Raulin had just finished making dinner when he heard a knock on the main door.
The day had given them a pleasant afternoon and his family had had the time to rest and catch up on some sleep.
He had taken a nap after lunch, the girls and gramps had even had the time to shower and change.
So he went to answer the door, to find the person he was expecting, alongside someone else, a woman in her early forties, with a demeanor that clearly singled her out as a politician type, a stark contrast to the polite and all-business persona that Agent Steele usually presented.
Raulin welcomed them in and called his Dad and Papa Olaf, he went upstairs to call on Joe’s room, finding the door ajar, he called out “Joe, sis, I’m going in” and slowly opened the door, to find no one inside. So he went to where he should have gone, to begin with, a flood of emotion assaulting him as he opened the door to his brother’s room.
Joe was sitting in William’s bed, her back to the door, grabbing her knees, while holding his pillow as a headrest.
“Joe, Agent Steele is downstairs, they want to talk to all of us,” Raulin said.
“Mhm,” was her only answer, Raulin knew it would take time. He left her alone, she needed space now. And he would be damned if they wouldn’t give it to her.
Back downstairs, he sat down next to Maeve and his Dad, protective of them both, and listened to what Agent Steele had to tell them.
“Mr. Hagen,” Agent Steele said, talking to Dad.
“Again, the United States of America wishes to offer its thanks to you and your family for your hospitality, and for allowing us this impromptu reunion.” Agent Steele proceeded.
Raulin understood Agent Steele being there, and what looked to be his partner, even though she looked more like an administrative resource or politician rather than a field agent. What he did not understand was this fixation on making everything sound so patriotic.
“Please allow me to introduce to you the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, the Honorable Katherine Mayorgas” he continued while standing up and with a small bow signaled to his partner.
So that is how this is going to go, Raulin thought, they are going to give us the full state package to try to appease us and make us go with anything they say.
“Good evening Mr. Hagen, and Mr. Hagen Senior,” she said while standing up. Dad and Gramps didn’t. Take that Uncle Sam, they will not be so easy, Raulin thought, proud of them.
“We, as in the United States government” she continued while sitting down, “understand the tragedy and loss you all are going through,” she said while looking at each of them in turn.
“We know there is nothing we can say or do that will relieve the loss, but we can offer certain help, we can connect you with groups that deal with, and assist victims surviving terrorist attacks,” she continued, while Agent Steele face-palmed, and my Dad stood up, angry as I had never seen him.
“Ms. Mayorgas,” My Dad said in cold, barely contained anger, “what you and the Government can do, is at least treat us with the respect my son’s sacrifice deserves,” my Dad started, “I understand what your job entails, and the things you have to pull to keep everyone safe, but I will not tolerate your disregard for our intelligence, nor the grief we are going through. If this is the line your government is going to follow, I will ask you to get out of my house, and my property or you will understand that William was not the only Hagen who knew how to stand up for himself.”
I stood up next to him, while Joe appeared out of nowhere and stood next to Gramps, Matthew was already opening the door, while the girls were throwing daggers at her with their eyes.
“I told you it wouldn’t work, we had decided you wouldn’t,” said Agent Steele back at Ms. Mayorgas.
“Come on Roger, you can’t blame me for giving it a go, is what we are supposed to be doing” she argued back at him.
“We have clearance Katherine” he countered.
“Yes, well, it was a lapse in judgment then” she acquiesed.
“Mr. Hagen, there is no need for your concerns, it was my mistake and mine alone,” she said back to Dad, in a conciliatory tone.
“If this wasn’t the first time I heard a politician saying it is her fault, I would consider taking you out of my property myself, but since it is, I will acknowledge that at least, you are human before a politician,” Dad said, and sat back down, somewhat mollified.
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“Well thanks for the field promotion,” she said back at him.
“I understand that you were all yesterday at the site of the tragedy, correct?” she asked everyone, to which she got nods and a couple of ‘yeses’.
“Very well, Raulin,” she said looking at me, “can I call you Raulin or Mr. Hagen Jr. would be preferable?” she said.
“Raulin is fine, if anyone, that was my brother” I replied.
“Understood,” she continued “I want, just for the sake of procedure, to confirm that you were the one to dispatch the second assailant,” her eyes like a predator on mine.
“Yes,” I answered, “Yes, ma’am,” Maeve said to me while grabbing my forearm with a smile.
“Yes, ma’am,” I corrected myself. To which Ms. Mayorgas gave a gentle nod to Maeve, but instead of a smile, she got a fierce glance, making it obvious Maeve did not care for the woman, only about proper manners.
“In that case, you will have to include him for the award ceremony, Roger,” she said back to Agent Steele.
“What award ceremony?” Asked Gramps.
“Both your grandchildren will be given the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as a State Burial for your grandson William, at Arlington of course.” she replied to Gramps, “You know that since your father is a WW2 veteran, your son can be considered for Arlington, under very extenuating circumstances, such as we have now,” she now told Dad, to wish I was sure he did not know; I didn’t know, Raulin thought.
Joe was now grabbing Gramp's hand.
“What about the body?” asked Zoey, Matt trying to shush her in vain, while she stood up and moved next to Joe, giving her a half hug. More to gather courage than to support our resident Amazonian.
“What do you mean?” I asked her while looking at the now pale faces of Agent Steele and Ms. Mayorgas,
“What does she mean?” I asked Agent Steele instead.
“It disappeared,” said Joe, while Matt took both palms to his face.
“We have evidence,” Zoey added.
“What are you girls talking about?” said Dad, and Gramps was just sitting there with a little smile on his face… the old fox knew!
“I,” said Matt now, “I...I left a camera recording at the site, I wanted to know what was going to happen, so I prepared them before even the first responders arrived at the farm, and used drones to set them up high on some trees.” he admitted.
“Matthew Murphy,” said my Dad, in an overly fake angry tone, “how could you? And well done” he finished.
“It’s our property,” he added to the Agents, “We will argue that those were there before yesterday’s events.”
“No need for that,” Ms. Mayorgas added. “What a mess,” she continued. “Can we at least see the recording? we have no information on how that happened, so if we could see it, we can start leading local and federal authorities in a search.” Added Agent Steele, all business again, Raulin liked him.
“Yes Matt, bring it out so we can all see it,” Dad said, “But bring just a copy, send the original to the cloud or something, that is what is called right? The cloud?” Dad said while pointing upwards.
My Dad could handle a Lamborghini tractor and paint the Monalisa on a cornfield, but he could not even handle smartphones, therefore our short-wave radios. You couldn’t help yourself but love the man for his quircks.
Sometime later, after tensions had lowered, we gathered in the TV room, where the huge one was, with some cookies and coffee, we got ready to watch the video or videos since Matt had placed several remote-controlled cameras, similar to a closed TV-circuit.
In the video, that Matt showed in backward order, starting from where Agent Steele had been informed about the disappearance of William’s body, to where the medical examiners had tried to remove the body from the examiner’s van to fifty-six minutes before that when light had enveloped it, in a brief flash, to nobody’s attention, since not even the guards noticed it, nor reported anything of the sort. During the flash scene, Matt paused it, and using some computer wizardry, he revealed what looked like the frame of a winged figure, shining as well on top of the van. Finishing when a couple of hours earlier, the medical examiners had placed my brother’s body inside the van. The irregularity that whenever we decided to pause the video and run Matt’s wizardry, we could see the same winged frame of light, always on top of William.
“What the fuck was that?” And it wasn’t me, nor Dad, those were the words of the Honorable Madam Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
“Well, I have run the video through a spectrographic analytical software and concluded that the light was not visible by human eyes, as it falls on the ultraviolet range of the light spectrum,” said Matt, while Zoey proudly smiled at him, those two were perfect together.
“We are actually seeing a video that was already curated for us to be able to see it with our naked eyes.” Said Zoey.
“Roger, remind me why we pay our analytical department again?” Ms. Mayorgas, or Katherine, since she had asked us to go on a first-name basis a while back, asked Agent Steele, who had not asked for first-name treatment, always business.
“I have no clue, Katherine, but this must be classified and sent back to the bigwigs.” He said.
“What do you mean Roger? I am the big wig!” Katherine said, in a joking manner.
“You know what I mean Katherine.”
“Yes, I know what you mean Roger, and you are right, can we have a copy, Matthew?” She very politely asked my best friend.
“Already sent it to your e-mail Ms. Mayorgas.” Being too polite to call an appointed official by her name.
“The secret one,” he added, “The one for internal use.” he ended.
“My word Roger, remind us to fire the entire IT department after we are done here,” Katherine said.
“I think that would be an overcorrection Katherine, but will do it regardless.”
“What do you guys think happened?” I asked, no one in particular.
“William is alive,” said Joe, while Gramps patted her hand, which was resting on his shoulder.
“Joe,” I said, “I know that you and Gramps believe in the old stories, but there is no way that could happen. I saw him, he expired in my arms sweetheart, I know that you are in shock, heck, even I am, I saw that ‘thing’ mauling him over, savaging my brother,” I could not stop a tear going out my eye, “You know what his last words were? He told me to not look at him so, that a smile better”
“Stop!” said Zoey and Maeve at the same time, “Still too son Raulin, too soon.”
“Ok guys, have it your way,” and looking at Joe I said, “It was you, Joe, the last thing he ever said was your name.”
Silent tears crawled from her eyes, and Maeve and Zoey ran to her, even Katherine was looking at me as if I was a big jerk, with her arms crossed and moving her leg in exasperation. I was thinking that maybe I had just said too much.
“Well, Wiliam was the smart one,” I said as an apology, which only brought more tears to Joe, now even Maeve and Zoey sobbing, Katherine stood up and took the girls to the kitchen, to make them some tea. She was a real one that one.
“Well young Raulin,” Agent Steele said, “I’m glad I wasn’t the one who said all that to them, is nice not being the jerk in the room for once.” Which was the nail in my coffin... for fucks sake!
“Actually,” Matt said, “had you guys ever heard about the Shroud of Turin?”
“How do you know about that?” asked Roger, if he was going to call me a jerk, to my face, in my house, I would call him Roger, no fucks given.
My Dad’s face had gone livid, and Gramps looked somehow vindicated for some reason.
“Well,” said Matt “You know Agent Steele, in the spirit of full disclosure, I may or may not have run a lip reading algorithm over every single second of footage I got from my cameras, so I may or may not be aware of everything that was said by almost everyone that was there.”
“You know what kid,” Roger said, “You are going to give me every single piece of information you may or may not have, as in ASAP, you know, for the sake of the spirit of full disclosure,” he added. “And do you want to work for us? I could set you up remotely so you never have to leave the farm and only work per project, not having to do any hours.” he finished.
“Add a hefty signing bonus and a consulting position answering directly to the secretary of the DHS,” added Katherine, now back with the girls, and some tea for us.
Matt looked at me of all people, looking for support.
“Tell them you will think about it Matt,” I told him.
“Yes, I will think about it, I already have your contact information anyway,” he said to them.
“Now,” Katherine said, “what was that about some blanket in Italy?” she asked the room.