Damage Control

by Gordon Savage

  I got back to my report, and the morning slipped away. When I was done, I leaned back in my chair and sat for a long time looking at the last words I had written without really thinking. Finally, I shook my head in a futile attempt to clear it and gathered myself together long enough to save the file and send a copy to Frost.

  “Are you ready for lunch?”

  I jumped at the sound, and was instantly wide awake. Jack was standing right behind me. I hadn’t even noticed him come up. “Don’t do that,” I grumbled.

  He ignored my reaction. “So, are you ready?”

  I wasn’t in the mood to go out to lunch and answer countless questions, even if everyone was well meaning. I wanted to back out, but I knew I couldn’t get out of it. I stood up with a wan smile and said, “Let’s do this.”

  The restaurant was crowded when we arrived, but Xavier Clemente had gone early and saved us a couple of tables pushed together. He stood up and waved as we came in. When we were seated, the questions began. Everyone wanted me to talk about the explosion and what had happened to me. I looked around the table at the eager faces, not anxious to relive those harrowing few seconds. Finally I called on my marine training to steel myself. Despite the way my throat felt, I knew I had to speak up to be heard above the restaurant noise. I opened my mouth, and almost immediately the noise level dropped. I glanced around to see what was going on. There on every TV screen in the place was a video of the explosion, and almost everyone had stopped to watch. Unable to look away, I stared at it in fascinated horror.

  Someone who was far enough away that they survived the explosion had taken a cell phone video. The video ended with a confused jumble as the blast knocked the photographer off their feet. The broadcast kept repeating it as well as another video from inside the lab – the one that had been broadcast for the whole world to see. Every time the station played the outside video, I could see the flames and debris rushing at me and had to keep from screaming in terror. But the interior video soon proved to be what really got my attention. As I got control of my fear and began to actually watch the interior video, what I was seeing really hit me. The only frame of the explosion itself showed a single point of brilliance. The next frame was black. That was all there was, and something was wrong with it. I couldn’t tell what, but it gnawed at me.

  When the broadcast moved on to other news, I had to tell my whole tale from the beginning, but it didn’t take my mind off the video. The seed had been planted. I had to find out what wasn’t right in that video.

  As we were leaving the restaurant, Xavi came over to me. He was shorter than I with black hair and swarthy skin. Even though he was a little stout, he was far and away the handsomest man on the team. He asked, “Did that newscast upset you that much?”

  I answered as we fell in behind the rest of the team. “There’s something about almost being killed that makes for an indelible memory.”

  “Yeah. I know what you mean. I still have nightmares about that FBI shootout.” He shook his head.

  Xavi had been carjacked in Phoenix by Russian mobsters when they conned Troy into believing they were really FBI. Jack and I had been trailing his cell phone and caught up with the Russians just as the real FBI arrived. We had watched in horrified fascination when the FBI took the Russians down, and Xavi was caught in the middle of the gun fight.

  The newscast came back to haunt me, and I changed the subject, “Did anything strike you as odd about the video from inside Reid’s workshop?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t say it did. There wasn’t much to see. Why?”

  “Something about it bothers me.” I paused. “Trouble is I don’t know what, and that sequence goes by so fast that I didn’t have time to look for details”

  He glanced at me with a faint smile. “I recorded the newscast last night. Do you want me to cut you a DVD or maybe put it on a thumb drive?”

  When he mentioned cutting a DVD, I had to wonder if I was obsessing, but my subconscious kept telling me there was something important in that brief video. I really wanted to find out what it was. “I’d appreciate that.”

  Back in the office I made the mistake of attacking my accumulated emails. The Agency has an intranet, not internet – hackers can’t hack what they can’t get to, so the emails were all internal. Most of them were trivial, and almost all of them required me to respond … ASAP. I had planned to go home right after lunch, but time got away from me. I doggedly pounded out answer after answer. At the same time I kept thinking about that video. Before I knew it everyone around me was picking up their belongings and heading for the exit.

  An hour later I stared bleary-eyed at the monitor. Six new emails had come in while I was answering the others, but they could wait. I pushed my chair back. Frost walked in with his coat slung over his arm. He stopped by my desk. “You should have gone home hours ago. Are you some kind of masochist?”

  I laughed. It only hurt a little bit. “There’s something about email … It has a hypnotic effect on me.” I got out of the chair and shoved it under my desk. For a second the room whirled around me, and I grabbed the back of the chair to steady myself.

  Frost grabbed my arm. “Are you alright?”

  “Just dizzy for a second. I’m okay now. Thanks.”

  He released my arm, but his face showed concern. He was still standing by me, poised as if to catch me again. “You’re sure? That concussion …”

  “I’m sure. Really, the dizziness is gone.” I smiled at him. “So did you stop by to tell me to go home?”

  He shook his head. “I was going to call you, but I saw you were still here. You probably won’t be surprised to hear that Wells managed to get Homeland Security to take over the investigation of the explosion. I thought you should know.”

  I fought down my personal frustration with Wells. “That would seem appropriate if it was a possible terrorist strike.”

  Frost agreed. “True, but he’s already pushing a matter/antimatter explosion as the cause. There’s so little left of the building that any useable evidence to argue against him is going to be hard to come by. And the head of Homeland is already leaning his direction.”

  I scowled at that thought. “So he declares it an accident and prohibits anyone from doing anything more about the other universe. How does that help him restrict access to teleportals?”

  He frowned. “I suspect he plans to scare Congress into passing a law giving the government control over them. Unfortunately Congress does seem to respond easily to scare tactics.”

  I pondered that, but Wells was wrong on two counts. By this time I was pretty sure that the explosion was not caused by opening the interface to another universe, or at least, a matter reaction with antimatter just didn’t fit with the explosion that happened. On top of that, Pandora’s Box had been opened; there was no stopping teleportal development. Even if we Americans didn’t do it, someone else would. “I still say the explosion didn’t fit with any of the scenarios the Trio and I came up with. If Wells writes it off as an accident, it could mean someone gets away with murder, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let someone who almost killed me get away with it.”

  Frost looked thoughtful. “I tell you what, there’s still some money for the research charge number. I know you want to get back to Colorado, but I’d like you to stick around for the next week or so to see if you can find some compelling evidence that the explosion wasn’t matter/antimatter. We can use the charge number to pay for your investigation.”

  I immediately thought of the Trio – okay, of Troy. I really wanted to get back to him, but if Wells was going to base his arguments for shutting down teleportal development on the explosion, I had to prove the teleportal wasn’t the cause. But, could I? “Do you have anything specific in mind?”

  “Not really. You’ve shown a talent for coming up with solid answers on limited data. See if you can find any promising clues. If you can, I’ll keep the charge number open.” He wrote the number on a notepad and handed it to me. “This will
be an out-of-office assignment. Only come in if you need something. Now, let’s get you home. Were you planning to walk?”

  I thought of the mile walk I normally made to get home. What with the weather and how I felt, I didn’t find the idea appealing. “I think I’ll call a cab.”

  “How about I drop you off?”

  “Thanks, I’d appreciate that.”

  All the way home I thought about Frost’s comment about my skill at working from limited data. I wasn’t nearly as confident as he seemed to be. Was Frost trying to boost my confidence to make up for him giving Wells the idea of a matter/antimatter explosion? But I knew better. He always took time to encourage his subordinates, and it was always appreciated. I sure hoped he was right this time.

  Chapter 9

  Robert Cannon, Channel 6 News: My guest tonight is Claude Devlin of Homeland Security. Mr. Devlin, can you tell us why Homeland has taken over the investigation of the explosion Monday night? Is there some indication that it might have been caused by terrorists?

  Devlin: Right now we’re looking at all possible scenarios. We are primarily concerned about the possibility that the explosion may have an impact on national security.

  Cannon: I must admit that sounds pretty vague. If terrorists caused the explosion, wouldn’t they have tried to take credit for it by now?

  Devlin: As I said, we’re looking at all possible scenarios. Yes, that means we are looking for any ties to terrorist groups, but one of our concerns is that the technology may have some flaws that caused the explosion. Either way we’re doing whatever we can to keep Americans safe.

  Cannon: What do you mean by the technology may have some flaws? Are you suggesting that simply using a teleportal can cause an explosion?

  Devlin: I’m saying that the technology may have some flaws we’re not currently aware of.

  Cannon: Could you be more specific?

  Devlin: Not without getting into classified information.

  People in the News – Channel 6

  Day 3, 6:30PM

  When I got home, Cardinal Richelieu was waiting inside the door looking impatient. He’s just a gray alley cat, and I can’t tell you why I named him that. Kitt wasn’t home, but I made a mental note to thank her profusely for taking care of him while I was gone. I gingerly took off my coat and hung it in the hall closet. When I picked the Cardinal up, he began buzzing immediately, and I wondered about taking him with me when I went back to the safe house. Of course I knew it was impractical – at least until we had teleportals we could actually use for transportation.

  But I was home for now. Almost immediately exhaustion overcame me. I put the Cardinal down and stumbled to the sofa. Careful of my left side, I lay down. The next thing I knew the noise of the front door closing woke me from dreamless sleep. Groggy, I sat up. The wave of pain that washed over my left side finished clearing my head. I looked toward the foyer. “Kitt, is that you?”

  “Sam?” It was her voice.

  I stood carefully.

  Kitt walked into the room. Her jaw dropped when she saw me, and she whispered, “My gosh! What happened to you?” She hurried over to me.

  Even after a long day shuffling papers at the Pentagon, Major Kathryn Julia Foxx looked sharp in her air force uniform. A petite black woman with a killer sense of humor, she had been my apartment mate for the past two years while working at the Pentagon. Although this assignment was important to her career, she was a fighter pilot—what she called a vanishing breed because of the increasing use of drones for air missions—and I knew she wanted to get back in the cockpit.

  She stopped right in front of me and stared. “What happened to you? Your boss—Frost?—said you’d been in an accident. He wasn’t kidding. Did you have a fight with your boyfriend?”

  I had to suppress a laugh. She was more concerned about my injuries than I was. “Were you watching when Duncan Reid was blown off the air last night?”

  She nodded slowly, frowning as if wondering what that had to do with anything. “Wasn’t everybody?”

  “I was across the street when the building blew.”

  Her eyes widened. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Do I look like I’m kidding? The cab I was in had barely pulled up to let me out. I didn’t even have time to open the door. The cab absorbed most of the blast, but it dounced me around quite a bit. You can see some of the bruises.”

  I smiled at her. “It’s not really as bad as it looks.” I thought about how lucky the cab driver had been. He had his back to the window while he was talking to me, so the glass had peppered the back of his head instead of his face.

  “Not as bad as it looks? Your whole left side is covered with bandages and you seem to have bruises everywhere else.” She stepped back and examined me carefully. “You look like you were run over by a truck. How do you feel?”

  With that for a straight line I had to chuckle a little. I responded, “I feel like I was run over by a truck.”

  She frowned again. “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?”

  I started to shake my head but thought better of it. “No way. What you see is what you get. I mean I was mostly bruised and scratched up. I didn’t even need stitches, and the doctor told me it probably won’t leave any scars.” I didn’t mention the concussion.

  Kitt apparently couldn’t resist joking. “So other than that, how was your vacation?” This time she laughed, I suspect more to cover up her own nerves than out of humor. She eyed me up and down and motioned toward the couch.

  I still felt weak so I eagerly took the suggestion. As soon as I sat, the Cardinal jumped into my lap. I stroked him absently.

  Kitt sat down beside me and scratched his head. She continued. “So what’s going on and why in the world were you outside that building when it exploded?”

  “When we heard at the safe house that Reid was going to open the interface to another universe, we all knew someone had to stop him from opening his portal. Since I was the only one who both understood the danger and didn’t need special permission to leave the place, I got the job. I just got there too late.”

  Kitt shook her head. “So, if you’d been a few minutes earlier, you’d have been inside the building….” She paused to let that sink in, as much for me as for herself.

  A chill flashed through me. I hadn’t thought about it like that. What if I had been on my way to the building when it blew? I tried to pass it off lightly. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  She studied my bandages. “Any less lucky and you would have been hamburger. You took a shower of broken glass. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds, you know.”—Although her hamburger analogy made me shudder a little—“Safety glass shatters into dull pieces, and I was wearing a leather jacket. It took most of the impact and was shredded. You should have seen it. Still, it was sort of like being shot by a high powered bb gun ma-any times. It hurts, but I’ll get over it.”

  She gripped my right forearm. “Details. When did you get out of the hospital?”

  Knowing Kitt, I was more or less prepared to be bombarded with questions. She had started with a softball. “This morning. Dr. Frost wanted me to write a report on my time and the developments at the safe house, so I spent the rest of the day at the office.”

  Kitt waved her hand in the air impatiently. “Never mind that. I don’t want to know about your day at the office. Tell me about your time at the safe house.”

  I gave her a condensed version, focusing mainly on Troy and that I was there primarily to observe.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re okay – or should I say, ‘Going to be okay?’” She looked at her watch. “Oh my, it’s late. I’d love to continue this sparkling conversation, but Harrison is picking me up in fifteen minutes, and I need to change.”

  She stood. “I’m glad to see you didn’t suffer any permanent damage. We’ll talk more later.” She wasn’t being brusque. It was just the way she operated.

  After she headed to her room, I dr
agged myself over to my laptop and pulled up the video of the explosion on YouTube. When I ran it straight through, I couldn’t pin it down, but something right before the video cut off still felt wrong. I tried to pause the playback several times, but when I finally caught that last frame, the image quality wasn’t good enough for me to see anything useful.

  I needed a better copy. I wondered why YouTube didn’t have it in HD. Xavi had offered me a copy of the broadcast he had recorded. If it was HD quality, it might serve. If nothing else my player could show the recording frame by frame. That might help. I called him.

  ◆◆◆

  Day 3, 7:00PM

  If I had walked home from the office, it would really have been completely worn out, even though I normally did it almost every day. As it was I still felt exhausted. I remembered Dr. Nazary’s admonition to take it easy and decided to take a cab to Xavi’s place. I thought of the irony that at least the explosion hadn’t made me paranoid about taxis.

  I called Xavi to make sure I wasn’t intruding and then called for the cab. The wait for the cab took longer than the ride to Xavi’s house.

  Sylvia, Xavi’s wife, answered the door. She was wearing a green and black plaid skirt and a white sweater. They worked well with her flowing black hair. I often wondered why it was that Xavi was stocky and always fighting to keep weight off and she was thin and had to eat a lot and often to barely maintain her weight.

  She looked me up and down with an expression on her face that grew more pained as she took in my bandages and bruises. She said, “Hi, Sam. Come on in. I hope you don’t feel as bad as you look.”

  “I’m not feeling all that bad, but I am running on empty.”

  She helped me off with my coat and hung it on the hall tree. She glanced over her shoulder as she led me through the living room. “You walked all the way over here? You’re amazing.”

  “I’m not that amazing. I took a cab.”

  She laughed. “I’m glad to see you still have your sense of humor.” She headed down the hallway toward the back of the house. “Xavier is in his office. He’s watching the video of that awful explosion.”