The Portent Page 3

  “Can we help you?” Brian asked, breaking the silence.

  The girl ignored him completely, her gaze fixed on Melissa, taking in every detail of her face. “I can’t believe it. Dr. Kelley—Dr. Melissa Kelley,” she said with alarming clarity. “What are you doing in North Dakota?”

  Melissa’s face was calm. Neither Brian nor her interrogator noticed her clasp her hands in her lap to prevent them from shaking. “I don’t know how, but you have my first name correct,” she bluffed. “But my full name is Melissa Carter. This is my husband, Brian.”

  “I don’t care who he is,” the girl persisted. “You’re Melissa Kelley, from Georgetown University.”

  8

  Coincidences are God’s way of getting our attention.

  —Frederick Buechner

  “Who are you?” demanded Brian, startled. He moved his chair to position himself between the girl and Melissa.

  “Why don’t you ask your wife?” the girl replied defiantly, stepping to the side to speak to Melissa again. “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “If you want to talk, have a seat.” Brian stood up slowly, sensing that he needed to prevent this situation from escalating. He grabbed a chair from the adjacent table and positioned it for the young woman. Melissa said nothing.

  The girl sat down without hesitating, still staring at Melissa, but she didn’t repeat the question. The short break helped Melissa regain some composure. “I’m not sure why you’re so convinced I’m this Melissa Kelley,” she began, “but you’re right about my not knowing who you are.”

  “Figures,” the girl smirked, her voice trembling unexpectedly. She looked down at the table, then cupped her face in her hands and began to sob quietly. Brian and Melissa glanced at each other, mystified but still aghast at the sudden assault on their secret.

  “Do you need help?” Brian asked.

  “Yeah, I need help,” she sniffed, looking at both of them. “I need a buttload of help, but I’m not going to find any. A few weeks ago it was all a thrill. In college we talked all the time about sticking it to the freakin’ feds, but now I can’t see any way out. At least Dr. Kelley would have understood why I did it.”

  “What kind of trouble are you in?” Melissa probed, carefully.

  “I stole something. Actually, I took something my boyfriend gave me. He stole it, although it would be more correct to say he saved it. He’s in jail now, but I got away with it—at least for now.”

  “Who are you running from?” Brian asked.

  “The government, federal agents, FBI—who the hell knows?” She fretted with exasperation. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be on the run?” The girl’s expression lapsed into distress as she fought back more tears.

  Brian and Melissa avoided making eye contact. Both feared the same thing: that a shared connection might encourage the girl’s suspicion. “Brian, why don’t you get her something to drink?” Melissa suggested. “We can talk when she’s ready.”

  The distraught girl nodded, and Brian left the table. He returned in a few minutes with her drink. The girl took it without a thank you and held it in her lap.

  “Brian, this is Becky—Becky Leyden.” Melissa was careful not to telegraph that there was something familiar about the name, though she couldn’t place it. “Fargo is Becky’s home town, but she hasn’t been here for almost five years.”

  The girl nodded, and Melissa waited, prompting the girl to take over. “I moved to California after high school,” the girl explained. “I was majoring in peace and conflict studies at Berkeley—you know, community activism, working for change, empower the 99 percent, ‘screw capitalism,’ and all that.”

  “Then what?” Brian prodded.

  “After graduating I spent the next two years with Greenpeace. That’s where I met my boyfriend. He was in a PhD program in environmental studies—global change ecology. He had a masters in polar studies from the UK. That’s how he got to the Antarctic, where this whole mess erupted.”

  “What kind of trouble can you find in the Antarctic?” Brian asked.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “I might.”

  “I doubt it, though it’s right up Dr. Kelley’s alley.” She glanced at Melissa, who knew she was deliberately referring to her by her actual name, as if probing for an advantage in a battle of wits. “Anyway, I applied to the graduate program in American studies a year ago at Georgetown. I wanted to study right-wing fascist movements in America. Not the normal ones like the Tea Party, though. I’m into—or was into—Nazi occult disciples, the Aryan Nation, the neo-pagan apocalyptic loons.”

  “I wanted to study under Melissa Kelley,” she added, making direct eye contact again with Melissa, “since she’s the best for that sort of thing.”

  Melissa stood her ground, trying not to let on that the brief recounting had jarred her memory. She now remembered voting to accept Becky’s application into the program.

  “But Dr. Kelley disappeared this past summer,” Becky continued, scowling at Melissa. “All the dean would say is that she up and left the department to ‘pursue personal interests.’ So I quit. It was that simple. She was the reason I had applied.”

  She shook her head. “But as awful as that disappointment was, it was nothing compared to what followed after my boyfriend got home from his summer post-doc.”

  “Let me guess,” Brian interrupted. “Your boyfriend brought government property back with him, and they were more or less waiting for him when he got to the States.”

  “Basically,” she conceded. “He had barely been home a day when one of our friends called and told us federal agents had questioned them about him. The feds didn’t know he was living with me; they’d gone to his old apartment.

  “Some of the activist groups I hang with are ready for that sort of harassment, though. They got us out of DC in a car with some cash, but it only lasted a couple weeks. My boyfriend got desperate and tried to steal some money from a convenience store in Chicago, but he got caught. I was waiting for him in the car and took off when the cops arrived. He was still inside. That was our agreement, since I was carrying what they wanted. I had enough gas money left to get here. That was two days ago.”

  “I’m sure they know you’re from North Dakota, so they’ll guess you were heading here. Have you told your parents what’s going on?” asked Brian.

  “My parents moved to Mesa a couple years ago, so I’ve been staying with a friend from high school. It will make me harder to find, but it puts her at risk. They’ll track me if I use a credit card, and I’m out of cash. It’s looking like the end of the road …” Her voice cracked. “I really don’t want to go to prison, but it was the right thing to do. The government is so freaking corrupt. We can’t just let them fabricate history.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Melissa asked.

  The girl took a deep breath and scanned the café for anyone who might be looking in her direction. “About six months ago, my boyfriend’s scientific team in the Antarctic accidentally discovered plans for a Nazi base,” she explained, eyeing Melissa carefully. “It was to be built in Neuschwabenland.”

  Melissa managed to suppress a gasp, but Becky saw the shock in her eyes.

  “My boyfriend was at the station to study ice-core samples,” she continued. “The first core he saw was contaminated. It had a human thumb in it, along with part of some sort of notebook. The core drill had bored right through it all. What are the odds?”

  “That’s …” Brian struggled for a response, amazed at the inconceivable circumstance.

  “Freakin’ incredible, I know,” Becky finished his sentence. “Of course,” she continued, now eyeing both of them carefully, “Antarctica has never been inhabited by humans. That fact, in addition to the notebook, immediately told everyone they had a modern anomaly. None of the researchers or their funding agencies knew of any missing-person report from the region or anywhere in Antarctica. In fact, only one agency—the one to whom my b
oyfriend was ultimately responsible for his funding—reacted.”

  “What agency was that?” Melissa asked.

  “NASA.”

  “NASA?”

  “They’re involved in Antarctic research to study how life might evolve and sustain itself in extreme environments—ecosystems that are, in theory, similar to other planets. But that’s just the official reason of interest. They have other, more obscure connections.”

  “Meaning what?” Brian asked, playing dumb. He and Melissa had an irresistible intuition of where this was going.

  “The Nazis claimed the territory of Neuschwabenland during an expedition from December of 1938 until April of 1939. They wanted land in Antarctica for their whaling fleet, since the whaling industry supplied oil for food products as well as glycerin for creating nitroglycerine, used in explosives. The expedition also had secret military goals. On the return journey the expedition was supposed to check out some isolated islands off the coast of Brazil as potential landing places for the German Navy, especially U-boats.”

  “What did NASA say when they heard about the discovery?”

  “They did what our beloved capitalistic superpower always does: asserted complete ownership and command of the situation. They decreed that all materials related to the discovery were to be impounded and returned to them. No one was to handle them, and the news was to be considered classified.”

  “So what happened?”

  “All the scientists at the station had a look at them,” she said with a satisfied grin. “They were too late in issuing the warning about not contacting the outside world about the news. My boyfriend had already emailed me about it. He knew I was into Nazis and World War II, and he’d seen the notebook fragments before the find was reported. He told me about a word he found in the notebook, but I didn’t learn anything more until he came home. That first email was followed by news of NASA’s orders. Further outside contact was strictly monitored, so we had to avoid the subject. We had no time to work out a code for communicating.”

  “What was the word he sent you?” Brian asked.

  “Belastung.”

  “It means ‘elevator,’ ” Melissa said thoughtfully, her mind running through the implications.

  Becky noticed Melissa’s slip and quickly seized the opening. “Do you remember,” she asked, looking at Melissa, “the lecture you gave at Stanford a few years ago about neo-Nazi apocalyptic beliefs and Siegmeister’s Hollow Earth ideas?”

  “Yes,” Melissa answered, her focus returning.

  “Yeah, so do I, Dr. Kelley.”

  “I—” Melissa stopped herself and closed her eyes. She’d blown it.

  “Can we cut the alias crap now?” Becky asked.

  Brian looked at her face. There was no hint of triumph on it, only relief mixed with resolve. It didn’t help him feel any less exposed. “Look,” he said, “we both know what it’s like to be on the run. We’re in a sort of witness-protection situation.”

  “Hey, I’m not looking to put either of you in danger.”

  “We’re already in danger!” Melissa snapped, though she managed to keep her voice low. “We’re not running from people who operate within the law like you are. The people who are after us are completely off the radar and report to no one. You have no idea.”

  “If you ever mention to anyone that you saw Dr. Kelley here,” Brian said ominously, “you won’t just be trying to avoid prison. You’ll be looking to stay alive, like we are.”

  “He’s not kidding,” Melissa added. “Do you seriously think I’d leave a tenured position at Georgetown to come here if I wasn’t forced to?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “The best thing you can do is turn yourself in and return the fragments,” Melissa continued. “It’s your only chance for any leniency. Like I said, your pursuers function within the law—ours don’t.”

  “You want me to give them what they want so they can just bury it? Don’t you want to see the fragments?”

  “Of course I want to see them,” said Melissa, keeping her voice low, “but you have to return them.” She paused contemplatively. “I have an idea.”

  “What are you thinking?” Brian asked.

  “We need to find some place to make copies of the fragments.”

  “Sounds simple,” said Becky. “I feel sort of stupid that I didn’t think of that. I guess all I’ve been thinking about is getting nabbed. The main library at North Dakota State here in Fargo is open until midnight. It’s close.”

  “Melissa,” Brian cautioned, “if we get caught with her, it’s going to be very hard to maintain our identities here.”

  “We’ll make up something. If the police are ready to grab her and we’re there, we’ll say she’s a poor college student who asked for money for the holidays. It’s a Catholic school, so acts of charity are believable. We’re only in trouble if she gives away my identity.”

  “I won’t do that,” Becky promised. “I know what you’re going through. Besides, I’d never get in bed with the police state.”

  Brian sighed. Becky’s leftist rhetoric was irritating, though her mindset was probably helpful under the circumstances. Still, he was uneasy. “No offense, but we don’t have anything beyond your assurances.”

  “Yes, we do,” Melissa offered. “If we find out she’s said anything—and no doubt, we would—I’ll destroy the copies of the fragments. They aren’t worth our lives. If she really cares about the truth being preserved, she’ll turn herself in, return the fragments, and keep her mouth shut.”

  Melissa stood up and put on her coat. “It’s time to choose. If you ever want these fragments to see the light of day, you’ll follow the plan. Otherwise, we never saw you, and you’re on your own. You’ll get caught, and it will all be worth nothing.”

  “Let’s go,” Becky said, pushing her chair back from the table.

  “Not so fast,” said Brian. “We don’t want to be seen leaving together. Melissa and I will leave and go to our car. Wait a few minutes, then meet us there. It’s the burgundy Taurus at the end of the back parking lot. It will be idling.”

  “Got it.”

  Brian and Melissa left the table and headed outside. Becky waited dutifully, as instructed, before leaving.

  That’s right. Don’t miss your ride, thought the balding man across the room. He calmly but quickly took out his ear buds and turned off his portable listening device, which was designed to appear, to the untrained eye, as a normal iPhone. He sipped the last of his mocha, watched the girl exit, then put on his coat and followed.

  9

  There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.

  —J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

  “We should scan the photocopies as a backup,” Brian said, removing his coat as he and Melissa walked through the door of their home.

  “Good idea. I’ll be right downstairs.”

  Brian opened the door off the main hallway that led down to their finished basement. The space was decorated to appear as a large family room, but it actually served as Brian’s room—or, as Melissa like to refer to it, his cloister. Early on, he and Melissa had decided to make it look like the two of them shared her room, creating the environment any visitors would expect. Brian kept a few items of clothing downstairs in a small closet, along with his library and desk. Although the space had a small room that could have served as a bedroom, they had decided to use it for storage—again to conceal the fact that Brian slept downstairs on the couch.

  Brian was at his desk waiting for his computer to boot up when Melissa came down the steps. She grabbed a pen from the desk and numbered each of the pages, handing them in turn to Brian, who fed them into the scanner.

  “Make sure you give them some sort of innocuous file name.”

  “Right.”

  Once they had saved and backed up the files, they spread the sheets of paper across the
available space of Brian’s desktop. There were four pages in all. Each page held four or five circles that the core drill had cut from a notebook. In most cases the fragments held content on both sides. Some fragments had words on them that had been cut mid-sentence from their context; others had portions of what were apparently blueprints.

  Melissa and Brian had no idea if the circles could be aligned in such a way as to match fronts with backs, since Becky had admitted she and her boyfriend had exercised no care in looking at the fragments in a specific order. The girl had also divulged that the material in her possession was not the entirety of the notebook content. Her boyfriend had pulled random circle fragments from the notebook material thinking that no one would notice if a few had been removed.

  “There’s the one with ‘Belastung’—that one, at the top,” Melissa pointed. “The ink has blurred a bit, but you can make it out. And I’m guessing that drawing underneath is part of a diagram for the elevator.”

  Brian nodded.

  “What do you make of these?” Brian asked. “Squares and triangles—are they part of an architectural drawing?”

  “Maybe.”

  They continued to examine the images, particularly those that had words.

  “Here’s another legible one,” Melissa said, pointing. “It might be ‘Strahlturb,’ if that last word that’s cut off is ‘turbine.’ Can you look up ‘Strahlturbine’? I don’t know what the first part would mean.”

  “Yep.” Brian quickly located a German-English dictionary on the web. “Got it. Get this: It means ‘jet turbine.’ ”

  “ ‘Jet turbine’?” Melissa repeated, puzzled. “The German expedition was in the late 1930s. Was there anything like that then?”