Blue Darker Than Black

by Mike Jenne

  He cleared his thoughts to focus on the immediate task at hand. Orienting himself to his surroundings, he quickly spotted Hubbert at a booth in the secluded lounge adjacent to the bar. Tonight was Luau Night at the club, so the bespectacled engineer wore an orange Hawaiian shirt, allowing him to blend in effectively with the tiki torches and other glintzy Polynesian décor. As Hara watched, Hubbert chatted with a balding man who appeared to be in his late thirties, wearing dark chino trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt. While still on the phone with the Hara’s office, Hubbert had been briefed on the response plan, and he was obviously doing his utmost to keep the man engaged while not acting furtive or suspicious.

  Hara leaned against the bar, munched a half-handful of stale peanuts, lit a cigarette, and then gestured towards the barmaid, a heavy-set, middle-aged woman dressed in a brightly colored muumuu. The woman’s bottle-blonde tresses were set in a massive bouffant, lacquered board-stiff with hairspray, spacious enough to conceal a covey of quail.

  As he waited on the barmaid, Hara looked at the paneled wall behind the bar and studied the portraits of former Wright-Patterson pilots who had been killed while flying. He hadn’t been in the club in months and noticed that the most recent additions to the wall included several pilots shot down over Vietnam, as well as Tom Howard and Pete Riddle, who had perished in a “T-38 training accident,” according to a typewritten label under their photographs.

  The barmaid placed a coaster and napkin in front of Hara and said, “Jimmy … long time, no see. How have you been, baby?”

  “Busy.” Hara slipped a ten across the bar. “Hey, Sally, I need you to do me a big favor. I think that guy over there is trying to run some sort of scam on my friend, so I need to keep a sharp edge. Can you fix me a gin and tonic, extra heavy on the tonic, just enough gin to pass the whiff test? I’ll probably be ordering them for a while, so keep the same thing coming. I’ll run a tab, and there’s a tip in for you, also.”

  “Sure thing, Jimmy,” she replied, grinning. “But I had better not see you two walking out hand in hand at closing time.”

  “I only have eyes for you, Sally,” he said, winking as he reached out to take her hand. “You know that.”

  “Oh, you’re such a sweet, smooth-talking man, Jimmy,” she replied, fluttering her eyelashes as she poured his faux drink. “I sure hope that your wife appreciates the treasure she’s found.”

  Hara smiled and then walked over to the booth where Hubbert was sitting. “Stan the Man!” he declared. “Forgive me for acting surprised, buddy, but I don’t see you out very often. Did Gunter unshackle you from your oar?”

  “For the moment,” answered Hubbert, standing up and grasping Hara’s hand. “Hey, Jimmy, care to join us?” He motioned towards the stranger in the booth. “This is Eric Yost. He works on base, in that warehouse right down the road from us.”

  “Pleased to meetcha,” said Yost. On the other side of the club, the house band had started into a new set of dance tunes, so Yost had to speak loudly to be heard over the music.

  “Eric, this is Jimmy Hara,” said Hubbert. “He’s an A & P guy.”

  “A & P?” asked Yost. “You work at a grocery store?”

  “Airframe and Power plant,” explained Hubbert, nudging his black-framed glasses up on his nose. “A & P. Jimmy’s an engineering technician.”

  “Engineering technician,” sniffed Hara, sliding into the booth opposite Yost and taking a sip from his drink. “That’s just a glorified description for a wrench-turner. You could train any monkey to do my job, provided that you could dumb him down first.” He looked at Yost—if that was his real name, which was highly unlikely—and suspected that he might be seriously ill. He was painfully skinny, his face was drawn and his skin was pale and pasty. His hands trembled slightly, like he might have some sort of nervous disorder, and his left eyelid twitched erratically.

  The three men made polite conversation for a few minutes, before Hubbert announced, “Gents, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go hit the hay. Early day tomorrow.”

  Yost and Hara watched Hubbert walk away. Several minutes of uncomfortable silence elapsed before Yost warily observed, “Pardon me, Jimmy, but I don’t recognize you.”

  “So why would you?” asked Hara, holding up his empty highball glass and motioning towards Sally for a refill.

  “Oh, I work a couple of doors down from Hangar Three, so I see most of the guys coming and going, and I get accustomed to the faces.”

  “Then it makes sense that you haven’t seen me. I’m TDY a lot. Nevada, Arizona, you know the drill,” explained Hara. Now he understood how Yost had picked Hubbert out of the crowd at the club. The unanswered question was whether he had become casually familiar with the Blue Gemini workers, or whether the familiarity was the product of deliberate surveillance.

  “Yeah, I understand. So if you don’t mind me asking, what is it that you guys do in that hangar of yours?”

  “I do mind you asking, but to be honest, it’s not anything too exciting. I spend most of my days dismantling stuff,” confided Hara. “The engineers look at it, and then I piece it back together. Like I said before, any monkey could do it.”

  “I suppose,” replied Yost, obviously sensing that it was futile to pursue any further line of questioning. “Anyway, I’m sorry for being so nosy. Just too curious, I guess.”

  “Curiosity killed the cat,” quipped Hara, accepting a glass from the barmaid. “Sally, dearest, could you be so kind as to bring a fresh one for my friend here? Put it on my tab.”

  “Sure, Jimmy,” said Sally, wiping the tabletop with a damp rag. “Another rum and coke, sir?”

  “Please.”

  Hara was sure that if he spent enough time with Yost, he could slowly and methodically peel back the layers of the onion to determine what he was up to and which publication he was working for. He was fairly certain that Yost was pretty much as he presented himself. He clearly wasn’t a trained intelligence operative or a cagey reporter with any measure of street smarts. He had the air of someone who had landed himself in a jam and was presently clawing his way out. That didn’t make him any less despicable, but perhaps a little more manageable.

  With decades spent in counter-intelligence work, Hara was an avid adherent to the ancient Latin adage “In Vino Veritas.” Although Yost might be reluctant to recruit Hara because he hadn’t witnessed him going in and out of Hangar Three, a substantial amount of alcohol, liberally applied, might overcome his aversions. Hara felt confident that he could drink Yost under the table on any given day, and it shouldn’t be much of a momentous feat tonight since he was just sucking down diluted drinks at two bucks a pop.

  Finally, after almost an hour of throwing back hard liquor—at least on Yost’s part—the two men had become as intimately close as old war buddies. With his inhibitions loosened, Yost dropped what little was left of his guard. He leaned towards Hara and quietly conveyed, “Look, Jimmy, you’re a great guy and one of my best friends, so I need to come clean with you. I have a friend who’s very interested in your hangar. He’s with an Israeli company, and they want to compete for Air Force contracts.”

  “Israelis?” mumbled Hara, staring at the ice cubes slowly melting at the bottom of his glass. While he presented a calm façade, he was growing physically sick. His stomach was literally churning. Israelis? He seriously doubted that Yost’s acquaintance really was an Israeli, and now it was extremely apparent that this caper had little to do with gathering information for some slick article in some glossy tell-all magazine. How could he have been so stupid?

  “Yeah,” said Yost. “Israelis.”

  “Israelis?” Hara smirked, raised his eyebrows and laughed. “Then I really don’t think that your friend would be too interested in what we do.”

  “Don’t be so quick to think that. To be honest, it could be worth your while to talk to him. I’m sure that he would be willing to come off his wallet if it helps his company to land some American contracts. Also, I don’t know how
close you are to retiring from the Air Force, but you might be able to parlay this situation into a very lucrative gig later on.”

  “Hey, look, I don’t know,” answered Hara. “You seem like a pretty decent guy, but I just met you and I don’t want to put my security clearance in jeopardy.”

  Yost persisted for several minutes, until he finally persuaded Hara to provide his contact information. “C’mon, Jimmy. The Israelis are our allies. What could it hurt?”

  Feigning reluctance, Hara eventually scrawled his name and phone number on a napkin and slid it across the table. “Here,” he said. “I won’t promise that I’ll talk to your guy, but if he calls, I’ll listen to what he has to say.”

  After downing another drink, Yost announced that it was time to leave. “Maybe I’ll run into you again down here, or see you on the base,” he said.

  “Maybe,” replied Hara. He watched as Yost limped towards the door, and then observed one of his operatives leave the bar and nonchalantly follow him outside. Another of his sleuths was waiting in the parking lot, waiting to follow Yost home. Over the next few weeks, until he was arrested or the matter otherwise resolved, the sergeant would be under constant surveillance. A “flaps and seals” specialist would surreptitiously read his mail and his phone would be tapped. Since they were now aware that Yost was in a position to routinely observe Hangar Three, they would make subtle adjustments to limit what he could see. More so than anything else, they didn’t want to tip him off that they were conscious of his activities. As loathsome as he was, Yost was just a small fish; the prize catch was his handler, whoever that was.

  “You okay, Jimmy?” asked Sally, approaching the booth. “You look like hell.”

  “I’m okay,” he replied. “Do me a favor, please. Clear out my tab and bring me another one.”

  “Jimmy, you know I’m charging you full price for these watered-down drinks, right?” asked Sally, picking up his empty glass and rattling the ice. “That’s what you asked for.”

  “I know. Bring me full octane this time.”

  Hara seethed with anger. He despised traitors. It took all the restraint he could muster not to follow Yost into the parking lot and immediately kill him. At this point, his anger for Yost was only exceeded by his ire for himself and his own actions. It was virtually impossible to guess how much damage had already be done if a foreign intelligence service, even one theoretically benign as the Israelis, was manipulating Yost. He was responsible for safeguarding the Project’s secrets, and he felt like he had failed miserably.

  Aerospace Support Project

  8:32 a.m., Monday, August 18, 1969

  “Virgil, got a minute?” asked Jimmy Hara.

  “Barely,” replied Wolcott, looking up from a mass of paperwork. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Plenty. Is Mark around?”

  Wolcott glanced towards the door to Tew’s private office and said, “He’s indisposed. I don’t want to wake him unless this is awfully danged important. He has way too much on his plate right now; he doesn’t need any distractions. Savvy?”

  Hara nodded. “Do you remember when we briefed everyone on a potential security threat last month?”

  “About someone pokin’ their nose around and gettin’ too curious about what we do over in the hangar?” asked Wolcott. “Didn’t you imply that you thought it was some sort of reporter?”

  “I did,” replied Hara. “But I was wrong. We threw out a hook for this guy and we got a bite. A big one. Virgil, I’m pretty sure that it’s more serious than we thought. He might be working with a foreign intelligence service, maybe even the Soviets.”

  Hara looked at the floor. “I’ve bungled this one, Virg, and I’ll accept the consequences.” Swallowing, he bent forward and closed his eyes, like a shamed samurai offering his head to his master.

  “Straighten up, Jimmy. It can’t be so bad that you won’t be able to handle it.”

  “It is. I talked to this guy at the Falcon Club on Saturday night. His name is Eric Yost. Not only was Yost watching Hangar Three, but we also initially misidentified him as a guy named Dan Kroll because he was driving Kroll’s car and living in Kroll’s apartment. What’s so stupid is that Yost gave me his real name in the Falcon Club, and I was too quick to jump to the conclusion that he was trying to pass himself off as someone else.”

  “So what’s the connection to this Kroll?” asked Wolcott.

  “They work together here on base. Kroll is TDY in Thailand, so it looks like Yost is just housesitting for him. Virgil, I know you want me to handle things internally, but if there’s a foreign intelligence service involved, especially if they’re trying to actively recruit our people, then I’m obligated to notify the OSI and FBI. I should have already …”

  Wolcott gritted his teeth, shook his head, and declared, “No. The last danged thing we need is for the OSI or FBI to inject themselves into our operations right now. We’re at a crucial juncture and there’s just way too much at stake. We danged sure don’t need outsiders pokin’ their noses into our business.”

  “But …”

  “Jimmy, we’ve got another launch in less than a danged month. I’m up to my ears in the minutia, and it’s all that I can do to keep Mark from having a damned coronary frettin’ about it. So don’t trouble me with all the burdensome details from your end. If we’ve got a problem, just fix it.”

  “Fix it?”

  “That’s right, hoss,” replied Wolcott. “Just fix it.”

  Waffle ’n’ Egg Diner, Dayton, Ohio

  8:19 a.m., Monday, August 25, 1969

  Morozov abhorred the notion of conducting meetings in uncontrolled locations, but Yost had all but insisted on this place, ensuring him that they could be assured of a booth in a quiet corner. At least he had been right on that account; aside from the cooks and wait staff, there were only seven people in the diner.

  Four elderly men occupied one booth, playing dominoes and swapping war stories. At the other end of the diner, a middle-aged businessman in a poorly fitted blue suit ate a late breakfast and perused a trade magazine.

  The remaining two souls were a couple—both apparently in their early thirties and obviously married but not to each other—who clearly didn’t know what constituted appropriate behavior in a public setting. Judging by the tables that had yet to be bussed and the stacks of unwashed dishes waiting by the sink, the regular breakfast crowd had come and gone.

  Morozov was desperate. Besides Yost and his friend—Bob Carr, the medical orderly who worked in the base hospital—he had not developed any reliable sources at Wright-Patterson. The Washington GRU office was clamoring for more information about Project Blue Book and UFOs, particularly in light of Yost’s claims that the Air Force physically possessed and studied alien technology at Wright-Patterson, but Morozov had yet to provide anything substantial. In a note he had deposited at a dead drop, Yost implied that he was finally successful in obtaining contact information for a technician who actually worked inside Hangar Three, who was also apparently involved in flight testing activities.

  Although he had been specifically dispatched to seek information about Blue Book, Morozov was becoming increasingly convinced that the answers lay within the Aerospace Support Project. Since Yost had not yet been forthcoming with useable contact information about anyone working in that organization, and it was yet to be seen if his new “contact” would be of any value, Morozov submitted a formal research request to the GRU’s Department of Archives and Operational Research—commonly known as the “Encyclopedia”—to identify personnel currently assigned to the Aerospace Support Project.

  The GRU had been recruiting and cultivating sources within the Air Force and Navy personnel systems for several years, mainly to harvest background information on POWs being held by the North Vietnamese, particularly to identify any prisoners who might have access to classified projects or compartmented information. Unfortunately, Morozov’s request had not yielded results; the Aerospace Support Project’s personnel reco
rds were kept separate from most records and were not yet accessible to their sources.

  Despite this administrative snag, Morozov did have at least some slight insight into some personnel assigned to the Project. Although Carr demanded a king’s ransom for his labors, the orderly had proven considerably more reliable and industrious than Yost. Through his connections at the base hospital, Carr was able to determine that six test pilots had been assigned to the Aerospace Support Project. The clue to the puzzle was the hospital’s internal protocol for labeling medical records. Through some patient investigation, Carr was able to identify six sets of medical records with a unique code similar to Agnew’s. The special code and extensive lab work signified that the six had been subjected to an unusually thorough physical examination, as had Agnew.

  All six were unmarried, which was apparently a prerequisite, and they were all relatively small in stature. He was also aware that two—Howard and Riddle—had been killed in an alleged training accident earlier in the year. Another—Agnew, the pilot that Yost had first identified—had been removed from the Project for psychiatric reasons, and had subsequently vanished. That left at least three—Carson, Sigler and Jackson—still assigned. Carr had also identified a seventh man, an engineer assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, who had undergone the same exhaustive physical, but Morozov didn’t feel he was as relevant as the pilots.

  Morozov suspected that the pilots were probably involved in flight tests of reverse-engineered alien spacecraft. The tip-off was their physical size; certainly, a captured UFO could not accommodate anyone any larger than the six pilots. He strongly felt that he was on the verge of a breakthrough and hoped that Yost’s latest revelation would be the key that finally unlocked the door.