[austintorn@aol.com]

As Fredrick looked up, there was none other than that unplaced face approaching, that of KGB General Burkov appearing at his table and pulling up a chair. The General bore a look of astonishment and that was probably all that would give Fredrick a few more seconds of life.

Ah, to be taken defenseless and unaware like this, even by some fluke, after all his training, Fredrick thought, but other, deeper wheels had already been turning from that same ninja training.

“Was the train ride enjoyable, General?” Fredrick asked in Russian—while unobtrusively searching for the wooden table flap levers underneath, the General’s right arm tendons betraying his own reaching under the table, for his trouser pocket perhaps.

“Nyet,” came the reply, “for my precious golden train is now at the bottom of a mine shaft.”

“It would have been a fitting memorial for you, General,” Fredrick goaded, as he lowered the table flap, the poison dart winging its revenge into it and sticking there.

Fredrick quickly pushed the table into the General, sliding it and him, pinning him to a wall, but the General was a sturdy man and pushed back hard, so Fredrick tilted his end upwards and retrieved the dart, sticking it to the KGB man.

By now, everyone had run out, and so Fredrick headed for the kitchen, pulling the trash bag out of its can along the way. He put on a chef’s hat and whites and went out the back, picking out his old papers and even taking the time to dump the trash into the dumpster, then went back into the kitchen to grab some tasty pastry.

An astute investigator might link Fredrick’s apartment fire to the killing of a foreign spy ten minutes later, nearby, but all that any satellite video would show would be a cook emptying the trash and going back to work, then perhaps that same cook or another going home, where he could be interviewed later, for Fredrick was now back out the rear, getting into someone’s car, rolling it in neutral down a slight decline, toward a dark area, for there was no key, then exiting out the other side into a bush. Maybe the Police/CIA satellite wasn’t even around, but this was good practice, and, furthermore, there could be other Russians around.

Although someone with influence might have half a chance of freeing him, Fredrick saw no need to enter captivity, friendly or otherwise, wherein anything could happen, and slithered, then crawled, and then eventually walked into the night, through a treed park then through another alley, catching a bus to the airport, and not a taxi, for those drivers could often remember their passengers. He would make a report when he got where he was going, or along the way, and it would trickle down to the locals to exonerate him.

He found a flight to nowhere—Anchorage, Alaska, where he boarded a stopover refueling flight from New York and goiong to Tokyo via Guam, where he would get off, the best he could do on such short notice.

Fredrick relaxed and began to sort it all out: Could there have been some kind of signal attached to his locker? No, for it was unlabeled and it was not that area that had blown up first—they’d thought him to be in his apartment. What was Burkov doing near the cafe? Probably just oversight for his mission of retribution, for he had been astonished to see Fredrick alive. Did they still want TOE information? No, for only the living can tell tales, and anything else of interest left in the building would not have survived the inferno, one expanded by a the gas leak which was probably just a cover. But how did they react so quickly to his arrival back home after his being gone so long? Every city has street cameras now, but they are crude, having to focus on an entire scene, and, even so, his taxi had dropped him at the rear.

Fredrick closed his eyes and meditated for a bit. I’ve got it, he thought, snapping up. Burkov, obviously a greatly unbalanced person, seething over their old encounter, had camped or lived in the area with a small team, perhaps, waiting for the day that there prey would show, but they couldn’t just hang around the complex day and night for months at a time, so, there must have been a special real-time facial-recognition camera or two at the front and back entrances of the unit, although a device almost unheard of. What lengths does a man go to for revenge! But who has that kind of surveillance technology? Only the Conspiracy. Yes. When their centers had been overrun by the Russians from a tip by the ninjas, Burkov had madly appropriated some of the cameras unto himself. Then a signal to Burkov, and a few minutes to confirm, or even an automatic process if he was too sound asleep, then BOOM! Fredrick dozed, finally at peace.

A few hours later, the pilot announced that Guam was closed to air traffic and they they were diverting to Hawaii. What! thought Fredrick, although that was his ultimate destination. Guam can’t close, for most of these great circle flights need for refueling. But, it’s also a U.S. military base.

Twenty minutes later, Fredrick noted an arc in the night sky that led back down to the ocean. It could only be a submarine launching a nuclear missile, for he’d already dreamt of its effects the day before.

As Fredrick deplaned a Honolue International on the reef runway, crowed with jets without gates, an Egyptian girl who had become very dear to him waved him toward a black helicopter. They were soon off to the bunkers of Niihau.

A week or two later a mini-nuclear winter arrived and began to restore some of the lost ice shelves. That was indeed close to a prophesy that Nobody, rest his soul, had run into while lost in waves of time displacement on the CMBR trip. Perhaps some future things have already happened, but only in some general form or direction.

Back at the TOE center, they plugged in Fredrick’s updated formulas—the simulation would take about a month, so Fredrick and his sweetheart took off to roam the island of paradise, albeit 3 degrees cooler in its average temperature, building some pyramids in the sand along the way.