The Unlikely Savior (The Unlikely Savior Trilogy)

by T. S. Seley Elliott

  “Mr. President. China responded. They demand the U.S. cease and desist interference with all Chinese affairs, to include negotiations with Iran and interference with the Pakistani pipeline… or they will terminate purchase of our bonds – and will call for immediate repayment of all U.S. debt.”

  Knowing his boss was a thinking man, not one for rash decisions or emotional discussion, Wallace simply handed over a folder containing the Chinese’ communication.

  With a grim face, President Liang replaced the phone in its cradle and took the folder.

  The delicate balance shifted precariously on Atlas’ straining shoulders.

  Although a bit more technologically savvy than most of his generation, Byron was not a wizard with modern electronic devices. He had, however, given in to the lure of the Blackberry generation to help him manage his calendar and e-mail, and even to take notes for his job when absolutely necessary. That necessity only called when he didn’t have one of his half dozen beat up, dog-eared Steno-pads handy.

  The Blackberry appointment reminder alarm jerked him on a backward path from memory lane, and while he still looked at little Johnnie’s face, it was from his room in the motel, and not from Selma Gallagher’s classroom.

  Time to go see Homer Reeder. He gingerly tucked the old photo and flower back into its safe place as he considered the fact he’d never met a “Homer” in his life. He’d bet a piece of his pension that the fellow would be suited in a fresh pair of overalls, be cleanly shaven, and have an American Flag decal, of some sorts, on what would have to be a pick-up truck. Probably a new one, due to the accident, but a truck, nonetheless. None of these stereotypes were inflammatory…they were things Byron hoped for because he believed this was segment of society America couldn’t afford to lose. Besides…the guy’s name was Homer, for God’s sake.

  He also planned to follow up on the train station story to stay honest in his pursuits. Even though he was sure he was on the right path, he needed to validate every point to turn soft hopes into hard facts.

  Although unlikely, he hoped Dr. Benson, the shrink, would talk to him about his assessment of Sergeant Carter. He was just reaching for the note paper with the doctor’s phone number when there was a light knock at the door.

  He grabbed all he’d need for the day’s excursion before answering the door, assuming it was the motel maid. Rather than a housekeeper, however, he faced Jason whose red stubble was concealed by a combat patterned cap; he wore his uniform. The airman looked nervous and breathless.

  Shooting a furtive glance behind him, Jason asked if he could come in.

  “Of course… but I only have a minute because I’m meeting Mr. Reeder,” Byron shooed the young man in, intrigued by the surprise visit, especially since they’d met just hours earlier. “How did you find me?”

  “You mentioned where you were staying when you were complaining about your mattress this morning. And the car…well, you don’t see too many purple PT Cruisers around here.”

  While Byron was impressed by the observations, the chit chat had done nothing to calm the boy’s nerves. Closing the door, he turned to face Jason, who had only taken a few short steps into the room and hurriedly continued to talk.

  “I was cleaning out Johnnie’s desk this morning because my new supervisor will move into her office soon.” His face clouded; he was clearly still unhappy about her departure.

  “Anyway, she left a bunch of stuff in the drawers, and I found these papers. Mr. Hoffstedder, I’m giving you something that could get me in big trouble. But after this morning, I really trust that you are onto something and I don’t think you’ll ever hurt her. Maybe you could help her figure out what’s going on, because, I swear, she doesn’t know.”

  Byron’s gratitude was palpable, but paled in comparison to his inner curiosity. What was Jason offering? He would not betray this young man, but also hoped he wasn’t about to tread too deeply over the line of military regulation. This was never his intent. But….

  Jason held a worn manila envelope so tightly, his knuckles blanched whitely amid his already pale skin.

  “Promise me you will use this for the right reasons and you’ll shred it when you’re done?”

  What in the hell did this kid have…Byron had no interest in possessing classified information…

  “Look, I don’t even know what you have, but if I agree to take it, you have my word…”

  Jason opened the envelope and pulled out several sheets of what appeared to be completed questionnaires. Byron could also see that portions on each header had been blacked out.

  “We have to fill out really detailed forms for our security clearances,” the airman explained with a slight quiver in his voice. “It’s actually done electronically, but because we have to list everything about our life for several years back, we usually print them out and keep personal copies to help ourselves the next time…you know, old addresses, contacts and stuff like that.”

  Byron was initially unsure of what he was about to obtain, but as the boy talked, it slowly dawned on him that this wasn’t a matter of great military secrecy, it was about the Privacy Act, meant to protect each member of the Armed Forces when they provided personal information in the line of duty. He barely had time to sense relief that he wasn’t taking possession of stuff he’d go to jail over…when the significance of the data sunk in.

  “Johnnie had a top secret clearance, which requires a lot more stuff than the regular one…and it’s redone every ten years. Anyway, I guess it hasn’t been long since her update and I found copies in her desk along with her old first set…which goes back to her childhood. Nobody would care if it was in her office, or even think to look for it. It was hers.” He looked down at the papers as he handed them to Byron, keeping the envelope in his own shaking hands.

  “I blacked out her social security number and anything else you really don’t need…I do have some morals.”

  He added the last statement rather pathetically. In this young man’s professional world, he was committing an unforgivable indiscretion. But in the world of his conscience, he was helping to right a wrong and to solve an irresistible mystery. The latter had won out, and he steadily looked Byron in the eye and told him, with resolution, “You have her home of record address, the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all known relatives, and between the two sets, every address for at least the past thirty years. After what you told me, I think this might help see if there are more pieces than either of us know. Please, just don’t hurt her, and please don’t ever let anyone know I gave you this.”

  The magnitude and unlikelihood of this gift stole all words from the older man. He was swept with the familiar feeling of being a vital instrument in an unseen, but delicate operation. But the background information was not the coup de grace. Jason wasn’t finished.

  “I really have to go, but one last thing.” Jason reached into the envelope, retrieving a five by seven photograph. “After talking to you this morning, I realized you don’t even know what she looks like now. This is Johnnie’s last official photo. It was on the office staff board, and, well, it had to come down when she left; she’s not the type that would want to keep her own pictures, so I kept it. And I wrote her cell number on the back…I don’t think she changed it.” He stuffed it back in the envelope, wincing with his next words.

  “I’m warning you, she won’t be happy about you looking into all of this, so you really need to have your A-game on if you call her. And you didn’t get this number from me.” He handed over the envelope.

  Johnnie Carter’s wrath wasn’t Byron’s preeminent concern; he was currently dealing with the task of preventing death-by-adrenaline. This was too much. In two days he had gone from a single old photograph and fantastical suspicions to supportive current events, background data, a picture and a phone number. He’d gone so long on so little, he had failed to even think to ask Jason for these very things when they’d talked this morning.

  Byron seemed to pop out of a mental vacuum
when Jason reached for the door, pausing to look worriedly at the dumbfounded, wild-haired man. Byron’s free hand found its place in the taxiways over his ears, as if the contact could force his racing mind into the moment. This boy-man had just, in a matter of hours, potentially changed his world. And the kid was scared.

  “Jason. This will never come back to haunt you and no one but me will ever see it. If I understand you correctly, no one knows these print-outs exist, and they never will.”

  Looking at the so-young face, as an afterthought, Byron added, “You have my word, man to man.”

  Those words had never been spoken to Jason Barker in his life. He smiled then, squared his shoulders, and removed his hand from the door knob long enough to shake Byron’s hand. Man to man.

  Johnnie and Betsy hadn’t been on the road long when she saw they were approaching Wells, Nevada. They surely didn’t need to gas up, but Johnnie figured that proximity to a town would give her a stronger phone signal and she could try out her Bluetooth prowess and call her brother. There was some risk in the operation which was not limited to trying to dial a phone while driving; she would have to roll up the windows in order to hear and be heard. Glancing at Betsy, she assessed the hazard.

  Betsy returned the look with a suspicious side-eyed glance, then lay down in a heap, her rear end smashing against the passenger door with two of her three paws hanging over the front of the bench seat. Her loud sigh and closing eyes seemed to be signs of resignation, which was good enough for Johnnie.

  Earpiece in place, she held her phone over the steering wheel, buying into the myth that one could drive safely if placing the secondary object of attention in proximity to the windshield. She activated the Bluetooth function on her phone and with her eyes darting back and forth, she found her brother’s name in the contact list, pressing her finger to “make it so.” There. Mission accomplished, and she had only jarred onto the road’s sleep strips once, grateful it didn’t unnerve the pooch out of her current position.

  Johnnie felt foolish when she got James’ voicemail. As she left her message, she wondered why she thought she’d actually catch the busy man on the first try. She had to remember that even though she suddenly had all the time in the world, the rest of the population was still engaged in life. After she finished her message she panicked for a split second because she didn’t remember how to terminate the call with this gizmo in her ear. Painfully aware that she was still being recorded, she swore in the awkward silence, Too late to take back her colorful recording, she uttered, “Oh, shit, sorry…” just as she remembered to push the button on the earpiece, effectively disconnecting the call.

  She grimaced, thinking of her very professional sibling hearing the full message. Not that he was impervious to curse words; growing up with their mother had introduced them each to a rich vocabulary which would impress even a seasoned sailor. But James had done an amazing job of shedding their roller-coaster childhood, creating himself anew. In fact, by the age of 35, he had been a self-made millionaire.

  No one who knew Johnnie, who was also familiar with the phenomena of James Cain, speaker, author and “motivator,” knew they were related. She, of course, read his books and had even watched two of his DVDs. As much as she, the more blue-collar of the two, wanted to think his teachings were a bunch of hogwash, she knew deep down that he was not only brilliant, but had become what he was because of their upbringing. He lived what he preached; power in belief, creation of one’s own destiny. Johnnie felt a rush of guilt that she really hadn’t thought much about her brother at all over the past few years outside of their occasional phone contact, although they were very close as children. She scanned the terrain as her mind wandered.

  Wells was now a fading mirage in the rear-view mirror and they were in the midst of the desert expanse bordered with distant hills. Johnnie shifted in her seat in thought; the desert west was an area her mother had never dragged them through during their nomadic days. The years-long Odyssey had apparently started in New York, although Johnnie had been too young to remember that far back, and had eventually included residence in sixteen towns that she could account for. Sixteen towns and nine states.

  Unlike hundreds of her contemporaries in a Jerry Springer generation, Johnnie Carter had spent little time or energy looking back at how much better her childhood could have been or blaming her mother for the wonky upbringing. After all, she’d done alright up until now, and James had done great. Truth be known, it wasn’t her mother who was to blame, it was her father.

  These thoughts were the very ones she’d not only refused to allow to haunt her, but which she’d almost exclusively blocked her entire adult life. In fact, almost as if on autopilot, Johnnie was already reaching for the MP3 jack, a quick distraction so she could “change channels” to escape her current thoughts, a practice she’d unwittingly developed over years of avoidance.

  But she stopped. She remembered her resolution the day before to examine her “back yard,” and sort through the refuse piles she’d so long ignored. She had a growing conviction that she held the keys to her own situation, but had misplaced them years before…probably in that junky proverbial yard. If she wanted her life back, she needed to know her life.

  Blowing through her lips and rolling her eyes like an obstinate child, she yanked her hand from the floorboard before it could find the cord it had sought. She planned to stop in Wendover, less than two hours away; she’d give herself that much time – and no more - to excavate. Her deep desire was to enjoy this trip, to the degree possible, not a likely prospect if she engaged in endless Freudian probes into her distant past.

  Freud, himself, would probably insist her ailments could be blamed on her parents. Good enough starting point, she figured, reluctantly. Johnnie had only met her father on one occasion, at the age of seventeen, and it was unmemorable other than her immediate impression that the guy was a slime ball. In her time as an adult, she’d met many unscrupulous salesmen who seemed like sterling citizens compared to her dad. It was that bad. But, still, he seemed harmless and at worse, a two-bit conman.

  She’d sensed absolutely no threat from him; she just didn’t like him. But there had to be a darker side, perhaps undetectable by such a short meeting. Why else would a mother uproot her children on a dime in order to avoid him? Ah…yes, Herr Freud whispered, “Vas about your Mutter?” Mom.

  Fixating on painted lines ahead, nescient to the landscape which had actually launched this whole backward exploration, Johnnie squinted as she worked through the cobwebs in her mind. What were the things Mom said, from so far away, to the sounds of thumping and sliding as pots, pans and clothes were jammed into boxes and bags?

  “Wake up, Johnnie, come back to me Girl, come on! Got to go! Come on James, get your ass into gear and load up the car, we need to leave before he gets here. Son of a bitch. Johnnie, wake up!”

  Mary must have felt incredibly threatened; why else would they always go in the middle of the night? Leaving towns with no notice, no time to say goodbye. Leaving not just teachers and schoolmates, but also discarding their last names.

  Johnnie’d had a hell of a time explaining that when she applied to join the Air Force. The only reason her numerous “aliases” didn’t hurt her chances of military service was the fact she had engaged in no criminal activity…and she was not personally responsible for the prolific name-changing. In her day, schools required very little for registration, other than a birth certificate, and they took her mom’s word for it that they’d changed their name due to divorce and remarriage. Mind blowing, in retrospect, but even though she’d always had a sense they were “different,” she really didn’t know how different until she sat in the recruiter’s office 13 years before. She had taken her father’s name back, as had her mother, in hopes to smooth things out in the recruitment process.

  She took a swig from her coffee go-cup and reflected on her childhood from an Oprah-esque standpoint: she had been programmed to be self-sufficient and not friend-dependent.
To be alone…yet to be totally socially functional, but she had no idea how to create or sustain a friendship. OK, that was some progress in this self-exploration, she supposed. But so what?

  And with that, she realized she had gotten absolutely nowhere with this excursion. Her dad was a deadbeat, and apparently a really bad guy -- although all she’d detected of him was bad fashion sense and questionable character. Her mother was, well, her mother. Welcome to probably half of the families’ stories in America, she mused wordlessly, although her eyebrows crept up wistfully, mouth slightly skewed in response to such an unfortunate prospect.

  Frustrated and knowing she’d have disappointed Oprah, she failed to see how the childhood facts could have led to her current perils, and they had clearly not hurt James in the least. Almost as if on cue, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother,” the ring-tone she’d assigned to James blasted through the drywall in her brain, and suddenly, the picture in the windshield was one of sagebrush instead of pavement.

  “Holy Shit!” she exclaimed, reacting in time to prevent an accident, but too late to appease the yelping dog who had simultaneously lost her balance, front paws off the seat, head smacking the console.

  Johnnie corrected the truck’s direction and decelerated enough for the “I’m going to die in a car crash” feeling to subside, but she was not quite to the point of knowing why the phone was sounding off inside, not outside, of her head. When her flailing hand answered that question upon discovery of the Bluetooth stuck in her ear, the ring-tone had stopped and it was too late to answer.

  By the time Johnnie had cast the ear-raping contraption onto the seat, rolled down the windows (of course) and steadied Betsy’s awkward backward ascent onto the car seat, she heard the faint “twink” sound, indicating she had a voice mail.

  Her pounding heart shifted from her eardrums back to her chest where it belonged and she slid her hands to the top of the steering wheel, lifting her elbows till they were almost even with her shoulders in order to air out her soggy armpits. She reckoned her 24-hour deodorant had expired and it wasn’t even noon yet.