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Chapter 64 - Intelligence Reaction

Everyone in the room jumped to their feet as Gerston said, “Relax, everyone. Please sit. So why am I here today? Because a little mouse... well, not so little and definitely not a mouse—more like a lioness protecting her cub... told me a little story about how MY government was screwing with her baby. Sorry I got here a bit late, but looking at the faces of some of my officials here, I see my late entrance won’t matter much. I’m guessing that all of you people now know about the problem.”

As everyone was getting reseated, Tamara glanced at her mom; Nadine was wearing a smug expression.

“Now where were you before I rudely interrupted? Oh, before getting to that, let me tell you that I know the details of what was said in that Baltimore coffee shop. I also know all about a certain airport incident. I understand, too, that the NSA is involved in this in a big, nasty way. I will not have a repeat of an Edward Snowden-type situation while I’m in office. Spying on civilians and attempting to frame them—I will not tolerate that... okay, go on, folks.”

Wilkins pulled her laptop closer. “Ah, FBI Special Agent Sarah Wilkins, sir. I was just about to play the recordings that those NSA agents left with Miss Alexandre, sir.”

“Oh, good. Go ahead.”

Wilkins nodded and spoke again. “You’ll recall from the recording of that coffee shop meeting, that those perps told Tamara that they had recordings of what they claimed were her international calls. They gave her a SD card and told her that it contained several digital files, recordings of calls which they claimed were made from Tamara’s phone, and the card also contains text files which appear to be carrier phone records showing international calls using that telephone number with the calls’ dates and times. I’ll pass around a paper copy of the text files on the card. Now I’ll play the recordings in order; there are four of them.”

She played them and everyone in the room sat stony faced as they listened.

Carlson raised her hand and Wilkins nodded to her, “Go ahead, Director.”

“Not to accuse or anything, but apart from what I heard in that coffee-shop recording, those call recordings sound very convincing,” Carlson said, carefully.

“Certainly. They were meant to be convincing and would surely frighten any typical citizen into complying with those agents’ demands, but Miss Alexandre has other resources at hand in addition to the FBI. Her boyfriend, I understand, is also something of a genius and gave us the answer to determine the validity of those recordings. With me here is Mr Foster Simpson, he’s an FBI forensic expert and when I was told how to check to see if they were real or fake, I got him to explain the process to me. It’s way technical, but he assured me that he’d use pictures to demonstrate what he found. Mr Simpson?”

“Thanks, Agent Wilkins. Jeez, Mr President, I didn’t expect...”

Gerston chuckled, “Carry on as if I’m not here. You need to convince them. I already know the truth.”

“Okay then. Let me pass out this description of EMF matching; it’s a forensic technique which is useful to learn when an audio recording was made or if it was tampered with. The handout’s a bit technical but in a sentence or two, it says that the hum that’s present on all power lines can be used just like a fingerprint to uniquely identify an audio recording. That hum can tell us the precise date and time of when an audio recording was made and gaps or discontinuities in the hum show that it was doctored somehow. With me so far?”

There were no questions but everyone was listening closely.

“So, if I show you exactly what’s happening while the clip is playing, that will explain it best, so if someone gets the lights, I’ll play the demo. The audio clip of the first phone conversation will play and what you’ll see on the screen is a tracing of the background hum’s frequency as it varies around the 60 hertz standard. As that handout explains, the hum is everywhere and when you record audio, the hum gets recorded too. The clip begins with a 1.5-second silent period before the ring and then the voice starts.”

He played the clip and as it played, the image on the projection screen showed a wiggly line, jumping randomly up and down, but staying close to a base line that Simpson told them represented the 60 hertz frequency. When the clip finished, mostly everyone sat back in their seats and sighed.

“Okay, I see that many... most of you ... see the implications; good. You understand the process. At the beginning of the clip, you saw the continuous, unbroken tracing of the hum before the ring, which continued into the quote foreign agent’s unquote voice answering the call. Point one: it’s a 60 hertz hum; only 60 hertz. The European grid runs at a 50 hertz frequency and you saw that second horizontal line on the tracing below the 60 hertz line. If that voice had originated overseas, we should have been able to see a signal hovering around the 50 hertz line, even if that section was re-recorded. There was none, which means the recording of the so-called foreign voice was made totally in the U.S. Where? Using EMF matching and the national power grid database, I matched those sections of the recording to the power grid serving the eastern part of the U.S. and the time that it was recorded was on October 29 between 2:19:32.31 to 2:20:02.15 p.m. Yes, we actually can get the time down to a millisecond. Further, that’s not the date and time of the first call as shown in the text file from the SD card; you have that printout. Still with me?

There were nods. No one wanted to speak.

“Good. Then Tamara’s supposed voice came on. What about the hum? It was gone, right? That section of audio was not an audio recording; it was a chunk of computer-generated speech saved directly to the storage media. You saw the hum appear when the ‘foreigner’ spoke and stop when her voice came on—the recording is therefore a patchwork of assembled sound clips. So what about Tamara’s voice? I’m sure you know that people’s voices can be very accurately mimicked by AI now; the technique is known as ‘deepfake’... ah, I see you all nodding, you’re familiar with the term. Tamara’s supposed voice was computer-created and added to make this ... well, forgery, I’ll call it what it is. Do you need to see more examples? I have three more. Or do you have any questions?”

There were head shakes and “No”s from all around the table.

“Excellent presentation, thank you,” Gerston complimented. He looked at Wilkins. “What is your office doing now, Special Agent Wilkins?”

“I agree that we can’t let this become like another Snowden situation, sir. Or the NSA’s earlier ‘SexInt’ sex blackmail scheme. But serious crimes have been committed here, and not only violations of FISA. Plus that airport incident. We’re seeking warrants for the NSA agents we’ve identified so far, but several rogue agents aren’t enough to gather the kind of information they had assembled for Miss Alexandre. Her own sources told her that she was being shadowed for weeks before this broke and Mr Simpson told me that cloning her voice would need hours of her voice samples.”

Gerston looked at Visson, who had been whispering hurriedly to his aide. “General, you haven’t said anything yet; what’s going on at your agency? How could you let your people run amok like that?”

“Sir, I was completely unaware of anything like this happening. Do you want my resignation?” Visson asked.

“We’ll see if it comes to that, but first, can you tell us anything that bears on this unfortunate situation?”

“Ah, we have uncleared persons present, sir.”

“You’re referring to the Alexandres, I presume. Major Alexandre is an ambassador with the highest level clearances. Miss Alexandre has DoD top-secret clearance through her DARPA work and I will vouch for Dr Alexandre; she was vetted for top-secret clearance by the Diplomatic Security Service of the State Department when I appointed her as a special envoy. I will also vouch for their additional intelligence clearances,” Gerston responded.

“Very good, sir. The two agents that Agent Wilkins named earlier as being involved at that coffee shop are in our Signals Intelligence Directorate in special operations and report to one of our assistant directors. I only recall this because I read an action report this morning from that section; I have a meeting with that assistant director tomorrow morning. It would have been this afternoon except for this meeting.”

“What prompted you to want a meeting? Is that normal procedure?” Gerston asked.

“No, sir; but the action report raised some questions in my mind. I see now that my questions about what I read in that report are justified, but what I heard here tells me that some people really fu... ah ... screwed up badly.”

Tamara raised her hand and Gerston nodded to her.

“Mr President, Agent Wilkins and I have been trying to figure out why those NSA jerks have been hounding me. Why did they try to set an elaborate trap at the airport? The counterfeit money in that luggage strongly suggests a blackmail attempt right there. And then this blackmail or extortion attempt with those fake recordings happened. I also assume that they were trying to track me down from info I got from Hopkins officials and campus police, and also from the APL office where someone was asking about me. I wouldn’t put it past them that they were trying to trace my phone too and I think that my using a number of burner phones got them frustrated. Then they started to cut corners, got sloppy, and got trapped. Agent Wilkins and her team did a fantastic job, sir.

“Why was it me they were trying to trap? General Visson just gave me the answer. He said that those jerks are in a section called the Signals Intelligence Directorate. From a contact email that I received from them which used a fictitious company’s email address, I could tell that someone in that group was familiar with my MRI work, and a close reading of the papers I published about my findings suggest that the human brain is capable of producing electrical signals which, under certain circumstances, can be detected by other nearby persons. I’m assuming that whoever read those papers became convinced that I had discovered a potential method to read people’s minds. That’s a form of signals intelligence, I suppose. Maybe that person thought that grabbing someone who knew something about that kind of research fell into his sphere of responsibility—but that’s a real stretch. And because it was such a stretch, those NSA jerks didn’t have the necessary evidence to get whatever kind of warrant they’d need to arrest me, so they had to use blackmail.

“And why blackmail me? That’s a simpler question to address. It would be clear to anyone with half a brain that someone who’s in a physics doctoral program and doing research into quantum engineering would refuse outright to agree to simply give up that education and switch into an area where they have virtually no background. That’s exactly what I did, I refused outright. So to try to compel me, you heard on that coffee shop recording how they threatened to tie me up with criminal terrorism charges. I suppose that after I was arrested, I would be offered a second chance to work for them—or face a prison term. Oh, another thought just occurred to me... am I the only person that this has happened to?”

Gerston had been scowling while Tamara was speaking and he broke in, “Yes, that makes total sense, Tamara. You all probably know that all kinds of people, organizations too, have been complaining about ‘mission creep’ at the NSA for years, especially after the Patriot Act and then the Freedom Act were passed by Congress. People have maintained that those laws are at odds with the Constitution in many areas. General Visson...”

“Yes, sir!”

“...I want you to have your inspector general review every section of your agency and all its contractors to find out if anyone was recruited under duress. Start with the signals directorate; that seems to be where the bad apples are at—in this one case, anyway. And let me know immediately about your meeting with that assistant director. If he’s involved in any way, even just by ignoring what his agents were doing, I want him suspended and interviewed by the FBI, preferably by Agent Wilkins here.”

“Thanks, Mr President,” Wilkins acknowledged. “I also believe that we need to avoid a scandal over NSA over-reach. Tamara and I discussed this extensively, and as she is the victim of the operation, I believe that we should listen to her wishes in this matter. Is that okay, Tamara?”

“Sure. Mr Gerston... and Mr Gray, too... Mr Gray, I know that this isn’t your call not to prosecute; that’s up to the U.S. attorney or even the attorney general, but your recommendation carries a lot of weight. I’d prefer that these goons get a real scare thrown into them. When I was talking to them, I sensed a really strong dedication and absolutely no evil intent at all—my family has a strong sensitivity to that...”

She was interrupted by both Gerston and O’Rourke, who commented, “Absolutely they do” ... “For sure; I’ve seen that.”

“I’m certain that they are excellent at what they do; I could tell that this mess wasn’t their idea but they tried to complete their mission. The NSA needs people with talent and dedication like theirs. Perhaps better management and guidance...”

Visson almost choked at that.

“...so I’d like that no criminal prosecution on these charges be undertaken for them. Possibly a secret arraignment to scare them; force them to get an attorney and make them think a bit about the consequences of blindly following improper instructions. Common sense should have told them that many of the things they did were illegal. Certainly a letter of censure or reprimand should be given to them.”

Janine Carlson, the director of national intelligence, replied to her, “That’s an admirable thought, Miss Alexandre. Most people in your position would be vindictive and demand the maximum penalties possible. Your acknowledgment of the agents’ expertise and value to the NSA shows you really thought about the matter. I appreciate that and believe that the general does too.”

“I do indeed,” Visson responded. “If the assistant director I’ll be meeting with tomorrow morning set up this fiasco, and it appears that he’s the person who did, I’ll take appropriate internal measures to handle his case, after I get the report of his interview with Agent Wilkins. That is, if she doesn’t recommend any criminal sanction; after all, he might have simply suggested that Miss Alexandre’s activities might need looking into and not ordered any overt action against her. Is that satisfactory, Director Gray and Miss Alexandre...?”

They both nodded to him.

“Good. Thank you. Now I was just asking my deputy here if he thought that our technical services directorate had a hand in those doctored recordings. He thought that they might be involved too and that’s a serious concern.”

Simpson raised his hand then and Gross pointed to him.

“General,” Simpson said, “perhaps I could make you feel a bit better about your tech people. I’m sure that they could do a much better job at making a forgery than this cobbled-up job, making it much more difficult to detect. There are many voice-cloning apps on the ‘net, Respeecher and FakeYou immediately come to mind, and those can be used by people with little technical skill. You saw how good the results were; it took some high-powered tech tools to show that they are fakes. What should be more concerning to you is how those NSA agents got enough samples of Tamara’s voice to train an app. It seems like the communications dragnet that the NSA was supposed to have stopped using must still be operating—perhaps clandestinely, even hidden from management. And there’s the matter of her surveillance too. I’d suggest that you look into that branch if it’s a different one than the one those agents are in.”

Director Mark Gray was recognized. “I was thinking about Miss Alexandre’s request not to prosecute and I concur. Agent Wilkins, this is your thought too?”

“Yes sir, it is.”

“I believe everyone here also has the same opinion but for Mr Gerston. Sir, do you have a thought on the issue?” Gray continued.

“I’d like to see them squirm for what they did to an innocent party, but no, I won’t order an action, one way or another. That decision is up to you experts. My political sense tells me to avoid any exposure of this—these incidents. I applaud Tamara’s magnanimous suggestion; she’s showed me many times that she’s a true team player and wants the best outcome for the group.”

“Very good, sir,” Gray said. “We will proceed as Miss Alexandre has suggested. Secretary O’Rourke, as you hosted this meeting, is there anything more?”

“No, sir. And I trust that those of us in the intelligence community will get our houses in order.”

“Well said,” Gerston replied. “I appreciated being told about what was happening, folks, and please remember that I’m very sensitive to politically controversial incidents, as is every president. I’d prefer hearing about these issues from my officials and not from a bystander, now is that completely clear?”

There were a number of “yes sir”s from the room’s occupants and the group began to break up. Gerston went over to where the Alexandres were sitting and greeted them.

“Nadine, thanks for telling me about this problem,” he said as Wilson chuckled.

“I thought I had brought in the big guns for this meeting, honey, but you sure aced me there,” he told his wife.

“I have to get back to my real job now,” Gerston said. “There was no doubt in my mind about your part in this incident, Tamara, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness and forbearance. At least this wasn’t an agency-wide problem. Dr Carlson is a Cabinet official, so I know she’ll have her staff keeping track of the fallout for me. Take care, and I’ll be in touch.”

“Right, sir. And remember, let me know when you begin working on getting economic benefits to the world’s common citizens, ‘cause I’m about to unleash another major invention.”

“Oh, hell, you had to go and remind me of our agreement, Tamara. Yes. That’s in the works. Your mom will be part of that, you know. See you soon.”

He left with his Secret Service agent, who had been patiently waiting.

Wilkins got Tamara’s attention. “Do you want to be involved in this operation anymore as we root out the problem people in the NSA?”

“Nope. Let the process work and let the organizations heal themselves. That usually works best when there’s no outside interference. They’ll know what to do if the leadership is any good and I sensed that Visson is a good leader.”

Wilkins shook her head. “Tamara, you’re simply...”

Nadine interrupted, taking Tamara’s hand, “...simply Tamara. Don’t swell her head any more than it is already,” she chuckled.

O’Rourke had been talking with his aides and then came over to them. “Thanks for all of that excellent work; you people took a nasty situation and turned it into a teaching moment, it would seem. Agent Wilkins, Mr Simpson, that was impressive work and Secretary Gross, who had to get to another appointment, told me to tell you how gratified he was about how you all handled this incident. Alexandres, you’ve made a number of friends in the intelligence community now, in addition to those in the DoD.”

They chatted for several more minutes and then prepared to leave. On the way out, Wilkins was issuing orders to some of her agents about handling the NSA incident.

Meanwhile, Tamara was thinking, I seem to be a magnet for stuff to happen. Jeez, blackmail even; glad everyone’s okay with the outcome. I wonder why these weird things happen around me... Is it my commitment to oppose evil that attracts baddies to me? My connection to the lwa? I wonder what it’s all about...

Applied Physics Laboratory, North Laurel, Maryland: early December

It had taken three months of work, but soon after the Thanksgiving holidays, everything was ready for the big test. It was a chilly and a bit overcast morning when the final connections were made to the coil array, the cameras were activated, and the sensor cabling was attached to the various recorders.

The watchers were hunkered down in a little reinforced concrete bunker structure about 700 feet away from the tall fiberglass shed where the coil assembly sat, ready for the test.

“Okay,” Tamara called as the last techs left the shed and ran to the bunker. “All clear back at the coil?”

One of the techs called, “Clear.”

A walkie-talkie radio that an APL security person was carrying squawked, “Surrounding area clear.”

“Okay, people, I’ll start the first sequence now, a 0.2 second activation. If the thing is gonna blow up, one amp for two-tenths will do it. On three. One, two, three.”

Everyone held their breaths and sighed when all remained quiet.

“Cameras?” Tamara called.

The cameras had been triggered at the “two” count and at 480 frames per second with a two-second burst, there had been about 960 frames recorded.

The person monitoring the camera data called back, “Between a one to two centimeter movement showed on the vertical scale; then the disk dropped suddenly.”

Everyone applauded; that was an excellent response given the inertia of the 100 kilogram mass which the force had to overcome.

“Any readings from the pressure or strain gages?” Tamara asked.

“Nominal,” a voice called and some people chuckled.

“Well, that’s all great news,” Tamara went on. “None of the safety trips went and the power readings on the feed source remained steady. It appears that the coil is stable and won’t attempt to pull power to sustain itself, which was another concern I had. Are we a go for the full second?”

“In just a bit,” Miskin called. “One of the power circuits has some kind of fault downstream. Sector six.”

Tamara scrolled through her computer readout.

“I see it. Power loss to coil segment four at 0.1892 seconds, then back on at 0.1991 seconds,” Tamara responded. “Is it that?”

“That’s it. Most likely a connector,” Miskin replied.

“Okay, let’s check that power cable. There should be just three connectors.”

Soon that was completed; the techs found a pin on one connector hadn’t been crimped fully, so they rechecked all of the connectors, and an hour later they were ready for the full sequence. Power was to be applied for one second. To ensure that the disk in which the coil assembly was mounted was kept stable, the guide rods holding it had inset ratchet togs every ten centimeters so that the disk could slide up, but couldn’t drop down more than the ten centimeters. They didn’t want a 100 kilogram mass dropping several meters onto the base of the apparatus. Tamara had calculated that, neglecting inertia and gravitational forces, the coil’s force which was generated on the application of one ampere, could move 100 kilograms 16 meters in one second. Accounting for gravitation and inertia, she calculated that with the applied acceleration force, the coil would rise about two meters during the powered second and its momentum inertia would allow it to coast, rising an additional 0.5 meters. What was unknown was the assembly’s initial inertia. The heights of the guide rods were sized appropriately, allowing for a 400 percent safety factor. Therefore the guide rods were made ten meters tall.

The full test was begun after the all-clear signals were received and Tamara set the computer to apply the power to the coils for one second. Everyone held their breaths for the countdown; on “three,” the computer beeped and it beeped one second later, indicating power off, as a loud “bang” was heard from the structure. It was the “bang” sound of a collision of some kind.

“Cameras?” Tamara called. “What happened in there?”

“Wow, the disk actually hit the top stops on the guide rail assembly—ten meters up. It’s locked on the cogs up there,” came the answer.

There was applause and cheers at that news.

“Can you do a slo-mo video replay? What happened at the beginning of the power input?” Tamara asked.

“Damn, I don’t believe what I’m seeing here,” the engineer replied. “It’s like there was no inertia—the disk just took off with only that initial two-tenths second delay and it began accelerating upward... let’s see... at about 4.2 meters and 0.6 seconds, it was going about 7 meters per second and still accelerating. Right about then, it appears that it lost steam and coasted, decelerating, till it hit the stops. I’m guessing that at around the 4.2 meter height, the repulsive force field dropped off and the coil had nothing to push against.”

“Any readings from the pressure and strain gages? Don’t say nominal either; this ain’t rocket science,” Tamara requested.

Everyone chuckled.

That person reported, “I do have readings. Small. Nothing from the wall air pressure gages; there was virtually no lateral air pressure increase. The strain gages show that the wall and roof panels were unstressed. But the pressure gages directly above the disk showed a small increase, most likely as a result of the mass moving rapidly upwards.”

“Who has the radiation detector readouts?” Tamara asked. “Any sign of ionizing radiation?”

“Nothing there; it remained at background.”

“Finally, before we go back in there, what’s the coil’s condition? Any surprises, like little green men hopping around it?” Tamara asked to a round of laughter.

“The video shows it’s sitting right up against the top stops and locked there by the ratchet cogs.”

“Thanks, everyone,” Tamara said. “We can call this test a complete success, I think. We’ll go check out the coil and the other hardware now.”

Everyone cheered again and Emma and Dr Wilfred Zucker, the APL director, came over to talk to her.

“Tamara, what I saw on the video is completely unprecedented,” Zucker told her. “From your plans, I saw that your power supply was simply three 12 volt, 9 ampere-hour sealed lead-acid batteries. And they propelled a 100 kilogram weight ten meters vertically. You only fed one amp of current to your coil?”

Tamara nodded. “Yep, it was a total of one amp to all the sectors in the coil assembly, actually. You saw my proposal—I calculated that the one amp input would allow the coil assembly to output a total energy of 12,080 joules, give or take a little.”

“But those were only 12-volt batteries. At one ampere, that only provides 12 joules per second of power,” Zucker objected. “How did that get to 12,080 joules in the second of powered operation?”

Tamara smiled. “Yep, the 12 joules per second is 12 watts. That’s roughly the minimum power that the coil assembly needs to open the coil-force, or G-force, portal. Energizing with more power produces a larger G-force output on a logarithmic scale but there’s also a threshold effect. The extra power comes not from the battery; it comes from inside the portal, if ‘inside’ is a valid concept there. We’re still working out the parameters as they apply to this large-scale coil assembly.

“Actually, what’s more interesting to me now is what seems to be the almost inertialess acceleration of the assembly. I had calculated what the inertia of the assembly should be to overcome its mass together with the gravitational field’s strength of 9.8 Newtons per kilogram, to allow it to lift off the platform base during the one second when power was applied. But the assembly appears to have violated Newton’s First Law, ‘cause its vertical acceleration was supposed to be about 16 meters per second squared without accounting for gravity, but after about 200 milliseconds, the assembly just took off at its maximum possible acceleration with no apparent inertial delay. We’ve gotta explore that phenomenon.”

Zucker shook his head. “Damn, Tamara, you just keep going on finding all kinds of violations of the laws of physics, don’t you. Now you’ve managed to clobber conservation of energy and Newton’s First Law.”

Tamara smiled at him, nodding, while Emma chuckled. “You have no idea what else she’s come up with, Wilfred. Solving the problems that her applied research is producing is creating a new field in physics, it seems. She’s come up with a theory of this coil force that needs to be carefully reviewed and we’re putting together a two-day mini-conference with about eight to ten physicists, high-energy, solid-state, mathematical, cosmology, and condensed matter specialists, to dissect her maths and their interpretation. It’s scheduled right after the new year. We have some top people coming; when I briefly showed them what Tamara did, they’re gagging to come, aren’t they.”

Emma turned to Tamara. “I suppose you’d like to look at your gadget now?”

Tamara shook her head. “I have faith in our people, Emma. They know the important things to look for so I’m gonna let them do their jobs; they don’t need me for that—I’d just be in the way. I want to tear into the data. I’ve got a million questions bouncing in my head now and I want to start work on them. Also on all the patents that the coils will generate. Just think if that inertialess property turns out to be real, what that could mean for engineering. And for science too.”

Zucker walked away, shaking his head, saying that he needed to get his safety personnel back to their normal duties as Emma smiled and winked at Tamara.

“He’s a good scientist,” she whispered to Tamara, “but he’s a bit old-school and conservative. Still, I think you impressed him.”

Tamara chuckled. “I guess. But he’s been good to me, even with the weird things I’ve asked the admin people to do for me.”

“So it looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you now, dear. And I suppose this test’s given you ideas for a number of followup experiments; am I right?”

“Oh, absolutely. But figuring out what happened to the inertia is a biggie and I can’t ignore that effect. It might mask something critical in the way the coil force behaves, so I need to understand that effect before I start looking at developing that coil assembly into a functional component of an engineered device.”

“I completely agree. I think that I’ll also look at the data from this test and see if anything suggests itself, if you don’t think that I’m encroaching into your work.”

“Oh no, Emma, please never think that,” Tamara objected. “I really value your insights.”

Mid-December

With the holiday season rapidly approaching, work on the “G-coil,” as it had been christened by Tamara’s team, was slowing down. The force name was now being called the “G-force” by everyone. Tamara used this slower time to arrange to bring in a 10 foot by 36 foot construction-office trailer, the kind that contractors use at construction sites, next to the G-coil structure. This was much more efficient, and cheaper, than replicating the whole guide-rod structure inside one of the lab buildings. The electronics from the makeshift bunker would be moved to the trailer.

On the second week of December, Kevin and Denise arrived in Maryland for a visit to Westphalia University. Avery University’s fall term was over and they had arranged a campus visit to Westphalia so that they could meet some graduate school and medical school faculty and talk to a number of the students. That Friday, late afternoon, Denise called Tamara.

When Tamara answered, Denise said, “Hi there, Miss Magician, cast any good spells lately? It’s Denise.”

Tamara laughed. “Well, I did figure out how to make a ‘Cloak of Invisibility,’ like Harry Potter had. I told you how I used it to disappear at the airport when we got back from the gallantry awards, when we spoke back then.”

“Yeah, and that was awesome,” Denise chuckled.

“And I now have a version of the ‘Two-Way-Mirror’ that Harry used for secret communication. No one can intercept or block it, but so far it just handles audio,” Tamara went on, continuing the joke.

“You’re not shitting me?” Denise asked. “Really?”

“Oh, absolutely. Used it in thwarting a blackmail scheme.”

“Damn. I call bullshit on that. Blackmail? You?” Denise objected.

“It’s true. It’s too complicated a story for a phone call, though, so...”

“...so you owe me the explanation. Hey, here’s why I called. Our meetings with the Westphalia people are finally over, but we had to stay an extra day—we were supposed to fly back this afternoon. Kevin rescheduled us for a Monday morning flight, so we’ve got the weekend free now. How’s about you guys getting together with us tomorrow—and guess what? Cindy and her husband, Tom Emerson, can come too, so you’ll get to meet them.”

“Oh, so she’s married? You called her Cindy Denison when you spoke about her,” Tamara replied.

“She’s keeping her maiden name professionally. So our hotel has this great lounge and a huge indoor pool; could you come around 11 tomorrow? We can get reacquainted; you’ll get to meet Cindy—and yeah, tell me all about that blackmail shit. Oh, almost forgot. You think Barbara can come? I think she’d really want to meet Cindy.”

“I think so too. Could she bring her boyfriend? He’s a Hopkins physics senior and is working on control and detector systems for radio telescopes.”

“Ooh... Tom’s an industrial and mechanical engineer. I bet they’d have things to discuss.”

They disconnected and Tamara confirmed with Barbara that she and Terence could go. Barbara, who had gotten a copy of the detailed Avery syllabus being used in the U.K., was hyped to meet Cindy.

The four friends arrived at Kevin and Denise’s hotel around 11 a.m. on Saturday. When they walked into the lounge, no one was there, but a minute later they heard Kevin’s voice in the hall. A few seconds later, he and Denise walked in, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered guy with a chiseled face and a slightly less tall, broad-shouldered woman with flaming red hair. Like Kevin and Denise, this new couple radiated confidence and charisma, but Tamara was attracted to this new woman’s strength.

She’s tall like me... and like Emma but different... she’s got a command presence, almost, like Dad has, Tamara thought. I think if she gave a command, people would jump to do it...

Denise was speaking. “Hey guys, great seeing you again, Tamara, Peter, Barbara. We’ve got some introductions now. These are our great friends, Cindy Denison and Tom Emerson. We met when they were students at Avery; they were renting an apartment in my mom’s house. Kevin and I had transferred from our old school to a high school nearby.”

Barbara said, “Great seeing you again, Denise, Kevin, and meeting you, Cindy and Tom. This is my boyfriend Terence.”

They began shaking hands, and when Tamara took hold of Cindy’s hand, they both gasped slightly, looked deeply into each other’s eyes, and then Tamara told the others, “Hang on; you guys talk to each other a bit. Cindy and I need to figure out what just happened.”

Tamara, when she grasped Cindy’s hand, to her infinite surprise, had felt an emotional “construct” very similar to one she associated with Ogorin.

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