Chapter 6 Dr Immanuel Paley and Agent Riley

So, there we stood me and the rest of my team, with Agent Riley expecting answers. Well, more answers from me, rather than a collective 'we'. I knew at that moment that if they had not done so already, people in black suits would be plucking Dr Immanuel Paley from the facility he was in in London. I was so far away, what could I do?

From what I knew of Paley he would not do well with being man-handled in a brutish manner. He would not go with them quietly. I felt a rush of anger at the thought but needed to keep it contained. It was not the time or the place to let my anger take the steering wheel. It never got me anywhere, being angry, even when I knew an injustice was taking place. I would be dubbed as one of many angry Black people presented as dangerous, threatening and too emotional; a tactic of those who would always try to undermine my argument without truly engaging constructively. With any luck Dr Paley would not give anything away. I had my hopes that he would continue with his ways of talking in riddles and buy us some time. I stood strong in the belief that he had not previously gone to government agencies with his work for a reason but that he had confided in Dr Guilder because he knew she could help. Or at least try to help.

As I tried to control my anger Kai put his arm between me and Agent Riley causing her to step back from me.

He held eye contact with Agent Riley, "We shared what we needed too and what was relevant at all times, and we will continue to do so," he stated calmly and confidently.

"That is not good enough," Agent Riley retorted snappily.

I fired back, "I did not share the name of my source, or any information, as I had promised him confidentiality."

"Confidentiality! Confidentiality!" Agent Riley exclaimed aghast, "You are implying one man's confidentiality is more important than national and international security. I will not have it."

The fury Agent Riley was culminating was now palpable.

"I did what I thought was right," I added, I was not letting her think she could try and belittle me and my decision.

In that moment I turned my back on Agent Riley and went to sit down with my friends. She did not deserve any more of my time. Kai continued to converse with Agent Riley, seemingly trying to appease her in any way. I tuned out of the conversation and started to wonder about Dr Guilder and Dr Immanuel, I desperately hoped that they were okay.

The heated conversation seemed to come to an end when Dr Derwent finally waded in on the discussion. The Agents all left the room and slammed the door behind them. Followed by a click of a lock system being rearmed.

"She took my access card from me," Kai said, exhaling deeply.

"What is happening? Who is Dr Immanuel Paley A.J.?" Jen asked with a furrowed brow.

Kai looked at me and nodded. After he had dealt with Agent Riley for the most part, I took on the task of sharing with Lava, Jen, and Dr Derwent the story of Dr Immanuel Paley. It was time for me to start trusting my team fully and wholeheartedly, they had earned that. I explained how I became acquainted with Dr Paley through Dr Guilder and how I made a few visits to see Immanuel Paley. As I sat there and explained all that had happened before, with Dr Paley and Dr Guilder, I felt like everything that had taken place had occurred in another lifetime. If felt quite surreal to relay it to those sat in front of me, after everything else that had happened in such a short space of time. I explained his quirks, his brilliance, and his mystery. As I spoke, I came to realise the amount of warmth that was in my voice when I spoke about Dr Immanuel, which came as a bit of a surprise. As he was so unlike those I tended to gravitate towards, or the people who would give me the time of day in my life I did not expect to feel a sense of adoration for him.

As usual, Jen was the first to speak, "Well, this Dr Immanuel Paley seems to be a very interesting character, I would definitely like to know more." She then added with a twang of sarcasm detectable in her voice, "And it seems Agent Riley would too." She then gave a quick wink in my direction.

I gave a slight smile and then rolled my eyes at the mention of Agent Riley. Kai seemed to verbalise what I was thinking at that moment.

"Yes, I am sure we would all love to meet him, but I can imagine that by now he is being interrogated in some undisclosed location," I looked over at Jen as he spoke, Kai gave a sympathetic smile, then he turned to me to offer the same sentiments.

"Why didn't you mention any of this earlier A.J.?" Jen said, with a hint of impatience in her voice.

"Well, Dr Paley is very particular about who he meets and when, and how much he is willing to share. And it hasn't been easy to get in touch with him since his move. Plus, I am not sure how well he is, his mind often seems muddled." When I stopped talking, I felt I had given a list of excuses, that wouldn't wash well with Jen.

Jen retorted, "Well we need to meet with him, he might know something about..." she paused then continued "…about what we saw out there, in the desert." She seemed a little uncomfortable with the prospect of beginning to take her mind back to the events from earlier that day. It was too soon.

"Yes, it really seems like we are in a sticky spot. And we need someone or something to help us come unstuck," Dr Derwent added.

It was in that moment that I had a stark realisation that this was 'the moment of need' that Paley had referred to when I spoke with him last. "I might have something," I said quickly and excitedly.

Lava asked, "What is it?" eager to problem solve.

The last time I went to visit Dr Immanuel he gave me an envelope. And I was hoping, beyond hope, that it would be of some help to us. "We need to go back to England. There is something there that I think could help us. Something that Dr Paley trusted me with," I said, rather quickly, as I looked at Lava, to answer her question.

Dr Derwent looked from Lava to me then spoke, "Well, how quickly can we get back to England? That is if these agents will let us go back anytime soon." Dr Derwent was right; we needed a plan.

We spent a good half an hour strategizing about how we would get back to England and get to Dr Paley. Kai made a thorough sweep of the room, looking for anywhere there could be listening devices or anyway we could log in to the computers. After banging on the door for a few minutes Officer Beckett came barrelling through the door into Kai. Jen stood up and made her way over to Beckett, visibly pleased to see him.

Officer Beckett quickly ushered Jen and Kai over to the rest of us in the far end of the room. "We don't have long," Beckett started, with his no-nonsense approach. "I can get you all out, but it's going to be a tight window. Riley is looking for blood here," he continued, throwing a glance towards Kai and myself.

Dr Derwent pushed himself up out of his chair "let's go!" We were all surprised to hear Dr Derwent say this, without asking further questions, as he seemed like a man that took his time over all his decisions, in a meaningful way. Taking Dr Derwent's lead, we all readied ourselves to leave.

Officer Beckett had managed to organise transport for us with some of his contacts. We managed to make it out of the building without too many questions, with Beckett making out he was the one in charge. Once outside and bundled into our transport, it was a very tense ride to the nearest airport. Beckett had managed to retrieve paperwork and passports that had been confiscated on our arrival. I kept looking back, out of the rear window of the car, trying to figure out if we were being followed or not. When we finally reached the airport Beckett had us all pushed through security as a high priority and had organised for a military flight back to England. He had claimed it was a matter of national security. It was evident that many countries and governments were beginning to get desperate at this point, desperate for answers. So desperate that they were willing to get our team back to England at lightning speed.

Once we had boarded the flight, I felt I could breathe a little easier. However, it looked like Jen was not feeling as at ease. I was guessing that she was feeling uneasy as the last time she was on a plane, the flight did not go to plan.

After experiencing several spikes in adrenaline throughout the day, I started to feel exhausted. And I quickly drifted into a deep sleep.

I was woken by the ping of the seat belt sign. Feeling a little disorientated and somewhat groggy I stretched my legs out and pulled myself into more of an upright seated position and made sure my seatbelt was still fastened.

"We are coming into land," Lava said gently as she leant over the empty seat in-between us. I smiled and nodded. I couldn't believe I had slept for the entire flight.

We exited the plane and went through the obligatory but mundane tasks that come with re-entering the country, minus the collection of suitcases. At least that was one upside of coming back from another country with no more than hand luggage. Skipping the holiday ritual of having to wait at the baggage conveyer belt until you could identify your own case and pull it off the carousel swiftly before it passed you by for it to take another go around the suitcase 'merry go ride' was refreshing.

Officer Beckett had organised for a large shiny black people carrier to be waiting for us, courtesy of one of his connections with the bosses of the hire companies with links to the airport. He was a man with many webs of friends it seemed, which was proving to be very resourceful.

It was time to head back to my apartment. Which felt very surreal. With everything happening on a global scale, here we were, returning to my insignificant apartment in Newcastle England.

I would have never thought that our journey as a team would take us back to where, for me, this all started. However, I had started to expect the unexpected by that point.

I had to be confident that Dr Immanuel would guide our next steps. I wanted to believe that the envelope he provided would really help in this 'time of need' as he phrased it.

Officer Beckett parked the people carrier, in a most impressive fashion in one of the very tight parking spaces in the road where I lived. We all piled out onto the pavement. Beckett retrieved a backpack from the vehicle and unzipped it quickly holding it open in front of me. "Here you go, here are all the teams' personal effects I could get. I am assuming one of those sets of keys in there are yours? But hurry we shouldn't really be out on the street exposed like this for too long," he said in a serious tone.

I nodded and looked in the bag, I grabbed my keys and headed to the door. I welcomed everyone inside then closed the door behind me, making sure it was firmly locked. Everyone made their way into the living room and kitchen area.

"Please make yourselves at home," I said, much more sincerely than I had done when my last visitors were there. I dashed into my bedroom to look through all my draws of paperwork, trying to remember where I had put the envelope in question. I sifted through the piles of papers as I thought to myself, I really need to invest in some ring binders. And there it was, hidden between two bills, the letter from Paley. I took it in both hands and looked over it, remembering the first time I caught a glimpse of the envelope when Dr Paley presented it to me at his live in clinic of sorts. I smiled to myself at the memory of Paley in his colourful purple dressing gown and black slippers.

I took the letter into the living room where I could hear through to the kitchen. There was a whistle of the kettle that was boiling audible. Lava and Kai had managed to figure out where the cups, sugar, teabags, coffee, and spoons were in the kitchen cupboards.

"Sorry it will have to be black coffee," I shouted through to them as I re-entered the living room. "I've got the letter," I continued holding it up and then pulling one of the dining tables chairs out to sit down. Jen stood over me and read the front of the envelope aloud to the rest of the group, "To my dear Lalande Star. Open in a time of need." I turned the letter over and opened the envelope as carefully as possible, as I did not want to risk ripping the paper inside. I pulled out the contents. It was a thick piece of card, with one side which was rather blank apart from one statement on the few black lines that are offered by your traditional postcards. I flipped it over and on the other side was a picture. It was a rather odd and seemingly insignificant picture on the front of the postcard. I didn't take Dr Immanuel for the postcard type. He seemed to come across as someone who would much rather enjoy writing a long letter on thick, good quality paper, like the paper he had in his home bureau. He never seemed to cease being a puzzling character, an unpredictable one.

The postcard picture looked to present itself as an insignificant one, with the only thing in shot being a strange green building.

"Where is that?" Beckett asked as he peered over at the picture.

"I'm not sure," I replied as I turned the card back to take a closer look at the sentence on the other side. It read, 'Here you will find what you need to defend the cold ones, the ones of little intellect, full of fear, the ones that blindly attack,' in Dr Paley's fanciful handwriting.

"What does Paley mean by the cold ones?" Lava asked.

"He likes to talk in riddled," I replied.

Beckett seemed to start trying to take some logical explanation from Paley's scrawling. "Cold. And blinded by what, perhaps rage or anger, pure violence? Do they become blinded by the light? Is that why we were attacked in such poor visibility in the desert?" Beckett looked to Kai, "What do you think Kai?"

"Yes. You could be on to something there Beckett," Kai replied as Lava handed the postcard to Dr Derwent. We all took turns to take a closer look. No one knew where it was. So, Kai suggested that we take a photograph of the postcard image and do a reverse image search on the search engine Archie. Since I no longer had my laptop Kai had to use Lavas very small and compact laptop that Beckett had managed to retrieve from the agents in China. The laptop had been squirrelled away in one of the backpacks that Beckett had managed to transport with us, that now sat in the people carrier outside my apartment.

We all continued to have smaller break off conversations whilst Kai was busy on the laptop until he addressed us all. Nothing online was quick in the 90s. Kai then excitedly announced, "I have it. I have the search results!"

We all gathered around the dining table where Kai had the laptop open. "It is a cold war bunker in the city of York. It's an English Heritage site," he said as he spun the laptop around for most of us to see. He held the postcard picture up to show us the similarities of the pictures, one on the screen and the other in his hand.

"A bunker, what a strange place for Paley to send us," Jen said as she scrunched her face up.

"Well, it seems quite fitting given that Dr Paley seems to like the odd and peculiar from what A.J. has told us," Dr Derwent replied quite chipper.

After quickly freshening up and grabbing any supplies we thought we may need from the apartment we were back on the road again. Making the 90-minute journey to our next destination, York.

Once again, I found myself looking out of the back window of the vehicle seeing my apartment shrink into the distance. However, this time I was looking back knowing where we were heading, which offered some comfort. 

I was unsure as to why Dr Paley would send us to a bunker. Hopefully York would provide us with some answers. More answers than questions would be great, but by this point I had come to learn to not hold my breathe. As providing sufficient answers didn't seem to be Paley's usual way of working. There was no need to try to attempt to predict what was around the corner when it came to Dr Immanuel Paley. But that didn't stop us from trying.

At least the journey time would provide us with time to discuss what we thought Paley was trying to tell us through his scribblings on the back of the postcard. It did not hurt to try and be as prepared as we could. And talking for the journey seemed to be helping take my mind off the thought of Dr Paley in uncomfortable surroundings. We had to get to him, we had to help, and if going to an old war bunker was the way we did it, then we were ready and willing!