The Pandora Directive

Chapter Seventeen

I had other things I wanted to discuss with Regan, but I’d grilled her enough for a day with such bad news in it. I sat in the lounge for awhile longer, examining the boxes. What had Fitzpatrick called then? Chinese puzzle boxes? Whatever they were, they had me baffled. Maybe Fitzpatrick could figure them out. My instincts had already decided to trust the old man. Letting him hold on to both boxes were safer than carrying them around, and if he could unlock them, it would be an added bonus. In the meantime, I’d be free to track down the other boxes.

I flew back to Fitzpatrick’s hotel. He confirmed that the boxes did indeed appear to be the ones Malloy had owned in Peking. I left him hunched over one of them, examining it closely.

Sitting in the driver’s seat of my speeder, I considered my next step. The two boxes were as safe as they could be for the time being. Regan would, I hoped, go out and find a lead for me after she licked her wounds for a while. Chelsee was on the back-burner. The deadline Jackson Cross had given me had come and gone, but I was still among the living. I supposed that was a good sign. Maybe I should contact Mac Malden and see if he could give me any estimates on my current life expectancy.

Then there was the matter of getting past the encryption on Malloy’s desk and reading whatever information was there. Unfortunately I had no idea what the password was. The only real lead I had was the e-mail address that have fallen out of the paperback. I racked my brain, trying to think of where I could get on to the I-Net. No one I knew subscribed. Hold on a second. Malloy had a computer at the warehouse. People don’t typically carry e-mail addresses without having internet access. Maybe Malloy had been hooked up where he was working.

I flew over the waterfront area and landed for the second time at 54 Front Street. The outside of the warehouse looked no different. I was willing to bet the inside had changed significantly. The first two doors I checked were locked, but the side door was slightly ajar. I didn’t like the look of it. Glancing around, I couldn’t see any vehicles parked anywhere close. I stepped inside.

There hadn’t seemed to be so many steps when I’d sprinted down them last night. By the time I reached the third floor, I was panting. Here and there, I saw chips in the concrete walls where my pursuers bullets had struck. Was I dragging myself straight into a date with an armour-piercing slug? With some effort, I resisted the urge to turn back and continued on to the sixth floor.

The door into Malloy’s former work area was closed. I paused, my ear to the door. There was no sound coming from within. I turned the knob and pushed the door open slowly.

The room was spotless. I’d expected to see a Pollock-esque display of blood and brains. Instead I saw a perfectly tidy, unused office space. Temporarily stunned, I walked around the area, trying to picture what had changed. The desk Malloy had been working on was still there, but a quick search showed that it had been cleaned out. The file cabinet must have been there before, but it, too, was empty. There was nothing to find. Not a scrap of paper, not a single rubber band or paperclip. And no indication that a man had been gunned down in this very room less than twenty-four hours ago. Whoever the hit men were, they were good.

Malloy’s computer was in a corner, on the floor. I picked it up and set it on the desk. It didn’t take long to get everything attached and ready. As I expected, the active data storage clip had been removed by whoever had cleaned out the place. All I could hope for was that Malloy had stored his modem access commands in ROM. If he had, I could log on even without a data storage clip.

He had. Within seconds, I was ready to surf. With the familiar whining and screeching noises, I was welcomed into the world of virtual communication. I pulled out the There are Messages from Outer Space paperback, removed the bookmark, and typed in the e-mail address. After a short wait, the message to send screen popped up. I typed in We need to meet and clicked send. Several minutes went by with no reply. I dug for my smokes.

The cigarette was smoked almost all the way down when I heard a beep. I clicked Open and read the message displayed. Is this Malloy?

The senders ID was listed as Anonymous. I typed another message. Malloy is dead.

I sent the message and waited for a minute. Another beep. Who are you?

A friend. I was the last one to see him alive.

A longer interval passed. Whoever was on the other end was probably debating how to deal with me. Beep. How much do you know about Malloy?

Mr Anonymous was testing me. He died with a secret. I tried to find out what it was and keep it away from the bad guys. Can you help me?

I was coming on pretty strong, but I didn’t have time to pussyfoot around. This guy was either going to help me or he wasn’t. His message came back. Do you know about the box?

He was interested. Luckily, I had a trump card. I have two boxes.

It took only fifteen seconds to get a response. 413 Vina del Mar. There are ears everywhere.

The sloppily painted sign at 413 Vina del Mar identified the place as the Cosmic Connection. The tiny store front was wedged between a fruit stand and a sex shop in a run-down business section just off the Wharf. The display window was filled with charms, amulets, UFO books, and astrology charts. It didn’t look promising.

I opened the front door and stepped into the incense-filled shop. The interior was long and narrow, with old, creaky shelves bulging with boxes and books, reaching to the ceiling on either side. The place felt and smelled like an attic, stuffed with a mix of mysterious treasures and worthless relics.

A man stood behind the counter. His age fell somewhere between 20 and 40, with a face that was boyish, yet spottily bearded. His tiny wire-rimmed spectacles made him appear both scholarly and deranged. A baggy cardigan dwarfed his narrow shoulders and emphasised his hunched posture. From the pallor of his skin, I assumed that he saw as little of the sun as possible.

“Can I help you?”

I glanced around to make sure we were alone and approached the counter. “This is 413 Vina del Mar, right?” the man nodded. I thought back to the final e-mail message I’d received. “There are ears everywhere.”

My new acquaintance squinted his eyes at me and pursed his lips solemnly. “Wait here.”

He hurried to the front door and locked it. Then he leaned into the display window and flipped over the Open sign. Finally, he pulled down a shade to cover the door, leaving the room very dark. With a businesslike stride, he turned and brushed past me, heading toward a door at the back of the shop. “This way.”

I followed him into a back room, eerily lit by an aquarium, a lava lamp, and a half dozen candles. The smell of incense was strong. My New Age guide motioned for me to sit down. I sat on a solid oak chair with a spiderweb design in the backrest. My arm rested on a heavy wooden table covered with dusty tomes, yellowed documents, and splodges of candle wax. Maybe while I was here, I’d try to make contact with my Great-Aunt Rita and see what she’d done with my X MEN comic books.

“What’s your name?”

“Murphy. What’s yours?”

“Ellis. Archie Ellis. Here is one of my cards. Do you have one?”

I reached into my overcoat and pulled out a wad of business cards. Finally finding one of my own, I handed it over to Mr Ellis. As he looked it over, I checked out the card he tossed in front of me. Archibald Ellis. UFOlogist… Mystic… Occult Expert… Licensed Tarot Card Reader…Numerologist. I looked up, thinking of what Lucas Pernell had said about wheat and chaff. This guy struck me as a loony tune, but Malloy had been in contact with him. And he was still my only lead.

Ellis finished examining my card and looked up. “So, you’re a PI.”

I extended my hand across the table. “Good to meet you, Mr Ellis.”

His handshake was aggressive. “Call me Archie.”

“Okay, Archie. Let’s talk about Malloy.”

“Tell me what you know.”

I spent the next fifteen minutes giving Archie a quick overview of what had happened. None of the principal players names were mentioned (and I referred to the NSA as an unnamed federal agency), but Archie didn’t seem to mind. He soaked up everything I said. My story continued up to the point from where I found the e-mail address. Ellis leaned back and pressed his fingertips together.

“Would you like some herbal tea?”

Only if I were in the middle of a desert, dying of dehydration. “No thank you.”

Archie pressed his church steeple hands against his lips, lost in thought. I waited patiently. “You said that you have two boxes.”

I nodded and pulled out my smokes. Archie’s cool facade evaporated in horror as his eyes caught sight of my Lucky Strikes. “I don’t allow any smoking in my shop. Sorry.”

Looking peevishly at the smouldering trays of incense, I reluctantly replaced the pack. Damn health nuts. I couldn’t wait to find out what this Bozo knew, then get out of his New Age little shop of horrors.

“I’ve got two boxes, both of which came from Malloy.”

Ellis leaned back in his chair. “Small, right? Made of a strange material… no way to open them?”

I confirmed with a slight nod. “You’ve seen them.”

“I had one.”

It was hard to believe that Malloy would have entrusted something important to this crackpot, but he seemed to know what he was talking about. “What do you mean you had one?”

“It was stolen, along with a disk I recorded during my interview with Malloy.”

Three or four questions came into my mind at once. First, the box. “When did this happen?”

“Six days ago.”

“Go on.”

Ellis obviously felt stupid admitting that the box had been taken from him. “I’d only gotten the box the day before. Malloy had mentioned boxes during our interview, so I assumed that he was the one who’d sent it. There was no letter with it, no return address. I hid it here in the back room. The next evening, I came in here just after I opened the shop, and someone had broken him. The only things missing were the box and one of the interview discs. I tried to contact Malloy but couldn’t get through to him. Since then, I haven’t left the shop.”

“Tell me about the interview with Malloy.”

Ellis seemed relieved to change the subject of the box. “I publish a magazine called the Cosmic Connection. Maybe you’ve heard of it.”

I nodded, vaguely remembering that Fitzpatrick had mentioned it. Ellis was pleased. “Well then, you know we have feature articles, investigative reports, and interviews, all concerning the supernatural, particularly all things extraterrestrial. I have contacts throughout the field of UFOlogy, one of whom is a man named Elijah Witt. He’s a legend among those of us who study alien encounters.”

The name didn’t sound familiar.

“Mr Witt and I have corresponded for some time. Maybe six months ago, he wrote and said that a friend of his, Thomas Malloy, was coming to town and that I should hook up with him. Actually, Malloy contacted me.”

“Do you know what he was doing here?”

“Well, Mr Witt was a professor at Berkeley for decades. He still has honorary status, though he’s retired and lives in seclusion in the north-west. Anyway, he pulled some strings and got Malloy use of research lab at the University.”

“What was Malloy working on?”

Ellis shrugged. “He wouldn’t go into a lot of detail, but he did use a strange term: the Pandora Device. I have no idea what it means.”

Fitzpatrick said that he’d tracked Malloy to a nearby university. If Ellis’ information was reliable, then I could assume that Malloy was at Berkeley creating, or working on, something called the Pandora Device. I shifted in my seat.

“What else did Malloy tell you?”

“Well, he talked about Roswell, of course. Actually, I still have that part of the interview.”

“I thought you said it was stolen.”

Ellis got up and walked toward an old wooden cabinet. “It was a long interview. I filled up an entire disk. After I started a second disk, we only talked for another five minutes or so. The first disk was stolen with the box. Luckily, the other disc was still in the video recorder, which I’d taken home with me. I was going to publish a transcript of the interview in my magazine, but having the disk stolen ruined that plan.”

He looked through the cabinet for a moment, then pulled out a disk in a blind sleeve. “This is it. You want to look at it?”

It didn’t sound like there was much to see on the disk, but I wasn’t about to jump to conclusions. A laser disc player sat on a nearby shelf. Ellis clicked it on and slid in the disk. A moment later, Malloy’s face appeared on the screen. Ellis’ recorded voice came from off camera.

“Sorry for the interruption,” Ellis’ voice said. “You were saying…”

“As you know,” Malloy continued, “the Roswell Complex has been shut down for years. Most people don’t know that a tremendous amount of alien equipment and technology was, and still is, stored there.”

“What type of equipment and technology?”

“Who knows? The best minds in the military couldn’t figure them out. But I’ll tell you this: the ship that crashed in Roswell was loaded with equipment. Several of the people on the project that I talked to said that it looked more like a supply ship than an exploratory craft. There were duplicates of almost everything on board. One device looked like it functioned as some sort of power cell, and there was a second one stored on the ship. Some of the analysts speculated that once they knew how to operate everything, the second set of equipment could be used to construct another ship. Of course, this was pure conjecture. As I said, the analysts never did figure anything out. Except, of course, the particle accelerator.”

“Hypothetically speaking, do you think, with today’s technology, scientists could create their own extraterrestrial craft?”

Malloy shrugged. “It’s possible. Of course, all the alien equipment is still stored at the Roswell research complex.”

“That could be a problem.”

Malloy smiled conspiratorially. “More like impossible… if the rumours are true.”

Ellis leaned into the picture and shook Malloy’s hand. “Thank you for your time.”

“My pleasure.”

Ellis ejected the disk and returned to the wooden cabinet. “See? There’s not much there.”

“What was Malloy referring to… the rumours about Roswell?”

Ellis seemed amused by my ignorance. “You haven’t heard? That story has been around for ages. You must know that the Roswell Complex was shut down just before the war ended. The rumour is that one of the final projects turned into a major disaster. Apparently, several mysterious containers were recovered from the alien crash site. Researchers spent decades trying to figure out how to open them. After they’d stumbled onto how the particle accelerator worked, someone hit upon the bright idea of using it on the sealed containers. Well, they got the containers open, and all hell broke loose. Whatever had been stored inside was living matter. No one knows whether it was toxic or viral, but it killed off most of the researchers before anyone knew what was happening. The complex was quarantined and hasn’t been opened since.”

My tax dollars at work. From everything I’d learned over the past week, it seemed like nothing was foolproof as long as the military was involved.

Ellis broke into my thoughts. “So, what are we going to do now?”

I didn’t like the “we” reference. Archie might have been reading too many Batman comics, but I wasn’t in the market for a sidekick, especially one who drank herbal tea and preferred incense to good, clean tobacco.

“I’ve got to find out more about this Pandora Device. I probably need to contact a Elijah Witt, as well.”

Ellis’ eager expression scrunched into a defensive frown. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?”

“Well, Mr Witt’s a very important, very private person. And he doesn’t talk to outsiders.”

Archie sounded like he was talking about his pet hamster. I restrained myself from telling him that I really didn’t care what he or Mr Witt thought or did. “Oh, well. I guess that’s my hard luck.”

Ellis relaxed. “So… is there anything else I can tell you about?”

It was time to smoke. As I got up from my chair, one other question occurred to me. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the There are Messages from Outer Space paperback. “You ever read this?”

Ellis looked at the book closely. “Sure. Mr Witt wrote it. It’s really good. See? The author’s name is J.I Thelwait. As an anagram for Elijah Witt.”

I slipped the book back in my pocket. Ellis kept talking, his tone becoming more anxious. He was like a fisherman about to lose the big one. “You should read Foucault’s Pendulum, too. It explains everything. The Telluric Currents, the Templar plan. It’s all in there. Umberto Eco was a prophet.”

He got up quickly and hurried around the table, placing himself between me and the door. “You should also read The Fifth Column. It’s great. It proves that there’s a giant conspiracy in the government. Aliens have been living among us for generations. It even hints that one of our presidents was alien, or at least half alien. It’s all documented. The crop circles… the alien inductions… the government knows about all it. Heck, they’re in on most of it!”

I moved past Ellis into the main room of the shop. He didn’t even pause. “If you want my advice, trust nobody! I can tell that you’re on the level, but most of the time, you never know. The aliens are everywhere!”

I stopped at the door and turned back with an exaggerated look of suspicion. “How can I be sure that you’re not an alien, Archie?”

It was like I’d slapped him. He didn’t recover for a few seconds. “Everyone knows — aliens deny their own existence. I wouldn’t talk about them if I was one.”

I smiled indulgently. “Ah… of course. Well, now that I know you can be trusted, I’d better be moving along. I’ll be sure to keep your advice in mind.”

Ellis hurried to the door and unlocked it. “It was good to meet you, Murphy. It’s always nice to meet another believer. Keep in touch.”