Project Reunion

by Ginger Booth

  “You didn’t kill any?” Margolis didn’t like that.

  I recalled Margolis’ contributions to the land use debate. They’d screamed out ‘control freak’ to me.

  “Pre-trial, Ash,” Emmett reiterated. “They hadn’t been convicted yet. A couple juries offered death by oxycontin overdose. The judges allowed it. There was this one case –”

  As salads arrived and we settled down to eat, Emmett related the goofy local jury trial that kept us entertained last January, before I’d met Emmett. The jurors insisted they needed to study the house where the husband had putatively attacked his wife. This mansion was on an island, so boats were dispatched to reunite the principals to re-enact their roles of the night in question. The judge kept calling Emmett to decide whether all this silliness was allowed. Emmett kept saying, ‘You’re the judge. You decide.’ Eventually, the jury determined that the wife had falsely accused the husband, and set the whole thing up to steal his money. The jury verdict was divorce, and they offered the wife the opportunity to suicide, in exchange for everyone lying to the kids that Mommy had gone away. And she’d taken the oxycontin.

  I was impressed. Emmett was hardly a chatterbox, and he managed to dominate the conversation long enough for Amenac to report back. Though I was ready to step in and prattle if his energy lagged.

  “Dang it,” Emmett said, ostentatiously pulling out his phone to read it. He openly angled it for me to read: ‘Tracking complete, PA. Shut it down. SUX2NT.’ “You know, I think we should all shut these down, and go offline for the rest of dinner. Don’t you agree, Ivan?” He held out his hand across the table, with a fey grin.

  “Is that your cell phone, Ivan?” I asked pointedly, as I stretched my hand out across the table, too.

  He hadn’t produced the cell phone yet. I playfully put a finger to my lips to urge silence. “I’ve always wanted to look at one of those. May I?”

  General Ivan Link frowned at Emmett. But he slowly drew out his phone, as everyone else plonked theirs out on the table. “No holdouts now, Ivan!” Niedermeyer pressed. His voice was cheerful. His narrowed eyes were not.

  “Oh, it’s so pretty,” I prattled, as I took his golden chassis phone. Emmett seeded a general babble of how we’d all become slaves to the damned devices, as I inspected the phone’s running processes. General Link looked alarmed, and almost said something – no doubt there was classified stuff on the thing. Hoffman and Margolis, flanking him at the table, both grabbed his biceps, and pointedly insisted he join the conversation deploring the use of cell phones at meals.

  I left the malware SUX2NT process running, and dropped the phone into my wine goblet. I sloshed it thoroughly and dunked it on both ends. “Oh! I am so sorry, Ivan!” I told him. “I owe you a new phone.”

  “Tibbs?” Emmett called the Marine over. “Could you please store these phones in the kitchen for us?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Tibbs assured him. “I’ll clean this one up.”

  “Oh, don’t trouble yourself,” I suggested. “I broke it, I’ll fix it.”

  “No trouble at all, Ms. Baker,” he said, blinking his eyelids slowly.

  Rats. Tibbs wasn’t going to let me take the general’s phone home for an autopsy.

  Emmett rose and circled the dining room, with his sniffer out. “Clear,” he reported, as he resumed his seat. He’d kept his own phone and sniffer. No one argued with him.

  “No cyber warfare capability, eh, Dee?” Hoffman teased.

  “Well, I think of warfare as offense,” I said, in defense of my denial earlier today.

  Emmett snorted his wine beside me. “Uh-huh. Darlin’....”

  “Dis-ingenuousness comes in handy sometimes, Emmett,” I offered. Adam laughed.

  Emmett explained to the table. “Ivan was clean all day. We all were. I left Ivan at the Academy around 6:15, and by the time we arrived – 7:10? – his phone was transmitting our conversation to a location in Pennsylvania. SUX2NT was the malware program name. Right, Dee?” I nodded.

  Tibbs was back to plonk medium-rare prime rib in front of Link. The general’s fork was still poised over the salad Tibbs relieved him of with the other hand. Tibbs’ steward style was a trifle uncouth. His security style, I rather liked.

  “Time is of the essence, sir,” Tibbs told Link. “Who had access to your phone?”

  “My aide was in my room while I took a shower,” Link supplied. “Possibly the driver? No one else, that I know of.” Tibbs nodded and disappeared.

  Adam and I shared a skeptical look across the table. But Niedermeyer voiced the question. “So, Emmett. You’re sure that Link didn’t do this – why?”

  “I did not do this,” Link asserted. He certainly looked angry and betrayed.

  “No way to know for sure,” Emmett said. “But I believe him. His aide tried too hard to get into the planning room today. The Admiral threatened to throw him into the brig at one point. Did he have access to the naval plans in your room, Ivan?”

  “No. The Admiral secured them,” said Link.

  Emmett shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. That’s too large an operation to remain secret,” he concluded to Niedermeyer. “I think we have privacy for tonight’s conversation, at least.”

  “Would you rather I leave, John?” Ivan Link offered bitterly.

  John Niedermeyer looked like he was seriously considering it. “No, Ivan,” he decided. “I think you’re a Northeast patriot.” The two men held each other’s gaze without flinching. Link nodded once, emphatically.

  “Ivan and I have spoken at length about this,” Niedermeyer continued. “I believe you three Rescos – and you, Dee – are some of the key power brokers in the Northeast.” He met their eyes, and mine. “Have you considered secession?”

  I shrugged uneasily. Margolis and Emmett nodded neutrally. “Pennsylvania...looms large,” Margolis said.

  Hoffman said, “I’m particularly curious about your opinion, Emmett. You did an exceptional job on the plans for New York. Leavenworth?”

  Emmett tensed beside me briefly, then relaxed. “Command school. I finished the ILE, yes,” he agreed.

  He’d mentioned that to me before, that he held a Master’s degree from Leavenworth. I thought it was funny, since I’d only ever heard of Leavenworth as an Army prison. ILE stood for Intermediate Level Education – a peculiar name for a grad school to prepare for brigade-level command. It sounded like a middle school series of graded readers.

  “Yes, I saw that on your record, Emmett,” Link said. “I was interested to see that you graduated from ILE three years ago. You arrived in New Haven two years ago.”

  “I was on classified assignment after ILE,” Emmett agreed. No doubt about it, he was tense now.

  “There’s an interesting rumor,” Hoffman said, continuing the tag-team offense, “that the final SAMS class at Leavenworth game-tested the Calm Act. Even helped write it.”

  “I tried to look up who was in that SAMS class,” Link said. “That information was locked up tight. Possibly expunged. You would have been an ideal candidate, though, Emmett. And your performance with these plans – like a SAMS who’s considered the scenario before.”

  “Sam’s?” I asked Emmett.

  “SAMS stands for School of Advanced Military Studies,” Emmett supplied softly. “Another grad school, post-ILE, at Leavenworth. SAMS go deeper into planning complex operations.”

  “Including cross-service, such as a joint Navy, Marine, Coast Guard, National Guard, and Army operation,” General Link elaborated for me. “Though even a SAMS wouldn’t be able to tackle this one cold. Unless he’d played the scenario before.”

  “I think you’ve been outed, Emmett,” suggested Niedermeyer softly. “What I’d like to know is, who are the other SAMS in the Northeast from that class?”

  Emmett’s eyes flashed bitterly at Niedermeyer’s, but just for an instant. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t been watching Emmett so intently. My stomach was turning sour. I felt like the foundation of my life had been y
anked out from under my feet. And this less than a day after I’d finally admitted I loved him. You wrote the Calm Act?

  “That question is one I will never answer,” Emmett replied to Niedermeyer. “Alright. I’m outed. So be it. It’s more than my life is worth to out the others.”

  Niedermeyer nodded understanding. Was it also relief? Or just the release of tension as Emmett admitted this...SAMS thing? I wondered briefly if SAMS were Army-only, or included other services.

  “Dee...” Emmett turned to me, with a trace of pleading in his eyes. “I didn’t sign up for this. SAMS... It’s like a second grad school. I was honored to be accepted. We were already enrolled when they told us we’d be doing ‘something different this time.’ And we did not write the Calm Act. Well, not most of it.” He sighed. “We did add the section that authorized the resource coordinators.”

  “And the Resco manual that goes with it?” Hoffman inquired. “That was quite a training manual.”

  “Yeah, that too,” Emmett agreed. “We were tasked with, um, play-testing the Calm Act. The Resco materials came out of...play balancing, you might say. Other sections, we recommended changes. We never saw the final version, what Congress approved. Not all of it, ever. Some parts were classified too highly.”

  “You chose the Northeast. You’re not from here,” I accused.

  Emmett shrugged. “Hawaii was popular with the SAMS,” he quipped. “For obvious reasons. Dee, I was originally assigned in Missouri. I never lied to you about that. I came up here to join a friend, and make a difference. It’s the end of the world, you know? Why play it safe, when I could play big.”

  Link framed his question thoughtfully. “Having ‘play-tested’ the Calm Act, Emmett – is relieving New York a good move?”

  “It’s an excellent move,” Emmett replied, without hesitation. “Unify and mobilize a large and viable swath of the U.S., in advance of March. Start reversing the victim mentality created by the culling. Create a feeling of solidarity across the states, that we’re in it together. It puts the Northeast in a strong position to start the next phase. Uniting the regional armed forces is a major plus.”

  “Is that why you’re doing it?” Ivan Link pressed.

  “No,” Emmett sighed. “I believe – I believed all along – that the right thing to do, is the right thing to do. The only good strategy is to play for lives. For quality of life. For a sustainable society. Dee originally suggested that New York deserved a chance, and pointed out – rightly – that Tom Aoyama, my epidemiologist, could lead us to that chance. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it could work.”

  “I don’t understand,” I complained. “What other strategies are there?”

  “Power. Control. Resources,” Emmett said. “Survival. Dee, in the Northeast we’re playing one of the better hands. Large parts of the U.S. don’t have the resources to go it alone. They’ll seek to steal them, and more turf. Better turf, anyway.”

  “Who are the players?” I asked. “These SAMS, like you?”

  “My crop of SAMS are still only middle-grade officers, Dee,” Emmett replied. “And as Ivan pointed out, we don’t even have the SAMS credential on our records, just our abilities. If one of us plays for territory, it would be through someone who already has command of a big chunk of the Army, probably. Like Ivan here, or General Cullen, or Tolliver. It’s possible a SAMS could try to wrest control. But that’s a waste of energy, if he could work through an existing command structure instead. Much easier.”

  “So this massive – game,” I hissed the word, irate. “This begins in March? What exactly does the Calm Act call for, in March?”

  “We don’t know what the final phase of the Calm Act says, in March,” Emmett said. “The United States is over, so far as we could tell. If a powerful enough player wins, the U.S. could be put back together again. But that’s a very ugly scenario. On the bright side, I doubt any of us would live to see it.”

  “So your game, Emmett,” said Link, “is to what, play Cullen or me, to win the Northeast?”

  “It’s not my game,” Emmett said bitterly. “As I said. I’m playing for the lives in New York. Because they’re worth saving. I won’t risk lives in New Haven. Because I care about them.”

  Link sat back and stared at him. I couldn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure I believed Emmett, either. And he certainly hadn’t replied with a ringing ‘I’m behind you, sir!’ team player style endorsement of Link.

  But I didn’t know or care about Link. “How many of you SAMS are there, Emmett?” I asked.

  “Fifty-eight.”

  “Sounds small, for a SAMS class,” Margolis commented.

  “It didn’t turn out to be a SAMS class,” Emmett returned. “They said it was a special intensive. It was certainly intense.”

  “Emmett,” Hoffman asked, “should South Jersey team up with the Northeast?”

  Emmett toyed with his dessert, an apple-oats cobbler. Assorted courses had come and gone with Marine-fisted elegance while we spoke.

  “Pennsylvania is a problem,” Emmett eventually said. “Your position in Jersey is infinitely stronger if we reintegrate New York. But I’m not a crystal ball, Pete. Sorry. You’re at a bit of a crossroads in South Jersey.”

  “You mean battlefield,” Hoffman suggested.

  “My honest advice?” Emmett said. “Play neutral. Treat your people well. Get the best deal you can for them. If you live at a cross-roads, might as well set up shop as a trading post.”

  “MacLaren, we need South Jersey!” Link barked at him.

  “With respect, sir, who is ‘we’?” Emmett returned. “And do we? If we can’t defend Pete, then why ask South Jersey to join us? Why die there, defending an exposed position? Unless it’s good for South Jersey, and good for us, teaming up is a bad move.

  “But Pete, I hope you’ll help to save New York. In the long game, maybe that gives you options. In the short game, doing the right thing is its own reward. I may never be able to help you militarily. But help with New York, and whatever happens – you have my good will.”

  “Yeah,” said Hoffman. “I’m behind you, on New York, Emmett. Bank on it.”

  “Ash,” Link said to Margolis. “New York state will stand with New England. Won’t it?”

  Margolis looked around the other men, then also applied himself to his dessert. “I don’t know,” he eventually said. “Maybe after New York City. We’ll see.”

  “The next right thing, is New York,” Emmett said. “Then Boston-Prov.”

  “Pennsylvania is a problem,” Niedermeyer underscored, to close the subject. “Tibbs? Perhaps you could pass us back our phones? Gentlemen, ladies, it’s been a very enlightening evening. Thank you very much for coming.”

  Niedermeyer really was good at this master of ceremonies thing. For a brief moment, I considered that I’d spent the past two days up on strings, just another marionette being jerked around by a puppet master. I discarded the thought as unkind. Niedermeyer was a highly effective leader. And he’d done quite well by Emmett and myself.

  As I suspected, the phone Tibbs handed Link was in a bright shiny new box. “Just like new, sir,” he murmured helpfully. He handed mine back with a smile worthy of a sphinx. No, Amenac wouldn’t be allowed to dissect the corpse of Link’s phone.

  “Did you catch the aide, Corporal?” Emmett inquired.

  “He’s my goddamned aide, Emmett!” Link spat at him.

  “Sir.”

  Tibbs turned to Emmett and Niedermeyer, snubbing Link, to report that the aide and driver were being questioned in the Ark 7 brig. He shared a smile with me. “Have a good night, Ms. Baker.”

  I grinned. “Thank you, Corporal Tibbs. You’ve quite made my evening.”

  I left Emmett to his awkward good-byes with his Army colleagues, and instead traded farewell hugs and cheek kisses with the Niedermeyers and Adam.

  “Stay in touch,” Adam breathed in my ear, in the scant moment his mouth was in the vicinity.

  “You, to
o, Adam,” I replied. I tapped Pam’s albatross with a smile. “All things both great and small.”

  The Coast Guard trio chorused the end of the stanza. “For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.”

  I should have expected that. At a guess, a Coast Guard Academy graduate – and by association, the wife of one – probably couldn’t avoid Moby Dick or the Ancient Mariner. There were only so many masterpieces of nautical literature to torture students with. So it was an inconclusive experiment on The Great Pumpkin front. But it gave us all a good laugh.

  “Have a Happy Halloween, Dee,” Pam added, with a wink.

  Chapter 11

  Interesting fact: The state of Washington was the same size as all six states of New England combined. New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania combined to roughly the size of Nevada.

  “You could have waited inside,” Emmett said, as he joined me on the dark and blustery wet street. He tried to put an arm around me for warmth. I could have used it. A pashima shawl is a perfect foil for air conditioning on bare shoulders. For 45-degree rainy winds, not so much.

  I stepped out of his arm and headed for the car, using my phone to light our footing.

  “Dee?” he called, frozen to the spot.

  “Not on the street. You have the keys. Unlock the car.”

  “Dee...” he attempted again, once we were in the car, out of the wind.

  “Start the car and turn on the heater. And start driving,” I ordered. Once we were moving, I pointed. “The water’s over that way. Park somewhere scenic.”

  The industrial seawall he found wasn’t terribly scenic, but I did see some heaving waves in the headlights before he turned them off. After that we couldn’t see much of anything, but the familiar sound of waves crashing soothed me. Emmett laid his head back on the head-rest, and waited in the dark.