Authors: Andrew Mayne
“
H
ELLO,
A
GENT
B
LACKWOOD.”
His voice is just as deep and confident as I remember. “Have you seen the contents of the video?”
“Yes . . . Mr. . . . What should I call you?”
“You may call me Mr. Oberst. And what is your professional opinion?”
“My professional opinion? Your pope is acting nuts.” There's no other way to put it. He's one
Drudge Report
headline away from a global scandal.
“Yes. There's cause for concern. Do you have a possible explanation?”
“Other than a psychological breakdown?”
“I can assure you that this man doesn't know a word of the language he spoke, let alone how to string a sentence together.”
Without Gerald's technological discovery, I'd find this hard to believe myself. “What does he say happened?”
Oberst hesitates. “It's a complicated question.”
“How so?” I don't have any patience for this kind of verbal dancing. Lives are at stake. “You ask the man what happened and he tells you. It's really not that hard, I do it a hundred times a day.”
“Yes, I imagine you do.” He pauses. “These things must be broached more delicately. There is a chance for people to misinterpret the response. Words may be taken out of context.”
God, more insider politics.
“You approached me.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Our friend says he heard the words inside his head in his own voice. He wasn't aware that he was repeating them out loud. In fact, he wasn't quite sure what was taking place. It was . . . It was as if someone else had control over his speech.”
And thus the fear over the identity of the “someone.”
“But he does remember the experience?”
“Yes. Vividly.”
“I don't suppose someone hijacked a teleprompter?”
“No. On these occasions, one wasn't even present. We considered all of the obvious possibilities.”
Obvious is a subjective term. “Is he on any medication?”
“Nothing that would cause this. After the first episode we began monitoring everything that went into and out of his body.”
I need to rule out the obvious conclusions first. “Does he have a hearing aid?”
“Yes. But we checked it for interference and in the second speech he went without.”
“Are these the only times it's happened? And they were all in public?”
“Yes, and mostly. The second time was with a group of about a hundred people in Majorca. The third time was in a museum in Vienna where he was speaking at the opening of an art exchange with the Vatican gallery.
“After the first incident, we've been certain to thoroughly search everyone who comes near him. We've also used scanners to listen for illicit transmissions.”
“Anything?”
“Just cellular signals.”
“And this has never happened in the privacy of his own quarters or in parts of the Vatican with no public access?”
“No. Never.”
This suggests a method that can't work when security is too tight. “Hmm . . .”
“Why is that interesting to you?”
“I don't know yet. But it simplifies things to a degree. Can you send me any photographs or video you may have of these locations? Any shots or information about the crowd would be helpful.”
“Do you think there's a connection to what happened with Reverend Groom?”
“I don't know. We think he may have been coerced to pull the trigger. He may not have thought he was possessed. We may never know.”
“Interesting. Hold on a moment.” Oberst muffles the phone. There's the faint sound of someone talking. “Would you have any suggestion for how to stop this?”
“If I had to guess? Earplugs.”
“Earplugs?” he asks, confused.
“We think Groom was being extorted to do what he did by someone hacking a radio receiver in his ear. In the pope's case, we think either the sound could have been projected off his face in sync with his speech. Or it's possible he was somehow hearing his own voice, modulated and time-delayed, played back at him.”
“I'm not sure I understand.”
“Try it yourself, it's very uncomfortable. You can use a sound mixer to delay your voice a half second or so. If you try to listen to this as you talk, it confuses the speech center of our brain. If you alter the sound and then play the words to the person in this way, they try to form them with their mouths. You can shape someone's speech in this manner.
“Watching this video, I'd guess that's what might be happening. It's some kind of psy ops trick. A mechanical device involving speakers. But you said you searched everyone?”
“In the second and third speeches. Hold on . . .” He speaks to the other person. “So you're confident that there is a scientific explanation?”
“Yes. Very. We think there are a couple explanations. The actual method may be different, but I'm sure we only have to ask the right questions.”
Oberst speaks to the other person for several minutes. I scan Gerald's emails about sound projection and voice shaping. The more I read, the more this theory fits the bill. It also has the sting of being the same trick that got Marty killed. Marta has decided to use it to discredit the pope and make him fear for his sanity.
“Agent Blackwood, we'd like you to come to Rome.”
Rome? Is he kidding? “I don't think that's possible. Technically, I'm not assigned to this case right now.”
“It would be a great service to us all if you could come here and share your explanation in person. It could also be very advantageous to you personally.”
I'm not sure he understands how my life works. “Like I said, I don't think that's practical.”
“I can have a jet ready for you in a few hours. The flight is quite pleasant. I made it this morning.”
“I'm speaking to your Mr. Lamont this afternoon.”
“After that then? Surely your superiors would let you take the time off for this?”
“It's not about that.” I don't like their poorly veiled attempt at wielding power. It might impress some, but it only annoys me. As far as I'm concerned, once we get done with the X-20 matter, I plan on pursuing Marty's murder. And that means finding out how involved Oberst's boss is.
“You can't be convinced?” He asks with the hint that it's merely a challenge.
“I'm sorry.”
“Hold on.” Oberst whispers to the other person in the room.
“All right. We appreciate your assistance. I'll send you the information about the venues in which his holiness has spoken.”
I can't end this call without pointing out the elephant in the room. “I'd also like to know what happened the night Marty Rodriguez died.”
“That's not relevant,” replies Oberst, a little more curtly than usual. “Thank you and good-bye.”
Gerald gives me a look when I hang up. “What's up?”
“Ever have one of those conversations where there's clearly another person in the room calling the shots?” It's just become obvious to me whom Oberst was speaking to.
“Yes. Annoying. Who was it?”
“I think it was the pope.” I set my phone on the table and stare into space, wondering what the hell I got myself into.
A
BOUT TWO WEEKS
after our drive to Tahoe, I was awoken one night by the rumbling sound of a truck engine in the back driveway of Dad's workshop. I crawled out of bed and crept through the house to the kitchen window to see what the noise was about.
Dad and Uncle Darius were pulling a large wooden crate out of the back of a pickup truck. Uncle Darius had been gone for several days so I rushed out onto the driveway to greet him.
“Uncle Darius!” I shouted.
He looked up from the crate they were struggling to lift and smiled. Dad scowled at me. “Go back to bed!”
Hurt, as he rarely raised his voice at me, I ran back inside and defiantly climbed onto the counter in the darkened kitchen. I listened to them argue for several minutes. I couldn't quite make out the words.
“Spying?” barked Grandfather from behind me.
I turned around to face him. “What's in the crate?” My curiosity was stronger than my fear of being caught.
“It's not important.”
Obviously it was, but I knew better than to challenge him on matters like that. I climbed down from the counter and padded toward the hallway.
“Jessica,” called my grandfather. He was half lit by the light of the driveway through the window.
“Yes?”
“Do you know the difference between sheep and wolves?” he asked.
“Wolves eat sheep?”
“Yes. What else?”
“Sheep are gentle?”
“Gentleness isn't always a virtue.” He leaned on the counter, staring out the window into the dark. “The difference between a wolf and a sheep is that a sheep will stand by and watch a wolf devour its own lambs. If you threaten a wolf's pup, it'll rip your throat out. Wolves are foul, vicious creatures. But it's better to be a wolf pup than a dead lamb. Now good night.”
I returned to my bed with some horrible images churning in my head, but they were nothing compared with what I saw early that morning when I got up before everyone else to go to Dad's workshop. I can never remember a time when my curiosity didn't get the better of me.
Bigger than a toy chest, the crate was in the middle of the floor. Made of wood planks, there were foreign words stamped on its side and I stood there trying to imagine what was inside.
I could see from the scraped wood where Dad and Darius had opened it last night then sealed it back up with four small nails. I grabbed a hammer off the workbench and clumsily pried the lid off the top of the box using all my weight as leverage.
I had to know.
The box was stuffed with straw. I pulled fistfuls aside to see what Uncle Darius had gone away to get. At first I thought it was a ceramic vase because of all the padding.
When I pulled away more straw, I revealed fine black hair. Below it was the thin brown skin of a scalp.
A body.
I didn't scream. We had shelves of fake body parts in our house
from the show. I could look at this dispassionately as if it was a severed head I'd placed into the magic guillotine bucket.
On another level I registered the dried-out leather smell invading my nostrils. This wasn't latex and rubber. This was rotted flesh and blood.
That was the first time, but sadly not the last, I experienced a dead body. I say experience, because the scent penetrates you.
This was a dead thing.
A dead person.
Uncle Darius stole a body.
I replaced the lid and shoved it back on the crate and hammered the nails in the exact spots, using small strokes so I wouldn't wake anyone.
I crawled back into bed, still trying to understand everything. I knew this had something to do with me and the man that had me followed after school.
The corpse was old and withered. I couldn't imagine that it was anyone Uncle Darius would have killed. This was an old thing dug up from some cemeteryâa cemetery in a faraway place.
Grandfather and Dad had been talking about things late into the night over the oak table. They always waited until I was in bed before they had their discussions, and even if I didn't creep out to my usual spots the sound of their arguing voices carried all the way into my room.
A few weeks after the Buick followed me, we started receiving calls at all hours. I picked up the first time and heard a man panting. After I described this to Dad, I was forbidden from answering the phone. Grandfather had them all unhooked except for the one in his study. The calls kept coming. One time I heard him yelling at the man on the phone. A little while later the phone rang again and Grandfather started screaming, only to stop abruptly when he realized it was someone he knew.
I imagined it was Uncle Darius calling from some exotic location. I may have heard the word Sicily. It's hard to remember.
The body was real, I was sure of that.
I also vividly remembered the previous night, when my grandfather told me I was being raised by wolves.
J
ACKSON
L
AMONT SMIRKS
as he's led into the room on the other side of the thick glass divider. “At least you're more fun to look at than my lawyer,” he says as he picks up the receiver.
During the half hour it took for them to dig him out of lockup, I'd been reading the file on him. With short-cropped hair and Air Force insignia tattoos emerging from the sleeve of the orange jumpsuit on his left arm, he now looks like a weathered version of the clean-cut young man in his government file folder. Currently serving time for intent to distribute, his life has been one spiral after another.
Kicked out of the Air Force for possession of controlled substances, Lamont knocked around various jobs ranging from telephone solicitation to hauling portable toilets. Probably seeking something more out of life than verbal abuse and trucking other people's waste, he was let go from the telephone job under suspicion of stealing credit card numbers.
I get to the point. “Martha, or Marta, Rodriguez. You know her?”
Lamont gives me a long stare. His eyes dart to the door where the guard went through. “What about her?”
“Do you know her?”
His eyes narrow on me. “There may have been a person by that name in my Air Force unit.”
Marta was discharged eight months after Lamont. She was let go with a general discharge, the kind they give to somebody they suspect is up to no good, but don't quite have the goods on. “It says here she was interviewed by the Air Force Security Forces when you were apprehended with controlled narcotics.”
“Narcotics. There's a funny word. Do you know how much they found on me?”
“I'm sure I can find it here somewhere . . .”
He waves his hand in the air. “I'll save you the trouble. Less than what they send a pilot up with when he's in combat.”
“I don't think the pilots generally intend to distribute while they're in aerial combat.”
He shrugs. “Why are you here?”
“Marta Rodriguez. What can you tell me about her?”
“Nothing.” He smiles smugly.
“What if I speak with your prosecuting attorney?”
“Don't waste your time. If he agrees to knock the time in half, I'll still be seventy before I get out of jail. That's assuming, of course, she doesn't have me killed first.”
“She can do that in here?” I already know the answer, but I want him to tell me what he thinks she's capable of.
“What do you think? Let me just go on the official record as saying she's a wonderful human being.”
“You were arrested with two kilos of cocaine in the trunk of your car. It doesn't say where you got it from.”
“It was planted.” He rolls his eyes.
“Of course. How's that defense working for you? What if I told you we found a fingerprint on one of the bags that belonged to Marta?”
“Bullshit.” His eyes lock on me. I know I have his attention.
It's a calculated lie. I gamble that he still thinks the X-20 operation is a complete mystery to us. “An informant, one of the drone pilots, made sure she touched the bags before it went over the border.”
“An informant?” he asks skeptically.
“Former Air Force. Marta contacted him like you. I'm sure you know who I'm talking about.” I want to vaguely insinuate Deland, but I'm not sure if Lamont knows he's already dead.
“If I talk, she kills me. I was clumsy and got caught. That didn't fly so well.”
Marta has been cleaning house. She knows it's only a matter of time before we work our way to someone who knows her. “She's going to try to kill you whether you talk or not. If you do talk, there's another level of protection. You don't get mixed in with the regular population.”
“They can still get to you.”
“It's much, much harder in the federal system. If you have a lot to say, we can put you in witness protection. The only people who get killed there are the ones that stray. Keep your nose clean and you'll be fine.”
He shakes his head. “I don't know. They found a lot of shit in my car.”
“Yes. Yes they did. They also want Marta for something much more serious.” In the back of my mind I'm putting together an arrangement for Winstone. The DEA can get a solid sentence for Lamont; not the lifetime they want, but five years or so, and we can get enough information to connect Marta to the bombing attempt and X-20.
“More serious than being a trafficker?”
“Let me put it this way, if you'd known where Bin Laden was hiding, they'd have flown you out of here on Air Force One. We let people operate poppy fields in Afghanistan just so we can get intel on Al Qaeda. Marta is a terrorist now. We're not above making deals with drug lords to go after them.”
“What will this information get me?”
“Probably a much shorter stay here. You'll still be able to remember why you wanted out.”
Lamont mulls this over. I can tell he was already fearing the prospect of Marta reaching him inside of here. “I need to talk to my lawyer.”
“Is this an attorney provided to you by the state? Or is it someone recommended to you?”
“Why?”
“If this is someone Marta's people suggested, you're screwed. They don't hire attorneys they can't buy body and soul.”
“So you're telling me not to talk to an attorney? I'm not sure that's legal.”
“I'm saying you probably need new counsel. Ask to speak to the DA directly. Ask him point-blank if you should get a different attorney.”
“Why the hell would he give me a straight answer?”
“If he says âyes' and agrees to a potential delay, then he's shooting straight. That's assuming he thinks you'll be more likely to make a deal with a different attorney.”
“Meanwhile, you want me to tell you everything?”
“I don't care about how you got stopped or what happened. I need to know about Marta. See the explosion on the news in DC?”
“Yeah?”
“That was her. There were over a hundred people in that building. Thankfully, none of them were hurt and the building is still standing. You're still alive because you're not worth her attention, for the moment. So help me out. Who is she, really?”