Hunter's moon

EPILOGUE

At noon, November 27th, a Thursday, Tomlinson and I boarded Amtrak’s Silver Star in Tampa, kicked back in our respective sleeper cars, enjoying beverages and an elegant dinner. Eleven hours later, we disembarked beneath a blazing full moon in the village of Hamlet, North Carolina, population 6,018.

Hamlet’s train station, with its Victorian Queen Anne gables, wood painted and polished bright, may be the most beautiful in America. Kal Wilson and blues icon John Coltrane were born nearby.

Tomlinson had stood by the tracks, in a circle of yellow light, watching our train pull out, gathering speed northbound toward Raleigh, Richmond, D.C., and Grand Central Station, New York.

“A time warp,” he said.

The city’s main street was deserted an hour before midnight. No one else had gotten off the train, and the upstairs station windows were dark, save for one where the silhouette of a stocky man was hunched over a typewriter-or maybe a telegraph key.

“The moon’s bright enough, we should’ve brought our ball gloves,” I told him. We could have played in the middle of the street, no problem.

My arm felt good. Two weeks after returning from Panama, General Juan Rivera had met us at the Presidential Library in Minnesota. We’d gotten a sandlot ball game going with some local kids and Rivera had pitched three innings of shutout ball. Next day, we received VIP treatment, and a special tour of the Wilson Center.

The president himself had welcomed us into his office, then took us next door to show us the First Lady’s office. There was a concert grand piano, and Tomlinson had played “Moonlight Sonata” and “Clair de Lune” until a nurse noticed that Wilson was weakening. We pretended not to see the wheelchair she’d left around the corner.

The three of us said good-bye with the forced but courageous good humor that friends draw upon when they know they may never meet again.

But we would meet again. two days earlier, Vue had telephoned unexpectedly and invited us here, to Hamlet, saying, “He wants to see you.”

As Tomlinson had once observed, it’s impossible to say no to a man like Kal Wilson.

So we booked sleeper cars and took the train. We didn’t even consider flying commercial. We would have had to land in Charlotte, then there would have been a two-hour drive southeast.

Besides, we wouldn’t have enjoyed flying commercial after the way we’d returned from Panama.

The White House was so delighted with Wilson’s speech, and the reaction it had received worldwide, that the president had sent Air Force One as special thanks. He had insisted it be designated Air Force One, even though it carried a former president.

Shana Waters was aboard. She thought it was hilarious when, somewhere over the Caribbean, Tomlinson signaled for Wilson’s attention and said, “Sam, I don’t want to put you in an awkward spot, man, but”-Tomlinson had looked at Waters-“there are a couple adventurous types aboard who’d like to be the first to smoke a doobie aboard this fine aircraft.”

Wilson had chuckled, but then said, seriously, “You’d need a time machine, I’m afraid. I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t be the first.”

Tomlinson liked that. “Wow,” he said. “Radical.”

Later, Waters came to me, stood on tiptoes, and whispered another adventurous suggestion. When I said, “I think we’d need a time machine to be first at that, too,” she was not dissuaded.

Pulling me by the wrist, she countered, “I covered the White House for three years. You don’t think I know that? But history’s supposed to repeat itself.”

In its way, Hamlet’s train station was a time machine. Wilson had chosen this, his boyhood home, in which to spend Thanksgiving, and had decided to stay on until Christmas.

That’s why we were standing in this North Carolina village, an hour before midnight, looking at a blazing moon.

It was a “hunter’s moon,” Tomlinson informed me. The first full moon in November.

“Yeah, man,” he added, his tone introspective, “streets are empty, and it’s bright enough to play. Next time, we bring our gloves.”

But there would be no next time, as we both knew.

The next morning, we stood on a country road, too small for the number of Lincoln Town Cars, unmarked Fords, and Secret Service SUVs parked in the sand, and watched Agent Wren touch an index finger to his ear before telling his partner, “He’s countermanded my orders again. His doctors, too. He says these two gentlemen should be escorted in immediately.”

As Wren said “gentlemen,” his eyes brushed past me with a variety of contempt reserved exclusively for rogue biologists who help rogue commanders in chief escape. Wren didn’t like me, didn’t trust me, and had contacted the head office in Maryland determined to keep Tomlinson and me out.

Finding several joints in Tomlinson’s silver cigarette case, he believed, had finalized his case.

Instead, he had been overruled.

Wren’s partner straightened his Ray-Bans and turned toward two houses set back in a clearing of orange clay and pines. The area had been cordoned off with Secret Service agents, local law enforcement, and sophisticated electronic sensors.

Tomlinson asked Agent Wren, “Did his family own both these houses?” Each was tiny: white shingle exteriors, asphalt shingle roofs, and sand driveways.

Wren’s partner answered, “No. The president and his family lived in the one on the right. The First Lady’s family lived in the other. Their parents worked for the same textile mill, and they both moved to Minnesota at about the same time. That’s where the Presidential Library’s located. And the Wilson Center.”

Tomlinson said we were aware of that as one of the agent’s radios squelched, and I overheard, “If Hunter wants privacy, that’s what Hunter gets…”

Not easily accomplished.

Overhead, two Blackhawk helicopters cauldroned like seabirds, maintaining secure airspace, keeping a half dozen TV news choppers at bay. There was a breaking story below. New York, Atlanta, and L.A. wanted a live feed when it happened.

Kerney Amos Levaugn Wilson lay dying in the house where he had been born.

Leukemia destroys red blood cells with a swarming indifference. Kal Wilson’s face was the color of a mushroom, and he looked as frail.

He lay in a hospital bed, in the room that had been his as a boy, surrounded by monitors and tubes but also family photos. The Boy Scout and the deaf girl, with this same white-shingled house in the background-there were several black-and-white shots in frames.

When Tomlinson and I entered the room, Vue gave us a quick hug, then shooed everyone else out. When he turned to close the door, I could see that he’d been crying. I don’t know why I found that surprising but I did.

The president stuck his hand out. I shook it. His skin was cool but too loose over its fleshy scaffolding. He didn’t object when Tomlinson leaned to pat his shoulder-a daring familiarity with this man.

“I’m glad you came,” he said. “The holiday season’s a busy time for everyone. But there’s one last bit of business I’d like to dispose of before…” He had a mask that fed oxygen when he needed it and he fitted it over his face and took several breaths. He left the sentence unfinished.

“You received the envelopes containing your dossiers?”

Yes, we had. Tomlinson and I had not shared. Not everything, anyway. We all have done things in the past that we would prefer to remain in the past. That is certainly true of my life.

As the documents confirmed, Tomlinson had been recruited, tested, and then employed by a federal agency-the CIA, most likely-as “asymmetrical intelligence-gathering personnel.”

“My God,” he wailed when he told me, “I was a psychic spy. Like James Bond, man, only I never got to leave the damn room.”

“You have nothing to be ashamed of,” I told him.

I was referring not only to Stargate. Tomlinson had unwillingly participated in another CIA program, he discovered, that is not as well documented because files were ordered destroyed by Richard Helms, director of the CIA at the time.

According to information provided by Wilson, The research project, code-named MKULTRA, was established to counter Soviet advances in brainwashing techniques. It was designed to study the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior, and also human memory.

MKULTRA researchers demonstrated that human memory can be damaged or destroyed by electroshock treatments-Tomlinson was proof. But there was no way to selectively destroy memory, as Hollywood would have us believe.

Far easier, they discovered, was introducing specific, detailed memories of events that, in fact, never occurred. Give a subject a combination of drugs and shock treatments, for instance, show them a film of a murder scene over and over, the subject would soon be convinced he was guilty.

“You had nothing to do with sending a bomb, or killing Naval personnel,” the former president told Tomlinson. “You already know that. The information was in the documents I provided. But I wanted you to hear it from my own lips. Feel better?”

Tomlinson was looking at him affectionately. “You are a good one, Sam. I wish you would’ve run for a second term. We need you, man.”

According to polls taken after the stand he took in Panama, Kal Wilson could have won the presidency again-but the mention of a second term was still an unwelcome subject.

He pointed abruptly to the door and said to Tomlinson, “Give me a few minutes alone with Ford.”

After Tomlinson exited, Wilson told me, “You never admitted that you are one of the thirteen plank members of the Negotiating and Systems Analysis Group. I want you to sit in on a little meeting I’ve arranged with three of those plank members. Right here. Are you willing?”

It seemed absurd to lie but I had to. “I still don’t know what group you’re talking about, sir.”

He went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s my understanding that members of your group trained and operated separately for security reasons. You’ve never met.”

That wasn’t exactly true. I was aware of the names of two fellow members. Hal Harrington, the software millionaire, and another who was a journalist.

I shrugged. “If you would like me to stay, I will.”

“It is also my understanding that one of your members was supposed to destroy all documents relating to your group’s activities. But he didn’t.”

That was my understanding, too, but I said nothing.

“Members of your group had quite a scare a few years back when a New York Times reporter nearly came into possession of some of those documents. It was my last year in office.”

I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Even for a former president, Wilson knew way too much about the Negotiators.

“I really have no knowledge, sir-”

The door opened and I stopped in midsentence. It was Harrington, the intelligence guru Wilson said he no longer trusted. I no longer trusted him, either. Hal was the man who’d kept records that should have been destroyed.

Surprised, I looked from the president to Harrington. Typically, Harrington was wearing a tailored suit and tie. Atypically, he looked distressed.

Wilson took several breaths of oxygen, then said gruffly, “Tell him the truth.”

Harrington cleared his throat. “I was using the stuff we had on your pal Tomlinson to keep you working for us. I don’t apologize for that, damn it. We need assets like you, Ford.

“But now that you’re both guaranteed a pardon”-Harrington grimaced at the former president-“I guess the only leverage I have is your sense of duty. I discussed it with President Wilson and we thought that if two plank members of the Negotiators asked you to keep working, you might reconsider.”

I turned from Harrington to Wilson, then looked at the door. “I’m confused. You said a meeting of three plank members. Who’s the third?”

President Kal Wilson was staring at me with his intense green farmer’s eyes. He continued staring until a gradual and numbing awareness forced me to face him. He nodded. “That’s why I couldn’t risk running for a second term.”

I sat back in my chair digesting this, remembering Wilson in my lab exactly one month ago saying, “I ran across other globe-trotting Ph. D. s with backgrounds as murky as yours. Scientists, journalists. .. even… politicians.”

Wilson said, “I’m right about this, Ford. Stay. ”

I returned to Florida undecided.

We all accumulate past regrets and I began to fear my indecision would become another. Shortly after I got home, I sent the president a telegram-an anachronistic touch I thought he would appreciate.

RIGHT AGAIN STOP AS USUAL STOP AWAITING INSTRUCTIONS STOP FORD

Two days later, I was beneath my stilt house, patching a hole in the shark pen, when I got word Kal Wilson had died.

I am still awaiting my instructions.