Chapter Thirty Five
Erin woke up and gasped: “The Lincoln Memorial - tomorrow three pm.”
“What?” asked Johnny sleepily.
“I… don’t know, just the Lincoln Memorial tomorrow.”
“Oh God, I thought we were getting away from this cloak and dagger stuff.”
“I have a feeling this will answer a few questions.”
“So we just show up to meet what could be the Dark Angel.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a demon,” said Erin as she climbed out of the bed and wrapped her robe around her.
Johnny got up and pulled his jeans on then followed her down to the kitchen. “What if it’s a CIA trap? I mean you’re not exactly flavour of the month right now,” he said as he leant on the door frame.
Erin switched on the kettle. “So, the CIA are contacting people by telepathy now are they?”
“Well…yeah, you know what they’re capable of.”
Johnny had a point, she thought as she put heaped teaspoonfuls of instant in two mugs. “Okay, I’ll take care, but I’m going - I need some answers.”
“What do you mean ‘I’?”
“You’re not coming, it’s too dangerous.”
“Whoever it is will hardly try something in such a public place, anyway just try to stop me; after what we’ve been through, I’m ready for anything.”
“Well okay James Bond,” she said with a smile, handing him a mug.
They crossed the Potomac by the Arlington Memorial Bridge on a cloudless, hot summer’s day. The pillared, white Lincoln Memorial building rose from behind some trees as Erin changed lanes.
She parked the car, and they strolled along the tree-lined Henry Bacon Drive until it merged with the Lincoln Memorial Circle. The pair walked around the outer perimeter sidewalk and then stood and gazed along the elongate Reflecting Pool toward the fawn coloured obelisk that was the Washington Monument, which pierced the sky.
“Jeez, this is really impressive, said Johnny.
“Yeah, it makes me proud. No matter the bad things America has done, this makes my patriotic heart beat a little faster.”
Johnny looked at his watch. “It’s ten to three we’d better head over to the memorial.”
They climbed the steps along with a throng of tourists and then stood in between two pillars. A white marble Abraham Lincoln stared past them and out over the National Mall.
“Superb, isn’t he?” asked a gravelly voice.
Johnny and Erin spun round in unison to be greeted by the sight of a man with a grey beard and a black baseball cap above brown eyes. His long, grey hair, tied in a ponytail, hung through the back of the cap. He wore a dark blue sweatshirt above dirty Levi jeans.
“It’s you!” said Johnny.
“Yeah, I’m back in your life again Mr Duncan.”
“But, I don’t understand, your eyes… they’re a different colour,” uttered Johnny.
“Miss Rodgers,” said the bearded one, nodding his head.
“You two seem to know one another?”
“This is the tramp I told you of,” said Johnny. “You know–was in my bedroom.”
The tramp stared at Johnny. “Okay cards on the table time. Have either of you heard of Project Proteus?”
Erin nodded “Yes, I have, that is, I’ve seen the name.”
The man trained his brown eyes on Erin. “You would have seen this somewhere in Langley I assume.”
Three children ran excitedly past them as an overweight woman dressed in shorts and a loose, grey T-shirt shouted for them to wait on her.
“How would an angel know about Langley?” Johnny asked, after the woman had passed.
The tramp looked down at his old Levi’s and chuckled. “I’m no angel Mr Duncan, I used to work for the CIA. I was involved with Project Proteus: an offshoot of Project Stargate of which I’ve no doubt you’ve heard.”
Erin screwed up her facial features. “The remote viewing operation closed down after millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money had been wasted. Apparently there was only a twenty percent success rate at the tests.”
“That was what was released to the media, and of course the Russians. We’re speaking about the Cold War here.” The tramp took a deep breath and stared at the Washington Memorial. “My name is Lindsay Koenig recruited by the CIA after I had shown exceptional telepathic skills at a special school in Philadelphia, which I detested.”
“So you’re ‘L’.” said Erin.
The two men stared at her.
“It was just something written somewhere–that’s all!”
“Why did you tell me all that stuff in Scotland?” Johnny asked.
“Because I wanted you to stop the tests in California.”
“Why me?”
“Why not? You had written about the Bell and religion and had trusted media connections.”
“But in the Garden of Gethsemane …”
“Mr Duncan,” interrupted Koenig, “what happened in Jerusalem was a fabrication. I was there. I made you see these things.”
“What …?”
“I can make people imagine things that would not otherwise be there. Just like this …”
Johnny and Erin gasped. Koenig had gone and in his place was a radiant Christ, who gazed at them with piercing blue eyes. Then a second later Koenig returned and continued, “Proteus was a Greek ‘shape-shifter’, to use the modern term. He was a telepathist; incorrectly termed a ‘seer’ during his lifetime. The changes were not physical changes more a shift in the perception of the observer influenced by the telepathist.
Erin shook her head. “So why did you make me believe my bath water was boiling the other night?”
“Ah now we’re getting to the crunch. That wasn’t me. There were two main telepathist’s involved with the project. The other was a guy called Nathan Malloy; he was, and still is, more powerful than I am. He was irate when the government pulled the plug on Stargate, which of course meant the end for Proteus. It wasn’t the money; it was all the hard work we had put in; all the secrets we revealed to the CIA. Hell, we were in the Kremlin on several occasions–uninvited of course. I couldn’t have cared less about the abandonment, but Nathan took it bad, swore he’d make the US pay.”
“But, if you passed on important info why did they close you down?” Erin asked.
“Because of public opinion. They asked some of us to stay on as contractors, which I did for a while, but Nathan, well he told them to go to hell.”
“I’m getting confused how does all this tie in?”
“Well Mr Duncan, what better way of getting back at the US than to destroy something they’re proud of, something constructed using engineering genius, something that showed America could hold back the forces of nature?”
“The Hoover Dam,” answered Erin.
“Right, that’s what part of it was all about. That was Nathan’s bit.”
Erin looked at some people reading the dedication behind the Lincoln statue. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“I didn’t really know what he was planning. Even if I had known; an army wouldn’t have been able to stop him.”
“So, what happens now?” Johnny asked.
“There’s one other person you need to fear; she is ruthless and has her own agenda.”
Erin gazed into Koenig’s eyes as understanding seeped into her mind.
“The neo-Nazis; they were just part of the plan?” Johnny asked.
“Yes, they needed the help of some extremist group to collect money and take care of things. He must have offered them some type of controlling role in the new world I guess. Much like the Nazis offered their party members.”
“Will he strike again?” Erin asked.
“I wouldn’t think so; after all he got what he wanted.…!”
Koenig vanished leaving his sentence hanging in the air.
Johnny searched around the pillars, but the telepath had gone. “What do you reckon?”
Erin stared at him with fire in her eyes. “I reckon we get drunk then we see Karen fucking Blakley!”