The Golden Chair

by A J Fontenot

  Ben and Erin walked up to the front. It was quiet. Empty feeling.

  “Let’s do this fast,” Erin said.

  They opened a door marked ‘office’ and climbed the steps leading upstairs. Erin went first. Ben followed, his camera slung over his shoulder.

  Upstairs had a center hall with a series of rooms on either side. Because of all the windows, the inside was full of natural light. Most of the rooms looked like they were used as office space. One room, in particular, was large, with chairs and a table in the middle. It had a wall of windows and a door leading out to a second-floor veranda that overlooked Lake Volta.

  “What exactly are we looking for?” Ben said.

  “Anything illegal,” Erin said. “And the more it ties directly to Lennox, the better.”

  Most of the rooms Ben glanced in were sparse, sprinkled with paperwork and office furniture. One room caught his eye. It was the only one that didn’t have windows. He walked in and flipped on the lights. The place looked like a cockpit or command center. He heard the soft whir of computer fans and saw a thousand tiny lights dotting the equipment.

  In the middle of the main desk was a joystick. He sat down. He put his hand on the joystick, wondering what it controlled. As soon as he touched it, the six monitors in front of him flickered to life.

  The center monitor, the one directly in front of him, was still mostly black. But it had a series of green meters on it. It reminded him of looking through the viewfinder of a camera with a lens cap still on. Another monitor, to his left, had a file index with a series of recording in it. They were ordered by date. He moved the mouse, but nothing happened. Then he noticed the pointer on a different screen off to his right. He slid the mouse across and clicked one of the recordings.

  There was no sound, but it was clear right away it was an underwater video. Everything was in shades of green, like the phosphorescent color of night vision goggles. He saw it navigating around what looked like trees.

  The lake… he thought. It was somewhere, here, under the lake outside. Lake Volta was known for its underwater forest, with its eerie bald trees, sticking up from the water, still preserved since it was flooded fifty-something years ago.

  He watched another video. More of the same. He kept watching videos. In another, the video showed an underwater cave. As he watched it, the screen went dark and then bright green again as its exposure was adjusting, all captured in the recording. He kept watching as it—

  The screens flickered, then died.

  Ben looked around. The power was still on in the building. But he noticed, the computer-fan hum he’d heard since he walked in this room, it had also died. It’s as if the entire system just shut itself off.

  A small light off to the right, about eye level, glowed red for a brief moment. He looked to see what it was and then it began flashing brightly, like a strobe. Bright and red. And then, like the rest of the equipment, it went off, too.

  He shook the mouse. Nothing. Tapped the joystick. Still nothing. He didn’t like the feel of it. But it wasn’t a normal-looking computer. He didn’t even know how to turn it on. Or reset it. He pulled his camera off his shoulder and took a few pictures of the room. Just in case.

  55

  Gl-013V

  Erin sat at a desk, in a featureless room, surrounded by stacks of dot-matrix printouts. It was the only office room with any paperwork in it.

  She’d intended to start with the computer. But it was locked with a password other than ‘password’ or ‘password1234.’ She tried a few more guesses before moving on to the stacks of paperwork. They were grouped by date. She started with the middle stack. It was from around a month ago.

  When she picked up a page, the next page came with it, and so did the one after it. The entire report appeared to be connected.

  GL-008V. The entire stack of paper had this code on it. She skimmed it, a series of progress reports. Mostly coordinates she didn’t understand, concluding with a “negative” report.

  She moved on to the next stack, older. She put it down and picked up another stack, three weeks ago. Getting closer. She noticed the code at the top was getting higher, too. GL-009V, GL-010V, GL-011V.

  But as she skimmed the body and the progress reports at the bottom, they too were all “negative reports.” They were looking for something, and, it appeared, they were trying different spots and still not finding it.

  Sitting here in this room alone, staring at the same endless white and gray paperwork had a hypnotic effect. She looked down at her watch. Had she really only been in here twenty minutes? It felt more like a few hours. She looked up, noticing she couldn’t hear Ben. He must be elsewhere. She looked back down and kept working. She’d made it up to last week’s reports now.

  GL-013V. By now, she started with the report summary at the end. This was the first one they’d finally found something. A potential target, read the report, was located via sonar in an interior cave. The structure of the cave appears to predate the lake itself, making it a high-value property.

  Erin skimmed further down.

  DGT2-R visual inspection confirmed target is intact… DGT2-R was familiar. She looked back through a different stack, keeping her finger in the current one. She found the reference. The DGT2-R was a submersible, ‘modified for underwater exploration.’ There was a small stencil drawing of it. Looked like an eyeball with arms.

  Database modeling confirmed, object size is within range… the report continued.

  She flipped to the end, realizing she was already at the bottom of the stack — the top of it being in a mess on the floor beside her. The report wasn’t conclusive. They’d found something, but not yet extracted it. She looked around for the next report.

  But everything else she found was old. Past dates.

  “This wasn’t much on its own,” she said to herself. “But…if the story about the Ashanti artifact checks out, it sounds an awful lot like we’ve just found the documentation of them stealing it…”

  She reached down and began putting the report she’d been reading back in order. In the U.S., using something like this without first getting a court order would be illegal, not submittable in a court of law. But here…she hoped…this might slide. She’d take it. Just in case.

  As she picked up about four inches of report, the most recent ones, she heard Ben call from a room down the hall.

  “Erin,” he said. “You should come see this…”

  56

  Visitors

  “Ben?” Erin said, walking down the hall.

  “In here,” he said.

  “I found a bunch of reports…,” she said. “Might be able to use them…they look like automatic printouts. At first, I thought they were nothing,” she said, walking into the room where Ben was. “And then, as I started reading, I fou—”

  She stopped mid-sentence, taking in the room. She’d glanced at the room when they first walked in. But now it was— “What did you…,” she said.

  “Look here,” he said, pointing.

  He had pulled large swaths of wood paneling off the walls. “This,” he waved a hand, “is all new.”

  “Okay…,” she said.

  He was on his knees, feeling something on the wall.

  “But right here,” he said, looking over his shoulder at her. “Come here, look.”

  She walked to him and leaned down to where he was.

  He showed her the pitting of the old wood underneath the paneling he’d pulled off.

  “This,” he said, “is not natural.”

  “What, the holes?”

  “Yeah. There’s one here,” he pointed, “and here…here…and here,” he said, pointing to other places on the wall. “Now,” he said, “step back and…what does it look like?”

  Erin walked to the other side of the room and looked back to where he was pointing. Her back was to the large windows overlooking the lake.

  “See the pattern?” he said.

  “Er…no,” she said, shaking her head.
>
  “They’re bullets.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you watch the tele?”

  She looked at him with a not-time-for-jokes face.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “Pretend you’re holding a machine gun. Then pretend this room is full of a bunch of blokes. Now just unload your gun on them.”

  “Come on…”

  He walked along the wall, not deterred, and traced points with his finger. “Bullets would spill over and hit along here…and here,” he kept moving as he talked, following the holes he’d found under the paneling he’d just removed.

  “And what’s more,” he said, “this stuff, the paneling I pulled off, wasn’t hard to pull off.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning it was probably put up in a hurry.”

  “I don’t know,” Erin said, shaking her head, “it seems kind of…”

  “Look down,” he said.

  She did, the floor under her feet was darker.

  “And here,” he pointed to another place, “and there, too,” pointing to a third.

  She looked at the spots and then back at him.

  “What?”

  “It’s blood,” he said.

  She immediately stepped off the spot, looking at it again.

  “Are you…sure?” she said.

  “What else woul—” Ben started.

  “Shhh,” Erin hissed, holding up a hand.

  Ben froze, hearing it, too.

  “Was that a car door?”

  57

  The Veranda

  Ben moved quickly to the door, walking out on to the balcony that surrounded the back of the facility. He went to the far end and looked around the edge. She walked outside, still holding the computer printouts in her hand.

  He looked back at Erin, and held up four fingers, “four men,” he mouthed. He looked back around the corner, kept watching.

  Erin heard a noise downstairs. She motioned silently to Ben and nodded her head in the direction of the conference room they’d just walked out of. “Downstairs,” she mouthed.

  He looked around the corner again and came back, going past her into the conference room, picking up his camera. Before he came back out, he bent down and opened one of the windows only a few inches. Outside, he shut the door slowly without a sound.

  “Two are still out front,” he said, turning to her, “which means we can’t climb down and get to the truck.” He looked over the edge. “We’re going to have to hide,” he said.

  Ben put his leg over the two-story balcony, putting his weight on the frame on the outside.

  “It’ll hold,” he whispered.

  Erin followed him over, still holding the stack of paperwork. The two of them sat crouched on the outer side of the half-wall that surrounded the upstairs balcony. His camera hung on his shoulder. The paperwork under her arm flipped lightly in the wind. They waited, not speaking.

  Erin looked down, praying the two guards at the front didn’t walk to the back. From the ground, their hiding spot was laughably vulnerable.

  She heard a radio scratch close by.

  “They were here,” a voice said.

  They must be in the room, she thought.

  “Look at this place…,” another said.

  “Check the other rooms,” the first one said. “I’ll call Keeler and report in.”

  Erin could feel the lactic acid building up in her legs, burning, as she crouched on the ledge, waiting.

  “We’re at the site,” she heard the first man say again. “They were definitely here,” he continued. “Tore off the paneling in the conference room. And—” He stopped talking. “Yes, yes sir,” he said, pausing again. “Right away, sir.”

  “They’re still here,” the first man called out in a loud voice, “stay sharp.” A radio scratched, and the same man spoke again, “Fan out, they’re still here.”

  58

  Captured

  “We need to move. Now,” Ben said.

  Erin was thinking the same thing. But there were four men now looking for them. And, other than the stacks of logs around them, the only other hiding place was the woods, and it was quite a good stretch before they could get to the tree line. None of their options looked good.

  Ben looked down at the ground and silently dropped from the second-story ledge. He hit the ground in a crouch, moving only his head to look around. Then he motioned to Erin. She dropped silently next to him.

  From the ground, they moved to the short perimeter wall around the lodge and slipped over the short wall. Following it along the outside, they made their way to a long stack of logs a few yards away from the facility. The logs were organized in stacks, about fifty feet long, with narrow aisles in between. The logs made for a good cover. But only briefly. If someone were to look down their row, which Erin figured would happen soon, their hiding spot would be blown. Not to mention, their truck was hidden on the opposite side of the compound. With four men searching, it wouldn’t be long before they found the truck either. Whatever they were going to do, they needed to do it soon.

  “Okay,” said Ben. “We need to split up.”

  As he said it, she knew where this was going.

  “We what? No,” she said, shaking her head, “not an option.”

  “We don’t have another option,” he said, pulling the memory card out of his camera and holding it up for her.

  “Everything in there,” he said, motioning to the facility, “is on here.”

  She held up her hands, shaking her head.

  “Here’s the plan,” he said, moving closer and sliding the card into her hip pocket. “I’m going to make a run for those trees over there.”

  “They’ll shoot—”

  “No,” he said.

  “Ben…”

  “Listen, I’ll surrender before I get there. It’s a distraction. I’ll let them get me. Plus,” he said, smiling, “I’ve got a friend who works for them. Best case, he can vouch for me and they’ll have to let me go. Worse case, he’ll find a way for me to get out.

  “But you said—”

  “Trust me on this one.”

  She started to argue, but he kept talking.

  “Meanwhile, when you hear the commotion, once they’ve realized I’m running, you get to the car. It’s important that you don’t wait,” he said almost clinically now. “You’ll need the diversion so that they don’t see you. And then — and this part is key — don’t leave until after they do. They need to think I was the only one here.”

  “Okay,” Erin said, “say we go with that. What’s the rest of your plan? What if their instructions are to…kill on sight whoever they find?”

  “They won’t. At least not right away. They’ll need leverage. Hostages.”

  “Hostages? What could they possibly — this won’t…”

  “Don’t worry, we don’t have another play right now,” he said. “They know we’re here. Lennox has had the upper hand since he’s been here. And what we just saw in there is that he’s responsible for this.”

  “Plus,” he said, “I told you…Paul’s connected. Which means one of the first things you need to do when you get out of here is to get in touch with Kwami. He’ll be able to get word to Paul.”

  “Paul…? Paul’s in jail right now. What’s he going to do?”

  “Don’t worry about that. If Paul’s in jail, it’s because he’s got some plan.”

  Some plan… This was a bizarrely optimistic position to be taking right now, Erin thought. Her mind was racing forward. Besides her own objections, she was trying to find a world where this could all actually work. But — the objections continued to mount — even if Paul could somehow do something, she didn’t even know where they would take Ben. What would she tell Paul? And, come to think of it, if Paul was so ‘in control,’ why was he sitting in a jail—

  Ben put his arms on her shoulders, breaking into her deluge of thoughts.

  She looked back at him.

  “Remember,” he said,
“I’m going that way,” he pointed with his head, “so when they notice me,” you go toward the truck.”

  Everything in her wanted to object and tell him this was a bad idea. That with just a few more seconds, they’d think of a better plan. That even some kind of peaceful negotiation would be better than this. But nothing came out.

  Instead, she just nodded.

  Somewhere inside of her, she was ashamed of the thought. She knew this was a zero-sum game. If they were going to get proof about Lennox, proof about the loggers’ death, even proof about this Ashanti artifact, she was the better of the two to do it. And now…she had everything she needed to blow the whistle. It was the right play. Still, she hated herself for not finding a better way.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  He hiked the camera farther up on his shoulder, turned and jogged down the aisle. He turned at an opening and disappeared.

  Erin moved to see better. On and off, she could still see him.

  Then, she could hear them.

  They’d found him.

  And then, a shot.

  And another.

  She couldn’t see him anymore.

  Did they… she wondered, before stopping herself. Forcing herself to focus.

  It’s time.

  She reached down and felt the card Ben put in her pocket. She adjusted her grip on the papers still in her hand, took a controlled breath.

  It’s time to move, she told herself. Now.

  59