Читать книгу THE BETTER PART OF VALOR - Morgan Mackinnon - Страница 24

Chapter 17

Consciousness came slowly the next morning, a consciousness that someone was pounding on her front door. Cresta, bleary-eyed, struggled to sit up on the sofa, apologized to Max and Mettie when she accidentally dumped them on the floor, and staggered to her front door. She could see through the peephole a somber-looking man wearing a black suit. He stood there holding one large box, standing beside a second box, tapping his foot.

“Doctor Leigh? I’m from the CIA. A Doctor Sanford said I should get this material to you as soon as possible.”

Cresta tried to focus. “What is it?”

“Not sure. Doc said it was priority information and to tell you not to come to the office for a few days.”

Cresta signed for the boxes and told the man to put them in her library. Both cats were now under her desk, softly hissing at the CIA delivery man, even after he’d nodded and departed.

“Shush.” Cresta opened the first box and found a folded piece of paper on top.

Morning, dahling. I had Chen stay late (later than midnight?) and find everything he could on our subject, Mister Keogh. There’s quite a bit of information available. You are the analyst, the team shrink, so please go over this stuff and prepare a report for the team—say in two or three days? Work from home. It will save time. Anything you need, give me a buzz. Tkx, Jim.

Cresta decided whatever the boxes contained could wait until after breakfast. Inspecting her side-by-side fridge, she pulled out regular milk, orange juice, jam, and bacon. A nice English muffin with butter and jam and a few strips of bacon should recharge her batteries. She looked at the cats. “No. No bacon. You can have some dry cat food.” At their looks of incredible disgust, she grumbled, “Okay, fine. One half strip and you share it.”

Half an hour later, dishes in the sink, cats off to look for a napping place, Cresta settled down on the sofa with the two boxes. Most of the information was in the form of books, some of them looking quite old. Amazing how efficient the CIA could be when it was necessary. There were also some folders from the War Department. She seemed to recall Chen saying this Mr. Keogh was an Army man. Then she began to get excited. If Mr. Keogh was born in 1840, he could have been old enough to fight in the Civil War. Were they going to snatch a man off the battlefield at Gettysburg?

An hour later, Cresta had the books and files sorted into heaps. There were a small number from Ireland, several from the Civil War era, and a lot from the Western Indian wars. Digging out a large notebook, Cresta labeled the first page “Myles Walter Keogh.” Then she got to work.

*****

Cresta M. B. Leigh didn’t make an appearance back at the CIA building until a week later. She’d spoken with Sammy Chen twice asking for additional information, argued with her mother twice, both times breaking luncheon dates, and chatted once with Jim Sanford when she finally called and told him she was ready for her presentation.

It turned out to be “one of those” days you can run into in late April in northern Virginia—wet, windy, and wild. Hanging grimly onto the steering wheel of her car, she decided that suited the situation accurately. At least the wild part did. She hadn’t brought any of the reference books with her but did have the copies of all the War Department files in her briefcase along with records from Irish archives and some overhead slides she’d prepared.

Rather than hold this particular classified meeting in the regular conference room, Jim Sanford reserved the top secret “war” room on the fourteenth floor. It was soundproof and checked weekly for recording devices or bugs. The door to the room required a preset sequence of numbers and letters to gain access. Since the project relied so heavily on the physicists, they set the door code for today to one with a combination of elemental table numbers and letters. No one left the war room, even to go to the bathroom, as there was a restroom attached.

The conference room was full. Jim was there as well as his entire team plus Montoya’s engineers and, to Cresta’s surprise, even the secretary, Stacie Clayton. The guest of honor was the Secretary of Internal Development, Rick Berstem. Cresta also noticed that rather than the usual Danish and orange juice, the back table held vats of coffee, iced sodas, cupcakes, and trays of covered sandwiches.

Turning on the projector, Cresta began her presentation.

“I apologize it’s been a week since I started working on this. Jim, have you filled the Secretary in on the background?”

Cutting in, Rick Berstem said rather derisively, “Oh, he’s filled me in all right. I understand you people have been flitting back and forth in time for months now. Why the hell didn’t you bring me in on this earlier?”

Jim smiled. “You didn’t need to know. Not until now. We figured the less you knew the less you would have to deny knowing. Now we’re going to need authorizations, ids, strings pulled…the secretary kind of stuff we aren’t paid enough to do.”

Cresta put up the first slide, which basically outlined their problem, and that was a man born in 1840 had to sire a child to be born in 2003.

She then sat while Sammy Chen stood up and reiterated his findings up to the year 2037 and then specifically the year 2037 when a smart, talented young politician had to become Secretary of State in order to prevent all-out nuclear war on a global scale.

The Secretary was obviously cynical. “These documents you found. Have you ever considered the date is nothing but a typo?”

Sammy caught the sarcasm and turned red. “Yes, sir, I did. A man born in nineteen forty could technically father a child in two-thousand two, but he’d be sixty-two. Possible, yes. But in twenty thirty-seven, that same man would be ninety-seven. I have here a photo of the father and son in question taken in twenty thirty-seven, and the father can’t be too much older than midsixties.”

Rick Berstem took the photo and studied it. “You sure this is the right guy? The younger one?”

“Yes, sir. The photo is labeled as new Secretary of State Thomas M. Keogh and his father, Myles W. Keogh. It’s dated January, twenty thirty-seven.”

“All right, Doctor. Chen, how do you prove that all these archived documents are authentic? Accurate? They could be forgeries.”

Chen put both his hands on the table, squared his shoulders, and decided to be assertive. “Because they were archived by me. Look at the stickers on the backs. Samuel Dillon Chen. That’s me, and that’s my handwriting.”

Jim laughed. “Well, if that isn’t job security, I don’t know what is!”

This much established, Cresta took the floor again.

“Sammy knows a handwriting expert and asked him to authenticate his own handwriting, but I requested he go a step further. That expert also matched letters the father, Myles W. Keogh, had written home to his brother, Tom Keogh in Ireland circa eighteen sixties and also with documents signed by Myles Walter Keogh in two thousand two and beyond. Secretary, it’s a 100 percent match. This man we are seeking was born in eighteen forty. Finally, I asked Sammy to take the picture of the older man in the photo and do facial recognition to Myles Keogh of the past. Perfect match.”

Rick Berstem sighed and surrendered his skepticism. His team was the best in the world and if they said they needed a man born in 1840, then they needed a man born in 1840. “You’re sure? Okay, then you’re telling me we have to deal with getting a fish out of water, so to speak. Are there options?”

Cresta changed her slide. “There are some.”

1 Bring Keogh Senior to 2002, convince him sex outside marriage is not a sin and then send him back when his mission is accomplished.

2 Bring Keogh Senior to 2002 and let him stay in his future.

3 Send potential mother to 1860-something to conceive with Keogh Senior and then bring her back to 2002.

Cresta went through each option. In the first, Keogh Senior would remember his journey to the future, which could result in an extreme psychological event. In the second option, if Keogh Senior could handle the psychological issues of remaining in a time not of his origin, it would be a possibility. Third option would probably not work, and she proceeded to explain why.

“Myles Walter Keogh is a Catholic. Not a staunch Catholic but what he himself described as a ‘lapsed Catholic.’ Nevertheless, there is documentation that while our subject loved the ladies, he was discreet with a nearly obsessive fervor. The profile I have built so far would indicate Mister Keogh would go to great lengths to prevent fathering a child out of wedlock just as he was apparently very choosy about the women he courted. They didn’t have one-night flings in those days except with prostitutes. Our subject probably did indulge, but if he did, it is not documented. Soldiers in the Civil War had to be very careful of venereal disease, what they called the French pox, because it could be fatal. I have copies of letters Mister Keogh wrote to his brother in Ireland, and he’s quite frank about this.”

The Secretary of Internal Development leveled his gaze at Cresta. “What’s your recommendation, Doctor?”

Cresta spoke slowly, partly so there would be no misunderstandings and partly because she was still thinking this one through in her head. “I believe we have to approach this from the objective of first convincing Mister Keogh we are real, convince him of our intentions, and then bring him forward to the future. We don’t have much time.”

Jim Sanford interrupted. “Why not?”

“I’ll show you. Here we go…”

The next slide showed a picture of their subject, Myles Keogh. Of course, it was in black and white.

“This photo is courtesy of the National Archives and shows our subject photographed in eighteen sixty-two. It’s the best photo in the file. He’d just been assigned Captain in the US Army.” She put up a second slide which showed Keogh in a formal suit, velvet collar jacket, white shirt, and black shirt stud. His sensuous lips were obvious, although the moustache could have been trimmed just a bit. He was posed looking over his left shoulder with what Vernita would have defined as bedroom eyes.

Cresta then went through an abbreviated summary of the man’s life. Born March 25, 1840, Leighlinbridge, County Carlow, Ireland. Fought in the Papal Wars 1860-1861. Came to the United States in 1862 and was commissioned a Captain in the Union Army. Fought in every major campaign of the Civil War, serving on the staffs of Generals Shields, Stoneman, Buford and McClellan. Mustered out in eighteen sixty-six as a Lieutenant Colonel. Commissioned in the regular army as a cavalry Captain.

Stacie timidly raised her hand. “We have a Lieutenant Colonel who is also a Captain?”

“The Lieutenant Colonel was a brevet rank. That means during the Civil War, they had more chiefs than would be needed after the war was over. The regular army was much smaller, therefore, not as many high-ranking officers needed. While serving as a Captain, however, Keogh was entitled to wear the accoutrements of a Lieutenant Colonel when not on duty and to be addressed as the same. I’m not sure about the pay scale, but in one letter Keogh wrote home, he mentioned something like one hundred fifteen dollars per month compared to a trooper who earned fifteen dollars a month. As for the titles, Keogh was also in the Ordine de San Gregorio Magno, which is a knighthood from the Pope.”

The secretary chimed in again, “But why don’t we have much time? Seems to me someone volunteers to go to eighteen something-or-other, find this Keogh, convince him to come to our time, and boom. We’re done.”

Physicist Bob Maguire had been silent until now but shook his head.

“We have to minimize just how much time we’re playing around with. Ideally, we give our team volunteer just enough time to convince the subject he or she is on the level and then do the transplacement. That way, we are changing a minimal amount of historic record.”

Everyone looked at Cresta at the same time. “How long will you need?”

“I would like about five months or so.” The others in the room gasped.

“Five months? Cresta, we’re working here with experience of a week or so. No one has tested such distance and such time!”

She wasn’t even sure who was speaking. Probably Bob Maguire. She felt tired. Tired to her bones. She’d known the very instant her boss had sent her the information on Mr. Keogh; it wasn’t just because she was a clinical psychologist. Anyone could have gone through the information and done up the very same slides she had prepared. She knew that this was going to be a rough sell, and now that she had an idea of the strong will of the man in the past, she was going to be the volunteer. It was going to take careful planning and finessing to get Mr. Keogh on board and make sure he was in lock step every inch of the way.

She explained as best she could how she’d charted out the life of Myles Keogh. He took frequent leaves to go visit his family in Ireland, and she wanted to exploit that. She knew he would be going on leave to his home town in the spring of 1875, returning to his army assignment in late August of that same year.

“I want you to set me down in New York City in early April of eighteen seventy-five, and if all goes well, we can transplace myself and our subject back sometime before September. That way, Mister Keogh goes on leave and vanishes. He never married. No one will know. There will be some articles or something perhaps, but nothing historically major will be changed. I can use that time to evaluate him and communicate with him. I have outlined a plan for your consideration.”

Jim Sanford took up where Rick Berstem had left off as to the timing. “Why on this particular leave? Why eighteen seventy-five?”

Her words were hollow. “Because otherwise, Myles Walter Keogh will die on June twenty-fifth, eighteen seventy-six, with Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and two-hundred sixty-six men of the Seventh Cavalry at a place called Little Bighorn.”