by Bryan O
“It’s already a mockery!”
“You just remember: David beat Goliath, not the United States Military.” Storm quickly surveyed others nearby, making sure his quiet furry hadn’t attracted any eavesdroppers, then continued. “I don’t like everything I see, but certain people and circumstances should be left alone. I don’t know how far along you are with your plans, but covertly sending an FBI agent onto a secret military installation is not oversight; it’s tantamount to espionage. They’ll bury your man in that desert. Then come after you. I’m being kind by warning you.” He extended his hand for a shake, not out of courtesy or respect, but in a calculated fashion to control the conversation and signal their exchange was over.
Watching Storm return to his military cohorts, the congressman considered Storm’s parting statement about not liking everything he saw, and how it contrasted with a previous remark: If there was any truth to them, I would know.
Warnings and actions were two different problems. The congressman knew Storm was making idle threats to keep his committee from being scrutinized. Plus, Storm misunderstood the situation; the congressman’s man was already in the desert, and was far from being buried.
Minutes after Storm left him, the congressman’s phone rang.
“Where are you?” Grason asked fervently.
“Good timing,” the congressman replied. “I’m at that GRATCOR function I told you about. We have a problem.”
“Call me after you’ve left, and use a landline.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve got troubles too.”
“Get out of that place and call me back.”
The congressman was eager to talk, but sensed the urgency in Grason’s voice. He hung up the phone and left the party. After driving a few blocks he found a gas station with a payphone in the parking lot.
“Someone broke into the professor’s lab and bugged his house,” Grason informed him once they were in contact again. “Tried to look at his files. He thinks they’re watching him.”
“How can that be? You haven’t given him anything yet.”
“They didn’t find him through us. I assume his FOIA request for documents raised a flag somewhere. I think we discovered the problem immediately, the professor took good precautions.”
“We’ve got to believe that whoever is interested in the professor is the same group we have an interest in. Maybe you can work some counterintelligence?”
“I’m trying. But I’m having trouble getting him to stay at his house.”
“Then put him on hiatus until we know it’s safe.”
Grason was surprised to hear the congressman take the conservative approach.
“In the meantime,” the congressman continued, “Val should be back from his second trip. Better luck?”
“A little, but let’s not discuss that over the phone. Bottom line is he’ll have to make another trip.”
“It might be the last time we can risk sending him. The cat’s head is out of the bag in Washington, but they don’t realize the investigation is operational.”
Grason didn’t like hearing there was a leak on the political end, but had no option other than to deal with it. After hanging up, he stretched out on the aging avocado green couch in his office. He closed his eyes and milled over the operation, where it was, and where he wanted to take it. The sofa felt comfortable. He liked spending time in his office, surrounded by all the electronic devices that helped make his career exciting: recording devices, anti-recording devices, state-of-the-art computer equipment. The one piece of equipment Grason didn’t have: the laser-guided listening device that was trained on his office window.
• • •
Outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, across Veteran Avenue, a small parabolic satellite dish had been installed atop a six-story apartment building by Damien Owens’ Aquarius agents. The results weren’t as effective as tapping Grason’s phone because the dish only recorded his end of the conversation, but was less risky than tapping the FBI’s secured phone lines.
Routine investigations by the Aquarius teams into individuals studying fringe sciences had led them to Professor Eldred, who led them to Grason Kendricks, and would soon lead them to the congressman.
CHAPTER 33
Blake returned home and found a phone message from Professor Eldred telling him to take some time off—no mention of how long—and he would be in touch. Trying to return the call proved frustrating; the professor wasn’t answering his phone, and had disconnected his answering machine. Time off? Blake wondered. He had just taken three days off, and the professor had seemed disappointed to see him go.
Having the professor as an employer was an awkward situation. Now he understood why people advised against conducting business with friends. He couldn’t afford to take much time off, but felt uncomfortable making an issue of it. Maybe I jumped into the project too soon, he thought. Could gravity really be an attainable resource? His time with Desmond did nothing to advance his understanding of the classified document. Although the science of antigravity had captivated him, he wondered if it was better studied by ufologists, not someone looking to start an engineering career.
After being home for two days, Blake began to feel directionless, and did something he had never done before by watching daytime television, evening television, and prime time television all in the same day. On the third night he considered a return to productivity through new channels of employment and printed a copy of his resume to review, but before he could give considerable thought about where to send it he received a late-night knock at his door. Opening the door revealed the professor’s slight frame.
“Hello, Blake,” he said with a somber face.
Although Blake had been upset by the professor’s ambiguity on the answering machine days earlier, and their present state of affairs, seeing the frail man saddened him. The last thing Blake wanted to do was let this situation jeopardize their relationship. “I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said, forcing himself to sound happy. “Is everything all right?”
“My house was infested with bugs.”
“Infested? I saw a few roaches, but no more than I’ve grown accustomed to living with Trevor.”
“I don’t like the roaches, but it was the bugs you couldn’t see that made me leave.” He motioned with his hand for Blake to step outside. “Let’s take a walk.”
The professor thought the easiest way to handle the situation with Blake was to tell him about the FBI, the break-ins at his house, and how this whole project had turned into a disaster, but he was a man of his word, and had agreed not to discuss Operation Patriot. “I’m having some troubles right now. I think I need to take a vacation. Get away. I want you to do the same.”
“Are the problems something I can help with?”
Since he told Blake a private corporation was funding his work, he blamed the problems on them, “I’ve lost my funding.”
“I see.” Blake’s thoughts turned to his personal finances. The professor’s funding was his funding too, and he didn’t have the luxury of a savings account to get by on.
The professor realized why Blake turned pale. He didn’t mean for him to take it that way. He hadn’t lost his funding; the FBI was continuing to pay him. That’s why he hated lies, even white lies with good intentions led to more lies. “I’m not trying to worry you, Blake. I want you to understand my state of mind. I’m not the least bit discouraged about the future. You committed to me and I’m following through on my end of the bargain. You’ll keep receiving your paychecks. In a month you’ll start your classes. I’ve seen to it the tuition is covered.”
“Where’s the money coming from if your sponsors canceled?”
“I’m funding everything myself,” was the first answer he could think of.
“Professor, I don’t want your money.”
“It’s the least I can do, Blake. I’ve received plenty of grant money over the years. This is one way of giving back. Funding your Ph.D. is also an extension of my w
ork.”
“I don’t mind the government giving me educational grants, or some foundation awarding me a scholarship, but this is too personal. I’ll borrow before I take your money.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is something I want to do.”
Blake didn’t know how to turn the professor down. The passion in his voice and the sincerity in his heart, evident through tearing eyes, was too much to resist. He smiled, thinking what a decent man the professor was, and agreed to continue.
The professor handed Blake a paycheck, and an advance for the next month, telling him to relax until the next semester started, five weeks away. Then they would begin working on the science, no more chasing paper trails or UFOs.
CHAPTER 34
With each successive day, Owens furthered Kayla’s rigorous and profound progression into the Aquarius program. Never before had a candidate failed this late in the process, and Owens felt confident that Kayla wouldn’t be the first. He needed her to not be the first. Selecting her broke with two traditions: Kayla was a woman, and she wasn’t military.
Owens had trained other civilians, not as Aquarius agents, but as members of his Unacknowledged Special Access Projects. Ben Skyles was a civilian pupil of his, brought straight from MIT, and there was a second man—Aaron Liebowitz—who was lured from a civilian post with the Navy and nurtured into the program. Unlike Skyles and Liebowitz, however, Kayla would see every aspect of the USAP. That was why Owens needed to mold her, harden her soul, awaken her mind. Wake up and smell the coffee was a phrase his agents favored. Owens had a rare blend of coffee for Kayla to smell today. Additional proof that there was more to the world than mainstream predisposition dictated.
Boarding a small elevator, isolated at the end of a gray cement tunnel in an underground area of Papoose Valley, seen more through surveillance monitors than the naked eye, they descended to one of the base’s lowest depths.
“You won’t see anyone on this level,” Owens told her. “It’s a storage area.”
“Storage for what?”
“Knowledge,” he answered, chasing the word with one of his patented sinister smiles.
She didn’t return the smile, instead keeping a stoic face.
That was the reaction Owens liked to see—no reaction.
The elevator doors opened into a wide tunnel, expansive enough for semi trucks to traverse and dimly lit from stand-by lights that prevented sheer darkness. Their presence triggered a sensor and overhead incandescent floodlights began shining, one after the next, starting with the closest to the elevator. The sequence continued until the entire tunnel was free of shadows, revealing the concrete walls typical of the fortress and the usual supply lines, ventilation ducts and pipes along the ceiling that acted like veins and arteries, lifelines sustaining the environment the government had created underground.
Kayla counted five sets of large sliding doors along each wall—storage bays—and figured somewhere there was another elevator, a vehicle lift of sorts, besides the cramped passenger elevator they had used.
Slowly, methodically, Owens strolled the tunnel with Kayla at his side, not wanting to arrive at their destination before setting the stage verbally. “Do you enjoy museums?” he asked.
“I haven’t been to one in ages.”
They reached the third storage bay on the right. Owens placed his palm on a control panel, causing a motor to churn and echo for nobody to hear but them. Massive steel doors—twenty feet tall and equally wide—slid apart.
Center stage in the storage bay, under a solitary overhead light that cast a cone-shaped spot, was a long cylindrical object, the size of a bus, cast from a dull alloy.
Owens looked for the slightest expression of surprise or intrigue in Kayla’s demeanor, hoping not to see it, hoping she could hide her feelings. “Let me introduce you to my friend over here.”
“You say that like it’s alive.”
“It’s not dead.”
His comment broke her stoic look, but he was in front of her, walking toward the object so he didn’t notice her faux pas.
“Put your hand close, but don’t touch,” he told her as they neared the object.
She did as instructed, holding her palm inches from the object’s smooth metallic casing.
Extending his right arm, he shadowed her hand with his own and eased her palm against the alloy.
The dull gray metal reacted to her touch, brightening as various shades of purple, red and yellow spilled across the surface from beneath her hand.
He pulled his hand away, leaving Kayla’s alone on the surface. Red became the dominant surface color.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“It’s a symbiotic alloy,” he said slowly, his mind captivated and admiring the reaction despite having seen it before. “The molecules are reacting to your touch … your body’s molecular output … understanding your state of mind.”
“Who built this?”
He didn’t plan to tell Kayla much about the engine. He wanted her to see it and start building a sense of what was hidden at the installation. Breaking from his trance-like focus on the object he said, “We’ll talk about that at a later time. Now we need to focus on our trip to San Diego. We’re going to visit a congressman.”
CHAPTER 35
Ben Skyles had not felt sunshine warm his skin in two weeks, maybe longer—he couldn’t remember. The cars passing him on the busy streets of San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter roared in his head like thrusting engines from a fighter jet. His system was drained from various medications and drugs. All he had on his mind was completing his task so he could sleep.
Skyles walked south down Fifth Street, along crowded sidewalks, past restaurants and bars on a revitalized boulevard that had become a hotspot for locals and tourists. He continued walking until the crowds of business types on their lunch hour dwindled and old office buildings replaced retail establishments. Crossing through a half-empty parking lot, he noticed a homeless person sitting beside a shopping cart filled with his belongings. Skyles wondered if he was being offered a glimpse into his own future. Maybe he’d be better off that way, free from his troubles. He looked over his shoulder, knowing his troubles were somewhere nearby, watching him through those serpentine eyes.
On the next street, most of the old warehouses had been converted into office space or residential lofts. He knew exactly where he was going because they had driven him by the building a few times earlier in the morning while explaining plans for the day.
He entered the office building, which had an American flag hanging from an angled pole next to the lobby entrance. Skyles road an elevator to the penthouse floor that two tenants shared. To his right, oak double doors were propped open, revealing a reception area and front desk flanked by American and Californian flags.
A smiling receptionist said, “Good afternoon, sir.” She was in her twenties, wearing a red skirt suit with a flag pin on her lapel. She aimed to please everyone who came through the double doors and impress those she worked for because she had higher aspirations and would someday need a recommendation from her boss, the congressman.
The receptionist’s words pounded in Skyles head like an over enthusiastic Wheel of Fortune game show contestant who screamed out the letters. GIVE ME A SIR! He didn’t expect someone to greet him when he exited the elevator. Not having the opportunity to rehearse his spiel again made him nervous, and his tongue twisted in his mouth. All that came from his lips was a jumbled mumble, “I mm da huh.”
Dealing with occasional troubled souls who wandered up looking for government handouts or to complain about issues ranging from police harassment to alien abductions had taught the receptionist to ask questions, be assertive, and not give them time to babble. “Do you have an appointment?”
Skyles took a quick breath and composed himself, remembering that if he did this right, he could rest. He hoped clearing his throat would offer some explanation for his stammer, “Huh, hmm … excuse me. No … I don’t have an appoint
ment, but it’s important that I speak with the congressman.”
“He keeps a busy schedule, but you can speak to a member of his staff.”
“I want to speak to the congressman.”
“Well if you give me your name and a telephone number and the reason for your visit, I can pass it along and someone will contact you regarding an appointment in the future.”
Skyles jammed a hand in his pocket to retrieve something. His action scared the receptionist until she saw it was an ID badge. “Do me a favor,” he pleaded, tossing the badge on her desk. “Show the congressman, or whoever is in charge, this badge. And tell them I’m from Dreamland. That’s all you’ve got to say. If they want me to leave, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
She read the badge: GRATCOR; Contract Employee; Nevada Test Site; Department of Energy; Ben Skyles. “What’s this?” she asked, concerned about a vial hanging parallel from beneath the badge.
“It’s a radiation dosimeter. It won’t hurt you.”
The only word that registered in her mind was radiation, and she tossed the badge back at him.
“I’ll take it off,” he said.
She left Skyles in the reception area and retreated to the offices beyond her desk. Skyles used the time to rest his mind. He sat, thinking of nothing for almost five minutes. Finally the chief of staff appeared and escorted him into the offices.
A woman was packing grooming supplies—scissors, tweezers, electric razor, hair brushes—into a box when Skyles entered the congressman’s office. The congressman spoke first, always wanting to take control of a situation. “I bet the last person you expected to see occupying my time while you waited was a stylist. You might argue that politicians today are battling some derivative of the Oedipal complex—seats not held by women are held by men acting like women, plucking their bushy eyebrows, tweezing their nasal hairs. I’ve got to color coordinate my suits with the season and my skin type, show feminine emotions that would have gotten my ass whipped during my military days. Women might be a minority in politics, but they’re sure defining the style. If I hadn’t bought into it, emulated others, I wouldn’t be here,”—he approached Skyles with his final words, extending a hand to return the badge—“and I wouldn’t be meeting you, Ben Skyles. Now what can I do for you?”
