Equally, she wasn't surprised to learn that the White Sands recovery operation had been undertaken without consultation with Roswell Air Force Base. It was normal for top-secret information to be compartmentalized.
“Marcel stopped briefly at his home, waking his wife and son to show them the unusual metal before returning to the base at approximately 0200,” Teal'c continued. “Cavitt returned an hour later. Wreckage from both men's vehicles was loaded into wooden crates. At approximately 0600, a pilot named Pappy Henderson, flying a B-29 named Dave's Dream, transported the crates to Colonel Blanchard's superior at Forth Worth, General Ramey.”
A B-29—a Superfortress—had taken off over the top of them, right on sunrise. Sam glanced at O'Neill, who was obviously thinking the same thing. “Sir, contrary to popular opinion and countless conspiracy theories, no Asgard wreckage or bodies ever made it to Area 51. We would have known about it if it otherwise.”
“Here's a thought,” O'Neill said with a hopeful look. “Maybe that's because we took it instead?”
“Why would we? We only need the power module, and the transport system—if the one on board is functioning.”
“Do we know for certain if Marcel arrived at Fort Worth?” Daniel looked at Teal'c for confirmation.
Inclining his head in agreement, Teal'c said, “General Ramey ordered the crates flown from Fort Worth to Wright Field, and Major Marcel to pose for a newspaper photographer while holding a damaged weather balloon.”
While Teal'c talked, Daniel closed the medical kit and returned it to the cargo bay storage area. “The photograph on page one of the Roswell newspaper.”
“That is correct, Daniel Jackson. Colonel Blanchard issued a press release several hours earlier, in which he announced that the Army had captured a flying saucer. This alerted authorities in Washington DC, who, upon realizing that the two crash sites were related, ordered a disinformation campaign, and that all wreckage and bodies from both sites be brought to Roswell Army Air Field.”
“Okay, fine. We wait until dark, spring An, and Carter can grab the parts she needs from the pod.”
“I am uncertain if An will survive until then, O'Neill. The bodies were reportedly autopsied that afternoon, then flown to Wright Field at 0200 the morning of July 8.”
Sam digested that in silence. Wright Field—what, in their time, would be named Wright-Patterson Air Force Base—might have been the assigned destination for the crates, but the fact remained that nothing from the Asgard crash had ever arrived there, or been sent on to Area 51 or the Pentagon for that matter.
That nagged at Sam, and she was about to say so when Teal'c added, “If this is indeed the morning of July 7, and events unfold as I have described, then an opportunity exists for Colonel Carter to access An before evening.”
Sam finished rifling through the supply case. No sticky notes, no hints, just ranch-hands' clothing for her, Daniel and the General that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a mid-western 1947 town. When Teal'c explained what he had in mind, it made a lot more sense than trying to sneak into the building in broad daylight, and it would give her a few hours now to make certain the jumper was fully operational. Except... “Teal'c, didn't you say there were several versions of events?”
“By remaining here I will be able to monitor air traffic, Colonel Carter. That will indicate the likelihood of events unfolding as I have described.”
“You memorized all of the flights into and out of Roswell?” O'Neill accepted the shirt from Sam and pulled it over his bandaged chest. “Never picked you for the train spotter type, T.”
As plans went, it was better than what they generally had to work with, but Sam couldn't shake her concerns over the eventual fate of the wreckage—and the Asgard bodies.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The sign on the diner said coffee and ham and eggs breakfast for less than a dollar. Nothing about aliens yet, and there wouldn't be until a generation had passed and a nuclear physicist with a penchant for conspiracies turned a quiet little mid-Western town into the UFO capital of the world.
Sizzling burgers and a clatter of china plates muffled the buzz of conversation and a radio playing, the announcer told them, selected music brought to you by Roswell's very own radio station, KGFL. Daniel and Carter made for the booth furthest from the door, while Jack positioned himself between a pair of blue vinyl stools and leaned on the counter. The decor was just like any one of a thousand greasy spoons that had mushroomed across America in the post-war prosperity, all Formica and chrome, faux-terrazzo floors and chintz curtains. Except for the absence of nose rings, iPods, and cell phones, the patrons were the same ubiquitous mix as their modern counterparts, with maybe a slight bias toward cowhands and enlisted men.
A pinstripe-uniformed waitress made change for a traveling salesman-type then turned to Jack with a disinterested, “What'll it be, honey?”
“Thanks, Dorothy.” The salesman jammed the butt of his cigarette into his coffee cup, stood, and, dropping his folded newspaper on the counter, exchanged a wave with the aproned cook. “See you next week, Casey.”
Jack ordered steaks for three and eyeing the newspaper added, “Can I take this?”
“Sure,” replied Dorothy, popping gum. “I'll be by with the coffee in a moment.”
Dodging a flypaper strip polka-dotted with corpses, Jack went to the booth, placed the newspaper on the checkerboard tablecloth, and, careful of his ribs, slid into the seat opposite Daniel. “Where's Carter?”
“Bathroom.” Daniel unfolded the paper and read, “Roswell Daily Record, Monday, July 7. That confirms the date, which means Brazel should be in here soon, assuming this is the right diner.” Daniel scanned the front page, then flipped to the inside section. “Don't you find it a little disturbing how much Teal'c's enjoying our current predicament?”
“Hey, it doesn't get much better than being at ground zero of your favorite conspiracy.” The frown on Daniel's face prompted Jack to add, “Now, Daniel, don't be jealous. If it'll make you happy, on the way home we can stop off in Houston and check out who really was standing on that grassy knoll.”
“Given a choice, I'd much prefer to know exactly how Alexander the Great died.” Daniel paused before adding, “Or more pertinently, Tutankhamen.”
Dorothy appeared with three cups of coffee and passing conversation. “Gonna be a scorcher again tomorrow. Bureau says at least ninety.”
“Thanks.” Daniel looked up just long enough to flash her a distracted smile, and then went back to whatever had caught his attention.
Jack batted a couple of persistent flies away from the open bowl of sugar, vaguely wondering what year paper sachets made an appearance. Probably about the same time as lattes, he decided.
“That's...interesting.” Daniel was scanning the text with the sort of focus that he normally reserved for books the size of a small suitcase. “We could have a problem.”
Glancing around at the 1947 Roswell diner they were currently sitting in, Jack treated him to a baleful stare. “Ya think?”
“That's...um...not what happened.”
Part of an upside-down headline with 'museum' in the text caught Jack's gaze. “How about we forget old—and, dare I say, completely irrelevant—academic debates and stay focused on finding An and the stuff Carter needs, so we can get out of here?”
“No, you don't get it, Jack. This isn't...” Stabbing a finger at the page, Daniel lowered his voice. “Oh, my God. It is.”
A long silence followed before he succumbed to the bait. “Is what?”
“You're not going to believe this.” Blinking, Daniel looked up at Jack for a moment and then began to read. “As part of a larger exhibition of Egyptian artifacts and mummies on loan from the British Museum, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently displaying the Tutankhamen collection.”
Personally, Jack couldn't see what was not to believe, but he had a bad feeling he was about to find out.
“Who'd have thought?” The grumble in his stomach was
probably more in anticipation of an unwanted piece of information and not, as Daniel's expression suggested, because he was hungry. “No,” he added, firmly. “You can't go to New York to look at a collection you can probably catalogue in your head anyway.” He picked up a small pitcher and poured milk into his coffee.
“We may have to.”
“Don't tell me. Couple of camping jars with Goa'uld stuffed inside of them?”
“Canopic jars. No. Worse.”
Jack waited for the punch line but Daniel's eyes were still flying across the print. When his grip on the newspaper turned white knuckled, Jack prompted, “Worse?”
“The collection,'“ Daniel read on, in a tone that suggested he knew he was going to win this argument, '“includes the massive stone rim of the well discovered the same night Lord Carnarvon died.'“ He looked up at Jack expectantly.
That didn't sound so bad. Carefully injecting only minimal interest in his voice, Jack said, “So?” Too much enthusiasm and he'd get Daniel's version of the entire history of the Egyptian pyramids. Again.
“There was no 'well' found that night or any other night, at least not the way they're describing it here.”
“Ah... That could be a problem. I suppose.”
Carter returned and slid into the seat beside Daniel. “I radioed Teal'c. Dave's Dream just landed. Eight military officers got out, including two Generals. He can't tell if they're Twining and McMullen but four men in black suits and another civilian also emerged. Teal'c figures they're the government agents and scientists flown in for the autopsies.”
Jack stirred his coffee. So far things were going according to what Teal'c remembered. “Maybe the timeline's only off by a well or two.”
“Sir?” Carter asked, looking puzzled.
“Five members of Carter's original team were dead within two years.”
“What?” Carter's head shot up. Wide eyed with indignation, she demanded, “When did that happen?”
Dorothy returned carrying three plates loaded with fried eggs, lashings of bacon, and hash browns—real hash browns, not the pre-packaged reconstituted twenty-first century versions—all but burying the massive T-bones. “You folks enjoy your meal now. Second coffee's on the house. Just holler if y'all want anythin' else.” The words ran together, trailing after her as she marched to the next customer.
“Not you, Sam.” Using a skill that seemed unique to academics, Daniel continued to read as he talked, blindly reaching around his overloaded plate and accurately zeroing in on his coffee. “Different Carter.”
At her blank look, Jack explained, “Daniel's found some Egyptian display in New York.” He picked up the bone handled knife and fork and started on the eggs. “He wants to go visit.”
Daniel tapped emphatically at what appeared from where Jack was sitting to be a grainy black and white photo. “I know this photograph. There's supposed to be only three people in it, not four.”
His voice carried a conviction that Jack read as guilt with a side helping of desperation. “C'mon Daniel, I know I said you probably know the entire collection by heart, but you can't claim to have seen every single photo—”
“You have to believe me on this, Jack.” The desperation downshifted into determination. “Only a limited number of photographs exist from that era, and they're all part of the Tutankhamen exhibition. This picture is identical in every way but one. There should only be three people standing there.”
Looking over Daniel's shoulder, Carter's face went slack. “Oh, no.”
Nothing like an 'oh, no' from Carter to put Jack off a perfectly good meal of undiluted cholesterol.
“Okay, what?” He tugged the paper from Daniel's grip and examined the image.
Against a backdrop of sand dunes and date palms were four people dressed more like escapees from a tea party at the British Embassy than archeologists. Despite the quality of the print, the tall woman looked vaguely familiar.
“Read the caption. Lord Carnarvon is on the left, standing behind his wife, Almina. The second man is Howard Carter. The woman holding his arm is...well, her face is shadowed by the parasol and sunbonnet, but take a closer look.”
Was it possible for coffee to curdle in your stomach? “Valerie Mitchell.”
“This is my fault. I left Vala and Cam in 1908,” Daniel said, his eyes carrying way too much guilt for Jack's liking.
“We left them, and we're going back for them.”
“But we didn't.” Daniel's gaze dropped to the newspaper. “That proves it.”
Carter took a deep breath and turned to him. “I don't like saying this, but maybe we're not supposed to. Think about it,” she added, forestalling his objection with a raised hand. “We were responsible for the accident that damaged An's ship and bringing down a Ha'tak in 1908. Maybe we can't go back for them. Maybe we're not meant to.” “Sam, you're forgetting the fact that the photo is only supposed to have three people.” Carter looked skeptical but Daniel plowed on. “Aside from that you need to understand the historical context. The man who financed the Tutankhamen dig, George Carnarvon, was an incredibly wealthy English Lord — thanks in good part to his marriage to Almina Wombell, heiress of the Rothschild fortune. When he was younger, Carnarvon was involved in a motor vehicle accident that left him weak and vulnerable to infection in the damp, English weather. So he more or less moved to Egypt and took up Egyptology as a hobby.”
One of the flies returned, fat and lazy, buzzing around their plates. Jack batted it away while Daniel fell into lecture mode. “It was an amazing period in history, and ripe for someone with Vala's talents. Not to mention her lack of scruples. Museums and wealthy philanthropists were literally buying concessions to excavate Egypt in the archeological equivalent of a gold rush. Carnarvon wasn't a professional Egyptologist, but he hooked up with someone who was, Howard Carter. The partnership would eventually uncover some of the most productive archeological finds of the era, including the lost temples of Queen Hatshetsup, Ramesses IV and Amenhotep I. In those days there were no antiquity laws, so Carnarvon, who was pretty much Carter's walking ATM, amassed the most extensive and valuable private collection of Egyptian artifacts in the world. Still, he didn't have the one thing that he really wanted—Theodore Davis's concession to the Valley of the Kings. In 1915, just six months before he died, Davis abandoned those rights believing that there was nothing more to be found.”
There was only so much of this that Jack could take, and no amount of caffeine, steak and eggs could help. Flicking the persistent fly into a sticky coil of paper, he said, “Daniel, can we please skip the history lesson and get on with the important stuff?”
“Jack, this is important because it's pivotal to the entire Stargate program.”
That got Carter's attention and, Jack had to admit, his. “Okay, but can you at least make it the abridged version?”
Outside, a couple of old Buicks and a dust-covered Dodge pickup trundled by, windows wound down low in deference to the stifling mid-afternoon heat.
“Carter and Carnarvon uncovered Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922,” Daniel explained. “Four months later, Carnarvon was bitten on the neck by a mosquito. No big deal, except he nicked it while shaving and it became infected. Within days he was critically ill with a respiratory infection. On April 5 1923, at 1:55am, he died. At precisely that moment, all the lights in Cairo mysteriously went out. Now listen to this.” He picked up the newspaper and read, “That same evening, Almina Carnarvon's female companion since 1914, an American woman named Valerie Mitchell, and her husband, Cameron Mitchell—”
Carter almost choked on her steak. “Husband?”
“—also died, having drowned in a large well that mysteriously erupted in a geyser from the desert sands behind the Giza pyramids. The waters of what would later become known as the Well of Ra vanished soon after, like a mirage. The Mitchells' bodies were never recovered. The curse of the King Tutankhamen had claimed its next victims.”
“Oh, my God.” Carter dropped her knife and fork a
nd pushed her plate away. “They found the Stargate.”
Daniel, who now had Jack's undivided attention, handed the paper to Sam, stabbed a piece of meat, coagulated with egg yolk and fat, and forked it into his mouth.
“The Mitchells' disappearance,” Carter read, “along with several valuable artifacts discovered in Tutankhamen's tomb, fuelled endless speculation— Hold on a minute.” She looked up at Daniel. “The Giza DHD was taken to Germany in 1906. How could they have dialed the Stargate in 1922?”
“The hand thingy,” Jack said, through a mouthful of steak.
They both stared at him blankly.
“The other Carter, the General one... Actually, it was the guy with her, Herbert. He had the hand device that Cassandra used to send us home after we left 1969.”
Stargate - SG-1 - 09 - Roswell Page 16
