The Genetic Imperative Page 12

  The lobby stood in stark contrast to the gray exterior. The space was a squat oval area with benches set into the curved walls the color of onyx and marbled with subtle green, red and white veins. Engineers had taken the time to build some luminous substance into the marbling so that the room provided pools of varicolored and blended light. Red cushions covered the benches upon which soldiers lounged. Some drank wine alone while others sat talking in groups both large and small while others sat, eyes closed and fists curled around information stones as they read. Nina was impressed. The space was calm and relaxing.

  The random construction of the building made access to the different apartments a matter of climbing. The blocks were set so that channels and passages were formed between them, allowing for toeholds and finger grips. It was very inconvenient. As Nina climbed, she voiced that opinion.

  “Yes, it is,” Chanise replied, her labored breath underlining the comment. “There are corridors here and there where people agreed to build on a plan.”

  “Are all the places built like this?” Nina asked, making a transition from a small ledge to a thankfully larger shelf that ran to a small corridor. She hugged the wall and shimmied across to stand up in a rather wide hallway with irregular rectangles and squares and a ceiling of varying height. They’d climbed about twenty-five meters.

  “No. This is one of the most chaotic. But I like the view and the challenge. Access is easier on the other side. They’ve built an elevator and people have agreed to share their space for access.”

  Chanise found her apartment and opened its traditional pocket door which hissed and made a bit of a grinding noise against its socket. Nina shook her head as she entered. She thought the building was silly.

  The apartment was spartan. A wide sleep riser sat beneath tall, single window looking out over the lower roof of another building. A small balcony was built out from the window that was covered with a thin, grainy, curtain glass. Nina made her way immediately to the bathing cubby and was thrilled to find a proper bathtub. It was small but deep and already filled with warm, clear water. The tub lip stood just above the bathroom floor. She wasted no time getting in after unceremoniously shedding her ceremonial robe. It was just wide enough for her to stretch out her arms and lean back against the high, narrow bench built into the tub wall. Apparently, the bathtub was the apartment’s single luxury. Nina thought Chanise chose that luxury well.

  It took a test of will for Nina to wash quickly. Facilities on the warships were nowhere near this nice. She found the small recess above the water line filled with fragrant clay that she used to scrub quickly. The light abrasive in the clay made her skin tingle as the water clouded. The silver necklace with her service diamond got in her way, so she absently took it off and threw it onto the bathroom floor. When done scrubbing, she placed her palm to the control recess next to the clay cubby and thought “change.” The water swirled around her and rinsed away the cleansing mud. The water turned bright again as Nina ran her hands over her body to help the rinse. It took another effort of will for Nina to leave the tub and dry herself.

  Chanise had already placed a fresh robe on a weathered and beaten black travel cube that seemed to be the only furniture in the room. The trunk was relatively large, and Nina reasoned it must be where this robe came from. Chanise must keep all her possessions in there, Nina thought. She took note of the lack of furniture and personal items and found it strange. Chanise also took the time to fold Nina's formal robe carefully. She had placed Nina’s service diamond necklace on atop the robe. Chanise carefully picked it up and presented it to her.

  “Maybe you should also wear this,” she said, her voice almost a question.

  Nina thanked her friend, slipped the necklace over her head and concealed it beneath the relaxed pleats of the casual robe. The garment was a bit too long and slightly tighter, but that was to be expected with Nina’s proportions. She shrugged her shoulders to get accustomed to the more confining cut as they walked back down the hallway. They climbed back down the absurd stairwell/ladder feature of the apartment building.

  They followed long avenues back to the train station. It took a while for an outbound, long distance train to arrive. Once it arrived, they boarded and settled into their journey again. The propulsion coils became a solid line in the window as the train followed the spiral down a few kilometers. It soon found the outbound curve to the main line that would carry them straight away from the District. Nina relaxed the further she moved away from the teeming core.

  Chapter 7: Earth, Maryland, Trainee

  Sergeant Mike Skeates wheeled the big black Chevy Suburban into downtown Washington DC with grace and confidence among the rush hour crowd. The passenger side mirror showed Lieutenant Triska the driver of a silver Audi barreling right up to the back bumper. The Audi driver whipped the wheel, nearly sideswiping a Prius in the next lane. He passed them on the right mere inches from the passenger door, only to lash the wheel again to appear before the Suburban’s grille. Brake lights flashed a moment later, and the big suburban pressed its nose down toward the asphalt as Mike braked in response to the slowing traffic and reduced space. The Audi driver scored a single car-length lead in his quest to reach his destination. Joggers on the broad sidewalks of the Memorial Bridge passed them as they headed toward the Lincoln Memorial.

  “Yeah, it’s bloody murder trying to get through this joint after five,” Mike said. “Wish we coulda left earlier.”

  Arnold nodded in agreement and gave Mike a quick once-over. Sergeant Skeates was resplendently casual in his aviator sunglasses and wrinkle-free, red-and-white gingham shirt tucked into the slim waist of pristine jeans that appeared to be familiar with a morning iron. Even in casual dress, it was hard to hide the traits of an active duty soldier. Imagining himself as a civilian, Arnold guessed he would take one look at Mike and think "cop" or "soldier." Arnold sat in the passenger seat, sticky from the mid-August heat that still seemed to saturate his officer’s service uniform in spite of the air conditioning. They had just left the pentagon by way of the hotel where the Unit housed Mike for the week. His luggage rode behind them—a single large duffel bag containing mostly army uniforms, some magazines and a few sundry items the Unit had fetched from his on-base apartment back in San Angelo, Texas. It felt like he was leaving basic training again.

  “I’m taking us to the Wharf to wait out this traffic,” Mike announced. “The Clevis brothers have the best steamed shrimp. Fresh from North Carolina. You’re gonna love it. I grew up in Iowa, Lieutenant Triska. Hardly ate fish until I joined the Army. Once I discovered real seafood, it was all over for me. Can’t get enough.”

  Why not, Arnold thought. He had been along for the ride for a solid week since Mike and his team hustled him out of the NSA complex through service corridors, a mechanical room and into a waiting windowless van parked between two dumpsters in the most inconvenient loading dock Arnold had ever seen. He remembered trying to figure out how the trash trucks got in there as the white van wound its way through concrete pillars for a good three minutes before they saw daylight. It was a long and awkward ride from Fort Meade to the pentagon with three soldiers in full battle gear. There was an aluminum partition with tinted, bulletproof glass at the top between the windowless passenger section and the driver cabin. The inside walls of the van were lined with Kevlar.

  The driver herself wore a what could have been a delivery uniform. There was a shotgun mounted discreetly on the right side of the driver’s seat. Mike tried to make awkward small talk then as well but was not successful. Arnold was too distracted by the activities of the two soldiers who moved to the back of the van where some pretty elaborate computer consoles were installed. The rear quarter of the van was taken up with electronic equipment. They sat in jump seats and put on some headsets and kept looking at each other but as far as he could hear, neither of them spoke a word into the headsets or to one another. Arnold couldn’t get a look at what was on the computer screens because Mike kept distracting him
like he was doing now.

  After a forty-five-minute drive, they dropped him in the Pentagon parking lot with a manila envelope and an office number. For the rest of the first day, it was pretty much the same "hurry up and wait" routine typical of the U.S. Military. He escorted paperwork to several disinterested corporals in various offices. There was very little eye contact. That week itself consisted of a series of meetings. There were a few lie detector sessions and a couple more "interviews," and standardized tests designed by clinical psychologists to weed out any dishonesty or subversive, or anti-American tendencies. One more strange thing he noticed was that there were quite a few questions asking him how much he knew about insects and whether or not he liked science fiction stories. A few of the standardized test questions asked him in different ways whether or not he believed in "UFOs." He guessed those questions were to ferret out kooks.

  He was surprised that they put him at a four-star hotel near the pentagon for the week. He supposed that was to compensate him for the strict instructions to stay completely off the internet and entirely away from socializing or any kind of night life. He was to call no family or friends, except to let them know he would be on assignment and working that week. They took his cell phone. They also suggested he would be monitored, but of that he had no doubt. He was the graduate of two intelligence programs, after all. He spotted at least three tails that week. Those were just the obvious ones. The entire thing, from his bizarre, "Twilight-Zone" interview, to his weird paper chase through obscure offices in the pentagon, to this very drive for seafood, was simply surreal to him.

  “Sure,” Arnold said, both wary and weary. “Let’s go eat some crustaceans.”

  “Ha! ‘Crustaceans,’ I like that, Lieutenant Triska. I’m gonna use that one.”

  And with that, Mike turned up the contemporary country music radio and tapped along to the beat on the steering wheel while office workers, lobbyists and ubiquitous lawyers jostled for position in air-conditioned metal boxes around them. Arnold hated contemporary country with a passion that bordered on the psychopathic. He smiled politely and comforted himself by internally criticizing everyone’s driving. He was just glad to be heading on toward the next leg of his strange journey, and shrimp did sound good.

  They finally crossed the bridge and got a good look at the bright white stone of the Lincoln Memorial as they wound their way onto 23rd street. Traffic was still thick, but flowing. Mike rambled on as he drove, yielding the fact that Arnold had eight years on him. Mike was about to turn thirty in the Unit. He seemed to mark time by his experience at his job. He’d been doing it a while; Arnold was surprised to learn. Mike was regular army, but he was recruited right into the Unit soon after his military occupational training at twenty-three. He’d been in the group for seven years now. His original occupation in the army had been Military Police, but the Unit had sent him to advanced intelligence training, which was very unusual. He seemed to enjoy his work a great deal, but was very vague about the places he was stationed and times spent there. This was odd, because most soldiers liked to give a history of where they’d been.

  They swung around to Independence Avenue and got a view of the long, shimmering reflecting pool in the distance. They passed the Washington Monument that was busy with tourists. The Potomac to their right shimmered brightly with the early-evening sun. A rowing crew was on the river, and tourists and bicyclists were everywhere on the sidewalks and intersections, enjoying the monumental city that was Washington, DC. From Independence, they split to the right onto Maine Avenue just before the exit ramp for I395. Mike pointed the truck deftly through a gap in traffic for the side street. The street dove down toward the water and Arnold immediately saw the rooftops of the fish stalls built on the backs of barges that were more-or-less permanently moored at the wharf.

  They passed a marina and Mike swung the SUV down a service road a block from the fish market. He took an illegal parking space on a gravel shoulder between Maine Avenue and an access road.

  “They never ticket government vehicles around here. These are federal plates,” Mike noted as they exited the cool Suburban for the steaming, damp wool blanket that was the month of August in Washington, DC.

  Mike was armed. The impression of the pistol was obvious on the back of his right hip, almost near the small of his back. Mike realized the pistol showed, and adjusted his shirt to give it more room to hide.

  Mike was also constantly on-point. A casual observer wouldn’t see how Mike was constantly engaged with his environment. He gave Arnold a smile that said “I see that you see,” and led the way.

  “Sorry you didn’t get a chance to change, Lieutenant Triska,” Mike said as Arnold slipped back into his uniform jacket. The uniform was all or nothing. Training and discipline wouldn’t allow him to go out with only half the proper uniform. He had to put on the jacket. Without it, he would have felt naked and alone with a nagging feeling of failure to duty. But today, in the summer heat, he didn’t feel all that noble about it. In fact, he thought, it rather sucked.

  “It’s OK, Sergeant Skeates,” Mike said, giving his best professionally courteous half-smile.

  They made their way to the wharf free of banter and Arnold observed Mike observing everything along the way. Mike made a beeline for the Clevis Brothers barge, which had one of the busiest stalls. Steam rolled and billowed up around the stall’s awning near the cookers, offering to the crowd tantalizing smells of freshly steamed shrimp. Customers shouted their selections out to the workers who stood up on the barge above the angled ice chests that held conch, flounder, haddock, crab legs, shrimp and clams and more varieties of fish than Arnold could name. The workers shouted back, confirming orders, announcing that they were shucking clams "just for you," and that the fish was fresh caught and the best price around. Arnold loved it. He couldn’t help but grin at the show. He felt normal for the first time in more than a week. He bumped into a couple of folks rushing to catch the attention of the fish hawkers and exchanged polite excuses and smiles. Mike waded his way into the crowd and waved over a worker he knew.

  “Hey, hey!” Shouted a squat, aproned man with an enthusiastic, weathered face, and a thick Salvadoran accent. He held strong, gnarled hands up to the sky in his own personal form of benediction. “Soldier Mike, where you been! C’mon, c’mon, what you need today! Shrimp? Hey, we got crawfish today!”

  Mike wasn’t a customer, but a long lost friend.

  “Hola Pietro! I’ll take a pound of steamed shrimp and pound of crawfish, both spicy.”

  Pietro confirmed with an enthusiastic: “Alright!” even as he turned to swoop down on the steam tables for the order. The veteran Clevis Brothers customer that was Mike Skeates was already moving down to the cash register with his wallet out, counting cash. Arnold made a gesture for his own wallet and Mike brushed him off.

  “Expense account,” he dismissed Arnold with a grave, knowing smile. “Special occasion.”

  Pietro handed them their food and gave the same benediction to the next set of customers.

  “That’s a lot of food,” Arnold noted.

  “Don’t worry Lieutenant, I think we’re up to it. Trust me, it will go fast. I’m already drooling on myself here.”

  It didn’t take long after they arranged themselves with the food at a stand-up table near the water for Arnold to realize that Mike could indeed handle that amount of food. The man could eat. Their opening sortie against the crustaceans lasted only minutes, but soon Mike had a significant and growing pile of shrimp and mudbug shells by his right hand.

  “Sergeant, you were right. This is fantastic,” Arnold said, without realizing he hadn't used the more formal "Sergeant Skeates." Mike did notice and was grateful. The man was finally loosening up.

  “LT, I do not lie about food,” he said through a mouthful of crawfish.

  “Oh, we forgot…” Just before he was about to say "drinks," Pietro magically appeared with a brown paper bag that rattled with the sound of glass on glass. Pietro slappe
d Mike on the back, and Mike reached his hand around to pat a shoulder in return. He slipped the man a twenty-dollar bill. Inside the sack were four bottles of very cold beer, each wrapped in a smaller paper bag.

  “Technically, this is a public parking lot, so beer is a no-no. That’s the reason for the paper beer condoms.

  Cops don’t bother you here if you drink beer like this wino style. Plausible deniability for them: they don’t see it’s a beer, they don’t have to care. Plus, I think the barge owners pay them off.” Mike explained, as he carefully rolled the paper bag away from the bottle neck like the cuff of a shirtsleeve.

  Mike was a master at figuring angles. He had a landscape architect’s eye for social construct. He was one of the Unit’s fixers. Understanding the wisdom of the paper bag style, Arnold followed Mike’s example with an easy grin. This was OK, Arnold thought. The Lieutenant didn’t realize how hungry he was for food, and also for something normal. They worked on eating for a while.

  “So LT, you haven’t asked where we’re going,” Mike suddenly said. He slid the question-statement hybrid across the table like a card in a poker game.

  “I realized the day I met you that I was along for the ride. I’m just staying in the moment, Sergeant.”

  Mike nodded knowingly with a thoughtful expression.

  “Well, this is a bit against protocol,” Mike began, but Arnold didn’t believe it. This seemed casual, but it was still part of the protocol. This man was a colleague and was still feeling him out. Mike continued, “But I’m going to let you know a bit about how this all works.

  We’re going out to P.G. County—Beltsville, Maryland, to the USDA research site there. We have a little station up there out of the way in the woods. Nothing but aggro nerds and cow fields.