11:55 AM — 29 March, 1979 — Wiesbaden, West Germany

  Mike Pastori read the preliminary report from the attacks from the week before, and he did not like what he saw. Ed Simpson was just as unhappy.

  “What were they thinking, attacking two of our bases with that small a force?” Mike asked his friend. “What were they trying to accomplish?”

  Ed had almost a week to consider that same question, and he kept coming back to the same answer.

  “I think they were trying to do the same thing we were. They just went about it differently.”

  Usually Lieutenant Colonel Pastori was able to decipher what Major Simpson was saying. But not this time.

  “And what exactly were we trying to do?”

  Ed looked at his superior officer like he was the slow child in the css. He spoke slowly as he replied.

  “We were trying to confirm or refute the reports of a glowing human shaped whatever intervening during the attack on the ammo dump.”

  “Ah, that.”

  Ed smiled as he nodded. “Yeah, that.”

  It wasn’t that Mike Pastori hadn’t considered that possibility. It was just that he hated to admit that the fucking Ministerium für Staatssicherheit had succeeded. He picked up the report again.

  PFC Larry I. Ferguson, Jacksonville, TX. 19 years old — Killed in action.

  SP4 Lamar T. Maxwell, San Bruno, CA. 21 years old — Killed in action.

  “Shame it didn’t get there sooner,” Mike said as he read the report again.

  “We didn’t know they gotten inside before then. We’re still not sure how he—how it even heard that there was an attack underway,” Ed answered.

  “Two attacks,” Mike said, almost as if he was talking to himself. “At least the guards at Ledward did their fucking job. Do we know how a truckload of terrorists got through the gate at Ramstein?”

  Ed shrugged. “You’re a smart guy. Not as smart as me, but you can keep up when you put your mind to it. You read the report. You tell me.”

  Mike smiled against his will. “A little deference to my rank, please. Yeah, I read the report. They were distracted by a bze orange sports car. And two men died as a result.”

  Ed could see that his friend was not in the mood for jokes. “Two men almost died at Ledward. All the terrorists there did die.”

  Army intelligence had every scrap of evidence from both attacks. The terrorists at Ledward had set their charges and were already climbing over the fence—two had made it all the way over—before they’d come under fire. The ones at Ramstein had still been attacking the first bomber when something—someone—had intervened. Five dead terrorists from Ledward, eight live ones from Ramstein. Battered, but alive. All were concussed. Some needed stitches. None cimed to have any memory of what happened. All of those details had been provided by the Air Force’s own men, all of whom had passed drug and alcohol tests. And you didn’t get to guard tactical or strategic bombers and their fuel if you were even suspected of having psychological problems.

  The men killed at the secure perimeter would receive posthumous Purple Hearts and Airman’s medals. The wounded guards at Ledward would receive Purple hearts and Army Commendation medals with Valor devices. Various commendations as well as a Meritorious Unit Citation would be awarded to the four men who took the terrorists under fire. Article 15 disciplinary hearings would be held for the guards that had let the men through the base gate.

  “So, they wanted irrefutable evidence that this glowing whatever was real, and they got it,” Mike said as he dropped the report back on his desk.

  Ed corrected him. ”We have it.”

  Mike looked at him and smirked.

  Ed turned his palms up and shrugged. “Fine. We have it now. They’ll have it in seventy two hours.”

  Mike Pastori stared into the infinite for almost thirty seconds. Ed was about to make a joke about smelling wood burning but thought better of it.

  “What will they make of it when whoever they have tucked away inside our intelligence machinery gets them a copy?” he asked, his eyes still unfocused.

  “That we have an enhanced asset in py. But—”

  “But,” Mike completed the sentence, “Why didn’t he stop the Ledward attack?”

  Ed shrugged again. They were covering old ground, and the ndscape hadn’t changed. “They were pretty close together. That stupid car had traffic at the gate entering Ramstein backed up a mile. If that hadn’t been there the two attacks would have kicked off at the same time.”

  Mike Pastori was still bothered by the car. He knew it was total coincidence. The driver was a well known high end car thief. He was just working out of his usual area, not familiar with Frankfurt. “If that hadn’t been there, the guards might have stopped that truck before it got inside.”

  “Or they’d have been the ones that died,” Ed suggested. They had been lucky at Ledward. One man shot clean through the shoulder. Another round had left a rge gash in his deltoid. The other guard had dropped to the floor of the shack as a spray of bullets punctured the canvas covering the truck bed. His face, hands and neck were covered in cuts from flying concrete, wood and gss. The men killed in Ramstein had each been shot through the head. Small consotion to their families that their deaths had been quick.

  Mike steepled his fingers in front of his face. “So two simultaneous attacks. Make the glowing avenger pick one. Except one attack was deyed. So why didn’t it stop both attacks?” Mike wondered for the hundredth time.

  “Like I said, we still don’t know how it learned that there were attacks in the first pce. Maybe monitoring radio traffic? Maybe it didn’t know about the Ledward attack. Maybe it’s just stationed near the air base.”

  Pastori shook his head. “Supersonic object appears fifty miles east of the base flying at 5000 feet. It takes two minutes to get there before radar loses it. The eight closest guards have a clear view of something as it descends and then—does something that throws all the terrorists against the truck so hard they’re all still in the hospital.”

  Ed knew all of that. It was in the report. “What are you telling me?”

  Mike leaned forward, his face closer to his friends. “Fifty miles. In two minutes. Then it appears to change direction before stopping. What was it doing, acquiring a target? Is it human? Machine? Autonomous? Guided? Is it ours? The German’s? Someone else’s?”

  Ed sat back in his chair, reciming some of the distance that had separated them. “The DDR will assume it’s ours. It defended two American facilities.”

  Mike waved that argument away. “The FRG has enough shit stationed at Ramstein. How many NATO countries have stuff there on TDY for REFORGER? Maybe someone else moved an asset in pce, and when they leave it leaves with them.”

  “Maybe. But you and I both know that the East Germans will assume it belongs to us.”

  In that respect, Major Ed Simpson was entirely correct. What neither man realized in that moment was the lengths to which the Stasi would go over the next months and years to investigate the nature and identity of the glowing figure.

  8:00 P.M — 29 March, 1979 — Schweinfurt, West Germany

  Aric sat at the bar and ordered ein Bier, bitte

  The note that the CQ had handed him was brief. Sergeant Housewright said the man asked specifically for him, and then asked to leave a note when he couldn’t speak with him.

  My name is Ed Martell. I have information that I believe you are searching for. Possibly an answer to your recent problems.

  “What’s the matter with you, Ammo?” the sergeant asked. “Got the cp or something?”

  He’d folded the note and pced it in his pocket before answering. It seemed that someone had finally tracked him down.

  “Or something.”

  So here he was. Appointed pce. Appointed time. At least the mysterious Ed Martell hadn’t picked a Gasthaus that was off-limits.

  He’d had time for only two sips from his tall gss before a middle-aged man sat next to him.

  “Pint of bitter,” the man said to the bartender in immacute English tones.

  “Vas?” the man asked.

  “Bloody hell,” the man replied with a sigh before gncing at Aric, “whatever he’s having, then.”

  British, Aric thought. A long way from home.

  But so was he.

  He was half a head shorter than Aric, about forty years older, and at least forty pounds lighter. His hair was gray and long enough to brush his shirt colr. One thumbnail was bck—an old injury, maybe. Aric briefly considered fixing it without saying anything, just to see what the man would do. A rough two-day stubble shadowed his jaw.

  “You got my note,” the man said after his beer arrived and he’d drained a quarter of it in one go.

  Aric was suspicious. But if some of his squad mates were pying a prank on him, where would they dig up this guy?

  “I got a note. If it’s yours you should be able to tell me what it said.”

  The man pyed up trying to remember what he dictated. He took another long draw on his gss, which was now only half full. “Well, let me see. I think I started with my name, which is Ed by the way. Ed Martell. Doctor of Philosophy. Professor lecturing in Physics at The University of Surrey. That’s in Engnd.”

  Aric nodded slightly. “OK.”

  “Then I believe I said, I know what you’re looking for, or I have the answers you’re looking for. Words to that effect.”

  The bar was about half full, but it seemed to Aric that all of them were smoking. The air was thick, and he knew if he spent much longer in it his clothes would reek for days.

  As far as he could tell they were the only ones speaking English. But Aric didn’t need to speak German to know what everyone was saying. Or what they were thinking. He was trying to pay attention to Ed Martell’s words while blocking out the thoughts of everyone around him, and the effort —combined with the smoke, was giving him a headache.

  “Let’s get some air,” Aric said just before sliding off the bar stool.

  “Good idea,” Ed Martell said before draining his gss dry.

  “How did you find me?” Aric asked as they walked slowly. The air was crisp, biting at their faces.

  Ed Martell zipped his coat up to his chin and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Aric had forgotten to grab a jacket before leaving the barracks —a careless mistake, one he would have to stop making. Camoufge was an important skill for any infantryman — even more so for one who was impervious to heat or cold, and, unfortunately, to going unnoticed. He jammed his hands into his front pockets and did his best to look cold.

  “It wasn’t hard. You left a clear trail. I got the st clue in a Gasthaus in Schweinfurt. The one right outside the Ledward Barracks gate. You know the one?”

  Aric nodded. “The German-American Club. It’s one of the few pces still not off limits to American GIs.”

  “Three nights in a row I was in there. Asking the same questions. Finally, a pair of bck berets felt like sharing ghost stories. One of the waitresses —tall, slender blonde, blue eyes, who’d ignored me the first two nights, joined in. She must have thought I was a friend of yours.”

  Ada, Aric thought.

  “Let me guess: tall redhead from Okhoma, short Hispanic from Texas? Those two bck berets?”

  Ed nodded as he walked. “You know them.”

  West and Trujillo.

  “Yeah. I know them. They’re not supposed to wear that off-post. Nothing the Baader–Meinhof Group can use to identify us. Anyone wearing an American uniform is a target no matter where they are. Those two know that as well as anyone, or they should.”

  “I’ll remind them the next time I see them. Which will be never, now that I found you.”

  “Right. You were saying —ghost stories. You tracked the incident reports. You were looking for me. Why?”

  “Because I think I can help you figure out what’s happening to you, and why.”

  Something wasn’t adding up—not for Aric.

  The two men continued walking along Ziegelrainstra?e, heading away from the Gasthaus Kolbenhof and the barracks. The wind was in their faces, pouring down the narrow street like water rushing downstream.

  “What did you say you taught at the—” Aric paused, searching his memory for the missing piece.

  Ed Martell worked his hands in his coat pockets to keep the cold blood flowing. “The University of Surrey. In the United Kingdom. Engnd. And I said I lecture in physics.”

  Aric’s hands were warm—so was the rest of him, stiff breeze or no.

  “Right. Physics. So tell me—why are you tracking me across West Germany? What’s your interest? Why does a physics professor from Surrey spend his free time listening to drunk GIs in the FRG tell ghost stories?”

  Ed thought for a moment before answering.

  “I lecture in physics to pay the bills. I do it in Surrey to be near my daughter. I listen to ghost stories and sift them for the two or three percent that might contain something real—something useful. I’m doing that listening in the FRG because of the recent spike in paranormal incidents.”

  As Aric listened to the Brit’s recitation, it mostly made sense. But one piece was still missing.

  “You teach physics. Science. So why are you even interested in ghost stories? Why paranormal activity at all? That’s what I don’t get.”

  Ed had had enough of the headwind. His face was going numb. He stopped walking and turned his back to the current of air. Then, facing Aric fully for the first time, he realized just how tall he was—and how attractive the Fr?uleins in Deutschnd must find him.

  “Did you ever study the U.S. Senate committee hearings on inhuman activities?”

  Aric’s eyebrows shot up. That wasn’t the direction he’d expected.

  “In high school. There was a chapter on it in our U.S. History textbook. Critics called them modern-day Salem Witch Trials. Why?”

  “You wanted to know why I’m interested,” Ed said. “So I’m telling you.”