Sedona Conspiracy

by James C. Glass

  “Yes. Leon took me to a party at her home. You and I met there. Remember?”

  “Isn’t she a beauty? I haven’t had the privilege of meeting her.”

  “Well, I’ll have to introduce you sometime. Are we still on for Monday?”

  “Ah, well, it’s actually fortunate us meeting like this. I was going to call. Can we put it off until Friday? Two other cancellations messed up my schedule. That’s why I’m in town today.”

  Right. “Sure. Same time and place?”

  “Yes.” Coulter smiled. “Bring a pen. I’ll have a contract for you to sign.”

  “I’ll do that,” said Eric, and stepped back as Coulter started his car. The Mercedes backed up, turned, and headed south on 81A, tires spitting red scree in the parking lot.

  Leon was in the office when Eric returned. Eric told him about meeting Coulter.

  “I don’t like it,” said Leon. “He was supposed to be out of town. He might be watching us.”

  Eric bit his tongue to keep from telling Leon what Mister Brown had said about Coulter. “He’s a dirty guy, Leon, hiring us to do dirty things. We have no reason to trust him.”

  “I know. Eyes open, mouth closed. You armed?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did notice the hard lump when I brushed by you yesterday. Hear something?”

  “No. It seemed like the right thing to do. You?”

  Leon smiled, lifted a pants leg to show the Smith .41 holstered at his ankle. “Want me to follow you on Friday?”

  “I don’t want to chance it, but you might want to pick him up after the meeting and see where he goes. We need to find out who he’s working for. If possible, we should put a twenty-four-hour tail on him.”

  “There’s a gallery next to the restaurant. I’ll be in the parking lot, and follow him when he comes out. I won’t use the Humvee.”

  Eric sat down on the edge of Leon’s desk. “Any progress on what happened to Johnson?”

  “Not a clue,” said Leon. “Military round, standard weight bullet. Someone just out of boot camp could have fired it so accurately at that distance.”

  “Someone young. He ran like a rabbit,” said Eric.

  Leon blew out a breath of air. “Things are heating up, but I don’t see why. The only thing new is you coming here. What else could it be?”

  Eric’s decision was made before he realized it. “Yeah, there is something. We got a new instruction manual for Sparrow.”

  “I know that from Davis. It still isn’t complete,” said Leon.

  “No, but there are some leads. I got inside Sparrow, Leon, opened it up. There’s some kind of strange energy field inside. We’re trying to identify it. People think I’m a wunderkind for opening it up, but it was just luck or intuition or both.”

  Leon frowned. “I won’t ask when you did this; the answer would probably irritate me.”

  “Yeah, it would.”

  “Still don’t trust me?”

  “I’m trying to. Davis is on the take, and you’re pretending, and now I’ve had an offer. We don’t get paid top dollar, Leon. I have no illusions about the temptations of bribery.”

  Leon nodded. “Okay, that’s honest. Can’t say I haven’t had the same thoughts about you. I guess actions will have to speak for us. Let’s start with Friday.”

  Leon held out a hand, and Eric grasped it. No limp greeting for the garden club ladies, the handshake was bone hard.

  They went back to work at their desks, doing a mix of local cover and agency work. Eric had asked Gil for information on John Coulter, and sent a reminder. Two new portfolios were assembled and sent, and there was a call of thanks from an excited artist who’d just received a check for eighteen thousand dollars.

  Eric followed Leon down Dry Creek Road, turned in first, and garaged the car. An overhead camera the size of a laundry marker watched him unlock the door to the house, and enter it. Four other cameras watched him move from room to room, checking the placement of hair-sized threads at strategic places. In the basement, he played the day’s recording of all cameras, and then erased them. Nothing was amiss. No phone calls had been received, and there was no electronic news from Gil.

  The house was terribly quiet, and the walls seemed to be moving closer together. Eric put on a classical CD at low volume, put two potpies in the oven and boiled some frozen vegetables. Eating alone was again a thing to be dispensed with quickly, as it had been since the divorce. Thinking about Nataly, imagining her sitting across the table from him, helped.

  He rinsed his dishes, put them in the dishwasher with their cousins from breakfast and meals of the previous day. Some brainless sitcom was on screen when he turned the television set on, and he flipped channels for twenty minutes before turning it off. One of Nataly’s loaned books remained on the coffee table. He’d read it, but looked through it again: strange lights over Sedona, magnetic vortices, portals to other dimensions, aliens living in his own backyard, blah, blah, blah. He snapped the volume shut, put it on the coffee table and leaned back in the embrace of an overstuffed chair. For a moment he dozed, but came back startled by a sound from the basement that could have been a door opening or closing. He pulled the Colt Modified from its underarm holster, snicked off the safety and pulled the hammer back from half cock. The floor creaked once as he padded to the basement stairs on stockinged feet. The downstairs lights were still on. Eric put his back to the wall, went sideways down the stairs, gun leveled.

  The door to the tunnel was closed. When he first glanced at it, Eric detected blurred movement to the right, but when he looked directly nothing was there except two boxes and a broom in a corner. He unlocked and opened the tunnel door. Nothing. Closed and locked it again. He was not feeling foolish; instincts honed by twenty years of life-threatening work were telling him to remain observant. He sniffed the air, but there was nothing obvious. The quiet was absolute. He stood motionless for minutes, eyes scanning back and forth. Even as he ascended the stairs again, the Colt held lightly in his hand, he felt an apprehension about having missed something.

  Eric sat down in his chair again, put the Colt on the table in front of him. He sat that way for an hour, feeling as if he’d had six cups of strong coffee. And when the telephone rang, a shudder ran through him from head to toe.

  “Hello.”

  “Hi. Just called to say good night. I’m going to bed early.”

  It was wonderful to hear her voice. “Not me. For some reason, I’m jumpy tonight.”

  “Take the pills I gave you. What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Every sound makes me hyper-alert.”

  “The pills will help. Do you have to go out of town?”

  “No. I would have heard something today, but it could be anytime.”

  “How about tomorrow night?”

  “Sure. Why don’t we eat at my place? I’ll fix you a pot pie, and show you my etchings.”

  “You live on those horrible things. Okay, pick me up at five. Marie can close up.”

  “I’ll be there. Sleep tight.”

  “You too. Bye.”

  A click, and Nataly was gone, but suddenly the world was good again. The jumpiness was still there, but didn’t seem important anymore. His watch said ten, early for bed, but if he stayed up his hyper-vigilance would only get worse, and for no good reason he could see.

  The little piece of folded napkin was still in his pocket. He unfolded it, took the two pink tablets Nataly had given him to the kitchen and washed them down with a glass of water.

  He undressed, and brushed his teeth, checked the doors, windows, the video recorder downstairs. The pills seemed to be working, the jumpiness fading, and no more imagined movement in his peripheral vision. The house was thankfully quiet when he finally crawled into bed at ten-thirty and turned off the bed stand lamp. He felt relaxed; a tingling that began in his toes and worked its way upward. He heard a car go by outside his house, recede in the distance. From far off came a mournful call of a dog or coyote on the prowl.r />
  There was a lapse of consciousness for some length of time, and then he was aware again. His eyes were closed, his skin warm against the sheets. When he willed his eyes to open they didn’t respond. He wondered if he was on the edge of dreaming, but could smell traces of cooking odors in the air. He felt a tingling again in his legs, a pleasant feeling, and he sighed.

  The vision began with a sound like gently bubbling water, and then it was as if a curtain was raised on a brightly lit stage. Eric felt the muscles of his closed eyes tighten at the brightness. There was a pale blue sky, a giant eye of emerald green hovering there above a golden man. The man was seated in lotus position on a green rug that floated on a layer of mist over an endless pool of bubbling water. He was dressed from head to toe in a net of shimmering white cloth that filtered the brightness of his golden skin.

  Eric realized with a start that he was looking at himself, though the eyes seemed extraordinarily blue.

  “Hello,” said the man, and smiled. “We’ve not formally met before, though I’ve wished for it.”

  It was his own voice, but affected, and Eric suppressed a laugh. He could feel the cool air in his bedroom; hear the occasional creak as the house settled in the night. “This must be a waking dream,” he said, and felt his lips move. “I know I’m not asleep.”

  “Not exactly,” said the golden man, “but in this state you can receive the information I have for you, and remember it when necessary. We don’t have much time. There will be a disturbance, but you will not come to harm. You must focus on what I have to say, and we’ll protect you.”

  “We? You’re me; I can see that, an interesting illusion I’m conjuring up for myself. Nataly’s new-age stuff is getting to me. Interesting.” Eric could not remember being so relaxed, and willing to go along with the flow of what was happening.

  The golden man’s voice was sharp. “This is not some amusing dream. Now listen to me carefully. The star craft you call Sparrow must be flown again, and you must fly with it. The information you need is here; it’s only necessary that you look at it, and it will be stored in the proper place in your mind.” The man made a swirling gesture with one hand, and a framed page of text and symbols appeared to one side of him. The text was already scrolling when Eric looked at it, accelerating as he focused, a near blur of text and diagrams rushing past his view. He was drawn to it, mesmerized, though other things suddenly tempted his senses. He felt motion in the air around him, and there were sounds: a rattling, a crack like a hammer hitting stone, a pounding on a wall or floor in his house.

  “Concentrate!” said the golden man.

  It was more than pounding. It was the sound of a struggle coming from the basement. Eric’s eyelids fluttered, and flashes of darkness obscured for one instant the data scrolling in front of him.

  “Ignore it! You’re safe! We’re nearly finished!”

  There was a crash, and the pounding stopped. Eric smelled a strange, coppery scent, and the blur of words and diagrams suddenly ceased. The golden man stared at him with concern, but had not changed his position. The large, emerald eye above him was gone. Eric felt uneasy by its absence, and wondered why.

  “The danger is past. I’ll make a small correction when we’re finished,” said the golden man. “Your confusion is understandable. Don’t be alarmed by it.”

  “Don’t be alarmed? I’m in a waking dream, talking to myself while something or someone is crashing around in my house, and my legs and arms won’t move and I’m supposed to be reading something that’s a blur to me. Who or what are you?”

  “I’m you,” said the golden man, “the essence of you, if you wish. I hope we can meet again, just the two of us, but for now I must channel for our friends. What you do for them you do for yourself, and for all humanity. We are honored.”

  “You’re a figment from my reading and Nataly’s new-age mysticism, all of it. Enough of this, now. I’m going to sleep.”

  The golden man closed his eyes, and nodded. “That is best for now. I’ll complete my task, reinforce what has been given to you, and give you a restful sleep with simple dreams. But in the future I hope you’ll think of me, and search me out again. We have issues to discuss.”

  “Sure,” said Eric, and again felt his lips move. A strange scent remained in the air, and there were faint scuffling sounds close by. He tried opening his eyes, moving legs and arms, but nothing would respond. His mind was suddenly fuzzy, and as consciousness faded he felt his right leg jerk once.

  When he awoke in the morning he was instantly alert, jerking back the covers and leaping from the bed. Everything he’d experienced the night before was instantly remembered. He checked the doors, the windows, even the floor around his bed. Nothing was disturbed. He browsed the kitchen, the bathroom, found a faucet dripping slowly, and tightened a cold-water handle to stop it. The lights on the alarm clock on his nightstand blinked at him. There had been a power outage or surge in the night. He looked up at one corner of the ceiling, saw the faint red spot of light from the camera there, still on, but the recorder could have been affected. If there had been loss of power, the alarm clock indicated it had been shortly after eleven, soon after he’d retired.

  His suspicions were confirmed when he went down to the basement. The video recorder was off, sitting on standby, and the tapes ended just after eleven. He remembered the sounds he’s heard, and he’d been without surveillance, totally vulnerable, yet nothing had happened to him other than a bizarre waking dream.

  He turned to go up the stairs again, and saw a dark spot at the inside edge of the lowest step. He touched it, felt a soft crust, then liquid. The color was right; he sniffed at the liquid on his finger.

  It was blood.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CONCERNS

  The lights were low, the video monitor on the table darkened. Mister Brown and Mister White sipped tea and spoke in near whispers. They had checked the room for listening devices, Brown had activated his random wave generator, and they were reasonably certain they were alone in the room.

  “You seem certain we can trust him,” said Mister White.

  “I do. He’s been evaluated at all levels. There are no commercial interests pulling at him. His loyalty is to his government, and his experience is just what we need.”

  “He’s a killer.”

  “Yes, he can be that. He has also survived by his wits for many years. It won’t be simple to predict his reactions or movements. Natasha will give us what she can, but her time with him is limited.”

  “Her father would be proud,” said White.

  “Indeed, but I’m concerned about her. She has developed feelings for the man, and I don’t want to see her hurt.”

  “She’s an adult. And there are certainly no racial issues.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You know me better than that. I just hope her attachment to Mister Price doesn’t go too far. At worst he could soon be dead. At best he will be gone when his job here is finished.”

  “So what’s the next step?” White leaned closer.

  “We have to tell him about the portal. I’m convinced our saboteurs are using it to come and go. Davis has not cooperated with us in the placement of guards. He insists his people cannot stand in total darkness for hours at a time. And even when the bay is active I can’t get him to regularly photograph all personnel coming in and out of the portal. It’s too simple to hide a face from a video camera placed only at one position.”

  “So how can Price help with that?”

  “If he knows how parts and key personnel get in and out of the base he can talk to Davis as a security expert and pressure him for better surveillance. He also needs access to the portal bay if he has to pursue someone. He at least has to know where it is.”

  White grasped Brown’s arm. “He cannot be told the exact nature of the portal. If he reported that to his government there would be a panic. It could destroy everything we’ve worked for.”

  Brown patted White’s hand. “I agree
it could shock people in the agency he works for, but I know for a fact that people much higher than any agency know all about the portal and its origins. And they are the people who initiated this project with us. For now, it’s enough if Price knows where the portal is and can get to it. But if he ever has to use it we’ll have to tell him everything. Do you agree with me?”

  “Yes, for now. Even Davis doesn’t know the mechanics of the portal. He just thinks he does.”

  “But he’ll have to allow Price access to the bay so he can see its operation. I’ll talk to him right away. Things will be happening fast, now. Price has what he needs to fly the star craft. If that leaks out, our adversaries could make a move quite soon. Make sure our people are never far from Price. We just came close to losing him.”

  “Will you tell the others?”

  “No. We still can’t be sure there aren’t other conspirators acting with Watt.”

  “Why not have Price kill him right away?”

  “Not until I know their overall plan, and everyone behind it. Watt surely knows our suspicions. For now, I think sabotage will cease, but I worry about assassinations. And it could happen to any of us. I’m going to see Davis, and demand that he introduce Price to the portal bay. Hopefully he’ll do it quickly before Price demonstrates his new knowledge of the star craft. Things will likely be chaotic after that. I’ll want regular reports from your people on any reactions from Reds or Blues. It has been far too quiet lately.”

  “I really don’t think they’re involved. Watt is working alone, or with secret service personnel loyal to him,” said White.

  “I tend to agree, but let’s keep a close eye on our so-called allies anyway.”

  The two men shared a laugh about that, and adjourned their meeting.

  * * * * * * *

  Outside it was close to sunrise. Inside, the control room was nearly dark, and only one man sat at the console. It was the time of low priority transmissions, and only a few people were in line. Dario Watt had presented his authorization, and enjoyed an herbal tea while waiting his turn. His aide sat with him, a small man with a prominent nose. Dario smiled pleasantly at him.