Sophia winced, grabbed her shoulder, and began to sit up. “Nick, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Nick looked over to Dalton, who signaled he was fine. Nick’s attention returned to Sophia. He gently pulled her shirt to the side to see her wound. “You have a flesh wound on your shoulder, Mom, and you took a couple to your jacket.”
Sophia nodded as she raised herself to stand. “I’ve got one to match on my calf. You have a couple on your neck and arm.”
Nick smiled, “Some reunion, huh?”
A full medical team now swarmed the room and began working on Dalton, Sophia and Nick. Sophia explained that Chisel Chin, Mason and the two men outside of the door were merely tranquilized.
Sophia asked Nick, “Why are the CIA here?”
Nick gave her the short version of why they were looking for the Geneva lab as he helped Sophia stand. Sophia pulled Mason’s phone from her jacket. “J.T. told me how to activate this.” She smiled when the phone LED lights displayed. “Let’s see who your contacts are on this very special phone, Mr. Mason.” Mason remained passed out on the floor, handcuffed in a contorted pose.
Sophia clicked through Mason’s contact list, smiled, and said to Nick, “I might be able to help you.”
Nick and Dalton listened as Sophia spoke into Mason’s phone. “Mr. Prime Minister? Do you recognize my voice? Do you remember a midnight meeting on the St. Charles bridge in 2012?” Sophia listened a moment and then continued. “Yes, this is Sophia. I am willing to continue keeping secrets as long as you please me. You can see that I am calling you from Mason’s phone?” Another pause. “I want the precise location of the Geneva lab, Mr. Prime Minister.”
Sophia began writing on a piece of paper. “I expect we will not speak of this again. Good day, sir.”
Sophia handed Dalton the address and pointed to Mason’s secret office. “I believe the rest of what you need will be found in there.”
Nick watched Sophia limp to Mason’s office, holding her shoulder, as the CIA medic frantically tried to get her to stop.
Dalton looked at Nick. “So… your mom is FBI, personally knows some Prime Minister well enough to threaten him, and found Mason’s secret office? She only had a 15 minute head start on us! That’s pretty amazing.”
Nick chuckled, “Yes, she is.”
Nick followed his mom into Mason’s office. Dalton called Directorate Anders to give him the address of the Geneva lab.
*****
Benson nearly tore the paper as he wrote down the address. He had Dalton put Sophia on the line with one of the computer techs to transfer the data from Mason’s computer to the control center. Benson buzzed through to the Director’s communication monitor.
“We have it, sir: the address for the Geneva lab. I have ordered the premises secured and our astrophysicists to be moved to that location immediately.”
After giving Elliott the good news, Benson walked back toward his office. Benson stood at Darren’s desk and smiled.
Darren tilted his head and asked, “Dare I hope we’ve had some good news?”
Benson nodded, “We have the address for the Geneva lab. Mason’s computer data is being transmitted here and Dr. Nobel and Dr. Larson are working on two theories to stop this beam.”
Darren smiled, “What’s your gut say, sir?”
Benson nodded, “I feel hopeful. Scared, but hopeful. I’m taking a 20 minute rest. Wake me sooner if you need me.”
Benson didn’t nap. He went to his office restroom, removed his shirt and changed his surgical bandages. The bleeding on the old bandages indicated he had pulled some stiches. The doctor had warned him to stay off his feet and rest for the first twelve hours.
Benson replaced the bandages, put on a fresh shirt and put the bloody bandages in the wastebasket. A quick glance in the mirror shocked him. He looked ten years older than he had yesterday.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Elliott reviewed the file information that had been transmitted from Mason’s computer to the control center. With the help of Roger, the control room manager, they located what looked like a promising file in a folder titled “New Order”.
Elliott glanced at Roger, “That’s not a very imaginative way to label files.”
Roger announced the folder was encrypted. Elliott moaned in dismay.
Roger smiled, “Trust me, this will only take a minute.”
Roger executed a program in a few keystrokes and within moments a pop up box announced ‘Encryption Bypassed. Enter to Proceed’. Elliott was impressed. They scanned the file names and opened the file titled ‘Passcodes’.
Elliott asked, “Mason wasn’t so foolish as to label these files for what they really are, was he?”
Roger smiled, “You would be amazed at what people do. Actually, the more important they think they are, and especially if someone they trust tells them that no one can break the encryption, the less precautions they take. They want it easy to remember and they don’t want to write things down. Their biggest fear is that they will forget an important passcode.
Mason had all of this in a secret office behind a concealed wall. Plus, he paid dearly for encrypted files and security personnel on his premises at all times. I bet we find everything we need to know about Mr. Mason with minimal difficulty.”
Roger said, “Bingo! You said they might have used Titan? Here’s their code for entry to Titan.”
Elliott couldn’t contain his excitement. “We must use this now! We need to see Titan’s analysis of the strength of the shield.”
Roger entered the secured Titan site with Mason’s passcode and the screen filled with 17 separate orders dating back six months. Dr. Gustoff Kyser had ordered each of the trials from Titan. There was no fast way to determine which one was the shield composition.
Elliott looked at Benson, “I can’t possibly review all 17 of these myself in the amount of time we have. Have you requested a NASA astrophysicist to assist me yet?”
A female voice spoke from behind Elliott. “Did I hear a request for a NASA geek?”
Elliott spun around to face a young woman with a huge smile across her face. Her short, wispy cut, black hair framed her beautiful face with a halo of crazed spikes. She said, “I’m Dr. Sanford. You can call me Jules. What do ya say we crack this egg?”
*****
The International Security force, led by a team of CIA agents and agents from Interpol, entered the delivery bay wing of the Pal Expo Center in Geneva. The grounds and buildings are owned by the Swiss canton but a private business owns the facility rights. The entrance to the collider lab was an elevator marked as ‘Disabled’ in delivery bay fourteen.
For those staff familiar with underground lab requirements for a super collider, the trip to the bottom shaft was typical. For those officers that were there for the purpose of arresting the people associated with the lab, the trip was like descending into some science fiction version of hell. It was immediately obvious that the amount of planning and money required to establish this under one of the most popular locations in Geneva meant powerful people were involved. The Pal Expo hosted the largest tradeshows and conventions in the world.
Once the international team entered the lowest level of the lab, the NASA astrophysicist took charge. He introduced himself and ordered the most senior collider staff to cooperate. They watched as their coworkers were led out of the area in handcuffs. The NASA astrophysicists looked at the remaining three man team charged with monitoring the super collider.
“My name is Dr. Sherman. I would like to show you what you have done by initiating a flawed project.” He had opened a laptop that was displaying the satellite image of the ‘egg’. “This mass will generate a radioactive electromagnet beam to Earth unless we can discover a way to stop it.”
The three men leaned forward to view the screen. One by one their expressions of curiosity were replaced with looks of horror. They put their hands to their mouths as they gasped and returned their eyes to Dr. Sherman.
Dr. Sherman asked, “How long will it take to reproduce the data on the actual initiation?”
One of the men answered, “I have already done that, sir, for our reports.”
Dr. Sherman sighed with relief. “We need this sent to NASA immediately.”
He dialed Jules. “I’m at the Geneva super collider now. We’re going to transmit the collider’s data from the initiation. We should be able to measure the residual feed data Dr. Elliott needs by forwarding this to Titan.”
Jules gave Dr. Sherman a few more report requests and then sat next to Elliott. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Elliott loved Jules casual manner, it relaxed him instantly. “We want to re-excite the electromagnet plasma mass before it fully aligns. We hope to fragment or reverse the ions within the plasma and begin a cooling, instead of realigning. We also want to raise the ionosphere enough to initiate another, tighter shield that spans the entire globe to protect from the inevitable radioactive debris.”
Jules smiled, “That’s all?”
*****
The emergency room doctor told Dalton he needed to be hospitalized overnight. The bullet he took to his thigh had in fact been a through and through, but muscles had been damaged and the doctor was concerned about infection. Nick and Sophia stopped into Dalton’s treatment room before leaving the hospital.
Nick had bandages on his neck, over his ear, his left shoulder and a bandaged right hand. Sophia’s right arm was in a sling, she had a bandage on her neck and was using a crutch.
Dalton chuckled, “Every time I’m around you, I get shot.”
Nick smiled, “I could say the same thing.”
Dalton asked, “What happened to Mason?”
Sophia answered, “I shot him with a tranquilizer pellet. I’m sure he came to in a CIA interrogation room.”
Dalton winced as he raised the back of his bed a little more. “You guys are really mother and son?”
Nick grinned. “Yes. We’re heading back to Chicago now. The FBI jet is waiting, but we wanted to say goodbye.”
Dalton thought about what Chris and Elliott still had to do and said, “Give my best to Chris.”
“I will.”
Dalton watched Nick and Sophia make their way down the hall with two FBI escorts. Nick had his hand on the center of Sophia’s back. The dutiful son. Dalton knew that there was much more to their story then he would ever know. Nick and Sophia had not expected to see each other in Mason’s office. Dalton had felt the energy that had passed between them. He knew he had witnessed a very important moment.
A pretty young nurse walked in and announced she had something for Dalton’s pain and to help him sleep. Dalton thought about how little time they may all have and declined the medication. He looked out the hospital window at the blue skies and clouds. If these were his last hours, he wanted to savor every moment.
“Could you have someone wheel me outside instead, please?”
The nurse looked at him with surprise. “You want to go outside?”
“Yes. I want to breath the air, hear the birds, and watch the clouds.”
Dalton’s CIA guard nodded at the nurse and she left for a wheelchair.
The guard asked, “You don’t think Dr. Nobel can stop it?”
Dalton asked, “You know?”
The guard answered, “I think half of the CIA knows.”
Dalton answered, “Dr. Nobel is just a man. These crazies just attacked Mother Nature. I don’t know if anything can stop it.”
The guard took the wheelchair from the nurse and held out his arm for Dalton to use for leverage. “I’m with you. Let’s go listen to some birds.”
*****
Angel waited anxiously for Chris to finish his conference with Elliott and some NASA scientist the CIA had brought to Langley. She feared that her preliminary tests were run with too many variables to be useful. She felt as if she were wasting time, time that none of them had.
Elliott and Chris had developed a ‘what if’ module for their collider that they had used in the early days of the DIANA project. Angel typed in a collider speed that was double that of DIANA and hit enter. Her thoughts were to find the extreme and work her way backwards. The colorful graphs of the monitor spun for a few minutes and then appeared to have locked her processor.
“Damn it!” Angel pulled her long hair back from her face with her hands and shook the long ponytail behind her head in anger. “Don’t you dare lock up on me!” The graph quit spinning and displayed an error message: Error Number 14. Angel stared at it in disbelief. This program was now linked to the Titan processor and since Titan’s last upgrade the error messages were coded differently.
Angel looked over to Todd who was busy reviewing the last set of parameters Angel had given him. “Do you have the new Titan error code key?”
Todd said, “Yes, I’ll send it to you now.”
Angel said thanks and waited. Finally, her screen filled with a list of codes. Number 14 read “Security Clearance Inadequate”.
“Really?” Angel slammed her fist onto her table top. “Really?”
*****
Nick and Sophia were about twenty minutes into their flight home. Sophia told Nick how poorly the Federal Witness Protection Program really worked 25 years ago. She blamed Congress for underfunding the Bureau until the FBI took the lead in the fight against terrorism. She echoed what Phillips had said about too little attention and assets being allocated to organized crime. She even used the same phrase, “It isn’t the flavor of the month. Organized crime is getting stronger at an alarming rate.” She didn’t seem bitter, but Nick sensed she was more than ready to leave the life she had created in the FBI.
Sophia said, “It will never be done, Nick. But for me, the death of Dominick was my freedom call.”
Nick said, “I don’t mean to make you feel bad, but did you think of us often? Me and Dad?”
Sophia opened a file on her phone. She opened up a photo album and passed it to Nick. “These are what kept me going. Just swipe to the left.” Nick saw her discreetly brush a tear from her cheek.
The first picture was Nick in a Pee Wee baseball uniform. It was just after his mom left them because he remembered his coach encouraging him to channel his pain into performance.
“How did you get this picture?”
Sophia smiled, “I took all of the pictures. Keep looking… there are hundreds in there of you and your dad. I saw you both as often as I safely could. I couldn’t draw attention to you. Remember, the mob thought they had killed me in Arizona. As long as they thought I was dead, you were safe.”
Nick swiped a few more pictures. He knew he couldn’t speak now. He was reliving the memories in the photos and his throat had tightened. Outside Momma’s Sandwich Shop sweeping the sidewalk, she was there. His high school graduation, she was there. His induction into the Navy SEALS, she was there. Nick turned and gently hugged her battered body. “Dad always told me that you didn’t leave, you couldn’t stay. I didn’t understand when I was young. I understand now, Mom.”
Sophia kissed his cheek and smiled. “You look at the rest of your pictures. I’m going to close my eyes and thank the Lord for a while.”
*****
Mitch watched as Momma and Artie seemed lost in deep conversation over the meatball cooker. He wished he could hear what they were saying. It almost looked like Momma was going to cry. Mitch had grown to like Artie, in spite of his well-known reputation as a mob forger and felon. He made Momma laugh and he certainly helped out a lot at the sandwich shop.
Mitch guessed that Artie had been fairly savvy with the money he had made with the mob. He knew that Artie owned several properties in the city and had donated a large sum to the community of homeless that lived in the tunnels.
A customer came in and Mitch returned his attention to business.
Momma looked into Artie’s eyes. “You knew? All of these years, you knew Sophia was alive and that I was giving her information about Dominick’s crew?”
Artie smiled, “Of course I knew, dear. It took a while, but it was a process of elimination. Some secrets I only told you.”
Momma dabbed her eyes. “You must hate me. I never meant for any harm to come to you, Artie. You’re a good man. Sophia and I are like sisters. What Dominick did to her family…”
Artie gave Momma a hug. “I want Sophia to be with her family in peace now. I want that more than you will ever know, dear. Sophia did what she had to do. Her testimony didn’t put me in prison, I did. My actions caused my problems. In my way, helping you to help her, completed my restitution and allows both you and Sophia to move away from the past.” Artie hugged Momma tighter. “A person can surprise themselves with what they’re capable of doing to protect the ones they love.”
Momma pulled back and kissed Artie on the lips.
Artie finally felt Momma give him back the love that he knew was there all along.
Artie said, “I think we can celebrate taking our relationship to a new level, yes?”
Momma smiled and smoothed her dress over her hips. That was always her signal it was time to get back to work. “We got a lifetime to celebrate. These meatballs are going to burn if I don’t give them proper attention.”
Artie smiled, “I’m driving a housewarming gift to Frankie’s house in Michigan. He’s moving in today and I want to thank him for helping Lenny.”
Momma frowned, “I hope he didn’t help Lenny too much. That’s one man you don’t want to be beholden to.”
Artie nodded agreement. “Yes, dear.”
Mitch watched as Artie left through the back door. Momma started humming as she stirred the sauce into the meatballs. She seemed to be on cloud nine. Why was it he never seemed to quite know what was going on?
Zero Margin: Nick Stryker, Book Three The Shallow End Gals (Nick Stryker Series 3) Page 19