To Danny’s surprise, Schreiber shrugged and sounded apologetic. “The answers are there, whether you like them or not. My directives came from Hitler himself, and he would not share the why of what I did. He simply ordered me to do it. And so, when Hiroshima occurred, we put our plan into motion, as laid out by the Führer himself. What he knew, the foresight he had, died with him — and to be perfectly honest, Admiral, I believe this to be for the best.”
“How so?” the CIA director demanded.
“Do you wish to have such a man in command of an army of supermen?” Schreiber asked, wide-eyed and genuine, at least as far as Danny could tell. “I can honestly say, having worked with him personally, I do not. If that means we must work to find the truth here, so be it.”
Hillenkoetter’s gaze returned to the vortex. “What do you need to take this further?”
When Schreiber told him, the color left the admiral’s face.
11
Today was a good day, praise the Lord.
Cal Hooks got up and, for the first time in what seemed like forever, didn’t feel every bone and muscle in his tired body protest to high Heaven. That was reason enough to embrace the morning despite the winter chill of the Nevada desert before sunrise.
Plus, today he’d get to call home. The Army folks — Cal well knew they weren’t really from the Army, but the Air Force name was still pretty new — had been letting him call home once a week ever since he had signed on. And last summer, he’d been given two whole weeks to return home, though his wife and boy were worried something fierce when they saw the condition he was in. And that was after the Army folks had given him a month to recuperate from any experiments before his vacation.
He got up from his bunk and stretched. Freed from the drudgery of third-shift factory work, Cal found he was a morning person after all. He flipped on a light, noting how sure his hands looked. No trembling at all. And in the mirror, the white hair had been darkening considerably, to the point where there was only a bit more gray than when he had first started down this strange road. All good signs.
He’d come a long way since the incident at the Firestone plant. He was bouncing back better now — faster. Today, he felt maybe ninety percent back to the last time he’d clocked in at the Firestone plant. He could walk briskly and, over the past few days, had been able to participate in some of the exercises the others were doing.
Cal could heal a paper cut without much trouble at all now. He could also focus all his energy into the gravely ill — they told him he had cured a woman with cancer last spring. Hearing that made the three months he was bedridden for afterwards almost entirely tolerable.
Truth be told, though, when he used his power, he never quite bounced back all the way. The doctors had confirmed it, but he had already felt it in his bones. Each time he used his miraculous gift, a tiny little bit of his life was sacrificed.
But that was fine by him. Over the course of the past year, he’d healed dozens — dozens! — of people. The woman with cancer, a boy out in Michigan who’d been in a terrible car crash, soldiers dealing with wounds left over from the war. It was God’s work, that much he truly believed. Whatever ills he might suffer, he was helping people, helping his country. His boy was going to college. It was more than a fair trade.
Cal got himself dressed and briefly read from his Bible before heading over to the mess hall for breakfast. He never quite thought of himself as an overly God-fearing man — the way he grew up, it was simply part of what he did and who he was — but there was more than enough swearing and other sorts of… behaviors… on the base that he felt a little brushing up on the Word was in order. Today, it was Ephesians. Tomorrow, maybe a Gospel passage.
The sun was still hiding behind the mountains as Cal walked down the dusty paths between buildings. He looked off through the chain link fence, toward the bigger base in the distance. Miss Dubinsky had gotten her hands on those binoculars, and sure enough, there was a lot of activity there, just like they thought. Lots of men in lab coats, more Army folks, some offices, and some big electrical generators. Planes buzzed in and out of the base almost daily.
It was a busy place, Area 51. Cal might not have been educated, but a man could see around himself just fine without a college degree. Whatever else was happening there seemed to be very important.
Cal entered the mess hall and nodded genially at those having an early meal. He usually sat with the other Variants, but at breakfast, he typically sat alone: mornings were for thinking, not talking. So, after he got his eggs and bacon, he was surprised when Frank Lodge plopped his tray down across from him and took a seat.
“Morning, Cal.”
“Good morning, Frank. What’s got you up so early?”
Frank ran a hand across his face and gave a small smile. “They flew me out to Las Vegas overnight. Bad construction accident; one of the workers was in critical and wasn’t going to make it. So, they brought me in.”
Cal nodded somberly. “You get there in time?”
“Barely. Mexican fella. Came up here to work, maybe bring his family over. Sad, really.” Frank stared down into his black coffee.
“Well, you were there for him,” Cal said, hoping it might comfort the young man. “I wish I could heal everyone, I truly do, but I know it’d probably kill me inside a week. You, though, you have a gift to preserve the memory of those gone home to God. I think that’s a beautiful thing, Frank.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know how many more I can do, either,” Frank said. “It’s not the toll, really. If anything, feels like I’m getting used to it a bit too much, you know? It’s like the surgeons would all tell me back during the war — you see so many die, you get numb. No, it’s more about feeling… full. I feel like I’ve got so many people in my head, and it’s sometimes hard to sort them out. It’s scary.”
Cal nodded with sympathy, though he really couldn’t relate, and he doubted anyone but Frank would ever know exactly what he was going through. He thought about asking him if he wanted to sit a moment and pray, but Frank didn’t strike him as a prayerful sort. Besides, he didn’t want to push anything on the man. Especially now. “What do the doctors say about it?”
Frank shrugged and took a swig of coffee. “The usual bunch of mental exercises, memory games, meditation, that sort of thing. They’re focused more on the skills I can get or the stuff I can learn. ‘Operational Asset Accumulation,’ they call it. Doesn’t sound so bad when you say it like that, huh?”
“Did you get any of that from this boy last night?” Cal asked.
“Well, if the Commies decide to recruit a bunch of villagers up in the mountains in the middle of nowhere, Mexico, I can speak Spanish and Nahuatl now,” Frank replied with a little grin. “Other than that, not really.”
“So, what are you trying to keep in mind, then?”
“Memories, I guess. Who these people were,” Frank said. “It seems like… I don’t know. It seems important somehow. Don’t know why yet, just a feeling in my gut, you know? I know I should just aim for the operational stuff — the languages or the skills. Medicine or science, stuff like that. But I’m telling you, Cal, I can’t shake the feeling that keeping the memories of these people is important.”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Cal agreed. “I think it’s God’s burden for you, for this gift, to be the caretaker of these memories — just like it’s my burden to bear the wounds I heal.”