As though sensing something, the cop stopped listening to his companion and looked up at Scarborough when he passed. He twisted around and watched for a moment as the man paid the dark-haired man in short sleeves and glasses behind a counter.
“Shit,” said the cop. “Something the matter?”
“Yeah. I get the feeling I seen that guy’s face somewhere before. Like in a picture.”
“What, Pat. A Wanted picture.”
“Maybe.”
“Doesn’t look real sinister to me.”
“Well, I could be mistaken. But you know, they don’t have to look sinister. They could look like Ronald Reagan and be serial killers or somethin’.”
Scarborough quickly took his change and left.
“Sure does look like he’s in a hurry, doesn’t it,” commented Ted.
“Yeah, sure does.”
“Well, thanks for the meal, Pat.” Ted threw down his napkin. “Gotta hit the office. Joyce has got some damned tax forms I gotta go over.”
“Good. Pay my salary, Mr. Businessman!”
“Screw your salary. I’m just trying to survive. Gotta run.”
Ted got up and left. Pat just stayed in his seat, watching Everett Scarborough get into his Ford Falcon. Making a sudden decision, the uniformed man got up and went to the window. The men in windbreakers watched him, saw his lips moving as he read out the driver’s license. Memorizing it.
The policeman went back to the table. He pulled out a ten from a fat wallet and tucked it beneath the bill. Then he stretched and waddled to the back of the diner, where the rest rooms were.
When he was gone, the young man said, “He’s not following.”
“No, but he’s got the license,” said the other, tersely. “He’s off duty. He’s probably just going to radio the state troopers after he relieves himself.”
“He didn’t seem to recognize Scarborough.”
“No, but the troopers might. It will be necessary to detain him. Just for a while, to give Scarborough a head start.”
The younger man nodded. He had a job to do, and he knew how to do it.
While the older man went to pay the bill, the younger man went back to the rest rooms. The men’s room was way, way back in the rear of the building, past a low-wattage bulb that flickered on peeling wallpaper. The door was labeled with a generic black Gentlemen metal sign hanging akilter from one screw. The young man opened it and entered the bathroom.
The rest room consisted of a sink, a towel dispenser, a trash can, one urinal, and one stall. The young man had hoped to find the police officer standing at the urinal, peeing. Instead, he immediately saw the two legs by the ceramic basin of the toilet. By the grunts and the smell already permeating the little room, it was clear that the man was defecating.
The young man turned and examined the door. No lock. From the pocket of his jacket, he took out a wallet-like case, from which he selected a blue pellet. It was a knockout gas capsule, but to work effectively, it had to be cracked within six inches of its victim’s nose. This was why the young man had hoped the man was urinating. He could have simply stepped up behind the cop, snapped the capsule and been done with it.
The young man reached behind his back and drew a gun from its place, tucked in his wide belt. It was a Glock with a built-in silencer. He did not intend to use it—it was just for show.
Fortunately, Pat the policeman had not latched the door of the stall. The young man pulled the door open with his left hand. With his right, he stuck the gun into the door at the man squatting on the toilet.
“Say a word, I’ll shoot,” he whispered tersely.
The policeman’s mouth dropped. He blinked, and brought his hands up slowly into the air, his eyes wide with surprise, but not arguing with the authority of the gun. The man’s pants were slung in a ring of disarray around his shoes.
The young man switched the gun to his left hand, and positioned the blue capsule between his thumb and forefinger of his right hand. The gas that the capsule held not only relieved its victim of consciousness for ten minutes to a half hour; it administered a memory blackout for up to an hour previous. Which meant that Officer Pat wouldn’t remember seeing Everett Scarborough.
The young man placed the capsule within the proper proximity of the policeman’s nose, and squeezed it between his fingers in the manner as he had been trained.
The capsule did not break.
Alarmed, the young man took his eyes from Officer Pat to the capsule. The left-handed gun aim tilted slightly away.
That split-second was all the cop needed. Silently, with a speed that belied his girth, he brought down one thick hand on the fingers holding the capsule, the other on the gun. The ampule was knocked from the hand and rolled away out of reach. The gun coughed, lodging a bullet in cinderblock with a spray of stone. The cop rose up from the ceramic throne like an angry Kodiak bear, one arm holding the gun aside, the other clawing toward the gunman’s face.
The fingers reached the young man’s temple and gouged. Artificial skin gave way, and the young man’s face came half off.
“Jesus!” said the policeman, stunned, stepping back. “Jesus Christ!”
The young man panicked.
He swung the gun up and shot the policeman twice in the chest and then once between the eyes with remarkable accuracy. Blood sprayed onto metal siding and grey cinderblock. The big man slumped back like a punctured inflatable doll onto the toilet seat. His head fell back. eyes rolling, tongue lolling, as bright red blood dribbled back into his bushy hair.
The young man took a quick deep breath. The policeman was dead, no question about that. An extreme, unnecessary measure, but it worked just as well as the blue capsule.
He put the gun back into place in the small of his back and examined the damage to his face in the smeared mirror above the sink. Carefully, he tucked the skin back into place, sealing it lightly with the proper squeezes at correct pressure points. It was a hurried job, but it would have to do. He and his associate had to leave this place. and quickly.
He found the capsule and put it back in his pocket.
He closed the toilet stall door and then left the bathroom. He was not concerned about fingerprints, because he had none.
The older man was waiting in the car.
As the black Cadillac moved out onto Route 6 the young man applied his breathing exercises, centering himself, releasing his tension and panic in a controlled manner.
“Did it proceed well?” asked his older companion. The car picked up speed, hurtling beneath the big blue of the Midwestern sky broken only by puffy cumulus.
“No,” said the young man. “I had to kill him.”
“Kill him! We kill only when there is no other choice!” The older man gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles growing white.
“He saw my face. My real face.”
“Unfortunate. We’ll have to take the time to make a complete identity and registration change. We can’t take any chances that they might remember us. or the car.”
“Yes,” said the younger man. ‘’I’m sorry.”
He told his companion of the trouble with the knockout capsule.
Afterward there was silence for a long moment.
“Well, we know where Scarborough is going. We can afford to lose him for a while. Let us just hope that he doesn’t need his guardian devils.” A humorless smile touched the older man’s lips.
The younger man, however, did not smile at all.
He was too busy staring out the back window, watching for any pursuit, doubtlessly wishing that this, his first assignment, was not so terrifyingly and crushingly important.
Chapter 2
She was in control.
As the last hypnotic commands issued from her mouth, she felt very much in charge of the situation, very much at peace. The room seemed to buzz with an intense respect, a great awe at her power. Everything was in its place, the blinds drawn just so, the illumination at the exact wattage she’d requested. Earlier, b
efore the session, there had been a fly in the hallway. She knew it was there; she’d heard its fitful buzzing as she’d prepared for her patient. Within minutes, two agents were out there with swatters and sprays, and pretty soon that offending fly, that dreadful insect that might somehow infiltrate her session, was terminated and removed.
“You are feeling very relaxed now,” said the doctor to her patient. “Very calm and relaxed.”
“Yes,” said the man in the chair. “Yes.”
The doctor got up from behind the desk, quietly opened up the cabinet behind her. Inside were some of the supplies she would need for the session. Now that the patient was under, it was safe to reveal them; he would notice only the things that were called to his attention.
Then she went back to her desk and pressed a button.
In another part of the _building, the suitable people were notified that the doctor’s patient had succumbed to deep, deep hypnosis. They would be ready within minutes for her next signal. She opened up a drawer and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Her script.
“Let us go back to the little house on the island, to the night of February 28, 1986,” she said to the patient. “Let us go back to the night when the aliens first actually placed you in their flying saucer.”
The man in the chair nodded. His face was relaxed. Though it was not an old face, already there were pronounced wrinkles about the eyes, the mouth, and the forehead, due to the extreme tension he had been through these past years.
“Yes, yes,” he said, and his voice was cultured and precise, with excellent diction. “That night.” He rolled his shoulders as though acclimating himself to his new setting. “I have finished my work late today, and I am relaxing with a cup of cocoa on the veranda. I am alone and yet I am not at peace. Something is deeply disturbing me. Something that vibrates through the air. As I am sitting in the chair, I see a light flashing off in the clouds over the ocean. An airplane? The light shimmers through the low clouds. It moves too fast, too jaggedly, to be a plane. It disappears. This unsettles me deeply, and yet I am tired. Very tired. It has been a long day, and I want to sleep. I lock the doors, and I bolt the windows and perform the other rituals that have been my compulsion for the last week; why, I don’t know. I go to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, putting on her gloves, beginning to layout the necessary instruments from the cabinet upon her desk. “Yes, and what then?”
A spastic tic quirked the whole side of the patient’s face. “What happens then?” continued the doctor. “Do you sleep through the whole night?”
“I wake up—in a cold sweat ... And I see ... I see at the other side of the room ...”
The tic again. Damn, thought the doctor. The dosage was too low. He needed more and more each time! Quickly, she picked up a fresh hypo, tore off the sanitary wrapping. It had already been filled with the drug solution, waiting for her on the tray, just in case.
The patient’s tic had changed into a spasm that was contorting his entire face. His feet began to twitch, his torso began to shake, and his tongue began to protrude from his mouth. The doctor imagined the storm that must be raging now inside the man’s brain. All the signs of an epileptic fit.
But of course it was not epilepsy.
She grabbed the man’s hand and pulled it out. The needle stabbed down, buried itself between the soft juncture on the opposite side of the elbow, and she pushed the plunger.
A split-second later, the man relaxed, lolling back in his chair.
The doctor sighed. She removed the needle, ignoring the little trickle of blood that followed it. She placed the hypodermic back onto its tray, and then turned to the sagging patient. She swung an open palm across his face. The slap resounded through the while examination room. and the man’s eyes fluttered open. “Oh! Oh!” he gasped. “Yes. Hurt me! Hurt me, I deserve it.”
“Just a little love tap to adjust your senses,” she said in a professional monotone. And, she thought, We’re going to have to make run another biochem analysis on him, soon. Serotonin might be a little sparse. “Are you back in your room now?”
“Yes.” His eyes were open now, wide. “Yes, I’m back in the room.”
She went to the desk. hit the buzzer to summon her “helpers.” “And what do you see?”
The door opened. Three men walked in. They wore masks and silver suits, and carried rods that glowed a pale phosphorescent green. The masks were oval-shaped with bright almond eyes and narrow V-shaped chins.
The doctor held up her hand for them to stay where they were.
“Perhaps you should look again,” she instructed. “Perhaps you should look behind you.”
Slowly, the man opened his eyes. “No. No, I don’t want to.”
“Look behind you. You have to face up to your memories. You have to delve deep into them, to discover the truth about what happened to you.”
Slowly, the man turned. When he saw the men in the masks and the silver suits behind him, he whimpered. “No,” he said in a soft voice. “No.”
The doctor held up her hand and beckoned to the three men. They started forward, raising their rods, which began to flash softly.
“What do you see in the room?”
“They’re here again! The Visitors! Three of them! They have their light-rods.” The patient gasped, drew in a deep breath. “Stay away! Don’t come any closer! Don’t touch me!” The man moaned and cringed back, but he did not move from the chair. It was as though he was stuck there by some invisible adhesive force.
The three agents in masks and suits stepped forward, slowly in an awkward, stylized shuffle, like clones of Charlie Chaplin’s Tramp in slow-motion. The front most held out the glowing rod as though he were some magician, about to pronounce a benediction.
“What’s happening now?” the doctor demanded.
“They’re coming ... coming ... Omigod ... don’t ...”
The lighted end of the rod—the effect produced by a simple battery and bulb arrangement—touched the man softly between his eyes.
The effect was immediate. The man crumpled as though someone had clicked a lever in his spine, causing him to fold in on himself. Despite the injection, the man’s hands were still trembling, and a tic constricted the left side of his face, as though an invisible hook was yanking it up the skin, then letting it go, yanking up the skin, letting it go.
“On the examination table,” said the woman to the agents.
One of them flipped up his mask, and looked down with concern at the patient. “Looks like he’s having some sort of preliminary fit, Doctor. Maybe we’d better just skip this session!”
The doctor glared at the man. She was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with high cheekbones and long beautiful hair, but the hair was drawn back and tied in a utilitarian bun, making the angles of her face severe. Her lips were thin, and her eyes were dark; and the combination of a frown on those lips and glare from those eyes were rumored in the Company to have been utilized from time to time as an Extreme-Prejudice measure on double agents.
“I will brook no insubordination, man! I am in charge of this operation. Get the patient off of the chair and put him on the table. Now!”
The agent slipped the mask back over his face. He and his fellows grabbed the patient by his arms and legs, carried him over to the vinyl-cushioned table, and placed him on the sterile
paper covering.
The doctor rolled up her instrument cart, then took her script from the desk and turned several pages.
“We’re going to proceed with the directives on Page Eight dash B today, gentlemen. So if you’d be so kind as to remove the subject’s clothing.”
The man’s hands had begun quivering as though he were a victim of palsy.
“Eight-B ... Isn’t that a bit extreme for someone clearly in his delicate shape.”
She could not read the expressions on the agents’ faces, nor did she particularly care what they were. “I’m the doctor. Let me be the
judge of that.”
They removed the clothing, leaving the patient totally nude upon the table.
“Restraint,” said the doctor in a monotone.
Two leather straps were pulled from the other side of the table, and securely buckled into place across the patient’s chest and abdomen.
“Examination aids.”
From the bottom of the table, two gynecological set-ups were protracted, angled, and screwed tight. The patient’s legs were then strapped securely into the stirrups.
The man’s body gave off the smell of deodorant and sweat. His hands were still shaking, and his teeth chattered like broken castanets.
The doctor tested each of the restraints. “Fine. Leave now. I’ll summon you when I need you.”
“He’ll be all right?” asked one.”
“He’ll be just fine.”
The men left the room obediently.
The doctor went back to the cabinet and pulled out her own mask. This was a professionally designed mask much the same as the others, but much more realistic. It was made of latex arid it fitted easily over her head, with holes for her eyes, nose, and mouth. Also from the cabinet, the doctor took up one of the wand devices. She turned this on, and examined the scars she had placed on the patient’s torso over two years ago, after all this had begun with him. There was the triangular-shaped scar on his left forearm; the lopsided figure-eight sign on his right shoulder. A little more delineation next session, perhaps. Best to keep him on his toes about that. The scars kept his mind constantly on the phenomenon, and that’s exactly where she wanted it to be.
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 40