“Charlie!” Niles screamed at the door.
Ellenshaw raised his head, his white mane of hair flowing in every direction. His glasses were perched on his forehead and acted as a headband to keep the long hair from getting in his face. The fifty-eight-year-old professor looked around, and when he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, he returned to examining the remains of the dodo.
Niles, frustrated, walked over to the stereo against the near wall and shut down the Byrds. Ellenshaw almost fell from the tall chair in which he was sitting. He looked around wildly, then he saw Compton and the others as they stared at him from a few feet away through the blue-tinted light he had glowing from a large light fixture from above.
“Ah, Niles, Sarah, what a surprise,” he said looking from Compton and McIntire, and then he finally caught sight of Will. “And Lieutenant Mendenhall,” he said through his teeth as he quickly waved away some of the leftover smoke hovering about his head.
“Professor,” Mendenhall said, wanting to laugh at Ellenshaw at his attempt to hide his illegal activities.
“Ah, Miss McIntire, there was a rumor you and the lieutenant here, were, ahh, on the run.”
“We are, Charlie. How are you?” she asked with her smile broadening; now knowing why Niles insisted Will’s security men and colleagues stay behind.
“Alright, Charlie, Colonel Collins has sent these two to ask you a few questions,” Niles said.
“Professor, I need you to think on this after I ask you the question, think hard on anything you can remember, okay?”
“Why, I will try my best.”
“Professor, where were you in the summer of 1968?”
As Sarah watched, a faraway look came into Ellenshaw’s eyes.
Ellenshaw turned to face Niles as a clear memory of another old song, “Incense and Peppermints,” swirled through his head.
“The summer of 1968,” Charlie said, but didn’t continue.
“Doctor, were you in Canada?” Sarah prompted.
Ellenshaw smiled and then looked at Sarah and Mendenhall.
“We all looked at it as a chance to get away from Stanford and the troubling times in the country back then. A summer retreat to study the Tlingit Indians of the northern country. They lived along the Stikine, it’s a river that—”
“We know, Professor, please continue.”
“We thought it would be nothing more than research during the day, and one big party at night—you know, forget about the war and protests, assassinations. It was also a real chance at doing some significant anthropological work in the daylight hours.”
“Tell us what happened up there, Charlie.” Niles watched his old friend’s eyes. He was looking even paler than usual in the blue light, and he could see that Charlie was not going to a place he liked very much. He slowly sat down in his chair. Ellenshaw then turned and half smiled at Niles.
“Sorry,” he looked back down at his hands.
“We have a time issue here, Charlie,” Niles prompted once more.
“That summer was dry; animals of all kinds were coming down from the high country north of the Stikine just to find water. One night while we were sitting around the campfire telling stories and generally having a good time, we started hearing the most terrifying sounds emanating from the deep forest around us. It was like fifty men out in the darkness hitting the trees with baseball bats, truly frightening to some, but I was intrigued as this was a way our prehistoric brethren communicated at night a very long time ago. However, it seemed I was the only one that found the disturbance interesting.”
Sarah and Will saw that whatever Charlie had witnessed that long ago summer was still with him, and they could tell every word he uttered was the truth.
Ellenshaw related the rest of the story of that summer, starting with his small foray up the Stikine River with their guide, L. T. Lattimer, finding the cave and the wagons, the collected camping gear, and then recounting his encounter with the animal that invaded his dreams every year since that long-ago summer in Canada. The story ended with him paddling down that same river and never seeing Lattimer again.
“What were they?” Mendenhall asked when Charlie paused to wipe his brow.
“Huh?” Ellenshaw asked, not realizing he had stopped talking.
“Those things in the woods?” Mendenhall asked, his eyes never once leaving Ellenshaw.
“I don’t know, name them whatever you want, apes, the missing link . . .” He looked from face to face. “Bigfoot, Sasquatch, whatever, I don’t care what they’re known by, but they were there.”
Sarah, Will, and Niles were silent as Charlie placed his glasses back on. Will and Sarah were watching Charlie with wide eyes that wouldn’t move away if a bomb had gone off in the large lab.
“You came across the journal with Lattimer’s declaration in it, didn’t you?” Ellenshaw asked, his brilliant mind figuring out the reasoning of their questions faster than they could have ever thought.
“Yes, Professor,” Sarah answered as she took Charlie’s shoulder and smiled at him. “Could you show us precisely on the map where this place was that you and Lattimer found this cave?”
“Oh, my, no. I would have to be there, I just couldn’t point it out to you.”
“You have to try, Charlie. Jack’s sister is up there somewhere, and you’re the only one that’s been there.”
“You know, that summer was the reason I dropped my pursuit of anthropology?”
“I didn’t know that, Charlie,” Niles said, knowing Ellenshaw was going to say what he had to say no matter what.
“Yes, that animal has been with me for thirty-one years. But yet, I have always refused to allow myself the chance to investigate it. It’s like I know it’s real and my searching once more for it would only attract attention to a species that seems to be doing very well without us. Besides, that Lattimer character always scared the hell out of me, that man was clearly deranged.”
“Charlie, we need . . .”
Ellenshaw suddenly stood from his chair. He shook his head.
“I need to go. I have to go, for the colonel’s sister, and for me. For me,” he said, almost as if he were begging.
Sarah looked from Ellenshaw to the face of a worried Niles Compton. He took a deep breath and saw the hope in the professor’s eyes.
“Okay, Charlie. But the priority is Jack’s sister, nothing else. Find your Bigfoot if you can, but assist the colonel first.”
Ellenshaw could only nod his head. He looked thankfully from Compton to Sarah and then to Mendenhall.
“Thank you.”
Mendenhall watched the professor for a moment and then turned away and mumbled to himself. “This is great. First, killer Russians, and now another myth that couldn’t possibly have existed an hour ago, and they are both going to try and take a bite out of my ass.”
Sarah just patted Mendenhall on the back nodding her head.
“And don’t forget about having a Frenchman along who wants to kill all of us, and then there’s half the U.S. government trying to hunt us down.”
“Yeah,” Will said, looking off into space. “Who needs the monster in the woods? We may not even make it to where we’re going.”
“See, it’s all in the way you prioritize things.”
PART TWO
THE VALLY OF
CHULIMANTAN
6
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
With maps of British Columbia and Alaska tacked to every piece of exposed wall inside of the small hotel room, Collins, Alexander, and Farbeaux compared the description of an area along the Stikine River taken from L. T. Lattimer’s letter home on the back of the last page of the Petrov journal.
“I don’t know Jack, how many times has the Stikine changed its course, even if only by feet after a hundred years?” Punchy asked. “I think if I returned to Ottawa, I may be able to get a better handle on this. Someone in our interior department may have something to offer.
Jack stepped back from the l
arge map and looked at Alexander. “You know better than anyone that if we went to any branch of any government with this, not only would we be arrested, they would fill those areas with so many Mounties and bureaucratic red tape, Lynn would surely be killed.”
“Damn. Sorry, Jack, maybe I need some sleep.”
Jack nodded and then looked at his old friend. “We’ll have time to rest on our way up to your backyard.”
Farbeaux sat at the small table and sipped a large cup of coffee, grimacing at the horrible taste. He turned the pages of the Petrov journal easily, and even as he did he felt the brittleness of the paper.
“Beside the description of the overhanging bluffs and medium-size plateau our Colonel Petrov describes at his last encampment, the exactness of the area leaves much to be desired. Too much has changed.”
Jack looked back and saw the Frenchman as he thumbed through the pages. “Lattimer used the journal to discover his gold deposit. Does it say anything about where that strike was made in the papers and letters?”
Farbeaux closed the old diary and then picked up the plastic-covered letter still etched on the last page of the journal. He shook his head and then handed Jack the pile. “I see no reference about his find anywhere, other than he found a wonderful strike.”
Jack shook his head. He was beginning to think they would stand a better chance just making their way up to the Stikine and hoping for the best. He figured the Russians couldn’t be that inconspicuous in that wilderness area. He became frustrated and slapped the page in his hand against the table, and then sat. He knew he was fooling himself: The Stikine was only the most dense and nearly unexplored region in North America. It could be like finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. In frustration, he started reading Lattimer’s announcement again about his find and declaration.
“Why was a Russian colonel even in that part of the world? How could anyone get that lost, especially a trained army officer? And just who in the hell are these ‘children’ he keeps mentioning?” Alexander asked. “It makes me think this whole book may have been written by a madman. Or, have you even considered the fact that this whole thing is a hoax?”
“I guess we’ll ask Sarah what Doc Ellenshaw has to say about it,” Collins said as he rubbed his eyes.
Farbeaux was beginning to agree with the Canadian CSIS man. “I believe the man may have been a deserter from the Russian army, after all, they were going through political turmoil at the time, if I remember right it was a little thing called the Russian revolution.”
“But run to Alaska, get lost, bury some wagons full of gold, then disappear.”
Jack looked at Alexander and then slowly shuffled through the papers again. As he did, he finally found the notation he was looking for. He smiled and then laid the papers down.
“Son of a bitch, it was right there the whole time, and we boy geniuses missed it.”
Farbeaux just raised his right eyebrow and took another sip of the bitter coffee. Punchy Alexander turned away from the large maps to look at Jack.
“What did we miss?”
“Here,” Jack said as he slid the journal across the table and pointed to the second to the last page. It was notes jotted down by Lattimer. “He said he finally had his strike, hallelujah, he said it was right in front of him the whole time, under a bluff just where the diary said Petrov and his deserters made their last camp. At this site he came across strange-looking aluminum, a hundred yards of it.”
“Strike, Jack, not gold-filled wagons, and just because he found a bunch of aluminum cans—I just don’t see where any of that helps,” Alexander said.
Farbeaux looked from the letter to Alexander who had joined them at the table. He then fixed Jack with his own penetrating eyes. “I think I see what you’re saying, Colonel.”
“Lattimer didn’t find his strike, he found the diary and then he found at least one of the wagons of gold.”
“Whoa, that’s stretching things, Jack,” Punchy said with a shake of his head.
“No, he tells us it was the mother lode, and it wasn’t a deposit he found in the river right here.” Jack pointed to the dates of the first notes in the upper right-hand corner. The pencil used was faded, but the date was clearly visible: July 22, 1968. “That is the date he wrote his relatives on the back page of the last entry of the journal. Now look here, the last thing he writes is the fact that he was sending Ellenshaw back with the journal and he would take the strike and head back when he had assistance from the local Indians to help load it.”
“So?” Alexander asked.
“The date, old friend, on that last letter—July 23, 1968. Now, how can he have a strike, a find of any kind, and have it dug out of the ground, packed, and ready to go in one day, or even two, three, or four?”
“I’ll be damned,” Alexander said. “Yes, I would say, maybe he found it already smelted and put into coin, maybe American double eagles, just as . . .”
“The diary said,” Jack and Henri finished for Punchy.
“Now that is what’s called a gold strike,” Alexander said smiling. Then the smile faded. “Still doesn’t say where along the Stikine to look.”
“I think it does,” Henri said, shuffling through the letters. “Now, the map that was inside of the journal is worthless, no markings of any value. Except for this.” Farbeaux pulled over the last page Jack was holding and then the map with Lattimer’s little chicken scratches on its old face. “Here, he says he’s sending Charlie Ellenshaw and the grad students back to the camp, and he figured they could find their way back in a matter of two days down river.”
“Yes?” Punchy said, but Jack already pieced it together and so he stood and walked over to the map and looked.
“The wording, Mr. Alexander,” Henri said. “He mentions the camp; obviously we thought he was saying it was the camp of the graduate students he was hired as guide for. Now, anywhere on the upper Stikine is many more days by boat back to civilization than just a mere two days, not two days journey, so it has to be another camp, perhaps—”
“A fishing camp,” Jack said turning to face the two men. “The Tlingit Indian Fishing Camp to be exact.” He jabbed a finger at a spot on the large map. “This Wahachapee settlement right here.”
“Even if it isn’t so, Colonel, I believe it is a good place to start looking,” the Frenchman said as he stood, walked into the bathroom, and poured out his coffee. “If young Sarah brings back anything at all from your complex, Colonel, I pray it’s real coffee, French roast if possible.”
Jack didn’t answer the remark, knowing Farbeaux was trying to take his mind off of Lynn if only for a moment. Instead, he just turned and looked at the map once more and studied the legend at the top and its wholly unintentional foreboding message: UNEXPLORED REGION—STIKINE ARCHIPELAGO WILDERNESS.
Two hours later, after Jack had just about worn a path in the dirty carpet from the hotel room’s large window and back again to the map, Sarah finally returned from the complex at Nellis. She hugged Jack and through the tenseness of his body, she could tell he was chomping at the bit to get moving.
Jack slowly pushed Sarah away when he saw that standing between her back and the front of Will Mendenhall was none other than Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III.
“Oh, no, this isn’t for you, Doc, sorry,” Jack said, eyeing Sarah and Mendenhall with a ferocious glare. “There’s enough of us probably going to jail over this.”
Charlie, replete with a bright orange hunting vest and green pants and shirt, pushed his glasses back up on his nose and stared at Jack, not moving. He shuffled from one foot to the other.
“It was Niles. He insisted Charlie join our band of outlaws,” Sarah said, stepping around Collins, and rolling her eyes at Alexander and Farbeaux.
“Uh . . . Colonel, I think I need to be with you on this trip. To help you get your sister back.”
“Colonel, the doc here may have something you need to hear,” Mendenhall said, still standing outside of the room, looking almost a
s nervous as Charlie.
Collins just stared at Will. His eyes told the young lieutenant everything he needed to know.
“Or not,” Mendenhall said looking away. “Uh, we brought some supplies and a little equipment . . . I’ll go check on it.” Will bounded away and then down the stairs without looking back. He had decided to let Sarah battle the colonel on behalf of Ellenshaw.
“Jack, I think you better listen to what Charlie has to say—he knows about the area we’re looking for, he can find it and recognize the spot.”
Collins finally gave in and stepped aside. “Alright, Doc, you have two minutes to convince me you’re worth the weight we have to compensate for on the plane.”
Hindershot smiled meekly and stepped into the room. He nodded at Punchy, who only stared at the crazed white-haired professor. Then Charlie saw Farbeaux and stopped dead in his tracks.
“That’s right, Professor, strange circumstances call for strange bedfellows,” Henri said with a nod of his head. “If I remember right, you’re the monster man, correct?”
“I am a crypto zoologist, yes”
“I would have thought you would have had quite enough of your very strange profession down in the Amazon, Doctor,” Farbeaux said as he stood and slapped the tall thin man on the back.
“Alright, you can tell your story on the way to the plane,” Jack said as he gathered the maps that were pinned to the wall. “If it isn’t a good one, you’ll have to describe the area as best you can and then hitchhike back to Nellis and tell the director, thanks but no thanks. Am I clear on that, Doc?” Collins said as he quickly folded the maps and shot Ellenshaw another withering look.
“Yes, uh, yes, Colonel, very clear.”
“Well, we few, we desperate few, we band of brothers,” Henri looked at Sarah and smiled and half bowed, “and sister, shall we head north, and not stop until we fall off the edge of the world.”
It was only Charlie that smiled as the others were already leaving. “Actually, I think we only fall off the map, Colonel Farbeaux.”
Primeval: An Event Group Thriller Page 20