The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy

by David Bischoff

  Scarborough was pleased to see that she was wearing the red blouse, and the necklace that he had given her this past Christmas. She was also wearing Opium perfume, her mother’s favorite. Scarborough wasn’t so happy about that.

  “No, really, Dad, what the hell happened to your face?”

  He sighed. “I guess you’ll hear about it eventually. I don’t want you to worry, though.” The tremors again, inside. He went to the table where he kept a couple bottles of Scotch and poured some Glenlivet into a clean glass. “It’s an isolated incident, and I guess I knew that it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

  “Whatever are you talking about? Out with it, Dad! You hem and haw so much when you’ve got something important to say. I can’t stand it.”

  He took a gulp of the amber stuff. “I had a lecture today. University of Maryland. Some nutcase took a couple potshots at me.”

  “Daddy!” She nearly dropped her bottle of Coke, her expression changing entirely. She was staring, horrified, at his face.

  “Oh, none of the bullets actually touched me,” he said, reaching up reflexively and touching his wounds. “Splinters from the podium. Very superficial. Unfortunately, a man who was on stage was hit by one. Killed, too.”

  “That’s awful!”

  He drank the rest of his Scotch. “Yes.”

  It was clear she wanted to go to him and hold him again, but he countered the possibility by turning away to his bottle and pouring himself another drink. “I’m okay, though. A little shaken up ... more by the shooting and the death than by this little wound here.”

  “Well, I just thank God you’re okay.”

  “If God had anything to do with it, I’d probably be in the morgue now,” he said, a touch of bitterness in his voice.

  Diane said nothing. Religion was one of the touchy points of their relationship, and she clearly didn’t care to deal with her father’s thoughts on God. Awkwardly, she put the Coke down and wrapped her arms around herself, as though she were cold. “You must be really wired now, Dad.”

  “Yes. A bit paranoid, too. I heard you knock that stack of CDs over from upstairs. Thought you were some assassin, out to finish the job!”

  “Did you call the police?” she asked.

  “No. Maybe subconsciously I figured it was you. You do, after all, have a tendency to knock things over.” He looked at his glass, thinking about taking another sip. But he could already feel the whiskey singing in his veins, and clouding his mind a touch. He decided he’d had enough for now. “Anyway, everything’s okay now, Diane. But I want to know what this important thing is that you have to talk to me about?”

  “Maybe we should wait till tomorrow,” she said, looking doubtful. “Maybe we both should get a good night’s sleep first. It’s been a long day for both of us and—“

  Suddenly, she wasn’t twenty years old anymore. To Scarborough, she was just eight years old, in pigtails, gap-toothed and guilty. “Diane!” he said in a deep, commanding but fatherly tone. “Tell me now!”

  She cringed a bit, and looked away. But then, recovering she stood up straight, took a deep breath and became more herself—damnably independent, frightfully like Phyllis at her most appealing.

  “Dad, I’ve had the most incredible experience. And you’re the only one who can help me come to grips with it. Actually, Tim and I—we had it together. You can help us both—Tim thinks so too. But you’re going to have to grow for us ... reach into the unknown ... “

  “Oh no, I see it coming ... What new religion is it this time ... the Quakers ... the Mystical Nabobs of Narcissism?”

  “Dad, I’m very serious. Tim and I—well, we saw an Unidentified Flying Object.”

  “What?” It was like a Kennedy child telling Papa Joe they were turning Republican.

  “And there’s more, Dad. We think that we were abducted by creatures from the UFO. Abducted, and then released—but somehow ... changed.”

  He was stunned. Scarborough couldn’t believe his ears. His own daughter—spouting this garbage!

  “This is a joke, right?” he said, shaking his head as though she’d just struck him across his face. “You know how I feel about this subject, so you and your Irish hooligan have concocted a grand April fool’s joke for the old man!”

  She shook her head no, standing her ground firmly, staring him straight on. “No, Dad. I wouldn’t joke about something so very serious. Two nights ago, Timothy Reilly and I were in our car. We saw a saucer-shaped vehicle, covered with odd lights landing beyond a field. We got out to investigate, and walked a ways, we think.”

  “You think? You don’t know for sure?”

  “No. Because the next thing we knew, we were back in the car and it was dawn. We had no memories of what had transpired the night before, Dad. Tim is arranging for a hypnotist to take us back through whatever experience we had. I knew I had to reach you right away, to talk to you about this. I figured you would want to share in our exploration of this ... well, this whatever it is.”

  Everett Scarborough felt dizzy. For a long moment, his brain seemed to simply freeze up, unable to engage. He stared at Diane, and saw for the very first time, not his daughter, but a stranger, someone he didn’t know, didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. All this New Age religiosity was hard enough to take. He knew that part of it was a normal rebellion against parental disposition. He’d humored her as much as possible, indulging in arguments with her as much for her sake as his own. If he agreed with her, her penchant for perverse rebellion would not be satisfied. Meditation was okay. Crystals? Harmless enough. Channeling and rebirthing? A bit outré, but he’d humored her. But abduction by beings from a flying saucer?

  “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth,” he whispered, going to his Glenlivet bottle.

  “What? Dad, are we going to talk about this? Are you going to look at me even? Have you forgotten I am your flesh and blood? Don’t you care about me?”

  He poured the Scotch into the glass, drank two swallows’ worth, knowing that a barrel of the stuff would be insufficient. “We’ll talk about this in the morning, all right, Diane?”

  She looked down at the floor, her shoulders sagging, a moistness appearing in her eyes. “All right, Dad,” she said in a disappointed tone.

  “Go to bed now. Mrs. Morgan’s already prepared your room. You know where everything is.”

  “Yes. I’ll go. But there’s more, and we’re going to have to talk in the morning, okay? We never talk, and this is really something serious, something important that needs to be discussed by you and I, just you and I.” She said it in a flat voice, as though it were a previously prepared speech that she now recited simply by rote.

  He mumbled a disgruntled “Yes,” and she started away, climbing the steps, while he finished his drink and watched her go, hearing her feet ascend.

  He went to get another drink, then selected a Deutsche Grammophon CD of Beethoven’s Ninth, knowing he’d not be able to sleep for a while yet.

  He knew Diane would get the message. He always played Beethoven’s Ninth when he was royally pissed.

  Scarborough turned on the Fischer, and started the CD, sitting back in his Eames chair. Beneath him, a spill of potato chips crunched.

  Maybe, he thought, it would have been better if that assassin, that guy in the black raincoat, hadn’t missed.

  Chapter 5

  When the phone call came at seven in the morning, he was working out in his home gym.

  Woodrow Justine pushed the two hundred pounds’ worth of barbell and Olympic weights up, eased them down again, feeling his pectorals strain at the load. He could already feel the lactic acid accumulating in the muscles, and now he was just pushing past the burn-point ... the place where strength training did the most work. That was the extraordinary trick that the truly cut, truly bulky guys had learned: Take the reps up to where you can’t go any more—and then, somehow go farther. Stripping, pyramiding, rest-burning—there were several methods, but the effects were the same. H
ypertrophy to the max.

  So when the phone rang, it annoyed Woodrow Justine terribly. He’d just gotten home last night from a whole week in the middle of the country, and he was looking forward to some R and R. If it hadn’t been his special, restricted line—the one from Headquarters, the Company Line, as he called it, he wouldn’t have answered.

  With an expulsion of breath, Woodrow guided the barbell back, and let it drop into the cradle of the Weider bench’s extended arms, where it clanged to a shaky rest. He got up and padded over the mat-strewn wood floor of his gym, across the carpeting in his den, past the hamster cages, to his desk, upon which one of the three phones was ringing, flashing a red light.

  He picked up the phone. “One-one-oh-six,” he said, his voice still breathless from the exertion. “Bananas for lunch!”

  “Hold the mayo,” said a terse voice. “Number Two here, Woody. Sorry to bother you. Gotta call you back to duty.”

  He blinked. He knew it had to be important; they usually liked to give him enough rest so that he’d be in maximum shape when they needed him. So, he didn’t say, “But I just got off a solid week of work!” which was what he felt. No, that wasn’t Woodrow Justine’s style at all. Besides, he didn’t know what they had for him. It could be something worthwhile!

  “Okay. What’s the scoop?” He took the end of the towel around his neck and he patted off the perspiration from his forehead and temples.

  “We’ve got a one o’clock Pan Am flight for you to Washington National. Tickets are at LAX; we’ll meet you at the airport with instructions and equipment. Just bring your muscles and your brain.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said in his usual monotone voice. “Tell me, though, what do I got.”

  “You’re gonna like this, Wood. You’ve got a Code Four.”

  Woodrow Justine took a deep breath, let it out, feeling a delicious shiver play along his back.

  Code Four. Woody’s Fave, as people in his section called it. Termination with extreme prejudice. Plus the possibility of a little preliminary persuasion thrown in, if possible. Read: torture.

  “Yeah,” said Woody. “Yeah, okay. Those things come along so seldom, I’m always ready for ‘em. What’s the make?”

  “Tell you the full story when you get here. But it involves Scarborough. “

  Woody grinned. “That jerk! Great!”

  “I’m personally going to be there to meet you, Woodrow, and you’ll get the full details then.” The man hung up with no farewell, as usual. Business, with no à la mode. That suited Woodrow Justine just fine. He checked the clock, decided that he had time to do a few more sets before he had to get ready to go. Good to get pumped up, man. Primed. He could go out like a light on the plane, take a nice nap, and be ready to go all night, if necessary. But first, he had to get primed.

  Primed.

  On the way back, he stopped at the hamster cages. Obviously Conchita, his maid, had filled the water bottles and the food bowls yesterday. The sunflower seeds in the three cages were plentiful, and the carrots and lettuce, half-nibbled away, looked almost fresh. In the central cage, Albert, the great-great grandson of Woodrow Justine’s first breeding hamster, Sniffles, was racing pell-mell in the cage’s circular running-track. The central cage was a traditional wire affair. The left cage was actually a large glass aquarium, where Justine kept the bulk of his hamsters. The right cage was a colorful and complex modular affair, consisting of tunnels and skywalks and cupolas for the creatures’ amusement. Justine had twenty-two hamsters now, with a new batch on the way, now that Mildred was pregnant.

  Woodrow Justine loved his hamsters.

  “Code Four, AI,” he said to the running hamster as he peered into the cage. “Sorry to leave, you guys, but I got a Code Four. Conchita will take care of you, don’t worry.”

  Albert just kept on running to nowhere, but some of the others looked up and twitched their whiskers at him, their round dark eyes popped cutely from their golden fur. April Bluesbuster yawned, showing a cute set of incisors. In the corner, Grandpa Bluesbuster slept in his pile of newspaper shreds, snoring. Grandpa was going a little grey around the edges, but he still ran a mean wheel, yes sir. Justine blew a hard puff of air onto the hamster, startling it awake. It spun completely around, revealing the soft white fur on its stomach, its little claws held up defensively, its eyes wide and confused.

  “Just a joke, Grandpa!” said Justine. “Just a joke!”

  Chuckling, he wiggled his fingers toot-a-loo to his hamster brood, then fairly skipped back to his weight room, where he commenced a spirited workout, including leg extensions and another set of bench presses, along with lateral curls and squats.

  Woodrow Justine was twenty-nine, and he’d worked for the U.S. government since he was eighteen years old, when he’d joined the Marines right out of high school. An exemplary first two years mastering a number of different technical trainings, as well as a startling expertise at martial arts and weaponry, promoted him quickly. He’d been stationed at a number of hot spots around the world, including the Philippines and Beirut, where he just managed to not get blown up, but his real showing came during the invasion of Grenada, when he stormed that Caribbean island with the élan and determination of a young John Wayne. Soon, a special branch of the Central Intelligence Agency came knocking at his door. A number of interviews and a battery of tests later, Justine was invited to work for his country in a different capacity—an operative for the CIA. He was trained another six months before he was put into the field, where he quickly became known for his dependably ruthless and efficient methods to deal with potentially unpredictable situations. After three years of first-rate service, not just in the United States but in various other parts of the world, doing what he laughingly called his James Bond service, he had been contacted by yet another affiliated branch of the CIA. A highly secret branch ... so secret that it was unclear if it was truly a branch—or the tree itself.

  These were the Editors.

  In just three years, Woodrow Justine had become a Junior Editor, assigned to Special Project, Codename: Skylark. He was entrusted with highly classified secret information, and the power that it imbued. He reveled in the power, and was openly amused about the secrets he knew. Amused because, as a controlled psychotic personality, it fit in perfectly with his paranoid purview of the universe. He ate his medicine like a good boy, got his checkups regularly—and in turn, the U.S. government paid him, taxed him, and assigned him people to kill. All for a good cause, of course. Justine was nothing if not a patriot. His victims were enemies of democracy—even if they didn’t know that they were. All in all, Woodrow Justine was extremely grateful to his country, and the intricate superpower structure that really ran it. Justine was a dangerous psychotic killer. If not for the Marines and the CIA, he’d be a criminal psychotic killer. The difference was spelled out in rank, prestige, salary and perks—which included this beautiful suburban home in Venice, California, just a half mile from World’s Gym. A beautiful home in the city he loved, El-Ay, Cee-Ay—mellow city without a soul. But with lots of distractions.

  When he was finished with his abbreviated workout (usually, he preferred two to three hours), Woodrow Justine flexed a bit in front of a full-length mirror. Justine kept himself muscular and sinewy, but not ostentatiously muscle-bound, like a lot of weight lifters. He kept a perfectly symmetrical body, geared to work well with his training in karate and aikido. He loved weight-training because it gave him such control over his body. People said that he looked like the rock ‘n’ roll star Bryan Adams—all the way to the pockmarked face. Justine knew they probably wondered why, as an Angeleno with easy access to plastic-surgery clinics, he didn’t smooth out his face a bit. Not that it was deeply pitted or anything—just that it didn’t fit with the rest of his body. Justine rubbed his face now, frowning at his visage. What they didn’t know was how important it was to him to keep his face rough, to keep the memories of his teenaged years when the acne had erupted, just one more nail in the coffin of
a social outcast. No, he wanted to remember, he wanted to savor that pain still burning in his soul. It gave such fire and immediacy to his purpose. Maybe his victims weren’t his classmates, or his principals or teachers back in that Houston, Texas, suburb ... but they were just the same. People were all the same, they were just pieces of shit bobbing in this cesspool called earth. Yeah, old Charlie Whitman back on that Texas tower had the right idea ... but he wasn’t as smart as Woody Justine. A psycho can kill just as many people as he wants, as long as he has the law on his side.

  Justine admired his biceps and his delts and his traps one more time, loving the way the bright California sunlight created a sheen over the patina of sweat on his skin. He loved the smell of his musky sweat, full in his nostrils. He could feel his cock getting hard in his gym shorts, just looking at himself, and he rubbed it, feeling a tingle of urgency.

  Maybe he could call Conchita, he thought. The wetback was always looking to make a few more pesos. Or maybe Candy.

  But no, he was on the way to deal with a mark, and it wasn’t good to shoot a wad within a day of a kill.

  “Hands off, pal,” said Justine, slapping his own wrist playfully. “Cold shower, bud. Gotta be primed, Woodrow Justine. Can’t have that lightning comin’ outta your balls!”

  After his shower, he packed some light articles into his flight bag. He didn’t have to take any weapons ... That was the nice thing about working for a widespread government network. They always had just what he needed, waiting for him. He went on airplane rides clean as a newborn. And if perchance he needed to carry heat—well, they’d give him a license and a badge to boot. Justine felt well-cared-for by his bosses. And to work for such great minds—knowing that destiny was within the grip of intelligent, molding hands ... Yes, he had found his ecological niche, he knew. He was proud to be a Junior Editor. He was proud to kill for his country.