The Agent's Daughter (23 page)

“
I don’t understand,”
Melina said. “Her machine was a chip?”

“
Not quite,” Evan said.
“She just used the chip building process. You see, chips are made
in layers by depositing materials on top of each other in stages.
Some layers are metal and form the connections, and some layers are
the silicon material. There are also some layers that are the
insulating material. Once each layer is laid down, the next layer
is put on top of it until you have a multilayer chip. Some chips
have dozens of layers.”

“
You mean, like a cake?”
Melina asked.

“
I guess you could think
of it like that,” Evan said. “But your mom’s cake was thousands of
layers thick. She built all of the intricate workings of the
machine one layer at a time until there was a three dimensional
structure. And when it was finished, she had built a nuclear power
plant that was about the size of a deck of cards. And that little
unit could provide enough electricity to power all of the equipment
that an agent needed to bring. Everything. Using this new energy
source resulted in a dramatic reduction in the weight that agents
had to carry. This allowed the agents to bring a greater quantity
of the other useful essentials such as extra food for longer
missions or additional sensors for more complex
missions.”

“
But if she had already
made the device that was so revolutionary, why didn’t they want her
to leave?” Melina asked.

“
Mom’s boss had the
foresight to see that her miniature power source was just the
beginning,” Evan said. “He felt that her miniaturization technology
could be refined and applied to other areas within the tools group,
and he pushed for additional money in the budget. He wanted to
create an independent nuclear division within the tools group that
developed new gadgets based on the technology. The President
agreed, but his support was dependent on Mom not
leaving.”

“
So, is that why she
stayed?” Melina asked.

“
That’s why she stayed.
She wanted to see the nuclear lab be built and see her research
continued. But she would only agree to stay if they would allow her
to work at home, and just come into the office when
necessary.”

“
How could Mom work at
home?” Melina asked. “She just has that tiny little office
downstairs with that old computer in it.”

Evan laughed. “You’d be surprised to know
how much work Mom could do at home. And she loved the new
arrangement. It was the best of both worlds. She could keep her
career and stay at home.”

“
Good for her,” Melina
said.

“
It was advantageous for
the agency too. She went on to develop an altogether new set of
gadgets for the agents in the field to use. The compactness of the
new energy source allowed her to create things that were not
possible before. For instance, she paired an even smaller version
of the power source with a tiny electric motor, and that became the
core of a new surveillance drone. Since the weight of the power
source was minuscule, the drone could be made the size of a small
bird. This made it small enough to fit into a backpack and allowed
the field agents to be able to carry several of them with them.
They could launch the drone themselves to investigate areas that
were too dangerous for them to go. And the drone could go for hours
on end. All day if necessary. I’ve used that drone myself many
times.”

Evan paused for a moment and stood up. He
thought he heard something, so he tilted his head up slightly and
listened all around him.

Hearing nothing, he continued. “Your mom is
one smart lady. The smartest person I know. Her boss was right. She
turned out to be extremely beneficial to the agency.”

“
He sounds like a great
boss,” Melina said.

“
I guess,” Evan said as he
chuckled to himself. “If you like being kidnapped and locked in a
room.”

“
What do you mean?” Melina
asked.

“
The man that you met
earlier, William Mason, was her boss.”

“
The man who has kidnapped
us and locked us in this room is… was Mom’s boss?” Melina asked.
“Oh man, here I thought that-”

Melina paused as she saw her dad stop
listening to her and begin walking toward the door. He got halfway
there, and then he looked up at the ceiling.

“
Do you hear that?” he
asked.

“
That dull rumble coming
from the ceiling?” Melina answered.

“
Yes. It’s footsteps. It
has the same sound as the last time we had visitors. Stand up and
get over against that far wall.”

“
Daddy, let me help you
this time.”

“
Don’t worry. I am not
going to try anything when they get here. They are ready for it.
Besides, I don’t think that they are coming to get us. It is not
time to go.”

The noise got louder in the ceiling until it
became clear that there were two sets of footsteps coming down the
hall. Evan stood in front of the door but outside the door swing
radius. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure that Melina
was still against the wall. He looked back at the door just as the
deadbolt turned. The door flung open as if the person opening it
had expected strong resistance. From the shadows, the doorway was
filled with a large man carrying the lifeless body of a man over
his shoulder. Behind him, there was a smaller, nervous-looking man
leaning against the far wall of the hallway. The small man was in a
semi-crouch as he trained a large handgun into the room. Evan
smiled as he spotted the crouching man. He mused that the man must
have learned that crouch-and-aim position from some late-night cop
show on television.

Evan’s gaze returned to the large man
carrying the body as he entered the room.

“
I brought you some
company,” the large man said in a snarled tone.

The words echoed in the room as the man
chuckled at his own comments. Evan said nothing and stood
motionless with his arms crossed. There was an awkward silence
before the large man looked over toward the nervous man to ensure
that he was still being covered. As he turned back around, he kept
an eye on Evan as he bent over and deposited the body into a heap
face down onto the floor. Evan looked down as the body settled. It
remained motionless, and Evan wondered whether the person was still
alive. His question was answered after a few moments when the
person let out a loud snort.

“
He shouldn’t be out
long,” the large man said as he slowly backed out of the room,
still maintaining direct eye contact with Evan.

As the door to the room was closed and
locked, Evan and Melina rushed to the side of the body.

“
Turn him over,” Melina
cried as she knelt on one side of the body.

Evan, kneeling on the other side, grabbed
the person by the shoulders and turned him over in one quick
motion.

Evan’s eyes widened as he backed away. He
sat on his heels, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Melina sensed that something was wrong.
“Daddy, what is it?”

“
This is one of my
co-workers. His name is David Winfield. I believe you know his son
Alex.”

“
This is Alex’s dad?”
Melina said, much louder than she expected. “Why would Mom’s old
boss want to kidnap him?”

Evan looked over at Melina. “William Mason
is David’s boss too. He works in the same group that your mom did,
the tools group. We worked together on a recent mission to
Malazistan, the country that wants to use us as a bargaining chip.
It makes sense that they might want him to come too.”

Melina still had a puzzled look on her face.
Evan walked over to the sink at the edge of the room, turned on the
faucet, and cupped his hands under the stream until he had a
handful of water. Then he walked back over to David, knelt down and
poured the water onto his face.

David sat up quickly, spitting out water. He
looked around furiously through watery eyes.

Evan crouched down right in front of him.
“David! David, wake up.”

David stopped looking around and wiped the
water from his eyes as he tried to focus on the face in front of
him.

“
David, it’s Evan
Roberts,” Evan said as he put one hand on David’s
shoulder.

David finally was able to focus on Evan and
a look of recognition washed over his face.

“
Evan?” he said. There was
a distinct note of confusion as he took in Evan’s face. Then he
leaned back on his hands and looked around.

“
Where are we?” he
said.

“
We are in a building, in
the industrial area just east of downtown Dallas,” Evan
said.

David was still a little groggy and paused
as the information filtered through his head. He looked away from
Evan toward Melina. “You must be Melina. I have heard so many nice
things about you from my son.”

“
Thank you,” Melina said.
She wanted to say more, but nothing else came to her.

David looked past Melina and began to scan
the room. “Why are we here? And I guess while I am asking… how did
I get here?”

“
I don’t have a lot of
answers, but I do know that your boss used an FCAN on us, kidnapped
us, brought us here and locked us in this room.”

“
Wait a minute,” David
said. “Are you talking about William Mason?”

“
Yes. He was here earlier.
He said that he was sending us to Malazistan. I guess now that
would include you too. Something about us being used as a
bargaining chip in order to get the President to lay off their
nuclear program. David, he sold some of the agency’s partially
enriched uranium to the Malaz. He called them his associates. He
must have-”

David stood and held up his hand toward Evan
as if he had heard enough. “Hold on a moment.”

He turned away from Evan and Melina and
didn’t say anything as he paced across the room, deep in
thought.

Finally, David turned around and looked at
Evan. “The Malaz government does not care anything about us.”

“
Well, duh,” Evan
chuckled. “I doubt they give two hoots about our welfare, but they
do seem to want us there.”

“
No, they don’t,” David
said. “In fact, I doubt that they even know we exist.”

“
What do you mean?” Evan
asked.

David took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I am
the reason that we are all here.”

Evan laughed. “You are the reason that your
boss kidnapped us? You must have gotten an especially crummy
performance review.”

“
Cute,” David smiled. “No,
seriously, did you get an email with a picture of Laura attached
that was taken by a red light camera the night of her
accident?”

“
Yes!” Melina said as she
pointed at David. “We looked at the photo on my dad’s computer! We
were headed to the police station when we were
kidnapped.”

“
I sent that picture to
your father,” David said.

“
What does that picture
have to do with us being here?” Evan asked. “Do you think that
William had something to do with Laura’s accident?”

“
Yes. I do,” David
replied.

“
Your boss, I mean Mom’s
boss caused her to get into an accident?” Melina asked.

“
Let me start from the
beginning and tell you what I know,” he said. “Evan, do you
remember this morning, after our meeting when I said that I was
going back to the lab?”

“
Yes. You seemed intent on
figuring out what went wrong with the glider.”

“
That’s right. But instead
of going to the lab, I snuck into the security room next door to
the lab. The room is locked, and it’s only supposed to be accessed
by personnel from the security department, but the door can be
opened if you enter a pushbutton code. They don’t change the code
often. Everybody in the tools group knows what it is.”

“
That’s a little ironic,”
Evan said. “What were you looking for in there?”

“
There are cameras all
over the building, including the lab, and video from all of the
cameras is fed to machines in that room where it is recorded onto a
bank of hard drives. They keep a copy of the streaming data of
every day for all of the cameras for the previous three months on
the drives before the data is written over. I wanted to see the
surveillance stream file from the lab for the day that we assembled
the glider to see if anyone messed with it after it was completed.
There is a computer in the room connected to the disks that I could
use to access them.”

“
So you found the file and
looked at it?” Evan asked.

“
No,” David said. “Right
after I snuck into the room, I heard voices coming down the hall
toward the security room, so I ran to the back of the room, and I
hid behind some tall storage racks. After a few moments, the door
to the room opened, and two men came in. I recognized both of them
as technicians from the tools lab that worked the night shift and
often on weekends. I could not figure out why tools lab techs were
in the security room.”

“
Funny,” Evan said.
“Considering you were in there too.”

David smiled and continued. “My ears perked
up when they started talking about the circumstances surrounding a
car accident that had happened some months before. One of the men
said that last Friday morning, William had driven through the
intersection where the accident had taken place, and he had noticed
that there was a red-light camera at the intersection. After a
little investigation on his part, he discovered that the camera had
been in place the night of the accident.”