Cold Glory

by B. Kent Anderson

  * * *

  Nick Journey and Sandra Kelly walked down the stairs and out of Cullen Hall into the bright September sunshine. As they did, a tall young man with a blond buzzcut, sitting in an armchair in the lounge area on the first floor pulled out a cell phone. He spoke quietly to his counterpart, who was leaning against an elm thirty feet from the front steps. The man outside watched the two professors as they passed, then snapped his own phone closed.

  Journey and Kelly cleared the common, with its towering oaks and elms and its “memory garden” of wildflowers. Uncle Charley’s, a campus institution that had been serving burgers and beer for half a century, sat diagonally across Whitesell Boulevard from the main gates of the college. One minute later, they were ordering lunch. Across the street, at a metered parking space, a man in the driver’s seat of a navy blue Chevy Suburban spoke into a cell phone. “He’s now off campus. Move in.”

  The young man in the lobby of Cullen Hall closed his phone, stood up, and headed to the stairs. Half a minute later, the one from outside joined him. Less than ninety seconds after the man in the Suburban had spoken, the other two were inside Nick Journey’s office.

  In three minutes, they called the man in the Suburban. “It’s not here,” said the one who’d been stationed outside. “He must have it with him.”

  “Acknowledged. Were you seen?”

  “Negative. The hallway’s empty.”

  “Good. Get out of there. They went to the diner across the street. I’ll establish surveillance there.”

  The man in the car was a little older than the other two, wearing jeans, a polo shirt, and sneakers. He left the Suburban, turned the corner, and walked into Uncle Charley’s. He spotted Journey and the red-haired woman three booths back from the counter. A waitress had just brought their food—an enormous cheeseburger with a side order of grilled jalapeño peppers for Journey, an equally substantial salad for the woman. The man glanced at their table once as he passed. The plastic sleeve rested on the table, Journey’s right hand on top of it, as if he expected it to try to escape.

  He went to the counter and ordered a cheeseburger to go. When it arrived, he took the white foam container and walked past the two professors again. They were eating, Journey’s elbow resting on the page. Journey looked up as the man passed and for an instant their eyes met. The man from the Suburban shifted his eyes away to the sleeve. He saw the faded seal—the swords, the star, the eagle embossed in deep red.

  Journey moved around a little, covering the page with his arm. The man from the Suburban walked outside and returned to his vehicle. His two associates were waiting for him.

  “He’s keeping it with him,” the man said. “Let’s go back over his schedule.” He looked at the other two. “We’re going to go operational. We have to take it from him.”

  “He’s not going to want to give it to us,” said one of the others.

  “Our orders are clear. We do whatever it takes.”

  CHAPTER

  3

  Journey lingered over his burger, Sandra picked at her salad, and the two of them talked about their colleague who was on sabbatical in England, about students who annoyed them, students they liked. Sandra didn’t press him about the document, for which he was grateful. It was a welcome respite from all the hype surrounding it, and he sensed she knew it. It was almost two o’clock when they left Uncle Charley’s.

  Journey didn’t have another class until evening, so he picked Andrew up from school and headed to his home, a brick 1930s Tudor six blocks from campus. Andrew wasn’t especially vocal today, which was good—he’d been screaming a lot lately. He was also likely to break into hysterical laughter at any moment, and it was far different from his genuine, happy laughter. Today’s sound, though, was whistling, the same three notes in the same pattern over and over again. Repetitive behaviors were one of the hallmarks of Andrew’s autism. Journey thought of his finger taps—always the left index finger, always three times. Maybe he shared more with his child than he thought he did. The idea gave him a little comfort. Many times a day, he felt he never reached Andrew at all, that nothing he did made the least difference, so he took his common ground wherever he could find it.

  He changed Andrew’s diaper. Changing diapers on a boy who was five feet six presented its own set of challenges, but it had become so routine to Journey that he occasionally let himself forget that parents of other twelve-year-olds didn’t have to do this several times a day. He rolled a ball back and forth with the boy for a few minutes; then Andrew grew tired of that and wandered off in search of a straw and a pencil, which he would beat together in rhythm for hours on end, if left to do so.

  Journey checked e-mail, thought about working on his journal article, and didn’t have the heart for it. He looked at the Fort Washita document again. What did it mean? Some 1865-vintage lunatic fringe stockpiling weapons to assassinate the president, the Speaker of the House, and the chief justice of the Supreme Court?

  The line at the bottom, scrawled more hastily but in the same handwriting, was nonsense. The Poet’s Penn. Penn with the double n. A reference to Pennsylvania? William Penn? Journey could think of nothing that coincided with the Civil War references.

  Before he knew it, two hours had slipped away and he needed to get ready for class. The sitter, a special education major from the college, was on time and Journey said good-bye to Andrew. As usual, he had to say the boy’s name several times to get a fleeting second’s eye contact, and then Andrew pushed his flat hand forward in a sharp, jerky movement, his version of a good-bye wave.

  He was almost late for class, which wasn’t unusual. The class ran from five thirty until nine o’clock, an upper-division course called Congress in the Civil War. He had only eight students, and the discussions were lively and challenging. He hated the scheduling of it, but intellectually it was the high point of his week.

  At a few minutes after nine, he walked upstairs to his office, intending to check e-mail and phone messages before leaving campus for the night. He pulled up short, three steps from his door.

  It was slightly ajar.

  Journey looked up and down the hall. He was alone. No other office doors were open. His was the only class that met in the building this evening.

  He stepped into the office. His laptop was on the floor, the screen shattered. His desk was clear—all the papers had been swept onto the floor. The single drawer of his desk was pulled open. His file folders had all been opened. Student assignments covered his chair. Books had been ripped from the tiny shelf. His pictures of Andrew were all askew. The one of a smiling three-year-old Andrew, in a gold oval frame, was cracked. The fissure in the glass slashed directly across the boy’s face.

  He heard a footstep somewhere down the hall.

  Journey turned halfway around, as abruptly as if someone had pulled him by the shoulder.

  Another step. Cullen Hall was an old building with tile flooring in all the offices and hallways. Footsteps were always magnified, and there was a standing departmental joke that one person walking down the hall sounding like the entire student body stampeding.

  Journey reached for his phone and punched 2-3-4-5, campus security. “This is Nick Journey, history department. My office … someone broke into my office.”

  The young male voice said, “What room, Dr. Journey?”

  “Cullen Hall. Two-oh-three.”

  “We’ll be right there.”

  Journey stepped into the hallway. It seemed darker, the walls closer, the air stifling. “Hello?” he said to the walls.

  There was the noise again, from the direction of the stairs. Three offices were between here and there, plus restrooms at the top of the stairway. He took a few more steps, a fast walk, then almost a jog.

  He turned back toward the hall. It was empty, dark. He’d never realized what an isolated cave of a place Cullen Hall was at night after classes were over.

  Journey tightened his grip on his backpack strap, flexed his hands, and put a foot on
the top stair.

  * * *

  The three field operatives had moved from their base in Dallas into Carpenter Center, armed with a thorough dossier on Nick Allen Journey, Ph.D. The young man who had watched from the common as the target and Sandra Kelly walked to lunch eight hours ago was in an alcove just off the stairs at the opposite end of the building from Journey. His code name was Silver, and his backpack lay at his feet. He withdrew a Heckler & Koch MK 23 Mod 0, the pistol adopted by the United States Army Special Operations Command for Special Forces use in the 1990s. It came with a suppressor, which was already in place. Silver’s field counterpart, code name Gold, was positioned outside, armed with an identical weapon.

  The Judge’s orders were very specific. The document was of paramount importance. Nick Journey was not deemed automatically expendable, but if the situation warranted, extreme measures were authorized, if it meant acquiring the document.

  Silver peeked from his alcove. Journey had started tentatively down the opposite stairs. He held his gun in front of him, arms extended, elbows tucked in, ready to fire, and started down the stairs.

  * * *

  Where the hell are the cops?

  SCCO was a small college in a small town, and real crime was rare, especially on campus. Journey wasn’t certain they would even have procedures in place for dealing with breaking and entering.

  He paused halfway down the stairs, listening. Now the acoustics of this old building were playing tricks on him. The noise seemed to come from somewhere else. His hands closed on the plastic bag. He jogged down the rest of the steps and half turned toward the opposite end of the building.

  A man not much older than some of his students, in nondescript jeans and polo shirt, had just stepped onto the floor at the other side. His hands moved strangely, and Journey followed the motion. He saw the gun. He spun toward the front of the building and ran.

  * * *

  Silver adjusted the ultraslim headset that curled around his right ear and down to his mouth, then spoke into the little microphone. “Moving as expected. He’s heading toward the front door. Stay in position.”

  He started to run in long, loping strides. Ahead, he saw the overweight middle-aged professor disappear around the corner of the wall that ran toward the front of Cullen Hall.

  Silver smiled.

  * * *

  Think! Journey screamed inwardly.

  There was a man with a gun in the building, coming for him. Coming for the document he carried in his backpack—this was no random campus break-in. He still didn’t understand the significance of what he carried, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

  But it doesn’t make sense at all. Cryptic words about the Civil War and “clauses” and heads of government being removed by “conspiratorial means” and nonsense words about water falling and the strong bending. It was incomplete—there had to be more to it.…

  They may think I have more than I do. Whoever they are.

  The man with the gun moved closer, and Journey was already out of breath. Fifteen years removed from his days as a minor league baseball player—and not a very good one at that—and his idea of exercise now was chasing Andrew to make sure the boy didn’t run into traffic.

  Andrew.

  Journey blinked. Part of having a child with special needs, especially a child who was nonverbal, was anticipating what he was about to do, to figure out if he was about to hurt himself or someone else. It was like chess, always thinking one and two and three moves ahead as to what Andrew was going to do.

  The man with the gun was herding him outside. The campus would be almost deserted by now. If he had come for the Fort Washita documents, he wouldn’t be alone. He would have another man stationed somewhere else.

  Right outside the front door.

  As he laid his hand on the glass front door of Cullen Hall, Journey turned away from it just as quickly. Three feet from him was a dark opening that led down a long wheelchair ramp and out a side entrance. Several students had complained about the poor lighting. Journey was thankful that maintenance hadn’t yet gotten around to replacing the lights.

  He dodged into the hallway.

  * * *

  Gold waited at the foot of the rock steps that led outward from Cullen Hall. He also held a backpack, one hand wrapped around its strap, the other hand buried inside, grasping his own H&K pistol.

  He was on full alert following Silver’s transmission. He caught movement ahead of him, inside the building, but just a flash, a small glint in the lobby lights, and then nothing. Seconds later, Silver swung open the glass door at the top of the steps and shouted, “Where is he?”

  Gold dropped the backpack, the pistol coming up in his hand. “He didn’t come out!”

  “Shit,” Silver muttered. “He must have turned at the last second and I didn’t see him. He has to be…”

  Both men turned, their highly trained senses hearing the sound at the same time. Gold pointed with his gun, around the side of the building. They broke into an instant run.

  * * *

  Journey skidded at the foot of the ramp, just long enough to slap the blue and white wheelchair symbol with the palm of his hand. It took three excruciating seconds for the door to begin swinging outward, the mechanism grinding slowly.

  Now I know why the students in wheelchairs get upset, he thought. The door opened a few inches. He got his fingers around the edge and put his shoulder against the glass. It opened a little more, inch by maddening inch. Journey put his entire body into it and slammed against the door.

  The opening widened, but then as if in rebellion against unwanted attention, swung back a few inches. Journey kicked at the bottom and twisted his body through the opening into the warm night air.

  A wide sidewalk bisected two lines of grass on this side of the building. On the far side of the second strip of green was Howell Hall, the science building, with an identical door and wheelchair ramp. Journey looked right. The sidewalk ran between Cullen and Howell and emptied into a parking lot. Diagonally across the lot was the field house.

  Yes, Journey thought. Phys ed students, not to mention some of the varsity athletes, often worked out late into the evenings. Staff was in the building until midnight, and security was nearby.

  He ran toward the lights of the parking lot.

  CHAPTER

  4

  The Judge sat in his study, with the smell of wood and leather and good whiskey, and watched his computer screen as the events in Oklahoma unfolded before him in real time.

  Amazing, he thought. The Internet has created possibilities that are endless. The information, the communication, the data …

  Still, he found it rather ironic that all the information technology in the world had not been able to find the document the Glory Warriors sought for all these years. That had come down to something as mundane as digging a hole in the earth. Perhaps the equipment was different, but the act itself was as old as humanity.

  He sat straight in his leather chair, watching the monitor. All the field operatives had wireless cameras mounted on their headsets, the images uploaded to a secure server and broadcast to the Judge’s computer. All the teams were coded as Gold, Silver, and Bronze, with further designations for their base and ranking. This was the top team from Dallas Base, known as Dallas One.

  The men’s motions were jerky as they ran, and of course, the lighting was poor, but the Judge could see the outline of Nick Journey as Dallas One Gold turned the corner between the two buildings. The men were equipped with all the information available on Journey, and now he must let them do their jobs. They had been well trained, and a paunchy professor with high blood pressure was no match for the Glory Warriors.

  He had been patient long enough. They had all waited too long. The Judge could taste success, as clearly as he had tasted the fine Thomas H. Handy rye whiskey in a glass at his elbow. He had put Dallas One into motion, and other teams were moving into position to orchestrate the remaining components of the mi
ssion.

  The Judge watched as Nick Journey’s outline disappeared into the parking lot.

  * * *

  With his gun hand, Dallas One Gold waved Silver around the other side of Howell Hall. He had seen where Journey was going, making for the parking lot. They would come at him from both sides of the science building. Gold would be in the parking lot in fifteen seconds. Journey would be in the open, and the lighting would be better.

  * * *

  Journey’s lungs were on fire, his legs wobbling as he stepped out from between Cullen and Howell. He heard only one set of steps behind him. No doubt the other man was circling in from another direction, trying to trap him.

  He bounded into an oval of light in the first row of parking spaces, steadying himself against a light pole as a campus police car, lights flashing, pulled into the far corner of the lot. He waved his arms. The police car angled toward him.

  The car skidded to a stop, sideways across three parking spaces. The officer was barely older than some of Journey’s students.

  The kid’s name tag read P. PARSONS. “Dr. Journey?” he said. The drawl was pure Oklahoma. “Why didn’t you stay—?”

  “Guns,” Journey whispered. “Two men.” He sank down alongside the concrete support of the light pole.

  “What?” said Officer Parsons, his glance moving from Journey to the space between the two buildings. He stepped into the space where Journey had been standing a second ago.

  Gold closed to within a hundred feet of him. Sighting the H&K’s laser aiming module, and well within the pistol’s range, he gave a gentle squeeze to the trigger, and the shot caught Officer Parsons just above his name tag.