Life was so unfair when, on the rare occasions when one was being honest, one was thought to be a liar. Randall knew nothing about any rock. He shifted his weight and edged further down the stairs, toward the storage area. “We can’t talk here,” he whispered, “come with me.”
Without waiting for an answer he descended the final two stairs and edged into the storage room. There. A hammer. He slid it off the shelf and concealed it behind his hip. Evgenia seemed to hesitate a second, but then followed. Clasping the hammer in his right hand, Randall waited. She glided toward him. “Shh,” he hissed. “I thought I heard something.”
He gestured with his chin back toward the stage. As she turned to look, he took a deep breath and lifted the hammer. Could he do this? His training told him he must. If he did not, Evgenia would include him in her report, which would raise suspicions in the Agency and seriously jeopardize his mission. And the mission was really all he had. The mission, Consuela, Morgana, Ricardo—he must be true to them. Otherwise what had the past fifty years meant? But the hammer would not fall. This was a woman he knew, trained, even had called a friend.
A sound wafted toward him. A voice. Consuela’s voice. “You must,” it whispered. “You must, my love. Duty is knowing when there is a need to take action, and taking that action. Cuba needs you. I need you.” Tears in his eyes, he gritted his teeth. As the smell of Juicy Fruit gum filled his nostrils, he flung the hammer forward, aiming at the dark curls on the back of Evgenia’s head only inches above his face. To a man with a hammer, the whole world is a nail. She crumbled silently. Randall caught her around the waist before she fell to the ground; as he did so the crowd in the performance hall erupted into applause.
A single sob bubbled out of Randall’s mouth as he dropped to his knees, the hammer clanking to the floor. The show was over. Another was about to begin.
Cam and Amanda hung back, waiting for Professor Antonopoulos to finish chatting and signing books. “Where’s Randall?” Amanda asked.
“Last I saw him he was out in the hallway. He was pushing a garbage cart around. He joked that his brother’s job was to take out the trash, so now he’s stuck with it.”
“There he is.” Amanda pointed as Randall came through a side door.
“Good. And the professor is finally alone.”
They climbed the stage and exchanged greetings with Antonopoulos, who stood to greet them. Randall explained that he was a retired CIA agent and that they had reason to believe the CIA might be trying to discredit researchers like Cam and the professor.
Antonopoulos’ face fell. “Oh my God. That explains so much.”
Randall nodded. “I thought it might. Perhaps we should go someplace private.”
Randall led them down a back staircase to a private meeting room where they sat in easy chairs around a rectangular coffee table. He seemed to have his run of the place; he opened a cabinet along the side wall and poured them each a glass of cognac. Cam thought Randall’s hand shook as he took the first sip. “Now,” Randall said, swallowing, “please elaborate on your last comment.”
The professor explained meeting Rachel and her friend in Washington and examining the artifact under his microscope. “The artifact was almost too perfect—there were runes and Hebrew letters and Goddess symbols on it, everything you’d hope to find if you were trying to prove medieval explorers were here. And the weathering was amazing; all the grooves were clean, like they’d been out in the elements for hundreds of years.” He shrugged. “It seemed too good to be true.”
Randall nodded. “This friend of Rachel’s. Can you describe her?”
“Tall, mid-twenties, bronze-skinned, pretty.”
Randall nodded again. “As I suspected. Her name is Evgenia. I trained her.”
Antonopoulos’ eyes widened. “Yes, that was her. Evgenia.” He chuckled. “She’s CIA? That explains how she kicked my ass.” He recounted how he had followed her until she ambushed him and tied him up. “So what does the CIA want with me?”
Randall gestured toward Cam. “Same thing they want with him. For some reason they are trying to discredit researchers like yourselves.”
Cam jumped in. “My guess is they were going to wait until you went public with this artifact, claiming it was authentic, and then it would come out that someone had carved it in their basement a few years ago.”
The professor sighed. “Right. Some kid probably carved it as part of a Dungeons and Dragons game.”
Amanda asked, “Is it possible to make something modern look ancient?”
“Sure, if you wanted to. You could put the artifact through a car wash a bunch of times, use a power-washer, sandblast it, freeze and thaw it, bury it for a few months, stuff like that. If you knew what you were doing you could make it look really old.” He swallowed. “So what should we do?”
Cam turned to Randall, who seemed deep in thought, staring out a window over Boston Common. Finally he spoke. “Cameron, I believe you mentioned at one time that you had a friend who worked on Senator Lovecroft’s campaign.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you could set up a meeting with him? He seems like the type who might be interested in hearing what the CIA is doing to innocent American citizens.”
At last the Grand Lodge was empty. Just Randall and a still-warm corpse.
He eyed the bottle of cognac. Later, when your task is complete. It had been such a long day, such an emotional day. And it would be hours before he slept. Or, more likely, tried to sleep. Decades had passed since he had killed someone—and that person had deserved it. Such a shame. Evgenia was a bright, talented woman with her whole life in front of her. She just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time….
After putting a plastic bag over her head to make sure she was dead, he had wrapped her body in an old tarp and stashed it, along with her purse, backstage under some blankets behind a plastic garbage cart. Now that the last of his Brothers had finally staggered out of the basement bar where they had congregated after the lecture, Randall began the tedious task of covering up his crime. Hand shaking, he locked and alarmed the Lodge door and returned to the seventh floor. Using a hand towel, he wiped the banister and hammer clean of any fingerprints. Next, grasping Evgenia under her arms and standing on a footstool, Randall lifted the body, spilled her into the garbage cart and tossed the blankets on top in case anyone happened upon him. He rolled the garbage cart to the elevator and descended to the first floor, the wheels squeaking in the quiet, empty Lodge. Earlier in the night he had brought a couple of garbage bags out to the alley behind the Lodge, so he knew where the security camera was mounted. Now he wheeled the cart into the kitchen, tipped it on its side and rolled the body out. Disentangling the corpse from the tarp and the blankets, he removed her jewelry and ripped a corner of her dress. He had previously retrieved her coat from a rack in the coat room; sitting on the floor, he wrestled first one arm and then the other into their sleeves. Maneuvering the body had exhausted him—she probably outweighed him by fifty pounds and she was, sadly, dead weight. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, tried to ignore the tears mixed with the perspiration. He took a deep breath and gulped some water from the sink. Almost finished.
Staying in the shadows, he walked back to the foyer and disabled the alarm before retracing his steps to the kitchen. He cracked open the alley door and peered outside—a few red-eyed rats stared back at him accusingly, but otherwise the alley was empty. Crouching, he dragged the body to the door and slid it over the threshold. A dumpster shielded him from the security camera as he maneuvered the body fully into the alley and propped it in a sitting position in the corner formed by the dumpster and the Lodge’s exterior wall. He rubbed some dirt on her knees—gently so, as if treating the corpse with respect would somehow minimize his crime. He removed one of her shoes, stuffed eight twenty-dollar-bills in the sole and wedged her foot back into it. He surveyed his work: A dead woman in an alley with a head wound, no jewelry, purse or ID, and signs of a struggle. The
cash and the dirty knees should point to a prostitute being attacked while on her knees servicing a client. At some point someone might wonder who she was and how she got there, but for a few days at least the police would probably treat it as a sexual encounter gone bad. And even if the police dug deeper there was nothing to tie Evgenia back to him.
He touched her lightly on the cheek and swallowed a sob. “I am so very sorry,” he whispered. He stared at her—even in death she was a beautiful woman. He wanted to tell her she had died for a worthy cause, but he knew doing so would be both trite and untrue. The cause was worthy to him, but Evgenia did not give a damn about Cuba.
CHAPTER 7
“Are you sure?” Cam asked, sitting with Amanda at the kitchen table on a snowy Saturday morning. Hoping to sweat out the last of the carbon monoxide, they had just finished working out together in the basement and were still in sweats; Astarte was upstairs taking a shower while Venus barked out the window at a cat that dared to venture too close.
Amanda nodded. “The dates work—Lovecroft was a divinity student at Harvard at the time. And the dentist came right out and said the guy he was writing about was running for President. How many six-foot-ten Presidential candidates who went to divinity school in Boston in the seventies are there?”
“Okay, so Lovecroft had all these extra teeth. So what?” Cam had connected the dots already himself, but he wanted to test his theory by learning what Amanda thought.
“Not just extra teeth. A complete set, upper and lower. Just like the giants in the burial mounds.”
“Which means you think Lovecroft is … a giant?”
She turned her laptop screen to him. “Look. It says here Lovecroft is one-eighth Cherokee. And the Cherokee legend is that a race of so-called giants interbred with them. So, yes, I think it is possible Lovecroft has some giant blood in him. Even likely. The extra row of teeth is probably one of those recessive gene things that pops up randomly every so many generations.”
“For the record, I agree with you.” Cam smiled. “And I think we should call Georgia. I’m sure she can craft a whole campaign around this. How about this: Lovecroft: A Giant Among Men.”
“And he can choose the bearded lady from the circus as a running mate. My guess is that Georgia wants nothing to do with this.”
“So do you think he knows? Lovecroft, I mean.”
Amanda sipped her coffee. “I don’t know. Perhaps he suspects. Since he apparently believes in the Bible literally, he presumably believes in giants.”
“So then here’s the next question. Does his candidacy have anything to do with why the Smithsonian has been trying to keep this quiet?”
She shook her head. “I don’t see how. This coverup has been going on for decades, long before Lovecroft came along.”
“Still, it seems like an odd coincidence.”
“Yes. And now Randall has suggested we set up a meeting with Lovecroft.” She hesitated. “It’s all a bit … queer.”
Cam nodded. “Or not.” He stared out the window. He couldn’t see the far shoreline through the swirling snow. But he knew it was there.
Randall slept late, awaking at eight. ‘Slept’ was actually the wrong word—he slumbered, drifting in and out of consciousness as guilt and regret and images of shattered skull fragments bounced around inside his head like popcorn in a hot-oil pot. Finally he shuffled out of bed and into the shower, skipping his regular yoga routine; he might never get over the guilt he felt for Evgenia’s death, but he needed to try to at least to get past it. He had read something once, something about guilt being a useless emotion—it was seldom strong enough to prevent one from taking an action, but often strong enough to render one useless afterward.
The act was done; he must not allow the guilt to make him useless.
As the hot water cascaded over him he sifted through the items the analytical part of his mind had digested during the overnight, thankful to be able to distract himself if only for a few minutes. First, Amanda had seemed excited about her discovery that Lovecroft had a double row of teeth; in fact, apparently she made a special visit to some dentist to investigate this. Normally a Presidential candidate’s bicuspids were not fodder for the Sunday morning political roundtable discussion. So why was this different?
Second, Evgenia suspected that Antonopoulos’ carving was a fake but did not know for certain; in fact, she thought she was being played. So obviously this went beyond a simple discrediting of the professor—why use a second agent, Evgenia, if a first agent, for now unknown, had already discredited Antonopoulos? It was redundant and unnecessary. Something else was going on here.
Third, whatever was happening with Project MK-Ultra—and there seemed to be plenty, including active operations targeting both Cameron and Professor Antonopoulos—may be just the opportunity he needed to get close to Senator Lovecroft. As Randall had mentioned last night, the Senator, as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would be interested to learn of a covert operation targeting innocent American researchers.
Fourth, there was little tying Randall to Evgenia’s murder, other than they once worked together. If the police did investigate, they might find a witness who saw her enter the Lodge. But even if so, the main suspect would be Professor Antonopoulos, whom Evgenia was tracking and apparently trying to discredit and with whom she had had a physical altercation in Washington a night earlier. Yet at some point the police might come to suspect Randall, which meant he needed to complete his mission quickly.
Fifth, he needed a strong cup of coffee.
Morgana tossed her clothes, unfolded, into her suitcase and dropped a couple of dollars—the last of her U.S. currency—onto the dresser for the chambermaid. No doubt the capitalists did not pay the hotel workers enough to survive. “Our plane can not depart soon enough,” she said, speaking to her roommate in Spanish.
Lucia, a middle-aged soprano with droopy eyes and a pair of watermelon breasts, sighed. “I would not mind staying another few days, Morgana—”
“Oh, and how I hate that name,” She interjected. “Once we get back to Cuba I never want to hear it again—”
Lucia continued as if she had not been interrupted. “The people here are nice and the food is so good.”
“The people are not nice—the ones you meet are kind to you because they want your money. That is all they care about. And the food is only good because they give you too much and they fill it with preservatives.” She glanced at Lucia. “In fact, you look more yellow than you did when we arrived. No wonder everyone in America dies of cancer.”
“Are you going to contact him before our flight?” Lucia asked.
“No.” She spat. “I am done with the fool.” She preferred not to confide in her simple-minded roommate, but Lucia’s father was her boss and Lucia was technically her partner on this mission. Lucia’s father, a distinguished-looking gentleman with fine manners, perfectly exemplified an old Cuban saying: Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak. Lucia, on the other hand, had not even been blessed with the appearance of intelligence. “It is best we get on the plane and let him continue to think I am his daughter.”
“My father did not think the plan would work.”
She fought to keep the edge from her voice. “And my mother knew it would. She knew Sid was a foolish old romantic.” She rolled her eyes. “As if my mother would remain unmarried for fifty years because of a summer fling!”
“And you are certain he believed you?”
She guffawed. “He practically broke down and sobbed.” She mimicked him. “My daughter, my daughter!”
Lucia lowered her voice. “And do you think he will take on this mission?”
“Oh yes, he will take it on. But he is old and frail and weak.” She rolled her eyes again. “Yet the Americans are so arrogant and stupid it just might work. They would never expect someone like him to be an assassin.”
Cam allowed the hot water to run over his body. There were few jo
ys that surpassed a hot shower on a cold day after a long workout. He smiled to himself, recalling Amanda’s and his spirited lovemaking session last night after returning from the Grand Lodge. “Few joys … not none,” he muttered.
His cheerful mood turned as he banged his injured pinky against the soap dish while reaching for the shampoo. Had it been only one week since Chung and his sons abducted him? The Bat Creek Stone bracelet was locked away in the safe deposit box and the restraining order seemed to be keeping Chung away. But maybe Cam should check in on Pugh….
Thinking about the old Chinese man jarred something in Cam’s mind. He had meant to do some research on Leonard Carmichael, the man Pugh said had been in the office with the Cornell professor, Wolfe, when Pugh stole the Bat Creek Stone bracelet. Carmichael was, at the time, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; prior to that Carmichael had been a behavioral psychologist and later President of Tufts University. The intersection between the Smithsonian and Project MK-Ultra had intrigued Cam, even more so now that it appeared that agents of MK-Ultra were using ancient artifacts normally housed at the Smithsonian to discredit researchers like Antonopoulos. Was this just another coincidence? Cam rinsed off and grabbed his towel.
Ten minutes later he was dressed and in front of his laptop at the kitchen table. The click-clack, click-clack of a ping pong ball echoed from the basement where Amanda and Astarte had descended. Cam would join them later, but for now he felt compelled to jump down the Leonard Carmichael rabbit hole….
First he rechecked the dates, confirming that Carmichael was indeed the Smithsonian head at the time Pugh and the other Chinese immigrants were being experimented upon in New York. It made sense—how else would Carmichael come to possess the Bat Creek Stone, which he apparently brought to New York to show Dr. Wolfe?
The Oath of Nimrod: Giants, MK-Ultra and the Smithsonian Coverup (Book #4 in Templars in America Series) Page 22