Chapter 11 – Secrets Revealed
We jumped into Chandler’s truck, and Faedra punched in Mr. Franklin’s address on her phone’s GPS app. It took me all of ten seconds to notice the cool air coming out of the air vents and that the windows were up.
“You fixed the air conditioning?”
“Yeah. I put some dye in and found the leak, and then I plugged it and recharged the system with a new refrigerant I’ve been developing. It keeps the air five degrees cooler and uses half the energy of the old coolant,” Chandler replied.
I shook my head and marveled yet again at how smart Chandler was. Even among the other brainiacs I knew, he stood out.
“That’s great. At least now we don’t have to shout to be heard above the wind.” Turning to Faedra, I continued, “So, it’s spill-the-beans time. Why on earth would anyone want to kidnap your parents?”
She let out a heavy sigh and looked down at the floor. “I guess there’s no point in continuing to hide the truth.” She looked at Chandler and then at me as she continued, “You guys have to promise me you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. I’m serious. If anyone finds out what I’m about to tell you, my parents could lose their jobs, or we might have to move or something. Promise.”
“Yeah, sure, I won’t tell,” I said. I decided not to point out that their having to move or losing their jobs was probably the least of her parents’ worries right now.
“My lips are sealed,” Chandler agreed.
“My dad and mom are government agents.”
“Whoa, cool,” Chandler blurted out.
“Since when?” I asked. “I’ve seen your mom’s work papers at home for that lab she works at a thousand times, and I’ve seen your dad in his park service uniform when we go hiking in the national forest. Those aren’t exactly spy organizations.”
“No. Those are their cover jobs. They really work for the Department of Homeland Security. Dylan, you remember when I had to leave you on that hike the other day?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, my dad called me home for an emergency meeting. That’s when he told me about the thumb drive and what to do if they turned up missing. When I came home from school this afternoon, the house was a mess, just like you saw, and my parents were tied up and laying on the floor of the den. There were these people in strange-looking suits, like hazmat suits or something, standing around. I started to fight them but then felt really weak. They tied me up to that chair in the basement. I heard them talking with each other about what to do with me. They finally decided it would be best to leave me behind because they didn’t want some kid to slow them down. They warned me, that if I went to the cops, they would kill my mom and dad. Then they left. Mr. Franklin is the person my dad told me to take this to.”
“Here we are,” Chandler announced as he pulled up to the curb and shut off the engine.
Mr. Franklin lived in a middle-class neighborhood on the edge of town. It was a small brick house with a slate walkway leading up to the front door from the curb. It was no mansion, but even in the quickly fading twilight, it was obvious he spent a lot of time working on the yard, just from the manicured shrubs and neatly-groomed flower beds. This was the first time I had ever been to his house, and it struck me as odd that a priest would live in a house like this. I didn’t know why. I guessed I’d always imagined him cloistered away in some monastery somewhere. Strange, the way we fill in the blanks like that without really thinking about it.
Faedra rang the doorbell, and we waited. It wasn’t long before the front door opened and Mr. Franklin’s smiling face greeted us from behind the screen door.
“Well, hello. What brings you three out here to my neck of the woods?”
Faedra held the thumb drive up to where he could see it, but kept it close to her chest.
“My dad and mom are gone, and they told me to give this to you,” she said.
Mr. Franklin’s brow furrowed and the smile faded from his face. He opened the screen door and practically whispered, “Come in, quickly.”
I noticed as we went inside that he was looking past us towards the street, first left and then right, before shutting the door and locking it. When he turned around to face us, his voice was urgent and solemn.
“Did you notice anyone following you on the way over here?”
“I don’t think so,” Chandler replied.
“Into the study,” he said as he motioned us to another room. Once we were all inside, he shut the door. When he turned around, he held out his hand to Faedra and she gave him the thumb drive. “Have a seat,” he said as he stepped around behind a mahogany desk and sat down. He plugged the thumb drive into a USB hub on the top of the desk and began typing away on the keyboard as he looked at a computer screen that we couldn’t see. No one said anything for about ten minutes. Finally, he stopped and leaned back in his chair, inhaling and exhaling a deeply.
“So, can you find my parents?” Faedra asked at last.
“One moment,” he replied. He got up and walked to the opposite corner of the room, to where a plaster bust of Martin Luther sat on top of a wooden pedestal. He grabbed the head of the bust and flipped it backwards to reveal a single red button, which he pushed. Once he’d done this, he turned back around to the three of us.
“Now we can talk.”
He looked down at the floor for a moment and appeared to be considering what he was about to say, and then suddenly he looked back up at Faedra.
“Faedra, how much have you told these two boys?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“How much do they know about you and your parents?”
“I told them that they work for the Department of Homeland Security and that they’ve been kidnapped.”
Faedra went on to tell him about how she’d been tied up and left at her house, how she’d texted me for help, and what had happened since then until we arrived at his house. Mr. Franklin nodded his head up and down and looked at Chandler and me, apparently trying to decide if he could trust us.
“Okay. Here’s the deal,” he said, still looking at Chandler and me directly. “You boys already know enough to be in some serious danger. You are going to need to stay with me until I’m convinced it’s safe enough to let you go home. Whatever we talk about in this room stays just between the four of us, understood?”
Chandler and I both nodded.
“Is that a yes?” he asked.
“Yes,” we both replied, speaking out of sync with one another so that it sounded like an echo.
“Good. Because if you break your promise, and all of our lives could be put in jeopardy. This isn’t a game.”
After pausing for effect, he continued.
“I wasn’t always a priest. Years ago, I worked with Faedra’s dad and mom for another government agency. I was involved in the operation where Faedra’s mom got injured and hurt her spine. That’s when I got this.” As he spoke, he pointed to a scar that began on the left side of his forehead, the remainder of it covered by his hair.
Faedra’s eyes got big and she opened her mouth as if she was about to ask a question, but then she closed it again. Mr. Franklin continued.
“The operation was a tragic failure, and it changed all of us in different ways. After that, I decided it was time for me to get out and do something different with my life. I became a priest, and Faedra’s parents joined a different agency. Life moved on.
“A few months ago, Faedra’s dad, Tom, came to me and told me that he and Colleen had discovered a mole in the DHS. Someone had compromised a major operation, and they found proof that it was done from inside the department. He told me that, if they ever disappeared, I should get this USB drive from their house. He said it would contain the latest information they had on who they thought the mole was and what their plans were.
“Apparently, several months ago, a small meteor crashed in the forest near here. Once it was discovered that the meteor had special properties that affected supers, the DHS took over and began working with the army to secure the area and conduct extensive experiments and analysis on the meteor. Tom and Colleen were a part of that team. They discovered the mole had been sending reports to an outside organization. They almost had enough information to go to the top when they discovered the code names of several other moles in the department. That was the last entry in the information on the USB drive. Ergo, we can’t go to any other government authorities for help right now – at least not until we know who all of the moles are. If we go to them, the other moles may learn of it, and Faedra’s parents will likely be killed to cover their tracks.”
He walked over to the desk, turned around, and sat down on the top of it with his arms crossed, looking down at the floor.
“So how can we find my parents before something bad happens to them?”
“We can use the information on the drive to follow the mole and possibly discover where your parents are being held,” Mr. Franklin replied. “The mole apparently smuggles out some materials from the meteor site once a week and meets with his superiors. Your mom and dad hadn’t yet been able to follow him on one of these rendezvous without the risk of being discovered, and that’s as far as they got before they were kidnapped themselves. Obviously, the mole, or whomever he or she is working for, discovered what they were up to and thought they were getting too close for comfort.”
“Alright. So how do we track this mole down?” Faedra asked.
“We don’t,” he replied. “It’s too dangerous for you kids to be involved. I’ll track him down and follow him to the next rendezvous; then I’ll contact you and let you know what I find out.”
“Are you forgetting that I’m a super, too?” Faedra asked.
“No, I’m not. But that doesn’t make you invincible. These people kidnapped your parents. Just because they left you alive this time doesn’t mean that they won’t kill you if they think you’re going to be a thorn in their side. Right now, it’s safer that you just lay low, continue going to school, and let me work on this.”
Faedra looked down at the floor, obviously disappointed, but she didn’t say anything else.
“Dylan, Chandler – you boys go home and don’t tell anyone what we’ve discussed here. Faedra, I’d like to take you to a friend’s house so you won’t be home alone. It’s too dangerous for you to be in your family’s house alone right now. These people could decide they made a mistake by not taking you, too, and come back for you.”
“She can stay in the spare bedroom at my house. My mom won’t mind,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Mr. Franklin asked.
“Yeah, she stayed with us for a couple of days last year when her parents went off to some conference.”
“I’d like that,” Faedra chimed in. “After all that’s happened, I’d really like to be with someone I know I can trust.”
I felt that flushed feeling creep into my face again, and I was pretty sure my face was turning red, but if it was, no one seemed to notice. I smiled at Faedra, and she smiled back at me.
“Okay Dylan, that’s probably a good idea. No use dragging anyone into this that we don’t have to. But if your mom says no, call me, and I’ll come over and pick Faedra up and find another place for her to stay.
“One more thing. We don’t talk about any of this over cell phones, email, internet social networks – no electronic communications. They’ll likely be monitoring anything and anyone related to Faedra for any signs that she has gone to the cops or that we’re on to them. They may even have left her behind for that very purpose. We only talk about this in person, here at this house if at all possible, and when we do, I’ll have the surveillance neutralizer system turned on just to be safe.” He nodded over to the bust of Martin Luther. “That was the red button I pressed earlier, in case you were wondering. It jams a variety of common surveillance signals from picking up anything that we say in this room. Agreed?”
Everyone nodded.
“Okay, I’ll contact you via text to arrange a meeting as soon as I know more. I’ll text you the question, ‘Will you be coming to Sunday service?’ If you get that, come back here at 7:00 p.m. the same night you get the text. The mole’s next rendezvous is Thursday, so that gives me all day tomorrow to track him down and get prepared to follow him to that meeting. I’ll have more information after that.”
“Is there anything we can do?” Faedra asked.
He unplugged the USB drive and handed it back to her.
“For starters, you can hide this somewhere and don’t tell me where. If I’m captured, this will be your only leverage to get your parents back.”
“Is that it?” Chandler asked.
“Of course not. We can pray,” Mr. Franklin said.
He held out his hands towards us. I wasn’t much of the praying type, but I had gone to church enough to know he expected us to join hands. Faedra took hold of one of his hands and I took the other. Chandler, who didn’t attend church as far as I knew, reluctantly joined in our circle, seeming somewhat confused by what we were doing.
“To quote one of our country’s founding fathers, and one of my ancestors, Benjamin Franklin,” he continued, “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. I wouldn’t dare undertake this mission without first asking God to help us.”
After saying this, he prayed a short prayer. And as he prayed, I began to feel a peace come over me. I couldn’t explain it. Nothing in our circumstances had changed, but I felt better. It was weird. When he was done, I opened my eyes and noticed tears coming down Faedra’s cheeks. Mr. Franklin pulled her to his side in a fatherly kind of hug and said, “Don’t worry about your parents, Faedra. They’re made of stern stuff. And I believe, with God’s help, that we’ll get them back.”
“Thank you,” she said.
After that, he walked over to the bust of Martin Luther, depressed the red button, and put the head back into its original place.
“Thank you for coming to see me. You did the right thing. I’ll be in touch soon,” he said as he ushered us out the front door.
As we got back into Chandler’s truck and pulled away from the curb, Chandler asked, “Sooo... is that it?”
The question hung in the air for almost a full minute. Chandler glanced over at Faedra, but mostly kept his eyes on the road. I tried to watch her without making it look like I was staring straight at her – which, of course, I was. She was looking down at the floorboard. Finally, she looked up.
“No. That’s not it. Mr. Franklin is going to follow the mole to the rendezvous... and I’m going to follow Mr. Franklin.”