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convinced Irene was gone that he now longed to hold his own wife?
There was no affection in his embrace of Hattie Durham just now, nor in hers.
Both were scared to death, and flirting was the last thing on their minds. The
irony was not lost on him. He recalled that the last thing he daydreamed
about before
Hattie's announcement was finally making a move on her. How could he have
known she would be in his lap hours later and that he would have no more
interest in her than in a stranger?
The first stop was the Des Plaines Police Department, where Hattie
disembarked.
Rayford advised her to ask for a ride home with the police if a squad car was
available. Most had been pressed into service in more congested areas, so that
was unlikely. I'm only about a mile from here anyway! Hattie shouted above
the roar as Rayford helped her from the chopper. I can walk! She wrapped her
arms around his neck in a fierce embrace, and he felt her quiver in fear. I
hope everyone's OK at your place! she said. Call me and let me know, ok?
He nodded.
OK? she insisted.
OK!
As they lifted off he watched her survey the parking lot. Spotting no squad
cars, she turned and hurried off, pulling her suitcase on wheels. By the time
the helicopter began to swing toward Mount Prospect, Hattie was trotting
toward her condominium.
Buck Williams had been the first passenger from his flight to reach the
terminal at
O'Hare. He found a mess. No one waiting in line for a phone would put up with
his trying to plug his modem into it, and he couldn't get his cellular phone
to work, so he made his way to the exclusive Pan-Con Club. It, too, was
jammed, but despite a loss of personnel, including the disappearance of
several employees while on the job, some semblance of order prevailed. Even
here people waited in line for the phones, but as each became available, it
was understood that some might try faxing or connecting directly by modem.
While Buck waited, he went to work again on his computer, reattaching the
inside modem cord to the female connector. Then he called up the messages that
he had quickly downloaded before landing.
The first was from Steve Plank, his executive editor, addressed to all field
personnel:
Stay put. Do not try to come to New York. Impossible here. Call when you can.
Check your voice mail and your Email regularly. Keep in touch as possible. We
have enough staff to remain on schedule, and we want personal accounts,
on-the-
scene stuff, as much as you can transmit. Not sure of transportation and
communications lines between us and our printers, nor their employee levels.
If possible, we'll print on time. Just a note: Begin thinking about the
causes. Military?
Cosmic? Scientific? Spiritual? But so far we're dealing mainly with what
happened.
Take care, and keep in touch.
The second message was also from Steve and was for Buck's eyes only.
Buck, ignore general staff memo. Get to New York as soon as you can at any
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expense. Take care of family matters, of course, and file any personal
experience or reflections, just like everyone else. But you're going to head
up this effort to get at what's behind the phenomenon. Ideas are like
egos everybody's got one.
Whether we'll come to any conclusions, I don't know, but at the very least
we'll catalog the reasonable possibilities. You may wonder why we need you
here to do this; I do have an ulterior motive. Sometimes I think because of
the position I'm in, I'm the only one who knows these things; but three
different department editors have turned in story ideas on various
international groups meeting in New York this month. Political editor wants to
cover a Jewish Nationalist conference in Manhattan that has something to do
with a new world order government. What they care about that, I don't know and
the political editor doesn't either. Religion editor has something in my in
box about a conference of Orthodox Jews also coming for a meeting. These are
not just from Israel but apparently all over, and they are no longer haggling
over the Dead Sea Scrolls. They're still giddy over the destruction of Russia
and her allies which I know, you still think was supernatural, but hey, I
love you anyway. Religion editor thinks they're looking for help in rebuilding
the temple. That may be no big deal or have anything to do with anything other
than the religion department, but I was struck by the timing with the other
Jewish group meeting at pretty much the same time and at the same place about
something entirely political. The other religious conference in town is among
leaders of all the major religions, from the standard ones to the New Agers,
also talking about a one-
world religious order. They ought to get together with the Jewish
Nationalists, huh?
Need your brain on this. Don't know what to make of it, if anything.
I know all anybody cares about is the disappearances. But we need to keep an
eye on the rest of the world. You know the United Nations has that
international monetarist confab coming up, trying to gauge how we're all doing
with the three-
currency thing. Personally I like it, but I'm a little skittish about going to
one currency unless it's dollars. Can you imagine trading in yen or marks
here? Guess
I'm still provincial.
Everybody's pretty enamored with this Carpathia guy from Romania who so
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