“It’s ready, sir.”
The senator swivelled his high-backed leather chair around to face a young man on the other side of the oval desk, his face as fixed and emotionless as the shoulder-patch on his sleeve. He rested his hand upon the controls of the tape recorder. Muehlenfeldt waited for him to speak again.
With brisk efficiency, the young man opened a manila clasp envelope and laid its contents out on the desk. “This was recorded,” he said, “about an hour ago, using one of our devices planted at the Revolutionary Worker’s Party headquarters. Through voice-print analysis we’ve identified the voices of the members of the group called ‘the Alpha Fraction.’ ” He slid a large black-and-white photo across the desk.
Muehlenfeldt picked it up, carefully holding it by the tips of his brown-spotted fingers. It snowed a short man waiting in line at a hamburger stand. All the features in the shot were foreshortened, compressed together by the telephoto lens that had been used.
“That’s Mendel Koss,” said the young man. “He’s been acting as head of the group since the elimination of their colleague Michael Stimmitz last week.” He slid another photo cross the desk. “That’s Spencer Stimmitz, the younger brother of the late Michael.”
The senator glanced at the pictures, then picked up the next one that came towards him.
“That’s the woman called Sarah.” The young man hesitated. “We haven’t been able to ascertain a last name for her yet. There’s only one other member of the group, a man by the name of Gunther Ortiz, but his voice isn’t on the tape. So he was either not present or remained silent.”
The photos adhered to each other as the senator pushed them aside.
“On the phone,” he said in his resonant, cello-like baritone, “you mentioned another person being there.”
“Yes, that’s right.” The young man extracted another photo from the envelope and pushed it towards the senator.
It was a blow-up of an Operation Dreamwatch FD card. Not much could be told from the blurry face-shot. He tossed it on top of the others.
The young man tapped the reel of recording tape on the machine in front of him. “From the conversation we’ve identified this other voice as that of Ralph Metric. He’s one of the watchers at the base.”
One of the senator’s snow-white eyebrows arched upwards. “A watcher? What’s he doing in L.A.?”
“He’s on vacation, I believe.”
“Come on.” Muehlenfeldt slapped the desk top. “What’s he doing there? Seems like quite a lot of initiative for a watcher to take.”
“We’re aware of that.” The young man pulled from the envelops a sheet of paper crowded with words and numbers. “We contacted the base and they wired us the record of his serotonin/melatonin activity monitoring. It’s been well below the necessary levels since he was hired over six months ago. We’re checking now to see if he has any abnormalities in his past history that we might have overlooked before.”
“Have the monitoring equipment checked out, too.” The cello’s strings grated. “First that Stimmitz person got past them, and now this one.”
In a small book the young man scribbled a note.
“Now what’s all this about?” said the senator irritably, waving a hand at the tape recorder.
“At approximately two-thirty a.m., quite some time after the weekly public forum at the Revolutionary Workers Party headquarters was over, the members of the Alpha Fraction and Ralph Metric were picked up by the device we have planted in the meeting hall. We assume they had previously been in a part of the building where we don’t have a device yet.”
The senator grunted and shook his head in disgust, but said nothing.
“From their recorded conversation,” continued the young man, “it appears as if Metric had had no previous contact with the group and was up to this point completely ignorant of its existence, let alone its purpose. Most of the discussion consists of the group members filling him in on the nature and past history of the Alpha Fraction, thus confirming much of what we had already found out about them.” He arched his eyebrows as his hand hovered over the tape recorder’s play button. When the senator nodded, he pushed it. “The first voice is that of Mendel Koss,” he whispered quickly.
A small clattering noise and a voice, slightly tinny from electronic imitation, emerged from the machine. “ . . . you see, Ralph, if we didn’t need another person—because of what happened, you know, to Mike—I’d probably tell you to get out of here and forget all this.”
Another voice, a woman’s. “But we need your help.”
“That’s the woman named Sarah,” the young man said to Muehlenfeldt.
“Well, just what is it you’re trying to do?” Another man’s voice, sounding puzzled.
“That’s Metric.”
A cough, and the voice of Mendel Koss spoke again. “We’ve been . . . kind of investigating the Operation Dreamwatch project for quite a while now—”
“Who’s we?” Metric’s voice. “The RWP?”
“No,” said Koss. “Just the Alpha Fraction. The rest of the RWP, both the local and the national organization, doesn’t even know we exist.”
“How come you call it a ‘fraction’?” asked Metric.
A second passed before Koss answered, a trace of impatience evident in his voice. “That’s just what organizations like the RWP call their committees. They have an Executive Fraction, and Publications and Fund-raising Fractions, and stuff like that; it’s instead of calling them committees. Just the way they’ve always done it. ‘Alpha?’ I don’t know—that was Mike’s idea. Had to call it something, I guess.”
“It was all Mike’s idea,” came another voice. “He created the fraction. He was the first one to suspect there was something strange going on out there with Operation Dreamwatch.”
“That was Spencer Stimmitz,” said the young man. “He was referring, of course, to his brother.” The senator nodded and leaned a little closer to the machine.
“You see,” continued Koss’s voice, “Mike had quit the RWP. He had doubts about the effectiveness of the party and the work it’s been doing.
“While he was at loose ends, he hired on with Operation Dreamwatch. He was one of the first to be recruited. It wasn’t too long before the little odd things about the project started to pile up in his mind, enough to really raise his suspicions about the whole thing. He got in touch with the few of us in the RWP that he trusted—”
“He wasn’t sure about the rest of the party,” interrupted Sarah’s voice.
“He didn’t want to hazard tipping our hand to any agents and infiltrators in the party. That’s always a problem in groups like ours.”
“Helga Warner was one of you?” said Metric.
“She hired on with the project,” said Koss, “because Mike felt that the two of them might be able to find out more.”
“Did they?”
“Not much more than you have already. Or at least not anything that got back to us before they were killed. We knew their plans for going inside the Thronsen Home, but yours is the first word we’ve gotten about what’s actually in there.”
“Do you know what it means?” Metric’s voice seemed to rush from the tape recorder. “The kids on ice and everything?”
“Hell,” said Koss. “Who can tell what somebody like Muehlenfeldt is doing with all this stuff.”
“How do you know Muehlenfeldt’s really behind it? Maybe the senator doesn’t know what the Opwatch people are doing with all the money he gives them from his foundation.”
“That’s something we are sure about.” Sarah’s voice was grim. “Mike had sneaked into the base commander’s office and found a whole file of memoranda from Muehlenfeldt. Nothing that gave away the project’s real purpose, of course, but enough to let us know that Muehlenfeldt’s been personally directing it from the beginning.”
“Don’t you think you’re kind of outmatched, then?” Metric’s voice rose in pitch. “I mean, that guy’s got billions. If Operation Dre
amwatch is his pet kick, and he doesn’t want anyone to know what’s going on, how’s your little fraction going to find out? Let alone stop whatever he’s doing with it.”
“We’ve got plans,” said Koss.
“Like what?”
“Well, it’s getting kind of late—”
The young man pushed another button on the tape recorder. The voice of Mendel Koss came to a halt in mid-sentence. “That’s all the important part,” he said.
“They left the RWP headquarters and dispersed. Metric went with Spencer Stimmitz to get some sleep and to be briefed on the Alpha Fraction’s plans.”
The senator leaned back in his chair. “Let’s hear that tape, then.”
“I’m afraid,” said the young man slowly, “we don’t have a device planted at Stimmitz’s apartment. He has quite a bit of electronics expertise, and it was decided that the chances were too great of his detecting anything we tried to put in there.”
“So you still don’t know what they’re planning?”
The young man hesitated a second. “No.”
“Or anything about the other group?”
His lips compressed, the young man shook his head.
The senator’s fingers laced together and rested on the desk top. “I assume, though, that you have plans for finding out.”
“Uh . . . yes. Yes, we do. We’ve just about completed the preparations for a means of breaking the fraction open. We’re . . . very hopeful about it.”
“Fine,” said Muehlenfeldt quietly, the cello strings whispering their lowest note. “I suggest you hurry with it.”
His face bloodless, the young man nodded, picked up the tape recorder, and headed quickly for the rear of the plane.
When he was alone, the senator stood at the jetliner’s window and looked down at the city below. Most of San Francisco was still dreaming.
Chapter 9
Spencer pocketed the key and pushed open the door of his apartment.
“There you go,” he said, waving his hand grandly as Ralph stepped inside.
Pushed against one wall was a tired-looking sofa half-covered with old magazines and newspapers. “You can bed down here.” Spencer jumbled the papers into a loose stack and dropped them on the floor. “I think I got some extra blankets in one of the closets.”
While he disappeared into the back of the apartment, Ralph looked around the front room. A small pagoda of dirty cups and saucers tottered on a low table constructed of plywood and cement blocks. The walls were randomly spotted with pages torn from books and other sources. Ralph stepped over to one and found himself looking at a yellowing newsphoto of a kneeling man engulfed in flames. Blurred oriental faces watched with varying expressions. He glanced at the picture next to it—a glossy publicity still of a grinning dog captioned, Rin-Tin-Tin—before turning away from the wall.
Carrying a mound of wadded-up blankets, Spencer came back into the room. He tossed them onto the sofa and brushed the lint from his hands.
“That should do it.”
“Who’s Rin-Tin-Tin?” Ralph tilted his head towards the picture on the wall.
“Huh?” Spencer looked around and spotted the dog’s image. “Oh, yeah—that. He was a dog they made a whole bunch of movies about, long time ago. Mike used to go to film festivals at some of the universities around here and watch them. Rin-Tin-Tin movies were kind of a fad for a while, I guess. They really meant something to Mike, though—a lot of weird things did. He used to tell me that that stupid dog was closer to being human than most people. ‘At least he’s trying,’ he’d say.” Spencer fell silent, gazing across the room at the picture.
After a moment, Ralph spoke. “I’m sorry about what happened to your brother.” He coughed. “There wasn’t much I could do. I was pretty scared at the time.”
Spencer shrugged and exhaled noisily. “Yeah, well, who wouldn’t have been? Even Rin-Tin-Tin. That slithergadee thing sounded pretty fierce when you were telling us about it back at the headquarters. Forget it. Let’s go see if we can find anything in the kitchen.”
Ralph sat at a table littered with unidentifiable electronic parts and a soldering iron while Spencer rummaged in the refrigerator. He held a carton of milk to his nose and sniffed. “Should still be good,” he decided.
With his forearm he cleared a space on the table, then set down the milk and two unmatched cups. “Good for the stomach lining,” he said. “After all that damn coffee.”
Over the rim of his cup, Ralph watched as Spencer abstractedly pushed a couple of transistors around with his finger. They were different colors, like pills, and rolled across the table’s surface, waving their small end wires.
“How well did you get to know Mike?” said Spencer, not looking up.
“While you were out there at the Opwatch base.”
“Not very well,” said Ralph, “it’s not the kind of place where you make much contact with anybody.” Or anything, he thought to himself.
“You know, Mike was okay. As older brothers go. He was—let’s see—a junior in high school when I was in sixth grade; the school psychologist diagnosed me as hyperactive, because I threw a blackboard eraser at one of the teachers and talked a lot. So anyway, they were going to give me these pills. Doctor’s dope, right? It’s legal as long as they want you all zonked out. But when Mike heard about it, he loaded me on the back of this little motorcycle he had, and we rode it all the way to San Diego.
“Checked into a motel—he gave the desk clerk some story about us being part of a rock group and the rest of the band hadn’t shown up yet. We waited a couple of days, then he called our parents and said we’d come back if they wouldn’t make me take the stuff.” Spencer picked up one of the transistors and laughed, shaking his head. “He told me later that he didn’t do it because he actually cared for me that much. It was just a matter of principle for him.”
Ralph set his cup down. “You must have felt pretty bad when you saw those pictures Sarah took.”
“What pictures?” Spencer’s brow creased in puzzlement.
“The ones Sarah took out in the desert. By the Opwatch base. You know, of that big bloodstain on the ground.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Spencer. “Sarah’s never gone out to the Opwatch base. We decided it might raise too much suspicion if any of us were seen poking around there. And I don’t think Sarah even owns a camera.”
Frowning, Ralph watched his forefinger circle the rim of the empty cup before him. When telling the Alpha Fraction about Michael Stimmitz’s death and the other strange things that had happened at the base, he hadn’t mentioned spotting Sarah aiming a camera at the bloody spot. He had assumed the others knew about it—that she had gone out there on the group’s orders and had reported to them on what she had found. But she didn’t, thought Ralph. They don’t even know she went out there.
“You okay?” said Spencer.
“Yeah.” Ralph nodded. “I must’ve gotten confused—thinking about something else. Everything’s been going so fast, it gets hard to keep track.” So what’s it mean? persisted his thought. Something else is going on with these people— or at least with one of them. With an effort, he pushed Sarah’s now enigmatic face from his mind. “Tell me about this plan,” he said. “That I’m supposed to help you people with.”
Spencer pushed aside his own cup and the empty milk carton. He drew an assemblage of electronic parts to himself and studied it. “Remember the Opwatch recruiting office downtown?” he said, poking a finger at one of the soldered wires. “Where you first signed on with them?”
“Sure. What about it?”
“We’re going to bug it.”
Ralph stared at him for a moment before he could say anything. “That’s ridiculous.”
The wire pulled loose and Spencer looked up. “Why do you say that?”
“Are you kidding?” said Ralph. “For Pete’s sake, that office is nothing but a closet with a desk and phone stuffed in it. You’re not going to be able to
pry any secrets out of a place like that—there wouldn’t be any.”
“We’ve got reason to believe differently. There’s more to that little office than you’d think. Our plan’s worth a try, at least.”
“You people are crazy.” Ralph’s disappointment had turned into anger. “This sounds like a pretty good way to get picked up by the police for no good reason.”
“Hey, we’re not asking that much from you,” said Spencer. “It’ll be safe. If anything goes wrong, you’ll have plenty of time to clear out.” He pulled another wire loose. “Of course, if that’s too much for you . . .”
Ralph snorted, but felt blood tinge his face. “When are you going to try to do this?”
“Now that you’re here, we’ll probably pull it tomorrow night.”
“What? Isn’t that kind of soon?”
“We’ve got everything ready,” said Spencer. “And besides, we don’t have much choice. We’re running out of time. If we don’t get some kind of lead pretty soon, whatever’s building up with Operation Dreamwatch is going to go off. It might already be too late to do anything about it.”
“Great,” said Ralph sourly. “In that case, why bother?”
“It’s the only game in town,” said Spencer, looking up from the device in his hands and staring directly into Ralph’s eyes. “Don’t you smell it? Mike could. And so can the rest of us now. Whatever’s going on out there in the desert is something big. And something—” He stopped, then went on, his voice lower in pitch. “Different.”
Something cold tensed the skin on Ralph’s arms. “What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t it strike you that way? Some of the odd things about Operation Dreamwatch. Like all those kids you found in the Thronsen Home, all kept unconscious, and those dreams they put them through. Mike told us about those. It’s not just that that stuff seems inhuman—people have done crueller things, I suppose—but doesn’t it all seem, well, non-human, too?”
He’s crazy, thought Ralph, a sick fear opening in his stomach. But the eyes that met his from across the table were sane. “Go on,” he said.
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