“The young man”—she picked up a thick file from the top of her stack and opened it—“Xavier Morales, brilliant, so many letters after his name it looks like a screwed-up alphabet. Thus far since his professional career has started he has broken into no less than three commercial companies with names like Microsoft, IBM, and Raytheon. He claims boredom. Main achievement in life, hacked close to a billion dollars from a drug cartel.” Alice smiled and closed the folder. “Still, him I can understand. You need an abstract mind to keep up with Europa, I get it.”
Niles leaned back as he watched the waters of the floodgates overflow. He pushed two aspirins into his mouth and dry-swallowed them. They caught, he grimaced, but then managed to get them down just as Alice reached for the second file. She eyed Niles as she opened it, waiting to see if his one good eye would flinch.
“Master Chief Harold Jenks, United States Navy, retired. Owner Blacksmith Engineering. Everyone in his own company hates his guts even though he has made all fifty-one employees very wealthy. Ruthless, barbaric, and quite the engineering genius. Here only because he has a fatal attraction with the only woman he has ever been terrified of, our own assistant director. Bottom line: unstable, uncontrollable, and any other ‘un’ you can think of. Not Department 5656 material, and that is according to your own job description and criteria.”
“Okay I—”
Alice politely smiled and held up her hand. “Oh, but there is more Mr. Director. How about a foreign intelligence agent who now has access to the greatest finds in the history of the world? Granted, she’s a woman we all like and admire, especially myself.”
“Alice, I—”
“And let us not forget our good friend Colonel Henri Farbeaux. Do I need to go into his record?”
“Now that was Jack’s idea and you have to admit Henri’s already paid dividends for this Group.”
“Yes, by getting our other high-risk asset out of Jerusalem, I know. It was me who sent him in as I figured if the Mossad arrested him we weren’t at a loss of one of our own.” Alice started gathering her files. “You are rushing into this, Niles.” She stopped and looked at the director. “All I’m saying is be careful. These new people are brilliant and are capable of good things, but make sure they belong here in the long term and not just for getting Carl back. They need to belong.”
Niles decided to let it drop now that he knew that Alice was only voicing his own inner thoughts and venting her fears, which were in line with his own. He watched her as she gave him one last look before patting his arm.
“You look pretty good, by the way. How’s your buddy?”
“The president is doing better, and yes, I do feel somewhat… well, besides being blinded in my right eye, having a scar on my face the length of Long Island, and knowing that this is the best I’ll ever walk again, hell, not bad at all.” He gave Alice a sour look as she smiled and turned for the conference room door.
“Could have been worse, Mr. Director. After all you still have your balls, and with these new personnel changes here at Group, you’re going to need them.”
Niles watched the door close and then he faced the large monitor and the image that was still up. He gave a crazed chuckle and wondered if he was doing the right thing in risking more lives to get one back from the dead.
Alice caught up to Xavier Morales as he just finished his rounds in the computer center. Though quiet and shy he asked very legitimate questions of the one hundred men and women who would be working for him in computer sciences. Most of the apprehension at having someone so young being a department head was tempered by the fact that they had all heard of Xavier Morales, the wunderkind of MIT. Alice watched the young man through the glass and immediately saw that he wasn’t dressed as a man of his education would have normally dictated: black tennis shoes and an old checkered button-down shirt. His black hair was neatly combed and in his shy way looked as if he were nothing more than a teenage boy.
Jason Ryan turned and saw Alice standing outside of the large theater-style comp center and then nodded as Morales turned to leave. Jason quickly opened the door for him. Alice greeted the young man and introduced herself again. She looked at Jason and stifled a laugh at his tattooed predicament.
“And I suspect Jason was taking you over to meet Europa face-to-face?” Alice asked. With boredom etching his features, Jason nodded. “Well, you probably have far better things to be doing. I’ll take him, I need a word with our new comp genius.”
Without a word Ryan hurriedly left toward the bank of elevators so he could get down to logistics where a whole lot of people responsible for this tattoo had better be ready for war.
Alice gestured for Xavier to continue down the same hallway. She noticed the old chair and the strong arms that propelled the young man at a pretty good clip.
“Our engineers can find you something far more advanced than that old chair if you wish,” she said, suspecting she already knew the young man’s answer.
“And Master Chief Jenks is one of those engineers?”
Alice only raised her lovely brows and smiled.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Hamilton, I was raised in this chair and if I get anything else now I would get lazy and also get no exercise at all.” He slowed his pace and then looked at Alice. “Tell me about Professor Ellenshaw.”
“Charlie?” A sad and knowing look crossed her features as she adjusted her load of files. “I won’t go into detail, but Charlie’s had a rough go of it the past three months.”
“I understand he was close to Dr. Golding?” Morales asked as he stopped by the double clean room doors and the blue-clad Marine guard standing outside. Xavier removed the new temporary ID card from around his neck and gave it to the guard, who checked it. He nodded at Alice as he gave it back.
“Quite close, rather unexplainable as they were such opposites, a man of science and one who chases dreams and sometimes nightmares… yes, they became close because they started out so distantly separate. He’s hurting and if he’s taken it out on you, I assure I’ll speak to him.”
“No, no, please, don’t do that, Mrs. Hamilton. I have an idea: Would you please give me five minutes with Europa to introduce myself properly, and then would you ask Professor Ellenshaw to join me in the clean room?”
With a curious look Alice just nodded. “Yes, I can do that.”
The clean room doors hissed open and Morales smiled as the guard handed him a sealed plastic bag with electrostatic clothing. Morales just shook his head with a polite smile.
“Nah, we don’t want to start off like that.”
The guard looked at Alice and then saw that the Group matriarch was smiling.
“You heard him, that’s no way to meet someone for the first time.” Alice nodded at Morales and then left.
The doors hissed closed behind Xavier as he entered the dressing area and then easily went to the last door and opened it. He wheeled himself inside and then turned. The console for Europa was there with six stations. Microphones were at each. The large bulletproof glass stretched fifteen feet across the front. The metal screen protecting the inner sanctum was in the down position so Morales could not see inside. But he knew, or could guess, what was there. Gone were the robotic program placement arms, and in their place would be a series of long glass tubes that contained Europa’s bubble memory system of Pete Golding’s own design. Morales closed his eyes as he faced the large glass remembering the paper he read from Golding describing the theory of bubble memory cylindrical super-microchip technology. He cleared his throat and a seventy-five-inch monitor lowered automatically from the ceiling. It came to life with a simple screen saver that said DEPARTMENT 5656.