“I smelt the gun powder, I heard the awful sound of that bullet hitting his head. I sensed the shock and horror and disbelief.”
“The Secret Service and the FBI closed ranks to keep the truth hidden,” Luckman explained. “They intimidated witnesses – they swore people to secrecy under pain of death. The Warren Commission was a whitewash. But you have to understand it was at the height of the Cold War. America would have been an international laughing stock if it had been revealed a man sworn to protect the president had accidentally blown his head off.”
Luckman pulled a strand of hair away from her mouth. She looked up at him like a small child. “How many more secrets are in that head of yours?” she wondered, closing her eyes again. Her breath was uneven, her heart racing. The remote viewing chair had consumed all her energy. He stroked her hair to calm her down, fearing she was so weak she could go into cardiac arrest. As her breathing returned to normal he asked her how she felt.
“Like I could melt into the floor,” she answered meekly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this exhausted.”
Luckman checked his watch again. Just after three in the morning. Wow, where did that time go? Another two hours of darkness at most. He was tired too. He was nodding in and out of consciousness like a narcoleptic. Mel was asleep on his lap now. His back was hurting. He was too old for this shit. Too many nights on hard ground. His dad would say he’d gone soft.
But adrenalin cut through the weariness as he caught a noise outside the vault. There – the same noise again. Someone else had found their way to the chamber. He pulled out his revolver, lifted Mel off his lap and rose achingly to his feet.
A young Aboriginal man peered through the vault door wide-eyed and wary, the expression shifting to alarm when he saw the gun pointing at him. His face was familiar.
“Don’t shoot, hey. I come to get you outa here.”
“I know you.”
“Yeah. Pat Williams.”
“I’m Captain Stone Luckman.”
“I know.”
“How did you know we were here?”
Pat tapped his heart lightly. “Felt it. I spent so much time in this chair it’s crept inside mah head.”
He pointed to the crumpled figure on the floor. “It was her, eh?”
“She’ll be OK, won’t she?”
“Yeah, yeah. It just sucks a lot outa you. Took me a while to get used to it. Bloody design fault if you ask me,” he added.
Luckman felt himself warming to the guy. He decided to take a chance. “The Others came for us tonight.”
“Bastards.”
“Are they gone?” Luckman inquired.
“Yeah, coast is clear.”
Thirty-Three
Luckman was awoken by the knocking on the motel room door. Judging by the persistent rapping he guessed he’d already slept through the visitor’s previous attempts to wake him. He blinked furiously in an effort to shake off his torpor. Mel was passed out on the bed next to him and didn’t stir. For one terrible moment he feared the worst but then saw her chest moving. She was stripped down to a pair of shorts and a bra. He dimly remembered helping her out of her shirt before they’d both collapsed. She had told him she didn’t want to be alone. He had passed out next to her moments after she hit the bed.
He felt a lot better after sleeping. Seeing her lying there prompted a pulse of desire and he might have been tempted to do something about it except the visitor wasn’t going away. He glanced at a clock on the bedside table. It was two thirty in the afternoon. He pulled on a T-shirt and opened the door of the motel room.
Pat Williams lifted the sunglasses from his eyes and smiled a warm greeting. Luckman was about to say something in response but Pat quickly put his finger to his lips and waved urgently for Luckman to come with him. Luckman glanced back at Mel. Pat offered a silent reassurance that she’d be OK, his expression tinged with sly admiration.
Luckman quickly pulled on a pair of runners. Pat peeled off his hooded jumper, revealing an identical jumper underneath. He threw the first one at Luckman and urged him to put it on. It stank of stale sweat, prompting Luckman to crumple up his nose in disgust. Pat was insistent. He removed his sunnies, pointed to them and then to Luckman, suggesting he find a pair. Luckman did so. Pat stepped into the room and pulled the hood up over Luckman’s head, fixing the sunglasses in place and giving him the thumbs up.
“You one of us now,” he whispered.
Luckman scribbled a quick note to let Mel know he was OK and urged her to stay put. They left the room, walking past another Aboriginal man dressed in an identical hoodie who remained behind, apparently to guard his companions. Again Pat gestured at Luckman to keep quiet then led the way through the complex, past the pool area and a rear garbage bay to a laneway onto the street behind the motel, where there was a small parking bay for deliveries and tradesmen. A crumpled and rusty once-white Ford wagon was waiting for them. Pat opened the back door and waved Luckman in first. Luckman climbed across the back seat and acknowledged the lanky young Aboriginal man behind the wheel. Pat climbed in next to him.
“Luckman – this is Shorty.”
“Which way, brudda,” said Shorty, shaking his hand.
Pat picked up a blanket from the back seat. “You better get down under ’ere for a bit,” he told Luckman.
Luckman did as Pat suggested. It was hot and uncomfortable under the weight of a jumper and a blanket in the blistering heat of a desert afternoon. The floor of the wagon reeked of stale beer and urine. Shorty launched the car onto the street like he was running late for the last train out of town.
“I borrowed this car to keep ’em guessing, in case they watchin’ you. Sorry ‘bout the smell,” said Pat.
“What now?” Luckman asked.
“We take a bit of a drive to see if anyone’s watching, then I got a few things I wanna show you.”
Luckman couldn’t help thinking it was an insalubrious way to get around town for the men he presumed had now taken charge of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise. He quickly began to feel like a human shock absorber, copping every bump and turn in his knees and elbows as the car lurched along the road. He tried to distract himself by recalling the events of the previous night. Pat had helped them to the door of Clarence Paulson’s office, but had stayed inside the secret chamber. It was cold and quiet outside. There had been no police patrol car, indeed no sound or movement to indicate disturbance of any sort. He stumbled across the river bed with Mel draped over his shoulder. She kept wanting to sit down and go to sleep. He might have been inclined to take her to a hospital, but Pat assured him sleep was all she needed. He had found Bell still in one piece, unconscious and apparently untroubled by the night’s events.
The car came to a halt. Luckman heard the driver’s door open and close again.
“You can sit up now,” Pat told him.
Luckman cast the blanket aside in relief and wiped the sweat from his brow, taking in a deep breath of hot desert air though the open car window. They were in the driveway of a single-storey red brick house, one of many in the street that had seen better days. Shorty was making his way up the front stairs. The yard was a dust bowl parking lot of banged-up wrecks. A couple of forlorn Holden sedans that clearly hadn’t been driven in years were slowly decaying alongside a late-model Toyota LandCruiser dented in nearly every panel.
“Can we talk?”
“Not yet,” Pat answered sharply.
The Aboriginal man shuffled over behind the wheel and drove the car along the side of the house and through the backyard, turning sharply to pull into a large steel shed at the end of the long yard. Luckman noticed the shed’s entrance was not visible from the street.