Shift: A Novel

Maria opened her mouth but nothing came out.

Ivelitsch squeezed her hand. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to press the chill to the bone.

“Listen to me, little girl. I am the man they sent to take the place of the dogs, and it will be much better for you and your neighbors if you tell me what I need to know.”

Maria swallowed. “M-my uncle.”

“Take me to him.”

Washington, DC

November 4, 1963

As part of the privileges of his first-class ticket, the tall young man in the gray suit was helped into his seat on the 10:27 Pennsylvania Railroad bound for New York City by an elderly Negro conductor decked out in full livery—brass buttons, gold braids, a flat-topped cap with a shiny visor. The conductor projected officiousness and obsequiousness in equal measure as he punched the young man’s ticket, stowed his suitcase in the overhead rack, and laid his hat atop it. Finally he lowered the table between the man’s seat and the empty one across from it and set a foil ashtray atop faux wood-grained plastic.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?”

The conductor was already turning away, his uniform as square on his shoulders as a Marine’s dress blues, and, although the young man would have liked an RC Cola, he only shook his head at the stiff fabric stretching across the man’s retreating back.

At twenty-five, Beau-Christian Querrey couldn’t have looked more like a G-man if he’d tried. Six-one, narrow waist, shoulders broad as a yoke; dark suit, white shirt, skinny black tie held in place with a brass clip. A buzz cut crowned the whole package, number one on the back and sides, three-quarters of an inch left on top. Though the effect was probably meant to be martial, there was something about his high forehead and wide, wondering eyes that made it seem like a little boy’s first-day-of-school crew cut.

Despite outward appearances, however, he didn’t feel like an FBI agent. Hadn’t felt like one for the past year, since he’d been “promoted” from Behavioral Profiling to the Counterintelligence Program. But this latest assignment took the cake.

He sighed now, set his briefcase on the table, opened it. On the left sat a stack of folders held together with typewritten labels: MK-ULTRA¹⁶ and ORPHEUS, GATE OF. On the right sat a hardcover book: The Man in the High Castle⁷ by Philip K. Dick. The black cover depicted the flags of imperial Japan and Nazi Germany, as well as the tagline: “An electrifying novel of our world as it might have been.” Since every novel was essentially a story of the world “as it might have been,” this struck BC as a particularly pointless addendum, even for a work of science fiction. Nevertheless, in light of his morning meeting with Director Hoover⁴, it seemed the less far-fetched of his two choices for reading material, and, sighing again, he placed it on the table, snapped his briefcase closed, and set it in the aisle beside his seat.

Before he could crack the cover, however, a commotion at the far end of the car distracted him. He looked up to see the Negro conductor with his hand on the shoulder of a large, suety figure in a wrinkled navy blazer. BC was surprised at the old man’s boldness. They were still forty miles due south of the Mason-Dixon Line, after all, sixty by the train tracks.

“Sorry, son,” the conductor said in a weary voice, “you got to ride in the lead car till the train reaches Bal’more.”

The big man turned beneath the conductor’s hand like a statue rotating on a plinth. You could practically hear stone grinding against stone as he pivoted on the soles of—BC wasn’t sure what you’d call the shoes he was wearing. Some kind of woven sandals, the leather worn away almost to nothing. The man’s dark hair had been brilliantined to his skull, but even so the distinctive ringlets were visible. His nose was thick, his lips full, his skin olive-colored, as they say, but an olive not fully ripened—if he was a Negro, as the conductor had assumed, he was a watery specimen of the race. But the more BC looked at him, the more he thought it just as likely that the man was simply a swarthy white fellow, in which case—

The conductor’s eyes widened as he realized his error, and he shrank within his uniform. BC prayed the passenger would handle the situation with dignity, but, given the man’s appearance—not just the swarthiness and slovenliness, but the flush that had turned his cheeks from olive to tomato—that didn’t seem likely.

“What did you just say to me, boy?”

The accosted man’s large, powerful frame outlined the conductor in wrinkled shadow. He tapped his finger into the side of the conductor’s head hard enough to knock the older man’s cap askew.

“I ast you a question, boy.”

The conductor’s head wobbled up and down as though his cap had grown too heavy for his neck to support.

“I’m sorry, sir. Here, sir, let me take your briefcase—”

“You touch my case and I’ll break your arm, boy. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?”

“I’m sorry, sir. There’s a nice seat—”

“Get outta my sight before I have you strung up behind the pump house so I can beat the black off your ass.” The big man elbowed past the conductor and lumbered down the aisle.

Please, BC said to himself, don’t let him sit—

“Goddamn uppity niggers.” The man dropped into the seat opposite BC. Knees the size of cannonballs collided with his, bumping the fold-out table so hard the foil ashtray flew away like a flying saucer. The man slapped his briefcase on the table’s quivering surface. “I blame Martin Luther King.”

A pause while he spun the dials of the lock on his briefcase, a loud click as it snapped open. He opened the case and riffled through what sounded like a ream of wadded paper.

“What the hell are you staring at?”

“P-pardon me,” BC stuttered. “I just—”