Sea of Crises (9 page)

The boom of the weapon shattered the relative silence and was followed immediately by multiple echoes as the report bounced back off nearby mountains. The lifeless body of the stallion dropped onto the hard dust-covered surface of the pen with a massive thud.

Raen calmly re-holstered the pistol.

“Fuck you, Marek.”

5

According to Peter, Eunice Gale lived in a home that she and her now-deceased husband, Alvin, had purchased shortly after World War II. They had raised two children there. The oldest, Patricia, was now 71. She’d never married, and, as near as Peter had been able to determine, had never even moved away from home. The other child, Mason, had died in the Apollo 18 tragedy in 1976 at the age of 34.

The house was a modest, single-story structure that sat in the middle of a residential block in the northwest corner of Minneapolis. Matt did not slow the SUV as they drove past, so Nate was able to catch only a quick view of the place. The lawn, he saw, needed tending, and the exterior was a few years overdue for a paint job. It was, however, essentially indistinguishable from the other homes on the street. A white compact car sat in the driveway.

At the end of the block, Matt turned right. Parked on the corner was a service van marked with the logo of a plumbing company. As they passed it, Matt glanced at Nate, arched an eyebrow and slightly tilted his head in the direction of the van. It had obviously been there for a while, as the blacktop beneath the vehicle was dry, in contrast to the rest of the roadway that shimmered from the drizzle that had been falling all morning.

Matt circled the two adjacent blocks. “Looks like that’s the only one,” he said eventually. Taking a circuitous route, so as not to pass the plumbing van again, he guided the SUV to a spot on the same street as the Gale house, but a block away and on the opposite side, so that it was not visible from the van. He shut off the engine.

“Now what?” asked Nate.

“Now we wait,” Matt said. Then, as if realizing he was being a bit cryptic, he explained, “We don’t want to try to approach the house in daylight. In fact, if we can do this without going into the house, so much the better. My guess is they’ve probably got listening devices in there. But,” he added, “if the women stay put today, we’ll have to go in tonight.”

“So, we’re just going to sit here all day?” Peter asked from the back seat.

Matt nodded, a sardonic smile playing on his face. “Welcome to my world.”

Nate glanced back, and Peter gave him an inquiring look. Nate shook his head. “It’s kind of a long story.”

It turned out they didn’t have to wait at all. A couple minutes after they’d parked, the front door to the house opened, and a woman stepped out. She locked the door behind herself and walked briskly to the car sitting in the driveway. She backed the car out, turned it up the street in their direction, and, at the intersection just before she reached them, she made a right and headed off down the side street. Matt started the engine, pulled out and turned up the street after her.

He kept a good distance between them and the white compact, glancing frequently in the rear and side view mirrors. She led them onto a busy commercial thoroughfare and eventually turned into a large shopping center. She parked the compact in front of a Bed Bath & Beyond store. By the front door, she retrieved a shopping cart and entered the building.

Matt parked the SUV a few spaces away. He looked at Nate. “We’ll be about two minutes behind you.” He pointed to the small device he’d previously given to Nate. “If it vibrates, we’ve got company. Find the storage room, go to the back door and wait for us behind the building.”

Nate glanced briefly at Peter, who looked a little dazed. Even Buster, sitting on the seat next to his brother, seemed unusually subdued. Nate nodded, opened the passenger door and stepped out. He walked quickly to the store entrance, hoping he wasn’t attracting attention, but feeling as if he were being followed by a spotlight.

He saw the woman as soon as he entered the store. She had made her way up one of the aisles to the right and paused to examine a floor display filled with coffee makers and prepackaged coffees. Tall and thin, with closely cropped grey hair, she moved with a vitality that belied her age. A pair of reading glasses hung from a chain around her neck, and, as Nate watched, she lifted the glasses and slipped them on to read one of the coffee packages. There was a quiet elegance to her.

Nate picked up a hand basket from the rack near the door, and, walking as casually as he could, he made his way up the aisle, passed the woman, and stopped a few feet beyond, pretending to look at a collection of mixing bowls. He was acutely aware of the small device in his left pocket, afraid at any moment it would start vibrating.

The woman selected a package of coffee and placed it in her cart. She then wheeled past Nate, turned and made for the escalator, where she slid the cart into the mechanism that would pull it up to the second floor and stepped onto the moving stairway. He followed slowly, making a show of looking at various items on display, and he entered the escalator only as she was reaching the top. Fortunately, there was no vibration from the device in his pocket.

As he exited the escalator, he saw that the woman had turned into a section of the store containing pillows and comforters. He didn’t see anyone else in the vicinity.

He walked up the narrow aisle in which the woman stood, examining a pillow, and said quietly, “Ms. Gale?”

“Hmm?” she said, turning to look at him. “Do I know you?”

“No,” he said. “But we need to talk.”

Her face took on a startled expression that quickly morphed into one of fear. Her eyes darted behind him, and then around the area in which the two of them stood. She tensed. Nate wasn’t sure whether she was ready to run or scream. Or both.

Nate raised his hands, palms forward. “I’m not here to hurt you. I want to help you.”

Eyes still darting, she said, “I don’t need any help.”

“Yes, you do,” Nate said, with as much calm as he could muster. He was about to say something else when her eyes went wide and the color seemed to drain from her face. Glancing back, Nate saw Matt step off the escalator. He returned his attention to the woman. She had a desperate look.

“I didn’t talk to him,” she said in a hoarse whisper. “I swear. Please. You have to believe me.” Then she suddenly gasped. Nate didn’t need to turn to know that she’d seen Peter as well.

“I’m with them,” Nate said. “I’m not with the others.”

The woman was shaking her head. There was still a pleading note to her voice. “You don’t know,” she said. “You don’t know what they can do.”

“Actually, we do,” said Matt, who had made his way up the adjacent aisle. Speaking in a low, but firm voice, he said, “And we’re just as afraid as you are. But what you don’t know is that the situation has changed. They’re coming to kill us.”

To hear Matt say it so bluntly made Nate’s knees weak.

“It won’t make a difference to them what you do or don’t say to us now,” Matt added. “It’s only a matter of time before they come to kill you.”

The woman seemed to sag. She looked down, but her eyes were unfocused. She opened her mouth to speak, but the only thing that came out was a weak, “Oh.”

Hoping that his voice was more composed than he felt, Nate said, “We want to help you. But we need your cooperation. You know something they don’t want anyone else to know. We can’t begin to help you unless you tell us what it is.”

There were tears in her eyes, and she was shaking. “I’m so tired,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I’m so tired of being afraid.”

“Please,” Nate said. “Let us help you.”

“Do you need some assistance?” came a sharp voice from behind them. Nate turned quickly to see a young man in a blue vest emblazoned with the store logo. Brows knit, he was looking suspiciously at the slumped figure of Patricia Gale.

“No,” Matt said, immediately. “Thank you. It’s just that there’s been a sudden death in our family.”

The store clerk’s expression softened. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yes,” Matt continued. He’d come around to the aisle in which Nate and Patricia Gale stood, and he now linked an arm protectively under one of the woman’s. “We need to take our mother home. Is it ok if we leave the cart here?”

“Of course,” the young man said, suspicion now replaced by solicitation.

Matt began guiding the woman, and Nate took her other arm. She did not resist.

Two doors down from the store was a pizzeria. At 10:30 in the morning, they were the only customers. Peter ordered four cups of coffee, and they took a table well away from the only employee in the place, a young woman who was ostensibly manning the cash register, but who was clearly more intent on carrying out a spirited conversation on her cell phone.

Patricia Gale seemed to have regained much of her composure. She considered each of the three of them, then said, more as a statement than a question, “You’re Bob Cartwright’s boys.”

Nate nodded. “Yes, I’m Nate. These are my brothers Peter and Matt.”

“I met your father once,” she said. “About a month before the launch. It was after…” Her voice trailed off. She took a sip of coffee. Then she said, as much to herself as to the three of them, “God, I am so tired of being afraid.”

Matt said quietly, “Why don’t you tell us what you’re afraid of.”

She looked at Matt for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Him. Or them, I suppose. He’s probably gone now. But I know there are others like him. Still, when I think about it, it’s always him.”

“What can you tell us about him?” Matt asked.

#

On the television, the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York City was winding down. Jimmy Carter and his new running mate, Walter Mondale, had just taken the stage amid raucous cheers when the knock came at the front door. Patricia glanced over at her mother, who was stretched out in the big leather recliner, the one that her father had so loved. Her mother had nodded off.

Not wanting to disturb her, Patricia set aside the needlepoint she’d been working on and quietly got up from the sofa. She reached down and turned off the television. At the door, she switched on the porch light and peered out through the side window. A man in his early thirties, with short cropped hair, stood on the stoop. When he saw her, he gave her a broad smile and called out, “Miss Gale? My name is Arthur Spelling. I served in the Marines with your brother. Here’s a picture of the two of us.” He held out a black-and-white snapshot.

Patricia put her face near the glass and studied the photo. It did, indeed, show Mason. He was dressed in a pair of camouflaged pants and a t-shirt and was standing next to another man who appeared to be a younger version of the man outside her door. The two were in front of a structure lined with sandbags piled almost to the roof. They each looked to be holding a can of beer. Mason had a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. Funny, she thought, she never knew he’d taken up smoking.

But, then again, she’d never had much of a chance to get to know about Mason’s life after he’d shipped out to Vietnam in early 1967. Not that there had been much to know. He’d been sent home three months later in a sealed casket, his body apparently so badly ruined that it couldn’t be viewed.

She reached up and undid the latch, then opened the door.

The man gave her a friendly nod and said, “It’s very nice to finally meet you. Mason has told me so much about you. May I come in for a moment?”

He didn’t wait for her to answer, stepping across the threshold and into the small living room. Taken aback, she began to close the door, but something stopped it, and then it was pushed open from the outside. Two other men entered the room, the second finally closing the door behind them and locking it.

“These men are with me,” said the man who had called himself Arthur Spelling. “They also know Mason well.”

Patricia shook her head. The suddenness of the appearance of these strangers, coupled with the odd turns of phrase, had her confused. “What…” she began to say, but her mother’s voice interrupted her.

“Patricia, who are these men?”

Before she could respond, the man named Spelling had crossed the room and put out a hand. “Mrs. Gale,” he said, “I bring you greetings from your son, Mason.”

Her mother instinctively took the man’s hand, but there was puzzlement on her face. “Mason,” she said slowly, “Mason is dead.”

“No,” said the man named Spelling, “that’s where you’re wrong.” Then he suddenly slapped his side. “Oh, where are my manners. Patricia. Is it ok if I call you Patricia? Please come and take a seat on the sofa.”

Though the words were polite, there was no mistaking the tone. It was a command, not a request. Patricia looked at the other two men. One remained by the front door. The other had walked over to stand by the door next to the dining area, the one that led back to the rest of the house. They both had their arms folded. She walked to the sofa, and, as calmly as she could, she sat down.

“That’s great,” the man said, walking over to the dining room table. He pulled out one of the straight back chairs, carried it to the living room and set it down in front of the gap between the sofa and the recliner, facing her and her mother. He took a seat and regarded them with what Patricia now realized were a pair of extraordinarily dark eyes. With much more familiarity than he had a right to display, the man reached out with both hands and patted Patricia and her mother on their respective knees. Looking back over his shoulder at the man standing near the hallway door, he said, “Mr. Johnson, why don’t you get us all something to drink.”

The other man nodded, turned and walked out of the room.

“Now,” he said, returning his attention to Patricia and her mother, “let me explain why I’m here. First, I need to correct a horrible mistake that was made by the Marines. And, being a former Marine, I’m a little embarrassed about this. It seems you may have received some terribly misleading news about Mason. But, I can assure you Mason is alive and well and doing just wonderfully.”

Her mother, Patricia saw, was still struggling with the sudden appearance of these men, not that Patricia was having much greater success. “What kind of cruel hoax is this?” Patricia asked. “We buried Mason nine years ago.”