Multiverse a technothril.., p.20
Multiverse: A Technothriller, page 20
She did and he dabbed something on her face, and then focused a bit more on the back of her hands.
“This helps highlight the blood vessels on your hands, which will definitely be seen by others, so you want to have the subtle signs of age show even there.”
Alicia looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize herself. She turned to her father who was doing something to simulate bushy eyebrows and he’d completely changed his appearance. The arguably good-looking, in-shape forty-something father of hers, was replaced with a ridiculously in-shape seventy-year-old. “Dad, this is so weird to see you like this.”
He turned to Alicia, tilted his head as he looked at her and grinned. “I like it. We have some teeth discoloration work to do, and clothing adjustments, obviously, but I think we can pull this off.”
Alicia frowned. “Um, Dad. You never really explained what it is we’re pulling off.”
He glanced at his wristwatch and said, “I’ll explain in a bit. However, while I’m getting our wardrobe straightened out, you’ve got some airplane origami to work on.”
“Airplane origami? Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Alicia stared in awe at the three stainless steel arcs rising a couple hundred feet into the air. Her attention shifted past the structure and on the horizon she saw an immense building with an unmistakable five-sided design. The Pentagon wasn’t quite a stone’s throw away, but it was very close.
A man nearby was talking loudly to an older woman next to him who must have been hard of hearing since he pointed at the structure and said quite loudly, “Mom, those steel arcs remind me of the contrails from Dad’s plane. Remember how he’d described how he and his buddies would do the bomb burst maneuver?”
There was a reasonable crowd of people milling about at the memorial, maybe about two or three dozen people, most of them fairly silent in their own thoughts as the place seemed to be the kind of place for quiet contemplation.
“Kumiko, help me give these out as a thank you to coming and honoring our vets.”
Alicia turned to her father, whose back was bent forward so much that he was forced to crane his neck to look straight ahead. They’d practiced their roles in the apartment, and as the elderly Japanese wife to a veteran, they made a very unobtrusive couple, and certainly not a pair of people that would set anyone on alert. He was wearing a U.S. Air Force Vietnam Veteran hat and had a grocery bag full of the gray paper planes they’d folded into intricate facsimiles of jets. She scooped up a handful of the planes out of the bag and watched as he shakily approached strangers.
“Thank you so much for coming, please, take a souvenir.” His voice had a reedy and gravelly tone to it that was distinctly old-man style. “My wife and I are so happy you’ve come to visit and honor our fallen.”
A young couple hesitated and finally accepted one of the planes. The young woman gushed as she studied the intricate paper art. “These are so beautiful. Thank you for your service.”
Alicia followed her “frail husband” and helped give out some of the planes.
One man gave her father a crisp salute and smiled as he accepted the gift. “May I ask what unit you were with?”
“388th tactical. But that was a lifetime ago.”
“Really? My father was in the 388th flying Phantoms out of Korat. Were you a pilot?”
Her father nodded. “The Phantom was after my time, young man. I mostly flew the Thunderchief back in ’67. Please enjoy your time here.” He glanced in Alicia’s direction. “Come with me, Kumiko. It’s getting warm.”
Watching her father struggle with his walker, it reminded Alicia to take shorter, more hesitant steps as she followed him toward the memorial wall.
He whispered, “To the left.”
She glanced in that direction and spotted a group of well-dressed men heading toward the memorial. Her eyes widened as Alicia spotted the familiar gait of the man she’d known for years. “It’s him,” she whispered, “he’s the one wearing a light-colored polo.”
“He’ll probably head toward us. I’ll start with his guards; you work toward the professor. Whether it’s you or me who gets to him, do what you need to do.”
Alicia had marked the nose of the specially-prepared paper plane and it was in the voluminous pocket of the shapeless gown she was wearing.
Her heart began thudding loudly and she felt butterflies in her stomach as the group headed straight for them.
Michael walked along the path up to the Air Force Memorial and smiled as he saw the three steel spires seemingly bursting out of the ground. The image immediately brought to mind the few times he’d gone to an air show where three Thunderbirds would zoom up into the sky, smoke trailing behind them and burst outward in an amazing display of aerial acrobatics.
One of the agents leading the group motioned toward the far end of the memorial and said, “The Medal of Honor recipients are inscribed on the wall over there.”
They moved as a group and he remembered his grandfather’s stories of the Vietnam War. He’d been a pilot, had run quite a few missions, and had downed a couple MiG-17s during his time out there.
There were several people reading the granite-etched inscriptions on the memorial and Michael walked up and began reading them as well.
One hit him particularly hard as he read it out loud, “Tell them that we gave our todays for their tomorrows.”
Michael felt his throat tighten at the sentiment and his mind drifted to his wife and child. Not everyone would have any tomorrows…
“Thank you for honoring our fallen.”
He glanced to his left and saw an older gentleman stooped over from age, holding himself up with his walker. He was a veteran. “Sir, I’m glad you made it home, and thank you for your service.” He moved to his right and spotted the name of Leo Thorsness. Michael’s eyes widened at seeing the name of the friend his grandfather had always talked about. His grandfather had described the man as “the damned luckiest, bravest, no-sense bastard hero he'd ever known.”
That was high praise from his grandfather, a man who didn’t think much of anyone’s accomplishments, including his own.
Michael hadn’t realized that his grandfather’s friend had been a Medal of Honor winner. That was a huge deal.
If only grandad was still alive, he would have loved to talk to him about that. Nevertheless, seeing his friend’s name gave Michael a warm feeling of contentment.
“Sir.”
Michael looked over at an old woman as she handed him a piece of origami in the shape of a jet. It was a small piece of paper artwork. He waved the offer away and smiled. “Thank you, but that’s okay. You keep it.”
“Please, as a memento of your friend who died. So you can remember being here.” She offered once again the paper.
One of the agents approached and was about to shoo her away when Michael accepted the airplane with both hands and gave the Asian woman a small bow. “It’s beautiful. Thank you.” The woman’s eyes teared up and her face contorted with barely contained emotions. He approached her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Is this plane something you made?” She whispered something he couldn’t hear, so he leaned down and whispered, “Say again?”
The woman looked over at him and whispered, “Unfold it when you are alone. There’s a message written inside that you must see.” The woman shrugged off his arm, turned and hobbled over to the old man using a walker.
He looked at the paper plane and carefully placed it in his pocket as an agent came over and asked, “Are we done?”
Michael nodded and the four agents escorted him past the old couple, who were still giving away more of the pieces of origami to whoever was nearby.
He patted his pocket and wondered if the old woman was crazy or something important had just happened.
His heart began thudding loudly in his chest as he knew it would be many hours before he’d be alone.
“There’s a message you must see inside it.”
What could that message be?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Michael waited in the car at Gate Four, one of the entrances to Marine Base Quantico, as the agent in charge of his security paced back and forth, arguing with someone on the phone.
“Are you shitting me? The Inn is full? It wasn’t full this morning… yes, but we didn’t know for certain if we needed it, and now we do.” The agent continued pacing and frowned as the crickets chirped loudly in the ever-deepening darkness of the evening.
Percy whined and put his chin on Michael’s shoulder as he too stared out of the rolled down window, wondering what was going on.
The agent held a sour expression as he pocketed his cell phone, hopped into the front passenger’s seat, and told the driver, “Let’s turn around, go back up Russel Road and hang a left on Richmond Highway. Supposedly there’s a Marriott about a mile away. It’ll have to do.”
The driver put the car into gear and remotely rolled up Michael’s window as he did a U-turn, heading away from the Marine Base.
The agent in the front seat turned around and said, “Professor, it’s late and we’ll just have to make due with what we have. Tomorrow we’ll figure out where we can get more controlled quarters for everyone on the detail.”
Michael shrugged. “As long as they have a hot shower and a decent mattress, I’m good.”
The agent pointed in Percy’s direction and the dog immediately let out a low growl. “When the dog needs a bathroom break and you need to go walk him, make sure you call me.”
Michael nodded and ran his fingers through Percy’s fur, trying to calm him as the dog stared at the agent, ears lowered, and fur standing on end. Something about the way the agent had pointed at him had set the puppy on edge. The last thing Michael needed was a seventy-pound canine wanting to get a piece of the guy who’s trying to keep him safe.
It took them no more than five minutes before Michael was handed a keycard for his hotel room and the agent said, “I’m in room 205. Remember, call me whenever you need. I or one of the other agents will be at your room right away to walk with you. You got it?”
“Sure.” Michael nodded, fist-bumped the agent and walked in the direction that the lady at the front desk had told him his room was located.
He swiped his card into the lock, a tiny LED flashed green and he felt the crisp cool air of the air condition as he entered his room.
He and Percy were finally alone in the hotel room.
And despite being exhausted, he hadn’t forgotten the odd encounter at the Air Force Memorial as he dug into his pants pocket and carefully extracted the folded-up piece of paper.
Taking a few seconds to find the light switches, he pulled the curtains to his room, locked the door and as Percy climbed up onto the bed and settled in for a nap, Michael carefully began unfolding the intricately constructed airplane.
Within seconds he noticed hints of some writing and what looked like money that had been used in the jet’s construction.
It took him a full minute or so before he’d discombobulated the separate pieces of paper and realized the old woman had weaved a one-hundred-dollar bill into the plane’s construction. As he turned over the blue piece of paper on which he’d spied some writing, he noticed it also had some tiny print from a laser printer.
The print looked like a fragment of some kind of transcript of a conversation.
[FBI Agent - Jason Whitley] “We have managed to detect tachyon particles in our vacuum chamber by their Cherenkov radiation…”
[DARPA - Dr. Carl Sundenbach] “And you are who, again?”
[FBI Agent - Jason Whitley] “Ken Lee, I’m a post-grad research on Professor Salomon’s team.
[DARPA - Dr. Carl Sundenbach] “Well, I will be sure to take this up with some others and you might be hearing from us. Thanks for the call.”
Voice pattern analysis between Agent Whitley and Princeton graduate student “Josh Whitley” is a match.
Michael stared at the paper, his hand shaking with anger as the solutions to puzzles he’d encountered months ago were suddenly answered.
Of course Ken hadn’t called Red Eye, he was physically incapable of it, yet Sundenbach wouldn’t have had a clue about the deceased researcher’s speech issues. It was Josh who’d alerted DARPA about his discovery.
An FBI agent posing as a grad student?
Percy sat up, sensing the anger building within him. He yipped a question at him.
“I don’t know, Percy. I just don’t know.” He looked over at the dog and asked, “What if Ken’s death wasn’t an accident?”
Michael stared at the paper and noticed a handwritten address and time on the paper.
Three a.m. tonight.
The hairs on the back of Michael’s neck stood on end as he thought of the likelihood of this being some kind of setup.
But the information made too much sense.
Josh’s seemingly smooth transition from meek graduate student to confident navigator of government bureaucracy was too easy. And the whole Ken communicating to the DARPA folks had never been resolved to his satisfaction until now.
It made sense.
Who was going to be at this address?
He looked at his watch and grimaced. It was almost ten p.m., and from what he could tell, the address was somewhere in Arlington, which was about thirty minutes away.
The agents would never let him go.
Surely the old woman was just a way to get a message to him. It wasn’t her or her elderly husband that he’d be meeting.
Who could it be? Someone trying to give him heads-up about something bad going on, more than likely. And if they knew about undercover agents and the conversation with Ken, these people had to work for the government. There was no other possibility.
Two factions in the government? Maybe…
And the FBI guys were not his friends, that much he’d already suspected, but the Josh thing clinched it.
Knowing about Josh, it seemed an impossibility that he could ever work with him again. There was no way.
He glanced at the paper and stared at the handwritten portion.
If he left at two in the morning… the FBI guys wouldn’t know. He could scout out the area and see what it was about. And he had Percy with him, who’d tear chunks off of anyone who approached him with ill-intent.
Using an Uber had been stupid back in New Jersey. It would involve a credit card charge and he might not get lucky two times in a row. For all he knew, his credit card was being monitored at all times… was that even a thing? He had no idea. He’d only seen stuff like that on TV.
He held up the hundred-dollar-bill and grinned. Whoever this was, they were probably thinking similar thoughts. He could call a cab and this would more than cover the round trip. And it would probably be untraceable.
He turned to Percy. “We could go out and come back before dawn. Nobody would be the wiser. What do you think?”
Percy looked at him, his tongue lolled out in a panting grin as he wagged his tail.
It was agreed.
Michael gazed longingly at the bed and reached over for the clock on the nightstand so he could set an alarm. “A couple hours of sleep and let’s see what we can find out.”
Sitting cross-legged in the back of a van during the wee hours of the morning with her father and Brice wasn’t something Alicia had imagined herself ever doing. However, this was definitely starting to feel legitimately like some kind of secret spy mission. Her father had put in his “ears” and had an elastic band around his neck with a flat microphone sitting flush against his throat, as did she.
To add to the whole mysterious John Wick feel of everything happening around her, Brice resembled a mad scientist as he was mixing some concoction in a clear plastic cup. He looked over at her and asked, “Are you ready?”
Alicia prepared herself to be fitted with a custom earpiece. With her head tilted to the side, she brushed back her hair so her right ear was exposed to the roof, then held her breath. “Yes.”
Brice approached with a bulb injector in one hand and a set of tweezers in the other. “Alicia, this stuff will feel weird as it fills your ear canal. Just don’t move until I say so. We need this receiver to be aligned properly as the silicone sets. Understood?”
“Yup.” Alicia responded, even though she was a bit freaked out about some goop being poured into her ear.
“Don’t worry, this’ll be over quickly.”
With tweezers, Brice held a tiny electronic device in her ear while he injected the flesh-colored liquid silicone around the device. Alicia felt the goop expand, filling the gaps and crevices in her outer ear. The stuff was getting warmer as it lay there, feeling not unlike a bunch of bubbling snot that threatened to dribble out of her ear and into her hair.
“Okay, now just stay still for two minutes and you’ll be set. Not too horrible, right?”
“It feels hot, and I can’t hear anything through it. Are you sure it’s working right?”
Brice chuckled. “Don’t worry, that’s normal. The silicone probably just oozed over the far end of the audio tube. In another minute or so, the concoction will cure, I’ll pull it out for you, shave the edges, and we’ll test it out.”
As the earpiece solidified, Alicia watched as her father popped out the magazine from his gun, chambered a round, and then seated it into his shoulder holster. Brice was also busy rummaging through a toolbox that was welded into the floor of the van. He pulled out a bag filled with oddly-shaped bent metal tubes whose ends were sharpened. “What’s in that bag?”
“Oh, these?” He held up the bag. “They’re caltrops. They’re for what I like to call ‘oh crap’ moments. Since these are made of hardened steel tubing, they’re particularly good at blowing out tires.”
“They’re often used for area denial campaigns in wartime. Dump a bunch of those things and anything with normal wheels is going to have some issues trying to cross. It prevents regular vehicles from advancing on your position, and admittedly, it’s less problematic than mines.”
