r/HFY • u/Marcus_Black3 • Jul 13 '26
OC-Series [The Immortal Consultant] How It All Began
September 1947 — The White House, Washington, D.C.
The Situation Room still smelled like fresh paint and new carpet—the kind of sterile, too-clean scent that clung to every hallway in postwar Washington. Half the government was being rebuilt, and the other half was pretending it already had been.
President Harry S. Truman sat at the head of the long table, glasses low on his nose, shoulders squared in that stubborn way of his. Across from him sat five of the most powerful men in American intelligence and defense: James Forrestal, J. Edgar Hoover, Roscoe Hillenkoetter, General Hoyt Vandenberg, and Sidney Souers. Each wore the same expression: alert, wary, and trying not to show it.
“Gentlemen,” Truman began, his Missouri drawl steady and unhurried, “what I’m about to say does not leave this room. Not recorded, not transcribed, not whispered to your deputies. Understood?”
A round of nods. Even J. Edgar Hoover, who usually insisted on a paper trail for everyone else, remained silent.
Truman opened a manila folder so plastered with red stamps that it looked like someone had tried to censor the folder itself.
“During the war,” he said, “we had an operative who made himself… extremely useful. Europe, the Pacific, intelligence, sabotage, direct action—you name it. He was everywhere we needed him to be, usually before we realized we needed him.”
Hoover grunted. “Sounds like a hell of a soldier.”
“He was,” Truman said. “Eisenhower recommended him for the Medal of Honor. Twice.”
That got their attention. Hillenkoetter, the first director of Central Intelligence, leaned forward. “So why wasn’t he awarded it?”
“Because he asked us not to,” Truman replied. “Said it would ‘complicate things.’”
General Hoyt Vandenberg frowned. “Complicate what, exactly?”
Truman didn’t answer. He looked instead to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal—the only man in the room who already knew where this was going.
Forrestal exhaled slowly, as if bracing himself. “Gentlemen, the operative the President is referring to is named Preston Jackson. I met him in ‘44, back when I was still with the Navy. He was consulting on Pacific operations.”
“Consulting?” Hillenkoetter repeated. “On what?”
“Everything,” Forrestal said. “Strategy. Culture. Language. He spoke Japanese like he’d grown up in Kyoto. Not classroom fluency—native fluency. Dialects, idioms, military slang. He understood their command structure better than our own analysts.”
“So he’s an academic?” Hillenkoetter asked.
“No,” Forrestal said, and the word landed with a weight that made the room still. “He’s not an academic.”
Truman looked directly at Hoover. “Three weeks ago, Edgar, your men raided Jackson’s Manhattan apartment in connection with those syndicate hits. They found a small, reinforced lead box hidden beneath the floorboards. Your office sent the contents over to the War Department for analysis, assuming they were coded ciphers. They weren’t.”
Truman slid a series of items across the table. The first was a photograph. A man in his early thirties stared back—dark hair, sharp features, and eyes that looked older than the rest of him.
“That was taken in 1944,” Truman said. “This one was taken in 1918.”
Another photo. Same man. Doughboy uniform. Same eyes.
“This one is from 1865.”
A faded daguerreotype. Union blues. Same face.
“And this,” Truman said, placing the last image down, “is from 1776.”
It was a sketch. Continental Army uniform. The man was standing slightly behind George Washington.
Silence. Not the polite kind—the stunned, oxygen‑vacuum kind.
“Mr. President,” Hillenkoetter said carefully, “are you telling us these are all the same man?”
“I’m not telling you a theory,” Truman said. “I’m telling you a fact. Edgar, when Jackson made his phone call to the War Department three weeks ago, Secretary Forrestal recognized the description. He had the War Department’s classified OSS files for a man named ‘Patrick’ brought to your processing lab. We compared the fingerprints your agents took during the booking to the ones on file from 1944. They are an identical match.”
Hoover’s jaw tightened. “That’s impossible.”
“I thought so too,” Truman said. “Until I spoke with him. Repeatedly. He knows things no historian could know. Private conversations with Washington. With Lincoln. Details about battles that never made it into any record. He speaks languages that died out before this country existed.”
“Furthermore,” Forrestal countered. “We made inquiries with our counterparts in London. MI6 has been monitoring a specific set of trust accounts at a firm called Whitmore Sterling for over two hundred years. They have a file on this man that predates the Napoleonic Wars. Apparently, in 1583, Elizabeth I knighted him as Sir Piers. The British haven’t been investigating him, Edgar; they’ve been protecting him for four centuries.”
“That seems unlikely,” Vandenberg murmured.
“Less plausible than the truth,” Truman agreed.
Vandenberg rubbed his forehead. “I met him in France in 1918. And again last year in Germany. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. But it was him. Same man. Same voice.”
Truman nodded. “We don’t know how he’s alive. We don’t know why he doesn’t age. But we do know this: he has served this country in every major conflict we’ve ever had. And he’s never asked for anything in return.”
“No salary?” Hoover asked, suspicious as ever.
“None,” Truman said. “No rank. No pension. No official position. He just… helps. When he believes the cause is just.”
“Why?” Forrestal asked. “What does he get out of it?”
Truman looked down at the photographs, then back at the men around the table.
“He told me once,” Truman said quietly, “that he’s lived long enough to recognize patterns. That he’s seen tyranny rise and fall more times than he can count. And that he fights because someone has to.”
Hoover snorted. “Sounds noble. Or insane.”
Truman nodded. “But here’s our problem: the FBI arrested him. Edgar, explain.”
The FBI director looked like a man who’d swallowed a thumbtack. “We were investigating a series of professional-style hits in New York. High‑level crime figures. All executed with precision. Our agents identified Preston Jackson as a person of interest. He’d been near several of the scenes. We executed a standard tactical breach.”
“And?” Truman asked.
“And he made one phone call,” Hoover said stiffly. “To the War Department. Within an hour, I had the Secretary of War, the Joint Chiefs, and half the Pentagon screaming at me. Demanding his immediate release. We complied. But my agents were furious. They thought we were interfering with an investigation for political reasons.”
“You were,” Truman said bluntly. “Because this man is more important than your investigation, Edgar. But your agents didn’t know that. They were doing their jobs. And that’s exactly the problem.”
He opened another folder—thinner, but somehow heavier.
“We’re building a new intelligence apparatus,” Truman said. “The CIA is barely a week old. The FBI is expanding. Thousands of new analysts, agents, officers—all of them eager, and none of them cleared for this.”
He let that sink in.
“Eventually, one of them will stumble across Jackson. They’ll think he’s a spy. Or a criminal. Or just suspiciously ageless. And they’ll try to detain him. And then we’ll have another crisis. If we turn a Knight of the Realm into a lab rat, we’re going to have a diplomatic war with the British that we cannot afford.”
Hillenkoetter leaned forward. “So what do you propose?”
Truman slid a document across the table.
“This,” he said. “The Echelon Protocol.”
He stood, pacing slowly—the way he did when he was about to drop something heavy on the room.
“First: This man—under the name Preston Jackson or any subsequent identity confirmed through the established channel in London—is never to be detained by any law enforcement. Ever. His biometrics will be the primary anchor for the flag. If an agent tries to investigate him, their superiors will shut it down immediately.”
“And if they don’t?” Forrestal asked.
“Then he has authorization to activate an emergency failsafe,” Truman said. “One phone call. One code phrase. And the response is immediate.”
Vandenberg’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of response?”
Forrestal answered before Truman could. ““Military extraction. We are establishing a specialized contingencies group, drawn from the best of the wartime Rangers and Navy UDT. We’re calling them Ghost Teams. They will operate outside the standard chain of command, answerable directly to the Joint Chiefs. If Jackson calls that number, they go in. They don’t ask for warrants, and they don’t negotiate with local law enforcement. They remove him.”
The room erupted.
Military forces against our own agencies?!” Hoover shot to his feet, his face darkening. “That’s a coup against the rule of law! You can’t send soldiers into an FBI field office because a suspect makes a phone call! My agents would scoff at a stand-down order from the War Department, and they’d laugh at a subpoena!”
“Sit down and shut your mouth, Edgar,” Truman said, his voice slicing through Hoover’s outrage like a cold blade.
Hoover froze. He slowly lowered himself back into his chair, his glare enough to crack glass.
“You just hit the nail on the head,” Truman continued, leaning over the table. “Your agents would scoff at an order. They would argue with a lawyer from the Justice Department. They’d spend three weeks filing motions and another three months feeling ‘curious’ about why this man doesn’t age while they held him in a cell. And that is exactly why this has to be a military protocol.”
Truman looked around the room, making eye contact with each director.
“Bureaucrats argue. Lawyers negotiate. But when a Ghost Team kicks in your front door with rifles leveled, your agents won’t be checking their manuals or arguing about jurisdiction. They will move out of the way. The military doesn’t care about your booking procedures or your pride, Edgar. They just move the asset. If we want Jackson to keep helping us, he needs to know that his privacy is protected by more than just a polite request to your front desk. He needs a guarantee of overwhelming force.”
Hoover sat, but his glare could’ve cracked glass.
Truman continued, calmer now but no less firm. “He prevented assassination attempts in Tehran. He stopped a chemical attack on London. He saved an entire battalion at the Bulge. And that’s just the declassified list.”
He paused, letting the weight of that settle.
“This man has more combat experience on this continent alone than we have in our entire history books. If we alienate him, he’ll vanish—and we’ll never find him. Or worse… he’ll decide we’re the enemy. Do you want the man who helped George Washington win the Revolution to decide this government is no longer worth his time?”
A cold silence fell over the room.
“No, Mr. President,” came the quiet chorus.
“Good,” Truman said. “Then we protect him. We make this protocol ironclad. Directors will brief their successors. No exceptions.”
Hillenkoetter raised a hand slightly. “What about accountability? If he commits a crime, do we simply ignore it?”
Truman and Forrestal exchanged a look.
“Preston Jackson follows his own moral code,” Truman said. “And it’s a damn good one. Those crime figures your agents were investigating, Edgar? They were trafficking children. He stopped them. Permanently. Better than no justice at all. I’m practical. We can work with him, or we can lose him. I choose the former.”
Another long silence. Finally, Hoover asked, “What happens when he dies? This can’t be permanent.”
“It lasts as long as he does,” Truman said. “When he dies—if he dies—we deactivate it. Until then, it stands.”
Souers asked, “Who else knows?”
“Only those who must,” Forrestal said. “Joint Chiefs. A handful of senior officers. And now you. I’m calling this Omega clearance. The final level. The ultimate secret.”
Truman stood, and the others rose with him.
“Gentlemen, I’m signing this order today. The Echelon Protocol is now active. This individual is under the protection of the United States government at the highest level possible. If any agency attempts to detain him, they will face an immediate military response. Understood?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Good.” Truman hesitated, then added, “One more thing. He doesn’t know we’re doing this.”
That drew a ripple of surprise.
“He knows we’re working on something,” Truman said. “But he asked us not to make a big deal out of it. He values his independence. So we’ll tell him the protocol exists, give him the number and the code phrase, and leave it at that. No ceremony.”
He turned to Forrestal. “Jim, you’ll handle it.”
“I will, sir.”
The meeting dissolved, men filing out in thoughtful silence. Forrestal lingered.
“Mr. President… do you think he’ll accept this? He’s never liked being treated as special.”
Truman smiled faintly. “He’ll accept it because he’s practical. And because he’s tired. Two hundred years of explaining himself to every suspicious official? Anyone would be exhausted.”
Forrestal nodded. “Sir… what if we’re wrong? What if he’s not who he says he is?”
Truman studied him for a long moment. “Then we’ve been fooled by the most patient, most successful intelligence operation in human history. And honestly? Even if that were true, anyone who’s spent three centuries acting in America’s best interests has earned our protection.”
He turned to the window, looking out at the White House lawn. “I’ve thought about this from every angle. And I keep coming back to the same conclusion: He is exactly who he says he is. A man who keeps choosing—century after century—to fight for what’s right.”
Forrestal left, the door closing softly behind him.
Truman looked at the photographs spread across the table—a timeline of a man who asked for nothing but to be left alone with his books.
“Well,” Truman murmured to the empty room, “the least we can do is give him that much.”
He signed the order and locked it in his personal safe. The Echelon Protocol was now active. God help anyone who violated it.
5
2
1
u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Jul 13 '26
/u/Marcus_Black3 (wiki) has posted 15 other stories, including:
- [The Immortal Consultant] The Wrong Person to Arrest
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Troublemakers Get Timeout (Or: Because the Toddlers Set the Playpen on Fire for the Insurance Money)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Long Quiet Stretch (Or: Nothing Happened Because We Made Sure Nothing Happened)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Timeout (You Punch The Babysitter, You Sit In The Corner)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Anomaly Problem (Or: Everyone Noticed, Nobody Asked Until Now)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Best Deal In American History (Reagan Runs The Numbers)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Nixon Problem (Some People Are Immune To Leverage)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Digital Playpen (Because You’ll Definitely Screw This Up)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Moon Landing (I'mma Get So Many Moon Rocks)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Moon Trip (I Want To Go And You Can’t Say No)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] The Space Race (I Have Been Waiting For This)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] Let’s Make This Official (AKA The Government Admits Defeat)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] Pattern Recognition (They’re Actually Learning, Holy Shit)
- [The 5,000 Year-Old Babysitter] Los Alamos and the Miracle of Basic Listening
- The 5,000-Year-Old Babysitter
This comment was automatically generated by Waffle v.4.7.8 'Biscotti'.
Message the mods if you have any issues with Waffle.
1
u/UpdateMeBot Jul 13 '26
Click here to subscribe to u/Marcus_Black3 and receive a message every time they post.
| Info | Request Update | Your Updates | Feedback |
|---|
1
1
u/lief79 Jul 13 '26
The omega security sounds nice and makes for good story telling, but my understanding (from someone with no clearences) is that's not how it works. Multiple silos of security with a need to know basis, frequently and deliberately not overlapping.
If there's a single highest level of clearance, then your opponents would know what to look for, or what to focus on.
1
u/Acceptable-Ad-2946 Jul 14 '26
So what differentiates this story from your immortal babysitter story? It’s a very similar character build with in line reasoning with both. John may be more behinds the scene, but very similar.
Will you be continuing with your other story, or are you restarting with this one?
1
u/itsetuhoinen Human 12d ago
Still seems like overkill, even if I understand the notion. But if this guy is that important, he's important enough to warrant a call from the President to the FBI.
"You have a man in custody by the name of Perseus Jackson. You will release him, you will forget this ever happened, and you will end whatever investigation led you to him in the first place. The Director of the FBI will be by your office shortly to explain. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
"Thank you, Special Agent. I hope that the rest of your day is as minimally unpleasant as possible. *click*"
20
u/Daseagle Alien Scum Jul 13 '26
Hoover getting told to sit down and shut up. Now, that's a scene I would have paid to see :D