THE BETTER PART OF VALOR. Morgan Mackinnon

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      Chapter 17

      Consciousness came slowly the next morning, a consciousness that someone was pounding on her front door. Cresta, bleary-eyed, struggled to sit up on the sofa, apologized to Max and Mettie when she accidentally dumped them on the floor, and staggered to her front door. She could see through the peephole a somber-looking man wearing a black suit. He stood there holding one large box, standing beside a second box, tapping his foot.

      “Doctor Leigh? I’m from the CIA. A Doctor Sanford said I should get this material to you as soon as possible.”

      Cresta tried to focus. “What is it?”

      “Not sure. Doc said it was priority information and to tell you not to come to the office for a few days.”

      Cresta signed for the boxes and told the man to put them in her library. Both cats were now under her desk, softly hissing at the CIA delivery man, even after he’d nodded and departed.

      “Shush.” Cresta opened the first box and found a folded piece of paper on top.

      Morning, dahling. I had Chen stay late (later than midnight?) and find everything he could on our subject, Mister Keogh. There’s quite a bit of information available. You are the analyst, the team shrink, so please go over this stuff and prepare a report for the team—say in two or three days? Work from home. It will save time. Anything you need, give me a buzz. Tkx, Jim.

      Cresta decided whatever the boxes contained could wait until after breakfast. Inspecting her side-by-side fridge, she pulled out regular milk, orange juice, jam, and bacon. A nice English muffin with butter and jam and a few strips of bacon should recharge her batteries. She looked at the cats. “No. No bacon. You can have some dry cat food.” At their looks of incredible disgust, she grumbled, “Okay, fine. One half strip and you share it.”

      Half an hour later, dishes in the sink, cats off to look for a napping place, Cresta settled down on the sofa with the two boxes. Most of the information was in the form of books, some of them looking quite old. Amazing how efficient the CIA could be when it was necessary. There were also some folders from the War Department. She seemed to recall Chen saying this Mr. Keogh was an Army man. Then she began to get excited. If Mr. Keogh was born in 1840, he could have been old enough to fight in the Civil War. Were they going to snatch a man off the battlefield at Gettysburg?

      An hour later, Cresta had the books and files sorted into heaps. There were a small number from Ireland, several from the Civil War era, and a lot from the Western Indian wars. Digging out a large notebook, Cresta labeled the first page “Myles Walter Keogh.” Then she got to work.

      *****

      Cresta M. B. Leigh didn’t make an appearance back at the CIA building until a week later. She’d spoken with Sammy Chen twice asking for additional information, argued with her mother twice, both times breaking luncheon dates, and chatted once with Jim Sanford when she finally called and told him she was ready for her presentation.

      It turned out to be “one of those” days you can run into in late April in northern Virginia—wet, windy, and wild. Hanging grimly onto the steering wheel of her car, she decided that suited the situation accurately. At least the wild part did. She hadn’t brought any of the reference books with her but did have the copies of all the War Department files in her briefcase along with records from Irish archives and some overhead slides she’d prepared.

      Rather than hold this particular classified meeting in the regular conference room, Jim Sanford reserved the top secret “war” room on the fourteenth floor. It was soundproof and checked weekly for recording devices or bugs. The door to the room required a preset sequence of numbers and letters to gain access. Since the project relied so heavily on the physicists, they set the door code for today to one with a combination of elemental table numbers and letters. No one left the war room, even to go to the bathroom, as there was a restroom attached.

      The conference room was full. Jim was there as well as his entire team plus Montoya’s engineers and, to Cresta’s surprise, even the secretary, Stacie Clayton. The guest of honor was the Secretary of Internal Development, Rick Berstem. Cresta also noticed that rather than the usual Danish and orange juice, the back table held vats of coffee, iced sodas, cupcakes, and trays of covered sandwiches.

      Turning on the projector, Cresta began her presentation.

      “I apologize it’s been a week since I started working on this. Jim, have you filled the Secretary in on the background?”

      Cutting in, Rick Berstem said rather derisively, “Oh, he’s filled me in all right. I understand you people have been flitting back and forth in time for months now. Why the hell didn’t you bring me in on this earlier?”

      Jim СКАЧАТЬ