Inside the restaurant Beto said, “Twenty-eight years married and living at the estate. Man, you were there six years before I was even born.”
“Gee, they got quite a selection here,” said Henry. “What’re you having?”
Beto told the girl at the register, “I’ll have the chargrilled chicken sandwich, the waffle potato fries, and a medium Coke, please.”
“I got these,” said Henry to the girl as he pulled out his wallet. “I’ll have the chicken Caesar cool wrap with the fries and a medium Coke. No dressing on the wrap; put it in a cup on the side.”
Beto followed Henry to a table. Henry wiped off the table with a napkin.
“Yeah, it’s been good mostly, but sometimes really difficult, you know?” Henry said. “I guess I’m what they call obsessive-compulsive. I like everything in order, nice and neat. I hate chaos. And everything at Cielavista is one surprise after another. It’s like a real-world fun house. So I need some time away, you know, without all that supernatural drama.
“Man this wrap is great, and these fries. Good choice, Beto.”
They finished their meal and got back on the interstate.
“Beto, I feel like that place is a high-security prison, and you know what’s the really sad part?”
“No, what’s that?” Beto sipped his Coke through the straw and gazed out the windshield.
“I’m my own warden.”
“How’s that?” Beto said.
“I have accepted all the constraining conditions Gabriella and Sandy put on me. Then instead of just turning the key and changing the conditions, I keep myself locked up.”
“Good thing you’re not living in New Hampshire.”
“Why’s that?” said Henry.
“You ain’t living free, man, you’d be dead.” Beto snorted Coke through his nose when he laughed.
“I was gonna ask you something, and I hope it doesn’t make you angry, Henry,” Beto said cautiously.
“What?” Henry looked over at Beto.
“How long’ve you had this angel hanging around?”
“What did you say?” Henry pulled over onto the shoulder of the interstate and stopped the SUV.
“The angel. He’s been following us the whole way. How long have you had him?”
Henry put the vehicle in park and turned in the driver’s seat to face the young Hispanic gardener. He stared accusingly into Beto’s eyes for several minutes.
“What angel?” Henry asked through his growing rage.
“Hey, I’m sorry, but I was kinda curious. Not everyone I know has special forces angel like this one that’s flying around the car all the time. He’s not mine, so he must be yours.”
“See,” Henry’s voice heated up, “that’s exactly what I’m talking about: all this mysterious insanity going on that I can’t see but everyone else can. How can you see this angel, Beto?”
“Look, I have the same vision that my Uncle Carlos has. I can’t help it. Don’t blame me, man. I won’t mention it again, trust me.”
Henry peered through the windshield into the sky over the interstate. “His name is supposed to be Tobias, kind of a second-string type angel, not as powerful as the big guys, I guess. I’m told that I can order him around, get him to help me out. Where is he?”
“I think he’s still back there at Chic-fil-A talking to that counter girl. Apparently she can see angels too.”
“Great, my angel’s a flirt,” said Henry and he put the Tahoe in drive, spun the tires in the gravel, and fishtailed onto the driving lane, causing a BMW to honk and swerve around him.
They crossed the bridge over the Piscataqua River into Maine. Beto pointed to the “Welcome to Maine” sign.
“Now there’s a motto we can live with,” he said. “‘Welcome to Maine, the way life should be.’”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Frances O’Donnelly pulled the lever on the leather recliner in her suite. The view out her balcony—autumn hills layered beyond the valley splashing gold, red, orange, and green against an amber sky—offered Frances a temporary sense of luxurious ease. She was well aware that tomorrow augured violence and trauma. She hoped that Anna Stone’s presence could somehow assuage her anxiety about the impending conflict.
There was a knock on her door. “Come on in,” she called.
Frances’ administrative assistant, Monica Browers, opened the door for Anna.
“Anna, come over here,” said Frances. “I’d get up, but I’m slightly buzzed by some wonderful wine, and I had a long, luxurious massage and a steam bath. I have all the strength of overcooked macaroni. How was your trip from Arkansas?”
“Oh, you know, just the normal routine—got picked up at the house by a private limo, driven to an executive airport in Little Rock I had no idea existed, then the flight in your jet with Monica, who is lovely by the way. Enjoyed a nice cocktail and appetizers on the flight and then a comfortable ride in a private car here to the Canyon Ranch—nothing out of the ordinary for this country girl.”
Anna’s sweet laugh swept through the suite.
“Well, Anna, your rooms are across the hall, so get settled in, put on some sweats, and come on over. Would you like me to order anything? Are you hungry?”
“I’d love some kind of dessert,” Anna said. “Do you suppose they could put together some pie and ice cream?”
Frances ordered Anna’s dessert from room service. As soon as she hung up the phone it rang. She picked up the receiver again, “Hello, this is Frances,” she said.
“It’s Romano Goldstein. We have to talk. It’s about Akebe. It’s bad.” Frances detected both fear and assertiveness in Romano’s tone.
“I’ll meet you in your suite in half an hour, okay?” answered Frances, forming a quick action plan in her mind.
“Good. Number 15A. See you at seven.” He hung up.
Frances asked Anna to sit on the couch next to her. They took their time with the tea and pie à la mode.
“This is even better than my mother’s apple pie, and she makes the best,” said Anna. “So what am I doing here?”
“Anna, I’m attending an important board meeting. I was hoping I could talk with you and get your moral support because the fireworks will be overwhelming. You and I have formed some kind of bond, and I find a tremendous amount of strength from our friendship. I hope I haven’t inconvenienced you. I’m so grateful that you could give me this time. You may have to sit around and just chill out, not knowing when I’ll be needing you.”
“Are you in trouble, Frances?”
“Not really. Just conflicted. The work of this executive board will improve life in American forever. Our operations are highly classified, but I can tell you that we control thousands of prominent American leaders. We are a small group of highly enlightened, powerful people. For years I have been convinced that we were on the right track, but after meeting you and having those powerful experiences with you, my mind has been in turmoil.”
“Sure, Frances. I’ll be able to occupy myself while you are busy in your meetings. If you don’t mind, I’ll be praying for you.”
“Pray? Well, if I did mind, what could I do about it?” Frances smiled. “I have a meeting. See you later.”
Frances got up and gave Anna a kiss on the forehead and left her there in her suite.
Anna rested her head back on the couch. Strange, untapped mental powers flowed from some divine source into her soul like waves of cosmic rivers. She felt exhilarated that her humanity was being expanded beyond her body, beyond the visible realm, enabling her to see the unseeable and understand the unfathomable.
Anna felt like a radio—receiving transmissions, processing them, and transmitting them. Now she was receiving supernatural wisdom, not for her but for Frances. She felt the waves passing into her that transformed into specific thoughts for Frances to use in her conversations. Anna shut her eyes and realized that Frances was unaware of the spiritual forces acting in and around her.
Frances knew Romano’s backg
round. His parents—German Jews hidden in Amsterdam when the Nazis occupied Holland—smuggled the two-year-old Romano out of the country in a crate bound for America. A friendly Dutch merchant arranged the trip and once out of port, he recovered the baby and found a place for him to live in New York. The parents eventually died in Auschwitz. Romano employed his superior intellect, his drive, and his diverse skills to become one of America’s leading psychologists. Although he focused most of his time researching treatments of posttraumatic stress disorder, he still saw a few selected patients, all young combat veterans.
Frances knocked on the door of room 15A. Romano held out his hand toward the inner room for her to come in. He was short and chubby, always a meticulous dresser, his white hair combed back from a narrow forehead. His intelligent eyes were almost black. Tonight he was wearing a dark blue dress shirt with topaz cufflinks, tan worsted slacks, and light tan alligator slippers.
“Oh, my,” the calm doctor sighed, “my dear Frances, we have a sticky problem on our hands and I know the two of us are more than capable of solving it. Would you like some wine, dear?”
“Sure, Romano—thanks,” said Frances, taking a seat on the couch near the window that looked out over the deck. She felt her body shutter. She received a flash of a vision in her head. Whispers of disturbing secrets swirled through her subconscious. She grasped the stem of the wineglass Romano was handing her.
Romano sipped from his glass and seemed to savor the taste and feel of the Chablis. “They really know how to treat their guests here, don’t they, dear? I will certainly return to this ranch with my wife when I have some time. If I ever have some time,” he said.
“Romano, did you know Andrew would be coming here tomorrow?” Frances imparted a bit of the new knowledge she was receiving to Romano. “Akebe never calls Andrew to board meetings. It’s a terrible breach of operational security. Akebe must have something demonic in mind.”
“You know, my dear, the kind of research I do?” Romano asked.
“Yes, you are a psychologist, and a world renowned psychologist at that. You do a lot of work with PTSD patients, right?”
“Well, yes, and Akebe is showing classic symptoms.”
Frances was surprised. “Akebe? Symptoms of what, Doctor?”
“When a man demonstrates such drastic change in behavior, as we are witnessing here today, that’s a sign that he has cracked under stress. We know Akebe, always aggressive and acerbic in his actions and his speech. For him that’s normal. This pleasant composure, this relaxed attitude, is a symptom. In all my years with the Directorate, I performed an extensive psychological profile on Akebe. I know that his life story is infested with hundreds of traumatic episodes. He manages to function, but he can only suppress those emotional injuries so long. He has never sought treatment. He has never dealt with any of his past trauma and now the effects of all his emotional wounds have surfaced. He is operating in a state of volatile agitation. He’s a time bomb ready to explode, and I believe he will be exploding tomorrow.”
“I have complete faith in your assessment, Doctor. And I have a strong intuition that Andrew’s presence at this conference is connected to Akebe’s unstable frame of mind,” said Frances. “So what are we to do?”
“That’s why I asked you to meet with me,” said Doctor Romano Goldstein.
Firdos leaned against the front fender of the Ford 250 truck that his boss was repairing. He wiped his greasy hands on the new green overalls with his name stitched over the right breast pocket.
“Hand me that three-eight socket with the extension, Firdos.” The voice came from under the wheel well of the truck where Dick was draining the brake fluid.
Firdos turned to the rolling toolbox, opened the drawer, and found the three-eight socket and the extension for the wrench Dick was using under the vehicle and he handed it to him.
The Directorate had arranged for Firdos’ job at Dick’s Auto Repair in Neddick, Maine. Carlene Wood and Randal Sanford managed every detail of his new life. He quit questioning.
Randal told him that Carlene’s Delta Squad would be located nearby and she would be contacting him. Firdos thought of her as the vanilla lady. Her sweet aroma lingered in his olfactory gland and his mind.
Firdos liked this job. It gave him plenty of time off to observe the comings and goings of the folks around Cape Neddick. His magnet of a brain had recorded and catalogued hundreds of faces, cars, boats, and places in his new place of work. As he stood by the Ford’s fender, he watched Route 1A and the occasional vehicle that passed by. In October all the summer tourists in this beach town were long gone and over half of the businesses were boarded up, waiting for spring.
There’s a new one. A black Chevy Tahoe with two guys in the front seat. Firdos’s mental video camera recorded the SUV and the faces. He was transfixed by a swirl of wind making the leaves dance across the yard chasing the starlings out of the oak tree. The gentle whirlwind followed the Tahoe north on Route 1A toward Neddick Harbor. For some reason Firdos detected a peculiar significance about these two men. The hair on the back of Firdos’s neck stood up and he felt a pang of fear in his gut. He had to call Carlene.
It took Andrew Johansen less than a day-and-a-half to outfit the Ford Transit van as a mobile operations center—tall enough to stand up in and roomy enough for all his equipment. On one side he bolted a swivel chair and a narrow counter where he secured five laptop computers, and on the opposite wall he built a shelf for satcom receivers and radio transmitters. Above that he mounted a large flat screen. In this command-center-on-wheels he drove from Missouri to Massachusetts in three days, maintaining his supervision of the operations of his six squads in the field.
As he rolled down the long driveway off Route 7 in Lenox, Massachusetts, toward the Canyon Ranch Resort, he listened to his squad leader on the East Coast, Carlene Wood. She had just held a meeting with her squad. Andrew read her Situation Report, pleased that she followed his precise format. The Directorate’s communications network was secure. Anyone trying to listen in on the conversation would hear only static and garbled noise.
Carlene’s voice in Andrew’s earpiece: “SITREP. Paragraph one: All friendly forces in place and operational. Five seers, three operators. Paragraph two: Current operations ongoing, seers one and two have identified four new targets, profiles in annex 1, seer three reconnoitering southern New Hampshire, no new targets thus far, seer four reports that target number 0925 is isolated for elimination.
“Paragraph three: Operator Green Arrow and Blue Wolf are staging to remove target 0925 at your command. Operator Red Falcon is in direct support of seer five, see annex 2.
Paragraph four: Request one-on-one meeting to discuss our need for reinforcements.
End of SITREP, date stamp: 10OCT2015.”
“SITREP received, Carlene,” said Andrew. “I will review the recorded version immediately. I will respond within the hour. Out.” And he clicked off the radio, terminating the connection.
Andrew pulled into the lot at the east end of Bellefontaine Mansion and parked the van so he could give his full attention to his squad leader’s report. Oblivious to the beauty and luxury that surrounded him at the Canyon Ranch, he toggled his control switch to computer number four. The computer decrypted and recorded Carlene’s report. Andrew gave a voice command into the audio reader, “Start with annex 2.” The computer’s voice read the document into Andrew’s earpiece.
“Firdos Gaffardi, seer number five, Delta Squad, is observing the new location of FITO in Neddick, Maine. He reports human enemy activity in that location but has not determined their identity. He also reports telekinetic activity streaming from that location. BREAK.
“Director Randal Sanford has met with Firdos, against my instructions. Randal reports that FITO may be attempting to divert attention away from their previous location in the vicinity of Gloucester, Massachusetts. Thus raising the question: is FITO operating from two locations, have they moved, or are they using the Neddick location as a
decoy?
“Request you attach two squads to my operational control to gain more accurate intelligence about this high-priority target. End of Annex 2. BREAK.”
Andrew sat back in his chair and studied his map of the Atlantic coast north of Boston that included Cape Ann in Massachusetts and Cape Neddick in Maine. Carlene’s report confirmed his own conclusions about FITO’s location or locations: either they moved or they are operating in two locations, or the new location is a decoy. His next course of action took shape in his mind. All-out-war against FITO.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Henry and Beto reached the home of Beto’s cousin at 9:00 p.m. They had turned off Route 1A onto Agamenticus Avenue and followed the narrow road up the hill overlooking Neddick Harbor. They passed large stately homes with spacious lawns on both sides of the road.
“Up there on the right,” Beto said. “That’s the driveway.”
Henry pulled into the cobblestone driveway that ended in a large circular parking lot between a three-car garage and the side of a Dutch colonial house. He turned off the engine and they got out and walked up the stairs to the wraparound porch at the rear of the home. Beto rapped on the door. As they waited on the porch, Henry looked down the hill to the boathouse and the slip where the fishing boat was moored.
“That looks like a nice boat, Beto. Are we taking that one?”
Beto looked down where Henry was looking. “Yep, that’s it. ‘Water Walker.’”
“Hi guys,” the voice from the house greeted them through the screen door. “Come on in.”
“Hola, my brother,” said Beto, and he gave their host a bear hug. “How are you?”
“Good to see you, Beto. And this must be Henry—hello and welcome. I hope you will enjoy the boat. I’m sorry I can’t join you. I’ll be taking off in the morning for business in New York.”
Beto said, “Henry, this is my cousin, Luis Santiago. Luis, my friend, Henry.”
Henry said, “Hello, Luis,” and shook his hand. “Well, we are very grateful for your generosity, Luis. You have quite a place here.”
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