by David Archer
Each of the young men bowed briefly as he was introduced, and then Thomas moved on to the ladies who were lined up behind them.
“These are the maids,” he said. “First is Julianna, who happens to be our daughter. She sees to the downstairs, and makes fine work of it. Next is Constance, and then Diana. They are sisters, and actually grew up just up the road in Guildford. They are the upstairs maids, so they will be seeing to your rooms. Feel free to let them know about anything you need, and when you want them to do your rooms. They will take care of your washing, so tell them about any special requirements for your laundry.”
The young ladies each offered a curtsy, which made Sarah and Jenny smile. Noah thanked them for the work they did and told them to let them all know if they did anything to make the work harder, but the girls only smiled nervously.
“And these are the cooking staff,” Thomas said. “We have Beatrice, who is the chef, and her helper, Lynn, and that leaves us with Susan, the pastry cook. She bakes cakes, pies, and biscuits, and you’ll always find some ready and waiting.”
Beatrice seemed to be the oldest of the ladies, and the least intimidated. “Now, don’t any of ye be shy about lettin’ me know what ye like,” she said, her accent thick and Welsh. “I know the ways of American cookin’, and many others, so tell me what ye’d like and it’ll be me pleasure to make it fer ye!”
Noah smiled. “We appreciate that,” he said, “but I think we’re all looking forward to trying new things, so we’ll be happy to let you make those choices.”
She smiled. “Well, then, and I hope ye like beef. Tonight I’ve prepared a roast, with potatoes and peas, and a gravy such as ye never had.” She clapped her hands together and her helpers followed her to the kitchen. A moment later, they returned and set large bowls on the table.
Chapter TEN
Allison was awakened when the slot in the door was opened. With no windows, it was impossible to tell what time it was, but she suspected it was rather early.
“Breakfast time,” called a voice. Allison looked through the slot and saw a tray being passed inside. She threw off the blanket and got out of bed, then walked over and took the tray.
“Surprise, surprise,” she muttered to herself. The tray held actual dishes and flatware, where she had been expecting to find cheap plastic plates and sporks. Breakfast appeared to be coffee, scrambled eggs, and bacon, but there was a pair of biscuits and packets of butter and grape jelly. She set it all on the table and sat down, then glanced back at the slot in the door.
The woman who had passed the food to her had apparently moved on down the hall, but the slot was left open. She shrugged and began eating. The coffee was black and strong, but she didn’t complain; at least it was coffee, even if it didn’t have the sugar she was accustomed to.
The food was actually pretty good, and she had to admit there was plenty of it. She wolfed it down rather quickly and then buttered up the biscuits and slathered them with jelly before eating them, as well. When she was finished, she took the tray back to the slot and set it down so that it was balanced.
Fifteen minutes later, the tray disappeared and the slot was closed. Allison had gone back to the bed and turned on the television, and was scanning through the news programs. There was still nothing that seemed to relate to her situation, so she found a talk show and let herself zone out while it played.
It was a couple of hours later when she heard sounds in the hall, and glanced at the door just in time to see the slot open. There was a new young woman looking through at her, and she was wearing a smile.
“Hi, there,” the girl said. “I’m Lucy, I got the snack tray today. Need anything?”
Allison cocked her head and looked at her for a moment, then smiled back. “I don’t suppose you have any instant coffee and some sugar, do you?”
“Yep,” the girl said. A moment later, she held out a plastic cup and a very small jar of instant coffee. Allison hurried to the door and accepted it, and found a spoon and several dozen packets of sugar inside the cup. “You have to use the hot water out of the sink, but it should be plenty hot enough. Do you need soap, shampoo, any of that kind of stuff?”
“Why, yes,” Allison said, “now that you mention it. Incidentally, how often do they give us a change of clothing?”
“Oh, every day. That’s usually shortly after dinner time, I think.” Lucy glanced down the hall for a moment, then looked back at Allison. “I’m not supposed to tell you,” she said softly, “but I heard that some people are coming to talk to you in just a few minutes. You might want to hurry up and get your coffee ready.”
Allison smiled. “Thanks,” she said. The slot closed and Allison dumped the contents of the cup onto the table, then went to the sink. It took only a few seconds for the hot water to become steaming, so she filled the cup almost to the brim and carried it back to the table. A spoonful of instant coffee and a half-dozen packets of sugar later, she took a sip and moaned with pleasure.
She carried the coffee back to the bed and continued watching television, but she didn’t get to watch for long. It was about fifteen minutes later when she heard keys rattle and the door swung open.
“You got visitors,” said a guard. She started to get up off the bed, but suddenly two men and a woman entered the room. Allison stared in surprise when she saw who her visitors were.
“Senator Duckworth? Senator Gibbs? Since when are either of you on the oversight committees?”
One of the two men, an older fellow who stood about six foot six, turned and nodded at the guard. The door was closed, and he turned back to Allison.
“Hello, Allison,” he said. “Obviously, you recognize Gibbs and myself. This lady is Congresswoman Barbara Holloway, from California. And you’re right, we’ve only recently been appointed to the committee. However, we are coming to see you for an entirely different reason, and I hope you’re going to be cooperative.”
Allison narrowed her eyes. “I’ll listen,” she said. “That’s all the cooperation I’m gonna promise.” She got up off the bed and walked to the table, taking one of three chairs and pointing at the other two. “Have a seat, Senator Holloway. One of these gentlemen can stand.”
Holloway grinned and took the chair, but neither of the men bothered to sit in the third. “I heard you were quite a firecracker,” Senator Holloway said. “Call me Barbara, please.”
Allison nodded. “Okay, then I’m Allison. What is it you folks want?”
“Hopefully, the same thing you do,” Holloway said. “A quick and satisfying end to this entire situation.”
Allison looked at the two men, then back at Holloway. “At the moment, I don’t even know what the situation is. Care to enlighten me?”
“First off,” said Duckworth, “we want to let you know that you’re not actually in any trouble, or at least not yet. The entire ruse about arresting you was to get you out of your office without letting anyone know what’s really going on. Unfortunately, we can’t turn you loose until we know exactly where you stand.”
“Stand on what, you old buzzard? You know damn well I was appointed by the president to my position, and that the entire reason for the existence of my job at E & E is to make sure that no one can ever use it for personal reasons. If this is going to involve turning any of my assets against anyone within our government, you can turn around and walk right back out of here and we can just say we’re done.”
Gibbs, who hadn’t spoken to this point, looked at Duckworth. “I told you she was sharp,” he said. He turned and looked at Allison. “Allison, you need to hear everything before you make any decisions. There are some things going on that need to be dealt with, and they need to be dealt with soon. That’s going to mean some eliminations, I’m afraid, and the people we are talking about are far too powerful to take down any other way.”
Allison looked at Holloway. “Barbara, the men are sounding stupid. Why don’t you explain this to me?”
“I’ll be happy to,” Holloway said. “All
ison, there is a faction within certain parts of our government that is out to destroy everything America stands for. The idea is to bring us to a point of becoming a true socialist oligarchy, one that will literally eliminate all of the freedoms currently afforded by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. This is a conspiracy that has been in existence for at least a couple of years, and some of us, including the three you see before you, have come to being concerned that it is just about to reach the point of achieving its goals.”
Allison looked into her eyes for a moment, then looked at Gibbs and Duckworth. “I’m going to be completely honest,” she said. “There is absolutely nothing about these two men that inspires trust or confidence in me. You, on the other hand, are an entirely new factor in the equation. I know who you are by reputation, because I follow what you people do, but if I recall correctly, you are something of a diehard liberal. Why would a socialist state trouble you at all?”
“I’m a diehard liberal, that’s correct,” Holloway said. “Do you have any idea what that actually means? It means that I hope to see our country become a mixture of all races and cultures, where everyone can actually consider themselves to be the equal of everyone else. It means I want to see poverty eliminated, so that no one in this country will need to go hungry, or go without medical care. It means that I want to see not fewer freedoms, but more. I want to see freedom from crime and avarice, I want to see freedom from envy, freedom from the fear of walking down the street. If wanting those things is bad, then I will happily plead guilty in any court that cares to bring me up on those charges.”
Allison grinned at her. “Okay, you got some gumption of your own,” she said. “Now, tell me about this socialist state that scares you so much.
Holloway glanced at Duckworth. “Marvin? This is where you come in.”
Duckworth took a deep breath and looked at Allison. “Allison, about two years ago, I was approached by a reporter—one of those independent reporters, a freelancer from the Internet—who told me that he had evidence of a conspiracy that involved people from every level of our government. These people, he claimed, were working behind the scenes to eliminate our freedoms by coercing the people into giving them up in return for greater safety and security. I’ll confess that at first, I thought he was a nutcase, one of those ‘tinfoil hat’ types. I dared him to show me any kind of proof, and he asked me to meet him privately the following day.”
“Did he turn up dead before you got there?” Allison asked. “That’s the way these stories usually go, isn’t it?”
Duckworth chuckled. “No. Actually, we met right on schedule in a Maryland shopping center parking lot. I had driven my son’s car, the one he used for going back and forth to school, so nobody knew who I was. I met the reporter, and we sat in my car while he showed me a lot of information he had compiled, information that was backed up by copies of emails he had intercepted, recordings of phone conversations, video of some of the conspirators discussing exactly how they were going to launch the next phase of their plan. From what I saw, he was telling me the truth, but I suspected there might be more to it than he even knew about.”
“So, let me guess,” Allison said. “You went to someone at the FBI? Somebody you trust, maybe?”
“That’s exactly what I did,” Duckworth said. “I went to Charlie McBride, who ran the field office out of Baltimore, and I showed him copies of everything I had seen. Would you care to guess what happened next?”
“I don’t have to guess,” Allison said. “SSA Charles McBride was murdered almost 2 years ago. The story was that he apparently surprised a burglar in his house late one night, and took a twenty-two caliber bullet through the head. I remember that, it was all over the news back then. You are thinking he was killed because he got too close to finding out the truth about this?”
“I don’t have to think anything,” Duckworth said. “Two of his agents came to me and told me that he had warned them that if something happened to him, they were to tell me that the plan was well advanced and that I should take whatever action necessary to stop it. I’ve been trying to do that ever since, but I keep running into brick walls. A year ago, I sat down with the directors of the NSA and DHS and laid this all out to them. They promised to look into it, and the next day I was told that they had concluded there was nothing to worry about, that it was all a conspiracy theory with no basis in fact.”
Allison set silently, looking into his eyes for a moment. “So how did it go from there to dragging me out of my office in chains?”
“I’ve been quietly trying to build a case, sharing what I know with other representatives that I’ve come to trust. Gibbs and Holloway are two of them, but there’s also Senators Ryan and Thomason and a few others. Ryan, of course, is the chairman of the Senate’s secret committee on intelligence oversight, and I went to him to ask for ideas. He’s the one who brought you up.”
Allison snorted. “Now, why does that not surprise me? Ryan and I have never gotten along, even back during my days with the Agency.”
“Well, you might be surprised at this,” Gibbs put in. “Ryan didn’t suggest trying to get rid of you, he said the only hope we have of saving the country at this point is to get you on our side.”
Allison’s eyes widened. “Seriously? All the man has ever done is try to block me from accomplishing anything. Why would he want me to be part of this resistance movement?”
“According to him,” Holloway said, “the only reason he has fought your department is because he’s afraid it will someday be used against the political enemies of whoever might be sitting in the Oval Office. It’s not that he thinks you would allow that, but trying to put some kind of restraints on the organization while you are still in the top chair might be smarter than waiting until there’s someone in the White House that might try such a thing. If your successor has political ambitions, or likes to curry favor, E & E could become a serious liability.”
“That’ll never happen while I’m in charge,” Allison said.
“We know that, and so does Ryan,” Holloway said. “The reason he wants to get you involved in this is because, in his words, Allison Peterson is the only one who could honestly have a chance at preventing the disaster that’s coming. And the only way to prevent it is to eliminate those people who are doing their best to bring it about. And, incidentally, I was able to get him recruited into the organization. Like us, he’s now working from the inside.”
Allison looked at each of their faces for a moment. “You’re telling me that each of you is a member of this thing? Right now?”
“Yes, we are,” Holloway said. “Each of us was recruited about six months ago, and we’ve been trying to gain information that would let us shut this thing down ever since. That’s the very reason Ryan arranged to have us nominated to and appointed to the intelligence oversight committee. It gives us opportunities to get together and talk in a secure environment.”
“So, you want to use me and my people exactly the way Ryan is afraid someone else might, in the future. Just what the hell is this disaster that’s coming?”
Gibbs took the third chair and turned it around, straddling it and leaning on his arms atop its back. “Remember back when 9/11 happened, and everyone swore up and down it was an inside job? Well, we don’t know whether it was or not, but it almost cost us a lot of the freedoms that Americans have come to depend on. This faction, which calls itself the Ascension Project, intends to generate three new mass terror events, and they’ll probably make 9/11 seem like a Sunday picnic. We only have basic details on the first one, but it involves some sort of orchestrated disaster that will cost the lives of tens of thousands of children.”
“Children?” Allison said, her eyes going even wider. “Keep going, tell it all.”
“That’s the problem, we don’t know it all,” Holloway said. “All we know is that there will be three events, and the first one is supposed to take out as many as twenty thousand children or more, ranging from toddlers to teenagers. Tha
t particular plan also refers to a lot of collateral damage, but only in the sense that it will help them to achieve a reduction of liberty. It is supposed to make it almost impossible to travel freely around the country. From what we understand, once it happens, there will be a move in Congress to require travel permits to even leave your home county. Anyone traveling without such a permit will be subject to arrest and incarceration without benefit of due process. The idea is that anyone who doesn’t bother to let the government know where they’re traveling to is probably traveling for an illegal purpose. Simply getting caught will be considered sufficient evidence for conviction and incarceration.”
“Holy shit,” Allison said. “What else is supposed to happen?”
“Like I said, we don’t know,” Gibbs said. “All we know is that there will be two more alleged attacks, and by the time they are finished, the American people will be willing to give up every freedom they got. Guns will be confiscated, and refusal to surrender them means automatic life in prison. Religions will be regulated, because terrorists often use the guise of religion to conduct their activities. Freedom of speech will be curtailed, because anyone speaking out against the government must be a terrorist. You see where it’s going?”
“I see it,” Allison said. “But, come on, there’s been talk about this kind of stuff for the last thirty years or more. It hasn’t happened, even though it’s been predicted over and over and over.”
“That’s true, it hasn’t happened yet,” Holloway said. “On the other hand, it requires people in certain positions of power to pull off something like this. It would mean that the leadership of organizations like the NSA, DHS, possibly even some of the top people at FBI and CIA must be in on it. We know that they’ve already got some of the highest ranking military officers involved, because they’ve been caught on video. General O’Reilly, the guy who managed to make North Korea back down a couple years ago? He’s in their camp, for certain, and he’s made it clear to many of his subordinates that he expects their loyalty to be directed to him, rather than to America. He’s built himself a fairly good sized private army, with enough clout to make a lot of the rest of the military follow his lead. When it comes time to round up the guns, he’s probably going to be leading the charge.”