Chapter 17

Boston, Massachusetts

The following Monday, a message appeared in Armis’ email inbox and Io buzzed Armis’ comm to retrieve it. It was heavily encoded, using a ten year old U.S. government code scheme. It said:

They have my daughter, Roxanne. Snatched her right out of the exercise room at the hotel at 6:30 in the morning. There was a voice mail, and that’s attached. It said to contact you about it. They said she wouldn’t be harmed. But I’m frantic. Please help!

Mary MacDowell

Io comm’d Armis, ‘I’ve already messaged her back for you, saying we didn’t know anything yet but we would. We’ll let her know as soon as we find out anything.’

They listened to the voice mail, but it was a disguised voice that didn’t say much more than MacDowell had echoed.

Io: ‘I have tracked her head comm unit -- Roxanne’s. It’s stationary and near an abandoned missile silo in Montana. So, “they” – who ever they are – moved fast. I backtracked it and a private jet flew from the Sacramento area to an old airport in Montana.’

Armis: ‘Can I just beam in, perform a counter snatch and beam out?’

Io: ‘If I were doing it, I’d plant her a long way underground ... assuming they know you’re beaming around with the help of satellite transmissions. Or they’d just kill her.’

Armis: ‘Maybe they’re guessing ... who knows? But we have to get counter leverage, somehow ... any comm units near hers?’

Io: ‘Oh. Good thinking. Yeah. There’s five comms in the immediate vicinity.’

Armis: ‘Track the history back on who they’ve called and who called them.’

Io: ‘I am sorry, Armis. I’m not thinking very clearly. I should know to do that. I’m tracing that now ... Okay. There is a whole bunch of calls to each other and to other comms that are off line. The only way they’d be unreachable to me is if they were deep underground ... There were a total of ten of them ... One of them had several calls to a secure comm unit in Washington, D.C. It’s not a head comm. It’s a hand held unit that was originally part of a block of comms assigned to the Department of Defense.

‘Considering the previous threats to the Senator, I think it was President Ellis that ordered the snatching of Roxanne MacDowell.’

Armis: ‘It’s a working hypothesis ... Does it matter who they are? ... Should we call them? Or should I just show up?’

Io: ‘Neither, I think. And yes, it matters. If it’s the entire government, we have to plan differently. First, if you wind up under a bunch of cement with hundreds of feet of soil overhead, I won’t be able to track you, hear your transmissions, or teleport you out. But you can still hear me ... Maybe they just want to kill you.’

Armis: ‘I’ll ignore the death part of things ... Which unit is stronger? The comm built in to my chip in my neck, or the one in the amulet on my chest?’

Io: ‘The comm in your neck is a single purpose device. As long as you’re alive, it’s a much stronger connection.’

Armis: ‘Well, let’s hope you don’t get to depend on a weaker connection. If I remember, there’s nothing short of an enhanced MRI that will find it.’

Io: ‘Right.’

Armis: ‘So ... we’ll use the amulet transmissions only, because they might be tracking transmission coming from me. I don’t want to let them know about the internal chip for as long as I can keep that secret. And when you have to be sending me messages by that chip, I can send out messages with it.’

Io: ‘No. That won’t work. It’s too weak to send from deep underground.’

Armis: ‘A simple on/off signal. One click for yes, two for no, three for something else.’

Io: ‘I’ll download a Morse code summary into your buffer. You can scan it and recall it to code messages if you need it. It’ll be slow, but you can get things out, in a pinch.’

Armis: ‘So ... like I said. Do I just show up there or call first?’

Io: ‘Neither. Again. [laugh] There’s somebody I want you to meet.’

Armis: ‘My security team?’

Io: ‘Not exactly. First you’re going to Canada to meet with the Cree Nation President.’

Armis: ‘Isn’t that where the electricity revolution started?’

Io: ‘Yes, but there’s more. There’s someone you have to meet.’

Washington, D.C.

Ten hours later, Armis teleported into the Private Office of the President of the United States. This was a fairly modest room separated from the Oval Office by a rest room, complete with a shower in addition to the usual facilities. She sat down to wait.

The President’s schedule showed that he always took a break before the evening’s business or entertainment – and Io’s overhead scan of the White House showed that there was only one person in the President’s office at about this time. Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds later, the door from the rest room opened and President Ellis walked through. He was two steps into the office before he noticed the young woman sitting behind his desk, in his executive chair, with her feet propped on the desk, ankles crossed. She wore a long white gown and combat boots.

“You must be the famous Armis,” he said, looking her straight in the eye.

“And you must be the man who arranged to have James Maguire killed,” she replied calmly, sitting erect. She and Io had discussed several opening gambits and had decided that Armis would take the high ground, and attack – he wouldn’t be used to that kind of treatment.

“You seem to have confused me with Martin Farouk, the assassin.”

“David Thomas Farouk. Not Martin. Perhaps that was the name of the man who was the go-between when you hired Farouk,” Armis pressed on.

He took a visitor’s chair and sat down. “Did you come all this way to quiz me about your fantasy?”

“No, actually. I came to talk about a kidnapping. It seems that Roxanne MacDowell has been kidnapped by ten men and taken to an abandoned missile site, and I think you had something to do with it. More than something.”

“Have you notified the FBI? They handle kidnappings,” he said, nonplussed at her knowledge. Then again, she was reputed to be from another planet.

“I think I’ve notified the proper authority. Could you pass that along for me? ... You know, if something untoward should happen to her, I’d be very, very upset.” And she turned on a high intensity, narrow heat beam and melted the ornate, metal desk lamp leaving molten slag in the middle of the desk, which started to smoke. It had been a lamp first used by Harry Truman. She teleported out of the room, leaving a confused and intimidated President behind.