Samantha Smart (27 page)

Samantha’s mother had, in fact, received a call from Agent Stiles which Samantha had eavesdropped on. It sounded as if they had arrested someone in connection with Cindy’s ‘drugging.’ She felt weird about this; whoever it was, they had not committed the crime, which she had fairly clearly witnessed or at least confirmed her suspicions about through her conversations in the past with Jordan Slane. He was obviously the guilty party. So whom had they arrested? She fretted, hoping it was some mob-connected drug kingpin who deserved to be in jail anyway, but how could she be sure? What if it was just some kid who happened to have been at the Heatwavvve
show, maybe with some small prior record for stealing a candy bar or a video game? Surely someone like that, though perhaps guilty of other, more minor crimes, didn’t deserve to go to jail for attempted murder!

Her uneasiness was amplified when she and Polly returned home and she took off their winter coats. Agent Stiles was there, sitting on their living room couch and enjoying a cup of tea with Cindy.

“Oh, hello Samantha,” the pretty, sharply-dressed woman got up and gently shook her hand. Polly growled under her breath.

“Polly!” Cindy yelled, quieting the little terrier.

“Oh–sorry about that,” Samantha added. “Hi.” She petted Polly calmly.

“That’s all right. Polly’s just being a good, loyal protector. That’s an admirable quality. One we look for in an agent, actually. How are you?”

“Oh, I’m good–I mean
well
,” Samantha blushed a little, correcting her own poor grammar. “I’ve been back at school a lot.”

“Your mother and I have been chatting a little, you know. We caught the person we think is responsible for blow-gunning her at the show.”

“Really? Uh–um, I mean, wow! Who is it?”

“Sadly, it seems to be–a teenager. We’d actually like you to come downtown and see if you could possibly help us I.D. him.”

“Um, sure... I guess,” Samantha half-gulped. “I mean–I’m not exactly sure that I can, specifically.”

“No?”

“Well, yes - and no. I mean, well–I could probably tell if it definitely
wasn’t
the guy.”

“Probably, definitely?” Agent Stiles raised an eyebrow and stared at Samantha for a moment. “I see. Well, I’d appreciate it if you could come with me anyway and aid us with whatever knowledge or memory you may have. We’ve put a lot of work into finding him.”

“Yes, please, Samantha,” Cindy was nodding, “whatever you remember, I’d feel a lot safer if I knew that whatever freak did this was locked up.”

“Yes, all right,” Samantha said nervously, unhitching Polly’s leash. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

“It’s not necessary for you to come, Cindy. I can get Samantha back home when we’re done. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours,” Stiles assured them. Cindy nodded and Samantha tried to put on a ‘helpful’ smile.

The two departed, saying a quick goodbye to Cindy (and Polly). Todd was gone, off to Seattle to spend a week with their father. Samantha was jealous in a way, but had declined to go in case something came up with The Professor. She knew she’d hardly see their dad anyway, if she went; he was always so busy. She had sent a present for him along with Todd, however, a deluxe shaving kit. She laughed to herself when she thought of it; it was sort of an ongoing joke as their father generally wore a perpetual beard, which she disapproved of.

The car ride got interesting fast. Agent Stiles was as sharp as she looked, and the questioning began immediately.

“So, Samantha,” she began, “I’m going to be straight with you. I know you’re a very bright kid. In fact, I know a great deal about you that you probably don’t think I know. The F.B.I. doesn’t mess around, Samantha, especially when people could be in danger. I know that you studied aborigines in school two days ago. I know the exact route that you take through Prospect Park when you walk your dog. I even know that for lunch today you had a cheese and tomato sandwich, embellished with Marmite,
a particularly nasty spread which you were no doubt introduced to by your mysterious British friend, Professor Smythe. But,
Samantha, do you know what the most unsettling thing I know about you is at this moment?” Samantha shook her head, intimidated. “I know that you’re hiding something from me.

“Now, despite watching you and your friends quite closely for the past few weeks, I’m still not sure what
it is that you’re hiding. What I do
know, however, is that it’s something big, something dangerous and, chances are, something that’s way
over your head. If I were you, I’d ask myself how many people could be affected by whatever it is that you know, and whether maybe you should seriously reconsider keeping quiet. You’re only
eleven,
Samantha.” She sighed, pausing for a moment in her lecture.

“When we get to the station, you’re going to look at a sixteen-year-old Hispanic kid who’s the only person we’ve been able to even loosely connect with this Heatwavvve
fiasco, and if you I.D. him, he probably goes to jail for a lot of years and this case gets closed. If you don’t
I.D. the kid, we’re all over you until this is solved one way or another. So, what’s it going to be, Samantha? Is your memory getting better yet?”

Samantha was cowed by Agent Stiles’ directness. This was the F.B.I. This was hardball. But what could she do? She trusted The Professor’s judgement, more than anyone’s. And he was an adult–he could get into much bigger trouble than she or any of her friends would, legally being minors. And they had agreed over and over again that for the time machine to fall into the government’s hands would surely be disastrous. But she couldn’t send an innocent person to jail. She couldn’t live with that. She wished she could’ve talked to The Professor about this possibility days ago, but in the absence of his advice she was forced to act on her own.

“Your suspect is innocent,” she blurted out, still trying to think of what to say next, if anything. She wished at this moment that there had been a law school for eleven-year-olds.

Stiles pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in ‘park.’ She looked over at Samantha with a deadly serious look.

“Samantha,” she said sternly, “if you know who’s responsible for putting your mother in a coma,
why
won’t you tell me who it is!? Was it Smythe? Was it some accident, some experiment of his gone wrong? What!?”

“I can’t tell you,” Samantha said as calmly as she could. “If I told you, many, many more people would be endangered. The future–”

“The future!? I’m talking about the
present,
Samantha! The Bureau is stumped here, and if you don’t give us some answers, we’ll find them, and you’ll wish you had. Now I’m going to ask you one last time: Do you know who is responsible for this?”

“I’m sorry,” Samantha swallowed. “Your suspect is innocent.”

There was a long silence as the two looked into each other’s eyes, Samantha’s sad and pleading and Stiles’ frustrated and confused.

“All right,” the agent turned away, turning the car around and going back up Fourth Avenue. “Tomorrow we’ll have a search warrant for Smythe’s office and labs, and don’t be surprised if we show up at your door with one, either. I’ll give you tonight to figure out how you’re going to explain this to your mother.”

Samantha nodded, almost in tears. Had she done the right thing? She was very worried.

*

Samantha was frantic. Agent Stiles had dropped her back off at home with something of a smirk on her face, one of those looks that said something like ‘I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!’ It had been tricky explaining to her mom why she was home so soon after leaving, but it had worked. Cindy was expecting Agent Stiles tomorrow so that they could ‘finish their business.’

She went into her bedroom and closed the door, sat down on her bed where Polly was lying patiently. She wagged her tail hopefully; a walk was always a possibility. Samantha took her little key and unlocked the box that held her wrist communicator. She was about to call The Professor when she stopped and thought a moment. Even if the F.B.I. couldn’t tap into its frequency, they still could have easily bugged the room, even placed tiny cameras in it. She quickly put the communicator in her pocket and looked around feeling as if she were being watched. She racked her brain for a safe place to try to contact The Professor. She could take Polly for a walk, but she had just done that and her mom might get suspicious, and once outside, agents could be lurking anywhere–hiding in bushes with highly sensitive directional microphones or binoculars powerful enough to read lips through. In a moment of inspiration, she walked out of her bedroom and over to the front door.

Cindy had most accommodatingly fallen asleep reading on the couch, and Samantha slipped noiselessly out into the hallway, silently shooing Polly, who was trying to follow. She walked halfway to the outside door and then made a U-turn following the stairs that led down to the brownstone’s basement. It was a dark and somewhat damp place, but she was worried it could still contain bugs or cameras–The F.B.I. had a certain knack for being thorough, if they really wanted something. Samantha walked over to the laundry machines that were fit in under the staircase, opened the door to the dryer and got in. She pulled the door shut behind her and was suddenly enveloped by a most intense darkness. With her heart racing, she tapped the talk button on her communicator, having fished it out of her pocket.

“Professor?” she whispered loudly. There was no response. “Professor!?” she tried again, louder. Again, nothing. She waited, trying repeatedly over the next half hour. It was around six o’clock and her mother would probably wake up soon and start cooking something for dinner. Thankfully, there was no laundry in the dryer or she would have worried that her mother would come down and find her, though perhaps she would just laugh and wonder what in the world she was doing. Just as she was about to give up and go back upstairs, The Professor’s voice came over the tiny receiver.

“Alpha Agent Prime? Come in, this is the Clockmaker. Are you there?”

“Yes!” Samantha said with great relief.

“All chatter to be coded,” The Professor said, indicating that no names should be used. They would have to be creative in their speech.

“Is the frequency compromised?” Samantha asked, feeling very professional.

“Negative,” the reply came back. “But still unsure about the premises. Calling from non-business location.” That meant that The Professor’s desktop unit was still at his house.

“I have important information,” Samantha went on, trying to decide how to convey that Agent Stiles would be showing up at his lab the next day with a search warrant. “The... uh... hawk will be searching tomorrow. She’ll have official papers. We must prevent her from looking at the... clock.” She figured if Smythe was going to be the “Clockmaker” then the time machine must be the “clock,” and Agent Stiles definitely had hawk-like qualities.

“This problem has been solved, Alpha Prime. We were expecting the hawk, so the Brooklyn Bandit and I made a few adjustments. The hawk will find nothing. Now, we must meet. All of Alpha Team. There is work to do regarding the sharks. I have located their base of operations. It is imperative that we infiltrate it and disable their... clock. It will be a complicated mission and may take days, but once we’re gone, it won’t matter if the hawk notices our absence. If we succeed, the threat to the world is over. We can disappear back into the background.” The Professor sounded almost genuinely American in his attempt to disguise his voice.

“How do we meet?” Samantha asked.

“Go to your mailbox. There is a CD in it. Put this CD into your notebook computer. This will destroy any potential bugging or spying programs that may have been installed by the hawk while you were away from it. After that, you will take your computer to a public café with Internet access and check the email account we communicated through previously. There will be instructions on where and when we will meet and what you will need to bring.”

“Samantha?” It was Cindy, calling her name down the stairs. Samantha’s heart leapt.

“Gotta go,” she whispered hurriedly. “All is understood. Will proceed as instructed. Alpha Prime out.”

“Excellent. Clockmaker out.”

Samantha turned off her communicator and slunk out of the dryer, trying not to make too much noise. She waited until her mother had gone looking somewhere else in the house and began walking up the stairs, as if she had been out in the back yard. When she came back up, Polly was jumping on her and her mother was standing in the kitchen with a puzzled look on her face.

“There you are,” she said. “Where were you, Samantha?”

“I was in the yard,” she replied.

“With no coat on!? It’s freezing out there, Samantha! And why didn’t you take Polly with you?”

“She just had a good walk an hour ago,” Samantha half-mumbled. “I just wanted a little fresh air.”

“Hmmmph.” Her mother huffed, obviously suspicious. “Well, help me chop some broccoli. We’re having chicken and broccoli tonight, and some rice.”

“Okay.” Samantha smiled. “Sounds good. Remember, Mom, you’re only feeding two people tonight.”

“Oh, yeah,” Cindy said absent-mindedly. “I keep forgetting Todd is at your father’s. The house has been mercifully free of sloppy teenagers and the sounds of video game monsters dying, though.”

“Definitely,” Samantha chuckled.

*

After dinner Samantha made ready to take Polly out for a walk. As she exited the house, she smoothly checked the mailbox, grabbing a parcel out of it and continuing on her walk. She could feel eyes on her even now and stared at every car on the street, wondering if Agent Stiles was sitting in one, watching her. She also wondered how The Professor had managed to get the package into the box without anyone having noticed, assuming F.B.I. Was watching the place round the clock.

No one jumped out at her, so she continued on up to the edge of the park. It was dark already and cold, and even the shivering Polly seemed to acknowledge that this walk would be a short one. She did her business quickly, and the two returned to the house in short order.

Cindy had asked if Samantha wanted to watch a movie upon their return, some girlish flick that Suki and Brianna would have enjoyed more, but Samantha declined and headed to her bedroom with a book, her excuse for self-isolating. Once inside, she quickly opened the package. Sure enough, it was a CD. She hastily took it out of its jewel case and popped it into her new laptop. Its ‘Auto-run’ kicked in and looked to be something like an Anti-virus program. It searched every file on her computer, finding and destroying at least five different spying “cookies” and seven other mysterious files. She had never seen anything like it and concluded that The Professor must have wrote the software himself, though it wasn’t beyond Marvin’s capabilities.