Terminus: Bissau

By Joseph L. Wager

Gerard Chastain leaned forward in his chair and tugged at his uniform blouse, trying to get it unstuck from his back. A call to meet with the Mission Police Advisor was unnerving enough but doing it in an uncomfortable uniform made him even more nervous. He sat and waited. Sweat trickled down his neck. His only consolation was that the desk officer looked just as uncomfortable. Who knew February could be hot?

A light flashed on the desk and the officer looked up at him, “Captain Cruz will see you now.”

Chastain stood and moved to the door by the desk. He tapped lightly and opened it at the muffled word, “Entrar.”

The ceiling fan in the center of the office made the air only slightly cooler. Cruz gestured to a chair without looking up from the file he was reading, “Have a seat.”

Chastain sat.

Chastain measured two full minutes of silence on the wall clock before the captain set down the file and looked at him.

“Lieutenant Chastain, why are you here?”

“Sir? I was told to report to you, sir.”

Cruz shook his head, “I don’t mean my office Lieutenant. I mean Why are you here? In Guinea-Bissau?”

“I don’t understand, sir. This is my assignment.” Chastain became more nervous than he was before.

The captain leaned back in his chair and picked up the file. He flapped it in the air then tossed it back onto the desk, “You don’t speak Portuguese. You don’t speak Kriyol.”

He leaned forward, “What am I supposed to do with you?”

Chastain knew the answer to this, “Assign me to an SPC unit, sir. Let me see first-hand how they work. What it is like on the street. With the local officers.”

Cruz stroked his chin, “Put a Development Unit officer on the street? I thought your sort just read reports.”

Chastain spoke cautiously, “I think that’s part of the problem here, sir. We don’t have the right people on the street. DU can’t see how the police act on an incident or when the military shows up.”

That evoked a snort of amusement, “We know how that goes. The police curl up their toes and say, ‘Yes, sir, no, sir, may I have some more, sir.’”

“Exactly,” Chastain replied. “If we’re going to help establish an effective civilian police force, we have to see the interpersonal dynamics as they happen, not from reading reports.”

Chastain sat still. The captain stared at him. Stared through him. Three minutes by the wall clock this time.

“Very well. I’m assigning you to SPC Team 2.” Cruz wrote something on a paper folded it and held it out. “Report to Lieutenant Thomas Spencer. He should be at the Ministério da Justiça. Something about a warrant for an impending drug raid.” He looked at Chastain and smiled, “How’s your English?”

Chastain stood, took the note, and said, “Fair, sir. How’s his?”

Cruz didn’t laugh, but he grinned broadly, “You’ll do fine, Lieutenant. On your way.”

-o-o-

Spencer looked like a British Bobbie, except in UNPol blues and beret instead of a tall helmet. He was tall, too. Lean, with a no-nonsense air. He took Chastain’s note and read it.

“Cruzie dumped you on me, did he? You good for anything?”

Chastain looked at the grin on Spencer’s face and grinned back, “Not much. I’m just here to observe.”

“So are we all, lad. So are we all. Observing’s what we do here.”

“How’s the training going?” Chastain asked.

“Well enough. They do right well in the classroom but seem to forget bloody all when they get on the street. Habits override training. Still taking bribes and letting their friends walk away. I’ve never seen corruption on this scale.”

“That’s why we’re here, is it not?”

Spencer looked at Chastain with what might have been disgust, “You’re not a bloody optimist, are you?”

Chastain shrugged, “Let’s say rather, that I am stubborn. I am French, you know.”

Spencer smiled again, “You’ll need that here. And patience. Lots of patience. Come along. I’ll introduce you to Lieutenant Costa. He just left for the Segunda Esquadra. You can tell me about yourself as we walk over.”

-o-o-

The Segunda Esquadra was the main police station in Bissau and the site of many of the human rights violations the UN Peacebuilding Mission was meant to address. It’s delicate business coming into a country and telling them how the things they’ve done in the past need to change, but at least the UN team had the support of the current administration, and it had been eight years since the last coup d'état.

Costa intercepted them in the lobby and seemed disinclined to let them any further into the building. He gave them a quick overview of the intended operation.

There was a warehouse near the docks with a lot of activity. That wasn’t unusual, but all the traffic seemed to consist of moving pallets into the building with almost nothing coming out. An anonymous tip from Port Authority got the attention of the police. Costa decided it was a drug operation. Chastain had no idea what evidence he had to support that, but Costa had a warrant and he thought it best not to ask questions.

He informed them that they could accompany the raiding team but were not to interfere an any way with the operation – though they could defend themselves if necessary.

They had a couple of hours before they had to report back, so Spencer suggested they eat something at a restaurant a few blocks away.

-o-o-

“We can talk freely here,” Spencer said. “It’s close, but far enough from the station that the local police don’t come here very much.”

“Are they much of a problem?”

Spencer snorted, “These people have been living with corruption for so long it’s a habit. On a policeman’s pay, it’s hard to say no to an extra hundred or so – especially since they don’t even get what respect they do deserve.

“That’s changing, but it’s a damned slow process. I always assume there’s at least one informant on any police operation.”

Chastain sipped his lukewarm tea and poked at his couscous. “So, we are likely to see nothing.”

“Oh, we’ll see something,” Spencer growled. “Maybe a couple of suspects will be beaten bloody, or near enough. We’ll have evidence contaminated. If the military gets wind of it, they’ll likely show up as well and confiscate everything. Keep on your toes, but whatever you do, be discrete. Don’t provoke anyone, especially the military. They’d as soon eat you as look at you.”

“I assume that’s figurative, no?”

“Only a little, Lieutenant. Only a little.”

-o-o-

Costa used a cannon on the door. It disappeared. The lintel – as well as a good portion of the wall – collapsed into the gap where it had been. Captain Costa insisted the UNPol officers remain by the transport van and were only to cross the perimeter when he signaled. Five men scaled the pile of concrete masonry like a forlorn hope through a breach in the wall of a besieged city. One man went down as he scaled the rubble. The police on the perimeter held their weapons ready, looking for a shooter. The man rolled down to the bottom of concrete steps where the doorway had been. He lay there moaning but soon rolled over onto his hands and knees and crawled back towards the van.

“Doesn’t look hurt much. No gunshots. Rubble must have slipped under him and he lost his footing. Like as not he has a twisted ankle,” Spencer was watching the operation with a critical eye. Everything would go into the post-operation report.

Unexpectedly, a figure appeared on the top of the rubble and waved an arm.

Costa moved forward with the rest of his men and signaled for the UNPol officers to follow.

Chastain cocked an eyebrow at Spencer, “Shall we?”

“Let’s do,” Spencer replied.

Chastain stepped carefully over the rubble around the entrance. Once inside he saw…

Nothing.

Or almost nothing. The far side of the warehouse was lined with empty shelving units. In the center of the floor, they could see a large structure made of pipes built in two-meter-tall hexagons lined up parallel to each other and connected into a tubelike setup by more pipes. Some of the spaces above the hexagons had what looked like lasers arranged in a circle. Most of the spaces were empty, with bundles of wires hanging down.

Whatever the contraption was, someone had been taking it apart.

Chastain looked around. Costa said pallet loads had been brought in, but nothing had moved out. He could see a large stack of empty pallets, but there were very few boxes or crates. Whatever had been brought in had gone somewhere, but it wasn’t here – not anymore. Someone had known they were coming and had slipped away with the goods. There weren’t even any suspects for the police to beat bloody.

“What in bloody hell is that thing?” Spencer asked.

Chastain looked at the hexagonal structure again. It almost looked like a sculpture. Several computers were sitting on a desk to one side and Chastain saw three power cabinets that looked like they could handle very high voltages.

“I’d like to look at those computers if I can.”

Spencer nodded cautiously, “Discretely, my lad. Discretely.”

The computers were shut down. No glowing keyboards or monitors. On one of the desk surfaces was a stack of papers and a small flash drive. Chastain pulled out his handkerchief and picked up the drive to look at the papers underneath. They were covered with complex formulas. He had studied physics while in school but had quit when the math got too complicated for him. He still knew enough to recognize some of the formulas.

“You! What are you doing? Get away from there!” Chastain jumped at Costa’s barked order.

He covertly slid the flash drive into his pocket, stepped back, and turned to show his empty hands, “Nothing, just looking at the computers.”

Costa gestured emphatically, “Move away! Over there! Touch nothing!”

Chastain nodded and moved back to Spencer’s side without saying anything more.

One of Costa’s men moved towards the computers when another shout rang out from the entranceway. The order was in Kriyol and Chastain didn’t understand it, but there was no mistaking the squad of Army uniforms, weapons out, flowing over the breach into the warehouse.

“Damn! The FARPs are here,” Spencer whispered. “Don’t do anything unexpected. Yes, sir, no, sir, thank you, sir, and we’ll get out alive. Our blues should protect us. They won’t want an incident with UN personnel.”

The UNPol officers stood quietly to the side and let Costa deal with the Army commander who seemed intent on taking over the scene.

-o-o-

“You have what?” Cruz demanded.

“I have a flash drive from the scene,” Chastain was sweating from more than the heat.

“Let me be sure I understand this. You took evidence from the scene of a local police raid? Evidence that the Army would claim if they knew of its existence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you failed to inform the incident commander of the existence of this evidence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why would you do that, Lieutenant?”

“Extenuating circumstances, sir,” Chastain was sweating, but calm.

“Please elaborate, Lieutenant,” Cruz gritted through clenched teeth.

“Sir, I got a good look at the papers on the desk. I know enough physics to recognize that they were very complex. Not something that any drug trafficker is likely to have anything to do with – at least not at warehouse facility. But these looked like they were related to whatever that equipment was.”

The tension around the captain’s eyes eased slightly, “And what, precisely, were these formulae?”

“I can’t say precisely, sir, but I recognized equations dealing with linearized Einstein gravitational fields and field tensors using lasers in ring configuration.”

Cruz’s jaw dropped, “What?”

Chastain took a deep breath, “I have read about the work of an American physicist who was using ring lasers to create gravitational distortions. The structure could have been something like a matter transmission device.”

“Matter transmission?” Cruz asked.

“Yes, sir. A teleporter. Possibly. I recommend UNPol confiscate the technical equipment from the facility for further study. Hopefully, the files on the flash drive will contain useful information,” he held up the unit, now in an evidence bag.

Cruz grabbed the drive out of his hand and turned to Spencer, who had been standing silently behind Chastain, “Lieutenant Spencer, you will place Lieutenant Chastain under house arrest until such time as I can arrange to send him to Geneva for disciplinary action. It may take a while. There are rumors of a new type of SARS virus and there may be travel restrictions soon. He is to have no outside communication. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

-o-o-

Geneva was cold. It was early March and Switzerland wasn’t Equatorial Africa. It had taken three weeks to schedule the flight. Airport news displays showed reports of a respiratory virus called COVID. There were rumors of some cities imposing lockdowns on residents. A man in a business suit approached them looking serious. He had UNPol guards with him.

“This way,” the man jerked his head in the direction of a panel van.

They drove for over an hour and finally stopped at a small building surrounded by a barbed wire fence. Chastain thought it looked like a prison. No trial or hearing?

He looked at Spencer with a questioning look. Spencer barely looked at him.

They were escorted inside and directed to an empty conference room. They sat silently and stared at each other.

After five minutes, the wall clock again, the door opened and a man in civvies and a lab coat walked in. He looked at them, “Which of you is Lieutenant Chastain?”

“I am,” Chastain replied.

“Would you take a look at these please?” he laid a stack of papers on the table.

Chastain poked at them without picking them up. They were covered with complex formulas and references to relativistic gravitational frame-dragging. He looked up, “I don’t understand. Why are you showing me these?”

The man looked surprised, “Didn’t they tell you? By order of the Undersecretary, the two of you are assigned to the Portal Project.”

“The Portal Project?”

“It took a few arguments with the Army, but we have the portal. The one the drug lords were using to move their product out of that warehouse. The time machine.”

“A time machine?” Spencer choked.

“Yes,” the man repeated. You two will oversee the project to make it work and locate any criminal bases using other ones.”

Time travelling smugglers. Chastain felt a sudden need to sit down.