“Not as many as you would hope, but there are some,” Evan said. “You’ve met one of them.”
“Who?” Melina asked.
“Angela,” Evan said. “She used to be an agent until she retired a few years ago.”
“That would explain a lot,” Melina muttered to herself.
Evan continued. “She was the first woman ever hired by my group. I remember the day she was hired. It was the day I met your mom.”
That’s right, her mom. If her dad worked for this agency and he met her mom there, then her mom must have worked there, as well.
“So Mom worked for this agency too?” Melina asked.
Evan laughed, “Not as an agent, of course. She worked in another part of the agency.”
“Okay, so tell me the story about how you met,” Melina said.
Melina had just heard this story from Angela, but she was dying to get her dad’s take on that day.
“It’s a little embarrassing,” he said. “Mom hasn’t told you this story?”
“No, she hasn’t. Anyway, I’d like to hear it from you,” she said.
“Okay,” Evan said. “I had been with the agency just a couple of months, and I had been on just a few minor operations so far, but I felt quite sure of myself. The field agents are at of the top of the pecking order at the agency, so you get a little cocky. On the day that I met your mom, I decided to go to the cafeteria with a few of the guys from my department. I no sooner sat down at a table, and I saw the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was wearing a white sweater, had long brown hair, and the biggest brown eyes. I sat there with my mouth agape just staring at her.”
“That’s kinda creepy,” Melina said, smiling.
“Fortunately for me, she was sitting with Angela. It was her first day in my department, so I had been introduced to her earlier. Angela saw that I was peering over at her and Mom, and she waved at me. Cocky as I was, I took that to suggest that I should come over there. ”
“Dad, sometimes a wave is just a wave,” Melina said. This time giggling.
“Yeah, I found that out when I went over to their table. I said hello to Angela and then I turned to Mom and in my suavest voice asked, to this day, the stupidest question that I have ever asked. I said ‘Are you the new secretary?’”
Melina gasped and then let out a large laugh. “That could not have gone over well!”
“You could say that. Those beautiful brown eyes vanished into a nasty squint, and Angela let out a small gasp. I didn’t understand what was going on until Angela introduced Mom as one of the agency’s new scientists. I was devastated. I fancied myself as being a fairly progressive guy, and had no problem with women doing any job. But I had heard that there was a new secretary, and I just assumed that it was Mom because she was a woman. I felt ashamed. After that, I just walked away. That’s the story. Do you understand why I did not want to talk about it?”
“Obviously it didn’t end there,” Melina said. “How did you two finally get together?”
“About a month after that lunch I was walking down the hallway by my office, and I almost ran into Mom as I went around a corner. I was a little flustered, but your mom was composed. I had not spoken to her at all since that first meeting. She asked me if I wanted to have lunch sometime. I was dumbfounded. After what I had said, she still wanted to have lunch with me. To this day, I don’t know what happened to change her mind about me.”
Melina knew the truth. Angela had told her. About how her dad had been a supporter of hers within his department. How that made her mom see him in a different light. For some reason, Melina’s mom had kept this from him. She was not going to spoil it.
Melina put her arm around her dad. “You miss her, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do kiddo. Your mom is a part of me.”
Evan sat there in silence, looking straight ahead. Melina left it at that.
“Do you know that, beginning with that first lunch, we made it a point to have lunch together at least once a week?” Evan said.
“That must have been hard to accomplish when Mom quit working for the agency,” Melina said.
Evan looked over at Melina. “Melina, as long as I am coming clean about my work, I should probably tell you the whole truth.”
Melina looked puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“Your mom never quit working for the agency.”
Chapter 9
“What do you mean Mom never quit working for the agency?” Melina said, clearly agitated. “She stopped working after Travis was born. She told me that herself.”
“I know,” Evan said. “That is what we both told you. And certainly, that was our plan. It didn’t quite work out that way.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
Evan sat down on the floor, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I haven’t thought about this in years.”
He looked over at Melina and continued. “The story goes back to the beginning of our relationship. When I first met your mom, she was fresh out of school. She had a Master’s degree in Applied Physics, and her entire career was still ahead of her. And your mom really loved what she was doing. I have never met anyone who enjoyed his or her job as much as she did. You could not drag her away at the end of the day. I had to marry your mom just so I could spend some time with her.”
“I can picture that,” Melina said, laughing at the thought. “When she helps us with our homework, we work on it straight through without a break.”
“That’s your mom,” Evan said. “Seven years later, several years after we were married, we decided to start a family. After a few months, she became pregnant with you. But, once the word got out at work that your mom was pregnant, people began to ask whether she was going to quit work and stay home. As much as things had progressed for women up to that point, they were still routinely asked whether they were going to give up their careers when they had kids.”
“That is so not fair,” Melina said.
Evan continued. “You’re right. But at least it wasn’t like the dark ages when they weren’t even asked. When it was just expected that women would stay home.”
“Like Grandma Roberts,” Melina said.
“That’s right. When I was young, my mom gave up a successful career as an accountant to stay home with my sister and me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved having my mom there when I got home from school. I was able to tell her what had happened in my day while it was fresh in my mind. But I always wondered whether she quit working because she wanted to or because she was expected to. I was not going to let that happen to your mom. When we decided to have kids, I let her know that I was behind her whatever she decided.”
“So she decided to continue working?”
“Yes. She had decided before she was pregnant with you that she would continue to work after you were born. There was not even any discussion. She had no second thoughts. Your mom was a career woman, and she got mad when people asked her if she was going to stay home. She was even more annoyed that nobody asked me whether I was going to stay home.”
Melina laughed. “I totally cannot picture you as a stay-at-home dad.”
“That’s true,” Evan said. “Your mom couldn’t either.”
“Okay, so Mom went back to work. But I’m confused. As long as I can remember, Mom has dropped us off at school and picked us up after school. That’s obviously not a regular workday.”
“That’s right, but there is more to the story. Something changed in Mom after you were born. Little by little, her attitude toward what it meant to work and what it meant to be a mom changed. One day, she stayed home with you because you were sick. Some sort of intestinal flu. In the evening, after she had changed your diaper for about the fiftieth time that day, I made a joke about her quitting work and staying home. I was shocked when she said that it was no joke. That she could imagine herself doing it.”
Melina shook her head. “I don’t know why that would be such a shock.”
“No
w fast forward a few years later, just after Travis was born. I was sitting on the couch in the living room watching a football game. She walked in, stood in front of the television with her arms folded and said ‘I’m going to quit work and stay home with the kids’.”
“What made Mom suddenly come to that decision?” Melina asked.
“I don’t know. We talked about it all evening, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was driving her. But I do know that it was a very difficult decision for your mom. She had worked hard for many years on her career, and she was just going to walk away from it. You and your brother matter that much to her. I told her right then that I supported her decision without question.”
“How is it that she didn’t she end up quitting?” Melina asked.
“The day after she told her boss at the agency that she was quitting she was called to Washington to meet with the President. President Walker was in office at that time. He pleaded with your mom to reconsider her decision. He told her that he considered her work to be too valuable to national security to halt.”
“Mom’s work was important to national security?” Melina asked.
“He was being a little dramatic, but he was on to something. Your mom had been working on something of extreme significance to the agency,” Evan said.
“Mom said that she worked in the fiber optics lab,” Melina said. “How important can that be?”
“That’s not quite what she was working on,” Evan said. “You see, your mom worked for the agency in what is known as the tools group,” Evan said.
“Tools? You mean like hammers?”
Evan laughed. “No. Not those kinds of tools. They call the group the tools group because they provide all of the tools and gadgets that a field agent needs to do their job. Fancy weapons. Special chemicals. Exotic forms of transportation. Whatever an agent needs for a mission, the tools group either buys it or makes it on the spot.”
“So what was Mom working on that was so important?”
“Your mom has a Master’s degree in Applied Physics. That means pretty much what it sounds like. She specialized in the application of physics to a given problem. Her specialty from the time that she was in graduate school was Nuclear Nanotechnology.
“Nanotechnology?” Melina said. “Isn’t that the building of miniature machines?”
“That’s right. Her Master’s thesis was on the miniaturization of nuclear machines. Small, nuclear powered machines that would fit in the palm of your hand. That is why the agency hired her. To continue that work.”
“That is interesting, but how is that so important?” Melina asked.
“Energy,” Evan said. “Or, to be more specific, electrical energy. Everything an agent uses runs on electricity. On a typical mission, a field agent is placed into a remote area of a target country, far from any civilization. Anything that they need, they have to be able to carry. Food. Shelter. A sleeping bag. But the nature of the work requires that they also bring with them many devices that consume energy. Radios, remote sensors and computers as well as things just to help keep them warm. All of that requires power. A significant amount of the weight that must be carried by an agent is either batteries or solar power chargers.”
“I still don’t see how Mom’s work relates to this,” Melina said.
“In your mom’s Master’s thesis, she presented a groundbreaking design for a miniature nuclear power generator, but it was so small that it could not be built with the existing technology. The agency was so convinced of the viability of her research that they gave her a lab and some funding to work it out. For several years, she struggled with the sheer physics of building something that was that small and that powerful. Then, right around the time that you were born, your mom made a monumental breakthrough. She found that if she used the same techniques to build her machine that integrated circuit manufacturers use to make chips, she could build it.”
“I don’t understand,” Melina said. “Her machine was a chip?”
“Not quite,” Evan said. “She just used the chip building process. You see, chips are made in layers by depositing materials on top of each other in stages. Some layers are metal and form the connections, and some layers are the silicon material. There are also some layers that are the insulating material. Once each layer is laid down, the next layer is put on top of it until you have a multilayer chip. Some chips have dozens of layers.”
“You mean, like a cake?” Melina asked.
“I guess you could think of it like that,” Evan said. “But your mom’s cake was thousands of layers thick. She built all of the intricate workings of the machine one layer at a time until there was a three dimensional structure. And when it was finished, she had built a nuclear power plant that was about the size of a deck of cards. And that little unit could provide enough electricity to power all of the equipment that an agent needed to bring. Everything. Using this new energy source resulted in a dramatic reduction in the weight that agents had to carry. This allowed the agents to bring a greater quantity of the other useful essentials such as extra food for longer missions or additional sensors for more complex missions.”
“But if she had already made the device that was so revolutionary, why didn’t they want her to leave?” Melina asked.
“Mom’s boss had the foresight to see that her miniature power source was just the beginning,” Evan said. “He felt that her miniaturization technology could be refined and applied to other areas within the tools group, and he pushed for additional money in the budget. He wanted to create an independent nuclear division within the tools group that developed new gadgets based on the technology. The President agreed, but his support was dependent on Mom not leaving.”
“So, is that why she stayed?” Melina asked.
“That’s why she stayed. She wanted to see the nuclear lab be built and see her research continued. But she would only agree to stay if they would allow her to work at home, and just come into the office when necessary.”
“How could Mom work at home?” Melina asked. “She just has that tiny little office downstairs with that old computer in it.”
Evan laughed. “You’d be surprised to know how much work Mom could do at home. And she loved the new arrangement. It was the best of both worlds. She could keep her career and stay at home.”
“Good for her,” Melina said.
“It was advantageous for the agency too. She went on to develop an altogether new set of gadgets for the agents in the field to use. The compactness of the new energy source allowed her to create things that were not possible before. For instance, she paired an even smaller version of the power source with a tiny electric motor, and that became the core of a new surveillance drone. Since the weight of the power source was minuscule, the drone could be made the size of a small bird. This made it small enough to fit into a backpack and allowed the field agents to be able to carry several of them with them. They could launch the drone themselves to investigate areas that were too dangerous for them to go. And the drone could go for hours on end. All day if necessary. I’ve used that drone myself many times.”
Evan paused for a moment and stood up. He thought he heard something, so he tilted his head up slightly and listened all around him.
Hearing nothing, he continued. “Your mom is one smart lady. The smartest person I know. Her boss was right. She turned out to be extremely beneficial to the agency.”
“He sounds like a great boss,” Melina said.
“I guess,” Evan said as he chuckled to himself. “If you like being kidnapped and locked in a room.”
“What do you mean?” Melina asked.
“The man that you met earlier, William Mason, was her boss.”
“The man who has kidnapped us and locked us in this room is… was Mom’s boss?” Melina asked. “Oh man, here I thought that-”
Melina paused as she saw her dad stop listening to her and begin walking toward the door. He got halfway there, and then he looked up at the ceiling.
“Do you hear that?” he asked.
“That dull rumble coming from the ceiling?” Melina answered.
“Yes. It’s footsteps. It has the same sound as the last time we had visitors. Stand up and get over against that far wall.”
“Daddy, let me help you this time.”
“Don’t worry. I am not going to try anything when they get here. They are ready for it. Besides, I don’t think that they are coming to get us. It is not time to go.”
The noise got louder in the ceiling until it became clear that there were two sets of footsteps coming down the hall. Evan stood in front of the door but outside the door swing radius. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure that Melina was still against the wall. He looked back at the door just as the deadbolt turned. The door flung open as if the person opening it had expected strong resistance. From the shadows, the doorway was filled with a large man carrying the lifeless body of a man over his shoulder. Behind him, there was a smaller, nervous-looking man leaning against the far wall of the hallway. The small man was in a semi-crouch as he trained a large handgun into the room. Evan smiled as he spotted the crouching man. He mused that the man must have learned that crouch-and-aim position from some late-night cop show on television.
Evan’s gaze returned to the large man carrying the body as he entered the room.
“I brought you some company,” the large man said in a snarled tone.
The words echoed in the room as the man chuckled at his own comments. Evan said nothing and stood motionless with his arms crossed. There was an awkward silence before the large man looked over toward the nervous man to ensure that he was still being covered. As he turned back around, he kept an eye on Evan as he bent over and deposited the body into a heap face down onto the floor. Evan looked down as the body settled. It remained motionless, and Evan wondered whether the person was still alive. His question was answered after a few moments when the person let out a loud snort.
“He shouldn’t be out long,” the large man said as he slowly backed out of the room, still maintaining direct eye contact with Evan.
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