by Terry James
Did he really see a spark of interest for him? She agreed to meet him, so…
“Hi, David!”
He turned to face the broadly smiling young woman, who reached to grip his offered hand.
“Boy! Some traffic at this hour, huh?” she said, patting his arm.
A very warm greeting, he thought, while putting his big hand over hers. Maybe he had been right about her liking him…a little, at least.
“Yeah. I’m glad to see you. I was beginning to worry. My granddad told me about this movie. The guy and girl were supposed to meet here, but the girl was crippled in an accident on the way over,” he said.
“Oh. You mean ‘An Affair to Remember’ with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr!” she said brightly.
“Yeah. That’s the very one. Couldn’t remember the names of the movie, or of the actors.”
“Guess some guys don’t remember very well about the romantic movies. And that’s a really old one.”
“Granddad remembered it. Of course, I’m sure it was because my grandmother told him it was her favorite.”
Cassie looked upward at the handsome face, whose eyes sparked with obvious pleasure in seeing her.
“Well, here I am. Safe and sound!”
“Now, if we can just get through the sightseeing from the top without King Kong getting us, we can grab a bite to eat,” he put in with a big smile, offering his arm, which she took, while they walked to the escalator leading to the elevators.
Forty minutes later they sat separated by a small table inside Heartland Brewery, each’s growing interest in the other closing the distance between them. David’s thoughts turned to things that might help him better understand Cassie’s relationship to Morgan Lansing.
“How long have you been friends with Kristi, and with Morgan?”
“Since college. We were suite mates at UCLA.”
“You and Kristi don’t sound like Californians,” he offered.
“Oh, no. Kristi and I are from New York. We’re both from Long Island.”
“UCLA is a long way from Long Island.”
“Yep. About as far as you can get,” she said, then sipped her Coke.
“Cassie…these dreams…” He hesitated, his attorney’s mind trying to meld with his desire to win her affection. “Exactly what are the things that stand out in them? I’m trying to understand what’s going on. Are these things all related in some weird way?”
She looked upward in thought, still sipping from the straw. She put the glass in front of her and played with it by half-twirling it with her fingertips, while in obvious thought about his question.
“I guess what stands out most, besides those dark creature things, is the laboratory setting,” she began, pausing to reflect for several seconds. “It’s the things in the glass containers that look like fish tanks. They are immersed in bubbling, greenish liquid. Kind of the consistency of--you know that stuff that keeps your car engine from freezing? What do you call that?”
“Antifreeze?”
“Yeah,” she said, her pretty face wrinkling with laughter at herself. “Yeah, antifreeze. That’s it. These things look like…little seahorses, or something, immersed in a greenish yellow type color that looks like antifreeze.”
David studied her for a few seconds, then asked, “And these seahorses…these fish tanks, are those all you see in the dreams?”
“Oh, no! There are these, I guess they are globes, or balls of glowing lights. They are always in the dreams. But, they aren’t really dreams. They don’t seem like dreams. It’s like I’m really there, and when I awaken in bed, it is as if I am still there…in their presence. At least for a few seconds. I can still see them. They don’t just suddenly pop from my mind like dreams. I can see them, these big globes of light floating around the bed. Then, they just…” She gesticulated with her hands. “Just fade to nothingness…” David asked, “And, these seahorse-like things in the fluid, do they just fade from the picture?”
Cassie rolled her brown eyes up in concentration. “Oh, there are also these people. Dressed like doctors. You know, doctors ready for surgery, or something. They are bending over the glass tanks. They obscure my view. I can’t see what they are doing.”
She paused, trying harder to remember. She shook her head negatively. “That’s all I remember. Then the lights are all around me, and I’m coming out of it.”
Colorado –Near Midnight
They were coming. They would be here at any moment. George Jenkins paced his office carpet, glancing at the clock.
“Eleven fifty-eight,” he said in a whisper, feeling the anxiety well within his stomach. He reached to his coat pocket to retrieve the Rolaids. He popped several in his mouth and crunched them, shut his eyes, turned his face toward the ceiling, and rotated his head to relieve tension in the thick neck muscles.
This was it. Something special. They summoned his thoughts to this early morning meeting for something different. Something that he instinctively knew was a leap beyond any dealings he had had with…them…before.
They seemed all-powerful, could do anything with impunity. Yet they could –or would—do nothing when he called them earlier that day to intervene in the capture or killing of the operative who hid in the snow and crags of…
The clock began chiming, and he stopped to glare at the instrument above the credenza against the wall. Midnight! They were never late. Never…
Before the clock’s chime struck its 12th tone, the room darkened to near black, and in the next instant, a single figure appeared out of the air, standing directly in front of Jenkins in the black suit and tie, like always.
The DOD covert operations chief felt his knees weaken. He caught himself, and straightened, his emotions flush with fear, and at the same time, with exultant anticipation.
The human-like figure stood stiffly, its mouth a black line that expanded and contracted upon the pasty-white face. The words, Jenkins sensed, while heard in English, came from the mouth in an unfathomable language.
“Time has come, George Jenkins. Now we begin bringing the kingdom to this sphere.”
“What kind of kingdom?” Jenkins' question was offered meekly.
“The subjects are prepared. Now is time to introduce the seed that will complete things begun in the antediluvian age. It is the moment for you to come into the fullness of fruition, for that which must be hereafter. It is time for you to understand these matters in their totality.”
Jenkins tried to form another question –to ask what the things spoken about involved. He could but stand, unblinking, watching the black slash of a mouth writhe in expansion and contraction, while his mind somehow absorbed thoughts from this –he knew within his deepest reaches—ancient intelligence beyond any that was human.
“Come,” the thing said.
He felt himself shrouded in warm mist that obscured everything around him. Still, he could not speak. He could but be engulfed, and somehow invaded, by the caliginous mist from which he received dark knowledge –understandings from regions where light did not penetrate, where no flesh and blood being could long survive.
Then, just as quickly as it came, the boiling mist dissipated. He stood, he knew when he could again see his surroundings, in the silvered, gleaming oval room. The room where the experiments –the strange experiments had been taking place for--he somehow now understood—eons of time…
He knew exactly what was happening while he watched the tall male he now knew was a long-ago planted subject within the European Union clandestine cabal –within American private commercial enclaves. He watched Blake Robbins, his eyes black, glistening spheres within the handsome face, first sit, then lie beneath the white covers atop the surgical gurney. Next, the young woman, in a zombie-like state, moved, with the help of surgically-garbed people, to the table near the gurney upon which Robbins had just reclined. Morgan Lansing was strapped to the table, while instruments were moved beside and above her body. The same procedures were performed surrounding Blake Robbins.
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A faint smile crossed Jenkins’ lips. He now had absolute knowledge, and it was indeed an inspired plan.
Chapter 14
Zeke took the plate he had just filled with bacon and eggs from the big frying pan on top of the old wood stove and handed it to Nigel.
“How do you get the things to make breakfast like this?” The grateful Brit didn’t waste time for an answer to the question. He dug into the food, glancing at the rottweiler, who had his muzzle into the deep bowl of dry dog food the old man had moments before poured.
Zeke treated the question as rhetorical, and said, instead of answering the question, “They’ll be sendin’ out folks to look for ya, young feller.”
He peered out the window into the whiteness that surrounded his cabin. “But, y’all will be long gone ‘fore they get a chance ta get at ya,” he continued.
The old man walked to the fireplace and stoked the burning logs with a poker, causing sparks to shoot up the chimney.
“Got this place I wanna show ya. We’ll start when ya’ve finished yer eats.”
When Saxton had sipped from the coffee mug, he asked Zeke, “Have they…these government types…never bothered you out here? Seems you are right in the middle of some secret things they are doing.”
“Nope. Ain’t never been bothered by any of ‘em. Never once.”
“Hmph…” Nigel, with his mouth now full of food, grunted his incredulity. He spoke again when he had swallowed.
“What do you do out here, Zeke? I mean, especially in these mountain winters? Seems there’s little to do –especially with having to go so far to…civilization.”
Zeke was again at the fire, stoking it to life, so that it glowed red, then blazed brightly, the sparks again flying upward.
“Ain’t so far as ya might think, young feller,” he said. “I’m gonna show ya what I mean.”
The old man snapped his fingers for Jeddy to come to him. The rottweiler happily complied, sitting at Zeke’s knee, while being stroked.
“Gonna miss ya, Peanut,” he said in a quiet voice.
Near Phoenix, Arizona
Reds, browns and many gradations of tans colored the mesas and buttes to the west. The sun was still high, but its quick traverse of the afternoon sky caused rapid changes in the crooks and crevices of the distant promontories lying across the horizon. The desert between Christopher Banyon’s third story studio/study and the ridges beyond seemed but a short expanse.
He hadn’t stopped scanning the sky above the ridges, looking for another glimpse of the things –the discs, or balls of lights, or whatever they were, that had beckoned him that day, had tugged him toward the cave that had become, somehow, the area of Qmran, near the Dead Sea.
He felt the bump against his leg, then bent to scratch Klaus behind an ear.
“It’s about time to take our walk, Christopher said, putting the volume he had been studying back in its place on one wall of shelves. He looked around the large study for the dog leash, seeing it on the floor near the massive ceiling-to-floor window that gave him the magnificent view of the vista he had grown to love. He had at last found a place where no trees obscured the horizon.
He was a blessed man, he thought, bending to attach the leather strap to Klaus’ collar. The Lord had indeed been good to him, and to Susie. Had given them three children and seven grandchildren, with another on the way. He had provided for the family. Not many were so fortunate.
But, it was not fortune, or luck, he mentally pinched himself to remember. There is no such thing as coincidence in the Lord’s vocabulary, he thought, remembering the well-worn apothegm.
His uncle had left several million dollars to his great aunt. She had turned it into millions more. He was the sole inheritor of the estate –the properties in Maine –in the stock market investments that had burgeoned over the past several years.
“Unto those to whom much is given, much is required,” he thought, paraphrasing the Bible’s reminder to those who might think wealth gave them special privilege, but no responsibility.
But, he didn’t want to be like the philanthropists who threw their money down the rat holes of social do-goodism. His –blessings—must be put directly to God’s work here on earth. The words of John F. Kennedy’s 1960 inaugural address echoed through his mind’s ear. “…here on earth, God’s work must truly be our own…”
“Come on, Klaus. Let’s get you to your favorite spots.”
The dog happily led him from the study, then to the small elevator at the end of the long hallway.
“We need to start using the steps, boy,” he told the canine, an admonition to himself, which he gave every time he stepped onto the elevator floor.
At 74, and getting older, he mused, it wasn’t likely that using the steps more often was going to happen. Maybe it was time to downsize, to get a one-story home, like most of the other residents in this desert community. The kids and grandkids still loved coming and spending time with Susie and him, though, so downsizing wasn’t a likelihood.
The Lord had indeed been good, he thought again, while the elevator clunked against the floor and Klaus led him into the large foyer toward the double-doored entranceway.
Yes, he had decided. If they wanted to do it. It was all that had occupied Susie’s mind lately. And, he worried, too, about the kids--Laura’s grandchildren, Mark and Lorie’s children. Yes. He would offer. He hoped they would do it. The Lord was prompting Susie and him to offer to do it. It was settled…
“Jenkins is in for a not so pleasant wake-up,” Wayne Snidely said, snapping shut the attaché case and rolling the tumblers on the locks on either side of the handle.
Jeremy Lasceter watched the smirking administrative assistant to the deputy secretary of defense jump his suit coat onto his body, then straighten the tie at its knot after buttoning the coat’s top button.
“You think they’ll fire him?” the young man said, following his boss into the hallway outside the basement office.
“Well, let me just say this, Jeremy, my boy, be ready to pack and move your things into covert operations. There’s enough in here to hang him.”
“You think the budget overruns are enough to do it?” Lasceter asked, holding the door at the end of the long, linoleum-covered hallway leading to the old building’s elevators.
“Not the overruns. The hiding funds in black projects that have nothing to do with the project he’s heading,” Snidely said, walking ahead of the taller man into the elevator doors that had just slid apart.
“I’m taking this directly to Rumsfeld. Not going to stop until I’m at the top, kiddo.”
“How can you get to the secretary? I mean –not many even want to get to the secretary,” Lasceter said, only half-joking.
“Got an appointment, my young friend. Rumsfeld wants to see me at 2:30,” Snidely said smugly.
“How’d you manage that, boss?”
“Told his appointments secretary the black ops were about to cause DOD to experience a scandal that will rival Watergate. That got ‘em moving, I’ll tell you.”
“And, you’ve really got that kind of information?”
“Sure do. Been gathering for more than six months, and this last thing –can’t tell you about it – is the proverbial straw that…”
Snidely stopped mid-sentence when the elevator doors parted, and they faced several men wanting to enter the conveyance.
“You’ll know about it soon enough, kiddo,” Lasceter’s boss said, hurrying ahead of the younger man while they moved toward the doors that led outside the building and to the awaiting car.
Jeremy Lasceter opened the door of the left rear, allowing his boss to seat himself before slamming the door. He hurried around the rear of the dark government sedan, then got in behind the wheel. Moments later, they started toward the Pentagon, Snidely smiling tightly with self-importance, pleased with his weeks of getting the goods on one George Jenkins. If he had it figured correctly, he, Wayne Snidely, would very soon be the new black ops chie
f.
Neither saw the darkly clad man with binoculars trained on the vehicle, standing in the huge window five stories above them while they drove out of the circular drive and merged with the heavy afternoon traffic.
Mark and Lori Lansing rode in the Tahoe from their cul de sac, and entered the LA Freeway 18 minutes later, merging with the vehicle congestion traveling toward LA International Airport. The smog hung heavier than usual, causing traffic in the distance to be swallowed by a coagulant haze.
“If Randy and Christopher want to meet us in Colorado, that will be great,” Mark said, glancing into the rearview mirror at the line of traffic that disappeared in the maze behind. “Just can’t wait on them. We’ve got to find out something.”
Lori said nothing. She could think only of Morgan and Clark…Of why they had not called, had not answered their cell phones.
“We should be there by five, or so, Mountain Time.”
“I just don’t see how we can find out much,” Lori said, tears in her voice, as well as in her eyes.
“I’ll raise enough stink. We will find out something,” Mark said glancing at his wristwatch. “It’s 11:19. Randy and Christopher couldn’t do anything that we can’t,” Mark said. “They can join us whenever they can make it.”
“But, don’t you see, Mark? We’re, somehow, tied together in all of this…”
Mark glanced at his wife and reached to put his right hand on her hand.
“And, I agree, Babe. I just can’t sit still any longer. I’ve got to get something going, to find out about those kids. If it weren’t for all the weird things, there probably would be no need to worry. But, like you said, we’re all tied together. Tied to what? We’ve got to find out.”
“I know the Lord will take care of them,” Lori said, straightening a bit.
“But, the Lord expects us…”
Mark’s spoken thought was abbreviated by his cell phone’s chime.
