1/2

Played: June 22, 2020.

Tuesday, February 13, 1973. Late afternoon. Archie and Marshall arrive back at Livermore. The moment they walk in the door, Sophie tells Archie that Dr. Stanton called. He’s going to need a report by the end of the day today. She says she’s put together a short summary on everything she knows about the incident and the Transamerica Pyramid itself. This is, notably, the first terrorist incident to target the Pyramid since its construction began. Although a lot of people in the city objected to the Pyramid on aesthetic grounds, none of its most vocal critics strike her as being the mad bomber type.

As Archie flips through Sophie’s report, the rest of URIEL returns to the office. Holding up a sealed manila envelope marked “CONFIDENTIAL,” Jocasta announces that she obtained the original letter and a few other items of interest from the FBI, among them a photocopy of the Steve Canyon comic strip. She puts on a pair of blue surgical gloves and spreads everything out on her desk. Everyone gathers around. Mitch picks up the comic strip and looks it over. Jocasta, who seems a bit rattled, explains that “things got a little, uh, difficult. I blame the FBI — they built their headquarters on the thirteenth floor of that building. But everything’s alright. Nothing bad happened. Everything’s under control. I don’t think that there’s been any real suspicion on the part of our friends in the FBI.” Marshall and Archie pick up that Jocasta sounds like she is attempting to reassure herself of these facts. Archie asks if she’s feeling OK. Jocasta says she’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep before hastily bringing everyone’s attention around to the comic strip.

Jocasta: If, uh … if my ability to read objects is not deceiving me, then this comic triggered a bit of a flashback in our friend who mailed the letter and, uh, needless to say, I lived through a bit of that flashback myself. It was rather traumatizing to him. So I'm handling it with kid gloves (she holds up her hands). I would say that the reason that I had them bring only the letter back to me is that it's got the actual living sigil on it. And the last thing we want is to have that be in anyone's hands who can copy it or distribute it freely. Especially the FBI, who lacks our … deliberate expertise in these matters. So I figured if we could have the original under lock and key here it would be better for everyone.

Marshall: What was the flashback that you experienced?

Jocasta: Well … uh, it was a prop plane. I couldn't really pinpoint the location of it, but it was back in-country. Not too long ago would be my guess and — well, I mean, I don’t need to tell any of you the sort of things that we did over there. I think, um, whoever wrote this letter did a little bit more of them than usual.

Archie: But Jocasta, just to clarify, this was not your flashback? It was his flashback?

Jocasta: It was definitely him. Yes. I was flooded with his memories … they got a little muddled with my own towards the end there, but what I was seeing was definitely what he had seen and I have a feeling it wasn’t the first time he’d flash backed to this particular memory.

Marshall: So we’re looking for a young-ish white man who was in the war and —

Jocasta: Army, I believe.

Marshall: Army, right — transported in a plane or — well, no, he wouldn’t, he would be Air Force if he flew the plane — anyway, did things that he feels remorseful or guilty about, or otherwise found traumatic, and who I now think lives in or near a town called Pittsburg, California.

Jocasta: That’s confirmed by the postmark on the letter, I believe.

Roger: Well, that actually does narrow it down, as opposed to every Vietnam vet who’s out there.

Marshall: Right. True. But how many of them live in or near Pittsburg, California? It’s a town of what, how many people would you say?

Sophie: About 10,000. It’s a lot like San Pedro. It’s a port, an industrial suburb. Basically. It’s grim. The steel plant that was there in the ‘50s, it’s not doing the business it was doing 20 years ago. But it’s by the water, and historically there’s a lot of shipping and fishing, that kind of thing. It’s a very — you know, this isn’t somewhere where people go out to live and commute into San Francisco. This is a working class suburb.

Mitch: If I was going to mail my manifesto from some anonymous mail drop I don’t think I’d go to Pittsburg to do it.

Sophie: It’s a drive. It’s about 45 minutes from Berkeley, so if somebody — or whoever did this — is living in or around, close to San Francisco, it would be a hike. But to throw the scent off? To pick that city among any of them? I mean, who knows? It's sort of like … you think about how the, uh, the postmarks on the Zodiac letters were all from sort of the North Bay. And he was doing a lot of crimes up there, like the Lake Berryessa stabbing. Could there be a connection? Could there be some sort of personal connection to Pittsburg? Certainly it’s — it’s definitely somewhere to start investigating.

Jocasta: Well, I put the feds back on the trail and I think that if they learn anything, just from a basic chronological angle, they'll get back to me. But, uh, language is not my specialty — does anybody know what the Chinese writing on the cartoon says?

Archie: (quietly) Basically, it is an offer of surrender.

The team discusses Jocasta’s vision a bit more, including the potential significance of the comic strip itself. After a few minutes, Marshall asks what Roger and Mitch found.

Mitch: Dogs, man.

Marshall: Cool. Cool.

Archie: Can you be more specific?

Jocasta: I didn’t get to see any dogs.

Mitch: These were not happy dogs. They had been in some kind of a fight. They were all bloody. They showed me a plaque.

Roger: Yeah, I gotta let him tell it ‘cause I didn’t see it.

Mitch: The plaque showed me some stuff. It was like a historical plaque, but it was like a plaque that somebody might put up. So I don’t think it was like a Red King thing. It was about, um, it was about two dogs who were Emperor Norton’s dogs. But they weren’t Emperor Norton’s dogs. People thought they were Emperor Norton’s dogs but they weren’t Emperor Norton’s dogs. They had dumb Civil War dog names like Patroclus and Glomper or some shit like that. But then there was a motto, E Clampus Vitus, and the date that the plaque was put up, which was 1997. Which was weird because, y’know, it’s 1973.

Archie, Marshall, and Roger have heard of E Clampus Vitus, or ECV. It is a jokey historical society — a fraternal organization known to put up plaques and markers that commemorate California’s weird, hidden history. They were ostensibly founded during the Gold Rush to take care of “widows and orphans.” Its members sometimes wear outlandish prospector outfits or Union suits and are known to drink fairly heavily. They hold their meetings and fundraising drives at various local bars and taverns.

Sophie: Who’s Emperor Norton?

Mitch: He was an odd gentlemen who went bankrupt and then kind of went crazy and then declared himself Emperor of the United States.

Sophie: (confused) An eccentric … homeless man who lived in San Francisco?

Mitch: Yeah. He caused the Golden Gate Bridge to be built and he offered to mediate between the North and the South during the Civil War, but I don’t think anything ever came of that. And he did not own two dogs who were not named Patroclus and Glomper or some kind of bullshit names like Patroclus and Glomper. He was a weird homeless guy from like a hundred years ago.

Roger: So he was in the Civil War? But that doesn’t make any sense because the plaque said it was from like 1990-something, which also doesn’t make any sense but —

Mitch: Yeah, exactly! That’s — thank you Roger, thank you. Thank you! Thank you!

Sophie heads off to the history section of the library to look this up, obviously frustrated that she’s never heard of this mysterious “Emperor Norton” character. Archie watches her go and then turns back to Mitch:

Archie: Alright but … what was it, Mitchell, that uh — what connects these dogs … ?

Mitch: (rubbing his forehead with one hand) I’m just experiencing — I feel like there’s nothing that I know that’s not common knowledge. I’m baffled by the looks that I’m getting from some of you.

Archie: But what do the dogs and the plaque have to do with the letter that went to the Examiner?

Mitch: Fuck if I know.

Roger: Well, we’ll get to talking about how the fact that he reacted — and when I say reacted, like OK, I've learned an important thing about distance — and I got all sorts of things to talk about but, you know, I'm gonna let him run himself down a bit …

Mitch: That’s not something you need to worry about, man. It’s like, you know, they’re dropping the bomb tomorrow, so why worry?

Sophie: (carrying a couple of books with her) I’m sorry — I have no idea, Mitch, what you are talking about. I’m sorry. I don’t know who this — I’ve looked him up in three different bibliographies and encyclopedias. I have never heard of this Emperor Norton fellow.

Mitch: He was issued his own currency! He was friends with Mark Twain! And he commanded the Golden Gate Bridge to be built. Oh! And he died.

Archie: But Mitchell, there can’t be an emperor of the United States! It’s in the Constitution.

Mitch: He was like a lovable eccentric! I think he sung songs? Right? People would come and get their picture taken with him. Well — no, they wouldn’t get their picture taken with him, that didn’t make sense. But he would sing, right? He was — it was kind of a performance kind of deal. Wasn’t there like a movie about him?

Marshall: Roger, did you see this plaque? Or these dogs?

Mitch: You were agreeing with me a minute ago, Roger!

Roger: Oh I know there was something there. There was something absolutely there. The threshold was broken. You certainly felt and sensed something. But I don’t know who Emperor Norton is so you’ll have to forgive me.

Sophie: You said something about Mark Twain?

Mitch: Yeah. Yeah! He was friends with Mark Twain. I’m trying to remember from the movie … he was friends with Mark Twain, he issued his own currency, and like, bars would take his money because it was a funny ha-ha joke type thing. And he would sell that to tourists! And that was how he made his living. He had a song about the Golden Gate Bridge and how it was his idea the whole time. Did none of you see this?

Everyone politely shakes their head “no.”

Sophie: Well, this is the thing that kind of — so, do you all know what was on the site of the Transamerica Pyramid before it was built? It was part of the Barbary Coast and it was a big — at the time — ultramodern building called the Montgomery Block. Basically like an arcade that contained offices, hotels, shops, taverns. That’s another thing that made me think about it — what you said, that they accepted his money at local bars. This Montgomery Block was the center of San Francisco bohemia for a couple of generations in the late 1800s. That was part of the research I was doing.

Mitch: There you go, there you go, there you go.

Sophie: So, is there something to do with this site that’s a … history vortex? Or subduction zone? Could this be why it was targeted? In the letter, he talks about it being some kind of way of anchoring … I mean … that’s something, if any of you are historically inclined, to look into. Those San Francisco bohemians in the nineteenth century were odd folks.

Marshall: OK, so this letter writer, a Vietnam vet, sets out to destroy the Pyramid —

Roger: He wasn’t destroying it.

Marshall: Uh, what do you mean by that?

Roger: If he meant to destroy it, he wouldn’t have put any of the bombs where he put them. He just put them to be in the showiest spot. Maybe some kind of weird thing about an eye in the pyramid because he put them — you know, you have all these triangles in front (he makes a triangle with his hands), he puts basically flashes right there (he taps his fingers indicating the “top” of the pyramid). There’s no way he could have gotten any of that stuff set up inside the building on any of the main supports to actually bring the thing down. Not with all the earthquake stuff. So he was not even trying to take that place down. At all. He was just … trying to be as showy as possible. Maybe crack open something to, you know, get past the threshold and reach into something. Sure. But he was not trying to blow up the building.

Marshall: Interesting. Interesting. So a traumatized Vietnam War vet wants to call attention to a pyramid building that has been built on a subduction zone as some kind of prophylactic? Or a staple? Or something to hold things together or pave over something. But then why call attention to something if you’re not going to destroy it? What does he think people will see in the building that they don’t already see?

Jocasta: Maybe he’s looking for allies. Or sympathetic parties. Maybe he’s trying to call attention to a cause and he wants people to join him.

Mitch: People will see it and be like, yeah, pyramids suck.

Jocasta: But, sorry — this Emperor Norton, Mitch. He wasn’t a real emperor, right?

Mitch: No. He was a charming hobo! He was a hobo, alright?! He was a hobo who lived in the park and he did not have dogs! People thought he had dogs, apparently, I don’t remember that from the movie.

Jocasta: What if this guy is trying to make him real? Make him a real emperor?

Archie: Oh my gosh — OK, I do think we’re getting a little off track here.

But as he is saying this, Archie thinks to himself: “I need to ask Hobo Stan about this. I have the King of the Hoboes back in my office — if anyone would know about an Emperor Norton it’d be him.” Archie then hastily recounts what he and Marshall got up to the Examiner. But Marshall is still confused:

Marshall: So this plaque could have been installed by this fraternal organization as a joke … ?

Archie: But there is no plaque. Mitch is the only person who saw the plaque.

Marshall: There is no plaque. Right.

Roger: Mitch took a picture — we’ll get that picture developed in the photo lab, but I want you to know —

Mitch: You never know. You never know.

Roger: — but I want you to know, something happened there that opened the way.

Marshall: OK.

Roger: For all I know, Mitch is hearing spirits. There may be an Emperor Norton spirit. Sounds certainly like someone I know. But I’m telling you: capstone, condom, or whatever you call that prophylactic — somebody cracked something open and some things came in from the other side.

Archie: Still, I think the priority is the letter writer and their threats. The letter writer and the person who set the bomb, if they are the same person. Those are the priorities. And the concrete evidence that we have — the material we have from the FBI and the things that came to us in concrete physical form — suggest, I think, that a trip to Pittsburg might be in order.

Roger: Uh, but I don't feel good about the Pyramid just still being cracked open. Someone's gotta make sure it closes up.

Jocasta: Is it worth anybody —

Archie: Cracked open? But the damage was not severe, right?

Roger: When I’m talking about the Pyramid I’m talking about the world, man. It’s just — it’s not a cool thing, that kind of bad juju down there. Someone’s got to clean it up. If you guys don’t want to get involved that’s fine but, you know, if it’s going to send Mitch around the bend and pull emperors out of the air, it’s worth somebody doing a little something to make sure it’s closed back up.

Marshall: Well … we need to delegate, I think, or at least divide up the burden of labor here. We have to send someone or some people to Pittsburg. We have to send someone back to where this plaque was found to see what’s there and address that situation. Those are the two action items I can think of. Are there any others?

Jocasta: Is it worth looking into this E Clampus Virtus organization? Or do we think that’s just a coincidence? (chuckling) I know there are no coincidences.

Marshall: It wouldn’t hurt to at least give them a passing glance. My recommendation —

Roger: One other thing. There’s some school kids that are in danger, right?

Jocasta: True.

Roger: Me and Mitch just took a little bit of a drive around to see if there’s anybody looking out for things and believe it not, the po-po are all over the place. Like the police are actually on it for once in San Francisco. So someone’s taking this serious. And then, just so you know, it means that the police, certainly playing cops, are out there next to schools and stuff. So whatever sort of, like, doubts have now been sowed about the seriousness of the letter at the Examiner, the fact is that the FBI and SFPD are taking it seriously because they don't want to get caught with another Zodiac, basically.

Marshall: Jocasta, what was the sense that you got from the FBI in terms of whether they were withholding information from you or whether they were being forthright or whether you thought they had more information that they were maybe dubious about?

Jocasta: My sense is that it's still very early in their investigation so they hadn't turned up anything concrete yet. They seemed pretty open. My paperwork is pretty solid so I don't think that they were withholding anything from me. I mean, as usual, they probably were underestimating me and not taking me seriously because the FBI is even more of a boys’ club than most law enforcement agencies. But insofar as the the feds can ever be open and forthright with us, I think they were being pretty straight.

Roger: So what cover did you use? Just because I showed up and splashed an FBI badge all over the pyramid.

Jocasta: I have plenty of false paperwork but I was actually using my legitimate paperwork as part of the Army Security Agency.

Sophie: I feel like, if we have a lot of information on who this individual might be — I mean we have a profile right? We know psychologically who he is. We know, ethnically — basically when he was in Vietnam. My feeling would be that somebody should probably check VA hospital records. That’s a needle in a haystack but if you need research help, I’m here to do that.

Roger: Another thing is like vets groups and, uh, 12-step programs and things like that. There's a lot of people who, they don't just go — the VA lines are terrible and the psychologists, they're, you know, basically just — she'll fill up the wrong kind of drugs. So there's lots of other sort of secondary social groups that someone might just check out. You know, it's not too hard to cover to show up as a vet.

Sophie: That seems like a logical thing to check in Pittsburg. The VA — there’s a few VA hospitals in the Bay Area, but you’re right, Roger, if this person is in or around the city, those kind of things might be a good thing to check.

Jocasta: There’s a really good one at the Presidium. So I’ve heard.

Marshall: Well, I would like to send — or like to dispatch — Mitch to Pittsburg because we know that Mitch has a propensity to stumble into coincidences and —

Mitch: Sure.

Marshall: — that will help us with canvassing people —

Mitch: Sure.

Marshall: — and he also fits the demographic profile of a Pittsburg resident and therefore will not raise too much attention.

Mitch: It’s the part I was born to play.

Jocasta: If I can be presumptuous here, uh … Mitch, you can drive, right?

Mitch: Well, I mean, my feet work and my hands work. I don’t have a driver’s license.

Jocasta: Given that, and unless anybody else would like to go as well, my bet is that if we actually find this guy — which is unlikely, I don't think we're gonna drive straight to Pittsburg and see him hanging out on a street corner with a sandwich board that says, “ask me about my insane conspiracy theory” — but —

Mitch: If he has a sandwich board, he's going to have something bad on that sandwich board. He's going to have some visuals on it or whatever.

Roger: And the night watchman at the Pyramid, he didn’t see anything. That’s weird shit. Maybe he’s getting outside help.

Jocasta: Given that, if we happen to find him there, things could get a little hairy, it might be useful to have me along. And the reason I asked if you can drive, Mitch, is that on the way over, if I can be the passenger rather than the driver, I would like to look over the materials that we have — the sketches of where the bombs went off and just any other kind of stuff that we have on the statement that he — you know, the diatribe, for lack of a better word — because I have a fairly decent amount of occult skill and I want to just read over these materials and see if anything rings a bell or triggers an association. And I’ll need a little time to do that.

Roger: Why don’t I drive us?

Archie: Yes, right. Rather than trusting on Mitch's, uh, stochastic Zen driving, let’s have a driver take you.

By now it is late in the day, so Archie suggests that they plan for the Pittsburg trip to take place in the morning. Sophie asks what the team would like her to be working on while Mitch, Roger, and Jocasta are in Pittsburg. Archie tells her to start the ball rolling on the needle-in-the-haystack stuff, combing through VA records and hospital files to see if she can identify possible suspects based on Marshall’s psychological assessments and Jocasta’s flashback recall. Sophie says that it might make sense for her to tag along on the trip to Pittsburg, as it will allow her to get access to the local library and check in with the regional VA hospital. Marshall suggests that he will visit the VA’s main office and a few other veterans’ services charities in San Francisco to introduce himself and offer his services — and the Mission’s resources — to their cause. Perhaps offer to give some people a tour and an explanation of what he does and how he and his work can be helpful to the Bay Area’s veteran community. Archie notes that he needs to check in with Dr. Stanton and will spend some time noodling over how to counteract the potential memetic impact of the bomber’s letter to the Examiner. On her way out the door, Jocasta asks Archie if he thinks the new ARPANET terminals may be useful. Archie immediately foists her off on the Librarian, who happily volunteers to request some “terminal time” to research a few key words (“ziggurat,” “pyramid,” buried children, etc.).

Once everyone has gone home, Sophie is ensconced in her cubicle, and Archie has closed his office door, Mitch draws out his Tarot cards. He shuffles them lazily and then lays out a simple three-card spread:

Mitch’s interpretation of this spread is that whatever happens next is going to involve motion. That’s the Chariot. Somebody is being held prisoner, or against their will. That the Eight of Swords. And the Emperor? Well, that could be a father figure — a literal emperor. It could be there is a father or a father figure somewhere. Perhaps deified, perhaps to be propitiated. An odd spread, Mitch muses, since in his own personal mythology, the Chariot is Roger and the Emperor is Marshall.

In Archie’s office, he debates whether he should first call Dr. Stanton or talk to his puppet, Hobo Stan, about this Emperor Norton character. He decides he should confer with the puppet first. He takes Hobo Stan out of his box and puts him on his hand. Hobo Stan’s dead button eyes look at him; Archie’s desk lamp casts a sinister yellow tint to the room, shadows playing on the walls and corners. Initially, it is just Archie talking to himself: “Hello Hobo Stan! Why, ‘ello Archie!” But after a few moments, Hobo Stan’s dialect changes, his hobo accent growing more pronounced and his movements more autonomous.

Hobo Stan: So I see you’re in a little bit of a pickle.

Archie: Well, I know we haven't talked in a while but I just wanted to know if, well, I wanted to know how you're doing, of course! But, um, yeah. I thought that maybe there … I had some questions I wanted to ask you.

Hobo Stan: So you come to me, King of the Hoboes. Who did you friend there — he’s a bit of a hobo himself — who did he meet tonight, who did he come across?

Archie: That’s right! Mitch started telling us some story about some character who called himself the Emperor of the United States, Emperor Norton.

Hobo Stan: (crumpling up his face, and shaking violently, his next words are shouted in gibberish Aulang) HE SHALL COME AGAIN!

Hobo Stan explains to Archie that Mitch has been exposed to History B so much, so often, that he is remembering a version of history that none of URIEL can remember. Also:

Hobo Stan: (in English) The dame was right! (he draws the hobo symbol for “in this house there is a good woman” in the air) She was right. He needs to come back! He is very, very important. To all of us.

Archie: This emperor, is he a sinister character?

Hobo Stan: Why, he just wants everyone to be free. To ride the rails. To go to Big Rock Candy Mountain. To live life the way they’re supposed to. The way they want to.

Archie: Well, that doesn’t sound too bad, Hobo Stan. But, you know: there’s good kinds of freedom and bad kinds of freedom.

Hobo Stan: Ah! I don’t know that, do I? All I know is the freedom to ride the rails and climb any mountain I please. To be able, at the end of the day, to get myself in front of the fire and cook some vittles. Doesn’t everybody deserve that, Mr. Ransom?

Archie: Can you tell me anymore about this Emperor Norton character?

Hobo Stan: Well, I do know that it is hard for some people to — some people consider it hard to believe in him. And the folks who do, sometimes … sometimes they go a little too far.

Archie thanks Hobo Stan for his time and puts him back in his box.

Wednesday, February 14, 1973. Valentine’s Day! Marshall is driven into San Francisco with his assistant Sunshine Parker to visit a few veterans’ services charities. Roger, Mitch, Jocasta, and Sophie convene at Livermore. As they get in the car, Roger points at the radio, looks squarely at Mitch, and says, “You don’t touch that.” Mitch says: “OK. That’s fair.” They drive north, to Pittsburg.

Marshall spends his day amid the veterans community. He visits several half-way homes, support groups, the VA center, YMCAs, etc. As he talks with staff and volunteers and a few actual vets, he hears again and again rumors about a man who seems truly disturbed. This man, whoever he is, talks often about pyramids as a means of control and how the Eye of Providence on the back of the US dollar watches the world. Marshall determines that this person may be the bomber and that he is seeding, or spreading, a meme among San Francisco’s veteran community. In his estimation, the meme is crude but potent. Whoever created the meme — whether it is the bomber or someone else — knows just enough about memetics and occult symbolism to make the thing work. It’s kind of like a memetic pipe bomb: simple but effective. Marshall puzzles over next steps, and on his way back to Sonoma, thinks aloud about sending a bus into town to gather up a group of veterans to conduct “contact tracing” on the meme’s origins.

On the ride to Pittsburg, Jocasta thumbs through the contents of the FBI’s file and a few of the records pulled by Roger about the Transamerica Pyramid. Drawing upon her extensive occult knowledge, she loses herself in thought:

The Transamerica insurance company is a huge conglomerate. Let's say for the sake of argument — and again, it's never, as far as your experience goes, it's never a bad thing to be completely paranoid — you're feeling that this huge symbol of finance, of rock solidness of — you know, who are you going to trust in this world, if not an insurance company, right? That’s what they're there for. They're there to ensure and assure you. The idea that this piece of real estate — which you're now finding has some kind of weird history to it — resulted in urban renewal, basically knocking down this you know almost 100 year old set of buildings and putting up this giant modernist skyscraper. Your paranoia might be working overtime here but you're feeling like the the letter writer might have been right, in that this building was literally put here to like put a stop to all that. And the only organization that could do that is Project SANDMAN.

Perhaps the bomber is launching a counter-attack against the symbol of the great white pyramid, that ultimate symbol of the secret masters of the world? But if that was the case, why didn’t he actually blow the building up? Why just detonate a bunch of harmless flash-bangs on the external columns? Maybe he didn’t have the ammo. Maybe. But in Jocasta’s estimation, Roger’s right: the bomber was trying to send a message. The bombing was symbolic. And symbols matter, especially when it comes to contested pieces of psycho-geography. As she wraps up this train of thought and puts the documents away, Jocasta explains her thinking to the rest of the group in Roger’s car.

Eventually the team pulls off the highway into Pittsburg. Based on Roger’s knowledge of the area, he’s able to hone in on areas of especial interest: churches that host AA meetings, public buildings that hold community outreach events, dive bars that cater to veterans of foreign wars, etc. As they drive around town and chat with the locals, they confront a side of the Bay Area that is often overlooked: a forgotten, dilapidated port-town filled with vacant foundries and rundown fisheries, polluted water and bad air, ramshackle homes in need of renovation. For Roger, such poverty is a common enough thing, but rare to witness among white folks. He thinks to himself that the vibe here feels similar to the vibe in Watts in the weeks leading up to the riots. A simmering anger. A desperation. A sense of abandonment.

While the rest of the team conducts interviews and boots-on-the-ground reconnaissance, and Sophie pulls records from the local library and city hall, Mitch hears the caw of a seagull. He feels the urge to get down to water level — water always finds the lowest ground, right? He wanders off in that direction. Even though it’s the middle of the day, he finds the dockyards near-full. The people of Pittsburg cannot fish anymore. The water is foul, slick with oil and runoff, opaque brown. It immediately becomes clear to Mitch why the fishing community here is dying, and he thinks back to that Eight of Swords, the woman wrapped in chains standing on a watery beach. Then: a lightbulb over his head. Whoever the bomber is, he is connected with the fishing industry in some way.

Back at Livermore, Archie calls Dr. Stanton. After Archie catches his superior up on the situation, Dr. Stanton asks if URIEL has any suspects. Archie says that they do not have a specific person identified, but that they’ve worked up a profile and, as far as they can tell, they have no reason to think the bomber is anything other than an angry, disturbed individual. He also remarks that the Transamerica Pyramid is an interesting target, to which Dr. Stanton promptly responds: “Oh, absolutely. We put it there.” Archie seizes this opportunity:

Archie: Oh, is there some kind of a, uh, subduction zone there? Mitchell is sensitive to these things and he had a bit of a, uh, a bit of an experience.

Frank: I would ask him to be careful there but again, we need to make sure that further damage is not done to the building. It’s very important, I would imagine that this individual was not just not able to get ahold of the — of what would be needed to take the building down, thank goodness. But this is a blow and I … well, what I really need to know here is, is this person a former Sandman or not? You’d better get your — I mean, your whole team has been in Vietnam. I think that’s where you need to go next, to find out what this individual did over there. We will have the folks at Granite Peak go through personnel records to see if anybody matches this profile.

Archie says that this possibility is indeed disturbing, and gives Dr. Stanton a bit more information about what they know in order to assist in pulling records. As he does so, he hears the Telex machine kick into gear. Wrapping up with Dr. Stanton, he heads over to the machine and sees documents coming through in response to Sophie’s ARPANET keyword search from the night before. Among the documents is an Army psychologist’s profile of a patient, including his name and the fact that he is from Pittsburg, California.

In Pittsburg, the team pulls into an old diner to grab lunch and exchange information on what they’ve found. Sophie starts:

I think I might have an idea of who might be behind this. I went through the old newspaper records and I found (here she lays some Xeroxed papers on the table) three letters to the editor of the local Pittsburg paper who started off being disillusioned about his service in Vietnam. He said that he flew some missions over there — secret missions. The first letter says that he's tired of everybody not understanding what Vietnam veterans go through. A very very common complaint in 1969, 1970, when all that was happening. This individual wrote again to the newspaper in ‘72 and his letters start to show a few of the signals that we saw in the letter to the Examiner from the other day. So I have a name and after the name it says that this individual lives in Pittsburg, California.

“Franklin D.”

Just a last initial. I don't have any more than that. But it's somewhere to start. I think we just have to go get ourselves a white pages and look for look through the Ds for Franklins.

Roger says they should follow standard operating procedure and call into Livermore first. At Livermore, Archie reads over the psychologist’s profile with baited breath. The profile is of a man named Franklin D. DiGiuseppe — a pilot who served in Vietnam for an extended period, but whose records omit any information for the time period from 1967 to 1968. For those years, the report says only, “DETACHED ON DUTY TO COUNTER INTELLIGENCE.” The psychologist’s report on Frank’s visits sync up with what URIEL knows of the man: he starts off talking about how people don’t appreciate the service he and others performed in Vietnam, then, in 1970, he checks in with a VA psychiatrist reporting delusions about buildings being used to keep the population under control. As Archie wraps up the report, the phone rings. It is Marshall, calling from the Mission. Archie tells Marshall they may have found the guy. A second later, the third line on the phone lights up. It’s Roger, calling from a payphone at the diner. Archie conveys all of Frank’s information to Roger. He also tells Roger that Frank may — may — be ex-Sandman, so he must be approached with care. Roger asks what his orders are. Archie tells him that they want him taken in alive, in one piece, if that’s possible. “I’d hate there to be any bloodshed.” Roger says he’ll discuss the sitrep with the rest of the team in Pittsburg and call back in an hour.

At the Mission, Marshall thinks about what Archie told him and recalls something from his days in Vietnam. There was this program … an unofficial, off-the-books program involving pilots flying covert missions over Laos and Cambodia. The Steve Canyon Program? Yes. That’s what the flyboys used to call it. So if Frank isn’t ex-Sandman, he’s at least ex-CIA. Marshall hastens to call Archie, get the payphone number that Roger called from, and then calls the diner. Roger knows it’s for him and, sighing, heads to the back to pick it up. Marshall tells him what he knows about the Steve Canyon Program and warns Roger to proceed with caution, as Frank may well be a spook. Roger chuckles, “And me without my AK-47.” Marshall goes on: “If he remembers anything from his training, he probably is not staying at his primary residence. But other than that, please, again, be extremely careful.” They hang up.

After Roger explains the situation to the rest of the group, Sophie gets visibly tense. She starts ripping her napkin into pieces and muttering to herself. Jocasta attempts to reassure her. Mitch mutters, “You haven’t known her for very long.” Roger offers to send her back to Livermore but Sophie declines, saying she’s duty-bound to see this through. Jocasta asks what the team’s marching orders are: bring him in or terminate with prejudice? Roger says Archie wants him brought in, if at all possible. Jocasta offers a few ideas for smoking Frank out, but Roger says he’s worried that usual tactics won’t work, based on what Marshall told him. But first, they need to find where he’s at. Mitch says that’s not a problem. He flips open a White Pages and slaps his finger down on a name and an address. The name is Frank’s, and the address is in Pittsburg.

The team decides to conduct some preliminary surveillance of the address. Driving there, they find a small house dating from the late ‘40s or early ‘50s. In the driveway is an old sedan and a fishing boat on blocks. The yard is unkempt, the house in disrepair. Someone is clearly living there, though. The team drives by a few times before parking across the street to observe the goings-on. Eventually, they see the outline of a stooped figure, definitely male, puttering around inside. It doesn’t look like the outline of a young former pilot. Everyone in the car debates what to do. Mitch volunteers to just walk up to the door and ring the doorbell, see what happens. Roger is not enthused by this plan but concedes if anyone could away with doing that and living it is Mitch. They settle on that plan in modified form: Mitch will approach and Jocasta will sneak around to the rear of the house to give cover.

Mitch gets out of the car and walks up the cracked pathway to the front door. There’s no doorbell, but there is a knocker. He bangs it. A moment later he hears a slurred voice say he’s coming. The door squeaks open. On the other side is an older man, probably late 50s or early 60s, cadaverously thin, with an oxygen tank on a rolling cart and tubes running into his nose. He’s plainly not doing well. Mitch says he’s looking for Frank. The old man says he hasn’t seen Frank for a couple of weeks. Mitch asks where he is. The old man says he doesn’t know, probably at his apartment in the city. He then asks who Mitch is. Mitch introduces himself using his real name, and asks again if Frank is there. But as he asks this, he catches a glance of the old man’s reflection in a big mirror over the fireplace mantel. What he sees is the old man’s head — but it’s not his head, it’s an actual naked skull.