“See that guy?” Camp asked, pointing back at Captain Wilkinson, who was unloading his gear from the tiny cargo space on the Vigilant. The men from 4a nodded in unison, eyes carefully attending the man.
“That’s my brother. You must keep him safe. I have to leave for awhile.” The Kachins smiled and nodded, happy to know that their leader had a brother.
“You will return?” Pagou asked quietly.
“Yes. Pagou, Keta... I’m counting on you. Don’t let him out of your sight. I’ll be back.”
As Camp loaded his gear on the plane, the Kachins warmly welcomed a rather confused Captain Wilkinson to their ranks.
Camp heard Keta, smiling, quietly tell the rest of the group in Burmese, “We will call him Uncle.”
CHAPTER 14:
Are they living still, those friends scattered to the world’s ends?
February 21, 1943: Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Lieutenant Barnsby was released from St. Francis Hospital in the morning, and was met by a car bearing Commander Cook and Lieutenant Thomas Arnold. He haunted the front steps of the hospital, dressed in a black overcoat, jacket and trousers with a black tie, black gloves and black hat. His thin, drawn face hung over his collar, almost blending with the white of his shirt. To Arnold he looked like a corpse come to life to attend its own funeral, but Arnold shook the thought away. The little Brit entered the car unsteadily and sat without saying a word as they drove away toward the docks. Arnold and Cook seemed in a similar mood. They rode in silence.
Barnsby had suffered what the doctors at St. Francis referred to rather guardedly as an “episode.” After grasping the notebook of the late Nathaniel Peaslee in his naked hand, Barnsby had remained unconscious for more than twenty hours, then woke suddenly, screaming incoherently about bizarre things. He was moved to St. Francis at the quiet request of the Department of the Army. Nothing was mentioned of his “abilities” or his affiliation with the military. He was sedated for a week and slowly recovered some semblance of his former self. Finally, as his condition improved, he was pronounced sane by the medical staff of St. Francis and was released. After a brief exchange of coded messages using one-time pads, orders from Major Cornwall called Barnsby home. Today he was to board a transport which would take him to England.
At the docks Cook waited in the car as Arnold helped Barnsby load his luggage onto a cart, which sailors would later move onboard the merchant marine ship. The grey sky hung low over the bay and icy water crashed against the pylons, kicking up the rich smell of the sea. As the two men looked out on the ocean, a huge transport ship heading out to sea let out a long, low sonorous hum. As the sound faded, Arnold could see unreasoning fear in Barnsby’s eyes. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone.
Somber and pale, Barnsby looked up at Arnold and said very quietly:
“Tom, this is all far more complicated than it seems. Peaslee’s vision and this Thule are connected. I just don’t know how. Be very careful.”
“How could they be connected, Al?”
“Something about the Library. When I touched the book, it was something Peaslee saw in the Library. He knew about the city in the Congo, or the name... I...“
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not very clear. Peaslee read a great deal about the future. I don’t know how. He read about Thule or heard about it or some such thing. He knew about it, and the creature that was in Peaslee knew about it, too. It went to the Jermyn estate to find more about it. It doesn’t make any sense. But it means something.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“I’ll try and get reassigned back to your group, Tom. Trust me, you’ll need me.”
“It’ll be too late then, Al. I’m leaving for Africa tomorrow.”
“Dammit, Tom—“
“Shut up, you. Get on the ship, go home, get married, have some kids.” Arnold tried to sound lighthearted, but the docks and the chill in the air bled all the merriment from his words. He looked around for comfort but all he could see were the boarding crewmen with faces clenched like fists, the drab posters asking people to buy war bonds, and a million different inanimate things which screamed of conflict.
Why can’t death be like this, Arnold thought. A place you go when it is time, with civility and comfort and a feeling of completion, like a trip from which you never come back. Instead life ended in the rending of flesh, in the consumption of every bit of effort contained within a form. Arnold’s men, the men who had raided the Cap de la Hague camp, were gone now, all but Steuben, and that seemed unreal to him. They had not said goodbye. They had not known they were heading to their deaths. If they had left when he was there, if they had known—maybe he would have felt different. And now Barnsby was gone, too.
“Goodbye, Tom,” Barnsby said, expression empty.
“ Bye, Al,” Thomas Arnold replied.
Alan Barnsby smiled briefly, a smirk really, turned and headed up the gangplank. Arnold watched him disappear into the crowd of men on deck, a black suit among blue uniforms. His hat was the last thing to go, slipping behind a group of men gathered in front of a lifeboat. It rose and fell one last time and then Barnsby was gone.
Arnold jumped into the army staff car. As it began to slide away from the curb, Cook glanced up from his endless paperwork with a questioning look in his eyes.
“That takes care of Barnsby,” Arnold said, and didn’t care for the feeling of finality the words gave him.
Arnold retired to his hotel, a dilapidated wreck near Needham on the outskirts of Boston, content to read through the paperwork he hadn’t yet covered. He left for the Belgian Congo in the morning. Things were rapidly spiraling out of control. Who knew what the Nazis were up to? Were they even up to anything?
In the fleabag room by the light of a single naked bulb, Arnold read of the catastrophe in France, the second mission, the one he had not been on, the one that had cost the lives of the men he had learned to call his friends. Arnold smoked and drank and read, trying to pull the bits of information together, to restore the separate filaments of thought that had been rent and split by time into a thousand different things. Arnold tried to see the absolute form of what they were chasing, just by considering a few of the fragments.
He read the report on Nathaniel Peaslee’s dream journals of another time and place, a report on the 1935 Miskatonic expedition to the Gibson in Australia, an antiseptic examination of the book Observations on the Several Parts of Africa, but nothing became clear. Instead his mind began to flounder in the face of the ever-growing wall of information. Soon he could not clearly assemble a chain of facts, and instead found his mind wandering, considering pointless, fanciful things. The way the rug lay upon the floor, the lumps in the yellowed plastered ceiling, the hum and click of the radiator.
Thomas Arnold fell asleep in a filthy easy chair and dreamt.
His brother Lucas worked summers at the Aladdin, the tiny movie theater in his home town of Dunsmuir, California, and it seemed in his dream that he was there now, in the back row on a Monday evening after swim practice, the rest of the theater empty. Was Lucas working up there in the booth? Arnold turned, but nothing could be seen past the scalding white eye of the projector. The rest was lost in darkness except for the window of the screen.
On the screen, with their backs to the camera, a black and white hero and his fearless companion trudged through a prop jungle on some Hollywood sound stage. What serial was he watching? Tarzan the King? Darkest Africa? Arnold could not recall. We regret to inform you that your son, Lucas Michael Arnold, was killed on 14 January 42 due to enemy action off the coast of North Africa. Lucas was dead, the Aladdin was demolished years ago and the war was raging. He was supposed to be in Africa, he was supposed to—
Who was up there in the dark running the film?
The music swelled, drawing Arnold’s attention back to the screen, just as the hero pulled aside a plastic frond to reveal a huge stone block cut into a perfect grey cube. As the music reac
hed its crescendo the black and white hero turned to the camera, his face filled with dread. Although he could not be sure, Thomas Arnold thought the face might be his own.
Then, pulled from the false freedom of sleep at three in the morning—a knock at the door...
CHAPTER 15:
I am part of the Darkness before man
February 21, 1943: Port Hedland, Australia
Joe Camp, sunburned and tired, crawled from the hatch of the PBM-3R flying boat, feeling something akin to relief, or at least delivery from the hands of blind fate, and smiled up into the sun. The plane was one of only four of its type to survive the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, and was called the “Ya Missed Me!” That bright green epigraph was emblazoned on the nose along with Bugs Bunny sunnily raspberrying the world, ducking a barrage of cartoon bullet holes. Despite its former luck, he didn’t care to test the aircraft’s fortune any further than he had to. Joe Camp believed luck was at best a dwindling commodity. Something about the plane’s upbeat name implied eventual disaster to him.
While airborne in the comfortable cabin of the Navy Transport Service flying boat, Camp could not shake the sensation that any moment the craft would come under Japanese aerial assault, a circumstance in which he could offer the crew no assistance. Being in terrible danger didn’t frighten him; it was the helplessness that got to him and ate at his nerves. The flight was the longest twenty hours he had ever spent. Despite the relative luxury of the aircraft—they even served him a Coca Cola with ice in it, for God’s sake!—it felt like he was flying about in his own, immense coffin. He found, with some wry amusement as he suffered through the luxuries of the Navy Transport, that he missed the reassuring sounds of the Burmese highlands.
The plane had landed twice in the midst of the endless ocean to refuel with the assistance of American Navy vessels, a process which left the crew as stricken by helplessness and frustration as Camp felt when they were airborne, feelings he could see stamped across faces that usually held the omniscient and limitless gaze known only to pilots. The crew of seven, all naval aviators, had treated Camp well, despite his Army credentials, and had even invited him up front to the radio room to play some cards to pass the time, an invitation he accepted more to please the Navy men than to distract himself.
Now on the far side of his journey, and at the beginning of a new one, Joe Camp stepped out into the sweltering heat and the fresh salt air of the docks as the crew debarked from the huge aircraft to Port Hedland. Out in the bay, spread out before him, lay a serene image of dozens of huge naval vessels, anchored and still on the crystal blue waves. Behind him was Port Hedland itself, a conglomeration of British-style houses smack in the middle of an exotic locale rich with native vegetation. The contrast looked somehow fantastic, although he had spent the last few months of his life in a jungle even more fantastic.
The knot of people at the end of the docks sorted gear and headed up to the shore, Camp lost among them. Past a series of wrought iron gates, Camp found himself in the midst of hundreds of Australian, British, and American soldiers moving and stacking boxes of supplies in various, apparently meaningful piles, each box stamped with its final destination in red ink. Camp found himself constantly jumping out of the way of the overburdened troops, to shouts of “Make way!” and”All right!” The Navy pilots, their mission done, rapidly disappeared into the crowd, leaving Camp in all the confusion and noise to fend for himself.
Camp, standing in his recently acquired civilian clothes, looked out of place among the enlisted men. The only thing that marked him as a military man was the drab green rucksack slung over his bony shoulder. He flipped his thick, black glasses out of a small case and placed them on his broad face, glancing around for his contact, an OSS lieutenant named Mark Steuben. His orders at Nazira informed him he would finally be briefed here by Steuben on the reasons he was recruited for the OSS in the first place—some psychological warfare unit called DELTA GREEN, which he never got the chance to investigate before he shipped out to the 101 in Burma. Joe knew the group, DELTA GREEN, had something to do with anthropology—that and his affinity for languages were the reasons he was recruited. After training at Camp X in Canada, instead of riding a desk for DELTA GREEN Camp was off to fill some holes in the line-up of the 101.
Camp shifted the pack to his right shoulder and his .45 dug uncomfortably into his back. When he looked up from readjusting his weapon in his belt, Joe saw the man coming towards him from the street which ran adjacent to the docks.
Tall and thin, he looked like some sort of religious type to Camp. Despite the scorching heat, the man wore a full suit, tie and all. It was the clothes mostly that identified him as an OSS man to Camp; the group’s propensity for often very expensive civilian garb had gained them the nickname “Oh So Social” from the other branches of the armed forces.
As he approached, Camp made out the stern set of his gaunt face, and the deep-socketed green eyes which stared back at him serenely. It was obvious now that the man was heading directly for him.
“What’s the time in Tokyo?” the man uttered in a flat voice, looking over Camp’s shoulder. His accent was cultured, vaguely British, like a Yaley.
“No time like the present,” Joe replied, finishing the code.
“Mark Steuben,” the thin man muttered.
“Joe Camp.”
“This way.” No niceties, no small talk. The man turned and hurried towards a run-down looking 1930s Packard parked up on the curb near the entrances to the docks. Camp had to double time it to catch up.
“Get in.” Steuben climbed laboriously into the car, which was covered in a fine, seemingly permanent layer of reddish dust, and started it with a roar of the engine. Camp threw his pack in and jumped in after it, shutting the door as they sped away.
“So what’s the news? You’re going to brief me here? When do I leave?” Camp shouted over the engine.
Steuben never looked up but shouted: “Change of plans. You’re staying here.”
“Oh?” Camp raised his eyebrows in surprise. Beautiful, perfectly painted houses zipped by on either side of the road, flashing past too quickly to be appreciated. Camp glanced into the rear-view mirror. His eyes settled on a second, similar car, which puttered along at the same pace, matching their turns. Something cold crept down Camp’s back and he found his eyes drawn to Steuben’s face, which was rigid with intensity. A rivulet of sweat dripped down the man’s cheek and over his thin, trembling lips. Camp could not be sure if the trembling was from the engine of the car or something more, some unspoken fear.
The road widened out into a cobblestone avenue, and the spacing of the houses grew until each building was isolated by great gaps of grass-covered hills. This was all wrong.
“So,” Camp stated, trying to break the tension by hiding his own.
“So,” Steuben repeated back, “...we’re here.” The car came to a rough stop with a screech of brakes. The apartment building was finely constructed but was in disrepair, and the street in front of it was empty of foot traffic. The building’s only sign of habitation were fly-covered piles of garbage stacked in the gutter. Camp could see no curtains in any of the numerous broken windows. Anything or anybody at all could be stashed in there.
As Steuben stepped out of the car and out of view, Camp rapidly shifted his .45 around to his front left hip in his beltline. Suddenly, just a second after his adjustment was done, Steuben’s head appeared in the window. Camp froze.
“Coming?” Steuben asked, confused, and then walked away towards the tenement without looking back.
Joe Camp got out of the car. He left his bag in it. Something told him he would need all the maneuverability that he had to make it through what was coming. Steuben waited at the double doors of the tenement, which hung open, unlit like a cave. Joe trotted across the street to meet him.
“Okay,” Camp said to himself as he climbed the steps, preparing for—what? He didn’t know. When he met Steuben’s empty gaze, he forced himself to smile
. Camp cast one last glance back as they entered the building and saw the other car, the one that had followed them, parked across the street forty feet behind Steuben’s. A dark-skinned man sat behind the wheel of the still idling vehicle, staring at Camp and Steuben with glinty, white eyes. Joe could not be sure, but he thought he saw others in the back seat of the second Packard.
Then he was inside the dark, cool building, following Steuben up a flight of squeaky wood stairs. Behind Steuben on the stairs, out of view, Camp practiced a reach for his pistol to make sure it would come free of his belt easily, and then slid it back in place, pulling his jacket in front of it. Somehow Joe’s senses were in overdrive, and every nook and cranny jumped out at him as they climbed, every nuance of the rotting wood. Every shadow leapt out at him, insisting itself upon his consciousness, like it was the last time he would ever see anything like it. Like it was the last time he would see anything at all.
Sadly, like a man heading towards the gallows, Joe Camp climbed the stairs, wondering vainly if he would ever leave the building alive.
Delta Green: Denied to the Enemy Page 19
