The Book of Truths

by Bob Mayer

  Her touch sucked the anger right out of him and he actually relaxed. “Big breakthrough on the DORKA front.”

  “Ah, the geeks. What have they invented now?”

  “It’s a secret.”

  She pulled her hand back. “I’m not fond of celebrating something that I don’t know.”

  “If I told you, I’d have to kill you, cut your head off, and stuff it in a safe.” He said it with a smile on his face and an edge in his voice.

  Debbie, in turn, pointed at the two Secret Service agents. “I don’t think they’d take that as a joke.” She picked up her fork as a waiter deposited a salad in front of Brennan. “I know you don’t mind. I ordered when you weren’t here on time. Last time you never showed and I never ate. I’m learning boundaries. At least my shrink says I am.”

  Brennan got the waiter’s attention. “Champagne. Your best.”

  The waiter scurried off, probably trying to figure out if they even had champagne in this dump, Brennan thought.

  Debbie put the fork down. “I’m sorry, Bren. I’ve had a difficult morning and I don’t mean to take it out on you. My mother is all atwitter about their last Christmas in the House. She wants it to be extra special so people remember it. Like, who’s going to remember? And the secret thing bothers me because that’s the way my dad is all the time. Drives my mother crazy too. It’s hard to be understanding when you don’t have the information to understand, if you follow?”

  Brennan nodded, but he noticed that one of the Secret Service agents was looking at his cell phone. Wasn’t he supposed to be watching the area?

  Debbie’s phone next to the breadbasket vibrated.

  “Who’s that?” Brennan asked before even the second vibrate.

  “I don’t know.” Debbie hit Ignore without even looking at the screen.

  “No. Who was it?”

  Debbie sighed. “You have got to stop this jealous thing, Bren. It’s getting old.”

  He snatched the phone off the table. “Who the hell is Daniel? And why does he have your number?”

  “Daniel? I don’t know a Daniel.”

  He looked closer and grimaced. “Okay. Danielle. Who’s that?”

  “She’s in my spinning class. What is wrong with you? You’re acting crazier than usual.”

  “How usual crazy am I? What did Danielle want?” he asked, trying to pretend he wasn’t being a complete fool.

  She grabbed the phone from him and read the text. “She says Daniel is going to be on a bike in front of me tomorrow morning and he has buns of steel and what a lucky girl I am.”

  “Very funny,” Brennan muttered.

  “I try.” She reached across the table once more. “I do try.”

  Brennan noticed that one of the Secret Service agents was smirking and Brennan felt a surge of anger that the man was listening and judging him.

  “That agent seems too involved in your life,” Brennan said in a low, taut voice. “Shouldn’t they be standing near the door and pretending to be statues or something?”

  Debbie laughed. “Oh, he’s just acting weird because I blew him in the car on the way over. Happy?” She waited for him to laugh, but when he didn’t, she shook her head with more than a hint of disgust. “I’m going to the ladies’ room. Here, knock yourself out.” She handed him her phone.

  He didn’t even wait until she was out of sight. He scrolled through her call record, thinking she was acting way too open, just like someone with something to hide. Then he noticed that the one Secret Service guy (and did they ever think about the fact that their initials were SS?) was staring at him with an odd look on his face.

  Yes, there was something in that stare.

  Riggs might be paranoid about the Russians and the Chinese, Brennan thought, but he knew the real danger was people. Couldn’t trust ’em. Especially women. His mother had gone out of the house when he was eight, not for the proverbial pack of cigarettes, but for tampons at the PX. Or so she said, and never came back.

  Debbie was cheating on him. He was certain of it. They had finally settled on a date, the first weekend in April, when the cherry trees should be blossoming in DC, and with that thought, he giggled, sensing the irony.

  They had a history and it wasn’t all written in large, beautiful scrolling letters. There were some dark chapters. Maybe she was getting in some last bangs before the big day. It was a thought that had occurred to him more than once. He checked her text messages.

  The waiter, a bit out of breath, came up with a bottle of not-too-bad champagne. It never occurred to Brennan that the man had run down the street to a liquor store and bought it.

  Exasperated, Brennan tossed her phone back onto the table next to her glass of bubbly.

  Debbie came back and saw the full glass and mustered a smile. “Bren, you’ve known me forever. Why do you think I’m doing something? Don’t you trust me?”

  “I trusted you,” Brennan said, “but how can I trust you in this new reality?”

  “What new reality?”

  “You don’t get it, do you?” Brennan didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s all going to end. Do you have any idea what’s really going on? Not just the treaty. But the experiments. The things those scientists are working on? And how just plain fucking-ass stupid some of them are? The Rifts? The Fireflies!”

  “What Rifts?” Debbie asked. “Fireflies?”

  He didn’t hear her. “The clock is ticking. It’s just a matter of time before it’s all over. And then there’s the general. Fucking Pinnacle. Stupid idea that should have gone away a long time ago. If he had his way, we’d all be blown back into the Stone Age, speaking of blowing.”

  Debbie picked up her glass. “I think the only clock that’s ticking is the one until April and you’re having cold feet.”

  He snorted. “Just because you’re the president’s daughter doesn’t mean you get to know everything. In fact, what you don’t know is far outweighed by what I do know.” He stared at the Secret Service agent, uncertain if the man was staring back because of those damn sunglasses they always wore.

  Debbie followed his gaze and put her flute of champagne down. “Not that again. We’ve been engaged for three years and dating since high school. Why do you make a big deal out of nothing?”

  “How do I know it’s nothing? Five years ago your father wasn’t president and you didn’t have all this.”

  “You think because Daddy got elected my love for you went out the window? And remember, your father was always so much more important for all those years and I never thought anything different about you.”

  “He was in your hotel room in Chicago.”

  Debbie blinked. “What? Who?”

  “That agent. I remember him. I came in and you just had a towel wrapped around you and he was in the room.”

  “Fully dressed. I told you, I was taking a shower and something fell and he was checking.”

  “Right. Nice story. Very convenient.”

  Debbie rolled her eyes once more. “This is like the quarterback in high school, isn’t it? The one who wouldn’t give me the time of day except when he asked to cheat off me on the algebra final and you were convinced that cheating meant cheating. I don’t even remember his name.”

  “You remember he was the quarterback.”

  “We ended up not going to the prom because of that. You only get one prom, Bren. And you caused us to miss it.”

  “Oh geez. Not the prom thing again. You bring that up every time we fight.”

  “I bring it up,” Debbie said, “every time you get jealous for no reason. Don’t blame me. You trigger it. I don’t cheat and I don’t lie, Bren. Accept that.” She pointed at the agent. “You planted that seed, not me.”

  Brennan blinked, because thinking of planting reminded him of Cherry Tree.

  “What is wrong with you?”

  “You’re right,” Brennan said, with a tremor in his voice, the anger gone. “I know you didn’t do the quarterback.”

  “How do you
know that?” Debbie demanded.

  Brennan started to cry, startling her. She’d never seen him cry. “I made it up and pushed it onto you because I’d been with Mary McCarthy. She told me I couldn’t go to the prom with you if I wasn’t going with her.”

  Debbie stared at him. “What do you mean ‘been with Mary McCarthy’? The girl with the braces in senior year?”

  Brennan glumly nodded. Between sniffles: “She gave me a blowjob in the chem lab after school one day when we were making up an extra-credit project.”

  “At least someone got a blowjob,” Debbie said. “Surprised she didn’t rip your dick off with those braces. In fact, I’m kind of wishing she had.”

  “It was the best blowjob I’ve ever gotten.” With that Brennan grabbed the tablecloth in panic, knocking over both flutes and stuffing his napkin in his mouth to shut himself up. He started giggling insanely, having no idea why he was saying these things to her.

  Debbie’s jaw dropped, then a flush of anger over years of accusations and missing the prom flooded her face. And the projection of betrayal, which hit deepest of all.

  “I hope you got the extra credit in chem!” she said as she threw her napkin down and jumped to her feet.

  And at that moment, Brennan’s cell phone chimed, the tone that meant the text was Top Secret, no bullshit, check it the fuck now.

  Brennan spit out the napkin as he read it. “Oh no, no, no!” Brennan cried out as he accepted he had just admitted his darkest secrets.

  A couple of them at least.

  Give him some more time and the rest would come, but luckily for him, time was up. The Secret Service agents had begun moving when the flutes went over and now they were hustling Debbie toward the limo, screeching to the curb. Like Brennan was some nutcase standing outside the Washington Hilton. All he’d done was knock over some glasses.

  And tell the truth.

  Brennan was stunned for a moment too long, enough to let Debbie get halfway to her waiting Secret Service car before he bolted out of the seat and ran after her. “Stop! I can explain!”

  The agent—the smirky one—who slammed him to the ground seemed to take a bit too much relish in doing so. The other agent grabbed Debbie over her protests and pushed her into the limo.

  The car door thudded shut and Debbie was whisked off to the White House while Brennan was whisked off to wherever it is the Secret Service whisk people off to.

  Where they whisk people off to is a place named Deep Six.

  Not very subtle, but who said you had to be subtle? The facility was run by contractors who, interestingly enough, were all non-American. They were from countries that did not have extradition treaties with the United States. Besides their excellent pay, part of their contract guaranteed them a helicopter ride to an airport, from which they would be flown to a place where they could retire in style should the need arise.

  Deep Six was part of a large facility in a part of the Pennsylvania countryside called Raven Rock. After the Russians exploded their first nuke in ’49 and the US no longer had a monopoly on blasting the hell out of another country, those in power in Washington decided they did not want to get blasted to hell (or heaven, depending on their optimism and beliefs).

  Since Shangri-La, as it was nicknamed by President Roosevelt (Eisenhower changed the name to Camp David in honor of both his grandson and father), was located just over the Maryland border, someone suggested looking for a site near there. They found a mountain made of granite, Raven Rock, and started blasting and digging, and then blasting and digging some more to the tune of almost a million cubic yards, ultimately hollowing out a large part of the mountain.

  Then they built office buildings inside. Because a government runs on bureaucrats and bureaucrats need offices. Or cubicles, depending on rank. There were also tunnels going hither and thither. Some say there’s a six-mile tunnel from Raven Rock to Camp David, but the government denies it.

  It also denies there’s an Area 51.

  One of those first tunnels used to end at a massive underground reservoir because man does not live on bread alone. Except as the facility grew, as many government facilities have a tendency to do (like weeds), there was a demand for more water. Another, bigger reservoir was built for potable water. And then another one for industrial water—cooling, waste, sewage, waterboarding, etc. The original reservoir developed a crack during some of the adjacent construction and all the water eventually leaked out, leaving a dark, damp, dank, disgusting cavern.

  The perfect place to put a prison for prisoners whom the government didn’t want to admit it had and who would most likely never see the light of day. Plus, they had all that industrial water for the waterboarding nearby.

  Primarily, it was a very secure place.

  After his interrogation in Springfield, Wahid had been whisked back to Deep Six by a contingent of contractors via helicopter. They landed at the helipad on top of the peak and then were hustled into an elevator, dropped down into the bowels of the mountain, and taken along tunnels to a thick steel door that barred the way to Deep Six.

  Those who worked in the other part of Raven Rock and caught glimpses of armed men dragging hooded subjects along the tunnels were smart enough not to stare or ask questions. What happened in Deep Six, stayed in Deep Six.

  By the time they got Wahid back in his cell, he’d already infected one-third of the guards.

  Colonel Sidney Albert Johnston sat in his office, deep inside DORKA, ignoring the blinking lights on the phone as he checked to make sure his 9mm pistol was loaded, then tucked it in his belt. He imagined this is what Robert E. Lee must have felt when his scouts told him Hooker’s Army of the Potomac was approaching Chancellorsville and had twice as many men. It was not a time for timid action. It was a time for audacity.

  Perhaps his imagination was being a bit overly dramatic, but he was from the South, he was in a crisis, and he was in charge.

  “Sir?” Upton intruded on Johnston’s martial thoughts and earned a steely-eyed glare.

  Johnston picked up the slender file folder Upton had brought to his office: the After Action Report on the lab trials of Cherry Tree. “You don’t know dick about this thing your people invented, do you?”

  “I told you we didn’t have time for—”

  He didn’t wait for more, because he knew Upton was going to cover his ass. “You don’t know possible vectors, do you? How did Rhodes get Cherry Tree?”

  “It can’t be airborne,” Upton said, “or you and I would have it.”

  Johnston looked at the screen where a team was working on Rhodes wearing masks and gloves, sticking needles in both his arms. The clerk from the ice cream store was there too, but so far, he seemed all right.

  “Then why are they wearing masks?” Johnston asked.

  “Precaution,” Upton said. “We think he must have jabbed himself with the needle accidently and—”

  “Bullshit,” Johnston snapped.

  First, the stupid dog and pony show Upton had pulled, then the lie about the first test. He’d locked the lab down as soon as he got the contain call, and on the video monitors he could see white-coated scientists milling about in confusion and muted anger. Upton had arrived minutes ago with Rhodes in tow, but it hadn’t been handled right. You think scientists could handle a contain correctly?

  But everything at the DORKA lab out in the Virginia countryside was focused on keeping things from getting out. Upton coming in with Rhodes had not been planned for and they’d bungled it because, in reality, they didn’t quite know what they were dealing with.

  The scientists hated being told what to do by the government, but that didn’t stop them from cashing their government checks every month and using the top-notch facilities here at the innocently named Department of Research & Kinesthetic Application. He’d sensed some warped humor in the cover name when he was first assigned as the liaison, and he’d learned that they were doing nothing at all about kinesthetics (he’d had to look it up), which is what a cover name
was supposed to do: misdirect.

  He’d found the scientists to be the greatest bullshitters he’d ever run into, and he had twenty-three years in the army, which meant he’d often been neck-deep in it. When they weren’t flat-out covering their asses, they reverted to science-speak like word camouflage. The bigger and more remote the word (like kinesthetic), the bigger their shit-eating grin as they flashed that superior smile of a PhD in the lab talking to a civilian. Or even better, a dumb soldier.

  Johnston was sitting ramrod straight in his chair, as taut as a plebe during meals at West Point, but he became even more rigid as a flash of Robert E. Lee inspiration connected synapses in his brain. It was very simple, the way Lee had split his army at Chancellorsville; Johnston had to split his own force. Turn the truth against the lie.

  “How much Cherry Tree do you have left?” he asked Upton.

  The scientist pulled the wooden case out of his lab coat pocket. “We’ve got three needles loaded. And there’s a supply in the vault.”

  “We’ve got to know the vector,” Johnston said. He could see that two of the scientists working on Rhodes were arguing. The “patient” was babbling something, some childhood trauma he’d never even disclosed to his shrink.

  “Shit,” Johnston muttered. He jumped out of his chair and left the office, Upton in tow. They entered the chamber where Rhodes was strapped to a table. The half-dozen geniuses who’d worked on Cherry Tree were clustered around the table.

  “You fucked up,” Johnston said without preamble. They all spun about.

  “My father cheated on my mother,” Rhodes was saying. “I saw him. In the garage one day, when I came home early. With my best friend’s mom.”

  “Shut him up,” Johnston ordered and one of the white coats slapped a piece of tape over Rhodes’s mouth, which was another tick mark confirming what Johnston feared.

  “You’re a dick,” the only woman in the room said to him, pulling down her mask, and that checked the last box on the list of his fears.