by Bob Blink
"Ugh," Jessie said softly as she finished checking the open area and marking the same cheapness that Mark had. "This is like seeing your date the morning after a hard night of drinking. The reality and the vision are nothing alike."
Mark nodded and proceeded deeper into the room. Chairs had been moved, and he recalled the arrangement as they had sat and discussed their plan to head to the restaurant that night. The positions were about right. The snack bar had been cleared away, leaving no sign it had ever held anything. The real proof of their having been here was Johnson's small travel case. It was still there, sitting behind the desk off in one corner.
"We should take that when we leave," Jessie said.
"Doubt it will tell us much," Mark said, "but it shows we were here. Maybe there will be something that tells us what is going on with the two versions of Johnson."
Jessie indicated the short hallway with the series of doors that led to the offices where they had each gone as called. She led the way, Mark following with his eyes sweeping across everything, trying to reconcile what he was seeing with what his memory told him about this place. As they approached the door, the one he had gone through, he once again tried without success to recall anything about what they would find behind the door. He didn't know how it could be, but those memories simply didn't exist.
Mark put his hand on the doorknob. He wanted to be first through this time. He glanced her way, and she nodded, the service automatic held ready. The eeriness of the place kept them with their weapons handy, even though their minds told them there was nothing here that required such firepower. He tried the doorknob. Unlocked, not much of a surprise. Nothing they'd found inside the building had been locked, but somehow he had half expected this place might be different. He turned the knob, and pushed the door open.
He had been prepared for almost anything, but somehow not what he discovered as the door swung inward, restrained by his controlling hand.
"Empty!" Jessie remarked, a touch of surprise in her voice.
Indeed it was. As empty as the offices they had checked on the levels below. How could that be? A part of his mind noted the office was larger than those they had seen elsewhere, and that they had no doors leading out other than the one they had just come through. The mystery of how he finished the day at the other end of the hall remained unsolved.
"How can this be?" Mark asked as Jessie wandered over and adjusted the heavy old venetian blinds so more light filled the room through the dirty windows. "We know we came here. The area outside supports that. How could these rooms be empty?"
Jessie looked at the faded paint on the walls and the dirty carpet. The lack of any kind of furnishings made the room echo and the lack of anything more unsettling.
"Something was here not too long ago," she said finally. "Look at the marks in the carpet."
Mark looked where she was pointing. There were other depressions where long ago furniture had sat, but those were muted, and partially recovered in the long years since the furnishings had been removed. They were also covered with dust like the rest of the rug. But where she pointed were some odd shaped depressions, deep enough to suggest whatever had sat there had been heavy. They were also arranged in such a manner that whatever it had been, it had spanned a large part of the room and would have been positioned over many of the older furniture items.
"Any idea what would have made those marks?" Jessie asked as she paced the extent of the apparent object.
Mark shook his head.
"The room would have been more than half filled by whatever it was though," he added. "Actually, more than that."
He knelt down and peered at the markings.
"I'm no expert, but I'd say these are new, and whatever sat here hasn't been gone very long."
Jessie asked, looking around the room and at the one standard sized door that was the only entrance, "How did anyone get something that large in here anyway?"
"They had to assemble whatever it was in place," Mark suggested.
"Maybe," Jessie replied, but the doubt was clear on her face.
This is really disappointing," Mark said. "I either spent the day in an empty room, or someone has been able to clear out whatever was in here in a few short days. I don't believe that given the lack of markings around the building. There have been no trucks here to haul something this size away."
"Let's look at the other offices," Jessie said, redrawing her Glock that she had put away upon seeing the condition of the room.
Mark nodded his agreement and they returned to the main area then turned further down the hallway where more of the office doors stood waiting.
The outer area remained as quiet and empty as before. Systematically they worked their way down the hall, finding the rooms more or less identical, and all showing marks in the aging carpet that, as near as they could tell, were identical in size and spacing.
"Each of us went into one of these rooms where something was waiting for us," Jessie said after they finished their checks. Each of the twelve rooms showed the markings on the floor. The remaining four were empty, but lacked any indication that something had been in the room.
"Let's have a look at the other end," Mark said. "We always came out there, although I have no idea how we got from this side to the other. The rooms don't have any back doors or secondary hallways."
The rooms at the opposite end of the building were very similar to those they had just checked, with only minor differences in layout. The carpet was the same tired color, and the walls were painted with the same colors as well. The only distinguishing characteristic was the layout of the markings. There were more markings, in a very different pattern. Something about the spacing and arrangements suggested that several smaller items had been set up in this area, but the markings simply didn't provide sufficient information to begin to guess what had been here.
"Shit!" Mark cursed, disappointed at what they had found. There was nothing here that was going to help them. They would get no explanation of who was behind whatever was going on, and have no leads to help them pursue the matter. They were at a dead end, and he couldn't see how they were going to move forward.
"Let's check the upper levels," Jessie said. "Maybe there is something up there that will help."
Without enthusiasm, Mark followed Jessie back to the stairwell. They pulled Johnson's small case behind them, leaving it inside the stairwell to pick up on their way down. Mark didn't expect to find much in the upper levels, and an hour later his expectations were proven correct. There was nothing in the building. If it wasn't for the fact they knew they had been here, and finding Johnson's suitcase, he could have believed it was all a mistake, and this place hadn't been used in years.
An hour later they were back at the hotel wondering what they were going to tell the others.
Chapter 13
The ride back to the hotel had been somber. Neither had much to say as each mulled over their discoveries, or lack thereof. Mark had brought Johnson's roller suitcase back with them, but he hadn't held out hopes for any great discoveries once they had a chance to sort through the contents. He'd recalled he'd brought an attaché case of his own to the meeting, and he hadn't found any clues when he'd searched through it the morning after Johnson's killing.
Now they were settled into a relatively private corner in the hotel dining room, their high-walled booth hiding any nearby diners from them, and they from others. As it was, the place had been almost deserted when they had been led to their seats. Neither had wanted room service, nor the hustle and bustle of the hotel cafeteria. They'd ordered dinner, and their drinks had already come, a glass of red wine for Jessie and a tall cold beer for Mark. For the moment they had a few moments of privacy.
"What do we tell the others?" Jessie asked, her voice conveying her disappointment with the day's findings. "We didn't learn anything."
"Actually we did," Mark protested.
"Did I miss something?" she asked. "There was nothing there that is going to help us
understand who is behind whatever is going on."
Mark nodded. "But we know for certain we were there, whatever logic tries to suggest otherwise. The area on the fourth floor is laid out as we recall, if not as nice as our memory suggests. But we found furniture arranged as we remember leaving it, and the offices exactly where they should be. We even found Johnson's luggage, which is proof positive we were there and events that we recall had to have happened."
"A lot of good that luggage turned out to be," Jessie said ruefully, taking a sip of her wine.
Once back in the hotel room they had opened the case to see what it might reveal. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't much out of the ordinary. The usual travel necessities for a person on an overnight trip. The clothes were almost certainly what Johnson had traveled from New York to Washington wearing, his business clothes that he had been wearing at the meeting and when he'd been killed burned up with him. Johnson had been an efficient packer, and there was nothing beyond what he would need. The only item seemingly out of the ordinary and potentially of interest was a zippered leather document folder slipped into a zippered compartment on the front of the luggage. It had been empty, so why had Johnson brought it along? Perhaps there had been something of importance he'd brought with him, and the documents passed along, Bud had slipped it back into the small suitcase before they'd set off that night. A recently released paperback was the only other item, in this case a book dealing with the periodically reoccurring theme of UFO's and potential government cover-up. Johnson was apparently more than casually interested in the topic, as he'd high-lighted several sections of the book, which his bookmark suggested he'd been about halfway through.
"I hadn't expected it to tell us much," Mark admitted, recalling his own case that would have been similarly devoid of clues had someone reason to examine it. But it proves conclusively we are being toyed with and that someone is messing with our minds. How and why they are doing it, I couldn't say. But they are."
Jessie set down her wine and nodded.
"Okay, I'll grant that. But now where do we go from here to find out just who and what? I was confident there would be something. And you have to admit it's damn weird how they were able to clean out that building of what had to be some substantial equipment without leaving any traces around the building. The snow had not been disturbed. It's easier for me to believe we were actually somewhere else and this building was set up to mislead us. Someone could have moved the case from where we really were to here, you know."
The thought had been bothering Mark for some time as well. Could they be examining a false lead, something someone had set up in case they stumbled onto the fact they were being manipulated. It was more than a little extreme, but then this whole situation met that description. He didn't believe it. Too many things pointed them back to the empty building with its cleaned out offices.
He was about to say as much when Jessie's phone buzzed with a muted tone. Frowning, she looked at the display.
"It's Jerry Marshall," she said. "I wonder what he wants?"
"Probably wants to know what we found," Mark noted. "We promised to let everyone know."
"It's early yet," Jessie protested. "Most aren't even off work which is why we have this place virtually to ourselves."
Mark shrugged.
"Answer it. That's the only way to find out."
Jessie thumbed the screen of the phone and raised it to her head.
"Yes," she said carefully.
Mark watched as Jessie listened, unable to hear what was being said on the far end, but intensely curious as he watched her expression change to one of concern.
"I'll check into this and get back to you in a while," she said into the phone. "Thanks for alerting me."
She set the phone down and looked across the table at Mark.
"Jerry claims Pam Chou is dead," she said simply.
"What?" Mark replied shocked. He had expected something bad from the way Jessie had reacted to whatever Jerry was saying, but he hadn't been prepared for such an announcement. "How can that be? We were just with her yesterday."
"Apparently there was an explosion and fire at her place a few hours ago. She wasn't mentioned by name, but Jerry caught the reference to the Senator in one of the news reports on the fire. He has an old friend in the media and called to see what he could learn. According to his friend the body was badly burned, but one person on the scene was able to conclusively identify the remains as her."
"The timing can't be coincidental," Mark said. "It might look like an accident, but she was going to reveal what happened to the Senator, and now there is a mysterious explosion that kills her. I don't believe it."
"Neither do I. Let's get out of here. I need to make some calls and see what I can learn. I guess it'll be fast food tonight."
Jessie started making calls on her personal number as they rode the Metro, sitting in the back of an otherwise empty car. As they approached Mark's exit, she called a temporary halt, only beginning again after they had retrieved Mark's Explorer and started driving randomly around the city. If anyone was checking, she didn't want the cell's history to reveal a location of where they might be.
Two hours later they had enough information to be certain the explosion hadn't been an accident, although those Jessie had spoken with didn't know why the Senator's aide had been targeted, nor by whom. Jessie couldn't press too hard, having to rely on contacts who owed her favors, not having a recognized need to be interested in the event, and not wanting people to start wondering why she wasn't able to learn what she wanted via more conventional official channels.
"It's pretty clear someone wanted her dead," Jessie said finally, pulling the battery from the phone she'd spent most of the last hour on. "We might as well go back to the hotel and call the others. They'll need to know."
As Mark dutifully drove back toward their hotel, an uncomfortable knot formed in the pit of his stomach. He knew it was fear. The fear of being targeted. It had been a long time since he'd faced danger, and even then it had been the random, untargeted risks that a soldier in the field was exposed to. Now it seemed someone might be targeting them specifically. That was a different thing, and he didn't like being a possible target of someone or some group he didn't know anything about. How did one defend himself against such a threat?
"What is your take on this?" he asked. "Do you think someone wanted to silence Pam because she was planning on revealing our situation, or is whoever is behind this going to try to eliminate all of us as potential risks to whatever they are doing?"
Jessie shook her head.
"Once again, we simply don't know enough. A lot would depend on just how much they know. A series of deaths like that would certainly alert the authorities that something unusual was going on, but it could be less of a risk than letting us go to the authorities. Pam wasn't taking any of the precautions we recommended, so it's reasonable she might have revealed her situation. What we can't know is how much about the rest of us she might have given away."
"We are positive this isn't an accident and a simple coincidence?"
Once again Jessie shook her head.
"My contacts are quite certain Pam was deliberately taken out, although whoever did it wanted it to look accidental. They simply didn't set it up carefully enough, and her closeness to the Senator caused the best eyes to have a look at the crime scene. If it hadn't been for her closeness to someone as important as the Senator, they might have gotten away with the accidental explosion angle."
As Mark pulled into the underground parking at the hotel, he said, "Going home tonight might not be the best choice. If someone is looking for us, where we live would certainly be targeted."
"I think we should both stay at the hotel tonight," Jessie replied. "Even if they are aware of the place, it's a lot more public than our residences, making an attack complicated."
Mark was surprised at her answer. Then he suspected what she might be thinking.
"You think the status of the rest of u
s isn't known by whoever did this," he said.
"I believe that's likely, and we should know soon enough if there is a move being made against the rest of us. Two armed agents should be able to hold out against any covert attack that could be mounted. Remember, whoever is doing this wants the deaths to appear natural or accidental. For tonight at least, I think we are safe enough here. On the other hand, I suspect it won't be long before our enemies discover we have become aware that we are being used. That makes us a liability. All we probably have for the moment is a bit of time. And unfortunately no leads to follow."
Mark thought briefly about the one large bed in the room. He smiled briefly, but there wouldn't be any time for that kind of thing. They would need to start planning and working through options. Somehow he thought his chances of going back to work soon had suddenly dropped significantly. He wondered if he would be going back at all.
The reactions of the four remaining members of their small band varied wildly. Jerry, of course, was extremely concerned, and wondered if they were making a mistake by not seeking help. Jessie pointed out that that was just the action that might have gotten Pam targeted, suggesting that it wasn't impossible they were being watched to see if any of them showed unusual behavior, which could then precipitate some kind of action. There was no way of knowing. What Jessie was thinking, but not saying, was Pam could be an isolated incident, but should one or more of their group come under suspicion, then the lot of them could be considered a risk
"I'm going into work," Jerry said finally. "I'm a bit behind anyway, and no one is likely to be able to take any action against me there. If any of the rest of you are attacked, I'll know and have to act accordingly."
Glen Taylor was of the opinion he could take care of himself. He was armed, and had an excellent security system, so he'd lock himself away and follow a normal pattern, paying particular attention to anything out of the normal pattern that might suggest he was being watched or set up. He'd call immediately if he observed anything.