Authors: Scott V. Duff
I chuckled. “C’mon, stand up. You’re making me feel self-conscious.” Two of them bolted upright in fear while the other four stood quickly, startled. Shrank trilled and whistled something over my shoulder I didn’t catch and they calmed considerably.
“The Regent relayed that you required the barracks, the kitchens, laundry services, and recreational services made available here, Lord Daybreak. Will a separation of officers or genders also be necessary?”
“I assume yes on both,” I answered. “Would it be a problem to let them worry about that?”
“None, Lord, it is simply a matter of organization,” the brownie answered.
“Is there any chance that you have a map?” I asked him.
“No, Lord, but we can prepare one.”
“Probably should,” I said, nodding. “Get a few dozen copies made for them. Not everyone has a built-in sense of direction. I’m going to have to hand you guys off to First, though. I’ve still got a million things to do today.” Turning back through my increasing entourage of people, I raised my voice and called into the corridor, “Major Byrnes? Come in here, please.”
Byrnes walked in after a moment with the same three officers in tow as before. The quartet shared a mild flushing of the skin, an exhilaration of their jog on the Road.
“Okay, I’ve got to get to Ireland to talk to Felix or Gordon as soon as possible,” I said, rubbing my face tiredly. It was beginning to wear on me. “Not to mention get my dad back to my mom. Then I have to start working on getting food shipped in and frankly, dinner myself. So this is what I need to happen here.
“Major, the brownies are here to facilitate your stay here, not to watch over you as prison guards. You and your men are free to do as you see fit within the confines of the barracks. First is in charge and will adjudicate any issues. Everyone introduce each other, learn each others’ names. Walk the area. Move the men in. Get the mess staff into kitchens, learning the equipment. Richard, you take Steven and keep working on a supply list with the mess staff, please. David, will you stay with Major Byrnes and start getting together a supply list of other incidentals and a wish list? Correlate that list with the First and one of these brownies against the Palace stores. Set up supply runs to stores as you see fit.
“Try to get me lists of what we don’t have here in an hour, hour and a half at the most,” I said, winding down. “I know that’s a tight time limit, but it’s gonna be just as tight on the supply side.” Looking around the room, I couldn’t think of anything else here that had to be done. Delegation was a must at this point. There just weren’t enough hours in the day.
“First, do you want the Deas with you?” I asked him.
“Aerial views may be helpful at times, so yes, please, Lord,” Jimmy said, stepping up to the desk and nodding politely to the brownies still standing there nervously listening. He’d lost the flames since leaving the Throne Room, but he still had a pale blue sheen coming from his skin.
Nodding, I looked around the room, trying to see if I’d forgotten anyone. I called back through my entourage again, “Could I get the FBI in here, please?” Messner and his men walked in quickly, having been listening at the door. “The rest of us are going to my office. Richard, Steven doesn’t have a key yet, so don’t let him stray too far from you.” Then I shifted the ten of us to my office.
“For five minutes, I am a decision-free zone,” I declared, already falling into the cushions of the lounge chair behind me. “Somebody else talk, please, I’m begging!”
“Even he thinks he’s been talking a lot!” Ethan crowed, laughing at me.
“I thought he was doing just fine!” Dad said defensively.
“No one would dare say he wasn’t, here,” muttered Messner, suddenly seeing the giant-sized blue and purple flowered bush that towered over his head. The alcove I brought us to was part of anteroom to my quarters, the waiting room to my office, really. As with most of my spaces, it was big and open and full of life.
“They would,” I said, waving a hand at Kieran, Ethan, and Peter, disagreeing with him. “Not in front of everyone, but I’d hear about it, trust me.”
“But while we have you talking, Agent Messner,” Peter said. “What do we do with you, now? I mean, we already have enough problems with the government as it is. We don’t want to add the FBI to the list, too. Seth brought you with us for your safety, not to kidnap you, and we have no plans to keep you against your will.” Peter cut his eyes over at me for confirmation. Nodding slightly, I wanted to keep quiet for a few minutes. “And we would much prefer to return the men to your care on Thursday morning should you be able to make arrangements to that affect. Honestly, we’d prefer tomorrow morning.”
“The Pentagon’s response will have to be answered,” Messner said sternly. “But I admit that it’s not likely that a charge of treason will stand for each man.”
“I really didn’t expect it,” I responded. “Even if it is true. It should still fall within your purview, shouldn’t it? It’s an interstate conspiracy involving a huge number of people, especially when considering the target involved is civilian and when you add the fact that it’s government agencies involved…”
“I don’t know. It depends on what kind of spin Echols and his leash-holders will put on it,” Messner admitted.
Peter sighed. I sighed. “So what do you want to do now?” Peter asked again.
Glancing over at his fellow agents, Messner answered, “Eat, sleep and shower, in any order, anything else can wait till morning.” He got a few mild chuckles out of us for that.
“I think we can arrange that,” Peter said. “Mike, would you take them to my apartment, please? Get them something to eat and set them up in a couple of spare rooms. Just let Daybreak know when you’re done.” That part was for Messner and crew. Peter only referred to me as Daybreak in the third person and he didn’t have with Mike.
“Yes, sir,” Mike said, moving to the agents. “All right, gents. Let’s gather ‘round. Do you remember your day care days? Hands on the shoulders of the one in front of you?” The hint of condescending humor was unmistakable in Ferrin’s pale blue eyes, but I understood the attitude. He’d been the ultimate street thug, to some degree, doing just barely enough illegal activities to be noticed by someone at Messner’s level in his country. And here he was, part of a team that just pulled off a major heist of men right under their noses and were getting away with it. It was an odd way of thinking to me, but who was I to judge? “Now, don’t let go. Don’t want anybody materializing in the middle of a…”
“Did he do that on purpose?” Kieran asked.
Peter’s eyes flew to mine locking into the image of pure naïveté that question had and the pure shock that Kieran uttered it. Dad on the other hand laughed his ass off. He was barely sitting in the chair, leaning forward, when he sort of heaved and clutched. The fabrics were slick and boom! On the ground. Ethan lost it and burst out laughing. Peter and I weren’t far behind, and Dad never stopped. Only Shrank didn’t laugh and Kieran just flushed in embarrassment.
“Yes, son, that was the joke,” Dad said told him in heaves as he slowed his laughter.
“Well, while you have the floor,” I quipped, causing everybody to wince at the pun. “What was your idea for supplies?”
“A couple of variations on the same theme,” he said cheerfully. “But, I think we should steal it from the military.”
Chuckling, I asked, “Do you have a plan for doing that?”
“Need to do a little reconnaissance and some spying, but I think we can get quite a bit of the bulk product from quartermaster stores. I bet if we can find the right information, we can steal it from our beloved Colonel Echols, even.” Okay,
that
got our attention. We formulated a quick plan to that allowed me to talk to Felix while everyone else investigated the possibilities of raiding a military base for food.
“You realize, though, if Echols was having anything brought here, it was MREs, right?” Peter asked Dad.
“Hey, it’s food and it’s not as bad as it used to be, trust me,” Dad answered, blanching at the thought of them.
“What’s an ‘MRE’?” I asked.
“’Meals-Ready to Eat’,” Peter said. “Freeze-dried, preservative-laden crap in a box.”
“Emergency rations,” Dad added, shaking his head mildly at Peter’s response. “But at least something for tonight.”
“Not wanting to be a wet blanket or anything, but has anyone considered the ethical implications of this idea?” I asked. “It is stealing, no matter the justification. And I seem to recall somewhere in my childhood my parents teaching me that stealing is wrong.”
“Yes, they did,” Dad answered, taking on that parental ‘do as you are told’ tone. “They also taught you the concept of ‘Situational Ethics’ and this fits nice and snugly into that.”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Just making sure everybody was on the same page.” I knew what he meant. Was it actually stealing if it was their responsibility to feed them in the first place? The question now, though, was did I really care? No. No, I didn’t.
Mike popped into existence at the edge of room. “The FBI is settled in, Peter, but we’re going to have to restock
your
kitchen now.”
“All right, if y’all think you can make it work, let’s get this going,” I said, standing. “It’s already after midnight in Ireland. I doubt either Felix or Gordon will be up, but I’ll need to tell somebody.”
~ ~ ~
Dad declined to go with me back to Ireland just yet and when I checked on her when Mike and I flashed into my room in the castle, I understood why: the trance made her look dead. It was meant to speed up her healing process, to turn years into months. We were hopeful and expectant, but probably unrealistic. St. Croix’s torture of her did some excessive damage to her mind. Once Dad pulled the Pact Lock off, her mind could play catch up with her body, but it would take time. Certainly longer than the four days she had so far. “Tomorrow evening,” he said before I left. “Tomorrow evening, just before dinnertime. I’ll go then.”
“You’re in luck. Gordon is up,” Mike said as he hung the phone up. He made the call announcing our arrival. “He’s on his way to his office right now.”
Jumping us to the outer office, we apparently caught him at the beginning of his phone call. “What is so damned important that you had to drag me out of bed at one o’clock in the morning?” His back was to us as we quietly slipped in the door as he listened. We weren’t trying to hide, but he just happened to turn opposite to us to look out the door, just missing us move in. “No, I haven’t heard from him since about noon. Why? What’s happened? … That’s not saying much… Look, Harris, you dragged me out of bed for this, so you better have more to say than ‘we made a little misjudgment’.”
A phone in the connecting office rang, causing Gordon to turn. “Hold on, Harris, I’m getting another call,” he snapped into the phone and dropped the handset to the desktop noisily. He rumbled toward his father’s office, his thick flannel robe drifting loosely around him as he walked, barefooted, on the cold tiles. “Yes?” he asked, his voice a knife on the phone that would have cut anyone who knew him. I wouldn’t want to be whoever that was in person when Gordon saw him next. “What is it, Thomas? It’s late!”
Mike noisily opened a bag of potato chips that he found on a table in the corner beside the coffee table, making Gordon look back. I took pity on him and picked up the phone on his desk, sitting in Gordon’s chair. “Marshall Harris,” I said into the handset, “Darius Fuller and you made your bed and now you have to lie in it. You have no further recourse in this matter. Now quit bothering my friends or you shall make me madder than I currently am.” Not waiting for a response, I hung up, then waved at Gordon as he closed his robe, staring at us and listening for Thomas Bishop on the phone.
“What did they do, then?” he asked. “If they won’t even tell us that, then they are well and truly buggered, aren’t they? Now good night, Thomas, I’m going back to bed now.”
“Sorry to be bothering you so late, Gordon,” I said immediately. “I was trying to get to you before they started damage control, but I had my own to do, unfortunately.”
“Wha’s happened that’s gotten Darius Fuller in such a fluster?” he asked walking back to his office as I vacated his desk chair. He opted for the more informal position of leaning against the front of desk, tying the robe more tightly at his thick waist. I gave him a very brief synopsis of the day’s activities, but detailed the parts of Fuller, Harris, and Calhoun. It was still a short story.
“So what do you want me to do?” Gordon asked once I was done.
“Nothing you can do,” I said. “They screwed up royally and now they get to pay the price for it. Fuller went after political gain and found political loss instead. Other than that, you suddenly have a half-dozen prime spots open up in the guest lists since they won’t be coming.”
“You don’t think that they’ll try anyway, then?” Gordon asked.
“’E threatened violence if they did. Would you?” Mike asked, crumpling the chip bag and tossing it into the bin beside the table.
“Wow,” Gordon muttered to himself.
“What?” I asked, sensing the humor behind the word. Gordon was like family to me, so he was one of those people I tried not to read, but I could see the wheels turning behind his eyes.