Infertile Grounds

by DB Carpenter

  "Nothing yet," Seth replied.

  "Have you heard from Bert?"

  "He hasn't found anything either. It's like the guy vanished."

  "Damn it!" Silence ensued for a minute before she said, "If you can't find him by tomorrow morning, I want you to evacuate the base."

  "Are you sure? We don't even know if David told this guy anything."

  She shook her head. Why was she surrounded by morons? Was she the only one capable of thought? "If he didn't know anything, why would he run? And why would he lie to Bert?"

  Seth didn't respond.

  "It's not so bad anyway," she continued. "We're just pushing up the date for getting out of Maine. Everything else stays the same."

  "True," Seth replied. "I still think we're going to pick up this guy's trail, but if we don't –"

  "Just do it like we planned. Make sure that there's nothing incriminating left here. Especially the lab. There can't be anything to raise any suspicions."

  "So, we're sticking with July 4th?" Seth asked.

  "I don't see why not. It's the perfect day. Besides, all the logistics for the Carriers are based on starting then. I don't want to have to change everything now. I'll call you when I get to Camilla's."

  "Have a good trip."

  Good trip? Was he nuts? She was exhausted, stressed and very nervous about meeting her benefactors. She wasn't going off on holiday.

  Jerry brought the plane down gently on runway 33 and taxied to the general aviation apron of Bangor International Airport, stopping at the waiting Lear Jet.

  The Lear pilot met them on the tarmac and said, "Good morning, Ms. Burns. I'll be flying you to Malibu. Ms. Haywood has asked me to look after you."

  "Thanks," Sarah replied as Jerry put her bags in the jet and walked back over to her. "How long is the flight?"

  "I'll have you in Malibu in just over five hours," he replied confidently.

  "I'm going to head back up north," Jerry said. "I've got a lot to do."

  She turned from the pilot and said, "I'll call tonight. I'm going to want an update. If the time has come, then it's come."

  "Don't worry."

  She gave him an empty smile before saying, "I know. It's just that we're so close."

  "Seth'll get things straightened out."

  She did a nod-shrug. Seth was very competent but not being there to keep an eye on things didn't sit well with her. She watched Jerry climb into his plane and taxi back toward the runway.

  Sarah said, "Let's go. We don't want to keep Camilla waiting."

  The pilot led her into the plane where she settled into a luxurious leather seat and started to recite her speech over and over in her mind, refining the key points. This day had been a long time in the making. She was about to finally meet the people who had funded the research and development effort. To her credit, Camilla had refused to divulge any information about them until Gen96 was ready and Sarah could make the trip to sit down face to face with them.

  The news from Ngamiland would be the hit of the speech. As she had predicted, everything had worked perfectly. Goddamn, she was good. They sped down the runway and soared effortlessly into the clear blue mid-morning sky.

  She watched out the windows as the busy streets and suburban houses of the mid-state metropolis quickly turned to empty country roads, forests and farmlands as they gained altitude and speed – heading due west. This was her first trip in a private jet, and it was wonderful – much better than that cattle-car feeling of commercial airliners.

  9:00 am Bethesda, Maryland

  "Good morning, sir," the FBI agent-chauffeur said as Arthur Kent emerged from his brownstone and climbed into the discreetly armored car.

  Arthur didn't respond. It wasn't a good morning.

  "Headquarters?" The agent asked.

  "The Hill," Arthur replied. Starting the day with meetings around the Bureau's new role made his head ache. He took a swig of piping hot coffee from the waiting travel mug nestled in the console as they pulled away from the curb and headed into DC.

  Since 9/11 it seemed he had done nothing but meet with finger-pointing, blame deflecting, predominately stupid-ass politicians. Everyone wanted to take a swipe at the FBI. The despicable vultures had been circling for years and now they were on the ground, nibbling at the extremities, seeing how much life was left, getting ready to pounce and deliver the deathblow before settling in for the feast but he wouldn't let that happen – not on his watch.

  Two years ago he would have said that things could never have been worse than the first half of the 90's – Ruby Ridge, the World Trade Center bombing, Waco, and then Oklahoma City, four bungled ops in just as many years. He couldn't complain though. He was fifty-six and held the number three, and arguably most powerful, position in the Bureau – courtesy of the events of the early 90's. Back then, it had been open season on the Bureau but those all paled to the bellyaching he was enduring now on a daily basis.

  He rubbed his temples.

  "I need a vacation," he said.

  "Want me to take you to Reagan National? Hop a plane to the Caribbean maybe," the agent said as he glanced into the rearview mirror, offering a slight smirk.

  "Virginia to do some deer hunting sounds more like it. Get out of DC for a while. Christ, I'd rather be back walking point then going up on The Hill."

  The chauffeur was silent for a moment then said, "So a little old lady called 911. When the operator answered she yelled, 'Help! Send the police to my house right now! There's a damn Democrat on my front porch and he's jerking off.'

  'What?' the operator exclaimed.

  'I said there's a damn Democrat on my front porch diddling himself and he's weird. I don't know him and I'm scared! Please send the police now!' the little old lady repeated.

  'Well, now, how do you know he's a Democrat???'

  'Because, you damn fool, if he were a Republican, he'd be screwing somebody!'"

  Arthur chuckled – stupid joke to start another stupid day.

  10:45 am FBI Field Office, Bangor, Maine

  Inside the nondescript, two-story brick office building, Chris found a small directory informing him that the FBI was in suite 220 and it looked like the rest of the building was empty. He climbed the stairs and walked into the office.

  For some reason, he had assumed an FBI office would be much grander than this. The reception desk had the FBI seal on the front of it and a fifty-something, expansively hipped woman behind it doing a Sudoku puzzle.

  She looked up slowly, as if her puzzle was at least as important to her as he was and asked, "Can I help you?"

  "I need to talk to an agent."

  "What's this regarding?"

  "Nothing personal," he glanced at the nameplate on her desk, "...Margaret, but I'd rather not say anything until I speak to an agent."

  "Do you want to report a federal crime, or do you want to talk to someone about an existing investigation?" She replied pulling out a form and a pen.

  "I need to report a federal crime," Chris explained. "But I don't want to give any further information until I see an agent."

  "They're all out in the field right now. Take a seat over there and I'll find out when someone will be back."

  After a few minutes, Margaret informed him that agent Paul Pelletier would return in about an hour.

  "Thanks," Chris said.

  She nodded cordially and returned to her Sudoku. He tried to sit in a reception room chair but kept fidgeting so he got up and paced. Margaret glanced at him, maybe he was making her a little nervous but he didn't really care.

  After a little more than fifty minutes, an overweight man in a rumpled brown suit came through the door. He and Margaret exchanged curt greetings and she pointed him toward Chris.

  "I'm agent Paul Pelletier," he said as he approached Chris, his hand out in introduction.

  "Chris Foster."

  "Pleased to meet you, Chris. Margaret tells me that you want to report a federal crime."

  Chris nodded, he was wire
d from coffee and adrenaline but his brain felt a little fuzzy from having missed a night's sleep. As he released the agent's hand, he caught a faint whiff of liquor. He glanced at his watch, 11:37. Too early for boozing, he must have been mistaken.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Can we talk in private, sir?"

  "Sure. Follow me."

  He turned and lumbered down the hallway with Chris in tow.

  "You can start by calling me Pell," agent Pelletier said over his broad yet hunched shoulders as he turned into a doorway. "Can I get you a drink?"

  "Sure."

  Pell grabbed a couple of sodas from a small refrigerator in the corner and returned to the table.

  "So what's up?" He asked as he sat down on the opposite side of the table and took a swig.

  Chris chewed his lower lip and stared at the ceiling for a minute. Just over twenty-four hours ago, he had been enjoying a relaxing fishing trip – the only thing on his mind was trying to catch his breakfast. Today he was in an FBI office after spending the night running for his life. Everything was happening too fast. He hadn't had time to digest any of this.

  He tore his gaze from the ceiling and stared into Pell's pink rimmed, blue eyes. Where to start? How to not sound like a lunatic? He drummed his fingers on the table, searching for the words.

  "I'm not from Maine, I live in Quincy, Mass, just south of Boston," Chris said.

  "I know where it is," Pell said. "I spent my first two years in the Boston office before I got transferred up here."

  Pell's brow furrowed and he opened his mouth as if he was going to say something else but he didn't. Instead, he started twisting the kinky hair of one of his long, graying sideburns between his thumb and forefinger.

  "Great," Chris replied, not that it mattered. "I run a small web development company."

  "Web development?"

  "We help build websites. Not the pages you see on your browser but the back end stuff - database access, secure store fronts, stuff like that."

  "Is it good business?"

  Chris nodded. "Business has boomed in the past three years. We've got a couple hundred customers now. It's become much more successful – much more work – than I ever imagined."

  "Congratulations," Pell said with a nod as he threw his empty can across the room into the trashcan in the corner. Drips of leftover soda dribbled onto the table and he swept them away with his hairy hand, which he wiped on his pants. "I bought some dot com stocks in August 2000. I should have just burned my money, at least I would have got some heat out of it."

  "Well, anyway, back to why I'm here," Chris said and he proceeded to describe his camp.

  "Sounds nice," Pell said, glancing at his wristwatch. "Now has this all got something to do with a crime you want to report?"

  "It's my little slice of heaven," Chris replied. "At least it was until yesterday morning."

  "What happened?"

  "I was fishing..."

  He told Pell everything from the initial crash to being snuck out of The Wild Bear by a gold-toothed Frenchman and making his way ultimately to this chair.

  "..and that's why I decided to come to the FBI. I didn't know what else to do."

  Pell looked at him from across the table. His thick eyebrows arched, causing wrinkles of flesh to roll up his forehead like the planted rows of a furrowed field and his mouth puckered, as if he had just licked a lemon wedge. He skimmed the yellow legal pad that he had scribbled notes on.

  After a moment, he shook his head and let out a low, slow whistle. "So what do you want me to do?"

  "What do you mean? You need to figure out if this guy, David Rose, was telling the truth, and if he was, you need to stop them. At the very least the guy was murdered. That's got to be worth an investigation of its own, right?"

  "Uh-huh," Pell grunted.

  "Look, I know that it sounds unbelievable, but why would I make it up? What would be my motivation? Run a check on me – I've got nothing to hide. There's absolutely no reason for me to lie."

  "I'll be right back."

  His absence gave Chris the opportunity to look around. This place was actually a dump. The rug was worn and stained. The well-used conference room table and chairs were of the office-furniture-bargain-store variety.

  He stretched, trying to shake the throbbing in his lower back that had been haunting him on and off for the past few years. He was carrying a little too much weight and spent most of his time sitting in front of a computer screen. His body was starting to rebel.

  Pell walked back into the room carrying a notebook computer.

  "We're going to go over your story again but before we do that, I just need to take a few more details about you, Chris," Pell said, booting up the machine and handing Chris a form to complete. "Just fill out your personal details on here for me."

  Chris sat at the corner of the table completing the form, watching Pell open a terminal session and sign into a mainframe computer somewhere. A text-only screen of the FBI logo came up.

  "That's throwback," Chris said.

  Pell grinned. "We're just happy that they remember to send us our pay."

  "How many agents are in this office?"

  "Three of us."

  "You been here long?"

  He stopped typing, looked over at Chris, and said solemnly, "Since '88."

  "That's a long time," Chris replied sliding the paperwork across the desk to Pell. Pell typed in his name and social security number, hit a few function keys, and the word 'Searching...' appeared at the bottom of the screen.

  He turned back and said, "It's not so bad up here. I've gotten used to the slow pace. I'm too old for the shoot-em-up stuff anymore, anyway."

  Once again, Pell's mouth opened, as if he was going to say more – something important – but his eyes clouded over and he grimaced at some unseen pain before sheepishly looking back at the static computer screen. He closed his mouth without uttering a word. He had a story to tell – probably a depressing one – and since they were waiting for the archaic computer, "So how'd you end up here, Pell?" Chris asked. He wondered whether this was where they sent the burnt out agents who couldn't operate effectively anymore. That would be just his luck, reporting all this to some incompetent, has-been agent who was going to do diddly squat with it.

  Pell leaned back in his creaky chair and did a funny little half-whistle, half-hiss – a histle – to some unrecognizable tune as he studied the intricate pattern of the stained and sagging drop-ceiling tiles. Sitting back upright, he said, "Right now I want to talk about you, Chris. I need to go over some of these details with you if you don't mind." He looked down at his notepad.

  "Okay. What do you want to know?"

  "You never saw this guy in the plane before, right?"

  "Never."

  "And this Alby character mentioned engamy. What do you think he meant by that?"

  8:45 am PDT Malibu, California

  Sarah's jet touched down at a small airport just outside of Malibu. The pilot taxied and parked in a row of comparable jets.

  Once the plane came to a stop, the pilot came back into the cabin. "Smooth flight, wouldn't you say?"

  "And fast," Sarah replied.

  The door opened from the outside, and a stocky, bald man stuck his head in. If he wore a yellow shirt with a black zigzag instead of the expensive dark blue suit he would have looked like a late middle aged Charlie Brown. "Ms. Burns?" He asked.

  "That's me."

  "You can come with me, please."

  She was about to pick up her bags when the suited gentleman pointed to the pilot and said, "He'll get those for you."

  She glanced at the pilot in time to see him shooting a dirty look at this man.

  "Okay," Sarah said. "Is Camilla here?"

  "She's at the beach house," the shiny-headed man said as he guided her to a limo parked in front of the plane. "I am Albert James Winslow. At your service ma'am."

  She smiled. He was a classically trained butler, or probably in more
modern lingo, a personal assistant. His speech and mannerisms fit the cliché.

  "Thank you, Albert. I'm Sarah." She extended her hand for a shake, and he responded by cupping her hand gently in his and bowing ever so slightly. She could get used to having someone like this around.

  She slid into the posh, air-conditioned limo and Albert shut the door. The driver's seat wasn't visible through the privacy shield. As the car started to move, Albert's voice came over some speakers. "You'll be at the house in twenty-five minutes. If you want something to drink, there's a wet bar on the left side."

  "Thank you," she replied. The butterflies that had been snoozing in her stomach started to awaken. She had never met any of the philanthropic financiers that were waiting for her at Camilla's. She didn't even know how many there were. What she did know was that they had deep pockets and open minds and had funded this entire endeavor. Now, as she was about to announce to them, their investment had finally paid off.

  They rounded a corner and a magnificent azure expanse of the Pacific came into view separated from the road by an enormous swath of white sand dotted with early morning walkers and joggers. She rolled down the window to get a better look, letting in the warm salt and sand tinted air. She breathed deep and shut her eyes, picturing herself lounging on the beach – it had been too long since she had given herself time off to relax. The sparkling ocean called to her like a now forgotten but once all-consuming lover. Her mouth opened to tell Albert to pull over. Let her out. Fifteen minutes was all she needed – feel the water, the sand between her toes – reconnect with life outside of the sterile lab in dreary northern Maine – but no words came out.

  Her mind wandered back to college, to Camilla – beautiful, rich, academically challenged and oh so vulnerable. Her parents had been public people; glitterati to a fault – stunning physical beauty, fabulous wealth, turbulent relationship, tabloid-people – their violent deaths had been fodder for countless media pieces, as had Camilla's grieving process. Somehow, Camilla had made it through that emotionally charged period of her life and now was on top of the world. A leading actress – she had her pick of what she worked on. Her latest role had Oscar written all over it. Sarah let out a soft chuckle. She had helped Camilla evolve, to cope with her parent's horrific deaths and to focus her limitless energy on something worthwhile. Or had it been the other way around? It didn't matter now. As Sarah was about to inform everyone present, the puzzle was finally complete. A couple of pieces were still in her hands but she knew where they went. It was just a matter of placing them in their spots and then stepping back to admire their long-time-coming masterpiece.