Legacy (8 page)

A knock sounded at the door and the girl stepped back. She smiled and then nodded that whoever it was should come in.

Lee, with a half spoon’s worth of oatmeal in his mouth, saw a heavyset man walk into the room and remove his hat. He knew the man well.

“Well, it’s about time you woke up.” The big man stood over Lee as if examining him. “And, you don’t look as bad as everyone made out. I’ve gotten worse wounds while getting a haircut and a shave.”

Lee placed the spoon on the tray and looked the man over.

“Then you damn well ought to get another barber.” He looked at the large man with his one good eye. “How are you, Bill?” Lee asked, his voice still raspy.

“Tolerable, Lee, tolerable. Everyone thinks we can relax now that the war in Europe is over, but to hell with that, I say. We’ve still got one hell of a problem in the Pacific.” He leaned over after nudging the young nurse out of the way. “And to be frank with you, my boy, the Reds are starting to rear their ugly heads in Berlin, not to mention a dozen other places.”

Lee closed his eyes. “Well, they can’t say you didn’t warn them about that one, sir.”

“Damn right I did, Lee.” William “Wild Bill” Donovan, the head of the Office of Strategic Services, shooed the young hospital nurse away and then sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, until you get out of here you can keep this in your pocket, my boy. Too bad you can’t show it to anyone or wear it on some fancy uniform.”

Lee was handed a small case. He clicked it open with one large hand while his eye studied Donovan. Finally he looked at what was inside the case. A set of silver stars gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lighting. He snapped the case closed as though he had discovered something distasteful.

“Congratulations, General,” Donovan said as he stood.

Lee set the new rank on the table with his oatmeal and then pushed the table out of the way.

“Yeah, I thought you would be all enthusiastic and giddy as a schoolgirl over the promotion.”

“Promoted for getting my agents shot all to hell? Getting a kid knifed in the belly? Yeah, I’m giddy as hell over that.”

“Felt you let them down, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, for your information, our young Mr. Hamilton stopped one murderous bastard in that Nazi general.” Donovan leaned over and looked Lee in his one good eye. “And you better damn well give that kid the respect he deserves for doing his job.”

Donovan turned and started for the door.

“I’m afraid I fell asleep before the end of the book. What in the hell was in those crates?” Lee asked as he reached for the box containing his new general’s stars.

Donovan turned and all humor and anger was absent from his face.

“By the time those Hoover boys got their tails back up, the crates were gone. We assume the German agents did what General Goetz couldn’t. They probably made their way back to Germany somehow.” Donovan looked down at his feet. “Anyway, we’ll talk later. Right now there’s someone who’s been waiting to see you.” He turned away as he buttoned his suit jacket and placed his hat on his head. “And try to use some of that etiquette you used to have when you were a senator. She’s a classy young woman.”

“Bill?”

“Yeah,” Donovan said as he turned back to face Lee. He flinched as he was almost hit by the small jeweler’s box Lee had thrown at him. He fumbled it and then caught it.

“Shove that star up your ass.”

Donovan at first smiled, and then he laughed out loud.

“That would hurt, General Lee.” Donovan turned and left as his laugh echoed back into the room. “By the way, I have another job planned for you, or rather the president has.”

As Garrison turned away, not dwelling on what Donovan or the president was cooking up, he heard the footfalls of high heels on the floor. When he looked up he saw a woman in a large hat standing at the doorway. She hesitated only a moment and then stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She stood planted just inside the doorway. The hat hid her face and the small veil attached to it made her look mysterious, but Lee knew who she was. She was the same woman he had awakened to three days before.

“I understand you’ve been a constant companion of mine these last couple of months,” Lee said.

The woman pushed the veil up over her hat and centered her attention on the man in the bed for a few moments before approaching him.

“I just wanted to see if you’re as big a son of a bitch as Ben said you were.”

Garrison Lee looked for the longest time at the young, beautiful woman before him. Then he swallowed as the memory of their first meeting came into his mind. He had come to her parents’ farm a million years before wanting to talk with her young husband about patriotism and how he could best to serve his country. His remaining eye could not hold her image any longer and he looked down.

“Mrs. Hamilton,” was all he said.

She slowly sat on the edge of the bed where a moment before the man who was soon to be known as the father of the CIA, Wild Bill Donovan, had been. She removed a large hatpin and then her hat. Her hair was done up in a bun and her face was clean of makeup save for lipstick. Her face needed none as far as Lee was concerned.

“Tell me about Ben.” She saw the uncomfortable look cross Lee’s face. “Not about how he died, about how he lived. You knew him far better than I, you see.”

Lee looked up and took the woman in.

“He lived, Mrs. Hamilton. In the short time he had, that boy lived.”

The widow of Benjamin Hamilton looked down and saw Garrison Lee clearly for the first time. She knew him to be someone who cared about his people, but also a man who hid that attribute well. She felt she knew him immediately and far better than anyone else ever would. It was that single eye and its penetrating glow. She never shied away from it and would listen to him speak for hours.

“General, I think you can call me Alice.”

PART ONE

THE KILLING OF INNOCENCE

1

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, PRESENT DAY

Alice Hamilton watched Garrison Lee sleep. She leaned closer when he mumbled, trying to catch the words he was struggling to say. She couldn’t catch the soft words but she could tell he was distressed. He had been having nightmares of late and they were the first she had ever been aware of in their sixty-eight years together. Lately it seemed Garrison Lee, former senator from Maine, an OSS general during the war, and now the retired head of the most secret organization in the United States government—Department 5656, also known to a few as the Event Group—was having trouble with his conscience, rare for a man who never allowed anyone near his deepest thoughts. For sixty-eight years Alice had guessed at them, and on a few occasions had been right about his true feelings, but now she didn’t know what was going on inside Lee’s failing body and mind. The only thing Alice Hamilton ever really knew for sure was that Garrison Lee loved her, and she him.

She took Lee’s hand and squeezed it gently when he turned his head first left and then right. He mumbled something again and then fell silent. Alice allowed the tears to flow for the briefest of moments before swiping them away.

“Jump, Ben, jump!” Lee shouted as he tossed his head to the right.

Alice froze at the moment her long dead husband’s name was mentioned. It was a subject Lee and she had discussed on only one occasion and that was in the months after World War II had ended. It had never come up again and Alice never once asked him to repeat the story of how her husband had died.

“Oh, no, no, no—you bastard—you bastard!”

Lee sat up so fast that Alice had to lean back to keep from being knocked silly by the man’s still large frame. He sat up and his left eye opened and he had a look of murder on his face. The ugly scar ran under the eye patch covering his right eye and ran pink into the gray hairline. Gone were the dashing good looks of the Hollywood leading man that was once General Garrison Lee. Now all that remained was a dying man with a guilt-ridden memory and a woman who had fallen in love with him in only a few short years after the war.

“Garrison, wake up,” she said as she tried to gently push him back onto the bed.

Finally Lee took two large breaths and looked over at Alice, allowing his one eye to adjust to the faint light filtering into the bedroom. He blinked and then finally realized where he was. He slowly lay back, but not before taking Alice’s hand in his own.

“Dreaming,” he said as his eye closed.

“Yes, I know,” Alice said, leaning over and kissing his brow.

“It’s hell dying, old woman. All the ghosts start to pop open the tailgate to the welcome wagon.” He opened his eye and looked at Alice. He tried to smile and for the first time in her life she saw that Lee had a tear in his good eye that he didn’t try to swipe away.

“I tried to bring him home alive. I—”

“Stop, don’t even think about it. Ben will be there waiting for you. After all that we’ve been through and learned at the Group, you have to believe he’s there. Hell, he may even have a choice word or two for you about stealing his wife,” Alice said, smiling.

Lee returned the smile. “The only reason I regret going is that I have to leave you.” Lee half turned and lifted his free hand. He held her face. “You saved me. Every day you were in my life, you saved me from being that bleak man you met all those years ago.”

“You’re not gone yet and I’m still here, old man. You get some more rest.” She let his hand go and reached for several large files that were spread across his blanket. “And no more reading material for you,” she said, stacking the red-bordered files and then standing, but not before she leaned over and kissed the 103-year-old-man deeply. “If you get your rest, I’ll give these back to you.”

“You’re such a bully,” he said as his eye closed.

“Yeah, and you know where I got that training.” She turned for the doorway and then stopped and looked back him. “Jack called and asked if he and Sarah could stop by later tonight, I told them yes.”

“Always good to see Jack and his girl,” Lee said, without opening his good eye.

Alice watched as the senator went to sleep, then she turned and went through the door, leaving it cracked open by a foot as she expected his sleeping mind to bounce back on him again.

Senator Garrison Lee was near death, and there wasn’t anything Alice could do but watch him die.

SHACKLETON CRATER, LUNAR SURFACE

For the first time since
Apollo 17
the United States had returned to the surface of the Moon. Peregrine, the code name for the package of four robotic lunar rovers,
George, John, Paul
, and
Ringo
, named for their resemblance to a large-tracked beetle, had landed safely with its air-cushioned (balloon) landing system that would eventually be used for all future lunar and Mars missions. The four rovers had deployed without incident. Their mission—find proof that the Moon had deposits of water embedded in its dead and lifeless soil and rock, possibly enough water to make the Moon a desirable launching platform for all future space travel.

Since the presidential order of 2010 to curtail NASA’s intention of a manned return to the lunar surface in the next decade, it was decided to combine the exploration budgets of Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA to explore the possibilities of hidden water deposits on the Moon, left there by countless encounters with the frozen speeders of space, the comets, thus justifying a return to a place America knew well.

As the first landing spot chosen for the Peregrine program, Shackleton Crater was above all else a safe spot for the experimental rovers. Unlike the remote and preprogrammed rovers sent to Mars,
John, Paul, George,
and
Ringo
would actually be tasked to do heavy-duty work in drilling remotely from the safe plains surrounding Shackleton and operated by mission specialists from their distant confines in Pasadena and Houston. This program was a far cry from taking soil samples on Mars. Shackleton Crater was safe, soft, and conducive to success the first time out. And success was what the space program needed. Water equaled a cheaper way to get to Mars in 2025, the projected date of the first American attempt at gaining the high ground of the red planet.

Mission parameters called for the four rovers to explore the dips and valleys of the outer crater, never venturing down its steeply sloped sides and to its deep floor. They would measure and test for any moisture content in the soil surrounding the large rock formations. This fact was a running joke for the mission planners, as they knew they would find no water at Shackleton. That would be for a later mission at the southern pole when they had conquered the problems of deep-soil drilling.

As
George, Paul,
and
John
ran freely around the brim of the giant crater,
Ringo
was taking snapshots of the sky above Shackleton for GPS purposes. The programming for this had been completed at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and designed specifically for
Ringo
to skirt the outer rim and map the sky. The simple instructions for
Ringo
were to guarantee that the other three rovers stayed on mission, testing their sampling and drilling packages for telemetry relay back to Pasadena and Houston. The problem developed when a small glitch in the rover’s programming had gone undetected by a sixth-year grad student in Colorado.
Ringo
’s design for traversing the lunar surface outside the brim of Shackleton was flawed and was off by a mere three feet. As the other three rovers were performing their remote-controlled tasks flawlessly,
Ringo
was off on its own and running dangerously close to the giant crater’s precipitous edge. As eyes 244,000 miles away watched the colorless broadcast coming from the small rover’s stationary camera atop its four-foot-wide boxed frame, the roving beetle started to slide off the powdered edge of Shackleton.