Chapter Eleven

A Fortean Christmas Gift

 

December 25. In the morning. 1959

Ichigaya, Tokyo.

Carl Scott covered his mouth, trying to hide the smell of alcohol coming from his mouth, and glanced sideways at the officer who escorted him in the elevator. The latter didn't seem to notice the gesture and kept looking at the floor indicator.

No matter how he had tried to brush his teeth, the stench of alcohol was still there.

They couldn't blame him, it was Christmas and he had decided to have a bender outside the station the night before.

He sensed that, since he was so far from home, he wasn't going to find much Christmas spirit in Tokyo. So it had been a surprise to find that, in many parts of the city, the shops were decorated with Santa Claus and Christmas trees in true western style.

He, and two other members of the Agency, had decided to celebrate Christmas in a place in Roppongi with a more western feel, and to celebrate the occasion with at least a few drinks.

What at first was nothing more than a few traditional beers and sake, later turned into a bar where all kinds of spirits had been paraded. Strong enough that, when he woke up, he felt like he had an army of monkeys playing with jackhammers on his head. The worst part was that they had charged it all to the Agency's account. Someone was going to be reprimanded for it later. He just hoped it wasn't him, and if it was, he'd better start doing the right thing in the morning.

Christmas, or the excuse for a hangover, for that matter, was not enough to miss work in his position. Which is why he felt even worse when the phone in his room rang, and told him that someone from the Foreign Affairs Department of the embassy was looking for him for an assignment. His presence was required at the Ichigaya Intelligence Building. He had no choice but to take a quick shower, have a cup of coffee, with nothing more in his stomach than the alcohol from the night before, and take the tram to Ichigaya. Because he did not want to drive one of the Agency's cars. He was terrible at driving on the opposite side of the steering wheel anyway.

Whether it was the little information the Agency had given him, or just the hangover, it all didn't seem to make much sense to him. He hadn't heard of anything strange happening so far that day, unless it was what had just happened in Indonesia.

It's too early for these games, damn it! he thought.

At just twenty-two years old he had managed to get into the Agency as an analyst, and it took another year before, supposedly because of his reports and performance, for him to climb the ladder enough to be assigned as a field analyst overseas. He had expected to be assigned somewhere in Europe, so he was surprised when they announced that he would be joining the Agency's Tokyo station.

Although, well, that was better than nothing. Tokyo was fine, it was a peaceful place after the disasters of the war fifteen years ago. He would not have liked to be assigned somewhere further west, where everything was going badly enough.

It had been a busy enough year in intelligence matters and, while he inwardly wanted to think that his promotion had been due to his performance, part of it could not be ruled out that it could also be because the Agency was scattering agents to every station around the world, due to the multi-front war going on at the time.

From the NLF in Vietnam, to Castro seizing power in Cuba. Not to mention the disappointment felt from the space program, with the success of the Luna missions and in particular the Soviet Union's Mechta probe.

Carl had even heard rumors that in October there had been a special agency operation, to steal the soviet Luna from an overnight exhibition in Mexico. This had been to photograph every part of the spacecraft and return it before they realized it in the morning. Apparently there were a lot of strange rumors about it. Like that the agents on clandestine service ended up being chased by a third party involved.

But that didn't matter too much. Carl liked his position at the moment. It was a quiet place, without a lot of behind-the-scenes backroom maneuvering. Tokyo wasn't of much interest to spies at the moment, when everything seemed to be cooking more to the south and east.

Although that did not seem to be the case that morning. It was the first time the embassy liaison had summoned him to do anything related to interagency cooperation. Scott only wished he had less of a hangover at the time. It wasn't Christmas at the Japanese intelligence offices in Ichigaya, as he was surprised to see how busy the movement was, from the moment he entered the building. Although, perhaps it was always like that. He could not say for sure as he had never set foot so close to it since he had arrived in Tokyo five months ago.

The doors opened and the escort led the way. They were on the 15th floor, and reading the signs on the different doors didn't help him much. His spoken Japanese was good, though not so good with kanji. In fact, he was terrible at it. In five months he had barely managed to memorize no more than four hundred of them, not counting katakana and hiragana vocabulary. And in that moment of hangover all the kanji seemed to be jumbled together in his head.

"This way please," the escort said, and invited him into the room.

Scott nodded politely to the escort, but ended up bumping his forehead on the door frame. He entered wondering what it was all about, and rubbing his head from the blow. He wondered if there was a water dispenser. He was pretty thirsty. That coffee had not done him any good.

Inside, two men were waiting for him, leaning against a table and wearing office clothes and hats.

Who wears hats inside? Scott thought to himself. What's with this outdated detective atmosphere from the 20s.

They both introduced themselves with names that Scott almost forgot after a few seconds. He hoped he wouldn't have to call them by them. "Satoru Nogizaka and...Kensuke...Aida?" he tried to remember in the brief introduction he made after the escort closed the door behind him.

"It's a pleasure."

"Please forgive us for calling you out of the blue, but we got word this morning that our man was starting to talk."

"Man?" Scott arched an eyebrow. "Who are we talking about?"

Aida extended a folder to Scott and he took it.

Straight to the point, I see.

As soon as he opened it he felt thick beads of sweat run down his face. The kanji seemed to be dancing before his eyes. Carl Scott was trying to make sure that his diplomacy was not directly proportional to the previous night's drinks. He leafed through the pages, trying his best to look interested, as he nodded without understanding anything.

But on the first page was a photograph of a man with dark hair, a neat beard and mustache, and a black T-shirt smiling rather inappropriately for an identification photo. If he had been the photographer, he would have punched him in the face to wipe that stupid grin off.

"Is this the man you're talking about?" Scott asked.

Nogizaka nodded and took off his hat, and put it on the table along with the jacket, and rolled up his shirt sleeves as he leaned against the table. His companion walked over to the window, or what Scott had thought up to that point was a window, and pulled up the blinds.

There on the other side was the man in the photograph, sitting at a table looking incredibly bored. He wore only a dark T-shirt and striped pants, that could have passed for prison clothes or flannel pajamas.

Nogizaka sighed and explained. "On October 12, we stopped him at Narita Airport. He arrived with forged documents under the identity of Jack Allen Zegrus. The flight he was coming from was France, but it was his nationality that caught our attention. That's why we knew that the passport was forged. Although, we still don't understand how he got a visa in France with that passport."

"Take a look at page 5 of the file," Aida pointed out.

Scott did so, and frowned. It was a photocopy in roman letters of the individual's passport. He didn't remember ever having heard of that city and country.

"Anyway, he's not European. His English accent is American, although he speaks more than six languages, including Japanese," Nogizaka reported.

"We consulted with the Bureau of Persons, and the FBI, and they have told us that there is no Jack Allen Zegrus matching the description of him, we also did the same with the French and Andorran authorities."

"He's a ghost," Scott said looking at the man.

Somehow the man was getting on his nerves, he had noticed that the man was following him with his eyes, as if he could see him through the two-way mirror.

"Our detention was primarily for the passport issue, but he had money that he couldn't explain its origin. We kept him in detention in case this was about money laundering or money related to one of the local yakuza families or the southern group."

"Does he have connections to the local mafia?" Scott asked.

"We don't know for sure, but some of the bills he was carrying had a Yanagida Clan mark on them. We know from other sources that the clan often marks bills."

"Isn't it a crime to damage currency?"

"It's an invisible mark, it doesn't appear before the eyes unless you know where to look and apply a flame just a few centimeters from the bill."

"What do they do it for?"

"They call it security money. It's a common practice among those who don't trust banks too much."

"Money under the pillow?"

"Something like that," Aida admitted.

"So. What did he say?"

"He just said he was a tourist. Honestly, it's not helping. We don't know what he's thinking," Nogizaka said, shrugging and pursing his lips.

"Until... yesterday afternoon," Aida interjected.

Scott turned away, looking away from the prisoner who was still following him with his eyes. "What did he say?"

"Not too much," Aida snorted, just one thing. "He asked to talk to someone."

"Just out of the blue? With whom?"

"With you, Mr. Scott. He specifically asked to speak to you."

Carl Scott looked at both of them not knowing what to say. That could become a problem for him. "I don't know what he told them, but I don't know this individual."

"But... the thing is, apparently he does know you."

Scott turned and looked at him with a frown. He took a closer look at him, but he didn't remember ever seeing him before. But, the more Scott looked at him, the more he thought of something else. He was sure he hadn't seen him, but there was something familiar about his face.

Who is this asshole? He wondered and then asked. "Can I talk to him?"

"Please. We don't have much to keep him in prison. He has no criminal record whatsoever. Like you said, he's a ghost." Nogizaka said.

"He's the reason we contacted the embassy liaison first to begin with."

"...Ok."

It didn't matter how he looked at it. Carl Scott was a simple analyst, nothing more. He was not an active field agent. His job was mostly paperwork at the station, mostly English analysis of transcripts that went straight to Langley or some other station. He had no informants, nor was he a clandestine agent on clandestine duty. He had only completed the field training to impress some of the girls on the farm, although that had been just as useful as an ejection maneuver without even getting off the ground.

Scott left the room and went to the continuous door, where there was a guard. As soon as he entered, Scott could only curse at his stupidity. The reason the man was following him with his eyes all the time, when he was on the other side, was because he could actually see the other side. All along he had thought it was a two-way mirror, but it was just glass.

He took a chair and glanced first at Nogizaka and Aida who were watching the other side with interest.

Tsk...fuck. It was a weird situation. How do you greet someone who asks for you even though you've never seen him in your life? Scott thought, as he sat down.

"Hello. Good morning, Mr. Zegrus," Scott said, placing the folder he still had with him on the table.

"Hello," Jack Allen Zegrus greeted in English. "Jack is fine, I think it's pretty obvious that Allen Zegrus is just a fake identity."

Scott opened the folder without saying a word. The truth was that the kanji were appearing to him as if the whole thing had been written with the intention of drawing barbed wire on the pages.

 

I don't understand shit, Scott thought, as he ran his eyes over the pages and nodded seriously. He flipped through the pages for a minute, until he closed the folder and put it aside.

"Well? You asked to speak with me?"

"Can you speak and read or just speak Japanese?" asked the man with a suspicious sneer on his face.

This son of a bitch thinks he's so smart? Scott thought.

The man leaned forward and spoke a little slower and his voice was barely a whisper. "My apologies, it's just that I don't know if we should speak in another language, there's a lot of ears."

"Get to the point, please. I have no idea who you are, and I don't know why you called for me so, I'm doing you a favor in coming here in the dark not knowing anything. Besides, we are in an intelligence building. I'm pretty sure the people behind the glass also speak English, or some other language, not to mention that this conversation is being recorded."

"My apologies. It's just that there are certain things must be done at the right time. Not before."

"What do you mean?"

"If you have time, I can tell you a story."

"What story?"

"You already know about them, don't you?" Jack asked.

"Who?"

Jack simply put his index fingers to his temples and pointed upward. "Our friends with the pointed ears."

Scott glanced sideways at the other two behind the glass who reacted to the strange sign. Of course, they knew too.... The question was how much this man knew about them. "Friends of the pointed ears?"

"Come on Carl. Although not all of them have pointed ears. The fey, who else can I be talking about?"

Scott decided to ignore the guy's familiar name calling. "Are you part of TF?"

"Oh, no," Jack smiled. "It's out of my league, I can only do what I can do. And the same goes for you, Carl."

"What are you talking about?"

"We'll be friends for a long, long time, believe me," Jack said, and clasped both hands together on the table, as he drummed his thumbs.

Scott folded his arms and leaned back in his chair.

He wasn't sure what was going on, but there was something strange about the man. Almost as if he was facing something that looked human, but gave him a sense of something else. It wasn't a threat, other than the guy's smug attitude. It was a sense of familiarity. But that couldn't be possible. And there was the fact that he had mentioned the fey. Scott examined his ears but, no, they were normal.

Although there was a possibility that it was another type of fey. He had already heard of some with stranger abilities, or pseudo-feys, or even children born from human-fey unions, although they were stranger.

The agency had been interested in them since the end of World War II. There were all kinds of rumors, about an extra cold war between different divisions, and that some were hunting for feys with unique abilities, to use them for espionag. There was other less pleasant rumors, about experimenting with them. It all seemed to have gone up since there was evidence that the "commies" were getting ahead not only in the Moon race, but also in the field of the use of parapsychology.

Scott had already heard that, even within the national intelligence agency, there was an experimentation program related to mind control called MK-Naomi, or MK-ULTRA, or the use of psychometry to create psychic spies.

Many rumors and few certainties.

Scott snorted and picked up the folder again, reaching for the page with the passport.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Sure," Jack nodded.

"If this document is a fake, you could have come up with something better. What the hell is Taured supposed to mean?"

"Taured, it's a country."

"Really? It's got to be pretty small, because it's not on our maps."

"No... Not yet, at least."

"Not yet?"

"You call it the Principality of Andorra here."

That didn't seem to make any sense to Scott, but the man was at least talking, so he decided to play along. "What do you need from me?"

"I need your help to create some... stuff. A little noise."

"Some stuff?"

"Well... to start with I think I should tell you everything."

"Get started then."

"We need to create a simulation…"

"Simulation you say? For what?" asked Scott smiling.

"Not for what... for who…"