Ascent

by Thorby Rudbek

  “It would suggest either that they are non-violent, as you are inferring, or simply that they do not feel threatened, Brisson.”

  “Oh, they are capable of violence, sir!” Judy countered emotionally. “Taking control of someone’s mind and forcing them to get out of their car, stand paralysed and watch while you drive off – that’s quite a violation – someone who can do that is capable of anything, I’d say.”

  “That rules out one explanation…” Ed concurred, his face now showing a better appreciation of the fear that this young model must have experienced.

  “Overconfidence, huh? With every law-enforcement officer in the country looking for them, how long will that last?” Leroy wondered, all trace of humour gone from his face as he too, caught the feeling that Judy had invoked by her brief but impassioned explanation.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Some find the choosing of personal jewelry an intense experience – Anon.

  “We’ll have it sized and ready for you on Wednesday afternoon.” Hanna Edwards smiled broadly, her brown eyes sparkling like the exorbitantly expensive engagement ring she had just sold. “I’ll keep the earrings on hold for you, until the bridesmaids can come in. Good luck now!”

  “Thank you so much, Mrs. Edwards,” the casually-dressed but obviously wealthy man spoke clearly with a distinct ‘upper crust’ Bostonian accent as he turned with his very lovely fiancée to go. “Let’s get over to the caterer, now, my dear.”

  Hanna watched as the two socialites left the store; another happy couple that had unthinkingly disposed of more money than some people saw in ten years. She never failed to find a vicarious satisfaction in the outward signs of new love, no matter how ostentatious the display might be. Patting an errant curl of professionally styled and dyed brown hair into place, she closed the cash register and mentally added the latest sale to the running total she kept in her head each day. Almost as good as last Saturday. It was true to say that for Hanna, money and happiness were invariably closely connected. Of course, the fact that she owned one of the most exclusive jewellery stores in Boston might help to explain the relationship between the emotion and wealth, at least from her perspective. They’ll spend far more on the reception, I’m sure!

  She looked down the length of the counter at her best friend’s daughter and smiled with relief as the quiet girl murmured something about karats and laid out another gold necklace for her well-dressed customer to examine. She’s finally started to open up enough to help the customer make his choice. I knew she would get the hang of it; it just took her a little longer than the outgoing types. It shows that anyone can sell jewellery, given the opportunity.

  The business day was fast drawing to a close, so Hanna started to plan the meal she would prepare that night for the friends she had invited over the next day. She had not seen them for almost two years, so this was a much-anticipated event for the veteran business woman. Middle-aged and comfortably over-weight, her main passion in life (other than work) was entertaining, and especially the preparation of exotic foods for her always appreciative acquaintances. She had figured out the main course easily enough, but became rather unsure about the appetizer as she absentmindedly polished up the glass counter-top next to the cash register. They both like chocolate, but I’m sure I did my famous moose for them last time…

  Hanna looked up as the tiny, anachronistic bell over the front door rang, announcing the next prospective customers. This time the couple that entered seemed out of place; they certainly did not fit the norm she had come to expect over the years. She started to hear bells of a different nature sounding in her head as the door closed slowly behind them.

  The man was tall and gaunt, wore a leather jacket over a sweatshirt that had a mailed fist featured prominently on the front, and faded jeans tucked into scuffed cowboy boots. He carried an old sweater draped awkwardly over his crooked left arm as if it were concealing a cast. His face was thin and lined, and his sunken eyes rimmed red from the excesses he clearly considered to be his right. His name was Bart Douglas, and he was struggling to ignore the pain of untreated ulcers, a side effect of his expensive and ultimately suicidal habits. Hanna did not notice the dull gleam showing faintly through the woollen sweater as the bright lights overhead reflected off, not plaster, but the ominous sheen of a curved metal surface.

  The girl was called Vicki Trent, though for a while a few years earlier she had been known simply as ‘Gabrielle’ to her clients. She was quite short, though normally she disguised that fact with high-heeled shoes. Today she wore runners, just in case she needed to move quickly, for some reason. With bleached blonde hair that was spiked and puffed out at the front, but long, thin and straggly at the back, heavy black eye-liner that made her eyes appear smaller and less blue than they really were, and pink lipstick she had applied so liberally to make her mouth wider and harder than nature had intended, she looked every bit the epitome of the most blatant of her previous profession. Her recently widowed mother would certainly not have recognized the ‘candy-striper’ she had been so proud of, just eight years before. How do these changes happen?

  Vicki wore a very faded and grubby denim jacket with leather fringes hanging from the shoulders. Underneath this a low-cut, close-fitting purple tee shirt revealed an ample cleavage. Someone had seemingly painted shiny, skin-tight silver-blue pants onto her legs and lower body. Pants that showed her figure to a lot more than maximum advantage, and also left exposed about three inches of bulging tanned skin between the non-existent waistband of her pants and the bottom of her tee shirt. She was holding a plain brown paper grocery sack tightly with her right hand by the crumpled portion at the top as she entered Hanna’s high-class establishment. She seemed to pause to catch her breath, then left her friend by the entrance, ostensibly looking at the window displays, as she came closer to Mrs. Edwards.

  Vicki walked right up to the cash register and smiled broadly at Hanna.

  “How’s business?” She said quietly, with a false cheerfulness. She glanced back over her shoulder at Bart without waiting for a reply. He nodded as he leaned on a display near the door and eased the sweater-wrapped bundle onto the glass top, loosening the wool a little.

  Vicki turned back and tore the brown paper apart. A moment later she was pointing a large, dull black handgun at Hanna. “Open it.”

  Hanna stood paralyzed until the girl moved the gun closer to her stomach. She opened the cash register as directed and watched helplessly as Vicki reached over with her free hand and pulled the thick stacks of large denomination bills from beneath the restraining clips, followed by the lesser denominations, dumping them all out on the counter.

  “Out.” She waved the weapon towards the back of the store, where the sales assistant, a young and timid-looking creature with a pale and frightened expression, was frozen in the act of laying out a third gold necklace on the velvet pad before her. In front of her stood her middle-aged gentleman customer, his dark hair short and neat, matching his browned skin, his immaculate blue suit showing creases only where the tailor had intended them to be. She was looking beyond him as he studied the jewellery thoughtfully, her eyes bulging as they fixated on the heavy handgun.

  As Hanna hesitated, wondering if she could reach the alarm without making it obvious, Vicki repeated the gesture and shouted something incoherent in her agitation at the lack of response from the young salesgirl.

  The noise caused the tanned gentleman to turn around, and he became aware at last of the reason for the sales assistant’s sudden incapacitation. Hanna stepped slowly left as the movement of the customer distracted the fake-blonde thief momentarily. She reached down behind the counter, then jumped back as the deafening report of the gun assailed her ears.

  “The next one will rip you apart,” Vicki warned shrilly, cradling the heavy weapon in both hands and trying to stop them from shaking. The muscles in her right forearm ached from the jolt given them by the recoil of the gun, which fortunately for Hanna had caused the bullet to fall
below and to the right of her intended living target.

  Hanna moved away from the alarm she had almost reached, and glanced at the shattered display where the slug had disappeared between rows of engagement rings, leaving a neat black hole in the fuzzy grey surface. Splinters of wood had pierced the back of her hand as the bullet had torn through the rear door of the cabinet, scattering fragments and leaving a far larger hole; tiny red droplets formed at each puncture point. She wondered if her heart would survive the shock, as the blood pounded in her ears and her head started to swim.

  “Now, get back there with the others.”

  Hanna moved shakily around the end of the display and joined her terrified assistant and the well-dressed customer at the back of the store.

  “You!” Bart shouted from his position at the entrance, as he threw a canvas sack onto the floor between his accomplice and the frightened group now huddling together for comfort at the back of the store. The businessman looked over, discovering with horror that he was the object of the communication.

  “Get the sack and fill it with the stuff in the centre display.”

  When the blue-suited man hesitated, Vicki waved her gun menacingly at him, her hands still visibly shaking. He picked up the carryall and started to load the diamond rings from the cabinet one at a time into it.

  “Faster.” Vicki approached him, stepping between the door and the display. “Tip them in there. Now that one.” She gestured with the handgun to a blue velvet panel mounted behind the main counter. Soon the best of the stock was bagged. “Now, put the money in.”

  The olive-skinned businessman shovelled the loose bills into the bag and turned slowly around.

  Vicki snatched the canvas sack from his out-stretched hand and backed towards the entrance. “Get down on your faces. Quickly! Or I might just shoot all of you.”

  Hanna, her assistant, and the unfortunate customer dropped to the floor and flattened themselves against it. The well-dressed gentleman put his hands on top of his head and kept his nose pressed to the maroon carpet, as he had done many years before during a revolutionary raid on his government office in the land of his birth. He had not expected to repeat the actions of that day, when he had managed to secure a visa to enter the United States, which he revered as a land of freedom and justice, but now that he was faced with death once more, he felt the position would minimize the antagonism of the two angry young thieves and maximize the possibility of continuing with his new and successful life-style for many more years.

  “The first one who moves gets this!” Bart shouted as Vicki stopped next to him at the door. He removed the sawn-off shotgun from the simple camouflage of the sweater and blasted one of the emptied displays into thousands of pieces. The boom hurt their ears, made them jump. Fragments of glass fell onto the three people on the floor as the door swung slowly closed, causing the little bell to tinkle one more time. Then, mercifully, there was silence.

  Chapter Thirty

  Never underestimate the gravity of the situation – Idahnian

  The black, painstakingly polished, stretched limousine squealed to a halt at the barricade on Daniel Street early on Friday evening. An aide dressed in a light grey uniform got out, walked around to the passenger side and opened the rear door. After a significant, perhaps theatrical pause, a rather elegantly-dressed man wearing a dark suit and sparkling black shoes emerged, carrying an extremely thin attaché case, and exchanged a few murmured words with his driver. He made a show of checking the time on his Rolex watch before walking briskly to the sergeant at the security gate in the newly completed perimeter fence. He showed his photo-identity card without saying a word, and the sergeant saluted and raised the barrier with due haste as he recognized the distinguished gentleman as Nathan Blackwell, the Chief Scientific Advisor to the President of the United States.

  “Mr. Baynes is just down there by the generator truck, sir,” the sergeant advised helpfully, pointing out the relatively rotund form of Ed Baynes some fifty yards further up the road, still dressed in coveralls, observing the construction of a walk-way across the increasingly muddy ground from the road towards Citadel.

  Once through, Nathan Blackwell walked directly up to Ed and flashed the same photo-identity card briefly before him. He lost no time in introductions, but immediately began his interrogation of the chief of NUIT. “I received updates on the hazard potential of this extra-terrestrial artefact during my flight up from Washington, so I want only information relating to developments since that point.”

  Ed Baynes looked around at the military personnel busily adjusting equipment and the engineers laying planks across the trampled ground, fixing them in place with long metal stakes; he was startled by Blackwell’s lack of concern with security, and gestured towards the truck. “Shall we continue inside?”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary; I’m sure you will have little of a sensitive nature to divulge.”

  Baynes could see that Blackwell did not seem to rate important the fact that few of the personnel within the fenced-off area were informed as to the true nature of the sombre building that formed the focus of their efforts. He knew that there were as many theories as there were servicemen in Redcliff, and that this confusion made for a makeshift, but effective kind of security. Ed considered spelling this out, but one look at the Chief Scientific Advisor’s polished dome-like head, prominent nose and domineering brown eyes convinced him that such a move would be unwise, if he wanted to stay on site.

  “I authorized an engineering team to begin excavations from both sides of the structure just a few minutes ago. Within an hour we should have some significant information on the shape and characteristics of the portions of Citadel that are presently hidden beneath the soil. My team is ready to subject the exposed surfaces to the same battery of tests that you have seen described in our earlier reports. There are some other options open to us, but I consider the time is not right to proceed with them at present.”

  Blackwell raised his eyebrows, as if he were doubtful of the value of Ed’s judgement. His aide, who had tagged along dutifully, like a well-trained dog, a few paces behind him, had pulled out a miniature, palm-sized computer and begun furiously inputting notes on the situation as soon as Baynes had started talking.

  “So not one of the techniques that you chose to achieve the penetration of the structure has proved at all effective, Baynes?” Blackwell summarized with disdain. “And you have not come up with any new approaches since the last report?”

  Ed sensed his credibility being undermined, as the President’s Chief Scientific Advisor questioned him out in the open, while engineers and soldiers milled around, setting up further defensive equipment and watching the interview surreptitiously as they passed by. Careful – don’t give him an excuse to expel you – he’s just itching to show off his political muscles.

  “There is one alternative, sir,” Ed felt like he was back at school, as Nathan Blackwell referred to him, not by his title, but merely by his surname. “But we really should move inside to discuss it.”

  Nathan Blackwell sneered down his long nose with disbelief. “You are way ahead of yourself there,” he assured Ed with contempt, “I have a program of explosive testing, organized with gradually increasing potency, all worked out and ready for implementation. Any use of non-conventional explosives is not justified at this point, but believe me, if I recommend such action, it will be taken! As I look at the lack of progress here, I can only conclude that your methods are ineffective; I expected results on my arrival, not more hedging around.”

  “Not effective thus far, sir,” Baynes qualified, trying to re-establish his credibility. “We are excavating from both sides in an attempt to investigate the lower part of Citadel, as I already mentioned. These are the only surfaces not yet subjected to our comprehensive battery of sensing devices and drills. However, I must admit that I am more hopeful that the capture of Richard Fletcher and or Karen Amer will enable us to unlock the secrets of Citadel. We have mobili
zed every available police and security officer, every F.B.I. agent, and every operative of any and all other government security agencies in the country. In addition, the government of Canada has been fully involved, and has assured us of the fullest co-operation, in case the fugitives make it across the border.”

  “The President wants results.” Nathan shook his head as if he were intensely weary. “We can’t maintain this level of security around Redcliff indefinitely, and I do not intend to rely on the intrinsically uncertain possibility that the enemy operatives will be captured. Besides, I have no reason to conclude that their capture would enable us to enter the structure or learn its secrets.”

  Ed struggled to keep his expression free of emotion as he listened to Nathan Blackwell’s radically differing, narrow-minded opinion being expressed with scathing intensity.

  “Consequently,” Blackwell continued, “I have been authorized to take any steps I deem necessary to bring this investigation to a successful conclusion.” He seemed to enjoy Baynes’ discomfort, and continued with relish to explain that he was taking over the leadership of the operation immediately. “You can continue to co-ordinate the capture of the ‘hostiles’; perhaps you will be more successful in that area, as it seems so important to you. I shall engineer the penetration of the artefact.”

  By this point, Ed had gone through his full range of frustrated expressions, and was left speechless, his face now white and immobile, as the super-slick Blackwell flowed smoothly away towards Citadel, up the newly completed walk-way, his aide staying a couple of respectful paces behind him once more. After a few moments, Baynes collected himself enough to realize he had been demoted and brushed aside, and he walked slowly back towards the observation truck, muttering expletives through narrowed lips. He looked up at the door as he approached, just in time to see it open and Fraser emerge. As their eyes met, Fraser’s ‘I’ve got something new and exciting to tell you’ expression slid down his face and disappeared into the open neck of his sweatshirt, to be replaced with one of uncertainty and unease.