Origins (Remote) (8 page)

What Thorne had proposed when he first sat down and picked up the phone seemed to Archer to be insanity, a program that would result in the complete possession of both Ronnie Gilmore and
Cassie Reynolds. The man was almost manic in his presentation, something he’d never seen. It amounted to abduction of both children, their seclusion in a hidden facility, complete isolation and control by his people with access granted only for the matters of the most profound national issues. No more viewings of low level diplomats. No analysis of sites deemed anything less than Top Secret. Ronnie and Cassie would disappear and be used in only the greatest of projects. Thorne had removed himself so far from the humanity of the situation that he now refused to call them by name, referring to them only as assets A and B, and spoke of the possibilities with a kind of glee. It was only with the sternest of warning that Archer had been able to talk Thorne down, dismissing out of hand his plans.

You can’t be serious,” he’d said. “If it ever got out that we’d begun to kidnap citizens in the name of national security, especially kids, we’d be crucified. I can’t risk that. Keep them under wraps. Let’s see what happens. Cutter thinks he can keep things under control.”

“Cutter’s an ass,” Thorne said. “This isn’t Stanford or Harvard here. We’re talking real world. You think the Soviets would hesitate to grab something like this? What if they already have? Keep it under wraps? How long will that last? That pilot we pinpointed? I’m already getting asked questions about that. We need them secure. And soon.”

“I’ll think about it.” Archer said. “There’s no pressing reason to do anything that drastic at the moment. For right now, we sit on our hands and let Cutter’s boys work them. We can ask bigger questions later.”

“These kids aren’t stupid, you know,” Thorne argued. “The bigger the questions we ask them the more we’ll have to let them know. How do you expect kids to keep their mouths shut? They’re kids. I don’t think we should even let them see each other. They need to be kept apart. They’re bound to talk and compare notes.”

“We’re walking a line here, Thorne,” Archer said. “The more we interfere with their lives the more chance we take on someone noticing. Besides, I’ve never seen anything in the reports about them hanging around together.”

“It’ll be on your desk tomorrow. The other day they spent an hour or so at the drugstore in their neighborhood, mulled around the place looking at magazines and such. When the boy went to leave the girl ran back and kissed him goodbye. Then they spent time together the next day. They’re closer than you think.”

“For Christ sake Thorne, they’re thirteen. I’ll take what you’re saying under consideration but for right now we let things go on the way they have been. I’ll consider your suggestion but it’s going to take a hell of a lot more thought to even come close to what you’re asking. Do not, I repeat, do not make any moves in that direction until I authorize it. Are we clear?”

“Yes, Sir, I understand. But with all due respect it’s going to have to happen sooner or later.”

“We’ve got to at least try and look at them,”
Cassie said. “We can’t do anything else until we know what’s going on. Right now all we know is that they’re showing us pictures and we’re making up stories. But we’re giving them something they want. Why would they keep coming back if what we were telling them wasn’t any good? Why would the CIA waste their time with a couple of kids?”

They were sitting behind the library, in the shade of a tree on the edge of the surrounding woods. The thick growth bordered the entire neighborhood. Summer was coming and the wind held traces of the looming heat. Behind them the trees were already greening up, the low scrub and weeds knee high and promising to get higher. The woods were filling out and within a month or so would be an impossible mass of foliage, impossible of course, if you weren’t thirteen years old and in your element. Ronnie had been running these woods since he was eight and knew every twist and turn, every narrow gap and gully that would pull you in until you were in your own world, cut off from the neighborhood, parents, and anything else that might seek you out.

It was Saturday and he’d made the walk to Cassie’s house in the morning, taking the huge step in knocking on her door, abiding the long gaze from her father when he asked for her. Cassie had come to the door wearing jeans and tennis shoes and a white sleeveless blouse and a smile when she saw who it was. It took some begging but she’d been allowed to go off with him, with a cover story of library work assigned by Farrow and Ruff. It was thin but sufficed for parents intent on seeing their daughter into a good school.

Ronnie shook his head. He was a thin boy and physically unimposing. But somewhere within that thin frame was backbone. There was also a stubbornness he’d inherited that required convincing. He’d been rattled by what he’d found in Farrow’s case and though he knew he was wrong, he was hoping there was some other explanation, some way out that didn’t include what he was thinking. Those things just weren’t possible. People, especially himself, couldn’t see things that weren’t in front of them. Now his certainty was being shaken and even worse this thin and pretty girl in front of him, this girl he’d watched from a distance and dreamed about, was taking the thing by the throat and dragging him along, forcing him to face what she could see and he refused to accept.

“Listen to me, Ronnie Gilmore,” she was saying. “If what you told me is true, and I know it is, the CIA is looking at us and using us for something. Do you think they do this kind of thing all the time? Waste their time looking at little kids and showing them pictures and writing down stories so they can read them to their kids at bedtime? No way.” She shook her head.

“So what then?” Ronnieasked. “What are we? Fortune tellers or something?”

Cassie took a deep breath and blew it out. She surprised him then, reaching across and lifting his chin, forcing him to look directly at her. “Look at me. We’ve got something they want. I don’t know about you but I can feel it. I’ve always been able to feel things. Do you think I didn’t know what you were thinking all those times we were out on playground and you were walking around and thinking about me? I knew, and I’ve known for a long time and I was just waiting for you to say something, you stupid.”

She let him go then and looked off to the library, across the empty field between the woods and the low brown building where parents were dropping off and picking up their kids, some waiting patiently on benches with their friends and others standing alone on the edge of the curved driveway. Off in the distance was the sound of an ice cream truck making its way up and down the streets, another sign of the coming summer.

“I remember the first time when I met Mr. Ruff and he took me in that room. There was this feeling I got. I know when people are lying to me. Yeah, he ran all these tests and that was okay, I could deal with it because it was the usual stuff right? Math and reading and like, problem solving stuff just like we get in school. But when he started showing me pictures, I knew it was going wrong. And you did too. That’s not regular stuff. But you know when I got really scared?”

Ronnie shook his head.

“I got really scared when I knew I could do what he was asking me to do. When I knew I could make up stories but they weren’t really stories. They were real. When I started rattling things off like I was reading a book. When I wasn’t making things up but telling things I knew were true. That’s when I started holding things back. Cause I knew something was wrong.”

“So what do we do?” Ronnie asked. “Tell our parents? Try and quit? I can just see me going in and telling my Mom and Dad I want to quit because I’ve got secret powers and the government is using me to spy on people. Right. They’ll lock me up in the loony bin. And you too if you do that.”

Cassie was still looking at the library and she stayed that way for what seemed to Ronnie like a long time. He started to speak and she waved him off with her hand. After a few minutes she seemed to come to some kind of decision.

“We can do one of two things. We can stop. I don’t mean tell our parents I mean we can just stop telling Farrow and Ruff the things that we see. Make up lies and hope they go away. But I kind of think it’s too late for that. The other thing we can do is find out exactly who they are and what they want and fight back. Because I don’t think they’re just going to walk away and leave us alone. But we’ve got to talk to somebody we can trust. Not our parents. We’ve got to talk to someone who’ll believe us.”

“Who’s going to believe us? I’m telling you if we say anything to anybody we’ll be walking around in those jackets with the long arms pinned behind our backs. Nobody’s could ever believe this.”

“I know someone who will,”
Cassie said. “And we’ve got to get started. If we can see all these things from pictures they show us we can for sure see them if we want to. We need to get started doing that, probably tomorrow. Call me. We’ll have our own session.”

“Who would believe us?” Ronnie said.

“My Aunt. I’ll call her tonight and ask her if I can come over and we’ll both talk to her. But we’ve got to be really careful from now on. Come on, you can walk me home. Let’s stop at Time Saver and get an ICEE on the way.”

Ronnie spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze and thought things over later, lying in his bed. He’d walked
Cassie up to the store and the whole time there and on the way home she talked of nothing important but Ronnie hung on every word. It was the strangest thing he’d ever been through. Time spent with this girl was precious. Hadn’t he spent the last few years of his life wishing for these moments? But when they happened they were so much different than he’d expected. Cassie was as beautiful as he’d imagined and even more so. What caught him off guard was the depth and the quick wit, the seriousness and the easy laughter. Somehow he’d never realized the person she could be and he felt ashamed of himself. In a few short weeks since they came together she’d proven infinitely more intelligent than he, or so he thought. Even more startling was the way she seemed able to look at their situation and then simply turn it off. Their walk had been filled with aimless talk, but behind her eyes he could see something churning. A few days before he had been confident that he could work out a plan. Now Cassie seemed to have taken over. He found himself trusting her. She’d kissed him again on her front porch. On the lips this time. Very quickly. “I really like you, Ronnie Gilmore. Call me tomorrow,” she’d said, and slipped away inside the house. He heard the door click and stood there dumbfounded before drifting home.

“This jackass I’m working under doesn’t know what he’s got on his hands,” Thorne said. He was in his office and he had an audience of one. Through his years in Army Intelligence he’d cultivated a small and select squad of men he could trust. He knew he had access to more men and equipment down the line if he decided to take matters into his own hands. Once he had the kids under his control he could force Archer’s hand. He might try and fight back at first but once the first steps were taken Archer would have to go along go. Take the initiative and everything else followed. And the first step was complete control of the kids.

The man in front of him was one of his trusted crew, tried and tested through countless sorties in Viet Nam and other places. His loyalty was unquestioned. Given orders he would follow through until the thing was done. Thorne had used him and his crew more than once, although never on U.S. soil. He didn’t think it would matter now.

“I want the whole thing to go down quick and easy. These are civilians so it should be no problem. We go in and grab the kids. If you have to, eliminate the parents. I’ll work that out on my end if it comes to it. We’ve got people in place to do that. The kids go to the Virginia facility where we can keep them under wraps. Once we’ve got them in custody we can use them as we like. Your job is to get them and get them to me. Unhurt, you understand?”

“No problem,” said the man. “I’ll need three men at each house. We’ll go in at night. Give me a few days to scope things out. I’ll need to do taps to make sure they’ll be there and I’ll have men watching the houses from morning till midnight or so. Just to make sure. Should be a piece of cake.”

“Good. Remember, I need them unhurt. Scared but not hurt. Once we’ve got them we can use the psych guys to work on them. They’ll come around. So will Archer. They’ll have to. They won’t have much of a choice.”

Julie Hoffman got off the bus on Elysian Fields and headed for home, her groceries in a paper bag she held in one arm. She carried no purse. That was for older women, or women like her sister who spent all their time trying to be like their mothers. Julie had no time for that. This was the seventies and liberation had hit hard in the sixties and carried her along like a wave. If her sister had gone the other way and married that bonehead Ernest Ruff and wanted to spend her time as the good little housewife, well, that was her business. No, Julie wasn’t going to spend her life attached at the hip to a man, cleaning his house and bringing him beer while he watched a football game.

She’d made the break early and completely, heading off to college and never looking back. A degree in accounting had given her a good job in what was a man’s world, the world of business, but she’d secured a good position with a downtown firm and she liked her independence. She was attractive enough with long brown hair and a good figure and she liked to keep her clothes up to date. She couldn’t let loose in the office, wearing sensible and modest clothes, but when she got home she’d shake them off. And she’d have some company today, the last Saturday in May. Her niece Cassie was coming over, the only good thing that had come out of her sister’s marriage to the bonehead. She hadn’t been surprised by the call either. Julie Hoffman had known it was coming, the same way she knew most things were coming.

She’d spent her life knowing such things. When she was in high school and college there hadn’t been a pop quiz she didn’t know about. Boyfriends had come and gone and she always knew it even before they did. When she went to business meetings with potential clients she knew what would sell and what wouldn’t. As a young girl she had once spent the morning at the kitchen table working on a drawing and when her mother had asked why, she’d replied that is was for Grandma, who was coming over that afternoon. Two hours later her Grandmother had shown up unannounced at the door. Her mother had given her the strangest look. “How did you know Grandma was coming?” she’d asked later and Julie had shrugged, saying “I just knew.”

It was something she couldn’t explain and it didn’t take long for her to realize that not everyone could do what she could do. Most of the time they didn’t like it. Her sister especially didn’t like it. For some reason it scared the people around her. Sometimes it angered them. When she told her sister that the bonehead Ernie was cheating on her she’d been scuttled out the door and hadn’t been back to the house for over a year. Sometimes it was best just to keep your mouth shut.

One thing she did know and had never told her sister was that
Cassie had it too, this way of knowing things. Julie could feel it, like a current running underneath the surface. It ran deep in Cassie, much deeper than it ran in her own blood. To someone like Julie it came off the child like sparks and more than one afternoon had been spent with the girl and her aunt exercising in a kind of mental exercise, Julie throwing things out in front and Cassie returning them. Cassie could predict a sequence of cards without thinking about it. The trick of choosing a number between 1 and 10 out of her aunt’s head was no problem. Once on a visit to her house the girl had burst into tears on the couch. Julie had tried to console her for an hour before Cassie had told her that she was crying because she wasn’t going to see her Grandma anymore. Two days later Julie’s mother had died of a sudden heart attack at the age of fifty-five. Julie Hoffman, who knew so many things were coming, and when and why, didn’t know what was coming with this visit from her niece. She could only wait and see.

She wouldn’t have to wait long to find out. As she turned the corner, she could see
Cassie sitting on her front porch. She wasn’t alone. With her was a slightly built boy with shaggy hair. They were laughing about something and Cassie looked at the boy while rolling her eyes. As she got closer the girl jumped up and ran to her. The boy stayed behind on the porch, but watched her niece the whole way. He lowered his head as Cassie reached her and began digging the toe of his tennis shoe against the porch. Julie was hit with a terrible feeling as Cassie ran to her. It was like being in a movie and watching the heroine as she approached the door and wanting to scream because you knew that beyond that door was something awful, something deadly. The feeling was so strong it made her legs weak and she stopped. Cassie came to a halt in front of her and gave her an odd look, her head tilting to one side. Julie had seen that move before. The feeling ebbed away some and she recovered.

“Aunt Julie?”
Cassie said. ‘You okay?”

“Oh, yeah, little girl. I’m fine. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you. I was shocked at how big you got.” She leaned over and whispered “Who’s the guy?”

Cassie smiled and ducked her head. “That’s Ronnie.”

“Boyfriend?

“Uhmm, yeah, kinda,” she said. “At least I hope so.”

“Well,” Julie said, “let’s go meet your fella.”

“So far nothing out of the ordinary.” Thorne was back in his office. It was Saturday morning and he was listening to his surveillance team’s report on the activities of his assets. The team leader had been efficient as always. He had two men rotating in and out, keeping an eye on the kids. They had boarded a bus on Chef Menteur Highway riding down to Elysian Fields before making the short walk to a small shotgun house a few blocks away. The information was called in and the owner identified.

“It’s her aunt. Her mother’s sister, name of Julie Hoffman. We ran a quick background and she’s an accountant with a firm uptown. Unmarried, thirty-six years old. No criminal record, a couple of parking tickets. Nothing unusual. We’ll be digging into her deeper of course but no red flags. They spent a minute on the porch and went inside.”

“You’ve got men in the area?”

“We’ve got guys a block or so away right now. We can’t stand outside the house of course but we’ll know when they leave. If they take the bus I’ve got a guy who’ll ride with them. If the aunt brings them home I’ve got a guy waiting with a car. That’s the best we can do right now.”

“Find out what you can about the aunt. Cover her phone too.”

“Yes, Sir”

“And be ready. It won’t be long now. We’ve got to take them soon. In the next few days I’m thinking.”

The man left and Thorne sat back in his chair. He was growing uneasy. Things like this had a way of getting out of hand. So far, he was the only one with direct access to these kids, aside from Cutter’s group but they could be dealt with. Maybe Archer wasn’t willing to make the move just yet but that situation could change soon and he had to be ready. Acting too late was as good as not acting at all. He wasn’t about to fall into that trap. First he had to deal with Cutter. Once he was out of the way, well, things would get a lot easier. In fact, if Cutter was to simply disappear, he could use that to bring some pressure to bear, couldn’t he?

Ronnie and Cassie laid the whole thing out for Julie Hoffman over lunch, Cassie doing most of the talking while Ronnie nodded his head. Julie listened as they went over the sessions, the story telling, the uneasy feeling they’d gotten as time went on and finally the discovery in Farrow’s briefcase. Ronnie had gone into it with the feeling that Cassie’s Aunt Julie would get on the phone first thing and call their parents. Instead, she’d given them her complete attention, never a look of doubt on her face. When they were finished she said “Holy shit. Give me a minute to think here.”

She got up and began pacing back and forth in the small living room. They were drinking iced tea and Ronnie picked his up, holding the glass against his forehead for a second before taking a sip.
Cassie was watching her aunt as she moved back and forth.

“Okay. Number one; here’s some things you have to know. If what you’re telling me is true, and I do believe you, you’ve got to play it cool. If these characters think you’re catching on, you’ve got some big time trouble. People disappear all the time. We can’t let that happen. As long as you keep cooperating we can buy some time.”

Julie sat down on the couch next to Cassie. Ronnie was sitting across from them in a folding chair Julie had brought in from the back somewhere. “What you’re doing in these sessions is known by a couple of different names. Some people call it astral projecting, some call it remote viewing or second sight, or whatever. The name doesn’t matter. It happens. I’ve got it to some extent. Remember the games we used to play when you were a kid? I knew something was up then. You’ve got it, I’ve got it, though not as much as you seem to have. Your grandmother had it too. For some reason it seems to have skipped your mother but you got a double dose. Ronnie I don’t know, but from what you tell me he’s got a big dose of it too.”

“But we’re dealing with some bad people. That I do know. I was involved with an anti-war group for a few years and there are some stories that came out of Viet Nam about the things the CIA would do over there. There’s also plenty of rumors about what they’ve done over here, to our own people, U.S. citizens. A lot of it is just talk and bullshit of course, but if it comes down to taking a chance I wouldn’t bet on their being real nice and understanding.”

“But what do we do?” Ronnie asked. “The last week of school is this week coming up. They’ll be back on Tuesday for another session.”

“What we need to do is make this go away,” said Julie. “And I mean permanently, which means we have to convince them that you’re no good anymore. That you’ve dried up. I can’t see them walking away if there’s any chance you could be useful to them. Do you think you can do that?”

“I can try,” Cassie said. “But I still think we need to find out more about them. The more we know the better off we are. I don’t like Ruff. I know he’s lying to me and Farrow is lying to Ronnie. But there’s someone else out there. I can feel him. Someone directing the whole thing. I know that sounds crazy but I know it and he’s the one we’ve got to worry about.”

Julie shook her head. “You can’t be asking these guys questions. You do that and they’ll know you’re on to them. Just play stupid, act like you can’t do it anymore. They’ll go away.”

“No,” Cassie said. “They’re not going away and I’m not going to ask them questions. We need to follow them in a way that they can’t see. We need to do exactly what they want us to do for them except we do it
to
them. We need to watch them without their knowing about it.”

James Cutter had spent the last couple of months living in a small hotel just off the New Orleans French Quarter. He missed the weather of California. The oppressive heat and constant humidity of the Crescent City might be fine for locals but for a California boy it was stifling and overpowering. He spent most of his day holding out in the air conditioned comfort of his office, overseeing Farrow and Ruff and waiting for the relief of the evening when the sun had gone down and the break in temperature offered some respite, although the dripping wetness of the air was still constant. As the calendar moved ever deeper into summer he knew it would only get worse. His days were filled with air conditioning, reports, and meetings. The muggy nights, when the sun broke and the cobblestones of the narrow streets pushed out the heat collected during the day, were his own.

Those nights had more and more edged towards finding a nice hole in the wall in the Quarter where he could down a few beers before heading back to his motel room. Lately, a little place called Maxwell’s was drawing his attention. He found it one evening as he was wandering around aimlessly, too wired from his conversations with Thorne to go back to his room and try to sleep. The man was becoming a problem. Cutter had an uneasy feeling that Thorne was coming at him from the fringes in a way he couldn’t fight. Thorne had always been a mystery. He served no real function that Cutter could find other than to act as a watchdog for the agency that funded his program, an organization even he couldn’t name. That alone was scary enough, knowing he worked for a group he couldn’t even name.

Despite the success of his program Cutter knew he had been the recipient of a stroke of luck that couldn’t be replicated in a thousand years of attempts. He’d done the math. The search had been conducted in eighteen cities spread out across the Unites States. Teams of researchers, none of whom knew what they were really looking for, had done extensive testing of thousands of schoolchildren and in only two cases had there been any results beyond the statistical norm. And they were right here in New Orleans, an anomaly that was unexplainable and akin to winning a lottery twice on the same day. All efforts to explain it had been futile and finally it had been decided to just accept it and move on at full speed.

But the joy of discovery was a two edged sword and Cutter was feeling the sharp edge right now. Pressure was being brought to bear on him, mostly by Thorne, to exploit the assets to the fullest extent as soon as possible. Things were happening overseas, in Asia, in Europe, and in the Soviet Union. The fight against the spread of communism and the Russian Bear was overpowering the intelligence system. New methods were always being explored and his program was bound to draw increased attention. What none of them seemed to understand is that by exploiting the assets you could overwhelm it and possibly kill it. Something told Cutter that using the talents of Cassie Reynold and Ronnie Gilmore was like dipping into a well. Pull too much and you ran the risk of drying it up. Better to draw slowly, maintain the physical and emotional health of the subjects, using them only in matters of the utmost importance, than to lay them to waste in a burst of constant use.