The Roswell Swatch

by Scott Powers

  They were alone there. A few cars were scattered in the parking lot but they looked left for the night. There was a light on in the Materials Characterization Center suite though.

  “Let me do the talkin’dear,”he instructed.

  Eve was tired, nervous, feeling bitchy, and in no mood to be patronized. Yet she figured she should let him play his game.

  He rang a buzzer at the door. Inside, a grey-bearded man drove a wheelchair to look out the reception area window and viewed Max and Eve waiting in the light. He punched a number into a cell and clearly heard Max’s ringtone chirp and nodded. He watched Max wave his phone before answering.

  “Thirty-seven,”the man inside said.

  “Forty-one,”Max replied, citing the next prime number.

  The man wheeled to the counter and buzzed the door open.

  “Ted Lee,”he said, extending a hand as Max and Eve entered. Ted wore a lab coat and gloves. Goggles were strung around his neck. “I’m very excited to see you two.”

  Max froze and did not take his hand.

  So Eve froze too. But Max hesitated too long for her.

  “I’m Eve. This is Max,”she said.“He’s a prick.”

  Ted led Eve and Max past the reception area, through a security door, and down a short hall to another security door. Before he opened it, Ted opened a cabinet in the hall and passed out eye goggles, masks, and gloves to them. Once everyone was prepared, they entered a lab crowded with benches holding large electronic equipment. It was cold and felt airtight to Eve, as if they had entered a walk-in refrigerator.

  “Let’s have it,”Ted said, reaching from his chair.

  Eve reached in her bag. Instead of retrieving the foil, she withdrew her gun.

  “My rules first,”she said.“The foil never leaves my sight. And when it’s out of my hand, I hold this instead.”

  Ted broke into an instant sweat. He looked at Max, who finally spoke to him.

  “Don’t worry, Ted,”Max said, accentuating the name.“She does this all the time. Only I ain’tseen her shoot no one yet.”

  “That’s because you’ve only known me a couple of days."

  Ted sat in his chair, saying nothing.

  “I shoot people,”she added.“If I have to.”

  “Fine, whatever,”Max said.“Get to it.”

  “I do.”

  She pulled the foil from her bra. It unfolded without a wrinkle. Ted finally moved and took it like a fragile treasure. He held it up to the light to see if he could see through it. He couldn’t. He held it down to examine its sheen. He crumpled it, pulled it flat, and flexed it. He looked up nervously at Eve.

  “It’s okay,”Eve said.“You can’t hurt it.”

  Ted finally smiled. “Oh, yes I can. I need to cut some small samples to analyze,” Ted said. “Is that okay?”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no way I can get this into the slides.”

  “One sample,”she said.

  Max and Eve followed as he wheeled to a lab bench in the rear. He chose a small pallet from the drawer and clamped it onto a corner of the swatch. He set it in a device the size of a toaster oven. Ted made some adjustments, raising a one-inch wheel blade.

  “Meet the Exteclow-speed diamond saw,”Ted said.“It can cut God Himself.”

  He turned it on and adjusted the tray downward until the blade made contact. A rooster tail of sparks shot upward into the guard and then out in a cloud.

  “Wow,”Ted said.

  “Wow what?”Max asked.

  Ted didn’t say. He turned knobs, feeding the swatch into the diamond saw, millimeter by millimeter. The tray turned at his command. The blade spun. Sparks continued. And the saw did what Ted said it would.

  It cut the foil.

  Peering through the goggles Ted had handed out, Eve moved in as close as she could. Ted was just about done trimming off a three-centimeter-square sample.

  “This is tough,”Ted said, switching off the saw.“Now let’s see what it’s made of.”

  Ted took his sample to a machine the size of a side-by-side washer and dryer, adorned with hoses, valves, and gadgets.

  “This is an XPS,”Ted said.“It’ll tell us what it’s made of. He opened a hood and clamped in the sample. He pushed buttons. It hummed.

  Eve looked over Ted’s shoulder at a computer monitor as he typed commands. The computer answered with squiggly fever chart lines and rows of data.

  “My God,”Ted said.“It’s carbon, all carbon, some sort of carbon.”

  “Diamond? I knew it! It’s some sort of extraterrestrial technology. Proof!”Max screamed, pumping both fists into the air.

  “Chill,”Ted said.“There could be many explanations. It’s not diamond. Not exactly. It appears to have been formed from some sort of carbon liquid crystal polymer.”

  Eve looked skeptical.

  “Show me on the screen where it says that,”she said.

  “Later,”Ted said, clearing the screen with a touch.“I want to look closer.”

  He took the sample and wheeled around a lab bench to another machine.

  It also looked like a washer-dryer combo, with a tall stack on one side.

  “Electron microscope,”Ted said.“For a very close look.”

  Ted took the sample and wheeled over to a cabinet near the door. He fished out a large beaker and then a gallon bottle full of clear liquid.

  He filled the beaker halfway. Eve recognized the smell of alcohol.

  “We must clean it first.”

  Ted dropped it into the beaker. He used metal tongs to swish it around, lifted it, and swished it some more.

  “If that’s vodka, I’ll have some,”Max said.

  Ted ignored him again. He opened a drawer and pulled out a hair dryer. He plugged it in on the other side of the counter and held the tonged sample in the breath of hot air.

  Somewhere behind them, up on the wall, a buzzer sounded, long, then short.

  Ted looked up and around. He looked worried.

  “Someone’s here,”he said. “I’ll go see. Wait in here. Be very quiet.”

  As he turned toward the door, he elbowed over the beaker.

  “Damn,”he said.“I got it.”

  He flipped the beaker up in time that maybe a half-inch of cleanser remained in it, with the sample floating on top. About a cup of alcohol was spilled across the stainless steel counter. He fished a rag from the drawer, wiped it up, and tossed it to the back of the counter. Then he let himself out.

  Max pulled Eve away to the center of the lab, as if there might be listening devices.

  “Look,”he whispered.“I’m not sure he’s who he says he is. He’s broken the network protocol a couple of times. He didn’t want to show you the screen. He’s not really answeringour questions. Why not? I have a bad feeling about this guy.”

  “You’re paranoid, remember?”

  “Aren’t your survival instincts tingling just a little bit?”

  Back on the counter, the rag burst into flames.

  Ted had tossed it against the outlet. Flames raced across the stainless steel to the hair dryer, which sparked. The lights went out, and they were in the dark, illuminated only by the alcohol flame.

  There was no alarm. In the glow, Eve could see ceiling sprinklers that weren’t spouting. She also saw a fire extinguisher on the back wall.

  As she ran for it, Max yelled and pounded on a wall.

  “Ted! Ted! Ted!”he screamed.

  He then remembered his phone, found the last call, and hit reply.

  Eve grabbed the extinguisher off the back wall as she heard a phone play Mozart on a counter near Max. Ted had left his phone behind. She saw flames curling the full bottle of alcohol on the counter.

  “Max! Hit the deck!”She yelled, diving.

  Max grabbed Ted’s phone from the bench and dove as the bottle exploded. Flame and glass shards blew everywhere. A moment later another bottle on the counter exploded, this one in a fireball. When Eve got up to look, a quarter of th
e room was on fire. Flames blocked the door they had entered. Smoke filled the room.

  “Max! Max! You okay?”she called.

  He got up coughing, tried to talk, but couldn’t, and broke into another cough. He waved and nodded.

  “The door’s blocked!”she said.

  Still coughing, he pointed to another door on the far wall she hadn’t noticed. He crawled toward it. She pulled the extinguisher’s pin and squeezed the handle. Nothing happened. She looked at the gauge—empty. Then she remembered what mattered most to her and turned toward the fire. As he passed her, Max grabbed her leg. She pulled free.

  “I need my swatch!”she said.

  “It’s gone!”Max hacked.“Ted palmed it.”

  Eve was coughed hard and went down on a knee. She couldn’t answer with words so she gave up trying. She got up and scanned the counter where the beaker had been. Nothing was there. She pulled off her latex gloves and pulled her mask and goggles in place.

  The fire was spreading. Heat seared her face and she raised her arms and palms. They burned and she involuntarily jerked backward, away from where she wanted to go. She stumbled as the fire took half the room, the half she wanted to be in. She got up swearing, heading toward the fire’s origin. Max already was at the back door, wrestling with the latch.

  “Where the hell you going?”he called, coughing.“Let’s get outtahere! Now!”

  Eve calculated a fleeting open path to the counter where the bottle blew and dashed through it. Where is it? Where is it? The roaring fire danced image and shadow back and forth.

  Finally, she saw it. It glittered in the rolling light of the fire. She reached into the flame and her arm flashed with pain.

  She grabbed the small sample Ted had cut from the swatch. A square inch of her life. She squeezed it into her fist, yanked it back, and broke for the back of the room.

  Max couldn’t open the door.

  “Stand back,”said Eve.

  Max went down on all fours as Eve raised her gun, aimed, and fired. Bam! Bam! Bam! Metal popped around where she thought the lock must be.

  Fire engulfed several lab benches, and something else exploded. When Max got up, he saw Eve was okay and tried the door latch again. Nothing. She fired again. Bam! Max dove out of the way. Bam! Bam!

  “Shit! Eve! Will you wait’tilI move first?”he screamed.

  He tried the latch again. This time it pushed free, attached to nothing on the bolt. When he yanked, the door almost opened. It jammed after it gave a half-inch.

  “Don’t shoot!”Max yelled.

  The smoke was unbearable, the fire growing. Eve was down on her knees. He wasn’t sure she could shoot again anyway. Max grasped the knob, braced his feet on the wall, and kicked. He could hear broken metal grind. He kicked and pulled again. It didn’t budge.

  “The lock hardware bent, jammed on the frame,”he said.

  Eve wasn’t listening; she was down. Max took her gun from her hand, aimed point-blank at the bent frame, and fired. The door jumped. Then he kicked it again and it gave. Air rushed through the doorframe. The fire roared toward them, toward its own need for fresh air. Max jammed Eve’s gun into his pocket and grabbed her arms. He dragged her to her feet and led her into the hall. She was still conscious, but coughing uncontrollably. So was he.

  At the end of the hallway sat Ted’s empty wheelchair.

  As they made their way toward the reception area, another explosion ripped the lab, slamming the lab door and blowing out the glass.

  Mercifully, the front door opened. They reached the parking lot and pulled the goggles off their faces. Max still wore his gloves. Eve raised her right hand.

  “I got it! I got it!”she said, waving the tiny foil, a small fragment of her original swatch.“He left the fucking sample.”

  In the light of the parking lot, Max could see her right hand was badly burned. He reached for her hand but she pulled it back. She transferred the foil to her left hand and shoved it into her jeans pocket.

  Max could hear distant sirens building.

  “We gottaleave, fast!”he said.

  Then Eve saw a man in the shadows. It wasn't Ted.

  She touched her bag, still looped over her shoulder.

  “Where’s my gun?”she asked frantically.

  “I got it!”Max said, patting his leg.“Let’s go!”

  Eve looked back toward the end of the strip center. The man she’d seen was gone.

  She ran around the corner. She saw nothing.

  “Who are you?”she screamed.“Ted?”

  Max ran to his car.

  Eve got no answer.

  Max pulled the Camaro up next to her.“Get in!”he commanded.

  She jumped in and slammed the door. For the second time, she escaped in his car. This time, she knew the escape was real.

  CHAPTER 7

  HOW TO SAVE A LIFE

  It almost glowed, that glittery, inch-square piece of magic, that slice of swatch Eve rescued from the fire, at least to her eyes, as important to her as anything she had ever held.

  She had laid it on the Formica tabletop at the Waffle House but kept her arms around it on the table, guarding it. Her right arm was bandaged from elbow to hand, thanks to an all-night drug store.

  “They stole my swatch, Max,”she said.

  “I know.”

  “They stole it! The bastards. I want it back. I’m going to get it back. And I’m going to kill that son-of-a-bitch Ted.”

  “That ain’tTed.”

  “I don’t care what his name is. You can find him, right? You and your friends in the network?”

  “Look,”he said.“These guys aren’t amateurs. They’re a powerful organization, with ties to the highest levels of government. They probably have connections with the FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO. Law enforcement. Who knows?”

  “Can you find them?”

  She looked like she was pleading. When she looked up, her eyes grew larger. Together with the slight gap between her top front teeth, she almost looked like a little girl. But deeper in those eyes, Max could see a burning, dangerous anger.

  He doubted the network could find anything the IBTT had taken. But that would be the wrong answer right now. He had to figure out what had gone wrong. He took a bite of his hash browns and waved the fork around.

  “Look, what we need to do is rattle them. You’ve still got that sliver, right?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “What we need to do is use that, get it tested again. Get the word out. Cause them to panic. They’ll come to us. One thing I know about these guys, if they want something, they come for it, and they don’t stop until they get it.”

  Eve was playing with her sliver of foil.“That sounds like a long-shot,”she said.“Maybe I should just do this on my own.”

  “No way you’re doing this alone. I’m in all the way now. I was in that fire too, remember? Besides, you think I want to miss out on any more of this fun?”He smiled at her and she smiled back.

  “They’ll do any crap they can to stop the truth. I’ve seen them threaten witnesses’sfamilies. Put people out of business. Slander people. Destroy their reputations. Frame them for crimes. Hell, probably the only reason I wasn’t charged with Di’s murder was I’d already given up the only evidence I had.

  “And they kill.”

  “No shit. They tried to kill us tonight.”

  “I think that was more of a warning shot. And a diversion,”Max said.“They’re usually not so sloppy that they fail. But I promise you. I promise. You try to mess with them alone, they’ll get you if you give them a chance. You need me."

  “Why you?”she asked.“Don’t you have a life to get back to?”

  The simple answer was no.

  Max Studebaker had disappeared as much as he could. He now held no credit cards, paying for everything by cash, except for business expenses paid by his personal corporation, which was incorporated in the Cayman Islands, where he kept most of his money. He owned no property. He paid no bills. The corpo
ration—actually a single lawyer in Houston who handled such things—took care of all of that. Max used a post office box for all personal mail and changed boxes every few months. He used disposable phones. His Internet activity was carefully encrypted, and he changed email addresses frequently. He rented his house through the corporation, of course, and had moved six times in four years. Max even had a phony driver’s license. Actually, he had several.

  When he had come to Houston, he’d shaved the beard he’d had in the band. He couldn’t cut his hair, though.

  He’d removed tattoos of Chinese lettering, guitars, and chains from his neck and arms and covered the scars with different tattoos, The Avengers along his right arm, the Justice League on his left, and a web around his neck. He had the work done in separate shops, of course, in different cities.

  When he was working for the network, as now, he wore long-sleeved shirts and collars.

  He assumed the IBTT wanted to find him. So far, it hadn’t. Max Studebaker was damn hard to find. His digital fingerprints had stopped showing up a long time ago.

  He hadn’t had a romantic relationship, or even a true close friendship, since Di had died. But that was because of Di. He couldn’t get over her. Not yet.

  He and Eve made four pledges to each other over coffee and eggs. Try to find and rescue the real Ted. Solve Di’s death. Retrieve Eve's swatch. And prove Joe’s story.

  “It makes perfect sense,”Max said.“Shit, the silencers were well known for being active in the fifties. It didn’t take near as much to intimidate people back then. Usually all they had to do was flash some sort of badge. And if that didn’t work, well, criminal investigations were a lot easier to screw with back then.”

  Rescuing Ted would have to be done first—now, if possible. First, because they’d need him; and second, Max feared the real Ted was probably being held hostage while the fake Ted had run his scam at the lab. Max searched for the real Ted on the Internet on his iPad.

  “We’re lucky,”he said.“We in the network go out of our way to not know each other. No ID. I never knew Ted’s last name or anything about his ID. And he wouldn’t have told me.

  “But our impostor,”he continued,“our would-be killer, gave us Ted’s full name. Ted Lee. I found him on the university faculty page.