by Mayer, Bob
“Hey, Top,” Caruso said, “you should see some of the things we’ve seen at Leavenworth. Anything is better than that.”
Eagle knew Caruso was wrong, but he didn’t think it prudent to correct him.
“Let’s move out.”
Manhattan, New York, 1929. 29 October
The guy was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Ivar had known the wounds were fatal, but he’d tried and there was comfort in that. He’d held the man’s hand as the light faded from his eyes, and Ivar had to suppose that was better than dying alone in the dark in some rat-infested alley. Or in the middle of Wall Street.
Ivar was now alone in a dingy basement via an alley. He’d been able to make it only a hundred yards, carrying the man, before his energy gave out. He broke a window, pushed the man through, and then followed. It had been pitch black inside, but with dawn lighting up the smeared half-windows at street level, he could see his surroundings a bit better. Crates were haphazardly stacked throughout the room and there was a door at the far end from where Ivar sat with the body.
Reluctantly, because he knew nothing good could come of it, having been a Nightstalker long enough to understand that, Ivar opened the bloodstained canvas bag.
He stared at the contents for several moments, trying to comprehend what he was seeing.
Several thick wads of $10,000 bills. He hadn’t even known—
The first $10,000 bill was printed just a year previously, in 1928, when the entire banknote system was overhauled. The actual notes were shrunk, an inch less in length and half an inch taken off in width. A $500 (William McKinley), $1,000 (Grover Cleveland), $5,000 (James Madison) and $10,000 bill (Salmon P. Chase) were circulated.
Who the hell was—
Sixth Chief Justice of the United States as well as Lincoln’s Secretary of the Treasury, Governor of Ohio, and senator. And Chase Manhattan Bank was named in his honor.
Ivar wished he’d had access to this downloading when he was in grad school. Would have made things a lot easier.
A 10K bill. Hard to get change for that at Starbucks, except there were no Starbucks now and Ivar regretted that ’cause he could really use a mocha right now, since he was cold and tired and hungry and scared, mostly scared.
There was a note and, like opening the bag, Ivar really didn’t want to read it. Someone had killed the guy lying over there, stone cold, and Ivar had no doubt it had to do with the money and whatever was in the note.
He unfolded the paper. Just a bunch of stocks and an amount listed next to them. And a long string of numbers; probably a bank account.
It didn’t take a genius, or even Ivar, to figure out the intent.
Buy these today. On a day when everyone else was going to be dumping stock, some brokers right before they took a header out of a window.
Unsummoned, more data from the download dumped into his consciousness: Some did jump out of their windows but asphyxiation by gas was very popular; also stepping in front of a train. Some broker in Chicago would poison himself later in the day. Some financier in Boston would shoot himself at his country club, perhaps to make some sort of statement or to just get his money’s worth in brain cleanup?
So Ivar began to count the $10,000 bills, and he was only up to five million with a couple of bundles left when the door was kicked in by two guys holding guns, M1911 semiautomatics about which Ivar’s training and download informed him. The weapon was a single-action, semiautomatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated pistol chambered for the .45 caliber round. Designed as a standard sidearm for the US military in 1911. (Duh.) It was developed because Army guys fighting Moro guerillas in the Philippines found their .38 pistols just didn’t have the stopping power. A lot of the Moros tended to charge hopped up on drugs and adrenaline and could take a half dozen .38 hits and still split one’s head open with a bolo.
Great, Ivar thought. He was going to die knowing the history of the type of gun that killed him.
Dead is dead.
“Hands up.” One of the gunmen trained his weapon on Ivar and ordered the other: “Check the stiff, Jimmy.”
Both men wore suits and fedoras, trying to look classy, but the scuffed up shoes Jimmy wore betrayed his real status: he was muscle.
The other guy, though, was something else. His clothes were several echelons above in cost and fashion. His shoes were brilliantly polished. He wore his suit like a man who’d murdered and stolen his way into his style with great effort, and it reflected that effort.
Jimmy kicked the body, apparently the extent of his medical training. “Dead, Mister Siegel.”
Alarm bells were sounding in Ivar’s head.
“Who are you?” Siegel asked, taking a step forward and sliding the gun into a shoulder holster. He spit on the body as he went past it, DNA testing at a crime scene not yet being an issue.
Ivar thought the prudent course of action at the moment was to say nothing.
Siegel apparently didn’t agree. He pulled a switchblade out of a pocket and flicked it open. As he got closer, Ivar realized Siegel’s fine suit was stained with a splatter of blood. And the blade was also covered in blood.
Siegel put the blade to Ivar’s throat, hard enough that it cut into the skin but not seriously deep. Of course, for Ivar, any cut was way too deep.
“I hate asking something twice.”
“My name is Ivar.”
“Ivar what?” Siegel said. “You Russian?”
“I’m American.”
“Right,” Siegel said. “So am I. But I’m also a Jew. That bother you?”
“No, sir.”
But Siegel was already looking past him at the money. “That’s more than he stole from us.”
“I don’t know who he is,” Ivar said. “He literally ran right into me. Asking me for help.”
“So you took him here to this basement, let him die, and are now counting the money,” Siegel said. “Didn’t call the coppers or take him to a hospital. And you just met him?”
“I’m an opportunist,” Ivar said.
Siegel laughed. “Yeah. I can see where one would figure this was a good opportunity. Unfortunately for you, it ain’t. Jimmy,” he ordered, “put it back in the sack. We’re taking it and him to the Boss.”
As he did so, Ivar slipped the list of stocks out of his hand and down his sleeve.
When Jimmy was done, Siegel nodded. “We’re going for a ride.”
Going for a ride with Bugsy Siegel to see the Boss. That’s not good, Ivar thought.
He wished he were back on Wall Street.
Siegel and Jimmy shoved the Nightstalker into the back of a car. They flanked him, pressing against his body. Siegel had the satchel on his lap and Jimmy had his pistol jammed uncomfortably into Ivar’s ribs. Some no-neck guy was at the wheel and started driving the moment the door was closed.
Ivar was now pondering the future of both the mission and his life. It had just occurred to him that if he died now, on this mission in the past, it probably meant that his future, back in the future, meant little to his timeline since he was so easily expendable, which was a terribly depressing thought. And the mission would probably be a failure too, he realized as an afterthought. At least his part.
Of course, Ivar knew, of the six sent back, he was the weak link and most likely to fail. Even Scout, young as she was, had more on the ball on an operation like this.
Another depressing thought.
Dying depressed. Geez, that made Ivar even more depressed.
The trip wasn’t far. The car pulled into an alley. Ivar was led through a door into what in his time would be considered an extremely dirty and unhealthy kitchen. No one looked up from what they were doing, which indicated two armed men leading another bleeding man through was a rather common event. That gave Ivar a flicker of hope—they can’t be killing that many people? Maybe they just wanted to talk?
Then his data dump depressed him: Murder Incorporated. But, wait, that wasn’t formed until the thirties, so maybe . . .
They pa
ssed out of the kitchen, down a hall, and turned right. A clone of Jimmy—i.e., big, smashed nose, cheap suit, fedora, dull look in the eyes, and scuffed shoes—stood stoically in front of a metal door. Spotting the incoming party, he rapped on the door behind him twice. Ivar could hear dead bolts being pulled back, and the door swung open on hinges that needed some oil.
Jimmy shoved Ivar through the door.
The room was filled with smoke and hushed conversation. Red velvet meets dark wood. Along the wall were big men, more muscle, faces blank.
It wasn’t hard to see the sun around which this entire operation revolved. At a round table in the center of the room were two men, well dressed like Siegel, faces guarded, not blank. They were obviously men who were rarely surprised and never frightened, which is one of the definitions of psychopath.
Ivar wished Eagle, or even Frasier, were here, because he had a very bad feeling about who he was seeing. Jimmy pushed Ivar forward, then paused at a predetermined position. Siegel put the satchel on the table.
There was obviously something going on, something big. Ivar wondered if it had anything to do with what was already happening nearby on Wall Street, since the opening bell had sounded not too long ago.
Then again, these were guys whose business was very different from that world financial center, although some might argue that their business was very similar to what Wall Street did. They just did it more bluntly.
Siegel took a seat at the table. He leaned over and whispered to the other two. The center guy nodded and indicated the satchel. Siegel dumped the contents.
That got everyone’s attention.
“The guy?” the Boss asked.
“Dead,” Siegel said. “We found this guy with the loot.”
“And who’s he?”
“Says his name is Ivar,” Siegel said. “I figured I’d wait until we were back here before asking further.”
Ivar noticed there was an empty chair at the table.
“You know who I am?” the Boss asked.
Ivar shook his head, although he had a very good idea.
“You know how to talk?”
“Yes,” Ivar said.
“You know who these guys are?” the Boss indicated the men flanking him.
“Uh, he’s Mister Siegel,” Ivar said. “That’s what he,” indicating Jimmy, “called him.”
Siegel laughed. “You got our loot and you don’t know who my friends are?”
“It’s a lot more than our loot, Benny,” the Boss said. “A lot more.” He ran a finger along his upper lip and contemplated the pile of bills. “My name’s Meyer Lansky. Heard it?”
Ivar didn’t even need to access the info dump. “Yes.”
“Then you know who this other gentlemen is?”
“I suspect Mister Luciano?”
“Wrong,” Lansky said, “which means you’re either playing real stupid or you really don’t know.” He twitched his thumb toward the man on his left. “This is Frank Costello.” Thumb to the handsome man to his right. “You’ve already met Mister Benjamin Siegel.”
“Bugsy,” Ivar said before he remembered an important scene early in the movie. He regretted the word immediately as Siegel rose out of his chair, pulling the knife, apparently his default mode to any slight, imagined or real.
“Easy, Benny,” Lansky said. “There’s a lot of money on the table and we don’t know where it came from, other than our share. And the only two people I can think of who got cash like this and wouldn’t run to the cops are Masseria and Maranzano, which really makes me wonder who this guy is. Don’t it make you wonder, Benny?”
Siegel sat back down but didn’t put the knife away. “Want me to ask him, less politely?”
Lansky didn’t reply. He pointed at the empty seat. “So you know who our absent friend is, then?”
“Mister Luciano.”
“Very good. You know what happened to Mister Luciano twelve days ago?”
Ivar accessed the dump, which he should have done earlier instead of focusing on Murder Incorporated. “Seventeenth of October. He got taken for a ride to Staten Island. Beaten badly. But he survived. Lucky Luciano.” As soon as he said it, Ivar knew he’d made his second mistake and realized too much information could be a bad thing.
Lansky’s face turned to stone and he spoke in a voice that cut through the room. “Everyone out.”
The muscle left the room, leaving the brains, if one wanted to include Ivar in that number with Siegel, Costello, and Lansky. Right then, Ivar wasn’t feeling too smart.
Siegel leaned close to Lansky. “How the hell does he know that? We was the only ones in the room.”
The door slammed shut behind the last person. Leaving just the four of them.
“My friend, Mister Siegel, is correct,” Lansky said. “Benny called Mister Luciano ‘lucky’ just two days ago, when we were all in his hospital room. You were not in that room. I’d have noticed. No one’s ever called him that before. So how do you know about it?”
They’re not paying me enough for this, Ivar thought, and then realized he really wasn’t sure whether people in the Time Patrol got paid at all. Did he have health benefits? Because he had a feeling if he did make it back from this day, he might well need them. At the very least a Band-Aid for the cut on his neck. It was still trickling blood.
“Uh, well, I heard someone on the street call him that,” Ivar tried. “You know. Surviving getting taken for a ride. And Staten Island. Really. People think he’s lucky. So they say that.”
“You’re not funny,” Lansky said. “Who do you work for?”
There was a knock, more of a muted thud really, on the steel door. Siegel got up, walking past Ivar as if he just wanted to reach out and rip his head off. He cracked open the door, there was a muted conversation, and then he came back to the table. He leaned over to Lansky and Costello, who had yet to say a word, and whispered something.
“Curious,” Lansky said when Siegel was done.
Lansky looked back at Ivar. “Your dead partner worked for Masseria. Except he also worked for Maranzano, it turns out. Robbed both of them. And then robbed us. Slippery fellow to pull all that off in one day. He got off easy. You will not.”
The Pentagon
Following the money hadn’t been enough. It had only deepened the mystery.
Neeley rattled along the rails underneath the Pentagon. The booth came to a halt and the door slid open. Neeley knew there was an alert, an infrared sensor on the inside of the door leading to an office beyond the booth.
That was fine with her. She stepped into the office, tripping the alarm. She was in another windowless room, the same size as Mrs. Sanchez’s. Except this was the one, of all the ones underneath the Pentagon, that had been inhabited by the same person the longest.
Neeley had read Doctor Golden’s report on Foreman’s office, so she wasn’t surprised at the aluminum foil lining the walls.
She’d seen stranger things in people’s offices over the years.
He was messy. Not a hoarder, or one wouldn’t be able to move in the office, but he’d been around so long, he’d collected a lot of stuff. A lot of paper. Files were piled everywhere. She noted the map. She recognized the outline of the Bermuda Triangle, where she’d run into the kraken and then been sucked into the Space Between.
Here There Be Monsters Foreman had written.
Neeley believed that. Now.
She knew Foreman’s supposed history. Ditched near the Devil’s Sea off of Japan. Assigned to the unit that lost Flight 19 in the Bermuda Triangle. His interest in the strange. A real Fox Mulder.
Neeley circled the office. A poster had a saying from Shakespeare:
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death!
An MRI was pinned to it. Golden had reported that it indicated Foreman had a tumor in his brain and was not long for this world.
Neeley knew men like Foreman didn’t fade away like old soldiers. She thought it amusing that ol
d Douglas MacArthur had “faded away” by giving a speech about fading away that every single West Pointer afterward had to memorize.
Neeley went to the old, gray metal desk and sat behind it. She went through the drawers. There was a .45 pistol in one and she pulled it out. She pulled the slide back and it was loaded, so she placed it on the top of the desk.
She slid open a file drawer and scanned the labels.
One caught her interest immediately: Operation Angkor (SR-71, Scorpion), and then scrawled in, almost as an afterthought: Dane.
Neeley opened the file. There was nothing inside. Whatever documents it had held were long gone, most likely shredded. But written in the same scrawl, on the inside cover, was: Dane, KIA, 1968????
Neeley looked at the crowded desktop. There was an open file on the right side. She looked at it. A photo of the Valkyrie suit captured in the Met was displayed. Then the gruesome pictures of the autopsy of the Russian Ratnik who’d been inside the suit. Detailed medical notes filled pages and pages.
Neeley considered that for several moments.
The door to the transportation system slid open and two guards armed with automatic weapons appeared, the result of the tripped alarm.
They trained their weapons on Neeley. She didn’t bother to pick up the pistol. “I work for the Cellar,” she said. “Call Sentry.”
One of the men whispered into his throat mike. The reply was instantaneous and he reached out and tapped his partner on the shoulder and gave a hand signal. Both men lowered their weapons.
“Where’s Foreman?”
The two exchanged glances. “We haven’t tracked him in here for two days,” one replied.
Neeley stood up. She walked past them and got into the booth, knowing what her next step was because she had a good feeling what Foreman’s had been.
