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  “Charter a flight,” Naiya had insisted. Carol agreed. “If someone is still trying to monitor us, this will make it harder for them. They could still figure out where the flight is going, but unless they are watching they won’t know who or how many are going. Remember, there isn’t supposed to be an investigation after last week, so we think that only you are being followed.”

  “Besides,” Carol added. “We don’t want to take any chance someone on the plane might recognize Kurt. I know he has changed. But . . .” and her voice trailed off, point made.

  In the end, we had booked the charter, and planned for Mike, Dave, and Kurt to make the trip. We decided it was important to move this along, and ended up renting a Lear Jet for the trip. Unfortunately Kevin, our resident pilot, wasn’t available for this trip. This time tomorrow we should have a pretty good idea if Kurt was right about the device he had found. I was still uneasy about the fact that Kurt said it had been powered continuously since he had found it. Just how long would the power source last, I wondered? And he told me he hadn’t seen it himself in over five years. No doubt about it. I’d feel a lot better to have it in hand, working, and performing the function Kurt promised.

  With the most pressing business out of the way for the moment, I was starting to think about lunch when the phone rang. “Jim,” I said as I reached across my desk and punched the speaker button.

  “Jim, Kurt’s dead!” Carol’s strained voice came through the speaker next to the phone.

  My mind stopped. I felt something tight wrap around my chest. I had heard what she said, but my brain didn’t want to acknowledge it. “What?” I asked, my voice a cracked whisper. I didn’t really need her to tell me again, but part of me wanted to hear something else come from the speaker. A mistake. I hadn’t heard her right. Kurt was really okay.

  Instead, she said again. “Kurt’s dead. And his daughter. Both killed in an auto accident. Bring Naiya to my office. Mike will be calling back with details in a minute.”

  I don’t remember my response. Slowly I reached over and punched the button to break the open connection. I sat down slowly in a chair. Dead? It couldn’t be. After everything that had happened to him? And just before he is able to give us the key to everything we have been trying to do for more than a decade? It couldn’t be a coincidence. Briefly I wondered if the aliens were somehow aware of us and causing these things to happen to prevent us from interfering in their plans. I shook my head. Couldn’t be! We had seen no sign of the aliens since Carol shot the one almost sixteen years ago. Slowly I stood and headed out the door. Naiya was headed my way, the same shocked look on her face as well. Carol must have called her also. What were we going to do?

  The sense of loss permeated the room. The three of us sat at the dark walnut conference table adjacent to her desk. Round, with seats for five, it allowed for smaller, more intimate meetings. Mike would be calling back shortly, using our secure network. The earlier message had come coded to her cell, but not via the secure system allowing voice communications. Now each of us was silent, numb. “We’re sure”? I asked uselessly.

  Carol shrugged. “The message was from Mike. The authentication would be impossible to fake. It was brief. Just enough to convey the fact and indicate he would go to the residence where we have a node for the secure system in the underground level.”

  Despite the loss, Naiya remained practical. “If this is true, we need to consider options. Is there anyway we can get the device without Kurt’s help?”

  “We’ll have Mike send someone for Dave. We can start thinking about options, but none look promising.” She looked at me in case I had any ideas.

  “All we know at this point it is somewhere in the greater Los Angeles area. That covers a lot of territory. Kurt told me he stashed the translator along with several other things he had accumulated over the years in a way that ensured there was no connection to him. There is no way anyone will trace it through any of his records.”

  “Which makes sense,” Carol noted. “The government has been searching for him and any leads to him for over a year. With total access to his home, business, and family. They never found a hint of these hidden items. From what you have said Kurt knew they wouldn’t. I can’t see how we can expect to do something they haven’t, with even less information.”

  “Now the brother and sister will have a free hand in dismantling the business and selling off the assets,” Naiya added. “Anything that might be there will be forever lost very soon.”

  “There’s going to be another investigation,” I warned them.

  “Oh shit! They are going to realize the dead man is Kurt!” Naiya shouted, getting it at once.

  “Once they identify the body, and realize the long missing Kurt Morris has returned and was not dead all along, there’s going to be a major flap.” Carol had caught the implications of my statement along with Naiya. “It won’t take them long I’ll bet. It was the daughter’s car. The daughter is dead as well, which can only help starting them thinking along those lines.”

  I was trying to sort through the possible implications when the secure phone beeped. Carol answered, and Mike’s deep voice came across the line.

  “Guys, there was nothing I could do.” His voice was apologetic. “It happened so quickly when Agent Williams showed up out of nowhere.”

  “Who?” we all asked simultaneously.

  “That NSG guy. Agent Williams. He caused the accident.”

  We looked at each other. This was unexpected.

  “Back-up” I instructed. “Let’s run through this step-by-step. But a couple of questions first. Most important, are we sure that Kurt is dead?”

  “Positive!” Mike answered. “I checked myself. Never had a prayer. Had to be quick.”

  “And the daughter,” I asked. “Maybe Kurt had hinted to her where the item was.”

  “She’s gone too. “Even the air bags couldn’t save her from that impact.”

  That ended that slim chance, I thought.

  “What about Agent Williams?” Carol interrupted.

  “He’s dead too,” Mike answered. “It’s gonna take them a while to sort him out. Burned to a crisp. Car too.”

  “Anyone else killed,” Naiya asked.

  “Tanker driver. The agent slammed into the tanker. The driver didn’t get out before it went up.”

  This was a mess. “Okay, give us the sequence of events.” It probably didn’t matter. The damage had been done. We really needed to think about what the implications of the deaths were to us. Also, we needed to start planning if there was a recovery approach. We were very likely back to where we were before all of this started.

  “Kurt and Mary, his daughter, were headed out for brunch, to be followed by a drive just like the last couple of days.” Mike started his story. “I followed in a separate car, partly so they could have privacy, but also to be able to keep watch for anything unusual. See if anyone was watching them. It started the same as always. They finished eating, came back out to the car, and headed out the old road. The one that climbs up the back of Watson’s Peak, then winds its way back to the cabin.”

  I knew where he meant. It was a less heavily traveled road, but because it was straighter the truckers tended to use it a lot. The scenery was spectacular, and I could understand why they would have preferred that way for a leisurely drive.

  “Just at the edge of town, a blue Chevy pulled out and got between us. After a second it suddenly accelerated and pulled up on the wrong side of the road paralleling them. I could see the driver shouting at Mary through the open windows.”

  “That was Agent Williams?” Carol asked.

  “Yes,” Mike responded. “He appeared really angry. I think it scared her. She accelerated, but he started chasing her. They were both going way too fast for the road. On the turns they were using both sides of the road. It was all I could do to keep them in sight. There was no way I could overtake or stop the chase.”

  “Not your fault” Carol agreed with him. �
��And then?”

  “It didn’t last long. Less than a mile. She took a turn on the wrong side. Lost it coming out of the turn and went off the road. Ran straight into a granite rock the size of my house.” He stopped for a minute. “A gasoline truck was coming the other way when she took the turn in the wrong lane. He tried to take the turn in her lane, but lost it also. William’s car side-swiped him and got tangled into the undercarriage of the tanker. It went off the road on the opposite side from where Mary and Kurt hit the rock, about one hundred yards down the road. Tanker broke open and gas was spilling everywhere. Something started the gas on fire, and it engulfed both the car and tanker in seconds. Williams never got out.”

  “Explosion?”

  “No, it didn’t blow. But it sure burned fast. There’s gonna be a forest fire to contain as well,” he noted.

  “How could he have found her?” Naiya asked out loud in a question directed at no one in particular.

  “He had inside help,” Mike answered matter-of-factly.

  “What?” the three of us exclaimed in surprise.

  “We have a leak inside the firm,” Mike answered ominously. “He has been passing along bits and pieces of information for some time now.”

  “Who?” asked Carol angrily.

  “Ken Marshall,” Mike responded immediately.

  Ken I thought. Fred Marshall’s son. Fred had been one of my closest friends and a key member of our team. His son had come on board a few years after his father’s death in the explosion that had caused us so much trouble early on. The explosion was one of the things Agent Williams had been interested in during that first meeting. How could he be working against us? Besides, he wasn’t in on the project.

  “Williams became convinced that Jim and Kurt were linked somehow. Then he gets informed by Kurt’s brother and sister of the daughter’s unexpected departure for a few days. Williams had close ties with the brother and sister. They have been trying to get the daughter ousted for a time, and they hoped that William’s investigation might help them accomplish their goal. He apparently had them make a call to her. They had caused another disagreement to develop. Seems it happens all the times these days, so she wouldn’t have been suspicious. Gave him a chance to trace the cell phone location up here.”

  “”How does Ken fit in?” Carol asked, still angry at the betrayal.

  “Williams got Ken to poke around to see if we had any activity in the area. I don’t know how he found out, but he knew about the cabin and he learned that we had recently moved someone into it. That gave Williams the connection he needed.”

  “Wait a minute,” I broke in. “It just occurred to me. How can you know all these details? Especially so soon?”

  “Oh,” Mike replied. “I have William’s sidekick. He survived!”

  “Jeff? What do you mean you have him?” I demanded.

  “I, uh, sort of kidnapped him,” Mike answered defensively. “He got out of the car just before the fire started. I thought we might need information, and that maybe we didn’t want the connection to us known. So I grabbed him. Turns out he is completely unhinged by all of this. Williams wasn’t supposed to be on the case. Told me everything. Williams had been forbidden to have any contact with any of the parties.”

  That confirmed what he had let slip last weekend. Naiya was first to the important point. “Where is he now?”

  “I took him back to the cabin. Doc’s watching him. Gave him something to put him out a while.”

  We looked at each other. We hadn’t yet thought through the implications of having kidnapped a federal agent. At least the man was contained for now. We might have to make him disappear, but we could decide that later. There was too much to think about right now to try and deal with that.

  “Anything else you can tell us Mike?” Carol asked.

  “That’s about it,” he responded. “The cops are all over the scene, along with the fire department. They haven’t removed the bodies yet, but I suspect it won’t take them long to figure out who the girl is. Kurt is anybody’s guess. A day or so, because they can get prints. The agent might take them some time to figure out. The car didn’t look official, and there isn’t going to be much left of him or the car by the time they get that fire out. The fire was pretty intense.”

  “Okay. Go back to the cabin and keep the other one sedated until we figure out where this is leading.” Carol looked at Naiya and me to see if we had anything to add. We both shook our heads. “Thanks Mike. You’ve done everything possible. We’ll get back to you after we have had a chance to think this through.”

  I broke the connection as we all tried to absorb what we had just learned. Carol was the first to speak. “Priorities,” she asked.

  “Implications to us,” Naiya spoke up first. “This is going to be very public. Is it going to reactivate the whole disappearance thing and the connection that was being made to us?”

  My turn. “With Kurt gone, what are our options with regard to his artifact?”

  “Ken Marshall,” Carol added savagely. She could not tolerate disloyalty. “I’ll handle that personally! What else?” she asked.

  I was sure there were dozens of things. But too much had happened too fast. I was still numb. “Let’s focus on Naiya’s item. I’m sure more issues will arise, but that is the one with immediate implications. We better be prepared. The resurfacing of Kurt, even in death will be big news. There will be a strong push to figure out where he’s been and why he suddenly reappeared.”

  “Good luck” Carol indicated. I knew what she meant. There was no way they were going to find out. The clues of his incarceration were lost in more than two thousand years of history.

  “What can link any of this to us?” Naiya asked pointed. “Not very much. Kurt suddenly reappears. With his daughter no less. She had been resisting any changes to his company and estate all along. Perhaps it was something the two of them cooked up for reasons unknown? We have never been considered as having any involvement with his disappearance.”

  “The gun links us to Kurt, but not his disappearance. And even that is weak,” Carol said.

  “What do you mean?” I asked

  “We did some checking,” she responded. “It would be next to impossible to really date the gun. Maybe some of the crud, but there are ways to have added that, so it’s inconclusive. Kurt wrote the cloth it was found with was dated at over 1000 years. Cloth can be dated, but there is only Kurt’s note to indicate they were really found together. He could have been creating a fake for some reason. There is a lot of history showing he didn’t like you. Besides, the gun isn’t a murder weapon. It obviously was not used to kill Kurt. He was just killed in a crash. So who’s going to care about the gun.”

  “And the bogus computer files,” added Naiya. “He was attempting some form of mis-direction there. Further reason to discredit anything they found in his hidden basement.”

  “He did have some of the alien metal. That’s worrisome” Carol added.

  “But not our problem either. I had considered this one earlier. Kurt was the only one to link us with the metal, and he was now gone. “But we had better be careful about keeping our possession of any of the material secret.” I recalled that Kurt had caught a glimpse of my ‘key’.

  “There were some notes about Carol’s identity,” Naiya noted.

  “From what Kurt told me there were no specifics in those notes. Just comments that he had suspicions. That isn’t helpful to them. As we noted a few days ago, we have passed multiple security checks. His suspicions will probably be viewed as questionable given his long dislike of us.” I could think of only one more link. And it was real. “There’s Jeff.”

  “That could prove to be a problem. Maybe it would have been better if Mike had left him alone?” Carol wondered.

  “But then we would still be wondering about how he had made the connection,” Naiya observed correctly. “And we wouldn’t know about the leak inside!”

  “He’s contained, at least for now,
” I insisted. “If it comes down to it, he will have to be either relocated downtime, or at worst eliminated.” They looked at me. That was a step we hadn’t had to pursue before. Although we had always known the tough choice might become necessary. “Is there anything we need to do, clean up, change, just in case there is some kind of formal investigation? Just because of the odd nature of these events, they may run us through some hoops just to be complete.”

  None of us had any ideas, but we agreed to pass the issues to the downtime base for their consideration. We were still shocked by the recent events, and could easily have skipped over something. The more brains thinking, the less chance of oversight. Meanwhile, I had another issue I wanted to pursue.

  “Can we talk a little about recovery of the artifact?” I asked.

  “You mean downtime recovery rather than finding it somewhere in Los Angeles?” Carol asked. “The implications of something like that are so potentially dangerous,” she hesitated. “We need more of our experts, and especially Al, our physicist. Let’s schedule a brainstorming session for Thursday. I don’t think we can get everyone here before then.”

  “That’s fine” I replied. But let’s just bounce around a few ideas for a minute. We can run anything that looks interesting by the whole group later this week.”

  “I’m not at all comfortable with removing the artifact out of the time sequence, even if you could locate it,” Carol said firmly. “We have no experience with such an action. And in this case, that object was a defining point in Kurt’s whole life. Good or bad, it led him, and in many ways us, to where we are. This has the same risks as going after the revolver that we discussed last week.”