Deadline Man

“I stopped in the press room. I thought you might want to see.” Amber sits next to me, hands me the newspaper. Newsprint has a special fresh, slick feel when it has first come off the presses. Cool, not hot. It feels precious. The Seattle Free Press. November 10th. Not just another day. I scan my story, set the paper in my lap, and let my head drop back. Clouds slowly sail overhead but even the mist of the early evening has stopped. The red neon Free Press sign looks enormous. Amber says, “It’s online and it’s already been picked up by AP, HuffPo, Yahoo, Google—with the Free Press and you getting credit.”

“Shouldn’t you be at work, Agent Burke?”

“All the big shots are here now, so they don’t need me at the moment. And how about calling me Amber, again. I thought you liked the name.”

I admit that I do. “You told me you would have some good news for me. Does it still matter?”

“We’re executing a raid on Olympic International here at the start of business this morning. The raid on Olympic Defense Systems in D.C. will happen in four hours. We want to have as many of their employees on-site as possible, to question. Now we’re getting an arrest warrant for Pete Montgomery, too.” She sighs. “I hope it matters.”

“Is he in town?”

“At the moment. We have him under surveillance. We knew these guys were up to something. We had no idea it would be this. You did good. Maybe you’ll get a medal someday, in secret of course.” She laughs. It’s partly the sound of tension being released, but it’s a nice sound nonetheless.

“You’ve got twenty-four hours to save the world.” I smile at her. “That always works on TV. In real life, I’d start by looking at Olympic’s warehouses down at the port.”

“Thanks. We can’t evacuate a whole city without panic. We don’t even know the location of the other cities with dirty bombs. Maybe we’ll break out the waterboards.”

I shiver.

“I’m sorry. Things are going to get crazy for me pretty soon. We’re going to flood the city with detection gear, so I’m hopeful. We have time. Here, at least. Still, I wish you’d take my Jetta and drive east. You’ll have plenty to write about when it’s all over.”

I don’t answer.

We sit and watch the immense presses perform their nightly miracle. It has been my life for so long that I can’t imagine another. In cyberspace this second, hundreds of billions of dollars are moving around the world, thousands of blogge

rs are expressing their opinions, and secret military orders are being encoded and flashed. But I am here, outside the newspaper building, watching the presses thunder. For this moment, which is all I really have, it is enough.

Amber leans against me. Just that.

She lightly runs her fingers down my cheeks. They feel wet. I look at her and see the tears forming in her eyes. She thinks I’m crying, too. But it’s just the rain. And the thunder.

--30--