Justification For Killing (32 page)

After the flurry of talk
about the astounding revelation of the fleeing lady assassin from
the Grassy Knoll, the Captain had a hard time returning to his
description of his Texas adventure. He managed to quieten the group
and continued explaining how he had hurried down the fire escape
and jumped into his get-away car. “Oh, yeah,” the Captain said
laughing, “I waved and called out to Anhur as we sped
away.”

“
What?” One of them said,
“You saw Anhur? He was there?”

“
I sure did. Anhur was
standing on the north side of Elm Street with a large black
umbrella. He recognized me, and as you can see in this next photo,
I took a fairly decent picture of him also. What do you
think?”

“
Doggone Grandpa, you sure
are leaving out a lot of details - like who was driving your
get-away car?”

“
It was Clem... Clem Ruby
was driving the car Gabby. Did I mention I met his uncle Jack Ruby
in person? Actually I shook hands with Jack. Seemed like a pleasant
enough fellow, but there is so much work still needing to be done
in the Kennedy Assassination.

Captain Scarburg began
with Lee Harvey Oswald mentioning he certainly didn’t work along.
He related how he personally saw or heard, at least, three shooters
in Dealey Plaza; the one on the roof; the one in the bushes and the
one firing the shot from the sixth floor, which may or may not have
been Lee Harvey Oswald. He insinuated it was possible the shot
could have come from the Dal-Tex Building across the street. From
his position on the roof, if was hard to tell where the shots came
from.

He speculated Jack Ruby
was more involved in the assassination than just the murder of
Oswald. There was a lot of information the Warren Commission never
uncovered, or didn’t want to discover. The Thursday before
President Kennedy was killed the Captain was in Jack Ruby’s place.
There were guys sitting at a table. He had taken pictures of them
talking with Ruby. They were Cosa Nostra or Mafia. The Captain told
the group the mobsters all had been identified. He then pulled the
pink napkin from his pocket with their names. “Now we need to find
out what their association was with Jack Ruby and the assassination
of President Kennedy. As I mentioned earlier, I was arrested in
Ruby’s Carousel Club and booked into the Dallas City Jail. I
literally was placed in the same cell, which would later hold Lee
Harvey Oswald. Guess who was my jailer? No, no more guessing I’ll
just tell you... Officer J. D. Tippit. J. D. Tippit the very same
policemen Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly killed as he was escaping
from the Presidential assassination.”

“
Grandpa, did you meet Lee
Harvey Oswald?”

“
No, never did – really
did not have enough time, but I though I heard his rifle being
fired. Let me rephrase, I heard the noise from a rifle being fired
- I have no concrete proof it was Lee Harvey Oswald or
not.”

“
I am now making a request
- lets all go back to Dallas and find out what really happened. I
used the term ALL loosely. Spook, you and Tinker, should stay here
and maintain a constant link with the Dallas team. Krista you need
to stay too for administrative purposes. We will need your help
here in the SCAR facility, and Olive Marie you must stay behind
also. Trey you need to stay and run everything.”

“
But Grandpa!! I can help
on the Dallas trip too!” Moaned Olive Marie.

“
I realize you can, but
honey, we will be in and out of some sleazy places, and these could
include bars and lounges. In Texas, you have to be twenty-one to
get in those places, and you were just of age your last birthday. I
believe you are just too young to be going in some of the dives in
Dallas. Sorry, but you can be more useful here. Hope you
understand.”

“
Okay,” she said sadly,
“Grandpa I’m sure you know best.”

Captain Scarburg
continued to explain how they would travel back to 1963 Dallas
in
Pegasus
, which
he reiterated he had now proven was safe. Safe if the computers are
programmed correctly. One other thing he mentioned.... this
information was for their ears only. He stressed it could not leave
the conference room. He cautioned them that someone had
deliberately sabotaged the instrument settings before he left. He
landed on the wrong day and forty miles from his destination point.
Again he warned, with the wrong numbers, they could land on the
right day forty years or four hundred years from the destination
date and might never get back to the present!

Tinker had been sitting
there silently through all this talk, but with the hint of a
saboteur among SCAR’s personnel, that got her attention. “Captain,
do you have any idea whom this saboteur is?”

The Captain responded that
he had a fairly good idea whom it was and explained he had called
this meeting with all of them that morning to reach an ultimate
decision on the Dallas mission, and in doing so they could flush
out the saboteur.

He wanted to send some of
the SCAR personnel back to 1963 and look into the Kennedy
Assassination case once and for all. There were a number of
questions they must find the answers to. Things like: exactly how
many assassins were involved? Who were they? What was the
connection between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald? Who was Oswald?
Who was Officer Tippit? Why did Oswald murder him, or did he? Did
the CIA have a clandestine finger in the pie? What was the Mafia’s
connection? Was Lyndon Johnson involved? Why were so many of
Kennedy’s medical records ‘lost’? There are these questions and
others, but the Captain believed he had made his point - a lot of
questions need to be answered. Questions the country needed, no,
deserved to have answered. And only SCAR and their ‘special’
equipment would be able to discern these answers.

He then announced he
wanted to put the plan to time-travel back to the Dallas of 1963
and he wanted a vote, a secret vote. He did not want anyone
ostracized for his or her vote. And he wanted everyone to vote,
even those who were not actually going to Dallas. It concerned them
all.

“
In front of each of you
is a pen and a note pad - just write ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the pad and
drop it into my hat as I pass it around the table. Vote your
conscious, if you believe we should go write ‘YES’ if not write
‘NO’. No one will have knowledge of your vote. Any questions?
Okay... good... vote!”

The Captain’s hat passed
from hand to hand around the table as it reached Gabby she, using
only her thumb and forefinger, gingerly dropped her scrap of paper
with her vote into the old, brown, sweat stained, tattered cowboy
hat, with the lone comment, “Ugh!”

“
Gabby that old, brown,
tattered cowboy hat may be sweat stained, begrimed and tattered but
I would not take a million dollars for it right now! You do not
comprehend how much the man that gave it to me valued it! The hat
continued around the table back to Grandpa at the head chair. He
reached into the hat and pulled out the slips of paper one by
one... ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’.
“Well that’s all the votes - the voted are unanimous -
yes.

“
WE ARE GOING TO
DALLAS!!!”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

"Now this is not the end.
It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the
end of the beginning." (Churchill)

THE PLAN

The next step was to
devise a plan
, thought the
Captain.

“
Okay
folks, the votes have been made and tabulated. We all agreed to
return to Dallas and find the reason for the assassination. But we
cannot jump into
Pegasus
and hop on back to 1963 and start running around
wildly. We must first plan a course of investigation before we set
foot inside that slick, shinny, time-traveling
machine.”

“
Okay Grandpa, give us the
plan.”

“
First
and foremost we have an enormous problem in the lab. The computer
coordinates and the final destination date had been changed
on
Pegasus
before
I left the launch site in the laboratory. Someone in the lab was
responsible for making the changes. I was fortunate while on the
ground in Texas to have one of the best shade-tree handyman
rescue
Pegasus
,
or I would be a sixty-nine year old that had only been born twenty
years earlier! And you would still be sitting here in this
conference room waiting, forever, for my return.

“
Earlier I said we were
going back to Texas. We are, but we have urgent work here that must
be solved before we go. I have already assigned jobs to Krista and
Olive Marie, but Sam Lin and Si Lie I have a job for you too. Spook
and Tinker I haven’t left you out. In just a moment, I will discuss
your assignments.

“
The more thought I have
given to the saboteur in the lab the more I believe I can fathom
whom he is.”

“
Who Grandpa? Who is this
loathsome snake-in-the grass?”

“
Just a minute and I will
reveal him to you. Sam Lin and Si Lei I appreciate you want to go
with me to Dallas, but I now believe I have an assignment that is
just as important.”

Sam Lin answered,
“Captain, you realize we will perform any duty you think is
essential, you are the boss. Si Lei and I are at your
command.”

“
Thank you for your
support. What I am about to ask of you is going to seem
distasteful, but it is necessary. I don’t even relish the thought
of requesting this assignment, but I believe it is entirely
necessary. You will both be of greater value to me and our mission
if you will faithfully perform what I am about to ask.”

“
Of course Captain, what
do you want us to do?”

“
You asked if I recognize
whom the traitor is. Yes, I believe it is Mr. Ryan Rousseau, SCAR’s
Chief of Experimental Design and the Flight Director downstairs in
the lab. Before any of you say anything, Sam Lin and Si Lei, I
realize he is your friend as he is mine, but I strongly believe he
is responsible for my almost disastrous time-travel failure. I want
you both to do a complete, and I mean complete, background check on
our friend. I grasp he was with you both in Bangkok, and I also
understand he was instrumental in getting Spook, Tinker and me out
of Thailand and safely home with the satchel full of alien
documents. I also understand we owe him a lot, but we do not owe
him our lives. Go back to Bangkok and check him out guys, I believe
he is hiding some deep, dark secret. You must find out what it
is.”

Walking over to the table,
he picked up the bag where he had stowed his red flannel shirt and
blue denim overalls. He removed the overalls and took out a piece
of pink napkin from the front bib. It was the napkin from the
Carousel Club in Dallas. Slowly he unfolded it, silently read the
name written on it and turned to face the others sitting around the
conference table.

“
Folks, I jotted down this
note while sitting in Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club on Thursday the day
before President Kennedy was killed. The name was seen by one of
the Carousel waitresses Miss Linda Lou Dearmann, known
professionally as Kandy Barr, as she was delivering a drink to the
table where Jack Ruby was talking to six of his friends, all bosses
of the Cosa Nostra. The name Miss Dearmann saw was MK-ULTRA. I am
not sure what it means.”

“
Captain,” said Sam Lin,
“I too have heard that name - in Bangkok at our CIA headquarters
building. I wasn’t assigned to that particular project, but I did
put two and two together and figured out it was a black ops,
hush-hush, need-to-know only, operation.”

“
You’re right Sam Lin, I
too have heard of MK-ULTRA,” added Si Lei.

“
Sam Lin, Si Lei we need
you to catch the next flight out to Bangkok. Turn over every rock,
call in every favor you might have over there but find out about
MK-ULTRA. And find out if Mr. Ryan Rousseau had any connection to
it. If he did, what was his involvement? It’s a strange coincidence
that the word MK-ULTRA was being used in Dallas, Texas in 1963 by a
bunch of Mafia bosses, and the CIA, in Southeast Asia, was mixed up
in the same project in 1967. You acknowledge I do not believe in
coincidences. I believe where there’s smoke there’s fire and
gentlemen I’m beginning to detect the aroma of smoke coming from
Mr. Ryan Rousseau’s direction.”

“
Grandpa, you said you had
a plan to uncover the saboteur in our lab. What are you going to
do?” Asked Gabby.

“
Nothing, right now, we have a number of projects connected to
the Kennedy assassination to complete before attempting
another
Pegasus
flight. Utmost is the data I believe Sam Lin and Si Lei will
uncover in Thailand concerning Rousseau. I have been thoughly
acquainted with this man, as have Sam Lin and Si Lei, but as well
as I have known him I now believe he is hiding something. Something
so sinister that he is willing to kill to keep
secret.”

“
Are you serious Captain?”
asked Sam Lin.

“
That’s your mission --
find out!! Krista has you and Si Lei booked on a flight out of here
tomorrow at 0700 on American Airlines 4446 to Washington, D.C. From
there you grab a Cathay Pacific flight to Hong Kong. From there you
will proceed to Bangkok. Have a pleasant flight - and get
information on Ryan Rousseau. There’s more to this man than meets
the eye, you just need to find out what it is. Oh, by the way, you
will probably need some help in Bangkok. Those CIA types can get
out of hand sometimes. I’ve got a couple of guys I’m going to sent
over to work with you two... they should be there in a few
days.”