by Scott Powers
Max gave her a half smile and nodded.
“Maybe, but there's something else to consider," Max said. "Another possibility.”
“What?”
“That old couple that gave you all this. You said yourself, when they took you into their home, it was familiar, but they weren’t.”
“You said you remembered that house. Same stupid elephants out front. Even the furniture seemed the same. But not the same couple, right? It wasn’t them.”
“So?”
Max paced on Hal’s back porch. It was covered and big enough to comfortably hold a patio table, four chairs, and a grill.
“What if Zivwas this NSC guy Hal told us about, or another one connected with the IBTT himself?”Max continued.“What if he wasn’t your grandfather’s neighbor? What if he gave you all this stuff, not your grandfather?”
“Then why would he tell me the story about Old Joe? Why would he give me the swatch?”
“Why?”Max took a deep breath.“They gave you the swatch. They gave you this scrapbook. They gave you this picture which no way in hell should exist. What if they planted it with you?
“What if this all is a set up?”
CHAPTER 19
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU
When Eve and Max returned to the motel, they walked in on an angry argument between Ted and Meln. Meln was back. So was Val, who was sitting on the bed with Jen.
“You’re back,”Max said.
Eve blocked the door.
“Look, Ironside,”Melnshouted, a few inches from Ted’s face.“Do it my way, we’re in. Without me, you’re done now. Go back to Florida. Dream your little fantasies.”
“I wouldn’t trust you to pour me a cup of coffee, you Goddamn whore.”
“What’s going on?”Eve asked.
“Ian here is running his own game," Ted said.
“I spent the day laying groundwork so that you amateurs could get into King,”Meln said.
“You can get us in?”Eve asked
“I can get you in.”
Max walked over and sat on the bed next to Jen. Eve remained on guard at the door.
“When?”he asked.
“Friday night,”Melnreplied.“Strange as it sounds, researchers don’t like spending Friday nights at work anymore than anyone else. There are plenty of obsessive scientists who come in weekends. But Friday night we’re likely to see our best opening.”
Meln said he and Val had left before sunrise to return to his lab before anyone else might arrive. They could not find the swatch sample. It was gone.
From there it was on to the King Institute, where Meln had a research appointment. He introduced Val as his new graduate assistant and arranged for her to obtain security clearance. Her connections through her father made it easy, not because of his powerful position—though that might have helped put security at ease—but because, being her father’s daughter, she had pursued a squeaky-clean life with all the right moves.
After that, they went to Meln’soffice and lab at the institute, where they ran through a day’s routine. Meln was part of a team working on a commercial research contract involving a silicone mat. There were a couple other researchers in on that project, both on full-time contract with the institute, and they welcomed Val but otherwise paid almost no attention to Meln and his new assistant.
Their day of routines also gave them a chance to check the temperature of the environment. They found there was no apparent fallout from the previous day’s adventures at OSU, or Meln’s sudden departure. No one seemed informed, concerned, or suspicious about Meln’sprevious days’activities. They swung by Meln’shome and then Val’s apartment, where each grabbed some clothes and personal effects.
“Ian’s setting us up,”Ted said.
“No, he’s not,”Val said from the bed. Once again, she was dressed far too well for her part, in a nautical striped top and white flared pants.“I was with him all day. We did exactly what he said we did.”
“You’re with him," Ted said.
Jen finally spoke.“Ted, Ian’s right. All your plans, we need someone on the inside. We need help. We have todo it with him. We can’t do it without him. We either take a chance with Ian and Val, or we’re screwed. We might as well go back to Florida now.”
“We can get in through the tunnels,”Ted said.
“Ha!”Melnsaid.“The institute is not like OSU. You won’t find students getting stoned down there. Security’s like the fucking Pentagon.”
“Then we get in through the delivery plan.”
“Again, that’s a fantasy. You might as well fly in on gossamer wings.”
“So what do you propose?”Max said.
“We do all three. I can get to some of the security infrastructure. But we’ll need multiple diversions. Multiple ingresses. To increase the chances of success, we need to try everything.”
“Anything involving his plans is a trap,”Ted said.
“For what? What do you think you have now that these guys want?”Melnsaid.“Stories? Go on! Tell the world! What will that get you? Laughter. You’ll take your places in that long line of UFO nuts.”
“Then why did they chase us through the tunnel?”Eve asked.
“Because they didn’t yet know that we forgot the sample back at the lab. That’s what they wanted. When they found it, they called off their search. You can bet on it.”
“But the cops showed up for us last night,”Eve said.
"Shhh!" Max said, kicking her.
"What?" Ted said.
"Nothing," Max said.
"Eve was saying they showed up last night?" Ted said.
"She's mistaken," Max said.
"No, no," Ted said. "If you know something, we've got to know. What're you talking about, Eve?"
“Nothing. Let’s do it,”Eve said.“We’re doing it the way Ian says. We got no choice.”
There was silence for a moment. Finally, Ted spoke,“Who appointed you queen of this operation?”
“It’s my swatch! Ian’s right. Without it, we’ve got nothing. We do the tunnels. We do the delivery. We do whatever the hell else Ian’s got up his sleeve. And we get it back.”
“Or die trying?”Ted asked.
“I’m not going to die,” Eve said.
Ted’s plan had focused on the tunnels, and he and Jen had spent the day doing what they could to research them. Between the city fire marshal’s office and code enforcement, he learned much about the King Institute, or at least some of the campus. There were alarming gaps in the city’s records, but there was enough. Much of the institute, especially the older parts, was designed by the same architects and built by the same contractors who had built the university during its early days, eighty or ninety years ago. Heating, cooling, and utilities were delivered the same way, at least to the older buildings, through steam tunnels.
The institute had nineteen major buildings and at least that many minor buildings, spread across a tight campus. They had narrowed their search to three warehouses, and Meln declared with certainty they needed to enter the one known as Building F. The route of steam tunnels was clearly documented to F, so that was a big break.
They still needed to find a safe house, and Ted, Jen, and Val intended to do that in the morning. They needed to turn Max’s van into a delivery van. That would be up to Max, with his multitude of fake IDs and stolen credit cards.
Max told the others of the visit with the lieutenant. Ted was troubled by the prospect the scrapbook was bait, and he and Max shared a growing concern there was a bigger silencers' agenda at work.
Ted thought the meeting with the reporter was folly, maybe even reckless, and Max did not disagree, though Eve was happiest with the prospect he might at least write about the mysterious deaths of 1955. If nothing else, that would be something. Short of justice, sunlight was something.
The next step was to try to figure out where the scrapbook had come from.
Max was particularly concerned about this part of Eve’s story, and he and Eve retu
rned to his motel room to find what they could. He checked Google Earth and found the house Eve had visited in Seadrift, Texas. He checked county records online and found the owners. A couple named Brown. Eve remembered them by that name. Max found a number.
Eve called and Del Brown answered. They’d been on vacation. Some nice couple had come out of nowhere and rented his house for two weeks, paying in advance. They left the house in pristine condition. But when the Browns tried to call them later, the phone number the couple provided had been disconnected.
“You were set up,”Max announced to Eve.“This guy Zivand the woman—what was her name?”
“Nan.”
“Nan. They were impostors, IBTT, no doubt. That means everything they gave you is suspect. Everything they told you was probably a lie.”
“No,”Eve said. “I refuse to believe that.”
“Eve. We’ve got to deal with this.”
“Why? I chose to believe. Besides. Those men really died. So did my grandmother. Rose confirmed that. Gleibiczconfirmed that. What’s left to not believe?”
“Your grandfather, he might have—”
“No.”
“—Been on the take.”
“Don’t you say that about my grandfather!”
“All I’m saying is, it’s possible. He might have—”
“Shut up!”
“—been. It doesn’t change anything. But it makes some sense. He reacted the same way Gleibicz did. Only Gleibicz turned to religion to wash away his guilt. Joe might have turned to booze. It might explain why he—”
Eve shoved him.
“You have to learn when to shut up,”she said. Then Eve stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.
"One more thing," Max said through the door. "The corner piece of swatch."
"Ian has it," she said.
"Ian has it. Otherwise, those guys would not have been looking for us last night. He could have hidden it anywhere today, even with Val around. At his office. At his home. In his car. Somewhere else. All we know is that only he knows where it is."
"If he has it, why is he still hanging around?"
"He obviously wants more. And as long as he does, we have leverage with him."
CHAPTER 20
I DON'T NEED NO DOCTOR
Melnwasn’t teaching this semester, meaning he had plenty of time to pursue the only thing faculty ever care about anyway, his research. He kept long hours at his lab at Ohio State, and still squeezed in a few hours at the King Institute, on his commercial research.
He and Val arrived at the King labs early Friday morning. Her credentials were ready at the main security office, and she slipped the lanyard around her neck, looking ever so official. He introduced Val to others in the lab whom she hadn't yet met, and then they were pretty much left alone. On his computer, Meln filed notice of a materials shipment he expected in the late afternoon. Fortunately, Meln had legitimate work to be completed on the mat contract, and equally fortunately, Val was at least competent as a lab assistant, if not damn good. The hours passed well in spite of their nerves.
About the same time that Melnand Val had arrived for work, Max entered the King Institute’s main drive and parked the Chevy near the rear of the lot. He didn’t bother to check in anywhere. He hiked back up the hill to the main entrance drive, turned left, and walked off the property. A couple of blocks away, he got a ride back to the motel.
Late in the afternoon, a van with magnet signs reading“DevereauxChemical”on the side turned onto the King Institute property and meandered to the delivery gate. The driver of the van appeared to be operating it with handicapped-driver modified hand controls. The other guy had a thick blond beard, wore earbuds, and was grooving to his own groove.
The guard checked the delivery request on an electronic tablet.“I hate this fucking job,”said the bearded guy.
“Shut up, Pat, I don’t want to hear any more,”said the driver. He took the tablet from the guard and signed an e-manifest.
“I told Kritengera week ago I needed to get off early today, and he gave me this late route just to piss me off,”said the passenger.
“I don’t want to hear it,”said the disabled driver.“You think I like having to put in a couple extra hours on a Friday afternoon? I got kids at home.”
As they argued, the guard got in a golf cart and led the van through a maze of alleys to a loading dock at Building M. A dockworker met them. The passenger with the beard unloaded two crates of bottles onto a hand truck.
“They’ve got us doing four more deliveries this evening! Four! I’m supposed to be on my way to Cincinnati right now. I got tickets to the Black Keys show. And they stick me with this guy. He drives like a fucking old man.”
“I heard that!”the driver shouted from the van.“It’s your own damn fault! I told you we needed to come in early today.”
“I’ve got a life! Not my fault you're not a whole man! Don’t put your problems on me!”
“So why don’t you quit, prick?”
“Youungrateful fuck! You have any idea how much I carry your sorry, paralyzed ass in this job?”
“You carry me? You couldn’t figure out how to unload a bowel movement without my help, youstupid baby.”
“Black Keys!”
“Baby, I’m howlin’for you," Max sang.
"Say what?"
“Baby I’m howlin’for you."
"Shut the hell up."
“There’s somethin’wrong with this plot."
"Aw, Christ."
The dockworker was trying hard to look as if he wasn’t listening. He leaned into the van with a tablet. The driver checked the tablet and motioned for the security guard to look closer.
“What’s this?”Ted demanded.
“That’s just routine,”the guard said.“Just sign it.”
Ted grunted and signed with an e-pen. The passenger had moved through the van back to the passenger seat, leaned forward, and put earbuds back in.
“Like glue, baby, I’m howlin’for you!”
“Shut up, Pat!”the driver said, grinding the gears into reverse.
As the van pulled away, the bickering continued, so the dockworker and guard looked away, not wanting to witness it.
Had they looked closely, they might have noticed that Ted now was arguing with his sister, dressed as Max wearing a fake beard. Through the tinted windshield, she could pass for Max, who had slipped away from the van into the shadows.
Max had followed the boxes back into the warehouse, slipped through an interior door to a storage room, and hid behind shelves to wait. He checked his watch. He had about an hour.
Ted drove off the property and down to the river, where he pulled onto a small, gravel access road. Jen, now without the disguise, and Eve exited the van carrying backpacks and slammed the sliding door. Ted backed the van around and left.
The women trudged down to the river.
Downstream, in a wooded patch just above a low-head dam, a wastewater sewer pipe, rusting and long dormant, thrust through rip-rap just above the waterline.
Above the pipe, hidden by the trees, the ground eroded from beneath a weedy fence. Jen pulled the wire up. Eve slipped through. Jen followed.
A concrete pillbox lay on the fringe of the wooded buffer. The door was locked. Heavy air, nearby traffic, the roar of the low-head dam, and the trees all muffled Eve’s gunfire. Jen used a crowbar to wrench off the shattered padlock.
Jen used the crowbar to open the door, and the pair stepped inside. Jen pulled the door back closed as Eve put an LED miner’s lamp on her head and swung the backpack onto her shoulders.
They headed down the stairs to the utility access tunnel. Flanked by pipes and cables, they walked about two hundred yards. Unlike the university tunnels, these were dark, so they used both the miner’s lights and flashlights. They turned into a side tunnel, walked for a while, and then entered a main trunk. Another fifty yards up a slight incline, they entered another side tunnel. The second door led t
o Building F. It was locked and they could not afford the noise of trying to blow it. They settled in to wait.
Ted drove into an old neighborhood behind the institute, all Victorian houses, some stately, some converted apartments. Around a corner, down an alley, he parked the van behind a detached garage, pulling over close to the rusty chain-link fence.
The driver’s side lift allowed Ted to get out of the van, and he wheeled himself through an opening between the fence and the garage. A sidewalk led to the side door of an apartment that Max had rented in a vacant apartment house. Ted rolled to the back entrance ramp and let himself in.
Inside, he logged into three computers. The first showed a video feed of Meln’s view, from a pocket clip camera. Max and Jen provided the broadcasts on the other two.
“One go,”Ted said.
“Two go,”Meln said.
“Three go,”Max said.
“Four. Go!”said Jen.
They were all in place. It was almost time.
The King Institute had grown quietly, almost secretly, over eighty years to become a powerful, diverse center of science and technology research. The institute had made its name during World War II with a variety of materials and ordnance technologies that still were its specialties. Now its research and clients ranged from pharmaceuticals to nano-electronics, employing more than 3,000 doctoral scientists and technicians, more than 10,000 people overall.
At 5:00 p.m. on Fridays, the parking lots came to life. Only those driven by dedication or deadlines stayed late Fridays. Ted and Melnconcluded it was better to strike at 6:25, when the institute’s population was low, but not entirely gone. While halls and labs looked mostly empty, there were perhaps hundreds of researchers hanging around, natural diversions.
Val left the lab and headed for the lobby to leave.
Meln bought vending machine coffee and walked a lonely hall toward a security electronics panel.
As Val exited the building, she took a few steps, then stopped, and looked around. There were three or four people within a dozen yards, but no one was looking at her or anyone else. In a grassy strip beside the sidewalk, Val stopped, put her hands to her eyes, and froze. Her knees buckled. She went down, kicking and thrashing, as if she were having a full grand-mal seizure. She closed her eyes tightly.