Rebel in Time

Chapter 17

The stack of documents that made up the McCulloch file was very impressive. Assembled together they stood at least a foot high. Troy had transferred them all from the house on Massachusetts Avenue to the office in the security building at the lab, the one that had formerly been the colonel's. Now his. It was a far better place to study them, here where McCulloch himself had worked.

Colonel Wesley McCulloch, Wes to his friends. Troy settled himself behind the desk, pulled a ruled yellow pad towards him, and wrote Wes at the top. He wanted to get to know the man, to get inside his skin and really understand him. The clues he was looking for were somewhere in this stack of paper. If he studied them closely enough, learned what made the man really tick — then followed his trail through the documented history of his life — the reason for everything that had happened would surely emerge.

He broke for coffee at eleven o'clock, stretched and rubbed at the small of his back. It was tiring, just sitting there and leaning over the desk. But the yellow pad was filling up and a shadowy picture of the man was beginning to emerge. He hated to leave it. Bringing the coffee back to the office he stood and looked out of the window. Just as McCulloch must have stood and looked numberless times. He must learn to see with that man's eyes. Whatever he looked at now, he wanted to see it just as Wes McCulloch had seen it. A knock at the door cut through his thoughts. He turned about just as it opened.

'My name is Van Diver,' the uniformed man in the doorway said. 'Major Van Diver.'

He walked in and, over his shoulder, Troy could see a number of officers and noncoms in the outer office; then the door closed.

'May I ask just what the hell is going on?' Troy said.

The major nodded, his pink jowls flapping when he moved his head. He had thin blond hair and obviously artificial white teeth; his watery blue eyes blinked from behind steel-rimmed glasses. 'I'm relieving you,' he said. 'Here are the orders. Issued this morning at the Pentagon. Lieutenant…'

He lingered over this last word, a tight little cold smile on his lips — which opened slightly as his teeth peeked out between them, then slipped back. He must have had a badly fitting upper plate; he kept pushing it back and forth with his tongue. Troy ignored this disconcerting sight as he read through the official papers. They seemed very much in order. The wheels of the military were finally grinding on this case and he had been squeezed out. He handed back the orders.

'All right, Major. It will take me about a half an hour to clear my desk and get all my papers together—'

'No. All of the records stay here — and you get out as of now. The troops outside don't know it but I know what's going on around here. I know that you are just a sergeant attached to one of the spook outfits. When I said you were relieved, sergeant, I meant it. In every way. I don't hold with all the goddamn undercover agencies that proliferate under the present administration. The Army can conduct its own investigations of an officer, that's what we have military intelligence for. You took over this investigation at a low level, something to do with gold. That's finished now. This is a major case. You're out. The records stay here. I hope that I've made that clear. Dismissed, sergeant.'

Troy opened his mouth to speak — then slowly closed it. He had received his orders. That was it. Period. There was nothing that he could say that would change the situation. The work he had done, the work that still needed doing, the theories he had, none of this was relevant. He was out and that's all there was to it. He had no choice, no choice at all.

He snapped to attention and saluted; Major Van Diver returned it. Then he turned on his heel, went to the office door, opened it, and walked out. Through the office, not looking to the left or right, and out to the parking lot to his car. He started it up and drove slowly down the drive to the gate, watching it swing wide at his approach. The guard nodded and he waved back as he drove past. Only after he was well clear of the grounds did the knot of tension in his midriff slowly begin to ease away. He smiled, then laughed aloud as he drove.

'I've been relieved!' he shouted as the buildings grew smaller in his rearview mirror, then vanished from sight. 'New orders cut. The specialists taking over! Well go ahead, you government issue assholes. You pinheads are never going to find out a thing. You're dumb. You relieved me — but you never even thought to take back my security pass.'

He patted the pocket where it lay. By the numbers, he knew how they would work. Knew how little they would find out. Let them. This case was his and he was still working on it. Or was he? That was really up to the admiral. He would have to see him at once; he headed for the District. On the way in he passed a barbecue drive-in and realized that he hadn't eaten for over six hours. After finishing a sandwich he telephoned the admiral's secretary from the phone booth, in the gas station next door. Yes, the admiral was in. He would see Troy in thirty minutes.

Admiral Colonne did not seem surprised in the slightest by the Army's action in relieving Troy. He sucked on his pipe and nodded as he listened to the details.

'SOP,' he said. 'This agency has performed its function, we have watched the watcher and have made our report. Now the watchman is gone. End of our responsibility. The regulars move in and we step aside. Standard operating procedure. The case is closed.'

'I'm sorry, sir, but I don't believe that it is. You assigned me to investigate the colonel, to determine the reason why he was buying all that gold. That fact hasn't been determined yet. In the meantime McCulloch has disappeared, after committing a number of crimes which the police and G2 are investigating. All well and good. But the original case is still open and unsolved.'

The admiral nodded. 'I can understand your point of view. But what do you think you can possibly accomplish — that other departments can't?'

'I can find out what really happened. I've had some good results so far, you've seen my report. And I've really only just started. There has to be a tie-in between the gold, the murders and the thefts. When I find the answer to one I'll know the answer to them all.'

'You believe that you can do this?'

'I think that I can, sir. After all of the time and energy already invested in this case, I'm only asking for a bit more time. At least the chance to try. Am I still on the case?'

The admiral gazed through the cloud of smoke for a moment in silence. Then nodded. 'You are. I agree with your thinking. As far as this department is concerned the investigation of Colonel McCulloch is still in the active file. What do you intend to do next?'

'Ask the admiral's permission to contact all of the agencies who submitted documents on the investigation of McCulloch. I want copies of their reports. That major booted me out so fast I couldn't even take along my notes.'

'Impossible. Although you and I think differently, QCIC is officially locked out of this investigation. Even if I requested the information the other agencies involved would be sure to refuse.'

'Damn!' Troy jumped to his feet and paced the length of the conference room. Slamming his fist into his palm, over and over again. 'That tears it. I'll never get the man without those records. I'm stupid. I should have made copies of the documents the instant they arrived.'

The admiral nodded agreement. 'You've come late to the decision that I reached decades ago. Establish a working routine. The instant a paper comes through the front door a copy is made for the files. I'm sure that after this little object lesson you will agree on the intelligence of that procedure…'

'Did you — were copies made of all these files?'

'Of course. I said that it was standard procedure. I'll have duplicates of them made now and sent to that cubby in the basement that you have been using for an office.' He raised his hand. 'No don't thank me. QCIC is my department. I want to see this case resolved to our satisfaction just as much as you do.'

Troy could not contain his enthusiasm. 'It's tremendous, I have to thank you, you've saved my bacon. I'm going to crack this thing yet.'

'I look forward to receiving your report.'

Troy started to leave, then turned before he reached the door. 'May I ask you a personal question, sir?'

'You may ask. There is no guarantee that I will answer.'

'It's not really that personal, more a point of information. It's, just what did you do in the Navy? I'm not knocking the Navy, don't misunderstand me, in fact the way you run this intelligence operation, maybe I have been wrong about Navy organization.'

'Then again maybe you haven't. The Navy does have a tendency to work by the book and to show little imagination. Perhaps that is why I am here. Then again — perhaps I never was in the Navy at all. Consider yourself, you have never been a lieutenant — but you're wearing the uniform of one right now. I suggest we leave it at that for the time being. I look forward to receiving your progress reports.'

It was probably the best answer that he could expect. Troy went down to his cubby and buried himself in the work. The papers gradually spread out to cover the desk, and even slopped over onto the floor as he tried to arrange them in some sort of coherent order. It was only after he had worked his way through the entire, laboriously detailed FBI report, that he hit paydirt. A three page evaluation of McCulloch's personality that had been analysed from his personal history and medical records by a government psychiatrist.

It was heavy going, and very Freudian. Much was made of the colonel's having left home at an early age; this opportunity to speculate about maternal rejection and sibling rivalry led to some fancy theorizing. Troy flipped through the pages until he came to the summation.

It is my conclusion therefore, tempered as I have stated earlier by the regrettable fact that I have never met the subject, that he has a strong paranoid personality, whose adjustment to life is further hampered by schizophrenic interludes. He feels that he has been passed over by others less qualified than he, that his lack of success is not his own responsibility, but rather the fault of society. His service in the structured military has enabled him to operate in a reasonably satisfactory manner despite these handicaps. But his military record, and the charges of murder during active service in Vietnam, even though the charges were later dropped, is evidence of strong homicidal tendencies. It is not that he does not know right from wrong, but rather that he believes himself right at all times and wishes to impose his will on those he knows to be wrong. Most important, in a serving officer, are his repressed but still violently held anti-Negro sentiments. His early membership in the Klan supports this conclusion. His deepest motivations are those of hatred. I firmly believe that he will not suppress these feelings much longer.

'Didn't need a shrink to tell me that,' Troy said, dropping the papers onto the laden desk, then unconsciously wiping his fingers on his trousers' leg. 'Felt that the first time I saw him. At least this proves it. But what else do I know?'

One by one he picked up what he felt were the relevant documents and stacked them to one side, away from the others. He tapped them with his fingers, speaking aloud to clarify his thoughts.

'The shrink says that McCulloch is a homicidal violently racist nut case from way back in the Mississippi slashes. Now we have to add to that the police report that he killed three people in order to push his secret plan through. All we know about this plan is that it involves a large quantity of gold, as well as a sub-machine-gun, complete with blueprints for same. Since McCulloch went to a great deal of effort to obtain these items we can be reasonably certain that they were important to him. If he travelled back in time the chances are that he brought them with him. To the year eighteen fifty-eight. Why? And why that year? What was important about it? Nothing that I can remember. A relatively quiet period in American history, with nothing much happening to make it memorable in any way. A lot of politicking and trouble between the different states, but the Civil War didn't start for two and a half more years.

'I don't know what he is up to!' Troy shouted, in sudden anger, slamming his fists down on the piles of paper. 'All I know is that he is up to no good, no damned good at all. People are going to get killed — or why else is he carrying that weapon around? And, knowing the colonel, I don't need a crystal ball to tell me that a lot of these people are going to be black. I'm sure of that.'

But anger wasn't the solution. Any explanations of the colonel's motivations would be found by reason and logic, not by emotion. Troy tore off his note and put them to one side, then started a fresh sheet of paper. Question; what had the colonel taken with him? Answer; gold, the gun, the blueprints.

Question; how did these fit together?

Answer; not easily. Think. Gold is money, the kind of money that is good any time, any place. When McCulloch arrived back in 1858 he would be a rich man — and he was certainly going to be rich in the South. No chance of him going North! He would dive into Dixie, good Old slave-holding Dixie. He would be right at home there. This alone would be motivation enough for a man with his prejudices to make the trip back through time. Live in the land he loved best, where integration was just a mathematical term. Great. But why did he pick the year 1858? Within three short years the Civil War would begin and the world the colonel loved would disappear forever. If he went back to 1830, or even earlier, he could live a full life cracking the whip over the darkies' backs. He would love that. But this way, 1858, he only had a couple of years to enjoy the fun.

But he had taken more than gold. The gun. The approaching war — and the deadly sub-machine-gun. They went together. They fitted together.

Troy had a sudden, terrible and depressing feeling that he had hit on the truth. No, it couldn't be possible. But it was possible. It had been done. The colonel had gone back in time with his gold and his blueprints and his gun.

The psychiatrist's report had suggested that McCulloch was a paranoid with criminal schizophrenic tendencies. That was another way of saying that he was insane. And his idea was insane. Just about the most insane idea that a certified nut case had ever dreamed up.

Colonel McCulloch had travelled back in time to change the outcome of the Civil War.

He wanted to alter history so that the South would win.