by Nick Thacker
“You can’t be serious,” Ben yelled. He wasn’t sure if Reggie had heard him, but more importantly, he noticed Reggie still hadn’t turned back around to see where they were flying.
The man charged with getting them safely to their destination was trying to talk Ben into giving him a drink from his flask.
He looked around. Julie and Joshua had a straight-laced expression on their faces. Their lips were a thin line, their eyes were on Reggie. For Joshua, Ben figured this was normal behavior.
He stared at Julie, eyeing her closely, until she burst into laughter.
“Don’t worry, Ben,” she yelled. “He’s just messing with you.”
Even Joshua began to laugh, and Reggie finally turned back around to pilot their aircraft. Ben smiled, but there nothing genuine behind the smile. Julie winked at him.
He lifted the flask and poured another shot into his mouth.
This is going to be a long flight.
Chapter Seventeen
THE FLIGHT WASN’T ACTUALLY VERY long — they landed in Anchorage to switch planes, then took a connecting flight to Seattle, then over to O’Hare International, then finally landed in Philadelphia.
Twelve hours later.
Ben was exhausted. He was surprised that their first plane, the Cessna, had been the most room he’d had during all four of their flights. The 737 they’d done the last two legs on offered little more than a straight-backed chair and hardly enough room for even his knees.
He was cramped, tired, irritable, and ready for dinner.
Reggie, on the other hand, seemed to be the exact opposite. When they landed in Philadelphia, Reggie bounced up and out of his seat, chipper and ready for the next adventure.
Ben scowled at him.
“What’s the problem, big guy?” Reggie asked. “Couldn’t get enough of a cat nap?”
“Couldn’t get any nap,” Ben replied. “And I’m hungry.”
Joshua appeared behind Ben and Julie as they walked up into the airport. “We’ll stop on the way for something quick. Hopefully enough to fill us up until dinner.”
“Wait,” Ben asked. “When’s dinner?”
“Whenever we’re finished talked to the curator at the APS.”
Ben sighed. “We’re not even checking into a hotel first? Just jumping right into work?”
Julie and Reggie exchanged glances, then she turned to Ben and looked up at him. “What — what were you reading on the flights?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, whatever was on my Kindle. Part of a novel. Wasn’t any good. I could do better. I fell asleep after a page or two.”
Julie and Reggie smiled, while Joshua looked confused.
“While you were dozing off, pal, the rest of us were already ‘jumping into work.’ We’ve been reading through the briefs and backgrounds Mrs. E sent over to prepare for the trip.”
Ben’s mouth opened and closed, but couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Don’t worry — we’ll fill you in on the way to the American Philosophical Society headquarters downtown. Just stay awake long enough to let it sink in.”
Ben nodded. He hated feeling like he was behind the ball, but he really hated being left out of this group’s activities. He felt like he was considered the weakest link on the team, and moments like this didn’t help things.
They walked along through the airport until they came to baggage claim, and Joshua and Reggie posted up near their plane’s baggage drop while Julie and Ben waited back a few paces, against the wall.
Julie grabbed his arm and linked hers within his. She stepped up onto her tiptoes so she was able to whisper directly into his ear.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “They’re nerds. They like that sort of stuff, but I’m more into the strong silent types.”
“Yeah, but — “
“And I made sure you and I got a room together where we’re staying,” she continued, a coy smile on her face. “So whenever we’re done talking to this museum lady, I’m hoping we can steal away and do some ‘catching up’ on the brief information.”
Ben smiled. “Yeah, I need a little extra time to get through all the information,” he said.
She winked at him. “We’ll go slow.”
Chapter Eighteen
REGGIE KNEW BEN AND JULIE were hoping to get to the hotel and relax a bit, but they had work to do. He had always been a man unable to focus on anything else than the task at hand when he had a job to do, and he had that in common with their team lead, Joshua Jefferson.
It had taken some time for Reggie to come to like Joshua, as the man had first introduced himself to the in the Amazon rainforest by ordering his men to kill them. After betraying his own men and killing his own brother, Joshua Jefferson had tried to convince Reggie’s group of his apparent side-change.
Reggie allowed it, but he kept a close eye on the man for the rest of the trip. Only after successfully completing their mission did he start to trust Joshua more, and it had taken months for Reggie to fully understand and accept the emotional turmoil his new friend had undergone.
Now, the two men were inseparable mirror images of one another. They shared a common background in weapons knowledge, organizational strategy, and training, even though Joshua had never served in the military. They shared a passion for well-planned and perfectly executed missions, and both men were adamant about putting in more than their share of the workload.
However, their personalities could not have been more different. Reggie was an outgoing, talkative loudmouth who enjoyed fun and practical jokes, while Joshua kept to himself and preferred talking only when asked a question, and even then answering with few words. Reggie liked Joshua, but he was constantly reminded of how different the two men were.
They made a great team — Reggie’s wit and ability to adapt in sticky situations, and Joshua’s leadership calm and resiliency. Reggie wasn’t upset when Mr. E had appointed Joshua the group’s de facto leader on missions, as he knew Joshua was the proper man for the job.
They were sharing a room as well, adjacent to Ben and Julie’s, yet he knew they would be spending little time inside. The brief had explained that Ben and Julie would be staying in Philadelphia and working with the curator of the American Philosophical Museum to provide information to Reggie and Joshua, who would be moving around and searching for the missing journal and vial.
Before anyone could check into the hotel, however, Reggie needed to eat and get to the museum. They had taken a mid-sized SUV from the airport, and Julie had offered to drive. Reggie sat shotgun and navigated, while Joshua worked through the briefs once more and Ben slept.
“How much longer?” Joshua asked from the back seat.
“We’re stopping at a fast-food joint first,” Reggie answered. “Then about twenty minutes, depending on traffic.”
“Fast food?” Julie asked. “Seems like there ought to be somewhere a little better to eat.”
“Maybe better, but not faster,” Reggie said. “I want to get started, see what this gal knows about this little journal and why it’s so important.”
“I second that,” Joshua said. “What’s Ben want?”
“Food,” Julie said. “Just food. Doesn’t matter what kind or how cheap. I guess I’m the one outnumbered.”
They decided on a drive-through taco stand just off their route, but Julie parked in the lot so they could get out and stretch their legs. They walked to the window to order, then brought the food back to the car.
“Last time we were all together on a project like this we had some better food options,” Ben said. “How come we can’t do this at The Broadmoor again?”
Before the team had left for Antarctica months ago, they had all met at The Broadmoor, a world-famous resort and hotel in Colorado. Mr. E had presented to them via video feed in one of the beautiful ballrooms and asked for their help on the project.
“Gotta admit this is a bit of downgrade,” Reggie added. “But at least the food’s paid for.”
Reggie got back into the car and took a bite of his first taco. A spot of sauce dripped down the corner of his mouth, but he was too focused on the amazing flavor to notice. “Never mind,” he said. “This food’s better.”
“I second that again,” Joshua said.
Julie drove on, heading south on 4th street after exiting the highway. As she turned onto Walnut and then 5th street, heading up into the historic downtown district of Philadelphia, the centuries-old Philosophical Hall and a block away Independence Hall came into view.
The building consumed Reggie’s focus. He had a love for history, and while visiting Philadelphia hadn’t initially struck him as someplace ‘exotic,’ he was excited to be surrounded by buildings and works of art created by a brand-new nation. Benjamin Franklin had been a father of this city, and many others had walked its streets long before they were even paved.
Independence Hall’s beautiful steeple jutted out and pierced the skyline, its square white facade that housed the bell tower moving upward until it met with the cylindrical top section. The clock on the front side of the steeple was not in view, but he could make out the very top point of the building from their location.
The red-brick Georgian-style landmark served as the main attraction of the Independence National Historic Park, and had been completed in 1753. Reggie had read a little about its renovations and reconstructions over the years, but he had never seen the building in real life. Modern-day architecture had surpassed what the architects of the Founding Fathers’ era could accomplish, so the skyline of Philadelphia now included plenty of buildings and monuments that stretched taller than the Hall, but to Reggie he could see the building as it had been intended, so many years ago.
He pictured the horses and carts that traversed the much narrower streets, the ruts of hundreds of cart wheels catching remnants of rainwater and mud and sending it downhill. Men and women dressed in the best colonial fashion had to offer, heading to the state house for business or government affairs. Children playing on the streets and running through the crowds, racing to beat their brothers and sisters home.
Reggie smiled, watching the scene unfold in front of his eyes while the real-life present took place outside the car’s windshield. He felt the urge of nostalgia, pulling him toward the simpler life of colonial America.
But as he felt it, he knew it wasn’t accurate. Colonial America was certainly not an easier time, nor simpler. There may have been fewer people, but history had done a great job painting a blurry-edged picture of what life was like back then. Reggie knew that each of those people had been faced with situations that he had never considered. He had been under attack and in real danger before in his life, but when his mission was finished he always got to come home to a heated or air-conditioned home, with the comforts of the modern day.
Perhaps the nostalgia he was feeling was one of the reasons he loved visiting and staying with Ben and Julie. He enjoyed the straightforward appeal of the cabin, the ease of life, and the lack of distractions. However, he had been amazed at the number of chores and tasks needed to keep the cabin up to a livable standard. Aside from chopping wood every morning, there was the initial felling and hauling of the trees, the hunting and trap setting — if they hadn’t been into town in a few days — and the maintenance on the cabin, including chinking and sealing.
And that was just the outside.
Reggie glanced back at Ben, dozing in the backseat. He once again felt a sense of pride for his friend. Ben was a living juxtaposition — seeming lazy and outwardly antisocial, yet the hardest worker, most resilient man, and one of the best friends Reggie had ever had.
And they’d still only known each other for about a year.
He smiled, catching Julie’s eye as she turned into the parking lot of their destination.
“Watching him sleep?” she asked.
He nodded, the grin growing wider on his face.
“He’s easy to love in this state,” she said.
“I feel like a dad watching his kid,” Reggie said.
“Tell him when he wakes up and see what he thinks of that.”
From the back seat Joshua chuckled.
Reggie turned away from Ben, who’d now opened his mouth and begun snoring quietly, and looked the other direction. Out his window he could see the final destination of this leg of the journey, Philosophical Hall.
“Home of the American Philosophical Society, founded by none other than Benjamin Franklin,” Joshua said.
“Finished in 1789,” Reggie added.
“Amazing,” Julie said. “It’s hard to believe this stuff’s been here this long. All the history in there. It’s overwhelming, really.”
Ben snored loudly and then woke up. “We… we here?”
“We’re here,” Julie answered.
“How long will this take? And when’s dinner?”
“You literally had food half an hour ago,” Reggie said. “You can’t wait a few hours?”
“A few hours ? That’s when dinner is?” He paused, getting ready to get out of the car, and added. “I hate traveling with you guys.”
Chapter Nineteen
THE BUILDING WAS, TO BEN, a mansion. Even though no one lived there, the building was too small to seem like a full-fledged museum but much too large to act as a simple meeting place for any society.
He wondered if that’s why the Society had rented out its space to a local university, the city, and various other organizations during the years of its existence. Perhaps the American Philosophical Society was large enough to need a meeting hall, but never quite large enough to require all the space it had built.
Still, the building was well-appointed and beautifully adorned. The entranceway held the air and superiority of the history it contained within, and the walls and ceiling seemed to bulge with the knowledge of the men who had met within its confines. Ben observed everything he could as they walked into the main foyer and down a hallway to the left.
They walked in silence, each of the others in Ben’s group apparently as deep in thought and reverence as he. Reggie, he noticed, seemed particularly fascinated as he walked. He nearly bounded around, poking and prodding at the air in front of artifacts and paintings that hung on the walls, all but touching them with a pointed finger. He whispered to himself, no doubt caught up in a sense of awe and wonder. There were plenty of such artifacts and things on stands and side tables along the walls, but Ben noticed nothing that seemed like a museum — no large, open rooms, no signs, nothing. It actually felt more like a small office building, he realized.
“You going to be okay, buddy?” Ben asked.
Reggie turned, his eyes darting around. Finally he realized who had spoken to him, and his gaze focused on Ben as he nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just… it’s all so… I mean can you believe there were people here two-hundred years ago? ”
Joshua and Julie laughed, but Reggie’s question was answered by another voice.
“It is particularly miraculous , is it not?”
Ben tried to see where the faraway voice had come from, but there was no one in the hall. He searched, finally seeing a foot appear in a doorway about twenty paces away at the end of the hall. The foot was followed by a leg, then a woman’s body.
A woman’s amazing body.
Ben tried not to notice the appearance of the woman who had just spoken and stepped out into the hall, but it was impossible not to. She was short, shorter than Julie, and had a tightly wrapped bun that pulled most of her hair up and onto the back part of her head. Unlike other buns Ben had seen on women, this one wasn’t too tight — it allowed a few strands of the woman’s golden-brown hair to bounce back down and land on the back of her neck, and one longer strand had been tucked into the space behind her left ear.
She had a pair of black plastic-rimmed glasses on her nose, and the small, upturned nose itself seemed to be providing most of the support for the frames. Her face was petite, young even, and her small mouth was uptur
ned slightly in the makings of a smile.
Of all the attraction the woman’s face held, however, it was not her face that Ben had noticed first, nor was it her face that beckoned for his continued attention.
The woman was wearing a skirt that bounced around her knees and a loose, white blouse that was of a thin, nearly see-through material. It all would have been nearly provocative had Julie or any other woman been wearing it, but the woman in front of them now somehow made it seem like a perfectly conservative, albeit very flattering, outfit.
Julie elbowed him in the side and he blinked a few times and looked down at her.
“Wha —?”
“She asked you a question , Harvey,” Julie said. Her expression gave him the impression that she did not seem pleased.
He looked at the the women approaching him. The others — Joshua, Reggie, and Julie, had parted and were allowing her to walk directly up to him.
“You must be Mr. Bennett,” she said, extending a hand.
Ben frowned, then looked again at Julie.
“We had a quick video chat in the car,” Julie said, answering his silent question. “You were asleep, but we all made some quick introductions and made sure we had the directions to this place correct.
Ben felt sheepish, but he shook her hand anyway. She had a firm grip, even though her hands were about half the size of his.
“Nice — nice to meet you,” he mustered. He subconsciously pulled himself straighter and sucked in his gut a bit. He hoped his hair wasn’t still disheveled from his short nap in the car.
She grinned, a cute, shy thing that completely contradicted the intensity and seriousness in her eyes. For a moment it seemed he was looking at two people — the youthful, innocent woman whom he had first seen in the hallway, and the professional, experienced woman who could see through him and into his soul.
He took an involuntary step back.
Chapter Twenty