every piece of luggage and onboard equipment as quickly as possible. Locke didn’t know what they should be looking for, but he wanted to see anything that looked unusual. When he was done in Seattle, he’d head back down to Phoenix to monitor their progress.
Locke took the Seneca exit and wound through downtown Seattle until he reached Gordian’s building across from Westlake Center, a shopping mall and tourist spot for the city’s many visitors. The famed monorail, which shuttled between Westlake and the Space Needle, cruised to a stop overhead just as Locke turned into the Gordian parking garage.
He stuck his ID into the card reader to open the garage’s steel door. A sensor in the floor made sure only one car went through for each ID. Locke parked in his reserved space and led Dilara to the elevator. He placed his hand on a biometric scanner. It beeped its acceptance of his ID, and the elevator doors whisked open.
Dilara raised her eyebrows at the security but said nothing.
“We do a lot of government work,” Locke said and left it at that. Gordian’s highly secret military contracts dictated the extra levels of security. The tourists who swarmed outside had no idea they were walking past one of the most secure facilities in the entire state of Washington.
A few seconds later, the elevator opened at the 20th floor to reveal a lobby reminiscent of an upscale law office. Muted paint complemented dark woods and plush chairs in the waiting area. A receptionist sat at a fine mahogany desk that stood in front of a glass door. Dilara signed a form to get an ID badge and clipped it to her collar.
Locke walked her to his office. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed off the view of Puget Sound to great effect. The room was sparsely decorated because he spent so little time there. A pile of his non-critical mail and a phone were the only things on his desk. No need for a desktop computer because he kept his laptop with him. A bookshelf held a collection of engineering texts and car magazines, and the wall was covered with pictures of race cars and photos of Locke standing next to men in racing uniforms.
“You’re a car nut, I see,” Dilara said. She looked more closely at some of the photos. Locke noticed that they were the ones that featured him with one arm around the same woman, a beautiful blonde, in all of them.
“That was my wife, Karen,” he said.
“She’s gorgeous.” Dilara faced Locke, her eyes showing the condolence he’d seen many times. “When did she pass away?”
He always dreaded the inevitable questions, but at least he was now able to talk about it without choking up. “Two years ago. Car accident. Her brakes failed, and she got broadsided at an intersection.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Me too,” he said. He let the pause go on slightly too long. He cleared his throat. “If you don’t mind waiting here, I’m going to talk with my boss. I may ask you to come in, but I’d like to talk to him first. If the phone rings, it’ll be me, so go ahead and answer it.”
“Sure. I’ll just take in the view.”
Locke left her and walked to the end of the hall, where he knocked on the door of Miles Benson, Gordian’s president and CEO. He heard a gravelly voice yell.
“Locke, get your butt in here!”
The receptionist must have told Miles that Locke was there. He wasn’t even in the room yet, and it sounded like he was off to a great start.
Locke opened the door to Miles’ expansive office. The room was comfortable, but it was all business. In the middle of the room was an eight-person conference table. To the side were a couch and chair, with an empty space where a second chair would have been appropriate. At the far end sat a massive desk. Behind it was a weathered man in a flat-topped crew cut he retained from his days in the Army. Miles Benson waved Locke over but continued typing at his keyboard. When he was done, he looked up at Locke, raised an eyebrow at him, and grabbed a folder from his desk. Then he began to rise, something visitors rarely expected since they almost always knew that Miles Benson was a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down in an industrial accident.
Locke had seen him do so many times, but the process still amazed him. He rose, still sitting, courtesy of his IBOT chair, a motorized wheelchair developed by the maker of the Segway. The chair normally moved around on four large wheels, but whenever he felt like being twelve inches higher, Miles would activate the gyroscopic control that pivoted the seat so that it balanced on just two of the wheels. Computers continually adjusted the wheels so that it wouldn’t tip over. The effect was disconcerting at first, but Locke had quickly gotten used to it. He sat on the edge of the conference table so that his eyes were level with Miles’.
Miles fingered the controller, and the IBOT deftly swung around the desk. He shook Locke’s hand with a grip that could crush steel. Locke knew he lifted weights daily and exercised with a racing wheelchair. Miles wasn’t the type to let a little thing like paralysis slow him down.
“How was the marathon?” Locke asked.
“Won my age division,” Miles, who was 62, replied proudly. “I would have come in first for everyone 40 and up if I hadn’t gotten a blister on my left hand in the 23rd mile. Some son of a bitch from the Special Olympics passed me with a mile and a half to go.”
“I think you mean Para-Olympics.”
Miles grunted. “Whatever. All I know is he was twenty years younger than me, and that he was an ass. Looked over his sunglasses while he went by me and winked. I almost ran him off the road.”
“What stopped you?” Locke said with a smile.
“The same thing that’s stopping me from tearing you a new one for abandoning the Norway job — my good-natured heart. That’s a half-million dollar contract you let go.”
Miles was more than Locke’s boss. Miles had been a mentor in his college years, driving him to excel in engineering school when he was Locke’s professor and academic advisor at MIT. When Locke had left the military, it had been Miles who had advised him to start his own engineering consulting firm, which Locke called Gordian Engineering. When the grind of administrative and sales work had gotten to Locke, Miles had convinced him to merge Gordian with Miles’ own company that he had founded when he left MIT. The combined firm took on the Gordian name, and Miles assumed leadership of the combined company. Even though Miles was a stellar engineer, his true expertise was in sales and hiring, and with Locke able to concentrate his engineering skills on fieldwork, the company had doubled in size annually.
So even though Miles’ words would have seemed sharp to anyone else, Locke knew that he didn’t really mean it.
“I know you had a good reason,” Miles continued.
“The job’s not abandoned. Just delayed. We were able to finish up the work on Scotia One.”
“From what Aiden told me, you saved their bacon a couple of times.”
“Unfortunately, the only reason they were in trouble in the first place was because of me. And Dilara Kenner.”
Miles tossed the folder he’d been holding onto the conference table. “That’s for you. I already looked through it. I had Aiden gather up everything he could on Dr. Kenner. She has a pretty impressive background.”
“She’s pretty impressive in person, too.”
As Locke perused the contents of the folder, he explained to Miles the events of the last 36 hours. When he was through, he looked for some response from Miles, who was as inscrutable as ever.
“How do you think this is all related?” Miles finally asked.
“Good question. Coleman and Hayden are linked somehow, and somebody has gone to a lot of trouble to get Dilara Kenner and me out of the way so that we won’t find out how. The next job is to discover what their connection is to Genesis, Dawn, and Oasis. I’m hoping that if we know what they have in common, we’ll know how finding Noah’s Ark can prevent the death of a billion people. In the meantime, I think it’s time we involve the FBI on this.”
“I agree,” Miles said. “It sounds like you’re on to something here. I know the local Special Agent in Charge. I’ll give him a call. What about your father? You said you thought the guy who tried to bomb the rig was ex-military. Maybe General Locke could help us with this.”
Locke stiffened. The thought of running to his dad for help was horrifying. When times had been lean at Gordian, Miles had pushed Locke to get his father to steer some military contracts their way, but Locke had steadfastly refused.
