Legacy - 47. Den of Deceit - Paul Manning

Wednesday, April 1, 2043 - Twelve Days after the Assassination

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I awoke from my sleep with a start. I was drenched in sweat. I had no idea what time it was, as the electronics in every device we had - even the tiny motors in our battery-powered watches, had been fried by the electromagnetic pulse. All of our lighting had been destroyed as well. Even our flashlights no longer functioned. It was tough at first, getting around in total darkness. Man, I never knew just how dark, dark could be. Thank God Mamood found a case of glow sticks! Unlike the electric lights and flashlights, which relied on tiny carbon nanotube-based light-emitting diodes to generate red, green and blue light, the glow sticks used a chemical reaction to generate an eerie yellow-green light for several hours at a time, until the chemicals in the stick ran out. They weren’t very bright but they sure as fuck beat stumbling around in the dark.

So far we’d only found the one crate, not that we were actively searching for more. Moving crates around involved heavy lifting, hastening the depletion of our precious air supply. For the time being we were rationing the use of the glow sticks with extreme care, opening a new one only once the previous one was barely visible at all, and sharing a single glow stick among all of us. That meant that if one of us went to the bathroom, he had to take the glow stick with him, leaving everyone else in the dark.

Although I was perturbed that I’d had the nightmare once again - the same nightmare I’d been having every night since we fled to our underground prison - I did not have time to think about it. I was certain the nightmare was a premonition of things to come but my full bladder was a more immediate priority.

Looking around our sleeping quarters, I noted that the glow stick was almost out. I resisted the temptation to open a new one, however, as it still provided enough light to find my way without tripping over my own feet, albeit barely. Once I got to the restroom, I carefully set the glow stick down by the sink and emptied my bladder into one of the urinals. Without flushing or washing my hands, I made my way back to the sleeping room, taking the glow stick with me.

Although not as dire as the situation with the air supply, without electrical pumps our water supply was limited to what was available in a holding tank above us. Water use had to be restricted to drinking and essential washing. Flushing the toilets was a luxury and, hence, we flushed accumulated fecal matter only once a day.

As I prepared to get back into bed - not that I was tired, but I had nothing better to do - I heard Altaf whisper, “That you Paul?”

“The one and only,” I whispered back.

“Could we talk?” he asked.

“Let me see,” I replied, “I’m going to have to check my calendar.”

“Very funny, lieutenant,” Altaf responded quietly.

Altaf took the glow stick and made his way to the restroom, then returned it to the sleeping quarters and joined me in the dark, in the common room. “I don’t know how you do it, Paul, dealing with death on a daily basis,” he began. I knew exactly where that was coming from, as there had been two fatalities from the EMP attack. One of the men died instantly from a surge of electricity in his pacemaker leads. The other man suffered severe internal burns from an implanted artificial hip joint. The current generated was so strong that it cooked much of his pelvis. He died the next day from toxic shock, but the sound of his screams before he lost consciousness was something I would not soon forget.

“You never get used to it, Al,” I replied, referring to Altaf by a nickname I’d given him during our time together in captivity. “You just learn to compartmentalize it, forgetting for the time that the object in front of you was once a human being. You never get past the smell, though, and it’s hard to ignore that it was human when you notify the family.” It was also hard to ignore it when I relived the crime through the victim’s eyes, but I couldn’t tell Altaf about that.

Having two corpses in our midst was bad enough, but the decay process would have consumed precious air we could not spare while at the same time emitting toxic gases. It wasn’t just a matter of the smell, either. In time the toxic gases would have overwhelmed us, being far more lethal than the accumulated carbon dioxide that was already building up.

It wasn’t like we had anyplace to store the bodies, however. We didn’t have anything like a sealed meat locker, just a storage room with so-called MREs - meals, ready to eat. For lack of anything better, we ended up stuffing them into large plastic trash bags and wrapping them up with duct tape. I feared that this place would soon become our tomb, too.

“You know I won’t think any less of you, Paul, if those rumors are true,” Altaf started to speak again from out of the blue. “I know you had a vision when you were a boy about David Reynolds’ funeral. You know that I had the same vision too, when I was a teenager. It was right after my first boyfriend, Fareed, came to me in my sleep to warn me my life was in danger, and that I had to leave Pakistan. At least I think it was in my sleep, but I never really was sure. Regardless of whether I was awake or not, however, there is no doubt in my mind that it was indeed Fareed that came to me, and it was through him that I saw a glimpse of the future we’re living now.

“Right before I came here, I had another late night visit, but this time it was from a boy I never met . . . Cliff Kimball.”

Although I tried to control my emotions, I was sure I must have registered a look of surprise, as Altaf continued, “He came to you too, didn’t he? I got the impression from him that he did, and that he comes to you regularly.”

When I didn’t say anything, Altaf continued, “No matter what you say, I’ll believe you Paul . . . and I’ll respect your right to privacy. Whatever you tell me, it will stay between us and us alone unless you want me to tell someone else. In fact, with what I’ve seen of your uncanny ability to solve crimes, I’d be willing to wager that you’ve experienced far more than visits from Cliff. I’d bet that your detective’s intuition is something far more significant than that.”

When I still didn’t say anything, Altaf added, “I’ve heard about your premonitions . . . how you’ve been having them since you were a kid . . . how you can see things, sometimes years into the future.

“I can’t remember not having them, Al,” I suddenly blurted out, losing all resistance to telling my friend about my secret gifts. “Ever since I can remember, visions have come to me. It’s like I’ll be looking at someone and I’ll suddenly see something from their future. I used to think it was like watching a movie, projected onto my eyeballs, but it’s more than that. I actually see what they will see someday. It’s as if I can see through their own eyes, but what I see is from their future.”

“Is that how you’re able to solve so many crimes?” Altaf asked. “So many murders?”

Nodding my head, I explained, “I see the last thing the victim saw when they were murdered. More than that, I feel what they felt. I fully experience their murder through their eyes and ears . . . through their flesh and blood. Usually the last thing I see before I experience their death is the perpetrator’s face. That’s how I’m able to solve so many crimes.”

Placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing it, Altaf said, “That must be horrible, Paul. I cannot imagine what it would be like to experience death once, let alone dying over and over again.”

“It is horrible,” I replied. “Not death, but dying . . . and dying violently. Many times I thought about quitting and, just when I decided I couldn’t take it anymore . . . that I had to switch out of Homicide, Cliff came to me in my sleep and told me to go for broke. He told me to up and quit. Not more than 24 hours passed after turning in my resignation before I was made a shift command and, now, I’m the chief. Cutting back on my time in the field made the job tolerable, yet I can still use my talents when they are needed most. I love the job and wouldn’t want to do anything else.”

”Did the cure for your Down’s Syndrome diminish your special abilities?” Altaf asked.

“Not at all,” I replied without hesitation. “Indeed if anything my abilities have only improved with time. Now that I’m able to focus, I can better pay attention to details . . . details that can be important to solving a crime.”

After a brief pause, I continued, “There’s one other ability I have. I can sometimes see an aura around people. When I was a kid I referred to it as a glow, but it’s not really something visual. There is just a feeling I get when I see someone who’s a good person . . . someone I can trust. That’s how I knew right away that I could trust the Prime Minister. That’s how I knew the very first time I met you that you were someone I could trust . . . that you were an inherently good person.”

“Thanks,” Altaf said and I could almost feel the heat of his blush radiating off his skin, even though I couldn’t see it. “Does it work the other way too?” Altaf then asked. “Can you sense when someone is inherently bad?”

“Yes,” I replied. “I sometimes see a shadow around people with evil on their minds . . . people who think only of themselves, which brings up another issue,” I added. “Mamood is not what he claims to be. He is enveloped by a shadow as dark as any I have ever seen.”

“Fuck, Paul,” Altaf said in a loud whisper, using one of his rare swear words. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why did you let him lead us here?”

“I did tell the Prime Minister I didn’t trust Mamood,” I answered. “He asked me why and I told him it was just a feeling I had . . . detective’s intuition, I told him. You have to understand Al that I couldn’t tell him more than that. He would have never believed me if I’d told him the truth. He told me he’d known Mamood since he was a young man and that he trusted him with his life. What could I say to that?

“And as for why I allowed him to lead us here, bad people don’t always do bad things,” I explained. “Self-preservation is the strongest of all impulses and, if anything, it’s even stronger in the selfish. I anticipated that Mamood would gladly help save us if it facilitated saving his own skin. Mamood might still be of use to us. He might still help us get out of here alive. But, as he himself admitted, we shouldn’t trust him. Don’t ever turn your back on him. I have little doubt that he would kill us all if he thought that it would preserve enough of the air supply to allow his escape.”

“Then why hasn’t he killed us already?” Altaf asked.

“Because we are here,” I answered, “because of your importance as the highest-ranking cabinet official in the U.S. Government. Because of the Prime Minister’s importance to the Palestinian people and to the Middle East peace process.”

When Altaf failed to respond or elaborate on his question, I continued, “The CIA knows we’re here, and, so long as we are alive . . . especially you . . . they will spare no expense to rescue us.”

“And that, my friends,” Mamood spoke to us from nearby, “is our only hope.” Fuck! Mamood must have taken advantage of the dark to sneak up on us. Altaf and I had been quiet but, apparently, not quiet enough. I could only pray that Mamood hadn't heard more.

Obviously thinking the same thoughts, Altaf exclaimed, “You just about made me crap my pants, Mamood. You surprised us. How long have you been here with us?”

“I needed to take a piss, but the glow stick was completely out,” he explained, “so I was just passing through on my way to the storage room to grab another one and then to use the facilities, when I heard some whispering. Naturally I was curious to see who was sitting in the dark having a conversation while the rest of us were sleeping.”

“Not that any of us knows whether it’s actually nighttime, mind you,” Altaf interjected.

“That much is certainly true.” Mamood responded. “You know, there have been studies in individuals undergoing sensory deprivation. As you can imagine, NASA and the military have a huge interest in this sort of thing. Astronauts on long space journeys may spend months or even years in isolation. There is no day or night in space and, the farther they get from Earth, the longer the delay in radio communications. By the time they reach Mars it takes an hour for transmissions to travel to and from Earth, making real time communication impossible. Hence the one remaining frame of reference becomes distorted and the passage of time has less and less to do with time on Earth.

“Soldiers, too, may spend days isolated from the rest of the world,” he went on, “and this is especially the case if they’re in an underground bunker as we are. Take away all external signs of day and night and time has a way of stretching itself out. People in isolation tend to assume a twenty-six hour day, give or take several minutes. They are, of course, unaware of this and will experience jet lag when they reconnect with the outside world.

“Throw in sensory deprivation and all bets are off. Without sight and sound, we are clueless as to the passage of time. We don’t just assume an internal frame of reference. Without an artificial sense of day and night, we sleep when we are tired and, without activity, we are always tired. People undergoing sensory deprivation start to hallucinate and, ultimately, go mad. Unless there is a rescue, running out of air could seem like a blessing before we're through.”

“But you said it would take weeks to dig us out,” I reminded Mamood. “The carbon dioxide will reach toxic levels within mere days. How will they reach us in time?”

“Much has been learned from mining disasters,” Mamood explained. “When coal mines collapse, if the miners even survive such an accident, they are sometimes trapped for weeks underground. The mines themselves are often highly unstable, so the miners often have to be dug out from the surface. The accumulation of carbon dioxide isn’t the problem, but methane gas is as it seeps into the mines from the surrounding coal and coal-containing rock. As in our situation, theirs is also a race against time.”

“So how do they survive until they are rescued?” I asked.

“The rescuers first drill down into the chamber where the miners are trapped,” Mamood answered. “The shaft thus created, although too small to use for rescue, allows them to pump in fresh air and, to a limited degree, provide supplies.”

“This can buy time for them to drill a larger shaft through which a cage can be passed that is then used to pull the miners out,” Mamood added. “Unfortunately, we’re much further underground, and the rock is much softer . . . it’s sandstone and, when drilled, it turns to sand. The very things that make us safe from attack make it hellish to dig us out.”

“And in the meantime we go crazy?” I asked.

“Hopefully, one of the first things they will send us through the first hole will be flashlights,” Mamood answered. “That alone would go a long way toward maintaining our sanity.”

“Good morning, or whatever it is,” someone said in heavily accented English as they entered the main living room. “Why are you sitting in the dark?”

“I was on my way to get a new glow stick,” Mamood answered, “when I found these two already here.”

“Is it already morning?” the Palestinian Prime Minister asked in his flawless English.

“It’s morning, afternoon or evening,” I answered. “It’s whatever you want it to be.”

“I better go get that glow stick,” Mamood stated as he apparently left the room. A moment later he returned with a fresh, lit glow stick. The room was suddenly bathed in light. It seemed like daylight compared to the complete darkness of the moment before. “I’m taking this with me to the restroom,” Mamood announced. “If anyone else needs to go, now would be a good time.”

By now everyone had joined us, and we all took advantage of the opportunity to use the facilities. There was only one restroom and it was unisex, so even the one woman in the detail joined us. There was no modesty in times of war.

The next order of business was breakfast, which as with lunch and dinner, consisted of dried food rations - so-called MREs. Designed to provide all the nutrition needed by a soldier on campaign, they were high in fat, yielding the maximum in calories at the lowest possible weight. They did not require heating or refrigeration. One only needed to add water to ‘enjoy’ a complete meal.

Frankly the military should have hired Sammy Austin. Certainly he could have at least come up with something palatable, if not outright tasty. I never knew food could taste so horrible, yet it satisfied my hunger as it was designed to do.

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Thursday, April 2, 2043 - Thirteen Days after the Assassination

There was no warning when they broke through. We were eating what we assumed was lunch when we heard a loud crash coming from the store room. Before we could even react, several heavily armed soldiers with headlamps burst into the main room, blinding us with their lights. With weapons drawn, but pointed down, they were upon us in no time. How the Hell did they get in here so fast?

The next thing I heard was an audible click - the distinct sound of a switchblade opening. “Drop the knife, Terrance!” one of the soldiers shouted as they all raised their weapons and pointed them slightly to my right.

“I suggest you drop your weapons or you’ll be taking your precious Secretary back in a body bag,” the man I knew as Mamood spoke. Finally I had time to turn to see what was happening, although my intuition had already told me all I needed to know. It was just as I had seen it in my dreams, only this time I knew it was real. Mamood had grabbed Altaf and had a knife blade held tightly against my friend’s throat. There was already a trickle of blood running down Altaf’s neck, staining his shirt.

“You even try it and you’ll be dead before your body hits the ground,” the same soldier challenged.

“That would be preferable to what I'm sure awaits me on the surface,” Mamood answered. “That is, if I even get to the surface alive in the first place. As you see, I have nothing to lose and would just as soon take the Secretary with me if that is how it has to be. Drop your weapons and I might consider letting Dr. El Tahari live in exchange for safe passage to Tehran.

“You have five seconds to drop your weapons!” Mamood shouted.

I felt paralyzed by fear. I knew that the soldiers would never drop their weapons and, yet, what choice did they have? If they dropped their weapons, Mamood would use Altaf as his hostage to demand who knows what. If they didn’t drop their weapons, Altaf would be dead. Even if they did drop their weapons, Mamood, or Terrance, or whatever his real name was would almost certainly still kill Altaf just as soon as he’d assured his safe escape.

Moving slowly so as to avoid attracting Mamood’s attention, I reached down to release the small hand gun I kept hidden in my prosthetic leg. Unlike modern weapons of the day that relied on electronic firing mechanisms, which were keyed to the owner and could be fired by no one else, my gun was an antique that used a conventional, mechanical firing mechanism. As such it was completely illegal to carry it the world over. In fact, it could only be sold as a collectable, with the firing pin removed. It was, however, the only gun small enough to fit inside my prosthetic leg. Hence it was the only gun in the bunker that could have survived the EMP device. Fortunately the Prime Minister had given it back to me in thanks for my having saved his life.

As I pulled the gun out of its hiding place, I looked across at Altaf and, behind him, saw into Mamood’s eyes, in that instant when our eyes connected, I realized that Mamood was going to slit Altaf’s throat before I had a chance to fire my weapon - before he even finished his countdown. For in his eyes I saw a vision - a vision from out of my past.

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As I pulled the gun out of its hiding place, I looked across at Altaf and, behind him, saw into Mamood’s eyes, in that instant when our eyes connected, I realized that Mamood was going to slit Altaf’s throat before I had a chance to fire my weapon - before he even finished his countdown.

Drawing on the vision that had passed before my eyes, I stated calmly and quietly, “Bart wouldn’t have wanted this.”

A flash of pain spread across Mamood’s face, and then he responded tersely with, “What the fuck do you know about my brother?”

“I was there when he killed himself, Terrance," I replied. Although Mamood had stopped counting, he wasn’t responding to me either, and so I continued, “I was sitting right there in the front row on the fifty yard line. Sitting next to me on one side was my best friend in the world, Sam, who’s now Congressman Sammy Austin, and sitting next to him was his brother, Trevor Austin, the current National Security Advisor . . . at least that’s what he was when I left. You may recall that Trevor was the young man who tried to talk your brother out of killing himself. Next to Trevor was his husband, Kurt DeWitt, the current White House Chief of Staff.

When Mamood still didn’t say anything, I went on. “On my other side was Cliff Kimball and next to Cliff was his brother, the current Vice-President, Jeremy Kimball . . .”

“Actually, Mr. Kimball is now the President,” one of the soldiers interrupted, much to the shock of all of us. “President Schroeder killed himself last Friday afternoon . . .”

“You’re lying!” Mamood shouted with venom in his voice.

“What possible reason would I have to lie to you?” The soldier responded. “Schroeder hanged himself from the chandelier in his Congressional office. His body was not discovered until Saturday morning, and the announcement wasn’t made until Saturday night, at a press conference in front of Congress and the Supreme Court. Kimball also announced he would be nominating Brad Reynolds to be his vice-president and some other guy to be his pick to replace John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.”

“William Kramer?” Altaf asked, and it was then that I noticed that Mamood no longer had the switchblade at Altaf’s throat, but rather he was holding it a few inches away. Obviously he could still slit Altaf’s throat before any of us had the time to react, but the fact that he was holding it so casually indicated to me that he was no longer paying attention to it. His thoughts of killing Altaf had become secondary, which gave us our only chance.

Slowly and deliberately, I inched my gun out into a position under the table from which I could shoot Mamood through the lower part of his aorta without hitting Altaf. Even though I held it in my left hand, I was an accurate shot with either hand. Of course I hoped I would not need to shoot Mamood, but if he became unstable and the opportunity presented itself, I was ready.

“That sounds right,” the soldier answered Altaf’s question about Jeremy’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

“You’re lying!” Mamood shouted again. “Marvin Schroeder would not have killed himself.”

“But he did,” the soldier reiterated. “It’s not public knowledge, but I guess Austin . . . Trevor Austin, that is . . . linked him to Reynolds’ assassination. Schroeder couldn’t take the humiliation of being impeached, I guess. At least that’s how I’m reading it. Not only did he have the decency to off himself, but he left behind enough data to arrest more than a hundred people who may have been involved, with hundreds more who may eventually be implicated.

“The interim Prime Minister of Israel has resigned and is under house arrest. The Prime Minister of India has resigned and is under arrest. The Vice-Premier of China was publically executed . . .”

“That’s impossible!” Mamood shouted. “Schroeder was on the periphery. He knew nothing of the plot to assassinate Reynolds, much less the plan to destabilize the Middle East.”

My eyes opened wide as I realized Mamood had been an integral part of the plot to assassinate one of the greatest presidents in history, a man who’d been a close friend since my early teens. I was tempted to shoot him then and there, but that would have amounted to stooping to his level and I wasn’t about to do that.

“Schroeder knew a lot more than you give him credit for,” the soldier responded. “He was a politician . . . a consummate politician who knew to keep records on all his closest associates, both friends and enemies. He might not have known what you were up to, but he had more than enough dirt on everyone involved to put them all away for life, and that includes you, Terrance. Of course in your case we already knew of your plan to drop a nuke on Tel Aviv. With your secret access codes and a retina scan from the Secretary of State’s eyeball, you might have pulled it off . . . right from this secure bunker, had we not deployed the EMP device.

“We should have left you down here to rot but death by asphyxiation would have been too good for you. And of course we needed to rescue the others . . . some very important others, I might add. President Kimball authorized deployment of the experimental thermonucleonic drill, so here we are.”

The change was subtle, but immediate. I could see it in his eyes. Mamood had the look of someone who knew he had run out of options. He knew he had failed and that there was no chance of him ever succeeding in his attempt to sow terror and possibly start a nuclear war. He was now one of the world’s most wanted men. Even if he could manage to take Altaf hostage, his network was gone. Where could he go? At best he might be able to hide out for a while but, ultimately, he would be captured and killed. If he surrendered now, he almost certainly would be executed. He undoubtedly did have some secrets to trade, but that would, at most, only result in a reduced sentence, perhaps life in prison, and that wasn’t for him. I could see it in his eyes that he’d made up his mind to slit Altaf’s throat and die in a hail of bullets. He was only summoning his courage to set it all in motion.

The moment I saw his hand tighten on the knife, I knew I had just milliseconds to react. Moving my finger inside the trigger guard, I squeezed the trigger and a shot rang out, sending a bullet into Mamood’s abdomen, piercing his aorta, the main blood vessel from the heart. Mamood instantly registered a look of shock as the color drained from his face. His wound was fatal but it wasn’t mortal. With quick attention he might even survive to face trial, but that was not my concern. As blood poured into his abdomen, there was insufficient pressure to perfuse the brain and so he lost consciousness, his knife falling from his hand.

In the past I’d always felt guilty whenever I had to shoot someone but this time I did not. No matter how it might end, justice had been served.