by Jamie Metzl
“What the fuck, Jorge.”
My spine stiffens. I turn to watch Sierra Halley put three large cups of coffee and the muffins she’s brought in on the table. “Not you, too,” I say wearily.
She looks up at the wall and the airiness of her Martina Hernandez impersonation dissipates. “Not much there, huh?”
“Joseph’s been here all night and hasn’t found much,” I say. “Jerry Weisberg’s working on it, too.”
“No surprise it’s tough gathering information on an intelligence service,” Sierra says, “at least one other than ours.”
“What the fuck, Jorge.” This time it’s the real Martina marching in.
“Good morning, madam,” I say politely.
Martina is not looking at me. Her eyes focus on Sierra. “No more of that. Do I make myself clear?”
I would expect Sierra to shrink a few inches after having been caught out by Martina, but Sierra is not me. She holds her ground and nods.
I would also expect, based on all my past experience, for Martina to exact a pint of blood, but instead she turns back to me. “End of today is forty-eight hours. Where are we?”
“We’re heading somewhere, Martina,” I say, “it’s just not exactly clear where.”
“Tell me.”
The three of us fill her in on what more we’ve learned.
“I don’t think we’re ready to go to print,” I say as we reach the end of our summary. “We probably can’t even imagine what the implications of all this might be.”
“Forty-eight hours,” she repeats.
“I hear you, but I just think we need to be mindful—”
“Good thing it’s not your decision.”
I’ve learned the hard way to never make a frontal assault on Martina’s intransigence. I take a step back and begin working the flank. “I get that we need to cover the component parts of all this,” I say. “My stories are already out about the explosions at Heller Labs and at Toni’s house. We’ve already done profiles on the two police officers who were lost. For what it’s worth, the story I filed on the disappearance of Professor Hart from the hospice is out there, even if nobody’s reading it. I just don’t think we’re ready to cover the big picture. We still have no idea how the pieces fit together. We don’t know if the science works; Chou is checking that. We don’t know what the connection with Scientists Beyond Nations means. We don’t know if this potential Israeli connection is real and what that says about anything.”
Martina’s momentary silence gives me the impression she’s absorbing my comments.
“Where do you think you’re working, Jorge? This is the Kansas City Star, not the global journal of scientific and international affairs. We don’t have to prove scientific validity to report something. We don’t have to crack some kind of crazy global intelligence operation. Our job is to learn what we can about things that affect Kansas City and report that.”
“This isn’t just about us,” I fire back. “If we tip our hand before we have any idea what we’re dealing with, we could be stirring a hornet’s nest without any plan for what we do next. And you know the implications. Heller warned of the dangers and look what happened to him. If people believe this science is real, the whole country, the whole world could become like Buenos Aires or worse.”
“How many times do I have to repeat myself? We are a news organization. Hello.”
My back straightens as I prepare to push back. “If there’s—”
“We are a news organization,” Sierra says, cutting me off and looking at Martina. “Of course we need a story. Of course we need to beat our competitors to it. Whatever the implications, this all is not going to stay quiet forever. It’s too late for that.”
I’m again amazed by Sierra’s impudence.
“We can’t hold out forever, but we also can’t come out before we’ve nailed down the basic facts. We’ve come a long way. Look at this wall,” Sierra continues, shifting her gaze around the conference room, “but we’re not there yet.”
Martina’s muscles tense as if she is about to pounce.
Sierra turns toward me. “What more information do you think we need to be ready to publish?”
“We … we,” I stutter, thrown momentarily off-balance by Sierra’s mediating between Martina and me, “should know if the science is real, what’s the link with SBN, who killed Heller and blew up Toni’s house, and where are Hart and Wolfson.”
I can almost see the internal debate raging within Martina. “We can’t just sit on this forever,” she says.
“How about three more days?” Sierra says to Martina before looking briefly at me with an expression I assume to be both asking if I can live with that and telling me I’d better accept whatever she negotiates.
Martina retakes command. “I’m giving this two more days.”
“Okay,” Sierra says. “In forty-eight hours we put out whatever we have.”
A painful silence fills the room while Martina deliberates.
“I want every detail along the way,” Martina says after the pause, clearly already regretting her brief moment of compromise. She turns and walks out.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Rich,” Sierra says after the dust settles.
The panic on my face can hardly be assuring. Even if the science isn’t real, this story has the potential to make waves around the world. If it is real, it has the potential to alter one of the fundamental premises of our existence.
We each wander around, trying to assess the elusive connective string tying the disparate data points on our digital wall together.
My hand moves reflexively to meet the vibration on my wrist.
Gillespie’s face appears in a box on the wall. “I need to speak with you,” he says. “Alone,” he adds, looking around the room.
“These are my colleagues Sierra Halley and Joseph Abraham,” I say. “They are working closely with me on—”
“Alone,” Gillespie thunders.
I hesitate a moment, then give Sierra and Joseph an apologetic shrug. They both seem rightfully annoyed in their different ways as they leave. Joseph closes the door behind them.
“Now switch to secure with the link I send you.”
The message arrives and I do.
Gillespie charges forward. “US intelligence doesn’t seem to be looking into anything involving Dr. Noam Heller. My contact didn’t even know anything had been referred to the FBI.”
“That’s encouraging,” I say sarcastically. The possibility briefly crosses my mind that Maurice never passed on the information. I reject the thought.
“Most of these idiots couldn’t boil water.”
“What about the ship?”
“The SBN carrier travels in international waters with no transponder and no readable digital footprint. It also uses the most sophisticated stealth technologies and masks its heat signature with radar-absorbent materials. That makes it extremely difficult to track.”
I don’t know Gillespie well enough to read where this introduction is going, but he’s not the kind of person who would call me and ask me to be alone to tell me he’s found nothing.
“But the laws of physics still apply, and we’re talking about the United States government doing the tracking. A ship like that displaces a lot of water, which can be calculated into surface flow analyses using a sophisticated quantum interference algorithm. This only works when the SBN ship is moving, and it doesn’t tend to move much, probably for this reason. But if they know close enough where to look, even a stealth carrier has a heat signature that can be tracked by satellite thermal imagers.”
“And?” I say impatiently.
“Nobody in the intelligence community wants to do me any favors these days. In their minds I’ve already cost them enough. They think they’re still cleaning up my mess.” He lets the words sink in. “But I still have one or two people who owe me and haven’t forgotten.”
“Can you just please tell me—”
“Last Thursday, the
SBN ship was tracked at approximately 56° west, 11° north.”
“I’m not exactly an ancient mariner,” I say, annoyed. “Can you just tell me—”
“Just outside the territorial waters of Tobago.”
“So Hart and Wolfson’s retinas trip the scanners in Tobago, they exit the airport with an invisible man not known to any database, and leave no trace on the island just as the SBN ship is passing by.”
“Looks like it.”
I close my eyes and inhale. “Do we know where the ship is now?”
“As of this morning, it seems to be resting at 25° north, 69° west.”
“Can you just please—”
“International waters on the Atlantic Ocean side of Cuba.”
43
“I’ve got to get there,” I say softly.
Martina, Sierra, and Joseph join me staring at the digital map on the conference room wall.
“If Hart and Wolfson are on the ship and the vial is there, the answers have got to be there,” I continue.
“What about Shelton?” Joseph asks.
“We already knew there was a connection. This confirms it.”
“What are you going to do, Jorge,” Martina says suspiciously, “climb aboard with a scaffolding hook?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you just call Shelton?” Sierra adds. “The guy gave you his contact information.”
“If I tip him off now,” I say, “won’t that increase the odds the ship just moves away? If he wanted me on that ship he could have invited me any time. It wasn’t that far away when I was in Cuba. If I have any chance of getting on, it may need to be a surprise.”
“What are you talking about?” Martina snaps. “This is not the fucking CIA. What’s your plan?”
I weigh a set of feeble options. “I could hire a boat and approach the SBN ship.”
“Where and with what money?”
“Miami, Haiti, Dominican Republic. Cuba even.”
“You’ve come a long way, Jorge, but this is now far above your level, maybe above the Star’s level, too, certainly far outside the scope of the local stories we’re supposed to be focusing on.”
“Fuck the new business model.”
“Fuck it all you want,” she says calmly, “but you still won’t be able to fuck the funds for an unplanned naval assault out of it.”
My mind struggles to calibrate options.
“I’ve given you forty-eight hours,” she says, turning toward the door. “The clock is ticking.”
The uninspired plan is becoming clear in my mind. It has no genius, but I’m starting to believe it’s the best I can come up with. I describe it to Sierra and Joseph after Martina leaves the room.
“So you fly to the Dominican Republic or Haiti or Cuba, find a boat and a captain who will take you, and then approach the SBN ship, if it’s even still there?” Sierra asks dubiously. “It’s a refurbished aircraft carrier, a warship. How are you going to do this without the Star, and what makes you think you won’t be blown out of the water as you approach?”
I think of Heller’s formula and the power and danger it contains, of Heller floating in the tank, of Toni in my home, of her house in ashes. “I’ll handle the money,” I say, already mentally subtracting the forty-six thousand dollars languishing in my bank account as I shift into gear, “and I’ll need you to get back in touch with Shelton at the last minute to try to get them to not shoot. We need to coordinate exactly what needs to happen as I approach the SBN ship.”
“If you approach the ship,” she replies.
I’d love to have a better plan, but this is the best I can come up with.
“Joseph, can you to find me some options for where I can charter a boat and how I can get there?”
“Okay, boss,” he says unconvinced, turning toward the wall.
I rush home on my way to the airport. It’s 11:30 a.m., and Toni is uncharacteristically still in bed. Her hair is a mess, the air in the room stale.
“Baby, what happened?” I say.
She looks up at me, exhausted. “I did a little research last night on remembering what happens under hypnosis. Apparently sometimes hypnotic memories can be triggered from images. I’ve been looking at photos of jellyfish through my u.D. Light sleepers also seem to recall their dreams a lot more than deep sleepers. I figured I’d have a better chance if I set my u.D to keep waking me up every hour to write down what’s in my head.”
I love Toni’s tenacity but don’t have much confidence in the process, and I hate seeing her this exhausted. “You’ve been through a lot these past few days, sweetheart,” I say, placing my hand gently on her forehead. “I’d hate for you to feel even worse by not sleeping.”
“We’ve both been through a lot, and if there’s some strange message hidden in my brain … I just still can’t remember what happened after Heller had me look into the jellyfish medusa.”
“What do you have in your notes?”
She reaches over to grab her pad. Not much. Colors. Fluorescent pinks, purples, yellows, greens. Jellyfish even, looking like long mushrooms, swallowing each other. “I can’t make much of it, but it definitely seems somehow linked to my experience with Heller.”
I lie on the bed beside Toni. She burrows her head into my chest.
“Maybe don’t put so much pressure on yourself,” I say. “Maybe memories need to work their way up from somewhere.”
“There’s something else,” Toni adds after a silence. “I’m going nuts here.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say quietly.
“I know you just want me to be safe, but this is still your house. I’ve been working and looking after the kids in the hospital for most of my adult life. It’s part of who I am. And even if there is a danger, it’s not entirely clear I’m better off here than at the hospital. I can’t be cooped up here forever. This isn’t me, waiting around your house all day, filing insurance claims. I need to go back to work.”
The idea makes me nervous. “I hear you, but at least here we can control some of the variables when you are here. Why don’t we wait a few more days until we can learn more about what we’re facing? I’m not sure it’s safe for you to be out. Here we have guards at the doors. I’m hoping we can get to the bottom of all this soon.”
“I know you’re hoping, but can you honestly tell me you have any idea if you’ll succeed? I work in a major hospital. There is security everywhere. The police officers will drive me. I’m going back to work.”
I don’t have an answer.
“Exactly,” she says after the silence. “Settled.”
“But—”
“It’s really not your call, baby,” she says gently. “I know you’re concerned. That means a lot to me. But I need to go back to work.”
I take a deep breath. I know Toni well enough to understand my chances of countering her are near zero.
“It’s not just that,” she continues. “I’m figuring out what I’ll do with my house. I guess I’ll rebuild, but there’s a big question mark in my life that seems to block a lot of things.”
It’s probably as gently as she could have raised the issue, but it’s abundantly clear the destruction of Toni’s house has forced forward a set of questions that should probably have been addressed long ago. My mind scrambles for words. I know? I understand? Let’s talk when I am back? None of the options seem worth saying.
“Which probably means you’re about to tell me you’re going somewhere,” Toni adds.
“I’m catching a flight from KCI at two,” I say quietly.
A part of me senses that giving Toni too many details might only put her in more danger. But I also know I can’t head out without providing her any explanation of where I’m going and why. I fill her in on what I’ve learned and the plan.
She shakes her head after I finish my short explanation. “I don’t like it.”
“You’re not alone,” I respond apprehensively.
“But you’re not going to budge. A
re you, Dikran?”
I place my hand on her arm.
“Please don’t,” she says softly, looking down. “I know you’re working hard, I know you’re committed, I know this is important. But life can’t be just about ideas and missions, it has to be about people, too. If we’re going to be together, it has to be about us.”
I know she’s right.
“But if you need to go, go,” she whispers.
44
I’m anxious on my Delta flight from Kansas City to Atlanta and jittery as I join the excited tourists and exuberant Dominican Americans filling the plane heading from Atlanta. It’s nearly ten at night when we touch down in Santo Domingo, eleven when I clear customs and pass through the dilapidated airport arrivals hall. There are only a few ramshackle minivans still left at the airport. I suspect the three hundred dollars I pay to get me to the port of Arroyo Barril, on the finger jutting out from the north of the island, will be cause for weeks of celebration.
The two-and-a-half-hour drive from Santo Domingo seems to pass through an endless blaring merengue party along the pothole-ridden roads. The taxi lurches through an obstacle course of dancing, music, and drinking flowing through the streets as if the roads are just an extension of people’s living rooms or some kind of omnipresent nightclub without walls. If this is what the Dominican Republic looks like after midnight on a Tuesday, it’s hard to imagine how things are when they really get going.
I bang on the door of the Atlantis Hotel in Samana for almost ten minutes before I’m let in and shown to my threadbare room. Pulled awake by my u.D at six, I find no one stirring in the hotel. I look around the parking lot until I discover a man asleep in a beat-up, burnt orange Datsun F-10, the first Datsun I’ve seen in decades. Fifty dollars and twenty minutes later I arrive at the port of Arroyo Barril looking for my charter.