Chapter 84
"You heard anything from Graham?" Chambers asked.
"Nope, you?" Reyes said.
"Nah, she must still be on the way up to Cairo. Cell service isn’t good in some places up there."
"Yeah, well let's go ahead, and we'll fill her in when she gets settled. Have we learned anything more?"
"Yeah, they're still analyzing them, but they’ve had some luck with those radios. They determined the frequencies the transceiver is using and were able to monitor some of the traffic. They actually checked the other devices already out there, and it looks like they're all talking on the same frequencies."
"That means they are talking to each other?" Chambers asked.
"Looks that way."
"Damn."
"Yeah. And so far, they think the devices are also talking to two different servers, from the IP addresses or something like that; it’s above my pay grade."
"Yeah, I hear ya'. Two servers?"
"They've traced one of them to Arizona, and the other to someplace in Eastern Europe."
"It’s foreign?" Chambers asked.
"Well, not necessarily. It’s talking to something there, but it could have been set up by anyone, and might just be a distraction. "
"Do we know what these things are talking about?"
"Not yet. And, they say there is a third connection somewhere; they see the traffic but haven't targeted it yet."
"What could that be?"
"Don't know yet,” Reyes said. “Might be another server, might be someone's cell phone. Hell, who knows. You still not getting anything from Graham?"
"No, and I don't like it." Chambers said.
"She said she was heading up to Cairo; she had a car, didn't she?"
"Yeah, she's had more than enough time to get there."
"Have you tried calling her again?"
"Five or six times. Just get the recording."
"Maybe I'm getting old, but I'm going to send one of our drones up that way to take a look," Reyes said.
"I'm climbing into one of our birds now; can be up there in twenty minutes. Where are you; I'll pick you up."
Chapter 85
"Agent Dasilva?" the voice on the phone asked.
"Yes." Dasilva answers.
"I am calling to inform you that the first action is completed."
"Excellent. Were there any complications?"
"None."
"When can I expect to hear about the second action?"
"Within twenty-four hours."
"Good," Dasilva said as he put the phone back in his pocket.
He smiled as he thought about how well things were going. It never ceased to amaze him how these people would go to such lengths to protect themselves, yet leave the most simple and obvious paths open. Their training prepared them to always be on guard, but time in the field made them sloppy. As much as Dasilva hated that, he also knew that he was depending upon it. The smile weakened as he reminded himself of how little time he had to finish his work. With the first step completed, the pressure was eased, but he knew he couldn’t rest until the second step was completed as well. Twenty-four more hours; barring any complications.
Miles to the north in Cairo, Illinois, Reyes and Chambers passed through sliding doors and moved down the brightly lit hallway, to a woman sitting behind a desk.
"May I help you?" she asked.
"Emily Graham, where can we find her?" Chambers asked in full Colonel voice.
"Yes, one second." They watched her press keys and stare at her computer screen until her polite smile changed. "I'm sorry sir, visitors are not allowed for that patient."
Two badges shined over the desk, "Which way to her room please?"
The woman automatically glanced to the hallway to the left, "I'm sorry sir. But she is not..."
Chambers and Reyes were already heading down the left hallway, hunting for someone who knew where they needed to go. A doctor stepped out of a room as they passed; badges were still in their hands.
"Excuse me, doctor," Chambers said, "we're looking for a patient by the name of Emily Graham; she was brought in earlier this evening."
The doctor's eyes focused on the badges, and then on the two very determined looking men holding them.
"Yes, I am doctor Greer. But I'm sorry..."
"Doctor, Greer is it?" The Colonel was tired, "please understand; I don't mean to create problems for you tonight doctor, but we have reason to believe that Agent Emily Graham experienced an attempt on her life this evening that led to her being brought to your facility. If that is indeed the case, and those responsible find out they failed; well, Doctor, these people will not hesitate to walk into your hospital here to finish the job. Now I ask you, Dr. Greer, are you prepared to deal with that situation when it occurs tonight?"
A very brief pause.
"She is in here." Dr. Greer said as he opened the door.
Emily was sitting up in bed, a small bandage on her forehead, and in the middle of an argument with a nurse attempting to do something next to the bed. Emily turned to the opening door.
"Would someone please tell this nurse-person to give me my damn cell phone!" Emily said to everyone in the room.
Chambers and Reyes stopped, looked at each other, and then back at Emily.
"I'm sorry ma’am," the nurse said, "but I've explained that cell phones aren't allowed because of the equipment."
"See what I've been putting up with here?" she said to Chambers and Reyes as they walked toward the bed.
"Are you OK?" Reyes asked.
"Other than not getting my cell phone, yeah, I'm fine. Just a bump on the head; they tell me I'll really feel things tomorrow, though."
"What happened?" Chambers asked as he glanced at the nurse and doctor in a way that suggested they find something to do someplace else for a while. They understood.
"Somebody ran me off the road. I was just driving along. There wasn't any traffic. Then I saw something moving by the right side of the road. Before I could do anything, it pulled right out in front of me, and I tagged the back of it; that's the last I remember for a bit. Apparently, I was there for ten or fifteen minutes before somebody drove by and saw me. Things are blurry, and I was hanging upside down there, but apparently I was lucky; that little rental car was a good one."
"Did the other car run a stop sign or something?" Chambers asked.
"No, there was no sign and no road there at all. They just pulled out."
"Like they were waiting for you." Chambers said. "Who all knew where you were going tonight?"
"Who? Well, you guys, and Lennie, and Dasilva.
"Dasilva knew?" Chambers asked.
"Yeah, I talked with him before I met you guys in Caruthersville. So, you think this was more than an accident, huh?" Emily asked.
"It’s sounding that way," Reyes said.
"I'm glad to hear that." Emily said, "I didn't want to be the only one. When can I get out of here?"
Reyes walked to the door and invited the doctor and nurse back inside.
"So doc," Emily said, "where are my shoes? I have work to do."
"I'm sorry Agent Graham," the doctor said, "but you've had a head injury, and we need to keep an eye on it for at least twenty-four hours."
"Twenty-four...?' Emily began.
"Doctor," Chambers interrupted, "considering what we spoke about in the hallway, do you think it might be possible for Agent Graham to leave the hospital this evening, as long as we have one of our medical people keep a close eye on her? And at the first indication of a problem, they'll bring her right back. I'm just thinking of security here; for all of us."
Dr. Greer looked at his shoes, at the nurse, at Emily, at Reyes, his shoes again, and then at Chambers.
"I believe that would be acceptable; for security reasons, as you say."
The nurse looked at him; then at the floor.
"Good," Emily sat up and swung her feet off the side of the bed; and stopped. "Whoo!"
"Are y
ou OK?" the nurse asked.
"Fine, just got up too fast. I'm fine."
"That's going to hurt for a while, so I'll give you something to keep it manageable." Doctor Greer said. "If it gets too bad, or you have double vision or have trouble focusing, you get back in here right away."
"Right doc. Will do," Emily said. "Now, where's my cell phone?"
"So, where are we going?" Emily asked as they walked outside.
"Right now we're finding you a room so you can get some rest," Chambers said, "and then we'll meet for breakfast and figure things out from there."
As the three walked across the parking lot to Chambers' car, Emily noticed several missed calls. She saw two messages. One was from Steve, and one was from Dennis. Both left essentially the same message: "I heard about your accident, and I want to assure you we had nothing to do with it."
Chapter 86
"You look tired," Ronnie said as his grandfather sat down with his cup, "didn't you sleep very well?"
"Does it show?" the older man said. "I slept in bits and pieces; this thing we have going on right now."
"Is that the thing you said you would tell me about this morning?"
"Yes, but I'm not sure it’s the best way to introduce you to how things work."
"You said something had gone wrong; someone had misdirected things?"
"You do pay attention, don't you? That's good."
The old man took a long sip from his cup.
"You see Ronnie, as I said before, the most important task we have to carry out is to remain invisible; to never put ourselves in any position that might make us visible, or even give someone the idea that we might actually exist."
"Yeah, I remember."
"What that means is, as we decide that we must take steps to create some type of distraction, we do it by creating several layers of communication; we usually refer to them as channels, and we use those to guide how things take place."
"Has someone found out?"
"No, it’s not that serious. But one of the risks of doing things this way is that we must put a lot of trust in the people we select as those channels; we give them a direction to move, but they have a lot of freedom in how they might do that."
"I'm not sure I understand."
"Ok, in this situation for example; but first, let me give you a little of the background."
He took another long sip.
"Over the past several years, we have become concerned about some of the things we have seen taking place among those with power; both political and economic."
"You mean in the states? I can understand that."
"Not just that, Ronnie, it’s global. Remember, we are not responsible for any one individual nation; our focus must be far more encompassing. The things you see happening here are happening in countries all around the world; the consolidation of wealth and power in an increasingly smaller number of people; and the expansion of beliefs and actions that are harmful to those without wealth and power."
"You mean..."
"Please let me continue. Throughout history, this type of development has usually led to very dangerous times; but never on this scale. It has been limited to individual nations, or continents. However, technology has made the world so much smaller; and movements like this now have the ability to feed off of each other, and assume far more power than was possible before. That is why we decided we needed to create a distraction; to disrupt the momentum that was building with this mindset, and to frighten people enough to make them ask the very difficult questions. Something so frightening that those without wealth and power would unite and demand changes be made."
"Wait a minute, is this about what I've been seeing in the papers about that boat; the one with the dirty bombs? Is that what you did?"
"No Ronnie, or not directly anyway. Remember, our goal is to ensure a safe future for our world; not to do things that would destroy parts of it. But, yes, we took the steps to begin what you are referring to, but what you see is not at all what we intended."
"But did you intend to put bombs out there? With radiation?"
"Our intent was to place the devices, yes, including the radioactive materials. But, they were designed to never be used; they were built to malfunction if someone actually attempted to use one of them. Think about it Ronnie; there would never need to be an actual explosion to create the distraction. Simply learning that someone had placed these things in the middle of the country would create the same type of powerful human response we saw after Pearl Harbor, or Kennedy, or the Trade Center. Just the threat of such a thing would do that. Our devices were created to be highly secure containers of the elements; nothing more. Never something that could be put into use."
"What happened?"
"As I said, the problem with using channels is that one of them might take it upon themselves to change things. That is why we go through such pains in selecting those channels. The person selected to be channel number 1, this Dr. Shallenger, somehow his mental instability was not recognized. By the time we learned of how he had changed things, it was not possible to stop them; not directly anyway."
"You let him go ahead?"
"Ronnie, the first day we spoke I told you that there may be times that we have to make some very difficult decisions; choices that may look like horrendous and even evil choices. This is one of those times. If we took direct steps to stop him, it might have made it possible for an investigation to lead to us; or at least to the idea that someone like us might exist. And as I have said, we can never allow that to happen, even when faced with risks such as Dr. Shallenger."
"What have you done about him?"
"The same thing we always do; we looked for steps we could take to disrupt his plan, rather than attack it directly. As we understood what he was doing, we learned about the F.B.I. agent that was helping him. So, we began looking for connections to someone near that agent who could become involved in a natural way. We found that one of his colleagues actually had an understanding of those boats from her family background, so we built channels pointing to Agent Graham, whom you are reading about in the papers."
"So she knows about this?"
"No. Again, Ronnie, it’s all about channels. When the decision was made to involve her, we put channels in place; I believe five, and only one of those channels has direct interaction with her. We named that channel Steve."
"But what if that Steve channel gets caught? Aren't you still vulnerable?"
"No. All that Steve knows is the name of the channel who communicates with him."
"And that channel only knows..."
"The one communicating with them, yes. And none of the channels know more than the specific message they are to communicate. None know anything about the overall distraction; other than what the media knows to tell them. And, Ronnie, we have channels involved there as well."
"Now you're telling me you control the media?"
"Not directly, no. But the media is competitive, and always looking for a scoop. All our channels need to do is occasionally offer them one; one that will guide them either toward or away from where we need them, and then let them do their jobs. The media is a great asset for creating blindness where we need it; they have such great ability to distract."
"What kept you up last night? Have things gone wrong again?"
"Some things have happened that are making it more difficult. When we make the decision to involve someone like Agent Graham in one of our actions, we feel a responsibility to do as much as we can to protect them from harm. This is one of those times that I am being reminded of just how corrupt a man can become. But, time is on our side, as always. If we select the right people to be involved, use the channels to provide them with the information they need, and give them time to act; they will be successful. Ronnie, all meaningful change takes time, Only the fool demands it happen right now."
A brief pause.
"Would you like me to get you a refill grandpa?" Ronnie said as he glanced at the empty cup.
/>
"No thank you. I'm afraid I must go. I have things I must do." The old man stood.
"Is there anything I can do?"
The grandfather paused, looking at his grandson.
"Yes, there is; something that might help you better understand what I've been talking about. This morning, did the young woman ask you for your first name when she took your order?"
"Yeah, she always does. You said it was because..."
"Let's start with that. Let's assume that, before they did ask for names here, we decided that it would be very helpful if they started doing it, to help with our communications, like I told you yesterday."
"Ok."
"Your task is to find a way to get this company to start doing that. We already have the technology built into the system, so all we have to do is get them to use it by asking each customer for their first name. How would you get them to do that?"
"You mean who would I ask?"
"No, no, remember the channels. You will not communicate with anyone about it directly, and want to have at least four channels involved so the origin of the idea could never find its way back to you. None of your channels knows why they are doing what they are doing, but just have a simple message to communicate to someone else. How do you start that message, until some morning you walk in here, and the young lady asks you for your first name?"
"Well, maybe I could..."
"We have no use for maybe Ronnie. We must get the action taken, and we must ensure that we are never uncovered. Think about it, and I'll see you in the morning."
Ronnie was staring at his empty cup as the old man walked out the door.
Disruption: A River Of Secrets And Betrayal Page 27