David Golemon - Leviathan

"They may very well be redundant, since we now know what they were trying to hide," he said as he removed the top file from the bunch. As he did, the others slid from the stack and slid across his desk. "Damn," he said.

"Here, I'll just put them on my desk until you have more time to check them off your list," she said, moving forward to relieve Golding's desk of at least some of his workload.

As she did, Pete's eyes locked on a particular file for no other reason than that was where his eyes rested. He blinked, then placed his fingers on the partially obscured file number. He pulled it from the fanned-out stack, looked it over, and let out a small chuckle.

"I've got to get out more often and see the world — or at least the complex," he said as he opened the obscure file. "I never knew we had anything from P. T. Barnum's old New York Museum — better yet, why would we?"

The assistant looked at which file he was perusing and then relaxed.

"Oh, well, Colonel Collins said to include it because it was the vault located directly under the Leviathan enclosure."

Pete looked up, partially closed the file, and then looked into the assistant's innocent countenance.

"Directly under the vault? On level seventy-four? Wasn't that where accelerant was also found?"

"Yes, sir, but the engineers said that could be explained by the liquid seeping through the rocks and falling inside that particular vault."

Golding nodded his head and excused the assistant, then looked at the file in his hands. It wasn't a thick file, and stapled to the inside jacket of the folder was a small notation made by the forensics department stating that the artifact was totally destroyed by the fire. Pete read the first page of description from the report filed by the Event Group back in 1949, when the specimen was discovered in an old repository building in Florida owned by Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, The Greatest Show on Earth.

" 'The Mermaid of the Pacific Isles,'" Pete mumbled as he looked at a photograph of something that resembled a jellyfish, and a rather degraded jellyfish at that.

There were enhanced details that had been added by the Group back in '49 that outlined what looked like a pair of legs and small arms. The see-through mass was unlike anything Pete had ever seen before, and by far the most disturbing feature of all was in the next color photo: The damn thing looked as though it had hair. Long, black, and flowing, as it was laid out on a stainless-steel examining table. The whole thing, from head to jellylike, fanned tail, was about four feet long.

Pete flipped over to the next page and read the details of its discovery. The specimen had been one of the only items salvaged from the great fire in midtown Manhattan in 1865 during one of the many draft riots during the Civil War. The P. T. Barnum American Museum, located on Broadway and Ann Streets, burned, with a loss of more than 90 percent of its displayed oddities. It was reported by witnesses that Barnum himself rescued only one item from the burning structure, and that was from a locked storage bin in his personal office. That item: the Mermaid of the Pacific.

For many years after, people saw a cheap version of the mermaid (actually made from a torso of a monkey and the tail of a giant black sea bass) on display at the museum Barnum built to replace the one lost. He never gave an explanation of the obviously fake replacement to people who had heard the rumors of a far more delicate and humanlike specimen that gossip said was kept at Barnum's own New York home.

After Barnum's death in 1891, a locked chest was willed to the famous Greatest Show on Earth and then sent to Florida, where it was stored and forgotten. That was where an Event Group field team discovered it in an old warehouse in 1949.

The forensics report was confused for the day; there was absolutely no relationship of the specimen to that of modern-day jellyfish or any vertebrate found in the fossil record. The deterioration of the specimen was so vast that no acceptable biopsy of the material could be conducted.

Pete noticed a small notation placed in the margins of the report and had to turn the file on its side to read it.

"The sample of hair was found to be human, and the lone sample of fingernail found was also closely related to man. The brain, made up of clear and bluish material, was thought to be far larger than that of any creature indigenous to the sea in relationship to its size."

Golding turned to the last page for the Group's conclusion.

"Because of the nature of Mr. Barnum's personality, it must be concluded at this time that this is a forgery on a grand scale. Although far more encompassing and impressive than his obviously fake 'Fiji Mermaid,' displayed from 1865–1881, the findings do not support Mr. Barnum's claims of finding the Mermaid of the Pacific off the coast of Venezuela, in the Gulf of Mexico. One item of note, the specimen was found in an enclosure engraved with the seal of the University of Oslo."

Pete laid the file down when he read the last words of the report. Coincidence? he asked himself as he picked up the phone.

"Miss Lange, get me Professor Ellenshaw down in crypto on the phone. Tell him I need some research done ASAP."

He hung up the phone and looked at the file. Could this be what those people wanted to remain hidden from the world instead of the submarine? he asked himself.

Golding looked at the 1949 color picture of the Mermaid of the Pacific. As he did, he noticed for the first time the intense blue eyes of the creature, even in death. Nothing else but the small arms and hands resembled a human. It was the hands that would give him time for pause before sleep. The fingers, he could tell, were long and delicate, and now that he was examining the photo closer, he could swear he could see femalelike breasts. He shook his head and closed his eyes.

The phone finally rang and he picked it up.

"Charlie, thanks for getting back to me so soon."

"No problem, I was just dozing off at my desk."

"I need to ask you something, Charlie. Your department believes in the existence of many, many strange things—"

"Come on, Pete, did you call just to rag on me?"

"Professor, I think you are one of the smartest people in this complex, so knock it off. I need to know your opinion on the existence of mermaids, or something like them?"

The other end of the phone produced nothing but silence for the longest time.

"Charlie?" Pete asked, thinking the connection had been lost.

"Pete, to believe in mermaids is a little far out, even for us. Now, if you're done joking around, I'll get back to dozing and dreaming about the Yeti and—"

"Professor, what would you say if I told you that we've had a specimen of an undersea creature since nineteen forty-nine that could possibly be what sea lore described as a mermaid, and that is what this whole Leviathan thing may be about?"

"Well, I would say that the Event Group was left in the wrong hands."

Pete winced as the phone was slammed down on Ellenshaw's end. He wanted to slam his down also, but instead eased it into the cradle.

He looked at the file in front of him. As he closed it, he knew that Leviathan and this artifact were linked somehow, in some fashion, but also knew he was at a dead end. He couldn't even pass on the information to Jack and Carl.

His new opinion of the events of the past week had just taken a turn toward the Twilight Zone.

Jack could feel eyes on him, physically and electronically. He looked at Everett and knew he was having the same sensation.

They were standing on the lone dock on the island that was fronted by a small building looking as if it had been constructed during the Second World War. The small hut was boarded up. Phone lines ran from the building to a point one hundred feet from the dock, where they disappeared into the white sand. Ryan and Mendenhall, with Robbins between them, were busy watching the sea.