of the Progenitors. Born and bred to combat reality deviants in all their multitude of forms." He grinned as he took another drag. "Not sitting around a table and talking to them over cigarettes and coffee."
"That was back in the nineties, and as long as I can remember I've been this way. I moved to AARAAM Security and the NWO in the late fifties. The Black Hats hoped I could lead the enforcement arm of this agency that they had been using to gather information. They had all the goods on a bunch of criminals, but had no direct way of dealing with any of it. I developed AARAAM's Special Detail Section. We would move in when the information gathered from AARAAM's security systems indicated the presence of deviants."
Mr. Iguana noticed Mallory's blank look. "You have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about here, do you?" He looked to Dr. Jacobs, who in turn looked to Siobhan.
"They're different groups inside the Union," Siobhan began, her voice low. "NWO stands for New World Order. I dinnea know much a'bo them. 'Black Hats' is a term for leaders in the NWO. The Progenitors perform medical experiments, genetic engineering," then more quietly added, "crimes against life."
Mr. Iguana slapped his hand on the surface of the table. It made a sound not unlike the last throes of a fish flopping on a deck. "Good job, Norman," he exclaimed with a smile. "Get them while they're young. I'm sure she can give a great speech about helping the common folk and noblesse oblige." Norman shifted his gaze from Siobhan back to Mr. Iguana. He did not rise to the bait. Mallory filled the silence with another question.
"Expand on you involvement with the death of Prince Khalid. Was it part of this New World Order initiative?"
"Once we were able to track Wang, we moved in. While not the objectives, your lord and his minion proved excellent targets of opportunity. We destroyed them both." He took a long, slow drag and sighed. "I lost more than a few good people that day. I guess I've lost them all, now. Most likely exterminated. Contamination, you know. If the Union has branded me a traitorous deviant, well they can't have that spreading around." He sat for a moment, breathing deeply. "To answer your question, yes, it was part of an AARAAM Security operation, but not that operation's primary goal."
"Explain how you met Portia, and your relationship with her. What motivated you to work with her?" asked Mallory.
"Portia contacted me to put me in touch with you, believe it or not." Mr. Iguana began the ritual re-lighting of another cigarette. "Not you, particularly, but the witch and her friends." He gestured towards Siobhan. "I had seen Portia around. I had to meet with her boss Annabelle for AARAAM business on a few occasions. I didn't know that she was a leech until a bit later." His eyes scanned the table. "Sorry, I didn't mean any offense."
"Portia had learned of that fiasco at Meigs Field," Mr. Iguana continued. "I knew how to find that traitorous bitch Defina, but after losing Wang, the Black Hats wouldn't give me approval for a strike. I learned from Portia that you had lost a few people, too. I was a bit desperate and I couldn't think of any better way to get back at that cunt other than to loose the witch on her in her secret hideaway."
"I was a bit surprised, Norman. She was actually more inclined to listen than her companions. You will have to send her back to the Alps for more brainwashing." Norman sat, and said nothing. Mr. Iguana finished lighting a new fag and put it in his mouth. He turned to look at Siobhan. "By the way, if you ever see your wolfie friend again, I have … I had something of his. He dropped it at Meigs. I imagine it's at some research site now."
"I met with Portia a few times after that. That's a nice club she has there, even if the music's not very good. We talked and I learned what she was. She said she was fighting a great evil, and that I could help her. I could help her the way the Technocracy helped in Bangladesh. I had no idea what she was talking about, but then, sitting in her club, nursing a dry martini, helping her seemed like a real good idea."
"I did a bit of poking around, called a few friends a bit higher up. I learned about our victory in Bangladesh. It seemed like just the thing to solve our issues in Chicago. Wipe out the entire collection of reality criminals in one blow. The casualties would be an issue, but I had a feeling that it would weigh out against the losses caused by an infestation of this scope. If I could prove that it could work in Chicago, the Union might be able to use the same procedure against New York, or Paris. I figured we could always detonate the bomb early and catch Portia in the city, too."
He sucked on his cigarette, and then looked around. "Could I have a glass of water please?" Siobhan took a few short steps to the safe house's kitchen. After a few moments filled with the sounds of running water, and a brief moment of silence, she returned and placed a glass in front of Mr. Iguana. She then took to her place on the wall, crossing her heals in front of her. Mr. Iguana smelled the glass, took a slight sip, testing. Satisfied, he took a larger gulp.
"I began making inquiries, all the time enjoying Portia's club more and more. The Union tentatively accepted my plan, but sent along an oversight committee to audit the details. I should have seen it then, after your attack on our warehouse in Cicero. If any of us were in our right minds we would have never have lost Mr. White when he went to warn that bloodsucker Genet. We would have found it strange to fight along ghouls, vampires, and other deviants. We didn't even think about it. We just sent Mr. White to meet with some vamp we had never even met before."
"Who was Mr. White? What role did he play in the Technocracy?" asked Mallory.
"He was the Man in Black you murdered at Dr. Genet's crypt. He was part of the original MiB triad the Union sent out for the audit. Mr. White, Mr. Orange, Mr. Scarlet. Mr. Scarlet later killed Mr. Orange and I bet he leads the current triad assigned to the case. I'm getting ahead of myself."
"I don't know what happened after Mr. White died. I started feeling reservations about the plan. Portia, charming as ever, seemed to have a more sinister edge. In a fit of despair, I contacted you, Mallory. I wanted to find out what you knew. After meeting with you, I did the math."
"It didn't work out. Even with a sharp un-explained increase in the amount of female disappearances in the last three years, it would take ten years before the damage caused by vampires on Chicago equaled the causalities the Union would have caused with a Primium bomb. Chicago isn't like Bangladesh. There isn't any open supernatural warfare here. We could launch a covert operation to find this 'great evil' and root it out with time to spare.
"Then I started thinking about the Russians."
"I had seen then a few times at Hell. They were usually the guests of that blonde musician. Svetlana, I think. Portia never treated them any differently than any other customer. She provided the best service she could. But I would sometimes catch her looking at them strangely, looking at Svetlana strangely. I think she was affecting their minds. I put tails on them. That's how I knew about that arms deal you busted at the Kirov, and that leech you offed when he got the guns out of the lock up." Mr. Iguana paused to take another long draught of water and sucked greedily from his cigarette.
"She's planning on building a nuclear weapon, isn't she?"
Dr. Thomas nodded her head once in agreement.
“I wrote down my thoughts and then went to share them with Mr. Scarlet and Mr. Orange. Portia must have her hooks into Mr. Scarlet pretty deep. He surprised Mr. Orange and I, and destroyed his fellow Man in Black. I barely escaped. I wandered for a few days, and then finally called you.
Mr. Iguana finished his water. Mallory filled the awkward silence. "What is the source for plutonium and Primium, and how do we keep them out of Portia's hands?"
The old man looked at Siobhan and tapped his now empty glass before answering. As he spoke, Siobhan took the empty vessel back to the kitchen. "I don't know anything about the availability of weapon grade material in the former Soviet Union. I don't associate with criminals."
"Primium's a different matter. It's very rare, very expensive. You could take all the Primium on this plane and it wouldn't fill this room. If they are planning to make a Primium weapon, and they are, there will be an audit process. Mr. Scarlet will have to prove the costs of continued infestation outweigh the costs and casualties of using a supernatural nuke. He'll have to doctor the numbers to make that work out. If I can get the real report to the Black Hats, they'll pull the plug on the whole deal. They'd probably eliminate Mr. Scarlet at that. Contamination."
Mr. Iguana looked around the table at the gathered crew of reality deviants, and Siobhan placed a full glass of water in front of him. "Not that they wouldn't eliminate me. Or even believe me, for that matter."
He took a sip and a drag.
"Still, my report's in the mainframe somewhere. I keep hoping that someone will find it, or that someone will check the facts. If not, they'll be able to detonate in roughly six months."
"What do you think we should do?"
Mr. Iguana chuckled and brought the cigarette up to his lips. He smiled. "Pack." He laughed out loud, finally having to take a gulp of water to calm himself. "No, no, no," he said, beginning to laugh again. "Do nothing. Stay here. Meet your fate like a good little deviant."
"Seriously, what the fuck do you care? They're all sheep to you. Norman would send them back to the Dark Ages, if he had his way…."
"Edward." Dr. Jacobs spoke hardly above a whisper. "What can we do to stop this?"
Mallory filled in the question. "How do we find Mr. Scarlet? What defenses can he bring to bear on us? Does he have any weaknesses that you know of?"
Mr. Iguana took out another fag. The old man lit one cigarette from the tip of another. He then placed the smoldering butt in an ashtray overflowing with the remnants of past conversations and questions. He took a long, slow drag.
"The Union will believe all of you," he gestured, "considerably less than they would believe me right now." He pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I don't imagine you'd be able to get in the mainframe and have my real report suddenly scroll up on the Council's screens." He sucked in more smoke. "Eliminating Mr. Scarlet would force an internal audit. That would put things on hold, and depending on how well he doctored the books, could put a stop to the whole thing."
"You're going to have a hard time finding him, and defeating him won't be easy. You won’t face just him, but a whole MiB triad. The Union will insist on sending new agents for such a costly enterprise. These are the same type of men you faced at the warehouse in Cicero and never even saw. You might be able to convince his new companions, but I don’t know anything about them. You can expect them to never leave each other's side. He'll probably have some new Iteration X toys, maybe the new H.I.T. marks. I don't have the specs on them. They won't have a lot of men. They'll have destroyed any of the AARAAM security personnel I had contact with, and will keep those investigators away from sniffing around too much.”
“Mr. Scarlet is under the influence of a reality criminal, and will try to avoid the Union from getting too involved. Still, if you start raising the body count, he could use that to further bolster his arguments. If you can free him from Portia's control, well, he'll come to the same conclusion I did and want to go after her, himself. He's balancing on a tightrope, needing the support of the Union, but not wanting them to find out too much. "
"Where is the last base Mr Scarlet worked from? Any idea where he is now?" asked Mallory.
"They've probably moved from the base I knew. We ran a small office out of the Ameritech Building, 227 West Monroe, suite 1610. I have no idea where he is now. They wouldn't use any of the bases I know about. The NWO are masters of information and disinformation. I wouldn't visit any of the old bases on a bet. They’re very likely trapped. I can give you a list, if you want to go play in the street."
He rubbed his chin. Wisps of smoke curled around his face. "The Union will want to remove any potential converts before the detonation. If you can follow those efforts, it might lead back to Mr. Scarlet. It might lead back to some other Black Hat. They'll use the tied and true methods, nothing too fancy. Look for health clubs, artifacts coming up for sale, student trips to mystical places, that kind of stuff."
"I can't help you with the mob. I understand they like money. Maybe you can offer to buy the bomb from them."
"Mr. Iguana, Edward, can I call you Edward?" asked Mallory.
"No."
"Edward," Mallory continued, "I want to get back to something you mentioned earlier. Do you have mainframe information to look for the report? Did you have a password? What encryption system is used? Are there any backdoors into the system? How can a few reality deviants like us get that report to come up? Better yet, is there a way for us to manipulate the mainframe to cause an internal audit of Mr. Scarlet?
"I originally saved the report in our information management system. Mr. Scarlet would have erased all traces of that record. I hid other copies in the root directories of several Union servers. I did have a password, but I'm certain it's invalid now. I don't know much about computers. I don't know of any backdoors. Do you have a computer geek you don't like? Try sending him into the Union mainframe. That system is designed to fry reality deviants like you if they try to manipulate it."
"What is your relationship with the Russian Mafia?" asked Mallory.
"I don't have a relationship with the Russians. I don't associate with criminals," replied Mr. Iguana. "I used the Kirov because I knew you were familiar with it."
"What is in the basement of the furrier? The evil presence Alex and I felt when we were there?"
"I have no idea."
"Do you expect me to believe that?" Mallory pressed.
"Mallory," Mr. Iguana said, rubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray, "I don't have very high expectations of you at all."
Mallory grunted. "Given that," he retorted, "If you were able to choose, what would your role be vis-à-vis our group?"
"I called you, and you came out. I felt like I owed it to you. You were the people that got me pointed in the right direction. I wanted to warn you. You protected me from that lunatic at the cafe, and I appreciate it. I've answered your question, and you've given me a place to hide out a few days."
"I'm not ready to have any 'role' in your group. When you're done with your questions, I'd like to move on. I have my own axe to grind with Mr. Scarlet, and I don't think having any of you around will help me with that." He played with a now empty pack of cigarettes, eyes moving from face to face, waiting for further questions.
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