I Was Owen Stewart

Chapter Six

Boris never sped up the boat.  He kept the throttle low, and the engine's drone was almost hypnotic, as I sat there with my eyes covered.  The trip seeming to take hours, but I had lost all sense of time.  At some point we left the swamps; the air began to smell healthier.

   I worried what would happen at this Fort.  Could I really trust these people?  Should I really turn over the evidence to them?  Groucho had wanted me to get it to the King, but which one?  Or had he meant Elvis?  Had he meant this Elvis?  How many dozens of Elvis Presleys were there in New Hollywood anyway?

   Time past and the air changed again: it became dank.  There was a smell of wet concrete and the sound of the boat echoed around us.  It dawned on me that we were in a tunnel.

   The scarf over my eyes was tugged off and I could see again, my reflection staring back at me in Elvis's sunglasses.

   "We're here.  Home sweet home," he said.

   The engine was cut and Boris hopped out and tied us up to the pier.  We were in a narrow walled marina with about twenty other small boats.  The sky seemed bright after my blindness, but it was an overcast morning.  Glancing around I saw the arch of the tunnel we had come through and the yawning blackness beyond.

   Elvis helped me to me feet and led me through a door at the end of the wharf.  The three of us headed down a dark hallway lit only by electric lanterns every ten feet or so.  At the end, Boris pounded on a steel door, and a muffled voice asked: "Password?"

   "Jimenez has got a date," Boris answered.  "And we have a prisoner with us."

   There were two guards armed with sub-machine guns on the other side.  We were in some kind of compound with squat old buildings surrounding us.  My mind raced, trying to figure out where in New Hollywood we could possibly be.

   "Inform the Sargent-Major, we're on our way with our guest and fresh intel," Elvis ordered one of the guards.

   So was I a prisoner or a guest?  As they took me to see this Sargent-Major, I felt much more like a prisoner.

   On our way up the stairs to the office, Elvis turned to me and said, "Look son, you better be ready to turn over the location of that chip.  If you've been lying to us, now's the time to say something.  The boss ain't someone to be triflin' with."

   So this was it, either I lay it all out and faced the consequences or keep the files hidden and what...?  Be executed?  Tortured?  Locked in a cell for the rest of my life?

   I took a deep breath and said a silent prayer to Gary Cooper.

    "You're The King, right?"

   "Some folk call me that."

   "Did Groucho?"

   "Never met the man," he said.  "But it is my code name.  I suppose it would've been in HQ's messages to him.  So are you going to tell us where you hid the chip?"

   "I have the evidence on me."

   Elvis and Boris stopped in their tracks and looked at each other.  What meaning the expressions on their faces relayed, I couldn't decipher.

   They shoved me into an office.  I expected some gruff old soldier in khakis, instead there was a woman faced as Audrey Hepburn, behind the desk.  Instead of fatigues, she had a smart blue suit on.

   "So what have we got here?" she asked.  "It sure doesn't look like Marx.  Did you boy's catch yourselves a rat?"

   "Ma'am, just listen to what he has to say.  Go on," he prodded me.

   I went over my whole story from the beginning.  When I was done, Hepburn said: "Well, that's all very fascinating, but let's see this proof."

   There was an interface glass on her desk, so I placed my Pewter on it and downloaded the data to them.  For good or bad, it was done.

   She looked at her Pewter.  "Hmm.  This is going to take a while to go over and authenticate.  Gentlemen, show Mr. Stewart here to his room."

    They took me too my new quarters, which wasn't much bigger than a cell.  There was just a cot and a small locker for possessions I didn't have.  But at least there was a window with a view of the compound we had come in by.  And from it, I could look up and see the sky.

   I had many more interviews with Audrey and other members of the Cavalry over the next few days.  Some of the meetings were clearly interrogations or debriefings, others were just conversations – some were even friendly.  At one point, I had a long talk with Elvis sitting on my cot.

   After a while I asked him, "So have you always been in the Cavalry?"

   "Naw," he said.  "It's only been about six years.  Before that I was with the government.  I was a clerk second-class with the Assessment Bureau.  Workin' my way up through the ranks, you know?  Thought I was doin' Network's will.  Had a nice apartment on Garbo Plaza, a fiancée- the whole shebang."

   "So what happened?"

   "Orson Powell happened."  He scratched his sideburn and thought.  It took him a while to start talking again.  "One day this man comes up to me in the park and gives me that name.  Tells me to look it up, and he'll see me again soon.  I didn't know it then, but he was with the Cavalry.  He was trying to recruit me to be an informer.

   "I had done a routine assessment of Powell about a month earlier.  Nothing special about it, except he only scored a C on his loyalty quotient.  I didn't even remember why, I had to pull his file to check.  He wasn't a subversive or anything, he had just written an article about the Lost Island of Catalina."

   "Why would that impact his loyalty?" I asked.

   "Man, all that nut-job conspiracy theory stuff really does a number to your profile.  Anyway, this eats at me for a day or two, and finally I swing by his house to talk to him.  Turned out he'd gone missin' that same week I filed the report.  Started checking on other people that'd scored low on my reports: a few of them were missin' too.

   "So when the feller comes up to me again, I join on - feed info to the resistance.  About six months in, the Execs catch wind of it.  And I am done, man.  It was only a miracle that they got me out before I disappeared too.  Been a soldier ever since."

   His story didn't seem all that much different from mine.  I can't say that it comforted me. 

   For the first time since meeting me, he took off his sunglasses and looked me in the eye.  "You're going to have to make that decision soon, son."

   "What decision?"

   "Join up or get out."

   I pondered the decision all night.  My instincts said to leave – leave the fighting to these people.  I'm no soldier.  No hero.  But then where would I go.  I might as well drown myself in the nearest canal, for all the good that freedom would do me.  So when the time came, I told them the only thing I could: I'd join.  I'd be a member of the Cavalry.

   "Well, it's not as simple as that," Hepburn said.  "Devotion to City and Network runs deep, even in the most zealous of recruits.  And you are far from zealous.  First, you are going to have to prove you're not a rat."

   "How?"

    "You are going to break into a bank."