In from the Cold
I was going to call the CIA as soon as I got back to my hotel in Warsaw, but I grew increasingly uneasy and paranoid as the day wore on. I decided that I wanted to be safely at home when I told my improbable little tale to what I assumed would be a long series of skeptical government employees. I would be back in Dallas in a few days. The fate of Western civilization would just have to wait.
And then, when I finally made it home, I decided to give myself another couple of days to recover from jet lag. The story was bizarre enough as it was, I didn't want to risk coming across as delirious.
But I finally ran out of excuses. And so, early one morning, I tracked down the CIA's phone number on the Web and gave them a call. I worked my way through the phone tree, but I was never presented with an option that said, "Press 3 to warn us that a renegade computer consultant has hijacked our space-based nuclear weapons." Finally I found myself speaking with a human being – a young, female human being, from the sound of her voice.
I told my story to the CIA Lady, starting from Sheldon and the books with the hidden messages, continuing through Dr. Malenkov's cryptic email, ending with the unlikely tale of Nicholas Vanderoo and the Ajax Project. Although I occasionally paused for a response, CIA Lady was strictly in listening mode. Her silence unnerved me, and I started to throw in rhetorical questions from time to time: You know what I mean? You following me?
"Go on," she said, every time.
And so I did, eventually reaching the end of the saga. CIA Lady asked me for my name and phone number (sure, I thought, like you don't have Caller ID) and said that someone would contact me in a few days.
The phone rang ten minutes later.
"You know who this is?" asked a familiar voice on the other end of a bad connection.
"Hi, Sheldon," I said.
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©2007 Henry Charles Mishkoff