The Veil War

Half an hour later my right hand ached from signing releases and waivers. Mr. Smithers escorted me out of his office and back to a cozy, decent-sized game room. The focal point of the room was a pool table made of marble, rich wood, gold and pearl inlay, and for all I knew green felt made out of baby seal fur.

There, shooting balls into the right corner pocket with monotonic regularity was the Chad. The Chad did not look up from his billiards marksmanship. In the corner, wearing a blue and white Russian sailor’s shirt and ridiculously short shorts was Tactical Beardman. His beard looked especially ridiculous hovering in space above that outfit.

He stood. Damn, but he was one muscular little fuck. Tattoos ran up both arms. He reached out a hand. I shook it.

“Mumbles. Welcome to an agency.”

“Not ‘the’ agency?”

“That name was taken,” he said. I thought I detected a smile behind the facial hair, but I couldn’t be certain. The Chad said nothing.

“Right.”

We looked at each other. The Chad sank another ball with a definitive crack. The ball orbited the inside of the pocket for a while.

“Enough of this gay shit,” Beardman said. “Let’s get you sorted.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Follow me.”

I looked over at the Chad. He gave me a nod. I was in. We left the Chad to his billiards. I followed the Beardman down a hallway. As we walked along we left a prosperous 18th Century and drifted into a budget-starved mid-twentieth.

Institutional gray crept up the walls, replacing the paneling. Linoleum tile overtook the carpeting. Pipes and ducts appeared, suspended by dusty wires from an unpainted ceiling. We came to a halt in a break room that would have felt at home in any non-self-respecting 1950s industrial facility.

“Coffee’s free,” Beardman said, waving at the sink and a battered stainless coffee machine.

“Awesome,” I said.

Beardman dropped into one of the fiberglass chairs loitering around the formica table. I set my bag on the table.

“Now what?” I asked.

“I imagine you have a couple questions.”

“A couple.”

Beardman pulled a flask from his pocket. He took a pull and handed it over. I felt the burn of an excellent bourbon. He settled in and started talking. “In the spring of 1945, a Nazi research facility in what is now the Czech Republic made an interesting discovery.”

I handed the flask back, and he took another pull.

“Using nothing more than their native brain power, an interesting mechanical calculator invented by a Jewish death camp vacationer, and a burning desire to make my life miserable, a bunch of SS eggheads created the great grand-daddy of the gate you saw back in the ‘stan. That gate opened into a world where the dinosaur killer never hit. Savvy?”

I nodded. He took another drink. “Seeing as around that time the Red Army was knocking on the door with artillery parks the size of Rhode Island, well, certain elements in the Third Reich saw a unique opportunity to not be bayonet practice dummies for the untermenschen.

“They ducked into the rabbit hole and pulled it in after them. The eggheads took with them the best part of a Waffen-SS division along with elements of the Luftwaffe, Wehrmacht, and hell, for all we know the Reichsmarine.

“But wait! Don’t order yet!” He mugged for the camera, a retarded sailor boy Billy Mays. “They also grabbed the whole laboratory, its support staff, and the village it was in. As an added bonus, a Krupp armaments factory and its associated workers, engineers and slave-labor work force went down the hole. Everything an embryonic Fourth Reich could need or want.”

He held up the flask and peered over the flipped up cap at me. “And on the other side of the rabbit hole, they didn’t find the mad hatter.

“They found dinosaurs”