PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘And the next major UFO flap was the Washington invasion of 1952,’ Dwight said, ‘of which I had personal experience.’

  ‘Dead on the nose, pal.’ Scaduto glanced back over his shoulder at the young couple making love on the grass, now a good distance away. The sight of them gave him distracting thoughts and forced him to concentrate. ‘On reinvestigating that case,’ he said, ‘using your old ATIC reports as my map, I discovered that while the real flap had started on July 19, there was a record dated June 17 of several unidentified red spheres that flew at supersonic speeds over the Canadian air base of North Bay, in Ontario, then crossed over some of the southeastern states. I also discovered that nearly all of the subsequent Washington DC UFOs were reported as disappearing to the north, and that when the UFOs returned en masse, on July 26, their disappearance in a general northerly direction also applied.’

  ‘All heading towards the Canadian border.’

  ‘Right, Dwight, you’ve got it.’

  ‘Well, it’s certainly true that Lake Ontario and Lake Erie are as notorious as the Bermuda Triangle for the unexplained destruction of hundreds of aircraft and ships, the failure of gyroscopes and radio instruments, irrational behaviour in normally sane crew members, and, of course, the sighting of numerous UFOs. It’s also true that Canada’s one of the greatest aeronautical powers in the world.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Scaduto said, sounding richly satisfied. ‘I never thought of Canada that way until I began my research. But during that research I came across an article, dated 1952 – at the height of the flying saucer scare – describing Canada as the Promised Land of Aviation. Considering that most Americans of the time thought of Canada as a kind of No-Man’s Land, I was suitably impressed to learn that in fact it was the home, even back in 1952, of a remarkable number of the most prestigious aircraft development companies in the world.’

  ‘It also had, and still has, vast areas of heavily wooded and uninhabited land – ideal for hiding secret aeronautical research establishments.’

  ‘Just what struck me,’ Scaduto said, clearly thrilled that he and Dwight were on the same wavelength. ‘So having learned these interesting facts, I decided to find out, once and for all, whether or not the Canadian flying saucer project had really been passed on to the US Air Force and, more important, if the Air Force had then really dropped the project, as widely reported.’

  ‘So what did you learn?’

  ‘A lot.’

  Dwight liked Scaduto and was, in a sense, envious of his relative youthfulness, naive optimism, and Brooklyn-based ‘street’ wisdom; but sometimes, as he was forced to admit to himself, the young man’s flair for self-dramatisation could be aggravating. For this very reason, he wanted to devastate Scaduto with a cutting remark, but all he could come up with was: ‘Stop teasing me!’

  ‘Okay,’ Scaduto responded, satisfied with the belief that he had managed to get one up on the older man, whom he admired and wished to emulate. ‘My research revealed that on...’ He pulled a notebook from his hip pocket and glanced at it... ‘On February 11, 1953, the Toronto Star announced that a new flying saucer was being developed at the A. V. Roe plant – now Avro-Canada – in Malton, Ontario.’

  ‘This suggests that it wasn’t the first one.’

  ‘Shit, no,’ Scaduto said, then continued to talk, picking up precise dates and details from his notebook. ‘Following that February 11 press release, on February 16, the Canadian Minister of Defence Production, C. D. Howe, informed the House of Commons that Avro-Canada was in fact working on a mock-up model of a flying saucer capable of flying at fifteen hundred miles per hour and climbing straight up in the air.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s all there in the morgues of the Canadian and other newspapers.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Dwight said, becoming excited. ‘Please continue.’

  ‘By February 27, Crawford Gordon Jr., then the president of Avro-Canada, was writing in the house journal, Avro News, that the prototype being constructed was so revolutionary it would make all other forms of supersonic aircraft obsolescent. Next, the Toronto Star was claiming that Britain’s Field Marshal Montgomery had become one of the few people to view Avro’s mock-up of the flying saucer. Shortly after that report, Air Vice Marshal D. M. Smith was reported to have said that what Field Marshal Montgomery had seen was the preliminary construction plans for a gyroscopic fighter whose gas turbine would revolve around the pilot, who would be positioned in the centre of the disc.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’ Dwight softly exclaimed, while glancing left and right at the many other people moving in both directions along the path winding through the park. ‘The Omega!’

  ‘Shit, man, you remembered! Yeah! The press dubbed that legendary machine “the Omega” and in 1953 the British RAF Review – the Royal Air Force Review – gave it a semi-official respectability by reprinting most of the unclassified Canadian research and including censored drawings of the actual prototype.’

  ‘The research and those drawings were actually published?’

  ‘Yeah... but only in Britain.’

  ‘Man, oh man!’ Temporarily forgetting his personal fears, Dwight felt like an excited schoolkid. ‘So what was the Omega like?’

  ‘According to the sketches,’ Scaduto said, again glancing at his notebook, ‘it was a relatively small flying wing, shaped like a horseshoe, with a lot of air-intake slots along its edge, ten deflector vanes for direction control, a single-pilot cabin topped by a cupola of transparent Perspex, and a large turbine engine that revolved around the vertical axis of the main body.’

  ‘Then it disappeared,’ Dwight said, trying to anticipate.

  ‘Not quite,’ Scaduto replied, still enjoying Dwight’s shock and excitement at his revelations. ‘In early November, 1953, Canadian newspapers were reporting that a mock-up of the Omega had been shown on October 31 to a group of twenty-five military officers and scientists. Then in March of the following year, the American press was claiming that the US Air Force, concerned at Soviet progress in aeronautics, had allocated an unspecified sum of money to the Canadian government for the building of a prototype of their flying saucer. Reportedly, that machine had been designed by the English aeronautical engineer, John Frost – who’d worked for Avro-Canada in Malton, Ontario – and it would be capable of either hovering in midair or flying at a speed of nearly two thousand miles an hour.’

  Dwight gave a low whistle of appreciation.

  ‘This hot piece of news,’ Scaduto continued, ‘was followed by Canadian press assertions that their government was planning to form entire squadrons of flying saucers for the defence of Alaska and the far regions of the north. This, they claimed, was because the machines required no runways, were capable of ascending vertically, and were ideal weapons for sub-arctic and Polar regions.’

  ‘Sub-arctic and Polar regions,’ Dwight repeated, practically in a daze.

  ‘Right,’ Scaduto said, glancing sideways and grinning when he saw the growing awareness in Dwight’s eyes. ‘So, do you want to hear the rest?’

  ‘Damned right I do,’ Dwight said.

  ‘On December 3, 1954, the Canadian Minister of Defence announced that the Canadian flying saucer project had been dropped, since it would have cost too much for something that was, in the end, highly speculative.’

  Dwight stopped walking, glanced at the many people criss-crossing the park, walking their dogs, flying kites, roller-skating or embracing on the sunlit fields, and then found himself glancing more intently at them, wondering if they were as innocent as they seemed. He saw no men in black.

  ‘So what makes you believe the saucer project wasn’t dropped completely?’ he asked Scaduto, who responded by turning to a new page in his notebook and glancing repeatedly at it as he spoke.

  ‘Because on October 22 the following year, US Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles released an extraordinary statement through the press office of the Department of Defence. Among other things, he said that an aircraft of – I quote
– unusual configuration and flight characteristics – would soon be appearing; that the US government had initiated negotiations with the Canadian government and AvroCanada for the preparation of an experimental model of the Frost flying disc; and that the saucers would be mass-produced and used for the common defence of the subarctic area of the continent.’

  ‘The sub-arctic area,’ Dwight murmured distractedly. ‘We’re back with the subarctic.’

  ‘Right,’ Scaduto said. ‘Ice and snow... But it didn’t end there.’

  Now Dwight stopped walking to stare hard at his young friend. He no longer gave a damn who overheard him. Paranoid or not, he was convinced that everything he said and did was being monitored somehow. Given that conviction, whether sane or mad, he could only follow his nose.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, following his nose. ‘Tell me the rest of it.’

  Grinning wickedly, Scaduto took a deep breath, held it in for some time, then let it all out as he started talking again.

  ‘By February last year, the press was receiving ambiguous Air Force statements about a revolutionary new aircraft that had been jointly undertaken by the US Air Force, the US Army, and the Canadian government. Then, on April 14, during a press conference in Washington DC, General Frank Britten implied that the first test flight of the aircraft was imminent and that it was destined to revolutionise traditional aeronautical concepts.’

  ‘So when’s that test flight going to be?’ Dwight asked, now realising that Scaduto’s whole spiel had been leading up to this single, crucial point.

  Scaduto brushed his ink-black sideburns with self-worshipping fingers and, taking a deep breath of the kind that all born actors employ, said, ‘The test flight’s already been completed. The results haven’t been announced yet. But - get this! – the press has actually been invited to look at the saucer on August 25 – next month – at the Army Transport Museum at Fort Eustus, Virginia.’

  ‘And we’re both going, of course.’

  ‘You bet.’

  ‘What’s the bet we don’t see much?’ Dwight said.

  ‘I don’t bet,’ Scaduto said.

  Amused despite himself, being otherwise deeply troubled, Dwight left the park with Scaduto, bid him goodbye, then hurried home to take comfort from Beth’s embrace, taste her full lips, suck the juices from her mouth, then lose himself in the tangle of her arms and legs, in her centre, her very being, in that bed they had bought many years ago, when, in fear and trembling and mutual need, they became man and wife.

  Dwight’s dark cave was love.

  Chapter Thirty-Two Dwight’s dark cave of love was a help, but not a cure, during the nightmarish month that followed his meeting with Tony Scaduto and the press conference arranged for the unveiling of the first officially acknowledged man-made flying saucer. Already haunted by her frightening experience at Frank Bancroft’s garage, Beth had then started experiencing terrifying nightmares about UFOs and faceless men dressed in black. Soon she was also being tormented by the feeling that she was somehow being followed and kept under almost daily observation. She felt this even when in her car.

  ‘It’s hard to explain,’ she told Dwight, ‘because there’s nothing I can put my finger on – nothing seen or heard or actually felt. But when I’m driving, particularly when on the roads outside town – empty roads – I have the feeling that something is pressing down on the car, exerting some kind of pressure, and that pressure is also pressing down upon and around me.’

  She and Dwight were sitting in deck chairs out on the back yard of the tract house they had leased just a week ago, having decided that they needed something bigger than the previous apartment near Carillon Park. Nichola, presently playing in the small, pumped-up pool in front of them with a neighbour’s daughter, Tanya Harper, was all of twelve years old and would soon be a teenager in need of her own space, so that had been their major consideration when deciding to move. As the sun was now blazing out of a clear blue sky, Beth and Dwight, both in swim suits and relishing the privacy of their own back yard, were trying for a suntan.

  ‘Any effect on the car itself?’ Dwight asked. ‘Any malfunctioning?’ ‘No – yes! It doesn’t malfunction, but it definitely drags. In fact, I often find myself checking the handbrake, thinking I forgot to release it when starting off. Then I find myself looking out of the car, trying to see what’s around me, what’s slowing me down.’

  ‘Ever stop and actually get out of the car to look directly above it?’

  ‘Yep. That shows you how bad it is. I sometimes get out and look up, but I’ve never seen anything. Strangely, that worries me even more. And I become almost sick with anxiety when Nichola’s with me. I even feel that odd... presence... call it what you will... when I’m taking her to school.’

  ‘Does Nichola feel it as well?’

  ‘She’s never mentioned it and I’ve never asked. No, she seems happy enough, belted in there.’

  During the last two weeks of that sweltering July, 1960, Beth’s nightmares had become more frequent and the feeling that she was never entirely alone increased dramatically. She began experiencing it while waiting outside Nichola’s school, at the supermarket, sometimes even when sunning herself out in the back yard or tending to her lawn.

  ‘I’ll be feeling perfectly fine,’ she explained to Dwight, ‘engrossed in what I’m doing, and suddenly, right out of the blue, I’ll find myself glancing around me, expecting to see someone or... something.’ She shrugged forlornly. ‘It’s a feeling so strong, you’re convinced someone is staring right at you and they’re close – you know? Like about the other side of the yard fence, just across the street, or only a short distance behind you in the mall. A very strong feeling. Shivery. I’m thinking of the shopping, or about what Nichola’s doing at school, or maybe where we should go on our next vacation – then, whammo! My head jerks around before I even know it and I find myself staring to the side, behind me, wherever, expecting to see... yeah, a man, or men, in black. I always expect to see them. And of course there’s never anyone there and, as I said, in some way that’s even worse. ‘Cause sure as hell it makes you think you’re losing your mind or having a breakdown.’

  By early August, Beth’s conviction that she was being followed was confirmed when a black limousine did indeed start following her, just about every time she ventured out. At first she thought she was imagining this, but at the end of the first day with that vehicle on her tail – a particularly busy day that had her driving here, there and everywhere, including school in the morning, the supermarket, the houses of a couple of friends, then school again in the afternoon to collect Nichola – she realised that the limo was real enough and definitely following her when it stopped everywhere she stopped, then started up again and followed her when she moved off. By the end of the first day of this, she was truly frightened.

  The process continued throughout a second day, then a third and a fourth. When Beth stopped, the limo stopped as well, always parking within sight of her, though never close enough for her to see anything other than the figures of men in... black suits. As they were always too far away for their features to be discerned, Beth was reminded of her nightmares, in which the men in black one-piece suits always seemed somehow faceless.

  Finally, during the fifth day, when she was waiting for Nichola to come out of school and suffering the dreadful fear that the men in black might abduct her, she got out of her car and hurried along the sidewalk towards the limo parked a good distance away. The limo didn’t move until she was approaching it – until she could clearly see the two men in the front – black suits, black roll-necked pullovers, dark glasses – but could still not make out their features. Just as she was coming close enough to see what they looked like, the limo pulled away from the sidewalk, did a U-turn and raced away from her.

  At once relieved and frustrated, Beth returned to her car and waited for Nichola to emerge from the school. When she had collected her and was driving her back to the house, the black limo came out of a side s
treet and sat on her tail again. When she entered the house, clutching Nichola’s hand, the limo parked a good way along the street, but close enough for her to see it from the living room window. Just as she was picking up the phone to call the police station, the limo moved off.

  ‘Just like that,’ Beth explained to Dwight, snapping her fingers. ‘As if they could see exactly what I was doing, even when I was inside the house. The second I picked up the phone, those bastards drove off.’

  That, however, was the last time she was tailed by the men in the limo. Unfortunately, during the second week in August, she began to have serious lapses of memory and what appeared to be brief blackouts, which, like her experience at the garage, left her feeling bewildered and disorientated. The blackouts were not dramatic and at no point harmful – she never collapsed or lost control when driving her car – but they were of a nature that was just as wrenching emotionally.

  Preparing dinner in the kitchen, some time later, she would abruptly find herself lying on the bed or the sofa in front of the TV with no memory of having made the move, but with vague recollections of the usual nightmares about UFOs and men in black. Packing her shopping into the trunk of her car outside the supermarket, she would suddenly find herself emerging from the by now customary nightmares, this time slumped over the steering wheel, with the trunk still open and the rest of the shopping still in the trolley. Sitting in her car outside the school, waiting for Nichola to emerge, she would suddenly see Nichola standing forlornly on the sidewalk as the last of the other kids either walked off or were driven home by their parents. Though unable to recall the children emerging from the school, she would rush guiltily to collect Nichola, her head still filled with a vision of herself being surrounded by the men in black in a circular, brilliantly lit, white-walled room. Such lapses of consciousness, and the nightmares contained within them, gradually made her a nervous wreck.