Abu Ghraib Prison, west of Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 7
“Look, I’ve got to go. I love you, too, Mom. Kiss Adam for me, ‘kay? Bye bye.”
Elle (After the first letter of her first name Laura) Moss clapped her cell phone shut as the Iraqi intelligence officials approached her at the end of their pantomime of an investigation. She self-consciously straightened the green badge of whatever intelligence agency out of the 16 known ones for whom she purported to work this week. Pocketing the phone, she began closing the gap between herself and the Iraqis.
She wasn’t sure what they’d expected to find considering al Islamiyah’s now seemingly absent, alleged ghost. After all, it was foolhardy at best, dangerous at worst, to consider lack of evidence as proof of anything. We learned that the hard way with Rumsfeld and Cheney. Besides, their inspection was a purely ceremonial one, like the kind Presidents and other visiting heads of state give as they strut past foreign troops. Except this symbolic inspection didn’t have the press to dutifully record it. The Iraqi government, as Col. Waterston told both her and Hans Dietrich, the world-renowned ghost hunter, was particularly eager to reclaim control of the prison, ahem, facility, according to the good Colonel, and that simply wouldn’t happen as long as there was a poltergeist on the premises.
Elle Moss was officially there in the capacity of a liaison officer for a certain intelligence agency, someone to help facilitate the transfer of authority from the Americans to the Iraqis. The idea was never to turn the notorious prison back into a prison but a museum to memorialize the abuses that had taken place there. No doubt, the Iraqi intelligence officials weren’t thinking of just Saddam’s own excesses at Abu Ghraib. In fact, they were probably secretly tempted to devote a wing or at least a tier to Bush’s, Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s own excesses that began right after Shock and Awe in March 2003.
Unofficially, Elle Moss was not there to liaise with the Iraqis but to investigate Hans Dietrich. Her people, her real people, had been investigating that dirtbag for over two years. There was nothing much that anyone in the world except for Dietrich himself couldn’t tell her about him. She was an expert on this guy, his blood-spattered past as a Stasi official and how he’d managed to not only escape his deserved comeuppance but even procure for himself a second and lucrative career as a “paranormal investigator.” So Laura “Elle” Moss was fooling everyone but herself by becoming part of the window dressing. While it wasn’t exactly on a par with Colin Powell’s bedtime fairy tales of WMD to the UN Security Council, it was important that the American intelligence community be represented as fully as the Iraqis’. And the CIA and other pertinent agencies didn’t think this was important enough to show up for. So it was a snap for Elle’s own well-connected if little-understood agency to shoehorn her in.
“I trust everything met to your satisfaction, Mr. Director?”
The tall and burly Iraqi intelligence chief curtly nodded his head and seemed almost shamed in having to deal with a woman who was anywhere close to his equal. She was 25, nowhere near Directorate level but she carried herself with a bearing that suggested hidden power and influence, like the stately carriage of an iceberg keeping 90% of itself under water. She had been asked to wear a kaffiyeh, or head scarf, to show her modesty and she politely but firmly refused.
The truly comical thing about this inspection was the complete absence of electronic equipment to document anything they would see. And there wasn’t much chance of that happening because the inspection was carried out in broad daylight. Ghosts, like vampires, tended to be shy around UV light and were generally nocturnal. She wasn’t exactly an expert on vampires whether or not they existed. Ghosts, on the other hand, were something she knew a thing or two about. In fact, it was almost a family profession.
After exchanging the usual diplomatic closing pleasantries and passing the details of the transfer of control to the detail men in attendance, Elle briskly walked out of the prison. In spite of her impressive knowledge of the paranormal, she wasn’t what you’d call an adept or a sensitive, people who claim to be able to see spirits (unlike her baby brother Adam). She just wanted to leave the prison because its sheer reputation oppressed her. It was the horrible knowledge of what had gone on, horrible knowledge that even Seymour Hersh had never learned and uncovered on the pages of the New Yorker. Earlier in the year, when the Obama administration released about a dozen more pictures of the abuses Americans had another opportunity to remember and not be allowed to forget what had been done in their good name. It remained to be seen if any permanent lessons were learned.
She was able to let her mind wander to personal matters once she was back in her borrowed Humvee. Several times she’d tried texting and calling her little brother once she got the terrible news about the accident that killed his girlfriend and, for a brief time, Adam himself. She should’ve known that even Adam, who practically slept with his iPhone, wouldn’t be accessible for a while after what had happened on Halloween night. To date, he still wasn’t answering his phone and she began wondering if it was irreparably damaged in the crash. She kept telling herself that was the reason why he never got around to calling her on her own phone.
She never told her younger skateboarding sibling but it was partly his “glimpses”, as he’d come to call them, that got her into her present line of work. The story he’d told the family years ago about having seen their stillborn brother, umbilical cord and all, standing on his own grave wasn’t the kind that Mom and Dad loved to dust off and trot out for polite company. Still, there was no denying that the kid at the very least believed that he saw something in that cemetery. He may have been an award-winning prevaricator who’d conned Mom and Dad countless times but he never fooled his big sister. And when Laura looked into his wide green eyes, she knew he’d seen something that would change at least his own life.
She toyed with the idea of calling Adam again then thought better of it. Whether or not his phone was junk, she’d see him soon enough. Now that her business in Baghdad was finally concluded, she prepared to hop on a MAC flight and take enough time off to swing by Massachusetts to pay her family a visit.
I knew it was sketchy beyond belief doing this, visiting Clarissa’s grave. It wasn’t lost on me what kind of shit went down the last time I went to a cemetery. That’s why, until today, I avoided them like our rabbi does pork chops. Still, I couldn’t not be there. I had to pay my last respects, to get closure, to torture myself on what could’ve been between us. Her father the Congressman already got his headstone so I guess the government moves on certain things. I avoided looking at file footage on the news of the big turnout for the family’s mass funeral yet for some reason actually being here by myself didn’t hurt as much as seeing the public outpouring of grief. I heard the Speaker of the House was there and a bunch of other politicians and even the Vice President put in a brief appearance.
But now I had the place all to myself. I paid my last respects in my own way to Clarissa’s mother and father just to get that out of the way before concentrating on her plot. Obviously, considering the time of the year, grass had yet to grow over them and they sat on the earth like barely-healed scars. I noticed with some irritation that there was just one massive headstone for the entire family and obviously it was put there to honor the Congressman. His wife and daughter had to share it.
It was a miniature obelisk like the kind you see in Egypt only it had a Star of David on it and the names of all three. I hugged my skateboard a little more tightly as I looked at Clarissa’s birth and death dates. She had touched my board and, before she got her own, even rode on it when I was teaching her how to do Ollies and other simple tricks right after we got out of the hospital together. Suddenly, my board got a whole lot more precious than it already was.
God damn you, Clarissa, what the hell were you thinking trying to outrun the cops? Even if they were there to bust us over the party, it was just a fucking party. Maybe it would’ve resulted in being grounded for a month after a few mentions on Republican blogs. But anything your folks would’ve done to you, even if it meant us being separated for that month, would’ve been a fuck of a lot better than this.
What wouldn’t you go back to? Your house or the hospital? I thought you were past all that, that you were, if anything, more normal than me. Why would you fear getting sent back to the hospital’s psych unit just for leading the cops on a high speed chase?
And did I really see you, your ghost, one that, thankfully, didn’t make an appearance at the cemetery? Or was it just a dream? The more I thought about what she said, the more convinced I was that she wasn’t saying “Frias” but “Free us.” But that only led to more questions. “Free us” from whom or what?
Hans Dietrich simply called it “The Hole.” It was a most amazing hole, albeit one in a purely metaphorical sense. In actuality, it was a larger, more outsized version of the “black hole” around which they’d built a Humvee that they took on “investigations.” The Hole wasn’t large to accommodate the growing number of restless ghosts and spirits. After all, such beings don’t view or move in conventional spatial dimensions as you and I do. But the huger, stationary Hole was larger because of the sheer volume of energy it required to keep them fixed within a manmade vortex that prevented them from slipping into another, uncharted dimension.
Dietrich dimmed the lights as he approached the massive structure, which was about the size of a tiny cottage such as you’d find on Cape Cod, so he could peer into the thick window that was made of bulletproof glass (in spite of their non-corporeality, they could get quite nasty). Generally, the inside of the structure was actually illuminated with the roiling energy of the partial and full body apparitions within it. Despite the august but posthumous assemblage, he was there to see just one, his newest acquisition: Mursi al Islamiyah, the terrorist mastermind who was rumored to be one of bin Laden’s countless second in commands.
The al Qaeda terrorist apparently had succeeded beyond his wildest expectations at the Sheraton in Boston. Among the countless EVPs that were recorded around the clock in the Hole, Dietrich heard what he thought was Tim McVeigh’s ghost crow about al Islamiyah actually chasing people around the hotel, people like Congressman Feingold. The terrorist was unusually adept at manifesting and visually presenting himself to people, even touching them briefly. The bastard even knew how to fly, another skill not mastered if ever by more conventional spirits.
With all that energy being drawn from the air, Dietrich mused, it must have been freezing cold in that penthouse. Served the decadent bastards right. The German had nothing really personal against the Who’s Who that was assembled at the Sheraton. It was merely a wakeup call to the complacent, a calling card from Dietrich warning of something far more disastrous.
He cupped his black gloved hands around his eyes as he peered into the window, looking for al Islamiyah’s unique energy signature. At last he found it and he banged on the three inch-thick glass. He got the terrorist’s attention and he floated to the window, his voice picked up by the Hole’s countless built-in microphones. He appeared to say something in Arabic and Breck wasn’t there to translate. But Dietrich wasn’t fazed by that. He thumbed the “talk” button on the Hole’s outer hull and said, “Speak English, you cretin.”
Dietrich knew all too well that al Islamiyah spoke perfect English, having gotten his college education at Eton in the UK on a Fulbright scholarship. The terrorist’s ghost distended his jaw and screamed, making his face much longer than it was in life and Dietrich smiled and shook his head. In his line of work, he’d seen and heard it all but this one was a fucking freak, the total package, the rarest of all ghosts. Moreso than any other entity he’d ever captured, Mursi al Islamiyah was seemingly more adroit at acclimating himself to the netherworld, having gleaned a vast array of supernatural disciplines. Most restless spirits, if at all, manage to partially master one, perhaps two. Mursi al Islamiyah seemingly could do everything of which a ghost was rumored to be capable and perhaps more. And Dietrich wondered what other tricks he could or would show him either now or in the future.
He thumbed the “talk” button again.
“Once, during an investigation in Ireland, we were hunting a criminal just like you. Toward the end of the hunt, one of my team members felt something go through him and the next thing he knew he was looking at his organs being pulled out of his torso even though his flesh wasn’t broken. He was literally turned inside out. Irish ghosts are especially nasty.
“In my line of work, my friend, I have seen and heard it all and you screaming makes me laugh. I would get more out of a conversation with you, for you to show me something I haven’t seen before. So make use of that Eton College education and impress me.”
“I. Don’t. Do. Tricks. You dog,” al Islamiyah hissed, his face back to normal dimensions. Dietrich tapped the “talk” button again.
“Tim McVeigh tells me differently. He said you did some splendid tricks on Halloween night in Boston, Massachusetts. Good job.”
Mursi al Islamiyah looked behind him as if searching for the Oklahoma City bomber then turned his attention back to Dietrich.
“You. Will. Pay. For this, heathen.” Dietrich touched the “talk” button for the briefest of instants to sarcastically murmur, “Ooh.”
“Some. Day. We will. Find. A way. Out. And you. Will be. Sorry.”
There wasn’t much chance of that happening, thought the ex Stasi policeman. The technology made available to him came courtesy of the Americans, who’d been looking into controlling supernatural dimensions and detaining spirits since the late 1960’s. The CIA project, named Operation Casper, had been axed by a secret act of Congress in 1974. Formerly attached to their Psy Ops division that also did R&D on remote psychics, the project’s existence was mainly rumor and conspiracy theory and had acquired a fantastic air to it similar to the Philadelphia Experiment or the Majestic Twelve.
However, unlike the Philadelphia Experiment and MJ 12, Operation Casper actually had existed and the neglected technology that only lack of funding could stop still provided a great head start to what Dietrich had had in mind twenty years ago when it was obvious the Stasi’s days were numbered. Luckily, he was able to make contact with one of the few Casper research scientists still alive, someone who had access to copies of the notes. He’d fallen on hard times and was willing to sell them to the highest bidder. Considering the fantastical nature of the research, it wasn’t surprising that he had no takers until it reached the ears of Dietrich.
Hans had listened because he knew such things were possible. In his youth, he’d had a paranormal experience of his own that involved both his parents right after the Nazi years, an experience that he’d never shared with anyone.
Just days after selling Dietrich the technology that he and his own experts were able to complete and perfect, the penniless scientist was later found dead on the banks of the Charles River on New Year’s Eve 1989. Despite his veins being loaded with high grade heroin that he shouldn’t have been able to afford, Dr. Bernard Moss’s death was later ruled a suicide by the Boston City Police Department.
Dietrich touched the “talk” button one more time and said, “Once again, good job on Halloween night. I may be a heathen dog, but that’s still better than being a trained dog.” He smiled cruelly at the terrorist’s ghost and walked out of the enormous structure. Mursi al Islamiyah silently screamed, heard only by his fellow dead.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment