Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 149: Busy Butterflies
Saturday, June 7, 1986
Jas and Paige were indeed both yawning when we met for breakfast. They were grinning, though, and that was the main point.
After we’d ordered, Jas said, “So ... we discussed it, and we think reporting the guy is the right thing to do, assuming you two didn’t spot a problem with it.”
“We didn’t,” Angie said, as I nodded.
“Somehow, it seems ironic that I’m supporting turning in a guy who got pissed off and started blowing things up,” Paige said. “But, in fairness, I just wanted to burn some houses down, not hurt the people in those houses.”
Everyone chuckled a bit at that.
“We came up with a plan,” Angie said. “And ... well. We’ll probably do it up here. Misdirection, if nothing else.”
“Misdirection works for me!” Paige said. “Tell!”
“Speak and Spell,” I said. “We get one, make it say what it needs to, record that, then play it for the FBI tip line or whatever. It’s a generic voice source that can’t be traced. We need a payphone with no camera watching it, but we would need that anyway.”
“Sneaky!” Paige said. “I like it!”
Jas grinned and nodded.
“I do, too. This is doing good in the world, but much of that goes away if we get caught. Not just for us, I think, but for everyone.”
Angie nodded.
“Yeah. We know too much stuff that could be misused in one way or another, I think. Not just ethically, but ... well. Let’s say we know some politician is doing sketchy stuff. We might want them to get busted. Someone else might just want to blackmail them.”
“Still ethical,” Paige said. “If we weren’t ethical, we could be the blackmailers. The temptation to have some people under our control ... I mean, it’s there. Just as an idea.”
“It is,” Jas said, nodding along. “We wouldn’t, but that’s being ethical.”
“We should browse thrift shops,” Angie said. “There are likely used Speak and Spells out there. We don’t need a new one, but that’s also another hurdle for anyone trying to figure out who we are.”
“There are some pretty obvious answers,” I said. “Wrong, but obvious. Some guy who knew the Unabomber and put it together, maybe. Or a family member.”
“In any case, we want our various tips to be separate from each other,” Jas said. “Make this one unlike the one for Challenger, for instance. We’re almost certainly not done with this sort of thing. The last thing we want is for anyone to figure out that there’s an ‘us’ to be tracked down.”
“Oh, heck, yes!” Paige said. “Too tempting! A bunch of unconnected mysterious reports with little commonality is much better.”
“Though we might do the Speak and Spell thing again,” Jas said, giggling. “Even if that maybe makes it feel like there is an ‘us.’”
“Could well happen,” Angie said. “We’ll see.”
Breakfast came, and we switched our attention to nourishment, as well as figuring out our sightseeing plans. Today’s plan was simple: head up to Salem and learn more about the witch trials.
Salem was a repeat for me. I’d gone here with the wife and kids back somewhere in the 2010s, during that same Boston trip where we ate nearly too much lobster. While I felt like there were more things to see and do during that trip, there was plenty to keep us busy for this one, and it didn’t feel quite as overdone.
We even got in a bit of time in yet another art museum, the Peabody Museum of Salem. It was my first time there, even counting my other life. Everyone else’s first time, too.
At dinnertime, Paige noted that we ourselves were potential ‘witches.’ We knew things normal people didn’t, we sometimes did things normal people wouldn’t, and so forth. I doubted anyone put on trial in Salem ‘way back when’ was someone like us, but we also had to at least consider the possibility.
Our ability to hide in plain sight was partly contextual. If Angie and I were exceptional, we could give credit to a tough high school, wonderful parents, and good decisions. Someone like us might have stuck out far more in other times and places, and sometimes sticking out is a very dicey proposition. It might have been fine, but it might not have been fine at all.
That, of course, raised other possibilities. Were people like Ben Franklin or Leonardo da Vinci polymaths because they were just that good? Or were they on a second try, having already learned a lot of things the average person never would have?
On the one hand, no one ever having revealed such an experience argued against it being common. But, on the other hand, would anyone ever reveal it? I could see an argument in favor of it: shouldn’t people know it’s at least possible? But, on the other other hand, might that encourage all manner of irresponsible behavior? Would people convince themselves they deserved a second chance and kill themselves in hopes of getting it?
Or were we in a carefully selected universe where no one before us had ever had a second chance? It was certainly at least a possibility.
I was pretty certain that the Salem trials had just been people in power doing bad things. But, at this distance from the events, who could really tell?
And, if anyone found out about Angie, Laura, or me, would we perhaps be destined for a similarly lousy ending?
Angie’s pager went off while we were having lunch. It was CBS. They wanted Angie and Paige back on Tuesday for a bit of additional material. Jas and I were off the hook for now, but either of us might be called in as a result of something Marco said. Apparently, nothing Anne or Natalie had said involved either of us. I considered that a good thing, and so did Jas.
While she was talking to them, I asked Angie to see if they could get us reservations for eight at Tavern on the Green on Friday night. The earliest we could probably be sure of getting there was seven o’clock. We hoped we could surprise Cammie, Mel, Jess, and Laura with a very ‘New York’ sort of dinner.
After she finished, I called the Hyatt and got their concierge working on it, too. Better to have two reservations than zero. I told him we had CBS working on it, too, though. If Tavern on the Green already had a reservation under Marshall for eight, he could relax.
In the evening, we stopped at a few thrift stores. One produced a working cassette recorder with a microphone at a reasonable price, while another had a perfectly good Speak and Spell. Between the two, we had our anonymous tip equipment.
I spent quite a while recording what we thought was the perfect message. It gave the FBI Ted Kaczynski’s name and likely location (‘a cabin in one of the Western states’), mentioned his math background, and also mentioned that he had family somewhere.
It was a reasonable tip, I thought. They could only go so far with it, but that ‘so far’ would hopefully be enough to put them on the right track.
None of us expected an arrest in the short term. We hoped there might be one before the next bombing, though. If there wasn’t, we would probably not try again. Perhaps, but this might be our shot. Nagging the FBI would likely not help.
We weren’t going to actually call it in until Tuesday. We would have plenty of options for payphones along the road, and this was 1986. Very few gas stations or restaurants would have any sort of camera, and we wouldn’t leave a paper trail at the establishment. It should be just about impossible for anyone to connect us to the call, and that’s just how we wanted it.
We headed back to our hotel for the night. Whether it was Salem or something else, no one was in a particularly sexy mood, so we played games for a while, then called it a night and snuggled up with our spouses-to-be.
Sunday, June 8, 1986
Since we were in a relative hotbed of Unitarians, we decided to visit First Church Boston, one of the oldest churches in the United States and a thriving Unitarian congregation. It certainly wasn’t life-changing or anything of the sort, but it was a fun thing to do. We might continue to do similar things in other places. Church wasn’t the center of any of our lives, but it was fairly important to us, so we would keep up with it.
After the service, we made the drive out to Cape Cod and toured a bit of the coastline, not making it back to Boston until dinnertime. It was a fairly quiet day, but perfectly enjoyable, and also the sort of thing we would keep on doing.
We had dinner with Amit, Sheila, Gene, and Sue again, this time at a cozy seafood place along Boston Harbor. We would see them again next month at Lizzie and Janet’s wedding, thankfully, but it had been a long time. And, aside from that wedding, we might not see them again until the summer of 1987. Of course, we would see all of them at Gene and Sue’s wedding, most likely, as well as at ours. None of them was currently planning on attending Cammie and Mel’s ceremony, simply because two trips to Houston plus a trip to New Orleans within two months would be too much.
To some extent, that meant we were upstaging Cammie and Mel, but even they agreed that it made sense. There were four of us, after all, and they would see all of those people at our wedding anyway.
We kicked around the idea of doing an ‘official’ Debate and Drama reunion in 1989 or 1990. It made little sense to call it a five-year reunion (or six-year, or whatever), because we would invite several years’ worth of students to join us. Heck, maybe we would just invite all of them, regardless of year.
Contacting them might be a pain in the butt, since we were well before the days of internet searches and social media, but we could probably contact most of them. Many parents wouldn’t have moved, for one thing.
It wasn’t until the car ride after dinner that the four of us discussed one obvious question: who would be paying? We would hardly fly people in or rent them hotel rooms, but I could see renting a nice restaurant and covering (or at least subsidizing) a meal. By that point, most of the in-crowd would know we’d done more than well enough to afford it, and we could keep it to the ‘nice gesture’ level and not make an ‘ostentatious display of wealth’ faux pas.
With few exceptions, though, the people we’d been in Debate and Drama with were people I expected great things from. Reunions would be a way to check on that, and might also be a way to figure out whose skills to tap into for whatever we were trying to accomplish.
The problem was: how would people relate to us if we were as successful as we might well be? Wealth and status sometimes intimidate people and can also make them greedy. Could we merely have friendly conversations with people, or would they either be nervous around us or trying to curry favor? Would Jess be able to be ‘just Jess,’ or would stardom place a divide between her and the others?
We might not be there in 1989 or 1990, but the thought process would be the same for 1995 or so. Sooner or later, either we were going to be greatly disappointed or we were going to have to get used to the problematic side of wealth, power, and success.
On the other hand, not trying at all might be giving in to the Dark Side too easily. If we acted differently because they thought we might be different, wouldn’t that make us different? And wouldn’t that be a bad thing?
Tonight wound up being a Paige night. It wasn’t anything big, just a good chance to connect and share our love.
Which, after all, was exactly as it should be. Our love was something big, and always would be.
Monday, June 9, 1986
We checked out midmorning and hit the road back to New York. Along the way, we stopped at a fairly nondescript gas station in Hartford, Connecticut with payphones on the side of the building. After looking for cameras and spotting none, I called the FBI’s tip line. Once it was obvious I’d reached the point where someone was listening (and, hopefully, recording what was said), I played the tape, then hung up. We wiped down the phone, just in case, then hit the road. We hadn’t bought anything there (or anywhere in Hartford), making it exceptionally unlikely that even the FBI could figure out who called them.
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