Sherlock Holmes and The Roswell Incident

by Michael Druce

  Holmes opened the door of the cell.

  “Take her. I have what I need. Get rid of her.”

  Moe and Larry entered the room. Moe gently leaned over the lifeless body of the prisoner while Larry stood behind him. As Moe bent near, Piper Sands opened her eyes. Moe jumped back, recoiling at the sudden stab in his arm. At the same instant, Larry also recoiled, suddenly aware of a sharp pain in his neck. Seconds later both men collapsed onto the floor.

  Holmes pointed to Larry. “This one has the keys.”

  Piper Sands knelt over the fallen agent she called Larry. She removed a set of keys from the agent’s pocket. Quickly she and Holmes went to the next cell and threw open the door.

  “Watson?” Holmes said with utter surprise.

  “Holmes?” I cried with equal astonishment. His preposterous disguise was jarring.

  “Doctor?” Agent Sands blurted out.

  “Holmes, I thought I’d never-”

  “No time to talk old chap, we must leave now. I am afraid we may be on borrowed time. I have a plane waiting.”

  Agent Sands, Holmes, and I fled to the upper part of the hangar. We dashed outside only to stop abruptly. Another plane was parked nearby. Two henchman holding pistols and a small framed man with a medical bag were waiting for us. Several yards further on was another plane, only this one was on fire. I assumed it must have been the plane Holmes flew in on. Whatever the fate of the pilot, I had no idea. I hated to think he was inside the burning plane.

  “Sherlock Holmes, so nice to meet you at last. General Leonid Lukin, at your service.”

  “You will forgive me if I fail to appreciate the moment.”

  General Lukin chuckled and shook his head. “The English sense of humor. Your disguise. Is this how the British imagine Soviet operatives?”

  “What did I tell you?” Agent Sands said. “Good lord, get rid of that ridiculous scar and creepy moustache.”

  “It was a matter of expedience,” Holmes said, removing his disguise.

  “Time! There never seems to be enough. There is so much to talk about Mr. Holmes, but I am afraid it is just not possible. Sadly, we will not have that opportunity.”

  Lukin snapped his fingers. One of the henchmen moved toward Piper Sands.

  “Take me,” Holmes said. “The girl knows nothing.”

  “You are mistaken, Mr. Holmes. It is you who knows nothing.”

  “Then take both of us,” I said.

  “Twice nothing is nothing, Doctor.”

  “From the beginning I have been a target,” Holmes said.

  “Your deaths combined with your complicity in the abduction of Miss Winston by unknown foreign agents will prove most scandalous.”

  The henchman grabbed a kicking and screaming Piper Sands and dragged her onto the plane. The young woman was no match for the brute manhandling her.

  After the thug had bound and gagged his prisoner, he emerged from the plane and joined his fellow thug on the runway.

  “Where is the pilot of the plane you arrived in, Mr. Holmes?”

  Holmes glanced at the burning plane.

  “I am an experienced pilot, General.”

  Lukin’s expression suggested he was not convinced

  “No matter. You have wasted my time Mr. Holmes and exhausted my patience.” He turned to his henchmen. “Take them inside and lock them up. Then torch the entire facility.”

  With pistols in hand, the henchmen gestured for Holmes and me to re-enter the hangar.

  “One last thing, General. How did you avoid being apprehended in Salt Lake City?”

  “Cherepanov. He is our man, Mr. Holmes, not yours.”

  Lukin’s thugs pushed us inside and down the stairs, locking us inside the cell where our former guards were still unconscious. Within minutes smoke began to drift in under the cell door.

  Immediately Holmes and I set about reviving the sleeping agents. Any chance we might have of breaking down the door would require the strength of as many men as possible.

  Even with the help of the groggy agents, the steel door would not budge. The heat on the other side of the door was beginning to raise the temperature in the cell.

  “Holmes, this could be it,” I said.

  “I am afraid you are right, old chap.”

  The two Soviet agents kept smashing futilely against the door.

  At the point I did not think I could remain conscious a second longer, the steel door swung open.

  “Bob!” Holmes called out.

  “Hurry, Mr. Holmes!” Our rescuer said. “The whole building could come down any moment.”

  As we reached the top of the stairs, the entire hangar was ablaze. Flaming insulation was falling from the ceiling and dropping onto the plane parked inside the hangar.

  “We’ve got to save this plane,” Bob yelled.

  Immediately the grizzled old pilot hopped up onto the wing and got into the pilot’s seat. For what seemed an interminably long time, the engines slowly cranked before catching and roaring to life.

  Revving the engines, Bob steered the plane outside before the hangar completely collapsed. Once clear of the burning hangar, Bob gunned the engines and raced down the runway as if to take off. Instantly the flaming debris that had fallen onto the wings and fuselage blew away. Other than scorched paint, the plane was undamaged. Returning to the site of the burning hangar, Bob shut off the engines and exited the plane. “That was close,” he said, hopping down from the wing.

  “Jolly good show.” I grabbed Bob’s hand and introduced myself.

  “How did you manage to avoid The Caretaker?” Holmes asked.

  “Listening to your story about him while you put on your disguise, I guessed that fellow was a nasty character. When I saw his plane pass overhead for a landing, I slipped out of my own plane and hid myself just in case it was him. It looks as if I was right. He owes me a plane.”

  “And we owe you our lives,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Holmes said. “Have you a way to track The Caretaker’s plane?”

  “This plane is not equipped for that.”

  “Then I am afraid we have lost the girl again.”

  “I think I might be able to help,” Agent Alexei Egorov said.

  “Don’t be stupid, Alexei,” his companion snapped. “These men are the enemy.”

  Alexei turned to Mikhail Lebedev. “The girl called us Moe and Larry. Do you know who Moe and Larry are?”

  Lebedev shrugged his shoulders.

  “They are part of an American comedy act called The Three Stooges. They are stooges because they are stupid. They are fools. You can continue to be Moe, but I will not be stupid or a stooge for you or the Soviet Union. Lukin left us to die in that hangar. These men, this enemy, saved our lives. I will take my chance.”

  “What can you tell us?” Holmes asked.

  Egorov pulled a small notepad from inside his jacket and scribbled down a telephone number. “I cannot say for certain if this contact can help you, but it is worth a try. It has been a couple of years. I do not remember the last name. Ask for James. Something along those lines.”

  “Thank you,” Holmes said.

  “What happens to us?” Agent Lebedev asked.

  “Dr. Watson and I are not Americans,” Holmes replied. “We have no authority to take you into custody. I am afraid you are on your own.”

  “Then we will take our chances. Thank you, Mr. Holmes.”

  With Bob in the pilot’s seat, ten minutes later we were airborne.

  “Cherepanov,” Holmes said. “Quite clever. Drawing my attention with an identical copy of the road atlas I consulted in the Washington D.C. bookstore. Obviously, I underestimated their surveillance methods. The Americans would never have overlooked a critical piece of information
. It was Cherepanov who wrote those coordinates.”

  “Why go to that much trouble? Why not tell you the location instead of leaving the discovery to chance?”

  “Telling me the location of a Soviet safe house would arouse my suspicions. It would have been too convenient. He would have been obligated to share that information with Intelligence and Colonel Hawker. Letting me discover it on my own keeps his cover safe.”

  “Hawker provided you with Cherepanov’s contact number. All along I have had my doubts about that man.”

  “I know you have, old chap. It is unclear who we may trust.”

  After describing to Holmes what had happened to me in Washington and New York, I fell into a deep sleep, lulled into slumber by the hum of the engines.

  For Every Action

  Kasputin Yar

  Yuri Olenev put down the telephone. He was seated in his small office located a few hundred yards from the massive complex that housed The Olympus Project. Shakily he poured himself a drink. He felt as if he had been punched in the gut. For ten minutes he stared blankly through the window. “Good God,” he said to himself. “Why did I ever become involved in this?”

  He picked up the telephone and called the Major.

  “How important?” The Major asked disagreeably.

  “Urgent,” Yuri responded.

  Yuri Olenev slipped into his winter coat and walked across the way to the Major’s office inside the hangar that housed The Olympus Project.

  “Leave the door open,” Major Sokolov said, “It is stuffy in here.”

  The junior officer removed his coat and shut the door.

  Sokolov glanced up from his desk. He sighed and shook his head. “Yuri, will you ever bring me good news? What has happened now?”

  “The safe house in Utah has been destroyed. The agents assigned to the Winston girl have disappeared. No word on the girl. The Caretaker may have been exposed. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are missing.”

  Sokolov smiled to himself and poured himself a strong, dark coffee. He offered a coffee to Yuri Olenev.

  The young officer shook his head. “There is one more thing.”

  “One more thing?” Sokolov laughed. “Is it not enough Shubin’s operation has apparently gone to hell?”

  “I have additional information.”

  “From Cherepanov?”

  “No, Cherepanov has gone silent. He may well be compromised.” Yuri paused, still reeling from what he had learned. “This information comes from my source deep inside.”

  “Yes, yes. I am well-aware of your deep source contact. Get on with it.”

  “The girl. It turns out she is not Jenny Winston. She is an imposter. A plant. An American agent. She was not at Roswell. She knows nothing about the FD3. She was sent under cover to expose our network.”

  Sokolov switched from coffee to vodka. He poured a drink for himself and another for Yuri. “A toast, Yuri. To the Americans. They have played this brilliantly. First worthless blueprints, and now this. We have been chasing a ghost.”

  “Might not this girl, this agent, have some value to us? A bargaining chip perhaps?”

  “No, Yuri, her job was to expose our operatives. Beyond that, her value to the Americans is that she knows nothing about Roswell. To them she is expendable; to us she is a waste of our time. We must take the current, Yuri.”

  Yuri Olenev gulped down his drink and poured another without asking his superior’s permission. Sokolov was quoting Shakespeare. It was one thing to plot and plan a seemingly impossible if not ridiculous operation, but to give it a go, the implications were overwhelming. Should Operation Dead Loop fail, it would be impossible to calculate the fallout. He wished he could distance himself from this harebrained plan.

  “Make the contact, Yuri. Operation Dead Loop is a go.”

  Roswell

  Colonel Jim Patterson pushed open the folding door of the telephone booth. He had slammed down the receiver so hard, the phone’s bell was still echoing as he stepped outside. He drew a deep breath and leaned against the fender of his car. His head was filled with conflicting thoughts. As an officer in the Air Force his job was to defend his country and the constitution. For four years he had been blackmailed by the Soviets who had threatened to expose his affair with Charlene. He should have called their bluff. Instead he had allowed himself to commit treason. Just one more time. It was always one more time. And now he had given them the most sensitive secret of all.

  A shabby looking bar was directly across the road. He dodged a few oncoming cars and spent the rest of his afternoon trying to drink away his regrets.

  Later at home he explained to his wife that he had had a hard day. Usually he worked out his troubles on the basketball court, his wife reminded him. Jim Patterson replied that his day had been exceptionally trying.

  Salt Lake City

  After saying farewell to Bob at a local small plane airpark, Holmes and I checked into a motel. My cell beneath the hangar had been better appointed.

  “It won’t be long,” Holmes said. “Perhaps not even for the night.”

  Holmes dialed the telephone number the Soviet agent had given him. After three rings, a woman answered.

  “Hello, Charlene’s Beauty Salon. This is Charlene.”

  “I beg your pardon,” Holmes said. “I must have telephoned the wrong number.”

  “Say,” Charlene said. “Are you English? You sound English. Now what is an Englishman doing calling my beauty salon?”

  “I am attempting to reach a gentleman by the name of James. My apologies.”

  “James? Do you mean Jim? If it’s the Jim I know, Jim Patterson, he ain’t no gentleman. But he sure is fun.”

  “Jim Patterson! Yes, Jim Patterson,” Holmes said, recalling the Colonel we had met five years earlier. He had been an officer in what was then known as the Army Air Forces. “Is Jim there now? May I speak with him?”

  “Oh, lord no. Jim is in New Mexico. This here is Texas, honey.”

  “Can you tell me how to reach Jim? Do you have a number for him?”

  “I can’t do that. Jim is pretty sensitive about that sort of thing.”

  “Madame-”

  “Please, call me Charlene.”

  “Charlene, this is a matter of extreme urgency. If you could give me Jim’s telephone number.”

  “Darling, I’d love to do that. You sound really cute and all with that England accent, but I just can’t.”

  “Can you have him call me? It is a matter of national security.”

  “You sound awfully convincing. All right, I’ll do that. Give me your telephone number.”

  Holmes reeled off the telephone number and room extension.

  “What name should I give?”

  “Sherlock Holmes.”

  “You are not!” Charlene gasped.

  “I can assure you this is no joke.”

  “Is Dr. Watson with you?”

  “Speak into the phone, Watson. Say hello to Charlene.”

  “Hello, Charlene. Nice speaking with you.”

  Charlene squealed so loudly Holmes had to move the receiver away from his ear.

  “Charlene, it is most important that we hear from Jim as soon as possible.”

  “Oh my god!” Charlene warbled. “I’ll call him right away.”

  After Charlene hung up the telephone, Holmes wiped his brow.

  “Good lord, Holmes, is Colonel Patterson working for the Soviets? I think we have stumbled into a nest of vipers.”

  “We shall see. All we can do now is wait and hope Colonel Patterson calls.”

  Tooele, Utah

  Wes Reed received the three successive calls shortly before dinner time.

  First call, one ring; second call, two rings; third call, three rings. He had
trained himself never to pick up a telephone before the first ring ended. Thirty seconds later the phone rang again. This time Reed picked up. A voice at the end spoke a telephone number. It was only stated once. Reed had fifteen minutes to get to a pay phone. Calls were rare, and they always signified something important. On his drive to find a pay phone, Reed wondered what would happen if another caller happened to call between rings or the minute in between the first series of calls. It hadn’t happened yet, but you never knew.

  Three miles from his home he used a pay phone outside of a drive-in restaurant. The drive-in was filled with teenagers in souped-up cars. He dialed the telephone number from memory. He assumed the number he was calling was also that of a pay phone. The phone at the other end picked up, but no one spoke.

  “Rain is in the forecast,” Reed said. It was a perfectly pointless phrase, but one deemed necessary for security and authentication.

  “The operation is a go. Two nights from now,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “I repeat, Dead Loop is a go.”

  The call disconnected.

  Reed lit a cigarette. “Hmm,” he said to himself. The voice at the other end of the line was American. Texan, Reed guessed. He chuckled. Had he been expecting a Russian?

  Brownville, Texas

  Charlene knew she shouldn’t call Jim at home, but she had spoken with Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and, well, that seemed important.

  After four rings, the phone picked up. “Hello?” The voice at the other end said.

  “Damn!” Charlene said to herself. It was Jim’s wife. What now?

  “Hello? Hello?”

  “Er, hello. May I speak with Jim - Colonel Patterson, please?”

  “May I ask who is calling?”

  “Er, Margie. I am calling from the base.”

  “Just a minute please.”

  A moment later Jim Patterson picked up the phone.

  “Jim, it’s me, Charlene.”

  Patterson almost dropped the receiver. He looked about to make sure his wife was out of the room. “Charlene, what are you doing? Are you crazy? You know you’re never supposed to call me here.”

  “I know, Jim. I’m sorry, but it’s urgent.”