THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Rear Admiral Harley Dickerson—Scooter to the men and women who knew him best—was waiting outside the national security advisor’s office with none of his staff present. General Maxwell Caulfield, former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been talked into taking the advisor’s job after the Overlord incident the previous year. He saw his old friend as he strolled into his outer office. After greeting his assistants and getting his missed calls, he turned with a curious look toward the man waiting patiently. He read the messages as he smiled toward his visitor.
“Scooter, what in the hell brings you out of that dungeon at the Pentagon? You spooks haven’t had enough after our little alien encounter?”
Harley Dickerson stood and shook his friend’s hand. They had worked together closely during the past three years of dealing with the Overlord incident. Dickerson was a liaison between DARPA, the US Navy, and several other darker entities inside defense circles.
“Max, we need to talk,” was all Dickerson said as he leaned in with Caulfield’s hand still clutched in his own.
The general raised his brow and then glanced at his two assistants. “I’ve got a briefing with the president in”—he looked at his watch—“fifteen minutes, Scooter. Can it wait? We have a developing situation at sea regarding the Operation Reforger IV exercise. We had to cancel the damn thing last night, a little coup for our friends the Russians, but if—”
“Max, make the time—now.”
Caulfield saw the anxiety in the younger man’s face and then simply gestured to his open door. “Liz, no calls for the next few minutes.”
Once inside the small office, Caulfield offered Dickerson coffee, and he refused, opting to open his briefcase instead. Caulfield sat behind his desk. He looked at the pictures of his family and the uniform he once wore. The old marine corps blues were a part of his past life now. Today and forever afterward, Maxwell Caulfield would be wearing what it was he was wearing today, civilian suits from varying Men’s Discount Warehouse stores. And as his assistants both quipped, he had absolutely zero taste in civilian clothing. Yes, he missed the far simpler life of a marine.
Dickerson tossed a small stack of photos and typed pages onto Caulfield’s desk and then sat back down. Max saw the man he knew as unflappable bite on a thumbnail as he picked up a photograph and scanned it. The black-and-white image depicted a very grainy view of a large ship. It was low in a depression inside a deep trough of water, something Caulfield had experienced many times in his career aboard ships. The vessel was in heavy seas.
“One of ours?” he asked, looking up at Dickerson.
“No. This was taken through the periscope of a tailing submerged asset in the North Atlantic last night. This was transmitted this morning to our offices and those of the chief of naval operations.”
“Why isn’t Jim Hardy bringing this to me, then?” Max asked as his eyes bored in at Dickerson. This was a breach of military etiquette. His boss at the Pentagon should have been briefing him personally on anything having to do with Operation Reforger IV.
“The admiral isn’t in this loop, only my department at intel. Besides, by the time I started explaining things to him, this thing could blow up in our faces.”
“What could blow up?” Caulfield asked.
“Max, we have a seventy-five-year-old ship of war out there that was reported sunk before the end of World War II. The name of the vessel is the Simbirsk, a Russian battle cruiser verified as being sunk by the German navy in 1944.”
Before Caulfield could register this shock, Dickerson tossed a file onto his desk after unlocking it from a compartment in his briefcase. Max Caulfield looked up with the photo of the Simbirsk still in his hand.
“And this?”
“A file on a warship of our own.”
“Don’t keep me guessing here, Scooter. I don’t have the time for it,” Caulfield countered.
“A destroyer escort, same vintage as our Russian war casualty. This file is on the USS Eldridge. This is all we have on her. It seems the Department of the Navy, or at least at the time, the Department of War, lost the entire file just after the incident. Many people in my group think it was intentionally lost by the navy department on orders from none other than President Roosevelt. The rumor is the navy boys tried to do something rather extraordinary that had not been cleared with the war department. That was right around the time that Admiral Stark, the chief of naval operations, lost a lot of influence at the White House.”
Max looked at the file and then looked up at his visitor after viewing the second photo. “This another war casualty?”
“No, Max, she wasn’t. She went on to serve the navy well throughout her deployments the rest of the war. We even sold her later to a foreign government. No, she had a very distinguished career.”
“Scooter, this is boring me to death. You bring me a partial file and then claim the rest has been lost. What in the hell is going on here?”
“General, that’s the ship that was the centerpiece of a little-known theoretic application undertaken by scientists from Chicago University and Harvard, jointly with the Department of the Navy. All this took place in 1943, and that experimental application turned disastrous for the navy.”
“What application, Scooter?” Caulfield said with resignation lacing his voice.
“That theoretic application was thought to produce what we would come to know as stealth technology. That theory and later action would be tagged by every conspiracy nut in the free world as the Philadelphia Experiment.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, after his assistants had told him that the president was waiting on his morning security briefing, General Maxwell Caulfield asked for and received a private meeting with the leader of the free world that lasted just thirty-five minutes. In the three minutes after, the United States Armed Forces quietly went to a higher alert status.
The partial file on the Philadelphia Experiment had been read by a sitting president of the United States for only the second time in history.
EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, NEVADA
The conference room was full. All sixteen departmental heads were present. Alice Hamilton was even there, popping in for meetings on a regular basis. Alice had been a part of the Group since 1947. She read the report filed by Jack and his excursion into Egypt. He reported the sting operation in cooperation with Egyptian Homeland Security had gone off without a hitch. Alice looked up and smiled as she saw the visible relief in the faces of Jack and Carl’s two replacements, Jason Ryan and Will Mendenhall. They were both still put out that the colonel had not included them on the mission, anything to get them out of the complex and into the field where they thought they belonged. Alice then flipped pages of her notes and then faced Sarah McIntire, who was sitting next to Master Chief Jenks.
“We have a report from Captain McIntire and Ms. Korvesky on their investigation into the expansion of the level forty-seven vaults.”
Sarah wanted to roll her eyes as she stood and reported on the granite strata she knew would not support further expansion in that area of cave system. Before she could finish, the double doors of the conference room opened, and an air force security officer allowed the new head of Computer Sciences into the room. Dr. Xavier Morales used his powerful arms to propel his old-fashioned wheelchair inside. He rolled directly to the head of the long table and Director Niles Compton. Sarah gratefully gave the twenty-four-year-old computer genius the floor. She was happy not to be spouting geological formations that no one but herself fully understood. Anya, for her part, winked at Sarah, being grateful herself for the respite.
Just as Morales stopped, another man was allowed into the room—Professor Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III came in and held up a file so Xavier could see. Charlie nodded and then took his place at the table, excusing the young lady who had been substituting for crazy Charlie and the Cryptozoology Department. Morales waited until the doors were once more secure. He handed his own file to the director.
“Doctor, you have something more important to share with us than Captain McIntire and Ms. Korvesky’s report on the unstable rock strata of our complex?” Niles smiled and then opened the file folder. Morales had it marked as Director’s Eyes Only. Compton read. The straight line on his mouth told Alice Hamilton and the others in the meeting that he didn’t like what it was that the Computer Sciences director had brought him. Ryan and Mendenhall exchanged looks, as they had yet to see the young Mexican American excited about anything other than his new love affair with the world’s most powerful computing system, Europa.
“How did you come across this information, Doctor?” Niles asked as he handed the folder over to Alice, who perused it very quickly. The other department heads were left wondering.
Morales looked around, somewhat apprehensive about his answer.
Niles took a deep breath and then patted the closed file with his fingertips.
“Okay, I’m going to have to place this meeting on hold until the same time tomorrow. Sarah will enter her strata report into Europa and copy all departments on its content. Thank you. Drs. Morales, Ellenshaw, and Pollock and Alice, I need a moment, please.”
The room slowly emptied, and Niles stood and made his way over to his desk and then sat. Alice took her customary place to his left with her electronic notepad ready. The others took seats in front of the large desk once used by Garrison Lee, and General George C. Marshall before that.
“First, Dr. Morales, when you insert Europa’s influence into another Blue Ice system inside government circles, it has to be cleared with either myself or Virginia first.”
“I understand that, sir. The computer break-in was not initiated by me or anyone in the complex. Europa herself initiated it after receiving several keywords from flagged communications that she routinely monitors with your endorsement, sir.”
“I’m not following,” Virginia said.
“It seems someone with A-1 security clearance programmed Europa to seek out certain keywords from government communications. The keywords in this case were Eldridge, Simbirsk, phase shift, and a few others. In this particular case, she hit on all the words coming from the White House and the Pentagon.”
“Two are the names of ships. The other is an advanced theory on the implementation of redacted covert cover—stealth technology, or in this case, phase shift. It’s the ability to hide the radar signature from prying eyes. The other keywords mentioned in the order to Europa were Operation Necromancer and Schoenfeld. I know because I was there when then director Garrison Lee, myself, and Pete Golding placed them there in 1997.”
Xavier looked shocked, as did Charlie Ellenshaw. As for Alice and Virginia, they were both confused. Then it was Alice who closed her eyes and remembered something from the past about Garrison Lee and the one event he could not get out of his thoughts, an event rarely spoken of by the former director of Department 5656. Whatever it was buried in that memory, Alice knew it had scared the hell out of Garrison, a man who feared almost nothing in life.
“Does this have to do with what happened in Philadelphia in ’43?” she asked Niles.
“Yes,” Niles said. “It seems our friend and mentor was an eyewitness to the event.”
“May I ask what in the hell you are referring to?” Virginia asked.
“The Philadelphia Experiment. And yes, it really did happen, much to the regret of many a young sailor.”
“Why would Senator Lee be interested in the so-called Philadelphia Experiment after the fact?” Virginia asked, trying to grasp what was being implied.
“He was a witness to the results of that failed experiment. It scared him enough that he and Pete Golding made sure Europa kept an eye out for any hint of the government starting up that program again.” Niles pursed his lips as he thought about his earlier call from Lord Durnsford.
Without another word, the director hit a small switch on his desktop, and a monitor rose from the wood. The screen was a solid blue in color until a flash and the seal of the president came on. Niles waited.
“Can you excuse me for a moment, please?”
The four people got up and left the conference room.
Niles sat and listened to the president, his friend of many years, explain his side of what was developing in the North Atlantic. Then Niles explained his earlier conversation with his asset inside Great Britain, whom the president never asked about but could have guessed as to the asset’s identity. Niles went into detail about their concerns over an operative inside the Russian authority who was even now making his way to the area in the North Atlantic in question. A decision was made, and the presidential meeting was over. Niles closed the screen and then moved back to the conference table and waited as the others came in. They quickly settled. Charlie still held his file folder and was awaiting his turn to put in his two cents.
“I just finished with the president, and he has confirmed that we have something brewing in the North Atlantic. I will explain later. For now, let’s start with Virginia. Place your nuclear sciences division on the highest alert.”
“The entire department?” she asked.
“Xavier, get with communications and liaise with the air force. We need Colonel Collins and Captain Everett rerouted. Stop them in London and get them to report to RAF Station Ramsfield for possible transport and sea drop. As I said, we don’t know much, but I want us ahead on whatever the president decides to do. I also have a friend of our government who needs a word with not only Jack but Colonel Farbeaux also.”
“What are we speaking of here, Niles?” Alice asked.
“The president was informed that the navy has come in contact with a derelict vessel inside the hurricane zone where a resupply war game was scheduled. It seems one of those keywords Dr. Morales spoke of and Garrison Lee warned us to look for has shown its face. The president has ordered that this ship be taken in tow and claimed as salvage. The US Navy brass wants that ship, and now, so does the president. Unfortunately, the Russians have an eye toward their property and want it back. CIA and MI6 in London have reported a very unsavory character is heading out there now. This department is currently liaising with our friends in Great Britain on this Russian character who is someone of high interest. That’s all I have on that. But our friend Henri Farbeaux is a key to a point the British have made, and our French asset will be needed on this little excursion.”
“I hope there is a sea lawyer available to the president, because the Russians will take exception to us boarding their ship,” Virginia said, knowing something about sea law.
“And it seems they are heading full steam back into the area. I imagine they may want that ship badly enough that they are willing to risk the lives of close to a thousand sailors to get it. Our naval assets in the area have three warships bearing down on them at high speed while battling a hurricane. They are taking this seriously. And”—everyone looked up at the and—“when the president spoke to our friend Vladimir Putin, he says he knows nothing about this. NSA and CIA concur that he isn’t lying. It looks like we have something going on here that doesn’t include the official Russian government. We and the Brits are very anxious to learn more about this specialist the Russians are sending out there.”
“Do you think we are dealing with a rogue element inside that government?” Alice asked with concern.
Niles smiled, as he knew Alice would be the first one to see the link. “We just don’t know enough yet. Now, Professor Ellenshaw, I have something for your department also.”
The crazed white hair of Charles Hindershot Ellenshaw III perked up.
“Get with Dr. Morales and file everything we have on the phase shift experiments of the ’30s and ’40s, also all we have on the ships involved. I want this information coded and placed into the new laptop system Xavier here just developed. Virginia, give them a hand on the physics aspect of converting light to energy; it may come in handy.”
A confused Virginia nodded.
“Okay, Charlie. What have you got there in that file?”
Ellenshaw slowly handed the file over, and Niles opened it. He pulled a wrinkled, weatherworn page that looked as if it were torn from a book. It depicted a pirate with a long, curly and flowing beard with sword held high as he and his band of pirates attacked some unsuspecting ship. The second item he pulled out was a black-and-white photo. Niles pursed his lips and let out his breath as he handed the photo and the picture over to Virginia and the others.
“Those were the only items filed under the Philadelphia Event in ’43. I suspect they were placed there by Director Lee sometime after he took command in 1947.”
Virginia and Alice were both stunned by the photo and even more perplexed by the colorful picture of pirates.
“The photo is what came back with the Eldridge after the phase shift accident. According to Garrison, there were more than fifty of these creatures on board, protected from the effects that killed all the exposed crewmen by being inside when the ship returned from wherever it had been. That picture of pirates was found in the pouch of one of the attackers.”
“Attackers?” Charlie asked, pushing his glasses back onto his nose.
“Yes, it seems while the Eldridge was away, she had been boarded by whatever those creatures are. The color picture is from a licensed Russian reprint of Treasure Island, published in Moscow in 1934. How and why this creature had this on its person is not known.”
“Amazing,” Charlie said.
“I’m glad you find it fascinating, Doctor, because you’re on the makeshift field team.” Niles turned away from the stunned Ellenshaw and faced Virginia. “Inform Master Chief Jenks that his engineering skills will also be needed.” He held up a hand to Virginia before she could voice her complaint. “No, you can’t go. The master chief is far more versed in naval applications than you, and his engineering is off the scale. Get him all the information you have on the theory of phase shift so he has it available. Also get Commander Ryan. He’s going also. And tell Will Mendenhall no also. He has duties here.”
“Do you want to inform Sarah and Anya their homecomings with Jack and Carl will be delayed?” Alice asked as she closed her electronic notepad.
“No, this is now a closed event. Only the people mentioned as team members and those in this room are to have operational knowledge of this. Thank you.” Niles closed the meeting, as he needed the time to think about just what he was sending Jack and Carl into. He looked up as Xavier was close to being through the door.
“Doctor, make sure that Europa terminal is functioning correctly. They’ll need her out there.”
“It’s working, sir. I’ll double-check it.”
“Thank you.”
The director was left alone. He stood and made his way to the large credenza in the corner and poured himself coffee and then returned to his chair and sat heavily into it. He picked up his phone and then hit one number. Through a series of screeches and bleeps, his call was finally connected. The face was the familiar one with the exception of his dress and his missing bow tie. Lord James Durnsford looked sleepy as he came fully awake.
“Niles, old man. Unlike you, us old sots like our sleep.”
“It’s officially on, James. The president has approved your request and my mission. I’ll leave it to you to deliver the bad news to Colonel Collins and our French friend.”
“Oh, delightful.”
HER MAJESTY’S NAVAL BASE (HMNB)
PORTSMOUTH, ENGLAND
Henri was looking at both Collins and Everett as if they had set him up for another fall as the trio was directed from the airstrip toward the command center of Her Majesty’s Naval Base in Portsmouth. They had been led into a very comfortable room and told to wait. When asked for what and for how long they had to do so, the Royal Navy marine guard just raised his brows in a your guess is as good as mine look.
“Maybe a little reward money for old, bad man Farbeaux?” Henri said sarcastically, not looking at either American.
“Relax, Henri. We already tried to ransom you off to any of them—MI6, Scotland Yard, the Rolling Stones—but alas, none were interested, so take it easy,” Carl said with his ever-present smile.
“If it’s any consolation, Henri, this was for you,” Jack said as he slapped a folded ticket onto Farbeaux’s arm.
The Frenchman looked at the ticket and then took it and opened it. It was a first-class British Airways ticket to his home in Tuscany. He looked from Jack to a grinning Everett.
“So, at least for that part of your little Egyptian sting, you were telling the truth,” Henri said, shaking his head. “May I use this now?” he asked with hope of excusing himself from the company of two men he admired but disliked very much.
Jack looked at his watch. “I don’t think that’s up to us any longer. It seems we have been diverted.”
Farbeaux let out an exasperated breath, and Jack decided to explain something the man needed to know.
“Henri, imagine that if Dr. Morales and Europa can find out just what it was you were up to in Egypt, how long would it be before the police in Alexandria, or even”—here, Jack looked around the room with its British Union Jack staring them down—“if MI6 caught on? You were there to steal something that wasn’t yours, and we just happened to need the cover of your enterprise in our recovery of American property.”
“The Egyptians hadn’t caught on because they don’t have the computing power that little maniac does at your little prairie dog burrow in Nevada.”
“Objection! Argumentative,” Carl said as he stretched his long legs out before him. “We like to think of it as our underground insane asylum.”
“For once, I agree,” Henri mumbled. “So, may I assume your little operation has hit somewhat of a snag, since we find ourselves virtually under arrest?”
Before Jack could tell Henri to relax once more, the door opened, and a familiar face poked in. Henri’s brows rose in worry as he saw it was Lord James Durnsford, the head of MI6. He stood and greeted the man they had met during the Overlord operation.
“Lord Durnsford, what brings you to Royal Navy jail?”
After taking Jack’s hand, the career intelligence man looked around the room, not understanding. Then he smiled and then chortled at Collins’s American humor.
“Royal Navy jail. Very good, Colonel, very good. But as you can see, just a boring little office filled with boring little men.” The portly nobleman nodded at a curious Everett and a suspicious Farbeaux. “I see our help in the recapture of this scallywag has paid off handsomely?” he said, smiling toward Farbeaux.
“Yeah, but in all actuality, Colonel Farbeaux holds a special place in our president’s heart, and ours also.”
“Yes, it seems we all owe a debt to many men and women—you and the captain here being two more of them. Gentlemen,” he said as he walked over and sat down in a chair and folded his fingers into themselves as he smiled uncomfortably. He reached into his coat pocket and produced a message flimsy and handed it to Jack. “That message explains to you the little mess science has recently, or not so recently, gotten us into.”
Collins exchanged looks with Carl and Henri. They both appeared to be listening, but both were also suspicious of one of the more brilliant spies in world history. One just never knew where it was Her Majesty’s intelligence services were coming from.
“Mess?” Jack asked.
“Yes, a rather big mess we haven’t quite figured out yet. Now, we here at MI6 know you are on detached service, Colonel, and you will never divulge your real duties to your country, but let’s just say we have suspected for quite some time who and what government entity you really work for.”
“I’m in the army, he’s in the navy, and he…” He paused when Henri smiled at him, waiting. “He, is, well, he just is.”
“Yes, of course you are.” His smile faded as he became serious. He leaned forward to emphasize what it was he was about to say. “What would you say, Colonel, that if we were to go digging into files from the old Soviet regime, and even in today’s rather aggressive Russian administration, we here in British intelligence may possibly have discovered an outfit that, not unlike the one you claim not to work for, and one that even rivals my own entity in this country, is quite active within the Russian government and has been for over eighty years? An entity run completely autonomously and without fear of Russian leadership?”
“I would say MI6 knows a little too much about friendly governments and not enough about the aggressive ones.” Jack didn’t care for British intelligence’s rather extensive guesswork on the Event Group.
“Good show, old boy. Good point.” He lost the smile. “Now, what would you say if one of the leadership of this mysterious group was now on his way to the very spot where the NATO resupply exercise Operation Reforger IV was just canceled, and they were heading there at high speed with one of the more lethal commando teams the world has ever seen in their company?”
“I would say let them fly off. What are they going to find, dumped garbage from the warships that had been in the area?” Carl chimed in, but he did sit up in his chair a little more erect.
“Normally, we would just observe, but this is not a normal situation as described by your president and your think tank under his leadership that is buried in some godforsaken desert somewhere, and the United States Navy, and all of NATO Northern Command.” Lord Durnsford stood up from his chair and placed his hands behind his back as he faced the Frenchman. “The president of the United States is calling in that favor, Colonel Farbeaux.”
“You mean calling in that favor for the fifth time in three years?” Henri said with a dirty look at Jack. “Owing him or any of these people is like owing money to the American mob: you never pay off that debt.”
“Yes, very good, Colonel. Now, it seems the security leadership of this mysterious Russian group, based somewhere we believe in the deepest, darkest, very much frozen wastelands of Siberia, has encountered you on more than one occasion. It seems you were even in this group’s custody at one point. Perhaps you know of whom I speak? Please, share what you know with Colonel Collins and Captain Everett. It may just come in handy.”
Henri allowed his breath to escape with a hiss as he angrily looked at the British intelligence man in his tweed suit and bow tie. He knew exactly who this man was referring to, and he didn’t like the memory of the man at all. He faced both Jack and Carl.
“There are rumors around which the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, possibly Germany also, have a deep closet of historical secrets. Maybe you have heard these rumors?” He looked at Collins with a crooked grin. “I can clearly state that the Russian element is in fact a reality, among other groups, that is.” He looked from Jack to Lord Durnsford. “This group, unlike the rumors toward others, is a ruthless entity and is a smaller part of a whole. The intelligence services of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany have long suspected that the whole is in charge of the parts. In other words, gentlemen, this group of men, from their varying departments within the government, actually runs the Russian state and have for the past eighty years, more so as perestroika moved forward. The freedoms the Russian people thought they were getting were all a sham.”
“You mean Putin and the politburo aren’t in charge?” Carl asked as if Farbeaux were joking. He could tell by Lord Durnsford that Henri’s words had the spark of truth behind them, which made Everett’s normally strong body feel ill. “I mean, in general conversation, why didn’t you ever say anything?”
Farbeaux looked at Carl with a questioning glare. “Just what would have been the benefit to myself for doing so, Captain?” He said the word Captain as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“The head of this Russian group’s intelligence, their security arm, is a man whom you may have met, Colonel Farbeaux. A ruthless individual who was trained by the true leadership cast of this underground organization to this group, and one man in particular whom we have yet to identify. We here at MI6 believe he is responsible for this mirror group and acts as the internal security for all of them combined.”
“I don’t know his employers or this mysterious group’s governing body you speak of. But a Russian I once heard of murdered an entire town in the Ukraine for hiding state artifacts after the fall of the Soviet Union. If it’s the man I am thinking of, yes, I did meet him once. In deference to my two American friends here, the man is the most capable killer and guardian of Russian history and state secrets I have ever heard of. He will kill children to keep the world from knowing what it is they know. Yes, he is a man who makes the world a ruthless and hateful place. And also a man I care never to meet again.”
“The very gentleman of whom it is I speak. Colonel Farbeaux, I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, sir. The president, in conjunction with the British prime minister and NATO command, has activated your temporary military status to active duty, and said status has been affirmed by Paris. You are now, once more, attached to the United States and British armed forces. You are to accompany Colonel Collins and Captain Everett on a joint NATO mission to recover something this mysterious Russian group may have lost. You will have no trouble finding this lost item, since your navy has just now begun to take her in tow in the North Atlantic. Your specific orders, Colonel, are to identify this man for Captain Everett and Colonel Collins during their mission to observe naval assets in the area and the mysterious circumstances surrounding what is now happening.”
The three men remained quiet as Lord Durnsford smiled down at the seated officers. Another message flimsy was produced by the British master spy. This one he again handed to Jack. He read.
“Are you joking?”
“We here at MI6 never have developed that sense of humor you Americans so readily ascribe to. No, no joke, Colonel.”
Jack handed the message to Carl.
“Proceed by military transport to confidential location and recover war matériel currently in NATO possession. Said war matériel is a derelict, and NATO has declared provenance and has initiated salvage rights over its discovery. You and your selected group will proceed to said undisclosed location, investigate, and determine if this war material should be considered a threat to the national security of NATO treaty nations.” Carl looked up from the flimsy. “Signed, Compton, advisory board chairman to the president on military and international affairs.”
None of the three men made comment about the disguised cover for their own director.
“Okay, what’s up, Lord Durnsford?” Collins asked as Henri stood and paced, not liking where this thing was going. “And why Henri? We could just get a description and go from there.”
“Colonel Farbeaux’s one job is to identify this man for our governments, and if at all possible, one of you three will kill him. Circumstances as to why this assassination is necessary will be readily apparent upon meeting this psychopath. I stress, Colonel Farbeaux, only if you can identify this man as the Butcher of Kharkov.”
“And us?” Everett asked.
“You, Captain and Colonel, will be in charge of a boarding party that will secure said war matériel. The final part of your instructions is to make sure Colonel Farbeaux follows his orders and, if need be, fulfill the directive as described in your orders.”
“You said this matériel was just taken in tow. Are we speaking about a ship?” Jack asked.
“Yes, we are, Colonel. A very large and even stranger ship than you could ever believe. A ship that was sunk during World War II and is now making a reappearance in the North Atlantic at a most inopportune time.”
“And why would this Russian murderer be there?” Everett beat Jack to the burning question.
“Because”—Lord Durnsford grinned broadly—“this particular ship belongs to the Russian Navy, and they have sent their number-one killer and his mysterious group to recover it. All our little puzzle pieces have now fit together somewhat nicely thanks to some highly questionable purloining of information from a very inquisitive source and his equally criminal computer somewhere within your national borders.”
“Oh, that’s just great,” Carl mumbled as he sat down. He didn’t go on to say they were now headed into danger thanks to a twentysomething kid and his maniacal new girlfriend named Europa.
“Yes, yes, it is great, Captain, as that may be the most important ship ever to set sail in the history of the world.” He smiled broadly. “You see, we believe, as do your own higher management, that this ship is only the second vessel in history to have gone to, and returned from, another dimension.”
The three men exchanged looks. After what they had just gone through to return Carl to this world, they had no doubt that this older scientific achievement had really taken place, and that was the reason why they all felt ill at that very moment.
“Gentlemen, the rest of your team will join you here shortly. They are taking a very fast aircraft and will arrive on time. Once you’ve breached Tildy, you can join the fun there with a squad of Her Majesty’s Royal Marines traveling with you.” Lord Durnsford walked to the door and opened it to leave.
“Who is Tildy?” the Frenchman asked.
“Why, it’s only the bloodiest, most hair-raising hurricane in the past five years. Good luck, gentlemen.”
Henri sat hard into a chair.
“My distaste for you has grown exponentially with every experience I have ever shared with you two … gentlemen.”