by JC Ryan
“Don’t even say that, buddy,” Harper said. “You’re right. Do you want to go home?” Harper signaled his Chief of Staff, who nodded and left the room.
“You know it,” Daniel said, fervent anticipation in his tone.
“I think we can communicate by phone or videoconference now. Go to Sarah, and try to get some sleep yourself. I’m for a nap,” said Harper, knowing that no such thing was in his immediate future.
“Thank you, Nigel. I’ll be out of your hair as soon as we can get a flight.” Daniel stood to go.
“Never mind that. Your fighter pilot is standing by to take you and your uncle home. How was that, by the way? I’ve always wanted to catch a ride in one of those things.” Daniel, who was halfway to the door, turned and smiled.
“Out of this world, Nigel. Literally. Mach 3 is a rush.”
“Always the joker. Daniel, in all seriousness, I can’t imagine what would have happened if your translator hadn’t happened on that passage. When this is over, I’m going to ask for extra funding and security for you. My heart won’t take many more of these surprises. We need to get that library fully translated sooner rather than later.”
“I won’t turn it down, Nigel. I completely agree with you.” With that, he saluted his friend and went to find Luke.
~~~
June 20, 2020; D-day minus 38, Washington and Boulder
Daniel found Luke in consultation with Sam Lewis.
“President Harper is sending us home, Luke. The helicopter to take us to Andrews will be here any minute. Are you ready to go?” Daniel’s eagerness to get back home was betrayed in his rapid speech, and the nervous jingling of change in his pocket.
“I’m going to hang around here for a couple more days, Daniel,” Luke said. “Sam needs my help with some retired agents we’re tracking down to reactivate them. You go on ahead.” He turned back to the papers he and Sam were perusing.
“Does Sally know?” Daniel asked. He dreaded having to tell her, so he was relieved at the answer.
“She will, before you get there.”
Relieved, Daniel acquiesced. “But get on home ASAP. We need you, too.” Luke nodded without looking up. Whatever he was doing had him fully engrossed. “Okay, then, bye, Luke.” Luke waved, still without looking up. Daniel retrieved his bag from Security and found an escort to take him out to where the helicopter was waiting.
When he got there, he was surprised to find a woman waiting in the chopper for him. No uniform, so she wasn’t Air Force. “Hi,” he said. “Going my way?”
Agent Lane gave him a heart-stopping smile and replied in kind. “Sinatra fan?”
“Not really,” Daniel said. “A bit before my time. Just seemed apropos. I’m Daniel Rossler. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He extended his hand across his body to the woman, who was seated on his left.
“Salome Lane. FBI,” she replied. “I’m a profiler. Sam Lewis requested that I go to Boulder and interview a few people, so we can get a line on whoever’s behind this planned attack.”
Daniel was impressed. Not only was she easy to look at, which even Sarah would have to agree, but if she could do the magic that her extended team seemed to do easily, they had a shot at finding the leader in time. And she seemed very confident that she could.
Before Daniel could ask more questions, their conversation was interrupted by the roar of the engines as the pilot lifted off. A few minutes later, both ducked and scurried out from under the rotors on the tarmac where the same Lockheed model Daniel had flown here in stood waiting for them. It was another few minutes before they could make each other hear, when they were seated behind the cockpit with headphones on for communication.
“Ever taken a Mach 3 flight before?” Daniel asked. Salome shook her head. “Get ready for the ride of your life. That first acceleration is a bit rough.” He felt like an old hand at this, though aside from choppers, this was the first VTOL he’d ever flown in, and definitely the fastest. They would be in Broomfield in under an hour, just a few minutes’ ride in the car from Boulder. But, the Mach 3 acceleration would make them think they’d left their stomachs in DC.
Daniel dropped Salome off at Foundation headquarters, turning her over to Sinclair for a briefing on what they’d found in the 10th Cycle library since the presentation the president had seen. He counted on Sinclair to introduce her to the others who knew about the pictures. The fact of the looming crisis was still not being released to the public. Harper and his counterparts had agreed that there was no purpose for doing so. If they averted it, then there was plenty of time to inform the press. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t matter anyway. No one in the target areas would be alive to worry that they hadn’t put their affairs in order.
Daniel had asked, what about people in outlying areas. Surely there would be some survivors. Had he ever read a post-apocalyptic novel, Sam Lewis had asked in return. It would be like that. People banding together to survive, looters taking food by force. ‘Affairs’ would have no meaning. Daniel began to consider what he would do if it came down to the final day before the destruction. Would he take Sarah and the baby and flee Boulder? Would they be able to survive as a family, with all the people they loved working together? Or would it be better to just wait for the bombs? Which would be worse, immediate annihilation, or a life of hardship and danger? He and Sarah would have to agree on the answer, just in case.
They’d also have to decide when to tell the family, to give them a chance to decide for themselves. As Daniel thought about it, he realized that the responsibility of sharing news of that sort had no boundaries. Was it right to inform his family and leave out his employees and their families? Where did it end, and how could he live with himself, if his family’s survival meant letting another family die without the choice? The questions helped him understand, as nothing had before, how great the burden was that Nigel Harper carried. No wonder he’d aged while in office. The moral dilemmas were unanswerable.
Salome liked Sinclair O’Reilly immediately. In spite of the dire nature of the problem at hand, he had an insouciant Irish personality that tended to make everything a joke. And he was an incorrigible flirt. He had to be more than twice her age, and she spotted a wedding band on his left hand, but he couldn’t stop making innuendo about pretty FBI agents. Instead of being creepy, it was funny. They were on their way to meet the nanotech genius when Sinclair warned her.
“The boy you’re about to meet has some kind of problem with women. Don’t make the mistake of thinking he’s not all there, even though he’ll stammer through any sort of conversation with you, if he’s able to talk at all. He’s actually quite brilliant, and if you can put him at ease, he’ll be a good resource for you. He can tell you everything there is to know about the use the Iranians can make of the information they stole.”
Salome stopped in mid-stride, effectively halting their progress down the hall. “How do you know it’s Iranians?” she asked. No one had mentioned that they already had suspects.
“Stands to reason, doesn’t it? It was Iran that pushed to have the Middle East included in the 10th Cycle treaty. Most of the spies in my department were Iranian and those who were not Iranian were proposed by them. And the Board member who killed himself was Iranian. Who else could it be?” Sinclair reached for Salome’s elbow and turned her once more in the direction of Roy’s office.
Who else indeed? Salome gained a new level of respect for Sinclair in that moment. The old man was sharp, that was certain. The buffoon act was some sort of defense mechanism. It would be interesting to study him and figure out his secrets, but her focus was on stopping a world-ending event. Her private interests would have to wait for another time.
Sinclair signaled with his hand that Salome should wait outside Roy’s lab for a moment, so that he could prepare ‘the boy’ as he called him for her entrance. Salome had a few ideas about how to treat a desperately shy man, as her brother had a similar personality. In a moment, Sinclair poked his head out the door a
nd invited her in. Roy James was standing with his arms crossed defensively over his chest, on the other side of a lab table where an array of what looked like tiny models of birds lay in various stages of completion.
“Roy, this is Salome Lane; Salome, Roy James,” Sinclair intoned. Then, with a mischievous smile on his face, he stepped back to observe the fun.
Salome stepped forward, glided, Sinclair would have said. She held her hand out to Roy, whose eyes had grown round as he beheld the lovely woman in front of him. She was tall, almost as tall as he, and from the top of her shining blonde head to her shoulders, she was stunning. His eyes refused to travel further, lest he embarrass himself. He found himself taking her hand without even noticing.
“Pleased to meet you, Roy,” she said. Roy swallowed a lump in his throat and said “M-me, too.” Then he grimaced. What a stupid thing to say!
While Roy had been stunned by her beauty, Salome was assessing him as well. Well-built, with broad shoulders, an open, boyish look in a very pleasing face. Brown, slightly wavy hair and she thought brown eyes as well. She wondered if he always wore the safety glasses he hadn’t taken off, or if it was an oversight.
Sinclair was right, it wouldn’t be easy to find a way to converse with this man, but she’d lay odds it would be well worth the effort.
~~~
June 21, 2020; D-Day minus 37, Denver
First thing the next morning, an agent from the Denver field office picked up Salome from her hotel in Boulder and drove her to Denver. It was inconvenient, but the suspects would be transported to a secret location outside the borders of the US later today. After that, Salome would be in Boulder for the duration, learning everything she could from the Rosslers’ staff and the 10th Cycle library. She would drive herself back from Denver in an Agency car and keep it as long as she was there.
Little was to be learned at the field office. She started with the youngest translator, a woman who the FBI minders told her was scared to death and might talk. She did, but she knew no more than she’d already said. She was to pass on any 10th Cycle document concerning nanotechnology, and she knew no one else in the network except her handler, whom she’d never met in person. She had already given them all the email addresses she was aware of. Unfortunately for the woman, that would all be verified by harsher questioning. Salome believed her already.
Nothing else of note was to be learned from any of the others, either. Except for the revelations about spy training they’d received. This was new information, skillfully extracted from reluctant detainees by Salome. The men evidenced fear when she came to question them and extended her hand to shake. None of them accepted the gesture. Sinclair would have been very surprised at her predatory smile as she sat down to question them at her leisure. Salome was a beautiful woman, blessed with a figure made for men to drool over, and she knew exactly how to exploit it in questioning these Muslim men. Her button-down blouse was unbuttoned from the top just one button too far, revealing a cleavage that made them sweat.
However, it was all in vain. They didn’t know much more than the women did. Salome was beginning to believe that an expert in very sophisticated networks had put this one together. Her discussions with Sam Lewis by phone between interviews led her to believe that such a thing was rare with radical groups from the Middle East. As an FBI agent, rather than a spook, she had to believe him; she had no other experience with them. She did say, more than once, that she didn’t understand why the Rossler group had trusted them. She wouldn’t have.
According to the agents who’d already had a crack at interrogating these detainees, the most interesting of the bunch was not a translator. She was the program administrator, assistant to Karsten Adler, the program manager. Salome learned from her colleagues that the woman was clearly more intelligent than anyone else in the group, someone who had easily turned Adler. That he was spotless before attested to impressive tradecraft. That she wouldn’t talk about any of it, not even her handler or how she communicated, had frustrated them from the beginning. They were looking forward to breaking her down by any means necessary. Salome saved her for last.
Observers would later tell the story of the two beautiful women sparring with words as if it had been an epic battle. Salome, with a degree in psychology and several years’ experience interviewing serial killers, knew how to ask a question without seeming to ask. Alica was equally good at turning questions around on her interviewer, frustrating most of them into quitting the game.
Salome was made of sterner and more patient stuff. Each time Alica deflected a question, Salome returned to the subject at hand. She noticed that Alica was most agitated when the subject was her family. After two hours of back and forth, she came out of the interrogation room, saying she wanted to talk with Alica more before the woman was transported.
She also wanted to talk with Karsten Adler. Though he was little more than a victim of Alica’s wiles, Salome wanted to question him about how he’d been seduced. It would give her better insight into Alica’s background, she thought. She sensed that Alica may know more about the man who’d trained the spies and built the network so expertly that no thread they pulled unraveled it. Find him, she told her colleagues, and he would lead them to the real leader.
~~~
While these investigations were going on, Raj was working nearly around the clock to locate any other pictures associated with the coming disaster that he could, and learn the locations they depicted. So far, only a few sites in Israel, the UK and Australia had been identified, along with a good number of sites in America. It was puzzling to Raj how the choices had been made, but he realized that with so much data to go through, it was possible that others would be included for destruction, too, that he just hadn’t found yet. He was therefore not surprised when he did locate more. What surprised him was the targets. He could explain the US, Israel, the UK, even Australia. But why Russia would be a target baffled him.
The Network
June 22, 2020; D-Day minus 36, Boulder
Since Salome Lane was on her own with regard to agency colleagues while she was in Boulder, Daniel suggested to Sarah that they should have her over for dinner. Sarah had responded favorably. She didn’t mind cooking for an extra, and besides, Daniel said the agent was a looker. She wanted to see for herself.
To make her feel more comfortable, as if this were a dinner party instead of a way to fish for information from her, Sarah decided to invite JR and Rebecca. Then she wracked her brain for a suitable sixth, to balance the party. The only single man of the right age that came to mind was Roy James. With little expectation that he would accept, she called him at his office and invited him. Surprisingly, he did accept, although Sarah thought she detected some nervousness in his speech. It was all right. She wasn’t trying to fix him up with the FBI agent, she just wanted to balance her table.
Salome was the last to arrive, apologizing for being late due to the long commute from Denver. Sarah liked her immediately. The woman seemed completely unaware of her looks, and was a scintillating conversationalist. JR and Rebecca peppered her with questions about profiling, while Sarah put the food on the table, aided by Daniel.
“You were right, honey,” she said. “She’s stunning.” A small gleam in her eye was Daniel’s only warning that he’d better take care with his answer, even though Sarah knew beyond all doubt that he loved her and was a faithful husband.
“She’s all right,” he said, suffering a poke in the ribs for his understatement. Man, he couldn’t win. If he played it cool, Sarah knew he wasn’t being completely honest. If he said Salome was a knockout, that wouldn’t go well either. Wisely, he decided not to rise to the bait anymore. For her part, Sarah was just kidding. She didn’t mind that Daniel appreciated a beautiful woman. After all, he came home to her every night.
JR was fine, too, with Rebecca right by his side making conversation with Salome as much as anyone else. The topic seemed to be the medical science behind some of the accepted techniques of profilin
g. Apparently, Salome was published on the subject. The real surprise was Roy. Normally he would be hanging back, shuffling his feet and trying to avoid conversation. Tonight he was hanging on Salome’s every word, even though he wasn’t contributing to the conversation. She was including him in her smiles for the group, and he didn’t even blush. What kind of magic was this?
At dinner, Salome had a chance to ask Daniel the question that had been bothering her all day.
“Daniel, why did you trust these people? Particularly with such sensitive information as the nanotechnology discoveries?” She took a delicate bite of Sarah’s’ grilled salmon and flashed her a smile of appreciation.
“That’s a good question. One I’ve been asking myself. It was mixed up in the aftermath of the 9th Cycle flu. Someone that our security expert trusted was referred to us by the president. He felt it was imperative that a gesture of goodwill be extended to the Middle East, as I recall. Next thing I knew, we had three new Board members and a couple of dozen Middle Easterners on staff, mostly in the translation department. They all passed their background checks.” He gave her a rueful look, inhaled the aroma of the chardonnay in his glass, and took a sip. With a smile that excused the cliché he was about to use, he said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time!”
“And the assignments?” Salome pressed.
“The idea was to bring the Middle East up to speed, especially in scientific development. We thought if they could start right in on nanotech research, which is cheaper and packs a greater economic punch for the seller, they’d catch up with the West sooner. Also that whole idea of helping Iran and other Middle Eastern countries fit right in with the Rossler Foundation philosophy, which is that the information in the 10th Cycle library must be used for the benefit of everyone, not just a privileged few. In retrospect, it was the worst thing we could have done.” Daniel’s plate was empty. He placed his silverware across it and sat back with his wineglass in hand.
