Changeling

by David Wood

  “You want to rewrite his missing book, is that it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t have put it that way, but yeah. And the first thing we have to do is put this place back together.”

  Judging by his expression, Kellogg found that prospect about as exciting as root canal surgery, but before he could reply, Professor ended his call and rejoined the conversation.

  “I have to go to Sydney,” he said with the abruptness of pulling off a Band-Aid. “Tam has given me the green light to join the search for Flight 815.”

  “Join the search? How is that going to help?”

  “There are a lot of wild rumors about what happened, but I’m guessing the authorities have kept a lot of information about the disappearance out of the news. Maybe if I can get inside, I can get someone to open up and tell me what they really think is going on, and that will give us an idea of who’s behind it.”

  The full import of his words finally hit home. “You’re leaving?” Jade was surprised by her reaction to the prospect.

  “Just for a few days.” He cocked his head sideways, brows furrowed in consternation. “I figured you’d be happy for the breathing room. You’re always telling me that you don’t need a babysitter. I think you’ll be safe here, but you’re welcome to come with me.”

  Jade tried to affect a mask of indifference. “Tagging along really isn’t my style. Besides, I’ve got my own leads to run down.”

  “You sure?”

  Jade was anything but sure. Although she would never tell him to his face, Jade liked having Professor around for a lot of reasons, and she was dismayed at the prospect of being separated from him for an indefinite length of time. But “tagging along” was exactly what she would be doing. She had nothing whatsoever to contribute to the search effort. The idea of sifting through the disaster zone that was Roche’s library was not particularly appealing, but it was something she could do, and truth be told, she wanted to know the secret that had evidently cost Roche his life.

  She looked away, hoping that he would not see the hesitancy in her eyes, afraid that if he asked again, she might not be able to refuse. As she did, she glimpsed another book title. Like the others, it was a slapdash production; the cover featured a sepia-tinted black and white photograph, emblazoned with bold red letters in a Comic Sans typeface. It was the letters that had caught her eye, or rather the words they formed:

  Fogou: Doors to the Underworld

  She picked the book up and murmured the title, or at least a phonetic approximation of it. “Foh-goo.”

  She flipped it over and glanced at the back matter. Fogou, she learned, was a term for ancient Iron Age subterranean vaults scattered throughout Cornwall and Scotland. The brief description of the dugout chambers reminded her of the kivas used by Native Americans in the southwestern United States, but that was not what had initially aroused her interest. Rather it was that word.

  Fogou.

  It was what Gerald Roche had said with his dying breath.

  She raised her eyes to Professor and managed a smile. “I’m sure. Be sure to send me a postcard from Down Under.”

  EIGHT

  Kilmaurs, Scotland

  The gray drizzle permeating London intensified to an almost constant downpour the further north Jade traveled, but as she left the urban and suburban environs of the metropolitan area behind, Jade’s mood steadily improved.

  Part of the reason for this change was the almost magical contrast between the stormy sky and the green pastures and fields of rural Great Britain and the Scottish Lowlands. Although it was a lot colder and darker than she ordinarily preferred, she could understand how people could easily romanticize the moorlands and heath.

  Mostly however, the reason for her elevated spirits lay with the fact that every mile brought her closer to a tangible objective.

  She arrived in Kilmaurs, a picturesque settlement in East Ayrshire, Scotland, on the afternoon of her third day in the United Kingdom. It had taken her that long to make sense of the clue she had discovered in Roche’s library, though in truth, it was not much of a clue.

  She had not shared her discovery with Professor, who probably would have told her that she had misheard Roche, nor had she discussed it with Kellogg, who probably wouldn’t have known what to make of it. Because it was such a slim lead, she decided the best course of action was to continue with the plan to conduct a methodical search of Roche’s home. After seeing Professor off, she and Kellogg returned to Mortlake and started sifting through the mess. The clean-up was not that much different than what she did everyday on a dig site.

  That first evening, after several ultimately fruitless hours of reconstructing Roche’s research library and sweeping up shards of broken glass, Jade yielded to her nagging curiosity and read the book about fogous. It was a short read, long on folklore and quick to jump to the kind of sensational conclusions that would have thrilled fans of the Alien Explorers television series.

  She learned that there were only fifteen confirmed fogous in the United Kingdom, but similar structures—called erdstall tunnels—could be found all over western Europe. Although there was no uniformity in structure, both fogous and erdstalls were dry stone chambers, about six feet deep and five feet wide, usually found near the center of ancient settlements. There was no clear consensus on their function. Food storage and shelter were obvious explanations, but the discovery of what appeared to be religious artifacts had led some scholars to believe that the fogous served a ritualistic purpose. The author of the book had gone a step further, proposing that the fogous were doorways between the human world and the world inhabited by faerie creatures, which reminded Jade of Roche’s comments about Changelings having their roots in faerie lore. What was not so apparent however was why Roche had chosen to expend his last breath to point her in this direction. There was nothing in the book that leapt out at her.

  The next morning, she and Kellogg went back to work at Roche’s home, and while she found nothing more in the dead man’s personal effects to help make sense of the clue, she was able to make a few casual inquiries of Kellogg, and learned that Roche owned a hunting lodge near Kilmaurs, west of Glasgow. Kilmaurs, which took its name from the Gaelic Cil Mor Ais, which meant “Great Cairn”, was the site of a fogou that had yielded several artifacts including a knobby orb of carved stone, the purpose of which, like the chamber in which it had been discovered, remained a mystery. It was, as Professor might say, pretty thin soup, and she had no idea what it was she was supposed to be looking for, but Jade felt certain that Roche had been trying to direct her to the fogou at Kilmaurs. If she was wrong, there were still fourteen other possibilities.

  As she left the motorway behind and began navigating the narrow backroads through farm country, her excitement began to wane a little. There would be no concealing the fact that she was an outsider and there was no telling how the local residents would react to her presence. Without their help there would be little chance of finding Roche’s hunting lodge, to say nothing of the fogou site. Dealing with the natives, whether it was a primitive tribe in Central America or a rancher in middle America, was one of the most challenging aspects of archaeology, but through trial and error, Jade had developed a knack for charming even the most suspicious locals.

  After booking a room for the night at a roadside inn, Jade asked the clerk about the fogou, and after some confusion stemming from her pronunciation—“D’ya mean the fuggy hole at Jocksthorn Farm?”—she was given a hand-drawn map that would, if the clerk was not having a bit of fun at her expense, take her right to the “fuggy hole.” Jade thanked the clerk and then asked for a dinner recommendation.

  “You’ll want to visit the Weston Tavern,” the clerk told her. “Try the haggis, neeps and tatties, if only to say you did.”

  “I’ll do that,” Jade lied. For the first time since his departure, Jade was actually glad for Professor’s absence, as he would have almost certainly double-dog dared her to eat the traditional Scottish meal of sheep’s stomach stu
ffed with organ meats and oatmeal, and served with turnips and mashed potatoes. As it was, she had no intention of stopping for dinner, not with the goal finally within reach.

  Armed only with a flashlight, she braved the chilly rain and set out on foot from the hotel for the two mile walk to Jocksthorn Farm, a forested parcel of land that jutted up out of the rolling fields like an island in a sea of green. After a quick look around to make sure that no one was around to observe her, Jade, hopped over the low stone guardrail and ventured into the woods.

  The map was of little use since there were no landmarks to speak of, but twenty minutes of methodical searching finally brought her to a fenced area surrounding a hole in the ground that, if the hotel clerk was to be believed, was the entrance to the fogou. Jade climbed the fence, switched on her light and dropped into the opening.

  The ground at the bottom of the hole was covered with loose soil and moss, but just a few steps into the covered passage brought Jade to a tunnel with gently sloping walls of carefully fitted stones—a technique called “battering”—reinforced every few feet with buttresses and corbels, and roofed with large stone slabs that easily held the weight of the earth above. The floor was damp but mostly clean and free of debris. Jade proceeded slowly down the passage, playing the beam of her light on every crack and crevice, looking for anything that might reveal the reason for Roche’s interest, but aside from the obvious craftsmanship required to construct the subterranean vault, there was nothing remarkable about the tunnel leading into fogou. After about twenty-five feet however, the passage opened into the central chamber and Jade was obligated to revise that opinion.

  The heart of the fogou was a broad circular chamber. The battered stone walls sloped outward gently up to a point higher than Jade’s waist, then reversed, with each successive layer of rock overhanging the layer beneath it to create an inward slope that continued all the way up to form a domed ceiling. It took Jade a moment to realize that she was standing in a roughly spherical room, remarkably similar to the cavern she and Rafi had fallen into in Peru.

  Jade glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye, a man standing beside her, lurking in the gloom. She spun toward the shape, aiming the light where she thought his eyes would be, but the flashlight beam revealed nothing but stacked rock.

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. Her eyes had tricked her. The similarity to the Paracas chamber had triggered a subconscious memory of the strange “ghost” hallucinations, and her imagination had taken care of the rest. That was the most plausible explanation, but she could not shake the feeling that she was missing something.

  She took another breath. She had not thought about the ghosts since leaving Peru. That particular mystery had taken a back seat, yet she recalled now that Roche had asked about her discovery. Almost as if he knew, she thought. As if he had seen something like it.

  Jade shone the light around, searching for more ghosts, but instead of the elusive and ephemeral shapes, her beam picked out something almost as fleeting. A shadow, sliver thin, cast by a rock protruding ever so slightly from the thousands just like it, stacked up to form the curving walls of the fogou. She took out her pocket knife, a Victorinox Swiss Army Tinker model. Professor had laughingly called her “MacGyver” when she’d purchased the slim red folding knife, but it was a lot easier to keep in a pocket than the bulky Leatherman multi-tool he favored. She opened one of the smaller blades and worked it into the crack between the stones. The protruding rock shifted enough for her to grab one end with thumb and forefinger, allowing her to wriggle it loose, revealing a small cavity the width of her thumb.

  Her light glinted off a polished surface inside the hollow and a probing finger teased out a rectangle of plastic that she immediately recognized as a USB compatible thumb drive. Jade closed her fist around in and allowed herself a smile off satisfaction. Without a computer, it was impossible to say what the external storage device contained, but her instincts told her that she had found Roche’s missing manuscript.

  She turned to leave but then froze as her light revealed something else, a human shape standing in the mouth of the tunnel, and this time, it was no ghost.

  NINE

  Sydney, Australia

  If there was one thing Professor had learned during his time in uniform, it was that, no matter the location, branch of service or flag they flew, military bases were all pretty much the same. It wasn’t a physical similarity, though block construction and grim utilitarian uniformity were a constant, but rather something less tangible. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but Royal Australian Air Force Base Richmond on the outskirts of Sydney was no exception.

  Even before getting past the main gate, as he waited beside his rental car for his bona fides to be checked and his visitor’s pass to be issued, Professor felt like he had been transported back in time twenty years to when he was a freshly scrubbed swabbie arriving at Coronado to begin Basic Underwater Demolitions/SEAL training. He found himself automatically checking the rank of every Aussie airmen that passed by, separating officers from enlisted like he used to do in the old days, just in case a salute was required. He had to fight the urge to stand at parade rest.

  The airmen manning the gate handed him a clip-on pass and supplied instructions on how to find the ad hoc command center where the ongoing search for Flight 815 was being coordinated. Although the Australian Transportation Safety Bureau was the lead agency, there were more than a dozen different organizations—military, civilian, and private—and hundreds of aircraft looking for the plane, which made the RAAF base the ideal hub from which to oversee the effort.

  Professor was posing as an FBI counter-terrorism consultant, on loan to the Australian government. The cover was vaguely defined, just official enough to allow him to hang out at the fringes of the search, ask a lot of questions, and get a feel for what had really happened. He did not expect to do any actual consulting, but if there was information being withheld from the public, something that provided a more concrete link to Roche’s murder, he had to find it. He had opted for casual attire—chinos and a navy blue polo shirt—but thought his Explorer fedora might set the wrong tone. It stayed in the rental car.

  He decided to begin his search by introducing himself to ATSB operations manager Steven Sousa, the man in charge, notionally at least, but despite the fact that he had both emailed ahead to make an appointment and called to confirm, Sousa was nowhere to be found. The ATSB office was all but deserted. The lone agent manning the phones answered Professor’s inquiries about Sousa’s whereabouts with a shrug, which left him little choice but to park himself in a chair outside the office and wait.

  Sousa arrived two hours later, a stout balding man with a haggard expression but a determined carriage. He brushed past Professor and went straight into the office where he immediately began making a phone call. Professor slipped in behind him and took a seat in front of the desk. Sousa acknowledged his presence with an irritated frown, but continued with his phone call—which mostly consisted of “No, sir. Not yet, sir” delivered with an almost stereotypically thick Aussie accent—as if Professor were not even there.

  Finally, after a promise of “right away, sir,” Sousa hung up and leaned across his desk. “Let’s hear it.”

  Professor offered a cordial smile and proffered his bogus credential pack. “I’m Chapman. FBI counter-terrorism.”

  “Great. Another seppo.”

  It did not sound like a question so Professor let it go. “I’ve got some questions I need answered and then I’ll be out of your ha… errr, your way.”

  Sousa let out a noncommittal grunt. “Fine. Ask your questions. Hope you don’t mind if I keep working.” He reached for a stack of papers and began leafing through them.

  The man’s recalcitrant attitude was the main reason Professor had not simply conducted this interview by phone. Getting anything useful out Sousa was going to be like pulling teeth. He decided to push back a little. “We’re on the same te
am, Sousa. I’m not here to piss on your hubcaps. As soon as I get what I came for, I’m gone. How long that will take is up to you.”

  Sousa glared at him for a moment then tossed the papers down and folded his arms across his chest. “Go on.”

  Professor took out a notepad and pen. “For starters, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened. I’ve heard what the news media are saying, and just about every crazy conspiracy theory imaginable. Now I want to hear it from you. What really happened to that plane?”

  “What happened is that the plane bloody vanished.”

  Professor’s pen remained poised above the page, but he said nothing.

  Sousa sighed. “The aircraft took off from SYD at 0958. It’s a daily flight, originating here, not a turnaround, so the plane received a thorough maintenance evaluation before departure. Not so much as a loose nut anywhere on that bird. The flight left on time, and everything was fine until it wasn’t.”

  Professor had just started writing, but stopped at the cryptic comment. “What does that mean?”

  Sousa gave him a hard look. “You know anything about how airplanes work?”

  “I understand principles of lift and aerodynamics, if that’s what you mean.”

  “It’s not.” Another sigh. “I’m talking about the air traffic control system. People watch movies and they get this idea that ATC is like some kind of computer game, with a great big screen and little lights that show the exact location of every aircraft in the sky.”

  “It’s not?”

  “At any given moment, there are close to seven thousand commercial flights in the sky worldwide. There are more than a thousand different air carriers, and a lot of them are flying old birds that haven’t been fully upgraded with the latest bells and whistles. Air traffic control has to manage all of them, and the only way to do that is with radar and radio navigation. Both of those rely on line of sight, which isn’t terribly useful a thousand miles out over the Pacific Ocean. There are a lot of gaps in radar coverage. Planes aren’t tracked in real time. Sometimes, we don’t know there’s a problem until a plane fails to show up, or misses a scheduled check-in. What we know about this plane is that they reported in right on schedule for the first three hours or so, and then…nothing.”