Winston Chase and the Theta Factor Page 6

  After all, Bledsoe knew where and when to find a spaceship and someone who, when properly motivated, could teach them how to use it.

  Emboldened by these thoughts, Bledsoe found it easy to ignore the clench of queasiness he felt when looking down at Claude’s exposed brain and its myriad of wires.

  “Here’s the way it works,” he said. “It’s like playing twenty questions. I ask you things, and your brain answers with associations and images.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell you,” muttered Claude.

  “I know,” said Bledsoe. “That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to say a word. Now, some of these images will be random, and some will be memories. My lovely assistant here knows how to interpret the signals to tell which is which.”

  The nurse kept her gaze focused on the several scrolling graphs displayed on her main monitor, although the pinch in her eyes told Bledsoe that, despite whatever she might think about him, she viewed this process as a challenge. Good.

  Bledsoe pointed to another monitor perched atop a rolling cart. Currently, it showed nothing but random static. He nodded at the nurse. She typed in several keystrokes, then set her hand on a mouse-like device that featured a black ball she nestled into her cupped palm. She gently moved her hand about, and the static gave way to curving shapes and vague forms. Colors swirled on the screen as the static receded into an ashen and black background.

  “Now watch, Claude,” said Bledsoe. “This will blow your mind. Ready? Elephant.”

  Almost instantly, a shape appeared on the screen. At first, it was little more than a blob, but with a few keystrokes from her left hand and some twists of her right, the nurse managed to focus the image. The background brightened into a dirty white, and against this stood the profile of what was unmistakably a gray elephant. The image jittered and flitted unsteadily, then changed to a close view of an elephant’s face, revealing the top of its trunk, tusks, and one eye set into a landscape of thick, wrinkled skin.

  Claude’s eyes grew wide with wonder and dismay.

  “A priori,” said the nurse.

  “Right,” replied Bledsoe, enjoying being the scientist in a lab again despite all of the pressure on him. “These aren’t memories. They’re just image associations your brain carries around — sort of a template, an idea of elephant-ness you use to make sense of the concept and match against a real elephant that you might see. But if I give you an experience association to match with the a priori concept, like—”

  “Devlin,” Claude murmured as he stared into Bledsoe’s face.

  The monitor flickered and cycled through various incoherent shapes and colors. The assistant’s hands twitched at her controls, and a second later she managed to pull a scene from the swirling chaos.

  “Memory,” she declared as she scanned her various graphs.

  Bledsoe didn’t need to be told. He recognized himself, Amanda, and Theo, and he knew that the small, formica-topped table they sat around had been in Area X’s Building C common room. A cigarette dangled from the younger Bledsoe’s lips, and he was smiling. All three of them held cards and had stacks of poker chips before them. The way they looked at one another with easy familiarity and friendship made Bledsoe cringe.

  “I think you’re bluffing,” said Theo, and his voice was thin and filled with echoes, barely audible through the monitor’s speakers.

  “I think your optimism is going to get you into trouble,” said the younger Bledsoe, and all three of them laughed.

  Present day Bledsoe forced a tired sigh. “Janice, apparently our patient didn’t receive enough of that—” He waved a hand at one of the IV bags. “—penta-something-sulfate to make him more cooperative. Can we increase the dose? And…”

  Bledsoe grabbed a white hand towel off of a nearby cart and draped it over Claude’s eyes.

  “Fewer distractions,” he said flatly. “Now, if you’re done reminiscing, let’s get to work. Remember the Alpha Machine in your hands.”

  A second later, there it was on the screen, all four pieces even clearer than Bledsoe could remember them himself. He recalled that there had been two rings and two pieces that clung together within them — and wasn’t there also a silver ball that didn’t match the others? — but he’d forgotten their markings and exact dimensions. The Chase boy had the silver ring, and it had to be one of the two smaller pieces in that coffee can he’d found. Bledsoe decided to start with what he knew and explore how to probe Claude’s mind.

  The screen’s image wavered, and Bledsoe saw hands pulling apart the Alpha Machine into its separate components. An instant later, they were back together again.

  “Memory,” said the nurse.

  “Good,” Bledsoe said. “Where did you hide that silver ring?”

  The monitor went black, then filled with static again. Strange. Of course, Bledsoe had expected that this would be a difficult process.

  “Claude, you hid the silver, ring-shaped Alpha Machine piece. You put it somewhere. You had it in your hands and set it in something.”

  Out of the static, the rough shape of a brown box with open top flaps appeared.

  A priori, mouthed the assistant.

  “A box,” said Bledsoe. “What kind of box?”

  The white towel puffed outward over Claude’s mouth, possibly with the effort of him resisting the recollection. It wouldn’t matter.

  A combination lock materialized on the front of the cardboard box, and its flaps disappeared.

  “Remember putting the piece in the box,” said Bledsoe.

  A black counter appeared. Hands gripped the sides of the box, which narrowed and elongated. The cardboard surface suddenly changed into dark metal, back into cardboard, then back again into metal. The combination lock transformed into a keyhole. The object was now unmistakably a safe deposit box.

  The hands flipped open the box’s lid and set a large, silvered ring inside of it. A moment later, one of the hands placed several photographs next to the Alpha Machine piece.

  Bledsoe grinned. He knew they were making progress, because he recognized that safe deposit box, even though it had held the larger ring Winston now carried, not the smaller one the boy would now be seeking. No doubt, this was going to take a while.

  A sharp vibration against Bledsoe’s thigh startled him. He jumped slightly and was glad that Claude’s eyes were covered.

  As he fished the phone from his pocket, the old man croaked, “If you’re busy, we can—”

  “Yes?” Bledsoe interjected as he put the device to his ear and stepped away from the table.

  He had to pull the phone away slightly as a wave of metallic grinding and screeching spilled from the speaker.

  “Hello? Sir?” yelled a voice through the chaos.

  “This is Bledsoe,” he enunciated louder than intended.

  Some of the noise at the other end receded, Bledsoe guessed that most of the noise assaulting him was the roar of a small engine, probably an outboard motor.

  “Sir, this is Agent Thompson, with the scanning crew. We have two…”

  A rubbing sound, like sandpaper across a microphone, filled the connection, and Bledsoe heard the man’s muted voice call, “Kill that for a second, will ya?” When the caller’s hand pulled away from his phone, the background noise was much quieter.

  “Sorry, sir,” the man said. “We have two definite locations on alpha emission. One is weak, but we have a strong signal that we’re right on top of.”

  Bledsoe felt triumph surge through him. “Well, get it!”

  “We’re working on it, sir. Divers are already down, and I’m sourcing a local dredge as soon as their office opens.”

  A dredge? Divers? Bledsoe’s thrill of victory darkened with confusion.

  “Agent Thompson, do you have the Chase boy?”

  This time, Bledsoe did allow himself a glance at the one-way mirror.

  “Negative, sir. Not unless he’s with whatever is creating this emission signal at the bottom of the Columbia River.”


  8

  The Curious Curator

  “Is that a Japanese bomb?” asked Winston, more quietly than he intended.

  “Why, yes,” said Lane. One of his eyebrows raised while the corners of his mouth turned down. The man waited as Winston edged closer to it.

  “What’s a bomb doing here? Is it…you know.”

  “Armed and dangerous?” answered Lane. “No, it’s been—” He paused, and again his mouth made that contemplative frown. “It’s been disarmed.”

  Winston reached out and gently rested his fingers atop the bomb’s point. Immediately, he felt the increasingly familiar buzz in his skin and down into his bones. It wasn’t sharp like a static discharge or forceful like vibrating. Rather, it felt almost like liquid heat simultaneously flowing into and out of him. Winston gave a slight involuntary gasp.

  “You OK?”

  Winston nodded but dodged the question. “Why does the museum have a bomb?”

  Lane cocked his head thoughtfully. “Little-known fact,” he said as he hefted a box of photos onto a counter and began sorting its contents into two stacks. “Oregon is the only state in the continental forty-eight to have been bombed by the enemy during World War II. If you go take the Fort Stevens tour, you’ll hear about how a Japanese sub surfaced in the mouth of the Columbia River and fired seventeen shells over the wall one night. No casualties, and the Japanese fled before the soldiers could even get their pants on. But nobody talks about the attack down by Brookings in September of 1942.”

  Winston turned to watch Lane as he talked, but most of his attention was already wondering when and how he was going to get inside the bomb. Maybe he could hide away somewhere and wait for Lane to go home.

  “America had been in the war officially for a year, and everyone was jittery about possible attacks on the coast. You have to remember that Pearl Harbor had been bombed just the prior December, and the U.S. was cranking up its war machine as fast as the country could manage. The Japanese wanted to do anything possible to cause fear and mayhem. So up floats this B1-type submarine before sunrise, the I-25, about 350 feet long, the same monster that fired on Fort Stevens. They assembled a seaplane on the deck under cover of darkness and launched it just as the first rays touched the coast.”

  Lane was right. Despite living in Oregon his whole life, Winston had never heard this story. “So they bombed tiny little Brookings? Why not Portland or Seattle?”

  The curator shook his head. “Because the intent was to demoralize and draw off resources. They wanted to set the forest on fire. They didn’t realize that it had rained the night before — at the Oregon coast.”

  A forest. Bingo.

  “Imagine that.”

  Lane arched an eyebrow and chuckled. “Anyway. The pilot, a very nice man named Nubuo Fujita as it turns out, dropped two 168-pound bombs into the woods. One detonated. It made some smoke and got spotted by a fire lookout. And there you have it: the only enemy bombing of the continental U.S. during the war.”

  Somehow, the bomb before Winston seemed both more and less menacing. He ran his palm slowly around the cone, trying somehow to sense the device’s history and the people who had played a part in it.

  “How do you know the pilot was nice?”

  “Because he returned to Brookings four years ago and gave the city his family’s 400-year-old samurai sword as a token of friendship and apology. I drove all the way down there and shook his hand myself.” A distant look came into Lane’s eyes, both fond and sad. He started to turn away from Winston, then paused. “Kids now don’t know, but that’s how it is in war. People are people, and a lot of good people can get pushed into doing a lot of bad things.”

  Winston thought of Bledsoe and suspected there might be a little more to it than that. Unlike Lane, he knew what was coming. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. He was no historian or expert on anything, but the sense he had from listening to his mom and others was that 1941 was the last time America had gone to war for the right reasons — to fight for good rather than greed. Maybe it was no coincidence that the struggle Winston faced now, a fight for the same noble cause, spawned from the same era.

  As if sensing Winston’s mood shift, Lane took a deep breath and sighed. “Well, it’s lunchtime for me, and I can’t leave you here unattended. Have you eaten?”

  “Yeah,” said Winston, then remembered that old-school guys sometimes found lack of formality rude. “Yes, sir. Down at the burger place.”

  “That’s too bad.” He gave Winston back his galleon photo. “I thought I might treat you.”

  Winston groaned inwardly. He hated passing up free food. Then again, the curator seemed like he might be getting a little too curious.

  “That’s really generous of you, but I don’t want to tie you down. You’ve obviously got a lot to do today.”

  And I have to figure out what to do about this bomb, he thought.

  “I did,” said Lane. “Now, I’m not so sure. I might take the rest of the day off.”

  With that, Winston knew that things had definitely turned dangerous. He could imagine Lane picking up the phone and dialing 911, or whatever they did in 1966, and having Officer Neuman give him a personal tour of Astoria — from his cruiser’s back seat. And this time, he didn’t have Shade to help him escape.

  “I should probably get back to my mom,” said Winston. “She’s got a migraine. Some food would probably do her some good. I’ll grab some soup or something to take to her.”

  “Your mother?” Lane stepped closer to Winston, uncomfortably close. “Is your mother here?”

  The curator’s head craned forward. Thick spectacles already made his eyes bulge, but Winston thought he looked especially anxious. Winston began to back up slowly toward the lobby, hoping he looked more casual than concerned.

  “In a motel down the highway a little bit.”

  “Which one?”

  “I — I don’t know. Past a couple of curves. Big red sign.”

  Winston continued to back up. Lane kept right after him.

  “I can give you a ride,” said the curator. “My car is only a block away.”

  “That’s really nice and all, but…you’ve got lunch. And believe me, with that migraine, my mom is not up for visitors right now.”

  Past the point of caring if he was rude, Winston turned his back on Lane and strode quickly across the gallery. Three steps took him down into the front lobby, and then he was at the door, sliding back the chain and drawing the bolt.

  “Why the hurry?” asked Lane, appearing next to him. “You’re very jumpy all of a sudden.”

  “I—”

  Winston drew a blank. If he could evade capture until nightfall, he might be able to break in and figure out how to disassemble the bomb. That should leave at least four hours to get the Alpha Machine piece out of the bomb, haul butt out to the bridge, and do whatever bit of lunacy was necessary before sunrise. Yes, that made more sense.

  Lane reached the exit just ahead of Winston and slid the door bolt shut again.

  “Why did you do that?” Winston asked through his rising panic.

  “Just hold on,” said Lane. “Let me think.”

  Only he wasn’t thinking. He was studying Winston’s face, looking to Winston’s left side, then his right, then more closely at his eyes.

  “Yes,” he whispered. “You have your mother’s eyes, don’t you?”

  That was about the last thing Winston expected to hear. “What?”

  “I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be honest. You tell me the truth, and I’ll tell you the truth. Understand?”

  Winston only nodded.

  Lane rubbed his hands together, as if he’d suddenly grown cold. He seemed more stooped, more tired, but also a bit scared.

  “How did you get here?” the curator asked slowly.

  “We dro—”

  Lane flicked his head to the side and made his hands into fists. “The truth.”

  Winston suddenly felt very cold himself.
Was this guy part of Project Majestic? If he was a government agent, Winston was as good as dead.

  “A boat,” said Winston. “I fell off a boat on the Columbia and swam ashore. And that is the truth, I swear.”

  “No mother?”

  Winston shook his head. Lane sagged even further, but he quickly recovered. His gaze was sharp and demanding.

  “You’re not answering the question completely,” he said.

  “But I answered it, so my turn. What is your deal? Why are you acting so freaky?”

  “Because for the first time in a very, very long time, I’m going to tell someone my real name,” said the curator. “I’ll give you a hint.” He leaned in close, even though they were the only ones in the building. “Vincent was my middle name I never used. My first name is Theodore. Friends called me Theo.”

  The guy was mental. Winston had no idea what he was blathering on about. He hunched his shoulders with confusion, not knowing what to say.

  “Friends,” said the man, “in Nevada.”

  Then it clicked.

  Winston remembered the drive with his mom a couple of days ago, right after this whole crazy mess had started. They’d been driving to the bank. She had described her history, her research, and how she’d come to Area X and made friends with three men. There was Bledsoe, whom she didn’t like or trust. There had been Claude, Winston’s father. And then…

  “Tremaine,” breathed Winston. “Oh, my God. You’re Theo Tremaine.”

  9

  Alyssa Enlisted

  Alyssa hardly remembered riding home, head spinning, worry and fury building within her. She needed time to think. And there was obviously no way she would be contacting Shade’s mom, at least not in the near future.