The Methuselah Project (43 page)

S
ATURDAY
, A
PRIL
18, 2015

S
TAYBRIDGE
S
UITES
, O
LD
D
OMINION
D
RIVE
, M
C
L
EAN
, V
IRGINIA

R
oger’s new suitcase lay on the bed, halfway packed, when a knock sounded on the door. A quick check through the peephole revealed Katherine’s cheery face in the hotel corridor. He yanked the door open.

“Katherine! I was beginning to worry you weren’t going to—”

Before he could finish, she had her arms around him and was delivering a kiss. “Who me, miss a chance to say farewell to my favorite old geezer? You can’t get me off your six that easy. By the way, how is the patient recovering after surgery?” She pulled away to gently touch the spot where the surgeons had removed the bullet from his chest.

“All healed. No side effects. Same as when I cut out that GPS chip. The CIA docs were flabbergasted. Said they’ve never seen a body functioning at peak efficiency like mine. Of course, they asked to keep me around ‘for observation,’ but I told ’em to jump in a lake. Sounded like a medical excuse to keep me prisoner in a hospital.”

“Good. What about Jaworski? Did he agree to your terms?”

“Yup, even though I had to do some heavy-duty negotiating. He wasn’t thrilled about pulling strings to get me into the Air Force Academy. But I stuck to my guns. I wouldn’t play Captain Midnight and help him track down organization big wigs unless I could fly for Uncle Sam. The cloak-and-dagger stuff will stay a sideline. For now, I’ll just be on-call for the CIA.”

“So the CIA knew about the HO? I still can’t wrap my mind around Uncle Kurt’s involvement in all this.” Moisture filled her eyes, and Roger gently wiped away the stray tear that rolled down her cheek.

“I know he meant a lot to you. But the Heritage Organization is a nasty group, and I, for one, am glad you’re free of it. The CIA agents haven’t told me specific details. But I do know that some organization agents have been caught stealing high-tech information, equipment, and classified research. Mostly military and scientific applications. If they’re likely to be caught, their agents have put bullets in their own brains instead of being taken alive. Or blown up themselves along with their captors. That Schneider guy from Florida you mentioned killed himself. What little the CIA knows has been pieced together through clues left on bodies or by intercepted snippets of messages. Jaworski thinks they’re infiltrating modern societies. What exactly they’re up to, no one seems to know. My guess is that they’re trying to gain control of the world’s major governments and manipulate things for their own agenda.”

Katherine’s eyes sparkled. “I’m proud of you, Roger. Even after all you’ve been through, you landed right-side up. You get to follow your dreams, flying and serving your country.”

He took her hand and pulled her closer to him. “I never could’ve done it without you.” He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “But I’m worried about you. Do you know what happened to your uncle?”

She shook her head. “It still feels strange to think about what he really is and that he’s out there somewhere. But he vanished without a trace. The official, public explanation is that a natural gas leak blew up the house. Of course, you and I know better. He’s covered his tracks.”

“What about you? Where have you been all week? You’ve been more secretive than the G-men who work under Jaworski.”

“I’ve been away on a secret mission. I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want to get your hopes up if I failed.”

“Secret mission? I thought it was only a desk job Jaworski offered you.”

She laughed. “This mission was personal. I drove back to Indianapolis. I wanted to see if I could track down anything about your past.”

Roger blinked involuntarily. Was there any shred of his early life still out there to be uncovered? “Okay, Detective Tracy, was your fact-finding mission successful?”

“Far beyond my hopes. You’d better sit.”

A lump settled in his stomach. She’d found out something about his origins? He eased down to the bed, unsure whether he wanted to hear it.

“I finally tracked down Sunshine Children’s Home. It changed its name and location in the late 1930s, then merged with another orphanage in the 1950s. In the ’70s, they were absorbed by an association of Christian ministries. In the end, though, I discovered they still had all the old records from Sunshine stashed away in cardboard cartons in a basement.”

“No fooling?”

“No fooling. And believe it or not, I discovered something that belongs to you.” Katherine held up a tattered manila folder.

Roger swallowed. He had no clue how old he’d been when he entered Sunshine Children’s Home. His earliest memories had taken place there. What had Katherine dug up? Evidence that he was illegitimate? That he had a prostitute for a mother?

“You wouldn’t believe the rummaging I had to do in order to locate the case file on little Roger Greene. Like I said, all the old records were transferred to the new association, but years and years’ worth of files were boxed up and stored away willy-nilly, in no particular order. I reckon no one expected they would be needed again.”

Whether the news was good or bad, Roger decided to dive straight toward the target. “Okay, I can’t stand the suspense. What did you find out?”

“They left something for you. You were supposed to receive it from the woman who directed the orphanage when you were old enough.”

“A woman director?” Roger thought back. The orphans didn’t normally have direct contact with the administration. Yet in the haziest recesses of his memory, he did recall something about a woman.

“The director I remember was a man named Fettler. But yeah, before Fettler, the workers took instructions from some lady. She wore her hair in a bun.”

“I don’t know about Fettler, but this belongs to you.” She opened the file folder and handed him a yellowed envelope. Rather than being sealed, it had a length of pink lace tied around it. “I’ve already read it, to make sure it was something you would want to know. Now it’s your turn.”

Roger sat on the edge of the bed, slid off the lace, and read aloud the hand-printed words: “For Roger Greene. To be given to him on his sixteenth birthday.” What? His eyes met Katherine’s. “My sixteenth birthday? The Tuckers yanked me out of there when I was twelve.”

Katherine nodded, and he noticed more than the usual amount of moisture glistening in her eyes. “Somebody goofed. They forgot about the letter. Read it, Roger.”

He attempted to swallow but found his mouth had gone dry. He extracted the ancient sheet from the envelope and silently began to decipher the faded lines, which a quivering hand had written with a fountain pen:

Kline! The lady with the hair bun. So they really did hold back information. And this writer had known his mother and father? Indescribable emotions welled up as he focused his eyes on each word, one at a time:

Roger slipped two fingers back into the envelope and pulled out not one, but two brown-tinted photographs. One was a wedding picture showing a proud groom and an embarrassed-looking bride. The second photo looked a year or two newer. The wife’s wavy hair was longer, and the couple posed beside the fuselage of an old tandem-cockpit biplane. A Curtiss JN4D.

“That’s a Jenny,” he said, using the nickname for the aircraft. He struggled to keep his emotions under control. Maybe if he concentrated on the plane, the tears wouldn’t start. “Because of the number produced and its popularity, military-surplus Jennies became the aircraft of choice for American pilots after the Great War. I took my first flying lesson in one of these.”

Katherine sat beside Roger and slid her arm around his shoulders. “You have your father’s eyes.”

He kept staring at the brown-tinted images. His throat grew tighter. “I can’t believe it. My own mom and dad.”

At last. He wasn’t a throwaway child. Not the unwanted castoff of some illegitimate union or other unhappy event. His mom was no floozy, and his dad—unexpectedly—turned out to be a pilot. A veteran of the Great War, at that.

“I think I understand why you always felt born to fly, Roger. You saw your parents soar into the sky but never saw them come back. Even as a child, you must have yearned to follow them, but you no longer remembered why when you grew up.”

Roger let Katherine’s words sink in. She made sense. He remembered that back in Sunshine he’d stared upward whenever an aircraft chanced to putter overhead.

She stood and pulled him up with her. “I didn’t have time to drive out to the cemetery. But on the map, Danville looks about twenty miles west of Indianapolis. I thought you might like to visit their gravesite.”

He nodded. “I’ve been to Danville. The Plainfield Quakers played football against the Danville Warriors. I never dreamed I could find my parents just by wandering through their cemetery.” Against his wishes, a lump formed in his throat. He looked at Katherine, who smiled through tears. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I can’t claim all the credit. Mostly I was hitting dead ends until I tried what you do. I prayed for God to help me. You know what? I believe He did.”

Before Roger knew it, his arms wrapped around Katherine and pulled her in. He could feel her heart beating against his chest as he leaned down and kissed her. His hands tangled into her hair, and he felt her smile under his lips.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a long time, but maybe—”

She pressed into him again. When his lips met hers, he let the kiss stretch into the longest of his life.

At last, Katherine pulled away with a giggle. “You really know how to rob the cradle, Captain Greene. You’re four times my age!”

“Aw, admit it. You have a hankering for older men.”

As she swatted his arm, a newspaper caught her eye. “Say, what’s that in your suitcase? An
Indianapolis Star?
Still looking for old classmates?”

“Nope. Just decided it might be fun to keep a copy of my obituary.” He released her and flipped the paper open to a small news item on page nine: “‘Correction officers of the Marion County Jail report the suicide of a Caucasian male recently arrested in the state capital. The actual identity of the deceased remains unknown. The individual was arrested for disrupting a military awards ceremony and physically assaulting law-enforcement officers. Witnesses state the man claimed to be a veteran from World War II. Authorities, however, concluded the deceased was a mentally unbalanced individual. The unidentified male was a suspect in a spree of shootings …’ Et cetera, et cetera.” Roger tossed the paper back into the suitcase. “The bottom line is I’m officially cremated, along with all cell samples. Think the HO bosses will swallow Jaworski’s handiwork?”

“Maybe, but maybe not. They’ll still wonder where I disappeared to. The G-men, as you call them, promise my new name under the Federal Witness Protection Act will keep them off my trail. But that won’t stop them from wondering or searching for me. By the way, I’ve been so busy tracking down your roots that I never heard how you’ll be getting to the Air Force Academy. I assume you’re flying?”

He couldn’t stop the grin. Now he could show her. “You know how the government owed me a bundle of back pay for all those decades I spent locked up as a POW? I used part of the money to buy something I really wanted—a Mustang.”

Katherine’s eyebrows went up. “You bought an antique fighter plane? When you could afford a much newer—”

His laugh cut her off. “Come here.” Taking her hand in his, he led her to the window of the hotel room and pulled aside the curtain. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

In the parking lot stood a product of the Ford Motor Company, a gleaming silver Mustang convertible with black pinstripes.