When Marie saw me, her mildly questioning look quickly morphed into shocked, lopsided recognition and then into a ‘what the hell are you doing here?!‘ expression. I ignored that and sent probes to examine her for open wounds. There were none, but two incipient bed sores marked her hips.
When she moved to try to sit up, my probe sliced her left sore open and captured some of the good flesh from below it. The probe then formed a tiny stasis field around the sample, put a stealth field around that, and stashed itself near my board matrix
Tanya said, “Mom, Ed is trying to find a way to help you. He retired from 3rd World Products and knows some people.”
That didn’t seem to cause Marie much ease and comfort. She glared at me and said something I didn’t completely understand, but the last part of it was fairly obviously, “…anything from you then or now.”
Tanya said, “She…”
I interrupted with, “No need. I got the gist of it. Told you we didn’t get along very well.”
Stepping close to the bed, I took Marie’s good hand in both of mine. She feebly tried to pull away as I said, “I’ll do what I can whether you like it or not, Marie. We never liked each other, but we covered each other when it counted.”
With that, I backed away and said to Tanya, “I’m not here to upset her. I’ll wait outside. Have a good visit.”
Tanya nodded. “Okay.”
When I returned to the corridor, I went looking for a coffee pot and found one in an area marked ‘visitors’. As I pumped coffee from an urn through the sipping hole of my mug, a man came to watch.
He asked, “Sir, why not take the lid off?”
“Too messy.”
He reached for my mug and said, “Sir, I’m going to have to see that mug.”
With a shrug, I handed it to him. He took the lid off, looked inside, and poured my coffee into a nearby fountain. He carefully observed what came out of my mug, checked the lid and bottom again, and handed it back to me.
“Sorry for the imposition.”
“No problem if there’s coffee left in the pot. Did you really have to do that?”
“Yes, sir. Any time anyone does anything unusual, it’s my job to check things out.”
As he walked away, I used the drinking fountain to rinse the lid and mug, shook residual water out of the lid’s cover over a potted plant, and put my mug back together. Filling it again with coffee, I sent a cooling tendril into it and sipped some. The place might be the next best thing to a medical prison, but the coffee was damned good.
Nearly twenty minutes later, Tanya emerged from her mother’s room looking more than a little stressed. I got up as she approached, but she rather angrily grabbed a foam cup and a cardboard sleeve, filled the cup with coffee, slammed a lid on it, and dug a little flip-top flange open. Pressing the flange back to lock it open, she sipped and flinched hard, then went to the fountain and tried to find a way to get some cold water into the cup. I took a new cup to the fountain and let it fill a bit, then poured the cold water into her coffee.
Tanya’s hands were shaking. She started to say something, then didn’t, and simply sat down with her coffee. After a few sips, she sat back and sighed, “I tried to calm her down. No luck. I tried to tell her you just want to help. All she did was rage about things that happened way back in… whenever.”
“1972 and 1973.”
She looked up at me with irritation. I raised a hand and said, “Sorry. Go ahead.”
After a moment, she said, “Forget it. Let’s just go.”
She looked for a place to put her cup, sipped it down some, and left the cup by the urn. We walked out past watchful eyes and mounted our boards where we’d dismounted them.
As we lifted toward the hospital, Tanya sent me a ping.
“Here! Present! Yo! Take your pick!”
“Did you get a sample?”
“Of course I did. And before you ask, yes, it’s some of the good stuff.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Off her butt. Fresh flesh from deep inside a bed sore.”
Wobbling hard in flight, Tanya sent, “Eeeewwww!”
“Hey, no sweat. Untouched by human hands.”
“But we’re talking about putting it in candy to get it back inside her, dammit!”
“It’s all we’ve got, lady. We’ll wash it before we give it back, okay? Besides, now that there’s an open bed sore, I won’t have to put it in her candy. I’ll just put it back where I got it.”
A moment passed before she sent, “Still… Eeewww.”
Heh. I saw the hospital below and sent, “There’s the hospital. Any reason for me to go in?”
Tanya shook her head. “I don’t think so, but… Ed, what do you think of the idea of sampling Jessica, too?”
“No. By now they know about her drug problem and her injuries will make her check in periodically with a doctor. She has a chance to clean herself out with supervision. Just send a ping when you’re done here and I’ll meet you in the sky.”
“Okay. Later, I guess.”
She landed and headed for the front doors. I called up a screen to surf the net, check email, and edit a few chapters of my latest book. About thirty minutes passed before Tanya sent her ping.
I sent, “I’m right above the building.”
“I’ll be right up. Do we need to take anything with us?”
“I have my instant coffee. What do you need?”
“How long will be be gone?”
“A couple of hours, max.”
“A juice pack, I guess. Let’s find a store.”
We met in the sky and I followed her to a nearby grocery store. A few minutes later, Tanya followed me back to Lake George, where we did some fancy flying before I descended into a clearing. When Tanya joined me there, I took us to stealth mode and called Galatea.
Tea manifested around us in stealth mode using a non-standard frequency, but she appeared in the standard flitter configuration, which let us step off our boards to the deck. As soon as we were in seats, I launched Tea toward Guyana and opened a Dr. Pepper.
Tanya marveled at the flitter, of course. I explained the console and reclining seats, then explained why we weren’t blown off the deck by having Tea turn the inside of her elongated hull field gray.
As Tanya went through another round of marveling, I had Tea morph to her two-seat configuration. Tanya screeched as the hull seemed to contract around us and turned a deep emerald green.
I said, “And this is how Galatea usually looks, milady. Her outer stealth field is still stretched to suit our speed.”
Contacting the Guyana clinic, I again asked for Milla and told her we’d be there shortly. Once that was done, I turned to Tanya and asked, “Now, how can I keep you entertained for half an hour or so?”
Staring around at the receding world and the blackening sky above, she seemed not to hear my question. Because I knew she’d start asking more questions shortly, I put a plot of our flight on a two-foot screen and shoved it toward her. Tanya pawed it twice in a distracted manner before she rather blindly found the corner and pulled it into her lap.
I leaned my seat back, put my feet on the console, and gave some thought to inventing a reason for visiting Marie twice in one day.
Some time passed before Tanya asked in a tense voice, “Are we really going this fast?”
“Yup. And we’re really that high, wherever we are along the path at this very moment. I think I thought of a reason to visit Marie again today.”
“You did? What?”
“All those old pictures I put on your laptop. Think she’d like to see them, or would the memories be too painful?”
“I can’t think why they’d be painful. After all, our memories of other times are sort of like snapshots we’ve kept.”
“Yeah, but… Have you ever seen any of those pictures before? The ones of your father, maybe?”
She looked at me oddly. “No. I haven’t.”
“Have you wondered why yet?�
�
“No, but now that you’ve mentioned it I’m wondering that.”
“If they’re still using those areas for training, she likely wouldn’t have mentioned them. Otherwise, her silence might involve things about the people in the pictures. Can’t think what, though. Except for Mike, the others managed pretty well with her.”
Tanya sipped from a juice pack and seemed thoughtful. I wondered why Marie had reacted so angrily to my visit after such a long time. We’d had no relationship outside of work, not even a friendship. Could that have been one of the problems? Unlikely. Not enough motivation for emotion.
She hadn’t been shy about much; I’d seen her tell Mike to take her to a movie once. She’d simply stated what was showing and that she’d like to see it, then said it looked odd when women went to movies alone. He’d recognized the hint and been so surprised he almost looked around to see if she’d been talking to someone else. When he asked if she really meant him, Marie had rather tartly asked if he had something better to do that evening.
Mike Sayer. I realized I didn’t know if he was still alive and checked. Nope. Died in an accident near Hannover, 1973. Hm. Wonder why nobody bothered to tell me? I’d gone to Israel that year, but I’d had contacts with Linda and John before I left, and when I’d returned, I stayed with Linda for a while.
Linking to my core to buzz official records hooked me into an automated microfiche machine. I didn’t turn up anything between Marie and Mike. Not surprising. Unless there’d been notable problems or an investigation, there’d probably be no mentions of unofficial involvements.
Then something caught my eye; Mike had been driving a green Volkswagen 411-E, the car he’d bought from me when I was about to leave for Israel. The cause of the accident was listed as brake failure.
Huh? What? Well, it’s possible, but the car had almost-new front brake pads and would have had to pass a base inspection before he could put POV green tags on it. Then I noticed the car’s registered owner. Me. Mike hadn’t immediately re-registered the car. He’d been driving it on my old plates for some reason.
‘For some reason’ indeed. It was likely about money, as always. Despite being single and making good money, Mike never had a dime to spare when I knew him. He’d probably put off re-registering the car. I’d used the car right up to my last day before takeoff, then given him the signed registration and keys. He’d said he’d take care of the registration through our office. But he’d have needed insurance, and you couldn’t insure someone else’s car over there. At least, not back then under Army rules.
Another check turned up a six-month insurance policy in my name, dated the day I’d left for Israel. Damn. He’d probably just called in as me and renewed the policy. When the registration didn’t change, who’d know? But after the accident, why didn’t anyone contact me?
Easy answer; in a spook shop in the seventies, any and all details and changes in the lives of operatives — including their deaths — would have been routinely classified info. Some more fishing turned up an accident report. The driver’s name had been blacked out and an attached page quoted security interests for the censorship. The car had been towed directly to an MP lot that night and scrapped the following day.
Tanya asked, “Ed, what’s wrong?”
I sat up and put up a screen with the data I’d been studying, then said, “Read this. Mike died in my car after I sold it to him. I’d gone to Israel. He didn’t re-tag the car right away, probably because he was short of money, as usual. He also extended my insurance six months, so he probably didn’t plan to get new plates until he absolutely had to.”
As she studied the screen, I rooted up more data through my core and said, “Brake failure. But the front pads were new and the rear shoes had lots left on them. I suppose it could happen anyway, but how? No cause given.”
Pointing at a chunk of the screen, I said, “And look… towed directly to an MP yard that night and scrapped the next day. Why such speedy service? Some MP yards had stuff that had been rusting away since the end of World War Two.”
Tanya read the info, then looked at me and asked, “Where are you getting all this?”
For some reason, I’d expected just about anything but that from her. With a trace of irritation, I snapped, “Here and there. Everywhere. Doesn’t matter. I think we’re looking at a cover-up.”
Chapter Seventeen
I sent a ping to Linda. She answered with a screen and, “Hi, Ed. Thanks for calling, I needed a break from gardening.”
“Glad to help out, Fearless Leader. Tanya Connor and I are out for a drive. While she’s been sightseeing, I’ve been rooting through old records. I turned up something I think you should see. Ready for a data feed with some notes?”
“Sure. Send it.”
I did so and said, “Note the disposal of my old car.”
She read for a few moments, then whistled softly. “Wow. That was quick, wasn’t it?”
“Phenomenally so. Can you add anything? Why Mike transferred out, when, and to which other outfit?”
“You’re going to pursue this?”
“You bet, milady. I think it has something to do with why Marie seemed to hate me today more than she did back then. The more I think about it, the less trouble I remember Marie and Mike having with each other. There was some contention and a clash or two, but nothing like between Marie and me.”
Linda looked from me to Tanya and back, then said, “Mike and Marie had an affair. It began just before you left and lasted until he died in Hannover. If I’d known, I’d have split the team, but I didn’t find out about it until Marie went to Hannover when the local MPs contacted her about Mike. The Hannover MPs found her phone number in Mike’s wallet.”
Huh? What? Her contact info in his wallet? Or, for that matter, anywhere on or near him?
Linda saw my expression and said, “That was my reaction, too.” Looking at Tanya, she said flatly, “We didn’t do things like that. Never. If Mike had lived, I’d have traded him to another outfit immediately.”
Tanya looked confused. She asked, “Just because he had Mom’s number in his wallet?”
“Yes. Marie wasn’t a local civilian or military woman. She was one of his own team members. That, in itself, was a big security and regulations breach.”
“Why?”
“Emotions ran high enough among team members without personal entanglements. Ed, with your plates on the car, it’s entirely possible someone thought you were at the wheel that night.”
“That occurred to me, too, ma’am. I’ve only checked the immediately available US records so far.”
“I’ll see what else I can find out, too. Keep me posted.”
“Will do, Fearless Leader.”
“Later, then.”
“Later.”
She dropped the link and I rooted up German police and insurance references to the accident. Very few routine records that old had been digitized or made into microfiche; I had to place requests for scanned copies of whatever still existed. That meant I’d likely have them no sooner than Monday and more likely Tuesday or later. Oh, well. Things had already waited quite a while.
Tanya said, “So that was the legendary Linda.”
I chuckled, “Congrats, ma’am. That wasn’t a self-answering question. I think you might be making progress.”
She gave me a dim look and, “Oh, up yours. Doesn’t it matter to you that she thinks someone may have tried to kill you?”
“Not particularly. If so, they missed. What bothers me is that they killed someone else in the effort and they apparently had the juice to get rid of the evidence through official channels.”
Tanya stated, “The car. Okay, I can see all that, but what if you can’t find any actual proof there was a murder?”
Shrugging, I said, “Then someone gets away with it. Hell, they might already have. Could be any perps died of heart attacks or something. They’d be my age or older.”
“Perps? More than one?”
�
��Possibly not. Just covering all bases. Finding out who ordered the immediate disposal of my car would probably tell us a lot. The XO or CO of the MP unit would have had to sign off on a car disposal. Since lots of other cars hadn’t been crushed immediately, there should be something on record as a reason for rushing this one through. If there isn’t, I’ll call it a cover-up and push things a bit.”
“Push things how?”
“Show what I’ve found to an FBI friend and let her take it from there. The FBI doesn’t handle murders, but they know who does. Do you think what happened to Mike might be why your mom hates me?”
She shook her head and sighed, “I don’t know. I guess it’s at least possible.”
“Good for you, but think a minute. If she thought it really was just an accident, her only likely reason for hating me would be the fact I sold him the car. The cops would definitely want to know where she was the night Mike died. You know how your mom’s mind works. Does that possibility make any sense to you?”
Staring at the screen, Tanya shook her head again slightly. After a brief pause, she turned a stern face to me and said, “No. Mom’s always been the first to write off things that couldn’t be helped and I don’t think I like where you might be going with that line of thought.”
“I’m not going any farther with it without a lot more than we have now. Cops probably would, though. Tanya, I will say that I don’t really think Marie had anything to do with it. Feel better?”
“If that’s the truth, yes.”
“It’s the current truth as things seem to me. If that changes for any reason, I’ll let you know. Either way, I’m not afraid to be proven wrong.”
A few moments passed, then Tanya asked, “Why don’t you think she had anything to do with it?”
“My gut says so. One of the things I didn’t like about her back then; she was too confrontational, like she was always trying to prove herself. Not ‘blow up in your face’ confrontation, but definitely right there in your face, ready to argue or fight, whichever was required. Some things aren’t worth the trouble. In any group, toes will be stepped on occasionally. Can’t be helped. Most people realize that and just get on with things when they know whatever wasn’t intentional.”
3rd World Products, Book 16 Page 18
