Penthesilea's Wish: [Vol. 3]

Chapter Sixteen

When the 'closed door' intelligence committee reconvened at the University of California Regents Boardroom, Dr. Williamson was prepared to hear more serious testimony regarding an international society which was, by its recent provocative activities making itself more widely known. Nicasio and Professor Simons sadly expected the agenda would now morph into a meeting more urgent, more cautionary and certainly less academic relative to their involvement. The President was surely to make that clear in his opening statement.

"Partly through the work of these two fine researchers," Dr. Williamson remarked, holding his hands out judiciously to the professor and Nicasio, "we have determined that circulating around this archaeological mystery at Big Sur is a group of women who seem to be a part of a much larger, well connected organization."

The group attending seemed more poised now in their chairs, prepared to share what they had each gleaned from their independent investigations.

"We are gathered here today as a fact finding body to try and determine the scope and purpose of this secret organization, and why it is unanimously female in membership. What we do know at this point in time is that it is a network. A network suddenly drawing the interest of agencies the likes of which you folks work under. It's also a group that is making a sudden impact on an international level in the various news media right now. You could say some of these events are totally unprecedented in certain parts of the world."

There was a moment of silence following this dramatic introduction. Nicasio had no idea where the gathering was headed beyond that point. He only could not forget Daniela's brief connection with a female figure at the center of it all. His hopes were that Professor Vasiliou would not be focused on in a greater sense at this presentation, for Daniela's sake.

"I would now like to ask Mr. Dave Helms from the Central Intelligence Agency to brief us on what he has most recently learned about this organization."

The young, balding man with the neat beard got up from his chair and walked to the front of the table beneath the screen. He handed Dr. Williamson what appeared to be a USB and took the remote controller from him. Waiting for the president to insert the memory device into the nearby laptop, Mr. Helms, after several seconds, accessed the PowerPoint presentation he had brought to the meeting.

Suddenly appearing on the screen were the photographs of ten or so women. The pictures appeared to be taken from driving license photos or other official documents.

"These individuals you see," Mr. Helms expressed solemnly, "are linked to a larger multinational cell of women, we don't know precisely how large yet, but they are unmistakably working toward an ideological cause. Perhaps it is some manifesto which supports fellow females globally. But make no mistake, the homogeneity of it involving all females, we have substantiated."

There were several furtive glances over to the only female in attendance, Ms Caitlin O' Ferrell, from the State Department."

"There have been only a few arrests thus far in our own investigations with the CIA," Mr. Helms continued. "However, this society, if it's associated with the operations we are seeing and being informed about across the country . . . indeed, in other countries right now . . . it will begin to be confronted by more law enforcement officials and agencies in the future. So in that regard we are speaking of females in this group who might be involved directly or indirectly with certain serious crimes."

The committee remained quiet, scrutinizing the identification pictures of the faces of the individual women depicted on the screen. Nicasio could feel his heart begin to accelerate.

"The females whom you are looking at here today, ladies and gentlemen, are all full professors. And they're active on the faculties of Stanford, Cal, UCLA, USF, UCSD and Caltech. These are some of our state's most astute research institutions and all of them appear to have operatives in this organization. Actively engaged with their unique agenda."