The day had turned cold; a fresh air blew across a field, the amber grain rustling to an unseen presence. Jose Gerrera stood at a gravel crossroads leaning against his 1945 Cord waiting, taking in the breeze.
From the west he saw a glint and a silhouette. He straightened and peered trying to identify the approaching craft, the evening sun in his eyes. The doors opened and Wallace and Forrester found him in his uneasy stance. He relaxed back into his car.
“What have you got Jose?” Wallace asked.
“Time…” Jose said with a smirk. “I ran the chronometric readings from the Mag-Craft fleet and found that there were hundreds of mags with chronometers off by seconds, even minutes.”
“I wonder why.” Wallace hummed.
“I thought you’d be wondering. So I did a little checking.” Wallace gave a smile and a wink. Jose
continued, “I Googled the Mag-Craft computers and decrypted some interesting communiqués between Bustamonte and a certain lab tech at Gnomon labs-name of Clark. It seems the result was a tweak, to the Mag-Craft GPS system, which reroutes thousands of commuters through a 100 acre space on the Missouri river.”
Wallace and his partner shared a look.
“Eric?” Jose questioned his friend’s glance. After a pause he continued, “Well, I don’t know what to make of it, but it looks like the intel is in good hands.”
“Yes,” Wallace responded, “and we’d better get back to Gnomon labs. Thank you my friend.”
***
“Wallace and Forrester took up position in front of the Gnomon labs building. The postmodern architecture illuminated in the darkness of the cool night. The agents sat in the darkness of their voluptuous mag-craft, sipping coffee and occasionally checking on their surveillance equipment.
“Eric, do you ever wonder if there is more to life than this.”
“Than what El?”
“I don’t know, stakeouts and conspiracy?”
“Ella! Don’t you have enough mystery in your life?” Wallace scolded. “Take this place: classified G12. Here we are digging in where we don’t belong, uncovering the hidden mysteries of our time, and you want more?”
“Absolutely, facing this stuff all the time forces me to think beyond the mundane routine the rest of the world faces.”
“You’ll grow out of it the longer you stay in this business,” Wallace said with a quizzical smile. “I’m going to have to stop taking you to the country, you always come back romantic.”
“Doesn’t it do anything to you? Don’t the flowers and grain and sky make you feel apart of something bigger?”
Eric looked into her eyes finding there a life and depth he found attractive. His mind went back to days as a boy when he felt that kind of unlimited presence. Suddenly he was aware that his eyes were betraying his thoughts and he laughed it off. Returning to the surveillance there was, for a moment, silence.
“Justice,” Wallace said with enigmatic significance.
Ella waited for him to continue. “Justice?…”
“I guess that is where I feel most connected with something bigger than myself. That is why I started this job, but it has less to do with correcting injustice than I had imagined in my more sentimental days.”
Ella returned her gaze out the windshield and smiled. After a moment of quiet reflection her expression changed, “Oh-oh, look who we have here.”
She nodded toward a large figure waddling to the corner of the street. The man took off his fedora and waved it stealthily as he wiped his sweat drenched face. Out of the bushes came a man with slick hair parted in the middle, thick round glasses and a full-length double-breasted white lab coat that gave him the look of a mad scientist from a B-movie.
Part 3
