FIRE CREEK, WEST VIRGINIA
It was just after 9:00 A.M. when Mike Califano walked through the front door of the Fire Creek Diner. He observed three old codgers seated in a booth near the front and an elderly woman in an apron behind the counter. He approached the woman. “You Thelma Scott?”
The woman nodded. “That’s me, honey.”
Califano retrieved the leather ID holder that the CIA people had provided him with and flipped it open to show his FBI credentials. “I’m Special Agent Califano.” He felt awkward flashing his badge like that. It always seemed so natural on TV. “FBI,” he added.
Thelma glanced at Califano’s fake FBI badge but showed no particular interest in it.
“Do you mind if I ask you some questions about what happened yesterday?” asked Califano.
Thelma shrugged. “No, I don’t mind.”
Califano snapped his ID holder shut and motioned with his head to a vacant booth in the far corner of the diner. “Can we talk over there?”
“Sure.”
Thelma and Califano made their way to the empty booth and sat down across from each other. Once they were situated, Califano said, “Okay, please tell me everything you remember about the incident.”
Thelma recounted the prior day’s events as best she could, pointing several times to the spot on the diner floor where the man had curled up and nearly bled to death. She mentioned the man’s strange appearance, his hat, his foreign accent, and the fact that he claimed to have come from the Thurmond National Lab. She also remembered that he’d asked her to call someone.
“Yeah? Who’d he ask you to call?”
“Oh, gosh. It was Doctor somebody. Dr. Brown? Dr. Burns? Bernstein . . . hmmm . . . Dr. Somebody. Burr . . . Burt . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“That’s okay if you can’t rem—”
“Reynolds!” she exclaimed. “I was thinking Burt Reynolds. It was Dr. Reynolds. At Princeton. And he gave an old-fashioned number. Like Princeton one two three four, or something like that. That’s the way we used to do long distance when I was young. But not anymore . . .”
“Thank you, that’s very helpful. Now, did he mention any other names?”
“None that I can think of.”
“How about Opie? Did he mention anyone by that name?”
“Opie? No, not that I remember.”
“Can you remember anything else he said? Maybe particular phrases that he used?”
Thelma shrugged. “No. Just what I’ve already told you.”
Califano decided not to ask her about the phrase “murder of science.” Might freak her out, he figured. He could hear McCreary’s voice in his head: I don’t want people speculating. “Okay, Ms. Scott. Is there anything else you can recall about the incident that might be important? Anything at all?”
Thelma fidgeted with her hands and hesitated for a moment, apparently unsure about whether to proceed. “Well, there’s one thing.” Her voice dropped a notch as she spoke.
“Hmm?”
Thelma looked around the restaurant and then lowered her voice to nearly a whisper. “I think I know who that man was.”
“You do?” Califano leaned in closer. “Who was he?”
“Well, I don’t know his name per se, but I think he was one of those scientists who used to work up in Thurmond in the fifties. I recognized his voice ’cause he had a German accent. He come in here on Sundays for breakfast when I was still helping my mother on weekends. Said Mom’s pancakes reminded him of home.” She smiled. “I think what he really liked was my mother. Anyway, that’s who I think he was.”
Califano had nearly forgotten about the cover story he was supposed to be using. But he figured now would be as good a time as any to bring it up. “Actually, ma’am, I think you might be mistaken about that.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. The man who came in here yesterday is an escaped patient from St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital in Washington, D.C. He’s not German. He’s not a scientist. And he didn’t have anything to do with the Thurmond National Laboratory.”
Thelma looked hurt by the suggestion that she was misremembering things. “I’m . . . I’m just telling you what I remember,” she said. “You asked if there was anything else I recalled, and I’m telling you what I recalled. If you say I’m wrong, then . . . well . . . so be it. But I know what I saw.”
Califano decided to leave it at that. There wasn’t much else to say. Stupid cover story anyway. “I understand, ma’am. Now, is there anything else you think might be important?”
Thelma looked around again, and her voice dropped even lower. “Well, yeah. Now that you mention it.” She paused for a moment. “But first let me ask you something.”
“Okay . . .”
“Do you know what used to go on up there in Thurmond?”
Califano shrugged and said no. Which was the truth.
“Well, let me tell you something. I was about fifteen or sixteen when they first started doing all that stuff up there. And I remember lots of strange things happening. Most of all, our clocks would get all messed up. And watches, too. You wouldn’t notice it at first, but then someone would come to visit from another town, and you’d find out that every clock in Fire Creek was thirty or forty minutes behind. Always behind. Never fast. You’d reset them, but then it would happen again a week later.”
“How long did that go on?”
“Better part of a year, as I remember it. Eventually, a couple of the men in town complained about it, on account of it making them late for work at the mines. After that, a man from the government come down here and explained it was all because of solar flare activity or something like that. Not anything to do with the lab.”
Califano was nodding along.
“Well, we never really believed that for a second. We knew they were doing something strange up there. But it did get better for a while. After that, clocks just ran a little slower, a few minutes each day. Which they still do today, by the way.”
“What, even now?”
“Uh-huh. Every clock in town. We’re all just used to it, I guess. So we don’t really think much about it. But every morning, I have to bump my clock ahead three minutes, just to keep it on time. Same with everyone else. We don’t really worry about it none. Doesn’t seem to affect anything important.”
“Yeah, but it’s . . . strange,” said Califano.
Thelma’s eyes widened. “You think that’s strange? Well, let me tell you what happened to the folks up in Thurmond.”
Califano leaned in close. “You mean the people in the lab?”
“No, honey. In the town. There was still some folks living up there in Thurmond even after they built that lab. Probably fifty or sixty folks in several families. ‘Mountain folk,’ I guess you’d call them. Kept to themselves mostly. Never bothered no one. They’re long gone now, though. That place has been a ghost town for, lord, fifty years or more.”
“So what happened to them? The families in Thurmond?”
“Must have been late summer or early fall of 1959. I was already married and pregnant with my first child. One night, there was some big commotion up on the mountain, in Thurmond. You could hear it all the way down here. Some type of explosion, a big, loud boom, or more of a popping or whooshing sound. Anyway, there were helicopters and searchlights all over the place, and it went on all night long. Next morning, we expected to hear some big news about it. We figured it was a mine explosion or something. But . . . there was nothing about it at all. Nothing in the newspaper. No radio reports. Nothing on TV. Nothing. Well, that didn’t sit right with folks here. Thurmond’s just ten miles up the ridge, and a lot of people in Fire Creek knew people up there. So, some of the men went up to investigate, including my father.”
“They drove up there?”
“Well, they tried to, but all the roads was blocked off by the army. So three of them decided to hike off into the woods to see what happened . . .” Thelma paused, apparently trying to recall the exact details of the incident. “They left on a Sunday morning, probably about nine, and didn’t come back all day. Sun went down, and they still weren’t back. Lord, I remember my mother was a wreck that night. She called the police, and they said no one was supposed to be going up there on account of the whole area being . . . what’s the word? Quarter-eened?”
“Quarantined?”
“Uh-huh, that’s it. So no one was being allowed in or out of Thurmond ’cause of the quarantine.”
“So what happened to your father and the other men?”
“Well, we thought they must have been put into quarantine with the rest of them. In fact, we were convinced it was radiation or something like that. Everyone was worried sick. But then, out of the blue, they come walking back out of the woods on Friday. Five days later. Said they were stopped by military police before they ever reached Thurmond and told to turn around, which they did. So we said: ‘Okay, but where you been for the past five days?’ And they was totally confused because, according to them, they’d only been gone a few hours.”
Califano’s brain was working overtime, fitting all this new information into his memory bank and comparing it with what he already knew about Thurmond. “Whoa, whoa. Hold on. They thought they had been gone only a few hours, but it was really five days?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So . . . did you ever find out what happened?”
“Not exactly,” said Thelma. “The quarantine lasted about a month. Nobody went in or out of Thurmond during that entire time. When it was over, the government evacuated everyone from Thurmond and relocated them to temporary housing . . . I think somewhere near Charleston. I never personally saw any of those people again. But I heard from other folks that they was never really the same. They had all types of medical issues. Memory loss and night terrors and such. Government paid for their food and housing and health care, I guess for the rest of their lives. And, like I said, I never saw any of them again.”
“What about your father? Did he ever figure out where the five days had gone?”
Thelma shrugged. “It’s just like our clocks. The time just vanished somehow.”
Califano sat quietly for several seconds as his mind processed this bizarre information. Finally, he thanked Thelma for her time and told her she could go. A few minutes later, he put on his overcoat and began making his way to the exit. He smiled and nodded politely at Thelma as he passed by. Then he stopped just short of the door. “Uh, Ms. Scott.”
“Yes?”
“You mentioned there’s a way to walk to Thurmond from here?”
“Well, there used to be. There’s an old railroad line that goes straight over to Thurmond from here. It doesn’t go around Beury’s Ridge like the road does. It goes straight over the top. When the coal company was still operating, that’s how they got the coke from the furnaces to the coal depot in Thurmond. It’s all overgrown now, but back then—yeah, you could walk along the tracks. Probably about ten miles, I’d say. Hey, Frank!”
One of the old men in the booth suddenly looked up from his buckwheat pancakes. “Huh?”
“How long’s that old branch line to Thurmond? Ten miles, would you say?”
“Yeah, I reckon. Maybe a bit less. Why?”
“This fella wanted to know.” Thelma turned back to Califano. “You can still see part of the tracks out there.” She pointed toward the back of the restaurant. “Walk straight back into the woods until you reach the old coke ovens. Can’t miss ’em. Branch line runs right in front of the ovens.”
Califano thanked her and exited the restaurant. Outside, he made an immediate right turn on the sidewalk and then another right turn at the first corner. Then he made a beeline for the woods. He tapped the button for his transmitter as he walked. “Hey, guys, I’m all done in the diner,” he said.
A second later, he heard McCreary’s voice crackling in his ear: “Anything interesting?”
“Got a name,” Califano replied as he walked. “Dr. Reynolds at Princeton. Apparently Holzberg wanted to contact him. I’ll feed that into my database when I get a chance and let you know what I find.”
“Very good,” said McCreary.
“Also,” said Califano, “sounds like they were doing some strange stuff in Thurmond. Apparently something that messed up all the clocks around here . . . to this day.”
“Oh yeah?” said McCreary. “The locals told you that?”
“Mm-hmm. Thelma Scott says they evacuated and relocated the entire town of Thurmond back in ’59 after some sort of explosion.” Califano suddenly stopped at the tree line and searched for a path through the woods. He spotted one off to the left and started making his way toward it. As he walked, he pressed the transmit button again. “How about you guys? Anything interesting?”
Ana Thorne’s voice came on the line. “Nothing here. Still waiting for the sheriff.” She sounded annoyed.
McCreary’s voice came on a few seconds after that. “I’m suiting up right now. I’ll let you guys know what I find.”
Califano immediately stopped walking. Suiting up? He’d worked at DOE long enough to know what that meant. He tapped the transmit button. “Hey, Doc, I thought we needed more information before we could go down into the lab.”
There was a long pause before McCreary finally responded. “Keep the line clear, Michael.”
The coke ovens in Fire Creek were apparently a popular attraction among the “ghost tour” crowd, as evidenced by the well-worn footpath that led there. Califano followed that path several hundred yards into the woods until it gave way to a large clearing. He stopped at the edge of the clearing and took in the unusual sight that was now spread before him. The morning sun was filtering softly through the trees, illuminating thick pools of swirling fog that still hugged the ground in splotches. The coke ovens themselves were about thirty yards away, at the far edge of the clearing. And Thelma Scott had certainly been right. You couldn’t miss them.
The coke ovens were part of an enormous brick structure, about twelve feet high and more than two hundred feet long, that stretched deep into the woods. Each of the beehivelike ovens was built directly into the face of this brick structure, creating a long row of semicircular openings, each about six feet in diameter, with a two-foot column between them. This gave the masonry structure a Romanesque appearance, like a crumbling, vine-covered aqueduct that had somehow been transplanted from Tuscany into the West Virginia wilderness.
Califano made his way to the first of the semicircular ovens and poked his head inside. In the dark shadows, he could see that it was shaped like an igloo, with curved brick walls that converged at the top, leaving a small, circular opening, which he guessed was a chimney. Turning away from the ovens, he scanned the forest floor until he spotted the remnants of the train tracks that Thelma Scott had mentioned. The rusty rails were barely visible beneath a tangle of vegetation and forest debris. With some effort, he made his way to the tracks until he was standing directly between the rails. He peered eastward into the forest, in the direction of Thurmond, and observed that the tracks quickly disappeared into the vegetation.
Califano checked his watch; it was just shy of 10:30 A.M. He stood there for a long time, thinking about what Ana had told him earlier this morning: don’t take any chances. She was right, of course. In fact, he already felt like he was in over his head.
But that had never stopped him before.
With a deep breath, Califano began walking eastward along the tracks, and he was soon deep in the woods.