The Phoenix Agenda: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 6)

by JC Ryan

  Sinclair lifted his mug, as in a toast, “That is where the firewater fits into the picture.”

  “Shit no, you can’t force the stuff down his throat, man!” JR objected, quite worried that was what Sinclair had in mind.

  Sinclair laughed, “Relax boy, relax. That’s not the plan. He won’t be force-fed. But I will need a bit of help – you two lads have to arrange with the women to find an excuse to drag Jane away tomorrow afternoon. That way, I can get the chance to ask John to help us with a few things.”

  JR replied, “No problem with that. Consider it done.”

  Sinclair gave the final instructions. “Oh, just one more thing. Make sure they prepare Jane to expect when John returns that he could be euphoric and moderately to severely incapacitated for the rest of the night.”

  The next afternoon the musketeers were all in the library. The conspirators, who now numbered at least thirteen, were all briefed in detail about what they had to do and say. Sinclair placed two full bottles on a shelf in the library, one Chateau de Grotte and one honeyshine, before he walked over to the Mendenhall's quarters.

  “John and Jane, sorry to trouble you. We have a discussion going on in the library and we could use your expertise.” Sinclair was saying just when Rebecca arrived.

  “Sinclair, I am no expert in anything. I don’t know if I can be of help to anyone with anything. What is it about?” John replied emotionless.

  “Not sure that’s the case. We are looking at the school curriculums that we have in the library, trying to figure out which to use for the different ages of children here. But we have no clue what we need. We thought you might be able to give us a bit of a hand. ”

  It was as if a little light went on in John’s and Jane’s eyes when they heard that.

  “So, is there a plan to start a school for the kids?” John asked, with a bit of a higher tone in his voice than before.

  Rebecca had to suppress a smile. This was the first in such a long time she could see a sparkle of hope in her parents’ eyes.

  Sinclair also saw it and continued, “Yes, that’s the idea. The problem is Ben, Ryan, and I were appointed as the school committee, but we don’t have any expertise. We’re stuck as to which curriculum we should use and hoped you could give us some advice.”

  “Yeah, well like I said …” was as far as John got with an objection to get out of a commitment, when Rebecca saw what was coming and interrupted him.

  “Sorry Dad, I actually came over to fetch Mom. Bess and a few of the others asked me to invite her over for a cup of tea and a taste of the first cake ever baked in these caves.”

  Jane responded immediately, “That sounds great, Becky. I’d love to go with you.” She turned to John. “Will you be okay if I am gone for a while, dear?”

  John considered for a moment what would be the worst, sitting around on his own for a few hours doing nothing or accepting Sinclair’s invite. “No problem. I might as well go over to the library with Sinclair, then.”

  Within a minute they were ready and on their way. In the library they had the seating arranged in such a way that John would be sitting at the head of the table. He had to be ‘in charge’ of this meeting.

  Sinclair and John arrived in the library just in time to hear a ‘heated argument’ between Ben and Ryan. Ben saying, “What do you want the kids to learn that stuff for? All they have to learn is how to read the Bible, calculate, ride a horse and shoot straight!”

  Sinclair looked at John as they took their seats, “You see what I have to deal with here?” John nodded his head.

  They laid out the plan for John; they thought it necessary to start a school for the kids and for John to agree with them. They kept on referring to their lack of knowledge and subtly heaped on the praises on John and how lucky they were to have him around to give them advice. They had many questions. A lot of them started with “John, so how would you …?” Many responses to John’s answers included, “Excellent idea, never thought of it that way …” or “That will solve the problem …” or “I can see the logic of that …”

  Within forty minutes, John started smiling and even made suggestions of his own without being asked. That was when Sinclair knew the time was right to roll out the big guns. He got up and fetched the bottle of honeyshine, to which they had added a bit of honey afterward for a sweet taste. Placing four tin mugs in front of them, he worked his way round the table matter-of-factly while he poured a stiff shot into each.

  He sat down and shouted, “Bottoms up!” All of them except John grabbed their mugs and poured the honeyshine down their throats in one big gulp and looked at John who wasn’t sure what to do. But no one was talking now, they were all staring at him. He grabbed the mug and did the same. They all smiled and continued the conversation as if there was no interruption.

  Five minutes later, Sinclair did the rounds again, and this time John knew what he had to do. As they worked their way through history, geography, mathematics, science, languages and other topics, Sinclair emptied the bottle of honeyshine in their tin mugs and then started serving the Chateau de Grotte. John was now firmly in charge of the whole meeting. By the time they'd reached the halfway mark on the bottle of Chateau John had told them how much he and Jane had been missing their jobs as teachers and the school environment. By the time Ben slipped out to collect another bottle from the cellars, John had accepted the appointment as headmaster of the Gallatin Unified School and on behalf of Jane received her appointment as a teacher.

  The third bottle was empty by the time they had covered the entire curriculum. Two of them held John upright between them, while the other helped them find the way to the Mendenhall quarters, singing Gaudeamus Igitur at the top of their lungs.

  When they finally managed to find the way to the Mendenhall quarters, they found a smiling Jane there, who helped them get John to bed. She thanked them as they left, now trying to whistle Beethoven’s Ode to Joy while trying to find their own quarters.

  A week later the Gallatin Unified School opened with fifteen students and three teachers - John and Jane Mendenhall, and Jenny Ellis, a kindergarten teacher. The youngest students were the two three-year-olds; Nicholas Joshua Rossler and Aanya Sankaran.

  It was soon noticed that the new headmaster was more often than not, after school, seen in the presence of the musketeers on fishing trips. During happy hour, his wife was often observed in the presence of their spouses.

  I should be the one digging out of here

  “Luke, please tell me you could hear them and have recorded that conversation,” Alison said with excitement in her voice.

  “Oh yes, I heard every word of it and recorded it. You can listen to it when we get back to the house,” Luke said with as much of a smile as he could manage under all of the heavy makeup. Trying to behave like an old lady who’d had a stroke while concentrating on walking with a bit of a limp and the walking stick was not easy. “They’ve been waiting for us. They have all their hope pinned on us.”

  In a house three hundred yards down the street from the Lewises front gate, Owen, Alison and Luke quickly connected the spyflies in the Lewis house to a big computer screen. Now they could see and hear better what was going on inside the house. They made sketches of the layout of the house and captured the faces and voices of the guards as they directed the flies around the entire house.

  It was heartbreaking for Luke when he saw how the guards had taken over more than half of the house, occupying three of the four bedrooms. One they used for an office and kept the Lewises in what could only be described as a prison. That afternoon it was Owen’s turn to accompany the old lady on her walk to the park, and two more spyflies got smuggled in on Susan’s cap. Another very informative and sometimes romantic private conversation was recorded while the Lewises walked around the park.

  Luke had to smile when he heard Sam telling Susan that if his friend didn't show up in the next few weeks he had plans. He'd either storm the guards or dig a tunnel out of the house for the
m to escape. Susan’s frantic objections followed. He was sure Sam was teasing her, but he wasn’t entirely sure Sam wasn’t in earnest. He had to stop himself from catching up with his friend to tell him the Marines had landed, and they should just hang on.

  Two days later, they had eight spyflies roaming the house and an excellent idea of the routine of its inhabitants. That included every move of the security guards, when and what and to whom they reported. They recorded the keystrokes of the passwords that the guards typed in to access their computers. They also figured out that the surveillance microphones and cameras were interconnected by a wireless network. They carefully made recordings of each report the guards phoned in every day to their control center, which they ascertained was located in Washington.

  The Lewis’ shopping was done for them by one of the guards, who would also exchange their library books when required. The two prisoners did not have much to do other than watch TV, read and go for walks twice a day. It seemed though, from time to time they were also allowed to go fly-fishing.

  Luke and his team also knew the layout of the garden and the Lewises habit of having breakfast under a pergola in the middle of their flower garden. Here was where real hummingbirds were seen sucking nectar out of the flowers and hunting for insects.

  After four days of observation, Luke was satisfied that they had enough information to be able to kick off the next stage. It was time to roll the zingers out, as there was no way he would be able to meet with Sam or Susan in person. The guards were constantly around them, and it was obvious that they were not allowed any contact with anyone else. The circumstances in which his friends were held were a source of constant annoyance to him.

  The next morning, after their walk in the park, Sam and Susan carried their breakfast out to the pergola, also rigged with surveillance equipment, and noticed there were a few more hummingbirds that joined the group. They enjoyed watching these little marvels that did not mind humans so close to their feeding grounds.

  While they were still talking about the birds, they saw two of them approach them and hover over their table looking for something to feed on. Susan was as excited as a little girl when the birds came so close. She'd seen videos where they would eat out of people’s hands. Wouldn’t that be exciting if she could get them to do that? But what happened next made her think again about that idea. The one of them closest to Sam had a little accident and left a big black and white colored gooey heap on Susan’s beautiful white tablecloth. Sam saw the disgust on her face and grabbed a paper napkin to wipe it up, at the same time wondering at the size compared to the size of the birds themselves. Something wasn’t right.

  When he placed the napkin over the heap and picked up the bundle, he felt something solid inside. For a split second, he wanted to ignore it, but his earlier observation made him want see what it was. When he got it all gathered in the napkin, he turned it around and saw a metal tube the size of a vitamin capsule sticking out of the rest, he folded it up. “What the hell? Hummingbirds wouldn’t ever eat that!” Sam didn’t know much about hummingbirds, but he knew enough to be sure that they wouldn’t eat a metal capsule. He had to see what it was.

  “Don’t worry Susie. I’ll get a wet cloth to clean up the mess and throw this away,” Sam said as he got up.

  On his way into the house, while he had his back to the surveillance camera, he slipped the capsule out of the napkin and into his shirt pocket. He would go to the bathroom later and with the camera covered, as he was allowed to do by the grace of James Gordon, he would have the chance to inspect that capsule.

  Luke and his team down the street were high-fiving and had to control themselves not to start screaming with joy when they saw on the spyfly screen when Sam put the capsule into his pocket.

  With the camera covered, Sam took the capsule out of his shirt pocket and pulled it apart. His heart skipped some beats when he found a tiny piece of paper the size of a postage stamp rolled up inside. He looked at the picture of a bronze coin with a robin embossed on it and a very visible green border around the edge of the coin. He turned the stamp around and read the words - More Coming. What was this? He turned the stamp around and stared at the picture again. How did it get into the bird’s stomach? Hummingbirds won’t eat stuff like that. Hummingbirds … wait a minute … I saw Roy James use hummingbirds against those nanonuke-carrying drones of the Sword of Cyrus terrorists a few years ago. Can it be? He turned to the picture again and said the words slowly and silently to himself, bronze coin … robin in the middle … green border and it was as if something struck him between the eyes. His heart almost stopped – Green Robin Bronze! “Oh my God! He’s here! Sam had to restrain himself from running down the hall shouting to Susan.

  There were only two people in the entire world who used those code words to identify themselves to each other in situations where they could not meet face to face. He was the handler at that time, and the agent was Luke Clarke. One of them would challenge with one or two of the words, and the responder had to provide the missing word or words. Sam grinned broadly as he turned the paper around and read the words “More Coming.” Again he gave himself a thumbs up in the mirror. He and Luke were back in business.

  Luke and his two companions could not help but laugh when they saw that smile on Sam’s face and the thumbs up on their screen.

  Sam couldn’t wait to go on their afternoon stroll through the park. Being sure he couldn’t be heard, Sam whispered with a huge smile on his face, “My dear, I really like those hummingbirds in our garden every morning, even if they mess up your table cloth. I wonder if we could maybe put a paper towel or something on the table and let them be around us. I’d like to see if we could perhaps get them to eat out of our hands, too. I think they could have a message for us.”

  “I like them, too. It would be exciting if we could get them to trust us that much, but I don’t like them making a mess on my table. I’ll see what I can do about the table cloth,” Susan replied. Then she stopped and pondered for a moment why Sam thought the birds might have some sort of message. “What type of message do you imagine they could have for us, Sam?”

  Sam could not hold it any longer, “Susie, please make sure you keep your voice down when you hear what I’m about to say.”

  Susan nodded her head in agreement.

  “My friend Luke is here! That dropping on the table this morning had a capsule with a message for me in it.”

  “What? How is that possible? How could a bird be trained to do that? I don’t …” Susan wanted to believe him but had serious doubts.

  Sam explained, “Don’t worry, I’m not going crazy. One or more of those hummingbirds we saw this morning weren’t real. I can't be sure how he did it, but I’m not surprised. I saw how Roy James, that nanotech scientist I told you about that works with the Rosslers, saved the world from annihilation with imitation hummingbirds. The hummingbirds I saw back then were built for a different purpose, but I suspect they have modified them to look so real we couldn’t see the difference. The message Luke sent me in the capsule said there will be more coming.”

  Susan was excited and worried at the same time, “How can you be sure it was Luke? Won’t the guards be able to find out what’s going on? I’m very excited, but I am also worried, Sam.”

  “Okay, one thing at a time my dear. I know the message came from Luke because it contained a passcode that he and I used more than twenty years ago on a mission. There is no other person in the world who knows that passcode. We never used it again; we never used passcodes for more than one mission. As for the guards spotting the imitation birds, let’s see tomorrow morning if we can spot one of them. Now that we know some of them weren’t real, we could pay close attention. If we can spot them, then we know the guards can as well. But if we can’t, the guards can’t either,” Sam said, calming her down.

  Susan drew a few conclusions of her own, “If he is here, then I get the feeling that he must know what we’re doing and perhaps is even watching us. How
do you think he managed to avoid detection by the guards up till now?”

  “You can bet that beautiful bottom of yours that he is watching us.” Sam smiled.

  “Sam Lewis, I am shocked! My bottom? What is going on in that wicked mind of yours?” She laughed.

  Sam just ignored that question. “There’s a lot more about the spy business I have to teach you, Susie. You’re right - he knows what we’re doing, and he’ll make sure that he won’t be detected. Luke was one of the best, if not the best, field agent I ever worked with, and he is alive today only because he was always very careful.”

  As they walked past the two on the bench, Sam looked straight at the old woman, and he could swear he saw her wink at him as he said ‘hi’. That was Luke Clarke! I know it, that’s him! The old fox had been here for days watching us. The guards were too close to them, so he couldn’t tell Susan about it until the next morning’s walk. How he would have loved to go and kiss that old woman! On second thought, maybe he would rather ask Susan to do the kissing when the time came, under his watchful eye, of course.

  The next morning when they went for their walk they both noted that their ‘friends’ on the bench weren’t there. Sam’s heart dropped to the ground when he saw that. Was that just a figment of my imagination yesterday? Sam told Susan what he thought he saw the day before, not so sure anymore now that the bench was empty, but he was almost sure the old woman was Luke.

  Susan got a cunning little smile on her face, “How long have we been married now, Sam? Not even two years, and you are already looking at other women? Winking at you? Maybe I should be the one digging out of here, not you.”

  Sam just laughed - his Susie always had a good sense of humor. If this were how he had to spend the rest of his days, it would also be ok with him, as long as he was with her.