Virgil Carter was in his seventies. His hair and bushy beard used to be redder, but he favored the color, and along with his suspenders, his belt and the monogram on his shirt pocket were red. After he was stopped by the policeman, he waited patiently while Mickey and Marcus had a word.
“See what this guy’s going on about,” Mickey said.
“Why do all the nut jobs like red?” Marcus said.
When Mickey turned his back, Carter called after him, “Mr. Andreason, you really ought to speak with me.”
Mickey walked on and said, “My security man will talk to you.”
With that, Mickey headed for the elevators with Dr. Spara, the Cutrìs, the girls, and their nurse.
Marcus told the policeman that he’d handle this Carter fellow and introduced himself.
“I’m Marcus Handler. What can I do for you?”
Carter said, “I know that important men like to delegate. Here’s my card, Mr. Handler.”
Virgil M. Carter, Lt. Colonel, US Airforce (Retired), Silver Springs, Maryland, www.u_an.org
Celeste drew near enough that Marcus felt compelled to introduce her.
“Do you work for Mr. Andreason as well, Ms. Bobier?” Carter asked.
“I don’t, no. Perhaps, like you, I came to Italy to help him find his son and daughter-in-law.”
“Are you in the alien-abduction field like me?” he asked.
“Not at all. I’m a psychic.”
“Well, different strokes for different folks,” he said with a loud chuckle. “Far be it from me to judge.”
Marcus’s patience was nonexistent at this point. “No, I’ll do the judging,” he said. “Look, Colonel Carter, we need to get situated in our hotel. You’ve got thirty seconds to tell me what you want.”
“Going to take more time than that.”
“Starting now.”
“Well, be like that. Okay. I run one of the largest citizens’ networks in the States on UFOs and alien abductions. A year ago, I interviewed a fellow named Ruben Sanchez from Arizona who disappeared for five months.”
Marcus looked at his watch.
“Now, I told you it was going to take more time. Just hang in there. You won’t be disappointed. Sanchez told me he was abducted from his truck one night by Grays.”
“What are Grays?” Celeste asked.
“Aliens with gray skins—sound familiar? Well, he was kept on board their craft—more on that later—and while he was there, he communicated by tapping on the wall of his—get this—his white room, with an Earth woman by the name of Helen, he said. I understand the girls’ mother’s name is Elena. Do I have your attention yet?”
Celeste sucked air through her red lips and nodded emphatically.
Another nut job, Marcus thought, but Mickey was going to be livid if he didn’t at least talk to him. “Why don’t you come with us to our hotel?”
*
Some of the media broke off and followed Marcus’s van to the hotel. It was a very short ride to the five-star resort adjacent to the Vatican. Once the photographers saw that the girls weren’t there, they took off. Carter followed Marcus and Celeste into the lobby, a study in cool, white marble, and gave out a whistle.
“I saw this one on Booking.com,” he said, “but it was way out of my price range. Air Force pension, you know, and not a lot of money in the alien-abduction game.”
“I’m not surprised,” Marcus said. “I’ve got to deal with the bags. Be right back.”
“You really a psychic?” Carter asked Celeste when they were alone.
“I really am.”
“Well, you’re the prettiest psychic I’ve ever met.”
“Have you met many?”
“You’re the absolute first.”
“And you’re my first alien-abduction gentleman.”
He seemed delighted by the innuendo. “Know what they say,” he said. “You never forget your first. So, what’s a psychic doing here, if I may ask?”
“It seems we have a confluence of interests, Mr. Carter. I’m here because shortly after the abduction, I had a vision of the girls on a spaceship with gray beings.”
He sprouted the widest of grins. “You want to know something? I am liking you more and more.”
When Marcus returned, the three of them repaired to a shaded terrace that overlooked the Vatican walls and the Castel Sant’Angelo. Carter asked if it was okay if he had lunch and Marcus told him that Mr. Andreason would spring for it. The fellow ordered half the items on the menu, while Marcus and Celeste contented themselves with coffees.
Munching on a breadstick, Carter said, “Marcus, no offense, but you seem a tad on the old side for a bodyguard. Am I missing some mad kung fu skills you possess?”
“I’m a security consultant, not a bodyguard.”
“Oh yeah, what kind of a background does a fellow need to get into that line of work?”
“I worked for the government.”
Carter drew out the words, “I see,” and laughed at himself. “In my experience, when a guy says that, he worked in Langley.”
“Something like that.”
“What is Langley?” Celeste asked.
“CIA headquarters in Virginia,” Carter said, helpfully. “Mr. Handler, it seems, was a spook. We’ve got a bunch of you guys who’re members of U-AN.”
“And that is?” Marcus asked.
“UFO Abduction Network. I founded it the day I retired from the Air Force. Want to hear my story?”
“My guess is it would take a bullet to stop you.”
“Well, you’re right about that. I spent fifteen of my twenty-two years in the Air Force at the Pentagon. I’ve always been in logistics. I was never a pilot—hell, I don’t even like to fly. Logistics isn’t sexy, but if the Air Force needed to get X materials to Y place, I was their guy. I was always vaguely aware of the subject of alien abductions—I mean, who doesn’t know about the famous cases like the Betty and Barney Hill abduction?”
“I don’t,” Celeste said.
Carter’s caprese salad arrived and after admiring it, he said, “You’re kidding, right? New Hampshire? 1961?” Working off her blank stare, he asked Marcus if he was similarly ill-informed.
“Please go on, Colonel.”
“Only if you call me Virgil. Okay, forget the Hills. So, years ago, I met a flyboy from Idaho who was doing a Pentagon tour of duty, and he told me about a buddy of his, a civilian, who was a truck driver, who was abducted one night, right out of his rig. He was transported up into a spaceship, a sausage-shaped affair, which was why the poor bastard, to the day he killed himself, was cruelly called Hot Dog. The aliens who did all manner of experiments on him over about a week’s time before returning him to Idaho—well, they were Grays. These are far and away the most common types of aliens abductees describe. You’ve got your Grays—they’ve got gray skin, large, elongated heads, big eyes, tend not to have ears, noses—they’re the classic Roswell-type of aliens. Then, you’ve got your Reptilians. They’re green, of course, with lizard or snake-type heads. Then, you’ve got your Nordics. They’re a heck of a lot taller than the Grays or Reptilians, usually with fair skin, blue eyes, blond hair—basically Swedes in space.”
Marcus muttered under his breath.
“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Carter said.
“I said I can’t believe I’m listening to this.”
“Well, listen and learn, my friend. Shit, lost my train.” He took advantage of his memory lapse to pop a glob of cheese into his mouth. “Okay, got it back, so, let me fast-forward, ’cause I can see I’m in danger of losing you. After hearing about Hot Dog, I began compiling cases of abductions, at first as a kind of a hobby, and after a while I began doing some shoe-leather research, interviewing abductees and their friends and families. My employer took a dim view of such undertakings, so I waited till I hung up my spurs before starting U-AN with an online data dump of all my research. Currently, we are the biggest network of abduction documentation, bar none. Which brings us to Ruben Sanchez. Ruben Sanchez, a fellow who drives an Uber in Phoenix, dropped a post on U-AN a year ago. Now, after doing this long enough, I can separate the wheat from the chaff, and I could tell right off that he was a legitimate abductee.”
“How?” Celeste asked.
“Well, because all the assholes—excuse my French; shit, you are French; that’s pretty dumbass of me—they can’t help themselves from engaging in a-nod-and-a-wink BS, showing how clever and funny they are. Ruben was earnest and his account was pure, so I contacted him, then went to Phoenix to interview him in person. In a lot of ways, his abduction story had typical elements, but it was also unusual, because he was missing for a long time. Five months was one of the longest disappearances on record. At the time. Now we know it was small beer compared to the Andreason girls. So, his family filed a missing person’s report. The police had an active investigation ongoing. And then he shows up, five months later, walking along the very road he disappeared from with a helluva story. Anyway, with Ruben’s permission, I posted all his details and documentation and you can find it on my website with the date I posted it.”
“What about this woman named Helen?” Marcus asked.
“Well, Ruben is kept in this all-white room, and the Grays are doing all manner of experiments on him, when one day, he kicks one of the walls in frustration. And guess what? Someone thumps back at him. The two of them have a lot of time to kill, as one does in the stir, and before long, they work out the simplest form of code to communicate. It’s an alphabetic knuckle rap. A is one rap. C is three raps. N is fifteen raps, and so on. It’s not fast, but like I said, what else did they have to do?”
“He said her name was Helen? You sure?”
“That’s what he told me. Now, it took them some time to figure out how to use their code and to ask each other some basic questions, and shortly after they exchanged names, Ruben goes to sleep one night and wakes up on the highway. His five months is up.”
A large steak arrived and Carter asked for steak sauce. He grumbled when the waiter told him they had none, but he tucked a napkin into his shirt, sampled the meat, and declared that it was tasty enough, dry.
“Mr. Andreason’s daughter-in-law’s name is Elena, not Helen,” Marcus said.
“I’m aware of that. Ruben told me she said it was Helen.”
“Could he have made a mistake?” Celeste asked.
“An E is five taps, and H is eight,” Carter said. “Maybe he got it wrong, maybe she was using some variation of Elena.”
“Do you have his number?” Marcus asked. “Could I speak to him?”
“It’ll be a very long-distance call,” he answered. “Ruben passed away two months ago. When he came back, he had headaches and they found a tumor.”
“Oh, my God,” Celeste gasped.
“That what the girls have?” Carter asked. “Brain tumors?”
Marcus shut that down. “We’re not discussing their health. Did Ruben mention communicating with anyone else? In space?”
“Just Helen, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s close enough for government work. So, there I was, having a sandwich in my condo yesterday, minding my own business, when I saw the reports on Twitter coming out of Italy about the girls being abducted by Grays and returning the same age as when they were taken. Now, it’s entirely possible that Ruben didn’t age during his ordeal, but he was forty-seven and he was only gone for under half a year, so there was no way to tell. And it’s possible that other abductees didn’t age either, but their abductions were even shorter. Anyway, I could tell that this is, by far, the most important case I’ll ever see, so I bought a ticket and got my ass to Dulles. And here I am, eating an Italian steak, without sauce.” He wiped his mouth and said to Marcus, “So, when can I see the girls?”
*
Bruno Spara brought the grandparents to a family consultation room on the Hematology ward. He had large hands, and when he laid them, palms-down on the table, they seemed as big as dinner plates.
“How are they, Professore?” Armando asked.
“I examined them and reviewed the medical reports and laboratory tests from the Morelli Hospital, where I must tell you, they received excellent care. I concur with the diagnosis of chronic myeloid leukemia. I believe that Jessica Bingham already told you how unusual this leukemia is in young children, but we know how to treat it, and I can reassure you that the prognosis is quite good with appropriate and aggressive therapy.”
“Thank God,” Leonora said.
“What’s your explanation for the way they look?” Mickey asked.
“Are you asking about the fact they appear to be the same age as when they went missing?”
“I am.”
Spara finally lifted his hands off the table and slowly turned them palms upwards. “I have no explanation. There is a very rare genetic disease in children called progeria, which is an accelerated aging. These progeria kids are born with abnormal proteins that make the cells age and die prematurely. By the time they’re eight, nine, ten years old, they have the appearance and the bodies of ancient men and women and they usually die of old age before they are teenagers. If anything, Victoria and Elizabeth have the opposite condition. Here, we are confronted with the absence of the expected changes that young children would experience over five years. But there are no functional ways to measure age other than the calendar. People aren’t like trees. We can’t count our growth rings. I can say with complete certainty that there are no reports in the medical literature of a slowing or cessation of the aging process. It’s better that I stick with something I know about and that is the treatment of leukemias.”
“We’re in your hands,” Armando said. “Tell us what must be done.”
“I’m starting them today on a drug called Tasigna. It’s a fairly recently approved drug, a so-called second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor. The anticipated side effects are not so profound, and even if they occur, we can manage them quite easily. I’ll be giving you a brochure with all the safety information.”
“What’s the prognosis?” Mickey asked.
“I expect to see a deep molecular remission in about a fortnight.”
“That fast,” Mickey said.
“Yes, children can respond very quickly. They will need to stay on the drug for a year or maybe considerably longer. However, given their age, we want to be aggressive. We want to go for a cure, not just control. So, once we get them into remission, we will wipe out all of their blood-forming stem cells with strong chemotherapy, then perform bone marrow transplantations to give them new, healthy cells that will continue to grow inside their bone marrow. The hospital in Reggio Calabria never had the chance to do the testing, so I’d like to test the three of you to see who is the best genetic match. If all goes as well as I hope, I feel very good about their prognosis.”
*
Carter was on dessert when Mickey called. Marcus excused himself and took a walk through the lush hotel gardens. Mickey wanted to know if Carter was on the level. Marcus played back the conversation and let Mickey form his own judgment.
“Brain cancer, you say. Not leukemia.”
“That’s right. Sanchez had brain cancer,” Marcus said.
“And it was Helen, not Elena,” Mickey said. “I don’t know what to say about that?”
“I do,” Marcus said. “If we keep collecting them, we’re going to have enough crazies to play doubles tennis.”
“Then I’ll be the umpire and I’ll keep an open mind,” Mickey said.
“Carter wants to speak to the girls. He wants to cross-reference things that came out of his interviews with this Sanchez guy.”
“Maybe later. Not right away,” Mickey said. “They’re starting their treatment today. Dr. Spara seems good. I trust him. If all goes well, they’ll get curative bone marrow transplants in a couple of weeks. I hope Armando or Leonora are a better match so the poor girls won’t have to get my old-man cells. So, let’s keep Colonel Carter close by. Put him up at our hotel.”
“He won’t say no,” Marcus said. “He likes the restaurant.”
After lunch, Carter went off to his first hotel to get his things and Marcus gave Celeste her room key.
“How are the children?” she asked.
“Fine, I think. Mickey’s happy with their doctor, seems upbeat. They’ll be getting bone marrow transplants soon. He mentioned the C-word. Cures.”
*
Marcus checked into his room and before long, drank his way through the three little bottles of Scotch in the minibar. He rang room service to bring up a full-size bottle and had them take cash, so it wouldn’t appear on the bill. He paced himself as the afternoon drifted along in case Mickey wanted him for something and managed to stay on a knife-edge of mild inebriation. When the hotel phone rang, he expected to hear Mickey’s voice, but it was Celeste and she sounded distressed.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I was sitting quietly with the curtains drawn,” she said. “I had a vision.”
There was a little bit of drink left in his glass. He swallowed it. “Oh, yeah? What kind of vision?”
“It was their doctor, Dr. Spara. He came into a room to speak with Mickey. He looked very grave indeed.”
Marcus poured another measure. “And what did our Dr. Spara say?”
“He said, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Andreason, but the bone marrow transplantation has gone horribly wrong. Victoria and Elizabeth are going to die.’”