Installment 7

You know, looking back on it, I can see how Clara planned it perfectly. We arrived at the bus station at exactly five o’clock, and everyone was taking a bus. The crowd was so thick you could barely breathe, and since Clara and I were just below the average height of everyone in the place, we were almost unnoticeable.

            The police cars showed up five minutes after we did. Come to think of it, maybe she planned that out too. But by the time we heard the faint sound of sirens, we were both holed up in a small back room.

            I think it was once a staff room for the bus drivers, but by now it was deserted of all human life and furniture.

            “Are you sure no one comes in here?” I asked.

            “Positive,” Clara replied, swinging her backpack off of her shoulders.

            “How?”

            “Because I’ve been living here for the past two months,” she said simply.

            I gaped at her. “What? How has nobody found you?”

            “I sneak in at the right times. People don’t see me in the crowds, and the staff don’t come in here. So I don’t get caught, and with luck, neither will you.”

            For five minutes, I stood listening at the door, and when I finally decided that no one was going to come charging in after us -- at least not right away, anyway -- I turned back to Clara.

            She was sitting up against the wall, closely examining some notebook from her backpack. I thought about snatching it out of her hands, but decided against it.

            “So,” I began. “Do I get an explanation?”

            Resigned, she set down the notebook. “I told you that there wasn’t much of one. I’ll tell you what I know, but really, it’s not much more than you do.”

            “That’s virtually nothing,” I cut in, “So I don’t see how you could know any less.”

            “Fair enough,” she admitted. “Okay. Let’s try this.

            “My parents used to work for an agency -- that is, back when they were alive. They died when I was two…but we’ll get to that. The thing is, I don’t know what agency they worked for, or what their job was, or anything. No one’s ever told me, mostly because they don’t know.

            “Anyway, the deal is that back when I was two years old, my parents were both found dead. Actually, my mother was dead -- my dad was still conscious, but barely. They took him to the hospital, but he was already in bad shape and didn’t have long to live. Apparently he kept saying things that sounded like gibberish to the doctors, and all they remember is him saying the name ‘Travis’ several times.

            “After that, the agency clammed up and wouldn’t release any information about their work or what happened or anything. My parents had set things up so that I would get passed along to my uncle -- he’s not really my uncle, he’s a distant cousin -- if anything happened to them. He never knew anything either, and believe me, he wasn’t cut out to take care of kids. He tried, I guess, but he just wasn’t very good at it.

            “So a year ago, I decided to do some investigating for myself. I dug around in my parents’ old records and found a phone number, some codes, a few passwords. None of them turned up any leads. So I bought a bus ticket and headed out to my parents’ old house. And that’s where I found all this stuff.”

            Clara gestured at the backpack.

            “The sunglasses and everything else. I don’t quite know what all of it does, but I’ve figured out some of it. Apparently the house was barely touched after they died. Anyway, when I was there, I found an email printed out dated from the night before they died.”

            She fished around in the backpack, and finally came up with a crumpled piece of paper. I smoothed it out and read it.

To: Frederick Stone

From: Pseudonym

Re: Operation 497

     You were right. It was Thatcher. 497 is underway -- now. This is our last chance.

     Just in case things don’t go horribly wrong, the kid’s name is Nathan T. Dalton.

     I stared at the email. “You’re kidding.”

            She shook her head. “Hardly.”

            “And this is all there is?”

            Clara nodded. “Uh-huh.”

            I hesitated before handing the paper back. “It’s a complete disconnect! Operation 497? Travis Thatcher? Then they throw my name in there?”

            “Remember that we don’t have the whole conversation. This is just the last word in it.”

            “And who’s Pseudonym?”

            Clara reached back into her backpack. “I found a couple other mentions of the name in this notebook, mostly with strings of numbers after them.”

            “Tracking numbers?”

            “Already tried it. They come up a blank.”

            I nodded. “Go on.”

            “So I looked you up -- just your name, that is. I couldn’t really find anything, but when I decided to stick Travis and Thatcher together…I got some crazy mix-ups. His name is everywhere, but you can’t find any information on him. It’s mentioned in little articles, passing mentions…But imagine my surprise when I finally found something worthwhile. Someone used the words ‘Travis’ System’ on a blog.” Clara passed me a printed out blog post. I scanned over it. It seemed like it was about pretty boring things, but my stomach did a flip when I saw the title of the blog.

“Operation 497?” I said out loud.

Clara nodded. “Since there are a lot of random blog names, I wouldn’t have thought twice, except for that there were also a few other things that didn’t make sense…including the fact that the words ‘back door’ are capitalized for seemingly no reason, and that the writer makes a very obscure reference to a main character in a movie called ‘The Hack Job,’ who’s apparently named Nathan. It could have been a coincidence…but I decided to follow up on it. The post was written from this town. So I caught another bus and came out here. I’ve been living here, in this room -- ” she gestured around the small room that was practically a closet -- “while I’ve been trying to find a new lead.”

“I wasn’t hiding or anything,” I pointed out. “Why couldn’t you find me?”

“Because I wasn’t looking specifically for you,” Clara answered. “And because I was afraid to go into any public place and be recognized. I don’t know if my uncle’s still looking for me. Anyway, I found Travis a day or two before you did. He showed up at the police station. I only know because I happened to be passing the station on my way here when he and Larson were talking outside. Travis told him his name, and I recognized it right away. After that, I hung around the police station a lot to see what I could pick up. A couple days later, they brought you in. I was outside the window, and I heard everything they said. I figured that there must be some good explanation for all this, and since Travis just as good as admitted he was framing you, I thought I’d get you out of there.” Clara leaned back and crossed her arms. “That’s all I have. Do you have anything to add?”

I shook my head, disappointed that there wasn’t more. “No. I’ve never heard of any of this in my life.”

Clara nodded, and I could sense her own regret. “Well, we have far more questions than answers.”

            “We?” I interjected. Clara raised her eyebrows.

            “I sprang you out of the station, Nathan. They’re not going to be happy with either of us. We have to stick together or they’ll catch both of us eventually.”

            I had to agree with her, but there was something about trusting a complete stranger that I was not so eager about.

            “So the plan is to catch a bus tomorrow at ten o’clock?” I said finally.

            “Yes.”

            “And you’re assuming that the police will be gone by then?”

            Clara tried to look confident, but failed. “Of course. They’ll decide we went somewhere else by then.”

            “So we’re here all night? Where are you planning on heading?”

            Clara leaned forward. “See…that’s the problem. I don’t know.”

            I have to post this before I run out of battery. Until next time…

-Nathan T. Dalton