Case Nr 10-036

'The Man from Gakona'


Chronology

12 June 2013
Ted Turner meets with team B2 in Amsterdam and hands over case 10-036.
13 June
Planning and preparation.
14 June
Flight to Moscow, via Copenhagen, on board D&HE's DHC-6 series 400 seaplane. Rendezvous with Dimitry 'Dima' Vybornov, then on to Ministry of Interior, and Central State Archives. Nikolai Glinka found to be still alive and living in Moscow. Dima arranges meeting. Glinka tells his story of the Sturgeon Bay incident, which he says was a mission to follow and possibly apprehend a mysterious individual known as 'the grey man'. According to Glinka, the orders for this mission came from a group of military scientists operating from a place called Mul'da. He blames Ossip Bunin for the death and disappearance of Lemmy Rogers. B2 return to the Central State Archives with Dima and after asking for information pertaining to Mul'da retire to Dima's house to sleep.
15 June
Return to Central State Archives where only one military installation is listed near Mul'da. Mul'da itself is nothing much beyond a rail junction to the south west of a town named Vorkuta. Since the D&HE sea plane is due to return to Amsterdam, B2 charter a Russian airplane.
16 June
Flight to Vorkuta, then after some shopping for supplies, B2 drive up into the Urals in a rented UAZ 469. The roads are only dirt tracks used by logging company trucks and the vehicle experiences some difficulties. The day passes with no sign of any military installations. The mountains are unpopulated except for the loggers. Derrick hears a helicopter some where in the distance.
17 June
Still searching.
18 June
Discovery of a path leading to an old hardened bunker. Within a hall big enough to accommodate six large trucks, B2 discovers a pair of very old, locked blast doors. Further investigation reveals another road leading to a tunnel inside a small mountain. B2 enter the tunnel with Dima but are forced to return to their car having forgotten to bring torches. Back at the car they notice an absence of bird song, but are unable to explain why. Inside the mountain is a large abandoned bunker complex complete with an underground rail station, a telephone exchange, chemical and biological laboratories and various 'assembly' areas. Investigation of a 'chemical assembly' area reveals an abandoned laboratory, complete with dead monkeys in testing apparatus, isolation chambers and cryogenic vats. A map found on an office wall shows the full extent of the complex, with four ICBM silos nearby. Deeper inside the mountain B2 find a partially flooded electrical power plant complete with generators and dynamos. In an ante chamber to the power plant is a strange machine of unknown purpose. B2 return to the car, where once again they find there is no sound of any birds. They drive back to Vorkuta and Dima goes to telephone Moscow to try and find out what the purpose of the abandoned installation was.he returns with a list of names gleaned from his cell phone photos from the telephone exchange.
19 June
B2 return to Moscow on a commercial flight.
20 June
B2 visit Natalia Dudinaskaya at the St Peter Institute in Moscow. They find her to be entirely incapacitated by an unknown neurological disorder, and unable to provide any information. After this, the team visits the Moscow Institute for Neurological Research where they are granted access to the institutes archives. Here they learn that the former director, Ilya Gruznov was affiliated with the TOPAZ project, but no one else at the institute was. Access to the institutes files regarding TOPAZ is forbidden.
21 June
Commercial flight to Paris to find Ivan Kolpakova. Lunch, then on to the Hotel Toulouse where B2 were surprised to find a paper note hanging on the door reading 'Gone for an hour'. Inside, they found the concierge dead behind his counter and Kolpakova's name on the registry computer's screen. Whist Derrick called the police, Bjarke made his way upstairs where he found signs of a gun fight, and a discarded, customised M14 carbine. Inside the penthouse, Ivan Kolpakova lay dead of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. The Paris police arrived under the command of Inspector Paul Cuso, who placed B2 under cautionary arrest. Shortly there after, Dysan & Hahn's legal representative in France, Jaques Mayon arrived and after a few hours of questions and swab tests, B2 were released, though told not to leave Paris.
22 June
Jaques Mayon sent word that the police had found a body in a burned out car and believed it to be one of the attackers. B2 were no longer regarded as suspects and were given leave to travel out of France, though Cuso requested further cooperation in solving the Hotel Toulouse murders. Michael asked to examine the body and was given permission. At the morgue he also examined the corpse of Ivan Kolpakova. Both bodies corroborated the police theory that Kolpakovahad mortally wounded one of his assailants before being killed by the second. Michael estimated the dead assassin was probably a Latin American male, some where in his mid to late twenties. B2 decided to examine Kolpakova's house on the Southern French Coast and took an express train to Nice. Kolpakova's house was clean and empty, except for a wealth of science papers and books. There was nothing much of interest. Derrick called D&HE head office and had Nicole arrange a meeting with an Electro-magnetics expert at CERN.
23 June
Having over-nighted in Nice, B2 took a train to Geneva, and then a taxi on to CERN where they met with Dr Bernard Ecclestone. Ecclestone examined the images on Bjarke's phone and thought he had an idea what the Mul'da device might be. It was, he said, similar in some ways to an ELF (Extreme Low Frequency radio waves) transmitter, only it seemed too small and to have been built in a chaotic manner. He asked various technical questions regarding the lay out, but B2 were unable to provide any answers having had insufficient time to examine the device. Ecclstone's assistant found references to project TOPAZ on an Internet conspiracy web page, which quoted a Serbian Science Journal. B2 called Nicole who booked ahead, and then travelled to Georgia to find Akaki Turashvili. In Tblisi, they met with their booked translator, 'Semenoi', whose cousin sold a 9mm Makarov automatic pistol, with serial numbers removed, to Bjarke. Both Semenoi and his cousin agreed to help them find Turashvili using their contacts in the criminal under world. The cousin wanted ten thousand dollars, and Semenoi asked for Nicole's personal telephone number. 
24 June
Derrick recieved two e-mails.The first came from D&HE head office in Amsterdam and read; 1-0. There was no name or identification attached. Semonoi's cousin quickly located Akaki Turashvili and B2 went to visit the elderly physician who lived in an anonymous two-roomed apartment building with his wife Anna. Akaki had no compunction talking about TOPAZ which he described as a failed attempt at creating a nuclear powered, satellite-borne electromagnetic weapon system. According to Akaki, TOPAZ was a non-lethal system designed from conception as a viable alternative to nuclear weaponry. The project failed he said, when Pavel Gerdt made the move from small scale experimentation to a full size, fully powered prototype. When the prototype was activated it created a feed back wave from the Earth which could not be stopped, nor contained. Several people were permanently disabled (including Natalia Dudinaskaya). The entire Mul'da complex was eventually abandoned as the feed back waves continued to reverberate around the site for years afterwards. Bjarke then asked about the Lublin incident and Akaki seemed to become surprised and ill at ease. Eventually he told the story of the incident at Lublin, which he said was caused by the Grey Man who had been abducting people in the Soviet Union, especially scientists, from as far back as the 1940's. The Soviet's had originally regarded the Grey Man was an agent of a foreign power, most probably an American, but after Lublin they realised they were dealing with something far more disturbing. Turning to their best neuro-weapons experts, they asked Léonide Baryshnikov to coordinate a capture of the mysterious person. This took a long time, as it was difficult to find the Grey Man but eventually Baryshnikov managed it and found his target in Prague. A SPETZNATZ team was sent in to grab the individual, but when four men grabbed him, they all disappeared and every one for a hundred meters burst out laughing. The Grey Man disappeared in the confusion, as did Ivan Kolpakova who had the presence of mind to slip his minders during the disturbance. Kolpakova eventually made his way to the USA. To the best of Akaki's knowledge the Grey Man never returned to the USSR, but he did hear that it had been seen in other countries since. The Soviet leadership regarded the entire matter as an unexplained mystery. Neither Baryshnikov or any other scientists who had taken part in the matter were able to identify the nature of the Grey Man and the unofficial explanation tended towards ideas concerning extra-terrestrials.
25 June
B2 sends inquiry to Interpol regarding missing scientists. Commercial flight to Moscow, arrving 1400. Return to Dima's office. Dima passes on information regarding the deat of Ossip Bunin (North Korea. 1978). Bjarke calls Inspector Paul Cuso and learns that the dead assassin, identified as Ariel Ramirez from Argentina, is known to have operated as part of a small team, for the past several years in South America, and more recently is linked to several assassinations all across the world. 
26 June
Return flight to Nice. B2 go back and re-search Ivan Kolpakova's house but find nothing except a secret stash of child pornography. They report this to Cuso then suffering the effects of jet lag, retire to their hotel which they find to be a small grubby place, but with flowers awaiting them. With the flowers is a card bearing the words 1-1. Touché boys. Bjarke realises the card is from Nicole paying them back for having given her personal phone number to Semenoi. 
27 June
B2 make various international telephone calls, talking with Dima, Akaki Turashvili and D&HE. Nicole relays an email from Interpol listing all known missing scientists from Europe and the USA since 1945. The last known scientist to go missing during a psychogenic laughter outbreak was Mr Roger D. Miller, from Flagstaff Arizona, in 1974. Commercial flight to Arizona. DHS stop Derrick and Bjarke at the airport since they have no entry visas, but a call to D&H head office in Seattle gains them full entry to the USA. After some inquiry at the local newspaper, B2 call Ted Turner and lay the case out to him. Turner looks into Ivan Kolpavoa's past and finds he last worked in the USA at some place called Gakona. A Google search reveals Gakona is the location of HAARP. Turner agrees that his contact at the CIA; Jeff Boyd may be acting to prevent some secret from escaping. He advises B2 to come to Seattle and meet with Irving Moore.
28 June
Commercial flight to Seattle. Meeting with Irving Moore. Moore accepts B2's conclusion. He readily believes the possibility of alien abduction. He agrees to close the case and also offers to ask around his own contacts regarding Gakona.
29 June
B2 return to D&HE. Amsterdam.
4 July
Telephone call from Irving Moore telling B2 to be at a McDonalds restaurant in Anchorage at 1200 next day. Commercial flight to Anchorage.
5 July
B2 meet with an unnamed technician from Gakona. He tells them that the Grey Man is kept there in an underground holding facility, where it has been ever since a CIA capture team, helped by Ivan Kolpavoa, used a modified Faraday cage to isolate it and render it harmless. He is unable to explain what the Grey Man is or where it came from, but he can guarantee that the Grey Man is not human, and does not conform to any known scientifically explainable technology. It does not communicate, is impervious to X ray and does not sleep. It wanders endlessly around the maze of its holding facility and none of its victims have ever returned. Having imparted this information the technician slips away and B2 return to Europe.