window at the front, and the whole thing was split in half, along its side, horizontally, maybe where it got blown open … maybe that was where that scattered junk Brazel found come from. Of course, I always thought there was a possibility the Air Force mighta loaded up some of the wreckage here, and carted it over to the Foster ranch, to scatter it around and confuse things, draw the attention away, onto a bogus site.”
I wiped the back of my hand across my sweaty forehead under the brim of my straw fedora. “Wouldn’t you have known about that?”
“Hell no. I wasn’t in charge! Blanchard was. Now, I could see inside the craft-there was control panels and some hieroglyphic-type writing. As for how the thing flew, I didn’t see any propulsion system, just a series of cells on the underbelly, quartz-type cells, octagon-shaped, like a beehive. I didn’t get that good a look-it was still before dawn, we musta got out here about three a.m.-and we had searchlights from jeeps shinin’ down from on top of the cliff. The colonel wanted us to get that craft onto the flatbed and back to the base before dawn, muy pronto; daylight, somebody else could stumble onto this mess. Then, of course, we had casualties to deal with.”
I was cleaning my sunglasses on my shirt. “The craft’s crew, you mean? The ‘little bodies’?”
Kaufmann nodded, shook his head, his eyes distant. “There were five of these beings…. You know, you see somethin’ out of this world, it shakes you up; we were just kind of stunned, kinda stupefied, not saying a word, just staring. Then finally we snapped out of it.” He pointed. “One body was tossed up against the wall of the arroyo, flung there; another was half in, half out of the craft. I saw one sitting inside, slumped over in his seat, dead as hell. They found another one inside there, later, the men that loaded the bodies in those lead-lined body bags.”
“That’s four-you said there were five.”
“Sorry, I’m … I mean, I haven’t been out here since that night. It’s all kinda … rushin’ back. I didn’t mention the one that was still breathing?”
“There was a survivor?”
“Yup. Wasn’t in bad shape, neither. He was just sittin’ on a rock … right over there, that boulder by the cliff, there. At first he was kinda cowering, then-when he saw we were trying to help, he got the god-damnedest look on his mug … almost serene. Like he didn’t have a care in the world.”
“This world, anyway. What did they look like, Frank?”
The wild eyebrows lifted. “Not like you see in the funnies or the movies. No horns or spiny fingers, and they sure weren’t green.”
So Mac Brazel had said.
“… They were slim, pale, smooth-looking individuals, hairless, fine skin, silver-type uniforms. Five four, five six … fine features, small nose, heads kinda too big for their bodies.”
“Big eyes?”
“Bigger than yours or mine-kinda slanty, Oriental type….” Kaufmann, hands on his hips, was slowly scanning the landscape; his expression was somewhere between sickened and haunted. “Tell ya what, Nate my friend, I think I had enough of this place. Let’s head out. I’ll tell you the rest of it on the way back.”
That was a good suggestion; the afternoon was fading, shadows starting to lengthen, and on the highway I got treated to one of New Mexico’s glorious yellow-red-orange-blue sunsets.
Kaufmann told me that there was concern about the condition of the bodies-one was showing signs of deterioration-and Blanchard’s first stop had been the base hospital. A second team had already been dispatched to further clean up and cordon off the crash site. At the base, each of the eight men who-with Blanchard-had been involved close-up with the operation were ushered into the briefing room, one at a time; Kaufmann assumed his instructions from the colonel-that the “retrieval” was “classified at the highest levels”-mirrored that of the others.
Though his participation had come to an end, Kaufmann understood that Hangar 84 at the airfield became the base of operations, housing both the corpses-and the survivor-and the captured crashed craft. Then the craft went on the back of a truck under a tarp to Wright Airfield in Ohio; the bodies-and presumably the survivor-on a flight, first to Andrews Air Force Base at Washington, D.C., then to Wright.
“Why the stop in D.C.?” I asked. Roswell was up ahead.
“Rumor has it, top-ranking Army and Air Force personnel requested a look at the bodies. Also, Truman and Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower … oh, and the Defense Secretary.”
“Forrestal?”
“Yeah. Isn’t he the guy that had the nervous breakdown? I read about that in Drew Pearson.”
“Mental problems can afflict the best of us, Frank.”
Kaufmann grinned at me. “Is that your way of sayin’ maybe I’m nuts? Maybe I am.”
“Maybe you’re still working intelligence and are feeding me … what’s the word? Disinformation?”
“Why would I do that?”
“You wouldn’t. But maybe Blanchard would. To throw me off the scent.”
“The scent of what?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it? You got any proof, Frank? Any pieces of indestructible tinfoil? Photo of a dead spaceman, maybe? One of their silver suits?”
As I’d requested, he was rolling up to a stop at the parking lot where I was keeping my car. “We weren’t allowed to keep anything, Nate. Not any piece of information or evidence, not a thing. Any report we made got quickly turned over to an intelligence officer.”
“Who, Jesse Marcel?”
“No-those CIC guys.”
Counterintelligence Corps.
“Like that guy Cavitt, you mean, who went out to the Brazel spread with Marcel? What became of him?”
Kaufmann shrugged, leaning on the wheel of the idling jeep. “Transferred. I don’t know where.”
“So where does that leave us, Frank?”
“Leaves you here in this parking lot. I leveled with you, Nate-and you’re free to use any of that yarn, as long as you don’t use my name. If you do, I’ll deny it on a stack of Bibles.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It’s like Mr. Ripley says-believe it or not.”
I stepped out of the jeep, gave him a little wave, and he gave me a big old grin and big old wave and rumbled off.
I was about to get in the rental, to go driving in search of an interesting restaurant, when I said to hell with it, locked my spiral pad in the glove box and walked back to the hotel.
Bone-tired, I stumbled into the hotel, found my way to the dining room, where I consumed a rare steak and all the trimmings and a couple bottles of Blatz, which seemed to be the local favorite-I wondered if the little men in silver suits liked it better out of the bottle or from the tap. My room was on the third floor, a small clean cubicle that could have been in any hotel, except for the framed print of a desert landscape over the single bed. Caked with dust, frazzled by bizarre information, I showered, standing in the tub, letting the needles try to pound sense into me.
No smarter, but cleaner anyway, I toweled off, and strode naked from the bathroom, wondering whether I should take in the show at the Chief Theater down the street, or just collapse into bed, where I figured it would take me maybe three seconds to lose consciousness, in which case I might not wake up to take advantage of the back-door date at ten p.m. I had at Maria Selff’s place, when she got off work at the base hospital.
Instead, a powerful arm slipped around from behind me, an uninvited guest tucked against the wall outside the bathroom door, a gloved hand settling a chloroformed cloth over my face, changing my plans for the evening.
At least I was right about how long losing consciousness would take.
15
The dreams were vivid and they were strange and they were compelling but they were also comforting and I not only remembered them upon awaking, I can remember them today, so many years later, as if they were a movie I watched yesterday.
