Danning gives him a look as if to ask, how’s it going. Ramirez gives him the A-okay hand sign, and nods his head and winks to say, it’s going great. Danning is not so convinced. Ramirez continues:
“I’m sorry that happened, but it doesn’t change the fact that I did pull that file and– I know, I know. That’s why I knew I could call.” He gives Danning a thumbs up sign, and then continues on the phone. “It’s a really complex thing that needs your unique insight … Over at the Service … Harold Danning. He’s the Deputy Director now … Yeah the same one … Yeah. Only thing is Al, this is the sort of thing that’s just better gone over in person … Well, if at all possible, nine this morning! … I know, I know; so do I, but it’s kinda crucial, even more than the thing for– Over here, at SS. I’m here now … Yeah. I know, it’s a royal pain in the ... That’ll work. Okay, just call us when you get to the gate.”
He hangs up and says to Danning, “Phew. She can break away for an hour in about an hour.”
“Sounded iffy for a moment there.”
“Alice and I go back a ways. She was an acquaintance of Marcy, and kinda took me under her wing when I first got to the Bureau. It had been hard on her, being African-American and a woman, so she tried to help me, the only Hispanic in my class, avoid some of those rough spots. My career success has long been a point of great pride to her, so when I stopped keeping our seasonal get-togethers I guess she kinda took offense.”
“Humph, I never thought you needed any help, I’d hire you over anyone else that comes to mind, heck I tried to weasel you outta there, a couple of times, but your boss looked like he would have me up on charges for even suggesting to steal you away.”
“Really? Ha! Imagine. Shoot, if I knew that old turtle loved me so much I would have asked for a raise! I’m doing all right don’t get me wrong, and yeah, maybe Al thinks she helped me more than she actually did, but we’re not all you, hermano; not everybody is a super genius!”
Danning smirks, “If I’m so smart, why is my career hanging on the hopes of a twenty-three-year-old girl!”
Ramirez, with playful glee, “Uh-oh! So you are concerned about assigning young what’s-her-name!”
“It’s just that this is so not like me! It’s not carefully planned, it’s not studied … I’m flying by the seat of my pants! Everything I know about how to do things tells me I need experience and proven skills working this case, which is why I’m glad you put Hinton on, but something else is leading me to trust in this girl, to trust Lauren, that she’s important to this case.” He shakes his head in frustration. “I just get this sense that–”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Harold, please,” Ramirez interrupts, “this case has enough weird stuff without you wigging out too! I agree this isn’t the fifty-five backup plans version of you that we’re all used to, but there’s no mystery as to why you feel you can trust Lauren. She’s a carbon copy of you! Remember you at twenty-three? You were smart as a whip, and practically as capable as you are today minus the seasoning. You had graduated ahead of the class just like she did, and raced through training, just like she did. Huh! If you could, you’d probably adopt her!” They both laugh.
Danning, shaking his head asks, “How do these conversations always get to being about me. You’re arguably the best investigator at the Bureau—who, I might add, also finished ahead of your class—so let’s drop this I’m-just-a-working-stiff/you’re-a-genius thing, we all know where you’d be in the Bureau if you wanted it! So, let’s get our act together for Alice; I get the sense that she’s not going to have much time.”
His assistant Mark isn’t there, so he calls out to get someone to move another table into his office where he could splay out the case. He then goes to his whiteboard and begins making a timeline. Ramirez sits contemplatively. Looking through the case file, he asks him, “Harry, what do you make of this Howard fellow?”
Danning, still writing on the whiteboard doesn’t turn around but answers, “You mean the one the prophecy says is supposed to take the old Jennings woman to the train?”
“Yeah, him.”
Danning stops writing, turns around, looks at his friend and says, “I don’t know, I don’t even know what that means, and … I don’t know.”
“Yeah, you know, now that I have li’l Beck, I think about things differently. I’m actually glad to be out of fieldwork. Imagine that?”
Considering where his friend’s career might be had he accepted a management position sooner, Danning can only say, “Humph.”
“You ever think about things … about the danger, dying and stuff?”
Danning, going back to writing, says, “I guess I’m like most people, I don’t think about it ’till I’m forced to, when it’s more close at hand.” He turns again to look at Ramirez, “but if this is a round about way of asking me whether I think Howard was the death angel or something, I can’t go there.”
• • •
Moments later, and well before they’re completely ready, there’s a phone call from the gate. It’s the guard informing them that he just let an Alice Wheaton in, and that she should be walking in any moment.
Danning, uncharacteristically nervous asks, “Should I put on my jacket?”
Ramirez, “Nah, she’d read that as phony; besides, look, here she is.” An office clerk brings in NSA Information Assurance Deputy Alice Wheaton. She’s a medium build, 50-ish lady of about five feet, five inches. The men rise to greet her and she goes over to Ramirez and gives a friendly hug. Ramirez says, “I like the weekend clothes.”
She cuts her eyes at him and says, “Yard sales.”
Ramirez, “Very nice. Harry, I’d like to introduce my mentor, Alice Wheaton. Alice, Deputy Director Harold W. Danning.”
Alice shakes his hand and says, “It’s a pleasure.”
Danning, “The pleasure’s mine, let me get your coat, and please, can I get you anything?”
Alice, “No, its only ten fifteen, I’m not quite ready for my third cup of coffee.”
Ramirez and Danning, both look at each other. They all enjoy the light moment and then Ramirez and Alice take a seat as Danning positions himself in front of the whiteboard, which bears his timeline. Pacing slowly he says:
“Please allow me to try and briefly bring you up to speed, I know you don’t have much time. Roughly eight and a half years ago, a retired FBI man contacted this office with item A, a photo of a journal page entry that implied that the President of the United States’ life was in danger. My predecessor, Goodson, opened a case and called it, Lifesaver, and established certain parameters whereby the case might go active; one of which was, determining if the author of the threat was credible. Well, the author turned out to be a five-year-old boy writing in his very first journal; which was a gift from his mother; and thus the case languished. The story there was, this boy in New York was making all sorts of predictions and …” He takes a deep breath and swallows hard to tell the next part, “allegedly, he was hearing voices telling him these things, so not surprisingly, Goodson put it on the back burner. But I like things tidy.”
Alice nods hear head listening attentively and says, “Uh-huh.”
“So when I came on board with the new administration, I put some of my people on clearing any of this sort of thing out of the case log. One of my research analyst, my lead, located chat-room conversations from the kid’s older brother and began cross-referencing them against what could be gleaned from the journal, and found out that the FBI man’s sister-in-law died as the kid recorded in his journal. She then asked me for three researchers to help track down if any of the other predictions had come true.”
Alice, who cannot stand the suspense, leans forward and asks, “Have they?”
Danning, looking at her with a cool calm expression, drops the bomb. “That’s just it, of the five predictions we know of, three have been confirmed as true, and all three involve a death of some sort.”
Shocked, Alice says, “What?”
Danning continues with
the second bomb, “Yes, which is why I contacted Bill. This third event, the death of an elderly woman in Denver was accurate to the day and has been verified as natural causes.”
With that, Alice whips out her cell phone and gets up to make a phone call. “Excuse me gentlemen.”
“Wait, hold it, who are you calling?” exclaims, Danning
Ramirez jumps in, “Alice, please. One moment … please.”
Alice stops shy of pressing send and says, “Um, Mr. Danning, Billy, you don’t know this, but you’ve got a national security event on your hands! Do you know the odds of predicting when someone is going to die? Do you know what it means if someone can successfully do that twice, in their whole lifetime? Do you have any idea what happens to a nation if that same person decides, even if just as a joke, to say that a national leader is going to die? What that means for the economy, for foreign relations? Do you know how many nations would rather simply kill that kid rather than chance someone else paying him to say that their national leader is going to kick it in two weeks? Oh, my God! Is he in protective custody?”
Danning, “We’re working towards doing that.”
Alice, “What does that mean? What does that mean?” Danning and Ramirez are somewhat speechless. “What the hell? How many men do you have down– up there?”
Danning, “Just one at present.”
Alice looks at Ramirez. “I thought you said this guy was some sort of genius. Look gentlemen, perception is the whole game. Sort out truth and reality later. You don’t have to actually have anthrax or an exploding package, or anything to cripple a nation!”
Ramirez, “Okay, okay, Al we get it. Just give us a second to catch our breath here. Just don’t make any phone calls.”
Alice, emphatically, “No! I’m going to call my boss and request a surveillance detail. Billy I love you but same as you, I’ve got a job to do here! At this point your best option is to limit the intrusion by telling me absolutely everyone connected to this case!”
While Ramirez paces the floor, Danning, almost in a daze, writes out a list of everyone involved in the case that he’s aware of, starting with himself, Ramirez, Agent Coles and Agent Hinton and proceeding on to cover every family member and townsperson.
Alice makes notes of everyone and their connection to young Joseph. She sketches a diagram in her pad figuring how and how closely they are connected. Danning’s mind runs a hundred miles an hour as he answers Alice’s questions while simultaneously making notes of his own on a pad on his desk. It’s a list of all that needs to be done now, in light of what Alice has said. Finally he just sits at his desk, and begins to call his assistant, Mark, at home.
Pausing a moment, he looks up at Alice, who has resumed making her urgent phone call and asks with concern, “Miss Wheaton, can you tell me one thing?”
Ramirez stops from his pacing and looks at Danning. Alice, whose phone is already beginning to connect says, “Yes, hurry it up.”
Danning, “Do you think that there’s a chance that the kid is an accomplice, wittingly or not, to a larger plot?”
“I honestly don’t know,” replies Alice. “Seems that if I were to suspect someone–” her cell phone completes the connection and she says, “Hello, this is Alice, I need to speak with the deputy direct– Can you hold for just a second?” Looking quickly at her notes, she says to Danning, “I’d suspect his father first. Generally what was true in Watergate is always true, follow the money. Dad’s doing pretty well for himself; he has the greatest degree of control and will over the kid and has international connections through his company. Do you know if any of the company workers have access to the kid?”
Ramirez jumps in, “My guy is checking into that right now.”
Alice gives them both a look that says, in essence, you two, this thing is really serious! She returns to her phone call, “Hello? Yes, thanks. Can you put me through to him? Thanks.” And just like that she’s on with her boss, the deputy director of the National Security Administration. She asks for surveillance and background checks for everyone that Harold Danning told her of, including Lauren Coles and Albert Hinton. She also asks for checks on everyone in the dad’s company. Hearing only her side of the conversation, Danning and Ramirez can tell that she’s getting some flack for such a large detail request. But she uses some special code to indicate the kind of case they’re dealing with and the matter is settled with finality.
• • •
Back in New York, Hinton is alone with the fire inspector in the house. He has provided the inspector with his real credentials to allow him to do his job as an FBI investigator. He focuses primarily on the bedrooms of the two boys Joseph and James. Starting with Joseph’s room he finds what you would expect of a teenage boy, though perhaps a little more tidy. Hinton searches for where he might have hidden his journals, but comes up empty. The closet is roped off by the fire inspector, but doesn’t look too promising. On the plus side, there are no secret notes from assassins or large sums of money to be found either, so all in all this search, even without the journal, has a positive outcome.
Moving on to James’ room he spots a computer but regretfully it’s too new to be the one he used to send email and chat about what was going on with his brother over eight years ago. Again, it’s a typical boy’s room, only this one is even neater. Looking at the posters it would appear that he’s a Jets and Mets fan. “Poor thing,” Hinton thinks; “talk about longsuffering.”
Fire Inspector, Marshall, pokes his head in and warns, “I’m just about done. Do you need me to stall?”
Hinton replies, “I need to check both their closets more thoroughly; you think you could give me another fifteen?”
“Okay.” Referencing Hinton’s credentials and actual role there, he adds, “I don’t suppose I can forbid you from doing anything, but I don’t recommend that you step into the other closet, the fire beneath has compromised that floor and it’s not safe.”
“Thanks for the head’s up; and believe me, I trust you guys completely. You mean the closet in the other boy’s room, right?”
“Yeah, is that whose room it is?
“Yeah. I saw the tape, but you’re saying I can reach in there if I don’t walk on the floor?”
“That’s right.”
Now pressed for time, Hinton finishes up with James’ room, swiftly going through his large closet. Stepping inside he finds a treasure trove of collectables, models, and sporting goods. Hinton is a skilled profiler, and if he had the time, he could do a complete personality sketch, but right now it’s just more stuff than he can deal with, and it’s using up precious minutes. Funny sometimes how the last fifteen minutes can turn out to be the most important. Hinton has done many searches of this type, and his experience tells him that he is onto something! The memorabilia seems to be arranged sequentially by year. Having seen James’ Junior High stash, he’s now working on what looks to be elementary school stuff.
Just then, as the fire inspector says, “It’s time to head out, sir,” lo and behold, behind some fifth-grade textbooks sits James Market’s old journals. Hinton smiles and, shaking his head incredulously, mutters, “Humph, just like in the movies.”
Hinton stashes the six Mead seven-by-nine Composition Notebooks beneath his papers and exits the premises first. He joins the conversation still going between Commander Watson and Mr. Market.
Watson turns to Hinton and asks, “That took longer than I expected, is it bad?”
Hinton replies, “No, it was really my fault, I was checking some code regulations and such, but the damage is pretty much as you expected, perhaps less. Mr. Marshall will be out in a–” He pauses a second, then continues, “Mr. Marshall will be out with all the details on what he sees. I’ve got everything I need for repair estimates, so I’ll be in my car going over your insurance papers. I’ll be in to give you my damage assessment in about thirty minutes, uh, if I don’t go grab some breakfast first.”
That last bit about breakfast was Hinton thinking fast
on his feet. He figured just in case he had to rendezvous with someone from the team, or examine those precious journals more thoroughly, he might need some privacy.
But of all the words in what he said, the only one that stood out in Robert Market’s mind was damage; not because of what he may hear about the house, but because of what he caused in his last conversation with his wife—the love of his life.
Hinton gets to his car and begins reviewing his haul. He’s very happy, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it to listen to him grumble. “The Fire Marshall’s name is Marshall. Marshall! You can’t write stuff that corny!” He shakes his head as he skillfully evaluates the journals. It takes him only seconds to locate the years in question, the years when Joseph’s predictions were being made. It’s a lot of writing. If ever he needed to confer with Agent Coles it would be now. It’s too much material for him to handle in 30 minutes, so he decides to use a hand scanner to scan the pages to digital files and upload them to the team. Feeling a little too exposed where he’s parked, he stashes everything and drives up to the three men and says, “Guys, I’m gonna go grab some breakfast and go over this, can I bring you anything?” They all decline, and so Al Hinton drives off to finish his task from a more private location.
• • •
Fire Inspector Marshall explains to Mr. Market, “It’s actually surprisingly little damage. I count one ten-by-eight-foot wall, one joist and about forty-five or fifty floor boards that’ll have to be replaced. I’d guess the wood and plaster work will cost you about two thousand dollars, and by the time you replace the chair curtains, bookshelf, and custom door you might spend another thousand. Anyway, Mr. Hinton will have the exact number from your insurance company, I’m sure they’ll cover all this. Meanwhile, I can clear the house for habitation as soon as my electrician checks your wiring.”
Watson says, “Huh, I thought you always check the wiring, Greg.”
The Journal: A Prophecy, A President & Death Page 9