How the hell had Scarborough gotten out? They had plans for him today. His escape spelled big problems. Dolan drove the whole way along the scenic ride that skirted the Potomac River valley, which was wearing its spring green finery, so tense his teeth were clenched. Damn the man! How could such a good thing for these twenty-plus years suddenly turn so sour? Well, he just prayed there was a way that Richards had worked out to deal with it, because Dolan hadn’t the faintest idea.
Great Falls Park was a few miles north of the Washington Parkway’s intersection with the Washington Beltway. Dolan pulled his Cadillac Seville into a parking space shadowed by trees; he walked past picnic tables and the Central Office which housed the Men’s and Women’s rooms toward the expanse of reinforced concrete edging the cliff that overlooked the rock-filled falls and waterways. This early, there were only a few people milling about, enjoying the fresh air and scenic beauty the falls provided. There was the taste of mist in the air, and the smell of a nearby barbecue firing up charcoal to broil an early lunch. The roar of the falls was a steady, comforting sound.
Richards was leaning against the railing, looking out at the white spray of the main waterfall. He was wearing his regulation spook Burberry raincoat, but Dolan was gratified to see that beneath it was a red flannel shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Dolan himself had changed to civilian clothes, and removed his tie. For these kinds of meetings, you didn’t want to wear your official blue, no sir.
Dolan leaned on the railing two yards from Richards, and pulled out a pack of Doublemint Gum, offering it to the man.
“No thanks,” said Richards.
“We okay here?”
“I’ve got a couple men as backup. You’re right though. From now on we’ve got to be careful.” He pulled up a Nikon from where it hung by a leather strap and clicked off a shot of the rushing white water below them. “It was that Lieutenant of yours that got him out. I checked.”
“Damn.”
“Scarborough was right. You had no legal right to put him there. But that’s neither here nor there. Actually, in the long run, it may work out for the best. I talked to the Publishers this morning. They agree with me. Where Scarborough was once a strong asset, the events of the past week have made him a liability. And I think that my men can deal with him better on the loose, if you get my drift.”
Dolan shuddered. “I didn’t want it to come to this.”
“I think that you’re going to have to let loose some of these scruples, Colonel, if you want to retire safely and happily. Things are charging ahead on several fronts.”
Dolan silently chewed his gum, feeling ill but not offering any kind of objection.
“I’ll deal with Scarborough. He’s fully my problem now. Understood? You’re going to have to do some serious sandbagging for a while. God knows what kind of shit’s going to hit the fan. But that’s the totality of your involvement until I say different. Just guard Blue Book. White Book and Black Book will proceed apace. They are too important not to.”
Dolan nodded silently. He wasn’t enjoying the gum at all; in fact, somehow, it was making his stomach feel sour and upset. He took it out and wrapped it up in a length of handkerchief, which he stuck back in his slacks.
White Book. Black Book. God, what they’d developed into! Even now, even though he’d been involved with both of them since the late forties, the very thought of their importance staggered him.
From the very beginning, Project Blue Book had been a cover-up. A form of lip service paid to quell the demands of the public. And to think, from the very beginning of it all, certain key members of the Air Force, of the government, had known the truth. Including Walter Dolan.
Simple enough in the beginning. But then, in the beginning it had just been high echelons of the U. S. government, principally defense personnel who had been involved. But then, the organization known as the Publishers slowly had gotten involved, subtly and inextricably—and things had gotten complicated.
At first, the young and ambitious and starry-eyed Walter Dolan had no moral qualms about what he was doing. It was for the benefit of his country. Now, though—God! What a morass! He wanted out, but he was in too deep. Far too deep. If he even made a peep about getting out now, he knew that one of the Junior Editors would be paying his East Falls Church home a surreptitious visit. It would be Dolan and family at the wrong end of the gun, and not poor Scarborough!
“I understand,” said Dolan. “You know you’ll have my full cooperation, Richards.”
“Good. That’s what I had to be sure of, Colonel. We can’t hazard un-loyal constituents. Not at this stage of the game. We’re too close to our goals.”
“Scarborough will go looking for his daughter, you know. His daughter is very important to him.”
“Yes. Our ministrations with one Timothy Reilly have proved most revealing.”
“You mean, you know where she’s gone?”
“We certainly do. Which means we know exactly where Scarborough will go as well. This business will be tidied up thoroughly by the end of the week, I promise you.” He turned to Dolan, and poked him in the arm. “But there’s going to be fallout. The Publishers had hoped to protect Scarborough—and now they’re going to have to remove him. This is going to attract attention!”
“Can’t he just—disappear?”
“Oh, sure! Can’t you see the headlines? UFO Debunker Abducted? No, we have to try to make it look like an accident, but without any harm done to the incredible amount of anti-UFO propaganda generated by his books and appearances. This is where you come in, Colonel. To begin with, you’re going to have to stonewall on Scarborough’s Air Force connection.”
Dolan nodded. He’d stonewalled so much, he felt as though he’d invented the word.
“Then, we need some kind of replacement. Someone to take up the slack—a new debunking spokesman, as it were. Now, he doesn’t have to have been with Project Blue Book.” Richards cleared his throat. “In fact, from recent experience, I’d say maybe it would be best if he wasn’t associated. At any rate, he has to have an unimpeachable scientific reputation, just like Scarborough, with attendant respect, etcetera. Media-ready, a nice smile, a man who knows his way around a bon mot and who’d look good on the Carson show.”
“That’s a big order to fill.”
“Don’t worry. This is really the Publishers’ area—but I figure they might want your input.”
Dolan felt relief. “I’ll send a list of candidates from my end, yes.” He shook his head. “Damn shame we have to write Scarborough off. He’s the best.”
“Exactly. Which is why we don’t want him appearing on Ted Koppel’s ‘Nightline’ anytime soon. Savvy?”
Dolan let go an expulsion of breath. “Boy, do I! But what about Diane? You can’t...”
Richards glared at Dolan with a coldness that frosted the colonel’s spine. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do, man! You forget who’s in charge here.”
Dolan looked away. Down below, the sun had placed a small rainbow into the mist that hung over a convergence of white, roaring water. Killers and hooligans, that’s what Richards, his men, and the Publishers were, for all their high-minded and vaunted ambition for this country, this world. Killers and hooligans, maybe even madmen on a level with Adolf Hitler or Napoleon Bonaparte. No, it had all been very simple at first, back in the old days of Project Blue Book, when Walter Dolan had lived to serve his country. Now, he served his country’s secret masters, to live.
“I understand,” he said, and turning away from the water-filled chasm, he walked back to his car.
Chapter 35
“Well, what do you think, kiddo?”
Camden stepped out from the dressing room of the Vegas Cut-Rate Clothing shop and preened for Diane, showing the sartorial splendor of a pink-and-yellow flowered shirt with green nylon trimming. “More subdued than my usual threads, huh?”
Diane Scarborough stared aghast at the ugly thing. Not even a nice jacket would cover up this atrocity.
Diane’s intellect may well rove the cosmos, all time and space—but her tastes were purely Fifth Avenue. She simply could not deal with a travelling companion who looked like a refugee from “Don Ho’s Hawaii Goes to Hell.”
“Pretty cheap too!” said Camden fluttering the price tag at her.
“I’ll bet it is!” said Diane, grimacing. “Jake, you look like a party favor in that thing! It’s awful!”
It was the middle of the afternoon, a bright sunshiny Vegas sky shining beyond the plate-glass windows of the shop. She’d let Camden sleep late while she went out and bought maps and information on Hoover Dam and the surrounding area. He’d be absolutely no use to her tired and hung-over. As it turned out, it had been a good idea. After she’d pumped some Denny’s twenty-four-hour breakfast into him, he was the old Jake Camden again, rarin’ to go, eager to chase those “bogies,” as he called them. He even bought new Kodak film for his camera, and new SKC tape for his cassette-recorder. Now they were buying him some new, subdued clothes.
“I still don’t get it! Hell, don’t you want me to fit in with the tourists?” Camden said. This was his second swipe at her taste in clothes.
“Jake, you don’t understand. I don’t personally care what you look like. But whatever happens, there may be pictures involved. As my father would be certain to point out, Jake, this sort of subject material would look shoddy and questionable if it had pictures of you in it looking like a two-bit LA con-artist. Comprende?”
Jake shrugged. “Okay, tell you what. You’ve got my size, now you go and pick out something that will match your outfit for this evening, suitable to your sense of taste and decorum for the occasion of contact with aliens from Planet Xenon!”
“Jake! Shhh!” She put her finger to her mouth and looked around the room, past mirrored racks of clothing and clerks with tape measures hung around their necks. “You don’t have to broadcast what we’re doing tonight.”
“Okay, okay,” said Jake, calming down. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess I’m just a little jumpy, a little edgy. Yeah, you’re probably right. But you gotta help me, you gotta pick something out. I’m a forty-Regular, thirty-three waist, thirty in the leg. You find me something, I’ll wear it tonight. But only tonight.” He looked at his watch, then out the window across the street at the Rexall Drug Store. “I’m gonna hop outta these things now, and go get some more batteries. I don’t want to get caught with duds in my machines.”
“Okay, Jake.” She looked at him sternly. “But no stopping in any bars. You promised me, no drinking until this is over.”
“Don’t sweat it! I touch a drop, and the way my system is now, I’ll puke! I swear!”
“Okay, Jake. I’m counting on you.” He disappeared back into the draped changing rooms, and Diane set about finding something suitable for him to wear. Not that it really mattered, she supposed. She was like this with Tim, too, always choosing his clothing. Maybe it was the Scarborough in her—she had elements in her personality of a control freak.
Anyway, Jake was right about one thing. They had a few hours to spare. The time she remembered being given for the rendezvous was nine o’clock, and it was now only a little after five. Still, she wanted to get to the dam early. As she’d thought about it, it seemed a damn public place for an encounter—but at the back of her mind, there was the thrilling thought that maybe this was going to be IT—the first public contact of an earth citizen with extraterrestrial visitors.
That was just the way Diane Scarborough thought. Tim Reilly called her the Meryl Streep of self-dramatizers.
Immersed in a cloud of brooding, she went to the men’s jacket section. She would have just settled on something simple, like a nice Izod shirt, and some tasteful grey golf slacks, but the temperature was supposed to go down to the fifties tonight and she didn’t want Camden’s hands to be shaking on the camera.
She was going through the jacket and suit section, in the size forty-R selection, pondering this whole business, when she stopped still, feeling a little faint. `
Suddenly, as she was fingering the fabric of a nice linen jacket, things became very wobbly.
The floor seemed to drop out from beneath her feet. ...
She was back on board the ship again.
Before her were the two men. Normal looking, in their jumpsuits. The sensations and exhilaration and awe at being where she was swept through her again. The moment seemed encapsulated in eternity.
“Hoover Dam, at nine. You will be more prepared to accept what we have to tell you at that time.”
But the man with the grey hair and the fiercely intelligent eyes did not stop there.
“But not on the dam itself. Two miles away, off the highway, there is a valley formed of small hills, out of sight of the road. Here, there is an old rock quarry. A small lane veers right as you approach the dam, heading southeast from the town that is called Las Vegas. That is where we will meet at nine o’clock, after the sun has set.”
The clothing shop swirled back into existence around her and she had to grab a stand of clothing to prevent herself from falling headfirst onto the floor.
“Are you okay, Miss?” asked a balding clerk.
“Oh—er—yes. Yes, I just felt a little dizzy for a moment.”
“Can I get you a glass of water?”
“No. No, I’ll be okay.”
“Can I help you choose something then?”
“No, I think I’ve already made my choice.” She had to get out of here quickly, had to talk to Camden. Things were getting complicated—this altered the plans! She quickly thumbed through the forty—R suits, and found a cheap cotton one, not exactly stylish, but far from bad taste, and it wouldn’t draw unfavorable attention tonight, wherever they ended up—on the front cover of Time magazine, or in an interstellar craft headed at faster-than-light speed for a private audience with an alien princeling. She hoisted it off the rack and handed it to the clerk. “Do you take VISA?”
Sitting in a blue Buick half a block down from the discount clothing store, Woodrow Justine spoke to the other team members via a cellular phone.
“Okay, she’s coming out of the Cut—Rate with a package and she’s crossing the street. She’s going into the Rexall Drug Store where that other guy went.”
“Should we take them when they come out?” The voice was from the red Oldsmobile with tinted windows down the road, yet to communicate from less than a block, the signal first had to be relayed to the phone company, and bounce off at least one satellite. The notion tickled Justine.
“Negative.”
They’d had a man stationed at the Las Vegas airport last night. He’d tailed Camden and Diane to their motel. They’d followed their movements all day.
“We’re going to follow them to the dam. We don’t do anything till after it’s dark, and not so obvious. You got me?”
“You betcha. Sounds good to me. That’s about when Scarborough should be showing up, right?”
Justine grinned. “You better believe it.”
Chapter 36
Hoover Dam was not always called Hoover Dam.
One of the largest concrete dams in the world, the arch-styled behemoth had been built on the Colorado River during Herbert Hoover’s presidency, from 1928 to 1932, to generate electrical power for the Southeast, as well as to control flooding, improve navigation and river regulation, and provide water for the very dry areas surrounding it. It had been dubbed “Hoover Dam” in 1931 to honor the President, but after Hoover left a depressed economy behind him, the Department of the Interior began to call it Boulder Dam or Boulder Canyon Dam, after the nearby town of Boulder, Nevada. In 1947, though, with memories of breadlines and hard times behind them, the dam was dubbed “Hoover” by Congress itself.
Hoover Dam was on the Arizona-Nevada border, approximately twenty-five miles southeast of Las Vegas.
Scarborough landed at the famous gambling city in the early evening of a typically hot sunny day. The flight had been delayed, partly by an afternoon storm
in Kansas, partly by the usual vague human/technical foul-ups apologized for by the pilots in the Chuck Yeager drawls adopted to calm frayed nerves. By the time Scarborough checked out a rental car from Avis, he wasn’t sure he’d make it to Hoover Dam in time to get Diane the hell away from there before Richards’s people swooped down on her.
He wouldn’t have minded some kind of police backup. But what was he going to tell them? “Officers, you see, my daughter is waiting for a spaceship from another planet, but actually she’s going to be kidnapped by a secret government conspiracy!” Yeah, sure, and officer, Godzilla is at the Sands chomping quarters from the one-armed bandits as well!
He bought a map, and received directions from a Shell gas station. A highway—Route 93—used Hoover Dam as a bridge, and the attendant informed him that evenings held a small to moderate amount of traffic. The moon was full tonight, the sky clear, which was supposed to cast a beautiful light over the dam, the surrounding rough and rocky land of the El Dorado mountains, the desert it helped irrigate, and Lake Mead, the reservoir it created—a tourist attraction in itself.
A hazy sun was sinking over the horizon as Scarborough drove down the highway, his map accordioned out on the passenger seat. He wasn’t entirely clear on what would happen after he yanked Diane away from the place—maybe stay the night in a Las Vegas motel and fly out in the morning, maybe just point the headlights west and head for California. The latter wasn’t a bad idea. He had a close friend in L.A. they could stay with. On the other hand, driving in open spaces might not be such a great idea—they could easily be cut off in open spaces. Scarborough wished he knew the extent of the corruption indicated by Colonel Dolan’s cooperation with this Richards guy. A tremor of paranoia gripped him. God, this could extend everywhere! But, no—Marsha had sprung him from that brig, using legitimate measures. Clearly the conspiracy—whatever it constituted—was limited.
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 36
