“The Metropolis Police fished Thompson’s body out of the harbor last night,” Freeman told Straker the next morning. He noted the other man didn’t seem overly surprised at the news.
“Any evidence that Trask was involved?” Straker asked.
Freeman shook his head. “Only that Thompson’s last known location was at the Bureau’s Bessalo warehouse. There are witnesses to that. I’ve already dropped a friendly hint to one of my buddies over at PP-One that Thompson wasn’t the suicidal type and that he had an appointment scheduled with a disgruntled employee.”
Straker chuckled at that. “’Disgruntled employee’? Interesting description of Trask.” Straker sat back in his chair and contemplated the view outside his office window. “With Thompson out of the way, there aren’t that many people left who can positively identify Trask or know the details of Bureau 39’s mission, or how Trask had misinterpreted them.”
“I’ll have Paul assign some people to General Newcomb,” Freeman said. “He’ll be the next one on Trask’s list.”
Straker nodded and picked up the phone from his desk. “Get me General Burton Newcomb, please.”
Freeman knew there was little love lost between the two men. Newcomb had been with James Henderson when he first uncovered the danger from U.F.O.s and had been instrumental in setting up Majik - the ‘above-top-secret’ agency put together to put together to gather unassailable evidence of alien intrusions within the United States. That was back in 1947, less than a month after the now famous ‘Roswell Incident’. Bureau 39 was the field operation arm of Majik.
But Henderson’s plans had been much larger than Majik, larger than just defending the U.S. against alien marauders. The entire planet needed to be defended from the marauders.
Henderson wanted an international paramilitary organization that answered to the United Nations Security Council, not the U.S. government. That was something Newcomb could not bring himself to support – it was a given that the U.S. would be footing most of the cost for the new organization and, according to him and many of his associates, that should have given the U.S. some clout in the decision making processes within SHADO. And that simply hadn’t been politically viable.
Henderson won and Newcomb lost. It didn’t matter that Henderson’s ideas on the matter had been given the backing of the President of the United States. It didn’t matter that Henderson never got his fourth star because of his insistence that SHADO be international in scope and utterly politically neutral. And to add insult to injury Ed Straker, Henderson’s assistant, was given the task of commanding SHADO. Burton Newcomb’s name was never even suggested for the job.
Then, for various reasons only some of them political, SHADO had chosen not to bring the members of Bureau 39 into its operation. Majik was officially decommissioned and Newcomb’s group was transferred to the control of a ‘civilian’ intelligence agency. Officially, Bureau 39 ceased to exist. In fact, all records of its previous existence were classified above top secret. Burton Newcomb was shuffled off to an obscure corner of the USAF infrastructure to - supposedly - wait for retirement.
Freeman knew better. Newcomb had been charged with keeping Trask and his people under control. He’d done a credible job until he was forced to retire. And now there was little doubt that without Newcomb’s restraining hand Bureau 39 had gone rogue.
“Well?” Freeman asked when Straker hung up the phone.
“He already suspected something had happened to Thompson,” Straker said. “And he doesn’t really care if Trask comes after him. He’s dying. Maybe six months to live. But he also said that he had some insurance in place if anything untoward did happen to him, and that we need to move fast if we’re going to get our hands on Trask’s collection of alien tech. Stuff he told his bosses had been transferred to us, but hadn’t been.”
“How much are we talking about?” Freeman asked.
“A whole damned warehouse.”
-o-o-o-
Freeman assigned himself to the ‘acquisition mission’. There had been rumors around SHADO for years that Bureau 39 had been keeping back many of their more interesting finds. Now they knew it was true.
Three moving trucks blocked the alley behind the ‘furniture warehouse’, and barricades were set up to block the adjacent streets. The doors to the building on the opposite side of the alley were wide open, making it look like the movers were moving things in, rather than out.
Freeman looked over the alley. The surveillance cameras and motion detectors had already been dealt with. The phone lines had been blocked – anyone calling in or out would get a ‘temporarily out of order’ recording. Advanced radio frequency jammers were in place and the antennae in the building’s roof had been ‘disabled’. If Trask and his people were in the building, they were cut off from the outside world – at least Freeman hoped they were. SHADO had no idea what alien tech Trask’s people may have adapted for their own use.
“Sir, what about the rest of their security?” one of the security people asked.
“People usually just lock their doors and windows,” Freeman said. “The only people who guard their walls and ceilings are banks.”
“This doesn’t look much like a bank,” one of the drivers commented.
“Let’s see what’s inside,” Freeman ordered. They had already checked the building out using the scanners at their disposal, but now they needed to actually look.
Drilling a hole in the side of the building took less than a minute, as did threading the miniature camera into the hole. A picture of the building’s interior came onto a monitor inside the first truck. It looked like an ordinary warehouse except for the heavily reinforced door and the chicken-wire room partitions. Blue tarps covered odd shaped objects. File cabinets stood against the chicken-wire. The camera didn’t pick up any movement until…
The heavy door swung open and two people walked into the warehouse. Freeman recognized them from their pictures. Lane and Kent from the Daily Planet.
“Have we got sound?” Freeman murmured. The man in charge of the miniature camera handed Freeman a pair of headphones and turned on a recorder. Freeman watched as the two reporters started looking around the room, opening file drawers, seemingly at random.
“I don't know about this, Lois. Where is everybody?” Kent said. He sounded worried.
The woman shrugged it off. “Clark, the thing about luck is, don't question it.” She peered at one of the photos then held it up to her companion. “Give me a break. I've seen this movie.”
“Lois, these look like the genuine article,” Kent protested.
“They're too good. It's got to be a set-up,” Lane stated. Freeman stifled a chuckle.
“What if it's not? What if people actually traveled in these? People from far away...”
“There's a story here, Clark, but I don't know if it's UFO's,” Lane stated, shoving the photos back into the drawer.
“I thought you were the one who said if it walks like a duck…”
“Don't quote me to myself, Clark,” she groused. Then she stopped and stared at him. “How did you…?”
On the monitor, Freeman caught Kent’s glance at one of the folders just before the reporter slammed the drawer shut. The young man grabbed the woman’s arm and led her away from the cabinets.
“What are you doing?” she grumbled.
“You don't like their pictures, let's see what else they have,” Kent explained
“I suppose you think we're going to pull one of these off and find a U.F.O.?”
“I don't know what we're going to find,” Kent said.
The woman shrugged off his hand and stood in the center of the floor. “Eeny, meeny, miney, mo...” she called out, pointing at the covered objects around her. She pulled off one of the tarps, revealing the shattered shell of an Aurisian escape pod. Lane stared at it, unimpressed. “This is just an Unidentified Salvage Yard.”
Kent exposed a different craft. Another escape pod, this one was intact. “This doesn't look like any scrap metal I ever saw.”
The woman seemed to reconsider her skepticism. “Clark, do you really think...?”
But the man had already moved on to a third tarp covered craft. This one caught the man’s attention. Freeman couldn’t see what was under the tarp, but whichever one it was seemed to strike a chord with the reporter. Kent’s lips moved but the microphone didn’t pick it up.
“Clark!” Lane called out. Kent pulled the tarp back over the ship and Freeman thought that he put something from the ship into his pocket.
“Somebody's coming,” Lane continued. She obviously hadn’t seen what Kent had done. But now the microphone picked up what sounded like footsteps from some other part of the building.
Trask and several of his men appeared, guns drawn.
“And how did you two get in?” Trask demanded.
“That's your problem,” Lane stated. Freeman found that he was impressed by her lack of reaction to Trask’s obvious threat.
Trask wasn’t impressed. “That's correct. Getting out however, that's your problem.”
“People know where we are,” Kent said.
“Like... Superman,” Lane said. “He's going to come looking for us.”
“Oh, I hope so. In fact, I'm counting on it,” Trask stated. Freeman and his team watched in dismay as Trask forced the two reporters to go with him. Four of his men stayed behind to secure the ‘exhibits’.
The ship that had attracted Kent’s attention was the first one they moved.
“Find out where Trask is taking those reporters,” Freeman ordered two of the security people. To the rest of his team: “Let’s open up this can, swat the bugs, and salvage what we can.”
