The Normandy Club

by Bill Walker

  He approached the door and knocked. No answer. He knocked again, louder this time. Again, no answer.

  “Damn, he’s not here.”

  “We’ll come back. He’ll be here in the morning.”

  “No. We came all this way. We’re not leaving.”

  This time Jack pounded on the door, rattling it in its frame. A moment later they heard the patter of soft footsteps. A shadow appeared behind the frosted glass.

  “Yes, who is it?”

  “Dr. Chessman? My name is Jack Dunham. I—”

  “I am sorry. I have no time for interviews, I am working.”

  “Doctor, we’ve come a long way. We’re not reporters, we’re—Curly Williams sent us.”

  Jack heard the doctor gasp and then the sound of a deadbolt being thrown. The door swung open and there stood the infamous Dr. Morris Chessman. He stared at them, his bushy eyebrows arched in surprise. He wore a pair of thick bifocals in a synthetic tortoiseshell frame perched on the very end of his bulbous nose. His eyes were a deep brown, almost black, and the whites were slightly yellowed and bloodshot. His hair, thick, wavy, and shot with gray, stuck out at crazy angles as if he’d just awakened. Oddly, his goatee and mustache were still a deep, glossy black. He smiled, revealing teeth yellowed from years of coffee and pipe tobacco.

  “So,” he said, his voice sounding thick and phlegmy. “You are the two who have caused the SS such embarrassment?”

  Jack smiled sheepishly. “Yes.”

  “Good,” he snorted, “they deserve it. Come in, come in, you’re letting all the good ideas out.”

  He turned and walked back into a laboratory that looked like something out of an old Universal monster movie. Electrical equipment abounded, covering every surface. Some pieces were modern, like the rather sophisticated IBM/Siemens PC on the desk, and some ancient, like the gigantic Tesla coil standing in one corner. Chessman caught Jack admiring it.

  “Nikola Tesla. The man was a genius.”

  “So are you, I’m told,” Jack said.

  Chessman looked at him, contemptuous.

  “Bah. If I were such a genius, would I have permitted this?”

  “Well—”

  “No, young man, let me finish. Science is a wonderful thing... until greed gets in the way. We spend years learning how our universe works and, in some cases, how to manipulate its forces. But only superficially. Nature always exacts its price. And we are paying for it now.”

  “But Doctor. You had to know what you were getting into.”

  He nodded and smiled, but there was no trace of warmth or humor in it.

  “Oh, yes, I knew what I was getting into all right. Armand Bock seduced me with visions of glory and unlimited funding, of regaining the wealth those Communist bastards stole from my family in Russia. I was blinded, consumed with my own shortsightedness. I forgot what these Nazi fiends were capable of. Bock had me thrown into Andersonville as soon as his memory came back. He didn’t want me having a change of heart and putting things back the way they were.”

  “You mean—”

  “Of course. In training Kruger, I found I had the ability as well.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you do something?” Denise said, speaking for the first time since entering the room.

  “Because I’m an old man, young lady. And I have a cancer that is eating me up inside.”

  Jack looked at the old man and noted the dark circles under the eyes, the sallow complexion and the tremor in his right hand. This was a man who had little time left.

  “How did you get out of Andersonville?” Jack said.

  “I transported out.”

  “What?”

  Chessman smiled again. “When Bock threw me into that hellhole, my abilities were still raw and unpredictable. I spent the months there perfecting them, strengthening them. I have below-average psi ability, which is why it took so long. But I worked on it—hard. Finally, when the camp doctors discovered I had lung cancer and tagged me for the gas chambers, I had to move, ready or not.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t get it. I thought this whole thing was a method of time travel.”

  “It is, my boy, it is. But it is also a method for traveling through space.”

  “Whoa,” Denise said.

  Chessman continued. “One night I sat up in my bunk and began to chant. I had no idea if it would really work with me, but I had nothing left to lose. It only took five minutes and I appeared here in Toronto. It was the most extraordinary event, to actually experience my life’s work first-hand. Unfortunately, it has weakened me considerably. So, you see, my dear girl, I cannot do it again. To travel back fifty years and thousands of miles would kill me. But I can train others.”

  The old professor’s eyes shone with a queer light that made Jack uncomfortable. Could this man, a man who followed the sick dreams of Armand Bock, be trusted after all? Jack looked at Denise and saw the same concerns etched on her face. They were in Canada, they were free. They could just walk out and continue their lives, never looking back. But Jack knew he could never do that. He could never just sit back and let the Nazis keep the world. Eventually, Canada would be attacked. It could even escalate into a nuclear conflict. Better to trust the devil himself than allow that.

  “Curly said Wiley was here with you,” Jack said.

  “Yes, your friend is staying nearby. He has spoken of you many times. It is unfortunate that he is not trainable.”

  Jack nodded. “That’s why we’re here. I want to go back. Can you test me?”

  Chessman sat up in his chair and stared at Jack.

  “Yes,” he said. “Come with me.”

  Chessman strode toward another part of the lab. This room was considerably smaller but no less impressive. Dominating the space was what looked like a soundproof booth of the kind used by audiologists when giving their patients hearing tests. The door stood open and inside sat a simple wooden chair. About head level and projecting from the walls on telescoping rods were two halves of a highly stylized helmet. Completely transparent, it had embedded in the plastic all manner of complex-looking circuitry. At various points on the helmet, thick groups of tiny, multicolored wires emanating from jacks came together into bundles tied by plastic wire ties. These braids then twisted around the telescoping rods and terminated at an intricate network of jacks embedded in the lead-sheathed walls.

  Chessman pointed to the device as a father would his child. “This is my Psionic Wave Detector. It uses a principle similar to an EEG. The difference lies in its sensitivity to the psi waves put out by the subject inside the psionic sensor. This will tell us in minutes whether a person has any latent ESP or telekinetic ability.”

  “Why the lead?”

  “Two reasons. One, it is to keep out all other forms of radiation so as not to gain false readings. Two, the detector uses an infinitesimal amount of plutonium as the power source for certain components.”

  Knowing this did nothing to calm Jack. He didn’t like the idea of sitting in anything nuclear one damn bit.

  “What about the window? Won’t it get through that?”

  Chessman smiled indulgently. “That is lead crystal and is over six inches thick. No, my boy, it is as impervious as the lead. Shall we?”

  The old professor gestured for Jack to go inside.

  He sighed. “What the hell.”

  Jack stepped into the booth and heard the massive door slam shut behind him with a muffled thud. Weird! Aside from his own breathing, he could hear no sound... nothing. Even anechoic rooms had a minimal level of sound, but this one sounded dead. Listening again, Jack found he could hear the sound of his own head quite loudly. It made him even more uncomfortable.

  “Please sit still as I protract the sensor, Mr. Dunham,” Chessman said, his voice coming through a tiny speaker in the wall of the chamber.

  Jack heard a soft purring and saw out of the corner of his eye the two halves of the transparent helmet moving toward his head. The two pieces came together with a
soft click and Jack began to giggle. For all its impressive technology, the Psionic Wave Detector reminded him of the Cone of Silence from Get Smart, an old TV show he hadn’t seen in years.

  “Is it comfortable, Mr. Dunham?” Chessman said. The man sounded impatient. Could he now be as eager as they to right the wrong of this world?

  “Perfect, Doc,” Jack said, giving Chessman a thumbs up. He felt like an idiot sitting in this tiny box wearing some stupid thing on his head that resembled an electronic Rube Goldberg.

  “All right, Mr. Dunham. I need for you to think about one thing only.”

  “You mean clear my mind,” Jack said, thinking of the old hypnotist’s cliché.

  “No, no, my boy. Not only is that mentally impossible, but it will also give us a false reading. I need you to concentrate on one thought. It doesn’t matter what. It could be something from your past, something yet to be, or something that gives you great comfort. Perhaps the last time you and your pretty lady friend were intimate.” Jack saw Denise redden, and he smiled. That certainly would satisfy all of the above.

  “Okay, Doc. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Jack closed his eyes and thought of Denise, her hard, muscular body, the way they fit together, the way she smiled. He took mental inventory of her and it pleased him. Through these thoughts Jack heard a low hum pulsing through the booth and a warm, almost wet feeling coursed through his body, making him feel as if he were floating. It was odd, but his mouth tasted of amaretto. A moment later he heard a buzz and the floating feeling receded.

  “You may come out now, Mr. Dunham,” Chessman said flatly.

  Jack saw their troubled expressions as he stepped out of the booth.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  “I am sorry, young man, but your psi ability is far too low. It would take years to bring out only a minimal facility. You would be able to perform parlor tricks at parties to amuse your friends, at best.”

  Jack felt as if someone had pulled the floor out from under him.

  “But... what will we do? I have to go back. Curly said that only someone who remembered the real world could go back—”

  “No, Mr. Dunham, you misunderstood. What I told your friend was that someone who remembered would be the most effective candidate. This way, that person would know what to expect. Anyone with enough latent ability could be trained to go.”

  “Then why wait for us?”

  “Because we needed to exhaust the options. Now we have no choice.”

  “Let me try,” Denise said.

  “Forget it, Malloy, you can’t go back. You have no idea what to do, and a woman has no place trying to stop a trained killer like Kruger.”

  Denise’s eyes narrowed.

  “Listen, Jack, and listen good, because I’m only gonna say this once,” she said, her voice shaking with repressed fury. “You are one short-sighted idiot. What do you think Lambda is all about? We get our training from the ARM. I’m as good a person to send as any. Better than you. Who saved your butt back there at the border, anyway?”

  She was right, but it didn’t make him feel any better about it.

  “I don’t like it,” Jack said. “If something happened to you, I...”

  He couldn’t, wouldn’t finish the thought. He didn’t want to spill his guts in front of a stranger. But Denise got the message. Her manner immediately softened.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said, coming to him.

  “Yeah... well,” he said.

  She hugged him and he encircled her in his arms. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t goddamned fair.

  “Both of you could go,” Chessman said, breaking into their thoughts.

  “What?” Denise said.

  “If Miss Malloy’s ability is high enough, she can take you both back.”

  “But how?” Jack said, confused as hell.

  “One thing I discovered is that a traveler can take anything with him—or her,” he said, bowing to Denise, “simply by having it in physical contact with his or her body. In other words—”

  “All I have to do is hold hands with Jack and—”

  “Exactly. You both will transport. That and anything else you wish to take. Weapons, clothes, money... anything.”

  Without another word, Denise climbed into the booth and waited. “Let’s get to it, Doc. Time’s a wastin’.”

  Jack stood back as Chessman closed the door and walked back to the small instrument panel mounted into what looked like a modified lectern. He began flipping switches and turning dials. He watched as the psionic sensor closed around Denise’s head. The inside of the booth began to glow a soft blue and a generator hummed. Something that sounded like a giant centrifuge began to whir. The multicolored lights on the panel flashed on and off, casting a bizarre psychedelic display across Chessman’s intense features. The old professor leaned over to the microphone.

  “Now, my dear, you must do as Jack did. Think of something singular.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes, her face a mask of concentration.

  Jack looked over at the instrument panel and frowned, trying to figure out what the hell he was looking at.

  “What you are seeing, young man,” Chessman explained, “are the digital readouts for vital signs and the subject’s psionic waveform. And that contraption attached to the panel is a modified EEG graph machine, which will give me a permanent paper record of your lovely friend’s reading.”

  A quick glance at his own graph confirmed for Jack what Chessman had said earlier. The psionic wave portion of the graph was nearly flat. He couldn’t help feeling a trifle foolish, as if he’d failed an IQ test of some kind.

  “My God!” Chessman said.

  Jack looked back at the panel and saw the psionic readout racing through numbers at an astounding rate. The needle on the graph leaped about, making huge hills and valleys on the paper. Chessman smiled like a Cheshire cat as he tweaked the settings. He turned to Jack, laughing with glee.

  “Your lady friend’s abilities are nearly off my scale. Her latent abilities are positively astounding. She is like a dream come true, my boy, a dream come true.”

  Jack watched Denise, her face like stone as she made the psionic graph’s stylus hop on the paper. He glanced at the vital signs and saw they had hardly moved above normal.

  “You’re right about that, Professor,” he said, smiling in awe. “Right as rain.”

  In spite of his earlier misgivings, Jack was excited. The impossible was now again within their grasp. Depending on how long it took Denise to perfect her ability, they would soon be going back to 1944. Together. As much as the thought had scared him before, he now realized he didn’t want to be left behind. With her training, they stood a better chance of pulling it off. God willing, everything would soon be back the way it should be; God willing, they would both survive to enjoy it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Toronto, Canada

  26 April 1994

  The door to the motel room swung open and Wiley stared in disbelief.

  “Hey, shithead, how are ya?” Jack said, smiling broadly.

  “JACK!”

  Wiley grabbed him in a bear hug, lifted him off the ground, and carried him into the room, laughing like a lunatic. Denise shook her head, followed them in, and shut the door. No matter how old she got, she would never understand men, how every time they got together, they acted like twelve-year-old boys. Even now, they chatted excitedly, recalling times they remembered that, for her, never existed. That was another thing. After all they’d been through, the concept of a completely different timeline where history had taken a decidedly different turn boggled her mind. Even more startling was that each of these men remembered both.

  “...and you remember Leslie?” Jack said.

  “The brunette with the big—”

  Wiley stopped himself, his eyes flicking over to Denise. Jack turned, saw her level gaze, and realized his lack of manners.

  “Jeez, I’m an idiot,” he said.

  “I’m
not even gonna touch that one, Dunham,” Denise said, crossing the room. “Hi, I’m Denise Malloy, Jack’s girlfriend.”

  Wiley took her proffered hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you, Denise.” He turned to Jack. “You still got good taste, ol’ buddy.”

  “In more ways than one,” Jack said. “Denise is with Lambda; she helped me get out.”

  Wiley looked surprised, then his brows knitted in confusion. Denise saw the unspoken question in his wide, hazel eyes. Apparently, so did Jack.

  “It’s a long, long story, Wiley, and it’s not important. What is is that we love each other.”

  “Well, Killer, that’s all anyone can ask for,” he said, patting Jack on the shoulder.

  Jack moved over to the bed and plopped down on it, suddenly feeling very tired.

  “It’s been one hell of a week, Wiley. One day everything is fine and the next I’m remembering two different lives and two different histories. It’s driving me nuts.”

  Wiley nodded, his expression sober. “I know, man. It hit me the same way. I was watching TV about six months ago when a documentary about Armand Bock came on. I started feeling really weird, then it clobbered me like a sledgehammer. I thought I’d had a stroke. All these memories came back, everything. Especially you.”

  Jack smiled. “The worst part was realizing we knew what those bastards were up to... but not soon enough.”

  “Chessman says that may be why we remember the old life at all. He said something about the very fact of knowing the plot existed planted the seed.”

  Jack nodded. “Yeah, I know all that. But why the hell didn’t we remember when we were fifteen or something? Why now?” He got up and began pacing, his anger building. “Why now? You want to hear something fucked up? I mentioned Leslie because in our old life she was just a beautiful woman with well-to-do parents and a trust fund. Here, she’s a goddamn card-carrying, goose-stepping, head-honcho Nazi, a goddamned SS-Brigadeführer, no less. And I didn’t even know it. Can you believe it?”