Black Fall

by Andrew Mayne

  Right now I’m dreaming she’s brought a whole party to our dorm room and everyone is drinking coffee. I can smell it like it’s right in front of me.

  My eyes focus and I see a strange man looking down on me. Nadine’s bright grin beaming from her too-cheerful face, framed by her dirty-blond hair, is the only thing stopping me from pulling my gun from my purse by the bedside.

  She waves a latte under my nose. “Don’t shoot the nice doctor. He’s only here to check on your wound.”

  “It’d be better to do this in the clinic,” says the doctor. I recognize him as one of the staff physicians at Quantico. In his midthirties and very tan, he’s on call to treat the numerous injuries that occur as students climb through obstacle courses, undergo firearms training, and do all the other dangerous things we practice for, but rarely witness outside of action movies.

  “We can’t all get what we want,” replies Nadine sweetly. “Now lift your shirt so he can inspect the damage.”

  “Good morning,” I reply groggily, turning on my side and lifting the hem of my shirt.

  He lifts the bandage and examines the wound. “Not too bad. I’m going to change the dressing. I hope you’re going to stay in bed today?”

  “I once had hope,” I grumble darkly.

  He sighs. “In that case. I have some glue to put over the stitching.”

  I take the coffee cup from Nadine. “Thanks.” I see a sheet and pillow on the couch. “You stay here all night?”

  She shakes her head. “No. Gerald came by and watched so I could get some stuff from your apartment and grab coffee.”

  I’m very lucky to have people like Nadine and Gerald looking out for me. It’s above and beyond the call of duty. “Did he head back to the office?”

  “He’s bringing the car closer.”

  Oh, jeez. I am pathetic. “Where we going?”

  “Nowhere, if I have a vote,” the doctor protests.

  “You don’t,” Nadine says in a manner so cheerful I could never imagine being able to master it myself. “Your address from Devon’s house. The Citizens Communication Agency. It’s in Alexandria.”

  “What’s there?”

  “That’s the mystery. Just an industrial park according to Google Maps. I should tell you to stay here while Gerald and I go investigate, but I know you won’t sit for that.”

  “Damn straight, sister. What do we know?” I sit up and stifle a groan, but my pained face gets a rebuke from the doctor.

  “Easy.” He shakes his head.

  Nadine sits on the edge of the bed. “Records searches came up almost blank. No Virginia business license. No IRS information. It’s just a name and an address. Which is kind of odd. Who pays the rent? Especially at that address?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like I said, it’s an industrial park. Tenants are a mapping agency, some think tanks, and other companies that are either intelligence contractors or outright fronts for CIA, NSA, and NRO projects.”

  “It’s government?” I ask.

  “Well, Gerald did a search of Government Accountability Office records. The lease is paid up for another twelve years.”

  “So it’s active?” This is getting interesting.

  “We don’t know. There hasn’t been a safety inspection in years. Ailes asked some of his intelligence contacts, and nobody had even heard of it. The only mention we found is a nineteen eighty-five intelligence briefing for a congressional committee. That’s it.”

  “Nineteen eighty-five? Have we reached out to the CIA or NSA?”

  “No official response. It’s possible they don’t even know. There are a lot of off-the-books projects that only have one or two points of contact. Sometimes the Pentagon funds stuff and forgets it.”

  “Our tax dollars at work,” I reply. “So what’s the plan? We just go down there and knock on the door?”

  “It’s government property, so we can take a look if nobody answers. You might want to bring your bag of tricks.” She nods to my purse.

  Nadine has seen me open a lock without a key on a few occasions. Being raised by a master magician and escape artist can teach you a few things.

  “It’d be easier if they just let us in.”

  Her eyes drift down to the bandage the doctor is dressing as she has second thoughts. “You sure we want to meet these folks face-to-face?”

  “We’re all on the same team, aren’t we?”

  The Citizens Communication Agency is located in a two-story building at the far end of the industrial park. We don’t have to pass through security to get there, but the moment we pull up, a private security patrol stops us as we get out. I flash my badge and start questioning the security guard, a fiftyish man with a belly from sitting down too long.

  “Have you seen any people coming in or out of here?” I ask.

  He takes a look at Gerald and Nadine, trying to make sense of what we’re up to. “Not a one. You’re the first. I stopped you because we have a lot of government stuff here.”

  “We know,” I reply. “Anything you can tell us about this building?”

  “FBI?” he says, deciding we’re okay. “It’s been here longer than me.”

  With almost no windows, the brown concrete structure looks more like an elongated pillbox than a public-facing agency. I imagine some architectural firm got paid tens of millions of dollars to pull the blueprint for Bland Government Complex #2 out of their files and dust it off.

  His eyes dart to the side of the building, then back to me. He steps forward. Nadine and Gerald protectively close ranks. The guard ignores them, assuming they’re trying to hear.

  “What I can say is that not all these buildings are what they look like.” He points to one down the street. “It goes five stories underground. It was supposed to be a CIA mapping facility until the Washington Post leaked that information. This one”—he nods to the CCA—“I’ve always wondered about.”

  “But you’ve never seen anyone go in there?” Nadine asks.

  “No. But that doesn’t mean anyone isn’t in there,” he responds in a hushed tone.

  Gerald speaks up. “How do you mean?”

  The guard leans even closer. “Some of these buildings are connected underground. That way you don’t know who works where or at what time.”

  Well, that makes things complicated. “Wonderful. Any idea which ones?”

  He shrugs. “I just mind the surface and keep anybody out who doesn’t belong. You belong, right?”

  I eye the CCA suspiciously and wonder if I know the answer to that question. “Well, we’re supposed to be here. Are you guys plugged into an alarm system?”

  “At the guard hut.”

  “The door alarm is about to go off, just so you know.” Better to warn him now.

  “Understood. Mind if I call in your badges first, then? So I don’t have to call the police?”

  Gerald hands him his information while Nadine and I walk around the building. There are several fire exits and a loading dock in the back. Security cameras from the Flintstones era are mounted on all the corners.

  By the time we get back, the security guard is waving good-bye. I stop him. “A quick question. If the alarm goes off, you’re supposed to call the police?”

  “Of course.”

  “Could you check if there are any other numbers on an emergency list?” When I was a street cop, every bank, store, or any other business always had a twenty-four-hour contact. I’d love to know who that number connects to.

  “Will do.” He eyes the building before getting back into his truck. “I’m dying to know what’s in there. To be honest. It kind of spooks me out.”

  Me too. I stare back at the security cameras, wondering if someone is watching from inside.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  E-ticket

  Barely lit by a dirty skylight, the atrium is a wide open space of dull earth tones. Colorful tiles form images of satellites, Earth, and smiling people. In front of the largest mosaic sits a welcome
desk with rounded corners and a smoked-glass top. Plastic ferns in planters divide soft cushioned seats that form small waiting areas. Dust is everywhere.

  “I feel like I just stepped into a forgotten Epcot ride.” Gerald hits the nail on the head as we enter the lobby after I spent all of five seconds jiggering the lock.

  The only thing I’d add is that it feels like a ride after a zombie apocalypse. It’s some kind of corporate tomb that looks centuries, not just decades, old. The shaft of light from above only reinforces the lost-tomb analogy.

  I put my lock-picking set back in my purse and suppress a wince as it hits my side.

  “You okay?” asks Gerald.

  “I think the stiches hurt more than anything else. I’ll be fine.”

  “Um, okay,” he says, still looking a little unsure.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll let you know otherwise. Let’s see what we have here.” I aim my light into the hall and begin exploring.

  Behind the desk, large tube letters, like the old NASA logo, spell CCA. Off to the side is a small plaque:

  the only way to discover the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.

  arthur c. clark

  “What did I say?” Gerald replies. “Are we taking bets if this is a dark ride or a movie with chairs that shake?”

  “I’ve never been to Disney World,” says Nadine, as she uses a gloved hand to inspect behind seat cushions.

  “Never? What about Disneyland?” he asks, with the shock of someone who just found out their friend is a Martian.

  Nadine shakes her head. “Nope.”

  She had a rough childhood, basically raising her brothers and sisters. But to meet her, you’d think she was a little preppy raised by two loving parents in the nicest house in the best part of town.

  “We’re going,” Gerald and I say at the same time. We laugh, because it’s the kind of thing teenagers say, not FBI agents.

  “You’d go?” Nadine looks at me, surprised.

  “Hell, yes.”

  “Really?” Gerald blurts out, equally amazed.

  “Why are you surprised? I used to take the bus to Disneyland when I was eleven. In college we used to go to Orlando for study breaks.”

  “I, uh, never took you for the type,” he says as he taps the dust off a fern.

  “And what type is that?” I ask in an exaggeratedly terse voice.

  Gerald and Nadine exchange glances, too nervous to reply.

  I roll my eyes. “I like to do fun stuff too.”

  “Does she?” Gerald asks Nadine.

  “Um.” She thinks for a moment. “We once looked at shoes after going to the shooting range.”

  “Wow, Blackwood, you know how to live it up.”

  “Considering most of my clothes come to me on a UPS truck, that’s living on the edge.” I aim my flashlight at my wounded side. “And in case you haven’t noticed, extroversion can be painful for me.”

  “Ah, good point,” he replies.

  We turn our attention back to the lobby. It really does feel like the start of some kind of futuristic theme park attraction, albeit one designed in the late 1970s.

  Gerald opens a drawer under the reception desk and shines his light around. “Empty. Not even a phone book.” He cranes his head inside. “Looks like a computer monitor is under the glass, but the computer itself has been yanked free.” He slides open another drawer, finds a phone with an array of buttons, and picks up the receiver. “I have a dial tone. Looks like they paid their phone bill.”

  Nadine traces a finger across the glass, creating a furrow in the thick dust. “But not the cleaning crew.”

  I step to the dark glass door at the back of the lobby. There’s a magnetic card slot to the side. Fortunately, the lock is a standard government facility tumbler like the one in the front, and it opens without much effort on my part.

  Gerald looks at me, bemused. “I guess it was pretty pointless of me to give you a key to my place to look after it while I’m out of town.”

  “Pretty much,” I hold the door open for them and follow.

  The hallway ends in darkness. Nadine steps in front of us with her comically larger billy club flashlight. It cuts through the dark like a spotlight and illuminates a huge room filled with cubicles.

  Gerald flips a row of switches at the end of the wall without any success. There’s not even a glowing exit sign to be seen.

  “Guess they didn’t pay the electric,” Nadine observes.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” says Gerald. “It’s not uncommon to just throw a master switch when a building like this is mothballed. The phone system had power. Let’s keep an eye out for an electrical room.”

  We walk through the maze of cubicles. Each one is identical to the others. There’s a desk, a chair, and a faint outline in dust where a computer or typewriter sat. The filing cabinets are empty and the drawers don’t contain anything other than rubber bands and pencils.

  The whole building looks wiped clean of any actual information. I shouldn’t be too surprised. There are contractors that specialize in doing just that when an agency moves or gets shut down.

  On the first floor we find a break room, several cleaned-out offices, and a mail center. There’s absolutely no trace of what this facility was for. It could have been anything.

  Gerald flashes his light down the hall. “Shall we try the second floor? Stairs, or take our chances in an elevator that hasn’t been inspected since Tupac was among the living?”

  “Stairs,” I reply. “And he’s coming back.”

  The second floor consists of corridors of more private offices. All the doors are open. They’ve been cleaned out too.

  “Where did the people go?” asks Nadine, after we’ve made it down another empty hallway.

  Gerald puts his light under his chin, casting himself in a ghostly glow. “Maybe their mother ship took them home?”

  “Jealous they left without you?” I ask.

  “I’m here by choice.”

  “Theirs,” Nadine shoots back.

  After the fifth or sixth office I notice something lurking at the back of my mind.

  “Can you guys do me a favor? Let’s grab all the chairs in this section and bring them into the hallway.”

  “You got it,” Gerald answers, used to my harebrained ideas.

  We drag a dozen chairs into the middle of the corridor. I line them up against the wall. “Gerald, would you sit in one?” I direct my flashlight toward the middle.

  He looks at the chairs then back to me. “Okay, now I’m scared.” He takes a seat anyway.

  “Comfy?” I ask.

  “Well . . .” His heels are off the floor. “One second.” He reaches underneath it and makes an adjustment. The chair drops two inches with a pneumatic sigh. “That’s better.”

  “Okay. Try the next one.”

  “Hold on.” Gerald gets in the chair to the left and makes the same adjustment.

  “They’ve never been used,” Nadine realizes.

  “Yeah. I was totally going to go with that, and not that this place was run by giants,” Gerald remarks. He shines his light along the row of chairs. They’re all the same height.

  “I don’t know what’s creepier,” I think aloud. “That this place was abandoned, or that it was never even occupied.”

  “Or only partially occupied. We haven’t checked all the chairs,” Nadine, the stickler for details, points out.

  We continue our search on the second floor and end up finding at least three offices that appear to have been used. We compare notes in a small classroom marked orientation on the outside.

  Gerald scratches his chin as he paces the room. “So not a whole lot of people worked here. That’d explain why nobody heard of it.”

  “It could still be a front,” says Nadine.

  “A front for what?” I reply.

  Gerald notices a fuse box on the wall and turns a switch. The lights come on in the room. I look into the hallway. The lights are still out
in the rest of the building.

  “Interesting,” he says. “Local shutoffs. You use that in some buildings where you need to conserve power in emergencies.” He walks over to a television on a mobile cart and investigates a machine below it.

  I’m getting frustrated by the fact we’ve found next to nothing. “The building is an empty mausoleum. There has to be a way to squeeze something out of it. Maybe we should have the used offices dusted for fingerprints? If they were government employees, we should have them on file. Especially if they had security clearances.”

  “We could also see if the phone system has any numbers saved,” Nadine suggests.

  “That’s a great idea. It would be helpful to know who they were talking to, at least.”

  “Yeah, and maybe we can find out why they were such Beatles fans,” Gerald replies.

  “What?” Nadine and I turn toward him, confused.

  He’s holding up a large format videocassette he pulled from the machine. On the spine is a label that reads: paul is dead.

  Nadine shakes her head. “‘Paul is dead’? I don’t get it.”

  “Beatles reference. Before our time,” says Gerald. “Maybe this will explain it. Should I play it?”

  It’s the only piece of information other than the tile mosaic and the seat heights we’ve been able to find.

  “Heck yeah.” I reply.

  Ten minutes later, we’re even more confused.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Paul Is Dead

  The first thing that comes to mind is the industrial films by Saul Bass my father used to show me. Designed to be part art house short film and part propaganda, they used bold images and text to drive home a point, which could be why the AT&T logo was so clever or why you should drive a Volkswagen.

  An unseen male narrator, straight out of an educational documentary, begins talking over a vaguely sci-fi soundtrack of synthesizers played alongside images and clips.