Centralia (28 page)

Abernathy turned and entered the house; Habit and Peter followed. The interior was furnished with antiques and rustic pieces. The door opened to a great room with a cathedral ceiling. To the right was a small kitchen and two closed doors, no doubt a bedroom and a bathroom. Deer antlers and rifles of every size and caliber decorated the walls of the great room, and from the peak of the ceiling hung a chandelier made of moose antlers.

Abernathy headed for the kitchen. “Sit down. Sit down. Would you like some coffee? I just put some on.”

Habit declined but Peter, both intrigued and intensely curious, agreed. “Please. Sugar, no cream.”

Minutes later Abernathy returned with two steaming cups of coffee, handed one to Peter, and sat on a chair opposite the sofa where Peter sat.

Abernathy sipped at his coffee, not taking his eyes off Peter the whole time. “So I hear you’re looking for answers. Is that right?”

Peter held the mug with both hands and nodded. “The truth would be nice for once.”

“Yes. You’ve been fed a buffet’s worth of lies, haven’t you?”

“It seems that way.” Peter took a sip of his coffee but didn’t take his eyes off the older man. “I just want to know the truth about my wife and daughter.”

Abernathy shifted a glance at Habit, then looked back to Peter. “Ah, yes, and we’ll get to that. But first, Lawrence brought you here to me because I’m the only one who can give you the whole truth and nothing but. Do you know who I am?”

Peter shrugged. “Someone important enough to exile. You need to be kept quiet but also kept alive.”

Abernathy smiled and sipped from his mug. “Very good.”

“Whose side are you on?”

Abernathy turned his head slightly and fixed Peter with narrow eyes. He’d taken offense at Peter’s question. “Does my side matter if I have the truth?”

“Trust matters, don’t you think?”

“Certainly. Then what are the sides? The lines can be rather ambiguous sometimes, you know.”

Peter paused. What was happening in that hole under Centralia was wrong. “With Nichols, or against him.”

Abernathy studied Peter as if he wasn’t satisfied with that answer. Finally he said, “I’m on your side, Jedidiah.”

Peter straightened and placed his mug on the coffee table. “Why do you call me that?”

“It’s your name. Your real name. The name your mother gave you at birth. Jedidiah Patrick. It has such a nice sound to it.”

Peter was growing anxious. This Abernathy was as nebulous as Nichols, and no answers had yet to come out of his mouth.

As if he’d read Peter’s body language, Abernathy crossed his legs and said, “In the 1950s the CIA began a project it called MK-ULTRA. Ever hear of it?”

“‘Files no longer exist,’” Peter said, remembering the empty folder on the computer back in the bunker.

“You’re a resourceful man, Jedidiah. MK-ULTRA was a program developed to determine how far the human mind could be altered and controlled. Experiments were done on human subjects, some aware of what was happening, others not so aware. All sorts of methods were used. Drugs, hallucination, deprivation, torture. The early results were astounding but unpredictable.” He paused and looked at his hands, twisted them as if he were massaging an invisible lump of dough. “I was a researcher. We studied ways to program multiple personalities. But then in the early seventies, we were exposed, and ULTRA was shut down. The files were destroyed. There was much outrage over the experiments.”

“What does this have to do with me and my family?” Abernathy’s story was intriguing, but Peter failed to see the connection between some secret CIA project so many decades ago and him.

“The outrage, Jedidiah, was a front. We made such great strides, there was no way the government was going to just give up on our work, cast it aside as if it had never taken place. ULTRA was discontinued, but Centralia was born. And I was asked to head it up. It took us a while to get our bearings again after all the congressional hearings in the eighties and after the dust settled.”

“I’m still not seeing the connection.”

Abernathy leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “You were born in Pennsylvania Dutch country. Your parents were
young, unmarried, and scared. Your mother was Brethren, your father Catholic. A most unlikely union that never had a chance. Your mother ran away from her family, gave birth to her son, and promptly gave you up for adoption. Her family eventually took her back but not before intense shaming. Your father disappeared.”

Peter found his heart racing in his chest, and blood surged through his neck and ears.

“As a child,” Abernathy continued, “you spent time in a handful of foster homes. The system became your family, but it made a poor one. At eighteen you joined the Army, full of fight and attitude. You served your four years, got out, got married, and had a child.”

“Lilly.”

“Yes. Lillian. Sweet girl. But you missed the service. You missed the security, the structure, the predictability, so you rejoined. You were the best, Jedidiah. Absolutely the best in every way.” Abernathy hesitated and looked as if he might begin to cry. “Until tragedy struck. It was outside Kandahar. Your unit was ambushed and driven into a warehouse. There were no survivors except one.”

“Me.”

“You. And barely at that. Amazingly, you had few physical injuries. But you suffered severe head trauma. We essentially brought you back from the dead, gave you new life, a new purpose.”

“Centralia.”

“I saw the potential in you; of course I did. You were our hope for resurrecting the work begun in MK-ULTRA. Nichols was heading it up then, and he, too, saw the opportunity you presented us with.”

Still Peter remembered nothing. His flashbacks were there, but they were so spotty, so irregular and unreliable. Abernathy’s
story was totally unbelievable, and yet Peter found himself wanting to believe every word of it. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

“I know you’ve been lied to so much, haven’t you? But the lies stop here. I have proof that will convince you.” He motioned to Habit, and the big man got up, crossed the room, and retrieved a laptop. Abernathy ran a hand across his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “Nichols was a liar even back then. He told you your wife and daughter were dead, told them you had died in the mission. He said it was the only way to get you to volunteer. And for the programming to be effective, he needed a willing subject. I disagreed with his tactics. I’ve done a lot of things in my life I’m not proud of
 
—not now, at least
 
—but what he suggested crossed the line for me. I got out. Told them I was leaving. And that’s when they banished me to this mountain. They knew the secrets I keep would bring down kingdoms, crumble the White House, the CIA, Congress, everything Americans trust.”

Habit set the laptop on a coffee table and swiveled it so the screen faced Peter. He hit a key, and a video began to play. The picture was grainy and the filming amateurish, but the person front and center was definitely Peter. He wore Army fatigues with sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve. He sat at a desk, back straight, hands resting on his thighs. Across from him at the desk sat Nichols. What was visible of the room was bare save for an American flag next to the desk.

“Name and rank,” Nichols said.

Peter lifted his chin. “Jedidiah Kurt Patrick. Sergeant. US Army Rangers. Sir.”

Jedidiah. Peter’s face flushed and heat burned in his cheeks. That was him in that video. It wasn’t some digital trickery or any
such thing. He knew it was him. The real deal. And his name was Jed, just like Habit and Abernathy had said.

On the video, Nichols said, “Do you understand the mission of the Centralia Project?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And do you, Jedidiah Patrick, willingly volunteer for the Centralia Project?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why? What is your motive?”

“To serve my country, sir. To do my duty. Sir.”

Nichols slid a piece of paper and pen across the desk. “Sign at the bottom, Sergeant Patrick.”

Without hesitation, Jed picked up the pen and scribbled his name on the paper.

The video stopped with a freeze-frame of Jed looking at Nichols. The look on his face was one of determination, of resolve and purpose. He knew full well what he was getting into. Or at least he thought he did at the time.

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose, then looked toward Abernathy.

“I know it must come as a shock, son, but you’re not the man they made you think you are.”

Habit crossed his arms and nodded.

“So why have they kept you around?” Peter asked Abernathy.

“I’m valuable to them. I’m not proud of this, but over the years, I’ve been able to help them. Give them information they need.”

“Why? Why would you help them?”

“To stay alive. Without my cooperation they’d have no reason to keep me around. I was biding my time, waiting, hoping for an opportunity like this.”

Peter was quiet for a long moment. “So why bring me here and tell me this?”

Abernathy smiled again. He had a nice smile, warm and welcoming, a smile one could come to trust easily. “You’re our last hope for shutting it all down. The project has gone awry, experimenting on children and holding them and their mothers prisoner. It’s grown dark under Nichols and needs to be exposed for what it is. Nichols needs to be stopped.”

“Why can’t you expose them? You were part of it. You have all the inside information.”

Abernathy sipped his coffee and let out a long sigh. “My past is very dark and checkered. I’ve done some wicked things.” He paused and a shadow moved across his eyes. “Things I’m ashamed of. Things that have tarnished my reputation. Outside of the project my word means little. Most in Washington think I’m dead, and I can tell you no one mourned. If I suddenly showed up and wanted to pull the cover off a project few even know exists, I would not be taken seriously.”

“Can’t Habit do it then?”

Abernathy leaned over and patted Habit’s knee. “Lawrence is part of the plan. Voluntarily, I might add. He found me a week ago and asked me for my help. When I met him, I knew the opportunity had come. But you, Jedidiah, you’re the missing piece of the puzzle.” He stopped to sip his coffee again. “You see, this is my last chance to make things right. To do some good for a change. A lot can happen on a mountaintop, you know. One can even find God and forgiveness. Consider this my final act of restitution.”

Abernathy dug in his pocket and pulled out a small thumb drive and handed it over. “This is everything you need. All the names
of everyone who knows about Centralia. Locations. Documents. Videos. It’s all there.”

“And what do I do with this? Just walk into the president’s office and hand it to him?”

Abernathy laughed. “Goodness no. You might get slightly farther than I’d get but that would do no good. No one wants this information exposed. Be careful with it.”

“Then what do I do with this?”

“You’ll know when the time comes.”

“I don’t like that answer.”

A smile pushed the corners of Abernathy’s mouth toward his eyes. “Neither do I, but I knew what to do with it when the time came.”

“Give it to me.”

Abernathy nodded.

“So I can pass it on to someone else?”

“When the time comes, if you feel that’s the answer.”

Peter
 
—Jed
 
—didn’t like this. He didn’t want to be this involved. He only wanted to find Karen and Lilly, disappear somewhere for a long time, and regroup his life. But from somewhere inside him, a voice whispered and told him this was the right thing to do. He didn’t know how he’d accomplish it. He hadn’t any idea even where to begin. But he knew he had to at least try. He glanced from Abernathy to Habit. “Where are Karen and Lilly? Does this lead back to them?”

“It does,” Abernathy said. “They tampered with your mind. Programmed multiple personalities.”

“I know that. What does it have to do with where my wife and daughter are now?”

“They fed you what they wanted you to remember, to see, to
know, to experience. But what they fed you is merely images and ideas; remember that.”

Throughout the entire conversation Habit had sat quietly and listened. Now he spoke. “Your real memories, the real you, is still in there. They call it scrubbing, but they can’t delete what’s already been recorded in your brain. The truth is in your mind; it’s just buried under layer after layer after layer of false images.”

Peter’s heart began to thump again, and suddenly his fingers started to tingle. “Why are you telling me this?” He feared the worst, that they’d tell him Karen and Lilly were really dead, that they were saving the most devastating news for last.

But instead, Abernathy motioned to Habit and said, “There’s a couple you need to meet.”

Habit rose from his chair and crossed the room. He stopped in front of a wooden door, placed his hand on the knob, and looked back. Then he opened the door.

The woman and girl from the bunker emerged. Nichols had called them Nora and Maddy. But then, Nichols had said a lot of things. Peter’s heart beat harder, faster; he could feel his pulse in his throat, temples, ears. Sweat wet his palms. He rose slowly from the sofa and faced the woman and child, who stood just outside the room, holding hands. The looks on their faces said they recognized him, knew him. There was sorrow there yet a glint of hopefulness.

Behind Peter, Abernathy stood as well and walked past him. He stood beside the woman and girl and rested his hand on the girl’s shoulder.

She was the girl from the dream, the girl who claimed to be his Lilly. Now that he faced her again in daylight in a much less stressful situation, he found himself wanting to believe that it was true.

“Jedidiah,” Abernathy said, “I gave you all that information so you’d be ready for this moment, so you’d understand it better, be able to place it in context and accept the truth. The images in your mind of what your wife and daughter look like are false, placed there by Nichols’s staff of psychologists. You must look past them now; you need to have faith
 
—believe without seeing.” He paused, squeezed the girl’s shoulder, and smiled at the woman. “Jedidiah, this is your wife and daughter. Karen and Lillian.”

Peter began to tremble, as faintly as a shiver runs over the surface of skin. He had an inclination to shake his head, to demand the lies to stop, to run from the cabin. But he couldn’t. Something held him there. A desire to know, a need to explore the possibility and probe for the truth
 
—the truth that transcended whatever false realities were piled up in his fractured brain.

He took a step closer to the couple. The woman who claimed to be Karen stared at him with wide, hopeful eyes and mouthed his name.
Jed.
Tears formed in her eyes, and her lower lip and chin began to quiver.

“Don’t rely on what your brain is telling you, Jedidiah,” Abernathy said. “Listen to what your heart says. And your soul. They can tamper with your mind but they can’t touch those.”

“They told you we died, didn’t they?” the woman said.

Peter did not respond. He needed to hear more, but how much more would convince him?

“They told
us
that
you
died,” she said. “In Afghanistan. They wanted Lilly to go to their school. Do you remember? The Centralia School?”

He did remember. The dream, the room, the brochure. The Andrews Academy. The school for gifted children.

“After they told us you died, that man visited us again. Several
times. He wouldn’t give up.” She pulled the girl close and hugged her. “Lilly didn’t trust him. She kept saying that you wouldn’t want her to go there. She warned me.” Tears formed in the woman’s eyes and one spilled down her cheek. “I didn’t listen, though, and eventually gave in. That’s how we ended up in that prison.”

Her words sounded like truth, and why wouldn’t they? He remembered the man, the school, the decision they had made not to send Lilly there. But his memories were populated by a different wife and daughter.

“Daddy,” the girl said. Her voice was sweet and innocent. “You found my note, didn’t you? That’s why you came looking for us.”

A chill raced down Peter’s spine. She knew about the note. But how? The only other person he’d shown it to was Amy. Could it be . . . ?

The woman released her grip on her daughter and drew closer. “My Jed.”

The sound of her voice was beautiful, but it wasn’t Karen
 
—at least not Karen as he remembered her. They were asking him to look past that, though. Believe without seeing or hearing.

She was before him then, barely a foot away. He looked deep into her eyes, searching for the truth, for some unquestionable evidence that she was indeed his Karen.

The woman moved even closer and rose onto her toes to place her mouth against his. The touch of her lips sent electric impulses through his body, not enough to move him but enough to stir images from some depth he didn’t even know existed. There was no flood of memories, no onslaught of revelations. But he was suddenly certain: there was no question now who this woman was. And with their lips still touching and him leaning into the kiss,
Jedidiah Patrick began to cry. He wrapped his arms around Karen, his wife, his sweetheart, and pulled her close.

He eased away from Karen as his daughter, his precious Lilly, ran to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. It was really them. It would take some getting used to, but as unbelievable, as unlikely as it was, he was ready to believe it was them and
 
—

In the distance, the faint sound of a chopper’s blades beating the air grew closer.

Abernathy moved across the room to the front of the house. His swiftness defied his age. “They’re coming.”

Habit joined him. The sound of the chopper grew louder.

“Jedidiah, you’ll have to take them and go,” Abernathy said.

“What about you?”

“I’ll hold them off. You need to get out of here.”

“We can’t leave you.”

Abernathy grasped his arm and squeezed. The intensity in his eyes could ignite a fire. “Listen to me. I’m an old man. I’ve done things of which I’m too ashamed to ever mention again. This is my time to make it right. To do some good. Now you and Lawrence take Karen and Lilly and get out of here.”

Habit stepped close to Abernathy. “I’m staying with you. Patrick, you take your family and go.”

The chopper grew closer and louder. “No, I can’t leave both of you. I won’t.”

“I owe you,” Habit said. “Remember? Hope. You gave me hope. Now it’s my turn.”

Abernathy crossed the room, opened a gun safe, and began pulling out a stockpile of weapons. He tossed one rifle to Habit as he spoke. “There’s an emergency exit through the floor, a tunnel that will drop you out farther down the mountain.”

“Won’t they be expecting that?” Karen said.

Abernathy lifted an area rug to reveal a trapdoor in the wood flooring. “They don’t know about it. I thought this day would come, sooner or later, when they’d need to get rid of the evidence. I had years to prepare myself.”

Outside, the chopper’s thumping grew still closer.

“Quickly now,” Abernathy said. “Down you go.” He passed off a rifle and a handgun. “Just in case.”

Habit handed over an envelope. “Hang on to this too. It’s your ticket out of this world. Good luck, Patrick.”

It would take a while to get used to, he knew, but even now the name Jed Patrick was starting to sound more and more like himself.

Habit lifted the trapdoor. Beneath it was a dirt tunnel lined with corrugated piping that dropped about twenty feet, then turned south. A wooden ladder fastened to the wall provided a way to descend. It must have taken Abernathy years to complete.

The chopper was now overhead, the concussion of its blades almost deafening. The windows of the house rattled; the floor vibrated.

“Go,” Habit shouted. “We’ll hold them off.”

Crouched by one of the front windows, Abernathy looked their way, gave a thumbs-up, then waved them on.

Jed squeezed Karen’s shoulder. “I’ll go first, then Lilly, then you.”

She nodded, worry and fear etching deep lines in her brow.

“Let’s go,” Jed said.

He descended the ladder and waited for Karen and Lilly to do the same. When Karen’s head had cleared the floor, Habit lowered the trapdoor back into place and darkness closed in on them.

Jed helped Lilly off the ladder, then Karen. He hugged them both.

“It’s really you, isn’t it, Daddy?” Lilly said.

Jed held her close and stroked her hair. Sporadic memories were falling into place, pieces to a complex puzzle slowly fitting together. “Yes, darling. And it’s really you.”

Karen pressed herself against her husband’s side. “I’m afraid, Jed.” Even in this terrifying moment, the sound of his name
 
—his actual name
 
—on her lips was like a balm washing over him.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Stay put and let me get a feel for where we are.”

The darkness was oppressive, almost palpable, and seemed to have a weight all its own. But unlike the darkness of the underground cell, this was a pregnant darkness, one that promised a new start on the other end.

Above, they could hear hurried footsteps on the floor, then the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire.

Jed frantically felt the walls of the tunnel, searching for any source of light. He had no idea how long this tunnel was or what kind of turns or drops it took. He didn’t like the idea of groping around in the dark, buried two stories underground, in a metal tube barely wider than his shoulders. Finally his hands found a small plastic box. He unlatched it and lifted the lid. It was filled with objects of various sizes and textures, but there was one that was unmistakable. A flashlight. Jed switched it on and a swath of light illuminated the tunnel.

The firefight continued above. Gunfire, muffled by earth and floor, sounded like raindrops on a tin roof.

“C’mon, let’s go,” Jed said. “We need to move fast.” He knew Habit and Abernathy wouldn’t be able to hold them off for long. If the chopper had found them, it was a sure bet that ground forces wouldn’t be far behind. Soon the two men would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers and would be forced to either surrender or fight to the end.

On all fours, the threesome crawled, Jed in the lead, keeping the light pointed southward. Behind them darkness loomed and in front the light reached twenty, thirty feet, then was swallowed by what appeared to be an abyss of emptiness.

They crawled in silence for what seemed to be at least a quarter of a mile. Finally the tunnel took a slight turn upward and the light found an exit hatch.

Karen blew out a breath. “Oh, thank God.”

The exit hatch was round and had a hand wheel in the center to seal it from outside exposure. Jed grasped the wheel and tugged it counterclockwise. The wheel moaned as it broke loose from its locked position and began to turn.

Muted sunlight flooded the tunnel when the hatch swung open. Jed half expected there to be armed men waiting for them, but the surrounding forest was void of any gun-toting hit men. In the distance they could still hear the beating of the chopper blades and an occasional concussion of gunfire. Whether Abernathy and Habit would survive the ordeal, Jed couldn’t know, but they had succeeded in delaying their pursuers.

Jed helped Karen and Lilly from the tunnel, then surveyed their surroundings. The tunnel had opened on the side of a hill, the opening protected and hidden by a stand of serviceberries. Around them stood giant pines, oaks, and maples, their branches offering a shield from any hovering aircraft looking for three fugitives.

“Will Mr. Abernathy and Mr. Habit be okay?” Lilly asked.

Jed pulled her to him again and hugged her. The feel of her body against his was somehow so familiar, so ordinary. “They can take care of themselves.”

Karen looked around and rubbed her forehead. “Which way do we go?”

Jed reached into his pocket to retrieve the envelope Habit had handed him. He slipped the contents from the envelope and unfolded a bundle of papers. They were birth certificates, three of them. One for Eric Bingsley, born in Baltimore, Maryland; one for Angela Tiegel, born in Hartford, Connecticut; and a newer one for Abigail Bingsley, also born in Hartford. Included in the bundle was a map of the Coeur d’Alene National Forest in northern Idaho. A star marked a location along a service road deep in the heart of the forest.

Also in the bundle was a smaller sealed manila envelope. Jed broke the seal and slipped out a pair of keys, two driver’s licenses for Eric Bingsley and Angela Bingsley, and a fold of hundred-dollar bills totaling ten thousand dollars.

“What’s it for, Daddy?” Lilly said.

Jed tucked all the contents back into the envelope and stuffed it in the front pocket of his pants. “A new life, sweetie. For all of us.”

Trekking down the mountain, Jed led the way. The terrain was rough but not impassable. The soil was soft, but the carpet of pine needles, as well as the stones that jutted from the ground like worn molars, provided some traction.

They’d traveled not even twenty minutes, picking their way along at a pace slower than Jed liked, when he felt something slam into the back of his left shoulder and heard the distinct crack of a gun. The impact threw him forward and spun him around. Immediately he hollered for Karen and Lilly to get down even as another gunshot ripped through the still forest air.