Sigma One (3 page)

Sarah didn't know about Zaire. She could understand Pat's concern. It bothered her to think about them being apart for that long. They hadn't slept separately since they married and she wanted it to stay that way. Still, Pat was finally letting a little steam off, and she needed to turn the heat up on the kettle just a bit to ensure he exorcised himself from the demons that were troubling him.

"So what are you going to do about it, Tad?" she badgered him teasingly.

Pat had had enough.

"You called me Tad!"

Smiling. "Yes I did! Because you're acting like him. It sounds like something he would say. He'd complain. But he wouldn't do anything about it. Just like you're doing now." She waited for a reply.

Pat became sullen, gritted his teeth and stared back at his wife. He was angry.But not at her. She was right. He was acting like a jerk and should know better. He had to do something to change his situation.

"Well. What are you going to do…..TAD?!" Sarah said playfully.

As soon as the word registered, Pat broke into a grin, picked his wife up and threw her onto the bed and hugged her.

She responded by hugging him back. This had been the first sign of emotion she had seen from him in weeks and she loved it.She kissed him deeply.

After their brief interlude in bed, they both got up and got ready for the day. Pat dressed, kissed Sarah and Alice goodbye and went out into the cold November Virginia air.

On his way to PCA, his car paralleled the Potomac. The trees had lost their rich green leaves weeks before. The gray overcast skies and their bleak naked branches combined to add to Pat's sullenness. As he stared out at the murky, brown, slow moving waters he began to formulate a plan for breaking with PCA. His numerous years of government service and his years of serving the senator as well as his observations over that last year at PCA had taught him one thing. There were alternatives. And there were ample supplies of money to be had, if one had the right idea.

Tuning into the news he heard Tom Brockaw editorializing about the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. During that broadcast, Pat had come to the decision that the only way he could contribute to society would be to somehow help lessen the threat of nuclear destruction to mankind. That desire generated the idea for the National Security Foundation, an organization of his own that would do something significant.

As he drove towards the PCA office he became obsessed with this idea and instead of turning into the parking structure, he headed for Senator Radcliff's.

The senator was in and over breakfast Pat convinced his old colleague of his idea for a company....a foundation he called it....to address this serious problem. A little arm twisting and reminding the senator that he owed Pat was all it took to ensure that his first year of initial funding would be forthcoming three months hence.

That morning, Pat finished his meeting with the senator, drove to his office for the last time, packed his belongings and began his search for a suitable location for his new company.Over the next three months, he located his office in rural Virginia, secured facility clearances and began preparing for his first proposal-developing a long term strategy for riskless nuclear disarmament.

Cherisa Hunt stood in front of a mirror--a darkened mirror--in a cheap hotel fixing her makeup. Miley really should replace this piece of junk,") she thought to herself as she squinted to better focus on the wary eyebrow she was trying to pluck from her twenty-five year old face.

The eyebrow didn't need to be plucked, and would have gone unnoticed by anyone else--but not Cherisa. She was a fanatic about her looks. "A real genuine priss!" as one gentleman lawyer she had met in the Dulles Airport while she was waiting for Senator Radcliff had described it. So she took the tweezers and yanked the errant foliage from her face, emitting a loud "youch!" as she did.

Stepping back from the mirror, she took a better look to see what, if any damage, she had done. "After all," she remarked to herself as she turned her head left then right, "This is the perfect face. And we can't be damaging the merchandise, now, can we?" (She always liked to refer to herself in the second person possessive; this to bolster up an inner sense of inferiority that her ner-do-well mother had instilled in her since she was a child, not wanting to compete with such a "pretty little girl.") Noting that now not a hair was out of place, she turned around and looked at the young twenty-three year old tire salesman lying in bed, half covered, totally smashed, that she had befriended just eight hours earlier in a fit of passion and thought to herself that her suitor looked a lot better in the dim light of the bar. She hadn't noticed it then, but she did now, that the guy still had acne. Yuck!

Dressing quickly and quietly, she turned and left the room being careful she removed her business card from the night stand to ensure the loser wouldn't try to track her down for one, and two, to avoid any potential future compromise in her security clearance. The NSF wouldn't think too kindly of this sort of behavior, and she had been cautioned already once. One more episode and she might get her clearance yanked entirely.

Hurriedly, she headed down the grimy stairs of the cheap motel and out onto the streets now bustling with people on their way to work. She dreaded the thought of anyone seeing her come out of this place, so she buried her head in her scarf and hailed the first taxi that happened by, quickly entering into the safety of the its warm surroundings, happy to be out of the biting cold wind which had begun to numb her.

She didn't notice the blue green station wagon and the two secret service agents, who immediately started to follow her as the cab pulled away from the curb. She was in too big a hurry to get to the NSF and her job.

The cab ride from downtown to her office took much longer than she had planned. When they finally arrived, Cherisa looked at her watch, threw the cabbie a twenty and left in such a hurry she didn't even get the change. As she entered the building, Cherisa stopped short of the security guard and hurriedly fumbled in her purse to get her identification pass. Normally she would have had it in her hand so she could walk right in, but she didn't recognize the guard at the door this day, and she didn't want to draw attention to herself. She was, after all, forty five minutes late for work.

Stepping forward, Cherisa showed her badge to the guard who did a double take, flashing his eyes first at the badge and then at Cherisa. Satisfied of her correct identification, he buzzed the door and let her inside. Before letting the security door close completely, Cherisa looked over her shoulder and batted her eyes at the guard and spoke.

"Please do me little favor, handsome. Okay?"

The guard responded, "What's that you want Ms. Hunt?"

"Just remember when you log in my arrival time, could you fudge just a little and put down 8:30 instead of the actual time? Mr. Huxley said if I was late one more time he'd fire me. And we wouldn't want that now. Would we?" She batted her eyes again, hoping her ploy would work. It always used to work on the guard in the Capital Building when she worked for Senator Radcliff.

The guard scanned her up and down lasciviously and then nodded his head in agreement. Maybe Ms. Hunt would remember this later on. He hoped so anyway.

Cherisa closed the door and proceeded down the long corridor of vault doors to her office at the end.

When she was halfway down the hall, one of the vault doors opened. The soft sound of classical music could be heard briefly as the petite brunette, Amanda Yates, stepped out almost running into Cherisa and dropping a pile of loose-leaf papers in the process.

"Hi, Amanda. What's the hurry?"

Amanda composed herself, stooped down and picked up the papers. When they were situated in her arms again she replied apologetically, "Oh, hi, Cherisa. I've just got to get these papers into art. We've got a big presentation to the budget committee tomorrow. You know. Same old thing. Tell 'em what we're spending. Tell 'em what we've accomplished. Get more funding to continue the research. That's all. Sorry I almost bowled you over.

"No problem, Amanda. I wasn't paying attention."

"Well. Gotta run!”

"Bye."

With that last comment, Amanda disappeared down the hall.

Cherisa watched her as she scurried along and thought to herself maybe she'd put in for a job in the research department. They always look like they're doing such important things. She wasn't really happy being just a secretary. And besides, the researchers had flexible hours. This was perfect for her scatter-brained approach to life. Flexible hours would suit her just fine.

Before entering the door at the end of the hallway, Cherisa pulled out her compact, straightened her eye makeup and then went inside. She had no sooner sat down at her desk then Pat (Mr. Huxley to her) summoned her into his office for dictation.

"Hi, Cherisa. Glad you could make it today." Pat said sarcastically. Were it not for the fact that Cherisa used to be Senator Radcliff's secretary and he was forced to hire her at the NSF as a condition of continued funding, he would have fired her years ago. But the senator made it perfectly clear that unless Cherisa had a job at the NSF, no more funding would be forthcoming. More than likely Radcliff had planted her there as spy anyway.

"Good morning, Mr. Huxley. I'm sorry I was late. An accident on the beltway was horrible this morning. A big rig jackknifed and it had traffic snarled for miles." She hoped he would buy this lie. She hadn't used the traffic excuse in weeks.

"That's okay, Cherisa. I've just got a lot of things that have to be out today. I'll be at the Senate hearings for the next three days and won't have time to come into the office, so every minute counts. Are you ready to work?"

"Yes. I'm ready."

"Well," Pat said, "then let's begin. First date this letter yesterday- -the forth of October, 1990.

"Uh, huh. Got it. The forth." Cherisa wondered why the date change.

"Then begin. Dear Senator Radcliff. (Cherisa smiled....a letter to her old boss). Regarding the upcoming budget hearings and continuation of funding for the NSF: Horace, I anticipate a very bitter fight this next month relative to our 1991 budget request, due in part to the recent discussions President and the Soviet Premier relative to European nuclear missile levels, but also due to the pressure Congress is putting on the Pentagon to freeze spending levels at last year's figures.

As you are aware, you and I helped begin the NSF over ten years ago, and during those ten years we have seen our organization grow from a staff of three highly creative individuals, to well over one hundred. Our research too has branched out from the initial study phase of finding ways of reducing the strategic threat, to the inception of the SIGMA ONE project which is nearing the demonstration phase.

Horace, we are on the verge of a breakthrough." Pat paused, thinking     deliberately about what he would say next.

"Did you get that, Cherisa?"

"Just a minute, Mr. Huxley." She flipped to the next page of her steno pad, scrawled faster and then looked up to see Pat rise and begin to limp around the office, dragging his right shoe across the carpet as he did. Her eyes inadvertently focused down on that shoe and she noticed it was very scuffed from constant abuse. The sight hurt her. Patrick Huxley, save for his physical disability, was really a handsome man. She thought to herself, Mrs. Huxley is a very lucky woman.

Pat caught Cherisa’s stare at his foot and looked at her. Their eyes met. Although it had been fifteen years since the accident, the look of pity in Cherisa's eyes still hurt slightly.

"Are you caught up yet, Ms. Hunt?"

"Uh,huh." She flashed her eyes down to her steno pad avoiding having to continue to look into his eyes.

"As I was saying," he hesitated momentarily to regain his concentration, broken as a result of Cherisa's stare.

"Please read the last line back to me."

Cherisa began, "Horace, we are on the verge of a breakthrough."

Pat thought for a moment and fumbled for his pipe finding it in the top drawer of his desk. Reaching into the humidor, he filled it with tobacco. He always smoked when he was nervous. And he was nervous right now. How long could he hope that Radcliff would believe him? Hadn't he written the same thing not three months earlier during the summer budget exercises? No matter. He wanted to believe-what he was saying. He really felt that in just a few more months his scientists and parapsychologists would find the answer to SIGMA ONE and he would be able to demonstrate the ability to reprogram a computer using only one's thoughts.

He continued, drawing on his pipe deeply as he did. "We are on the verge of a breakthrough and shortly we'll be able to give you a personal demonstration of SIGMA ONE's potential.

Dr. Jackowitz, a recently hired parapsychologist, has made outstanding progress in this regard. I've included the findings of his research over the last two months in this letter. I'm sure when you read the report you'll understand my urgency in compelling you to do whatever is necessary to convince your colleagues of the continued viability of this project.

I've also included the budget figures you asked for indicating our progress in maintaining control of expenditures (See Attachment 2). Attachment 3 contains our budget request for next fiscal year's operations updated to reflect the most recent estimates of inflation. (Pat remembered the snafu that the Pentagon got into recently when their budget submission included the wrong inflation indices, thus understating their needs by a substantial amount. He didn't want to be in the same boat, even though his organization was receiving funding from a number of sources.)