by Don Cook
“And I don’t want you to get hurt, love” Mike said. “You stay here with Glenn, Val, and Donny. Besides, Astra, I’m a cop, and you’re not.”
“Well…” Khraa/Astra said. She realized it would be best to allow for chivalry, safety, practicality and the need not to reveal any of her advanced extraterrestrial military training to her man and his kids to reign supreme. She said humbly, “Okay.”
Mike got his service revolver he kept handy from his den and went out the side door.
Outside, the weather was mildly blustery, but Mike saw the prowler’s tracks, which led into the RV and its lounge area door. Mike sneaked up on the RV, and found the door was jimmied open and the vehicle’s indoor lights were on. He opened the door swiftly and found a tall, gloved balaclava-masked man with dark goggles trying to break into one of the RV’s cabinets. Mike grabbed the burglar and put his gun into the most vulnerable area of the burglar’s neck, terrifying the burglar stiff.
“I’m Mike Bonhoeffer, FBI!” Mike snarled in a low, angry voice, “Now, I don’t want to harm you, but if you make one false move, you’ll meet either God or Satan! Got it, scumbag?!”
The would-be burglar nodded yes with life-and-death terror.
“Now we are going to leave the RV, close and lock its door, and walk into my house with your hands up,” Mike said with angry emphasis, “and we will meet up with my girlfriend, who just happens to own this chariot! Capisce?”
The captured prowler nodded yes again — and then hit Mike in the ribs and tried to make a run for it!
The burglar ran a few steps, and then stumbled in the deep snow, failing to make good his escape. Mike grabbed the burglar by his collar, and aimed his gun squarely at the prowler’s head. The prowler realized he was defeated.
“Was this your idea,” Mike snarled, “or did someone else put you up to this?”
“Oh, please, Agent Bonhoeffer!” the prowler begged, his voice denoting that he was a young man. “I was given orders —”
“By whom?!” Mike said with a snarl.
“Higher-ups!” begged the prowler.
Mike recognized the prowler’s voice as being vaguely familiar. Determined to find out the identity of the person at whom he was aiming his revolver, he grabbed the balaclava, yanked it off and knocked the goggles into the snow.
The prowler was Jack High, a young, crew-cut blonde FBI Agent with a wife, three kids, and a promising career ahead of him. He had been Mike’s rookie partner after Jack began with the Bureau.
“Jack High!?” Mike said in astonishment.
Jack said, begging for mercy, “Sorry, Mike —”
“That’s Senior Special Agent Bonhoeffer to you, boy!” Mike said, in an officious outrage common among police officers who had just been betrayed. “What in Hades made you go prowling around my girlfriend’s RV?!”
“I — I — I didn’t know she was your girlfriend, Agent Bonhoeffer!” Jack said. “Honest to God! I swear! Someone from higher-up, right near the top, ordered me to spy on her —!”
“WHO?!” Mike snarled in fiery outrage.
“C — c — can I tell you inside? Cuff me if you like, read me my rights in any language you like, even blow my brains out, but please get me indoors! I’ll tell you everything!”
“I could bust you here and now, but…” Mike, knowing an honestly contrite plea for mercy when he heard one, saw that Jack was merely a scared hired gun, and chose mercy over manhandling, as he said to a scared Jack, “Okay! Into the house!”
Jack nodded yes with the fear of a scared jackrabbit.
Mike, still holding his gun to the would-be felon’s head, closed and locked the RV as securely as possible. Mike took Jack into the house through the front door, with Mike hoping that his mercy towards his ex-rookie partner was not in vain.
“I could have sworn I locked it before I left!” Khraa/Astra said to Mike. “I always do. Here.”
Khraa/Astra handed the seated would-be spy-burglar a cup of chicken soup she made with plenty of garlic powder as he sat in Mike’s kitchen around 6:50 PM local time.
“Thanks, Astra,” Jack said, just before he took a long sip. “And yes, you did lock the RV’s doors. I’m an expert at picking locks, and I really was only following orders on a do-it-or-else basis. This must make me out to be some real ground Nuremberger.”
Everyone laughed at Jack’s nervous and lame tension-breaker.
“Jack really is an expert lock-picker” Mike said, making Khraa/Astra rather wary of Mike’s Bureau — but hoping that possible future spousal nepotism might work for her.
A minute later, Mike rose from his seat and began pacing across the floor with bewilderment in every step as he said, “Okay. Who gave you the orders to make like John Ehrlichman and burglarize my girlfriend’s RV?”
“If I told you,” Jack said, “are you going to press charges?”
“If he tells us, Mike,” Khraa/Astra said, “I think some mercy would be in order.”
For a moment, Mike pondered Jack’s plea for mercy in exchange for giving Mike and Khraa/Astra the necessary information that would help Jack’s case. Khraa/Astra began to wonder whether Mephistula, directly or indirectly, might be behind Jack’s burglary attempt, and thus looked forgivingly into Jack’s eyes and telepathically suggested to him, It’s okay, Jack. You can tell us. You’re safe.
“Well,” Mike said skeptically as he stopped pacing and sat down in front of Jack, “if you’ll tell us everything, and don’t hold anything back —”
“I won’t!” Jack said. “I swear! I’ll tell you everything!”
Then take courage, Jack, Khraa/Astra suggested into Jack’s mind for Mike to also “mentally hear”, and tell us all about it. In fact, we might be able to help you.
“First, Ms. Downey, I have nothing against you. My wife and I love your Bull-Free Truth show online. My burglary attempt was ordered by the Director of the Bureau himself.”
Mike was astonished with outrage as he said, “You mean from the very top?!”
“The very top. And the Director got his orders from the President!”
“POTUS?!”
“Yes, Mike, and since he and Stanton belong to the same party —!”
“I get it now!” Mike said. “You know that I’m also an FBI chaplain, and that as such, I have a deep faith in Christ as my Savior. I know you weren’t one for lying when I took you under my wing. You’re likely in deep trouble. But I think I can help you.”
He paused while he thought of a plan to help his protégé, and when he did, Mike said, “You know, Jack, I have a friend. His name’s Jim Stock. Ever heard of him?”
“You mean,” Jack said, “the former CIA Director, the up-through-the-ranks super-spy who worked his way to the top? Stock is practically a legend!”
“Stock’s also a very good friend of mine. He encouraged me to become an FBI chaplain after my first wife and the kids we had were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. He’s helped many government agents from the Bureau and other security agencies who’ve been wrongly done dirty by the government.”
“But what about my wife and kids?”
“Stock’s big on family, and he’ll… Well, let’s just say he’s like a witness protection mastermind for those patriotic agents betrayed by our own government. Stock has helped agents from various federal and state security agencies and their families who needed his kind of help in the past. Recently, he’s helped agents wrongly burned by Pizzagate, Burritogate, Moviegate, you name it. He began this altruistic aid to agents who were blackmailed by Nixon’s crowd during Watergate. He’ll even get your family professional help, if you need it.”
“Stock sounds like a great guy. Sure, I’ll do whatever you ask.”
“Okay,” Mike said, “I’ll go into my den and call him.”
Mike walked over to his den that adjoined his living room, locked the door, and made the call.
A moment later, Mike returned from his den and said, “Stock said he’ll gladly help you. He’ll send
two of his female operatives to get your family to his ranch. He’ll send someone here to pick you up tomorrow and take you there, too.”
“Thanks!” Jack said, with anxious gratitude. “Thank you! Thank you very much!”
“Don’t mention it. In the meantime, you’re a long way from home, right?”
Jack nodded yes.
“I’m sure your wife and kids miss you. Why not spend Christmas with me, Astra and my kids?”
“I’d love to!”
“Come,” Mike said, “Astra got me the whole Get Smart DVD set for Christmas, so how about we all go into the living room and watch some classic TV tonight?”
“Sure!” Jack said.
“Why not?” Khraa/Astra said. “Sounds like fun. And don’t worry, Jack, Mike’s an on-the-level kind of guy. I see it in his eyes.”
Mike, simultaneously flattered and embarrassed, mildly blushed.
HOME OF MALLORY STANTON
WASHINGTON, DC
SAME MOMENT (8:01 PM EASTERN TIME)
“WHAT?!” Stanton snarled at the FBI Director through her phone’s hand-held receiver as she talked with him from her den. “High bungled a simple burglary?! You told me he could do anything from picking a lock to taking care of — ARRGH!”
Stanton huffed in anger as if she was a big bad she-wolf, before she said, striving to restrain herself, “No, Mr. Director, don’t can High! It’ll look far too suspicious, and with calls for me to be investigated with microscopic scrutiny and for everything to be done to me short of crucifixion –! Yes, Mr. Director, High’s not to be harmed. If Bonhoeffer wants to press charges, I’ll tell him personally he can go press his pants!”
Stanton listened as the FBI Director told her that Mike would be more apt to help Jack than hang him.
“Well, that’s a relief. I hate Christians, Jews for Jesus, and I hate Jesus Christ Himself more than anyone in His freaky pew-stuffing fan-club! Why? Because I’m a mega-radical, bra-burning women’s libber from way back around the time Nixon and Kissinger bombed the hell out of Cambodia, that’s why, Mister Director! Really? Bonhoeffer’s not having High busted? Well, that’ll keep at least some of the heat off my butt. I hope so, too. Okay, Mr. Director. Merry — I mean, all the best!”
Stanton hung up, as her ex-President husband Jefferson Innes Stanton, a tall, thin white-haired, bathrobe-clad Tennessee man who was a wimpish, cuckold shadow of his former brutally handsome ladies’ manly self, shuffled into the room.
“Who were you talking with, dear?” Jefferson said.
“You wouldn’t understand” Stanton said like a betrayed yet still semi-loving wife.
“Try me. You know I’ve been there, done that, got the Presidential T-shirt.”
“Yeah,” Stanton said, “with Monique Levy’s sex-spoor all over it!”
“Look, Mallie, can’t we let this go —?”
“If the rest of America won’t let it go,” Stanton said, with betrayed wifely indignant anger, “why the hell should I?!”
Jefferson slinked out of his wife’s den, his spiritual tail tucked between his legs, as he said with wimpish sarcasm, “Merry Christmas, dear.”
“Happy New Year!” Stanton yelled at Jefferson’s back, with biting Christ-hating cynicism.
Stanton sat and wondered what she should do next about Astra. For a long time, she mulled within her mind, ruminating about what she could do to take down Astra Downey once and for all.
“Yes,” Stanton mused darkly to herself. “What would do the job…?”
An evil idea began to take shape in Stanton’s sinister mind. “Job. Not job, as in a task, but Job, as in, the Book of Job. Job may never have snapped, but Astra might not be as strong as our Bible-boy Job.”
Stanton, having figured out a clever way to hit Astra hard, snapped her fingers as she said to herself with darkly giddy joy and a sinisterly mock English accent, “By Job, I think I’ve got it!”
Stanton cackled quietly yet maniacally as —
APARTMENT 1214, BELLA VILLA APARTMENT COMPLEX
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, USA
11:51 PM CENTRAL TIME
“Survival log, Captain Khraa-Veh recording” Khraa/Astra began her daily survival-log entry. “Life is often filled with irony. Today was Christmas Day, a day that allegedly celebrates the birth of Christ and, in this day and age, is more often celebrated as a holiday of peace. But today’s Yuletide Day was not always peaceful for me. In fact, someone tried to burglarize my recreational vehicle in the name of national security, or, as Mike put it so well, ‘made like John Ehrlichman.’
“Jack told us that Mallory Stanton was behind the burglarizing of my van. And I suspect she will use any trick she has or can find up her proverbial sleeves, to use yet another linguistic ‘Earthism.’
“Thankfully, my new love-lord — sorry, dating-friend, how we women in love can get ahead of ourselves — and expert FBI Agent Mike helped me get to the bottom of this mess, and instead of turning in the burglar Jack High, also an FBI Agent, Mike opted to show mercy and help Agent High. I can tell from his mental, emotional and psychic radiation that Mike is prudent in exercising mercy where it is best applied, because Mike is no pushover, that is for sure!”
Khraa/Astra paused and pondered about a matter that dangerously obsessed many Earthlings, and also affected her personally. All too personally.
“Since Christmas Day is near the end of Earth’s standard calendar year, I believe this is also a good a time for this space explorer-scientist to address a certain Earthly metaphysical and sociocultural phenomenon with a strong link to what they view as ‘alleged’ intelligent life from beyond Earth. I allude to the phenomenon known as Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs. I wish to speak on this matter because since I have arrived on Earth, I have come across much media cultural babble — or ‘scuttlebutt’, I love that word — about alleged visitations to this planet by sentient non-Terrans. After intensely investigating this matter, I have drawn these conclusions about UFOs:
“(Alph) Having concluded, as I have stated in previous log-entries, Earth’s human populace and our own humankind are indeed descended from Adam and Eve (and thus are of the exact same familial and genetic stock), the aliens often mentioned in the discipline known as ‘ufology’ are also descended from Adam and Eve, though not through Noah;
“(Bett) These ‘ufonauts’, the alleged pilot-occupants of these mysterious objects, are descended, like the people from our Known Universe, from colonists who hailed from the pre-Flood Terran nations of Atlantis, Lemuria, Kolomdix and other realms recorded in thorough detail by our collective peoples, but about which Earthlings are completely ignorant (except for Atlantis and Lemuria);
“(Gamm) Eons ago, the god officially decreed that Earth was off-limits to all benevolent human beings from beyond it, and that no deliberate landings were allowed by benevolent non-Earthlings on pain of death. Yet, if a landing was purely either by accident or carried out because of an emergency situation, no punitive repercussions would be taken against such benign visitors to Earth;
“(Delt) The instances of UFOs that seem to be intelligently guided were likely close encounters of an inadvertent kind or circumstance — and that any reports of benevolent contact between Terrans and extraterrestrials where the visitors were treated as deities would indicate the ‘aliens’ in question were indeed benevolent, yet also lost and most likely amnesiac, with the good-godlike personas of these good aliens being the altruistic subconscious sides of said amnesiac visitors (or kindly personas to hide their true unearthly origins);
“(Epsy) Landings by more heinous ‘aliens’ were obviously carried out by Shrion or pro-Shrion interests, with the ‘legendary’ Gray aliens being the prime suspects in such cases, and andromorphic reptilians coming in a close second. At any rate, these exo-hostiles had no business being on Earth. The recurring pattern of traumatic encounters between Terrans and non-Terrans, such as sexual mutilations of various creatures, including humans, fits the Shrions’ method of operation al
l-too-well, especially those of the Grays, and;
“(Zett) Any and all non-Earthlies who were or are still here on this planet fall into one of three categories: benevolent yet lost space voyagers (like myself); benevolent amnesiac extraterrestrials; or deceptive and most definitely hostile invaders, like Stanton could very possibly be.
“Which leads me to Mallory Stanton herself. This contest between her and me will get much rougher, no two ways about that! And all this is on top of Earth’s current, hurricane-force turbulent age, which in and of itself is distressing enough. End of entry, date-time stamp — subjective timing.”
Khraa/Astra ended the log-entry, and then said with a hefty sigh, “And Deo help us all.”
* * *
* All quotations and excerpts from Understanding Telepaths: A Clinical Guide for Kannatikans are taken from Printing #4 (final edition, out-of-print), published in 1927 N.U.E. by Maklynne Publishing-Smiths (now defunct-bankrupt, 1935 N.U.E.), Turannya, Kannatika. All sole post-Kannatikan rights to said work re-secured solely by Lady Veh (ven-Bonhoeffer), and reprinted with her kindly permission.
Chapter 7
LOVED ONES UNDER ATTACK!
A standard New Year’s Eve on post-Guy Lombardo Earth is what one makes of it.
Mike, Glenn, Val, Donny and I had a simple but fun party watching New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on TV, with the big ball drop in New York’s Times Square at the stroke of midnight Eastern Time (which worked out well for us in Minneapolis at 11 PM Central Time.)
Once the “regular” Western World/standard Christmas season was over, Glenn went back to playing as right defenseman for his high school hockey team, the MacArthur High Blue Hawks as “Big Ten Glenn”, named after the number on his uniform. Because of his position and reputation as a high scorer, he was oft-touted as “the next Bobby Orr.” Mike and I cheered Glenn on, with me feeling like a proud “hockey mom.”
Mike and I soothed his raw feelings whenever his team lost by asking him if he gave it his best shot and if he still loved playing. When Glenn realized that he could say yes to both questions, it perked him up. And when he won, we let him enjoy the afterglow of victory, but then gently helped his ego down back to Earth slowly with dignity.
