The Long Chain

by Dan Willis

  “I just need to add the Genesis Water,” Harlan said, picking up a heavy jar full of a pinkish liquid. He tipped it up and poured some into the bottom of the pan, then set the rest aside.

  “What is this?” Sorsha muttered from his left.

  “Just watch,” Alex whispered back.

  Harlan plugged in the heating element, and a moment later, the liquid in the tray began to steam. He explained about how Dr. Burnham was trying to make polymers that could be shaped using electricity, going into detail on chemical reactions that gave Alex a headache.

  Once a steady stream of vapor rose from the tray up to where the metal plate was suspended, Harlan plugged in the wire leading to the plate. Almost instantly, long, thin strands of something sprang up through the tiny holes in the metal plate. They looked like a woman’s long hair flowing in some invisible wind.

  Alex leaned close to Sorsha.

  “Look familiar?” he said under his breath.

  She gasped as she recognized the way the fog strands had looked through Alex’s oculus.

  “I think now we know what Dr. Burnham was building for the Navy,” Alex continued. “A smokescreen generator.”

  Sorsha tried not to look impressed.

  “Does this mean you can find it?” she wondered, giving him a cold look.

  “I think so,” he said. “Iggy’s working on modifying my finding rune as we speak.”

  “That’s very good news.”

  Alex shrugged and turned to Harlan.

  “Okay, Doc, you can shut it down.”

  “You’d all better take a step back,” Dr. Taylor said as he gripped the plug that powered the metal plate.

  “Why?” Sorsha asked as she and Alex took two steps back.

  “That’s the bad news,” Alex said.

  Before Sorsha could demand what he meant, the elaborate, hairlike strands erupted in a truly impressive fireball. Alex was ready for it this time, but it still made him jump. To his right, Agent Redhorn threw up his hand in front of his face, and Agent Mendes stumbled, falling on her backside.

  The only one who hadn’t moved was Sorsha. She raised her hands palm out and then rolled her fingers closed, starting with the little finger and working inward. As she did the flames flickered and died until all that was left was the charred remains of the experiment.

  She turned to Alex, shaking her hands as if the effort stung them.

  “What was that?” she demanded.

  “The compound is unstable,” Harlan volunteered. “Once I cut off the electric current, it ignited.”

  Sorsha took a moment to absorb that information, then she grabbed Alex’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip and pulled him over to the side of the room.

  “Is he saying that turning off Burnham’s missing machine will cause the fog to—”

  “Combust,” Alex said with a nod. “Yes. I’m betting that’s why whoever turned it on hasn’t turned it off yet.”

  Sorsha gave him a patronizing look.

  “If whoever stole Burnham’s device knew about the burning fog, why would they turn it on in the first place?”

  “I don’t think they knew that when they turned it on,” Alex said. “Remember, Burnham’s notebooks are also missing. The thief might have turned it on to make sure it was working, then gone through the notebook while it warmed up. By the time he realized his mistake, it was too late.”

  “So you’re saying that even if we find the machine making the fog, we won’t be able to turn it off?”

  Alex shook his head and shrugged.

  “Not without Dr. Burnham’s memory or his notebooks,” he said.

  Sorsha crossed her arms and chewed on her lower lip.

  “What if we wait until it rains?” she pondered. “That flash was hot, but it didn’t last long.”

  Alex pointed to where Harlan was putting away the wires from the experiment.

  “Dr. Taylor says that the size of the fireball will depend on how much of Dr. Burnham’s unstable polymer is available to burn,” he said.

  Sorsha’s eyes widened.

  “How big a fireball will an entire city full of it make?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex admitted, “but think about this. Most of the houses in the city are made of wood. Half the city still has wooden sidewalks and every building except a few of the skyscrapers have wooden roofs. If the fog combusts, it will burn the whole city down.”

  Sorsha shivered and nodded.

  “It would be worse than Chicago.” She looked up at Alex with no trace of her former irritation; it had all been replaced by worry. “So what do we do now?”

  “We go back to the Navy Yard and have another chat with that Admiral,” Alex said.

  “What if he’s involved?”

  Alex shook his head at that.

  “Tennon was paying for everything, he wouldn’t need to send someone to knock Dr. Burnham over the head and steal the machine.”

  “Unless he ran out of money,” Sorsha suggested.

  “No,” Alex said, rejecting that idea out of hand. “The admiral in in charge of a giant government construction site, if he needed money, he could easily find some in his budget.”

  Sorsha raised an eyebrow at the idea but after a moment, she shrugged and nodded.

  “So why talk to Tennon if he’s not involved?” She asked.

  “It’s a long shot, but they might have copies of Burnham’s notes, or even know how to shut down the machine.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “By then Iggy should be done modifying my finding rune,” Alex said. “If the Navy is a dead end, I’ll use some of the Genesis Water to locate Burnham’s machine and we’ll see if Dr. Taylor or one of the other eggheads they’ve got here can figure out how to safely shut it down.”

  “Assuming they can, what will happen to the fog?” Sorsha asked.

  “According to Dr. Taylor, once the electric current from Burnham’s machine stops, the fog should just break down and dissolve,” Alex said.

  “Unless it burns the city down.”

  “Or that,” he agreed.

  “All right,” Sorsha said, her take charge attitude returning. “Let’s go see if Admiral Tennon wants to talk about his secret project now.”

  Alex snorted.

  “I want to know why they didn’t say anything before,” he said. “They must have known that the unnatural fog covering the city was from Dr. Burnham’s generator.”

  “I was thinking the same thing,” Sorsha said. With that, she turned on her heel and stalked out through the door, her FBI agents trailing in her wake.

  19

  Smokescreen

  The last time Alex had been to the Navy Yard, the gate guard had grilled the Shore Patrol sailors he was with for almost ten minutes before letting them in. When Sorsha arrived, unannounced, the wait was almost half an hour. Clearly the Navy hadn’t found their missing man, Seaman McCormick, or whoever was pretending to be him.

  Alex leaned on a metal railing that ran around the cement pad where the guard hut stood, smoking a cigarette while Sorsha glared imperiously at the sailors who were currently searching her floater. During their wait, the sailors at the gate had called in a stream of higher-ranking men as they each tried to explain to the sorceress why she was being delayed. The final one was a man named Williams with thick rough hands, a perpetual scowl, and no discernible neck.

  “All right, Miss Kincaid,” Chief Petty Officer Williams said, with as much of a smile as his gruff face could manage. “Admiral Tennon has agreed to see you and you’ve been cleared through the gate.” He turned and pointed off through the fog. “Just follow this road and—”

  “I know the way,” Sorsha cut him off, peevishly. “Thank you.”

  “Sorry again for the delay, ma’am,” Williams said, though whether he meant it or not wasn’t evident from either his face or his tone.

  Sorsha shot Alex a dark look and he tossed away his cigarette as he headed for the float
er.

  “Do you think the Admiral is burning any evidence of his link to Burnham?” Agent Redhorn asked, as Sorsha’s driver got the vehicle moving through the now-open gate.

  Sorsha seemed to consider it, but Alex shook his head.

  “He doesn’t think he’s in any danger,” Alex said. “Even if we had proof that Dr. Burnham’s missing machine is what’s causing the fog, it’s not his fault that someone stole it from Burnham.”

  “That’s exactly what he’ll say,” Sorsha agreed, disgust in her voice.

  “What I can’t figure is why he doesn’t seem to be worried about the fog,” Alex said.

  “He must not know that it can burst into flames at any moment,” Agent Mendes said.

  Alex hadn’t thought of that. This project was off the books for some reason; that was why Burnham was working from his home instead of here at the Navy Yard. Maybe that meant that the Admiral didn’t know about the problems with the device. He looked back at Agent Mendes. Women weren’t common in federal agencies and he’d never heard of a female FBI agent. Clearly she wasn’t there just as a pretty face, though. She noticed him looking at her and cocked an eyebrow, daring him to say something.

  “If Agent Mendes here is right,” Alex said, giving her a nod, “then it’s likely the Navy doesn’t have any of Burnham’s notes on his device.”

  “So we’re back to square one,” Sorsha said, her brows knitting together in frustration.

  “Not necessarily,” Alex said. “Let’s hear what the Admiral has to say first. He might have notes from Burnham but just didn’t read them. From what I saw in Burnham’s workshop, his notes weren’t very well organized.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Mendes asked.

  Alex reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the glass bottle with the rubber stopper that Harlan had given him. Inside was a small amount of Dr. Burnham’s Genesis Water.

  “Then I’ll try to use this to find out where the smokescreen machine is,” he said. “Whoever stole it also stole Dr. Burnham’s notes, so it’s likely that if we find one, we’ll find the other.”

  “Why aren’t we doing that first?” Agent Redhorn asked.

  “I’m told the rune isn’t ready yet,” Sorsha said, giving Alex a cold look.

  “Iggy will get it done,” he said, slipping the bottle of Genesis Water back into his pocket. “But you can’t rush that kind of work. I’ll call him once we’re done with Tennon.”

  “Speaking of which,” Agent Mendes said. The floater had just pulled up in front of the shoddy wooden building that housed the Admiral’s office.

  Lieutenant Leavitt stood from behind his desk in the reception area as Sorsha swept into the room. Unlike Chief Petty Officer Williams, Leavitt was all smiles, though Alex detected a hint of tension in his face.

  “Miss Kincaid,” he said with an ingratiating look. “I’m sorry you had to wait at the gate for so long.”

  “Am I to assume my waiting is at an end?” she demanded, eyeing him with a raised eyebrow of disapproval.

  His smile somehow managed to become even more charming and he swept his hand forward, indicating the closed door with the Admiral’s name on it.

  “He’s expecting you,” Leavitt said. He moved to the door, knocked quickly, and pushed it open for the sorceress.

  “Miss Kincaid,” Tennon said, standing as she came in.

  Alex noticed that the portly Lieutenant Commander Vaughn was also present, and he rose as well.

  “Thank you for seeing me, Admiral,” Sorsha said, no trace of the harshness in her voice that she’d used with Williams or Leavitt.

  “I’m a very busy man, Miss Kincaid,” Tennon said, his own annoyance clear. “I hope this is important.”

  Sorsha’s eyes hardened at that. The Admiral was trying to get a rise out of her, and not just to annoy her like Alex would have. He wanted her off balance. It was a tactic Alex used frequently. People who were flustered tended to say things they shouldn’t. From the look on Sorsha’s face, Tennon’s play was working. She drew in a breath to reply, but Alex spoke first.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that Dr. Burnham was making a smokescreen generator for you the last time we talked?” he asked.

  The question caught Tennon flat-footed and his mouth opened and closed like a fish in a bowl. The Admiral’s attention had been focused on Sorsha, and he hadn’t seen Alex.

  “I thought I told you to stay out of the Navy’s business,” he snarled when he recognized him.

  “Since I’m not one of your sailors, I don’t much care what you told me,” Alex said. He kept his face serious, but there was a certain flippant tone in his voice.

  Tennon’s face turned red.

  “Arrest this wharf-rat,” he shouted at Vaughn.

  “Enough,” Sorsha said. She spoke in her normal voice, but the sound rolled through the room like thunder, amplified by her magic. Tennon’s attention returned to her and she held his gaze for a long moment before she spoke again. “Mr. Lockerby has a frequent bad habit of speaking out of turn, but he isn’t wrong. You must have known that the fog currently blanketing the city wasn’t natural and yet you didn’t mention that you were paying Burnham to develop a device to generate just such a fog.”

  Tennon held Sorsha’s gaze without blinking. Clearly he was not the kind of man to be intimidated in his own office, which was probably how he became an admiral in the first place.

  “Of course I knew,” he said, his voice firm and defiant. “We figured it was Burnham showing off or trying to hold us up for more money.”

  “So you decided to just take his machine?” Agent Redhorn asked.

  Tennon’s eyes shifted to Redhorn and a snarl turned his lip.

  “He doesn’t have it,” Alex said before Tennon could explode. “The fog started the same day Dr. Burnham was assaulted.”

  Tennon gave Alex a stern glance, then looked back to Sorsha and nodded.

  “We didn’t learn about the theft of the device until this private dick started poking around. So, if that’s all?”

  “Did you know that the fog is unstable?” Alex asked. “That if someone turns off Dr. Burnham’s machine it could cause a fireball that might burn the whole city down?”

  For the first time since they arrived, uncertainty flashed across the admiral’s face. He glanced quickly at Vaughn, but the Lieutenant Commander shook his head.

  “Are you sure about that?” Tennon barked at Alex.

  “We are,” Sorsha said, her voice losing its hard edge. “I’ve seen the effect with my own eyes.” She briefly outlined what Dr. Taylor had shown her at Dow Chemical. “So you can understand our eagerness to find Dr. Burnham’s machine,” she concluded. “And to learn as much as we can about it. More importantly, how to safely turn it off.”

  Tennon stood there for a moment, as if weighing his options. Finally he nodded and waved toward the chair in front of his desk.

  “Sit down, Miss Kincaid,” he said, then added, “please.”

  He waited until she’d seated herself, then sat behind his desk.

  “None of us knew that Burnham’s machine had any dangers associated with it,” he began. “In truth we didn’t know his machine was actually finished. As far as we knew he was still working on it.”

  “He probably was,” Alex said. “His colleague at Dow said that he’d have to solve the instability problem before he could use his formula.”

  Tennon gave Alex an irritated look, then continued.

  “We do have his original proposal, but that just details what the device would do, not how it would work.”

  “Doesn’t the Navy already have smoke machines?” Agent Redhorn asked.

  Unlike his irritation at being interrupted by Alex, Tennon actually smiled at that.

  “Not like Burnham’s,” he said. “The smoke generators we have now can block an enemy ship from targeting our vessels, but it can be blown away.”

  “Of course,” Alex said, snapping his fingers. “Burnham’s smoke clings
to brickwork. All the Navy would have to do is put a stack of bricks on the deck of a ship and the cloud would move with the ship.”

  Tennon nodded.

  “Why would that matter?” Agent Mendes asked. “The ships inside the fog wouldn’t be able to see where they were going. How could they fight like that?”

  It was a good point, but Tennon’s smile only grew wider.

  “You’re assuming we want if for warships,” he said, then he turned to where Lieutenant Leavitt was sitting at the little table taking notes. “Get the thing,” he told him.

  “Yes, sir,” Leavitt said, rising. He crossed the room and pulled open a cabinet revealing a heavy safe. As he turned the dial on the front, Admiral Tennon went on.

  “The last time there was a war in Europe, we sent hundreds of cargo ships across the Atlantic loaded with men, munitions, equipment, and supplies,” he said, “even before the US got into the war. With things heating up on the continent, the Navy plans to be ready if we have to do that again.”

  “Why do you want to hide our convoys?” Sorsha asked.

  At that moment, Leavitt pulled the lever on the front of the safe and swung the door open. It was thicker than usual, which meant it was probably fireproof, a sensible precaution for something that held military documents. Inside, Alex could see stacks of papers, folders, ledgers, several guns and boxes of ammunition, and a thick leather folio, no doubt used to transport the Admiral’s important papers.

  The lieutenant reached into the safe and pulled out what looked like a yellow lava rock with a long string wound around it.

  “You’ll find this interesting, Miss Kincaid,” Tennon said, accepting the stone from Leavitt. He took a moment and unwrapped the string until only the end was tied around the strange rock. That done, he held it out to Sorsha. She hesitated a moment, then put out her hand, palm up.

  Tennon placed the rock into Sorsha’s palm, but the second he let it go, the yellow rock shot upward, out of her hand, and bounced off the ceiling with a clack. Sorsha gasped, staring up at the floating rock on the ceiling. She reached out and took hold of the dangling string and pulled it down like a child with a balloon.