Allegiance: A Jackson Quick Adventure (11 page)

“And if I were to come visit, can you suggest where I might stay? Is there a good hotel nearby?” George has his cell phone out and in record mode. It’s on and sitting next to the speaker on the phone.

“Well,” the woman pauses, “it depends. We do have some dormitory style rooms here in the Astronomers Lodge, but you’d have to be a Friend of the Observatory. Otherwise, you can stay down in Ft. Davis. There’s the Butterfield Inn Cottages or—”

“Do you have any room at the Lodge?” George interrupts.

“Hang on, let me check.” On the other end of the line, she’s shuffling through some papers and mumbling. “Let’s see,” she says. “Ummm…we have a few rooms. Let me look at who’s booked them. Johnson, Walker, Ripley, Franklin.”

“What?” George interrupts again. “Did you say Franklin?”

“Yes,” the woman says, a little off guard. “Dr. Franklin has one of the rooms. Do you know him?”

“Sure. We go way back,” George fibs. “Please tell him I said hello.”

“And you are?”

George ends the call and hangs up.

“Who is Franklin?” I ask.

“Not Franklin,” says George. “Ripley. She said Ripley. I asked her if Franklin was staying there to make sure she was rattling off a list of guest names. Now we know where Ripley is. We have to go find him.”

“That won’t be easy,” says Dr. Aglo. “Do you know where Ft. Davis and the observatory are?” he asks me.

“No,” I admit. I should know. I don’t.

“Far West Texas. It’s past Marfa. I’ve been there. The closest commercial airport is a two and half hour drive. If you’re going there, and you’re in a hurry to see Dr. Ripley, you better get going.”

“What’s the closest airport?” George asks, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

“Midland/Odessa,” Dr. Aglo says. “You could do that or El Paso.”

“Sounds good,” George says and starts to leave.

“Before you go…” Aglo is standing in his way at the doorway. “You never did tell me why you need him.”

“Oh,” George smiles. “True. Well, we think he’s involved in a conspiracy that includes an assassination attempt. His research here is connected to it.”

Oddly, Dr. Aglo doesn’t appear surprised. He looks down at the floor before smacking his lips and exhaling. He steps aside and waves George through the doorway. I start to walk out, watching the hint of pain develop on Dr. Aglo’s face. He suddenly looks much older, frailer. I imagine he’s considering the possibility someone under his tutelage and guidance was deceiving him.

I’m so focused on his face, I almost miss the photograph hanging to the right of the door. I catch a glimpse of it and it stops me in my tracks.

“George,” I call after the reporter who’s already halfway to the elevator. “You’ve got to see this.”

The framed photograph is from a clipped magazine article. It’s a black and white portrait of a small group of people. They’re assembled in an area outside the Science and Technology Building.

“Which one is Ripley?” I ask Dr. Aglo.

“That’s him there,” he points to the photograph. “Second row on the left.”

It’s not Ripley that interests me, really. It’s the man next to him. I recognize him. I met him in London, at the Texas Embassy.

The man next to
him
I recognize too. We met in Caracas.

Then there’s the woman sitting near the middle on the front row. She took a stroll with me in Alaska.

The man sitting next to her in the center of the picture is my boss, the Governor of Texas. I can feel my heart racing again. I’m not quite sure what this photograph means.

“Who are those people?” I ask Dr. Aglo as George walks back into the lab.

“Except for the Governor and Dr. Ripley?” he asks rhetorically.

“Yes.”

“Those are energy executives. They handle new technologies for some of the largest end-to-end oil and gas companies in the world.”

“Why are they in this photograph?”

“They were here for a symposium eight months ago. The Governor awarded a citation to the Institute and they all were here for that and the lectures.”

“What was the symposium about?” George is the one with the question this time.

“Emerging energy technology,” Dr. Aglo says. He looks bewildered by our questions, probably wondering why we would we care about this.

“That all?” George asks.

“That, and the role of engineered nanotechnology as it might benefit the energy industry.”

***

“On our way to the airport, tell me more about the people in those pictures,” George says. He is pulling the SUV out of the parking lot and slipping on his seatbelt and has already shoved a thirty dollar parking ticket from the Rice University Police Department into the glove box in front of my knees.

“They’re my contacts. Those people are the ones who I met with the iPods.” My head is spinning trying to figure out the connections. I don’t think I want to face the obvious answer.

George turns off campus and back into the shade of an oak-lined street. “They are connected to the lab and to your boss. Big Oil. Nanotechnology. Politics. The trifecta of fun.”

“Yeah. I don’t know I ever would have thought about nanotechnology mixing with the other two. I didn’t really even know what it was until today.”

“So,” he says as he brakes at a stop sign. “Are you thinking the same thing I am?”

“Well, my boss is somehow involved in new energy. If Ripley really is developing a competing technology to Nanergetix, it would seem the Governor is somehow connected to the assassination attempt.”

“That’s what I think,” George says. He accelerates and takes a swig from a warm Dr. Pepper. “The Governor and these energy people are colluding with Ripley to generate a competing technology that makes oil and gas last longer. Maybe Ripley hedges, and the Governor keeps him in line by framing his father for the assassination attempt on his political opponent. If Don Carlos Buell dies in the attempt, two birds are killed with one stone. His only political threat is gone, and the money behind Nanergetix disappears too.”

“Of course,” I counter, “we’re making this assumption based on what Dr. Aglo told us.”

“What’s that?”

“You asked him if Ripley could be working
for
Nanergetix. He denied that and told us he was competing against Buell’s company. We don’t know that for sure.”

“It makes too much sense,” he says, shaking his head at me and gripping the steering wheel with both hands. “Think about it. Your boss is sending you around the world on clandestine missions to hand over iPods to a host of energy executives. You know you weren’t delivering musical playlists.”

I stop myself again from telling him about the bank account information loaded onto the iPod in Alaska.

“Here is connection number one: The Governor of Texas and sneaky energy executives.” He presses the accelerator and changes lanes to pass a slow moving car ahead of us. “We know Ripley, the son, is working on some nanotechnology that interests the Governor and his oily friends. There’s connection number two. So whatever Ripley is developing either competes with or compliments Nanergetix’s neo-energy project. Nanergetix is financed by Don Carlos Buell who is trying to take your boss’s job. That’s connection number three.”

“I agree with you, but—”

“Wait,” George holds up his right hand. “Let me finish this. I’m on a roll.”

“Go ahead.”

“Connection number four: Buell is shot and nearly killed by Ripley’s dad, a self-proclaimed secessionist who has a website proclaiming big time support for your boss. Your boss, by the way, likes to talk about secession like it’s feasible. Like it’s part of a political platform. Ripley says he was framed.” George keeps glancing in his rear view mirror as he drives. “And he told me it was because of his son.”

“Yeah,” I interrupt. “For the sake of argument, don’t all criminal suspects claim to be innocent?”

“Given. But there are too many connections here. It comes full circle. The Governor, Ripley, Nanergetix, Buell, oil and gas. They’re all connected somehow.”

“And I’m in the middle.”

“And you’re in the middle,” George agrees. “The question still out there is, ‘Why?’. We have the who, the what, the where…”

“You mean, why am I in the middle?”

“That’s part of it.” George speeds up again. We’re nearing highway 59. I vaguely recognize we’re still in southwest Houston. “Maybe you’re mixed up in this because nobody’s sure exactly what you know,” he continues. “Maybe they want to make sure you stay quiet about whatever it is that’s going down.”

“It’s evident that’s why I was kidnapped,” I said, though I can’t reconcile why I was let go or who killed Bobby.

George checks his side view mirror and changes lanes. He presses on the brake as we approach a red light. “Yeah. Why were you let go? Why did someone else, I assume, try to kill you? What was on those iPods? What is it they think you know? Does this conspiracy end with an attempted assassination? Is there more to it? Was the Buell shooting the beginning?”

I’m about to tell George about what I saw on the Alaska iPod when he jerks the SUV from the left lane and into the right. He glances in his rear view mirror and grimaces.

“This ass won’t stay off my bumper,” he says, slowing the SUV. I turn around to look over my left shoulder and see a car inching even with us. It’s a black sedan with dark tinted windows.

“George! You’ve got to get us out of here. That’s the car!” My heart is racing in my chest. “Those are the guys who killed my friend Bobby!”

George accelerates, speeding through a yellow light and on to a feeder road. Within a second he’s merged onto the highway heading north towards downtown. He must be doing 90 miles per hour as he moves to the left and he slams on the brakes, the brakes scream, and we stop inches short of a red SUV in front of us. Traffic is at a standstill.

***

I’ve seen slow speed police chases on television before. I even covered one in San Antonio. Some idiot robbed a taqueria and led police through nearby neighborhoods for close to an hour before he ditched the car and surrendered. I’ve always wondered what must go through the mind of someone as they try to escape.

Now I am that person. I’m the fox and the dogs are giving chase. It seems surreal, being chased on the highway by two dudes who want me dead. We’re traveling at something like 5 miles per hour at the most. I should be fried. Strangely, I am calm. My mind is clear. I’m focused. My heart rate has slowed.

George is doing his best to navigate between cars and five lanes of northbound traffic as the black sedan gives chase at the same speed. Every time the sedan, a Cadillac CTS, switches lanes, George forces his way over to the next lane. Horns honk at him one after the other. People must think we’re trying to push our way past the logjam.

I glance behind me at the sedan. “Instead of trying to get ahead of them, why don’t we fall behind them?” I suggested.

“What?”

“This traffic is so slow that if we fall behind them by a few car lengths, we’ll be able to exit without them knowing, or at least without them being able to follow us.”

“Good idea,” he acknowledges, and checks his rear view mirror before trying to merge to the right. “We can exit up here on the ramp to downtown and take surface streets to the airport.”

George moves to the far right lane, which is barely moving. The sedan tries to merge right behind us, but George slams on the brakes. It creates an opening in front of us, which the driver of the sedan lurches forward to take.

The car slowly passes on our left. Both of us watch the car as it inches ahead. Through the dark tint on the front windows, it’s difficult to see into the car, but I can see there are two men, both with short, military-type haircuts. The one in the passenger seat is staring at us as they pass. He rolls down the automatic window about halfway. He’s wearing sunglasses and a dark suit jacket, white shirt, no tie. He smiles at us and waves with his right hand before the window rolls up again and closes. The car merges in front of us.

“What the hell was that?” George asks. I can see the sweat forming on his brow and upper lip. He keeps wringing his hands on the steering wheel. “Who are these guys?”

“I don’t know. They don’t seem to care we know they’re following us.”

“Yeah,” George says, wiping his upper lip with the back of his hand. “It’s not good they let us see them.”

“Why?”

“Haven’t you ever watched action movies?” George glances at me as if I’m stupid. “The bad guys always kill people who’ve seen their faces. They don’t want people to identify them. It’s the kiss of death. You see their faces – you die.”

“They can’t kill us if they can’t find us, George. Focus on losing them.”

George tries to move farther behind the sedan, but they must be onto us. They stay one car in front of us as we inch closer to the exit for downtown. The sedan has no rear license plate.

“Is the exit up here?” I ask. I was on this same stretch of road in the bus a few hours ago, but I don’t remember paying any attention to the exits.

“Yeah, maybe a mile,” he says. “But it’s on the left. If I try to merge over, they’ll get back behind us. This isn’t working.” He looks at me, his face flushed with stress. This kind of pressure is clearly different from trying to make a deadline for a newscast. He’s folding on me.

“Okay look,” I say, looking behind me to the right. “There’s this wide shoulder here next to us. “Why don’t you get onto the shoulder and back up?”

“You mean, put the car in reverse?”

“Yeah, I’ll watch out for you.”

George looks in his rear view mirror before merging to the right and brakes, lurching the Lexus. He turns and puts his right arm behind my seat, shifts into reverse, and punches the accelerator. Within five seconds we’re ten cars behind the sedan. Another five seconds and we’re an additional ten cars back.

“That’s good,” I say. “Now get back onto the highway and merge all the way to the left.

George shifts back into drive and slips onto the freeway. Up ahead there’s a sedan moving backwards along the shoulder. They’re trying the same thing, but by the time they’ve made it back to where we were, George has already managed to maneuver into the far left lane and is several car lengths ahead. He’s put enough distance between us and the sedan that I can’t see it. George slides into the left shoulder and speeds up to 20 or 30 miles per hour as we approach the downtown exit.