24 Declassified: Trojan Horse

20. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME

12:10:59 A.M.PDT CTU Mobile Command Center

Edgar Stiles needed no mirror to tell him he was a short, dumpy man. He was not handsome, nor was he a slave to fashion — his khaki pants seemed to wrinkle as soon as he put them on, and he wore shirts buttoned all the way up to his thick neck. But Edgar was not stupid. He grasped the tactical dilemma facing Jack Bauer almost immediately.

Sitting in the eight-wheeled CTU mobile command and control unit within sight of the Chamberlain Auditorium, Edgar could glance out the door and see the LAPD mobile command center parked just across the street. Only a few yards separated the two massive vehicles; for Edgar, however, they might as well have been parked on opposite sides of the planet.

Less than six weeks on the job at CTU, Stiles had not been happy to be torn from his familiar workstation and assigned to a glorified mobile home sitting only a few blocks from a terrorist crisis. When he’d arrived on the scene, Milo Pressman, his immediate supervisor for the evening, had assigned him the mind-numbing task of scanning and digitizing blueprints. The schematics came from all over — the Los Angeles Department of Water and Sewage, the Pacific Power and Light Company, LA Cablevision, and the California Department of Highways.

It didn’t take long for Edgar to deduce that Special Agent Bauer and Tactical Unit Chief Chet Blackburn were trying to find a way inside the Chamberlain Auditorium without alerting the hostage-takers to their presence.

Though Edgar’s first instinct was to devalue his own self-worth, he knew very well that in this situation he possessed information that might possibly help his superiors and save lives. Still, Edgar vacillated, wondering whom he should approach with the information. For fifteen minutes he mulled over this dilemma. Finally, he decided to speak with Milo — although he wasn’t particularly at ease with the idea. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Milo. Edgar just didn’t feel comfortable with him.

“E-excuse me,” Edgar said, so nervous he was already flustered. “I need to speak with someone—”

“If you need help, talk to Dan Hastings,” Milo said. “Dan knows this command center like the back of his hand. I’m kind of swamped right now.”

“Oh, sure. S-sorry,” Edgar replied. “I won’t bother you again, sir.”

Deflated, Edgar returned to his workstation. He labored to deplete the pile on his desk, then he took a break, stepping outside for a breath of fresh air. Through an open hatch in the LAPD command center, Edgar could see Jack Bauer in quiet consultation with Blackburn and the others.

“You have to say something,” Edgar muttered to himself.

Twice he took halting steps toward the vehicle’s doorway, only to turn back, or pace nervously in the dark street. More minutes passed, and Edgar realized he’d better return to his workstation in case more files came in for him to scan. But as Edgar turned to go, he heard raised voices coming through the hatch.

“It’s like Masada!” exclaimed Chet Blackburn in a frustrated voice.

“No fortress is impenetrable. The Chamberlain Auditorium must have some weakness we can exploit. We just have to find it.”

The second speaker was Jack Bauer himself, and just hearing the man close up made Edgar want to bolt in the opposite direction.

This guy’s killed people. He’s been in every kind of dangerous situation imaginable. How can a slob like me help someone like him?

Yet the longer Edgar eavesdropped on the conversation, the more he became convinced that the information in his brain — trivia, really—could actually help. And if he could help, then didn’t he owe it to the innocent lives at stake to do all he could?

Summoning his courage, Edgar took a deep breath and walked into the operational command center. As he moved through the busy control hub, crowded with monitors, communications gear and high-tech workstations, Edgar fully expected to be challenged and summarily tossed out on his ear. Instead, no one paid attention to him. Obviously they were too wrapped up in their tasks to notice a newcomer.

Edgar approached Jack Bauer. The man’s face was lit by the digital image displayed on a horizontal screen of the map table. The harsh light made the man’s already pale face seem almost white as bone.

“Mr. Bauer, sir?” Edgar cringed inwardly when he heard his own voice, strained by nervousness and too loud. “Can I have a word with you?”

Jack, jolted out of his thoughts, faced Edgar. “Excuse me?”

Face-to-face with the Special Agent in Charge of CTU, Edgar fought the urge to flee. Instead, he cleared his throat and spoke up. “I wanted to speak with you, sir. I think I have information that could help.”

Now Jack’s sharp eyes were fixed on Edgar, and the lowly computer technician shrunk under his intense, expectant gaze.

Edgar continued. “Do…Do you know anything about the building the Chamberlain Auditorium replaced?”

Chet Blackburn was listening now, and so were the engineers.

“No, we don’t,” Jack replied. “What’s your name again?”

“Stiles, Mr. Bauer, sir. Edgar Stiles. I work in the computer services division—”

“Under Dan Hastings?”

“Yes, sir, and for tonight also Milo Pressman.”

“So what were you saying about the Chamberlain Auditorium?”

“Actually, sir, I was talking about the site where the auditorium was built.”

One of the engineers remarked, “As I recall, this part of downtown was pretty depressed.”

“Yeah,” said Edgar. “But it had one of the greatest old movie palaces in the city. They tore the place down to build the Chamberlain.”

“How does this information help us?” Jack asked.

“The Crystal Palace was built in the 1930s, before the Great Depression,” Edgar replied. “It was one of those huge old theaters with balconies and everything. A real showplace.”

“I recall reading about that theater,” Blackburn remarked. “But I thought it was farther west.”

“No!” Edgar cried, again too loudly. “It was right here, at this intersection.”

“Really,” said Chet, suppressing a chuckle.

“My mother worked in that theater in the 1960s and ’70s, during the Cold War. She told me there were four or five sub-basements under the theater. The two lowest levels were used as air raid shelters by Civil Defense. They stocked the place with water cans, radiation detectors, the works.”

The engineers were the first to react. “That would explain that notation on one of the blueprints,” said Jon Francis. “Something about an existing underground structure, a wall or something.”

“You’re sure about this, Edgar?” Bauer asked.

Edgar nodded. “My mom saw Fail-Safe on television and had a lot of nightmares after that. She told me that if a nuclear war ever broke out, she would head right down to the Crystal Palace, where the basements were so deep she knew she’d be safe from radiation.”

“Jesus,” grunted Jon Francis. “If this guy’s right, those sub-basements may still exist. And even if they don’t, the air shafts that fed them may still be buried beneath the facility even if the basements are gone.”

“But what good does that do us?” Chet asked. “We don’t know where the shafts are, or the basements for that matter.

“No, but somebody does,” Francis replied. “The plans for the Crystal Palace are on file somewhere, probably with the County of Los Angeles House of Records, or maybe City Hall.”

“What about the old Civil Defense files?” Special Agent Evans asked. “There’s got to be blueprints for those air raid shelters filed with the Federal government.”

“We’ve got to locate all the information we can gather about this, ASAP,” said Bauer. “If these tunnels, those basements still exist, that’s our way in.”

Jack spun around. “Where’s the Mayor’s liaison?”

“Right here, sir,” replied a young woman in an immaculate pinstriped suit.