DECEPTIVE DELIVERY

I was eight years old the first time I warned America of an impending invasion. Nobody listened. In fairness, I was dressed like Paul Revere. Every year our elementary school put on some lame patriotic play involving the American Revolution. There were childish songs, cardboard muskets, construction-paper hats and scenery painted by people who clearly had no future in art.

It was difficult to distinguish a tree from a lamppost. Or a Patriot from a Brit. I landed Paul Revere. Dad couldn't have been prouder.

You would have thought I'd been elected president. Mom was in the audience. Cassie was there too, probably under threat of losing her phone if she didn't attend. Dad had a video camera pointed at the stage and, knowing him, enough spare batteries to document the entire Revolutionary War. My job was simple. Walk onto the stage carrying a lantern and warn everyone that the British were coming.

That's it. No singing. Thank God. I walked out, held the lantern high and yelled:

“The British are coming! The British are coming!”

The audience applauded. I should have stopped there. I didn't. For reasons I still can't explain, I decided Paul Revere needed a little more urgency.

“THE GODDAMN BRITISH ARE COMING!”

Half the parents laughed. The other half gasped. Mom looked like she wanted to crawl under her seat. Cassie was hysterical.

Dad?

He smiled. Then gave me that sly little wink of approval only a kid could understand.

That's my son.

Years later, I would think about that stupid school play more than any normal adult should. Not because of the profanity. Because Paul Revere had one enormous advantage over us. He knew who was coming.

We didn't. Dad thought he did. When I was eight, the same year I played Paul Revere, he told me a story about a frog. My father loved analogies. Most were good. Some required considerably more patience.

This one stuck.

“Aiken, what happens if you throw a frog into boiling water?”

“I don't know.”

“He jumps out.”

Seemed reasonable.

“But put that same frog in cold water and slowly turn up the heat...”

I looked at him.

“And?”

“He stays.”

“Until when?”

“Until the water boils.”

I remember staring at him, wondering why my father was contemplating ways to murder frogs.

“Why wouldn't he jump out?”

“Because the change happens slowly. He doesn't recognize the danger until it's too late.”

I nodded like an eight-year-old who understood. I didn't. Then Dad said something I did understand.

“We're the frog.”

That concerned me considerably more. I looked around our kitchen.

“What water?”

Dad laughed.

“There isn't any water, Aiken.”

“Then how are we the frog?”

“You'll understand someday.”

I hated when adults said that. It usually meant they didn't know how to explain whatever nonsense they'd just told you. Dad knew. He just wasn't ready to tell me.

Sixteen years later, Professor Julian Kilgore told me essentially the same story. Only Julian didn't talk about frogs. He talked about people. And unlike Dad, Julian had names.

Twenty-six of them. He kept the list folded inside his right pocket. I'd seen him reach for it enough times to know exactly where it was, although for weeks he refused to let me read it. The paper itself wasn't impressive. Crumpled.

Folded. Names written by hand. Some had numbers beside them. Others had marks I didn't understand. Twenty-six people.

“Who are they?” I asked.

Julian folded the paper and put it back in his pocket.

“The most destructive.”

That was all he'd say. I should probably tell you something about Professor Kilgore. He was brilliant. He was paranoid.

He smoked cigars that smelled like burning furniture. And when I first met him, I wasn't entirely convinced he was sane. Neither was anyone else. Julian didn't particularly care.

That's one of the things I eventually liked about him. He had spent most of his adult life studying history and the rest arguing that much of what we'd been taught wasn't history at all.

“History is written by the winners,” he'd tell me.

Then he'd take a long pull from that damned cigar and add:

“Until the losers get control of the textbooks.”

Julian believed America hadn't been attacked.

It had been delivered.

Piece by piece. Year by year. Child by child. The first delivery, according to him, arrived in October of 1962.

Thirteen miles off the coast of Montauk, New York. No bombs. No missiles. No soldiers.

Babies. Hundreds of them. Russian orphans.

That was the moment I stopped wondering whether Professor Julian Kilgore was insane.

I became reasonably certain of it.

“You're telling me the Soviet Union invaded America with babies?”

Julian stared at me.

“Yes.”

“Babies.”

“Yes.”

“Russian babies.”

His expression never changed.

“Yes, Aiken.”

I waited for him to smile. He didn't.

“That's your invasion?”

“No.”

He leaned forward.

“That was the delivery.”

There are moments in life when common sense tells you to get up, walk away and never speak to someone again. This was one of them. Instead, I stayed. Curiosity has caused most of the problems in my life.

This would be one of the bigger ones.

“What happened to the babies?”

For the first time, Julian smiled. Not warmly.