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While the secret sits in the middle and knows.
—ROBERT FROST
NORCESTOR & IMPERIAL,
MARKET PARK
12:03 PM PDT
Pope’s cell buzzed and it was Linda Garcia calling about a party. Last night’s big wig Summer Masquerade up at Lord Bletchly’s estate, to be precise.
“You know, we were told it was just a big VIP fund-raising party. What we weren’t told was who attended the fund-raiser and what it was for.”
After the incident with Decker, Pope found himself sufficiently curious. “Start with the ‘What’.”
“All right. The fund-raiser was for the Strategic Population Research Council. I’d never heard of it, but it’s been around for years and is somehow connected to Oakmont Laboratories.”
Linda explained. Oakmont was founded in the 1920s as one of the earliest institutes for serious genetic studies and backed by some of the wealthiest families in America, not to mention the US Department of Agriculture and endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt. The eugenicists’ methodology of applying ‘negative engineering’ to the human race. Essentially, rather than building up the race by making people better, the human race would be ‘purified’ by subtraction of the weakest elements. Basically, the eugenicists sought to eliminate the unfit from the human population first by separation from the general population and then by separating this group from one another along gender lines, so they couldn’t mate. And finally by forced sterilization— in California alone, she explained, tens of thousands were sterilized by legal authority in the 20's and 30's.
“Eugenics,” Pope said, “has been debunked as pure junk science.”
“But junk science with serious financial support and powerful players. Chief, they were trying to develop the human race by selective breeding. Like the Nazis.”
“C’mon, Linda, the Nazis. That’s over the top.”
“Sir,” Linda said, “not as much as you might think.”
She explained that while in prison, Adolf Hitler closely followed the American project at Oakmont Bay, citing it as a key influence in Mein Kampf. In fact, she said, Hitler later lauded Oakmont Bay’s work as instrumental to the Nazis beginning their own eugenics project— what they called racial hygiene— a national program based at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology in Berlin. Later, after Hitler’s ascendence, American eugenics researchers worked closely with their Nazi counterparts, first as senior partner and eventually— as the Nazis delved ever deeper into their sinister experiments— taking the role of a zealously enthusiastic junior. Then Linda made an observation.
“All this eugenics research, including significant German research, was funded by the wealthy aristocratic families, what's often referred to as the Eastern Establishment, and many of the old names are on a list of donors to the Strategic Population Research Council.”
Linda explained that when it became politically and morally unfeasible to continue financial assistance for Nazi racial-hygiene research, American eugenicists secretly collaborated with their Nazi counterparts, even once America entered the war, striving together to create a race of Aryan supermen.
“The ultimate plan,” Linda explained, “was to breed for enhanced intelligence, strength, athletic prowess, endurance, even the ability to survive in the harsh environment of a post-nuclear world. They realized it would require generations to realize their goal, but then the Nazis believed the Third Reich would last a thousand years.”
Pope tried wrapping his brain around all this. “Linda, you’re not trying to tell me Oakmont Bay’s still working on building an Aryan superman, are you? And that the people at Lord Alistair’s cocktail party are subsidizing it?”
“Well, not necessarily. But some of the same names appearing on donor-lists to SPRC are on lists donating to Oakmont Bay and the Nazis in the ‘30s.”
“What does the council do?”
“Well, according to the website, the organization’s has a strongly Malthusian bent, concerned with issues of poverty and overpopulation. They’re also one New America Project’s biggest sponsors.”
New America was a radical abortion-rights outfit advocating lump-sum payments to any woman willing to undergo voluntary and irreversible sterilization. Pope didn’t know much, other than their spokesman appeared like an asshole on TV.
“How does this relate to Ducroix?”
“Ducroix worked at Oakmont. And his previous posting before that was the same lab that burned down. Well, I found an old report from thirty years ago about ex-Nazi scientists working in a South American lab. The reports have been redacted, but what I can tell, it could be same lab Ducroix worked in at approximately the same time.”
Pope was getting a sense of Linda’s angst. “So what are you saying?”
“I don’t know, sir, just I think something weird’s going on. Something’s not right.”
Hanging up, Pope felt a tap on shoulder. “You need to see this. Found a foreign military uniform in the closet.” Al grinned. “You’re always making fun of my military history obsession, but today it’s paying off.”
Pope frowned. “Yeah? And why’s that?”
“Because I recognize it.” Al grinned even more broadly. “Christian Ducroix was infected in South Guyana. And the uniform’s North Guyana, colonel’s rank. Which led me to realize who the stiff is.”
Pope looked to the body in the Adidas running suit. “You know who that is?”
Al nodded. “It’s Molo Balcotez.”
“Wait . . . You’re saying that’s Black Molo?”
Before Al could answer, Decker was coming up the hall, saying, “Yo, just found a body in a backyard swimming pool just down the road in Lemon Grove, some dude in a suit doesn’t sound like he belongs. Jesus, and I thought it might be an easy day. It is Friday, you know.”
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