Creation- The Auditor’s Apprentice

by Frank Stonely

  But, for Daniel, the back cover was the pièce de résistance. It showed a recent aerial photograph of the White House grounds, extending north from Constitution Avenue, to H Street. The picture’s high resolution clearly showed all the access routes to the building which, along with the internal floor plans Amy had found, gave him all he needed to plan his rendezvous with Mr. President. As Daniel returned the book to Amy’s lap, he declared, ‘I’m going to go and meet Mr. President tomorrow!’

  ‘And how are you going to do that?’

  ‘I’m going to take the tour of the house again and when I’m inside, I’ll go and find him.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Daniel! You can’t just go walking around his house looking for him.’

  Daniel was engrossed in the book, finalising his plan, ‘Do you remember when the guide took us out onto that platform that overlooked the gardens?’

  ‘You mean the Truman Balcony.’

  ‘Yes, that was it. After that, he took us down into the basement and showed us the-’

  Amy interrupted, ‘You’re not going to try and use the secret tunnels?’

  ‘Have you got a better suggestion?’

  The network of tunnels beneath the White House was comprehensive and linked the building to various government facilities throughout the DC area but, most importantly, they provided a secure route to the president's emergency operations centre, buried six stories beneath the East Wing. During the tour, the guide had pointed out an unmarked, closet-like door in the basement, which apparently gave access to a secret tunnel that ran directly to the Oval Office.

  ‘If these tunnels are so secret, how come everybody knows about them?’ Spiro asked.

  ‘Spiro’s right. If everybody knows about them, then they’re going to be heavily guarded. No! We need to come up with a more elegant plan.’

  Spiro agreed with Amy, ‘She’s right, Daniel, there’s no point rushing into this, you saw their reaction when you asked to speak to him. Why don’t you let me get you into the house?’

  ‘No, I think using the tunnels is a better idea.’

  ‘Why are you so stubborn, Daniel? Just let Spiro help you… that’s why Director Hedrick sent him.’

  33

  Cancelled Breakfast

  It was the early hours of a raw winter’s day when Daniel and Spiro arrived at sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. Hidden in the shadows of the Rochambeau Statue, they studied the brightly-lit outline of the White House, tracing their route to the West Wing portico. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ Spiro asked.

  Daniel was looking up at the French nobleman towering above him. ‘I was reading about this guy in Amy’s book last night. He’s a French solder with a long, complicated name, Jean-Baptiste Donatien de, something, something, Rochambeau. He came to America to help Mr. Washington fight the British.’ Daniel started to smile to himself, ‘I wonder if Peter, the farmer’s ancestors were there? Can you imagine it? They’d be dressed in their cricket whites, using their bats as clubs, and bowling googlies at the frogs.’

  ‘Frogs?’

  ‘Yes, frogs. That’s what he calls the French.’ His smile melted away, ‘If only Anubis had left them alone, life on Earth could have been perfect… well, perfect, until the Dark Matter was harvested.’ Daniel turned to face the translucent figure standing behind him, ‘Sorry, Spiro, what did you say?’

  ‘I said, do you think this is a good idea?’

  ‘It really doesn’t matter. It’s the only one we’ve got. So, come on… let’s get on with it.’

  Amy’s suggestion to use Spiro to cloak Daniel had been inspired. Although, as they had passed, unseen, through the West Wing gates, sidestepping the armed Secret Service officers, Daniel had been convinced his host was about to die. With the guard dog still barking, they made their way up the West Wing drive, stopping under one of the trees for Daniel to catch his breath. Once inside the lobby he relaxed, now confident of Spiro’s ability to make him invisible. Disappointingly though, the ghost’s omnitemporal talents had proved to be less useful. Whilst it was true Spiro could predict every possible outcome of an event, selecting the relevant timeline had proved to be virtually impossible.

  As Daniel stood in the president’s bathroom, drinking the last of the water from the tumbler, he glanced at himself in the mirror again. Spiro was standing next to him, incarnated as the housemaid they had watched polishing the mirror in the West Wing lobby. It was obvious why the Secret Service agent had paid her so much attention; she was beautiful, with flawless skin and the blackest of hair. Her eyes were so dark that they looked permanently dilated, giving her a seductive appearance. ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘We wait,’ Daniel replied, glancing at his watch. The time was four forty-five. He walked over to the toilet and sat down on the seat.

  ‘Shall I go and see what’s going on?’ Spiro said.

  ‘No!’ Daniel snapped, ‘We stay here and wait for Mr. President to come to us.’

  Jerry was packing away his tools, when the door flew open and an irate Secret Service officer stormed into the chief of staff’s room, ‘Have you been fucking around in the President’s dining room?’ he snarled. Jerry refused to be intimidated and stood calmly coiling up the cables of his test equipment. From his experience, all Secret Service staff were assholes, blown up with their own self-importance, and he was fucked if this asshole was going to push him around. ‘Well, mother-fucker, answer the question!’ Jerry sidestepped around him placing the coiled cable into the instrument case on the desk.

  Before the officer could react, a housemaid entered the room, ‘Hey, Jerry. Do you know if anybody’s been in the President’s dining room this morning? Only, I laid it out before I went home last night, and now it’s a complete mess.’

  Jerry’s demeanour changed as he walked forward to greet her. ‘I’ve been stuck in here all night, Jan, trying to get this comms link working. Have you asked the goon outside?’ The maid had to bite her tongue to stop herself laughing. Goon was the name used by most of the White House staff when referring to the grunt-level Secret Service officers who made their life hell.

  The officer pulled Jerry around by his shoulder and pointing his index figure directly into his face said, ‘I’ll fucking deal with you later!’ He then pushed him aside and, barging past the maid, ran from the room.

  Stepping into the steam-filled shower cubical he lathered his hands with gel from the dispenser, his eyes closed against the cascading water. He slid the foam-covered hands around her waist, massaging her flat, silky stomach, and then, kissing the nape of her neck, brought them up to cup her full breasts. She reached behind, wrapping her fingers around him and slowly began to massage his erection, the strokes getting stronger as her grip tightened. ‘What happened to you this morning?’ she said, turning around to face him, fondling his balls gently in both hands.

  ‘There’s life in the old dog yet,’ he said, placing a kiss on her forehead. She was slightly shorter than her husband and, as she looked up at him, the water from the showerhead streamed over her face, pouring into the cleavage pressing against him. He held her head gently in both hands and pulled her up until she was standing on the tips of her toes, reaching up to kiss him. The kiss lingered and she turned from a wife to a lover, sliding her leg up against the side of his thigh and placing him inside her again.

  Suddenly there was an urgent knock at the door, ‘Mr. President! I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s been a breach of security downstairs.’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake! Can’t they leave us alone?’ the First Lady said, stepping back from her husband and turning the shower control off.

  The president sighed as his wife stepped out of the cubical, ‘Okay, Tom… Give me five minutes to get dressed,’ he called out.

  ‘I’ll be right outside the door if you need me, Mr. President.’

  ‘Oh joy! We can all sleep safely in our beds, Tom’s outside the door,’ she spat, wrapping a bath towel around her and stalking back into t
heir bedroom.

  By the time the president and Tom reached the Oval Office, the ground floor of the West Wing was crawling with security staff. Armed SWAT officers were stationed at every doorway, with plainclothes Secret Service agents scurrying around, talking into their suit sleeves. The president walked up to his desk, turned and leant back against it, ‘This better be fucking important, Tom! The First Lady’s really pissed off. Now, what the FUCK is going on?’

  The president calmed down as Tom related the unusual events that morning. There was the incident at the West Wing gate, the wet footprints along the corridor leading to the vice president’s office and now, someone had accessed his private dining room. This could have been a series of random events but, from Tom’s experience, that just didn’t happen. And after the terrorist attack on the Wall Street subway station, he was taking no chances. ‘I’ve got the tech guys scanning your dining room for bugs, Mr. President, so I’ve had your breakfast laid out in the Roosevelt Room, you won’t be disturbed there,’ Tom said.

  ‘Thanks, Tom, you did the right thing, what would I do without you?’ The president walked over to the window looking out onto the west colonnade and stood for some time deep in thought, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about today, Tom, a real bad feeling.’ He turned and sighed, ‘I need to take a piss.’

  Daniel glanced up at Spiro as he heard the Oval Office door open. He jumped up from the toilet seat and skated across the bathroom floor to stand behind the door as it swung open. The president walked over to the toilet, raised the seat and stood listening to the satisfying sound of his urine splashing against the water in the bowl. He shook his penis twice, smiling to himself as he replayed his performance in the First Lady’s bed that morning. He stepped back, zipped up his fly and flushed the toilet. Then, turning to wash his hands, he stopped dead as his eyes met Daniel’s. A tense silence filled the room as they stood looking at each other, the president taking a step back as Spiro emerged from behind Daniel. ‘What’s going on guys?’ he said in a nervous, trembling voice.

  ‘I need to talk to you, Mr. President,’ Daniel explained, locking the bathroom door.

  ‘Well, the normal way is to make an appointment with my secretary. Why don’t I call her and we can set up a time?’ The president started to walk purposefully towards the door but Spiro’s incarnation blocked his path. ‘Now look, honey,’ the president said, ‘I don’t know what this is all about, but you could lose your job over this. Just let me pass and we’ll say no more about it.’ The president had now regained his composure and was speaking with authority, until he realised that he could see the bathroom door through the housemaid’s body.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr. President and I’ll explain everything.’ Daniel lowered the toilet seat cover and the president sat down without taking his eyes off the translucent housemaid. ‘I’m sorry, but this is a very important matter. We’ve been sent from GOD to save the planet and we need your help.’

  The president sighed with relief, thank the Lord, he was only dealing with a pair of religious lunatics and not some fanatical terrorist group. He tried to humour Daniel and pointing to Spiro said, ‘That’s a cute trick, son, how d’you do it? Some sort of laser projector under your coat?’ Daniel beckoned to Spiro who stepped through his body causing him to momentarily disappear. The president shook his head and laughed, ‘Gee you’re good. Quit all this crap and I’ll hire you for the Thanksgiving ball, you’ll go down a storm.’

  Daniel spent the next fifteen minutes explaining in detail the Earth’s predicament. The president sat listening intently and, when Daniel had finished, said, ‘So let me see if I’ve got this right. You come from another dimension called creation, whose purpose is to make dark-matter for those-on-high, some sort of super-beings that are in charge of everything. Now the angels and ghosts used to be in charge of production, but they couldn’t keep up with the demand so, those-on-high, created a new dimension called creation to take over the job, a sort of industrial revolution. Have I got it right so far?’ Daniel nodded, pleased that Mr. President had paid so much attention. ‘Okay, so there are billions of these universes, all producing this dark-matter stuff but, you need us humans to enrich it... what did you say, like putting yeast into bread dough? And you’re here because this bad guy, Anubis, has come to Earth on some sort of time-machine to blow up the Sun and that’s pissed off the angels, ghosts, poltergeists, vampires and BOOGEYMAN… Do you think I’m FUCKING MAD?’ the president shouted, leaping up and launching himself towards the door.

  Tom had been looking at his wristwatch assuming that the president’s piss had turned into something more substantial, when he heard the shouting coming through the connecting door. He beckoned to the SWAT officer standing behind the president’s desk, putting his finger across his lips. Quietly and calmly he walked across the Oval Office carpet towards the connecting door, whispering into his suit sleeve as he went, ‘Code 28 blue, repeat, 28 blue, this is not a drill.’ At first he thought the voices had come from the president’s dining room and was walking past the bathroom door when the wrestling bodies thumped against the wall. He stopped and placed his ear against the door.

  Daniel was desperately trying to calm the situation down, ‘I’m not here to harm you, Mr. President. I just need your help.’

  Tom knocked lightly on the door and in a nonchalant voice said, ‘Your breakfast is ready when you are, Mr. President. And don’t forget you have that meeting with Elvis this morning.’ The name Elvis was a code word that told the president Tom knew he was in trouble. They had practised numerous hostage situations, with each scenario being given a different code name. The president struggled to recall what he was supposed to do when Elvis was mentioned. Then, it came to him. He was to put as much distance as possible between him and the intruder and, taking the room’s floor plan as the face of a clock, with twelve o’clock being the door, tell Tom a time which positioned him and his captor at the end of the minute and hour hands respectively.

  ‘Give me a couple of minutes, Tom, it’s only twenty past eight.’ Daniel watched as the president walked back to the toilet and sat down again, the incorrect time not registering. Both the Oval Office and the president’s dining room were now full of SWAT and Secret Service officers all staring silently into the connecting corridor where Tom was standing, still listening at the bathroom door. He took a deliberate step back and drawing his handgun from its holster, beckoning the SWAT officer to join him. He raised the gun and after taking thoughtful aim, started firing as rapidly as he could through the bathroom’s door, emptying the contents of the gun’s clip in seconds. As the last round left the barrel the SWAT officer smashed his way through the bathroom door and, diving across the room, dragging the president to the floor, covering him with his body. Tom ejected the empty cartridge clip and by the time he was through the door the replacement was snapped home and the gun ready to fire again. He slammed what was left of the door against the wall and stood sweeping the area behind it with his gun. He spun back to look behind him but, apart from the president and the SWAT officer, the room was empty.

  34

  NASA Langley Research Center

  As Orion stepped from the bus he knew the time had come to say adiós to José Santiago. He had chosen Newport News because of its proximity to the NASA Langley Research Centre. It was a small, independent city, with a population of just under two hundred thousand, only a fifteen minute drive from the facility. Oyster Point was a popular destination for the Langley fraternity who regularly lunched and dined in the numerous cafes and restaurants that surrounded the ornamental lake.

  Everybody looked up as José clattered through the cafe’s door, desperate to escape the bitter, westerly wind cutting across the bay. He closed the door and made his way to the only vacant table, the disapproving glances fading, as the diners returned to their meals. He had barely sat down before the gum-chewing waitress arrived. He quickly scanned the other tables and then ordered coffee and apple pie.

  As Orion wai
ted for his order, he took the street map he had purchased and, pushing the condiment rack aside, spread it open across the table. He wanted to find a location close to the bus station where he could rent an apartment. Suddenly, the cafe door opened again and a gust of wind filled the room, blowing the map from the table. In unison with the other diners, the Gatekeeper angrily glanced up at the door, to see a US army corporal enter the room. He scanned the cafe, and then walking up to Orion’s table said, ‘Excuse me, sir. Do you mind if I join you?’ Before Orion could reply, the corporal had retrieved the map and was sitting in the seat opposite him. ‘That TV weather guy sure got it right,’ he said, folding up the map and handing it back to José. ‘There’s supposed to be a bunch more of this crap on its way. They reckon it’s all down to that global warming shit.’ He leant back on his chair and twisting around called out, ‘Miss, coffee and the chowder, when you’re ready.’