“Joey, I have been trying to reach you; I decided to take the package.”
Joey was shocked. “Why?”
“Its… it’s just time, that’s all.”
He thought she was going to blurt out that she was pregnant or getting married. He found himself oddly angry. “You are going to dump your career now, for no reason, when you are having corn flakes with the president?”
“I know it doesn’t seem to make sense, but Joey, like I told Bill, the events of the last few months have really started me thinking. I don’t know, maybe it’s also evolution catching up with me, but I don’t want it any more. I don’t want to be blown off boats or exploding tanker trucks or become shark appetizer or have to make believe a master terrorist doesn’t scare the shit out of me while I am working him for information. I am done with the risk, the uncertainty, and the denial of what everyone else takes for granted.”
Joey softened, “Those are good reasons. But why wouldn’t you consider a leave or sabbatical? Take some time to get your life where you want it and then come back?”
Brooke looked at Joey; she genuinely respected and cared for him. She owed her rise in the Federal Boys Club of Investigation to his guidance and his taking her under his wing. What he was now asking her to do was exactly what he had done. That might work for him, but she was sure it wasn’t a life plan for her. Yet she didn’t want to attack his choices, so instead she said, “Joey, whatever it was that made me love the job, it’s gone! It’s not like something else is gnawing at me, something I need to take care of and I’ll be right back. No, it’s not that. I just don’t have the edge anymore or the desire to keep doing this. I want a shot at a normal life. I want to be less of a great guy, and more a happy woman. Can you understand this isn’t a phase thing or a whim?”
Joey sighed, “You got me on the happy woman thing; of course you deserve every chance to be happy. You have proven yourself, and the medal the Veep presented you with attests to the fact that you have paid back the Bureau and the U.S. for your training, and we got the better part of that deal. When are you leaving, Brooke?”
“Thanks for hearing me out. I owe you the most. You have become more than just a superior officer in my life. I always want to be able to call you and shoot the shit.”
“Sounds like a college break-up.”
“In many ways, my relationship with you is one of the longest I’ve ever had. You see now what a pathetic love life I’ve had?”
“Thank you, I think. So when are you leaving?”
“The only thing stopping me was talking to you first.”
“Well, I appreciate that consideration. Do we at least get to throw you one hell of a retirement bash?”
Brooke then let all caution go to the wind and did something she would have never considered in the past. She opened her arms and hugged Joey.
Bill took over the embassy office that had once been Joey’s. A cadre of embassy staff flittered and fluttered in a hubbub of activity that transformed the mid-level diplomatic utility office into that of a cabinet-level official who also had NCA nuclear ranking. It took thirty minutes for Bill to be alone in his new, upgraded office.
The chilling warning from Parnell about the second plot to destroy CERN had no corroboration from any police or intelligence agency in the world. Was Parnell a paranoid or the sharp end of the stick for a group of paranoids, or was he the lone voice yelling about certain Armageddon? Bill could understand the scientific aspect of his allegations, but all the police stuff boggled his mind. He felt like an English lit major dutifully trudging through advanced calculus; he could get the hard facts by rote to pass the test, but he couldn’t see the harmonic connections of the bigger picture needed to apply it in the real world. More precisely, should he now commit the considerable resources of the United States of America to alert the world to the threat the of some unknown group against the biggest science endeavor in the history of mankind, on the word of an agent of the Vatican? He looked down at his jotted notes and mind-mapping-style collection of facts that were his way to organize multi-layered problems before him. The more he looked at the cloud of facts on his sideways legal pad, ‘Engineer’, ‘Architect’, CERN, Maguambi, U.N., Vatican, Interpol, Dupré, and twenty other words, the more he thought of Joey. He would see this with a cop’s eye. See the hidden connections and formulate a practical investigation into this whole murky plot.
The intercom beeped, “Dr. Hiccock, Agent Palumbo on line one.”
“Joey, I was just thinking about you. I was…”
“Bill, let me talk.”
“Okay…”
“I owe you an apology. Mitchell kind of interceded and proved to me what a knucklehead I have been. I should have never doubted you and I said some things I wish I hadn’t. So, there. I think you were right to put me on the beach. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say, ’cept, be careful there in Paris and lean on Dupré if you need anything. He’s a good cop.”
A wave of relief washed over Bill. The rift between him and Joey had been unwanted and unnecessary baggage he’d been lugging around these last couple days.
“Joey, thanks for that. I was a little pig headed in all this myself. I should have brought you in, but Mitchell was the only one who could clear you for this. I am glad he did.”
The moment hung. Bill broke the tie, “So, ready to get back here? I got a whole lot of new stuff that has just come up for you to drill down into. I’ll post it on your SCIAD.”
“I got to pick up some corn and mushrooms, then I’ll be right over.”
“Good, cause you know, international crime fighting and thwarting major terrorist plots should never trump going to the market. And tell Phyl you are leaving ’cause of me.”
“On the next plane out, boss.”
Raffael spent two nights modifying the roulette program on the simulator operating system that he retooled on his home computer. He was about one hundred iterations in when he finally hit the right combination of sensory input and target correlation. He ran it ten more times to make sure he continued to get the same result. He saved the code he had created by compiling it into a file he could load into the system at the LHC. For the first time since the nightmare began, he breathed easier and got six hours of uninterrupted sleep that night. He was ready.
Bill couldn’t sleep a wink; his head was spinning with details and scenarios. Parnell Sicard kept coming back as a lynch pin to everything he had learned and was still discovering. He got out of bed and went to the desk in his room and dialed the number he had memorized but never written down.
“Clay, sorry to wake you. I need your opinion on something.”
“Hold it, let me take this downstairs.”
Bill sat at his desk making circles on his mind-map chart, imagining the super spook treading down the stairs in his PJs and slippers, maybe stubbing his toe on the coffee table as he fumbled for the light switch in the dark.
On cue, Bill heard over Clay’s cell phone, “Ow! Damn it!”
“You okay?”
“Damn hassock in the middle of the floor.”
Bill tried not to laugh too much.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Clay, I think Percy, er Parnell could be valuable.”
“You want to play him? Or bring him in?”
“I think bring him in.”
“And you want to know from me if you can trust him?”
“If your crystal ball reaches this far.”
Clay sighed the sigh of a man who has just sat down in a big reclining chair. “Well, he is former CIA, so he took an oath once. Of course, you have to be okay with the notion he will probably be playing for his team while he’s on your roster.”