Three Kings

The Sergeants whistled, calling back the Argonauts from their security perimeter and shouting to fire up the helicopter. They would leave the famous Oracle scarred by the spade work that had uncovered the hidden entry. It won’t matter anyway in a few hours time., she thought. It won’t matter…

But it did matter. It was going to make all the difference, at least to them and the lives they would lead in the world they returned to. The helos landed on the after deck of Argos Fire, and the Argonauts dismounted, laden with arms and equipment and feeling like passengers at an airport whose flight had been cancelled. Yet they were glad to be back aboard the ship and soon settled in below decks, thinking nothing more of the strange mission.

The Captain went forward with Elena Fairchild, carrying that small box they had retrieved from the dig site at Delphi. They reached the executive suite, tired, and somewhat confused. Morgan came in last after having stopped on the bridge to confer briefly with Commander Dean.

“What’s happening out there, Mack?” said Elena as she cast a worried glance at the clock on the wall.

Her intelligence officer, Mack Morgan, scratched his dark beard, a puzzled expression on his face. “Well, Mum, there’s been nothing on the black line while we were gone, so I’ve no hard intelligence over that channel. Funny thing now is that Mister Dean says we’ve got some strange interference on all the normal communications channels.”

“Interference? Anything wrong with the equipment?”

“No, Mum, they’ve checked it top to bottom. It’s very odd. We can’t even pick up anything on either AM or FM bands, not a word, not a whisper. It’s as if there’s just no one out there.”

At this Elena’s eyes clouded over with a squall of fear. It has started. It’s already underway. Captain Gordon MacRae was watching her closely as she stood up, slowly walking to her desk to depress a hidden button that would open the rear bulkhead to secret room harboring the red phone.

“Come with me, gentlemen. There’s one more line we can try.”

Morgan looked at MacRae, and the two men passed a knowing glance with one another. This was the hidden inner sanctum of Argos Fire, and messages coming across that line had been the seed of many missions in the past. Neither man had ever been permitted to enter the room before this, and so it was with some surprise and an equal measure of curiosity that they both stood now, quietly following Elena into the small room.

There was a single chair sitting before a small pedestal crowned by a Plexiglas dome over the red phone. It had a keypad for code entry and Elena quickly used it to re-enable her phone. MacRae set the box heavily down on the pedestal desk, waiting while Elena seated herself on the chair.

“Well,” she said, “protocol has it that I should report any red mission irregularity at once. I never thought I would find myself sitting here in front of this damn phone again. This is all quite unexpected.”

“What was the failure?” MacRae folded his arms.

“You saw yourself. The key would not operate, and there was no other passage or door.”

“But there was that box,” he pointed.

“Yes, and now I’ve got to report that and see if I can find out why my key won’t open it.”

“Try it again,” MacRae suggested. “No sense making your call unless you’re sure it won’t work.”

That sounded reasonable, and so she nodded, drawing out the key again on its chain and slowly inserting it into the hole. It turned! There was an audible click and a quiet tone from some mechanism inside the box, and now the front side tilted open, revealing a small drawer that held a rolled scroll. She glanced at MacRae, perplexed, and then slowly reached for the scroll to open it.

There was a brief message, addressed to her, and she read it aloud. “Should you read this your mission will have concluded as planned. Keep this device within a secure room aboard Argos Fire at all times and it will serve to hold you in a safe nexus. As of this moment, you are now Watchstander G1. Godspeed.”

“Watchstander G1?” MacRae did not understand.

“There were nine of us left,” said Elena. “It seems I’ve been promoted.”

“What does it mean, Mum?” said Morgan. “A safe nexus?”

She turned, looking at him with a new light in her eyes, and then smiled. “It means I know why you can’t raise anything on the radio now, Mack. It’s begun. It’s happening right now, and we’re right in the eye of the maelstrom.”

“What’s begun?”

“The bloody war you’ve been feeding me information on these last nine days. The missiles are in the air.”

“Athens would surely be on the target list. It’s fairly thick out there with this sudden squall, but we’d see a nuclear warhead if one went off.”

“Perhaps,” said Elena. “Unless we’ve moved.”

“Moved? Where?” Morgan didn’t understand. They were still in the strait northeast of Delphi.

Elena just looked at him, then back to the message on the scroll. She hadn’t read it all to them, not the string of numbers there, nor the name of the man who had signed off on the note.