He clicked the video projector button again. Chattopadhyay continued, “Once you’ve escaped, find a safe place, and then review tutorials located elsewhere in this device to evade detection by BTC surveillance and psychotronic technology.”
Chattopadhyay stared for a moment at the camera.
“I guess that’s it. This is where I say good-bye.”
Grady watched the image of his friend intently.
“Good luck, Jon. I look forward to the day we meet in person.”
Grady nodded.
“And now for my own video entry: My name is Archibald Chattopadhyay, nuclear physicist and amateur poet. I have a lovely wife, Amala, who has given me five wonderful children. I led the team that first perfected a sustained fusion reaction, and for this I was imprisoned by the Bureau of Technology Control in April 1985. I am not dead. I live still.” Tears had begun to form in Chattopadhyay’s eyes. “Please tell my wife and children that I love them very much, and that they are forever in my thoughts.”
Grady wiped tears from his own eyes.
This man was Grady’s salvation—the reason he was still alive. The reason he and his fellow prisoners had any hope left at all.
Grady was determined not to fail him.
CHAPTER 12
Forwarding Address
Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Bill McAllen didn’t like traveling to meet with subordinates. In fact, he preferred not to leave Washington if he could help it. He’d traveled enough during his military career to last a lifetime and now relished evenings at home. However, he’d been instructed by the Director of National Intelligence that the code-word-secret Federal Bureau of Technology Control had gone off reservation and needed to be brought back into the fold—even if that meant meeting them on their own turf. And so here McAllen was with two local DHS agents, pressing a duct-taped buzzer next to the lobby doors of a decrepit building in downtown Cleveland. For a bureau that supposedly managed advanced technology, the BTC seemed stuck in the last century. Maybe even the one before that.
As impossible as it was for someone with his security clearances to believe, he hadn’t heard of the BTC until a few weeks ago. Apparently it had operated for decades beyond oversight. This came as a surprise since post-9/11 everything had supposedly been centralized and reorganized. It even took some doing for the folks at Langley to locate record of BTC headquarters. McAllen found that suspicious—especially since it was the CIA that had founded it back in the ’60s. What was also suspicious was that no one could tell how the BTC was currently being funded—some budgetary shenanigans, he’d thought.
But now that McAllen stood before the BTC offices in person, it occurred to him that maybe they weren’t being funded at all. The place was a rat hole—a shabby ten-story government building in an unfashionable part of town. It must have been impressive back in the 1960s, but its heyday had long since passed. Clearly the BTC was the province of bureaucratic dead-enders. If the director of the BTC hadn’t personally invited them here for a meeting, McAllen would have turned around by now. Lord knows he was sick of leaving voice messages. And the BTC director didn’t do email. Stuck in the last century.
He shook his head and laughed ruefully. This was a snipe hunt.
After ringing the lobby bell for a few minutes, an uninterested elderly security guard came to the glass doors. McAllen had seen the type before—the federal lifer. This man was in no hurry. The guard finally unlocked the aged bronze-framed door from an overflowing key ring and opened it a crack.
“Can I help you, gentlemen?”
McAllen and the other officers showed their Homeland Security credentials. “We’re expected.” He glared at the guard until the man stepped aside. The trio pushed their way into the granite lobby. The place even smelled old. “What floor is the director on?”
“The director of what?”
McAllen gave the guard a stern look, but it didn’t have much effect. Perhaps the guards were instructed to divulge no information. He turned to Alvarez, the lead local agent. “Do we have a floor number?”
Alvarez checked his smartphone. “Director Hedrick says top floor in his letter.”
The guard raised his eyebrows. “Floor ten?”
They all looked at him.
He gestured to the bank of elevators. “Car four still works.”
In a few moments they entered the worn-looking elevator and hit the engraved brass button for the tenth floor. The elevator car rattled and lurched as they ascended. Slowly.
Alvarez, a sharply dressed young agent with an air of competent precision, just shook his head. “This isn’t the way I want to go.”
McAllen and Agent Fortis laughed nervously. But truthfully, neither of them wanted to die in a sketchy elevator either. Before long the accordion door rattled open, and they moved out into what could only be described as a time capsule.
The entire tenth floor had an open floor plan, with steel desks straight from the 1960s running row after row, with large IBM Selectric typewriters beneath vinyl covers. The whole place was coated in dust. The burgundy carpets had buckled, and the walls had started peeling.
“What the hell . . . ?”
Alvarez stepped forward, glancing first left, then right. “Is there some mistake, Deputy Secretary? Do we have the right address?”
“I double-checked the address downstairs.” He paused and pointed at an opaque glass-walled office at the far side of the open floor. There was a light on in there. “Let’s go check it out.”
“Are you serious?”
The men moved across the floor, Alvarez running a finger across a wood veneer desktop. His finger came up coated with dust. He shook his head sadly.
In a few moments they reached the closed office door. It had gold-stenciled lettering that glittered in the afternoon light: “Graham Hedrick—Bureau Director.”
“You have got to be kidding me.”
McAllen smirked at Alvarez and then opened the door without knocking. Inside was an empty secretary’s station—its huge IBM Selectric also covered. But the door to the executive suite beyond was open, and they could hear a man talking there as if dictating something.
“Hello?” McAllen walked through the office door and into a scene straight out of photos from his father’s days at the State Department. Sitting behind a large oak desk with a matching credenza and bar table, and paneled walls filled with institutional art, was a handsome, sharp-featured man in his fifties wearing a pinstripe suit. He sat in a large leather chair that had clearly seen better days.
McAllen ushered the other men inside and walked forward, his hand extended. “Mr. . . . ?”
The man did not rise or extend his own hand across the wide desk. “I’m certain you know who I am, Deputy Secretary McAllen.”
Having his hand refused made McAllen angry. “What on earth is going on here? Your bureau is a pigsty.”
“Yes, you might have noticed that our funding levels have dropped precipitously in recent years. I would have thought that would obviate the need for this meeting.” He gestured to the dusty chairs. “Have a seat.”
Alvarez answered for them, scowling. “No, thanks.”
Fortis was examining the decay everywhere around them. “This is unbelievable . . .”
McAllen leaned down onto Hedrick’s desk, leaving handprints in the dust. “Look, I don’t know what you’re running out of here, but I don’t appreciate you dragging me all the way to Cleveland for a meeting. This could have been dealt with in D.C. If it wasn’t for the DNI, I wouldn’t have come here at all.”
Hedrick appeared unruffled.