Tsunami Connection

by Michael James Gallagher

  In private, Kefira insisted to Zak that, in the end, her affair with MacAuley's sister had been business, not a change in orientation. She tried to explain to Zak that she had become over-involved in her role as she got closer and closer to her objective in Buenos Aires. That discussion had happened several months ago. Zak and she had not talked since that time. With difficulty, over the last few months, Kefira accepted his choice and tried to move on, too. Hearing his voice over the phone yesterday had given her a pause and helped her face the reality that she had not gotten over him yet. At the end of the meeting about their discoveries in Syria, Zak asked her to remain behind.

  "I really have missed you," said Zak as soon as Sam left.

  "Your voice on the line yesterday stirred something in me, too."

  "Brace yourself. I have some news."

  "About us?"

  "That, too, but it's about MacAuley. As you likely know, he appears to have escaped and left his sister to the wolves."

  "I overestimated the ability of his minders."

  "Did he kill them?"

  "No. He used some kind of drug to make it look like he'd had a heart attack. The minders submerged his body and attached his leg to a chain. Somehow he managed to escape."

  "Nine lives, that one!"

  "Anyway, we don't have any proof, but it looks as though he got away. In the debriefing report, it says he drowned, but the fact that the body was never discovered is telling."

  "It is like some kind of recurring nightmare, dealing with that guy."

  "You can say that again."

  "What about the sister?" asked Kefira, taking a chance and evaluating the extent of the damage she had done to her connection to Zak with her dalliance.

  "We gave her some rope. Maybe she will hang herself. She led you to him once. We have some people on her periodically in Buenos Aires. As well, her phones and email are under constant surveillance. We will see."

  "You seem to fit right in here in Yochana's old job," commented Kefira, getting away from the Michael MacAuley minefield.

  "Is that a problem for you?"

  "No, not at all. I never wanted the desk job. That was her dream for me."

  "Are you sure you are ready to come back to do that research?"

  "I think it'll pick up my spirits. I miss having a driving purpose, and I haven't been able to get enough satisfaction out of dancing and exercising more. I am in great shape, though."

  "Ah. Ehh …"

  "Spit it out."

  "Can we have dinner or something?"

  "Jesus, I never thought you'd ask."

  "Well?"

  "My place, tonight. I already started the marinade. It's one of your favorites. And the dessert will knock you off your feet. I've become a regular Betty Crocker with all this time off."

  "I can't wait, but now I have to get back to work. Do you mind?"

  "No. I'll occupy my old desk and get on the research thing tomorrow. Can you authorize an assistant for me today?"

  "The assistant will contact you at your desk tomorrow morning. You might be right in your hunch about Doctor Mordicai being useful. We can sign him to a contract if necessary."

  "Sounds great. Later."

  Kefira found her old desk looking lonesome, but the people around it were active and greeted her warmly when she entered the cubicle section on the fourth floor near the research library. Zak had taken the liberty of activating her computer for her. He knew I would jump on board again, she thought, as she keyed in a new password and searched the server for information on drones, hypnotism, power of suggestion and brainwashing. Everything pointed to Korea. She shook her head and left for her flat in Melchette Street. Yochana gave Kefira the roof top residence by way of an apology for her errors in judgment.

  The ex-chief of the spear group moved back to her roots at Kibbutz Na'an. Her life took on a more circumspect aspect. Besides, Mossad had discharged her, but the dishonorable part of the leaving was scratched in respect of her lifelong contribution and the fact that no one believed she had acted treasonously, just in bad judgment. The disgrace she herself felt was deemed punishment enough. Her life in Kibbutz Na'an involved organizing young people to develop their knowledge of Israel, as well as being in charge of a school self-defense program.

  Kefira visited her regularly and she seemed to accept her new life, if a little bitterly. They had not discussed Kefira's lack of interest in joining the Mossad leadership. It took all of Kefira's self-control for her not to ask Yochana about the dance studio fire that Kefira had discovered was set by Mossad agents under the General's control. It now seemed obvious to Kefira that Yochana's vicarious ambition for her included justifying the accidental murder of a civilian in California.

  How could my adoptive parent have rationalized that abhorrent decision-making process? thought Kefira. Machiavelli and the ends justify the means. I guess it was just like me with the Michael MacAuleys in Buenos Aires, considered Kefira as she watched Yochana working with a group of young people on a recent visit to her at Kibbutz Na'an. Some things were better left unsaid. It was all water under the bridge anyway.

  The End

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  I was standing in front of a class of thoroughly engaged teenagers a few years ago when my career took an unlikely turn. One of my favorite students asked me about dancing tango with my wife. I thought, Amazing! Maybe I can teach basic English as a second language by getting my students to learn some kind of line dancing tango steps. Who knows? There are lots of kids from Latin America in the class. It might work. Anything to remove those passive looks. I went on to push the desks out of the way and teach most of the curriculum for about a month, while instructing basic tango classes in English.

  That led to people in the class wanting to put the lessons on the Internet, and one thing led to another before I moved to another school. The school director drew the line at Internet tango.

  Tango sparked up my professional life for a month and woke up a dormant desire in me to live a lifelong dream. I'd always wanted to write thrillers, and now I'd discovered that tango was a contagious passion. The trick remained finding a way to combine tango and espionage. Kefira, my ravishing sleeper agent in strapped black stilettos, came to life on the page and my dream started taking shape.

  I hope I was able to communicate two of my passions to you with the book you're holding in your hands, and that you've enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

  We'll be partners for life when you take the time to create your own review here: Amazon Book Reviews.

  If you take the time to send me the link of your review to tsunamiconnectionmjg@gmail.com, I will offer you a free copy of Diamond Rain, Part One of The Science Fiction Action Adventure Series. Free sample starting on the next page or Pick it up now!

  I'd love to hear from you. Please feel free to leave comments on my blog or send emails to tsunamiconnectionmjg@gmail.com and I'll get back to you promptly. When you comment, I become a better writer and we get to be partners. Thanks again.

  Michael James Gallagher – Michael's Inspiration

  Turn the page to start reading your free sample of Diamond Rain…

  Diamond Rain

  Part One: The Science Fiction Action Adventure Series

  By Michael James Gallagher writing as Mike Gallagher

  Chapter One - Armageddon Valley

  Thomas stood on a ridge and peered through the viewfinder of his camera as he hustled for space with journalists and dignitaries. He was transfixed by the mass of humanity in front of him, a mass so big and eerie that just looking at all these people resulted in an involuntary shudder. Something stirred deep within Thomas. He suddenly heard his mentor’s voice in his head: “You’ve got it all, man. So you have to give some back too. Don’t ever forget it.” It was ironic that his life would come to this.

  All he ever wanted was to be a wildlife photographer, and all he wanted for company was solitude. Something told him that life was about to change, life as he kne
w it, that he would have to play a role in stopping these humanoids and if he just stood by and watched then they would take civilization back to the stone ages.

  Hastily organized international peace negotiations kept the overlook busy, with visitors curious to see the invading throng as it waited in Armageddon valley. Sue Ann Lee, Thomas’ professional partner and Al Jazeera reporter, readied herself for a live broadcast. Thomas occupied himself by working through his mental checklist as he tested his camera equipment and laptop connections to be sure they would relay without a hitch.

  A short distance away from Thomas and Sue Ann, Kefira was standing looking around critically at the mass before her. She was focusing her telekinetic powers on all the visitors, particularly the reporters and dignitaries in the crowd. Her Mossad special training kicked in. As this group approached the overlook, the atypical, sudden, collective intake of breath seemed deeper than usual. Kefira mustered her psionic ability to scan the group. She halted as she encountered Thomas; she was puzzled, something about him stood out and she found herself going back over that part of the crowd to work out what was causing her powers to stumble. She refocused her energies on Thomas and tried again. Odd, she thought, I can’t read him.

  With her interest piqued she sauntered closer until she stopped just a few feet away from him. At first she thought Thomas was a Chinese agent cloaked within a nanosuit, but her own unique diamond-molecule suit would have triggered a warning. She was puzzled. It could be one of two things, she thought, either he’s gifted or he’s undergone special training and has exceptional mental strength. Only once in the past two years had Kefira encountered someone she couldn’t read.

  Thomas noticed Kefira’s scent before he turned to face her. Although she was smiling engagingly, he noticed that the smile stopped at her eyes. Interesting. His journalistic antennae went to full alert; it was a warning to him that she may be military or at the very least a threat. But what sort of threat he couldn’t determine; the one clear signal was that she certainly had a unique perfume. It was disarming. He smiled back and they both spoke at once. They both paused and laughed. Thomas decided to let her speak first. He acknowledged her with an open right hand and a tilt of his head while his left had remained on his camera.

  “Impressive dust storm, isn’t it?” said Kefira.

  “I’ll say. Where’d an Israeli guide get such a great American accent?”

  For an instant, Thomas thought a cloud had passed over the sun, but when he looked up at the sky he saw no clouds. Strange, he thought. His professional instinct had him reaching for his light meter to validate his observation. Nothing. That was very odd. Kefira’s nanofog now engulfed both of them. She probed deeper. Thomas felt peculiar, and he found himself rubbing one of his temples as though he was about to get a migraine. His neck gave him the same signal. The last thing I need right now is a migraine. At least there’s no halo of light.

  High above the masses of Chinese nanosuited invaders, an invisible drone darted over Armageddon Valley. General Chou’s drones provided eyes and ears as well as nanofog seed. Millions of miniscule foglets tumbled in a controlled, directed manner towards the aura of the heat signature raised by Kefira’s suit.

  The general’s second-in-command, Colonel Lau, studied the information provided by a high definition nose camera in the drone. His brilliance at coordinating such an attack was widely acknowledged in the military hierarchy and his actions were closely coordinated with several Chinese asynchronous military satellites. Stealth technology kept his machinations invisible to even high powered Israeli radar.

  The focus of his interest was apparently a rogue Chinese agent wearing a nanosuit and doubtless providing intelligence to the enemy. Lau was mistaken. The signature was that of Kefira herself. Lau had already made up his mind: The scoundrel had to be stopped and contained immediately. We’ll have that traitor back and be gone before they know what hit them, he thought.

  Kefira’s Israeli masters were confident that her top secret nanosuit would be invisible to advanced monitoring technology. They would find out a little too late that it wasn’t, at least not at this time. Soon, though, the situation would change with the next owner of the nanosuit.

  General Chou stood behind Colonel Lau at his cubicle. Chinese cunning pleased the general. During a thaw in Sino American relations in 2008, joint manoeuvres made technology exchanges common. Chou laughed aloud. Startled, Lau turned to see his commander muttering under his breath. Such weakness. Giving us this technology in the name of fair play. Fools! Lau had grown accustomed to Chou’s outbursts and, as had become his habit, he parroted the last word he heard. “Fools, Sir. Fools.” From their perch in central China, Lau coordinated the first nano intrusion into Israeli airspace.

  At the overlook, and totally unaware of the nano storm approaching from above, Kefira sidled up to Thomas. She interrupted his train of thought. Thomas inhaled deeply, savoring the unique, feminine scent. Shame if it’s her perfume sparking my headache.

  Kefira spun a layer of nanofog around Thomas. Can’t understand this, she thought. She still couldn’t read him, even when he was completely inside her suit’s nanofog.

  “Your perfume’s subtle,” said Thomas.

  Thomas’ headache disappeared and, relieved of the pressure, he did a double take of the green-eyed, amber-skinned woman dressed in olive green silk beside him. She looked at him but did not speak immediately.

  “That’s a neat trick, whatever it is,” Thomas continued slowly, sensing that all was not as it seemed.

  “More than meets the eye.” Kefira gave an enigmatic smile.

  “Mysterious too.”

  “Do you have some kind of special training?” Kefira asked. She was more than curious now.

  “Years of practice. I’m a photographer.”

  “No, I mean psychological preparation?”

  “Well, you could say that. My adopted grandfather helped toughen me up mentally when I had trouble with some bullies in school, but that was long ago.”

  This guy’s one tough nut to crack. He’s not giving an inch, but he seems unaware of his ability. She stopped, suddenly annoyed at allowing herself to be sidetracked. Trying to figure Thomas’ ability to resist her probing was diverting her resources when she needed to be getting as much information from this crowd as possible. A routine procedure was turning into a frustrating activity.

  Sue Ann’s voice interrupted them both.

  “Thomas, we’re about to go live.”

  Thomas nodded. Sue Ann held up a hand, fingers extended.

  “Live in five, four, three, two, one.”

  Thomas went into action. The seasoned professional in him took over. Sue Ann panned the dramatic sight before them with her right hand. She turned to show her audience a panorama of an enormous dust cloud, hundreds of feet high and kilometers wide that would have been familiar to anyone in Oklahoma in the 1930s. Her narrative related the story of the thousands upon thousands of nanosuited Chinese invaders who were stirring up this dust in Armageddon Valley and all along Israel’s frontier.

  Just how they got there and why they had chosen to stop where they did remained a mystery. They hung there like deadweight making everyone’s blood curdle; everybody knew – or at least suspected beyond reasonable doubt - that they were just waiting for orders to strike. Just before Sue Ann finished speaking, a flash of light arrested her broadcast.

  Kefira’s subconscious noticed an unusual darkness in the sky and a gray line of nanofog heading her way. An oppressive sense of doom overcame her. Not knowing why, but trusting her gut instinct, she twisted the knob on her wrist device and it sucked her nanosuit into its receptacle. Just before she removed her special watch and thrust it into Thomas’ hand, Kefira penetrated Thomas’ psychic shield with a barrage of instructions.

  The force of the assault caught Thomas completely off guard. He stumbled over and dropped his camera before rolling over to protect himself from a massive onslaught of noise and light. His hand tightene
d around Kefira’s device as a childhood memory of a nightmarish kidnapping repeated itself, leaving him stunned and speechless. Won’t the world ever leave me be? Not this again.

  On the visual plane everything had changed. No longer was anything certain or dependable from Thomas’ perspective. A vortex of deafening sounds and flashing lights was incapacitating everyone on the ridge. Thomas pulled his head into his shoulders and covered his ears with his arms while he tightly closed his eyes. Before he passed out, a woman’s voice communicated a long series of instructions directly into his head and then all went black. One command - ‘to hold the watch tight in his hand’ was repeated continuously.

  Hazy ninja fighters surrounded the dignitaries and reporters on the Mount Carmel lookout. Percussion grenades sensation created by the nano concussed all nearby. One of the landing figments scanned for suit residue and stopped at an unconscious Kefira. The fog swallowed her and dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, leaving witnesses stunned and groggy but otherwise unhurt.

  Thomas was confused but his instinct told him to follow the set of instructions by rote. In the split second before he rolled over, he had wrapped the device around his wrist and attached its secure clasp as the instructions to flee and get to safety reverberated in his mind. I should stay, fight. I can’t always run like mother always ran.

  Thomas looked around and saw Sue Ann sprawled on the desert floor. He walked over and gently flipped her around, and her eyes began opening slowly. She was conscious but shaken.

  “Are you ok, Sue Ann?” His tone was one of concern.

  “What the hell happened?” she replied, brushing herself down.

  “Everyone is asking the same question.”

  Thomas helped her to her feet and she staggered slightly as she regained her balance.

  “How about you?” she said, noting his distant expression.

  “Oh, I’m fine,” he replied as he snapped back to the present.