Superpowers 1: Superguy

by T. Jackson King

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Valery walked out of the bedroom where Justine was still sleeping. Sunday morning was the time when they both slept in. But she had awakened early, her awareness filled with the residue of a dream she’d had. The dream had featured young Jeffrey Webster walking along the Seine River in Paris. He had looked up, seen the Eiffel Tower, then had lifted his arms and flown up to the tower to rescue the hostages.

  Walking into her kitchen she grabbed a packet of coffee and stuck it into her Keurig brewer. Putting a cup under the spout, she tapped the control surface and waited for her single cup of Columbian coffee to come out hot and steaming.

  The source of the dream was surely her memory of Jeff’s family history. Early in her counseling he’d talked a lot about his parents, the trips they’d made together overseas, and how he hoped to do future overseas trips. Right before his mother died from cervical cancer, his father John had taken Jeff and his mother Elaine to Paris as a kind of early high school graduation gift for Jeff. And, she suspected, as a means to give his wife one more experience of family togetherness. Before she passed on. Jeff had mentioned the places they’d visited. Those had included the Louvre museum, the top of the Arch de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, the Left Bank with its bohemian cafes, the Trocadero and Notre Dame cathedral.

  She grabbed the cup of coffee and walked over to the window in her living room that looked out on the mountains to the east of Santa Fe. Juniper and pinon trees framed that view.

  Taking a sip she wondered what Jeff would say at their regular session Tuesday afternoon. Would he talk about rescuing people, people whose genders and natures would match the hostages rescued in St. Louis and Paris? Or would he focus on the flashback nightmares of the night of the car crash, when Jeff had found himself thrown to the side of the road, watching as his father’s car and the DWI car became a mass of flaming wreckage? Valery had worked hard to help Jeffrey come to terms with the fact that he was not personally responsible for his father’s death. No one was responsible for what another person chose to do. Jeffrey had no control over the driver who’d chosen to drive badly drunk. Nor had he had any control over the fact his father had chosen to drive home right after his UNM graduation, rather than stay overnight in Albuquerque. Jeffrey, she had done her best to help him see, was only responsible for his own emotions. And for his own feelings.

  Which led her to what she had thought about days earlier.

  If the women of Jeffrey’s downtown Santa Fe rescue story were really the women taken hostage in New York City, then he really was this Green Mask superhero person. But how could she know that for sure? And if he did say something that convinced her, could she, should she, say anything to anyone else?

  Mentally she hoped Justine would wake up and propose they go for a drive up into the mountains to see the fall leaf colors up by Ski Santa Fe. She needed a distraction. She needed real life to be less stressful than it had become.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Janet drove into the parking lot at 1738 North Sage Street in Los Alamos. It was Sunday and this was the location of the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos, the church attended by Webster’s parents and himself when he was younger. Yesterday during Beverly’s call to her about doing in person interviews of seven young men who might be the covert Green Mask guy, she had learned something vital. One of those seven men was Jeffrey Webster. It turned out that his presence could not be accounted for during the rescues in New York City, St. Louis and yesterday in Paris. More important was the detail that DNA analysis of the NYC hair sample had shown that Green Mask was a red-haired guy who dyed his hair black. That was a serious match to Webster, who also matched to the intruder in voice tone, walking gait, age, height, weight and the fact he worked at the REI store in Santa Fe. Beverly’s other six suspects lived in various towns of northern New Mexico, like Farmington, Taos, Espanola, Raton, Las Vegas and similar places. Those suspects had a record of visiting REI and Men’s Wearhouse stores, just like Webster. Beverly had wrapped up their late night talk by adding that Webster was listed in the Customs records as having gone to Paris with his parents almost six years ago, when he was in high school. His family had also traveled to NYC and St. Louis. Webster was becoming a major candidate for Green Mask.

  She grabbed her black purse, made sure her badge was inside it, stepped out of the rental car, pointed the radio lock at it, then walked across the black asphalt toward the entry to the large one-story building. Her talk yesterday with Abby Spahn had included the mention from the young woman that the local Unitarian church had built a new building for its congregation. When she looked up the church details on its Facebook page, she’d seen something that had motivated her to get up early and arrive here at 9:20 a.m. This church had a regular Forum talk session set for 9:30, an hour before the later church service at 10:30. The title of today’s talk was “Magic or Biology? The Green Mask Enigma.” That interested her, since much of the congregation were former or current employees of Los Alamos National Laboratory. So the topic should have some science element in it. Equally vital was a chance to see some of the people who had known Webster as he was growing up. Maybe she could learn something about the man that would help her in her next interview with him.

  “Hello!” called a middle-aged Asian woman as Janet walked through the swinging glass doors of the entrance. “Is this your first visit with us?”

  Clearly the woman was a greeter assigned to show a happy face to new attendees. “Hi, yes, I am. I’m here to attend the Forum talk. Where is that being held?”

  The woman smiled easily. “Welcome! I’m Atsuki and today’s Forum is being held in the Fellowship Hall.” She gestured behind her. “It’s just this way and to the left. There’s coffee on a table for anyone who wants it or hot tea. And on the other side of this foyer is a table with blank stickers for writing your first name on, if you wish other folks to know your name. Thank you for coming!”

  Janet saw six men and women of various ages coming down from the right and aiming for the Fellowship room. She nodded to Atsuki, then walked over to the name tag table. Using a black marker she wrote ‘Janet” on a tag, pulled off the back and stuck it to the front of her lime green jacket. Today was her day to pretend to be a civilian rather than an agent in the open, so she’d dressed in her summer dress and jacket, hoping it would not clash with whatever other women were wearing today. To her relief she saw several women wearing floral dresses, with one wearing a sari. She turned and joined the group as they walked through the double doors of the Fellowship Hall.

  She found a seat in the middle row of seats and sat at the edge of the row. In front of her were forty or more people of all ages and genders who were scattered across the front of the room. A podium with microphone stood at the front of the room. To either side of the podium were doors leading outside. To her right was an opening that led into a kitchen area. Clearly this hall was intended to be used for food serving, in addition to lectures.

  An elderly couple sat down to the left of her. The white-haired woman was closest to her. The woman glanced her way, saw her name tag and gave her a smile.

  “Hi there Janet. I’m Heloise Camenbert. I’m original Dutch while my husband Jim here is from Arkansas. Are you visiting from elsewhere?”

  Around her other singles and couples were taking their seats as a tall, heavily built man with wavy brown hair walked toward the podium. “Yes, I am. I live in Virginia, near Washington D. C. My friends live there. Who’s the speaker?”

  Heloise looked ahead, then lowered her voice. “He’s Bryan Anderson, an ecologist from the lab.”

  “So he is going to talk on a biology issue?” she said, showing honest puzzlement.

  Heloise gave a shrug. “Bryan works in the Environment, Safety and Health branch of the lab. He’s a specialist in ecology. Has a Ph. D. in it. He knows more about environmental biology than me. I used to work in the Theory, Simulation and Computation branch.”

  “Well, this should be interesting.” Janet looked aw
ay and scanned the man, who looked to be in his early fifties, judging by how much color there still was in his hair.

  “Good day,” Anderson said as, behind him, a white screen unrolled from the ceiling to provide a surface for the projector attached to his laptop computer, which sat on a table to one side of the podium. The man tapped the keyboard of the computer, then smiled at everyone. “My talk today is ‘Magic or Biology? The Green Mask Enigma.” He gestured at the computer and tapped a radio control unit in his right hand. Behind Anderson the screen filled with an image of Green Mask in his blue business suit, showing a scene from his Gateway Arch rescue.

  “Over the last week people in America have seen this man, labeled Green Mask by the national media, carry out fantastic rescues of people held hostage by Islamic terrorists,” Anderson said, clicking his device so it showed an image of two bearded jihadists as they stood with rifles aimed at people. “While the Empire State Building rescue of hostages appeared at first to be that of an athletic vigilante who somehow happened to be in the right place at the right time to knock out the single terrorist, the Gateway Arch rescue caught him stepping off the arch, falling through the air, then disappearing. This happened after he lifted the body of one terrorist up to the roof of the arch, using what appears to be the power of his mind.” The man clicked his control and more images appeared of the actions of Green Mask in Paris, ending up with an image of him floating in midair next to the top level of the Eiffel Tower. “Now, there are plenty of physicists in this room, and a lot of research scientists from other fields. We all worship the scientific method. Observe, form a question, propose a hypothesis, experiment, verify the data, then modify the hypothesis and repeat.” The steps mentioned by Anderson now appeared on the screen, next to a separate image of Jeff hovering beside the tower. “Well, none of us can explain how this man could disappear in midair, or float in midair, or create a ball of flame that engulfed the fourth terrorist who fired bullets at the Paris hostages.” The man smiled. “But maybe I can. Some of you are probably familiar with the words ‘quantum entanglement’. Well, my hypothesis is that this Green Mask guy can teleport from one place to another based on the fact he has visited these locations in the past and his body has become quantum entangled with the molecules and atoms unique to those locations.”

  “That’s crazy!” called a white-haired man sitting on the front row.

  Anderson pointed at the man. “Now Steinman there is the first person to state the obvious. But floating in midair and teleporting from one place to another is also crazy. Or was, until we all saw it happen. Here’s why I think quantum entanglement, rather than the ‘magic’ explanation given by the man during his Gateway rescue, is the best answer for how he can do what he clearly is doing.”

  Janet listened for the next ten minutes as the man gave a professorial lecture on quantum mechanics, how everything vibrates in a certain way, and how quantum entanglement has been demonstrated at the subatomic level. She stifled a yawn. Around her the rest of the audience was leaning forward, clearly fascinated by what the man said. While it was very different than the Sunday sermons she’d listened to at the Methodist church attended by her parents, it was just as boring. Anderson’s presentation slowed, then stopped as he took a drink of water.

  “Anderson!” growled the white-haired man on the front row, someone whose name was Steinman. “That’s all physics stuff. Loaded with probabilities. What is the cause and source of this man’s abilities?”

  The speaker smiled. “Ah, that’s the biology part of this talk.” He pointed his control at the computer and a new image of the double helix ribbon of a DNA molecule took shape on the screen. “In short, I propose—” Loud chuckles from several people in the audience stopped him. He pointed a finger at the audience and shook it. “Hey, laugh at me if you want. But my monologue was shorter than Steinman’s last paper that he submitted to Physical Review Letters!” The man blinked, then resumed his professor manner. “Really, there is a biology answer to Green Mask. I submit the man is a mutant. Or to be more exact, he possesses a genetic sequence that is very rarely seen among most humans. That DNA sequence allows his mind to latch onto the quantum entanglement elements that are associated with past locations he has visited, then tell his body to move to a location that matches one set of quantum signatures.”

  Someone in the audience held up a hand. “Yes, yes, I know, you ask how does this explain his fire trick. Well, being close to a fireplace or a campground firepit would imprint that fire’s quantum signature onto him. His unique genetic code allows him to draw from that fire location the actual flames themselves and make them appear to float in air. Clearly the flame ball has to include some reactive elements, like hydrogen, in order for the flame to oxidize it using the oxygen in the air that surrounds the flame ball. But it could work that way!”

  Janet thought the mutant DNA idea was as good an explanation for how Green Mask could do what he did as anything else she had heard today. It certainly made more sense to her than this ‘quantum entanglement’ stuff. Or the materializing campfire idea. She kept quiet as Anderson reached the end of his talk and invited questions from the audience.

  Most of what she heard others say was similar to what Steinman had asked. One woman who held a Ph.D. in molecular biology asked just what the DNA signature of Green Mask might look like, as in which parts of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes might contain the genes unique to the man’s mind powers. Janet understood that the genes in chromosomes determined a person’s hair color, blood type, gender, weight, special abilities like being a math wizard, and they also held genetic errors that produced inherited diseases. It was clear the woman was focused on what she called “chromosomal abnormalities” that Green Mask might possess.

  “Doctor Ludeki, you have made some valid points,” Anderson told the woman. “Let’s hope someone obtains a DNA sample from Green Mask. That would allow researchers like yourself to examine his DNA for such signature abnormalities.” The man looked toward Janet’s side of the room. He pointed to the Dutch woman sitting beside Janet. “Yes, Heloise, you have a question?”

  Janet ignored the woman’s energetic questioning and thought about the point Anderson had made. The agency did possess several hairs with roots that had yielded the man’s exact and unique genetic profile. She understood that to mean they had a record of certain ‘marker genes’ across multiple chromosomes that served to create his unique identity. Realizing that made her wish she had somehow grabbed Webster’s hairbrush or something from his bathroom that would contain his cells, like a toothbrush. Or a bandaid with his blood on it. Well, the past was the past. But maybe she could grab something from his apartment the next time she visited him. And there would be a next time. The red hair dyed black, when coupled with his employment history and other physical data, plus his travel history, made visiting Webster her priority for Monday. If Webster really was Green Mask, that would explain his many personal quirks, like not dating anyone and not seeking a better job at a big corporation. It might also explain why the man had been so controlled during her visit with him. He knew she was an FBI agent and so he would be extra careful around her.

  The thought left her wondering if, while Webster worked his Monday shift at REI, she might visit his apartment. She could use her lock picker to get into the place, and then comb the site for stuff that would contain physical remains. Like hair in a hair brush or gum cells in a toothbrush or a discarded bandaid with blood on it. She knew there was no chance of grabbing a used glass with his fingerprints and skin oils on it. Her glance at his kitchen had shown him to be a spotless housekeeper. Still, getting into his place while he was at work seemed like a good bet.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Andrew sat in his seventh floor office wondering why he had come in on a Sunday afternoon. Late afternoon, actually. He could have stayed at home with his wife and watched NFL football on his giant flatscreen. Martha was very understanding of his addiction to football. Coming from Houston, footba
ll was in her blood. As it was in the blood of her aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces who lived in Houston.

  Still, he was here. Maybe he’d come in to think about the events of Saturday and the appearance of Green Mask to rescue the Eiffel Tower hostages. Richardson and Jackson had sent him an email late last night with the preliminary results of the interrogation of the three surviving jihadists. The French had been very forceful in their questioning. Jackson said their Paris agents had said nothing about the obvious bruises on the faces of the three men, who had been kept separate and subjected to interrogation by teams of GIGN officers who knew their stuff. Statements made by the jihadists, plus the records of calls on their cell phones, along with two computers found at the apartment block they’d lived in on the city’s north side, had confirmed the four were acting on orders from an Islamic State handler based in Raqqa. The email IPs suggested their handler was the same guy who’d directed the St. Louis and New York attacks. One of the four had been in regular email contact with Omar Alkoury from St. Louis. That matched the email trail they had found among the covert jihadists in San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, New Orleans and Houston. The only crew not yet rounded up were the six based in Houston. That bothered him.

  His iPhone buzzed. He pulled it out of his coat and put it on the desk in front of him. Touching the phone app, what he saw woke him up. It was Richardson calling from the SIOC room.

  “Deputy director, terrorists have hit the University of Houston,” Richardson said as, behind him, empty desks began filling up with agents and computers were activated. “The six jihadists attacked the TDECU stadium during halftime. They’ve taken hostage the entire marching band that filled the stadium field. The six fired automatic rifles at the stands on either side of the field. At least twenty are dead, scores more wounded. But most of the 40,000 people attending the Cougars game escaped out to the parking lots. Our Houston field office has dispatched a team to the stadium. What are your orders?”