The E Utopia Project (13 page)

“She said a gunman fired
shots at her,” the male reporter said. “Do you think she imagined that as
well?”

Wong removed his breathing
machine to let the cameras film his face one more time. “I don’t know. I wasn’t
there. She was under immense pressure and if some armed man tried to attack her
then I can safely say that the attempt on her life is the reason that pushed
her over the edge.” He clasped his hands together and tilted his head. “I know
that there are some people in this country who feel that Doctor Cummings
betrayed them by seeking refuge in a foreign embassy. Let me tell you
something. To Doctor Cummings, the world doesn’t consist of individual
countries. To her, the world is just one globe... one globe that she and all
mankind must save from El Monstruo.”

Three cars stopped at the
gate and six men, five white and one black, flashed their badges at the gate
and entered.

“Show is over,” said the man
leading the group, a silver-haired lean man with nasal cannulas. “We want to
question the staff members of GEMA.”

The reporters and their crew
reluctantly left Wong. The Chinese winced, unhappy at the curtailment of his
moment in the limelight.

“My name is James Woodgate,”
the silver-haired man introduced himself. “You’re Professor Wong, I presume.”

“Yes,” Wong said, putting on
his breathing machine. Now that the cameras had gone, there was no point
suffocating himself.

“I’m the UN Under-Secretary-General
for Safety and Security. Have you ever heard my name before?”

“No.”

“I guessed you would say
that. I’m the kind of guy whom people don’t get to know of when everything is
okay. This is my colleague Didier Pires, the Assistant Secretary-General for
Safety and Security. And the four gentlemen with us here are FBI agents. We
want to ask you a few questions concerning your colleague, Doctor Cummings.”

“I am at your service,
gentlemen,” Wong said, wistfully looking at the departing reporters.

“We are here to ask you questions
concerning the alleged attempt on Doctor Cumming’s life. A day before yesterday
there was a shooting incident involving one gunman. His intended targets, a man
and a woman, escaped on a truck. Today Doctor Cummings held a press conference and
identified herself as one of the gunman’s intended targets. Can you think of a
reason why anyone would want to kill Doctor Cummings?”

“No,” Wong said with a gentle
shake of his head.

“And you, sir?” James
Woodgate asked Nzue. “Do you work here?”

“Yes. I’m Doctor Cummings’
assistant.”

“Did she in any way hint that
her life was in danger?”

“No,” Nzue said.

“Did you see her press
conference?” asked Didier Pires.

“Yes,” chorused Nzue and
Wong.

“Do you believe anything she
said?”

“I don’t believe the part
about aliens or beings from outer space,” Wong said.

“And you?” Didier Pires asked
Nzue.

“I don’t know what to
believe.”

“We would like to get in
Doctor Cummings’ office,” James Woodgate said.

“Let me show you the way,”
Wong offered.

Wong led them to a lift. When
the lift reached the seventh floor, they purposefully strode out like a gang going
to a fight, and went straight to Sara’s office.

James Woodgate had been
cleared to enter Sara’s office, so the door opened when its scanners finished
scanning his eyes. They entered the room and James Woodgate and Didier Pires checked
everything whilst Wong, Nzue and the four stone-faced FBI agents watched.

The FBI agents were used to
leading investigations and they didn’t like playing second fiddle to foreigners.
James Woodgate was a former Deputy Commissioner for National Security with the
Australian Federal Police, and Didier Pires was a former commissioner of the
French police. This was a UN building and Sara was a UN official, hence the
investigation fell under the jurisdiction of the UN Department of Safety and
Security (UNDSS).

“Professor Wong, here is my card,”
James Woodgate said when he and his assistant had finished going through Sara’s
computer. “Contact me if you come across anything that you think might help us
in this case.”

Wong put the card in his pocket.
“I’ll contact you right away if I find anything notable.”

“Gentlemen, aren’t you scared
the people who want to harm Doctor Cummings might harm you?” Woodgate asked.

“It’s scary,” Wong said. “If
the attempt on Doctor Cummings is connected to her work as GEMA Director, we
should be concerned. We’re her colleagues and that might make her pursuers
think that we pose a threat to them.”

“Until this is over, I want
Doctor Cummings’ colleagues to be under twenty-four hour police protection,”
Woodgate told Byron Melony, the leading FBI agent. “Can you arrange that?”

Melony winced. Foreigners
were meddling in the law enforcement of the United States as if the country was
a banana republic. This Aussie behaved as if he was the Director of the FBI,
and to add insult to injury, the key witness was holed up in a foreign embassy that
was out of bounce for the FBI. “Yes,
sir
,” Melony croaked. “I think I
can arrange that.”

“I’m turning the show over to
you guys,” James Woodgate told the FBI agents.

Fuck you,
Melony screamed mentally but vocally he said, “Thank
you, sir.” He turned to his colleagues. “Guys, check everything in this room
while I ask Doctor Cumming’s colleagues a few questions.”

The other three agents
repeated the process that had been done by the officials from the UN Department
of Safety and Security, while Melony interrogated Wong and Nzue.

“In your own assessment, is
Doctor Cummings the kind of woman to make up such a story?” Melony asked,
gazing at Wong.

“She’s not that type, I would
say, but she’s been under immense pressure of late and I think she cracked.”

“What do you think, sir?” he
asked Nzue.

“Sara is one of the most logical
people I know,” Nzue said. “I don’t think she is the kind of woman to make up
such a story, but as Wong said, she was putting herself under immense
pressure.”

“Did she have a feud with
anyone here?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Nzue
said.

“Doctor Cummings is a
wonderful person,” Wong said. “Everyone here likes her.”

“But it appears that someone
hate her enough to want to kill her,” Melony said, watching Wong and Nzue.

“There isn’t anything of much
interest here, sir,” the black FBI agent said when he and his colleagues had
finished sifting the office for clues.

Melony gave Wong and Nzue his
card. “You can get in touch with me any time. I guess it’s time for us to go to
Doctor Cumming’s home.”

“We won’t be going with you
to her home,” Woodgate said. “Pires and I are going to the Russian embassy. The
Secretary-General talked to the Russians and they agreed to let us talk to
Doctor Cummings.”

“I want to talk to her,”
Melony said.

“The Russians only gave
permission for the UNDSS to talk to Doctor Cummings. If you want to get into
the embassy, you should ask your government to talk to the Russians.”

“You will let us know if you
get anything from her, right?” Melony asked.

“We’ll do that. Let us know
if you find anything at her home.”

“Okay.”

“Are you going to Sara’s home
right now?” Nzue asked.

“Yes,” replied Melony.

“I would like to go with
you.”

“To do what?”

“I want to take her dog. I
hope it hasn’t suffocated by now.”

* * *

“That woman escaped and she
is now holed up in the Russian embassy,” Sam Cruz said, his eyes glowing with
rage. “Tyler, I gave you a mission to take out an unsuspecting woman and you
failed.”

Tyler Gibbs remained silent,
bowing his head to avoid Cruz’s irate eyes.

Cruz lifted his glass of
whiskey and took a tiny sip. You let me down, Tyler,” he yammered. ‘I can’t
imagine how you could possibly bungle such an easy assignment. This could
jeopardize the whole project.”

“I entrusted the job to our
usual hit man,” Gibbs said, holding his glass with both hands. “I don’t know
why he failed this time.”

“What’s his excuse?” Cruz
asked.

“He says that Cummings got
unexpected help. He thought she was alone and the man we now know to be Cummings
boyfriend emerged from the supermarket and intervened.”

“Was Cummings’ boyfriend
armed?”

“No.”

“Then that’s not a good
excuse.”

The two were sitting in a
large study at Cruz’s farm.

“Sam, are we going to
continue with the milking?” Gibbs asked.

“Yes.” Cruz replied. “I sent
word ordering the space force to stop using the milking location that was
discovered by Cummings. Thanks to your bungling, many eyes will be looking at
space satellite images.”

“I don’t think anyone will
take her seriously.” Gibbs crossed his legs. “People don’t believe aliens
exist. Kids might believe her but world leaders and people who matter won’t
believe in her story about aliens. If they believed in aliens, they would have
created a space force long ago.”

“People might not buy her alien
story but they might soon start looking outside the Earth for answers,” Cruz
said.

“They still religiously cling
to Hitchcook’s volcano theory.”

“But they won’t cling to the
theory forever. People like Sara Cummings will make people ditch Hitchcook’s
theory.”

“Given this situation, is it
wise for us to increase the size of the milking fleets?” Gibbs asked. “Bigger
fleets pose higher risk of detection.”

“Let’s increase the sizes of
our fleets and get the operation over and done with. If the Earth’s superpowers
discover our milkmaids, we’ll launch our backup plan.”

Gibbs nodded.

“How’s the recruitment
going?” Cruz asked.

“The recruitment is going on smoothly.”

“You and Ford must expedite
the transit of the recruits to the spaceports.”

“We’ll do our best.”

Cruz leaned his head toward
his boyhood friend. “I don’t want your best, Tlyer. I want your utmost.”

“We’ll do our utmost.”

Cruz scowled. “I think those
fucking space agencies and satellite companies are trying to screw us up. They
fucking replayed a video clip.”

“But we told them to simply
paste an hour-old picture over our milking spots during milking sessions. Did
you talk to them?”

“Yes.” Cruz rose from his
seat and paced about the room, his hands thrust in his pockets. “I told them
there would be consequences if they repeat that stunt again.”

“Did they give any reason as
to why they replayed the video clip?”

“They’re saying that since there
was a storm in the area, they decided not to paste a still image to avoid raising
suspicions.”

“How would pasting a still
picture raise suspicions?”

“When there’s a storm,
weathermen expect to see clouds and winds moving and the companies say they
feared weathermen would get suspicious if they pasted a still picture of the
storm.”

“They’re bullshitting us,”
Gibbs said. “They could’ve just pasted a picture captured before the storm. Our
milking points cover only a speck of the Earth. They could simply paste a tiny patch
over part of the storm to cover the milking point.”

“I know they’re bullshitting
us and I gave them a strong warning. If they fall out of line, we’ll have to be
ruthless.”

“Cummings’ theory will make a
good number of experts scrutinize satellite images of the Earth,” Gibbs said. “Why
can’t the companies simply turn the cameras of their satellites away from our ships?”

“They claim that not all of
their satellites have cameras that can be quickly turned from the ground.”

“Do you believe them?”

“I don’t know,” Cruz mused.
“Maybe they’re bullshitting us. That’s why we’ve to watch them closely.”

“The Earth is not under
twenty-four/seven satellite surveillance. Satellites only see where their
cameras are pointed at and areas not covered by geostationary satellites are
not always under satellite surveillance. We could study the movements of the
satellites that cover these areas and send in our ships when the satellites are
away from our milking points.”

“That’s easier said than
done. Such a method can result in a pileup of ships while we wait for
satellites to move away from the milking points. I think the space agencies and
the imagery companies won’t cross us again. I made it clear that there will be
grave consequences if they do.”

“What about military
reconnaissance satellites? We’ve got no control over military recon satellites.”