"Could suck a golf ball through fifty feet of garden hose."
"Guys," Scrubbs said.
'And turns into a pizza at three
a.m."
Loud, guffawing laughter. Well, let them vent.
"Good night, boys."
Scrubbs signed off, finished his report, sent it electronically along to MJ-10, with copies for MJ-7 and MJ-4. Paperwork, paperwork, it was never ending. He notified MJ-5 (Media) that there had been a level-four snatch in their area and to monitor local news. He had developed a pretty good sense by now for how loud the abductees were going to yell. His guess was Maggie would let 'er rip.
He looked up at his wall calendar from MUFON, one of the more responsible - if that was the right word - UFO organizations. They had an abduction conference coming up in October. Maggie would be able to make it in time for that. A whole new life awaited her, apart from Henry and her raw-hot-dog-sucking brood. One minute she's comparison shopping at Wal-Mart, the next she's the homecoming queen at a UFO convention, giving weepy testimony that beings from the great beyond thought she was special enough to mess with her ovaries. Her life would never be the same. Her life would never be boring again. She had purpose. She had been anointed by gods. This was empowerment. There were times when Scrubbs felt like the Holy Ghost.
When he'd finished with all his message traffic, he checked his in box. There was a message from MJ-11. Yes! Personnel! His transfer! He clicked opened the message and read:
REF: STATUS YOUR REQUEST. TRANSFER MJ-2 (OPS): DENIED.
Some hours later Scrubbs was on the couch in his Foggy Bottom rental, so marinated in vodka that he was unable to do anything but angrily stab the channel button on his TV's remote control. It occurred to him, lying there in his underwear, that
this
was his life, vocationally and recreationally: punching buttons and watching TV screens. Blind drunk and alone on a Sunday morning. Keep holy the Sabbath. Another Bloody Mary.
Assholes! Bureaucratic sons of bitches! Small-minded dicks!
Here he had worked his ass off, giving them 1,000 percent, giving them Kathy Carr, giving them dozens of plump, juicy, media-seeking abductees, and what does he get?
denied
. Not even
R
egret
to
inform you
denied.
More vodka. Where
was
the vodka? Where
had
the vodka gotten to? Maybe in the thing by the whatever. Empty. Damn. Wait, there was other vodka somewhere, under the whatever. Ah, here.
Uch!
He sprayed it across the shag carpet. What the
f-
Pepper
vodka? Jesus
...
Just the thing to pour into a stomach that so far that day had had styrofoam-fiavored coffee and potato chips. He rummaged, finding only a stale chocolate Pop-Tart. He stumbled back to the couch with a presentiment of misery the next day. He flopped onto the couch.
He heard the words
"Sunday . . .
with John Oliver Banion."
Christ, wasn't there at least a frozen pizza in the freezer?
He went lurching toward the kitchen to the sound of the opening strains of
Sunday's
theme music.
The president? Hm. His boss of bosses, commander in chief, the one pershon
- person -
who knew about MJ-12. Drunkenly, Scrubbs saluted the TV set and fell over.
He struggled back to the sofa. The president was defending
Celeste,
the space station. Word around MajestNet was that it was a boondoggle.
Banion was on his case. Banion. Pompous prick! Look at him. Bow tie. Now if you really wanted to convince the world that aliens had landed . . .
Scrubbs chuckled mirthlessly.
. . . he
was the guy to snatch. Do a full CE-4 on John O-am-I-so-wonderful Banion. Man was so tight-assed they wouldn't even be able to get the probe in!
Scrubbs crawled over to his computer. It looked like an ordinary laptop, but it had special features. To turn it into a secure-transmission MJ-12 Field communicator, you had to reach behind and press the reset button four times for three seconds each. The track pad functioned as a fingerprint identifier. There were three passwords, and they had to be entered correctly or the machine would explode. Some safety feature. It was tricky work, drunk.
Burning Bush Country Club, ten miles northwest of Washington in the hilly, sylvan precincts of Maryland, was where the Establishment met to play the royal and ancient game. The main clubhouse looked like the set of
Gone With the Wind,
and as at Tara. you were met at the door by ivory smiles set in ebony. Burning Bush had only grumblingly accommodated the modern era. But since presidents liked to play golf here, it had little choice but to relent in its long-standing policies regarding people of pigmentation and members of the tribe of Abraham. Burton Galilee was the first son of the Dark Continent to be elected to membership. The club leadership managed to stall another couple of calendar years before opening the tent flap to the circumcised. Now Burning Bush was met on another great field of battle: whether to admit the weaker vessel. The First Lady was making the president's life hell over it.
On Saturday, just before one o'clock, Banion was changing in the men's locker room, ruminating on the
Sunday
segment he had taped yesterday with Erhardt Williger. The topic - Russia, naturally. Williger, former secretary of state, and now adviser to nations and corporations the world over, took the view that President Blebnikov's belligerent, irredentist growlings about taking Alaska back were just to placate the hard-liners in his own party. He had no intention of sending the Russian fleet willy-nilly across the water. "Anyvey," Williger said in his plum
my Hungarian accent. "From vat I
have seen, I am not convinced
deir Navy could make it across the Volga River, much less de Bering Strait."
As Banion contentedly mused, an unseen hand reached into his golf bag outside and substituted a half dozen monogrammed balls identical to the ones it removed.
The fourth hole at Burning Bush is, in the lingo of golfers, a "bitch." The fairway is narrow, with a water hazard running the whole length on the right. On the left are deep, rough woods. Many a promising day has turned sour on the fourth at Burning Bush. It was this hole in particular that Banion had come to play in preparation for his round with Speaker Meeker and Justice Fitch. He wasn't worried about Fitch. That old boy's glory days of golf were behind him. But Banion had seen an item in the
Post
recently about Speaker Meeker attending a golf clinic in Bel Mellow, Florida, so he was wary.
He teed up and dared to use his driver. He thrilled to hear the delicious smack of the ball connecting smartly with the sweet spot. (Oh, glorious sound!) The ball soared straight and true down the fairway.
So
satisfying. Now, if he could just do that when -
What the
hell!
The ball suddenly veered off into the woods at a positively geometric angle. It couldn't be windage. There was no wind. It was behaving like a billiard ball banking off a side. Uncanny. Inexplicable. He'd been playing golf for over a quarter century, and he had never, ever, seen a ball act like that. He watched as the ball disappeared into the woods with that discouraging rustle of leaves so familiar to golfers, that most hopeful breed.
Banion stood there for a moment wondering what freak of physics had caused his ball to carom off course at almost ninety degrees. He considered going after it but then decided to take a mulligan. Well, why not? The idea was to practice.
He teed up again, addressed the ball neatly, as he drew back, murmured that key word -
"Easy"
- to himself, and drove. Again he heard the lovely sound of precise connection of titanium and laminated rubber. The ball leapt. It wasn't as good a shot as the first, bit of a slice off to the right, but with luck it wouldn't go in the water. Stay . . . stay . . .
stay . . .
Seventy-five yards out. it banked left into the woods, almost exactly like the first shot. Banion watched, mouth open. He heard a distant
thok
as the ball hit a branch in the woods.
Banion examined the face of his driver, a present from Burt Galilee.
What the hell was going on?
Should he take another mulligan? The idea of two was an affront to his perfectionism. But it was too warm to go thrashing about in the underbrush, and there was poison ivy in there.
He teed up with the wary air of a man expecting his cigar to explode and drove with grim determination, forgetting the "easy" mantra.
He sliced badly to the right. Up, up, up . . . this one wa
s going swimming . . . then zip
off into the woods at an angle not found in nature or physics.
Banion jammed his driver into the bag without replacing the embroidered "Camp David" head cover - a Christmas gift from the previous president - and stormed off into the woods, poison ivy be damned.
He was about thirty yards in, right about where his balls had vanished, when through the trees he saw in the near distance an illogical number of blinking lights. Maintenance vehicle. Odd. What was there to maintain in here? Well, maybe they'd seen his balls.
He discerned figures moving near the vehicle. They were dressed in shiny clothing. Must be - firemen? - in those flame-retardant -
Jesus Christ!
It was no more than fifty feet ahead of him, in some kind of clearing. Round, low to the ground, metallic, sort of a brushed-steel look, full of blinking lights.
His throat went dry; he could feel his heart pounding. Normally he only felt his heart on the squash courts. Maybe once or twice during sex, back when they were first married.
He crouched behind a pine tree and watched. The two firemen seemed to be examining the vehicle, whatever it was. It looked - he felt uncomfortable even thinking it - like a flying saucer. Ridiculous. Ridiculous on its face.
But there it was. Whatever it was.
Aha, he thought. There were military installations all around Maryland. Top-secret sites built during the Cold War, where they could hide presidents and congressional leaders in the event the Russians dropped the big one. Could it be something like that? A bomb shelter? Damned odd place to put it.
At that moment, one of the firemen turned to face the other fireman, giving Banion a good glimpse at him.
He cried out. He couldn't help himself. It just came out. Great merciful heaven!
They saw him! They were coming toward him!
Banion turned to run.
"Ah!"
There was another one, blocking his way back to the golf course. It spoke.
"Alooka. Alooka walalo."
He was surrounded now, face to face with the three of them. He noticed a smell, acrid and overwhelming at first, like ammonia, with a sweetish aftertaste, like . . . cinnamon? Was this alien BO?
Things began to blur. His legs went rubbery. He passed out.
Who could blame him?
Banion awoke to the twinkle of lights and an electronic humming sound.
"Scotch and soda," he said foggily. "What is the movie?"
He was dreaming. He was in first class. When the fog lifted, he saw a thing peering inquisitively down at him. It was about the height of an ordinary human, but with shimmery, iridescent skin. It was bald and had black, almond-shaped eyes, slits for ears.
It spoke.
"Kaloo?"
Banion stared philosophically. He was versed in every protocol. He knew the correct address for an archbishop of Canterbury, retired Supreme Court justice, wife or daughter of an earl. What was the proper form here? "How do you do?" didn't sound quite right.
"Kaloo?" he ventured. The rational thought intruded that he might well be out of his mind with fear. He felt incredibly weary, too tired to register any emotion. It reminded him of the intravenous injection they'd given him when he'd gone into the hospital for the colonoscopy.
Another one. It was speaking to him. "Mooka."
"Mooka," Banion replied. He didn't feel half bad, really. It was a pleasant wooziness, almost
...
euphoric. He tried to raise his arms, in the process discovering that his wrists were attached to the table he was lying on. His brain flashed him a panic signal. The euphoria ebbed. He rattled his wrists, feeling metal. Not good, said the brain.
"Look here," he demanded, "what's going on?"
"Wooga bakak."
"Do you speak English?"
"Kreek maku feeto."
"Do? You? Speak? English?"
Useless. It was like being in the Third World, where you had to shout to make yourself understood. If they were going to travel billions of light-years or however far they'd come, to land on golf courses, they might have devoted a little of their superior technology to studying the local language. Surely they could listen to tapes on their way here.
Repeat, please: "Take me to your leader."
"Ha. Lo."