Chapter 35


   Calvin tapped the icon on his computer screen and breathed a heavy sigh of relief as he did. The reports should not have taken anywhere near this long but, when you had the major distractions on top of having to do every one else’s work, things like this could drag out well into the evening and, sometimes, beyond that. When Cal checked the time he realized that evening had ended a while ago.

The light of a camp fire, burning down by the beach, was flickering against the screen door. Somewhere out there, in the darkness, Cal could hear all of his friends and co workers having a good time. They had decided to celebrate the successful conclusion of a case with burgers and beer. For most of them, it had been the first case they had ever truly cracked.

It sounded like they were having a good time but, Cal realized, someone had to be the adult and hang out in the commissary, filling out all of the reports that kept this place running. Amy had been nice enough to bring him a plate of food and Calvin had been hungry enough to eat it. He actually laughed when she did and then, found himself having to explain, “we finally got an operational kitchen and what do we do? We go out and cook over a fire.”

When Amy had realized what he was talking about she actually smiled and then said, “I think I’m going to save myself some money and start cooking my meals here instead of getting take out.”

Cal had laughed at that too, “I thought you were the number one fan of Foo King.”

That was enough to get a snarl form the red head and run her off. Amy had been a bit touchy since she came back and, Calvin suspected, it had nothing to do with the fact that they had to use bolt cutters to get the handcuffs off of her wrists. The damn things used some kind of special key and she had not been all too happy about it.

Cal did not let himself worry that much about it. He had his own burr, in the form of a print out sitting on his desk, and it was stuck pretty deep in his ass right now. His eyes shifted from the empty plate of food, sitting on top of the print out, to Barbara who walked past the inner door and looked to be heading up to ops. Cal grabbed the print out and set out in pursuit. He caught her at the base of the stairs.
It took Cal a second before he said anything about the paper in his hand. Barbara just looked, well, different. Her clothes were the rumpled sweat shirt and pants that she normally wore when she was just lounging around but, there was something different about her that Calvin could not quite put his finger on. Then he realized she must have just gotten out of the shower. Her hair was still wet and her skin had that glimmering sheen of not quite dry.

All of this made Cal almost forget the paper as he asked, “does it work?”

Barbara actually looked relaxed as she answered, “oh my god does it ever.”

“Can’t wait to try it now,” Cal replied. Then he went on by saying, “leave it to the Germans and machinery. That’s something they seem to have the knack for.” Before everyone even got back from the field, a German military truck had showed up with some technicians to go along with it. They had scared the crap out of Bob Johnson, almost literally, since it was probably the first time he’d ever had such heavily armed plumbers showing up on a house call. They did not cause any other trouble though. They wound up installing a military grade, field portable, high pressure, water pump system to replace the stations antiquated pipes and machinery.

Before Cal could even ask the big question about the origins of said plumbing, Barbara beat him to the punch with, “don’t ask.”

“Never one to look a gift kraut in the mouth,” Cal replied as he held up the paper in his hand, “but this is a lot more serious.”
Barbara promptly snatched the paper out of Calvin’s hand and quickly scanned over it. She quickly found exactly what was the only possible thing that Calvin could be upset about. There was a reason that Barbara found it so easily and when she handed it back to him she said, “don’t worry about it.”

Cal blinked, “don’t worry about it? With our budget that’s a lot of money Barbara. It’s also a lot if you don’t know who spent it or what it was spent on. Course I’ve worked out the who, already. It had to be Kent and it had to be today. I just don’t understand…”
Barbara easily dismissed it with, “I know all about it Cal. I authorized it and you can go have fun now. Thanks for taking my load of the reports.”

Very confused, Cal stumbled around with his words for a moment as he tried to ask, “what is this all about Barbara?”
Barbara reached out and snatched the paper back from Calvin, “I’ll handle it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Now go on out and join the party.”

Still confused, Calvin walked off and headed out the door. Barbara dropped her pretend smile, crumpled the paper in her hand, and walked on up to the com center where she found a certain individual sitting in a dark corner. She tossed the paper at this person and said, “you made a mistake.”

Kent Gold got up off the half broken roller chair and walked over into the partial light, being radiated through the windows, from the fire down on the beach. He was quite calm as he said, “it sounds as if you all had quite the day.”

“Yeah well,” Barbara replied with only a half glance out the window, “they deserve it Kent. It’s not their day I’m interested in right now. I told you I didn’t want anybody to know about it. As far as everyone was supposed to be concerned, you were checking the vaccines for the valley immunizations. Now Calvin is going to run his mouth about this.”

Calmly, in his usual slick way, Kent replied, “I wasn’t the one who ran off, to play policeman and then, leave my report work for Mister Brandt. Now was I?”

“I had to do that too,” Barbara replied. “It’s also none of your concern.”

“I see,” Kent replied, “just like the new water pump and this grant money we now have?”

“Yes,” Barbara nodded, “it is none of your concern Kent. Now what did you find?”

“Very well,” Kent replied with a half smile, “if you insist. I dove on the Roby Celeste, just like you told me. I did not have as much time as I would have liked. There was a wee bit of a storm brewing out there. I did find what we were looking for and then some.”
Kent looked back out of the window and down towards the fire on the beach. He then said, “are you sure that bringing that girl on board is the smartest thing to do under the circumstances?”

Barbara remained calm even as she replied, “we have the money now.”

“It’s not what I mean,” Kent replied, “and you bloody well know it.”
Barbara let that go and then demanded, “you said ‘and then some.’ What else did you find?”

Kent walked back over to his dark corner, and then he came back with a strange looking canister that he tossed to Barbara. She examined it and then said, “so? It’s an industrial grade magnetic shipping container. They get used all the time.”

“Yes they do,” Kent replied with a nod, “I found several of them scattered in the wreckage, down on the sea floor. You can open it, it’s battery is gone and there’s nothing in it.”

Barbara sat it aside and then asked Kent, “is there a point?”

“The Roby Celeste was a tramp steamer, Barbara,” Kent told her thoughtfully, “you hire an old tub like that when you want to move produce and the like. Those kinds of containers are used to haul lots of things but, every single one of them are valuable. Their costs are usually measured in the millions of Marks per gram. Those containers themselves are pretty expensive and I saw at least five of them down there, sitting on the sea floor. What were they doing on the Roby Celeste?”

Barbara could take a guess. They were there because somebody wanted to keep their cargo quiet. The Roby was on the in bound leg of it’s run when she sank. That left Barbara with another question, “what about her holds?”

Kent smiled and bumped his finger off his forehead in a salute to Barbara having asked the right question, “they were empty.”

That was, in many ways, even more ominous than the presence of this container. Cargo haulers, like the Roby, never had empty holds. Almost all of them ran near the red line when it came to their books and, that meant, they never moved a cargo to a place where they did not have something else to pick up for the return leg. If she had been empty then, that meant, somebody had paid them quite a handsome sum to make what had become, literally, a one way trip.

Barbara realized that she could look at their manifests and logs but, she also knew how useless that would be. Asking any of the crew about unauthorized stops would be equally as useless. The Canadians ran the shipping business and, as such, they had lots of unauthorized stops for all the freighters to make. They were so common that the crews usually did not pay them much attention. There were also thousands of islands out there in the Archipelago and one looked about the same as another. Unless they were talking to the Roby’s captain or navigator, both of whom were now dead, no one could tell you where that ship had stopped.

The only other person who might have known where that ship had gone, and what it unloaded, was whoever had authorized the transport in the first place. The good news for Barbara was that she knew who that person was and, knew him personally. The bad news was that Conner O’Rouke was missing and, now Barbara really believed for the first time, he was most likely dead as well. Whoever had moved that cargo had gone to an awful lot of trouble to cover their tracks.

The footfalls on the stairs shook Barbara out of her deep thought. When she saw who ascended she poked Kent in the arm and told him, “go get you something to eat.”

“If it’s all the same Barbara,” Kent said in a weary tone as he walked towards the stairs, “I think I’d rather take a shower under our new heads and then turn in for the night. It’s been a rather tiresome day.” As he walked by Jake, Kent nodded and said, “Mister Barton.”
Jake waited for the guy to vanish in the darkness of the lower hall way and then walked on over to Barbara. He put a cup of coffee down for her on the counter and then sat down beside it, “I figured with that kid hanging around, out there, you’d be eagle eyeing Shannon.”
Barbara took a nervous breath and then said, “I had no idea that Ricky was here.”

“Thought that might be the case,” Jake then back pedaled, “not that I want to rat out Shannon. You know, I think that kid could use…”
Barbara put a hand on Jake’s shoulder and said, “leave him to me, please.”

“If you say so,” Jake replied in a neutral tone. Then he acted disappointed, “well damn, if that didn’t get you down there I’m not sure what will.”

“Um,” Barbara’s words might have sounded rambling but her demeanor was anything but, “how about nothing?”

Jake came back quickly with, “the troops need to see ya.” His eye then caught the industrial magnet shipping container and he picked it up, “this thing has seen better days. Where did this come from? I don’t remember seeing it before.”

Barbara ignored Jake’s question and the container, “they don’t need the boss looking over their shoulder right now. Let them blow off some steam.”

Jake put the container down and then told her, “and the boss needs to blow off some steam too. The troops might need a little encouragement for that matter. They had a win today and they need to hear you say it.”

Barbara crossed her arms and then told Jake politely if not somewhat aloof, “I think you can handle that part of it Barton. I think you can handle it, just fine, seeing as how you and Norm saw fit to undermine everything I was doing. It was your plan. You take the credit for it.”

“Oh I see,” Jake replied, “that’s what this little snit fit is about. You’re pissed cause Norm and I corrected your crappy ass plan.”

Barbara remained collected as she gestured to herself, “my crappy ass plan? My plan did not involve seven people getting killed and one strip mall getting burned to the ground. This isn’t the Special Forces Barton, we’re law enforcement. We’re supposed to prevent those kinds of things and not facilitate them.”

Jake reached up and ran a finger through Barbara’s hair. Her reaction was anything but pleasant as she shoved his hand away. Jake told her, “yeah I can see you’re all choked up about the results of today’s investigation.”

“Do you mind,” Barbara said with gritted teeth as she slapped his hand away one last time. Then she told him, “yeah it might be nice right now. Why not enjoy it while we can. All you did by blackmailing Horst was put us on the German’s radar. The first chance they get, now, they’re going to stomp us flat.”

Jake actually laughed at that, “you know, why is it, that I have to keep telling you and Norm this little fact? You’re the two people who should know better. We’ve already been on their radar. We’ve already been on a lot of people’s radar.”

“Oh really,” replied an unconvinced Barbara. “Well maybe when you’ve been out here a little longer, if you don’t manage to get us all killed, you might see things a little differently.”

It was not a challenge that Jake let go and, it was one that he had expected since his reply was instant, “and just maybe if you two had an outsiders view of things you might see the whole picture here.”
Barbara’s lack of response and obvious disgust made Jake spell it out for her, “Barbara, they sacked your little organization here. They didn’t do it randomly or, as some thrifty minded, budget cutting, to ease the burden on the tax payers. There is no such thing as a thrifty minded government.”

Suddenly, Jake had Barbara’s full attention. Even though she understood what he was saying she still asked, “what are you saying?”

“You were inconvenient and that’s why they reduced this place to nothing,” Jake told her flat out. “They couldn’t buy you off and they probably knew it from the start, so they didn’t even try. They couldn’t just out and out get rid of you so, they had to do the next best thing. They turned you into a joke that nobody is taking seriously.”

Barbara looked back out at the darkness of the sea. The little green foaming caps, that formed on the breakers were about all that they could see right now. Her arms were already crossed but she squeezed them even tighter as she thought about it. Then she said, “and maybe there were less than nefarious reasons for it.”

“You mean like Governor Crass not liking you,” Jake replied. “I think I figured that part out about twenty minutes after I got here.”
Barbara went on the attack, “at least I know where I stand with Helen. What I don’t know, Barton, is where do I stand with you?” Jake did not reply so Barbara made it plain, “you seem to have thought this matter through, quite thoroughly.”

“I’m that kind of guy,” Jake told her.

“Not what I mean,” Barbara replied, still looking at the sea. “You’re not like the other treaty guys they sent. They were incompetent bureaucrats who couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here. All of them acted like this was some kind of punishment. You on the other hand…” Now Barbara did look him in the eye, “you not only act like you want to be here but, you seem to have a reason to be.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” Jake replied, “that just maybe, I take my jobs seriously.”

Barbara replied with a non answer, “and did it ever occur to you that the problem I have with Helen is, that the woman is just a bitch?”
Jake let out a heavy sigh and stood up. As he walked towards the stairs he told Barbara, “well it doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere tonight. I guess I’ll go have another beer and then turn in.”

Jake stopped when Barbara said, “after my mother died.”

There was a moment of silence and Jake turned around. As he found himself looking at Barbara’s back, he waited. Then finally she said, “my Dad and Helen, they kind of, well he was seeing her.”

There was still no response from Jake so Barbara turned around and asked, “what? No smart ass jokes?”

Jake just shrugged, “what’s wrong with that? The guy probably needed some comfort or something.”

“He might have,” Barbara remorsefully said, “but I didn’t. At least not from that woman.”

Jake mulled it over and replied, “some kind replacement issues or something like that? You and your mother were close?”

“No,” Barbara dropped her head, “nothing like that. I was nineteen when my mother died. I’d been out on my own for a while. I just didn’t get along with Helen, that’s all. She had always looked down her nose at me and I… well, I just don’t like people like her. If that makes any sense.”

“I can buy that,” Jake replied. Then he nodded and turned for the stairs. As he walked back down he did yell up, “and that hasn’t got a thing to do with why they want you gone. Just remember that.”

Why was it that Jake’s certainty on the matter did not make Barbara feel any better.