Oliver
“Geez!
I swear, Keene, you must need glasses – we’ve been coming to the range twice a
week for three months and you still can’t hit the center ring!” Tony O’Malley
was laughing as he popped the clip out of his Sig and stowed it in its carry
case. Oliver laughed along with him, although his smile masked his frustration.
Tony was right – despite all his practice, his shooting didn’t seem to be
getting any better. And after what had happened at the cabin, he was worried
that was going to come back to bite him – or something else was. However, he had
gotten a lot closer to Tony, more than the simple co-workers they’d been three
months ago. Oliver glanced up at Tony’s lean grin and spiky hair, and wondered
(not for the first time) just where this might lead.
Seamus
Seamus
climbed the stairs of the brownstone, fastening his toolbelt around his hips as
he climbed the last flight. The sound of hammers told him the rest of the crew
had already started. He rounded the corner into the almost fully-gutted fourth
floor and the foreman did a double-take. “Irish! What the fuck are you
doing here?”
“Just
here for work, boss.”
“Work?
What the fuck do you know about work? Two days ago you cut out early and
yesterday you don’t show up at all, and now today you just expect to come back
like nothing happened?”
“Sorry,
boss. My girlfriend got really sick – had to take her to the ER. Turns out she’s
got …”
“I
don’t care about your fucking girlfriend, Irish,” the foreman cut him off. “She
probably got the clap from you. The rest of us are busting our humps trying to
make an honest living, and can’t be carrying a freeloader like you. Get outta
here, and don’t let me see you again!”
Seamus
trudged back down the stairs, slinging his toolbelt over one shoulder. This was
the third job he’d lost in the last year. At least this one hadn’t been his
fault – not really. He thought about the thing they’d seen at the cabin –
stopping shit like that was worth losing a stupid job over.
He
passed a Hallmark store, and a card on a rotating display in the doorway caught
his eye. It showed a goofy-looking cat dreaming of a smelly, dead fish; inside
it read ‘Just thinking of you’. He smiled and bought the card, along with a
stamp. He borrowed a pen from the checkout girl, scribbled a quick note in the
card, addressed the envelope and slipped in a ten-dollar bill (his last). He
dropped the card into a mailbox down the block.
A
few days later his phone chirped. He checked the caller ID, and answered. “Hi
Daddy,” a small voice on the other end said. “I got your card.”
Seamus
smiled. “Hi Punkin! What’s shakin’?” Some things were more important than any
job.
Carlos
Carlos
sat in his office in the basement of the Museum of Natural History. It had been
a week since they’d found the stash in Baughman’s cabin, and he hadn’t been
able to shake what he’d read in Karen Barr’s thesis. He’d found no record that
a Karen Barr ever received a graduate degree from the University of Indiana (or
any other university), although he did see that she got a BA in Anthropology
there in 1980. The thesis advisor listed on her thesis, Dr. Harvey McManus was
also a dead end. However, he had been able to track down another member of her
thesis committee, Dr. Ruth Spengler, who apparently retired in 2003 but was
still living in Bloomington. He picked up the phone and dialed her number.
“Hello?”
“Hi
– Dr. Spengler? My name is Dr. Carlos Rodrieguez, and I’m a senior researcher
at the New York Museum of Natural History. I’ve recently come across an old doctoral
thesis from the University of Indiana that I think you might be familiar with.
Do you remember a Karen Barr, from back in ’85?”
“Do
I remember Karen Barr?” she barked over the phone line. “Is this some kind of a
sick joke?”
Carlos
gulped – this wasn’t the reaction he’d expected. “No ma’am – not at all. As I
said, I found a copy of her thesis and I just wanted to find someone who might
be able to answer some questions about it. You can check my credentials if you’d
like – this is purely an academic call.”
Dr.
Spengler didn’t say anything for some time, and when she spoke again there was
a catch in her voice. “Yes, of course I remember Karen. I had her in several
undergrad courses – brilliant student, outstanding researcher, and a very sweet
girl. We were thrilled when she decided to pursue her PhD. Harv McManus was her
advisor, and I was one of the members of her committee. But the poor girl
started unraveling. I think it must have been some form of schizophrenia, or obsessive
manic-depression. She’d started out researching common symbology across the
myths of different Native American peoples, but her scope kept getting broader
and broader, spinning out of control to try to link Nepali yeti myths and
Siamese serpent-folk stories with Navaho and Nez-Perce legends. She began
citing National Enquirer stories as if they were scholarly research. We tried
to refer her to the student counseling service, but she brushed us off, too
obsessed with her research to take care of herself.
“When
we rejected her thesis, she barely seemed upset. She said it was just as well,
because she wanted to rewrite the whole thing to focus on the “real”
breakthrough. She claimed there had been an entire pre-human civilization - I
think she called it ‘Valusia’ - that flourished during the Paleozoic Age, and
that these ‘Sky Devils’ of hers were their last surviving remnants. Naturally,
we told her that the University would not support that kind of ‘research’, and
that she would have to leave the department.
“Three
days later she went to Harvey’s home. He was pruning lilac bushes, and she
stabbed him to death with his pruning shears, then used them to cut her own
throat.
“Do
you really have her thesis? There was only the single copy, as far as I know.
If you do, I suggest you feed it to a shredder. Then burn what’s left.” There
was a click as Dr. Spengler hung up the phone.
The
call left Carlos even more shaken than he’d been before, but somehow
invigorated, too. The name ‘Valusia’ rang a bell. He could swear he’d come
across it before – something to do with a 1920s expedition to the Antarctic. He’d
have to add that to Harriet’s list of things to follow up on.
Since
returning from the cabin, he’d assigned his research assistant, Harriet
Goodman, to begin digging through the museum’s more obscure collection of
manuscripts, along with private collections at Columbia, NYU, and the Morgan
Library, looking for unexplained or discredited reports of cryptozoological
creatures or unnatural phenomena. At first, she was excited by the new
assignment – it was certainly a departure from her usual jobs of wading through
dry field notes of observations of indigenous cultures. But over the next few
weeks her normally chipper demeanor began to change. She lost weight and began
to look haggard, her skin sallow. Carlos often encountered her standing in the
alley outside the Museum’s rear entrance, smoking heavily. Twice he walked in
on her crying in her office; she’d apparently broken up with her long-time
girlfriend.
One
morning she walked into his office and took a deep breath. “Dr. Rodriguez – I’m
afraid I have to resign.”
Carlos
was shocked. “Harriet – no! What’s going on? Is there something I can do?”
She
shook her head. “My therapist thinks I’ve developed an unhealthy obsession with
my work. She thinks I need to make a clean break, get away and put it totally
behind me. I’m going to go live with my sister in New Jersey for awhile. I’m
sorry.”
Carlos
tried to speak up, to find some way to persuade her to change her mind, but she
was already out the door.
Tabitha
Tabitha
pushed the long file drawer closed and gave a sigh of frustration. Another dead
end. It had been weeks since they’d found Clyde Baughman’s footlocker, and she’d
been combing the FBI archives for any links to the materials they’d found
there. She’d started with the tapes. She’d cursed herself for not copying down
their evidence tag numbers, but had been trying to find what operations the FBI
had active in August/September ’72, to look for any signs of missing evidence
or possible links to Delta Green. But there were literally hundreds of active
ops from that period – surveillance of anti-war and civil rights groups, not to mention normal
criminal investigations of organized crime and the like. And if any evidence
had been stolen it had either never been detected or covered up well.
The
Ventaja case went back even further. It had begun in 1965 as an FBI investigation
into allegations of weapons smuggling out of Miami, but the case was closed in
1966 without recommending prosecution; there was no indication in FBI files
that Delta Green had continued its own investigation for two more years (in
fact, Tabitha could find no reference to any agency called ‘Delta Green’ anywhere).
Tabitha also couldn’t find any FBI references to the so-called ‘K Group’ that
Delta Green had apparently linked the Ventaja Corporation to. But based on what
Oliver had seen in the file, K Group had been a WWII-era entity, and few
records from those years had been computerized.
Ultimately,
Tabitha abandoned her search; she wasn’t having any luck, and she knew that the
more she kept digging, the more likely it was that someone would notice that
she was accessing records she had no business looking at. But she couldn’t
forget about her father. The FBI had no record of anything called ‘OPERATION
BACKDOOR’, but the surveillance photograph had to have come from somewhere.
She hadn’t kept the photo, but she’d taken a picture of it with her phone, and
she stared at it every night, trying to will the pieces of the puzzle to fall
into place.
Three
weeks later, she was at her Mama’s house for dinner. Mama was sitting at the
kitchen table, leafing through a magazine, while Gramamma made sarmale, traditional
Romanian cabbage rolls. Gramamma was nearly 90 now, stooped and tiny, but
Tabitha’s mother had learned long ago not to challenge her when she’d made up
her mind to cook.
As
Tabitha busied herself chopping smoked bacon for the sarmale, she took a deep
breath and tried to steady her nerve. “You know,” she said without looking up, “in
my work I came across an old case file. It had a surveillance photo in it, and
one of the men in the picture was Daddy. But the thing is, that picture was
taken in 1993.”
Everything
in the room seemed to freeze. Mama was still staring down at her magazine, but
Tabitha knew she wasn’t reading. Gramamma kept rolling the sarmale, but only
her fingers moved; the rest of her body had gone stock-still. “You know that’s
three years after he disappeared,” Tabitha continued. “How can that be? Do you
know something about Daddy’s disappearance that you haven’t told me?”
Mama
turned. Her eyes shone with tears, but she tried to make her voice light. “Don’t
be silly, Tabby. You were practically a baby when Papa died – how could you
remember what he looked like? I’m sure the person in that picture was someone
who just looked a little like our old family photos.”
“I
was nine years old, Mama,” Tabitha protested. “I wasn’t a baby then, and I’m
certainly not a baby now.” She looked around the room; family pictures lined
the walls – she knew damn well what her father looked like. “I’m a grown woman
now, Mama. I deserve to know the truth. Daddy’s not really dead, is he?”
Mama
stood up, trembling with anger. “Yes he is! Your father would never have
abandoned us, just walked away without a single word for all these years! He
loved us, and he would never have done that to us. He must be dead! He is
dead, and you have to accept that.” Gramamma’s fingers had stopped moving, and
she stood perfectly motionless beside Tabitha.
“Then
how do you explain what I saw? What was Daddy doing before he died? You’ve
never even told me what he did for a living! What was Daddy involved in?”
“Your
father was a businessman! That’s all! He put on a suit, and went to work for a
company in the City, and that’s all I know. I don’t know what he did, and I
didn’t need to know. A wife kept the house, cooked the meals, raised the
children, and the husband worked. That’s just how it was. I didn’t know what he
did, or what his life was before we met. I just knew that he loved us!”
“What
about you, Gramamma?” Tabitha turned to the tiny statue beside her. “What did
you know?”
The
old woman remained frozen for a few seconds, and then her fingers began to move
again, rolling cabbage and chopped meat into cocoons of pasta. “I know that your
father brought us out of Romania in a time when Ceaușescu wasn’t letting anyone
out, Pisicuță. When you could be shot for just talking about leaving. I
think he had to do hard things to get us out, but I didn’t ask. I knew that he
loved me, he loved your Mama, and he loved you most of all. That’s all I need
to know. Now don’t cut those so small, Pisicuță,” she said, nodding to the
bacon bits under Tabitha’s knife. “You’ll lose the flavor.”