Cataloguing the thousand or so crates in the NavShield warehouse was nearing the end. I still haven't found the crate with the Pangaea emblem, Pegeen thought. Drat.
She pushed dusty bangs from her face and tied a blue bandana over her mouth and nose. Dust from old crates floated in the air before resettling on the crates, the floor and her.
Pegeen almost regretted taking this job. Her former police boss, Lance Burns, recommended her to Captain Brenda Stanley, in charge of Operation Paleo. The extra money to pay student loans was her reason for enduring the dust.
Cataloging crates was the cover for her real job: locating the Paleo Emblem, whatever that was. Her success catching the Killer-by-Night, and other hard cases, was the reason for the Navy offering her the job. During the Killer-by-Night search, she'd had a flash of the future where she hid in the Capitol grounds.
No precognition, no glimpse of the future now, although she'd tried to summon one. Maybe the emblem is myth, she thought. Professor McGonn's papers say he left an emblem with the map to the "lost world." Isla de los Olvidos, some prehistoric remnant in the Atlantic, was the home of a bacteria that could wipe out 90% of the world's population, according to McGonn. Seventeen of his twenty associates and workers had died overnight before he found the bug bite that caused an immune reaction to the virus. A secret government lab had the bacteria from McGonn's 1890 voyage, dead and harmless.
Seven crates and clouds of dust later, Pegeen applied the claw hammer to the 894th crate, marked, "McGonn 1890, B4, 7-21-90, meaning the fourth box collected on July 21, 1890. She wedged the claws under a board and stopped. This box was different. The top was dust free, and boards had been removed and hammered back in place. She called Capt. Stanley.
"Someone got here first," Stanley said, voice tight with anger. "What's in the box?"
"Notebooks about old dinosaur fossils," Pegeen said. "How'd that someone know where to look?"
"Recently, McGonn's papers came up for auction. Someone bought them before we could get a requisition. FBI and CIA couldn't track down the buyers, except one was Middle Eastern, and one was probably Russian."
"Apparently Dr. McGonn did find something on the island. What now?" Pegeen asked.
"Finish cataloguing these boxes." Stanley slumped, then straightened and turned to an ensign. "Notify the FBI of what we've found."
Stanley leaned over and peered in the box. "What else is in there? Anything helpful?"
Pegeen took out the notebooks. "You'll have to have someone review them. The dates are from McGonn's 1890 expedition to Olvidados." A white corner peeking from beneath a book caught her eye.
"Look at this," Pegeen said. She held out a small photo of a Dalmatian sitting before a green door. She turned it over and read, "Ares, before los Olvidados." She handed the picture to Stanley. Something about it bothered her. She needed to remember where she'd seen doors like that recently.
Stanley shook her head. "Maybe the FBI can make something of it in time. Thanks, Pegeen. You can quit for the day."
*
Pegeen ate leftover soup for dinner as the TV played. She turned on the news, the green door with the dog stuck in her thoughts, until she heard the anchor say, "Los Olvidados."
She listened carefully as the anchor reported that the hundred and seven inhabitants of Olvidados voted for annexation to Zudlandia. Hunh, thought Pegeen. Zudlandia had suffered an epidemic that medical teams from several countries and the UN hadn't been able to stop. A group of stateless mercenaries harboring on Olvidados provided a cure.
A coup left them ruling Zudlandia, a small island not far from Olvidados as the albatross flies. They halted democratic processes and ruled without opposition. They evicted all other foreigners. The anchor went on to report that speculation was the new Zudlanders were part of a larger organization that wanted to occupy more islands.
Hunh, thought Pegeen. She enlarged a picture of the green door on her computer and examined it. The door had a doorknocker with a satyr. She froze, shaking. She hated and feared doorknockers. Doorknockers spoke to her, enjoyed being rude and offensive, often bit her, but had to answer her questions truthfully if not completely.
She knew where the door was. A block of townhouses had doors like these with doorknockers. She'd noticed the doors walking around town one day. The doorknockers jeered at her and called her fugly--fat and ugly. She kept to the far side of the street ever since and could sometimes hear them calling "fugly!" and whistling as she hurried past.
An hour later she walked down the street of doorknockers with Stanley, the ensign, two FBI agents, and Lance. Seven of the townhouses had green doors and three of them had satyr doorknockers. "Wait here," Pegeen told the others, accepting the inevitable.
She went to the first green door. The doorknocker, a satyr, winked at her. "Hello. Lonely?
Pegeen inhaled. "Does a Dalmatian live in a house on this street with a green door?
"Sure. Ares."
"Which door?"
"Green door," said the satyr, cackling.
"Which one specifically?
"This one, fugly. That time of the month?" The doorknocker snickered.
Something broke in Pegeen. She was fed up with nasty, biting doorknockers.
"Uh-oh," said the doorknocker.
She picked up the satyr and hammered it against the plate repeatedly.
"Stop, stop, please stop," shrieked the doorknocker. "Pleeeeese?"
She stopped. The doorknocker's small, worried face smiled ingratiatingly.
"Is the dog's owner still here?"
"Yes," babbled the doorknocker. "Temporary rental. Leaving tomorrow." It grinned again.
"We're looking for a small metal box holding an emblem."
"Inside," jibbered the satyr. "Don't know where. I'm stuck here, you know."
An hour later the FBI, the Navy, Lance and Pegeen searched an office. An agent took a rusty box from a drawer and opened it. The Pangaea emblem rested inside.
"We found it," Stanley said. "Next, off to Olvidados. Pegeen, our submarine leaves day after tomorrow."
"Submarine!? Leave? Me?"
"Absolutely. Your country needs you."
"Wha-HA-ha-HA!" The satyr doorknocker cackled.
