The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (6 page)

David walked the defined pathway. He followed the prompts of the watch. He proceeded toward a barely visible grey door in front of the nearby high-rise office building. Perhaps the watch was attracted to the magnetic circuitry behind the door, David thought. When he arrived at the grey door, a red light turned on above the door’s frame. It revealed a sign that read, “Employee Entrance Only.”

David heard a buzzing sound. It sounded like an electronic lock held in an open position. He turned the doorknob, and he entered cautiously. He looked down at his watch, and he pushed another side button on it. The flashing red light on the watch changed to a light purple color.

David walked down a long bare corridor that seemed ominously dark and cold. The corridor was partially lit by two four-inch strips of side lighting centered on each side of the corridor walls. The lights in the strips turned off and on in a sequence. They created a sense of movement and encouraged forward action.

At the end of the hallway, an elevator waited for David. He paused for a moment, and he looked at the corridor behind him. He did not sense any threats, but something was not quite right. He pushed a button on the elevator front panel marked with an upright triangle, and the doors slowly opened for him.

David stepped into the elevator and looked for any inside buttons, but there were none. He smiled and shook his head back and forth with a sense of understanding and a lack of surprise.

He spoke and annunciated as if someone could hear him, “FOURTH—FLOOR—PLEASE!” Haj had said to meet him on the third floor. He decided to go to the fourth floor instead. Maybe discretion is in order, he thought. The elevator responded in a soft feminine voice, “Understood. Fourth floor. Proceeding.” It moved rapidly upward and responded again to its passenger in about ten seconds. “Arrived. Fourth floor,” it said. David exited.

He took a quick turn to his right, and David spotted the door to the stairs. With as much stealth as possible, he pushed the handle down, pushed open the door, and entered the lonely stairwell. He slowly closed the door behind him. He stepped softly down the concrete steps toward the third floor while he suspiciously looked at all of his surroundings. It was as if he expected something to happen.

At the entrance to the third floor, he opened the door and entered a well-lit floor, full of many offices and desks. All was visible. It was a very open setting. Some walls were tall and transparent, and some were opaque, short, and at waist level. Various cubicles and workstations with elaborate phone systems were also set up at some desks.

He walked around a corner wall, and a man quickly appeared in front of him and caught him off-guard. It was Peter. He was still in his dress clothes but absent a tie.

“David, old boy! Glad you are here!”—Peter gave a fake smile.

Immediately, David greeted Peter with a swift punch in the face, and Peter fell to the floor. David had the look of an angry man with a tightly pinched lip. “Y
ou son of a
…”—David started his tirade, but he was interrupted.

“David, please calm down!” Peter attempted to explain while he stood up to face David.

“You want calm, Peter? You want calm? Get me to Haj,
right now
!” David said, firmly pointing his accusing and judging finger directly in Peter’s face.

Peter slowly retrieved a handkerchief from his inner jacket pocket and wiped his lip stained with fresh blood. He spoke softly.

“I will explain. I will explain everything to you. And when you hear everything, I promise—I promise that you will be my friend, once again. Please! Hear me out first. Will you follow me? I will take you to see Haj—but, first—I need to show you something that will help you understand,” Peter explained.

“Make it quick!” the skeptical David urged.

They walked through a maze of desks, toward a double-door entrance, on the other side of the floor.

“How did you know I would take the stairs?”—David’s suspicions increased.

“David, you are more predictable than gravity at times. Oh, and I see you are still sporting that watch with the digital recorder? You still haven’t replaced my last one that broke. I have always paid you well for your little inventions, you know.”—Peter tried to make bland conversation, but David did not respond. He remained silent concerning his own watch’s undisclosed abilities.

Past additional double doors, they turned to a hallway on the left. Peter scanned a thumbprint, and the pair entered a dark room that was soon lit by automatic lighting.

The room was full of several glass-enclosed exhibits. They showcased technical inventions of some kind on display tables. Each glass enclosure contained various metallic or plastic shaped pieces, some with gears or digital monitors. A scanning red laser beam protected each exhibit. It emanated from the tip of a mounted metal rod in the center of the table. It continuously scanned the exhibit with a back and forth and random motion.

At the far side of the room, there was a yellow door clearly marked with an additional advisement not to enter the area. David stepped behind Peter cautiously as they approached it.

“Behind this door—this is what I want you to see. And, David,” he paused. “Please keep an open mind.” Peter attempted another synthetic smile that David rejected once again.

As Peter opened the door, David noticed a pulsating light. It illuminated the entire room. The color alternated randomly between pink and purple. The source of the light was behind a curtain. It was a thick curtain, but it did not block out the light that it attempted to hide. Peter moved the curtain to reveal an enormous ten-foot and circular field of color. It radiated with intensity. The room was obviously sized to accommodate the shape of the energy. The circular field of alternating and pulsating color remained pink for just a moment, before it changed to a light purple, in only a matter of seconds. There was no specific pattern to the color change. The field of color did not sit or rest on any barrier. Nothing contained it. It merely existed. On the opposite side of the colorful shape, there was an empty white room. It was as if it invited one to walk through the field and into the white room behind it.

To the left and in front of the field there was a wall of computer monitoring equipment. It displayed dozens of dials, controls, and knobs. That must control the field, David thought as they both stepped into the room. Peter confirmed, “The dials to the left control and manage the diameter of the field and its strength. Isn’t it amazing?”—Peter waited for a response, but David ignored him. He looked with wonder in his eyes and continued to scan the room.

Finally, David asked, “What is it?”

“This is an artifact I brought back from Cairo,” Peter explained. “Haj and I found this five years ago, but he was going to turn the technology over to the Egyptian government—he was a spy, David!” Peter braced for a response, but David again was silent.

“I was hired by very top U.S. Government operatives to find and keep this technology away from the Egyptians and any other foreign power,” Peter announced. He expected an inquisitive response. This time, he received it.

“This field of energy is only about ten centimeters thick. There is nothing supporting it or containing it?” David said while he looked at it from various angles with his scientific eyes.

Then David changed the subject.

“Why did Haj call me?—and how?” David asked.

“He escaped guard tonight, very cleverly I might add. And he stole my cell phone during an inspection. He is safe. I assure you,”—Peter tried to explain, but he also attempted to gauge David’s tone—as if ready to pounce upon it.

“You kept him prisoner for five years and lied about his death to Mattie and me!”—David grew angrier. Peter sensed it and wiped nervous perspiration from his brow.

“I had no choice,” Peter insisted. “I was bound by something called a Secrets Act, and I was operating covertly. My directives were from the highest powers in our government. A decision was made to cover and hide Haj’s existence. There were other countries and powers seeking this technology and power source. It was out of my control, old boy!”

“So, what does it do?”—David was still not satisfied and knew Peter was lying. What did he mean when he said, “our government?” None of this sounds believable, he thought.

“Look at this!”—Peter pressed a button on one of the left panels. A small door opened from beyond the field, at the far corner of the white room. David saw a German Shepherd dog trot out. The dog started to pant heavily. It quickly responded with excitement to the sight of David. David squinted and looked at the dog. David estimated the distance to the dog to be at least eighty feet or about twenty-four meters away at the far end of the room.

“You have a dog just like Haj had in Egypt. What was its name? Charlie?” David asked while the dog started to pace happily in its room. The animal barked several times, seemingly in response to hearing his name. David’s eyes expanded, and he had a face of bewilderment.

David called to the dog, “Charlie?” The dog immediately gave a barked response with a human-like smile.

“That dog
is
Charlie, David!”—Peter looked at David with an air of pride.

“But, Charlie had kidney failure, if I remember correctly.”—David grew more puzzled.

“When Haj first revealed this to me, I could not resist testing this technology. I was going to walk through the field myself, just to see what would happen. But it was Charlie that ended up testing it for me. He passed through the field by accident one day—chasing some cat or something. At first, we thought he was harmed, but a local vet gave him a clean bill of health. In fact, his kidneys were completely cured within a few days.”—again, Peter checked David and his reactions.

“He should have some age to him also.”—David noticed that the dog looked similar in age to the one that he had remembered.

“Another benefit—after passing through the field, his age was halted. Only recently have we noticed some differences in his vitals. It seems that passing through the energy field keeps you from aging for about five years or so.”—Peter smirked.

“We have not allowed anyone or any animal to pass through the field until we test further—and to see how Charlie makes out,” Peter justified, with some attempted reassurance. “We have only placed plants, insects, and mice through the beam—nothing else.”

“Ok—so who exactly is ‘
we
?’ ” David demanded.

“I am referring to the institute that has both of our names, David,” Peter proclaimed. “This company was meant for us both. That is why I named it Jenkins and Hughes. I have always wanted you on board, but you’ve always refused—except for some technical toys you made for me on occasion,” Peter gleamed with hope in his eyes. “You always wasted your talent. You had the brains to run this company—but you wanted to wander through life—and do what? You run a security company. You are a scientist, old boy, not a security guard!”

“I never liked corporate rules, and my income allows me to experiment freely,” David explained as he looked straight at Peter.

“Oh please! You are a dreamer. Are you still obsessed with your damn magnets as some new energy source?” Peter said as he made fun of him. “You are content with a meager income, but you could have so much more of the world! What you think of as humility is truly selfishness. The world
needs
scientists like you. It needs scientists that think outside of the box.”

“You don’t want the world. You want control—over people and things. What you don’t realize is this. No one has any control of anything, for any great length of time,” David said.

Then David once again demanded to see Haj, and Peter finally obliged with a look of disappointment. He motioned David to another side door to their right. They moved down yet another long corridor. There was a lengthy period of awkward silence as they walked. They passed through several security portals along the way, and in a few short minutes, they finally arrived at the holding cell of the one called Haj.

David and Haj immediately started to stare at each other, each with some sense of unbelief and mistrust. David was astonished by the elaborate security measures. Haj moved his lips, but David heard no sound.

“Soundproof?” David accused. Then Peter attempted a fraudulent explanation.

“Five years ago, there truly was an accident. I did not lie about that part. Haj took a fall, a couple of stories down from scaffolding. You remember the site where we worked? He was fortunate to land on some sand and empty boxes. He spent time overnight in a hospital—that was the night that American government officials came to me about the plan for secrecy. I had no choice, old boy, you have to believe me.”—Peter spoke his falsehoods well, but David was not convinced.

David remembered what Haj had told him five years before. Perhaps Haj was protecting him when he had told him to stay away that day.

Peter continued, “And, as for Haj, he suffered brain damage, and he was never quite right after the accident. He went mad. He had to be contained. It was decided, not by me, but by my superiors, to hold him in a private cell—and not in a traditional and public hospital. The matter had to be kept secret. The U.S. Government officials wanted to hold him and prod him for information, in some torture institution. I held out for a more private and humane solution. It was my hope that he could be rehabilitated. I hoped that he would, in time, come to be more
functional
, like the old Haj that we all knew. I bribed the government to move him here because Haj was my friend. I felt like it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, Haj has not made much progress it seems.”