Harold nodded, but never let his smile slip. “It’s just that since you’re not in uniform it’s easy to forget.”
Now it was my turn to smile as I turned slightly and pointed at a picture displayed behind me. “You can see me there in uniform. That fellow with the pipe standing beside me is...” I paused as if I forgot. I turned to Gomer. “What’s his name?”
“That there’s General Douglas MacArthur.”
“Ah, that’s right. You might recognize the man yourself, isn’t that right, Harold?”
“Major,” he said, his smile finally faltering.
I shook my head. “No, colonel. Now what was it you want us to do?”
“Cease and desist,” he said, pausing intentionally before he added, “Colonel.”
“You want us to stop what we’re doing with regards to...”
“The Bohemian Grove.”
I nodded and pretended thoughtfulness. I looked out one of the glass windows of the office. I had eight men assigned to me, but only five of the ten desks were currently occupied. Gomer was in front of me and the other two were monitoring the Transamerica construction project. Doris Morgan sat at the reception desk in front of the stairwell. She was our own personal Cerberus, able to immediately determine if someone meant the other person harm. Not the same as the Cerberus agents from the NSA program, but she did her job well just the same. She’d come in handy several times, using signals to let the others know that trouble was at the door. But she was also the wife of a retired Air Force colonel, which might dictate loyalty. I’d never thought that there was a problem before, but the fact that Harold was sitting in front of me indicated he had a way of knowing things that he shouldn’t. The only other person who knew we’d gone to track down and meet Enrique was Doris, who filed the meeting report. Of course, Enrique could have been under surveillance, but then that should have been the NSA or the FBI, not the Air Force.
“So let me get this straight,” I began, my gaze returning to Pretty Boy Floyd – that was it! “We have a valid connection from an East German Ministry of State Security official to a local catering company that deals directly with The Bohemian Grove. You want us to leave that alone? And again, tell me why the Air Force has jurisdiction over this?”
Pretty Boy Floyd sighed. He found an imaginary piece of lint on the arm of his uniform, picked it off and flicked it onto the floor. “First of all, Colonel, your mission statement refers to the defense of American interests from supernatural attempts to acquire technology. There was no link to supernatural in your description of the problem. Secondly, Travis Air Force base has the security mission for the area. We’ve detected nothing suspicious about the annual gathering at The Bohemian Grove nor have we been asked to assist.”
“Nothing suspicious. Interesting.” I turned to the gunnery sergeant. “Gomer, please describe for me The Cremation of Care Ceremony.”
“Yes, sir. The Cremation of Care Ceremony is what marks the beginning of the yearly meeting at The Bohemian Grove. This meeting is attended by many of the richest and most influential men from around the globe. Previous members include founding member Ambrose Bierce, William Randolph Hearst, Eddie Rickenbacker, Teddy Roosevelt, Jack London, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Herbert Hoover, Edward J. Pauly and our current governor, Ronald Reagan, along with our current president, Richard Nixon.”
I nodded. “Impressive list, but tell us about the ceremony.”
Gomer grinned like his namesake. “Sorry. So they describe it as a ritualistic shedding of conscience and empathy and abuses of power. It might be that, but what they actually do is ritualistically sacrifice a mock child before a giant statue of the Canaanite god Moloch, shrouded in the figure of an owl.”
I turned to Pretty Boy Floyd and matched his smile with my own and said, “Ritualistically.”
He stood and shook his head. “Old men dressed up in robes and pretending to pray to false idols is not illegal. You have no connection or jurisdiction.” He pulled his hat from the leg pocket of his flight suit. “Cease. And. Desist. Colonel,” he said, enunciating every word.
Then he saluted, turned and left.
Gomer waited until he left the room to say, “I never mentioned robes, sir.”
“No,” I said realizing the truth of it. “No you did not.”
“So what’s next?” Gomer asked, his excitement barely contained.
I shrugged. “Nothing really. We have to begin desisting, I suppose.”
I got the call at three AM that Enrique had passed away. I sent word to Burgess to meet me at his residence with the Box Man, then called Gomer and had him pick me up. By the time we arrived, the body had been removed by the morgue and the police had already left. Burgess waited in a paneled truck. I’d asked him to wait while I spoke with the family. Gomer and I had both agreed that the timing of the death was both inopportune as well as convenient for anyone trying to obscure our path.
It took several minutes of negotiations before I was able to talk our way inside. Clearly the family felt the death was a natural one. I wasn’t going to do anything to change their minds. Whatever I discovered wouldn’t be for their benefit, but for ours. As it was, I could see the relaxation in their shoulders, as if the death was a great burden taken from them.
So it was with the family safely in the kitchen, coffee brewing, eggs sizzling, their conversation lightening as they increasingly realized their newfound freedom that we gathered inside the small bedroom of the recently deceased.
Gomer and I stood side-by-side against the far wall, trying to stay out of the way.
Lance Corporal Burgess Washta, a Lakota from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota who’d made his escape by joining the military and surviving Vietnam, brought two creatures into the room. The first was the Box Man who was led in with a leash attached to a metal box completely covering his head. Rusted, riveted, and made of old iron, the weight of the box made the Box Man move like a hunchback, favoring one side over the other as he tried to keep the incredible weight upright yet still manage locomotion. A fine mesh screen covered the mouth and eye areas. The only other opening was a circular door on the very top of the box through which he was fed and from where he began his divinations. Behind him and walking free of a leash was the Licking Boy. Of small stature and with his eyes sewn shut, he wore a black jumpsuit and black boots. The only splash of color was the red unit path of Special Unit 77 on his shoulder. Not really a boy, he was an achondroplasiac, or dwarf. His real name had been Walter Scoggins, but he was now known as the Licking Boy.
Why Burgess had brought him, I didn’t know. I shot him an enquiring look.
“Gunnery Sergeant Chan asked that I bring him.”
To that, I turned to Gomer.
“I got a gut feeling we might need him.”
I knew that Gomer liked spending time at our special warehouse. My worry was that he’d go soft on our singular acquisitions. God knew it was bad enough to have them. If they didn’t like what they did, we’d never even use them. Harvey had been that way at first as well. Even I felt a tug at my heart, especially when I witnessed the Singing Girl do her thing. But I reminded myself that these were tools, much like a marine was a tool to take a beach or a pilot was a tool to fly an airplane. These creatures were purposely made by some arcane hand and were now ours to treasure and use. Feeling sorry for them would cause no end of problems.
Gomer recognized my look. “He doesn’t get out as much as the others. I think he could really do some good here.”