David Golemon - Legend

"Lieutenant, while you're writing, you may as well place yourself on my shit list if you don't answer my question."

"All right, everyone thought it sounded like you . It was just too damned creepy."

"Like me? It didn't sound like me… who said it sounded like me?…it wasn't me at all," he protested.

Mendenhall joined them. "Last sensor is in on this level, Major," he said as he flipped a screwdriver into the air and caught it.

"Sergeant, did the Cray auditory system sound like me?"

Mendenhall stopped suddenly in his tracks. "You know, I didn't peel the plastic protectant off the monitor screen. I'll be right back and then—"

"You're not going anywhere; answer my question."

"It was weird, Major, I'm not kidding. It felt like Big Brother…and… well…it was just… strange," he said as he looked down at his boots.

"I told you."

Jack was about to say something when Alice Hamilton's voice came out of the speaker built into the vault's door frame: "Will Major Collins please report to the main conference room, please, Major Collins to the conference room."

"Hey, wasn't that Alice?" Sarah asked brightly.

Jack didn't respond at first. He looked at Sarah and then Mendenhall.

"We're not through with this voice imprint thing. I want to know who was in on it."

"You want us to rat on our comrades? The sergeant here said you would try and track down those involved…" She stopped when she saw Jack smile. "What?"

"Lieutenant, you just told him who was involved," Mendenhall said with his chin on his chest.

"And tell Commander Everett I'll be speaking to him also," Jack said as he turned and walked away.

Sarah flinched and closed her eyes, and the sergeant grimaced.

"Shit," both Mendenhall and Sarah said at the same time.

Alice Hamilton, the semiretired administrative head of the Event Group, greeted Jack at the door just as she had when he had first arrived over a year ago. She was beaming and looking quite a bit younger than her eighty-one years. She was wearing her hair in her customary bun and holding her ever-present file to her chest. Jack walked up and hugged her.

"Alice, I forgot how your smile brightens this place up," he said, placing her at arm's length to look her over. "What the hell's going on? Did you find a fountain of youth out there?"

"Oh, knock it off," she said, embarrassed.

"How is the senator, getting along all right?"

"He's a bear, constantly pacing back and forth in his study. I suppose Niles has told you he calls the poor man every other day, asking what's going on."

Jack had only worked with the former director of the Group on one mission prior to the president's retiring him, but in that short amount of time the former OSS operative and senator from Maine had made an indelible mark upon Jack's life. The man was, to put it frankly, brilliant.

"Niles said he looks forward to bouncing things off the senator; I'm sure he's no bother. So, what brings you here?" he asked.

Alice frowned and looked around the reception area. Niles had not yet exited his office across the way to begin the meeting, so she thought to take a brief moment and fill Jack in.

"Jack, we have a serious situation down in South America. A former member of the Group has gone and gotten herself… well, lost. She hasn't been heard from as she missed her call-in time to her associate three days ago."

"Go on," Jack said as he walked with her.

"Well, this professor was asked to leave by the senator fifteen years ago. She became obsessed with something she came across and couldn't let it go. It drove her close to insanity, she even went as far as to 'borrow' certain files from the Group, from the senator's private files as it turned out, and she accessed other areas, we're not sure which, but they had to have been serious intrusions for Garrison to act as harshly as he did. It was Niles who brought all of this to the attention of the senator back then; basically he was the one responsible for the Group's firing her."

Jack stopped and looked at Alice. His brows rose as he waited for the punch line.

"She was Director Compton's fiancee, Jack. They had been engaged for two years. I'm afraid Niles is real close to this situation, but we can't dismiss his participation in this, because the good professor may have stumbled onto something she has searched for a very long time. You have the power to say no to Niles for security reasons if he wants to go after her; just hear him out before you decide."

At that moment Niles Compton walked from his office with his new assistant following close behind. He saw Jack and Alice and nodded as he continued on to the large conference room. His assistant rolled her eyes as she fought to keep up. Jack gestured for Alice to proceed, and he followed her into the room.

Five members of the upper echelon of the Event Group were present in the room, and one person Jack didn't know. They all took their seats when Niles cleared his throat. The director picked up a remote control and punched in a button. A wide-screen television slowly slid down behind him.

Consult Group number one consisted of Jack, as head of the department's security; Niles, as director; and Alice, because she knew most of the 298,000 files and vault contents by heart and could access her amazing memory at a moment's notice. Then there was Virginia Pollock, the deputy director of Department 5656; Pete Golding, of the Computer Sciences Department; and, for a reason the others weren't privy to, Heidi Rodriguez, of the Zoology Department.

"I excused Mathew Gates from this meeting as it really didn't concern languages, at least not yet. I did ask Heidi here to join us, because for the past two hours she's been quite busy assisting me with some research and can speak for the scientific end of things." Niles gestured to the dark-haired diminutive woman of about forty, who smiled and nodded to the others.

Niles pushed a button on the remote and a three-dimensional image appeared on the screen behind him. The visual was assisted by a small multicolored plate that acted as a 3-D lens. It produced a clear and precise picture that would have been the envy of Hollywood.

"Good God, what is that?" Pete asked.

"It's a fossil that former Group member Helen Zachary's ex-husband sent back from Peru fifteen years ago, when he had been a construction consultant for the Peruvian government. They were dredging and widening three tributaries of the Amazon River, for added space for commerce along the river," Niles said. On the screen behind him, a full-color image of the fossil slowly turned 360 degrees.

Virginia Pollock cleared her throat.

"Yes, Virginia?" Niles asked.

"We're not going to start this again, are we? I mean—"

"I know what you mean. For those of you that don't know, Helen Zachary was terminated from the Group for her fanaticism about this fossil," he said, frowning in the direction of Virginia. "Things have changed. Helen came into possession of new information about the Padilla expedition," he said, looking around the room.

"You can learn about the legend of that expedition from the folders in front of you; due to the hurried nature of the situation, we will not cover the historical aspects of this at this meeting. We must move on," Alice said.

"Helen used the files she stole from the Group's first complex in Virginia, where our old data and equipment are stored. She deduced from those files where the diary of Padilla was possibly hidden in the Vatican Archives in 1874. It seems one of the files contained an old OSS report of an Army Corps of Engineers study of the region in the Amazon basin and its history from the late thirties to 1940. She used that information to track down one or two known sources that depict the exact route of the Spanish expedition. In short, she may have found the valley and the very lagoon detailed in the legend, as taken from the diary."