“I remember the people of Flatley talking about the power plant being blown up.” Mason chimed in. “Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?” Fergus nodded and pointed at Mason, “That’s exactly the kind of thing we want to take home. Can’t have people trying to blow us up in Top Peake.” Tressa couldn’t imagine what anyone would want to blow up in Top Peake, except for maybe the McDonnell twins. And she didn’t think she’d mind that too much anyway. Instead of mentioning that she asked, “Fergus, what do you want to do while we wait our turn on the elevator?”
“How about explore the marketplace here and practice listening and observing. Tonight, tell me something I’ve never heard before.”
Both Mason and Tressa nodded seriously though neither imagined they could tell Fergus something like that.
“For now I’ve got to go place some orders for a few things for family and some folks back home. Feel free to wander around in here, but please don’t go out into New Omaha without me. I’ve left a credit for you both at the hotel tower so you’ll be able to get lunch or a snack later. See you for dinner at 7 sharp.” Fergus stood up and smiled at them and then wandered off in the direction of the market stalls.
Chapter 11
Tressa looked at Mason with shrugged shoulders and an expression of “what do we do now?” He spoke up and said, “I don’t know about you but, I’m going to go back to bed for a while.”
“Well, I’m going to start practicing my listening and observing.”
“You know he just said that to get us out of his hair for the day. He doesn’t want to get stuck with us glued to him all the time. We’ve got three days until we go – why not relax and take it easy?”
“I am relaxed…I think. But I also didn’t come to just sleep the time away. Maybe I’ll try to find something to take back for Yvette or my mom.”
“You do that. See you later, shrimp.”
“You’ve never even seen a shrimp – and I’m NOT one. I’m exactly two inches taller than the chart says I should be.”
“Whatever…” Mason got up and shuffled off toward the glass towers and their hotel room. Tressa thought he should tell stories about sleeping since he was so familiar with the subject.
Tressa mumbled as she walked toward a jewelry stall, “I’m NOT a shrimp. And I run faster than anyone at the Institute – except…Mason.” The stall owner showed Tressa several pretty pieces that she thought would look nice on Yvette. As she bent over to see them more closely her own necklace fell forward and hung above the glass showcase.
Spying the odd ring on the chain the stall keeper said, “I have many pieces that will look better on you than that.” The woman behind the counter sneered as she pointed at the little mechanical ring her father had given her. “Let me find you something. A pretty girl should have pretty things…”
“No thank you. I’ll stay with this.” Tressa shot back and walked away.
Tressa found the marketplace filling up with shoppers and vendors, hawkers, suppliers and piles and piles of things for sale. Pretty soon she found herself fighting to get through the crowds. She started to get uncomfortable as people began to bump and push to get past her, too. Her heart started to race and she felt like she had a fever. She’d never seen so many people! Her eyes darted around to find some small spot where she wasn’t hemmed in so tightly. Instead the crowd seemed to get even tighter.
Desperately, she sought some escape and finally her eyes settled on the support pole and roof trusses holding up this wing of the building above her. Gathering herself she twisted and bumped and pushed her way over to the base of the pole. Sliding behind it she found a little room and looked up. The trusses were interwoven all across the ceiling of the marketplace. Tressa bent at the knees and jumped upward as hard as she could. Fifteen feet up, she grabbed the lowest support frame and scrambled up into the roof trusses. “Just like going up a couple walkways at home,” She thought. Now, well above the crowds she felt more relaxed. “Let them all kill each other shoving around down there. I can see everything I want to up here.” As she made her way along the steel beams she was entirely at home on a four inch wide metal support suspended over thirty feet in the air. “If only they had a shop up here,” she thought.
Tressa explored the rest of the stall area from above and enjoyed being able to watch everything happening below without having to interact with all those people. As she was starting to look for a less crowded aisle where she could descend and go back to her room she noticed Fergus below her. He was talking to three men in uniforms, but there was too much commotion around them for her to hear what was being said. Two were large, rough looking men with serious expressions on their faces. The kind of men she thought would be in a story about people who would fight each other for money. The third man, who seemed to be in charge, was tall and lean with several ribbons pinned on his uniform jacket. Most noticeable was the black eye patch covering his left eye and Tressa could see an ugly scar that extended out around the side of the patch.
As she watched, Fergus gave the man in charge some money and they shook hands. The man with the eye patch turned and motioned to one of his subordinates who handed him a small package. The big man handed Fergus the package and he shoved it into his satchel. Fergus nodded goodbye to the three men and appeared to head toward the hotel area. Tressa was curious about what she had witnessed and thought these tough looking men might fit into a story somehow, so she decided to follow them.
The men sorted themselves out in the tight spaces below and “eye patch” lead them deeper into the market area. Tressa had no problem keeping up with them since there was no other traffic along the beams she was walking. The men wound their way through the crowds and came up to a part of the market Tressa hadn’t noticed before. A construction zone was fenced off and she figured there were plans to expand the marketplace. A high chain link fence with a black plastic backdrop kept prying eyes from distracting the workmen as they built. Eye Patch (as Tressa had come to think of him) pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked a padlock from a strong chain on a section of gate. All three men entered the work zone and closed the gate behind them. No workers were in sight and the more Tressa looked the more she got the feeling this area had been abandoned for a long while. The lighting was poor with just enough bare bulbs hanging here and there to allow a person to walk around without tripping over abandoned piles of building materials. Off in the distance the area was completely black. Bricks, mortar and wooden beams were simply dropped where they were when the work stopped.
Tressa had no problem following along as the roof structure for the work zone had just been attached onto the existing one. Eye Patch led his group way back into the construction zone and stopped in a pale pool of light coming from one of the few naked bulbs in the area. He stood there waiting for something or someone and whistled softly to himself while calmly smoothing the ribbons on his jacket. The other two men quietly disappeared in different directions.
Shortly, out of the gloom appeared two men in heavy coats and long pants. One was pushing a cart with six or seven wooden crates stacked on it, each of them about the size of a suitcase. Their boots echoed on the hard floor as they approached Eye Patch. The older looking one of the pair leaned toward Eye Patch, “We’re here. Right on time like you asked, Colonel.” He whispered.
“Did you bring them?” Eye Patch asked quietly. Tressa had no problem hearing the heavily accented Germanic voice of the “Colonel”.
“Yeah, these cartons for now and the rest will be shipped directly to the other cities,” came the hushed reply. “What about our money, Colonel? We’re the ones taking all the risks.”
“Please don’t trouble yourself about that. You have my assurances you will be taken care of shortly. Are you sure no one has followed you or knows about you working for me? In my position I can’t afford any loose ends.” Eye Patch then added, “It would be unfortunate if anyone were to know of our…arrangements.”
In spite of the setting, his
slow cadence and accented “w’s’” sounded soothing to Tressa and she could almost imagine him as a history teacher or something at the Institute. She snapped back to the present and wondered from the darkness of the rafters what the arrangements were.
“No one knows about this or the previous ones. It’s just me and Jimmy here in on it. You said not to bring anybody else in and we didn’t. We just want to get paid like you said we would.” The older man shifted around and seemed to make up his mind about something. “Come on Jimmy, let’s just take these with us and forget the whole thing.”
“Not so fast.” Eye Patch put up a hand stopping the men. He stared silently at them for a moment then said softly, “You really need to understand something about me. I don’t like to be pushed around. I think perhaps it’s time you were taken care of.”
The older man poked Jimmy with his elbow and said, “That’s what I’m talking about. Me and Jimmy here….” His voice was cut off as Eye Patch’s two men silently slid up behind the older man and Jimmy and slipped thin ropes around their necks. Tressa nearly toppled off the beam she was standing on and had to use all of her agility to stop from plummeting into the middle of the encounter.
Pulling the ropes tightly the henchmen slowly lowered their victims to the ground and held them there until they stopped moving. One of the men went to the cart and started to push it back toward the gate where they entered the work zone. Eye Patch stopped him. “Push it over that way away from these two and then leave it in the dark. It’s too big to try and maneuver through the market aisles. We’d never get out of there. Just grab whatever you can carry. We’ll come back later for the rest.” With that he led them off into the dark toward the gate into the marketplace.
Tressa shivered on the beam for a while. She couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed. Thinking that she should at least try to help the men below her, she hung from the beam and dropped lightly to the floor way below her. Jimmy and his compatriot still hadn’t moved and Tressa feared the worst. She had never seen a dead body before, not to mention someone getting murdered. As much as she wanted to run away she fought that impulse and checked each man’s throat for a pulse, like she had been taught in Health class.
Once she determined that neither man could be helped she just wanted to get out of there. Jumping and climbing back up into the rafters she started to make her way out of the area as quickly as she could. Unfortunately, in the dark she didn’t see a small puddle of water on a beam from an overhead roof leak and in her hurry she stepped right into it. Her foot slipped off the beam and she fought to catch it with her hands on the way down. Her fingers clawed the air for anything to hold onto but when they came into contact with the wet beam she couldn’t get any grip. The best she could do was right herself enough to drop straight down. In the dark she didn’t know where the ground was or if anything was under her.
The force of hitting the cart with the crates on it made her bite her tongue hard enough to make her eyes water. She slammed into the top crate but managed to roll her weight forward and down, eventually tumbling away across the dusty floor. As she stood up and walked back over to the cart she found the topmost crate had broken open from the impact. The smashed wooden box had been stuffed with packing peanuts and they had exploded all around the cart like a sudden snowstorm inside the building. Scattered among the peanuts were bricks of clay wrapped in plastic. When Tressa picked one up and walked over into a halo of light she could faintly read United World Army on one side and C-4 Explosive Ordinance on the other. She had heard stories of how powerful this type of explosive could be and realized how dangerous it was to be near it. When she looked back at the cart, and did the math of how many bricks were there, she felt the hairs on her neck rise and goose bumps formed on her arms. After dropping the brick of explosive, she flew upwards and ran along the familiar beams as her heart beat wildly.
A long, hot shower helped make the murders in the marketplace seem like a bad dream to Tressa, though she wept quietly for the dead men even though she didn’t personally know them. She wasn’t certain what Eye Patch wanted with the explosives but she had an idea. If he was going to do something bad, Tressa, as she always had, felt compelled to do something. She needed help, however, and decided that she would have to try and convince Mason of what she’d seen. Fergus would never believe her, especially if somehow Eye Patch was a friend of his.
When she knocked on the door to Mason and Fergus’ room she was surprised that no one answered. “Maybe Mason is getting a snack in the atrium,” she thought. Downstairs she looked around the cafe but couldn’t find him. Slowly she started to walk around the atrium in a big circle hoping to see him near the waterfall, or on one of the pathways. Just as she was getting ready to give up and go back to her room she heard a faint tapping sound. She tried to find where it was coming from but couldn’t. Then she heard it again. This time she looked up toward the glass tower and on the top floor saw Mason standing at the window banging on the glass and waving to her.
She motioned to the café and he nodded and gave her a thumbs up. Beating him there she got a table away from the others behind some potted plants that would partially hide them from view. “Why are you hiding back there?” Mason asked as he came over and sat down across from her. Before she could answer he went on, “You should go to the top floor of the tower. It leads out onto to a roof deck and you can go outside and see almost all of New Omaha. Really cool.”
“Mason, this is going to sound hard to believe but I think that something really bad is going to happen here or someplace else.”
“Duh, that’s like saying, ‘Uhhh, I think that this is going to something, something, something.’”
“No seriously, listen to what I saw today.” Tressa spent the better part of an hour telling and retelling Mason what had happened in the marketplace. He asked her questions about it over and over trying to find some inconsistency in her story that would prove she made it up. Finally, he sat back and said, “I want to believe you, but that’s just so far-fetched. It seems impossible.”
“Then I’ll prove it to you,” she promised. “Tonight after dinner I’ll sneak back in there and bring you a brick of explosive. Will that finally satisfy you?”
“You show me that and I’ll help you do whatever it takes to make sure no one gets hurt,” Mason assured her.
Chapter 12
Fergus tried unsuccessfully to pull out of the kids what they did during the day all through dinner. He couldn’t seem to get two words out of either of them until Tressa asked, “What did you do today?”
“Well, thank you for asking. I had a very interesting day as a matter of fact. First, I found a very nice toy truck for my son Jonathon and then a lovely set of earrings for Maria. I imagine she’ll look smashing in them at Festival. Just little things I fancied, once we get to the islands I’ll find something that will be really special.
“I also happened to run into an old friend who was here on business for a day or two. It was so busy in the marketplace I could barely get through the crowds much less recognize someone, but I guess he was keeping an eye out for me.” Fergus chuckled at what must have been a private joke.
Tressa stared hard at Mason trying to make her eyes scream out, “He’s talking about Eye Patch!” Mason was noisily finishing a chocolate milkshake and considering if he could talk Fergus into letting him get another.
Fergus continued, “I thought we might all get together tonight and go over some details for the trip to the Eastern Islands. The people settling there have some very strong feelings about how to behave in public and I don’t want either of you getting into trouble.” Fergus leaned across the table and removed the empty milkshake glass from Mason’s hand since the only thing left in it was the loud slurping sound of the straw finding air. Mason weakly smiled around the bent straw still hanging out of his mouth, “Sorry.”
“Fergus, I’m not feeling too well. Would it be alright if I met with you about all that tomorrow?” Tressa tried to
look sick enough to miss the meeting, but not so sick she needed a doctor. She must have been close enough because Fergus replied, “That would be fine. I think I’ll have my hands full enough with just one student tonight.”
Upstairs, as the door was closing to their room Tressa could hear Fergus’ voice saying to Mason, “The people of the Eastern Islands moved there so that they could get away from the rudeness found in the big cities…like New York.” As the sound of the monologue faded away Tressa knew Mason was in for a long night.
After changing into dark clothes to help her hide in the shadows of the rafters she went down to the atrium. Feeling her heart beating wildly she scampered across the gleaming tile floors and over into the now closed marketplace. All the aisles were empty and the stalls had sheets pulled over tables and the showcases were poised and ready for shoppers at a moment’s notice in the morning. Most of the lights had been extinguished but security lights shown here and there to keep would be thieves from having the run of the place. Tressa found her ceiling support column right where she left it and quickly jumped up into the shadows between the rafters.
Making her way slowly back to the abandoned work zone she was more careful this time where she placed her feet. She certainly didn’t want to take another tumble into some vendor’s shop and alert anyone who might be within earshot. She hoped she’d be able to find the right spot where the cart was, and she certainly didn’t plan on visiting the bodies until Mason was ready to believe her and alert the proper authorities.
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