“Think about that two months from now, when you’re walking towards my door. Think about that when you see me again, in the moments before my death. Think about that.”
He stood up gingerly and turned to his companions. “Get the car started. It’s time to go.” David and Jill, both still wide-eyed, nodded vaguely and stumbled over to the sedan. Reggie watched them for a moment and then looked back down at Adolph with a terrible grin. He unzipped his jacket, which was riddled with bullet holes, and plucked at the white t-shirt inside that hung loose—loose over his bare, unmarked chest.
“Be seeing you,” Reggie said, his words cutting through Adolph like a plow through soil. Then he turned and walked away.
Final Report
Friday, February 25, 1994
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Date: 25 February 1994 00:00:01 -0500
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Major General Reginald Fairfield, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Final Report
2/25/94
It’s been twenty-four years, a month, and two days since the bastards brought us down.
In that time we’ve come back strong, doing things they couldn’t conceive of doing. They think they understand us, those who know we’re still around. They think we’re cowboys, meddlers . . . They think we’re just too pig-headed and selfish and old to let go of what we once were.
They know nothing.
They think they’re better than us. Stronger than us. And worst of all, they just plain think they’re right. They sit in their offices and debate the Accord with the skinny little fucks from space. They sell out the American dream in exchange for stealth technology and sonic weapons. They betray our highest ideals, our loftiest principles. They’ve lost sight of who they serve—the people who vote them and their kind into power. They’ve forgotten why they’re in power.
They know nothing.
Every night my teeth rest in a glass and every morning I have a bowel movement and I couldn’t even begin to get it up these days. My eyes are hollow and bloodshot and my wife left me fifteen years ago. My children are callow monsters who laugh at me and the ideals I cherish and vote fools into office because they saw them on MTV.
They know nothing.
My generation supposedly saved the world from the forces of darkness. Now everyone thinks that evil died in 1945—or was it 1989? They think that things will never be that bad again. They think the apocalypse, the end of all we hold dear, just isn’t going to happen. They abandon the Lord and don’t go to church and teach sex in the schools and put filth on the television.
They know nothing.
Evil never dies. Darkness never retreats. In the cracks and the crevices of our society there are monsters undreamed of by the rank and file of humanity. I’ve been there. I’ve seen them. They exist in the spaces between things, in the folds of existence where we can’t find them. Sometimes they cross over, sometimes they manifest, and all Hell breaks loose. Only this is not Hell, nor Heaven. This is like nothing anyone has ever understood. This is pure evil, pure destruction. This is the apocalypse, and I’ve been fighting it tooth and nail since 1961. They made me retire in 1970 when Cambodia blew up in their faces and they blamed us, but I didn’t stop then and I’m not stopping now. They think I gave it all up that day in the Pentagon when they told me the choice—the only choice—I would be allowed. I took it, and then, like most of us, I made the decision to continue the fight. They thought we were washed up.
They know nothing.
But they know enough. They know how we started—a little slice of the OSS, investigating the Nazis’ interest in the occult. They know what we found—how the supernatural was realer than real and more powerful than the A-bomb. They know what we accomplished—three decades spent fighting the monsters wherever they cropped up, three decades that kept the world a saner place. They know what we want—to abolish the accord and send those ET fucks back to wherever they came from.
They know nothing.
Things are different today. There’s a whole new generation coming into the ranks, men—and women, for Christ’s sake—who are smarter and slicker and tougher than I ever was. We’ve got it down to a science. Something crops up, phone calls are made, operatives are re-assigned, paperwork is filed, and the darkness gets pushed back for another day. When it’s over everyone goes back to their routine and no official records exist to reveal the truth. We travel light, we probe deep, and we strike hard. We’re Delta Green, and we may be outlaws and cowboys and fools, but we’ve kept this green ball of shit safe and sound for longer than most people have been alive. They think we’re idiots.
They know nothing. But they know enough.
The Majestic group made the deal. They signed over the constitution to the Greys, those bastards from space—or so they claim—in exchange for technology and information. Majestic thumbs their nose at the Executive Branch and has more security clearances than brains. They call the shots when it comes to the Accord with the Greys, and they dispense the technology breakthroughs and they cover their tracks and they let the aliens do whatever they like to God-fearing U.S. citizens. They’re fools. I’ve seen the Greys for what they really are, and they sure as hell aren’t refugees fleeing a sun gone nova. The things that lie behind the Greys are no different from the things I’ve been fighting on the edges of reality since ’61. I couldn’t begin to guess what they’re really up to, but Majestic couldn’t care less. They just want to make deals and cover their ass.
They know nothing. But they know enough.
They know what I’ve been up to. Finally, after fourteen years, a month, and two days, they’ve figured it out. The news reached me fifteen minutes ago through six connections and two satellite bounces—the news that they were coming for me. I could give a shit. I’ve lived life true and full and rich and I’ve never betrayed my country. I’ve done my duty and ten times more and I regret nothing. Nothing.
I have, perhaps, another ten minutes before they arrive. They’ll come tromping through the snow and put a bullet in my brain. My communications have been “out of order” for hours, all except for the line I laid myself three years ago after hoarding the equipment for twice that time. That’s my escape route. A digital relay that will take this letter and the accompanying files and put them in the hands of my successors. A line that our slimy twin DELTA, the Majestic wetworks boys, know nothing of. I’ve used it five times since I set it up, and it, at least, is secure. It’s enough to get this information into the hands of Delta Green. It may be enough to save this planet a few times more.
That’s it. My power just died, except for the backup generator I installed in the basement for this room. They’re upstairs, tripping my internal alarms. In minutes they’ll come through the hidden passage and spread my insides across the wall.
Before they do, they’ll have a fight on their hands. I may be eighty, but I’m the toughest goddamn son of a bitch these assholes will ever meet. I’m Delta Green, and I’m not dying alone.
But first, I’m going to hit Send and put this information into the hands of a few people who will carry on the fight. People who will crush the Accord and—when the time comes—who will tell the public about all the lies our government has been force-feeding them since the Roswell saucer crash in 1947. They’ll carry on and they’ll fight hard and true and maybe they’ll leave a better world for their children tha
n the one I’m leaving behind.
Entry One has been breached. Time to get this show on the road. They have no idea the kind of Hell I’ve prepared for them. May God have mercy on my soul.
(signed)
Major General Reginald Fairfield, U.S. Army (Ret.)
:: transmitted 1323 est 2/25/94::PGP encoding enabled::
My Father’s Son
Tuesday, September 24, 1996
I’m in this dream, deep down, and there’s a baby crying. It’s a boy. The scene is murky. I assume it’s a hospital, but I’m just grafting assumptions on, limning a shadow with whitewash. It’s baffling. The boy is crying. I’m dreaming. “Wake up.”
I’m twenty-seven. I’ve just gotten my master’s degree in political science. My dad is there. My mom is there. They’ve brought their “friends,” those three guys that turn up at every big occasion in my life. It’s weird. They’re like a Greek chorus. They show up, they don’t give their names, they offer me homilies about my progress. Around them, my parents are affable but subtly guarded. These men were at my Eagle Scout ceremony, they were at my high school graduation, they were at my bachelor’s graduation, they were at my writing award ceremony, and now they’re here. My younger sister isn’t here today, but I’ve talked to her about these three men. They never go to her events. Just mine. My parents refuse to discuss this. They just say that the men are people who are interested in my progress, friends of dad’s from the State Department. If I press them on this issue, mom starts to cry. Dad says, “See what you’ve done?”
I’m seventeen. I’m at a party at Doug’s house and I’m pretty drunk. Sarah is a senior, a year older than me. She leads me into one of the upstairs bedrooms. We chase out Ricky who is passed out in a corner. Sarah takes my hand and we sit on the bed. I’m nervous, I haven’t done this before. She kisses me. It’s nice. It’s wet. Suddenly she grabs the folds of my shirt and pulls it up over my head and then tosses it in the corner. We’re still kissing. Her hands run down my chest, stroke my skin. She rubs me for a moment just above my waist. She stops kissing me and looks down, baffled. She looks back up at me. “Why don’t you have a belly button?”
I’m twenty-nine. I’m an agent with the DEA. I’m in Colombia in a personnel carrier full of local troops. A rocket strikes the carrier in front of us; there’s a massive explosion. Our vehicle swerves to avoid the flaming wreckage and we go off the road. Inside the carrier, we’re falling all over each other. Outside, the carrier is tumbling down a hillside. I hang onto cargo straps as bodies flail around me. The carrier comes to a stop. I shove the door open and climb outside, dizzy and stumbling and spattered with blood from the injuries sustained by the troops during the wreck. A dark shape obscures my vision. “What does the shape look like?”
“What?”
“The shape, the one in your dream. What does it look like?”
“It’s not a dream. I was in the DEA.”
“Derek, please. I’m familiar with your history. You were never in the DEA. This is just a dream. The drugs are confusing you. What does the shape look like?”
“It looks like my father.”
Derek takes a drag on the cigarette. His feet, shod in expensive Italian shoes, are propped irreverently on the conference table. His fingers, carefully manicured, tap on the sides of the cigarette like it was a trumpet. His hair, combed and oiled, is just short enough to be regulation but just styled enough to look out of place in the bureaucracy of the federal government. His teeth are where his skeleton shows through, dead white. When he grins it’s as if the skin is gone and there is nothing but his skull before you. He doesn’t mean it that way—he’s a nice guy. It just happens.
We move slowly over the table, beginning at Derek’s end. The table is a modern piece of shit, particle board overlaid with contact paper. You could buy it at an office furniture store for $150. The Pentagon paid $600 for it. Of the additional $450, $100 went to the requisition officer, $100 went to the sales rep, and $250 went to the owner of the vendor. The only thing French about this tacky piece of American crap furniture is that the process it was acquired by was strictly de rigeur.
For starters, we see a speckled-green cardstock folder in front of Derek. It’s currently closed. Affixed to the cover of the folder is a chalky piece of cardstock with an orange border an inch and a half wide. Repeated at the top and bottom, in large orange sans serif letters, are the words TOP SECRET. In the middle, also printed in orange but much smaller, are the words:
ALL INDIVIDUALS HANDLING THIS INFORMATION ARE REQUIRED TO PROTECT IT FROM UNAUTHORIZED DISCLOSURE IN THE INTEREST OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY OF THE UNITED STATES.
HANDLING, STORAGE, REPRODUCTION AND DISPOSITION OF THE ATTACHED DOCUMENT WILL BE IN ACCORDANCE WITH APPLICABLE EXECUTIVE ORDER(S), STATUTE(S) AND AGENCY IMPLEMENTING REGULATIONS.
(This cover sheet is unclassified.)
Cigarette ash dots the cover sheet.
Moving forward, we pass Charlie. Like Derek, he’s in the DEA. Unlike Derek, his feet are on the floor. He has an identical folder and cover sheet in front of him. His copy is open, disgorging an unkempt sheaf of papers, photographs, and charts, amended with various notes he’s made.
Beyond Charlie, we pass an expanse of bare table until we reach the end. Seated there is Special Agent Matthew Carpenter, a Deputy Director within the FBI national headquarters in Washington, D.C. Carpenter doesn’t have a folder in front of him; he doesn’t need it. Its contents have become a catechism for him. He could summarize or repeat verbatim any paragraph on any page within the primary report. As we cease our movement across the length of the table, he speaks. (We are ignoring the two armed guards standing outside in the hall, securing the entrance to this Pentagon briefing room. The incongruous nature of a meeting within the Pentagon chaired by an FBI deputy director and attended by two DEA agents does not concern us; the meeting is, after all, of Delta Green origin.)
“His name is Darryl Montgomery. He’s 32, works for NYC gov pulling corpses outta the Hudson. Master’s in library science, believe it or not, though he’s done jack shit with it. Near as we can tell he’s a complete non-entity.”
Derek chuckled. “And the punchline is . . . ?”
“The punchline is that an NSC analyst spotted him in three photographs of three apparently unrelated national security incidents in NYC during the past year: an accidental car wreck resulting in the death of a Russian Embassy attaché, a hit by a Jamaican posse on an NSA file clerk deep in debt with a bad coke habit, and the suicide of NYC Deputy Mayor Andrew Smith—his brother is the CIA station chief in Lisbon. There was no connection between these incidents whatsoever until the NSC realized that this guy Darryl was at the scene every time in after-the-fact photographs taken by reporters and investigators. As a result, we can’t be sure that he wasn’t there from the get-go and maybe had a hand in things. It is the official and classified opinion of the NSC that he’s a low-rank schmo in with one of the five families of the east coast La Cosa Nostra, and that they somehow had their hands in each one of these situations. It is my official and top-secret opinion that the NSC is full of shit. They don’t know from mobsters; that’s my turf. They did know shit far enough from shinola to hand me the investigation, at least. I’ve got an FBI task force assembled and I’ve fed them the usual line of bull. You two bright boys are the real investigation.”
Charlie stroked his jaw and tried to look thoughtful. He seemed to fail.
Derek looked away from Charlie, took his feet off the desk, and leaned forward. “I’ve heard the punchline, but I don’t get the joke. What makes the investigation of Mister Synchronicity a DG op?”
“All three victims—the attache, the file clerk, and the Deputy Mayor—appear on our routine surveillance roster of known persons frequenting Club Apocalypse.”
I’m twenty-three. Lisa and I are in love. We’ve been dating since we were freshmen. Now we’re planning our future, seriously. Graduation is just a few weeks away. I’ve already
applied to grad school for the fall. But Lisa and I have a secret plan. We’re going to elope after graduation. I’m not going to grad school. Her dad owns a chain of small bookstores in the northwest. He’s going to let us manage one. We’re moving to Portland in two months. If it goes well, we’ll buy the store from him as soon as we can afford to. We’re very happy. This is the life I want to live. I hold her close. “I love you.”
I’m eighteen. I’m in the hospital. My parents’ three friends are here. I lie on the table while the plastic surgeon works on me. I’m sedated but semi-conscious. The three men are paying for this procedure. I don’t understand why. But I’m going along with it just the same. The surgeon is nervous. He’s never worked in an Army hospital before, but they wanted it done here instead of his clinic. He’s supposed to be very good. The three men are buying me a belly button. “You may feel some discomfort.”
I’m thirty-one. I’m in the Library of Congress. Dr. Camp is showing me an old statue. It smells to me of Colombia and what I saw there. There are inscriptions around the base. I can’t translate them. He’s clucking away about antiquity and legend. I’m nodding, doing my best to keep up. I’m not sure why my boss at the DEA sent me here today; what does this have to do with me? Then Dr. Camp looks at me cannily. “We know what you saw.”
I’m twenty-four. Graduation is behind me. I’m wearing the sweater that Lisa gave me for my birthday last week. She says it’s chilly in Portland. We’re eloping tomorrow. I’m packing up my apartment. There’s a knock at the door. I open it. It’s the three men, the Greek chorus. They look grave. They say there’s been an accident. They say Lisa is in the hospital. They say it looks bad. They say they’re very sorry. Then they say that my parents found out about our plans to elope and they are very unhappy. Mom and dad? “No. Your parents.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m adopted.”
“That’s ridiculous, Derek. You’re not adopted.”
Delta Green: Strange Authorities Page 3
