Chapter 2

Jase, Ann, and Shirley materialized on the roof of a major upscale office building in downtown Charlotte, NC. It was the middle of the day, but they were not worried about being seen because they had their invisibility turned on. Ann looked around in surprise and said, "Jase, are we in the right place? This doesn't look like a cocaine distribution warehouse to me."

Jase grinned and answered, "We're here because I wondered if the outfit that rents the warehouse to the drug ring is in on the operation. The building owners also own this building and have their main office on the top floor. I thought that we could do a quick scouting job here before closing down the warehouse. If we cut our external gravity to 0.01 g, we should be able to hang from the ceiling and give this place a good going over, including finding out what other businesses they might be involved with. If we don't find anything by listening in, we can always come back later after everybody had gone home and browse through their books."

Shirley commented, "You mean that we are just here to listen right now just to hear what people might have to say. Doesn't that waste a lot of time?"

Jase answered, "'Wasted time' depends on your point of view. We have an unlimited lifespan and can jump to any point in time and space we want to experience, so we don't have to worry about the efficient use of time the way ordinary people do. Boredom is another story. If you get bored real easy, then you need to find another way to use your life, because being a cop involves a lot of waiting around for something interesting or useful to happen."

Shirley defended herself, "I wasn't finding fault with your leadership, I think you do a good job. I just forgot that we don't have to worry about a profitable use of every second of our lives. It will take me some time to get used to the new perspective, that's all."

Jase tried to be conciliatory, "That's OK, Shirley. I didn't mean to sound like I was criticizing you, though I guess that it did come out that way. Sorry!

"OK, this is what I want us to do. We need to split up so that we can cover as much territory as we can. We can keep in touch via our internal radio, so sing out if you find something interesting that we all should see or hear. Let's go see just how sneaky we can be."

They went through the roof hatch to reach the fire stairs. This route made it easy to enter the office unobserved. They separated and started looking for information. By turning up the sensitivity of their hearing they could hear both sides of telephone conversations, so they heard a lot of amusing gossip, but no useful hard information. After an hour of this casual eavesdropping, they still had not learned anything useful, and Jase was about ready to call an end to their search.

This was when Ann finally heard something germane to their search. She heard a man in a private office talking over the telephone to another man about a private meeting scheduled for that evening. He said that he didn't want to give out any details over the 'phone, but the deal looked good and they all should "rake in a tidy sum" before the year was out. Of itself, this comment meant nothing, but the man suddenly changed the subject when his secretary brought in some papers for his signature. That looked suspicious, so Ann flagged the other two to join her. The conversation returned to the original vague subject when the secretary left the room.

They held a quick discussion and decided to follow up on the lead after they had disposed of all the drug warehouses. They listened in and got the details of when and where the meeting was to take place. The meeting would be held in a private dining room of a posh downtown restaurant at 9:00 PM. It was hard to tell, but it sounded like the meeting would be attended by 6-8 people, and the tab was being picked up on a company expense account.

Nothing further was learned as they listened in to the rest of the conversation. They wandered around the office for another hour without hearing anything else of interest, so they jumped forward in time to nearly midnight and the roof of the target warehouse. This sort of destruction was somewhat routine by now, so they left the warehouse a flaming wreck and jumped to their next target. The other 5 warehouses were also destroyed in pretty much the same routine manner, so now they were ready to see what they could learn at the private dinner meeting back in Charlotte.

Jase, Ann, and Shirley jumped to the restaurant's private dining room at 8:00 PM and found a convenient place on the ceiling to wait for the meeting to start. Restaurant staff showed up at 8:30 to start setting up the room and the first of the diners showed up about 8:55. The last guest was seated by 9:15 and the meal was served. Though the restaurant was famous for its shrimp and oysters, neither were served. Other signs through the meal indicated that at least some of the diners were either Jewish or Muslim. Jase found this interesting, but not particularly significant at this stage of the meeting.

At the end of the meeting, two of the men began talking earnestly to each other in Arabic with a strong Pakistani accent. One of the men mentioned something about assembling a monster bomb, but he was quickly shushed by his companion. This was when the man whom Ann had caught on the telephone earlier in the afternoon stood up and called the meeting to order. He welcomed their foreign guests without going into particulars, and then rambled on for about 10 minutes with inanities.

Suddenly, his tone changed and he said, "OK, that takes care of the security check. We can now speak without having to worry about electronic eavesdropping. I know that our guests are on a tight schedule, so I will move along with no further stalling. Basically, as I understand the situation, our guests wished to lease a building with a minimum of 300,000 square feet for a period of 12 months, with an option for an additional 12 months. This building must have a clean room and must have heavy lifting capability. There must be a provision for moving large trailers holding international shipping containers entirely into the building so that they can be sealed off from outside contamination. We have found such a building and have arranged the necessary lease and occupancy permits. All agreements have been signed and the building will be ready for occupancy in 5 weeks. This meeting is the final one and is intended to celebrate a very congenial and mutually profitable association. Gentlemen, we thank you for your business!"

A few other short speeches were made and then the meeting settled into a number of individual conversations among the attendees. This was when the team gathered their most useful information. The result could be summarized as the Americans had no idea what the Arabs planned to do in the building, but didn't give a damn. All they were interested in was the fact that there was a considerable payment "under the table" of a huge number of US dollars deposited in a numbered Swiss bank account for "services rendered." The upper management of the company the team had visited that afternoon had no idea that they had been used as a cover for this, and numerous other deals, over the last 10 years which had netted the participants a very large income outside of their normal salaries and which they had paid no taxes on.

The team returned home and told the others what they had learned. Jeff suggested that they arrange some "accidents" for the Americans who had been profiting for the last 10 years with illegal activity, and they all agreed that would be the best way to handle that part of the problem; however, Jase was concerned about what the Arabs had planned for the building they had leased. He was going to check in on them after they had been using the building for a couple of weeks in a effort to learn what their scheme was. Obviously, it was illegal, but he didn't know what to expect, beyond that. All of the things he could think of were down right frightening!

Time travel had some quirks which made for problems when moving into the future. If one jumped into the past, then he could jump back to what had been his present without any misgivings, since the time line was more or less locked. Things that had happened could be changed, but one had to be careful of creating paradoxes. Usually, with reasonable care, it was safe to jump around in one's own past. On the other hand, jumps into the future could be disastrous if one did not take due care. Normally, it was better to sit around and wait for the future to become the present, and that's what Jase did in his campaign against the Arabs. The intervening time was spent in eliminating the sociopathic Americans who had been profiting from the drug traffic.