Blue Gold (NUMA Files 2)

“Interesting,” Max said after a moment. “I’ve tried to open several doors, but in every case Harry has put a lock on them.”

“Who’s Harry, another computer?” Yaeger said.

“No, silly. Harry Truman.”

Austin scratched his head. “Are you saying that all the files on this pilot were sealed by order of the president?”

“That’s right. Aside from the most basic information about Mr. Martin, everything else is still classified.” There was an uncharacteristic pause. “That’s peculiar,” Max said. “I just got a trace. It was as if someone opened a door that was locked. Here’s your boy.” A picture of a young man in an Air Force uniform appeared. “He lives in upstate New York near Cooperstown.”

“He’s still alive?”

“There seems to be some disagreement on that. The Pentagon says he died in a plane crash in 1949. This new information says just the opposite.”

“A mistake?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Humans are fallible. I’m not.”

“Does he have a phone?”

“No. But I have an address.”

A printout came out of a slot on the console. Still puzzled, Austin looked at the name and address as if they were in vanishing ink. He folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket. “Thanks, Hiram and Max. You’ve been a great help.” He started for the door.

“Where you off to now?” Yaeger said.

“Cooperstown. This may be my one and only chance to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

21

ACROSS THE POTOMAC at the new CIA headquarters building in Langley, Virginia, an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence was wondering if his computer was having the hiccups. The analyst, an eastern European specialist named J. Barrett Browning, stood up and peered over the partition into the adjacent cubicle.

“Say, Jack, do you have a second to look at something really weird?”

The sallow-faced man at the cluttered desk put aside the Russian newspaper he had been marking up and rubbed his deep-set eyes.

“Sex, crime, and more sex. I don’t know what could be weirder than the Russian press,” said John Rowland, a respected translator who had joined the CIA after the agency’s dark Nixon days. “It’s like U.S. supermarket tabloids on hormones. I almost miss the tractor production statistics.” He rose from his work station and came around into Browning’s cubicle. “What’s the problem, young man?”

“This crazy message on my computer,” Browning replied with a shake of his head. “I was scrolling some historical material on the Soviet Union, and this popped up on the screen.”

Rowland leaned forward and read the words: “PROTOCOL ACTIVATED FOR SANCTION WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.”

Rowland tugged his pepper-and-salt goatee. “Extreme prejudice? Nobody uses language like that anymore.”

“What’s it mean?”

“It’s a euphemism. Goes way back to the cold war and Vietnam. It’s a polite way of referring to a hit.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t they teach you anything at Yale?” Rowland said with a grin. “Sanctioning someone is setting him up for assassination. Real James Bond stuff.”

“Oh, I get it,” Barrett said, looking around the room at the other cubicles. “Let’s guess which of our esteemed colleagues is the practical joker.”

Rowland was in deep thought and didn’t reply. He slid into Browning’s chair and studied the underlined file number at the end of the message. He highlighted the number and hit the enter key. A series of digits appeared.

“If this is a joke, it’s a good one,” he muttered. “No one has used this encoding since Allen Dulles was agency director after World War II.”

Rowland hit the print button and took the copy of the message to his cubicle with his p