by JC Ryan
Mackenzie told him to take the rest of the day off to find his balance in her favorite area of the vast, wooded ranch. As he hiked away from the lab building, she noticed Keeva keeping pace with him. She pictured him finding peace with the necessity and sent the mental image to her wolf friend.
The team had already made remarkable progress in the short time they’d worked together, thanks to Liu’s discovery but also to the team’s dedication. They were beginning to form friendships among themselves, and the nano-engineer had sincerely apologized for his sarcasm in the ethics meeting. Mackenzie was proud of them, and of her choices. She had formed a highly effective research team, and when the respirocyte research was successfully concluded, there’d be other questions to take up for the betterment of human health.
21
IRENE STARED AT the video link in frustration. “Carter, I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t very well go to the Navy with this request. They’d laugh me out of office. No, I’d be dragged out of this office by men in white coats. You can’t seriously ask me to borrow a one-man sub to go searching for a Minotaur.”
“Irene, if I had time to have one built, I’d do it and pay for it myself. Do you not remember how much we owe the dolphins? Time is running out for Merrybeth’s daughter, and we need your help. A-Echelon’s help.”
“So, after I go to the Navy with this outrageous request, I’m also supposed to ask the State department to get Greece to allow a Navy submarine to go poking around in their sovereign waters. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yep.”
She threw up her hands. “All right, Carter. You’ve been right so far, and you’ve made important discoveries. But this is on you. When I go after these things, everyone involved will know that it’s you who’s asking. Everyone, and that will probably include the President. I doubt the Secretary of State will act on the request without his approval.”
“That’s fine. Then they can take me to the funny farm if it doesn’t pan out. You and Mackie can visit me there, but at least I won’t be going on more wild-goose chases.”
Irene had to concede that she deserved that. Sending him to London had been so much a long shot that they could have missed the side of a barn with it. But he had identified the dig pattern they were calling their best lead.
“Very funny. Okay, I’m on it. Stay available.”
Irene ended the call and studied her desk for a while. If she approached the Navy first, she didn’t have a chance. And there was no way SecState would listen either. She was going to have to go right to the top. That meant calling on the Big Man, Bill Griffin.
Even though A-Echelon operated as an independent security agency, they were nominally under the aegis of the CIA, and Bill had survived the change in Presidential staff. Not only that, but because of his personal friendship with former President Sam Grant, he also had the ear of Grant’s successor and protégé, President Ron Matthews. If she could persuade Bill to back her request, they could take it directly to the President, and then anyone else’s objections would be moot.
This was not a conversation to have over the phone, not even over video chat. Late in the day as it was, she sent a courier to invite Bill and his wife to her home for dinner that evening. Her next call was to a friend who owned a Washington, DC catering service that was in high demand. She called in a favor – Mrs. Griffin was known to enjoy gourmet food. Carter, I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for you.
Griffin wasn’t head of the CIA because of his political acumen. He was one of the smartest people Irene knew, besides the Devereuxs, of course. Minutes after the courier left her office, Bill called her. “What’s this all about, Irene?”
“Why, dinner, Sir,” she answered.
“Don’t be disingenuous. No one invites a couple to dinner just hours before the occasion. You want something. What is it?”
“Sir, I’d like the opportunity to tell you over dinner, not over the phone. Please. It’s already ordered, and I can’t eat it all myself.”
“Very well. See you at six.” He ended the call.
Irene called her friend back. “Change of plans. I need it by six, not seven. Yes, I know. I’m sorry. My guest insisted.”
At six precisely, Irene opened her door to the Griffins. Bill shook her hand, and Mrs. Griffin greeted her coolly. “So fortunate we didn’t already have plans.”
Irene was chastened, but Bill was her main concern. Mrs. Griffin was just there to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Even though Bill was twenty years her senior, he was still a handsome and charming man.
“Yes, fortunate indeed,” she answered.
Bill eyed her curiously throughout the three-course meal, but because Mrs. Griffin could not know the subject of the meeting, Irene patiently played hostess and waited until Mrs. Griffin excused herself ‘to powder her nose’. This was her chance.
“Bill, I have a request from Carter Devereux that I can’t swing on my own. It’s going to need the President’s sign-off, and I need you to back me.”
“What is it?”
“Believe it or not, he’s on the trail of a Minotaur.”
Griffin had heard some unlikely information over the years of his acquaintance with Carter Devereux. Irene counted on the hope that nothing could surprise him now. She was not wrong.
“Only Devereux. How credible is this, and why is it a threat to our national security?”
And there was the rub. Irene could not think of a threat to national security from a single mythical monster. She fell back on the only argument she had. “I can’t explain it, but Carter believes it is. It also has to do with a personal crisis with the dolphin who was instrumental in helping find the Alboran Codex. Her daughter has been, for lack of a better term, kidnapped.”
Bill sighed. “It’s not much to go on, but I’ll vouch for Carter’s reputation with the President. You’re on your own to tell him what it’s about, though. After this moment, the word Minotaur will never pass my lips again. How urgent is this?”
“Tonight,” she answered.
Bill sighed. “Of course, it is.”
“What was that, dear?” his wife asked as she came back into the room.
“Nothing, my dear,” he said.
Irene saw Mrs. Griffin’s lips press together. Evidently, she was used to her husband telling her things were nothing.
TWO HOURS LATER, Bill Griffin and Irene O’Connell were ushered into the Oval Office, where President Matthews waited for them. To Irene’s surprise, he had a mischievous grin. He stuck out his hand and shook hers vigorously. “Welcome, Director O’Connell. I’ve heard much about you and your agency. So pleased to meet you, at last.”
Irene was taken aback by his charm. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all. Ten minutes later, the President’s affable demeanor had disappeared in favor of frank disbelief.
“You want me to direct the Secretary of State to do what?”
“Mr. President, I’m aware this is highly unusual. Let me just say that I have complete confidence in Dr. Devereux’s judgment. If he says he needs a Navy sub and permission from the Greek government to take it into their sovereign waters, then I’m certain he has a good reason, no matter how bizarre it sounds.” Griffin spoke firmly and confidently, and Irene was doubly glad she’d asked him to accompany her to the meeting with the President.
“Bill, Sam Grant has told me the same about you. I have to confess, this is the craziest thing I hope I ever have to deal with in my presidency, but if you think it’s necessary, you’ve got it.”
“Not only necessary, Mr. President,” Irene replied, “but urgent. Can we prevail upon you to make this happen tonight?”
Now it was the President’s turn to sigh. “If you think…”
“I do,” she interrupted. This entire process was taking too long. It had been hours since Carter told her the young dolphin was running out of time.
22
CARMEN HAD NO way to understand how long she’d been in this place. Sh
e had to see the sun to count how many suns. She thought it was a long time. She was very hungry. The bad land-human gave her fish sometimes, but it was never enough. She was tired, and her skin felt bad, too.
She hadn’t heard her mother in a long time, either. Maybe the others had forgotten her. She sent messages now and then, because her mother had told her to keep talking, but she couldn’t find the energy to do it all the time. Mostly, she slept.
Sometimes, she thought she’d even welcome the company of the bad land-human. She was glad to see him when he brought fish, but then he would strike her with his weapon and make that unpleasant sound before he’d give them to her.
At first, she’d been afraid of the pain, and then afraid he would kill her. Now she thought if she knew how to die, she would just do it. This was not a life.
AHAB’S STATE OF mind was long stretches of boredom mixed with frustration and punctuated by flashes of rage. He couldn’t sustain any emotion for long, however. He was driven by his goals and the urge to have fun. Fun for him meant pain for the dolphin.
He was trying to train her to hate eating. Logically, he knew his best chance at finding the Minotaurs was to keep his hostage alive as bait for the mother dolphin. But his experiments around pain and death led him to act against that interest by starving the dolphin he had in captivity.
How much pain would she endure before she turned away from the food he brought her? How little could he feed her and keep her alive? These questions were fun for him to contemplate. At the same time, he hoped she lasted long enough for the mother to give in and lead him to his prize.
The underground grotto in which he’d stashed his hostage could be reached only by swimming an underground river, the same one that issued through a crack in the rock in the original cave the dolphin had been guarding. It took him only an hour or so of exploration in that cave to find his way through several passages and find the river again. From the back side of the formation that blocked it, he could see that an ancient rockfall split the cave system and dammed the river, allowing only a relative trickle through the crevices in the rockfall. On the other side of it, water under pressure spurted out the crack and formed the karst spring he’d used to find it.
He’d explored confidently, knowing he could physically best any man he encountered, and assuming he could overcome a Minotaur if he found one. He not only had superior size and quickness to any man he’d ever met, but he also had his stun-gun, and the weapon would surely stop a charging bull-man.
Once he’d found the river, following it to its underground source led him to a spot where it bubbled out of bedrock and ran in two directions. The second one led out to the ocean again. Once he’d gained the sea, he looked back at a steep cliff, and noticed hikers on a trail leading down to the water. He climbed out of the water and picked up the trail, nodding casually to the hikers as he passed them. The trail led past a Catholic monastery, which oriented him to where he was on the island. By his reckoning, he’d swum twelve miles from his starting point – more when he considered the turns the river had taken in finding its way through the rock that was Crete’s underpinning.
Along the way, he’d seen several places where the water pooled deep enough to keep the dolphin. It had been a chore, towing her around the peninsula and into the second entrance, but the reward was they were miles from either entrance, and the second one was not guarded by dolphins. This he took to mean they didn’t know of it.
Ahab didn’t know or care that the dolphin he’d captured, of the bottlenose species, would not do well in the fresh water of the underground river for very long. While she could survive, she was growing weaker, not only because he didn’t feed her enough, but because she had less buoyancy in fresh water than in salt. The need to stay afloat exhausted her, and her skin wasn’t adapted to fresh water. Though neither he nor his captive knew it, her skin would start to slough within the next few days.
What Ahab did know was that if his hostage died before he had accomplished his mission, he would need another, or a different strategy, to get the mother to cooperate. It had been more than a week since he’d taken the hostage, and two days since he’d eavesdropped on the mother communicating with Devereux. It was past time to find out what they were up to.
Ahab took his leased yacht to a spot near the place he’d first found the dolphin. He dove into the water, acutely aware that Devereux could recognize him if he saw him. He swam straight to the entrance of the tunnel leading to the underground cave, and lurked there, hoping the mother dolphin or Devereux would turn up. Surprisingly, they turned up together, Devereux clinging to the dolphin’s fin, and entered the tunnel.
Devereux had SCUBA equipment, naturally. He’d never have been able to make the swim otherwise. His boat must be beyond the horizon. Maybe he wasn’t here on a sanctioned mission and had to stay beyond the twelve-mile limit.
Ahab found a place to hide and stayed outside the tunnel. There was no reason to risk being spotted inside the narrow waterway. They’d emerge eventually, and he’d follow at a discreet distance.
WHEN THEY DID emerge, the dolphin and Devereux stayed close to the surface. Ahab considered swimming up behind Devereux and snatching him away from the dolphin, holding him underwater until the gas in his tanks ran out. But he and the dolphin seemed close. It was possible she’d attack, and Ahab didn’t think he could control both.
Instead, he followed as he’d planned. As Devereux rested at the rail and conversed with the dolphin, he learned that he’d soon have more company than he’d bargained for. Devereux planned to involve the US Navy, and something called AE.
Now Ahab would have to turn up the pressure. Unconsciously, his lips formed an evil grin. It wasn’t looking good for the young dolphin, he thought.
The conversation on the boat had ended, but the dolphin was still waiting off the side. Ahab’s attention wandered, and he was startled when she appeared before him with something in her mouth. He grinned when he realized they’d used his trick of putting a note in a plastic bag. He read it through the plastic.
“Proof of life,” it read.
At first, he was puzzled. Then he realized they wanted to know if the young one was alive. This meant the mother was going to try to trap him by agreeing to lead him where he wanted to go, if he proved her daughter was alive. He could do that.
He started toward his yacht, where he had video equipment for the eventual proof he’d found the Minotaur. It wouldn’t take much ingenuity to protect it from the water while he got to the young one. He could film her, and if he was right, he could tell her to say something in their language to convince her mother she was all right. He nodded at the dolphin and swam away.
Proof of life, coming right up.
AFTER HE’D SWUM away, Merrybeth returned to Devereux’s boat. “I gave him the note,” she said.
“So, he was there,” Carter observed.
“I told you he was. I felt him behind us.”
Carter didn’t pretend to know how she could have felt someone swimming behind them, but he didn’t argue. She’d been right. They’d wait here until he returned with something to prove her daughter was alive, or until she heard from Carmen herself again. Then he had an idea.
“Merrybeth, can you tell how far away an ansible message comes from?” He’d expressed himself inelegantly, but he was thinking on his feet, with no time for elegance.
“I know where the messenger swims, yes,” she answered. “Nearby.”
Quickly, Carter tried to explain the concept of triangulation to her. Finding he lacked the words, he grabbed the whiteboard again and drew it out.
Merrybeth caught on quickly when she saw the picture. She sent a broadcast of the image to every dolphin in the area, and even picked up a faint echo from the Navy’s trained dolphin, Joanna, all the way from California.
We need to find my daughter, she signaled. Anyone who hears her talking to me, please signal me your location.
She heard several signals of assent, and then
the ansible network went silent. Everyone was listening intently for Carmen.
23
JULY HAD BECOME August, and with it, the annual leave for the Executive Advantage team on Freydis. They’d learned that the most efficient way of handling vacations was to leave a skeleton crew at Tala to provide the security for the Freydis operation and everyone else go at once.
During the first three weeks of August, there was no school as most of the children would be traveling with their parents. Those whose dads or moms were left to guard the ranch usually went on trips with the other parent. Liam understood that his dad was on an important assignment, and his mom was just getting her research going and couldn’t leave Freydis right now. But he had a plan.
“Grandma, do you think you and Grandpa could take us on a trip?” he asked her on the afternoon school let out for the summer vacation.
“That’s a good idea! Let me see if your mom can spare me at the lab, and if your grandpa is at a stopping place with his history of the Hopi,” she said.
“Grandpa’s been fishing all summer,” Liam confided. “I think he’s at a stopping place. But I won’t say anything to Beth about it.”
Grandma laughed. “You’re probably right, but I’ll ask anyway. And it’s a good idea not to say anything to Beth, in case it doesn’t work out. Did you have a vacation spot picked out?”
“Yes,” Liam answered. “I’d like to go to Greece. I want to be an archaeologist like my dad, and there are a lot of cool sites there.”
“This wouldn’t have anything to do with him being near there right now, would it?”
“Of course, it would! We haven’t seen Dad in like, forever,” Liam said, his pseudo-adult demeanor disappearing. A tear formed in his eye, and he dashed it away angrily. “He’s never here.”