“Thank you, I will sir.”
As Joey got up to leave, the president added, “Joey, I had coffee with Agent Burrell the other day.”
“Yes, I know sir. That was an extraordinary honor.”
“Well, I have to tell you I was surprised, but she’s earned her way!”
“Yes, sir.” Joey left having no idea what President Mitchell was talking about.
∞§∞
Brooke had left messages for Joey in the office as well as on his cell phone, but Joey didn’t get around to them until he sat at his desk. He knew she was on a few days leave, so her call couldn’t have been work-related. He sat and read the classified “Report of the Science Advisor to the President on the Safety Issue Concerning Advanced Nuclear Research.” The six-page report impacted Joey to his core. In it Bill advised the president that there were not enough safeguards and not enough preventive science known to recommend furthering the experiments at this time. That, added to the fact that the president had told Joey he personally sent Professor Landau to meet Bill at Camp David in one last-ditch effort for him to convince Bill. Even still, Landau failed to change Bill’s negative report to the president.
All Joey could say when he finished the report was, “Son of a bitch!” He sat fingering the edges of the top-secret folder, wondering what in the world he would now say to his boss, his friend, his benefactor. His phone rang and interrupted the ‘mea culpa’ that was forming. “Palumbo, here. Brooke! Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. Sure, come in now.”
Brooke walked the fifty feet from Cheryl’s office, where she had been archiving her files, into Joey’s office. “Hi.”
“First off, I can’t tell you how great it was to watch you get your medal. I am only sorry I couldn’t be here to shake your hand, so let’s remedy that right now.” Joey stood and extended his hand.
Brooke self-consciously took his hand and shook it. “Well, thank you for your faith in me, and for allowing me to serve you, Bill, and my country.”
“You get a salary for the service, but you got the medal for exemplary action in the face of overwhelming odds. You should save that statement of humility for the future, when they give you the gold watch.”
“Well…”
Joey caught the different look in Brooke’s eyes. Then the words of Cheryl and the president echoed in his head. He changed his demeanor and casually said, “Hey, you know me and the president, we were just kicking back and chewing the fat, you know just like we always do, and he mentioned something, and you know, my mother having not raised no dummy, I knew that the key to longevity in the White House was not to say to the leader of the free world, ‘Hey pal, I don’t know what the hell you are talking about.’ So why don’t you tell me the good news that the president and everyone else around here seems to know already.”
“Joey, I have been trying to reach you; I decided to take the package.”
Joey was shocked. “Why?”
“Its… it’s just time, that’s all.”
He thought she was going to blurt out that she was pregnant or getting married. He found himself oddly angry. “You are going to dump your career now, for no reason, when you are having corn flakes with the president?”
“I know it doesn’t seem to make sense, but Joey, like I told Bill, the events of the last few months have really started me thinking. I don’t know, maybe it’s also evolution catching up with me, but I don’t want it any more. I don’t want to be blown off boats or exploding tanker trucks or become shark appetizer or have to make believe a master terrorist doesn’t scare the shit out of me while I am working him for information. I am done with the risk, the uncertainty, and the denial of what everyone else takes for granted.”
Joey softened, “Those are good reasons. But why wouldn’t you consider a leave or sabbatical? Take some time to get your life where you want it and then come back?”
Brooke looked at Joey; she genuinely respected and cared for him. She owed her rise in the Federal Boys Club of Investigation to his guidance and his taking her under his wing. What he was now asking her to do was exactly what he had done. That might work for him, but she was sure it wasn’t a life plan for her. Yet she didn’t want to attack his choices, so instead she said, “Joey, whatever it was that made me love the job, it’s gone! It’s not like something else is gnawing at me, something I need to take care of and I’ll be right back. No, it’s not that. I just don’t have the edge anymore or the desire to keep doing this. I want a shot at a normal life. I want to be less of a great guy, and more a happy woman. Can you understand this isn’t a phase thing or a whim?”
Joey sighed, “You got me on the happy woman thing; of course you deserve every chance to be happy. You have proven yourself, and the medal the Veep presented you with attests to the fact that you have paid back the Bureau and the U.S. for your training, and we got the better part of that deal. When are you leaving, Brooke?”
“Thanks for hearing me out. I owe you the most. You have become more than just a superior officer in my life. I always want to be able to call you and shoot the shit.”
“Sounds like a college break-up.”
“In many ways, my relationship with you is one of the longest I’ve ever had. You see now what a pathetic love life I’ve had?”
“Thank you, I think. So when are you leaving?”
“The only thing stopping me was talking to you first.”
“Well, I appreciate that consideration. Do we at least get to throw you one hell of a retirement bash?”
Brooke then let all caution go to the wind and did something she would have never considered in the past. She opened her arms and hugged Joey.
∞§∞
Bill took over the embassy office that had once been Joey’s. A cadre of embassy staff flittered and fluttered in a hubbub of activity that transformed the mid-level diplomatic utility office into that of a cabinet-level official who also had NCA nuclear ranking. It took thirty minutes for Bill to be alone in his new, upgraded office.
The chilling warning from Parnell about the second plot to destroy CERN had no corroboration from any police or intelligence agency in the world. Was Parnell a paranoid or the sharp end of the stick for a group of paranoids, or was he the lone voice yelling about certain Armageddon? Bill could understand the scientific aspect of his allegations, but all the police stuff boggled his mind. He felt like an English lit major dutifully trudging through advanced calculus; he could get the hard facts by rote to pass the test, but he couldn’t see the harmonic connections of the bigger picture needed to apply it in the real world. More precisely, should he now commit the considerable resources of the United States of America to alert the world to the threat the of some unknown group against the biggest science endeavor in the history of mankind, on the word of an agent of the Vatican? He looked down at his jotted notes and mind-mapping-style collection of facts that were his way to organize multi-layered problems before him. The more he looked at the cloud of facts on his sideways legal pad, ‘Engineer’, ‘Architect’, CERN, Maguambi, U.N., Vatican, Interpol, Dupré, and twenty other words, the more he thought of Joey. He would see this with a cop’s eye. See the hidden connections and formulate a practical investigation into this whole murky plot.
The intercom beeped, “Dr. Hiccock, Agent Palumbo on line one.”
“Joey, I was just thinking about you. I was…”
“Bill, let me talk.”
“Okay…”
“I owe you an apology. Mitchell kind of interceded and proved to me what a knucklehead I have been. I should have never doubted you and I said some things I wish I hadn’t. So, there. I think you were right to put me on the beach. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say, ’cept, be careful there in Paris and lean on Dupré if you need anything. He’s a good cop.”
A wave of relief washed over Bill. The rift between him and Joey had been unwanted and unnecessary baggage he’d been lugging around these last couple days.
“Joey, thanks for that. I was
a little pig headed in all this myself. I should have brought you in, but Mitchell was the only one who could clear you for this. I am glad he did.”
The moment hung. Bill broke the tie, “So, ready to get back here? I got a whole lot of new stuff that has just come up for you to drill down into. I’ll post it on your SCIAD.”
“I got to pick up some corn and mushrooms, then I’ll be right over.”
“Good, cause you know, international crime fighting and thwarting major terrorist plots should never trump going to the market. And tell Phyl you are leaving ’cause of me.”
“On the next plane out, boss.”
∞§∞
Raffael spent two nights modifying the roulette program on the simulator operating system that he retooled on his home computer. He was about one hundred iterations in when he finally hit the right combination of sensory input and target correlation. He ran it ten more times to make sure he continued to get the same result. He saved the code he had created by compiling it into a file he could load into the system at the LHC. For the first time since the nightmare began, he breathed easier and got six hours of uninterrupted sleep that night. He was ready.
∞§∞
Bill couldn’t sleep a wink; his head was spinning with details and scenarios. Parnell Sicard kept coming back as a lynch pin to everything he had learned and was still discovering. He got out of bed and went to the desk in his room and dialed the number he had memorized but never written down.
“Clay, sorry to wake you. I need your opinion on something.”
“Hold it, let me take this downstairs.”
Bill sat at his desk making circles on his mind-map chart, imagining the super spook treading down the stairs in his PJs and slippers, maybe stubbing his toe on the coffee table as he fumbled for the light switch in the dark.
On cue, Bill heard over Clay’s cell phone, “Ow! Damn it!”
“You okay?”
“Damn hassock in the middle of the floor.”
Bill tried not to laugh too much.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Clay, I think Percy, er Parnell could be valuable.”
“You want to play him? Or bring him in?”
“I think bring him in.”
“And you want to know from me if you can trust him?”
“If your crystal ball reaches this far.”
Clay sighed the sigh of a man who has just sat down in a big reclining chair. “Well, he is former CIA, so he took an oath once. Of course, you have to be okay with the notion he will probably be playing for his team while he’s on your roster.”
“I don’t think that’s an issue. Both teams, it seems, are trying to stop something that could only be the work of a madman.”
“Even so, could you shield your sensitive materials from him? Minimize the exposure?”
“Well, that’s the thing of it. I’ve gone over this a hundred times and there is no national security issue here. This is a universal threat. Literally. It supersedes political boundaries.”
“Sounds like you already have your answer.”
“But tell me, am I being too much the scientist and not enough of a suspicious mission runner?”
“If there is no nat sec vulnerability and you are purely on a quest to identify, isolate, and eliminate a threat, then I say the more the merrier.”
“So I should bring him on?”
“You saw his file; he is a first-class operator, good trade craft, and he’s gotten you this far. Yeah, I say, put away all your classified materials, lock ’em in your drawer, and let him in on the mission.”
“How’s the toe?”
“Good night, Doctor. You did good as a spymaster.”
Bill smiled and then called Joey to tell him about his decision.
XXII. OFFENSIVE HUDDLE
Joey landed in Paris at 11 p.m and went straight to the Embassy’s secure conference area. Upon entering, he went right to Sicard. “Percy, excuse me, Parnell, glad you’ve decided to join the team. Let’s start off again.” Joey extended his hand.
Parnell shook his hand; “In the face of a common enemy…” and said nothing more. Joey then acknowledged everyone else. “Inspector Dupré, Marilou, Yardley. Hi ya, Bill.”
“Good to have you back, Joey.”
“Good to be back, boss. What do we got?”
Everyone took a seat and Bill started. “The big news is that Parnell is on the trail of a new, unknown group, possibly radical extremists or a new breed of black-holers, who have abandoned their primary plot of destroying the Hadron collider, but may still be looking to do this another way. Perc — Parnell was on the trail but it went cold. That’s where you come in Joey. I, and more importantly, the president, have made you lead law enforcement officer on this.”
“Good. Thank you, Bill. Parnell, would you help me try to pick up the trail again?”
“I would think under the circumstances I really have no choice.”
“Come on, show me some love; we didn’t burn you to the Vatican.”
“And now you want me to be a double agent?”
“No. I want you to work for and be loyal to us and only us. Can you do that?” Bill said.
“You have my word, but only till this is resolved.”
“In the face of a common enemy, Parnell,” Bill said, then added, “The Inspector and the rest of us here in the Embassy will serve as command and control and communications.” Bill then established some pecking order and signed a waiver for Parnell to work under Joey at this high a level of national security.
The others left the room, and just Joey and Parnell were with Bill. “Joey, how do you want to start?”
“Parnell, where were you headed to when you skipped out on us in D.C.?”
“I got a message that the ‘Architect’ was on the continent. I met with my contact in London and he said either Paris or Geneva, so I took the next flight out.”
“To Paris, so what happened?” Joey said.
“I found that Paris was a dead end and I was leaving for Switzerland when Dr. Hiccock and the good inspector interdicted me.”
“Why Geneva?” Bill jumped in.
“Besides the obvious since that’s where the Hadron is, my British contact had some electronic intel that pointed to Geneva,” Parnell said.
“Well then, that’s where we start, Bill. Geneva,” Joey said.
∞§∞
The first thing she did was open the windows and let the slightly less stagnant New York City night air in. She hadn’t been in her apartment for three months. She sat at her kitchen table and leafed through the pile of mail that the widow McGinty on the first floor was nice enough to collect and hold whenever she was away. Ads, flyers, and postcards from every business in the world targeting females, from spas to bottles of skin lotions, diet doctors, and clothes catalogs. Instant junk, she thought.
She put aside the letter from the FBI agent’s association. It was a testimony to the fact that her status had changed from ‘active’ to ‘retired.’ She was too young to be a retired person. Her dad and her uncles were all in their 60s and 70s and only one of her uncles was retired. Although in his case it was at full pension. Since Brooke dropped out of her own volition, her benefits would be based on half of her pay. Though still pretty good, it wasn’t enough to live on in New York or Hawaii. Not the way she wanted to live.
Then she found a letter with a Hawaii postmark. The return address was Naval Station Pearl Harbor, HI. Her heart raced as she looked at it. He must have mailed it right before he shoved off. Slowly she slid her finger under the flap, as if it were some prized relic. Inside she found a three-page, handwritten letter. Her heart dropped when she read the first line: “Brooke, I hesitated to write this letter.” She put it down as a cold chill suddenly crystallized on her skin. She took a deep breath and looked around the room. On the mantle over the old fireplace, its one-hundred-year old chimney long since bricked over when the brownstone was divided into ‘modern’ apartments back in th
e late 40s, was her brother Harley’s picture. Although she’d had it for years, it suddenly looked back at her in a questioning expression she had never noticed before. “I love him, Har; for the first time in my life I took the plunge.” The picture remained unmoved. “Did I jump the gun?” She looked over at the letter and her eyes caught the word love somewhere in the middle. She took one long look at Harley’s photo and then reached over, took the letter and plopped down on the old Barcalounger her dad lugged all the way to her apartment when she first moved in. The worn arms were covered with her mom’s crocheted doilies. Even though it was nearly as old as she was, she had welcomed it into her new apartment. She felt warm and at home nestling in it with a good book on long cold nights. She now snuggled up with her feet on the footrest and started to read.
Her mood changed as Mush’s explanation for not wanting to send the letter was because he wanted to say these things in person to her. As she read more, she calmed down some. He wrote of the dilemma he was in. How unfair it was for his love for her — love for me, she thought as she beamed — to be couched as a devil’s choice between his duty and his heart. How by the time most commanders had earned his grade of responsibility, they were married and more settled. In fact, the only slightly negative notation on his fit-for-duty report was that his status was marked as ‘single.’ “I guess the Navy was afraid I could be distracted by someone like you :).” She liked his hand drawing of the smiley face. He went on to wonder about her side, if she was facing the same uncomfortable choice. He hoped it was easier for her, because if she decided to spend the rest of her life with him, it might not preclude her job in Washington; that he could probably pull some strings (for the first time in his career) and get re-assigned to the Pentagon. When she finished reading she felt both better and worse. She reread the last few words, ‘I don’t know how I’ll make it through the rest of my patrol. I want things to work out for us more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life, except wishing you were here right now.’
The God Particle Page 26
