Glen Allen - The shadow war

"Now that you mention it," Wolfe said, "there is. We'd like to get a list of all the computer registration numbers on the… campus. Who has what shiny toys, that sort of thing."

"Everyone?" asked Hauser. "I don't see how that's possibly relevant."

"Wouldn't you say a missing computer would be relevant? I know it would certainly worry other government beneficiaries."

Hauser looked dubious. "Dr. Fletcher's computer is missing?"

Wolfe smiled. "How do we know what's missing until we know what everyone's supposed to have?"

Hauser stared at Wolfe, his friendly manner of earlier evaporated.

"I'll have to check with Arthur about that," he said frostily.

"Fine," said Wolfe. "And tell him, every hour you're checking with him is an hour closer to our deadline. And his."

Hauser seemed about to say something to Wolfe, but stopped himself. He smiled at Benjamin and said, "Good to meet you, Mr. Wainwright," and continued on down the pathway.

After he'd left, Benjamin turned to Wolfe.

"You two have a history?"

"In a manner of speaking," Wolfe said, still looking after Hauser's retreating figure.

Benjamin lost his patience.

"Look, everyone we've met, everywhere you go here, there seems to be history. How can I help you sort something out when I don't even know what it is we're looking for? Or why they picked us to look for it."

Wolfe looked at him, suddenly very serious.

"Not why us, Benjamin. Why me. "

Benjamin looked slightly hurt. Wolfe patted his arm.

"I'm sorry. Don't take me too seriously. Not until I tell you to, anyway." He smiled that charming smile.

Benjamin suddenly felt quite fond of Samuel Wolfe; he also felt for the first time that he could trust Wolfe, completely.

"I need to check on a few things with Arthur," said Wolfe. "I'll meet you back in your room in, say, an hour?"

Benjamin nodded, and Wolfe walked off in the same direction Hauser had taken.

When he got back to his room, Benjamin was surprised to find a maid there. The bed was made, the room looked straightened up-but he wondered why the maid was there now, rather than in the morning. She had a vacuum cleaner out and was pushing the sweeper back and forth across the bare floor. She was just about to shove it under the bed when he entered.

"Excuse me," he said.

She turned, frightened and caught off guard.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but could you do that later? I'd really like to take a nap."

"Of course," she said. She switched off the vacuum, rolled the cord up, and, with a "Good afternoon, sir," she left.

Benjamin retrieved his briefcase from the dresser, opened it. Inside was a thick, leather-bound journal. Its neatly ruled pages were filled with notes in a small, precise handwriting, and the journal itself was stuffed with sheets of paper, Xerox copies, pictures… it looked just like what it was: a fanatically methodical academic's scrapbook. Or, as his father had called it, his "treasury."

Benjamin took the journal, sat down in a chair at the small table, opened the cover.

Journal of Dr. Thomas Woodrow Wainwright was written there in the same precise hand.

The writing was so like his father: solid, staid, respectable. And slightly obsessive in its neatness.

Yet, for all his compulsiveness, there'd been nothing arrogant about his father. In fact, the two things he disliked most in others were arrogance and intolerance.

"They go hand in hand, Benjamin," his father had said once. They'd been discussing one of his colleagues at Georgetown, an academic with a brilliant career-one built almost entirely by demolishing the careers of others. "Believing you have the flawless answer," he'd said, "is perhaps the biggest flaw of all."

Benjamin felt the usual twinge of regret that his father hadn't lived to see him complete his own degree, start his own career…

He shook off the sentiment. He began flipping through pages, looking for the copies of the few known letters of Harlan Bainbridge which he knew his father had copied verbatim into the notebook.

The first was a letter Harlan had written to his aunt soon after his group arrived on the land Coddington had purchased where they might begin their "New Jerusalem," their utopian Prayer Town, a place far beyond all other English settlements of the time. Above the letter his father had written Establishes claim to land; chronicles exodus from New Jersey, and then the text of the letter: Honor'd Aunte- -I've sent this with Elder Sassamon in greate haste, and he is trusted and that God's Speed did see him to you is my prayer-for the papers here be disposed as quickly as you mighte seeke a counsel with the Capetown Elders, that they may Recognise and Grante our Claime.

– Nosce teipsum reade the Scriptures, and this done, and trusting in the Wisdome of the Lord, so with my few and trusted people this Lent just passe'd fled much as Brother Bradford fled the Dutch truse with Spain, the Inquisition promising too near and hot a fire for his heels-and, passeing through the County of Mattekeesets and thought to abide meantimes in the Plantation of Providence, onely to find there no reall peace from Persecution and in feare of Salus Populi and againe, as the wandering Israelites, faceing West-so made discovery of this place by the Savages called Pettaquamscutt, but with the agreement of the whole community drawne as the Christian settlement of Bainbridge Plantation.

[an entire half page was illegible]

… but the Savages revere this place as welle, and their pagan gods be of a like not so tamne as weake, and they did in tragick form reape the Smallpox this winter laste as great as that of 1634.

– Unto you I commit theese papers, and so do I here note on this day of Our Lord, March 15th, Sixteen Hundred and Sixty-Six.

Your Trusted Nephew

The Right Reverend Harlan P. Bainbridge

At Bainbridge Plantation, his sign

How typical of the Puritans, Benjamin mused, to assume a smallpox epidemic was a punishment visited upon the Natives by a Christian God offended by their pagan forms of worship; when in fact the smallpox, Benjamin knew, had come from infected blankets given to those Natives by those same "righteous" settlers. Also typical was Harlan's portrayal of himself as a latter-day Moses leading his small congregation to the Promised Land. How frustrating it must have been for him to discover that the Wampanoags thought the land had already been promised to them.

The journal continued with entries about further communiques between Harlan and his aunt, most reporting the slow-but-steady progress as Harlan's group established the Bainbridge Plantation and began to work toward Harlan's utopian goal. His father had noted, for instance, that Harlan's group was one of the first in the region to actually sign treaties with the Natives and to begin bartering with them on a regular basis.

The second full Bainbridge letter was the last one he'd ever written, penned sometime before the plantation's destruction. Above this letter, his father had written Fears sabotage-from C.E.P.? Benjamin had never deciphered what his father had meant by that abbreviation. Thomas had all sorts of shorthand symbols he employed in his notes, working always to be more efficient, but he kept no glossary or index of them. He shook his head in frustration at his father's unique obsessions and read on: Honor'd Aunte- -Despite all the Perfidies practiced upon us by those who beare the marke of Puramis as Satan beares the Trident forke, The Lord has ordained that we shoulde establishe the Commandments of Piety and Efficiencie in all acts stemming frome and displaieing their respecte for God and His selfe-made workes, which, in their echo of our Creater, canne be not but sensicall, propere, and prosperous.

– The heathens may worshipe their god 'neath any randome sycamore, but a Christian knows Nature to be a chapel, which conceals not the ugly face of Death, but the abundante manifestations of a Supreme God, in whose Bosom we freely place our Truste and Fate; and we suffere not to be disheartened nor dissuaded from our Course by those who hide in Shadow and sow Feare on all Mankinde…