“Polly!” Cindy yelled, quieting the little terrier.
“Oh–sorry about that,” Samantha added. “Hi.” She petted Polly calmly.
“That’s all right. Polly’s just being a good, loyal protector. That’s an admirable quality. One we look for in an agent, actually. How are you?”
“Oh, I’m good–I mean well,” Samantha blushed a little, correcting her own poor grammar. “I’ve been back at school a lot.”
“Your mother and I have been chatting a little, you know. We caught the person we think is responsible for blow-gunning her at the show.”
“Really? Uh–um, I mean, wow! Who is it?”
“Sadly, it seems to be–a teenager. We’d actually like you to come downtown and see if you could possibly help us I.D. him.”
“Um, sure... I guess,” Samantha half-gulped. “I mean–I’m not exactly sure that I can, specifically.”
“No?”
“Well, yes - and no. I mean, well–I could probably tell if it definitely wasn’t the guy.”
“Probably, definitely?” Agent Stiles raised an eyebrow and stared at Samantha for a moment. “I see. Well, I’d appreciate it if you could come with me anyway and aid us with whatever knowledge or memory you may have. We’ve put a lot of work into finding him.”
“Yes, please, Samantha,” Cindy was nodding, “whatever you remember, I’d feel a lot safer if I knew that whatever freak did this was locked up.”
“Yes, all right,” Samantha said nervously, unhitching Polly’s leash. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
“It’s not necessary for you to come, Cindy. I can get Samantha back home when we’re done. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours,” Stiles assured them. Cindy nodded and Samantha tried to put on a ‘helpful’ smile.
The two departed, saying a quick goodbye to Cindy (and Polly). Todd was gone, off to Seattle to spend a week with their father. Samantha was jealous in a way, but had declined to go in case something came up with The Professor. She knew she’d hardly see their dad anyway, if she went; he was always so busy. She had sent a present for him along with Todd, however, a deluxe shaving kit. She laughed to herself when she thought of it; it was sort of an ongoing joke as their father generally wore a perpetual beard, which she disapproved of.
The car ride got interesting fast. Agent Stiles was as sharp as she looked, and the questioning began immediately.
“So, Samantha,” she began, “I’m going to be straight with you. I know you’re a very bright kid. In fact, I know a great deal about you that you probably don’t think I know. The F.B.I. doesn’t mess around, Samantha, especially when people could be in danger. I know that you studied aborigines in school two days ago. I know the exact route that you take through Prospect Park when you walk your dog. I even know that for lunch today you had a cheese and tomato sandwich, embellished with Marmite, a particularly nasty spread which you were no doubt introduced to by your mysterious British friend, Professor Smythe. But, Samantha, do you know what the most unsettling thing I know about you is at this moment?” Samantha shook her head, intimidated. “I know that you’re hiding something from me.
“Now, despite watching you and your friends quite closely for the past few weeks, I’m still not sure what it is that you’re hiding. What I do know, however, is that it’s something big, something dangerous and, chances are, something that’s way over your head. If I were you, I’d ask myself how many people could be affected by whatever it is that you know, and whether maybe you should seriously reconsider keeping quiet. You’re only eleven, Samantha.” She sighed, pausing for a moment in her lecture.
“When we get to the station, you’re going to look at a sixteen-year-old Hispanic kid who’s the only person we’ve been able to even loosely connect with this Heatwavvve fiasco, and if you I.D. him, he probably goes to jail for a lot of years and this case gets closed. If you don’t I.D. the kid, we’re all over you until this is solved one way or another. So, what’s it going to be, Samantha? Is your memory getting better yet?”
Samantha was cowed by Agent Stiles’ directness. This was the F.B.I. This was hardball. But what could she do? She trusted The Professor’s judgement, more than anyone’s. And he was an adult–he could get into much bigger trouble than she or any of her friends would, legally being minors. And they had agreed over and over again that for the time machine to fall into the government’s hands would surely be disastrous. But she couldn’t send an innocent person to jail. She couldn’t live with that. She wished she could’ve talked to The Professor about this possibility days ago, but in the absence of his advice she was forced to act on her own.
“Your suspect is innocent,” she blurted out, still trying to think of what to say next, if anything. She wished at this moment that there had been a law school for eleven-year-olds.
Stiles pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in ‘park.’ She looked over at Samantha with a deadly serious look.
“Samantha,” she said sternly, “if you know who’s responsible for putting your mother in a coma, why won’t you tell me who it is!? Was it Smythe? Was it some accident, some experiment of his gone wrong? What!?”
“I can’t tell you,” Samantha said as calmly as she could. “If I told you, many, many more people would be endangered. The future–”
“The future!? I’m talking about the present, Samantha! The Bureau is stumped here, and if you don’t give us some answers, we’ll find them, and you’ll wish you had. Now I’m going to ask you one last time: Do you know who is responsible for this?”
“I’m sorry,” Samantha swallowed. “Your suspect is innocent.”
There was a long silence as the two looked into each other’s eyes, Samantha’s sad and pleading and Stiles’ frustrated and confused.
“All right,” the agent turned away, turning the car around and going back up Fourth Avenue. “Tomorrow we’ll have a search warrant for Smythe’s office and labs, and don’t be surprised if we show up at your door with one, either. I’ll give you tonight to figure out how you’re going to explain this to your mother.”
Samantha nodded, almost in tears. Had she done the right thing? She was very worried.
*
Samantha was frantic. Agent Stiles had dropped her back off at home with something of a smirk on her face, one of those looks that said something like ‘I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!’ It had been tricky explaining to her mom why she was home so soon after leaving, but it had worked. Cindy was expecting Agent Stiles tomorrow so that they could ‘finish their business.’
She went into her bedroom and closed the door, sat down on her bed where Polly was lying patiently. She wagged her tail hopefully; a walk was always a possibility. Samantha took her little key and unlocked the box that held her wrist communicator. She was about to call The Professor when she stopped and thought a moment. Even if the F.B.I. couldn’t tap into its frequency, they still could have easily bugged the room, even placed tiny cameras in it. She quickly put the communicator in her pocket and looked around feeling as if she were being watched. She racked her brain for a safe place to try to contact The Professor. She could take Polly for a walk, but she had just done that and her mom might get suspicious, and once outside, agents could be lurking anywhere–hiding in bushes with highly sensitive directional microphones or binoculars powerful enough to read lips through. In a moment of inspiration, she walked out of her bedroom and over to the front door.
Cindy had most accommodatingly fallen asleep reading on the couch, and Samantha slipped noiselessly out into the hallway, silently shooing Polly, who was trying to follow. She walked halfway to the outside door and then made a U-turn following the stairs that led down to the brownstone’s basement. It was a dark and somewhat damp place, but she was worried it could still contain bugs or cameras–The F.B.I. had a certain knack for being thorough, if they really wanted something. Samantha walked over to the laundry machines that were fit in under the staircase, opened the door to the drye
r and got in. She pulled the door shut behind her and was suddenly enveloped by a most intense darkness. With her heart racing, she tapped the talk button on her communicator, having fished it out of her pocket.
“Professor?” she whispered loudly. There was no response. “Professor!?” she tried again, louder. Again, nothing. She waited, trying repeatedly over the next half hour. It was around six o’clock and her mother would probably wake up soon and start cooking something for dinner. Thankfully, there was no laundry in the dryer or she would have worried that her mother would come down and find her, though perhaps she would just laugh and wonder what in the world she was doing. Just as she was about to give up and go back upstairs, The Professor’s voice came over the tiny receiver.
“Alpha Agent Prime? Come in, this is the Clockmaker. Are you there?”
“Yes!” Samantha said with great relief.
“All chatter to be coded,” The Professor said, indicating that no names should be used. They would have to be creative in their speech.
“Is the frequency compromised?” Samantha asked, feeling very professional.
“Negative,” the reply came back. “But still unsure about the premises. Calling from non-business location.” That meant that The Professor’s desktop unit was still at his house.
“I have important information,” Samantha went on, trying to decide how to convey that Agent Stiles would be showing up at his lab the next day with a search warrant. “The... uh... hawk will be searching tomorrow. She’ll have official papers. We must prevent her from looking at the... clock.” She figured if Smythe was going to be the “Clockmaker” then the time machine must be the “clock,” and Agent Stiles definitely had hawk-like qualities.
“This problem has been solved, Alpha Prime. We were expecting the hawk, so the Brooklyn Bandit and I made a few adjustments. The hawk will find nothing. Now, we must meet. All of Alpha Team. There is work to do regarding the sharks. I have located their base of operations. It is imperative that we infiltrate it and disable their... clock. It will be a complicated mission and may take days, but once we’re gone, it won’t matter if the hawk notices our absence. If we succeed, the threat to the world is over. We can disappear back into the background.” The Professor sounded almost genuinely American in his attempt to disguise his voice.
“How do we meet?” Samantha asked.
“Go to your mailbox. There is a CD in it. Put this CD into your notebook computer. This will destroy any potential bugging or spying programs that may have been installed by the hawk while you were away from it. After that, you will take your computer to a public café with Internet access and check the email account we communicated through previously. There will be instructions on where and when we will meet and what you will need to bring.”
“Samantha?” It was Cindy, calling her name down the stairs. Samantha’s heart leapt.
“Gotta go,” she whispered hurriedly. “All is understood. Will proceed as instructed. Alpha Prime out.”
“Excellent. Clockmaker out.”
Samantha turned off her communicator and slunk out of the dryer, trying not to make too much noise. She waited until her mother had gone looking somewhere else in the house and began walking up the stairs, as if she had been out in the back yard. When she came back up, Polly was jumping on her and her mother was standing in the kitchen with a puzzled look on her face.
“There you are,” she said. “Where were you, Samantha?”
“I was in the yard,” she replied.
“With no coat on!? It’s freezing out there, Samantha! And why didn’t you take Polly with you?”
“She just had a good walk an hour ago,” Samantha half-mumbled. “I just wanted a little fresh air.”
“Hmmmph.” Her mother huffed, obviously suspicious. “Well, help me chop some broccoli. We’re having chicken and broccoli tonight, and some rice.”
“Okay.” Samantha smiled. “Sounds good. Remember, Mom, you’re only feeding two people tonight.”
“Oh, yeah,” Cindy said absent-mindedly. “I keep forgetting Todd is at your father’s. The house has been mercifully free of sloppy teenagers and the sounds of video game monsters dying, though.”
“Definitely,” Samantha chuckled.
*
After dinner Samantha made ready to take Polly out for a walk. As she exited the house, she smoothly checked the mailbox, grabbing a parcel out of it and continuing on her walk. She could feel eyes on her even now and stared at every car on the street, wondering if Agent Stiles was sitting in one, watching her. She also wondered how The Professor had managed to get the package into the box without anyone having noticed, assuming F.B.I. Was watching the place round the clock.
No one jumped out at her, so she continued on up to the edge of the park. It was dark already and cold, and even the shivering Polly seemed to acknowledge that this walk would be a short one. She did her business quickly, and the two returned to the house in short order.
Cindy had asked if Samantha wanted to watch a movie upon their return, some girlish flick that Suki and Brianna would have enjoyed more, but Samantha declined and headed to her bedroom with a book, her excuse for self-isolating. Once inside, she quickly opened the package. Sure enough, it was a CD. She hastily took it out of its jewel case and popped it into her new laptop. Its ‘Auto-run’ kicked in and looked to be something like an Anti-virus program. It searched every file on her computer, finding and destroying at least five different spying “cookies” and seven other mysterious files. She had never seen anything like it and concluded that The Professor must have wrote the software himself, though it wasn’t beyond Marvin’s capabilities.
When the cleanser program was done, she took out the CD and put it into her little lockbox, locking it securely. Now she only had to think of an excuse to go out one more time so she could check the vital email that awaited her from a safe, random location. Even if she left, she figured, if there were agents watching her they would follow her to the café she planned to go to on Seventh Avenue.
She did, however, have a plan brewing in her head. She went out to the living room and hung out for a while with her mom, then feigned going to bed around 10:30. Cindy had to work tomorrow, so she would most likely be asleep soon. She would probably encounter Agent Stiles in the morning at the museum, but Samantha couldn’t worry about that now.
At midnight, she snuck out of bed, shushing Polly, and down to the basement again, her laptop computer tucked neatly under one arm in its stylish, nylon traveling bag. At the opposite end from the laundry machines there was a grate in the floor; it drained to the city storm sewers and had been put in many years ago by a handyman whom her father had called when their basement had had troubles with flooding. She and Marvin had gone down it one day, as nine-year-olds (well, Marvin had been older), and found that it led into tunnels that ran underneath the entire neighborhood. It had been scary, and Samantha did not relish the thought of going down there again, but necessity demanded it, so she pulled off the grate and descended into the cold, wet underworld of Brooklyn.
She had been smart enough to bring along a flashlight, and turned it on as her feet hit the bottom of the tiny tunnel. The first hundred feet or so was the hardest: she had to crawl on her hands and knees through a tunnel that was barely wider than her, especially now that she was almost twelve and had grown considerably since her last adventure through this maze of brick and old stone. Luckily, she was still very thin, and the journey wasn’t as bad as it could have been, though the tunnel’s floor was coated in a thin sheet of December ice. She doubted that Marvin could have traversed the passageway at his current size.
She reached the larger tunnel that ran beneath Twelfth Street and extracted herself from the smaller one, finally able to stand. She turned right and began walking, keeping her flashlight pointed down lest some alert agent notice it through a street-gutter grate. The storm sewers were absolutely frigid and ice crunched beneath her feet. Under the ice was, of course, freezing cold water, whic
h promptly soaked her new boots and made her fairly miserable and most unlikely to enjoy the trip back. At least there are no rats, she thought to herself, trying to look on the bright side of things, which was difficult in a dark, wet, freezing cold sewer.
She passed under Eighth Avenue and continued on; she could hear cars whizzing by above her and caught the occasional glimpse of the city above through grates. She kept moving, faster now as the sounds died away, and in about five minutes had reached Seventh, she thought. The sounds were busy and she came to a spot where she could see lights through a grate above her. These signs also corresponded with another crossroads in the tunnel, and she chose to turn right, which she was pretty sure was North, or at least toward Flatbush Avenue anyway. The cyber-café was down around Ninth Street, and she hoped that in the three blocks in between she might encounter a manhole with a ladder, or at least stepped grooves cut into the stone below it.
Almost immediately, she found one. An alcove was visible off to the left about a half a block down, and she made for it. The semi-circular well beneath the manhole cover was layered in graffiti; obviously she wasn’t the only one who had been down here. She slung her laptop over her shoulder, put her small, two-battery flashlight between her teeth and set to climbing the worn grooves in the old concrete wall.
When she got to the top, she stuck the flashlight, facing up, in her back pocket, so she still had some light to operate by. The manhole cover was very heavy and she almost despaired when she found that her arms could not lift it. Her small size had been an advantage up until now, but at this moment it betrayed her, and she felt quite helpless. She was not one to give up easily, however, and in an instant had wedged herself between wall and manhole, her feet on the highest notch in the subterranean concrete and her back pressed hard against the iron cover above her.
It was enough. The manhole cover rose slightly from its hole and slid some inches to the side. Worming her body into the crescent-shaped space she had made, Samantha flexed outward and edged the cover away from the hole as much as she could. It took her breath and she relaxed after her effort, though suddenly realized she was staring straight into an oncoming army of cars and quickly dropped back down below street level, holding onto the hole’s rim with only her fingers. She sort of dangled there, wincing as the horn-blaring cars zoomed over her; she was certain at least one would crush her fingers as they sped by.
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