Eight Miles High

by James Philip

  “I’m not crazy,” Dwight Christie muttered.

  “I agree, and I disagree. I’m describing a psychosis arising out of your mind attempting to heal itself, in which you began to live in your own, increasingly separate world. Once you do that it is relatively easy to lose empathy, connection with the people around you. It becomes easy to think of them as ‘things’, pieces on a chess board which exist only for your convenience.”

  “Psycho-babble,” the man grunted derisively as Erin Lambert returned with three cups on a metal tray.

  “Have I missed anything?” She inquired, picking up her cup and stepping away from the table to stand next to the mirror on the wall.

  “The professor has me down for a psycho,” Dwight Christie complained.

  “On a bad day,” Caro agreed, with an apologetic grimace. “You see, I don’t think you recognised what was happening to you. Not for a while, and by the time you did, well, by that time not knowing what was real and what was fantasy didn’t seem to matter anymore. Tell me I’m wrong?”

  “You’re wrong!”

  “Okay, that makes you a run of the mill psychopath,” Caro retorted matter of factly. “If there is such a thing, which strictly speaking, there probably isn’t. Be that as it may, contrary to your carefully constructed back story I don’t believe that you were ever that comic-book all-American kid traduced by some kind of ‘Communistic dream’. That stuffs purely for the movies. You didn’t grow up a closet Red or any other kind of rebel. During the Second War I don’t even think you were very shocked to discover that American industry routinely – gratuitously, in fact – systematically fleeces and gouges the American taxpayer. Like most Americans you accept the venality of the system because, in the scale of things, it benefits the greatest number of people. All that polemic you gave those dopes at Quantico about obscene fortunes being shamelessly built upon the bodies of dead GIs; that’s just crap, Dwight!”

  Caro recognised what had shouted so loudly at James Adams as he forensically deconstructed Dwight Christie’s personal history and career in the FBI.

  It was far too pat. Too clean, too…organised.

  Dwight Christie’s whole thesis was flawed.

  And besides, while his association with criminal figures on the West Coast and his loose affiliation with several outlandish characters who together, had come to form, in the FBI’s files and the wider public imagination, ‘the resistance’ were demonstrable, documented post-October 1962, there was no evidence other than his own highly suspect testimony, linking him to Soviet Intelligence, Red Dawn or to any other leftist subversive group.

  Problematically, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI expected to, badly wanted to and therefore, often assumed that what it was looking for, and now and then seeing, was evidence of ‘reds under the bed’. Dwight Christie wholly understood that mentality; and he had played to his audience with marvelous adroitness and adaptability.

  But now the game was over.

  James Adams had briefed Caro that Christie had been a ‘star member’ of a special FBI team digging up and feeding, sometimes legally, other times not, ‘evidence’ to the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. His work in the American North West, and spells on detachment investigating the Hollywood milieu of Los Angeles, had identified him as a future high-flyer to the ‘big chiefs’ in DC, and earned him a series of promotions which had eventually put him in line to take over as Head of the San Francisco Field Office in 1963.

  Dwight Christie had been living a dual life for a long time: that of the proto-typical FBI man parallel to that of a facilitator and sometime co-conspirator with a gang of ‘crazies’ ultimately led by Galen Cheney, the evangelical berserker who had terrorised parts of West Texas in the chaos after the October War, and died having led the mob that seized the Wister Park Embassy compound in July 1964.

  He had never been a ‘deep sleeper’ Red spy, that was simply a constructed rationalisation which had come to underpin his alternative reality.

  Dwight Christie said he had tried to stop that atrocity at the Wister Park compound; and even when he failed, had attempted – in the event, ineffectually - to stop the rape, torture and murder of the surviving female staff held as hostages. Some of that might even be true. He might, as he claimed, have tried to kill Cheney down in Texas the year before, or not, after he had spirited away several members of the madman’s ‘family’ around the time Cheney and his son had attempted to assassinate the Reverend King at Bedford Pines Park in Atlanta.

  Caro sighed, and pushed back her chair.

  “I think we’re done here,” she declared, rising to her feet. “Looking down at Christie she hesitated: “We probably won’t meet again. I honestly don’t know if you are a bad man, Mister Christie. I suspect you are sick, but honestly and truly, I don’t think anybody cares about that anymore.”

  James Adams had a theory that Hans Mikkelsen was the man with whom Christie and another one of Galen Cheney’s disciples, or perhaps one of the maniac’s sons, had lured a joint FBI-US Army team into a trap which had claimed the lives of seven federal agents and eleven soldiers, and wounded another dozen, in Texas prior to the Wister Park atrocity.

  It was the one thing Dwight Christie refused to talk about.

  When shown a mug shot of Hans Mikkelsen he had simply shrugged and looked away.

  Caro had no intention, or inclination to go there.

  Anybody seriously trying to get to the root of Dwight Christie’s psychosis would need to study him for weeks, months perhaps, and having royally screwed up at Quantico, the FBI was never going to allow that to happen.

  James Adams had needed an expert second opinion.

  She would give him exactly that.

  And wash her hands of the whole thing.

  Right now, a few months locked up in officers’ married quarters at Offutt Air Force Base catching up on her reading, and writing up the papers she had put on the backburner before the war in the Midwest, pretending to be just another ordinary Project Looking Glass widow, would suit her just fine!

  Chapter 71

  Friday 17th February 1967

  United Kingdom Embassy, Washington DC

  Air Marshal Sir Daniel French was ushered straight into the Ambassador’s rooms on his arrival from Andrews Air Force Base. It was customary for senior British officers in the United States to travel in mufti; however, for this trip he had made an exception, donning his day uniform, for his first appearance before the cameras of the American TV broadcasters and press photographers on the tarmac at Andrews Field.

  Nicko Henderson guessed that his guest’s expression had scarcely been less black on the tarmac of Andrews Field as it was when he had swept into the Embassy.

  “What the Devil is going on, Henderson?” Dan French demanded angrily. “Nobody will tell me a bloody thing!”

  The Ambassador was about to reach for a bottle of Brandy, deeming that the other man could, like him, do with a stiff drink right now. He was about to suggest as much when his wife swept into the room.

  “Rachel is sleeping at present, Sir Daniel,” she said confidentially, softly as if she was afraid the slumbering wife would overhear, and awake.

  Although she hid it well, inwardly, Mary Henderson was still a little shaken up after yesterday.

  They all were still suffering the after effects, it was just that Nicko was incredibly good at concealing that sort of thing from casual observers. It was something probably best explained by his public school-upbringing – he had gone to Stowe before going up to Hertford College, Oxford - rather than anything the Diplomatic Service had taught him.

  Mary had almost fainted the first time she had seen Rachel at Cleveland Park.

  The hospital or the police had taken away Rachel’s ruined dress and coat, both of which were covered with unspeakable gore; but there had still been what was probably congealed brain matter in her hair, and when she had changed into the winter frock and coat Mary had brought from the Embassy, she had seen that her unde
r things were stained, soaked with dried blood. Apparently, the Angleton man had collapsed across her and pretty much bled out into her lap.

  Back at the Embassy Mary had guided Rachel into a bath, where she had sat, shivering, uncommunicative for over an hour until the water was freezing cold. Mary had washed the offal out of her hair and a doctor had been called, who given Rachel an injection of something to help her sleep. Then, Mary, and a female secretary whom Rachel knew from her time at the Embassy in 1964 and 1965, had sat up with her all night.

  In addition, at Nicko’s request, two armed Marines had stood sentry outside the bedroom door in case she awakened and ran amok in the night.

  God, men were so bloody melodramatic!

  Mary Henderson took Dan French’s arm.

  “Look, sit down and have a drink, Dan. I know Nicko’s dying to have one. You both need it.”

  Regardless of how angry or distraught Dan French was he was far too much of a gentleman to gainsay the mistress of the house. It was a matter of moments before the Ambassador pressed a crystal tumbler into his hands.

  “The Queen,” Nicko Henderson suggested, pouring himself clumsily into a nearby armchair, to be joined in the blink of an eye by his wife, perching on one arm, anxiously scrutinising Dan French.

  “Rachel is physically unhurt, Dan,” she said, knowing that was the most important message to communicate and that once that had sunk in, the poor man would feel an awful lot better.

  “Airey should never have asked her to come back to America!” Dan French fulminated, pausing only to take a gulp of the Embassy’s first-class Brandy. “I knew…”

  Nicko Henderson raised a hand.

  “It was a mistake,” he agreed, “but I’m sure Airey had his reasons.”

  Airey Neave had, presumably motivated by the natural escaper’s sixth sense honed and perfected in extricating himself from Colditz Castle in the Second War, made tracks for the White House shortly before Dan French’s plane was due to land.

  There was an inordinate amount of smoothing over of wounded sensibilities to be done, and had Dan French’s arrival not been imminent, Nicko himself would at this moment, be well and truly ‘on the carpet’ at the State Department; as, indeed, he would be shortly when he attended Foggy Bottom at the Secretary of State’s pleasure.

  Or in this case…extreme displeasure.

  “Reasons?” Dan French grunted, teetering on the edge of being unspeakably rude to his hosts.

  No, no, that would never do…

  Unconsciously, powered by raw angst he had risen to his feet, clunking his glass down on a table which fortunately, happened to be where his hand released it.

  Why are the Ambassador and his charming wife looking towards the door I came in through?

  The red mist did not want to clear.

  However, he turned.

  “Rachel…”

  His wife was standing in the open doorway.

  Dressed in a white shift-gown that covered her shoulders and fell to her knees, her feet bare she seemed so helplessly pale, and weary. Her hair was tangled, half over her face.

  She tried to meet her husband’s gaze.

  Failed, stared at her feet like a little girl lost.

  “I’m, I’m sorry… I…”

  Dan French, in no mood to stand on ceremony reached his wife in two, three strides and wrapped her in his arms with such urgent intensity that briefly, he inadvertently crushed the air out of her lungs.

  Rachel coughed.

  “I can’t breathe…”

  “Sorry, I…”

  She was crying and the man was terrified he was about to break down too.

  He buried his face in her hair, clung to her as if he was afraid that if he let go, she would evaporate into thin air.

  They swayed, embraced.

  Then: “I think I’m going to be sick!”

  Dan scrabbled desperately for the Ambassador’s wastepaper basket and almost, but not quite placed it in the right place at the right time. In the process the couple ended up on their knees in front of Nicko Henderson’s marvellously cluttered desk.

  “Oh, God… They gave me an injection of some kind yesterday,” Rachel gasped. “And now I’ve been sick on Nicko’s favourite rug…”

  The Ambassador and his wife had, meanwhile, absented themselves, thus deferring this new embarrassment a while longer.

  Rachel fingered her hair.

  And I have been sick in my hair…

  “Oh God, I must look as dreadful as I feel.”

  “You look,” Dan French began, contemplating a white lie. “Not so good,” he confessed.

  She rested her brow on his shoulder, too weak to hold up her head.

  “Dan…” She slurred, feeling nauseas again.

  “I’m here. I’m here, my love.”

  Chapter 72

  Friday 17th February 1967

  Orcines, Puy-de-Dôme, the Auvergne

  The once scenic village at the foot of the Chaine de Puys lay on the gently rising ground west of Clermont-Ferrand, little more than five kilometres distant from the boundaries of the neighbouring city fought over, looted and now left to dereliction since the October War. Before the war the road from Clermont-Ferrand to Limoges would have been busy, particularly in the summer; now, it was pot-holed, cracked and at the margins, overgrown by weeds and when the trees started coming into leaf in the spring, branches would overhang its nature-narrowed course as it headed up into the mountain passes to the west.

  Comrade Agnès thought she had dreamed being picked up, and jolted and bounced on the back of some kind of litter or trailer. She had been cold, wet, slowly succumbing to exposure, hypothermia. Beyond help, beyond caring.

  Now, her thin, famished frame ached as she lay, barely sensible on the lumpy straw palliasse on the floor of what, as her eyes blinked in and out of focus, she guessed must have been a stable of some kind in happier times.

  No, not a stable.

  More a pigsty accommodated in a thatched, smelly hovel!

  She thought about it, would have brooded had not somebody put a hand under her head, and held a metal bowl to her lips. She slurped brackish, cold water.

  Presently, she sat up, her knees drawn close to her chest with her back to the uneven, unyielding wall.

  The company of at least one member of the Suinae subfamily of Artiodactyl Mammalia, Suidae – the domesticated pig – would, she decided, have been infinitely preferable to the two filthy, black-uniformed, stinking Revolutionary Guards with whom she shared her new cell. A few days ago, she would have done anything to hide the way she felt, the bile that rose in her throat every time she saw that evil, neo-Nazi uniform. That’s what these people were, Nazis by any other name and she hated all the things she had done to help them stay in power.

  One of the pigs was looking at her oddly.

  “What the fuck are you looking at, shithead!” She snarled.

  Now they’ll beat me insensible, kick me on the ground until I’m a bloody, broken mess, probably piss on me for good measure. She shut her eyes waiting for the first blow.

  What was that to a woman who had slept with a man who kept a knife and a gun under his pillow?

  One of the men stuttered: “Sorry, Comrade. I didn’t mean anything by it…”

  No, now I know I am still dreaming.

  She squinted at the man.

  He was…terrified.

  Literally, scared witless, he was clearly about to wet himself with fright.

  She thought about asking what was going on: no, that was a bad idea, and anyway, I know I am going mad already. What is the point of getting her self-diagnosis doubly confirmed?

  Neither of the Revolutionary Guards were carrying firearms.

  “Where are you rifles?” She demanded.

  “Left them behind, Comrade. The Chairman said for us to do it. So, well, we could carry you up that hill out of the city…”

  “You don’t have guns?”

  “No…”

  �
��I want a knife. A sharp one.”

  It would have been easier, probably a lot less painful to kill herself with a gun. Never mind, one good stroke with a sharp knife ought to slash or at least seriously damage both carotid and jugular, she would pass out within seconds, bleed to death in less than half-a-minute.

  Back there in the woods she had been reconciled to death.

  Now these bastards had ‘saved’ her.

  What right did they have to do that?

  Maxim…

  They had said ‘the Chairman’.

  Machenaud was alive…

  “Where is the First Secretary?”

  “Resting, Comrade.”

  In that moment her brain tingled as it had as a child the first time that she began solving complex mathematical puzzles, finding proofs for all those theorems her teachers struggled to grasp. It had been as if for a few seconds she glimpsed the infinite majesty of all the possibilities in the physical world.

  The ‘memory’ did not last long.

  Ignited into life, it guttered in a nanosecond.

  What rational sentient being existing in a Universe with an average temperature of just two degrees above absolute zero would reasonably expect her dreams to come true?

  Her head was clear now.

  He was still alive.

  She was still alive because he willed it.

  She was tired of living by his will.