Disclosing the Secret

by Vincent Amato

  Without committing treason? Reilly asked himself.

  Steven was now gaining momentum. “I was brought up to believe that the United States of America was supposed to be the land of the free. But it’s keeping a lid on the fact that we have been visited, that we are not alone, because of what comes with it.”

  He paused to emphasize his point. “Which is the ‘crown jewels’ of the technology; that we now have a working knowledge of the advanced science and physics that comes with the ET technology, which would also have to be disclosed. And will mean the end of the world’s 200 trillion dollar oil business, the end of our oil age and the 19th century oil-based technologies that come with it.”

  Greer was right. Because the US contributed one-third of the world’s economic output, there was more pressure from Dr. Reilly’s former employers than from other nations to maintain the status quo, despite having to cook the atmosphere and go to war over oil more than once. It was this unintended consequence of keeping the secret that had been eating its way through Charles; increasing dependency of foreign oil, resource depletion, global warming and the increasing disparity between the rich and poor nations. The list went on.

  Steven was still firing: “The world can’t wait another 50 years for the truth about these technological advances to come out. Because once the technology is shared then every single person on every continent can potentially have access to energy extracted from the ambient environment. You know better than anyone that it will permit a society, even in the jungles of Tanzania, to have energy for electrification, irrigation, crops, manufacturing, with no pollution or need for multi-trillion dollar infrastructures like power lines, fossil fuel or nuclear power plants.”

  Greer caught himself, calming his excitement down a notch. “We know of the meeting that was held at the UN when 30 nations were represented and one of the subjects touched on was the ET matter. Although it was widely accepted by those in attendance that the extraterrestrial presence around the globe was real, US interests used, shall we say, alarmist tactics to convince the other nations that disclosure within the next decade would still be premature. But I can tell you there is active discussion happening at the senior levels of the G7 countries to initiate open contact sooner rather than later. We have been working behind the scenes with the more supportive governments to facilitate a landing event with the full support of their Ministries of Defense, air forces and senior political and scientific leaders present.”

  A wide smile crept across Steven’s face. “In May 2001 we held the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure at the National Press Club. Attending media heard testimonies from more than 100 contactees including 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence officers who stepped forward to describe what they had witnessed. And yet, it made little impact. But with your knowledge and help, you would bring a weight to our movement that the United Nations would not be able to ignore, and help negate the US’s push to keep delaying disclosure.”

  Dr. Reilly knew what Greer was asking was akin to asking him to breach multiple national security acts.

  He paused, as if weighing his words carefully. “That’s a very dangerous question you are asking. And as I said earlier, you are embarking on travelling a traitorous road. It’s fortunate that up until now your personal safety has been predicated by you maintaining a very public profile. But you need to understand that a public profile is not an absolute guarantee of one’s personal safety.”

  Greer swallowed, nodding. This time he heeded the warning.

  Charles pondered the implications of this fortunate, but dangerous, development.

  Does he know what he is getting himself into? Charles thought.

  If he was to assist Dr. Greer, Dr. Reilly would no doubt put Steven in the crosshairs of the unacknowledged NSA branch charged with the job of keeping such secrets. And yet, Greer’s next Disclosure Project venture presented an unparalleled opportunity to bring on disclosure as the project was a grass roots movement gaining critical mass in the public domain. Outside the sanitized walls of the NSA, Groom Lake or Section 4, the Disclosure Project was freely accessible and could be joined by anyone who had an interest.

  Reilly made his decision. “I cannot, and will not, breech the oaths I took to preserve Nation Secrets by feeding you information or materials from within the vaults of our most secret underground facilities.”

  The words seemed to drain the blood from Steven’s face. He felt his hope in the scientist’s support instantly evaporate.

  “There is, however,” the scientist added, “no reason why I couldn’t direct you toward a sample of irrefutable, undeniable evidence that was already in the public domain, or help stand you in front of the United Nations General Assembly to share it with the world.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Fifteen miles away on the far side of downtown Las Vegas, Jake Marcel was sitting at his desk in the inner city low rise office building. He stared blankly out the window; building design drawings were scattered over his desk, the coffee at the bottom of his mug had reached room temperature, and his computer had finished its 3D modelling analysis on the structure he was working on.

  Jake’s mind was elsewhere; he hadn’t noticed that the analysis had finished 25 minutes ago and was sitting idle. Gazing out the window, he watched the reflection of the late afternoon sun bounce off the adjacent office towers as it made its journey across the sky toward the horizon. Around him the office was bustling with activity, but Jake remained engaged in a fixed stare at the sun’s orangey-red reflection, his mind filled with the conversation he had had with Dr. Reilly. The content of the USB drive given to him by the scientist was swirling in his mind.

  The sun’s reflected image off the adjacent building was that of a focused beam of light that shot through the clouds toward the ground. It was eerily reminiscent of the light he had seen in the sky with Jackie the night he dropped her off in the city. The strange scene replayed in his mind.

  What the hell was it? Was Grandpa really right about what he saw? he thought.

  “Would you like another tea or coffee?”

  Jake didn’t seem to hear.

  “Jake…are you okay?”

  The question tore Jake from his thoughts. Startled, he turned to find the company secretary hovering beside his desk.

  “I said, would you like another tea or coffee?” she said with a hint of a smile.

  He shook his head slowly. “I’ve had my caffeine quota for the day. But thank you,” he quickly added with a lopsided smile.

  “You’ve been staring out the window all afternoon.” Her tone was both playful and artificially condescending.

  He slowly turned to again face the window. “Just thinking.”

  The secretary arched a delicately shaped eyebrow. “Aaaaah! A new girl in your life?”

  “No, just something I saw.” His voice was flat.

  “She must have been really something!”

  He pushed the thoughts of Dr. Reilly out of his mind and turned back to her, forcing a polite smile. “Now why does it always have to be about a woman?”

  “A young man like yourself…that’s the only thing you guys think about. It’s either that or money!” With a mischievous smile, she turned and walked away, rolling her hips back in the direction from which she came.

  Jake let the comment fly past. Usually he would have returned a witty comeback, but at the moment his thoughts were elsewhere.

  He turned back to the desk to assess his workload. It had been an uneventful day at the consulting engineering firm that employed him; no site inspections, no architects calling to scream for engineering designs or structural drawings, no contractors calling with their latest problems, which usually spawned from their inability to follow structural documentation.

  I really haven’t done much today, he thought glancing at his watch.

  Turning to his phone, he activated the loudspeaker and dialed the director’s office. “Excuse me, William?”

  “Yes
, Jake.” His boss’s voice was as efficient as it was emotionless.

  “I’m not really being terribly productive. I’m going to call it a day…but I’ll have my phone with me if the office needs to call.”

  “We’ll see you in the morning then.”

  Jake flushed with relief. “Okay, thanks. Bye for now.”

  *

  Forty minutes later Jake was walking up the footpath to his parents’ modest suburban residence. He felt the familiar feeling of home as he opted to walk the length of the driveway to enter the house from the rear door facing the backyard instead of ringing the front doorbell. It was a habit he had picked up as a boy from his father, who in turn had learned the same habit from his grandfather.

  The familiar aromas of a home-cooked meal being prepared rushed at him through the back door as it opened, total enveloping his senses.

  “Hello?” Jake called out.

  “Is that you, Jake?” Linda Marcel, Jake’s mother, sounded both surprised and pleased.

  Jake was entering the kitchen when he answered, “Who else were you expecting?”

  The mother promptly dropped the kitchen utensils she was using, rinsed her hands and threw her arms around her son. Although she attempted not to let her damp hands make contact, her familiar embrace was no less welcoming.

  She kissed him on the cheek. “What are doing here?”

  Jake tried to hide the apprehension that had been growing within him since his impromptu meeting with the scientist. “I need to ask Dad something.”

  “He’s outside tinkering away at something; he’ll be happy to see you. Are you hungry?”

  Jake couldn’t help but smile. Using those three little words ‘Are you hungry?’ was the universal method by which a mother communicated her affection for her child.

  *

  When Jake walked back outside he was finishing off a pastry that had just left the oven. His mouth was still full when he called out to his father, “Dad?”

  The response was a muffled bark: “In the garage!”

  Jake stared blankly when found his father in the garage. Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr., the retired colonel and former flight surgeon for the189th Attack Helicopter Battalion, having flown 225 hours of combat in Iraq, had apparently completely disassembled the lawn mower and had spread out its parts across the garage’s concrete floor. In the middle of the organized chaos sat the retired colonel, perched atop of what looked like an old metal bucket that was upside-down, cleaning a small engine fragment with a dirty rag.

  Jesse Jr. looked up at Jake over murky reading glasses. “Are you still wearing those old things hanging from your neck?”

  The question caught Jake off guard. His father was referring to the military dog tags that hung from a necklace under Jake’s shirt.

  He shifted uneasily, clutching at the offending accessories momentarily. “You know I never ride without them; they keep me safe on the road.”

  Wiping his hands clean, Jesse Jr. moved toward his son, careful not to step on a lawn mower engine part.

  “Four wheels will keep you safe!” the retired colonel scowled, giving the other a playful open palm slap on the back of his head. Jake winced, instantly annoyed.

  A bright smile then crept across his father’s face. “It’s good to see you!” He opened his arms to offer a hug.

  Jake embraced his father, not forgetting about the slap. “Was that necessary?”

  “Come on,” Jesse Jr. said, his wide smile as warm as it was welcoming. “How often do I get to discipline you now days? You’re not working today?”

  Jesse Jr. led the pair back outside to an outdoor table under one of the sporadically positioned fruit trees within the backyard.

  Jake let the question go.

  “Here, sit,” his father insisted, motioning to take a seat.

  Jake sat, not hesitating to dive straight into what had been playing on his mind. “I had some guy show up in front of my work. He claimed to be some scientist for a secret government agency. Said he used to work for the NSA on secret black projects.”

  Jesse Jr.’s expression darkened.

  “He knew who I was, who you are, and all about Grandpa’s military history. Then he gave me this story about his agency working with ET technology, and that the government would never admit to what is really going on.”

  The retired colonel felt a rising alarm. “What does any of it have to do with you?”

  “Apparently he had access to a private email I sent, and said that if he knew about it then other factions within the government would also know, and not be too happy about it,” Jake explained.

  Jesse Jr.’s face filled with confusion. “I’m not following. How could any of this possibly have anything to do with you? Or us?”

  Reaching into his pocket, Jake retrieved a neatly folded piece of paper and offered it to his father without a word. His father’s eyes went wide with recognition when he saw the image embedded within the printed email.

  *

  “Dad, have you ever heard of a scientist called Dr. Charles Reilly?”

  Jesse Jr. didn’t look up from the familiar image he was riveted on. He was studying the cross-section of an I-beam he had once held as a young boy. It was part of a collection of objects that his father had brought home that had supposably been retrieved from a crash site. There was no way Jesse Jr. could have known as a young boy that the shiny object he innocently held would change their lives.

  Jake tried again. “Do you think this guy is genuinely who he claims to be?”

  The retired colonel was silent a long moment, as if calculating a stream of possibilities.

  Finally he drew in a long breath. “Once something similar happened to me. It was the summer of the early nineties. Just before I flew out to attend a UFO conference in Washington DC, I received call from an individual who didn’t identify himself right away, but said it was imperative that he meet with me while I was in Washington.”

  Jake was surprised. “So you went off to meet with this person without knowing who he was? You didn’t think that was a touch dangerous?”

  “The arrangements were to meet at a Capitol Building address, which at the time I thought was reassuring,” his father explained. “I really didn’t think that someone within the government would kidnap me from there.”

  “But when I got to Washington, there was a message left for me at the hotel to meet with him the following morning,” Jesse Jr. mused.

  Jake hesitated a moment. “So whoever it was already knew that you were not only attending the conference, but also your arrival time and where you were staying… At which point did the alarm bells go off?!”

  “If anything I was more curious than alarmed,” his father answered. “So I went to the Capitol Building that morning after the conference, cleared security and was shown to an office where I was given instructions to wait in the outer lobby.”

  “And none of this seemed a bit…odd?” Jake pressed.

  “Sure, I felt a little bit anxious as I sat there. But it wasn’t long till a gentleman in a dark suit greeted me.”

  Jake looked skeptical. “And by a dark suit you mean a man…in black?”

  Jesse Jr. didn’t seem to catch the devious reference. “He was pleasant and got straight to the point. He told me he knew exactly what your grandfather saw that crashed out in the desert, and what I had seen as a young boy.”

  “Who was he? Did he ask you a thousand questions about Grandpa and what he brought home?” Jake ventured.

  His father took a moment as the synaptic gears turned. “I think he introduced himself as Richard… That’s right, Richard D’Amato. He was a security specialist with the National Security Council. I just told him that I had nothing further to say that I hadn’t already said before. Actually, he surprised me.”

  Jake held his father’s gaze. “How do you mean?”

  Jesse Jr. paused. “He said he wanted to see me because there were things he needed to discuss, but more importantly, that he may have h
ad things to tell me. He then took me to a secure subterranean room, deep underground, beneath the Capitol Building.”

  *

  With the demeanor of a caring father, the colonel went on to recount the events that followed.

  When the elevator doors opened to the secure subterranean basement level, Dr. Jesse Marcel Jr. was met with an imposing concrete corridor that shot out into the distance. Service pipes and data cables lined its ceiling, and a labyrinth of sub-corridors branched out on both sides of the main passage he was now being led down.

  Two minutes later Jesse Jr. was shown into what seemed to be a boardroom lined with flat panel monitors and resplendent portraits of the country’s founding fathers. As he was led to a seat at a long boardroom table that stretched the length of the room, he sensed that he was in a place where only the most privileged conversations were held by powerful people.

  Sitting on the table before him was a yellow notepad and book. Marcel’s eyes scanned the book’s cover; it was Majestic, by Whitley Strieber. Having written the foreword for the book, Marcel knew that it was a fictional recreation of the events that followed the discovery of the crashed extraterrestrial vehicle that his father was sent out investigate in the 1940s.

  “As it turns out, this book is not fiction,” the government official said as he took his seat opposite Marcel.

  The subtext to his host’s statement was not lost on the colonel; it had all the subtlety of a stampeding elephant; I know that the story of the crash was in fact true!

  “Can you tell me what you remember about the pieces of the crash that your father showed you in the kitchen of your family home all those years ago?” D’Amato probed.