Sky Ghost (8 page)

But not this pilot—this very surprising individual. He did it completely differently. As soon as he went into his hover, he simply cut the engine way back and the Pogo fell—backward—toward the big circle.

And just as everyone was convinced it would crash, the pilot cranked the engine again, in effect putting on the brakes. Then he touched down without so much as a bump.

It was such a piece of artistry, some people applauded. But then the security troops arrived and the crowd scattered.

The pilot climbed out—and accepted a brief spate of renewed applause. Then he met the security people at the bottom of the access ladder and went calmly to the paddy wagon. The security truck slowly began to drive away.

The phone in the sixth floor office rang a moment later. X answered it. It was the base’s top security officer.

“We have him,” was the message. “Now what do we do with him?”

It was a good question. X and Z looked at each other. Neither wanted to take on the responsibility of this strange case. What the hell was this guy? A villain? A hero? A spy? A madman? They’d be months trying to figure it out.

No, neither one wanted to get involved in this thing, not so close to what should be the end of the war.

They had better things to do.

So it called for a quick decision, like many quick decisions made when victory was pending. What would they do with this man, now back in their custody?

“I say send him to Sing Sing,” X declared. “With the rest of the freaks.”

“Sounds good to me,” Z replied. He picked up the phone again.

Zoltan was astonished. “You’re going to send that man to prison?” he asked. He couldn’t believe it.

But they ignored him.

“Make arrangements to transport the prisoner to Ossining Military Prison,” Z told the base security officer. He listened for a moment, then cupped the phone and said: “They want to know on what charge?”

X and Z had to think another moment. “Theft of government property?” X suggested.

“Sure…or something,” Z agreed.

Zoltan lit another cigarette. “I think this is a big mistake,” he said. “This man, he is not just an ordinary person. I mean, look at what he did here today. There are some pilots that still can’t land a Pogo and they’ve been flying them for 10 years!”

X finally turned back towards him and fixed him in his steely gaze. “You want to join him in the clink, Swami?”

Zoltan’s heart went into his throat. He had no doubt the OSS agent could get him locked up just as quickly as this strange Hunter character.

So he took the cigarette out of his teeth and drew a line across his mouth. The message was clear: his lips were sealed.

“Theft of government property,” Z said into the phone. “Give him, um, let’s see. Ten years…OK. Bye.”

Z then gathered his notebooks and put them into his briefcase.

“Well, that’s that,” he said, snapping the case closed with a flourish. “Where are we going to eat dinner?”

“Your choice,” X replied, getting his coat and hat.

At that moment they both looked up at their other colleague.

Agent Y hadn’t said two words during the whole time. He was standing at the big picture window now, looking out on the huge air base, watching as the armored police wagon took the strange man away to prison.

“Problems, my friend?” X asked him.

But Agent Y didn’t really hear the question. He turned around and looked at them both, his face blank, as if he was coming out of a trance himself.

“You know what’s really strange about all this?” he asked them.

They both shook their heads.

“The strange thing is,” Agent Y told them, “I think I might know that man.”

T
HE ENORMOUS GERMAN BATTLE
cruiser slipped into the German-occupied Spanish port of Cadiz at exactly midnight.

The ship had been at sea for nearly two months, a long time these days, and this stop was to be the last of its last patrol. The ship captain’s orders to his crew were to cool off the double-reaction engines, destroy all sensitive documents and await further orders.

In days past, when the cruiser returned from patrol, families of the crew members would be on hand to welcome the vessel back. Sometimes there was recorded music, speeches, a small celebration. Reunions. Then preparation for the next cruise would begin.

But there was no celebration this time. No loved ones, no mechanical oompah-band pumping out reverb polkas. This time the return of the battle cruiser had been kept a tightly guarded secret. The port itself had been sealed off. Armed soldiers lined all the docks, the harbors, the roofs of nearby buildings. They blocked off all roads leading in and out of the city itself. A curfew from sundown to sunrise had been declared. Violators would be shot on sight.

These were very strange edicts for the port city of Cadiz, or for any part of Occupied Spain at all. The German Army had rolled into Spanish territory shortly after the occupation of France in 1940 and had been here ever since. Nearly two generations of people of mixed Spanish and German blood had come and gone, and indeed Spain was now more German than Spanish. The people felt this way, and so it was unusual for them to be treated as their forebears had been 50 years before. Curfews, soldiers in the streets, orders to shoot on sight—these things had not been seen in these parts for nearly a half a century.

But then again, how often did a messiah arrive?

The ship was drawn up to its berth by the automated docking system, run by the enormous Mark V computer housed in the largest building in the port. Save for a few of the ship’s top officers, and a squad of SSS guards, the crew was confined to quarters. All windows were shuttered. Absolutely no conversation would be permitted, electronic or otherwise.

A convoy of armored vehicles was waiting at the dock. Personnel carriers mostly, three high-speed Tiger-7 supertanks were also in evidence. These frightful machines carried a crew of 10, an enormous 188-mm gun and could travel nearly 80 miles per hour on the open road. These three were just about the last ones left in the German inventory.

There was a stretch Mercedes limousine on hand too, and it was this vehicle which was now driven up to the dock, where the gangplank from the sailing castle had been placed.

A flurry of hand signals and walkie-talkie blasts bounced between the ship and the dock. The port and the city were secured; this was confirmed over and over again. Five massive Messerschmitt helicopter gunships were circling high overhead—yes, the skies were secured too.

Finally, the main hatch leading from the ship’s bridge opened and a dozen heavily armed SSS troopers came out They were followed by a phalanx of the ship’s officers. Then three more armed SSS guards. Behind them, a dark figure, dressed all in black, stepped out.

A hush went over the port. Some fool played a spotlight on the man’s face. Thin features, a short beard. Black hair. The man looked directly into the light and the bulb exploded.

Startled, the officers hustled down the gangplank; one quickly opened the limo door. The figure in black climbed in, the door was closed behind him, and the entire motorcade sped away. Out of the port, through the deserted city and to the Spanish Autobahn beyond. They headed north—the entire roadway was clear ahead of them for miles. At top speed they’d be in Berlin by morning.

Two citizens, two middle-aged sisters, did dare to look out their window while all this was going on. All the security in the world could not prevent them, or anyone else in the city, from knowing what was happening. Not even a well-planned German security net could keep hidden a secret this big.

“This man who has come to save us, to save Germany,” one sister said to the other as the motorcade flashed by. “They found him out in the ocean.”

“Walking atop the waves?” the second sister asked. “Just as they always said it would happen?”

“Yes,” the other replied in a hushed reverential voice. “Walking atop the waves. That’s exactly how they found him…”

Near Bermuda

The next morning

Somebody had finally found the third floater. It happened about 40 miles off the northern coast of Bermuda. The waves were high and the wind was blowing at 30 knots. A rainstorm had just passed through the area and it was cold for this time of year.

A small rescue launch was sent to pick him up—a very small boat from a much larger one. The rescuers were astonished when they reached the man and found he was still alive. They quickly pulled him onboard.

He was dressed very oddly; right away they felt he was from a different place than they. His skin was very white—he’d been in the water a long time. And he was very thin, as if he were malnourished.

Yet once they laid him at the bottom of their launch, he simply opened his eyes and stared up at his rescuers.

“You’re alive.” one of the men blurted out. His accent was very thick.

“I know,” said the man they pulled from the sea.

“How did you get out here?” a second rescuer asked.

The man thought for a moment.

“That I still don’t know,” he finally answered.

He looked up at the men. They were in gray uniforms, but they wore long scraggly beards and had oddly curled hair. Their arms, hands, faces, and chests were emblazoned with outlandish tattoos, most of them six-pointed stars.

The man saw their boat was just one of many. Indeed, a long string of boats stretched out before him. Though they were armed, these weren’t naval vessels; rather they looked like large passenger ships that had been heavily armed in a very haphazard fashion. They were rusty and old, but their decks were crowded with people. Tough, angry faces on the seamen, gentle, inquiring faces on the women and children. They were all looking down at the man who’d just been pulled from the water.

“What is your name?” one of the rescuers asked him.

The man from the water thought a moment.

“I don’t know,” he lied. Actually he’d remembered his name sometime during the long night. But he suddenly didn’t want to tell these people anything.

“Well, from now on, you’ll be known as Rower #1446798.”

“Rower?” the man asked, confused.

The rescuers indicated the ship nearest to them. It was a huge cruise liner, which had been rigged with sails, and two huge outboard engines on the stern. But it also had hundreds of holes on its lower hull, down near the water line, and from these holes hundreds of oars were sticking out.

“Yes, a rower,” one of the rescuers said. “The Lord has obviously sent you to us. He knows we always need an extra pair of hands to row.”

Sing Sing Military Prison

Two months later

T
HE CELL WAS 12
feet by eight feet. The ceiling was exactly seven feet and one-quarter inch high. The walls were made of plaster and stone. A single dim bulb hung over it all.

There was a bunk, a chair, a toilet, a sink, and one window. The window faced east, which was good. The morning sun came through on occasion. There were no bars on the window; it was made of thick glass. This was good too, because at night it offered a clear view of the starry sky.

The constellations Ursa Major, Pegasus, and Andromeda had been Hawk Hunter’s nightly companions for the past two months. They and dreams of blonds, redheads, brunets. But mostly blonds. Always young, always shapely, they had fed his dreams like ghosts every night since his incarceration.

His hair was very long now, and so was his beard. But his appearance made no difference to him. He was in solitary confinement, segregated from the rest of the prison population. He didn’t see anyone other than the same two guards every day. He never went out to the exercise yard; he never went to the chow hall. His meals were brought to him. He washed his own clothes. He cleaned his own cell.

In fact, the only time he left the lockup was to go to the prison library, and this was permitted just once a week. And then he could go only in the middle of the night, when there was no one else inside. He was allowed five minutes to pick out one book, the same two screws watching him at all times.

It took him about two weeks to get over the shock that he was actually in prison and would be for a very long time. No one ever told him what the charges were. But that didn’t really matter. He had the three ancient officers and the wacky hypnotist to blame for this and every minute of every day for those first two weeks, he plotted ways to break out and find them and kill them. Hate and thoughts of revenge made his first fortnight in jail bearable.

But eventually, those miserable feelings began to drain away, to be replaced by some a little less dire. He knew he had to make the most of this time in the clink, so he laid out some objectives for himself. The first was to find out exactly where he was.

He had lived another life, somewhere else—this much he knew by now. This world he’d fallen into was a different place, but not a different time. This too he was sure of. But
where
was this? And how did he get here? And what were the differences between where he came from and this here and now? And how could he find out?

His only choice was to reeducate himself. That’s why on his first trip to the library he took out a physics book, the only one on the shelves. The text was barely high school level, but he read it cover to cover and at its conclusion, he determined that wherever the hell he was, the same basic tenets of physics seem to apply. This came as a great relief.

Next, he took out a huge book titled
The Greats of Literature.
Was western culture the same here as there? He read the whole thing. Shakespeare. Dickens. Joyce. Everything was as he remembered it. Then he read a book on the great philosophers. Confucius. Plato. Homer. All of them, just the same.

Next came the psychologists: Freud, Jung, Skinner. And it was in Jung that he found his first clue as to the difference between here and there. Nothing in Jung’s writings mentioned the subject of Coincidences. This was very strange. In Hunter’s place, Jung had spent much time pondering the meaning of coincidences. He’d coined the term “synchronicity,” or “meaningful coincidences” and brought to the fore, at least for discussion, the notion that there might be a spiritual connection to even the smallest coincidental event.