The Magdalene Cipher (8 page)

Chapter 11

To Dunphy's surprise, the file was a thin one, consisting almost entirely of documents in the public domain. There was an obituary from
The Observer
,
a handful of clippings about the murder, and a worn copy of the first issue of an old magazine:
Archaeus: A Review of European Viticulture
.

Disappointed, Dunphy paged through the magazine. Though it was dedicated to the cultivation of grapes for wine, the magazine was filled with essays and articles on a variety of odd and disparate topics. Religious iconography (“John Paul II and the Black Madonna of Cze¸stochowa”), public housing (“Redevelopment Options on Jerusalem's West Bank”), and chemistry (“A Form and Method of Perfecting Base Metals”) were equal grist for
Archaeus
a's mill. So, also, was an essay on the early Middle Ages, the so-called Dark Ages, which asked the peculiar question “Who Turned Out the Lights?” By way of an answer, there was a photo of the pope and a cutline that read, “What was the Church trying to hide?”

Elsewhere, Dunphy found a page of weirdly illustrated horoscopes that led him to suspect that the editor must have been drunk when the magazine had been put together. Indeed, the only article having anything to do with viticulture, he saw, was an essay on “The Magdalene Cultivar: Old Wine from Palestine” by a man named Georges Watkin. Having only the most practical interest in wines, Dunphy set the magazine aside and turned to the last item in the file, a five-by-seven index card on which the following had been typed:

This is an Andromeda-sensitive, Special Access Program (SAP) whose contents, in whole or part, have been transferred to the MK-IMAGE Registry at the Monarch Assurance Co. (15 Alpenstrasse, Zug, Switzerland). (See cross-references on reverse.) Report all inquiries concerning this file to the Security Research Staff (SRS) in the Office of the Director (Suite 404)
.

This gave Dunphy pause. The geeks who'd debriefed him—Rhinegold and what's-his-name—had asked him about the MK-IMAGE cryptonym. And he said he'd never heard of it. Which was true. Until now
.

Neither had he ever heard of the Security Research Staff. But that didn't mean much. The CIA was probably the most compartmented agency in government. Its components were myriad, and their names were constantly changing. What puzzled him more than the existence of the SRS was the fact that the Agency would store sensitive files abroad, and that inquiries about those files would have to be reported to a special staff. From a counterintelligence standpoint, the practice was problematical. And even more importantly, from
Dunphy's
standpoint (which is to say, from the standpoint of a thief in the night), reports to a “Security Research Staff” could be awkward indeed. What if, in pursuing some of the questions that were troubling him, he requested a
series
of files marked Andromeda-sensitive? What would happen? He thought about it for a moment, then felt a shrug somewhere deep inside himself. He'd show them Eddie Piper's FOIA requests, and they'd see that he was just doing his job. If they didn't like it, they could send him back to London
.

Having resolved what seemed, at first, to be a sticky issue, he turned the card over in his hand
.

Dunphy studied the card, more alarmed than flattered to find himself sandwiched between Allen Dulles and Carl Jung. Dulles was a legend, of course. He'd been a spy during the first world war, and a superspy in the second, operating out of Switzerland in both cases. When Hitler surrendered, Dulles had joined OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan in lobbying President Truman to create the Central Intelligence Agency—which Dulles had later gone on to lead
.

But Dunphy knew less about Jung. A Swiss psychiatrist, or analyst. Wrote about the collective unconscious. (Whatever that was.) And archetypes. (Whatever they were.) And myths. And flying saucers. Or, wait a second: was that Carl Jung or Wilhelm Reich? Or Joseph Campbell? Dunphy couldn't remember. He'd had so many “brush contacts” with erudition while in college, it seemed at times as if he knew a little of everything—which is to say, next to nothing about anything. Well, he'd look up Jung when he had the chance
.

Meanwhile, things were looking decidedly Swiss. According to its masthead
,
Archaeus
was published in Zug, which was also home to the Special Registry. Availing himself of an atlas, Dunphy saw that the town was about twenty miles outside of Zürich
.

Returning to the file, he scanned the other names on the list. Besides Davis and Curry, the only one that meant anything to him was Ezra Pound. Though he had not read Pound since his days as an undergraduate, Dunphy recalled that the poet had remained in Italy throughout the war, making propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini and the Fascists. When the war ended, he'd been captured and returned to the States, where it was expected that he'd stand trial for treason. But the trial never took place. Influential friends had intervened, psychiatrists were consulted, and the poet was declared insane. Instead of being hanged, he'd been committed, and so spent a good part of the Cold War across the river from where Dunphy now sat, receiving visitors in a private room at St. Elizabeth's Hospital
.

Dunphy considered the other entries on the list. Sigisbert and Dagobert sounded like historical figures. Gomelez, he didn't know. That left Optical Magick, Inc., and the 143rd Surgical Air Wing. He'd never heard of either, but
Inc
.
and
Air Wing
were subjects he could work with
.

All in all, the file was a disappointment—but an interesting one, nevertheless. While its contents, a magazine and some newspaper clippings, were so apparently innocuous that no one could possibly object to their release, Dunphy's curiosity was piqued by the fact that the Agency had felt it necessary to stash his own personnel jacket in Switzerland, while at the same time placing him within the purview of the slightly mysterious Security Research Staff
.

Dunphy called one of the Drones over, and tapped a forefinger on the five-by-seven card. “What do I do about this?” he asked
.

The Drone glanced at the card and shrugged. “There's a form you fill out,” he said. “I'll get you one in a second. But all of that MK-IMAGE crap is a no-brainer. There's nothing in the files except newspaper clips, so you can copy whatever you want and send it to the requester without redactions. The only thing you hold back is the note card with the cross-references. That's a B-7-C exemption.”

Dunphy nodded. “This come up a lot?” he asked
.

“What?”

“MK-IMAGE.”

The Drone shook his head, crossed the room, and came back with a form. “I process about three hundred fifty file requests a week, and I haven't seen one of those cards in a couple of months. So you figure it out.”

Dunphy looked at the form he'd been handed. There were only a few lines, and he filled them in
.

Returning the form to the Drone, Dunphy crossed the room to a bank of Xerox machines and began copying. As he stood in the blinding wash of the strobe light, it occurred to him for the first time that what he was doing might be dangerous
.

Chapter 12

The eagles on Murray Fremaux's uniform lifted when he shrugged his shoulders, leaning forward in the bar at the Sheraton Premiere
.

“There's no such thing,” he said, “as the 143rd Surgical Air Wing. It doesn't exist. Never has.”

Dunphy sipped his beer and sighed
.

“Officially,” the colonel added
.

“Ahh,” Dunphy said, and leaned forward. “Tell me about it.”

“It's a black unit. Used to be headquartered in New Mexico.”

“And now?”

“Middla nowhere.”

Dunphy frowned. “Sounds kinda relative. I mean, if I was
driving
a—”

“The closest
city
is Vegas—but that's about two hundred miles to the southwest. We're talking high desert. Smudge sticks and tumbleweed
.
Jackalopes
.
a”

Dunphy thought about it. “Whatta they do?”

“Hoodoo!”

“The 143rd.”

Murray laughed. “I wasn't asking a question—I was answering one
.
That's
what they do. They do
hoodoo
a—four ohs, no dubba-ewe.”

“Murray—” Dunphy said
.

“Okay! It's a helicopter unit. But that's as close as I can get. I really can't tell you any more.”

Dunphy took a deep breath and leaned forward. “We go back a long way, Murray.”

“I know that.”

Silence
.

“We were
sophomores
together,” Dunphy said
.

“I know, I know.”

“This is important to me. Why won't you tell me?”

“Because I can't—not won't
,
can't
.
I just don't know.”

“Bullshit! You've got oversight of every black operation at the Pentagon.”

“I'm an accountant—”

“You audit their books!”

“Not these books!”

“Why not?”

“Because they aren't ours. They're the Agency's.”

Dunphy was nonplussed. “A surgical air wing?”

Murray shrugged. “Yeah. That's what I'm trying to tell you.”

“Then . . . what does the Agency need with something like that? I mean . . .” Dunphy couldn't even formulate the question. “What
is
a surgical air wing?”

“I dunno,” Murray said. “If you want, I could ask around, or maybe I should just shoot myself in the head. Same result, either way, but it might be a little quicker with a gun. Still . . . whatever's best for
you
.
I mean, we go back a long way, right?”

***

The clock was ringing midnight when Dunphy got back to the house, letting the screen door to the kitchen slam behind him
.

“You know,” Roscoe called, “this is actually pretty interesting.”

“What's that,” Dunphy asked, looking in the refrigerator
.

“
Archaeus
a—however you pronounce it.”

“Oh, yeah, right—the magazine.” He opened a Budweiser, and kicked the refrigerator shut. “I thought you might be interested.” Then he walked into the living room where Roscoe was sprawled in an overstuffed chair, a copy of the magazine in his lap. “You gettin' any tips?”

“About what?”

“Wine.” Dunphy dropped to the couch and took a sip
.

“No,” Roscoe said. “There isn't anything in here about wine.”

Dunphy looked at him. “It says on the cover it's about viticulture. Grapes. Vines. There's a story about . . . what?”

“The Magdalene Cultivar.”

“Right!”

“Yeah, but that isn't about vines,” Roscoe said. “It just sounds like it. It's actually about . . .”

“What?”

“Genealogy.”

Dunphy's second FOIA request, mailed on Tuesday in E. Piper's name, was routed to his desk by Roscoe on Friday
.

The Drone took the request to the files area, returning a few minutes later with a slim folder and the form reporting the fact that an “Andromeda-sensitive inquiry” had been made. As he had the other day, Dunphy answered the form's few questions:

and returned it to the Drone
.

The file contained a newspaper clipping and a five-by-seven index card. Dunphy looked at the card, and as he expected, it contained the same warning that he'd read in the Schidlof file:

This is an Andromeda-sensitive, Special Access Program (SAP) whose contents, in whole or part, have been transferred to the MK-IMAGE Registry at the Monarch Assurance Co. (15 Alpenstrasse, Zug, Switzerland). (See cross-references on reverse.) Report all inquiries concerning this file to the Security Research Staff (SRS) in the Office of the Director (Suite 404)
.

On the opposite side of the card, Dunphy found the following cross-references:

Optical Magick, Inc.    Bovine Census (New Mexico) Bovine Census (Colorado) Allen Dulles Carl Jung

There was nothing new, really, except the references to a Bovine Census. Dunphy wondered about that. Why would the Agency count cows? He put the card down and turned to the clipping
.

It was a wedding photo, the kind of picture that you find in local newspapers. This one came from the
Roswell Daily Record
,
dated June 17, 1987, and it showed a happy couple. There was nothing unusual about the pair except, perhaps, for the string tie that the groom was wearing. Dunphy examined the clipping more closely. The groom looked familiar. He began reading:

Dunphy's third FOIA request, seeking information about Optical Magick, Inc., generated the usual warning, along with a copy of the firm's articles of incorporation. In an apparent mistake, a sheaf of newspaper clippings about UFO sightings in different parts of the country was also included. Dunphy glanced at the clips, some of which were quite old, but there wasn't anything to be learned from them. They were mostly AP reports of incidents in New Mexico, Washington, Michigan, and Florida
.

Turning to the articles of incorporation, he saw that Optical Magick was a Delaware corporation, formed in the spring of 1947. Jean DeMenil, of Bellingham, Washington, was listed as the company's president and registered agent. Everything else was boilerplate
.

In the weeks that followed, “Edw. Piper” made FOIA requests on Carl Jung and the Bovine Censuses in New Mexico and Colorado. These requests were mixed in with legitimate inquiries from others: spouses seeking information about missing husbands (whom they suspected had been CIA agents); Kennedy-assassination researchers looking for a cultural Rosetta stone amid the events of Dealey Plaza; geologists wanting satellite photos of obscure regions; historians looking for evidence of treachery in high places; and a disturbing number of people who claimed to be victims of “mind control.” Dunphy gave all of his requests to the Drone, who didn't seem to notice the statistically improbable number of Andromeda-sensitive inquiries, and made whatever copies Dunphy needed
.

All in all, his little operation was working like a charm, but even so, the yield was slim. There was nothing in the Jung file except newspaper clippings and a five-by-seven warning—along with a handful of cross-references that Dunphy had already identified. The Bovine Census files were equally dismal. Each contained catalogs from a surgical supply house in Chicago—another filing error, Dunphy thought—a five-by-seven notice, and nothing else. It was frustrating
.

Dunphy's frustration turned to apprehension, however, when he returned to his office in the B corridor and found a note on his desk
.

To: J. Dunphy, IRO From: Security Research Staff

Message: Report to Suite 404
.

Dunphy handed the note to a black-uniformed security guard who sat at a small table just inside the glass doors to suite 404. The guard entered Dunphy's name in a logbook, dropped the note in a burn basket on the floor, and gestured to a heavy wooden door at the far end of the antechamber. “Mr. Matta is waiting for you.”

As Dunphy approached it, the door sprung open with a metallic click, and he saw with surprise that what appeared to be oak was in fact steel, and nearly three inches thick. He stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind him
.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light, and when they had, it seemed as if he'd walked into a Ralph Lauren catalog. The fluorescent lights that were everywhere at headquarters had been replaced by standing lamps with parchment shades and incandescent bulbs. The walls of the room were paneled in white pine and lined with books in leather bindings. Nearby, a fire guttered in the grate below a dentiled wooden mantel while, above, a darkened oil painting hung from the wall: two shepherds at a tomb, looking lost. At the far end of the room, a Remington manual typewriter, itself an antique, rested on a heavily carved oak desk. Persian and Azeri rugs were layered on the parquet floor, and the air was fragrant with wood smoke
.

“Mr. Dunphy.”

The voice made him jump. For the first time, he noticed a man standing at the window with his back toward him, looking out at the Virginia countryside. “Have a seat,” the man said, and turning, crossed the room to his desk
.

Dunphy settled into a leather wing chair and crossed his legs. The man in front of him was elderly, gray, and morose. Impeccable in what Dunphy guessed was a thousand-dollar suit and handmade shoes, he radiated courtesy, authority, and old money. For the first time, Dunphy noticed that the room was uncomfortably warm
.

The man smiled wanly. “We have a really serious problem, Jack.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, Mr. Matta.”

“Call me Harold.”

“Okay . . . Harold.”

“As you've probably guessed, I'm in charge of the Security Research Staff.”

Dunphy nodded
.

“I was hoping we could have a chat about Mister Piper. Edward Piper. Ring a bell?”

Dunphy pursed his lips, wrinkled his brow, and finally shook his head. “Not really,” he replied
.

“Well, let me jog your memory. He's made a number of FOIA requests.”

Dunphy nodded and tried to look blank—no easy feat, since his heart was tap-dancing on his ribs. “Right. I mean, if you say so.”

“I do.”

Dunphy wrinkled his brow and grunted. “I see. And, uhh . . . I guess I must have handled some of them.”

“You did.”

“And . . . what? Did I make a big release, or—”

“No. Not at all! Just some newspaper clippings. A magazine article or two. Nothing that wasn't in the public record.”

Dunphy scratched his head and grinned. “Then . . . I don't see the problem.”

“Well, the problem is—or, I should say, the problem
begins
with the fact that Mr. Piper probably doesn't exist.”

“Oh.” Dunphy began to hyperventilate as the silence grew between them. “So you think? . . .”

“He's a fiction.”

“I see,” Dunphy said. “Though, actually—I understand what you're saying, but I really
don't
see the problem. I mean, I guess what you're saying is that I've released next to nothing to . . . well, next to no one.”

Matta watched Dunphy in silence as he filled a pipe with tobacco, tamping it down with his thumb. “Mr. Piper's address is a P.O. box—a Parcel Plus outlet in Great Falls.”

“Hunh!” Dunphy said
.

“But what's really interesting,” Matta added, “and one of the things that really
bothers
us, is that he never picks up his mail.”

Dunphy gulped. “No kidding.”