The Babel Conspiracy

by Sylvia Bambola

  “Come, let’s sit on the porch.”

  Trisha rose and followed her mother out the front door.

  As the elder Callahan rocked, Trisha sat beside her, enjoying the cool breeze sweeping down from the nearby hills. She tilted her head back to catch the wind before reaching over and taking her mother’s hand. “How many hours have we sat on this porch together, do you think?”

  “Too many to count.”

  “I remember every one of them and all our conversations, too. And I don’t think I’ve ever said, ‘thank you.’”

  “For what?”

  “For providing a happy, peaceful home in which to grow up. I know there were times you went without in order to put braces on my teeth or give me a new school wardrobe or for a class trip or some other thing that kids are always needing or wanting.”

  “What brought this on?”

  Trisha shrugged. “I don’t know. Everything is so topsy-turvy now with all the rioting and violence. I don’t think we can afford to leave things unsaid anymore. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Plus, I’m getting older—at least old enough to appreciate you, to appreciate all you did for me.”

  “I’m a mother, Trisha. I did no more than other mothers down the ages have done for their children.”

  Trisha squeezed her hand. “We both know that’s not true. You put up with a lot.”

  “Are you talking about your junior high years?”

  “Yes. And I’m sorry. Sorry I was . . . ashamed of you, ashamed you were half Indian, ashamed I was a quarter.”

  “I know how much that word ‘half-breed’ can sting. You didn’t want to be different. You didn’t want to stand out. It was a hard time for you . . . when learning and growing, tears and joy, all seemed to fold together in awkward adolescence like a jelly roll. Do you remember what I told you?”

  “Never allow anyone to make you ashamed of who you are. That God made me and I must not insult Him by my shame. You were so wonderful and wise. And then you told me not to be afraid. That I was to soar like an eagle.”

  “But you are afraid now.”

  Trisha turned to her mother and frowned. “How could you know that?” When her mother didn’t answer, Trisha nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid. But only of myself, of my own weakness.”

  “I have sensed that for some time, Patricia. And I’ve been praying. The world is a difficult place and you are alone and vulnerable. You need a proper husband. Hasn’t Daniel proposed yet?”

  “We’re friends, Mom. Only friends.”

  “I don’t think Daniel would agree. And perhaps you would give him a chance if you . . . didn’t love another?”

  “Mom! Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s true. And it’s someone you are ashamed of loving.”

  Trisha tensed. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s something I need to work out myself. Let’s talk about something else. Tell me what’s new with the council.”

  Mrs. Callahan withdrew her hand from Trisha’s. “Some of the members have had visions of a coming danger. They say when it comes, the Cherokee must go to their safe place in the hills. They saw armored trucks and soldiers and a camp.”

  “They’re always having visions. You can’t put too much store in them. You can’t guide your life by them, Mom.”

  “Scoff if you want, but I’ve had dreams, too. Dreams involving you and . . . . ”

  “And what?”

  “Danger. You and some danger.”

  Trisha laughed, but even to her ears it sounded hollow. “Mom, how many times have I told you not to eat chili before going to bed?”

  “The thing is, I can’t get you to safety. Though I try . . . I try. You must be careful, Patricia. You must be very careful.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?”

  Her mother compressed her lips.

  “Well, please say it. Do I die or something?” When her mother didn’t answer, Trisha pulled on her arm. “Mom?”

  Mrs. Callahan leaned her head back in the rocker and scanned the sky. “It looks like a storm is coming. You better head back.”

  Reluctantly, Trisha rose, all the while wondering if her mother was speaking of the darkening clouds overhead or something else.

  • • •

  Audra couldn’t believe it was Sunday night and he was still here. She glanced at the large body sprawled across her bed, clad only in briefs. The handsome, square face was studying its new object of lust, a sizable Granny apple. After a few bites he tossed it on the floor.

  “Too sour!”

  His attention then turned to his massive biceps. They quivered in brief, isometric jerks. He was into body building and possessed the powerful physique of an avid weight lifter. He had told her that aside from women, lifting weights was his only passion.

  Audra had scoffed at what she considered an ignoble pursuit, and had asked what he saw in it. “Power,” had been the reply, which he followed with a demonstration by twisting her arm.

  Now, Audra looked at the discarded apple and thought of what her mother would think.

  Like mother like daughter?

  No. Her mother had been married, at least for a few years, then divorced when Audra was two. According to her mother, marriage was a dying institution; a farce that had outlived its usefulness. And hadn’t she told Audra that the only good thing she got out of that marriage was her daughter?

  Audra wondered if her father had been like Bubba. She knew little about him. Her mother seldom spoke of him but when she did the adjectives were always the same: weak, lazy, selfish. And Audra, who had no reason to doubt her, grew up applying these same adjectives to most men.

  But she wished she could remember her dad. He had been a shadowy figure, visiting her every weekend until she was five. Then one dreary Saturday her mother told her he wasn’t coming anymore, that he had died in a car crash.

  Audra walked over to the apple. “You’re such a slob!” she yelled, nudging the apple with her foot. “I don’t know what pigsty you came from but here we don’t throw food on the floor!”

  The blond, blue-eyed man rippled his quadriceps and chuckled. “Sorry Audra, just one of my bad bachelor habits.” But he made no move to pick it up. “What’s on TV?” he asked, sounding bored.

  “Look for yourself!” Audra didn’t even try to conceal her irritation as she tossed the TV Guide onto the bed, just a bit out of reach so Bubba had to pull himself over in order to get it.

  “You broads are all alike.”

  Audra looked down at the discarded apple, debated whether to pick it up or make a scene, then finally bent over. “And you men are all alike!”

  But even as she walked into the kitchen, carrying both the apple and her anger, she knew she wouldn’t ask him to leave tonight, just as she hadn’t asked him to leave the night before. In fact, she might not ask him to leave for sometime.

  He was crude, brutish, possibly even dangerous, and these things she didn’t like. But he was a companion to fill the lonely space that seemed to gnaw at her more and more the closer she got to her thirtieth birthday.

  But wasn’t this the life she had chosen? Instead of the tedium of marriage and raising kids, hadn’t she decided to pursue a career? She had worked hard to get where she was, and diapers and dirty dishes weren’t part of the picture. Men were simply to enjoy. That’s where her mother had gone wrong, by trying to fold a husband and family into her career. And Audra had learned from her mother’s mistake.

  She glanced back at Bubba.

  He wasn’t exactly the type of man she had envisioned for herself; even for a one-night stand. She would have preferred a more educated, cultured man. Sometimes reality lowered standards. But the one good thing about someone like Bubba was that things would never get too serious. There would be no talk of marriage, no temptation to walk down the aisle and drive SUVs in subu
rbia. No husband who would go and die on his five-year old daughter.

  “Hey, Audra! Get me a brew while you’re up, will you?”

  Audra opened the refrigerator and reached for a Bud Light, regretting, for the first time, that too many Bubba Hanagans of the world seemed to populate her life.

  • • •

  Joshua sat in the living room of his posh apartment and stared at the two agents who had been sent to retrieve Arie. The younger one, Nathan Yehuda, was clean shaven and bright eyed. The other, Iliab Nahshon, with deep facial scars and dark brooding eyes, intimidated him, though Joshua would be hard pressed to admit it.

  Iliab was a member of the elite Kidon, the assassination wing of the Mossad. Many in the agency had heard of him, but few actually knew him, and fewer still had ever seen his face. And like most Kidon agents, Iliab had been recruited from IDF Special Forces. Compared to him, Joshua, who often worked out of two separate Mossad departments—Collections, their espionage wing, and Technology, their development wing—was a rookie.

  Iliab sipped from his bottle of water while his partner, who had yet to speak a word, sat beside him. “Headquarters has instructed me to tell you we have confirmed Arie’s last communiqué as valid. Someone in deep cover was able to get us a message. President Baker is behind the rioting or at least has authorized some American Muslim leaders as well as members of the Muslim Brotherhood to instigate it.”

  “Why would a U.S. president want to destroy his own cities and foment unrest?”

  Iliab replaced the cap on his bottle. “That is for us to find out.”

  “Then you’ll be staying? Even though Arie is . . . ?”

  Iliab’s eyes narrowed. “Our source tells us that the Brotherhood assured the president they ‘knew just how to do it,’ just how to make the riots appear spontaneous and tied to some killing or another. And that Kamal may be spearheading the operation.”

  Joshua nodded, finally understanding why someone like Iliab was assigned to Arie’s collection detail—a routine mission—and why he had been ordered to remain. “Then I assume I am to contact you with any new information?”

  “Me or Nathan, here, and of course headquarters directly.”

  Nathan smiled as Joshua retrieved his phone, then punched in the numbers rattled off by Iliab.

  “Any word on the information I found in Arie’s apartment? I’ve had no luck deciphering it.” Joshua said, after the contact numbers were entered.

  “No.” Iliab rose to his feet, his action prompting his companion to rise with him. “But headquarters will figure it out. It always does.”

  • • •

  CHAPTER 4

  The first thing Joshua noticed when he entered Merrill Campaign Headquarters was the noise. A dozen people, all young and eager-looking, with phones glued to their ears, sat behind desks requesting contributions or extolling their candidate’s virtues. In the background KFOM spewed out the latest poll numbers on a small wall-mounted TV. Another half dozen volunteers pounded computer keys or pulled stacks of bumper stickers from cardboard boxes.

  Joshua stopped and smiled when he saw glossy handbills scattered across one of the desks, proclaiming, in bold lettering, that Phillip Merrill was a man they could trust. Beneath the letters was a color photo of a lean, serious but pleasant-looking man with short, salt-and-pepper hair.

  “You Joshua Chapman?” asked a young woman appearing from nowhere. She looked like someone you’d find at a rock concert with her black nail polish and short purple-tipped hair. But her violet eyes—eyes Joshua found remarkable for their size and color—were serious, thoughtful. “Joshua Chapman?” she repeated.

  When Joshua nodded, she jerked her head sideways. “Follow me. Senator Merrill is waiting in his office. We’re going to have to cram a lot into twenty minutes. He’s on a tight schedule and has to leave for a fundraiser in New York.”

  “We?” Joshua said, struggling to keep up. The woman was moving so fast she could be on motorized skates.

  “Yes, I’m database manager, Cassy Merrill,” she said without bothering to turn around.

  “Merrill? As in Senator Merrill? A daughter?”

  “A niece.”

  Joshua had finally caught up. “Any more relatives I should know about?” When she didn’t answer he added, “I hope you don’t expect any special treatment. I’m here to do a job, not babysit family members or conduct special tutorials to bring them up to speed.” He had heard how political campaigns were often populated with irksome family members.

  Cassy stopped in front of a closed door. “Let’s be clear, Mr. Chapman. My Uncle is paying your company an exorbitant amount for your new security software. They say Global Icon is the best in the business, but frankly, I don’t think you’re worth it. And I’ll be watching to make sure we’re getting all we’re paying for.”

  She placed her hand on the knob. “And save your tutorials. As part of a project for Homeland Security, a team of ten software engineers were commissioned to see if sKyWIper could be blocked by a firewall. Six months. That’s all it took us. And I was project manager.”

  While Cassy rapped on the door then twisted the knob, Joshua swallowed his surprise. sKyWIper was a program developed jointly by Israel and the U.S., and among other things was capable of intercepting keyboard strokes and wiping data. It was called a “veritable tool kit of cyber-spying programs” and its code considered “unprecedented in complexity.”

  With effort, he pulled his gaze from the woman in front of him and directed it to the open door where a dignified man sat behind a desk, smiling.

  “Come in, Mr. Chapman. We have a lot to talk about.”

  • • •

  Trisha bent over a long, metal table cluttered with paper, made several notations, then stopped and smiled. She loved the P2, her sleek lines, her promise. Once more she scanned the specs, not with her usual critical eye, but with the eye of love that filters imperfections.

  “Mind if I sit down?”

  Trisha felt something touch her fingers then saw a large, powerful hand next to hers. “How can I?” She looked up and smiled. “You’re the boss.”

  Mike eased himself onto the bench beside her. “I love this room.”

  She had heard him say that before and knew why. It was nothing to look at; a giant cafeteria-style area with large, metal tables and benches set up here and there. Against the far wall, partitions separated the space into cubicles containing small, metal desks. Each cubicle belonged to a different employee of R&D; a place where their books and notes were kept, a place to go for quiet thought when not in one of the busier rooms containing the reactor or the wind tunnel or the computers that displayed a different spec on a screen at the touch of a finger.

  But in this drab place, vision turned into reality.

  “How are you doing on that report?”

  Trisha thumbed through some papers. After finding the right ones, she slid the pile closer to him.

  “Not bad,” he said, scanning it. “But you’ll have to complete the rest without Nolan. He’s on special assignment.”

  “No problem.” Though her curiosity was aroused, she didn’t question him. His passion for secrecy was legendary. If he wanted her to know about the “special assignment” he’d tell her.

  “I guess that’s about it, except . . . thanks for not asking about Nolan.”

  “You’re welcome, J. Edgar.”

  “J. Edgar? As in J. Edgar Hoover? The former FBI Director?”

  “Exactly.”

  Mike chuckled. “Are you suggesting there’s a similarity?”

  “You could be twins.”

  “From what I hear, he was pretty tough on his boys.”

  “He was.”

  “Well, keep that in mind, Callahan.”

  “What?”

  “That you’re just one of the boys.”

  �
�� • •

  Audra’s perky, blond hair bounced around her head as she walked beside Trisha.

  “Here’s your new space.” Trisha’s arm swept the premises as though she was showing off the Taj Mahal instead of a drab, unimpressive room where Audra would conduct her experiments. Next door was the nuclear reactor.

  Her stomach knotted. All eyes would be on her now. The eight-member team of R&D would follow her progress closely. Two years of hard work made them emotionally invested. Now, it was up to Audra to see it didn’t fail.

  She eyed her boss, a boss she never liked.

  On the personal side, Trisha was far too ordered for her taste; far too rooted in conventional morality.

  But professionally, Audra grudgingly respected her. A few minutes on Google revealed that Trisha had worked at Princeton with the tokamack or Princeton Large Torus, a doughnut shaped nuclear fusion test machine that used deuterium in four neutral beam heating devices to achieve near fusion threshold.

  Audra knew that fusion had never been achieved because of insufficient plasma densities and confinement time. But under Trisha’s direction at PA, these and other problems had been solved, problems such as eliminating impurities from the hot plasma held at the core of the magnetic doughnut—the very impurities that cooled the plasma and retarded fusion.

  Audra frowned. Yes, Trisha Callahan’s successes were impressive, while hers remained to be seen.

  “You do have a back-up plan, right? I mean, while I’m doing this, Nolan will be working on the shielding and vacuum pumps, won’t he? Just in case?”

  “Afraid not. Mike wants to put all the eggs in your basket.”

  “Risky, isn’t it? I have faith in titanium X, but suppose . . . .”

  Trisha threaded her arm through Audra’s as she led her down the hall. “It’s a lot of pressure, I know. Just remember, you’re not responsible for what the executive office decides. You can only do your best. And that’s all I ask. Everyone is here for you.” Trisha stopped in front of a door and opened it.