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  “Didn’t get a chance.”

  Pacing now, Remington took a moment. Investigative reporting was a lot like climbing a mountain, and this story was no casual climb up a grassy meadow; this mother was like climbing a sheer cliff, and she’d managed to wedge her fingernails into a crack in the rock. She turned, the look of discovery washing over her. “This is why I hooked the president. He thinks I know what they were working on.”

  I smiled. “Could be, but he slipped away into deeper water. Now you need to find out if he’s still on the line.”

  Romano came out of his meeting and headed straight for my desk. “Well?” He wasn’t in a good mood, and his face was all rosy-colored.

  “We’re not ready,” I said. “Remington has to go back and squeeze her source.”

  Romano looked at her and said, “Until he bleeds. I want a buffalo on my desk by tomorrow night.”

  With that, he wheeled toward his office, and I thought I saw bullet holes in his flat ass. I jagged my head and said, “The brass must have drilled him a new one.”

  “Wonder why.”

  “Not our problem right now. Get yourself an expense voucher and get back to D.C. The faster the better.”

  Rather than leaving, however, Remington collapsed into the chair next to my desk. “What?” I asked, feeling her gaze.

  “Where do I start?”

  Did I detect just a hint of insecurity there? Why, I think I did. “Corvissi looked pretty nervous when he got a look at that notebook. I’d suggest you start there. Then, I’d revisit your bluff. You’ve got the scientists’ names; if Corvissi gives you anything at all, call the White House and play it out. What was it you’d said? If the president didn’t set things straight, you’d publish the truth about his visit to Sea Beach? I’m sure Romano has some connections with the White House press office if you can’t get anyone to listen to you.”

  Remington nodded blankly, twirling her pen between pink-nailed fingers.

  “If the president is spooked by that, then there’s another motive here besides getting those scientists back and keeping things calm. Find a way to get to it.”

  “How the hell do I do that?”

  “They’re called boobs, Ed.” She smiled now. “If you can get it out of Corvissi, see if David’s formulas have anything to do with what the scientists were working on, and find out what makes the project so classified that the president of the United States is spending time covering for it.”

  “And, I’m supposed to do all that in one day? You heard Romano.”

  “Don’t worry about him. I think I’ve got that covered.”

  “You do? How?”

  “If I’m right, twelve more people are going to disappear from Sea Beach today. I just don’t know who they are yet.”

  Chapter 16… Caesar’s

  Roy said, “I think it’s started.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. “Are you sure?”

  “Four calls last night, and four this morning. There’s frozen helium all over town.” Roy looked pained, as if he’d just swallowed a corkscrew.

  I said, “There’s no way you could have prevented it, Roy. What about the remaining four? A jury needs twelve people.”

  “No information yet. If others have been taken, it could be people living alone, and it may take a day or two for anyone to realize they’re missing. And it might be more than four if they take alternate jurors. You know Norm Simpson, runs the Wawa near the parkway?”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Went out last night to take out the garbage, never came back in. His wife called me when she saw the block of helium in the back yard.” Roy looked up, his eyes glazed. “I’ve known Norm since grammar school.”

  I said, “He’s not dead, Roy,” but it sounded weak. Outside Roy’s office, the two officers there were picking up one call after another. I had the feeling none of it was good. Sure enough, one of them came in while we were sitting there.

  “Two more reports, Chief. You want me to send Johnson and DiNardo over when they’re done where they’re at?”

  Under his breath Roy said, “That makes ten.” He looked at the officer and asked, “Who are they?”

  “Bob Fisher and Joanne Gilbert. Both calls came in after they didn’t show up for work and there was no answer on their home phones or cell phones.”

  “Bob works over at Viking Yachts, and Joanne over at Little Tykes Day Care.” Roy looked at me. “They’re both single.”

  Just as he’d predicted. My stomach suddenly felt like it had a fury animal inside trying to claw its way out. For Roy, it must have been like having his children disappear. He sat there, and to an outsider it may have looked like he was daydreaming, but I knew better. Moments later, he smashed a thick finger into his phone intercom, and bellowed, “What about the teachers?”

  “They’re still at school, Chief. Both of them refused our offer for escorts again; said there was probably nothing we could to anyway.”

  “Amen to that,” Roy mumbled. “Call those numbers the government folks gave us. Let them know what’s happening.”

  “All the numbers, Chief?”

  “All of them. I don’t want it to look like we’re not doing everything possible. Oh, and one more thing.”

  “What’s that, Chief?”

  “As soon as they get free, have Kaplan and O’Malley cruise around to all the National Guard checkpoints and find out if there were any incidents last night—nonresidents trying to get into town, any oddball occurrences, whatever. You got it?”

  “Got it, Chief.”

  With that, Roy grabbed his hat, and said, “Let’s go Johnny. We don’t have much time.”

  I wondered what that meant.

  * * * * *

  I didn’t say a word as we bounced along in Roy’s truck. The weather had turned gloomy, and the warmth of the previous day had been swept away by a damp gale off the water, which often signaled the onset of a nor'easter. As we passed the marina, I noted the boats bumping hard on the dock tires as the ocean swelled and subsided beneath them.

  “This morning?” Roy said when I thought neither one of us was going to say a word until we reached our destination, wherever that was. “I met with Allison Kovar and Scott Reemer.”

  “You did?”

  Roy nodded vacantly, his features tightly knit.

  “Where?”

  “At the school. I figured I’d catch them before classes. I started thinking this whole thing through, especially after seeing those formulas in David’s notebook last night.”

  Roy obviously wanted me to know something, otherwise he wouldn’t have started the conversation. He seemed reluctant to talk, however. I figured I’d give him a chance to come at it from another angle. “How were they holding up?” I asked.

  “As good as could be expected. Neither of them thought there was any place to hide.”

  Okay, Roy was acting squirrelly now. His eyes kept darting at me, his head not turning.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “They figured that if your story was true, and they were going to be returned unharmed, they might as well go about their normal business.”

  We already knew that. He was stalling. Edgy. Not like Roy. “And that’s why you had to get up with the chickens and meet them before school?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay…. How not exactly?”

  He didn’t answer right away, looking both ways at the stop sign. Twice. Looked like we were heading for the parkway. “Well, I sort of planted some information on them.”

  We took the ramp, and I jabbed Roy with a stare. I know he felt it, but he still didn’t look at me. “What information?” I said, my tone hardening. Something didn’t feel right.

  “Well….”

  “Well, what, Roy?”

  “You know how we talked about how maybe the kidnappers were using the newspaper to communicate?”

  “We talked about it, y
eah.”

  “Well, we really don’t know if that’s the case. I mean, they haven’t responded to any of your stories directly….”

  “Except for kidnapping me again.”

  “Well, now that you mention it….”

  “What are you trying to say, Roy?”

  “Well, I sort of told the teachers that, if they have the chance, and if their memory isn’t affected when they get there….”

  “There being 2194?”

  “Right… to tell their abductors that the memory erase on your last trip didn’t take, that you remembered everything.”

  I didn’t know if that was good, or bad. “So?”

  “So, as a result, we’re trying to discover the identity of the great, great, great grandfathers of the terrorist leaders.”

  “Why would we do that?”

  “So we can stop them from having any more offspring.”

  I looked at Roy in total amazement. “You mean kill them.”

  “Not necessarily. They could be sterilized.”

  “Wait a minute. If the terrorists think that’s true, won’t they come back and try to kill me?”

  “But, it’s not true.”

  “Fuckin’ A, Roy, they don’t know that!”

  “Yeah, I kind of thought of that.”

  Fuming, I said, “I can’t believe you’d set me up like that.”

  “As of now, I haven’t done anything. The teachers haven’t been abducted yet. All I have to do is make a couple of phone calls if you don’t go along with it.”

  “Go along with it! You gotta be fucking crazy.”

  “You sound upset.”

  I looked at the passing trees, and felt my jaw muscles working. “No, Roy. I’m perfectly fine. Why not? It’s only a few futuristic terrorists—terrorists whose symbol is a swastika on a field of blood. What’s to worry about?”

  “We can protect you.”

  I laughed. “Just like you could have protected the ten people who were snatched from right under your nose last night; or how you’re protecting any others who might be taken while we’re going for a ride in the country. Where the hell are we going, anyway?”

  Roy didn’t move a muscle, just sat there with his wrist hooked over the steering wheel. Low voiced, he said, “We didn’t know who the people were going to be, Johnny. You just admitted that. If we did, we could have done something.”

  “You couldn’t have done shit, Roy. Hell, the fucking feds are in this up to their eyeballs, and they can’t do shit either. What makes you think you can do better?” He didn’t answer, and I could tell I’d hurt his feelings. Yeah, well, screw him. It was my ass on the line. We sat in silence for some time. Roy wanted to use me as bait to do… what? Capture one or more of the terrorists if they came back and actually did try to kill me, or hijack me? It wasn’t a bad idea actually, but he didn’t need me to accomplish that.

  “You can use the teachers,” I said. “You know when they’re going to be taken; you simply need to be there when it happens.”

  “I’ve already thought of that,” Roy responded as he pulled off the parkway onto the Atlantic City Expressway. “You can back out if you want. I was just trying to avoid putting that kind of burden on them.”

  Roy looked at me out of the corner of his eye, and I said, “You bastard.”

  “Me?”

  “You think that by my visualizing frail little Allison Kovar, sitting on her threadbare Victorian sofa, waiting to be taken away by futuristic thugs in jack boots, I’ll feel shamed into letting you use me as bait.”

  Roy rolled down his window and threw a couple of quarters into the toll baskets just outside Atlantic City. “I would never do anything like that without asking you first,” he said, sounding as sincere as any priest. “The fact that both Allison Kovar and Scott Reemer have decided to stand tall in the face of danger rather than run and hide, has nothing to do with you. Don’t let it affect you.”

  “You bastard,” I said again, knowing he was working me, and, worse yet, knowing it was working. “I want a gun, no, two guns—big, ugly, black guns, so I can shoot their balls off when I see them coming. And I want you there, too. If I’m going down, you’re going down with me.”

  Roy just frowned, and said, “We’ll talk.”

  Damn that Roy. How do I get myself into these things? “You never answered my question,” I said.

  Roy rolled into downtown Atlantic City toward Caesar’s. “You ask a lot of questions. Which one are you talking about?”

  “I asked you where we were going.”

  “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” Roy joked.

  “Get in line,” I responded, figuring I’d find out soon enough.

  * * * * *

  “You are hereby charged with crimes against humanity.”

  The defendant leaped from his chair, the humdrum activity of the courtroom interrupted by his outburst. “This is insane!” he shouted, knocking over his chair despite the restraints binding his hands behind him. “You are the criminals here! How many people have you murdered just today?”

  With the words echoing off gray block walls—no need for fancy trappings here—the defense lawyer stood and restrained his client.

  “Order!” the judge shouted. “Counselor, control your client, or you’ll take your place beside him.” Bang! The sound of the gavel cracked like lightning. Bang! Bang! “Sit down now, or I’ll have the prosecution proceed without your presence.”

  “What’s the difference?” the defendant screamed. “You’re all murderers; kill me now!” He turned and spat at his defense attorney.

  The attorney lunged now, grabbing his client violently. Being of the same race, he needed to control his client or he risked losing his own status. If that happened, his name would appear on the next docket along with all the others.

  Two burly bailiffs came over, both of them wearing the same insignia on their sleeves as was displayed on the flag draped behind the judge’s chair: a swastika on a field of red. Tired, and not wanting to waste any more of the court’s time with this holier-than-thou nonsense, one of the bailiffs cracked the defendant behind the right knee with a baton. The defendant crumbled in agony, and the bailiffs propped him in his chair. Expecting the judge to issue the sentence for contempt of court—which was death—along with instructions to carry it out immediately and thereby saving the time and expense of proceeding with the trial, one of the bailiffs pulled a DNA-controlled brain stem disintegrator, and pressed it to the back of the defendant’s neck. Surprisingly, the judge waved the bailiff off, and the bailiff clipped the disintegrator back onto his belt, there being no chance that anyone with different DNA could operate the device. Its presence in the courtroom was perfectly safe.

  The prosecution having just rested, the judge asked if the defense had any evidence to present.

  “None, your honor. The defendant does not wish to dispute the charges. He is of lower race, as accused.”

  “Fine,” the judge responded. “Then this case shall go to the jury for immediate deliberation.” The judge turned to the jury. “Your charge is the same as it has been in the previous cases you’ve heard today. Is there any need for me to repeat the instructions?”

  The foreman looked to either side. “No, your honor, we are clear on the charge. In the interest of time, we would like to take our vote here, without further deliberation.”

  The judge scanned the jurors, and asked, “Are there any objections to the foreman’s request?” There were none. “So be it,” the judge noted. “How do you vote?”

  The foreman stood, and called, “Guilty?” Twelve hands went up.

  “So be it,” the judge declared. “The sentence is death, to be carried out immediately.”

  The immediacy was justified publicly as a merciful tactic on the part of the justice system to avoid mental anguish for the guilty. In reality, the cost of executions was high, and, seeing as there was no need for add
itional tax dollars to be spent housing future infidel corpses, the executions were carried out upon sentencing. Justice had become routine.

  The defendant, having had his fair trial before an impartial judge and jury just as the law allowed, the bailiffs came forward and carried the hobbled, and now convicted, defendant to the execution chamber. The chamber flanked the courtroom, and was designed so that executions could take place within view of the court if, for some reason, such was desired, or ordered, by the judge. In this case, the jurors did not witness the executions, as they’d all seen them several times before, and, despite the routine nature of the event, most jurors preferred to not lose their appetite if there was no need to do so.

  Saying nothing, his eyes glistening, the defendant was outfitted with a securely-fastened, external diaper, and strapped into place, his death a foregone conclusion as it had been with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of his kind over the last generation; no one knew the real number. Behind the chamber, an executioner came forward and slid open a moveable panel, pressing another brain stem disintegrator to the back of the defendant’s neck and activating the device. The body went limp immediately as the spinal cord was instantly severed with no invasive procedure. What was good for the modern surgeon in the year 2194 was also good for the modern executioner. In this case, rather than cauterizing a few thousand cancerous cells from a functioning organ, the microwaves concentrated their power on an inch-thick core of tissue at the base of the skull. The procedure was quick, and painless, supposedly, save perhaps for the microsecond when the spinal cord actually melted away.

  Outside the execution chamber, the jurors looked at their watches, having sat through the procedure for the twentieth time that day, about one every fifteen minutes. It was almost time to go. The straps were undone, and the body was wheeled off to a waiting vehicle beneath the building that would take the corpse to a processing plant. There, it would be processed and turned into a protein-rich nutrient. The nutrient would then be scattered over the oceans to feed the stocks of fish needed to feed the ever-growing world population, which stood at forty-seven billion and was still growing, despite all efforts in this country and around the world to curb the numbers. The limp corpse joined the other nineteen from this courtroom, and approximately an equal number from each of the other seven courtrooms in the facility. Justice was administered efficiently, bloodlessly, and painlessly, and tomorrow another twelve jurors would perform their civic duty and sit through another series of convictions, as they did about once every other year in every major city in the region. The work was never-ending, but needed to be done in order to thin the numbers and keep the more deserving fed.