Sherlock in Cheyenne - The Adventure of the Missing Missile Part

On page 4 of the local newspaper was an account of an Army convoy from Northern Colorado being diverted. It had gone into Nebraska and disappeared. Mr. Holmes did not fail to bring this to my attention. But a convoy, Army trucks, deuce and a halves gone off the reservation? So?

Popcorn was a family tradition on Friday night. We had a gunnysack of it in a hallway closet. We shelled it. Then into a popper with a right angle stirrer through the cover and into the corn. Add lard to the popper, corn in, gas on and stir. We would get the top coming off as the popping went on and on. The top would clang onto the stovetop, so we knew to remove the popper from the heat. Then we would load up the popper again and give it another go. Butter (real butter) and salt until satisfied.

Fully stuffed with popcorn I went downstairs and found no Mr. Holmes. As he had resolved after the activity known informally as The Case of the Missing Milk Bottles, he was probably in disguise and not smoking as he visited far and wide with the citizens of Cheyenne.

He was gone until the AM next day. Then it was front-page news that a convoy of trucks had been proceeding west from Kimball (Nebraska) near the state line when a few other Army trucks uninvitingly joined them near Pine Bluff. The interlopers roared up beside a truck, removed the occupants by means of long grappling hooks and commandeered the truck away from the convoy, heading due north. A Zeegler, or so it must have been from the description, was seen by flashlight in the truck bed before the light was shot out.

Why was this usurpation of a government truck so momentous? It had been in a low profile convoy transporting a missile part. That part of the missile was to be fitted to an ICBM having a nuclear warhead. Until the capture of the missile part, no nukes were known to be in the area.

But note, it was front-page news. The missing convoy had been on page 4. Page 4 was one of "our" pages but now it had gotten promoted out of our territory. Maybe we were to assume a license to pursue front-page news?

Mr. Holmes did not think so. He religiously read pages 3 and 4 over the next few days and sadly concluded that we were to have no involvement in the missing missile part dustup. He had talked to his Air Force contacts and learned the part was involved in the guidance system of the missiles. The Air Force feared They would duplicate the part for placement in all other ICBMs.

I thought so what - make up a new part and install that one.

So then - said Mr. Holmes, They will steal the newer one and fabricate copies.

Can't they stop Them?

Apparently it would be cat and mouse on and on. Our side could never be sure the missiles would go where they should go. A faulty guidance device could convince the missile to explode after the rockets had ignited but without the missile leaving the site. In other words, the faulty guidance would "convince" the missile to detonate at the site after a travel of zero miles. Then, too, the missile could leave the site but be misdirected and impact an incorrect target.

Me - This meddling gives the Soviets the advantage.

Mr. Holmes - Not if their guidance systems have also been tampered with.

Have they?

Mr. Holmes nodded in affirmation.

Me - But this is all, if I may so, highly irregular. (Mr. Holmes almost smirked.) Whatever could They be up to?

It seems They have always had the threat of someone in the nuclear force deciding to end it all if They were on the verge of success from one of Their schemes to rid the world of almost all of us.

Me - That has always been a possibility, hasn't it?

Yes.

So they are removing the nuclear capability worldwide. Then the scenario of a Red Army sweeping across Europe comes alive.

No, They would not allow it.

Who says?

Our authorities.

What cold comfort. The B52s are still operating.

No.

No?

They have had, these last months, a need on an ad hoc basis to return to base for repairs. The nuclear loads were then altered.

Me - This has gotten out of hand! This makes it seem They can now operate without hindrance if they can get a scheme successfully swooshing along.

Mr. Holmes - We would stop them.

True, we have so far.

Sad to relate, I think we go no further.

What do you mean? At last, They have been successful?

No, quite the contrary, we have succeeded.

You mean to say, they have given up?

Mr. Holmes - If we remain, they can achieve nothing.

Granted. We, or at least you, won’t let them get along.

So why must they persist? It would be rather senseless of Them, agreed?

Me – Like nukes are pointless, unless their threat is to the use, accidental or insane.

Correct. But note They are not insane nor are They accidental.

Meaning?

The meaning will become clear in a fortnight. My guess presently is that your suspicion that you might cycle through your school, ad infinitum, is groundless.

We are kaput?

In another manner of speaking, yes.

I took a long look around. It was all familiar, yet it wasn’t mine, not really. Mr. Holmes sat in his chair, arms on the armrests, pipe in mouth, looking very much like when I first saw him. The newspaper was unceremoniously dumped on the concrete floor.

Done? No more fun? Why end it? Why start it? Why continue it? This wasn’t our world. Mine was elsewhere. Mr. Holmes would go to ….

So, Mr. Holmes, you think I am to return?

I do suppose so.

You?

I have no idea.

I irrationally kept trying to fit Mr. Holmes into this world, why couldn’t he be allowed to persist? I wanted to make it known that he could be allowed to persist. Though truly I didn’t want to go. I had suddenly come on the scene. I suppose I would suddenly go away from the scene. Start and stop. No more tutor, Black Leg, cig stamps and green gas, Stephanie and John and a twenty-dollar bill and bad lettuce and snowflakes that bacteria loved. Mostly, no more “smoke it outside” and helping with chemical analysis, and receiving homework assessment by phone, and helping to gun down Zeeglers galore. He wouldn’t be with me on cold, windy nights. Whatever he was, he was a Mr. Holmes to me. My Mr. Holmes. I don’t suppose I could go with him? No escape. Certainly not. We didn’t come together. I had my route, he, his.

I had been musing about all this, then I realized Mr. Holmes was watching me-  again, a lot like when I first saw him here in this basement, this bedroom.

My dear boy, we have saved a world and helped it to be safer than the one you came from. I suppose it is “progress” that Victorian England was dismantled slowly and surely into a world like yours that ignores a stunning peril. A grievous, vicious, horrible world-ending in store for yours, someday. Always 1 + 1 is 2. Insanity plus error makes for an accepted outcome. It must be persistently accepted, the process of addition persists, so the outcome too persists.

I hope not, Mr. Holmes.

Never give up hope but know reality when you see it. History is not memory. Memory is history. Have a weapon, use it. Axiomatic, if you don’t have it, then it can’t be used. If you can’t remember it, then it isn’t. Remembering when it wasn’t, hopefully, won’t help.

Now, Mr. Holmes, you make me all the more reluctant to go. All will go on as it is here. They won’t miss me.

Truly, They will know you are gone.

Yes, incongruously, I am known to Them and no one else.

But for me.

Pardon me, of course, you are the most important of all.

A fortnight passed by. Mr. Holmes said it would be today. We would go. He had said goodbye to Them. How odd of him to do that.

It was 10 AM on a Saturday. Lots of Sun was coming in the East window of the bedroom-basement. I heard a tramping of many feet coming down the stairs. Mr. Holmes did not reach for his revolvers. He did pick up the diary from the card table and put it in one of his jacket pockets. I knew they wouldn’t knock. The door swung open slowly. A phalanx of Zeeglers entered. All of them were smiling. I was standing by the armchair. Mr. Holmes was directly behind me.

The Zeeglers parted in the center and out stepped the only teacher that ever gave me unbiased encouragement. She was one of my junior high teachers, an English teacher. I could never recall her name. She had me read my writing before the class, and it got in the school newspaper. She mentioned what better books were to be had from the Scholastic Book Club. She had me looking up words in the dictionary. She was great. She had steel blue hair, glasses, tall, overweight and shook all over if she laughed. She offered me her hand, I took it. She faded away.

Then one of my Army lieutenants appeared where she had been. Red hair, narrow nose, head back, a lasting smirk coupled with a blank look of authority on his face. Suddenly a fist shot by my right cheek and collided with the lieutenant’s jaw. He fell quickly backward and disappeared.

Mr. Holmes whispered– Was he the one?

Yes.

Then Dr. Hammer came forward. My research guide and savior from economic disaster. Sad, blue watery eyes. His hands always twisting  at the wrists. I intercepted the right hand for a shake. He beamed at me. There were only three signposts for my past. Dr. Hammer disappeared.

Then it all disappeared. I was home. My wife and daughter were down at the end of the hallway going over my daughter’s homework. I was in the living room, but I wasn’t alone. I turned around and looked up at Mr. Holmes.

Mr. Holmes – We have little time. I have been posted to a new venue.

I hope you knock them dead, so to speak.

Mr. Holmes had lost his boots and legs up to his knees.

Give me your hand, my boy. I wish you well. Those were memorable adventures. You are to be commended.

Mr. Holmes, I thank you for the adventures. No one can top you. May you never cease to exist, to be thought of with admiration always.

Thank you, my dear boy.

He had disappeared from the waist up to the shoulder on the left side. He still had his left arm. He still had his right hand in mine. His right shoulder was starting to fade. He quickly removed from his right jacket pocket the diary I had kept.

Yours, he said.

I couldn’t say anything as I took the diary.

I must go. His grip was firm and confident.

I let go of his hand. Only his head remained. He smiled assuredly and knowingly.

I smiled.

He was gone.