The Magdalene Cipher (9 page)

“No kidding! It's as if he isn't interested in it. Which seems strange. I mean, after writing all those FOIA requests, you'd think—what
do
you think, Jack?”

“About what?” Dunphy asked
.

“Mr. Piper's disinterest.”

“I don't know,” Dunphy said, waiting for an inspiration. “Maybe he's dead! And somebody's using his name!”

Matta puffed thoughtfully on his pipe. Finally, he said, “That's a really stupid hypothesis, Jack. It wouldn't explain anything. The question is, why would anyone make all these FOIA requests if they were uninterested in the information we release?”

“I don't know,” Dunphy replied. “It's a conundrum.” He was beginning to panic
.

“At least! It is
at least
a conundrum. In fact, it's even more curious than that!”

“Oh?!” Dunphy asked, his voice a little too high, and a little too loud
.

“Yes. Though you don't seem to recall, the fact is that Mr. Piper has made six requests to date, each of which might have been delegated to any of eleven IRO officers at headquarters. But—
incredibly
a—every one of those requests has gone to you! Now, do you have any idea what the odds are on something like that?”

“No,” Dunphy said
.

“Neither do I,” Matta replied, puffing. “But I should think they'd be quite high, wouldn't you?”

“I guess, but . . .”

“Astronomical, really,” Matta said
.

“I'm sure you're right, but . . . I don't know what to say. I don't have anything to say about the requests I get. They're handed down from—I don't know where they're from. They come from
on high
.
a”

“Well, actually—not
so
high. They're ‘handed down' by Mr. White.”

“Okay. By Mr. White, then.”

“With whom, as I understand it, in yet another remarkable coincidence, you're sharing a house.”

For the first time, Dunphy noticed a clock ticking at the other end of the room. It was a very loud clock. Or so it seemed as the silence swelled, filling the room with the expectation of sound. Finally, Dunphy said, “Wait a second. You mean—Roscoe?!”

“Yes.”

“So
that's
what he does!” Dunphy gave a strangled little laugh
.

“Mmmm . . . that's what he does. I take it you've never discussed Mr. Piper with Mr. White?”

“No. Of course not. We don't talk about our work.”

Matta grunted and leaned forward. “That's commendable, Jack. But you know what? I don't believe you.”

Dunphy set his jaw. He didn't like to be called a liar, especially when he was being one. “I'm sorry to hear that,” he said
.

Matta reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a manila file. Wordlessly, he pushed it across the desk
.

Dunphy took the folder and opened it. A handful of eight-by-ten glossies slid into his lap. He looked at them. Each of the pictures was stamped
MK-IMAGE
.
Each was numbered, and they appeared to be the same: close-ups of a man's eyes with a small, vertical ruler superimposed upon the pupils. The ruler was demarcated in millimeters. Dunphy wrinkled his brows. “I don't get it.”

“You passed your polygraph,” Matta said
.

“Good.”

“Well . . . so did Aldrich Ames.”

Dunphy grunted at the allusion. Ames was doing life without parole for spying on the CIA. Finally, he tapped the photos and asked, “So what are these?”

“You flunked your eye exam, Jack.”

“What eye exam?” Dunphy looked more closely at the pictures. Slowly, it dawned on him that the eyes were his own, and the realization sent a chill down his spine
.

“We don't rely on the polygraph that much. Not anymore. We've been burned too often. Retinal measurements are a lot harder to beat. A lot more reliable.”

Dunphy was genuinely perplexed, and he looked like it. He shook his head and shrugged
.

“You want to see a lie, Jack?”

Dunphy nodded. Ever so slightly
.

“Look at number thirteen.”

Dunphy did as he was told. The photo looked like the others. Except, he saw, that the eyes were bigger: the pupils were larger. Dilated
.

“Turn it over,” Matta said
.

Dunphy did
.

Subject's Statement: “I'm sorry, I don't know where Davis is.”

(To) Rhinegold, Esterhazy

Fuck
.
The word went off in his head like a gong, and for a moment, Dunphy feared that Matta must have heard it. But, no: the old man was sitting in his chair with his cheek pulled back in a kind of geriatric smirk, or rictus. Dunphy turned the photo over in his hand and looked into his own eyes. Where had the camera been? Instantly, the answer came to him: the turquoise bolo in Esterhazy's tie. “This is bullshit,” Dunphy said. “I didn't lie to anyone.”

Matta puffed thoughtfully on his pipe, then leaned forward with a confidential air. “I think a few days off would be a good idea, don't you, Jack? Give us some time to sort things out.” As Dunphy started to protest, Matta shook him off. “Not to worry—it won't take long. I'll put my best people on it. And that's a promise.”

Chapter 13

Dunphy picked up the mail at the top of the driveway, parked, and went into the house. It was a stale joke, but he couldn't stop himself from calling out, “I'm home, honey!”

Roscoe was at the dining room table, reading
Archaeus
.
He acknowledged the jest with a halfhearted smile and said, “They put me on administrative leave.”

“Jesus,” Dunphy said. “So that's what they're calling it? Me, too.”

“You wanta know the truth?” Roscoe asked. “Matta scared the wits out of me. I'm thinking about taking early retirement.”

“But, Roscoe—we hardly knew ye.”

Roscoe chuckled
.

“Look, man, I'm really sorry,” Dunphy said. “I got you into this.” There was a long pause. “I don't know what else to say. My bad, I guess.”

Roscoe shrugged. “Don't worry about it. If you wanta know the truth, I'm not all that bullish on spying.”

Dunphy shook his head
.

“I'm serious! Redistributing FOIA requests to Agency fuckups—” Roscoe winced at Dunphy's look, caught his breath, and forged on. “Present company excepted—obviously! But this isn't what I signed on for. I mean, it's
depressing
.
The Cold War's over. The enemy went away. We oughta be celebrating, but we aren't. And why not? Because the Russians' surrender was the ultimate betrayal. Now that we don't have an enemy—make that a ‘symmetrical enemy'—one that's as strong as we are, or who can be packaged that way—how're we supposed to justify our budgets? Drugs? Terrorism? The medfly? Gimme a break. I'll be glad to be out.” Roscoe paused, and nodded at the mail in Dunphy's hand. “Anything for me?”

Dunphy looked. There was a big envelope with Ed McMahon's picture on it and a huge headline—
WE'RE PROUD TO ANNOUNCE THAT ROSCOE WHITE IS A $10,000,000.00 WINNER!
a—followed by the words, in small type, “if he fills out the enclosed entry form and holds the winning ticket.” Dunphy tossed the letter to Roscoe. “Congratulations,” he said, dropping into an armchair and glancing at the rest of the mail. Most of it was bills, but there was one envelope that, lacking a stamp, had been hand-delivered. It was addressed to Dunphy, and he opened it
.

“Jack,” it read, “You didn't get this from me, but . . 
.

I ran a computer check, and the long and the short of it is, Pentagon files show a single, open reference to the 143rd. The reference is to a disability pension for a Dodge City, Kansas, resident named Gene Brading, who contracted something called Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (?) while on assignment with the 143rd You-know-what. If you're still interested in the subject, you might want to contact him. I checked, and he's in the book
.

The note, which was obviously from Murray, was signed
Omar the Tentmaker
.

“Jesus,” Dunphy whispered
.

Roscoe looked up from
Archaeus
.
a “What?”

“The guy's got Creutzfeldt-Jakob's Disease.”

Roscoe frowned. “Who has? And what is it?”

Dunphy ignored the first question. “Mad cow disease,” he said. “It's got another name in humans, but in England, where it's bad—I mean, they've lost a hundred thousand animals—that's what they call it. And kuru. In New Guinea, where the cannibals get it, they call it kuru.”

“Hunh,” Roscoe muttered. “Thinka that.”

“You got any quarters?” Dunphy asked
.

“Yeah . . . I guess. On my bureau—where I keep my change. How many do you need?”

“I don't know—ten, twelve. How many you got?”

Roscoe shrugged. “Lots, but . . . why do you want quarters?”

“I need to make a phone call.”

Roscoe gave him a look. “That's why we have that thing in the hall—the one with all the buttons on it, and the curly plastic cord.”

Dunphy shook his head. “I don't think I should call from here. I think I should use a pay phone. You need anything from the 7-Eleven?”

Brading wasn't inclined to help
.

“I can't discuss any of that,” he said. “All that's classified.”

“Fine,” Dunphy replied. “Then I'll put that in my report, and that'll be the end of that.”

“Whattaya mean, the end of
that?
The end of
what
a?”

Dunphy sighed audibly. “Well, hopefully—not your pension.”

“My pension?!”

“Or the health care, but—”

“What?!”

“Look, Mr. Brading—Gene—you know what Washington's like: the GAO's looking for fraud. That's their job. They take a random sample of pensions and entitlements—not just from the Pentagon, but every agency—and check 'em out. Every year. So we're talking about maybe one person in two thousand who's audited, and the idea is to find out if the government's writing checks to someone who's dead. Anyway, your name was kicked out by the computer and—”

Brading groaned with exasperation
.

“—you can see the problem. The way it looks to the accountant is, the army's paying a disability pension to someone whose military records don't exist, and who claims he was injured while serving with a unit that's nowhere on the books. So it looks like fraud—which is bad for you, and bad for us. 'Cause, as you know, we don't need the publicity.”

“Oh, for cryin' out loud—can't you tell them—”

“We can't
tell
them anything. We can
talk
to them, but before I do that . . . I'm going to need some basic data about the circumstances of your illness, and—”

“Who'd you say you're with?”

“The Security Research Staff.”

Brading grunted. “Well, you know as well as I do that we can't talk about any of this on an open phone. They'd cremate the both of us.”

“Of course,” Dunphy said. “I just wanted to touch base. Unless you're busy, I could fly out tomorrow and—”

“No, no, tomorrow's fine. Let's get it outa the way.”

Dunphy flew to Kansas the next day, rented a car, and drove out to see Brading that same afternoon. He lived in an enclave of condominiums beside an eighteen-hole golf course, an oasis of bluegrass that surged toward a nearby shopping mall
.

As it happened, Eugene Brading was a thin and sallow man in his sixties. He answered the door in a wheelchair, a blanket over his knees. His first words were, “Can I see your ID?”

Dunphy took a small black case from inside his jacket and flipped it open. Brading glanced at the laminated eagle, squinted at the name, and, apparently satisfied, gestured for his visitor to come into the living room
.

“You want some lemonade?” he asked, rolling toward the kitchen
.

“Sure,” Dunphy said, glancing around the room. “Lemonade would be nice.” His eyes fell on a gold-framed postcard that hung on the wall beside a small bookshelf. It was a picture of a religious statue, a golden-robed Madonna standing in a black marble chapel, gazing out at the camera. Surrounded by lightning bolts and clouds, and with armloads of carnations at her feet, the Madonna herself was inexplicably black. Coal black. And at her feet was a printed inscription:

La Vierge Noire
Protectrice de la ville

A handwritten note on white matting read
Einsiedeln, Switz., June 1987
.

Weird, Dunphy thought. But that was as far as it went. The postcard meant nothing to him, really, and so he let his eyes wander along the wall. There was a Keane painting of the usual doe-eyed waif, replete with a single tear, and farther along, something stranger: a square, black cloth hung like a curtain from the wall, concealing something that Dunphy very much wanted to see
.

“I make it myself,” Brading said, rolling into the room with a glass of lemonade. “All natural ingredients.”

“No kidding.” Dunphy took the glass and sipped. He paused for a second, savoring the taste. “Now that's what I call delicious.”

“Me and some buddies,” Brading said, nodding at a faded snapshot in a plain gold frame. The picture was of four men in black jumpsuits, standing together in a field of wheat. Their arms were around each other's shoulders, and they were smiling at the camera. Dunphy saw that one of the men was Brading, and another was Rhinegold. The photo was inscribed:

Men in Black!
Ha Ha Ha!!!

Brading gazed at the picture with a grin. “In-joke,” he said
.

Dunphy nodded, pretending to understand. “I see you and Mike were working together.”

Brading chuckled, pleasantly surprised. “Yeah! You know Mike, huh?”

“Everyone knows Mike.”

“I'll bet they do. Whatta guy!”

Dunphy and Brading gazed at the picture, grinning inanely, saying nothing. Finally, Brading broke the silence. “So what can I do for ya?”

“Well,” Dunphy said, taking out a notebook and settling into a wing chair. “You can tell me about the 143rd.”

Brading furrowed his brow. “Well, I guess . . . I mean, since you and Mike go back a ways . . .” Then he shook his head. “But . . . you don't mind me asking—just how high are you cleared, anyway?”

Dunphy coughed. “The usual. I've got Q-clearances through Cosmic—”

“A Q-clearance isn't gonna cut it. We're talking about some very heavy insulation.”

“And, beyond that, I go up through Andromeda.”

Brading grunted, suddenly satisfied. “Oh, well—
Andromeda
.
I figured that. I mean, being with the SRS and all, you'd have to be. But, well—I had to ask. I'm sure you understand.”

Dunphy nodded. “Of course.”

“Anyway,” Brading went on, “I was with the 143rd for, I don't know, maybe twenty-four years. Started out in Roswell—only then, it wasn't the 143rd. It was one of them no-name units that were part of the 509th.”

“What's that?”

Brading frowned. “The 509th Composite Bomb Group. Ain't you read your history?”

“Of course,” Dunphy said, placating the old guy with a smile
.

“They dropped the A-bomb on the Japs,” Brading explained, then added with a wink, “among
other
things.”

A knowing smile seemed to be required, and Dunphy provided it. “Oh . . . right,” he said, and let the smile flare
.

“Anyway, I was with
them
for . . . what? Musta been twelve years.”

“Starting when?”

“ 'Sixty. Up through '71, '72, maybe. That's when we got our name. The 143rd.”

Dunphy nodded
.

“Aintcha gonna write that down?”

“Sure,” Dunphy said, and made a note
.

“ 'Cause that's when the 143rd got started. Same year as Watergate. So it's easy to remember.”

“Right.”

“And, of course, you couldn't run something like the 143rd out of Roswell—I mean, it's a working town, for God's sake. People live there!”

Dunphy nodded in an understanding way. “So . . .”

“They set us up over in Dreamland.”

Dunphy gave him a blank look
.

“You don't know Dreamland?”

“No.”

“Hunh! I thought everybody knew about Dreamland. I mean, it's been on
60 Minutes!
a”

“Yeah, well . . . I don't watch a lot of television.”

“By now, I expect there's books about it. Anyway, Dreamland's in the Nellis Range, a hundred and twenty miles northwest of Vegas. Emigrant Valley. They got about a hundred thousand acres up there—”

“They?”

“Uncle Sam. Three or four hangars, half a dozen runways.”

“You lived there?”

“No one actually ‘lives' there. All it is, really, is an antennae farm with rattlesnakes—and funny airplanes, of course. Most of us lived in Vegas and shuttled back and forth.”

“There's a shuttle?”

“You had half a dozen flights a day out of McCarran Airport—still do, I guess. Takes about half an hour. The flights are run by a Lockheed subsidiary. I forget what it's called. Anyway, they fly 767s, painted black with a red line down the fuselage.”

“So how many people were going up there every day?”

“Maybe a thousand. Back and forth.”

“And they're all with the 143rd—”

“No, no, no. Nothing like it. When I was working, there were maybe ten of us—tops.”

“And the others . . .”

Brading gave a dismissive shrug. “Testin', trainin' . . . there's an Aggressor Squadron, MiG-23s and Sukhoi Su-22s—they're outa Groom Lake. And I guess they've come up with a replacement for the Blackbird—”