I’d only slept for a few minutes before the door opened and the AD entered surrounded by a score of agents. He sent them back out of the room as he threw my backpack on the table top, scattering the contents. My ID, the thousand bucks cash, my spare clothes, a few energy bars, some of my camping gear that I found necessary to keep near me at all times, and uneaten MREs were the only things left inside it. I knew they weren’t stupid enough to bring back the quipp. Even now, I was sure that it was being taken apart micro-circuit by micro-circuit. If they had discovered it was more than a cell phone. It could go either way; they might think it was just a cell phone or knowing me and my predilection for creating things, they had started examining it for its other uses.
I wasn’t too worried about that. For all extents and purposes, it was just an oddly re-wired cheap smartphone.
“Are George and Leon released yet?” I asked him, trying to stifle a yawn. I’d been up for 22 hours not counting the short stop at the Lodge. The energy from the shower had long since dissipated and I was tired.
“The NSA says they don’t have them but if we turn you over, they’ll make every effort to find them,” Anson reported.
I snorted. “Sure they will. Chase is keeping them in a safe house in Albemarle, on Deacon St. with armed guards. Four inside and four more patrolling the street. It’s a gated community so no one notices extra security people making the rounds. So much for presidential promises.”
“What did Houston promise you? Why are you so important to the NSA and HS? I’ve heard the rumors, what’s the truth?”
I sighed. “The rumors are the truth.” I looked him over. He was six foot plus two, two hundred twenty pounds and in fit shape for a desk man. His skin was ruddy with health, his eyes bright blue and sparkling. Even the whites of his eyes and teeth were perfectly white. He wore his salt and pepper hair short, styled with a razor cut and not some $12 job from Super Cuts. He looked as if he’d stepped out of GQ magazine just moments ago.
“What’s your name?” I questioned and that startled him.
“Anson. Michael Anson.”
“My father’s name was Michael. I never got to know him. Did you know my mother? Rachel Strong, FBI?”
“I’d worked with her in D.C. when we were both new agents,” he admitted.
I pulled on the wrist chains and he hesitated, took out the key and opened the cuffs. I rubbed my wrists and reached for his hand. He jerked it back and I sensed the perturbed emotions of those behind the two-way mirror.
“You’re strong, right Assistant Director? Stronger than me, a 16-year-old boy that’s recovering from major trauma and surgery? Then why are you afraid of me, that I’ll hurt you? Don’t you have a score of agents watching me from behind that mirror and on camera?”
He nodded. “Of course, you’re not armed. It’s against FBI policy to bring a loaded weapon or any weapon into an interrogation room.”
I lunged forward and grabbed him by his shirt front, wadded it as I lifted him off the chair and held him above me so that his feet dangled off the floor. He struggled as I heard the sounds of panicked agents behind the locked door.
“If you kill me,” he gasped. “You’ll never get out of here alive!”
“I have no intention of hurting you, let alone kill you. I’m just demonstrating part of what I can do even though I’m weak and injured.” I set him down on his feet just as the door flew open and agents tumbled over each other in their attempts to attack me and rescue him. Someone grabbed Anson and shoved him to the back of the crowd and before order was restored, I’d taken several punches to the face and belly.
The belly ones hurt the worst, inflicting more damage on already sore and healing muscles. I let them hit me and offered no resistance. The AD’s shouts brought abashed and sheepish faces to most of them.
“Holy Jesus!” Anson yelled. “Have you all gone out of your minds? Have you forgotten he’s just a child? Or that he’s recovering from a serious, almost fatal injury and surgery? Do you want to kill him?” They backed up and he turned towards me. “Are you alright? Do you need a doctor?”
I rubbed my stomach but other than a general soreness from their punches, no further damage had been done to me. He turned to one of the sullen agents who was built like a pro-wrestler.
“Peters, could you lift me off the ground?”
The agent blustered. “Easy as pie.”
“One handed?”
The Rock look-alike hesitated. “Probably.”
“What if you were 16 and four inches shorter?” Anson questioned.
“If I looked like him? No way.”
“Well, he just did. Two feet off the ground and you all watched.” He looked at me. “Could you get out of those cuffs and shackles?”
I held up the steel chains and they flopped on the table. I placed Anson’s wallet, badge, keys and watch with it. Also, the other agents’ Sig Sauers that I’d removed from their shoulder holsters along with spare ammo clips and several IPod phones.
“So, you’re an accomplished pick-pocket,” the Rock sneered. “That doesn’t make you God.”
“Doubting Thomas, huh?” I looked him up and down and shrugged. “I don’t have to convince you, anyway. Just call Chase and see how fast he scurries here.”
I opened my paper jumpsuit and removed the dressings that their doctor had replaced for hospital ones; the staples still held my flesh together. Although I’d healed far enough along for the wound to remain closed, I did need to have the staples pulled. I had a raw, disgusting 12-inch lesion bisecting my chest and another one where the drain from my ribs had been stitched in.
Their eyes popped at what should have left me flat on my back in some medical facility under 24/7 ICU care.
“All you men need to back up and leave us alone,” Anson said. “If this boy was going to hurt me, he’d have done it already.” He waited for all of them to retreat and most of them did after grabbing all their stuff off the table. Delaney was the only one who remained in the room with his AD. He retrieved his things but left his own weapon on the table. It didn’t tempt me.
“You have my cell phone?” I asked casually.
“Cut the BS, Lakan,” Delaney grinned. “We both know that…thing is no cell phone. Just what is it?”
“I call it a quipp.”
“Short for equipment?”
“Sort of,” I answered. “You two gonna do that good cop/bad cop thing or is that just TV? I didn’t have a TV growing up.”
Delaney laughed. “We couldn’t get it to turn on,” he said candidly.
“It won’t. I destroyed it before I turned it over to you. Even if you take it apart and reverse engineer it, you won’t get it to work. I’m not saying I’m smarter than your tech gurus but---.” I shrugged.
“But what?” Anson asked.
I grinned. “But I’m smarter than they are.”
“We’ll see,” was all he said and gestured to the door. I stood up and waited. I followed behind Delaney minus my restraints while Anson brought up the rear. I had an instant four-horse escort the minute we exited the room as all four agents fell in around us.
Traipsing down the hallway of sterile white as if we were a mini-parade, we followed a narrow maze of corridors with only a few doors breaking the sterility of the expanse. Making several left turns, we eventually came to a small elevator and Delaney gently nudged me inside as the doors opened. All seven of us crowded in, wall to wall shoulders as he pushed the button for LL3. The doors closed silently, no dings to indicate we were going down but we dropped with that initial stomach wrenching plunge. I felt nothing until the cage settled to a gentle stop.
The doors opened on a gray painted lower level that was their holding area with a sally port into a hallway of cells not with bars but electronic doors with a wired glass see-through narrow windows.
The first pair of agents went first and opened the sally-port into the cell area, keyed in the electronic sequence covering the keypad so I couldn’t see which ones they touched nor could I hear any tones emitted by the pad.
Once the inner door opened, the next pair pushed me out of the cage and herded me towards the cell. The AD waved me in and I went like a good little prisoner.
It was a basic 8x10 cell with a slab covered with a thin air mattress and pillow, a stainless steel toilet w/o a cover and a sink. There was a small built-in shelf table with a chair and a TV bolted high near the ceiling. A metal bookcase in the wall of the right corner with worn out paperbacks on three of its shelves.
No blanket and the AC wasn’t pumping out cold air from the tiny ceiling vent that only a rat could crawl through. No lights that I could control, no privacy and no reasonable chance of escape. Then again, it would take a presidential decree and a court order for Chase to remove me. Or an unsanctioned raid on FBI premises. I didn’t discount any of the three or a dozen other scenarios.
“Are you hungry? Thirsty?” Anson asked. “I’m sending a doctor down to go over your condition too. I believe those staples should come out and I want to make sure no damage was done to you from these overzealous professionals.”
“I ate breakfast at Denny’s,” I admitted. “But I’m still hungry.”
“Are you allergic to anything?”
“Nope. I can eat anything.”
“There’s a cafeteria on the fifth floor. They have a special today---macaroni and cheese or teriyaki stir fry.”
“Both, please. Coffee with cream, extra light and sweet. Pepsi. Couple bottles of water, too.”
Anson relayed the orders to one of the team and slowly swung the door shut. His and Delaney’s faces were the last thing I saw before the metal door blocked my view of the hallway. I sat on the bed, leaned back against the cement gray walls and rested till my food got there.