Mahogany's Dream Read online

  MAHOGANY’S DREAM

  A Novel

  By

  Jamel H. Cato

  ______

  www.jamelcato.com

  (Microsoft Reader Version)

  Copyright © 2004 Jamel H. Cato

  Protected by international laws and treaties.

  Electronic Edition published in 2005

  Some rights reserved. This file has been made available to the public under an Attribution-No Derivative Works-Noncommercial 2.0 Creative Commons license. You may freely copy or distribute this file for noncommercial purposes as you long as you give me credit as the author. You may NOT charge for it, modify it in any way or create derivative works from it without my express written permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No trees were harmed to make this electronic version. J

  FOREWORD

  (Electronic Edition)

  I’m not one for long preambles, so I’ll keep this brief. In the event you obtained this file someplace other than my official website, there are a few things you should know about it:

  1. It’s free. I made this novel available for free to help build a reader base for my future works and because I want my fiction to be read by as many people as possible.

  2. It’s made to be read on a PDA. This special electronic version of the novel has been formatted for comfortable reading on a PDA. Certain typesetting compromises were made to produce this version. Download the PDF version to view it as I intended it to be seen.

  3. It’s shareable. This file has been made available under a Creative Commons License, which in this case means that you may freely copy or distribute the book as long as you don’t charge for it, make a derivative work from it, or change it in any way, including removing this Foreword.

  If you enjoy the novel, I do ask two small favors: One, please tell someone else about it (or email it to them). Two, consider joining my email mailing list. The signup form is on my website.

  Thanks for reading.

  For Terrell and Victoria.

  May all your dreams come true.

  “You wake up one morning and find a snake the size of a fire truck in your house. What to do?”

  -Walter Mosley

  “Too much joy weeps. Too much sorrow laughs.”

  -Ian McDonald

  From Tendelio’s Story

  PROLOGUE

  Dreams.

  In 1851, a chemist named Frederich Kekule fell to sleep on a bus in London and had a dream that led to a groundbreaking scientific discovery: the natural hexagonal shape of the benzene molecule, which led to the development of gas, plastic, rubber and scores of modern drugs. It is not an overstatement to say that mastery of the “benzene ring” revolutionized life on earth. In his dream, Kekule saw the vision of a snake with its tail in its mouth.

  In 1983, a seven year-old orphan in North Philadelphia named Dyson Conwell had two dreams in one night. In the first, he dreamt of an angel carrying a golden lamp stand to the top of a towering circular room. In the second dream, he envisioned a small boy standing outside of a redbrick house with the address 1331 in golden numerals. It was winter in the second dream and the boy had no coat. There were people inside the house, for the little boy could hear a man yelling and a woman crying. Unfortunately they chose to ignore the boy freezing to death outside. The boy tried the front door, the back door and pounding his fists on every window, but he could not get anyone’s attention. Eventually the cold began to overtake the helpless youth, but Dyson awoke the moment before the boy died.

  The first dream, which recurred often, led to a senior honors paper ten years later outlining a rudimentary structure for a quantum calculator. To Dyson’s agile mind, the angel flying with the lamp stand looked like the Greek symbol psi, which he used to solve a Schrodinger equation that postulated the number of nuclear spins necessary to produce a stable quantum state. For this precocious work, he was awarded a full scholarship to Princeton University as a Kekule Scholar, in honor of the famous chemist.

  The second dream made him homeless immediately. Upon hearing it, his foster parents promptly sent him back to the placement agency with no explanation. This began a cycle of moving from one foster home to another that lasted until the day one of his high school teachers bought him a Greyhound ticket to Princeton. Forever unbeknownst to Dyson, 1331 was the exact address of a redbrick house where his foster father’s long-time mistress lived with their illegitimate child. Unarmed with this knowledge, Dyson invented the idea that his sudden rejection by his new family was somehow his fault. Again.

  In 2009, a nine year-old girl named Mahogany Burrows had a dream about a small boy standing outside of a redbrick house with the address 1331 in golden numerals. Of all the unusual dreams Mahogany received, this was the most extraordinary.

  This is the story of that dream.

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER

  1

  Kirtland Air Force Base

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  1995

  Brian Hassett hated his job. As FBI station officer for the Air Force Research Laboratory, he was little more than a glorified security guard. In theory, he was there to prevent the lab’s classified weapons research from falling into the hands of America’s enemies. In practice the job was about as exciting as watching paint dry.

  His main duty was making sure the scientists who worked at the Base returned all the diskettes they checked out of the Data Room. Even that was a stretch. A cardboard logbook handled the task just fine without his intervention.

  His “office” consisted of a cheap plywood desk and a metal folding chair in the otherwise empty foyer outside the Data Room. He’d been told that the AFRL was equipped with a $200 million particle accelerator and a $72 million deuterium fluoride laser. But for his workspace, apparently all they could spare was forty-nine bucks.

  But he didn’t care about that. He had only requested the post so he could be near the Bernalillo Cancer Center over in Sandia, where his wife was being treated for acute Lymphoma. At the time, the BCC was the only medical facility in the country with an intensity modulated radiotherapy machine. The IMRT was a byproduct of some earlier military research at Sandia National Laboratory. It was their last hope. He would’ve taken a job on the moon to ensure Alison had access to the experimental treatment. Still, it wasn’t exactly where he had expected to find himself at 28, four years into his FBI career.

  The funny thing is that he actually had a license to kill. All station officers do. On the off chance that some idiotic foreign agents tried to storm his office and steal his floppy disks, Brian could blow their brains out with full immunity from prosecution. But where he worked, that scenario was about as likely as a snowstorm.

  It wasn’t as if the lab didn’t have anything worth stealing. That was the furthest thing from the truth. The AFRL housed the Pentagon’s Directed Energy Directorate, one the most advanced scientific research projects in the world. It was just that Brian’s office was the least likely place on the whole Base that such a theft might take place. The Data Room he mindlessly guarded was also protected by a biometric security system that scanned the iris and the palm. Any false reading would cause the system to charge a huge bank of magnets, instantly erasing all the disks. Anyone who knew of the existence of the Data Room also knew about the magnets. No spy in his right mind would risk destroying the data when he could just as easily steal the disks when they were outside the Data Room.

  Either that or recruit someone else to do it for them.

  But the pickings were slim f
or that option. Besides Brian himself, only three others had access to the Data Room: Dr. Stitz, the lab’s research director; José Arroyo, the technician who backed up the disks; and Chen Tsang, a mild mannered forty-three year old engineer who was the research team’s designated diskette gopher. Dr. Stitz, who was unquestionably his own biggest admirer, wouldn’t be caught dead doing something as petty as logging out a diskette when there were Nobel Prizes to be won. José came by everyday to do his backups, which he always took offsite for safekeeping. Sometimes he would bring adult magazines for Brian to drool over while the backup tapes filled. Dr. Tsang came to the Data Room everyday too, but unfortunately for Brian, the small man was the least communicative of the three. Brian figured that was probably due to Tsang’s less than fluent English.

  With so little interaction with other people, Brian spent most of his workday reading or staring at the drop ceiling, wondering why the hell the lab even needed a station officer.

  He was doing the latter when a stranger who would change his life tapped on the glass.

  ___________

  Brian looked up to see a beefy, middle-aged man in a business suit smiling at him through the glass door. The stranger had thick reddish brown hair and wore a neatly trimmed beard, giving his face a curious frame.

  The stranger motioned for Brian to come towards the door.

  The moment after that was the first time Brian realized that there was no means to communicate with a person outside the foyer without opening the door. No intercom. No phone. Nothing. Although people passed by in the hall all the time, in nearly a year no one had stopped at the door but José and Tsang.

  Brian cautiously rose from his chair.

  Sensing reticence, the stranger pulled a business card from his inside pocket and held it at eye level against the glass.

  Brian strode towards the bulletproof door wondering if he were in trouble. Maybe someone caught him napping one day and decided to report him. Maybe he was napping right now and this was a dream. He noticed the stranger grasped a manila folder and decided that people in dreams don’t tote files around, so whatever brought the man there was real. Even before he reached the door he noticed that the card had the standard FBI layout. Close up, he read the full text:

  Carl S. Dunleavy, Ph.D.

  Senior Special Agent, I.I.D.

  Federal Bureau of Investigation

  What the hell was I.I.D.? The card listed an address at FBI headquarters in Washington.

  Brian mouthed the letters “I” and “D”. After a few repetitions, the stranger understood and produced his official, laminated FBI identification, which included a photo that was more than a few pounds old.

  Brian pointed at the wall behind the man and shouted, “Stand back!” The shout was pointless as the room was soundproof. Nonetheless, the redheaded stranger complied with this request, though annoyance was beginning to show on his face. It was the unmistakable expression of someone unaccustomed to taking orders.

  Brian unholstered his weapon, opened the door, and stepped into the hall with the man. He heard two soft clicks as the door locked behind him.

  “A gun,” the stranger said, “is the least effective means of obtaining information.”

  “Who are you and why are you here?” Brian responded. “Even if you’re with the Bureau, this is a classified facility.” During station officer training, he had heard rumors that the Bureau sometimes sent people posing as agents to see if procedure would be followed.

  The stranger huffed. “I know more about this facility than you ever will, Agent Hassett. And I showed you my ID, so you already know who I am.”

  Brian didn’t lower his gun. “All I know is that you have a card and a picture. I repeat: Why are you here?”

  “I’m here to perform a CTO security op.”

  “Password?”

  “Green Lantern 12-3-71.”

  “You have to get scanned,” Brian told him.

  The stranger approached the glass door without hesitation and placed his face and palm in the appropriate places, even though they were intentionally unmarked. Three seconds later a synthesized female voice confirmed his identity and unlocked the door.

  Brian relaxed. “What’s I.I.D.? I’ve never heard of that.”

  Dunleavy ignored the question and opened the folder in his hand, which contained a few sheets of paper and an 8 x 10 black and white photo of Brian from the year he graduated from the FBI Academy. Dunleavy glanced at Brian, then down at the photo.

  “Yep, you’re Hassett,” he said, snapping the folder shut.

  “What is this about?” Brian asked, less confrontationally.

  “You ask a lot of questions, kid. I hate it when people ask too many questions. It’s a sign that you’ve haven’t been paying attention.”

  Insulted, Brian said, “Excuse me? Who—”

  “There you go again with another stupid question. From here on out, if you ask me a stupid question, I’m just going to ignore it. At this point, all you need to know is that as station officer it’s your duty to close down the Data Room and observe the interrogation.”

  Brian wanted to ask, “What interrogation?” But he found himself wondering if that were a stupid question.

  The two agents stood silently in the hall, sizing each other up.

  Finally Dunleavy said, “If I were you, right now I would be on the horn with Bruce verifying my identity and confirming those orders.” Then, with a sigh, he added, “No wonder they have you guarding floppy disks in the desert.”

  Brian’s supervisor in Santa Fe was named Bruce.

  After Brian had spoken with Bruce and confirmed Dunleavy’s information, he collected all the checked out disks from the lab and closed down the Data Room. Then he went to meet Dunleavy in the lobby.

  As soon as Dunleavy saw him emerge from the elevator, he began walking at a brisk pace towards the main exit. Brian trotted to catch up, his wingtips clacking loudly against the marble floor. That was about noon.

  ___________

  Dunleavy led them across the street to the main laboratory. Even though Brian was sure he had never seen Dunleavy on the Base before, the stranger navigated the maze-like neighborhood of cubicles in the lab like he had personally designed the floor plan. The trip ended at Dr. Tsang’s workstation.

  Tsang was scrutinizing a dot matrix computer printout that was so long the pages spilled over the edge of his desk onto the floor. He was so engrossed in his printout that he hadn’t noticed the two men approach.

  Dunleavy startled Tsang and Brian when he claimed to be an INS agent who needed to speak with Tsang in private right away. He even produced an official-looking INS ID with the same photo as the FBI ID that he had just shown Brian.

  Tsang, while surprised, had not found the visit unbelievable. After all, he had been in the States for more than seventeen years under his original student visa. This had not been a deliberate plan; the State Department had indefinitely extended his visa under a special exemption for military researchers. Consequently, he had never bothered to apply for U.S. citizenship.

  What he did find odd was the fact that the INS man was accompanied by Hassett, the young station officer whom he recognized from the Data Room.

  The two agents escorted Tsang out of the lab. Nearly everyone they passed stopped what they were doing to stare. Some of them exchanged whispers. The scene reminded Tsang of the perp walks he had seen on American television many times.

  They took him to a small, windowless room in a remote part of the Base. The long walk to that isolated room was Tsang’s first indication that the men wanted to do more than chat. Within moments of sitting down, he found out that they were not interested in the status of his visa. The redheaded man admitted that he was not really an INS official. He told Tsang that he was actually an FBI agent. He provided no further proof or explanation before beginning his interrogation.

  Tsang and Dunleavy sat across from each other on opposite sides of a twelve-foot folding table. There were only t
wo chairs in the room, so Hassett stood by the door. The room was uncomfortably cool. Dunleavy reached down into a top-loading metal case next to his chair and pulled out a legal pad and a pen. He put the pen on top of the legal pad and slid them across the table. He said, “I want you to write down the real names and codenames of every one of your contacts in the MSS.”

  Tsang looked at the stranger in bewilderment. Then he looked up at Hassett, who was working hard not to appear confused. It wasn’t working.

  When Tsang asked, “What is MSS?” Dunleavy glowered at him. Then he smoothly rose from his seat, walked around the table, and smacked Tsang in the face so forcefully that the small man did a partial back flip. Tsang’s chair hit the concrete floor with a loud crash, followed by the thud of his body falling on top of it. As soon as he landed on the chair, Dunleavy kicked him in the abdomen, thrusting the air from his lungs. He coughed and gagged while Dunleavy loomed over him.

  That was the least painful thing that would happen to Tsang over the next two days.

  When Dunleavy attacked Tsang, Brian sprung to attention. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Instead of answering, Dunleavy lifted Tsang off the floor by the collar of his lab coat. He sat the folding chair upright again and then brusquely dropped Tsang into it. Tsang immediately curled over, whimpering like a child. Dunleavy retook his seat and calmly said, “Now, Dr. Tsang, I’m going to repeat my last request. After that, I’m going to ask you other questions. Lots of questions. I would advise you to listen carefully because I don’t speak Chinese and this is the only time I will repeat myself. Each time you lie to me or give me an unsatisfactory answer, I will make you regret the day you were born. When I ask a question or state a request, you will have two seconds to respond: One second to retrieve the answer from your gook brain and another second to begin speaking. That is your grace period. If you don’t begin speaking by the end of your grace period, I will hurt you. And then I will make you regret the day you were born. All of my queries will be precise. Therefore, you are not permitted to ask questions, not even for clarity. The only time you will speak is in response to a question or request from me.” Dunleavy stretched his arms wide. “Look at these four walls. Inside this room, you have no rights. No civil rights, no human rights, no fucking rights at all. This is not Guantanamo Bay. Inside this room, the Geneva Convention does not exist. I will not kill you. But that’s not good news so don’t be relieved. Each time you lie to me or give me an unsatisfactory answer, I will do things to you that will make you prefer death.”