“I don’t think that’s an issue. Both teams, it seems, are trying to stop something that could only be the work of a madman.”
“Even so, could you shield your sensitive materials from him? Minimize the exposure?”
“Well, that’s the thing of it. I’ve gone over this a hundred times and there is no national security issue here. This is a universal threat. Literally. It supersedes political boundaries.”
“Sounds like you already have your answer.”
“But tell me, am I being too much the scientist and not enough of a suspicious mission runner?”
“If there is no nat sec vulnerability and you are purely on a quest to identify, isolate, and eliminate a threat, then I say the more the merrier.”
“So I should bring him on?”
“You saw his file; he is a first-class operator, good trade craft, and he’s gotten you this far. Yeah, I say, put away all your classified materials, lock ’em in your drawer, and let him in on the mission.”
“How’s the toe?”
“Good night, Doctor. You did good as a spymaster.”
Bill smiled and then called Joey to tell him about his decision.
XXII. OFFENSIVE HUDDLE
Joey landed in Paris at 11 p.m and went straight to the Embassy’s secure conference area. Upon entering, he went right to Sicard. “Percy, excuse me, Parnell, glad you’ve decided to join the team. Let’s start off again.” Joey extended his hand.
Parnell shook his hand; “In the face of a common enemy…” and said nothing more. Joey then acknowledged everyone else. “Inspector Dupré, Marilou, Yardley. Hi ya, Bill.”
“Good to have you back, Joey.”
“Good to be back, boss. What do we got?”
Everyone took a seat and Bill started. “The big news is that Parnell is on the trail of a new, unknown group, possibly radical extremists or a new breed of black-holers, who have abandoned their primary plot of destroying the Hadron collider, but may still be looking to do this another way. Perc — Parnell was on the trail but it went cold. That’s where you come in Joey. I, and more importantly, the president, have made you lead law enforcement officer on this.”
“Good. Thank you, Bill. Parnell, would you help me try to pick up the trail again?”
“I would think under the circumstances I really have no choice.”
“Come on, show me some love; we didn’t burn you to the Vatican.”
“And now you want me to be a double agent?”
“No. I want you to work for and be loyal to us and only us. Can you do that?” Bill said.
“You have my word, but only till this is resolved.”
“In the face of a common enemy, Parnell,” Bill said, then added, “The Inspector and the rest of us here in the Embassy will serve as command and control and communications.” Bill then established some pecking order and signed a waiver for Parnell to work under Joey at this high a level of national security.
The others left the room, and just Joey and Parnell were with Bill. “Joey, how do you want to start?”
“Parnell, where were you headed to when you skipped out on us in D.C.?”
“I got a message that the ‘Architect’ was on the continent. I met with my contact in London and he said either Paris or Geneva, so I took the next flight out.”
“To Paris, so what happened?” Joey said.
“I found that Paris was a dead end and I was leaving for Switzerland when Dr. Hiccock and the good inspector interdicted me.”
“Why Geneva?” Bill jumped in.
“Besides the obvious since that’s where the Hadron is, my British contact had some electronic intel that pointed to Geneva,” Parnell said.
“Well then, that’s where we start, Bill. Geneva,” Joey said.
The first thing she did was open the windows and let the slightly less stagnant New York City night air in. She hadn’t been in her apartment for three months. She sat at her kitchen table and leafed through the pile of mail that the widow McGinty on the first floor was nice enough to collect and hold whenever she was away. Ads, flyers, and postcards from every business in the world targeting females, from spas to bottles of skin lotions, diet doctors, and clothes catalogs. Instant junk, she thought.
She put aside the letter from the FBI agent’s association. It was a testimony to the fact that her status had changed from ‘active’ to ‘retired.’ She was too young to be a retired person. Her dad and her uncles were all in their 60s and 70s and only one of her uncles was retired. Although in his case it was at full pension. Since Brooke dropped out of her own volition, her benefits would be based on half of her pay. Though still pretty good, it wasn’t enough to live on in New York or Hawaii. Not the way she wanted to live.
Then she found a letter with a Hawaii postmark. The return address was Naval Station Pearl Harbor, HI. Her heart raced as she looked at it. He must have mailed it right before he shoved off. Slowly she slid her finger under the flap, as if it were some prized relic. Inside she found a three-page, handwritten letter. Her heart dropped when she read the first line: “Brooke, I hesitated to write this letter.” She put it down as a cold chill suddenly crystallized on her skin. She took a deep breath and looked around the room. On the mantle over the old fireplace, its one-hundred-year old chimney long since bricked over when the brownstone was divided into ‘modern’ apartments back in the late 40s, was her brother Harley’s picture. Although she’d had it for years, it suddenly looked back at her in a questioning expression she had never noticed before. “I love him, Har; for the first time in my life I took the plunge.” The picture remained unmoved. “Did I jump the gun?” She looked over at the letter and her eyes caught the word love somewhere in the middle. She took one long look at Harley’s photo and then reached over, took the letter and plopped down on the old Barcalounger her dad lugged all the way to her apartment when she first moved in. The worn arms were covered with her mom’s crocheted doilies. Even though it was nearly as old as she was, she had welcomed it into her new apartment. She felt warm and at home nestling in it with a good book on long cold nights. She now snuggled up with her feet on the footrest and started to read.
Her mood changed as Mush’s explanation for not wanting to send the letter was because he wanted to say these things in person to her. As she read more, she calmed down some. He wrote of the dilemma he was in. How unfair it was for his love for her — love for me, she thought as she beamed — to be couched as a devil’s choice between his duty and his heart. How by the time most commanders had earned his grade of responsibility, they were married and more settled. In fact, the only slightly negative notation on his fit-for-duty report was that his status was marked as ‘single.’ “I guess the Navy was afraid I could be distracted by someone like you:).” She liked his hand drawing of the smiley face. He went on to wonder about her side, if she was facing the same uncomfortable choice. He hoped it was easier for her, because if she decided to spend the rest of her life with him, it might not preclude her job in Washington; that he could probably pull some strings (for the first time in his career) and get re-assigned to the Pentagon. When she finished reading she felt both better and worse. She reread the last few words, ‘I don’t know how I’ll make it through the rest of my patrol. I want things to work out for us more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life, except wishing you were here right now.’
She mulled over everything she had read. Had he already decided to give up his command for her? Could she accept that? Worse, would it fester, rearing its ugly head when the thin times came? Her head stopped spinning when she realized the take-away was, He loves me, he wants me as much as I want him, and the options are all open for us to find a way to be together, yet still be true to ourselves.