Star Trek The Original Series From History's Shadow (14 page)

Setting aside the cover letter, Sutherland examined the
documents, each of which bore some kind of stamp or label marking them as classified along with the Blue Book designation. “They’re reports,” he said for Larkin’s benefit. “Investigations of recent sightings.” The locations, he noted, were scattered across the country. He was familiar with some of the incidents, while others were new to him.

“I don’t get it,” Larkin said, taking off his fedora and scratching his balding head. “I thought you said this guy always mailed you the stuff. Why would he break in here and risk getting caught if all he wanted was to give you that?”

“I don’t know,” Sutherland said after a moment, when whatever seemed to be bothering him refused to come together and form a cohesive line of thinking. “Something about this is just off.” Why
would
his unknown ally risk the danger of coming here and exposing himself if he truly was offering more of the same assistance he had provided? And if he was a friend, why the hell had he pointed a gun at Sutherland?

Well, you did say you were going to shoot him
.

“Yeah,” Sutherland said, nodding to himself as he began gathering the papers in order to return them to their envelope. “Something’s definitely up here.” Figuring out what that might be would take time.

And coffee. And cigs. And Scotch
. At present, he had only one of those three vital ingredients.

“Well,” Larkin said, “I don’t know about you, but I tend to think better when I’m not starving.”

And food
.

Though Sutherland rather would read over the papers than eat, he knew he was going to be in for another long night, and maybe Larkin was on to something. Dinner first, he decided.

“Let’s go see if Mabel’s got any of that pie left,” he said, retrieving the .45 so that he could return it to his desk. He also grabbed the envelope. There was no way he was leaving it here. Besides, it would make for good dinner conversation. Eyeing his friend, Sutherland smiled. “So, you think this is the real action yet?”

“Definitely looking up,” Larkin replied. “Still not as much fun as those crazy parties, though.”

•   •   •

Approaching the mouth of the alley, James Wainwright paused to remove the ski mask covering his head and face and stuck it into his jacket pocket. After all, it would not do to alarm any pedestrians he might encounter at this early evening hour. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to bring his elevated respiration back under control, reaching up to smooth his hair and wipe sweat from his face. The dash from the office building had been risky, but far less worrisome than being caught—or even shot—by the magazine reporter. The man’s disheveled appearance was deceiving; given his service training and experience, Sutherland might well have succeeded in wounding or even killing Wainwright had the opportunity presented itself.

The dark sedan was waiting for him with its engine running and lights off when Wainwright emerged from the alley and opened the unlocked passenger door before plunging inside. As planned, Allison Marshall had taken the precaution of covering the interior light with dark tape so that it would not illuminate either of them when he opened the door. She was sitting in the driver’s seat with both hands on the steering wheel and greeted him with an expression of concern.

“Go,” he said, by way of return greeting.

Marshall put the car into gear and stepped on the
accelerator, guiding the sedan into the early evening city traffic. Settling into his seat, Wainwright glanced first in the rearview mirror before looking over his shoulder. Though he did not expect to see any signs of pursuit, he was not ruling out the possibility. Cal Sutherland, from the information Wainwright had been able to gather, was rather resourceful as a journalist, even if he chose to devote his talent and skills to tabloid magazines.

“Sir?” Marshall prompted after driving in silence for a couple of blocks. “Did you do it?”

Turning back to face forward in his seat, Wainwright nodded. “I delivered the package, but I didn’t get a chance to do anything else.” Sighing in frustration, he removed the small .38 caliber revolver from his waistband and placed the weapon in the glove compartment, exchanging it for the pack of cigarettes and his lighter. “He almost caught me when he came back to the office for something.” What truly irritated him was that he had waited most of the afternoon, hiding in an unused office down the hall from Sutherland’s and biding his time until the reporter left for the day. He should have held his position long enough to ensure the other man was out of the building before entering his office, and he had nearly been shot for his lack of patience.

Idiot
.

Dividing her attention between the traffic and him, Marshall asked, “So, you didn’t find anything?”

Wainwright extracted a cigarette from the pack and lit it, savoring that first draw as he inhaled the smoke into his lungs. “I only had a couple of minutes, but I didn’t see anything useful.” The material visible on Sutherland’s desk was interesting though not damaging, and a quick perusal of the desk drawers had yielded nothing. On the other hand, the
filing cabinets in the adjacent office had enticed him, requiring far more time to unlock each of them in order to examine their contents than was available to him. “Something tells me the stuff we’d be looking for isn’t even there.”

“What makes you say that?”

He pondered Marshall’s question as he took another long draw from his cigarette. After blowing smoke out the open passenger window, Wainwright shook his head. “Just a gut feeling, I guess. Sutherland strikes me as smart and sneaky enough to cover his tracks. If there’s anything really incriminating, I’m betting he’s got it squirreled away somewhere else.”

As part of his regular Blue Book duties, Wainwright tried to keep himself updated on how various segments of the civilian population treated the notion of UFOs and possible alien activity on Earth. This research took many forms, including the review of any printed materials that prominently featured anything pertaining to the subject. News reports of sightings, newspaper interviews with alleged witnesses, and even books and magazines, from which there seemed to be a steady, increasing focus.
Watch the Skies
was just one periodical that regularly crossed his desk. While it had started out as little more than sensationalist tripe not far removed from the gossip columns infesting many Hollywood-based publications, in the past year the stories it contained had taken on an air of heightened legitimacy, setting it apart from other such efforts. This seemed to resonate with its readership, which was reported to be growing with each new biweekly issue, but it also had attracted the Air Force’s attention.

After carefully reviewing a stack of the magazine’s back issues, Wainwright had come to the conclusion that its coverage of UFO sightings, witness accounts, and even the
military’s official responses to the reports was just a bit too good. In particular, this level of quality seemed to stand out when
Watch the Skies,
usually in the form of an article written by Calvin Sutherland, called on the Air Force to be more forthcoming with details regarding a particular investigation. There was nothing in the magazine’s content that suggested a direct connection to a military source; certainly no classified photographs or report excerpts. Still, Sutherland almost certainly was receiving information and assistance from someone connected to Blue Book. His occasional oblique references to having read top-secret documents only supported that assertion.

Wainwright had communicated his concerns to Captain Charles Hardin, the officer currently overseeing the project. The possibility of an information leak to a civilian print publication, even one so fringe and low-impact as
Watch the Skies,
warranted attention, and to that end Hardin had ordered Wainwright and Marshall to investigate.

“I know what you’re thinking, sir,” Marshall said in the midst of making a left turn. “You want to go back there anyway, right? Just to get a better look?”

“Yeah,” Wainwright replied, reaching to snuff out his half-smoked cigarette. “Even though I think anything really damning won’t be there, that doesn’t mean we won’t find some clue about whoever he’s talking to. Mailing address, a postmarked envelope, something.”

Given the presence of Blue Book liaison officers on most major Air Force bases around the country, finding the source of the leak could be problematic. The only thing Wainwright had to go on was a gut instinct, based on what he had read in various
Watch the Skies
articles, which told him Sutherland’s contact likely was someone based at
Wright-Patterson. To that end, Wainwright had devised a plan calling for him to offer up information that was a mixture of factual data and documents he had created for the sole purpose of throwing Sutherland off the scent. It was Wainwright’s hope that the reporter would attempt to contact his real source to corroborate or refute details from the fictional investigations he and Marshall had worked together to develop, and that Sutherland’s contact in turn would reveal him- or herself in the course of attempting to gather more information on those counterfeit reports. Wainwright knew it was a risky gambit, depending on how Sutherland reacted to the apparent treasure trove of documents left in his office. The plan might well backfire and cause the reporter to become even more wary when it came to protecting his benefactor’s identity.

Sensing the car slowing, Wainwright looked up to see that they had arrived at the motel that was their impromptu base of operations during this trip. A gravel parking lot was bordered on three sides by single-story structures each containing six rooms, with only a few cars occupying parking spaces in front of the rooms. How many nights had he and Marshall spent in places like this just in the last three years? Wainwright had lost count.

“Hungry?” Marshall asked as she maneuvered the sedan into the parking space in front of the pair of doors leading to their adjoining rooms. “There’s that café down the block. I think it’s open all night.”

“More tired than anything else,” Wainwright replied, not enamored with yet another meal in yet another roadside restaurant. “Tired of a lot of things.” He waited until Marshall turned off the car’s engine before shifting in his seat so that he could face her. “Do you ever get the feeling we’re just wasting
our time with all of this? That we’re not getting through to anyone just how important this is?”

Marshall tapped her fingernails on the steering wheel for a moment before replying, “All we can do is our duty, sir, and work to convince the brass that they’re wrong not to be treating this more seriously.” Though she mentioned no one by name, Wainwright was certain she meant Captain Hardin along with some of his cronies higher up the chain of command who did not seem at all interested in any of the very real evidence Blue Book and its predecessor projects had collected over the years. “Sooner or later, they’ll have to acknowledge what we already know.”

“Let’s hope so,” Wainwright said. It had been nearly eight years since the Roswell Incident; eight years since the Ferengi spy had warned of the coming of an invasion fleet. With the passage of so much time, Wainwright had chalked up the alien’s threat as little more than bluster, designed to throw off his human interrogators while he bided time for the escape he eventually had made. Even if that had been true, it did not discount the possibility of the Ferengi choosing to attack at some later time, perhaps after waiting for humans to grow complacent. The same could be said for any other extraterrestrial civilization that might target Earth. Perhaps Project Blue Book was becoming nothing more than a tool of misdirection, if indeed it had not already achieved that pitiable goal. So far as he was concerned—and he was all but certain that Marshall felt the same way—he had not been relieved of his duties, and therefore would continue to carry them out until such time as he was ordered otherwise.

What else could he do?

TWELVE

U.S.S. Enterprise

Earth Year 2268

This is just so totally weird.

Standing here, knowing that to James Kirk and Mister Spock, mere days had passed since her first meeting with them more than a year ago—or
three hundred
years, if one wished to engage in temporal pedantry—was more than a little disconcerting for Roberta Lincoln. She had traveled through time with Gary Seven only on rare occasions, and in a few of those instances they had encountered someone with whom there had been prior contact. During those meetings, the objective as well as the subjective passage of time, not just for her but also the other party, always added a layer of confusion for her. It also never failed to give Roberta a tremendous headache.

After assuring his chief engineer and the rest of his command crew on the bridge as to the stability of the current situation, Kirk severed the communications link on the tabletop viewer. “Where’s Mister Seven?” he asked, gesturing for her and his officers to take seats at the conference table.

“He’s tied up elsewhere, Captain,” Roberta replied, opting against going into too much detail. “We’ve been pretty busy lately.”

From where she still stood to one side alongside Mestral
and under guard by a trio of the captain’s security officers, Gejalik asked, “Who are you? You said you know us. How?”

Hesitating as she moved toward one of the chairs at the table, Roberta studied the Certoss agent and her Vulcan companion, sympathetic to the numerous questions each of them surely wanted to ask. There would be time for that later, she knew. For now, there were more pressing concerns. “Captain, I’m afraid what I’ve got to tell you is pretty sensitive.”

Kirk regarded her in silence for several seconds, no doubt weighing her request against his desire to acquire as much information from all available sources as quickly as possible. His eyes shifted to look at Mestral and Gejalik for a moment before he asked, “Answer one question for me first: Is Gejalik a threat? Or Mestral, for that matter?”