Time Patrol (Area 51 The Nightstalkers) (24 page)

The nameplate read
LOUISE
SMITH
. She had a thick gray bun, reading glasses perched on her nose, and wore a bulky sweater of some indeterminate muted color that was draped over her shapeless body.

She was the gatekeeper to the inner sanctum of the Cellar. She’d sat in this outer office for over twenty-five years for Hannah’s predecessor, Nero, and she’d simply stayed in place as he passed on and Hannah took his place. If Ms. Smith had a life outside of this office, Hannah knew nothing of it. She could undoubtedly have retired years ago on a government pension, but the fact she didn’t indicated she actually didn’t have a life outside of this office.

She was rarely perturbed or startled, an essential trait for someone in this position. No one entered the doors behind her, leading to the hallway to Hannah’s office, without her permission.

But when the doors behind her suddenly hissed open on their pneumatic arms, Ms. Smith was indeed startled. She turned with surprising alacrity for someone who sat so lumpily in her chair.

“Ma’am?” she asked, while she tried to remember the last time her boss had left her office unannounced. Had she missed something on the schedule? A meeting with some senator or congressman who needed to be threatened into silence? A briefing at the CIA? Such an oversight would be unprecedented.

“Ms. Smith,” Hannah said, nodding. She further surprised her secretary by walking up to her and sitting on the corner of her desk.

Ms. Smith turned her seat to face Hannah, uncomfortable with both the action of her boss and her proximity. Ms. Smith did not enjoy people within five feet of her, and Hannah had breached that distance by six inches.

But Ms. Smith did not protest. She didn’t scoot her chair back six inches. “Yes, ma’am?”

“In your time with Nero,” Hannah said, “did you ever hear of a program called the Time Patrol?”

There was no hesitation in the reply. “No, ma’am.”

“Certain?”

A tic of irritation, uncontrollable, registered in Ms. Smith’s left cheek. “I’m certain, ma’am.”

“Ever hear of a man named Foreman?”

“The Crazy Old Man?” Ms. Smith nodded. “Is he still around? It’s been years.”

“He’s still around,” Hannah assured her. “What do you know of him?”

“He visited Mister Nero several times over the years. I was never privy as to what transpired between them.”

“Do you know what Foreman does?” Hannah asked. “Who he works for?”

“Foreman was early Agency,” Ms. Smith said, referring to the CIA. “In it before it was even called the CIA. If he’s still there, probably no one knows what he does anymore. He’s outlived everyone. Including Mister Nero.” She paused, as if considering what she said next was an indiscretion. “Mister Nero thought Mister Foreman was a bit bonkers.”

“As good a cover as any,” Hannah said. “Native Americans actually respected those who were considered crazy. Thought they had special powers and insight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did someone called the Administrator ever visit Nero?”

“The ‘Administrator’ of what, ma’am?”

“That’s the point,” Hannah said. “He just goes by the Administrator.”

“Not that I recall.”

Hannah slid off the desk. She reached under her business jacket and pulled out a pistol. She pulled the slide partly back, making sure there was a round in the chamber. “Have a helicopter ready for me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Golden felt claustrophobic in the booth as it rattled along the tracks underneath the Pentagon. She had an identification tag clipped to her jacket with the highest possible access level, but it still had taken a frustratingly long time to clear all the security checkpoints to get this far.

With a lurch, the booth came to a halt, and the double doors whisked open. Golden stepped out of the booth, the doors shutting behind her, unaware she’d just tripped the IR beam that crossed the inner doors. She took in the large, square room.

The first thing she noted was the tinfoil lining the walls. She considered that, then dismissed it as a ploy. It was too obvious for a man who’d survived inside the CIA-Pentagon–Black Budget–Covert world for so long. Of course, there was the possibility Foreman was getting Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia, but the reports from New York didn’t indicate anything of the sort.

She went over to the desk and sat down. She’d always believed that literally sitting in someone’s seat gave insight into their psyche. Golden had come to the attention of the Cellar because of her studies in profiling, trying to ferret out dangerous people
before
they committed any acts. She’d been using the military’s extensive database to do this, and the concept of predicting behavior based on past experiences and traumas had caught Hannah’s eye.

Directly across from the desk was the world map, so that must be a priority for Foreman, but Golden shifted her attention to the desk, because objects here were closer at hand. She saw the ancient coins, and that fit in with the Time Patrol. There was a black and white photo in a simple frame. Foreman, as a very young man, was in it, standing with a man on either side. In front of him were two rows of men in white lab coats, one row seated, the other kneeling. They were in a desert somewhere in front of an old army building. Golden took a picture of the picture. She pulled open the file drawer on the right-hand side. It was stuffed full of old manila folders, papers bulging out of some of them.

Golden prioritized and wasn’t totally surprised to find exactly the three things she was looking for, each carefully labeled and in alphabetical order. She pulled out three thin folders: COYNE, RATNIK, SIN FEN.

She quickly opened them and photographed the scant contents.

Putting the folders back, Golden noted the world map next. She walked over. She took a couple of photos of it, and then read the notes.

Here There Be Monsters

Bermuda Triangle

Devil’s Sea

She knew some of the locations by reputation, but others were new to her. She’d have to brush up on her viewing of the UFO cable channel, she reflected as she leaned over and peered at the MRI image pinned to the Shakespeare quote.

“Crap,” Golden muttered as she saw the dark mass. She looked at the face of her cell phone and wasn’t surprised to see she had no signal.

She looked back up at the map and frowned. The line drawn around the area labeled Bermuda Triangle wasn’t exactly a triangle. It zigged and zagged in the Bermuda area but also had arms reaching out, one of them across Cuba and ending near the Caymans.

“Double crap,” Golden said.

She spun about as the doors slid open. A man dressed in black fatigues with a submachine gun tight to his shoulder stepped out. He was aiming it directly at Golden.

“I have authorization!” Golden yelled, holding up the pass.

The man said nothing, edging to his right, her left, the gun remaining aimed at her. When he got halfway around the room, he gestured with the barrel toward the door.

“You want me to leave?” Golden asked.

In reply, he gave a quick jerk of the muzzle toward the exit.

Golden didn’t need any further urging. She scuttled across the room and got into the booth. She breathed a sigh of relief as the doors shut behind her and she began moving. She had the photos, which was the key thing. Golden had butted heads with people inside the Pentagon throughout her career. She found the military mindset to be—

The booth jerked to a halt and the doors slid open. Two men dressed in black had their weapons trained on her, while a third stepped in, looped a zip tie over her hands before she could react, and yanked her out of the booth.

“What the—” Golden began, but one of the men hit her in the stomach with the butt of his submachine gun before she could get the third word out.

Golden doubled over, gasping for breath. The man who’d jerked her out and zip-tied her hit her across the back of the legs and she fell to her knees, her forehead coming perilously close to smashing into the floor.

One of the men stepped behind her and Golden felt the muzzle of a weapon pressed against the back of her head, in that soft spot at the top of the neck, just below the bottom of the skull. She realized she was looking at a rusty stain on the tile floor and dimly realized it was a bloodstain, so deep and so persistent it could never be washed away.

And that’s when she realized her blood would join that stain.

“No!” Golden tried to cry out, but she only made a squeal.

The tableau was frozen like that for a long second, and then was broken as the doors slid open once more.

The executioners were more surprised by that than Golden, who was still trying to process the inevitability of death.

“Not today, gentlemen.”

Golden felt a rush of relief hearing Hannah’s voice.

One of the executioners spoke for the first time. “We have authorization.”

“From a traitor,” Hannah said.

Golden felt a hand around her arm, and she was lifted to her feet. Hannah looked calm and businesslike, but she held a gun in her other hand, not aimed at anyone, but more as a leveling of the playing field.

“I’m Hannah.”

The three men took a step back. Glances were exchanged. “The Cellar?” one of them asked.

“The same.” Hannah pointed at Golden. “She works for me. Please cut her hands free.”

One of the men whipped out a knife and expertly severed the zip tie with a single slash. He slid the knife back into the sheath without missing a beat.

“Foreman is rogue,” Hannah said. “Correct, Doctor Golden?”

Golden could only manage to shake her head in the affirmative.

“Have a good day, gentlemen.” Hannah took Golden’s elbow and led her into the booth. It was slightly crowded, but Golden didn’t notice. The doors slid shut and they began moving.

“They were going to kill me,” Golden finally managed to say.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Foreman had his office rigged with an IR alert if it was compromised. You compromised it. He had a standing order with those who rule that place to terminate anyone who made unauthorized entry.”

“How did you know that?” Golden asked.

“I didn’t. I’m surmising that based on the evidence.”

“But then why did you come?”

“Because there’s something wrong about Foreman,” Hannah said. “What did you discover?”

“There is something wrong about Foreman.”

“Let’s go to New York,” Hannah said.

“He stayed at that hotel,” the Asset said, pointing out the window of the car. “He would order room service. Drink at the bar in the evenings. That was pretty much it.”

The Asset was sweating, which might be due to the high temperature on Grand Cayman but more likely because of Neeley sitting in the passenger seat. She was dressed all in black: slacks and a collarless, armless shirt, which displayed the long, toned muscles in her arms. She wore wraparound sunglasses and had a daypack resting on her lap. She’d flown in on an unmarked Learjet and bypassed customs, not an unusual thing in the Caymans.

Neeley said nothing, letting the silence drag out.

“It’s all in the report,” the Asset insisted, as he had when Neeley met him planeside. He was an old man, face flushed red from sun and alcohol. A stringer, not a Cellar Asset. A big difference. He worked for whatever various US government agency tapped him with a request. He was well past what Gant had called ROAD: Retired on Active Duty.

“
All
?” Neeley finally said. “Every second of his time accounted for?”

“I’ve got a small team here,” the Asset protested, which answered the question.

Coyne had not come here just to lie in his room and eat room service and drink in the bar in the evening. Gant, who’d never read Conan Doyle, had a rule that Sherlock Holmes’s inventor would have loved: The obvious answer is usually the answer.

Gant had had a lot of rules. They’d kept him alive for a long time until the cancer took him. Neeley had appropriated his rules as her inheritance and she was still alive, thanks in large part to them and the training he’d imposed on her.

She felt a trickle of sweat slide down her back and get absorbed into her shirt. A long way from the rain and deep forest of Whidbey Island, but the target was the same. What had Coyne been here for?