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  “And then we’re out of here?”

  “Damned straight.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Secret Service Headquarters

  Washington DC

  Max Power had faced several interviews like this one. Opposite him sat the District Attorney William Kassel, the Chief Prosecutor (Secret Service) Andrew Clearwater, the Director of the FBI Cassandra Burrows and the Director of the Secret Service Richard Armitage. There was a lot of power in the room, and each person had shown a degree of amusement or rather, bemusement at the name of the technology expert seated before them. Max Power was born John Maxwell Power and Maxwell was a family naming tradition for the men in the Power family. John Power had changed his name to Max Power in his freshman year in a bid to get laid. It had not worked. But it had always been a great conversation piece or would have been had he not been the same geeky man he was ten years ago. As usual, his hair was untidy, and he had attended the meeting in Simpson’s socks and a black tie with a geeky statement about MS Dos commands written in white:

  Keyboard Failure: Press F1 to Continue.

  Bad Command or File Name: Go to Your Room!

  COMMAND.com not Found: Should I Fake it? (Y/N)

  Must Specify Destination: Start TRAVELAGENT.exe? (Y/N)

  Out of Memory: Run ALZHEIMER.com? (Y/N)

  BREAKFAST.exe Failure: No Response from Cereal Port.

  An agent from the internal security team finished rigging Max Power to the polygraph machine and started to check the reading. The man had studied Power’s tie with interest but did not get the jokes as he was probably quite normal, despite what he did for a living. “I’m going to ask you a few test questions before we start, just to check the machine’s readings. Please answer truthfully in either a yes or no response. “Do you understand?”

  “Sure.”

  “Again, Mister Power, in simply a yes or no response…”

  “OK.”

  “Yes, or no?”

  “Yes, or know to what?”

  “Do you understand?”

  “I do…” Power shook his head. “Sorry, I didn’t know we’d started.”

  The agent sighed and said, “Simply answer yes or no to my question. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  The agent frowned. “The polygraph shows that was a lie.”

  “Sorry, I think it must be in response to whether or not I understand. I don’t understand the situation, so understandably, my response is deep seated. I therefore haven’t given the appropriate response to which you were projecting your expectations.” He paused, watching some of the most senior intelligence officers in the country becoming impatient. “OK! Good to go!” Power took a deep breath and exhaled long and slow.

  “Is your name Max Power?”

  “Well, yes and no. It was John Maxwell Power, but I changed it in college…”

  “Yes, or no…”

  Yes, er no. Well, yes, sort of…”

  “For the purpose of the test…” the agent sighed and said measuredly. “I will continue and try to ask a question that you can give a yes or no answer to…”

  “OK…”

  “Are you thirty years of age?”

  “Yes, well my birthday is next week, so I suppose generically, with my mother going into labor ten days overdue, I am in fact, already thirty-one.” He looked at the rest of the panel and shrugged. “Yes. Thirty on a form, I guess…”

  The agent sighed. “Do you work for the Secret Service?”

  “Yes.” Power smiled. “I did it, a one-word answer. Yay, go me…”

  “Mister Power!” Chief Prosecutor Andrew Clearwater snapped. “Your behavior can be construed as evasive at best.”

  “I think I should probably have legal representation,” Power said matter-of-factly.

  “Do you think you need legal protection?” Clearwater asked.

  “Is a one-word only answer response for the purposes of the polygraph required or expected for that question?” He shrugged. “I think any response would be inadmissible in a court of law as the polygraph test is being run by an agent of internal security, and therefore an expert in polygraphy and not, with respect, the panel of senior figures before me.” He paused. “I have attended three of these tests previously, so could someone please tell me why I am being subjected, unfairly in my opinion, to another test, when previous polygraph readings have shown that I am not in contact with Rob Stone, have never been in contact with Rob Stone after the assignment where I was called upon to provide technical assistance and that I have no idea of Agent Stone’s whereabouts. I do not have, nor ever have had access to assets seized by Stone during his assignment and other than a rented apartment, a modest vehicle on a zero percent payment plan and two cats waiting for me to arrive home, have no financial commitments, dependents, or debts. I do not have more money than my means allows.” Power stood up and tore off the adhesive patches holding the sensors and wires in place and adjusted his tie. It would have been a more credible gesture had the MS Dos jokes not wafted in the panel’s faces, but the man was not working with much to start with.

  “Do, please sit down, Mister Power,” said Clearwater. “We haven’t finished here, yet.”

  “No,” said Power. “We’re done. Each time I have been requested to undertake this procedure, I have done so in good faith and foregone any legal representation, despite it being your legal and moral obligation to advise me counsel.” He walked to the door, and nobody tried to stop him, but he turned and said, “I hope you catch him. I hope you do whatever it takes so that I can move on with my life and my career and this dark cloud above me is lifted.” He closed the door behind him and made his way down the corridor. He paused at the water fountain and bent down to sip but spat out the nicotine gum he had been holding under his tongue and drank heavily. He was not a smoker, but the flood of nicotine had stimulated his resting heartbeat further to the amphetamine he had swallowed on his way to the unmarked office on the top floor. He was used to their questions now, and not only did the amphetamine and nicotine shot make his heart race – something that had always been attributed as a severe case of nerves, but the act he put on made his readings unreliable at best. Max Power was a geek, and he wasn’t a field agent, but he had a higher IQ than anybody else in that room, and he had seen enough of Rob Stone, and enough of the evidence to know they were only interested in a witch hunt and had no intention of clearing a framed agent’s name.

  Power glanced at his Casio digital watch. It was a calculator model, and quite valuable in today’s market, despite having worn it all his adult life and not in an ironic gesture. Geek was finally in style, and he was even considering a beard and man-bun to up the ante and gain some credibility with the women in the secretarial pool. But who was he kidding? If his name change had changed nothing ten years ago, facial hair and a questionable hair style was not going to help him now.

  He had another hour until the end of his shift. The water was helping with the voracious thirst caused by the amphetamine, and he could feel his heart rate slowing, his blood pressure lowering. He did not feel himself and he was light-headed, felt drunk. He had never experimented with drugs, not even in the early Max Power years on campus and would not take any more once they were finished with him. He carried them in a signet ring with a screw-down cap. There was room for six of them as they were LSD-soaked rice paper squares. Not a heavy dose, but enough for him and as much as he’d ever want to risk taking.

  “Max Power?” the woman asked from behind him. Power turned around and stared at her. “Are you OK?”

  “Sure.”

  “Your eyes look dilated, are you sure you’re not ill?”

  “I’m fine,” he replied, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “Who are you?”

  “Liz Roper,” she said.

  Power smiled. He was quite sure she was one of the most attractive women he had ever seen. Porcelain skin and auburn hair, with the most penetrating and intense green eyes imaginable. “H
ow can I help?” he asked.

  “Can we get a coffee?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” he beamed back at her. “Just say where and when and I’ll be there…”

  “That’s great. But I’m kind of talking about now.”

  “Oh, sure. Well, there’s the coffee shops in the building.”

  “Let’s take it outside,” she said. “Can you spare the time?”

  Power glanced at his watch, but he barely registered the time. “Yep, nothing else on for the rest of the day. Java Joe’s? It’s right across the street.”

  “Sure,” she replied.

  They headed downstairs and went through the security gauntlet. Keys, wallets, and pens in the box and x-rayed while they walked through the metal detector. Liz Roper declared her firearm and Power watched as she placed it along with two spare magazines in the box. They were given a once over with the metal detector wand before the guard pointed them over to collect their possessions.

  Max Power watched her holster her weapon. “You’re a field agent?”

  “Treasury,” she nodded.

  “I thought you were in the secretarial pool.”

  “Wow.” She fastened a single button on the jacket of her trouser suit and said, “That’s quite a generalized assumption on gender.”

  Power stared at her and said, “I didn’t mean it.” He paused. “I just…”

  She started walking and gestured with a flick of her head for him to follow. Her hair swung loosely over her shoulder. Power was mesmerized. He had never been in the company of a woman in this league. He checked his watch again. He was leaving an hour early but had already decided he would arrive at dawn tomorrow to compensate. He started to head right, but Liz Roper headed left, and he did a sort of half skip as he changed directions, hoping she had not seen.

  “The coffee’s better at Bean Around the World.”

  Power knew that it was on 9th Street NW and Palmer Alley. A corner location, but too far for a quick break. He had never been there, but he had driven past, and it had a good deal of outside seating and always looked busy. They crossed over on 9th Street and Liz stepped around and walked on his left. Power had the road on his side, but he did not resist as she brushed against him and his heart raced at the notion of a beautiful woman being so forward as to ask for… what, a date? He couldn’t exactly process that it had happened, but he figured this was how the acorns of love took root. He had no experience in such matters, but he was more than willing to go with it.

  “How long have you been with the Secret Service?” he asked.

  “Ten years,” she replied. “Just got transferred from Los Angeles.”

  “Right, that explains it.”

  “Explains what, exactly?”

  “Why I’ve never seen you around.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Are you kidding?” He laughed. “No, trust me, I’d have remembered you.”

  “I think you probably will for some time to come…”

  It all happened at once. They walked past the black van, the side door slid back, and rough hands grabbed Power as Liz Roper pushed him inside. The door slid closed, and Roper turned and opened the passenger door and hopped up into the seat. The two men in the rear of the van had Power pressed down on the floor, the chloroform-soaked rag pushed into his face. By the time they were fixing the cable ties around his wrists, Power was unconscious, and the van was already pulling out into the beginning of the rush hour traffic.

  Chapter Fourteen

  He slowly came round, the heat inside the hood stifling and the air heavy with his own breath. He could not see, could only hear background noises and he struggled to breathe. His hands were way beyond feeling, the sensation of pins and needles long turned to a dull ache that ebbed and flowed with his heartbeat and ended in excruciating pain at his fingertips.

  If he was a field agent, then it would have been time to remember his training and draw from experience. Subtle sounds, smells, the feel of the floor beneath him, temperature, the regional accents, and gender of the voices in the van as he had been subdued and drugged; whether the van ran on diesel or gasoline – it would all be valuable intelligence if he managed to escape. However, Max Power was not a field agent. He had never even fired a gun. Not ever. Not even a BB gun as a kid. When the kids on his block had been doing that and knocking out panes of glass on the derelict house in their street, Power had been inside playing Warhammer. He was merely a gifted technology and communication expert who worked for the Secret Service. He had no training for this.

  He wasn’t a big man and was dragged to his feet by two pairs of rough hands that were used to lifting heavy weights. They pressed him down into a chair, then secured his ankles to the legs of the chair with the dreaded cable ties. He felt them cut into him, heard them ratchet tightly together. He tried to ask for his hands to be released, the feeling now completely gone, but it was only then that he realized that his mouth was taped over, that something dry – a ball of cloth - was inside his mouth. The sudden realization made him gag.

  “You don’t want to be doing that,” a man said. “You’ll choke and drown, for sure.”

  Power suppressed his gag reflex, breathed the hot, stale air through his nose. He felt the cable ties around his wrists loosen, heard them snap as they were snipped by something sharp. His arms were pulled apart, and he tried to resist, but put up embarrassingly little fight. He doubted the two men even noticed. But they tugged at the hood and when he blinked against the bright light of the single bulb hanging from the ceiling, he looked up into two faces he did not recognize, but who looked frighteningly at ease with their actions. One of them tore at the tape around his mouth, and Power tried to move his arms but realized that they had been tethered to his own belt with more cable ties. He had not felt them do it, despite the feeling slowly flooding back into his wrists and fingers. The other man ripped out the ball of cloth that had been put into his mouth. The dry material tugged at the soft skin on the inside of his mouth, and he tasted the metallic essence of blood.

  “Who are you?” Power asked. “I…” He was cut short by a sharp slap across his cheek. He smarted at the blow, blinking, and opening his mouth to test his jaw, which felt like it might have been dislocated by the force of such a slap.

  His abuser said nothing, but he tapped his partner on the shoulder and the two men left the room, closing the wooden door behind them. Power looked around him. The walls were stucco and lath, but long in need of patching. There was a small, boarded up window. Beneath him, a patchy cement floor. Power was no home improvement expert, not even a novice because he had always lived in rented accommodation and never thought once about the jobs that kept a building from crumbling, but he suspected that meant he was on the ground floor. Stucco and lath seemed a residential material, and residential homes had floorboards on any floor above ground level. He wasn’t sure how this could help him, but if he could get free and remove the boards on the window… He shook his head, the notion leaving as quickly as it had arrived. Such nonsense was for the cinema screen. He had no way of breaking the cable ties, no knife, or tools to pry off the boards at the window and he was not a physical man. He already knew he would not have the strength and if his escape involved a climb, he doubted he would be capable of holding his own weight for more than a few seconds.

  His attention turned to the door as it cracked open on a poor-fitting lock, or rusted hinges. Liz Roper walked in with a coffee in a go-cup. The irony. Power watched her, mostly fearful, but with a great deal of anger as well.

  “Wow, intense. Now there’s an expression which goes with the ridiculous name.” She purred. Her auburn hair looked darker somehow. The light and shadow of the room made it glow more vividly. She sipped some of the coffee and said, “Now that’s a good roast…”

  “What do you want?” Power asked subduedly. “It’s not what I had in mind when you asked if we could go for a coffee.”

  “Not your best date, huh?”

&nbsp
; He shrugged. “Sadly, it’s not my worst, either.”

  “That remains to be seen,” she replied, still savoring the coffee. “Tell me what you know about Special Agent Stone.” Power’s face dropped. “Ah, this should be interesting.”

  “I’ve told you all I know!”

  “You haven’t told me anything.”

  “I just came out of a polygraph session!”

  “Polygraphs? Don’t make me laugh,” she scoffed. “They only work if your heart rate can be steadied. What did you use? Ketamine? Speed? LSD?” She shook her head. “I’d have thought better of the Secret Service.”

  “But you’re Secret Service,” Power frowned at her. “Aren’t you?”

  “No. I am not,” she replied derisively.

  “But your ID, your weapon…” He shook his head. “How were you even in the building?”

  She smiled and said, “The US Government have over fifty law enforcement agencies, and all operate their security protocols on a similar level. There are eighteen thousand police departments and a hundred other federal agencies with the power of seizure and prosecution. With the right ID and knowledge of procedures, they’re a walk in the park to get into.” She paused, taking the lid off the go cup. “The Secret Service provide the best security for a world leader and their subsequent political and diplomatic charges, but as an agency office, it was no more difficult to penetrate than the Department for Fish and Game.”

  “I don’t buy it,” Power said. “You can’t walk into the building with a homemade identification card and clear security.”

  “I’m not here for an interrogation,” she said coldly. “But you are. I will ask the questions and make the statements. All I want from you are honest answers. And I will not be using a polygraph. I will know when you’re lying to me. Because I have a lot of experience in these matters, and I can spot a liar. I can spot someone making up shit just for the pain to stop, and I know when a person has reached their limits…” Power stared at her, horrified by her words, but when he saw her rapid movement, he couldn’t do anything except brace himself for the pain. The coffee left the cup as she casually upended it into his lap and the hot liquid instantly burned through his thin suit trousers and scalded his skin. He screamed and panted in agony as the tender, sensitive skin in the region was flooded with steaming liquid. “Extra steamed milk. Full fat. And plenty of sugar. Makes it stick to the skin…” she told him calmly. “I’ll leave you alone for a while to think over your situation. When I return, you’ll start talking and I’ll know if you’re lying.” She headed back to the door, turned as she crossed the threshold and remarked, “It’s in your best interest to tell me the truth, Mister Power. But I’ve got as long as it takes, and you’re not going anywhere.”