Both my sisters were there. I’d been in a coma for days. Renee was holding one of my hands and Diane the other. I didn’t even notice them at first. I was looking at the weird colors on the monitor and the clock. And I thought I was losing my mind. Then I saw my sisters, and even though I knew they were my sisters, there was just something . . . gone. I felt nothing for them. I mean nothing.”
He looked away.
Jamison, who had clearly been stunned by this candid out-pouring from her partner, finally found her voice. “You’d been through a terrible trauma, Decker. And then you had some unexpected . . . challenges.”
“A nice, polite way to describe it.”
“But you’ve changed. Since the first time I met you in that courthouse back in Burlington. You’re different.”
“I know. And that’s what scares the hell out of me.”
He said nothing more, but just stared at the darkening skies like they would any minute starkly reveal his even darker future.
WHEN THEY DROVE UP to the front gate of the facility two men in suits approached them.
Jamison rolled down her window and showed her creds.
“Go right in,” said one of the men. “You’ve been cleared through.”
The gate opened and Jamison drove on.
“Robie’s doing?” she said.
“When I called Robie and filled him in on what we had discovered, he said he was going to get the wheels turning for our visit here. And they were going to start making discreet inquiries about the chemical weapons piece.”
They parked where they had last time and got out.
Jamison said, “So where do we begin?”
“Let’s try the pyramid building first. Probably the closest I’ll ever get to Egypt.”
Another man stationed there and also wearing a suit, his eyes shielded by sunglasses though now the dark clouds fully covered the sky, let them inside.
They could see that the stone walls on the outside also constituted the interior walls.
The inside was enormous. In the center of the facility was, at least Decker assumed, the PARCS radar apparatus that Sumter had told them about. It looked somewhat like the enormous telescopes one would see in an observatory but with lots of other equipment surrounding it, including workstations lining the walls, with banks of darkened computers on them.
“Wow,” said Jamison. “This looks like something you’d see in a weird science fiction film where they’re plotting how to blow up the world.”
“It might not be fiction,” retorted Decker.
“Gee, thanks for that comforting thought.”
Decker saw only one doorway set into the far wall. “Let’s go see where that leads.”
Multiple sets of stairs led to a lower level, where Robie had previously told them the prisoners had been kept.
They were cages more than prison cells, obviously improvised by the look of them.
“They probably just dumped these things in here once they decided to use this place as a jail,” said Decker. “Doesn’t look like a lot of thought went into it at all.”
“Imprisoning and torture don’t require a lot of thought. Just a lot of immoral people doing all the wrong things for all the wrong reasons,” Jamison said forcefully.
“I can see you’ve given this some thought.”
“In my previous life as a journalist I did a story on the subject. It wasn’t pretty.”
They both noted the blood and what looked like bodily waste on the floors of the cages. And the smell of urine was strong in the air.
“Despite how disgusting this all is, I take it we won’t see any congressional hearings,” said Jamison.
“They’re going to bury it all like they told us,” replied Decker. “And so long as the people behind it are punished, I’m okay with that. We have enough to deal with as a country without having this added to the pile.”
“I suppose,” said Jamison doubtfully. “But what about the truth coming out being the cornerstone of democracy?”
He glanced at her. “Your old journalist’s antennae tingling for the truth to come out again?”
“But that’s in the past. I follow orders now.”
“No, it’s not in the past, Alex. It’s why we’re here. To find the truth.”
She smiled. “I knew I liked you for a very good reason.”
“If they did work on chemical and biological weapons, it must have been down here somewhere.” He eyed twin corridors that went off to the left and right.
“Do you think this place might be contaminated?” asked Jamison suddenly. “I mean some of that stuff can hang around a long time.”
Decker stiffened. “I didn’t really think about that. But people have been working here for