My new nickname did nothing for Mom’s happiness. She pictured me in a nice Manhattan brownstone, being paid zillions of dollars helping wealthy East Side ladies with their neuroses. I tried to keep my nickname hidden from Mom, but she spotted it on a business card I had made as a joke. Mom was not amused. What saved my relationship with Mom and Dad was the verdict in the Langston trial, a notorious murder case that involved some of the biggest stars in Hollywood. After the verdict, yours truly was on every TV news show talking about how I spotted lies and inconsistencies in some of the key witnesses in the trial. So mom was able to email YouTube links to her friends with the subject line reading, “That’s my Bennie.” Mom can be embarrassing but I love her.
All of which brings me to my strange relationship with my good friend Jack Thurber. Jack’s probably the smartest guy I’ve ever met. He’s a big-time journalist and author who loves to dig into areas that others have ignored. He scored a deal from Random House to write a book called Living History – Stories of Time Travel Through the Ages. Part of his research was to interview people who claim to have traveled through time. Jack heard about me, having seen me on TV a few times, and called to ask if I’d like to collaborate with him on the book. I figured if there’s ever a field of fresh bullshit it’s time travel stories. Jack offered me not just a fee but a generous share of his royalties. Besides fun, this was one of the best financial moves I ever made. Today, almost 10 years after the book was published, my royalties checks keep coming. Sharing time with a good friend and making money to boot is a gift from God.
When I interviewed the “time travelers” for the book, my mind was blown. I’m an expert at evaluating psychopaths, people who, among their other traits, can be very good liars. I thought I’d seen them all. Yes, a few of the travelers I interviewed were obvious nut cases (I didn’t learn that term at Harvard) but a half dozen were solid as rocks. They said they time travelled and had detailed stories to back them up. Not one of them was lying.
Jack Thurber himself claims to be a “time traveler.” I think I mentioned that Jack’s a good friend, maybe my best friend, and here’s where things got dicey on occasion. Jack would tell me his stories and I determined, professionally, that he wasn’t lying a bit, not even stretching the truth. When he was in the Navy about four years ago, he and a ship full of about 630 people claimed to have traveled from the year 2013 back to the Civil War. When the ship “returned” to 2013 the Navy convened a Naval Board of Inquiry to investigate. To help vet the witnesses the Navy hired guess who? It was the second most amazing experience of my life. I’ll tell you about the number one amazing experience shortly. Every sailor who took the stand was telling the truth, including Jack and the ship’s captain, a beautiful woman who Jack would eventually marry. I told you he was smart.
Okay, for the most amazing experience this bullshit detector ever had, well, I’m still going through it. Jack, along with his lovely wife, were killed two years ago in a terrorist attack on a ship that she commanded. Four other ships were attacked within five minutes. That was in 2015, Thanksgiving Day, to be exact. But here’s what’s making me nuts. Jack showed up in my office a few days ago, in 2017, very much alive. He wants to travel back through time to 2015 and prevent the attack. I told you it was amazing.
Also, it’s no bullshit.
Chapter 7
“Bennie, I need you to help me focus on my research. I don’t just want to dive in, I want to have some targets to aim at. I want to come up with some stuff that, in retrospect, will look suspicious. I don’t want to pounce on people shouting that I just time tripped into the future and found some bad guys. Put your skeptical cop hat on.”
“Well, let’s start with what we know, Jack, which is very little. A lot has been written about that Army scumbag, Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 and wounded 30 at Fort Hood. There was a lot in his background that should have set off alarms. He never passed up an opportunity to talk about his hatred of America and his love of radical Islam. I’m sure you’re going to remind the Navy and the FBI about this case.”
“Great points, Bennie. But like you said, Hassan put out a lot of warning flares. People who should have known better just ignored them. How do I tell the folks in 2015 where I got the information on the Thanksgiving Attacks?”
“Jack, the last, the absolute last fucking thing you want to do is to tell them about your little time trip. You’re one of the best investigative journalists in the country and nobody’s going to doubt that you uncovered the facts. The evidence that we’ll be digging up existed before the bombs went off. Also, you have one big advantage over all of the investigators – you’ll return to 2015 knowing what will happen in a few months. Pieces of evidence that would otherwise seem insignificant will jump out at you.”
Chapter 8
I just came back to Bennie’s office from my five-mile run around Central Park and a forty five-minute workout at Planet Fitness, a block away from the office. They’re having a 30-day free tryout, so I didn’t have to hit up Bennie for money. I like to stay in shape. Good for the brain. It also helps to calm the frantic demons in my stomach. Nobody likes to think about his own death, but I’m surrounded by evidence that I’m already dead.
I’m in the office that Bennie’s lending me. It’s perfect for concentration, just the right size and equipped with a good PC, Internet access, and a printer. It's airy and has pleasant green and blue walls. Hung on the walls are painting of pastoral scenes from various historical eras. Bennie says that type of art calms him, and I see what he means. The office only has one window that looks at nothing interesting, which is good because if there’s one thing that can break a researcher’s focus it’s a pretty view. If I want to rest my eyes I can look at the paintings. I’ve decided to start my research by checking the security clearance procedures for all crewmembers at the time of the attacks.
I found that background checks are done through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which uses its own agents as well as private contractors. I came across a Reuters article from September 2013 that talks about hundreds of security clearance records that are falsified every year. How nice. OPM has a security clearance budget of about a billion dollars, and part of the bucks go to the private contractors who nobody tracks down. In one case that was prosecuted, an investigator reported that he personally interviewed a guy who had been dead for over 10 years. With that kind of taxpayer dollars sloshing around so many pockets, it’s no wonder a lot of people get clearances who shouldn’t. Aaron Alexis, the nut who gunned down 13 people at the Washington Navy Yard, had a Secret clearance even though he’d been involved in incidents of violence before and after he got cleared. And then there’s Edward Snowden, the contractor for the National Security Agency who divulged a mountain of American and British surveillance documents. His clearance? Top Secret. Both Snowden and the Navy Yard shooter were vetted by USIS, a private company hired by the OPM. And this crap was years before the carriers were nuked. I feel another book coming on. I also feel like I’m gonna puke.
After reading about the screw-ups by the OPM, I have the sinking feeling that there may be no smoking guns, simply because nobody thought to ask the right questions. Oh, Nidal Hassan? Just because he was heard constantly denigrating America and praising radical Islam, and just because he was an Army officer who carried a gun, heck, none of that stuff should cause anybody to put a bad remark into his fitness reports. Okay, I guess I’m just enjoying the smugness you feel when you look at things from hindsight.
Wait a minute. Hold the phone. What’s this? According to a New York Times article, five officers, all stationed on the nuked ships, had something in common. When each of them was 18 years old, they took a trip to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, conducted by an organization called The Center for Open-Minded Youth. Wallace Burton, the author of the article is an old friend of mine, a classmate at the Columbia School of Journalism. Bless Wally, he doesn’t miss a trick. It turns out that The Center for Open-Minded Youth specializes in sending A
merican and European kids on special trips to the Middle East for mind stretching. That must take a lot of money, yes? No problem. The Center for Open-Minded Youth is funded by Saudi Arabia.
Okay, just because an 18-year-old kid takes a trip to sand land doesn’t mean he’s a terrorist recruit, but these are five dots, five coincidences, five possible clues. To keep my research focused, I’ll call these guys the Atomic Five.
I’m thinking about that 1987 movie No Way Out, with Kevin Costner playing a naval officer at the Pentagon. He was a deeply imbedded Soviet mole, having been groomed for the job since he was young. Is it possible that the Atomic Five have been preparing for their roles since they were kids?
I don’t see anything in the research that hints at any radical religious leaning of these officers, just those trips to Saudi Arabia when they were teenagers. According to the personnel records, one of them, Joseph Monahan on Ashley’s ship, is listed as an Episcopalian. Then there’s Quentin on the Harry Truman, who calls himself a Presbyterian, and Martin on the Carl Vinson, a Catholic, as is Peyton on the Theodore Roosevelt, and Murphy on the George Washington. According to Wally’s article, the parents of each of these guys told investigators that their sons and their wives were of the same religion as them, except for Peyton who isn’t married.
Here’s another article by Wally about the names of the officers. He took the angle of searching for stories using the Muslim names of the Atomic Five. The article was co-written by Eric Pucinski, another great reporter. Eric also reads, writes, and speaks perfect Arabic. That said, this must have been a tough job, because the spelling of Arabic names are notoriously changeable. Not only that, but just because there’s an article about Abu Hussein doesn’t mean it’s the Abu Hussein also known as Joseph Monahan.
So, Wally and Pucinski restricted themselves to stories that include the word American or America or United States. Here’s what they found:
Joseph Monahan (Abu Hussein) “...our American brother.”
George Quentin (Jazeer Mohammed) “...visiting from his home in the United States.”
Ralph Martin (Fatah Zayyaf) “...American brother.”
Philip Murphy (Mohammed Islam) “...our American friend.”
Nothing much, but here’s a bell ringer from a newspaper article in Yemen: “...Lashkar Islamiyah, still uses his infidel name, Frederick Peyton, when he’s in America.”
Wally also found another “coincidence.” Each of these guys was the weapons officer on his ship.
Wow. But why am I thinking wow? This is a 2017 wow. In 2015 it could be a so what. What I mean is that, post attacks, we can connect all sorts of dots. I may conclude that these bastards were Islamist terrorists, but it wouldn’t be a cold exercise in logic. We know these facts in 2017 because they’re history. But in 2015, before the attacks, the politically correct response to what I’ve found so far would be, “So, they may be Muslims. Doesn’t make them terrorists.” Not only politically correct, but accurate. Nothing I’ve read thus far has any of the blinking red light warnings that Nidal Hassan, the Fort Hood shooter, put out. Numerous post-shooting witnesses testified about Hassan’s radical views and diatribes against America. There was none of that from the five officers in question.
I need more. Bennie’s right. I can’t go back to 2015 and say, “Hi, I just got back from the future and found out that five naval officers are nuclear terrorists.”
Bennie dropped into the office to ask me if I wanted some coffee. He asked where I was in my research. I told him about Wally Burton’s article in The New York Times.
“I haven’t found anything that’s not already been covered,” I said. “I’m going to call my friend Wally Burton from the Times. He may be doing follow-up research and I need to compare notes with him.”
“Jack, he knows you’re dead. Everyone does. How are you going to chat him up when you don’t exist?”
“Ben, you make the call. Tell him that you have some information about the attacks. He’ll drop everything to see you and when he opens the door, I’ll be with you.”
“You’ll make his day, I’m sure,” said Ben.
Chapter 9
Wally Burton’s secretary escorted us into his office at The New York Times Building on Eighth Avenue. Wally’s window faced east, giving him a great view of the Empire State Building. Ben introduced himself, and then me, simply as his friend Jack. Wally and I hadn’t seen each other for over 15 years. Wally’s about six feet and has gained a lot of weight since I last saw him. I recall liking the guy. Smart as a whip with a great sense of humor. Wally has a way of interviewing people that gets straight to the facts, but he it does in a way that puts a person at ease. He's sort of like jay Leno. Friendly and affable, but he always asks the right questions.
Wally stared at me. “You look just like a friend of mine from journalism school named Jack Thurber.”
“I am Jack Thurber.”
It’s uncomfortable to tell somebody the impossible. Wally just stared. He didn’t say a word. I go through this a lot.
“I guess I owe you an explanation,” I said.
“Yes,” said Wally, “you do. You’re dead.”
So I laid it all out for Wally, with Bennie chipping in. Wally, like everyone else in the country, was familiar with the Gray Ship incident and my writings on time travel.
“So let me get this straight, Jack. You’re not dead, which I can see. You say that you came to us from July 2015, a few months before the Thanksgiving Attacks. I suppose as a reporter I should be excited about this story, but you’re freaking me out, my friend, you’re totally freaking me out.”
“I get it, Wally. I have a hard time believing it myself, but it’s the truth. I’m very much alive as you can see, and for me, the attacks didn’t happen yet. I have no idea how, but I’m able to travel through time. My wife calls me a time magnet because I seem attracted to time portals or wormholes. You’ve read about my testimony at the Naval Board of Inquiry in 2013 about the USS California incident. I know it sounds impossible, but I’m a time traveler. But now I have one simple objective. I want to get as much evidence as I can and return to 2015 and blow the whistle. I want to save a few thousand lives, including my own and my wife Ashley. And that’s why I need your help.”
“I’ll be happy to help, Jack, not that I can believe any of this. Tell me what I can do.”
“I need convincing evidence that the guys you wrote about are potential terrorists. I want to give the authorities in 2015 the ammunition to take action. I need objective data, stuff that will make their hair stand on end. I don’t want to tell them that I came from the future and found out that something terrible will soon happen. You dug up some great information, Wally, especially the part about all five of these guys going to a Muslim camp when they were teenagers. But I need more than that. You know as well as I do that a story is never over until the end. And here in 2017, we haven’t heard the end of the story yet.”
“Yes,” Wally said, “I haven’t let go of the story, and my recent digging has turned up some new stuff. It’s a bitch trying to find sources, but I’m on a trail. Like you, I prefer to interview witnesses. But they’re all dead.”
“The bad guys are dead, Wally, along with the people they murdered. But there are spouses, kids, parents, siblings. We can interview them on the ruse that we’re doing a story on the families of those who were killed in the Thanksgiving Attacks. It’s been two years, so emotions won’t be too raw. We’ll just be asking them questions about their departed loved ones.”
We both turned to look at Bennie.
“Ben, my friend, if the world ever needed a bullshit detector it’s now,” I said. “How would you like to play journalist and interview these people with us?”
“I’m in,” said Bennie.
Chapter 10
We stood on the front porch of 200 Darvis Circle, Brooklyn, the home of Janice Monahan, widow of Lieutenant Commander Joseph Monahan, weapons officer on the USS Abraham Lincoln. The time was 11 AM, a reason
able hour to ring somebody’s doorbell. Neither cops nor journalists like to call in advance to schedule an appointment. The person can always try to duck you. Better to just show up. A car was parked in the driveway, so we assumed Mrs. Monahan would be home.
An attractive woman in her mid to late 30s answered the door. She had the usual look of confusion when somebody is confronted by strangers. She had medium length blond hair, wore tight jeans that caressed her athletic butt, and an MIT sweatshirt. A casual observer may think of her as a knock-out.
“Good morning, Mrs. Monahan,” said Wally. “We’re from The New York Times. My name is Wallace Burton and these are my colleagues, Jack Harper (my new alias) and Ben Weinberg. I hope we’re not catching you at a bad time.”
“What’s this all about?” The standard response.
Box Set - The Time Magnet Series Page 29