City of Iron

by Williamson, Chet

  Chapter 10

  Forgive me for being a little dense," Tony Luciano said, "but what do you mean, we no longer exist?" Skye turned from them and looked out across the darkening waters of the bay, to where gray mountains rose on the other side. He removed his hat so that Laika could see his sandy-brown hair. "I mean that for all intents and purposes," he went on in his officious, almost prissy voice, "Anthony Luciano, Laika Harris, and Joseph Stein are gone. Everyone in the Company but a very high-ranking few will think you've been assigned to Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Even now, false trails are being laid. Nearly everyone at Langley will believe you to be working deep cover in Ankara, Bucharest, and Azerbaijan." The thin mouth beneath Skye's thinner moustache gave a half-smile as he looked at Tony. "Which is where we've put your shadow, Mr. Luciano. We expect to see a great deal of termination work there in the months to come."

  Laika sensed Tony's tension, but he said nothing. "What about our personal lives?" Laika asked.

  "For the time being, they will cease to be. I assure you that at some time in the future you will be able to reenter them, and you will be able to keep in touch with whatever loved ones you may have via letters only, which will be routed through the usual network. Communication by telephone or by Internet will not be possible."

  "What's this all about?" said Joseph, sounding peeved, Laika thought. She was peeved, too. She hated not being able to talk to her mother.

  "It's about exposing lies and debunking the false," Skye answered. "What you did at Loch Ness was a trial run, which, as I said, you passed with flying colors. Having proved yourselves, you will be assigned to further projects for which there are no known natural explanations or solutions, cases that would suggest the paranormal to superstitious minds."

  "What?" said Tony. "You mean, like professional ghost hunters, uh, UFO chasers? That kind of thing?"

  "You put it a bit baldly, but yes, something like that, to mention just two of the more common delusions of the masses. You three will be called upon to produce the natural solutions for such absurdities."

  "And what if we can't?" Tony said. "What if some of these things—" He shrugged. "Well, what if we can't?"

  "Of the three of you," said Skye, "I expected that particular question to come from you, Mr. Luciano. It must be that good Catholic upbringing that makes you cling to outmoded beliefs."

  "I didn't say I believed in anything!" Tony flared. "I just asked a question!"

  "And I'll answer it," Skye said calmly. "If you find yourself unable as a team to disprove any so-called psychic phenomena, you simply report your findings to me. Some of us in the Company will do further research into a natural solution, and it will then be given to you, who will distribute it for public consumption."

  "Wait a minute," said Laika. "I thought we were supposed to keep out of the public eye."

  "You are. You will distribute your findings—or our conclusions—through channels."

  "And what's our cover?" Joseph asked. "Do we just walk in and say to the authorities, 'Hi, we're your friendly freelance paranormal investigators, show us everything you've got'?"

  "You know better than that, Mr. Stein." Skye placed his hat firmly on his head. It added a good two inches to his spindly frame, but Joseph still towered over him. "You'll be working for a branch of the National Science Foundation with whom we have made some arrangements. It's a non-existent branch, but the cover will stand up to all but the deepest government scrutiny. Nothing short of a Senate sub-committee will be able to disprove the provenance of the Division of Special Investigations."

  "Special Investigations," repeated Laika. "Well, that sounds innocuous enough. I just have one concern, Mr. Skye." He nodded at her to continue. "If we're supposedly connected to the National Science Foundation, I would have to assume that we'd be working within the United States."

  "That's correct. Possibly outside, but most of your operations will be domestic."

  "There's the slight problem, then, of the CIA charter?"

  "That," said Skye, "is precisely why I referred to you as shadow operatives."

  "Why wouldn't the FBI handle something like this?" Joseph asked.

  "Mr. Stein, I really don't think I have to explain government policy to you, do I? I was unaware that the DCI and even those far above him were answerable to you. Do you perhaps have your own senate committee of which I've not been made aware?"

  Stein said nothing. Laika didn't expect him to, and, seemingly, neither did Skye.

  "You will work wherever you are needed," Skye went on. "You have been assigned this operation, and if you do not choose to accept it . . . well, you know what your rights are. Do any of you wish to refuse this assignment?"

  They looked at each other, but none of them spoke.

  "Very well, then. Though I need not answer this question, I suspect you are wondering about it: why on earth would the government want to become involved in what seems to be an area that the private sector has been involved with?"

  "You took the words out of my mouth," said Joseph. "Aren't we getting into CSICOP's territory here?"

  "We're getting into matters of national security here, Mr. Stein. The order for a group such as yourselves has come from high up—very high up. It expresses a deeply felt concern with our national character. The thought that pervades the reasoning behind the formation of this shadow group is that a superstitious citizenry is a weak and easily led—and misled—one.

  "Tabloid trash has become daily bread to the majority of Americans. UFOs, ghosts, channelers, angels . . ." Skye gave a sardonic laugh. "Appearances of Jesus on plywood doors and in spaghetti sauce. Even cinnamon rolls that look like Mother Teresa. No side is spared. The left gets caught up in New Age garbage and magical thinking, while the right are suckers for religious appearances, angels, and Satanic cults hiding in every closet. And everybody from Maoists to militias is jumping on the UFO bandwagon."

  "Not to mention reading their horoscopes," said Joseph, with a sidelong glance at Laika.

  "Precisely. The more strange events that can be given rational explanations, the more reasoned our society will be. At least, that's the rationale behind what you'll be doing. I think it is not unimportant work."

  "I tend to agree," Joseph said. "If there's anything that I don't mind pulling me away from my desk, it would be this."

  "I'm so glad you approve," said Skye with a blend of sincerity and venom.

  "How's the team structured?" Tony asked.

  "All the details will be in the packets you will receive on the plane back to the States. But you already know that Ms. Harris is the team leader. She makes the final decisions, and you two gentlemen will be her support. Mr. Stein, you will concentrate on communication and research; Mr. Luciano, you will be responsible for covert operations. Your duties will overlap, but these are your primary functions. Any other questions?"

  "What's our first assignment?" Tony asked.

  "You will learn that later as well. Now," Skye said, looking up at the dark clouds overhead, "might I suggest we walk back to the house while we can still see our feet in front of us? There were some rather large piles of manure along the way that I should like to avoid."

  It wasn't hard for Laika to bite back the comment she would have made, were Skye not there.

  Chapter 11

  The three did not spend the night in the house with Skye. Instead, after the landlady rather grudgingly served them tea and scones, Skye gave them directions to a small private airport that was used mostly for medical emergencies. He gave them a brief and businesslike good-bye, and they went to their cars.

  "He loves to hear himself talk, doesn't he?" said Joseph, when they had left their chief behind.

  "I think it gives him an erection," Laika said without smiling. "Then he plays it back in his head at night."

  "Did you check this car for bugs?" Joseph asked.

  "I've said worse things he's probably overheard. I don't think he likes you very much—probably because you're a head t
aller than he is."

  Laika heard more in Joseph's silence than mere agreement. After that they didn't say much of anything until they got on the plane. It was an eight-passenger Learjet that sat on the rough surfaced runway cutting between the craggy hills like a trench through rock. They were the only passengers, and the pilots asked nothing about customs. They told Tony to bring his personal luggage only, so he took a suitcase and the satchel with his picks from the van. Laika was sure he was used to leaving Company goods behind. They would be picked up, transported elsewhere, and used again. And when he needed such items in the future, they would be delivered. But picks were personal.

  The plane lifted off without coming within five hundred yards of the end of the runway. Their trail would end there, and any reports of the flight would indicate that it had headed southeast, toward Eastern Europe.

  Instead, it started across the North Sea, bearing toward Newfoundland, where it would turn south. After a half hour in the air, the co-pilot left the cockpit long enough to come back into the small cabin and ask if the three passengers wanted anything. "Just to know where we're going," Laika said.

  The co-pilot smiled warmly. "You'll find that out soon enough. Would you like anything to drink?"

  When he returned to his cabin, the ops discussed their assignment. "What I wonder is how long this is gonna be," Tony said. "Open-ended like this—hell, they could shuffle us back and forth from one goofy case to another for years. There are a lot of fortune tellers around."

  "We'll do it as long as it pleases them, I guess," Laika said flatly. Then she looked closely at the two men. "What I want to know is, other than discomfort at the openendedness of this mission, how do the two of you feel about it?"

  Tony jerked his head to the side, as if trying to shift his thoughts into place. "It's kind of cool, actually. Interesting. I got a little buzz, you know?"

  "How do you feel about the paranormal?" Laika asked him.

  Tony thought for a moment. "One thing I learned with the Company is that where there's smoke, there's fire. If several agents suspect there's a mole loose, there probably is. If a few think they can turn a foreign agent, they probably can. If enough of us think a government's ready to topple with a little push, it probably is."

  "So if enough people believe in ghosts," Joseph said, "or UFOs or angels and demons and gods and devils, there probably are?"

  "I wouldn't rule it out," Tony said hotly.

  "I would," said Joseph, "unless there's some empirical evidence to back it up. No matter how careful he is, a mole leaves a trail, some physical evidence, behind. If an agent's ready to turn, other signs will be there—a persuasive and political lover, a busted bank account, the threat of blackmail. And nothing shows more physical signs of decay than a regime ripe for a fall." Joseph shrugged. "But ghosts and angels and devils don't leave anything behind, and all UFOs leave is flaky witnesses who can't stop talking about their anal probes."

  "So you think it's all bullshit, then?" Tony said, bristling.

  "Let me just put it like this. In over two decades of looking into the paranormal, I've never come across a piece of evidence—not one single piece—that you'd be able to take to a court of law to prove the existence of any of this stuff people claim is true."

  "There are pictures of UFOs . . . and ghosts. . . ."

  "Not one of which was ever proven to have been authentic. Under test conditions the results are always the same—negative. It's bullshit, Tony, it's all as much bullshit as Zeus and Jesus and the fairies."

  "Ah, what do you know? You're bullshit!"

  "Now, there's a reasoned riposte."

  His cheeks flushed, Tony started to get up, but his seatbelt held him down, and a hard look from Laika kept him there. "All right," she said, "we're not going to work too cooperatively if we start insulting each other."

  "Don't tell me about it," said Tony. "I didn't say his god was bullshit."

  "I don't have a god, thank you," Joseph replied.

  "Yeah, 'cause no god would have you!"

  "All right!" barked Laika. "What the hell am I, a kindergarten teacher? Now, take it easy, both of you. I'm just trying to get an idea as to where you stand concerning the paranormal. Let's keep religion out of it."

  "All right, fine," Joseph said crisply. "And if it helps, I apologize."

  "Okay, I'm sorry I got pissed," Tony said after a moment, though Laika thought he still sounded annoyed.

  "The only point I want to make," Joseph added, "is that it's the easiest thing in the world to ascribe supernatural causes to things that are all too natural. We seem to have a real proclivity to see patterns where none exist. That's why conspiracy theories thrive, and why people call unexplained lights ghosts and aliens, rather than looking hard for a natural explanation." He took a leather portfolio from beneath his seat and unzipped it. "Look, let me show you what I mean. Here's Fortean Times magazine. It's named after Charles Fort, who collected volumes of unexplained phenomena."

  "The Book of the Damned," Laika said. She had read parts of it in college.

  "Right, and three others. Anyway, the people who put this together aren't necessarily believers in psychic phenomena, but what they do is report the paranormal, or just strange things that happen. But strange things happen all the time, and strange things don't mean that the supernatural or aliens are at work. Like this article on the chupacabras. "

  "The who?" Tony asked.

  "In Puerto Rico, they've found dead goats that are drained of blood: one puncture wound, weird slime over the corpses, and sometimes the animals are killed in closed cages. So naturally it follows that it's a supernatural vampire beast, right? Or the same UFOs that are responsible for the cattle mutilation in the States. But there's another perpetrator that makes a whole lot more sense."

  "Man," Tony said.

  Joseph nodded. "Exactly. There's nothing here that couldn't have been done by a sadistically clever human being."

  "Then it gets into questions of psychology," Laika said. "What would make somebody do something like that?"

  "The same thing that makes people create crop circles or tell about being abducted by aliens," said Joseph. "Notoriety, or, if they keep it secret, just the thrill of knowing what nobody else does."

  "And scaring the hell out of them in the process," Tony added.

  "Exactly," said Laika. "And God knows that's a kick for a lot of people." James came into her mind then, and she pushed him back out again, concentrating on what Joseph was saying.

  "Here's another one. Listen to this:

  Plattsburgh, New York—Authorities were amazed to find the charred remains of eleven bodies in a burned down hunting lodge twenty miles from this town in northern New York State. The corpses were all male, and it has not yet been determined whether the men died in the conflagration or before the fire began. The identities of the men are unknown, as the lodge was rented under a pseudonym.

  Attempts to identify the corpses by dental records have led to the remarkable discovery that some of the teeth exhibit dental techniques that have not been in use for hundreds of years. The remains of bone and ivory dentures have been found, as well as guttapercha and lead fillings. Dr. Norton Thomas stated that he had never seen such techniques used on teeth, regardless of a patient's age.

  Witnesses who saw several of the men before they left for the lodge stated that they seemed to be in their thirties or forties and spoke with Scottish accents. These facts have led to speculation that the meeting was nothing more or less than a secret gathering of immortals that somehow went awry. Or perhaps the Society for the Appreciation of Dental History and Haggis?

  "That's one thing I like about Fortean Times," Joseph said, after he finished reading. "Their sense of humor. If you don't take any of this stuff too seriously, you never look like a moron when it's debunked."

  "All right," Laika said. "I'll play devil's advocate. How do you explain away the teeth?"

  "Well, my last assumption would be that the dead guys are im
mortal. Maybe they are, however, part of a sect that does things the way their ancestors did them. That might very well give them a reason to gather in private."

  "A secret society," Tony said.

  Joseph nodded. "I believe in secret societies—because they exist. The Masons are a secret society, after all. So are Skull and Bones and the Trilateral Commission. There have always been secret societies, and there always will be. But I don't believe these societies have paranormal powers, despite their supposedly ancient rituals."

  While Joseph was talking, the co-pilot came into the cabin with a large sealed envelope that he handed to Laika. When he left, she tore it open and read as Joseph went on.

  "As for these victims being immortals, that's nuts. How can you deduce that somebody's immortal on the basis of a few guttapercha fillings? Why would an immortal even need fillings? And how could one true immortal die in a fire, let alone eleven of them?" Joseph and Tony both laughed.

  "Inquiring minds want to know!" Tony said.

  "In that case," said Laika, with no humor in her voice, "Richard Skye is an inquiring mind."

  "What?" both men said at once.

  "I think we've just seen either a terrific coincidence, or proof of synchronicity," Laika said. "We're going to Plattsburgh, New York, gentlemen. Home of the eleven burned immortals. We're supposed to prove that they're not."

  Chapter 12

  The next afternoon, Richard Skye was back in his office in Langley. He picked up his telephone, hit a few buttons before dialing to ensure that the call would not be monitored, and dialed a number in Washington, D.C.

  "Dr. Roker, calling for Mr. Stanley," he said, using his code name. He held the phone for three minutes before he heard another voice. Then he spoke softly and deferentially. "I've turned the matter of the Protectors over to the new team . . . oh yes, they're very good indeed. The Kristal thing? That was them. . . . You didn't? I'll send you a tape. You'll enjoy it . . . of course . . . of course I'll keep you informed every step of the way. As I said, they're very good. The only problem with them will be to make sure they don't learn too much. . . . Yes . . . yes, I certainly will. . . . Goodbye, sir."