London Bridges

agents from the CIA arrived. All in suits with briefcases.
Uh-oh.
Then came half a dozen hitters from Homeland Security. Things were definitely getting more serious now.
    “This is getting hinky,” Monnie Donnelley whispered to me. “It’s one thing to talk the talk about interagency cooperation. But the CIA is
really
here.”
    I smiled over at Monnie. “You’re sure in a good mood.”
    She shrugged. “As General Patton used to say about the battlefield, ‘God help me, I do love it so!’”
    Director Burns entered the room precisely at six. He walked in with Thomas Weir, the head of the CIA, and Stephen Bowen from Homeland Security. The three heavies looked extremely uneasy. Maybe just being there together did it—which succeeded in making all of us nervous, too.
    Monnie and I exchanged another look. A few agents continued to talk, even as the directors took their places in front. It was the veterans’ way of showing that they’d been here before. Had they? Had anyone? I didn’t think so.
    “Can I have your attention,” Director Burns said, and the room immediately went quiet. All eyes were glued to the front.
    Burns let the quiet settle in, and then he continued.
    “I want to bring you up to speed. The first contact that we received on this situation was two days before the bombing in Sunrise Valley, Nevada. The initial message concluded with the words ‘it is our hope that no one will be injured during the violence.’ The nature of ‘the violence’ wasn’t revealed or even hinted at. We were also instructed not to mention the initial contact to anyone. We were warned that if we did, there would be serious consequences, though these consequences were never spelled out for us.”
    Burns paused and looked around the room. He made eye contact with me, nodded, then moved on. I wondered how much he knew that the rest of us didn’t. And who else was involved? The White House? I would think so.
    “We have been contacted every day since then. One message went to Mr. Bowen, one to Director Weir, and one to me. Until today, nothing of consequence had been revealed. But this morning each of us received a film of the bombing in Nevada. The film had been edited. I’ll share it with you now.”
    Burns made a rapid, circular hand signal and a video began to play on the half a dozen monitors around the room. The film was in black and white; it was grainy and looked handheld, like news footage. Like war footage, actually. The room was very quiet as we watched the video.
    From a distance of a mile or more, one camera angle revealed the army trucks and jeeps arriving in Sunrise Valley. Moments later the mystified residents were escorted from their mobile homes into the trucks.
    A man pulled a handgun and was shot dead in the street. Douglas Puslowski, I knew.
    The convoy then drove off quickly, raising great clouds of dust.
    In the next shot, a large, dark object tumbled into view from the sky. While it was still in the air, there was an incredible explosion.
    The film of the actual bombing had also been edited but showed footage from only a single camera. The editing was mostly a series of jump cuts. Jarring, but effective.
    This was followed by a long shot of the explosion. The plane that delivered the bomb was never in the shot.
    “They filmed the whole damn thing,” Burns said. “They wanted us to know that they were there, that they are the ones who bombed the town out of existence. In a few minutes they’re going to tell us why. They’ll call on the phone.
    “The person making the calls has been using phone cards from public phones. Crude but effective. So far, the calls have originated from grocery stores, movie theaters, bowling alleys. Pretty much untraceable, as you know.”
    We sat mostly in silence for a minute or two. There were only a few private conversations going on.
    Then the quiet was broken—the phone at the front of the room began to ring.

Chapter 20
    “THIS WILL BE on speaker for everyone to hear,” Burns told us. “They said it was permissible, even advisable for all of you to be here. In other words, they expected an audience. They’re very big on rules, as you’ll see.”
    “Who the hell is
they?
” Monnie whispered up close to my ear. “See, it
is
sci-fi. Aliens, maybe? That’s my bet going in.”
    “We’ll know in a minute, won’t we? I’m not betting against you.”
    Director Burns pushed a button on his console, and a male voice came over the speakers. The voice