CHAPTER FOUR
Garrett may have even lost consciousness for a moment, thunking his head against metal when the suit-and-tie goons threw him into the van. One of the men was young—late-twenties—and huge—six-eight, three hundred pounds—and Garrett didn’t see much fat. It was this man who sat on a padded side bench and was pressing his shoe against Garrett’s chest, pinning him to the floor.
Wow, Garrett baldly thought when his vision cleared. He’s…big…
A second man in an equally cheap suit was chubby, much older, and not nearly as big. Hair streaked with gray was brushed back; the guy was going bald fast. His face looked find of puffed and pinched, like a hamster with full cheek pouches.
It was this man who pointed a 9mm Beretta calmly into Garrett’s face.
“Man, you guys from MasterCard don’t fool around,” Garrett said. “Okay, we’ve got Grandpa and Herman. Who’s driving? Lillian or would it be Eddie?”
“Shut up and listen, said the big man.
Then the man with the gun. “Are you going to be good, Mr. Garrett?”
“You’re pointing a gun in my face,” Garrett replied the obvious. “No, I’m going to be bad. Duh.”
“For all intents and purposes,” said the guy with the gun, “I’m Mr. Smith, and the man who could easier fracture your entire rib cage with his foot is Mr. Jones. Listen, and don’t say a word.”
“Uh—” Garrett said.
That was it. Mr. “Jones’” titan-sized leg flexed, and suddenly his foot was squeezing all the air out of Garrett’s lungs. He could feel his rib bowing, expected to hear them crack in another second.
Smith nodded to Jones, and the foot came off. Garrett, pink-faced, let out a hoarse gasp, and then—
“Owwww!”
—he was grabbed by the hair, jerked up, and plopped down on the bench seat.
“That’s just to let you know what we’re capable of,” Smith bid. “So you’re going to sit there and say nothing.”
Garrett wheezed, his head between his knees, until he got his breath back. It was less bad judgment and simply more reflex which caused Garrett to look at the behemoth Jones and say, “Nice shoes. Bruno Magli, right? Size 12?”
Smith sputtered, then directed his associate, “Put him back on the floor. Break some ribs this time.”
The giant meat-hook hands were instantly forcing Garrett back down, as Garrett wailed, “No, please! Jesus Christ! Can’t you Air Force guys take a joke!”
Instantly, the hands let go, and Smith and Jones were exchanging the oddest of looks.
“What, uh, makes you think we’re in the Air Force, Mr. Garrett?” Smith asked.
Garrett laughed out loud. “Come on, the Air Force has been using that hokey Jinko’s Printing cover for more than three years. It’s common knowledge now, boys. Christ, novelists are starting to put that stuff in spy novels. You need to change those logos, like, at least every six months. And while you’re at it, tell the FBI to lose those ridiculous H.R. Tires signs on their Hostage Rescue Team vans. The skinheads and nazi militias have that one printed in their damn training manuals. Everybody under the sun knows that one.”
Smith stalled, narrow-eyed. “I’m impressed, Mr. Garrett. You know a lot about a lot of things.”
“Great. And lose the Beretta 92s. You want to keep your kidnap victims guessing, don’t you? Any sap with a sliver of brain sees a 92F-model and he knows right off the bat he’s dealing with the Military. Pack a Glock or a Sig—then people’ll think you’re Interpol or GSG-9. Pack a .25 and they’ll think you’re Russian GRU or the Israelis…”
“Hey, boss,” Jones said, “how’s this punk know this kind of—”
“Shut up, Carson!” Smith shot back, and then was instantly biting his lip.
Garrett beamed. “Hey, great! Carson, huh? You guys are something, you know that? Real pros. You haven’t had me in this damn Big Brother meat-box for five minutes and I already know who you work for and one of your names.”
Smith was shaking his head, wincing.
“So what’s this all about?” Garrett went on. “Why the shake, and why me? And what the hell are Air Force ops doing making a daylight grab in D.C.? Usually it’s the Field Intel Branch from the Washington Navy Yard that pulls these capers in the district, isn’t it?”
“Hey, boss,” Carson cut in again, “how’s this punk—”
“Would you SHUT UP!” Smith yelled back at his man. “You’re verifying everything he says!”
“Sorry, Captain Morran—er, I mean—SHIT!”
Garrett was laughing in spite of himself. “Man, you guys are priceless. If you’re the best shake team the Air Force has got, then God help us. Step on your dicks any harder and you’ll fall over.”
Smith was rubbing his temples.
“What’s the scoop, fellas?” Garrett went on. “If I gotta miss the Teletubbies today, I damn sure have the right to know why.”
“We’re just taking you for a little ride,” Captain Morran aka Mr. Smith said. “That’s all.”
Garrett didn’t like the sound of that; it was almost a cliché. “Great. I’ve always wanted to meet Jimmy Hoffa. So how long’s it take to get to Yankee Stadium? I mean, that is where you guys buried Hoffa, right? Under the west bleachers, fourth tier?”
Now, even Morran spared a smile. “You’re a real hoot, Mr. Garrett.”
««—»»
Two more days, Ellie Romesch thought. Bring it on!
In two more days, school let out, and that meant that Ellie Romesch—”Miss Romesch,” to her third-grade students (though most of them pronounced it “Romp-sh”)—would be blowing this cement pop stand called J. Exner Campbell Elementary School and not coming back until the last day of August. Three months of fun in the sun, at least that’s what she hoped. Sandy Point Beach was only a thirty-five minute drive, plus she had a week’s time-share at Ocean City second week of July. I’m going to work on my tan, work on my body, and work on finding a man who will actually call me back after the first time we go to bed. Ellie had the tan and the body covered—year-round membership at the tanning salon and some meaningful numbers to the tune of 38-24-36. No, it was that third component of the formula that she’d never quite gotten a grasp on. She was twenty-eight years old; she wasn’t getting any younger, as her mother liked to remind her every time they talked on the phone, and most of her friends from Shepard College were all married and either had kids or were halfway there with stomachs sticking out till next Tuesday. Ellie wasn’t sure how she felt about the kid-thing (she taught six roomfuls of the little buggers five days a week, nine months a year—but…
It’d be nice to have a husband, she sullenly thought. Until then, though: I’ve got two more days with these crumb-snatchers, so do your job!
Her last creative assignment to her fourth-period class was for the pupils to paint their most interesting dream. With kids this young, of course, she needn’t expect much, but on the other hand these pre-adolescent years could spell a lot of a child’s future interests. This was just basic brush-work with tempera paint on 30-grade paper. No Picassos yet but Ellie could see that a few of her floor-monkeys were exhibiting a genuine aesthetic interest—the unbidden urge to create. She truly felt that this was a wonderful thing…and she supposed that it also might mean she was a good teacher. Art, after all, was release. Children needed to be taught to do that, to release themselves (except in their pants, which happened on occasion, too).
One day they would all find their inner drives and their passions. Ellie saw herself as someone helping them along. She was one of the directors of this intricate play called Childhood.
She never had much trouble, nothing like the schools in the city. Most of these kids here were from the Army base, well-mannered, well-disciplined, not a lot of riff-raff. If anything, a fair share of them seemed a little too well-mannered—products, perhaps, of any overbearing home environment.
Like Danny Vander, for example.
A good kid, bright, but lately it seemed that something was stifling him. He brooded a lot; he seemed tired as if he wasn’t getting enough sleep. Ellie could only guess that Danny’s father—a high-ranking officer—ran the household like a boot camp. An environment like that could drain a kid’s vitality fast.
As her class painted quietly, Ellie walked down the aisles between their desks. She stopped at Danny Vander’s and looked down over his shoulder.
For a change, he seemed focused as he painted his picture; he didn’t even notice that Ellie was standing behind him.
Wow, she thought when she examined his picture. “That’s very imaginative, Danny.”
The choppy tempera painting depicted the outline of a houseframe; in the houseframe there was a little boy in bed, but beside the bed stood several stick-figures. There was something scary about the way he’d painted the figures: black shapes with a white-slit where one would expect eyes. Outside the houseframe he’d drawn a long black cylindrical object in the sky, with a trapezoidal-shaped window toward the front of the cylinder.
Spacemen, she guessed, or monsters from some video game. “What are you going to call it?” she asked.
Danny looked up from his desk, his face is sullen, tired. “It’s called The Stickmen.”
“That must’ve been some dream.”
“It’s a nightmare, Miss Romesch. I have it all the time.” He sighed frustratedly. “My dad makes me go see this special doctor. He thinks there’s something wrong with me.”
Poor kid, Ellie thought. Sounds to me like the problem isn’t with you, it’s with your father. She’d seen it too many times: these spit-and-polish West Point officers forced their kids to be duplicates of themselves, had them marching around the house like little soldiers. It was no way to raise a kid. “Well, that’s very good work,” she said in after-thought.
“Thank you, Miss Romesch.”
“Maybe you’d like to be an artist when you grow up.”
Danny shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I want to be in the Army, like my dad. I want him to be proud of me.”
Ellie ground her teeth at the comment. “I’m sure he’s very proud of you already, Danny. Just because he’s in the Army doesn’t mean you have to be. You can be whatever you want.”
Chuckie Murrett, the boy sitting right behind, nudged Danny’s shoulder. “Hey, Danny, show Miss Romp-sh the other one you painted. The other one’s even cooler.”
“Oh, you’ve done another painting?” Ellie asked.
Danny nodded sullenly. “Yes, Miss Romesch…”
“Well let’s see it. Is it from another dream.”
“Another nightmare, Miss Romesch.”
Danny lifted up his blotter and from beneath, he removed a second tempera painting.
“Isn’t that cool, Miss Romp-sh?” Chuckie Murrett enthused.
This one left nothing to be interpreted. Oranges, reds, and yellows curved up into a blossoming billow. Danny had painted the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.
“They don’t understand, Miss Romesch,” Danny said.
But Ellie was still off-guard from the impact of the second painting. Someone was polluting this kid’s head in a big way. The father, she decided. It must be. Where else could a child this age get such brutal images. “I’m sorry, Danny. What did you say?”
“They don’t understand.”
“Who, Danny?”
“My mom and dad,” the little boy went on. “And Dr. Harolds.”
Now the kid was really sounding weird. “What is it they don’t understand, Danny?”
Danny glumly pointed to the painting: the nuclear mushroom cloud. “This is going to happen,” he said.
Ellie’s face drew up in total lack of comprehension. “What?”
“But nobody believes me, Miss Romesch. The Stickmen aren’t really from a nightmare.” Then the little boy gulped. “The Stickmen are real…”
««—»»
As the strange ride drew on, Garrett fidgeted in the back of the windowless van. Obviously his kidnapers didn’t want him to know where they were taking him—further indication that they didn’t intend to kill him—so Garrett discretely tried to keep time. So far, they’d been on the road for forty minutes. Within that he considered rush-hour and the fact that the van never seemed to accelerate to a highway speed. His gut and his equilibrium told him they were heading north-east of the city. If he was lucky he might later be able to come up with a rough map radius.
“Come on, fellas. This whole thing smells worse than Waco. If you wanted to do an e-action on me, you’d just put prussic acid on my doorknob or aflatoxin on my postage stamps.”
“We’re just delivery men, Mr. Garrett,” Morran replied, his gun put away. “We don’t do things like that.”
“Yeah, and I’m Aldrich Ames. Everybody knows it was Air Force field ops who went undercover in Panama and poisoned the flight-controllers and radar men at the main the night of the invasion. You turned someone in the chow hall and put shellfish toxin in the chile con carne, so these guys were all either throwing up or dying when Seal Team Six came in.”
Morran was rubbing his temples again, shaking his head.
“And let’s not forget Colonel Loa in Phan Thiet,” Garrett added. “That was—what? 71, 72? The guy was funneling Military Assistant Group money out of Vietnam to his villa in the south of France. You ask me, you should have assassinated all those corrupt sons of bitches.”
Wearied now, Morran said, “Believe me, Mr. Garrett, our little trip today is nothing so dramatic. You wouldn’t have come if asked, so that’s why we—”
“Abducted me,” Garrett finished. “Without my consent and with malice and clear threats of deadly force, not to mention torture, snatched me off the street and violated my Constitutional right to be protected from false arrest.”
“Maybe he needs more floor time,” Carson said.
“Yeah, and maybe you need a lobotomy, Lurch,” Garrett replied.
“Yeah, and maybe you need—”
“Shut up!” Morran insisted. “Both of you. You want to know where you’re going, Mr. Garrett? Let’s just say that one of your…admirers wants to have a little talk.”
Just then the van slowed, seemed to pull up a slight incline, and stopped. Driveway, Garrett immediately thought. They’re taking me to a house? Morran popped the back doors, and when he shoved Garrett out, that’s exactly what he was looking at: a nice two story house in a quiet upper-middle-class neighborhood. Garrett looked around as he was escorted away from the van.
“No bag over my head?” Garrett asked. “I thought you guys didn’t want me to know where we’re at.”
“You don’t know, Mr. Garrett,” Morran said. “All you know is we’re about to take you into an ordinary house.”
Garrett stopped, closed his eyes and touched his chin. “I’m psychic, didn’t you know that? Uhhhhh, let me guess. Bethesda, Maryland.”
Morran grabbed Garrett’s shoulder hard and shook him. “How the hell did you know that?”
Garrett spun around and pointed. “Because it says so on that For Sale sign right across the street, you no-black-op non-tailing surveillance-bungling moron!”
In front of the house directly across from them stood a sign that read: FOR SALE: LONG, FOSTER & SONS - BETHESDA’S #1 REALTOR!
“Just get in the house, smart guy,” Carson said with a stiff shove.
Garrett stumbled forward, and looked around some more. Several powder-blue U.S. Government cars were parked at the curb, and inside the home’s front bay window, he could see several uniformed Air Force SPs glancing out.
Carson knocked with his huge fist, then opened the door.
“Be careful with that leg-press machine,” Garrett chided. “You might hurt yourself.”
“Inside.”
Garrett was shoved into an opulent foyer, a nice chandelier hanging overhead. Then a white-haired butler speechlessly pointed to a door on the right. Just then Morran pulled Garret aside and whispered: “The Yankee Stadium flap was dis-foe leaked to the press. It was a joint job by CIA and contract killers with the Utica Mafia. Hoffa’s body was cremated in a slag furnace at Sparrow’s Point.”
“Can I interview you on that?” Garrett asked. “I’ll make ya famous.”
Morran betrayed the slightest of smiles. “It’s been a pleasure, Mr. Garrett.” Then he opened the side door. “Someone want to talk to you.”
Garrett stepped into large, makeshift intensive-care unit; the door clicked shut behind him. At once he was breathing antiseptic scents and listening to monitors beep. And he didn’t have any idea what to think about the completely bald, withered old man lying in the railed convalescent bed that comprised the center of the room. His eyes were sunken pits; an oxygen line ran into his nose.
Who the hell is he?
The old man, in spite of his ailments, smiled, and that’s when the shocking recognition flashed.
Garrett glared. “If it isn’t the ever amiable General Norton T. Swenson. And that chuckhead outside said it was an admirer.”
“I am an admirer, Harlan—” Swenson’s voice sounded ten or twenty years younger than his emaciated appearance—”I always have been, you just never realized that. In fact, I’ve been perusing your work.”
A crabbed hand bid a high table by the bed; a pile of magazine lay atop it. Cover-up! The Psi-Com Journal, The MUFON Informer, Apocalypse Countdown, The Vince Foster Newsletter, all of which Garrett had written articles for. He curiously eyed Swenson.
“I don’t know what this is all about but… You’ve…looked better.”
“There’s an old saying in the Air Force,” Swenson cheerily replied. “‘The Gravy Train always comes to an end.’”
“But, what—”
“‘A large-cell metastasis of the right lung with keratinizing adenocarcinoma,’ to quote my doctor. Good old fashioned lung cancer.”
Garrett felt a grim shiver. Sure, he hated Swenson, but now, seeing him on what clearly must be his dead-bed, made him feel lousy. “I wouldn’t even wish that on a two-faced, back-stabbing government cover-up trilateral commission creep like you.”
Swenson waved a nonchalant hand. “There is no trilateral commission, Harlan, but I guess you’re right about the rest.”
“So you’ve been reading my stuff, huh? Why?”
“You’re actually not a half-bad writer, Harlan. You pose convincing arguments. Too much zeal, though, in your style. It kicks your credibility right out the window.”
“Like you kicked my career out the window?”
The old man’s eyes leveled. “I especially enjoyed the article you wrote about me several years ago. In the…what was it?”
Garrett began to simmer. “Constitution Times. Funny how you could’ve read an article that never got printed. The publisher’s entire warehouse burned down the day before the issue was going to ship. Somehow I always knew you were behind that one.”
“The things we must do sometimes,” Swenson related, “to protect the public trust.”
Garrett released a vile laugh. “Gimme a break! You’ve been pissing on the public trust since the day you joined up.”
“That’s a matter of interpretation, Harlan.”
Before Garrett could launch more objections, a uniformed SP stuck his head in the room. He paused sternly, looking around to see that everything’s all right. Then he ducked back out and shut the door.
“You under house arrest—I hope? Why all the SPs?”
“Someone broke into my house last night,” Swenson said, “a real pro black bag job. Cross-wired my burglar alarm. Fortunately I have an armed security guard in the house at all times, compliments of the good old AFSS. He chased the intruder off. But this was no typical burglar, Harlan. It was a man come to kill me.”
“I’d never believe that a swell guy like you has enemies.”
“This…burglar was looking for something, Harlan. It’s my good fortune that it wasn’t here. It’s never been here.”
Garrett wasn’t impressed. “I don’t give a crap that someone broke in here. It looks like school’s gonna be out for you real soon, so now’s the chance to clear your conscience, I mean, if you have one. Why did you kick me out of the Air Force? Why did you ruin my life?”
Swenson gave an amused snort through his air tube. “I’ve hardly ruined your life, Harlan, and as for dismissing you from the Air Force Data Processing Command, you know why I did that.”
“Yeah, I tapped into a batch of files that verified the defense department was secretly testing a genetically manufactured flavivirus in Gambia. Hundreds of villagers died.”
Swenson drew on a pained pause, his old eyes peering at Garrett. “Forget about that, Harlan. I’m not responsible for every indiscretion ever perpetrated by the cells within our government.”
“Indiscretion?” Garrett replied, aghast. “That’s what you call it? Murdering hundreds of people to test a weapon?”
“Sometimes evil must be battled with more of the same,” Swenson contended. “Because of those tests we now have a cure for a series of viral strains that the Chinese have been processing for a decade. What’s more important, Harlan? The security of the U.S. population or a few hundred villagers living in the stone age?”
Garrett seethed. “I ought to pull all those fuckin’ tubes right out of you, you old bastard.”
“Feel free to, but…please wait until after I’ve said what I brought you to hear. It’s something I’m sure you’ll be quite interested in.” Now Swenson coughed, his face clenching in pain. “I know what you’ve been up to, Harlan. There’s always been someone like you down the line. I trust the date April 18th, 1962, has some meaning to you?”
“Sure,” Garrett thought after only a second’s thought. “The Nellis Crash in Nevada. NORAD tracked a UFO skimming across the continent. People thought it was extraterrestrial until the radar scans and NASA telemetric surveys revealed it to be a bolidic meteor fragment.”
“Do you believe it?”
What a question. “I think so. A couple of years ago I saw the Moon Dust documents on it, and I saw the NASA charts. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t believe it?”
“Yes, Harlan. Because I was the one who manufactured the charts. The NASA telemetric charts and the NORAD radar scans were phony.”
Mouth suddenly agape, Garrett stared back at the old man.
“Harlan? Did you hear me?”
“I must be hallucinating. Are you admitting that the military has perpetrated disinformation in order to discredit UFO reports?”
“Yes.”
Garrett walked inanely around the room, talking with his hands. “Let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you generated phony documents to indicate that the Nellis impact was a meteor fragment?”
“Yes,” Swenson repeated.
“Which means what you’re really telling me is that it wasn’t a meteor fragment. It was really a—”
“A vehicle of extraterrestrial manufacture,” Swenson clarified. “Yes. I’m admitting that. I ought to know, Harlan. I was at the crash site. There was this high bluff overlooking the impact perimeter.” Swenson’s eyes seemed to momentarily drift back. “It was…spectacular.”
Though Garrett’s heart began to quicken, his expression dimmed. Holy ever- living shit. This guy’s verifying that—
“Let’s use MJ-12 as an example, shall we?” Swenson went on. “The mythical contingency team that was so seriously debunked by phony documentation that even the most zealous UFO crackpots don’t believe it existed. I was the one who did the debunking. I provided the documents that were eventually found to be fraudulent by experts such as yourself. If you want to know the whole of it, I ran disinformation for the Air Force, for more than a three dozen sightings and crashes.”
Garrett could only continue to gape.
“I would use men like you, Harlan—men who knew the truth and were desperately trying to prove it—by providing the very documents which you and your ilk would thoroughly investigate and eventually prove to be false. It’s always worked very well.”
Finally, Garrett found his mouth again. “Fine. I know all about disinformation. But why am I here?”
Swenson looked as though the answer were obvious. “Because you’re the most credible UFO researcher in the country, probably the world.”
Garrett nearly hacked up his lunch. The compliment—from Swenson, of all people—hit him in the face like a two-by-four. “Thanks…I think.”
“Why do you think I didn’t put you in prison in 92?”
Garrett paused to contemplate. “So you could continue to use me to generate your own disinformation?”
“Exactly. But now, because of your knowledge, and your…expertise, well—that’s why I’ve brought you here, today. You see, Harlan, and this may sound absurd but…I need your help.”
Garrett guttered a humorless laugh. You need my help? Right. Like Kennedy needs another trip to Dallas.”
Swenson leaned over with some difficulty, picked up a tiny envelope—like a stamp envelope—off the high table, and held it protectively in his liver-spotted hand. “Four things, Harlan. And no questions. Deal?”
“I’d be smarter making a deal with Lucifer, but—” Garrett squinted, chewed his lip. “Why not?”
“Run the name Jack H. Urslig.”
“Why?”
Swenson held up a warning finger. “No questions. Also, dig up whatever you can on a man named Sanders; if you have trouble, run the designation QJ/WYN.”
“Sounds like a CIA crypt.”
“No, Sanders isn’t with the Company. He’s the man who broke into my house last night. It’ll take some hacking, but check the old Army CIC files. Let’s just say that the Air Force and the CIA are not the only government branches who are hell-bent on the suppression of truth from the populace. Just remember, though, that CIC files all officially stop in 1979—”
“Yeah, I know,” Garrett said. “Jimmy Carter insisted the Corp be abolished, so the Army discreetly reassigned them under cover into the Defense Investigations Service.”
“Correct. You’re a knowledgeable man, Harlan.”
“Of course I am,” Garrett came back. “But listen to what you’re asking me to do. CIC files, Army Counter-Intelligence Corp? And DIS? Come on. Even I can’t break the passwords on databanks in that league. The best hackers in the world can’t even get near that stuff.”
Swenson looked back with pursed lips; then his brow rose. “Don’t let something as trivial as a password…hamper you, Harlan. Do you receive my meaning?”
“Uh, well—”
“And let me also remind you of a little Greek Mythology.”
“Wha—”
“They say that if you fly too close to the sun, the heat will melt the wax that holds the feathers in your wings.”
Now another mental two-by-four hit Garrett right in the head. His eyes shot open and his mouth drooped. Am I having serious auditory hallucinations, or did Swenson just do what I think he did?
“Thirdly,” the dying general continued, “about a week ago, someone infiltrated the Edgewood Arsenal. You’ve heard of it?”
The confusion—and the shock—still swirled in Garrett’s mind. After a moment, he answered: “Yeah, it’s near the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland. Never got any press at all until the sexual harassment thing. They store old bombs and ordnance that’s out of date. Also a lot of binary biological weapons that are scheduled to be destroyed as part of the latest CBN treaty with Russia.”
“Yes, but there are also some other things stored there, and someone broke in there last week and stole…one of those things.” Swenson’s gaze locked into Garrett’s. “An ADM, Harlan.”
“I take it you’re not referring to the Arthur Daniel Midland Corporation.”
“Atomic Demolition Munition. It’s a low-yield, defensive nuclear device, and its theft is what set everything else about the Nellis crash into motion. Check it out. There’s a lot about Edgewood you don’t know; there’s plenty that even I don’t know. I’ve never been there myself, but I can tell you, somewhere on that 20,000-acre military reservation, there’s also an old AIC facility.”
“Well, there’s an acronym I do know,” Garrett acknowledged. “A.I.C. Air Force Aerial Intelligence Command—your command.”
“A long time ago—yes. As an MJ-12 member, I ran the AIC from 1959 to 1980.”
Garrett was still having a hard time managing all this shock and information. “All right, I follow you so far. But you said four. Four things you were going to tell me.”
Swenson, his hands shaking, finally passed the minuscule wax-paper envelope to Garrett.
“I take it this isn’t the 1851 George Washington X stamp?”
“Inside that envelope, Harlan, is a key to a storage garage in Annapolis. U-STORE, it’s called. It’s registered under a counterfeit name that will withstand all federal scrutiny. In other words, if you tell anyone that I gave you this key, you won’t be believed.”
Garrett cocked his shoulder. “No problem there. I have a knack for people not believing me.”
“In that garage you will find a list of some names you’re not familiar with. Pay very close attention to those names. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, sure. Pay attention to the names…”
Suddenly, Swenson was smiling very coyly. “There are a few other things in that garage that you’ll find interesting too. And if you successfully complete this task, you can do whatever you want with those things.”
Garrett decided to set a dare. “What if I don’t complete this task of yours? What if I run off with this list of names and these things?”
“Then I’ll have you executed,” Swenson calmly replied.
Garrett believe him. I guess that says it all, he thought. But then the most obvious fact occurred to him. “Listen, I’ve had my tail stepped on about this stuff so many times it’s not funny. I’ve been bugged, robbed, DF’d, tailed, beat up—a couple times I’ve almost been killed. In other words, it’s been made pretty clear to me to lay off the subject.”
“But you won’t lay off, Harlan. You’ll never lay off. It’s not possible for you to do that, not in a million years, and you know it. Big Brother could cut your legs off, and you’d still be coming after him in a wheelchair.”
He’s probably right, Garrett considered. “Okay, I agreed to no questions. But let me ask you one thing.”
“All right.
“Why? Why are you giving this to me?”
Swenson rubbed his chin in the thought. “Repent ye, and ye will be saved’? I don’t really know, Harlan, but I doubt that it’s anything so dogmatic. Doesn’t matter anyway, really. I’ll be dead in a matter of weeks or even days. Were I more of a man, had I more resolve and more conscience—if I were more like you, Harlan—I might’ve done this years ago. I can’t do anything now, though. I can’t even get out of bed.”
Swenson broke into a coughing fit, his frail chest heaving. At this precise moment, with all he’d been told, Garrett didn’t know which way was up, and even though he’d always thought of Swenson as his worst enemy in the past, it pained him now to see the bald old man in such distress. Garrett gulped, holding the tiny envelope.
“You want me to call one of the SP’s?”
Swenson shook his head through the rest of his coughing fit. “No, no, it comes and goes. I’m all right…but—” His words fell off, and he…sniffed. “Harlan, I don’t mean any offense by this but have you showered anytime recently?”
That’s just great. “My water got cut off because I couldn’t pay the bill,” he recited, embarrassed. “I was on my way to Nero’s Roman bath-house Y when your two Keystone Cops hauled me off the street.”
Swenson’s brow narrowed. “You can’t pay your water bill?”
“Or my phone bill, if you must know. But that’s fine because if my phone’s not working then the NSA can’t tap my calls anymore.”
“You’re broke, in other words?”
The frown seemed to stretch Garrett’s face. “I’d call it a mere matter of temporary financial insolvency.”
“You’re broke; we can’t have that.” Swenson pressed a buzzer by the bed. Instantly an SP popped into the room, pistol in hand.
“Everything all right, General?”
“Yes,” Swenson said. “Get twenty thousand dollars out of the safe and give it to Mr. Garrett.”
“Yes, sir.”
The SP vanished.
Garrett almost relieved himself in his jeans. “Gee, thanks…Dad.”
Swenson’s face was getting pink again, another coughing fit coming up. “This is no joke, Harlan. For what it’s worth, I always liked you. I’ve always thought of you as something of a wayward son.”
“Let’s not get carried away,” Garrett said.
“I’m sorry things couldn’t have been different.”
Garret felt oddly choked up.
“Go now, Harlan. Time is of the essence. And good luck.”
“Thanks… I think.” Garrett, still mystified, was about to turn and leave, not even knowing what he was leaving to—
“And, Harlan?” Swenson stifled a cough.
Garrett turned back to him.
“Be very careful.”