The Brad West Files

by Fritz Galt

  Where was the ticket money going anyway? It wouldn’t be long before massive inflation hit the nation.

  “I’ve got a ticket,” Brad cried, and tried to pierce the throng.

  He reached her and handed the boarding pass over the heads of a frantic family. She took it, examined it carefully, and let him through. The look on the small boy and girl he left behind nearly broke his heart.

  Yet when a flight attendant finally shut the cabin door on the mob, he squirmed into his coach seat and felt a sense of entitlement. He had jumped through all the hoops to buy the ticket. He was a better person than they were.

  What a lousy line of defense.

  He slouched down and rubbed his temples. He sat between two disheveled young men. Neither looked like he had been on an airplane before. On a normal flight, all three of them would be escorted off the plane as security risks. And he wouldn’t blame the airline.

  Passengers had crammed the overhead compartments full of the most important possessions they owned. He held his backpack tightly between his knees. That was all he owned, too.

  He examined the faces around him. Who were his fellow travelers and where did they think they were going? One typically saw all the stereotypes—the business traveler, the college student, the family going on vacation. What he saw now was definitely not the jet set. In fact, from the way they kept jumping out of their seats and otherwise violating airplane protocol, many had probably never flown before.

  It was hardest on him to watch the kids. On the one hand they were excited to be on an airplane, but what awaited them on the East Coast? Did they expect things to be normal there?

  An anthropologist might say that a great convergence was taking place. People were converging on other family members. People were returning to their clans. Distant aunts and uncles were being swamped by families, many of whom they had never met. And these clans were gathering around family money, whether it lay in real estate, possessions, or savings. Society was rapidly regressing to its pre-tribal past.

  When the flight took off, a hush fell over the cabin. Below them lay a darkened city, its once-busy arteries now empty of traffic. He closed his eyes and soaked up the breeze from his air vent. Something was new and invigorating about the experience. What was it?

  Oh yes. The air smelled clean. Now that he thought about it, his entire stay in Chicago had been one rich dose of oxygen. He gripped his backpack with its CIA reports inside. A trade embargo wasn’t the solution to terrorism, but it could reverse global warming.

  Trade embargo. National security. Climate change. He could only deal with one world crisis at a time. Just thinking about it increased his headache. He closed his eyes and tried to put his earthly cares aside for the next few hours.

  He was jolted awake by a pilot’s announcement. “We will begin our descent shortly.”

  Boy, that was fast. He looked beyond the nervous young man beside him. The sky had lost its blue glow and was turning yellow. Then a great gasp spread throughout the cabin. People pressed their faces to the windows.

  The city of Boston lay below, lit up like a telephone switchboard. Buildings were illuminated, streetlights were on, and vehicle headlights glared white and red. From a distance, it looked like the wave of panic from the west had yet to reach them. There was hope yet.

  But the swarm of people attempting to buy tickets out of Boston was just as large and frantic as that in Chicago. In fact, many were waiting to board his airplane that was scheduled to turn around and fly back to Chicago. If they expected to find a better life out there than in Boston, they were sadly mistaken. He felt like warning them not to go. But who can reason with a desperate person?

  Unlike O’Hare, Boston’s Logan Airport had an orderly line of taxis waiting to pick up fares and take them under the bay and into the city. How long would the patience hold out? How many would be surprised not to find gas at the pumps the next morning?

  Brad took advantage of the eerie calm and jumped in the first cab in line. He had never been to Boston before and only had a vague idea of the layout. And he had to get on the inside track, fast.

  “Take me to the hotel that’s nearest to Harvard.”

  Once they broke out of the Ted Williams Tunnel, he tried out his cell phone. It connected, so he rang his father up.

  Sullivan sounded angry. “Why has your phone been off all day?”

  “Dad, there’s no power in Chicago. The cell phone system is dead. Besides, I couldn’t have juiced my phone up if I wanted to. Then I was in the air. You’re not supposed to call from inside an airplane. Now I just came out of a tunnel. You know, you can’t make a call just anytime you feel like it.”

  “That bad in Chicago, huh?”

  “Worse than you can imagine. Well, thankfully I’m in Boston. And I’ll need your help setting up a meeting with someone at Harvard. I want to run your data past them and get a handle on who stands to gain most from the crisis.”

  “I’ll contact the chancellor tomorrow morning to set up a meeting.”

  “Great,” Brad said. “What have you learned in the past twenty-four hours?”

  “Well, aside from the fact that the trade embargos are still in effect and most of the other states have followed suit, our analysts have uncovered an interesting tidbit of information. China is undergoing a similar crisis.”

  “I could have told you that,” Brad said. “You should have seen the place when I left it.”

  “So that raises the question, who stands to gain there?”

  Good point. Normally one would expect the hardliners to take advantage of such a situation. The military leadership was always itching to exert more control and solidify their position in the government.

  President Qian was an old softie and sure to buckle under that kind of pressure. Brad remembered visiting the old lion along with May on several occasions. The guy wasn’t out of touch. But because of his age, he might not have the vigor and supporters to stop a palace coup.

  Brad took in the breathtaking scope of the scheme. “Liang stands to gain.”

  But why was Liang in the USA and not in Beijing, ready to step out of the shadows with a poison-tipped dagger? Instead, he was gallivanting around with someone else’s girl and her father somewhere in the American West.

  And who stood to gain on the American side of the pond? That half of the equation still made absolutely no sense. “Let me chew on it tonight, and I’ll let you know what they tell me at Harvard.”

  “Good luck, son.”

  Brad sensed that Sullivan wanted to emphasize how important the mission was, but Brad already had firsthand knowledge.

  “Talk to ya later.”

  He settled back in the taxicab and watched lights reflect off of Boston Harbor. Over two centuries ago, colonists had begun a similar embargo, forcing the British Navy to attack the port. In that day they embargoed tea and the issue was taxes. Now Americans embargoed everything, but over what issue?

  Would China launch an attack on the United States?

  The glider pitched backward to a forty-five degree angle. Beyond the drum of rain on the canopy, May heard fiberglass scrape against rocks and tree limbs. Two blackened tree trunks appeared on both sides. Her slide back toward the cliff was gaining momentum.

  She threw the radio off her lap, unbuckled her seatbelt, and opened the canopy. She tried to straighten up, but the glider shook as it slipped faster and faster. “Ay-yo!” She jammed a foot into the corner of the cockpit window, lifted a leg over the edge, and jumped for her life.

  Midair, she spotted a level spot between a pair of boulders. The impact nearly tore a heel off her cowboy boots, but her ski jacket cushioned the rest of the fall. She ended up in a patch of wet dust with her back against a sharp rock.

  “Ugh.”

  A final, terrible groan ripped the air. She sat up and watched her glider slip backwards and out of sight. Five seconds later, she heard the faint clatter of fiberglass smashing against the valley floor.

  Rain
slashed down on her. She closed her eyes and pulled her hat down low. A captain never liked to lose her vessel. Or her life.

  She took quick stock of her situation. She had abandoned Jade. She had lost track of her father and Liang. She was stuck on a mountaintop during an electrical storm. And darkness was closing in.

  First, she had to find shelter for the night.

  She rose unsteadily and worked the soreness out of her back. Through the steady patter on the brim of her hat, she made out several voices. She scrambled over rocks and headed through the blinding rain toward them.

  Could they be Liang and her father?

  She followed the rim of the cliff and closed in. There was a woman’s voice and those of two men. They were rushing about to set up camp before nightfall.

  “Hello, campers,” May said. She stood up to reveal her presence to them. “I am lost. Can I sleep with you?”

  They looked at each other, especially the men. “Hop in. The bed’s warm,” one of them said.

  The woman approached her with a kind smile. “Ignore him. You’re more than welcome. We have an extra tent.” She stared pointedly at the man, who reached into the trunk of their car and tossed May a heavy canvas sack.

  “Thank you so much.” She grabbed the tent and pulled it over to where the woman was setting hers up. The spot overlooked the cliff, but was far enough away from the men. “Is this acceptable?”

  “Of course,” the woman said, once again preoccupied with her work. “Pitch your tent and dry off inside. Once this storm passes, we can cook dinner.”

  That sounded good to her. She pulled the tent out of the sack and unrolled it. It had the same smell of mildew and canvas that tents in the People’s Liberation Army had each spring. “Why are you camping here?”

  The woman looked at her strangely. “Here’s as good a place as any. There’s no power and no more food in town.”

  To set her tent up, May had to repeatedly reposition it in order to pick up and toss away pinecones and small rocks. In the process, she pulled the tent away from the edge of the cliff. As it was, she would practically fall into the valley as soon as she emerged from the tent.

  Once she assembled the rods and drove in the stakes, she crawled inside for shelter from the rain. She took off her soaked parka, blouse and pants. Shivering, she wrung them out until they were merely damp. Then she leaned back and listened to the patter of rain and the nearby crackle of thunder. Wind blew her tent about like a child’s balloon, but her stakes held fast and the heat from her breath warmed the interior.

  After two hours of steady downpour and some close calls with lightning, it all came to a halt. She climbed back into her damp clothes and ventured outside. The sun was just breaking through the clouds on the horizon.

  “Wanna help cook?” one of the men called out to her.

  The other arrived at the campsite with an armful of wood for a fire.

  “Sorry we don’t have a wok.”

  May was already a member of the team. They didn’t question how she got there. The only sensible thing to do when times got rough was to return to the land.

  The man behind the car produced a Styrofoam cooler. He handed her various store-bought items, none of which May recognized.

  “I don’t know how to cook this,” she told him. She could barely make Brad a meal without burning something.

  “Just watch,” he said with a wink. “I’ll whip up a masterpiece.”

  Into a pot went eggs, hash brown potatoes and pieces of bacon. Intriguing, but not particularly appetizing. She watched as he slowly warmed the mixture over the smoky fire.

  “Grab that cheese, will you?”

  May found a packet. Not her favorite food in the world.

  The man threw in a handful of cheese.

  She began to feel queasy and had to find something to sit on. She pulled up a wet log. The fire finally took hold and started to dry her clothes out. But the food smelled awful, and she sought a way to cover her nose.

  “Now watch this.” The man pulled out several rounds of flat bread. Then he proceeded to slop the mixture onto the bread and fold it up. “Presto! Egg burritos.”

  May rose and tried to think up a way to politely refuse. But she couldn’t risk offending her hosts.

  “Thank you,” she said at last. She took the plate and casually strolled toward the edge of the cliff.

  The opposite rim seemed close enough that she could reach out and touch it. She felt once again like a pilot at high altitude, with a hazy blue sky between her and earth.

  Then she dumped the burrito into the canyon.

  Chapter 30

  Brad couldn’t help reflecting on the past as he sat in his hotel room in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Intellectual giants from all fields of academia had likely occupied the room at one time or another. It was a Tuesday morning in the Twenty-First Century, and he felt a shiver of greatness running through his body.

  He looked down at the paltry results yielded by the CIA’s computers. In Boston, a city of distinguished buildings that had lasted hundreds of years and on that venerable campus of great ideas tempered and tested by time, one person alone could make a difference. The statistics were only as important as his personal examination of them.

  The hotel’s radio clock gave him another hour before he had to leave for his appointment at the university.

  He rolled up his shirtsleeves and took a close look at the numbers. The skills he had developed as an anthropologist might yield some impressive results. He didn’t quibble with the percentage probability of positive outcomes for the futures traders and nations with extensive foreign holdings. But was the entire assumption wrong? Did a positive result indicate a deliberate attempt to achieve that result? Perhaps the attack on the U.S. economy was random or not designed to achieve economic gain. Didn’t that render the whole approach meaningless? And, taking that point one step further, perhaps the irrational nature of the attack indicated the lack of a perpetrator. Was America fighting a ghost?

  An hour later, he carried his handwritten notes and the CIA data into the chambers of the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

  “Sir, I’ve got a problem here.”

  “I see,” the dean said, and began to examine the data and Brad’s handwritten notes.

  He didn’t seem moved by the data or their implications as put forward in Brad’s analysis. Instead he looked out his window at the Dunkin’ Donuts sign above the Elliot Street Café as if it were more interesting.

  “Well?” Brad said. “What do you make of this?”

  The dean yawned.

  “Don’t you find it interesting?”

  “Not especially. I don’t see much unique in the research. It looks like a theory any junior college dropout could write.”

  Brad stared at the upper class twit in the cardigan sweater. “Do I detect a touch of elitism here? This isn’t the time for that. We’re talking about the future of the country.”

  “Young man, forces as trivial or unpredictable as the weather affect the future of mankind. What doesn’t shape our future? What I need to see is a new idea. A new way to grasp what our future holds. What I see here is mundane detective work.”

  Of course. That was what he had been doing. That was what all good scientists did. It was also the stock and trade of intelligence agencies. “Doesn’t it all begin with detective work?”

  “Harvard isn’t a crime lab. We don’t deal in minutiae such as these data. We might argue over the validity of your data, but essentially we deal with pure theory, new ways of understanding the universe.”

  Brad was still confused. “If this doesn’t grab you, what would?”

  “Oh,” the dean said with a flippant air. “Perhaps the fact that those figures show a gain in the short term for some financial entities, but those same players stand to lose the most in the long run.”

  Brad was floored. With one stroke of genius, the dean had cut through all the data before him. No trader or nat
ion stood to gain from the economic crisis in the long run. It had taken Brad two continents, several days and inspiration in his sun-drenched hotel room to reach even half the conclusion. But the dean had arrived at it quickly and put it succinctly.

  Brad snatched the pages away. “Thank you, sir.” He stuffed them back in the envelope.

  Like a lowly toad, he shuffled away from the great man. Only later when he came to a circular staircase did he slow down. His feet landed heavy and flat on each stone step. For the first time in his life, he was struck with the possibility that his academic life had been built on an illusion. He didn’t have the mental capacity to grasp abstract ideas in their totality.

  The dean was right to put him in his place.

  Brad returned devastated to his hotel room. His inquiry and theories had been shot down by yet another smug academician. He had let his father down. He had traveled to three major universities and gotten nowhere with the data.

  He leaned back in a parlor chair by his window and pulled out the list. He was done pursuing the first two targets on the list—futures traders and foreign countries with large holdings abroad. For their own esoteric reasons, the institutions of higher learning had snubbed his data.

  He had to turn to the third-most likely force behind the crisis: political opposition within America.

  If you take your sense organs seriously, you must turn on, tune in and drop out.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he said aloud.

  It’s an expression…

  Brad’s eyes fell on the television remote. Okay, he’d turn on and tune in. The station was rerunning the same porn movie from the night before. He switched to Fox News. What was their take on the disaster besetting the nation?

  He watched several correspondents report from around the country. They described much of what he had witnessed in the central and western states. The sad tales and doleful voices only served to help the nation further wallow in its collective misery.