Simon Green - The Spy Who Haunted Me

“Thank you; that would be lovely, my dear.”

The waitress flashed her perfect teeth at him and tottered off with her pad full of orders.

“What a warm and understanding chest that girl had,” said Walker. “What’s a Dr Pepper?”

“It’s like the docks,” Honey said kindly. “Close to water.”

The food finally arrived, and we gave all our attention to pounding it down. Nothing like real hunger to make everything taste good. To my relief, my burgers arrived entirely uncontaminated with lettuce or pickle, and neither had they been skimpy with the cheese. None of us felt like talking; we just sat and chewed and swallowed, along with the occasional grunting noise of satisfaction. Walker wolfed his stuff down too and even ended up trying bits from everyone else’s plate. Though no doubt he’d go to confession later and confess that his stomach had gone slumming.

It wasn’t as though we had much to say to each other, even after all we’d been through together. Perhaps because of what we’d been through. A lot of what happened at X37, all the things we experienced . . . were just too private, too personal to discuss. We were all hurting on a spiritual as well as physical level. I remembered seeing my parents. Or something that looked very like my parents. Nothing ever has a hold on you like unfinished emotional business . . . When this was all over, and Alexander King had his information, and the Drood family had his precious secrets locked safely away from the rest of the world . . . it was time, and well past time, that I finally got to the truth about what happened to my parents. Who really killed them, and why. And Molly’s parents too, perhaps. Was there really a connection? Molly always was ready to see the worst in the Droods . . . Still, I’d waited long enough for the truth. Once this game was over, I would make time for something that really mattered.

I’d allowed my family to distract me for far too long.

We all finally reached the point where even brute willpower couldn’t force another morsel past our lips, and we sat back from the table, favouring our distended stomachs, and looked at each other to see who felt like talking first. And since none of us felt like talking about X37, we talked about Philadelphia and why we’d been sent there.

“Has to be the Philadelphia Experiment,” I said.

“Has to be,” said Honey, nodding emphatically.

“Didn’t they make a film about that?” said Walker.

“I’ve seen it,” said Peter. “Started badly, ran out of steam, and then really went downhill. Sequel wasn’t bad, though.”

“If all you know is the movie, then you don’t know anything,” I said. “The film was all about time travel, while the experiment wasn’t.”

“I always thought the Philadelphia Experiment was just another urban legend,” said Walker. “The Case of the Vanishing Ship, and all that. I’ve never seen any official files on it, and I’ve seen files on most things that matter. Remind me to tell you about the Unholy Grail sometime.”

“I wouldn’t touch a straight line like that for all the tea in China,” I said firmly. “The experiment—”

“You’re about to lecture us again, aren’t you?” said Honey, not unkindly. “Droods know everything, right?”

“Right!” I said. “You’re catching on! Now hush while I tell you all a nice story. The legend first. There are many variations, but the gist is that on October 28th, 1943, the USS Eldridge was used as the setting for a very advanced scientific experiment, to see if a navy ship could be made invisible to enemy radar. This was also known as Project Rainbow. But something went very wrong with the experiment.

“The Eldridge set off from the docks, and set their brand-new machines working. Other ships in the area were standing by to observe any changes that might happen. They weren’t prepared to see the Eldridge completely disappear—become actually invisible. All they could see was a deep depression in the water where the ship had been. And then the gap in the river suddenly filled up as the Eldridge vanished. Thrown out of our reality entirely by the power of its new machinery.

“The ship reappeared just a few moments later at Norfolk, Virgina. It was observed, and identified, and then it disappeared again, returning to Philadelphia’s waters. The scientists on shore radioed the Eldridge again and again, demanding to know what had happened, but got no reply. There was a lot of dithering among the scientists and the navy brass over possible radiation leaks and the like, but in the end the navy had no choice but to send ships out to make contact with the Eldridge sitting still and silent in the water.

“When the team of volunteers got on board to investigate, they found blood and death and horror. Most of the crew were dead. Many were insane. Quite a few were missing. There was extensive damage to the ship, as though it had taken part in a major firefight, but no clue as to who or what they’d been fighting. Worst of all, something had gone terribly wrong when the Eldridge teleported. Some of the crew had rematerialised inside steel walls and doors. Flesh and metal fused together on the molecular level. But still horribly alive and begging to be put out of their misery. Luckily, they didn’t last long.

“The whole thing was hushed up by naval intelligence, denied all the way up the line. There was a war on, after all. And while a success has many fathers, a clusterfuck has no friends. The ship was broken up for scrap, after the burnt-out machines had been removed, and another ship was given the Eldridge ’s name. The surviving crew . . . disappeared. It was wartime, after all. I like to think they were taken care of properly; the U.S. Navy has a long tradition of looking after its own.

“And that . . . is the legend of the Philadelphia Experiment. The U.S. Navy still denies any of these things ever happened.”

“Right!” said Peter. “If you look up Philadelphia Experiment on the Net, the first site it offers you is run by the U.S. Navy, presenting their answers to the most frequently asked questions, denying everything. Backed up by loads and loads of official-looking records.”

We all looked at him.

“I was curious,” said Peter. “After the film . . .”

“Be that as it may,” said Walker, “that is the legend. What do we know about the facts?”

“Not a hell of a lot,” I said cheerfully. “Various Droods have looked into it down the years; we’re fascinated by mysteries, and we don’t like not knowing something that might turn out to be important. But American naval intelligence has gone to great lengths to deny, hide, and destroy all evidence of what really went down on that day of October 28th, 1943. And short of launching a major offensive on U.S. soil, we had no way of progressing. So we didn’t. We didn’t care that much.”

Our waitress had been busy removing empty plates for some time, coming and going so often that we’d forgotten she was there and talked openly in front of her. That’s why servants and service staff make such great sources of information. They’re around so much they’re practically invisible. And big people do so love to pretend that little people don’t really exist.

“You folks here about the Eldridge ?” she said cheerfully, and we all jumped, suddenly aware of her presence. “We get a lot of tourists ’cause of that. We got whole shops dedicated to selling nothing but. They can fix you up with books and posters and films and God knows what else. All junk, of course. Don’t waste your money. They make most of it up over drinks in the back rooms of bars. Tourists do love a good tall tale, God bless them. You know, my granddaddy worked right here in the docks, during the war. What he always called the Big One. He said, people back then used to call that ship the Eldritch, ’cause of all the weird stuff that went on around it.”