Last Things Last

April 24, 2009   1:38 PM

Four phones chirped, signaling an incoming text message from an Unknown Number:

421 8th Ave Rm 402 3pm – DG

That was it – just a place and time. And a cryptic signature. Lives were about to change.

Tabitha Suta

Special Agent Suta had barely slipped her phone back into her purse when SAIC Martin emerged from his office. He caught her eye and simply raised his chin, beckoning her into his office. “Just got a call from Homeland,” he said once the door was shut. “They need some support on a counterterrorism task force they’re setting up. Just looking for advice on how best to structure it, at least for now, probably just a few days work, and they asked for you specifically. You must be doing something right, Suta – people are starting to notice you. Good work – you’re making the Bureau look good.” He gave her an address. She knew it was meaningless as soon as she saw the room number she was to report to: Room 402.

Carlos Rodriguez

Carlos was already gathering his things when Dr. Hauptman poked her head into his basement office. “Oh good – you’re here,” she chirped. “I just got a call from Professor St. Claire over at Columbia. He’s looking for someone to help him review a dissertation, and thought your work on the Achagua culture would make you a perfect fit. Have you got some time?” Carlos suppressed a smile and nodded. “Perfect! He said to meet him at Schermerhorn Hall, room 402.”

Oliver Keen

Oliver deleted the text message notification from his screen. You weren’t allowed to have cell phones inside the bullpen, but he’d written an app to forward any messages from his phone through secure VPN to his workstation. He looked around at his colleagues typing away on screens around him, or talking over headsets to people half a world away. A wall-sized screen in front of him displayed a satellite view of a Chinese aircraft carrier in the South China Sea, with side screens displaying status of various Chinese air units, SAM batteries, and military comms. He was trying to come up with a plausible excuse to slip away when the Duty Master solved it for him. He pulled his headset down around his neck as he walked to Oliver’s station. “Got a job for you, Keen,” he said quietly. “CIA seems to have gotten their hands on a thumb drive they think might have come from Nobelium. They’re looking for somebody to vet it, see if it’s the real deal or not. They asked for you specifically. Don’t worry – you won’t have to fly down to Langley. They’re set up in a local spot here in the City.” He jotted down an address on a slip of paper. All Oliver cared about was that it said to go to room 402.

Seamus O'Riordan

Seamus unbuckled his tool belt and batted plaster dust off his pants legs. Around him the rest of the crew continued hammering away, knocking down great chunks of plaster wall as they opened up the interior of the brownstone they were demoing. As he headed for the stairs, the foreman saw him leaving. “Yo! Irish! Where the fuck you think you’re goin’? We gots 3, 4 more hours of work here!” Seamus didn’t look back. “My girlfriend’s sick – I need to cut out early.” His boss wasn’t pleased. “Fuck your girlfriend! I ain’t payin’ her, I’m payin’ you! Get back here and finish your fuckin’ job. Irish! Irish!” The man’s cursing faded as Seamus jogged down the stairs.

 

Special Agent Suta was the first to arrive at the rendezvous. It was in the main New York City Post office, the James A Farley Building in midtown Manhattan. Room 402 was a non-descript windowless conference room: long formica table, straight-backed metal chairs, a whiteboard at one end. Seamus and Oliver arrived a few minutes later, converging on the room from opposite ends of the hallway. As they sat down, the fourth figure strode in, tall, muscular, and covered in plaster dust. No one spoke to one another – if this was a Delta Green operation, they didn’t know if these other strangers were on the inside or not.

Three o’clock came and went. At 3:10, the door swung open and a stocky man with thinning hair bustled in. He was in his early 40s, wearing a gray suit with a Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand and a manila envelope in the other. “Sorry I’m late,” he apologized as he sat down. “Crosstown traffic is a bitch.”

He took a sip of coffee then looked up at the group. “I’m Agent Jacob, and I’ll be your Handler on this Operation. I know you’ve all done some work with The Program in the past, but never had your own operations. I’m here to let you know that the four of you are being activated as T-cell. Within your cell, you obviously can know each other’s real names, all that stuff – you’re partners, and you need to trust each other. But any interactions with other parts of Delta Green will always use code names.” He pulled a slip of paper out of the envelope and referred to it. “You’ll be Agent Thomas,” he pointed to Seamus. “Agent Teresa.” Tabitha. “Agent Tracy and Agent Tobias.” Oliver and Carlos. “Any records we keep will only use your code names. J-cell will be your primary contact with The Program – we’ll give you your assignments and make sure you’ve got what you need.

“Now, this first Operation should be a cake-walk – it’s just a simple clean up.” He pulled a sheet of paper out of the envelope and slid it across the table for the team to read.

“A former agent recently died – they just found his body this morning. Looks like natural causes – poor guy just had a heart attack. He hadn’t been an active agent since the early 70s, but he continued supporting the Program as a Friendly through the 90s – he was IRS, so he was probably pulling files, reviewing financial records, that sort of thing. Luckily his kids live out of state – they won’t be here until day after tomorrow. That gives you a chance to get to his apartment and make sure it’s clean. We need to make sure he didn’t hang onto anything related to Delta Green. Don’t expect that you will: Agents aren’t supposed to do that. But hey, people don’t always follow the rules, right? We need to make sure there aren’t any nasty surprises for the family, or anything that could prompt people to ask questions they shouldn’t. That key should get you into his apartment. Get in, sweep the place, and if you find anything, secure it.” Agent Jacob slid a flip-phone out of the manila envelope. “My number’s programmed in here. If you need anything, or run into anything you aren’t sure how to handle, give me a call. We’ll meet back here in 48 hours. That should give you plenty of time to clean things up. If you find anything, bring it here and I’ll take care of it. Any questions?”

The four new Agents exchanged looks – it sounded like this was really happening. Agent Suta took the phone. “We’ll see you in 48 hours.”

Suta felt like she was already ready to go – her service weapon was on her hip, and her FBI ball cap stuffed in a pocket of her jacket. The others felt less than ready, so everyone split up to collect gear before meeting at Baughman’s address. In was a blocky, concrete apartment building in a neighborhood like looked like it was still a few years from gentrification. When all four had arrived, Tabitha climbed the stoop and slipped the key into the building’s front door.

Except it didn’t fit. They knew they had the right address: on the list of residents next to their doorbell buttons they saw the name “Baughman” next to the button for 3B. Not expecting anything, Carlos pushed the button for 3B; it buzzed but got no response. They looked at each other in frustration – were they already stymied in their first mission? “Watch my back,” Oliver hissed, pulling a set of lockpicks out of his pocket. Tabitha stood behind him, arms folded and looking officious, partially blocking him from view from the street. He worked his picks for several minutes with no success.

“Let’s see if any of his neighbors are home,” Seamus suggested, and leaned on the button for 3A, with the name ‘Janowitz’. After a few seconds a woman’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Yes?”

“Hello ma’am,” Tabitha interjected, leaning forward. “We’re here about your neighbor in 3B.”

There was another pause. “You mean Mr. Baughman? But he’s … Oh. Ohhh! You’re here to clean up?”

“That’s right, ma’am,” Tabitha agreed, going with the flow. “We have a key for his apartment, but not for the building. Would you mind buzzing us in?”

The response was a long buzz and a clatter as the front door’s lock released. The group filed inside, and climbed up two flights of stairs. Oliver inserted the key into the lock and it turned easily. Tabitha waved at the door across the hall, in case anyone was watching through the peephole.

Clyde Baughman’s apartment was Spartan, with a patina of cigarette smoke over everything. A threadbare couch faced an old, squat tube TV. Between them was a coffee table sporting an assortment of mostly-completed crossword puzzle books, copies of Sports Illustrated and Reader’s Digest, and an open box of dried out powdered-sugar donuts, next to a half-empty bottle of bourbon. An open kitchen could be seen directly across from the front door, and another door led to their right, presumably into a bedroom.

“Let’s make sure it’s clear,” Seamus said in a low voice, and the team split up. Seamus moved to the kitchen. There were dirty dishes in the sink, and the cabinets were nearly empty: just a few dishes and glasses and some boxes of macaroni and cheese. The trash can held two more empty bourbon bottles. The fridge held remains of takeout meals and a six-pack of beer. All in all, Seamus reflected, it looked a lot like his kitchen. Except for a child’s drawing, stuck to the fridge with a magnet.

 While Seamus searched the kitchen, Carlos was going through the living room and Oliver and Tabitha went to the bedroom. The bedroom held a queen-size bed and a dresser. The dresser top was covered with picture frames: a couple, apparently Clyde and his wife Marlene, at various ages. The couple with a pair of kids, and then those kids’ graduation pictures. The daughter holding a baby of her own, and then that little girl sitting on a much older-looking Clyde’s lap. Next to them was a plaster-of-Paris paperweight with a child’s handprint and “Cassie age 4” painted on it.

The bathroom told its own story. The glass of the shower door was cracked and a towel rack pulled off the wall. Fragments of broken ceramic – possibly a toothbrush holder - had been pushed into one corner. Tabitha sniffed and wrinkled her nose. Jacob hadn’t said when Baughman had died, but it smelled like it had been awhile.

“Found something,” Oliver’s voice called from the bedroom’s walk-in closet. Tabitha joined him. Under the hanging clothes were a pair of two-drawer file cabinets. The drawers weren’t locked, but they were jammed full of folders full of papers. The two looked at each other, dreading the chore of sorting through all those files. “Let’s leave these for last,” Oliver suggested.

Over the next hour, the team turned Baughman’s apartment upside down, checking every possible hiding place, but finding nothing. In a small wooden bowl next to the front door was a ring of six keys. One was identical to the one they’d used on the apartment’s door, and they hoped another would fit the building door. Yet another was smaller, perhaps for Baughman’s mailbox in the lobby. But they saw nothing that the other three keys would fit. Two were pretty standard looking keys, but the sixth looked more like a small car key, and had a black plastic head with the letters “FJM” embossed on it. Seamus let out a low whistle when he saw it. “I saw FJM locks when I was in Afghanistan – if you had something you really didn’t want someone getting into, you locked it up with one of those bad boys.”

With all other options exhausted, the team turned their attention to Baughman’s files. Dividing them up, they began meticulously checking each sheet of paper for anything that might relate to Delta Green. Baughman was a pack rat when it came to paperwork. He had handouts and notes from every tax law seminar he’d ever attended. Warranty cards and instruction manuals for every appliance he’d ever purchased (most of which he almost certainly didn’t still own). Tax returns dating back to the 80s. There were three thick folders labeled “Marlene” containing doctor and hospital bills, insurance forms, etc. from his wife’s illness. The diagnosis seemed to be “hepatocellular carcinoma” and there was a death certificate dated Nov 2, 2002.

“That’s odd,” Tabitha muttered as she examined the death certificate. “All the medical bills were from here in New York City, but the death certificate is from Essex County.”

“This might shed some light on that,” Oliver piped up. He held up another set of folders. “Seems like our old buddy Clyde owns some property in Essex County, near the town of Keene. 9920 Red Fox Rd. Looks like he bought it in ’78, but the property taxes are up to date.”

“Shit, that’s almost to Vermont!” Tabitha groaned.

“Road trip!” Oliver grinned.

Having found nothing in the apartment, Tabitha used their burner phone to update Agent Jacob. “It sounds like we need to check out this other property, too,” she said.

“Yeah, definitely,” Jacob agreed. “Any of you got a car?” That drew unanimous head-shakes, which Tabitha passed along. “OK,” Jacob sighed. “Hang tight and I’ll get back to you with transport instructions.” He clicked off.

Everyone’s stomachs were rumbling and they were already debating pizza options as the filed out of the apartment. But then, the door to 3A opened, and an older woman walked out, leading a black pug on a leash. She started to see four strangers in the hallway, but then recovered. “Oh, are you the people cleaning up Mr. Baughman’s place?”

“That’s right,” Tabitha answered, trying to seem unthreatening. “We were just finishing up. Did you know him?”

“Oh no, not really. Just to say hello in the hall. He moved here after his wife passed, and didn’t socialize much. He didn’t seem to like Mitzi very much.” The pug wiggled its butt at the mention of its name. “It’s a shame what happened to him,” Mrs. Janowitz continued, lowering his voice. “Mr. Martin, the super, found him this morning, but by then he’d been dead for days. I hope that never happens to me.” She crossed herself.

But then a cloud of suspicion seemed to cross Mrs. Janowitz’s mind. “Does it really take four people to clean up a little apartment like that?" she asked. “And you were in there for hours.”

“Oh, you never know what you might run into on a job like this,” Oliver piped up with a smile. “Better to be prepared for anything, right? And we want to leave it spic and span when the family arrives.” They hoped she wouldn’t notice they weren’t carrying out any trash bags. Mrs. Janowitz frowned, but Mitzi was tugging at her leash. “I really need to take her out,” the neighbor said, excusing herself, and the team was more than happy to let her go.

Over pizza that night the burner phone chirped again, and Agent Jacob told them how to pick up a car in the morning. By mid-morning, they were on the road, making a nearly five-hour drive to upstate New York. The town of Keene was deep in the Catskills, not far from Lake Champlain. It was a small place, and they had to stop at a gas station to get directions to Red Fox Road. It was a winding gravel road surrounded by deep woods. They spotted a mailbox marked ‘9920’ and turned off onto a dirt track the wound another three-quarters of a mile before ending in a clearing.

They climbed out of the car in front of a single-story cabin. At first glance it looked like a log cabin, but closer inspection revealed faux-log siding. To the left of the cabin was a corrugated metal shed; behind it on the right they could see what looked like an outhouse. Seamus split off and made for the shed, wanting to make sure the surroundings were clear, while Oliver and Carlos made for the cabin’s front door.

Tabitha hung back by the car. Something about all these trees just felt … wrong. You were in the open, but closed in, all at the same time. She tried to reassure herself that it was just a city girl’s reaction to the country. “Yeah, I’d rather be on the subway than out in nature,” she tried to joke to herself, but she knew it was much more than that. When you were in the trees, no one could see you. No one could hear you. The trees held secrets. At some deep, visceral level, she felt afraid.

Seamus had no such qualms; he was used to being out in the open (although to be fair, not anyplace this green). The shed was unlocked, and he slid the door open. It held the usual shed stuff: an old lawnmower, shovels, rakes, and bow saws, fishing rods hanging above a shelf holding a tacklebox. A small metal boat sat on some sawhorses in the back, with a little outboard motor. But directly in front of the door, in a neat row, were four five-gallon cans of gasoline. Seamus unscrewed the cap from one to confirm its contents, then stepped back and squinted at the collection. What the hell was Baughman planning to do with all that gas? Shaking his head, he decided to leave that question for later, and continued his check of the perimeter.

Oliver had the keyring, and quickly confirmed that one of the keys opened the cabin’s front door. It revealed a musty living room and kitchen, furnished with second-hand furniture (or possibly very old first-hand furniture). A couple of bookshelves held mostly well-thumbed paperbacks, a few Tom Clancy hardbacks, and an assortment of board games and jigsaw puzzles. Pictures of Baughman’s family at various ages were scattered around the room, and the place didn’t look like anyone had set foot inside in months.

There were two closed doors. Oliver took one, and Carlos the other. Carlos found a small bedroom, bed made but covered with dust. Oliver found a bathroom: toilet, sink, and tub. Something seemed off, and it took him a moment to realize what it was. “There’s no water in the toilet,” he called to Carlos in the next room. He jiggled the handle, but nothing happened, so he removed the tank cover: also empty. He turned on the taps on the sink, and water poured out. “Toilet?” Carlos asked, joining him. “Why do they need an outhouse if they have a toilet?”

As Seamus circled around the back of the cabin, he noticed a mound of dirt some 10 meters behind the cabin. He moved towards it, and as he got closer, he saw that it was actually a hole that someone had dug, piling the dirt around the hole. Looking down, he saw part of a metal cylinder buried in the earth, likely a septic tank. The hole had revealed the metal hatch that would be used to drain the tank. And that hatch was secured with a hefty FMJ padlock. “Hey!” he shouted, turning back towards the cabin. “Who’s got the keys?” Then his blood ran cold as his shout was answered – from inside the tank. “Is someone there?” a muffled woman’s voice called out. “Clyde – is that you?”

Oliver and Carlos, inside the cabin, didn’t hear Seamus’ call, but Tabitha did, and she strolled casually to the front door. “Hey guys – Irish wants the keys.” By the time the three emerged outside, Seamus was almost back to the door. “I think I heard something,” he said cryptically. “There’s a septic tank back there, and it’s locked with the FJM lock.” Oliver and Carlos followed Seamus back to the hole, but Tabitha lingered at the front of the cabin, near the car. For some reason, she wanted to be ready to run for it.

“What’d you think you heard?” Carlos asked as the trio returned to the tank. He was expecting to Seamus to describe some wild animal sound. “A voice,” Seamus replied, and Oliver and Carlos exchanged worried looks. “It sounded like a woman. Inside the tank.” By now they were all gathered around the hole, staring down at the locked metal hatch.

“A woman? Are you sure?” Carlos whispered. Seamus nodded. Carlos looked around, and spotted a four-foot long tree branch laying nearby. He picked it up, and used it to rap on the top of the tank.

“Who’s there?” came a muffled voice, and all three men jumped. “Clyde? Is that you? Who’s out there? Please … let me out!” The three looked at each other, unsure how, or if, to respond.

“Who are you?” Carlos said at last.

“My name is Marlene Baughman, and my husband locked me in here. Please! You have to let me out before he comes back! Please – I’m begging you!”

“Don’t worry – Clyde Baughman is dead,” Oliver assured her. The other two looked at him in shock – had he really just told her that?

But Marlene was anything but upset. “Oh thank god! He locked me in here years ago. Now I can go home. Please – let me out! I need light, and air. I just want to go home!”

But nobody was ready to unlock the hatch just yet. Even if Baughman had been caring for his wife during her imprisonment, they could tell no one had been at this cabin in months – how had she survived? “Why did he lock you in there?” Carlos asked.

“He wanted to keep me here forever!” Marlene’s voice was weak, hardly more than a croak, but she was starting to sound desperate. “He thought I was going to leave him, so he did something to make me stay. He’d learned things, on his job. He read some ritual, from a book, to make me stay. But it didn’t work like he thought it would – I wasn’t what he’d wanted. So he locked me down here. But whatever he did, now I don’t eat, or drink – or die. Please, for God’s sake, let me out!” Her voice caught in a sob. “I want to see my children again, the sky again. I just want to go home!”

Seamus had heard enough. Taking the ring of keys from Oliver, he knelt down and worked the lock, tossing it free. He pulled back the hatch, and a humid stench arose from the opening – not the sewage smell he might have expected, but the stink of rot. A shaft of light shone down through the opening, illuminating a circle of shallow water in the bottom of the tank. Then there was movement at the edge of the light, and a figure appeared, hands upraised. Seamus gripped her hands, and lifted her out of the tank.

Marlene Baughman had once been a woman in her fifties. The woman standing before them was nearly naked, and large chunks of her hair had fallen out. The hands Seamus gripped were bloody and torn, fingernails missing from years of clawing at the metal sides of the septic tank; he released them hurriedly and frantically wiped his hands on his pants. Her flesh was bloated, skin peeling. From the shins down, her feet and ankles were almost nothing but bone, the flesh rotted away from years of submersion in filthy water. Yet she stood upright, face upraised to the sunlight. Their minds reeled as they tried to take in the horrible reality – this thing should not be alive. “Thank you,” she said, not looking at them. “You have saved me. I just want to go home.” Pushing past Oliver, she began walking away.

Tabitha had watched all this from the front corner of the cabin. She couldn’t hear their conversation, but she’d seen them standing around the dirt, then watched Seamus kneel down and somehow, impossibly, pull a naked woman from the earth. The menace of this place seemed to pulse in her blood, the swaying trees threatening to crush her at any moment. She saw the woman walk away, out of sight as she passed behind the back edge of the cabin. Tabitha rushed around the front of the cabin – partly to get a better view of where the woman was heading, but mostly to block her from getting to their car.

“Hey! Come back here!” Oliver called to Marlene’s retreating back, but she only picked up her pace. “Halt right there!” Carlos commanded, hoping he sounded more authoritative than he felt. She ignored him, too. She wasn’t heading for the cabin – she was headed for the treeline.

Seamus didn’t waste time with words. He couldn’t figure out what was going on with this old lady, but he wasn’t about to let her just walk away. He dashed after her, catching up and gripping her firmly by the shoulder. “We just need to talk to you,” he began, but Marlene twisted out of his grip and whirled on him with a screech that was so high-pitched as to be almost out of human hearing. She clawed at his throat, the exposed bone of her fingertips digging deep into his flesh.

Tabitha saw Seamus grab the woman then saw her attack him, and it shocked her out of the oppressive dread that had consumed her since they had arrived. She drew her Glock from the holster tucked into the small of her back, took a few steps forward and dropped into a practiced, two-handed crouch. She was at the extreme edge of pistol range, but she fired anyway, four quick shots. She knew she’d hit the woman with at least a couple of them, but she didn’t even flinch.

Oliver and Carlos were at a loss. They saw Seamus apparently engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the old woman, and heard gunfire from the front of the cabin. But neither was armed; they had weapons in the back of the SUV, but hadn’t thought they’d need them for a simple search. Oliver ran forward as fast as he could, but made no attempt to join Seamus in trying to restrain the half-rotted creature; instead he ran past them, into the edge of the woods, trying to cut off her escape route. Carlos also ran forward, but stopped helplessly, unsure what to do. “Just settle down!” he called impotently. “We don’t want to hurt you!” Tabitha’s bullet holes kind of undermined that argument.

Seamus ignored the pain of his wound and slammed into Marlene, taking her to the ground in a crunching tackle. He gripped her biceps, pinning her to the ground. He outweighed the old woman by at least a hundred pounds – he expected no problem in holding her there until his partners could put cuffs on her. But Marlene lunged upwards with inhuman strength. She’d have thrown Seamus off, but her rotting flesh betrayed her, as the skin and muscle of her upper arms tore away in Seamus’ hands.

Tabitha cursed as she saw her target go to the ground, her line of fire now hopelessly blocked by her teammates. She ran forward, pulling flexible restraints from her belt as she ran. Oliver, seeing her still struggling, picked up a large fallen tree branch, and tried to hit her with it, but she and Seamus were wrestling so violently that it simply tore up a chunk of turf. Carlos didn’t have a gun, but he did have a knife on his belt; he drew it with trembling hands and tentatively jabbed towards the struggling woman, but Seamus’ elbow slammed into his forehead, sending Carlos tumbling back onto his butt and the knife flying out of his hand.

Marlene let out another ear-piercing screech, and arched her back, then flung her arms and legs forward. Seamus went flying off of her as if he were a rag doll, landing on his back a few feet away. Marlene was on her feet in a flash. Oliver slammed her in the back with his tree limb but she didn’t seem to notice. Seamus, still on the ground, pulled his Ka-Bar knife out of his utility belt and stabbed up into her lower gut. She glared down at him, as if considering whether to finish him off, then took off at a sprint in the opposite direction, back towards the septic tank. Tabitha emptied her clip at her fleeing back; she saw holes appear in the bloated flesh, but Marlene didn’t break stride. Seamus drew his own pistol and fired. He too was sure he’d hit with at least a few shots, but Marlene kept running, and disappeared into the dense woods on the far side of the clearing.

Seamus didn’t wait to consult with his team – he took off after her. He hit the trees at the same place she’d entered, and immediately slowed down as he had to struggle through thick undergrowth. For a few seconds, he could hear Marlene crashing through the brush ahead of him, but then the sound faded, and all he could hear were the buzzing of insects and his own panting breath. He slowed down, pistol out and senses alert. He tried to follow Marlene’s trail, but soon realized he’d lost it. He continued on for a bit, stumbling through the woods at random, but he knew that the only way he was likely to locate Marlene was if she were waiting to ambush him. Reluctantly, he turned back for the cabin.

When Seamus disappeared into the trees, Tabitha’s sense of near-panic overwhelmed her again. The green leaves blocking out the sky overhead felt suffocating, and the buzzing of invisible locusts seemed to mask some other, horrible sound. She turned and fled to the safety of the SUV, hitting the button to lock the doors with a satisfying thunk. She watched Oliver and Carlos return to the cabin, shooting quizzical looks in her direction as they went inside. As her heartbeat began to slow, she pulled out the burner phone with trembling hands. She just sat looking at it for almost a minute, gathering her thoughts, then opened it and pressed the single stored number.

“Yeah?” came Jacob’s voice after a few chirps.

Tabitha took a deep breath. “We’ve got a horrible mess here,” she said. She hoped she sounded calm.

“Fuck! What happened?”

“We got to Baughman’s place, a cabin out in the woods. There was a septic tank out back, locked with a padlock, and they heard someone inside it. It was Baughman’s wife, who was supposed to be dead.”

“Shit! You didn’t let her out, did you?”

“I didn’t let her out. They did.”

“Fuck! How many dead?”

Tabitha’s blood froze. Jacob’s first question hadn’t been ‘How was she?’ or ‘Did you restrain her?’ It was ‘How many dead?’

“None. Seamus … I mean Agent Tomas got hurt, but he’s still alive. Or at least he was the last time I saw him. But she got away, into the woods.”

“Fuck me!” Agent Jacob moaned. “Fuck me! OK … OK … did you find anything else in the cabin?”

“Umm … we haven’t really searched it yet.”

“You haven’t … Never mind. Search the fucking cabin. Make sure there aren’t any more surprises for you to fuck up. I’ll see if I can get some other assets to look for the dead woman. Just finish your fucking job, and let me know when you’re done. I can’t believe you let her out!”

“I didn’t let her out!” Tabitha protested. “The other guys did!” But Agent Jacob had already hung up.

While Tabitha was throwing them under the bus, Oliver was turning the cabin upside down. Marlene had said her husband had read a ritual from some book, and he was determined to find it. He emptied Parcheesi pieces onto the floor, and flipped every paperback on the shelves open, but found nothing. Carlos had followed him into the cabin, but he was standing in the middle of the living room, eyes staring at a photo of Clyde and Marlene and their children, smiling at the camera from the front porch of this cabin. He couldn’t take his eyes off Marlene.

“In here!” Oliver called out. He’d moved on to the bedroom, and Carlos followed him on wooden legs. Oliver was dragging an olive green footlocker out from under the bed, a number stenciled across its top in fading letters. A padlock secured the footlocker’s hasp – not an FJM, but sturdy enough. Oliver reached into his pocket for the ring of keys, then cursed. “Shit! Irish still has the keys!”

The two left the footlocker on the bed, and went back to the cabin’s porch. Tabitha was walking towards them from the car, but she wouldn’t meet their eyes. The two men passed her, and opened the SUV’s back hatch, belatedly arming themselves from the stash in the trunk. Then all three headed around the side of the cabin, making for the spot where Seamus and Marlene had disappeared into the woods. Seamus reemerged before they were halfway there, shaking his head to let them know he hadn’t found her (the fact that he was still alive pretty much already told them that).

They all four returned to the bedroom, and Seamus began fitting keys into the lock. “Looks like an old Army footlocker,” he said as he tried another key. “Maybe Vietnam era.” They nodded; Baughman’s age and when he’d started his service with Delta Green matched up with that.

The lock clicked open, and he removed the padlock. Carlos had his gun pointed at the footlocker as Seamus flipped the lid back. Nothing leaped out at them. There was a lot of stuff in the footlocker, but all they saw for the moment was a handwritten note, right on top:

“I wish we’d seen that sooner,” Oliver muttered.

“No shit, Sherlock!” Seamus snapped. He turned his attention to the rest of the footlocker’s contents. Stacked along one side were several reel-to-reel tapes in worn cardboard holders, each labeled with FBI evidence tags dated 15 AUG 72 to 29 SEP 72. “I wonder if the FBI knows he had these?” Tabitha asked as she examined them. Oliver raised an eyebrow; he’d always thought FBI agents were supposed to be smart. Under the tapes was a flat cardboard Bloomingdale’s box, the kind clothing might come in. Inside was a man’s suit, neatly folded – but stiff with old dried blood.

Carlos saw an very old-looking leaf-shaped iron knife with a bone handle, lying next to a small dark glass sphere, about an inch and a half in diameter. He picked up the knife, and the sphere came with it; it was all he could do to pry the two apart. “Man! I didn’t know glass could be magnetic,” he said as he laid the sphere gently on the bedspread, where it promptly rolled a foot to stick to the padlock with a click. “This knife looks Anglo-Saxon,” he said, the sphere forgotten, “although the handle is much newer. Can’t tell what kind of bone it is. And I don’t recognize these markings on it – can’t tell if they’re just decorative, or if it’s some sort of language. Hey! What’s this?” Something else in the footlocker had caught his eye, and he laid down the knife to pick up a typewritten spiral-bound manuscript. “Sky Devils: Archetypical Figures in Native American Mythology,” he read from the title. “Cool! Looks like a doctoral thesis – University of Indiana. Aw, but it looks like it was rejected – too bad for …” he looked back at the cover for the author’s name, “Karen Barr. Wonder whatever happened to her?”

While Carlos was looking at decades-old academic research, Seamus was continuing to empty the footlocker. He lifted out three tear gas grenades and laid them gingerly on the bed’s pillow. There was a small leather pouch, not too old looking. Inside were a lock of coarse black hair, a few small teeth (baby teeth?) and some feathers. There were also two large accordion folders, which he handed to Tabitha. One was simply labeled ‘VENTAJA, which she recognized as Spanish for ‘Advantage’. The other was labeled ‘OPERATION BACKDOOR 1990 – 1993’. Both contained far too many pages to read quickly, so she set them aside.

With that, the footlocker appeared to be empty. They carefully checked for false bottoms or other hidden hidey-holes, but found nothing. They spread out to thoroughly search the rest of the cabin, but again came up empty. Clyde Baughman had apparently confined his secrets to the footlocker – and the septic tank.

Tabitha somewhat reluctantly took out the flip-phone and made the call to Agent Jacob, to report their findings. She gave him a quick inventory of the footlocker’s contents, and waited for instructions. Jacob’s side of the conversation was terse, as if he were holding back what he’d really like to say.

“OK, load the footlocker into the car, and put everything in the house back like you found it. I don’t want you carrying this shit into the Post Office – I’ll call you back with a drop point.”

Tabitha hesitated, but she had to ask. “What about Marlene?”

Jacob was silent for a moment, possibly choosing his words. “We’ve got eyes in the sky trying to locate her. You all have done enough. Just get the fuck out of there.” She heard a click as he hung up.

It took them longer to clean up the cabin than it had taken to search it, and it was dusk by the time they finished. Tabitha couldn’t get out of there fast enough, and insisted on driving. Carlos and Oliver had both kept some things out of the footlocker, reading material for the long drive back to the City. Carlos settled in to read Ms. Barr’s thesis. He could see why her committee had rejected it – it was a mish-mash of genuine scholarship mixed in with folktales, cryptobiology, and tabloid garbage. She tried to link Native American myth cycles with African, Tibetan, and Chinese legends with a logic he couldn’t follow; by the end, he was sadly wondering about her mental health. But still … there were a lot of similarities that seemed to go beyond simple coincidence. Could there be some seed of truth in there? The possibility was exciting, but somehow profoundly disturbing.

Oliver spent his ride going through the pair of accordion folders. The first was an investigation of the Ventaja Corporation, an Argentine import/export firm, dating from 1965 through 1968. It began with an FBI investigation into allegations of weapons smuggling out of Miami, but that investigation ended without prosecution. However, Delta Green had continued surveillance of Ventaja, and their ‘Agent Franklin’ (who Oliver strongly suspected was Clyde Baughman) uncovered financial ties between Ventaja and accounts mentioned in a World War II-era financial watch list called ‘K Group’. A raid on a Ventaja warehouse in San Juan, Puerto Rico, resulted in the recovery of something called “The Scheel Formula.” The accordion file included a manila folder with that title, but it was empty.

Oliver moved on to the other file, the one labeled ‘OPERATION BACKDOOR’. It contained papers that appeared to be copies of bank transfers and incorporation documents for a wide variety of companies spanning Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America. There were handwritten notes, on many of the pages, and based on the note they’d found, he could see they were in Baughman’s handwriting. It appeared that Baughman was trying to trace flows of money and purchases between a web of inter-related companies, but Oliver couldn’t make heads or tails of the financial stuff, and his head was throbbing from hours of trying to read by flashlight.

There was one last thing of interest in the file however - a black and white surveillance photo. It showed four men. One was seated in the backseat of a car, window rolled down. He appeared to be conversing with another man who was leaning forward, forearm resting on the car’s roof. They appeared to be on a dock or wharf; the car was parked beside a row of shipping containers and what might be the hull of a ship was in the background. Two other men stood beside the car. One man’s face has been circled in red.

“Any of these guys look familiar?” he asked Carlos, passing the photo over. Carlos studied the picture and shook his head. “You guys recognize anyone?” he asked passing the photo to Seamus in the front seat. Seamus took Oliver’s flashlight and studied the faces in the photo. “Nope. Tabitha – you want to take a look?”

Tabitha gave him a withering look. “While I’m driving?” Seamus leaned over and took the wheel, then handed her the photo and the flashlight. Tabitha looked down quickly, intending to give it no more than a cursory glance. But the color drained from her face, and her hands began to shake. “You OK?” Seamus asked, concerned. But Tabitha just stared at the photo. “Pull over!” she whispered, and Seamus guided the car to the shoulder. Tabitha leaped out while the car was still rolling, and Seamus had to throw it into Park. She raced to the guardrail, dropped to her knees, and vomited.

Her teammates gathered around her, oblivious to passing traffic. “What is it?” Carlos asked.

Tabitha held up the photo. “The man who’s circled? That’s my father.”

Seamus frowned. “Was your dad mixed up in something illegal?”

Tabitha shook her head, wiping tears from her eyes. “You don’t understand. My father was Delta Green. At least, that’s what they told me. He disappeared when I was 9 years old. In 1990. And that car?” She waved the photo. “That’s a 1993 Lincoln Town Car.”