Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

  His expression grew grim. “She had to ‘prove’ to the public that I was in the lab with Prochanski at the time of the explosion. If the real footage had been aired, it would have shown my quite-marked absence during the thirty minutes prior to the, er, event.

  “In that hour before the detonation, I told Prochanski I was stepping out for a short break. I left the lab long before the base was engulfed in chaos.”

  “But-but how did you get on and off the base? It was shut down for twenty-four hours. They searched every vehicle and person leaving the base for days. And your car was still in the lot.”

  “I never left, Gemma.”

  I gave my face permission to ask the obvious question.

  “I never intended to leave the base. Do you remember that I sent Rick and Tony on an errand? They were waiting for me in Rick’s car at the base’s golf course just off Pennsylvania, not far from the checkpoint through the PIDAS. When I left the lab, I got in my own car and drove to meet them.

  “I got into Rick’s passenger seat and we went through the PIDAS checkpoint together. He drove me to the munitions bunker that hid our western entrance, let me out, and drove back to the lab. In the meantime, Tony took my car back to the parking lot and left it there.

  “Rick picked up Tony from the parking lot and drove them to get something to eat. A bit later the explosion occurred and the lab burned. My car was found in the parking lot where Tony left it, but I’ve been here the whole time.”

  I let my astonishment show for the first time. “Here? You’ve been here?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . . what is this place?”

  Dr. Bickel grinned again and tugged his little beard. I was really warming to him by then. What he said next, put the icing on the cake.

  “This, Gemma, is my notorious secret laboratory.”

  Dr. Bickel had a secret laboratory, carved into the foothills of the Manzano Mountains, accessed via the World War II tunnels? He’d been hiding in his secret lab for more than three months?

  I liked it. I liked it a lot. I giggled; I laughed aloud.

  “Well, come take a look.” Dr. Bickel turned. He didn’t call to me to follow him. He knew I would.

  As we walked together through his lab, I took note of the three aisles of workbenches and their computers, monitors, and tools. I was familiar with some of the equipment, since I ordered most everything for the AMEMS lab. The setup wasn’t much by Sandia’s standards, though. The lab might even have been considered “sparse”—but it was still significant.

  “How did you get all this stuff?” I was staring at a high-powered 3D laser microscope.

  Dr. Bickel chuckled. “You know I’m a wealthy man, don’t you, Gemma?”

  I nodded, recalling some of the office gossip I’d overheard when Dr. Bickel first arrived. “Yeah. I heard something about that.”

  “Electronic purchasing and enough money can get you anything you want these days, Gemma. It was excruciatingly slow, but piece by piece, over the last year, Rick, Tony, and I assembled this tiny laboratory. Mind you, I’m not doing development or manufacturing here. I’m collecting and analyzing data more than anything else. Secret mountain laboratories have their limits, you know.”

  Ever practical, I asked, “How have you managed to live here? What have you done for food and water?”

  “Rick, Tony, and I have been planning and executing our plan for a number of years now. We stocked this place well early on. I have an abundance of staples and canned goods on hand, and I have a minuscule but functional living space over there.” He waved toward the side of the cavern opposite where I’d entered.

  “So Rick and Tony were in on all of this? They helped you build this?”

  “Yes, but they weren’t the only ones. In the planning stages I had help from a select few “others”—all compartmentalized to keep them safe and our plan secret. It will take a while to bring you up to speed.”

  He waved his hand to encompass the roughly circular cavern. “Of course, we didn’t have to build this. The military carved out this cave during the early Cold War. The project was deeply classified and therefore little known. See the stacks of furniture and equipment lying about? Very 1960s, don’t you think? Never used. The government canceled the project for which this was excavated and furnished. They simply abandoned the site as it was. The entrances to this room were sealed off or concealed.”

  “Our tax dollars at work,” I griped.

  He snorted. “Indeed. An old but close colleague told me about this place many years back. He’d been assigned here and read into the project when it was still viable. He’s been gone about ten years now, but in the months before he died he told me everything he could about it.

  “You see, I’ve been planning for this contingency for more than fifteen years now. Even back then, I knew some pinhead in the military would decide to appropriate my research—probably just as it bore fruit. When I came close enough to achieving the results I hoped for, I maneuvered myself into a position with Sandia so I could fully prepare this place.”

  “I thought you hated your job with Sandia.”

  He made a face. “No. You mean I hated having to kowtow to that fool, Prochanski.”

  “Yes, I guess that’s true.” I grimaced: Dr. Bickel’s disdain for Dr. P stung. I suppose I still harbored feelings for Dr. P, wounded and misplaced as they might be.

  “It was necessary for me to debase myself for a time, as repellent as bowing and scraping to him was. I knew he was in cahoots with Cushing, too. However, the best means to keep abreast of their plans was to stick close to him. So I did what was necessary until we were forced to make our move.”

  “We?”

  “Rick and Tony have worked with me for more than a decade. I brought them to Sandia with me when the government offered me a position there. Rick and Tony have known from the beginning where I was going with my work—and they agreed that we needed to protect it from exploitation. I trust them implicitly.

  “We located old unclassified specs of the mountain, its tunnels, and storage plants. The three of us scoured them. Based on the classified information my deceased colleague provided, we drew in the location of this cavern and pored over the maps until we agreed upon the location of a new entrance. We didn’t want to disturb the original entrance, you see, in case anyone in the military accessed the classified files and examined the original entrance to see if it had been disturbed after six decades.”

  “But how did you get access to the tunnels in the first place?”

  He looked aside. “Getting inside the mountain requires a badge to clear the PIDAS checkpoint and a key to open one of the tunnel entrances. I have a key. I can’t tell you who provided it, of course.”

  “But won’t they know who went in and out of the checkpoint?”

  “More than the mountain lies within the PIDAS, Gemma. NSA, DOE, and the military maintain classified facilities inside the fences.”

  He slanted his eyes toward me. “And the badge I used was real enough.”

  I nodded. “Real, but not yours, so it wouldn’t point back to you and steer the search toward the mountain.”

  He shrugged. “Precisely. Anyway, we tunneled into this cave from the inside of an old storage closet inside the mountain. Nights and weekends—we spent a harrowing two months just getting into this room that first time. That was our initial, temporary entrance.”

  I thought about how beat Dr. Bickel often looked at work. Things were starting to make sense. “You said ‘initial entrance.’ You have more than one way in and out now?”

  He nodded. “Yes. Here; let’s sit down.” He pointed to a couple of comfortable-looking chairs between the lab workbenches. The chairs looked like they belonged in the living room of somebody’s grandmother, not in the middle of a lab in the middle of a cave in the middle of a mountain.

  I sank onto the cushions of an old, overstuffed lounger, grateful to be off my feet. The chair was, surprisingly, still quite comfortable.


  Dr. Bickel picked up the thread of our bizarre conversation. “Every part of our endeavor has been—and still is—fraught with the danger of discovery. We couldn’t chance someone noting a disturbance in the storage closet and stumbling upon our entrance. It stood that the government would have other entrances into this room, entrances in addition to the primary one we knew of.

  “Once we made it inside here, we found a second exit and followed it into one of the munitions bunkers. Very cleverly hidden, it is. That became our customary route in and out. We built my little living quarters around its opening. Then we sealed up our temporary entrance at the back of the closet.”

  “What about the way I came in?”

  “Ah, yes. You came in the ‘back door,’ as we call it, the northern route.” He gestured toward my entrance with his hand.

  “We found the opening quite by accident when we were stacking all the furniture the government left here when they abandoned this room. It makes sense to me that the designers of this place would have kept an ace up their sleeve, a secret exit should it be needed.

  “The northern entrance is cleverer than the route leading from the munitions bunker into this room. About six months ago, Rick decided to map the route as another escape route, should I need it.

  “He explored the base’s fence line from the open space and found the spot where you went under the fence. He made the cuts in the PIDAS, drew up the map and directions, and left them with me. It was to be my ace in the hole, if I needed another way out.

  “As for the original, undisturbed entrance? We figured that if Cushing ever suspected I were hiding somewhere in this facility, she would request access to the specs of certain old, classified projects inside the mountain.

  “If she were granted access to the classified maps, she would have no difficulty locating the original entrance to this room, what we now call the decoy door. We haven’t touched that entrance from the outside; it has not been used in decades and is undisturbed. Ah, but from the opposite side? The inside?”

  His eyes gleamed. “From the inside, we made the decoy entrance easy to breach, Gemma. And once inside the tunnel, just beyond the breach, we left evidence for Cushing’s men to conclude that they had found the entrance I always use. We made it look that way—when, in point of fact, I never use it.”

  “But why? Why make it easy for her?”

  “Why trouble ourselves to ‘make it easy’? Because if Cushing ever comes looking for me here, I need assurance that her attack will come from that direction, through that entrance.”

  He was almost gleeful. “We booby-trapped the tunnel leading from the decoy entrance to this cavern, Gemma! Not necessarily to harm anyone, mind you, but to, first of all, warn me of their approach and, second, to delay Cushing and her people. The warning and delay will allow me to do . . . what I need to do.”

  “Wait.” I frowned. “At first you said ‘we,’ but now you keep saying ‘me’ and ‘I.’ ‘Warn me of their approach; the door I use; time to do what I have to do.’ I thought Rick and Tony were in on this?”

  He shook his head. “No, not any more. Not since the incident in the AMEMS lab. Our plan called for Rick and Tony to disconnect themselves from me—absolutely—once I made my move, my escape.

  “Once I fled here, I couldn’t risk either of them being followed into the mountain. You see, I was certain Cushing would have them monitored until The Hot Place froze over—and I was right, by the way. And, of course, they couldn’t come with me into this life of solitude—they both have families they love. They couldn’t leave their wives and children, and neither would I allow them to put their families in danger by continuing to support me.”

  Dr. Bickel’s voiced dropped. “You don’t know Cushing, Gemma. You don’t know what she’s capable of.”

  I shivered. Dr. Bickel’s narrative had taken five left turns in a matter of moments, but I thought I was still tracking with him. “So Rick and Tony helped you build this lab, but they haven’t been here since before the, er, incident at the AMEMS lab.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Because General Cushing is having them watched?”

  “She is.”

  “Because General Cushing knows you aren’t dead.”

  Dr. Bickel inclined his head. “My body wasn’t found in the wreckage. She went to great lengths to make the public believe it had been. Did you attend my memorial service?”

  I nodded and shivered again. “And you think General Cushing has threatened Rick and Tony’s families if they didn’t tell her where you are?”

  “I know she has.”

  “Because General Cushing still wants whatever it is you’ve got.”

  His whispered “yes” floated toward me.

  “Rick and Tony. Cushing hasn’t—?” I couldn’t finish my sentence.

  “Cushing has no proof they were involved with me outside of the regular workday. She will continue to watch them, however, and hope that they eventually lead her to me. She will watch them until she gets what she is after.”

  “And you’ve been here, alone, for three months.”

  He jerked his chin toward his chest once.

  I stirred uneasily, the lounger no longer as comfortable as when I first sat in it. “So why did you reach out to me?”

  Dr. Bickel sighed. “I considered every person I knew. It had to be an individual I trusted. Had to be someone nearby. Someone Cushing wouldn’t think of. I need help, Gemma; I need help, and you were the only one I felt I could call on.”

  “Me?” That single word came out on a squeak. I cleared my throat and asked again, “Me? But-but why me? And how could I ever help you?” I watched Dr. Bickel carefully, and I thought his expression saddened—which did nothing to alleviate my anxiety.

  “Gemma, as good as our planning was, some things require, shall we say, an outside source. I have my little quarters here. They are comfortable enough. I have an adequate bed and a little kitchen; I’ve even hacked satellite television and the Internet. I bring them down here by cable via the ventilation system.”

  “So what do you need me for?”

  Unlike me, Dr. Bickel did not have the same ability to mask his emotions. He appeared a bit embarrassed and sat forward in his seat.

  “I need someone to be my liaison with the real world. I own a safe house in Albuquerque—a residence I bought through a shell corporation I control. Quite untraceable, I assure you. The safe house is where we had the lab equipment sent when we were stocking this place.

  “Occasionally I still require parts or supplies for the lab. Some supplies are quite vital to what I’m doing here. I can order what I need and have it sent to the safe house, but I need someone to pick up what I order and bring it to me.”

  Then I thought he looked embarrassed.

  “And?”

  I was right. He turned pink. “To be frank, I haven’t had any fresh food since I went into hiding. The little frozen food I had is gone. All that remains is dried or canned. I-I need fresh meat, fruit, vegetables.”

  “You want me to grocery shop for you?” I was nonplussed.

  He glanced down. “Three months without a steak, without a salad or an apple or yogurt is worse than I thought it would be.”

  I was amazed that he would put all he’d planned and worked for his entire life at risk—for some greens and fruit? But, maybe it was more.

  “You must be lonely for another human’s voice.” The words slipped out of my mouth.

  He studied the floor. “I knew you were more perceptive than people gave you credit for.”

  We were quiet for a few minutes. Then I asked the burning question. At least, it was burning to me.

  “But . . .”

  “But why you?”

  “Yes. Why me, Dr. Bickel?”

  “Because, dear Gemma, you don’t have, er, ties. People living with you, making demands on you, inquiring after your activities.”

  “What you mean is I don’t have a family.” My throat
squeezed on the words.

  I was sure that Dr. Bickel’s expression saddened a bit more. His “poochy” eyes seemed softer, moister.

  “I’m sorry, Gemma. I don’t mean to wound you.”

  I believed him. I truly did.

  I sighed. “It’s all right. What else?”

  He nodded and looked away. “Thank you for understanding. It’s just that, well, you haven’t found suitable employment yet, and you already knew what we were doing in the lab—at least in generalities. And I will pay you well for your time. In cash.”

  I kept perfectly still as a palpable swell of relief rippled through me. I was grateful for my weekly unemployment checks, but they would stop in less than three months. Even with them, I was up against a wall.

  Steak hasn’t been on my menu lately, either, I reminded myself.

  “Most of all,” Dr. Bickel added softly, “I selected you because I knew I could trust you. You see, I know you saw things you could have reported to Prochanski, but you didn’t.”

  I thought over his words for a moment. I was not innocent, not at all, but I had resisted some of Prochanski’s demands.

  “Maybe. I guess I did. Some.”

  His eyes glimmered. “And I believe we share a mutual, ah, aversion to General Cushing?”

  “Her? I wouldn’t believe her if she said my name was ‘Gemma.’”

  I’d trusted Dr. P, and that was bad enough, as it turned out.

  Dr. Bickel’s good humor returned with a wry smile. “Take a number; get in line! Imogene Cushing is intelligent, devious, and treacherous. She wants my work, Gemma, wants to take them—er, it—and use them—I mean it—to destroy every form of resistance to her twisted ideals of national security. Imogene Cushing actually views a near police state as our nation’s most secure defense.”

  I composed my face in neutral lines again. “Obviously, you know her better than I do.” And I’m sensing that your opinion is more than a little personal, I added silently.