City of Sand

by Robert Kroese

  “Like what?”

  “All sorts of things. I’m sure you’re aware of his interest in eugenics.”

  “You’re saying Glazier funded genetic research? What are we talking about, Mengele-type-stuff?”

  “Like I said, I can’t prove anything. I have no hard evidence. But I know what Glazier was capable of. We were friends, after a fashion. I got him drunk one night, and got him to say all sorts of crazy things. Off the record, of course, but he gave me enough information that I decided to do some digging.”

  “What did you find?”

  “Nothing. I said I decided to do some digging. I never actually got around to the digging, because the day after my conversation with Glazier, I was visited by a couple of FBI agents. They made it very clear that I was to forget everything Glazier ever told me.”

  “They threatened you?”

  “In those days, the FBI didn’t need to threaten. They just showed up and told you what was what. Everybody knew what happened to people who didn’t cooperate. I’d be labeled a Communist and a traitor. They’d dig up something from my past, or fabricate evidence against me. At the very least, I’d never get another job as a reporter. I had a family to think of.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?”

  Sabbia shrugged. “I think they’ve forgotten me. Anyway, my kids are grown and my wife has passed on. I was diagnosed with a brain tumor three months ago. There isn’t much they can do to me at this point. How much do you know about Glazier?”

  “I’ve done quite a bit of research in the past few days. I know he had some pretty distasteful ideas. Like the eugenics.”

  Sabbia nodded. “His real obsession was trying to predict the future.”

  “Predict it and control it,” said Benjamin. “I mean, that’s the point of eugenics, right? Control the evolution of the race?”

  “Eugenics was mainstream compared to some of Glazier’s ideas,” said Sabbia. “He was convinced that the human brain possessed the potential for precognition.”

  “Precognition? You mean literally seeing the future?”

  “Yep. He thought that time was simply a matter of perception, and that by altering our perception, we could bridge the gap between the present and the future. This was back when the CIA was testing LSD on Americans without their consent, and I’m sure Glazier had a hand in that. But I wouldn’t be surprised if GLARE went far beyond that.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “From what Glazier told me that night, I think they experimented on people. He talked about projecting someone’s consciousness forward in time. It sounds crazy, I know. And he was trying to make it sound like it was all theoretical, but he would slip up at times. He was pretty drunk, and I’d switched to soda water after the first couple, so I was still pretty sharp.”

  “Projecting a person’s consciousness forward in time? What does that even mean?”

  Sabbia thought for a moment. “Let’s say you’ve got person A, who lives in the year 2000. You send person A’s consciousness—their mind, basically, forward a hundred years into the future. In the year 2100, you’ve got person B, sitting there all unsuspecting, driving his flying car or whatever. All the sudden, person A’s consciousness takes over his brain for a few minutes. Person A, in person B’s body, looks around for a while, sees what’s happening in 2100, and then gets snapped back to 2000 like a rubber band. Person B loses a few minutes of time, maybe crashes his flying car, but otherwise is none the wiser. Meanwhile—well, not meanwhile, but you know what I mean—Person A reports back to his bosses about what he saw in the year 2100.”

  “That sounds crazy, alright,” said Benjamin.

  “Glazier claimed to have it all worked out, at least in theory. The way he told it, the only real obstacle was in the human brain itself.”

  “How is that?”

  “Evolution,” said Sabbia. “Knowing the future is a selective disadvantage, at least on an individual level. You know how really smart and creative people tend to commit suicide at a higher rate the general population? That’s because at a certain point, intelligence becomes a burden. It’s a useful trait for the race, because smart, creative people come up with innovative solutions to problems, but it’s actually a disadvantage from the perspective of individual survival. Creative people are prone to suicide and self-destructive behavior like alcoholism, not to mention isolation and being ostracized. Enough of these creative types survive long enough to have offspring that the traits are preserved, but these destructive tendencies tend to keep the average IQ of the race below a certain ceiling.”

  Sabbia went on, “Glazier thought the same thing was true for precognition. He thought that certain individuals were genetically predisposed toward precognition, but that they are exceedingly rare, because such individuals tend to be highly self-destructive. Being able to see the future is too much for a person to take. He also thought these individuals were becoming even more rare, because precognition smacks of the supernatural, and the supernatural has become marginalized in Western society. There used to be a place for shamans and witch doctors, even the Victorian mystics. Not so much anymore. He hoped to find a trigger for these latent abilities, to allow such individuals to project their consciousness into the future. For the good of the race.”

  “But not so much for the good of the subjects.”

  “That’s the way it goes with people like Glazier,” said Sabbia. “The individual gets sacrificed for the greater good.”

  Benjamin nodded. As much as he was tempted to dismiss Sabbia’s comments as the half-remembered rantings of a drunken eccentric, what Sabbia was telling him aligned with what he’d read in Spiegel’s letter to GLARE. Had this been what GLARE had really been working on? Precognition? It made sense, given Glazier’s apparent obsession with the future, his interest in eugenics, and the political nature of GLARE. The CIA had been involved in all sorts of crazy ideas in the 1950s, including ESP and mind control, but what the government wanted more than anything was intelligence. An agency that could see even a day into the future would have a huge tactical advantage over its foes. Most of what the CIA had been up to eventually was made public, but maybe the really top secret stuff was handled by an even more shadowy agency—one that most people had never even heard of: GLARE. If it was true, the real question was: were they successful? Sabbia certainly wouldn’t know the answer to that one, though. Spiegel’s letter had said something about the “initial exposure” being accidental. Had GLARE happened upon a way to trigger precognition by accident, and then covered it up?

  “Who did he conduct these experiments on?” Benjamin asked.

  “I don’t even know for sure there were any experiments,” said Sabbia. “This is all speculation, based on the little that Glazier told me. I’ve thought about it a lot since that day, but I never dared to look very deeply into it. Like I said, I had a family.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” asked Benjamin. “Do you think GLARE’s interest in precognition has something to do with Spiegel’s death? Or my daughter’s?”

  “I think,” said Sabbia, “that GLARE, and Glazier in particular, were involved in some very questionable things. Things that may have seemed defensible to some people at the time, but that would look very bad for Glazier, not to mention the government. And Glazier cares for nothing more than his own legacy. So would it surprise me if Glazier had Spiegel killed? Or that fifty years later, there’s still plenty he’d like to keep under wraps? Not at all. Maybe it’s time the truth came out.”

  “Why don’t you go public?”

  “With what? Speculation based on a fifty-year-old conversation?”

  “Would you go public if you had more evidence?”

  Sabbia shrugged. “Sure. Like I said, I don’t have a whole lot to lose at this point.”

  Benjamin nodded. He was twenty years younger than Sabbia, and he didn’t feel like he had much to lose either. But Sabbia was right: they would need solid evidence of wrongdoing if they were going to try to ex
pose GLARE.

  “Thank you very much for your time, Mr. Sabbia,” he said, getting up. “I’ll see myself out.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Sabbia, slowly getting to his feet. Benjamin was halfway to the door when he spoke again. “Mr. Stone.”

  Benjamin turned. “Yes?”

  “There’s something else … that I just thought of. Not sure if it will be of any help, but it can’t hurt.”

  “What is it?”

  “Six years ago, someone else came to me, asking me if I knew anything about secret experiments on children in the fifties.”

  “Who?”

  “His name was Estefan Moreno. A man about your age. He was… that is, I thought at the time that he was insane.”

  “Why did you think that?”

  “He was ranting… almost incoherent. Scared the dickens out of my wife. Talking about Zionists and chemtrails and all sorts of craziness. But a few things that he said—about the “collective unconscious” and precognition—reminded me of Glazier’s drunken monologue that night in the bar. In retrospect, I think he was trying to get me to confirm much of what I just told you, but at the time I was more concerned with getting him the hell out of my house.”

  “So you didn’t tell him anything?”

  “Well, I didn’t have much to tell, and I was a little worried about feeding into the paranoid fantasies of a lunatic. And yeah, I guess I was still a little scared about what the government would do to me if I talked. I’m afraid he left disappointed.”

  “Do you think he came across the same inconsistency I did, about Spiegel’s accident? Why did he seek you out?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sabbia. “He wasn’t making much sense.”

  “Do you have a phone number for him?”

  “He’s in the book. Still lives here in town. I almost called him many times after June died, but I was never sure what I would say to him—or whether it would make things better or worse.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” said Benjamin. “Is it alright if I tell him you gave me his name?”

  Sabbia shrugged. “Sure. Like I said, I don’t have much to lose. Just be careful.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Benjamin borrowed Sabbia’s phone book to get Estefan’s number, and called him from the car as he drove away from Sabbia’s house. A woman answered. Benjamin explained that he was doing some research on William Glazier and was hoping to ask Estefan a few questions. The woman told him that was going to be difficult, because Estefan had died six months earlier. Benjamin expressed his condolences.

  “What is this about, Mr. Stone?” asked the woman, who claimed to be Estefan’s widow. “Who are you?”

  Benjamin had been working on a cover story, but something in the terseness of the woman’s voice compelled him to honesty. He explained that his daughter had been killed, and that he thought her murder may have been related to illegal activities Glazier had been involved in decades earlier. It was a bold gambit, but if what Sabbia had told him about Estefan’s behavior was true, then his widow would likely be well aware of her late husband’s eccentricity. And that meant she would either be glad to speak with someone who took his concerns seriously or suspicious that Benjamin was trying to capitalize on Estefan’s insanity. If Benjamin was cagey with her, that would only feed her suspicions. If he was completely up front with her and she still refused to talk to him, then she probably wasn’t going to be of much help anyway.

  It seemed to work. She agreed to speak with him, anyway. She gave him her address—an apartment not far from downtown—and asked him to stop by at two o’clock. That gave Benjamin enough time for a leisurely lunch. He had a sandwich and soup at a café not far away, and then walked to the apartment complex.

  Margaret Moreno’s apartment was small, cluttered, dirty and depressing. The woman herself seemed like a reflection of her surroundings: tiny, disheveled, and worn out. If Estefan was around Benjamin’s age, then presumably she was as well, but she looked far older. She invited Benjamin inside, and they sat across from each other in her little living room. Benjamin had to move a cat and a pile of newspapers to make a place for himself. Margaret showed no sign of embarrassment at the state of her apartment; she simply waited for Benjamin to take a seat.

  “You said some reporter gave you my name?” Margaret asked. Her voice was low and husky, like someone who had smoked for a long time.

  “Tony Sabbia. Your husband spoke to him once, years ago.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to ask you. Do you know why Estefan would have wanted to talk to a reporter?”

  “Sure,” said Margaret. “He was crazy.”

  “Crazy how?”

  “He was like one of those conspiracy theory types. Thought everything was part of some kind of secret plot. JFK’s assassination, the Moon Landing, UFOs…. He was always doing research. He spent a lot of time listening to that AM radio program that’s on late at night. You know, the one where they have all the crazies on. He used to call in. I think he got on the air a couple of times, but they stopped putting him on when they realized just how crazy he was. Can you believe that? He spent a lot of time at the library, said he was doing research. If he was talking to some reporter, it was probably because he thought the reporter knew something.”

  “Knew something about what?”

  “That’s the question, ain’t it?” Margaret said. “The big conspiracy, whatever it was. Sometimes it was the Jews, sometimes it was the Masons, sometimes it was aliens or lizard people. It kept changing, and I never did figure out what the point of all of it was. I loved him, but like I said, he was crazy. Do you really think William Glazier had something to do with your daughter’s murder?” The way she asked, it sounded as if she was trying to determine if Benjamin was the same kind of crazy as Estefan.

  “It’s starting to seem that way,” said Benjamin. “Do you know Mr. Glazier?”

  “Sure, Estefan worked for him for twenty-five years. At Glazier Semiconductor, I mean.”

  Another happy Glazier employee, thought Benjamin. “So Estefan was able to hold down a job.”

  Margaret shot him a bemused glance. “Well, of course he held down a job. He was crazy, not retarded or something.”

  “So he wasn’t delusional?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did he see things that weren’t there? Hallucinate?”

  “Oh, hell no,” said Margaret.

  “So when you say he was crazy, you just mean he had some unorthodox ideas. You don’t mean he was literally insane.”

  Margaret’s eyes went to the floor, and she was silent for some time. Until now, she had seemed eager to talk about Estefan, as if his “craziness” were some amusing and harmless quirk. But it was clear there was more to it than that. “Estefan wasn’t insane in that way,” she said. “But he had… issues. His death… it wasn’t an accident.”

  “Do you mean…?”

  “He shot himself,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Benjamin. “God, I’m sorry.”

  She shrugged. “He had problems with depression for as long as I knew him. You ever meet somebody who was uncomfortable in their own skin? That was Estefan. He had a beautiful soul, but he was just never comfortable being himself. At first he tried to hide it, act like nothing was wrong. I told him he should see a psychiatrist, but he hated doctors. I don’t think he ever saw a doctor in the twenty years we were married. Tell you the truth, I think all his crazy talk was just a way to take his mind off what was really bothering him.”

  “So you don’t believe there was anything to his suspicions?”

  Margaret snorted. “That’s what this is all about, huh? You think Estefan knew something about Glazier. Something that has to do with your daughter’s death.”

  “I just want to know what happened,” said Benjamin. “I’m following up every lead I can find.”

  “And you don’t trust the police.”

  “The police ha
ve limited resources. She’s my daughter.”

  “I’m sorry about your daughter,” said Margaret, “but there ain’t no lizard people.”

  “I realize that,” said Benjamin. “I’m not as interested in Estefan’s theories as I am in what made him go down that path in the first place. Lots of people suffer from depression. Very few of them seek solace in conspiracy theories. Did something happen to Estefan when he was younger? Some kind of trauma?”

  “I didn’t know him then,” Margaret said. “I can’t help you, Benjamin. And I need to get ready for work.”

  “You work nights?”

  “Second shift at the plant,” Margaret said, getting to her feet. It was clear what plant she meant. It seemed like everybody in this town who wasn’t some kind of entrepreneur or software engineer worked at Glazier Semiconductor. It was probably where she met Estefan.

  Benjamin got up as well. “Please, Ms. Moreno. I know this sounds crazy to you, but anything you can tell me about Estefan’s childhood—”

  “My husband had his problems, but he was a good man. I’m not interested in entertaining any more crazy conspiracy theories. You need to go.” She glared at him coldly.

  “Did your husband drink water?”

  Caught off guard, Margaret regarded him with a puzzled scowl. “Of course.”

  “Tap water?”

  “No,” she said. “Only bottled water. He didn’t even like me to cook with tap water.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “I never asked. I assumed it was another crazy conspiracy theory. Communists putting fluoride in the water or something.” She turned as if to walk to the door.

  “Your husband wasn’t crazy,” said Benjamin, taking her arm. “I think something happened to him when he was a child. Something that changed him. My guess is that he spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of it.”