by Roger Ley
“Cheers,” she said clinking glasses, “is this a private depression, or can anybody join in?”
Riley didn’t reply. Baby Cliff began to cry in the nursery and Estella left to feed him.
Chapter Twelve
USA the 2000s
For Riley, the day had started normally, with the usual accumulation of irrelevant emails demanding attention and time he wanted to spend on research.
Doug, one of the newly recruited American technicians, rushed into Riley’s office white faced.
“They’re gonna blow up the World Trade Centre,” he said. “The Twin Towers will be completely destroyed, two weeks from now.” He rushed out and back to the main laboratory. Riley followed and stood behind his chair as he called up the video recording. Several others joined them, the evidence was on the computer screen; Riley ran to the Colonel’s office.
“Come right away, you need to see this,” he said.
They hurried back, and together they watched footage they would never forget. The Twin Towers, viewed from a distance, the North Tower smoking. Then, the unexpected impact of a second plane, into the South Tower, and the explosion as its full load of fuel ignited.
“Oh no,” exclaimed the Colonel, unable to contain his emotions. The viewpoint pulled back to show both Towers smoking and burning. “Lock the doors,” he shouted and the leader of the new team of Scrutineers complied.
The crowd around the screen grew. As more information arrived on the hard drives, the whole team began viewing footage from different TV stations on their screens. The Colonel was talking quietly into his cell phone, his hand shielding the mouthpiece when, about an hour later, the South Tower collapsed. He banged the desk hard with his bunched fist.
“No, no, no,” he shouted.
“Did you see how it concertinaed? Like a demolition exercise,” said Riley in an awed voice. Half an hour later the topmost floors of the North Tower dropped bodily into the dust cloud below. The scientists and technicians stood speechless. Riley felt as if he was watching the special effects of a Hollywood disaster movie. He was horrified to realize that, after the first collapse, the people in the second Tower knew their fate. What would they do, use their cell phones to say goodbye to loved ones? What else could they do? TV footage showed people in burning rooms making their decision and taking the big leap. Riley was cold, his skin crawled, he didn’t speak. Other members of the team reacted in different ways, many of the men were angry, and many of the women tearful.
The Colonel was appalled. “Terrorists reducing our most important financial center to a pile of rubble, it would be an unbelievable coup for our enemies; we’d be a laughingstock in the eyes of the world. It’s intolerable.” He hurried back to his office and slammed the door. Riley knew the Committee would never allow this catastrophe to take place.
A week later, Wilson had invited Riley into his office to share a coffee break, an unusual occurrence. The Colonel seemed at peace, almost affable. Riley looked around, bemused by the regimental photos, buddy photos, flags, pennants and other trophies. All the military paraphernalia.
“Saudi student pilots were going to fly the planes,” said the Colonel. “Their instructors at the flying school told the CIA that they weren’t interested in learning how to land a Jumbo jet, just how to take off in one. They should have been more suspicious. We deported the bastards back into the gentle hands of the Mabahith.”
Riley looked puzzled.
“The Saudi secret police,” said the Colonel. “Our towel head friends will enjoy the fine hospitality of Al-Ha’ir Prison, and the best of luck to them.”
He laughed loudly, another unusual event, his relief showing through, thought Riley
“They’ve promoted me to full bird colonel,” he said.
Riley offered his congratulations. He gets another badge, while I get fuck-all, and no mention of me to the Oversight Committee, he thought.
“This has been our greatest success so far,” said the Colonel. “The powers that be realize that destroying the ‘Great Satan’s’ financial center would have had incalculable consequences. An enormous victory for the terrorists. We would have looked vulnerable, incompetent, humiliated. What a shame the public will never know what we accomplished here at Langley, Martin. From now on we can write our own ticket, we’re flavor of the month with George W.”
“Well, there’s no turning back now,” said Riley. “We’ve made a radical change this time.”
“It’s for the best Martin,” said the Colonel. “Think of the damage this would have done to America’s standing, in the eyes of the world.”
“Yes, and think of the children that won’t be fatherless, the husbands that won’t come home to a tearful, final message, on their answer phone,” said Riley.
We saved thousands of lives, he thought as he remembered the people waiting in the North Tower, knowing they’d soon be plunging to their deaths. He couldn’t forget the ‘jumpers.’ Surely it was for the best? Surely it was justified?
Two weeks after they had saved the Twin Towers, the Colonel invited Riley into his office for coffee again. Riley was suspicious of this new familiarity and wondered what the Colonel would reveal.
“It seems the Committee have seen things my way,” said the Colonel. “Saving the World Trade Centre has finally put some fire in their bellies. Now they understand the awesome power we have at our fingertips. They want to be discerning though, play the long game in the national interest. They want us to collect and analyses more data, so we’re gonna move the Gleaners to another site and hire more of them. We’ll recruit more Scrutineers here, in their place. The Gleaners don’t need to know who they’re working for, it’s the Scrutineers that should be inside the security bubble. The Committee want you to improve our reach beyond the two-week limit, so none of us is out of a job, quite the opposite,” he chuckled. “We need to be vigilant Martin. We’re the keepers of the keys. We can unlock the future.”
Or fuck it up, thought Riley, wondering when he would meet this mysterious Committee.
He was disconsolate as he left the Colonel’s office. When he got back to his desk, he found a letter lying on top of the budget report he had been working on. It was from HM Government and enquired whether he would be willing to accept a knighthood if one was offered to him
“But you’ve always despised the honors system,” said Estella, when he told her the news that evening.
“Yes, but when you’re offered one it’s hard to refuse,” he said, “don’t piss on my bonfire. You never seem to be on my side, these days.”
“Stephen Hawking refused a knighthood.”
“Yes,” he snapped, raising his voice, but still trying not to wake the baby, “but Professor Hawking has many other awards, so he can afford to refuse one if he wants to. I have nothing. I have invented one of the most important technologies in human history, possibly the most important, yet because of the Government’s disclosure restrictions, nobody has even heard of me. Thanks to me we control the future.” He was shouting by the end of his tirade. He went into his home office and slammed the door. In the nursery, Cliff began to cry.
That evening, after a late dinner, he sat at the dinner table, swirling a second glass of brandy. The boys were asleep.
“So, how are you feeling about the way things are going?” asked Estella.
Riley recognized an open-ended question when he heard one. “What do you mean?” he countered. He wondered whether she was talking about their marriage, or something more mundane.
“About the ‘Dire Effects of our Interventions,’ ” she said in a deep, comic male voice. She took a drink from what he noticed was her fourth glass of wine. She seemed a little fuddled.
“Do you see any ‘Appalling Ramifications’ coming over the horizon?” She leaned back in her chair and looked at him, her brow furrowed. “ ‘The Destruction of the Timestream,’ perhaps.” He heard the sarcasm in her voice as she quoted his own phrases at him. Their relationship was going through a low ph
ase. He had answered several phone calls to the house where the caller had hung up without speaking.
“I’m okay about it,” he said evenly, he didn’t want a row, it wouldn’t help. She was just a little drunk, she did this occasionally. “It’s too late to do much about it, we’ve made our bed and now we have to lie on it.” He stood. “I have emails to go through, I’ll see you later,” he walked into his home office and closed the door.
That night, in bed, Riley spooned up to Estella, kissed her shoulder and began to slide the strap of her nightdress over it.
“I’m sorry Martin, I’m tired,” she said, as she pushed the strap back into place. A faint wailing came from the baby alarm, building in volume. Riley sighed, got up and reached for his dressing gown, it was his turn.
“Best of luck,” said Estella, as she pulled the quilt up and settled her pillow.
Riley walked around the nursery, rocking Cliff in his arms. He sang quietly, to help settle him. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was a useful song because, with all the repeats, there were seventy-eight verses. He’d pinned an old Christmas card up on the wall with pictures of “Geese a laying” and “Ladies dancing,” as a prompt. He alternated with “Green Grow the Rushes, Oh” for the same reason.
He tried to remember the last time he and Estella had made love, it was months ago. They occupied the same house but it was as if they had forgotten what they liked about each other. He decided to give it some thought and resolved to try to be more attentive, buy her flowers perhaps? They were so tired most of the time, and living in a foreign land meant there were no mothers or mothers-in -law to look after the boys, while they spent a night out together. Estella wouldn’t trust local teenage girls to baby sit the boys.
Chapter Thirteen
USA the 2000s
The Christmas break was two weeks away, when Doug walked into Riley’s office. Doug the technician had quickly made himself indispensable. He was the guy who could unblock the photocopier, reload the water cooler, fix routine computer problems. Short and overweight he kept a low profile. On this occasion he had a half-eaten sandwich in one hand and the rest of it in his mouth.
“What’s the good news Doug?” Riley asked.
Doug gulped down his mouthful.
“It’s a Tsunami, caused by an earthquake in the Indian Ocean. It’ll kill a quarter of a million people on the 26th of December.” He placed a copy of a newspaper report on Riley’s desk and went back to sit at his work station. He put in a pair of earbuds and returned to the virtual world that most of his generation seemed to prefer. Riley thought he was remarkably unconcerned. He had noticed that many of the clever math types could be indifferent to other people’s problems, the technicians were usually more grounded, but not Doug.
Doug’s news made Riley feel optimistic for a change. It would be easy to warn the population in the danger zone, and save tens of thousands of lives, at no cost to the US taxpayer. He walked over to the Colonel’s office and, on principle, entered without knocking. He laid the news print out on his desk.
“Where does the Tsunami strike?” asked the Colonel, after he had read the headline.
“Well, around the Indian Ocean, but the worst hit countries are Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. A quarter of a million people will die,” Riley reiterated. “We could reduce the death toll if we warned them to move away from the coast and camp on higher ground. It should be easy to issue fake results from the seismic monitoring systems.”
“Okay, I’ll inform the Oversight Committee when they meet tomorrow.”
The Tsunami slipped from his mind, it was the Festive Season, everybody had preparations to make, presents to buy, cards to send. When Christmas Day came, and there had been no warning, he became uneasy. On Boxing Day, Riley and his two young sons, Cliff and Hank, were sitting in front of a log fire in the lounge of their Scandinavian styled house. He was watching the TV news, while the boys played with their new toys. On screen, an assistant handed a piece of paper to the newsreader.
“Reports are just coming in of a Tsunami in the Indian Ocean. No reliable details are available, but our correspondent in Indonesia reports they have lost communication with the northern parts of the country.”
Riley sat still. Estella came into the room holding a Christmas cake on a stand.
“Can I interest anybody in this?” she asked. The boys were very interested. “How about you, fatso?” She held a knife poised ready to make a cut, “Just a small slice for you?”
Riley couldn’t speak. The whole scenario unfolded as he mentally ran the footage he had watched two weeks before at the laboratory. A quarter of a million-people dead, a quarter of a million. He stood up, walked into the hallway, put on a coat and left the house. He walked in the snow for hours, his mind churning.
By the time he got back, the boys had gone to bed. He sat by the fire in the lounge, with a blanket that Estella had wrapped around him, and sipped at a glass of single malt.
“I told the Colonel about the Tsunami,” he said.
She looked shocked, “I remember. Didn’t they give a warning? I haven’t been keeping up with the news. Everybody at the lab knew about the Tsunami.”
“No,” he said, “they didn’t give a warning. A quarter of a million-people dead, and we could have alerted them. We could have saved hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. Why didn’t the Government warn them? The Colonel said he would tell the Committee. What sort of people are we working for?”
Estella stared at him, her hand in front of her mouth. There was nothing to say.
After the holiday Riley tried to tackle the Colonel.
“Sorry Martin, I’m too busy to talk,” he said over the phone. “I’m working on next year’s budgets I can’t be disturbed.”
After several similar calls, Riley walked past Wilson’s protesting secretary and into his inner office. He shut the door and stared at the Colonel who was standing at his ergonomic desk, reading a report. Wilson sighed and pushed his glasses up onto his forehead.
“Look, Martin,” he said, “now, I know what you’re thinking. The problem is that you and I don’t see the big picture. What might appear significant in the short term, might look real unimportant in the long-term and vice versa. They see the big picture at Liberty Crossing.” He was referring to the National Counterterrorism Centre, based nearby. “The Government ignored the warning for their own good reasons, I’m sure.”
“Explain that to the victims and their families,” said Riley more loudly than he meant.
“Well I share your concerns, but we have to trust our democratically elected leaders to work in our mutual national interests,” said the Colonel, staring hard at Riley.
Probably for the recording that the FBI was making of conversations in this office, thought Riley. The mealy-mouthed bastard. The Colonel continued to stare at him intently as if he would like to say more. Riley noticed that he had stopped blinking.
“We should be working in the international interest,” said Riley through gritted teeth. “If the victims had been Europeans or Americans, we’d have warned them,” he shouted.
Riley worried about how he would explain himself to a jury if the TM team’s activities ever became public knowledge. He didn’t know whether he could justify himself. An image of the defendants in the Nuremberg war trials, seated in the dock, under guard, haunted him. Their defense, “We were only following orders,” seemed laughable now.
The Colonel abruptly changed his attitude, he approached Riley and placed a hand on his arm.
“You’re overwrought Martin. Why not take a few days rest?”
Riley went home and slept on the sofa until Estella arrived home with the boys.
“I don’t know whether the Colonel will report our conversation to his superiors,” said Riley, later that evening. “If he doesn’t, they might accuse him of complicity, so he hasn’t got much choice. Anyway, they’re spying on us all the time, we’re such a big security risk. To the Yanks all Eur
opeans are commies and my outburst will have reinforced their prejudices.”
“Yes,” agreed Estella. “They seem to translate ‘Liberal’ into ‘Communist’ over here.”
Riley stayed at home for a few days, he painted the lounge and read a few physics journals. He went back to work, made a sizeable donation to the Tsunami relief fund, and tried not to dwell on it.
The dark months passed and finally it was Spring. The delightful smell of newly mown grass was usually overlaid by the meaty fumes from his neighbors” barbeques. Riley and Estella were getting ready to go to a concert with their new friends, Alan and Diana. Estella had met Diana through the boys” nursery.
“They’re probably FBI agents, tasked with watching us,” Riley said. “Be careful what you say if they fish for information about work.”
“Your trouble is that you think everybody has a hidden agenda, Martin. You think everybody wants something from you, or else they’re out to get you,” said Estella.
“You told me it was Diana who first approached you. We have to be careful.”
Riley was having a third go at tying his bow tie.
“Why don’t you wear an elasticated one like everybody else?” asked Estella as she leaned over and pulled the wrinkles out of her tights.
“Because I have standards,” he replied.
“Oh yes, we know all about your standards.”
Now there’s a statement without content, he thought, as the tie unraveled again. He decided to follow her advice, but he wouldn’t give her the satisfaction by admitting to it.
On the way home in the car they discussed the recent London bombings. “I don’t understand why the British Government didn’t intervene and prevent them,” said Estella. “Perhaps George W didn’t tell Tony about it. But I thought they were ‘bestest’ friends.”
Riley had been paying more attention to the “big picture” as part of his long-term plan to get onto the Oversight Committee.
