Chapter 4

Chapter Four






"Point him out," Mr. Brown barked at the waitress. "Point him out right now!"

"It’s all right, Mr. Brown, please, sit down," Julia pled. "I’m sure it’s nothing." She sighed heavily as the man from the State Department finally sat down and the sea silent faces began to look away. She smiled at the waitress. "Please tell the gentleman we said thank you…"

"You’d better tell me what’s going on," he demanded, "I need to know this kind of shit." His face was stern, his tone even more so. It was the first time she saw him ruffled by anything.

"Well, on the flight from San Francisco I received an in-flight fax from someone named Jerry Baines."

"Who is Jerry Baines? Is this someone you know?"

"Well, no... You see I thought it was Glenn, my boss…

"Glenn Stratton?"

"Yeah, Glenn… I thought he was just playing a little joke on me. It’s just the sort of thing he would do. He was the only one who knew I was on that flight, and besides, I was traveling under an assumed name. The fax was addressed to me as the assumed name. Then, later, when I checked in at the hotel there was another fax from him waiting at the front desk."
"What did it say?"

"He said he wanted to meet me; that he had something to show me."

"Yeah, I’ll bet the creep has something to show you," Mr. Brown mumbled.

"When I got to my room I looked up his company on the Internet. He said he ran some international firm out of Santa Fe... All the while, you realize, I’m thinking this was Glenn pulling a practical joke on me. Well, let me tell you, if this is a joke Glenn went to a lot of trouble to pull it off. Baines International is a multi-billion dollar company."

"Baines International? I know of it."

"Mr. Brown, I'm beginning to think this is no practical joke."

"Well, I think it’s time I paid our Mr. Baines a little visit."

"You’re not going to arrest him are you? I don’t think he’s done anything wrong."

He laughed, having finally calmed down. "Julia, remember, we’re the State Department, we don’t incarcerate people. We have them shot." He waited for the flair of shock to subside and then smiled. "Relax. I’m joking. I’ll be right back."

She strained to see the man Mr. Brown had gone to visit. The room was far too dark for her to make out his face, however, his profile suggested he was a man of considerable age. They must have talked for quite some time; as she noticed she was already sipping on her second drink.

Presently, Mr. Brown returned to the table. He was smiling. "Sorry I was gone so long."

"You two must have hit it off," Julia replied tonelessly, her eyebrows raised. "So, are you going to have him shot, or what?"

"Yeah, funny. No, actually he is a fascinating old man. He’s perfectly harmless. He claims to be a big fan and just wants to meet you."

"What do think?"

"Like I said, he’s harmless."

"But how did he find me? No one knew about this except Glenn and your people."

"Then your Glenn must have told him because we sure as hell didn’t."

"He wouldn’t do that."

"Don’t be so sure. It seems Mr. Baines is a big contributor to the S.E.T.I. program. Here, check this out." He handed her a piece of paper with a hand written note on it...
........................................................…………

Dear Gerald Baines,
Thank you for your generous contribution. Words cannot describe our unending gratitude for your support over the years. There is no doubt in my mind that without your contributions during the tough times this project would have disappeared altogether. Now that things are better for us financially I can honestly say your latest offering of five hundred thousand dollars has come as a bit of a surprise. All I can say is thank you four hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine more times.
Gratefully yours,
Glenn Stratton

Mountain View CA ............................................................................

"I can’t believe it," Julia exclaimed.

"What?"

"This is Glenn’s handwriting. I’d know it anywhere."

"So, do I go get the poor guy so he can see what his half a million got him?"

"Well, if you think it’s okay I guess it’s all right with me."

"Believe me, you have nothing to worry about."

He waved his arm above his head motioning to Mr. Baines to their table. Julia kept waiting for him to stand up but nothing seemed to happen. In the isle in front of her several people stood up and appeared to be pulling their chairs out of the way of something. Finally out of the darkness a little old man in a wheel chair rolled up to the table.

"Julia Rayhied, may I present one Mr. Jerry Baines, fan extraordinaire." She looked up at Mr. Brown, her brow furrowed; he saw the question in her eyes... "You never asked."

"Miss Rayhied," Jerry Baines said with a stout and confident voice that belied his frail appearance, "it is truly a pleasure to finally meet you." He held out his hand as she stood to greet him.

"Mr. Baines," she replied quietly.

"We mustn’t be so formal. Please, call me Jerry. I feel I’ve known you for some time. I trust your well?" She nodded. "But first, let me apologize..."

"Apologize? For what?"

"Mr. Brown here said I may have frightened you with the faxes I sent over. Really, I meant no harm."

"Don’t worry about that Mr.. Err... Jerry. It’s just that, well, you know with all the people that I meet one can never be too careful."

"I understand." Baines smiled at her. It was the most genuine smile she had ever seen. She understood how he could have disarmed a hardened government agent like Mr. Brown.

For a moment there was silence at the table. Julia looked at Baines and she saw him motion with his eyes to dismiss Mr. Brown. "Ahh... Mr. Brown," she said not taking her eyes off the old man, "would you excuse us for a moment."

"Certainly. As you wish. For a half million he deserves some quality time alone with you." He smiled and turned to walk away, and then hesitated, "call me if you need anything," he said with a wink.

Baines waited until Mr. Brown was seated at the rail before returning his glance to Julia. "He makes me nervous."

"Oh, I thought you two hit it off."

"Don’t let him fool you honey, he’s a trained killer." He saw the shock in her eyes. "I’m quite serious. Never under estimate the propensity of US government to defend its interests; to the death if necessary."

"Why Mr... I mean Jerry, you sound so cynical. My God, he's with the State Department, not the CIA"

He smiled again. "I have every reason to be cynical. But, now wait, I don’t want to get ahead of myself… I have something I need to show you." He reached under the red plaid blanket that he used to cover his crippled legs and produced a small, shiny object. He slid it across the table to her. She picked it up; surprised that it weighed almost nothing. She examined it closely. It appeared to be some sort of metal alloy. It was tapered at one end, as thin as a sheet of paper yet it would not yield when she tried to bend it with all her strength.

"What is it?"

"Evidence, physical evidence."

"Excuse me."

"You are holding in your hand, my young friend, evidence of the visitors, extraterrestrials if you wish. It came from a crash. Believe me, Julia, I’ve had it analyzed by the finest labs in the world, it is what I say it is."

She felt a cold rush. Could it be true, she asked herself. The rush quickly faded and she came back to Earth. They had all been stung by pranks before. Each one preceded by just such a rush. She vowed to keep her cool. Still… It seemed a remarkable material. She chuckled. "Wait, don’t tell me, Roswell, right?"

"As a matter fact it is," Baines replied bluntly, coldly.

"I’m sorry, Mr. Baines but you really had me going for a minute. God, how could I be so gullible? Hasn’t that whole thing been debunked by now? Everyone even remotely involved is dead and not one shred of real evidence was ever produced."

"Until now, that is. This is it, my dear, the smoking gun. I really didn’t expect you'd believe me. Why should you? If a stranger came up to me and told me such things, well, I wouldn’t have believed it either. Except in my case he was no stranger, he was my father."

"What do you mean, your father?"

"He was there at Mac Brazel’s ranch in the New Mexican desert in 1947. He was stationed at the army’s air base at Roswell. He was on the cleanup detail."

"If he was there and saw all this why didn’t he come forward in 1947?"

"Well, actually he did. You can read the story in the Roswell Daily Record. Of course you can read the story of the terrible accident that took the lives of his wife and baby boy and left his six year old son crippled for life in the next days edition." Baines paused as the point sunk in. "You see, Julia, it is very real to me."

"I’m so sorry about your mother and brother. You’re saying that the army was responsible for their deaths?"

"I didn’t know it at the time. In fact, I didn’t learn about it until 1961 when my father died. In his belongings was a key to safety deposit box for a bank in Santa Fe. It was there that I found this," he pointed to the object still in her hand, "and a diary explaining the whole story." For the first time in their conversation he sensed that she was ready to become convinced. "I’ve dedicated my life to expose those responsible for this."

Julia was speechless. She had never met a man quite like him. He appeared sincere. The story was either true or he was the most convincing charlatan she had ever met. "What is Baines International, then?" she asked having nothing left to challenge him on.

"We are in the information gathering business. I guess you could call us ‘spies for hire’. Most of our clients are governments who want information on their enemies. Primarily they want military information, but we also research economic forecasts and cultural trends as these can be weapons in their own right. We try to stay clear of corporate espionage. Realistically, it's impossible, the two are really one in the same in the modern post-Cold War era.

I started the company in 1963 with the fifty thousand dollars I inherited from my father's life insurance policy. It has afforded me the ways and means to pursue my life’s purpose."

"And that is?" she asked.

"To expose the governments cover up of the Roswell crash and to avenge the death of my mother and my brother."

She was fighting tears when finished. How ironic, she thought, he was telling her his life’s bitter story right here in the lion’s den. He was surrounded by agents of the very government that put his family to death and left him to live out the rest of his life in a wheelchair. 

"What does all this have to do with me?" she asked quietly, almost apologetically. "Why even tell me any of this? How can I help?"

"I don’t know," he said immediately. "All I know is that from the first time I saw you on television I knew you somehow held the key to the truth. You and your show are on to something. I know it. Everybody knows it. Why do you think the Cole administration brought you here today?"

"For a photo op, actually," she quipped.

"Our lovely President is a politician first but she’s also a pragmatist. There’s a good chance she knows little more than the rest of us. She may be simply be hedging her bets. After all she’s taken a beating in the press over the UFO that landed on the White House lawn. The truth is that presidents come and presidents go but the secret must be kept locked up. Face it, you don’t think they ever told Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter do you?"

"No, I suppose not," she replied. She looked over to the bar where Mr. Brown was engaged in a conversation with the young server that he had terrorized moments earlier when a question popped into her head. "Jerry, tell me, how do you know Glenn Stratton?"

"I don’t."

She grabbed the note that Mr. Brown had shown her and handed it to him. "What about this?"

"That’s very real," he said matter of factly.

"Then I don’t understand. Do you know him or not?"

"We’ve spoken on the phone a couple of times, I guess. He calls my office whenever I send him a check, but other than that to be honest I don’t really know him."

"Did he tell you where to find me?"

"Now, that part, I really must confess, was a little misleading. You must understand it is my business to know such things."

"My God, your not having me followed!"

"Relax," he smiled, "of course not. There are many ways to track somebody down without following them around like a dirty hood." 

She felt the blood run from her face. Maybe having his people follow her was not be so bad after all. By his own admission he had a stake in her safety and in the success of the S.E.T.I. program. She learned that he and a number of other wealthy individuals had been supporting the program from its inception. Since the S.E.T.I. moniker encompassed a diverse collection of projects and people all around the globe the fact he did not actually know Glenn Stratton was not unreasonable.

Their conversation went on long into the night. He explained that the army went into a panic at Roswell realizing they could never keep the event from becoming the stuff of mass speculation. Quite the contrary actually, they instantly realized that the only way to deflect speculation up was to muddy the waters by creating the controversy themselves. First they issued a report that a flying disk was recovered then quashed the story the very next day. Then they floated bizarre stories and pictures of bodies of little gray alien men with large eyes and large heads. A local Roswell coroner claimed to have ordered small coffins for them. Then there were reports that the bodies were flown to Texas and were seen being unloaded from an army transport plane in Fort Worth. Of course it was officially denied and the wreckage was attributed to weather balloon experiments that were known to have been taking place in California at the time. The flying disk itself was said to be a disk shaped reflector attached to the weather balloon. Any time the controversy seemed to be dying down it was the intelligence arm of the military that poured the fuel on the fire. Later, many decades had passed and an autopsy film was recovered and played on national television. It turned out to be bogus but was enough to thrust the UFO subculture back into the limelight. In 1997, the fiftieth anniversary of the event, the Air Force produced a 230 page document ostensibly closing the case on the Roswell incident by claiming the bodies were actually crash test dummies used in experimental parachute drops known to have taken place in the New Mexican desert. The report, Baines explained was designed to heighten the speculation, further clouding the truth that the bodies were actually human bodies, not alien at all. And that was the secret the government had to keep. It was the fact that the aliens were human that shook the military brass to the core.

"The diary," Julia said softly, "could I see it?"

"I thought you might ask about that." From under his blanket he produced a small leather bound book. "I’ll ask you to guard this with your life, it is obviously a one of a kind. I want you to read it. I think it’s vital that you do. When you are done with it just call the number I printed on the inside cover and I will arrange to have it brought back to me. And Julia, please, do not show it to anyone else. I trust you can do this for me." 

"You have my word."

***

Sitting in the first class section of a San Francisco bound 787 she couldn’t help but thinking that her life had changed forever. The old man’s mission was now her own. How long had she been wandering about aimlessly, blindly searching for the slightest molecule of the truth? Suddenly, without the slightest indication of it’s arrival she had been handed the mother lode. She chuckled to herself. Life was strange indeed.

Despite the feeling of unbridled excitement she didn’t dare breath a word of it to anybody, not even Glenn, her closest friend, until she had a chance to have it thoroughly analyzed. At the airport she learned something important about Baines’ little object. As she had watched her bag disappear into the x-ray machine at the gate she did not see it’s now familiar shape on the monitor. The alien metal was apparently impervious to x-rays. Chalk one up for Baines.

With the object clutched in her hand and rubbing it as if it were a worry stone she began to read the tattered journal of John Baines. At first most of the entries were foul comments on the mundane life of an enlisted man stationed in the blast furnace they called New Mexico. She skimmed through June and into July before she found anything interesting.

July 2nd
Some of the pilots are saying they’ve been seeing strange things in the sky. Janke says he was being followed by something for twenty minutes and then it shot passed him like he was standing still. He said he almost shit his pants. I don’t know what they think they been seeing but Glenn and I think they been takin’ a flask a hooch up there in them flight suits of theirs.

July 6th
Sarge says were going out into the desert tomorrow to clean up the wreckage of a crash on some guys ranch. None of us heard about a crash, it wasn’t one of ours anyway. Looking forward to scorching my ass. Told Sarge he’d better bring plenty of water and some salt pills or we’ll have guys droppin’ like flies. Sarge seemed kinda edgy about it. He told me to mind my own damn business. Glenn said it was just that time of the month. I told him he was wrong. That was last week.

July 7th
Sarge Peterson told us it was some kind of weather balloon but he’s full of shit. I know what a weather balloon looks like, but it aint no goddam weather balloon. All the guys are saying it some kind alien spaceship, one of those flying saucers people been talking about. All I know is that there shit all over the place, weird shit too. It kinda looks like metal but it don’t weigh nothing. It’s as light as a feather but it don’t bend. It must have came down awfully hard to break this shit into pieces like that. 

I don’t know what it is or where it came from but Sarge is takin a lotta heat cause we’re talkin’ like this. He said we’d better keep our mouths shut if we know what’s good for us.
Poor Pasqually couldn’t take the heat. He passed out and spent the rest of the day in the truck. Glenn says he was faking it. We’ll get him tomorrow if the goddamn rattlesnakes don’t get him first. There’s goddamn rattlers and tarantulas all over the place. They like to hide under the bigger chunks. Glenn says you gotta bang on ‘em first then you’ll hear ‘em rattling.

July 8th
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, today we found bodies! We were digging in the main impact site and goddamn if we didn’t find some bodies, three of them. They didn’t look like no Martians to me. Glenn says they were cause they aint got no hair on their bodies, well, hell one didn’t even have no hair on it’s head. They were pretty banged up but not so much that you couldn’t tell the were males cause they all had a dick and balls. Sarge said they’re Russians. Glenn says Sarge is full of shit, they aint no Russians cause they aint got no bushy eyebrows. All I know is the brass is all up in arms about the whole goddamn thing. I guess some asshole printed a story in the paper today. They told us to ignore it. Sarge told us we’d better not say a word about the bodies to anyone or we’ll be spending the rest of our sorry lives bustin’ rocks in Leavenworth. Christ, the whole things gettin’ weird.



July 14th
General Ramey from Fort Worth sent over the official version of what the Army said we saw. I think it’s a bunch of shit. I know what I saw. Glenn says I just better keep my mouth shut, but I won’t be told what I saw. It aint no goddamn weather balloon either. I talked to a reporter for the Roswell Daily Record and I told him I’d give him the story of his life if he promised not mention my name. I meet him tomorrow on my day off.

July 16th
The bastard printed my goddamn name. I’m dead. I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do. I can’t run, where the hell am I supposed to go? it’s a goddamn desert out there.

July 22nd
I buried Elizabeth and Jacob today. They said she was drunk and drove off the road. I know what happened, they killed her. My sweet Elizabeth never drank a drop a booze in her life. Goddamn bastards, they killed my wife and my baby and poor Jerry is still in the hospital. They told me he aint never gonna walk again. Those wretched bastards. But it’s all my own fault I should’ve listened to Glenn.

August 18th
Glenn got promoted today. He’s gonna get his stirpes. He said his wife is pregnant too. Say’s there’s gonna be a little Glenn Jr. if it’s a boy. I asked if he’d name it Glennrietta if it’s a girl. We both laughed. It’s the first time I’ve been able to laugh at anything since the accident. But what the hell do I care anymore. They’re giving me my honorable discharge cause of the hardship of havin’ to raise a cripple with no wife. I can’t wait to get the papers so I can piss on ‘em right in front of them. Already got a place up in Santa Fe where we can stay till I can get a job. Of course, Sergeant Glenn promises to visit Jerry and me once we get settled. I’m not sure if I want him to. He’s been acting strange lately. He used to be on my side. Now they are giving him a new job and he says I shouldn’t have crossed them. He said I was a fool to think I could get even. He’s not the same Glenn Stratton I called my friend…

She read the sentence again. Glenn Stratton? What? Could it be? Her mind raced back to Glenn’s office in California. In her mind she saw the pictures on the wall. A military man with a young boy on his lap sitting in a jeep in the desert. Another shot of the boy and the man on a tank with mesa’s in the background. Was this her Glenn Stratton Jr.? The timelines worked out. The locations were within reason.

She was in a panic. Her head was swimming with countless scenarios that seemed all too plausible. Could it be possible that Glenn was in on this? Did Baines know about it all along? Suddenly, she felt very alone. If this were true would she ever be able to look at her friend in the same light again? And what was the story with Jerry Baines? Was it the truth or just so much bullshit? Did he tell her the whole truth except the part about her boss and best friend possibly being part of a massive conspiracy? Could she really trust him or anyone now?

The plane was on final approach when she finally snapped out of the trance she had put herself in. She only hoped that it was all an incredible coincidence, and Glenn’s imagined misdeeds merely a figment of her vivid imagination. But how was she going to know for sure? If she asked Jerry Baines would he even tell her the truth? Would anyone tell her the truth?