"Roland. . . . In case we end up going separate ways in all this, or maybe if we both don't come through . . . there's some information that I need to give you. It's important that it doesn't get lost." Cade got the feeling she had been thinking hard about this. He looked over his shoulder to indicate that he was listening. Marie paused, as if searching for the right place to begin.
"Rebecca wasn't being infiltrated so much to find me. It was the particular group I was associated with. It's the group that was blamed for that assassination in Washington a couple of weeks back—when the Hyadean flyer was shot down. What the media are saying is all a lie. We had nothing to do with it. No part of CounterAction did. You have to believe that."
Cade slowed his stirring, and then resumed again just in time to avoid burning the contents of the pan. That was right. . . . The ISS people who came to the house two days after it happened had told him Marie was suspected of being with the cell the Hyadean plasma weapon supposedly found its way to. With all that had been going on, he had forgotten about that connection. "A senator, wasn't it?" he said. "Farden. . . . And some general . . . ?"
"Right. Meakes."
"A couple of Hyadeans too."
"They shouldn't have been there. The targets were Farden and Meakes. The reason the cell I was with got picked was that it had been compromised somehow. Therefore, it could be targeted to be taken out. Get the idea? Nobody who had been implicated would be around to deny it. That was the intention, anyway. But we were warned ahead of time, and disbanded."
Cade turned, frowning, as he scooped the eggs out onto the plates. "So that wasn't what happened yesterday at wherever that call came from—where Len went?"
Marie shook her head. "That was a place in Chattanooga that we were using in transit to wherever next. But there was another man there, who went by the name Otter. He had the information on how those assassinations were really carried out. That's the information I'm going to give you now. The more chance it has to get around, the better. His real name was Captain Wayne Reyvek of the ISS. He'd had enough of what he'd seen and decided to switch sides. They couldn't afford to let somebody like him talk. That's who I think Rebecca was sent to track down."
Cade added bacon strips from a plate he had set aside earlier and sat down to pour the coffees while Marie buttered the toast. "But they set me up to lead Rebecca to you," he pointed out. "What reason would they have to think that you and Reyvek . . . I guess he's history now?"
"Seems like it."
"What reason would they have to think you and he would be together?"
"I've been wondering that too," Marie said. "All I can think of is that they guessed he'd be asked to compare notes with the people who were being blamed." She shrugged. "The controllers monitoring a trace that Len took back found they had hit lucky, sent in a hit team—and you saw the cavalry heading the other way when we were leaving the motel. Guess who'd have been next."
Cade had already figured that much out. He went over what had been said so far while he began eating his breakfast. It still didn't make sense. "Why go to all that trouble?" he said finally. "If Reyvek knew who really did it, then presumably the ISS knew too. So why not simply go for them in the first place? Why go out of your way to lie about some other group, and then have to take them out in case they get a chance to disprove you?"
Marie sat back and smiled, as if something about the way he still couldn't see it delighted her. "Because they did it themselves! It was engineered within the ISS! Reyvek was involved in obtaining the Hyadean plasma cannon. It came from some that disappeared in South America, were recovered but not acknowledged, and found their way into an unofficial stockpile at Fort Benning in Georgia. It was fired by a colonel called Kurt Drisson, who specializes in deniable dirty work for friends in high places. Reyvek wasn't sure, but he believed that a financier called Casper Toddrel was behind it. Toddrel is mixed up in big land deals that are going on in Brazil and Peru. Reyvek had evidence to substantiate his story, which he mailed to a private box in Baltimore. I guess the key's lost, but there are ways around things like that."
Cade was listening, but he couldn't relate any motive to what he was hearing. The story the two ISS agents had given when they came to the house seemed straightforward enough. He shook his head uncomprehendingly. "But why? Farden was pushing bills that would open up big markets for cheap minerals that the Hyadeans are pulling out of Bolivia, right? Now, okay, sure, I can see how that might drop the bottom out of a lot of industries here that have seen their day, and make him unpopular with a lot of people. That would make him a natural target for an outfit like CounterAction, that looks for popular support. But why should somebody like Toddrel care? He's not a titanium miner who got let go last year with no place to go."
"You're buying the standard line that they put out," Marie told him. "Simple. Easy logic. Gives us an instant Enemy of the People to hate."
"Well . . . what other line is there?" Cade invited.
"Farden had enemies within the Terran Globalist elite. He was working with other interests—I suspect British, but I'm not sure—who were being paid by South American land agencies and development investors to expand the Bolivian extraction operations. That earns the Hyadeans the foreign currency they need for their land deals, and in recycling it everyone in the loop gets rich."
Cade still couldn't quite buy it. "But that still doesn't explain why Toddrel should want to get rid of Farden. I mean, isn't he in the loop too?"
"It's a different loop," Marie answered. "Farden's scheme is undercutting a lot of U.S.-capitalized mining, which makes it too radical for some people. Toddrel is part of a more cautious approach to cashing in on the Hyadean economic system by marketing Terran creative skills, which sell at a huge margin on the alien worlds. That means selling out middle-class professionals instead, which doesn't create powerful enemies. Also, you're not giving foreign governments a green light to rush into handing over big chunks of this planet, which not everyone is happy about." She waved her fork by way of conclusion. "Hence, eliminating Farden was convenient for a lot of people you don't find at Washington protest rallies. If you can do it and discredit the opposition at the same time, then so much the better."
Cade nodded reluctantly. It was starting to make sense now. "How come you know so much about all this?" he asked curiously.
"Oh, come on Roland. You know that reading between lines and finding sources that I believe has always been my thing."
"Yes, right. Let's not get into that. . . ." Cade picked up his glass and drank. "So what about General Meakes? The version I heard was that he wanted to beef up our defense capability by introducing more Hyadean weapons and methods, which countries like the AANS didn't want to see happen. So they spread the story that he was going to put our military under alien control, and that made him unpopular enough for CounterAction to target. What's your take on that?"
"From what I've heard, Meakes was sincere," Marie replied. "He genuinely wanted a stronger capability. But that was so the U.S. could run its own security operations independently. But the same people who didn't want Farden bankrupting Western industrial interests want an expanded Hyadean military presence here to protect their investments, with our own forces maybe eventually under their command."
Cade was astounded. "You're kidding!"
"I wish I was. The joke is that what they're pushing for is exactly what Meakes was accused of, but which in reality he was obstructing. So they had reason to want to get rid of him too." Marie looked across. Cade had no more questions for the moment, but sat absorbing what he had heard.
"So that's what you need to know," Marie told him. "If I don't come out of this for some reason, get it to the right people in the organization." She finished her toast, thought for a moment longer, and then added, almost as an afterthought, "Unless you still don't want any part of it, of course."
After half an hour of brooding, shuffling restlessly around in the cramped confines of the camper, and saying little, Cade sat down
opposite Marie as she sat staring through a window at the tree-covered slopes rising beyond the end of the field. "It's not enough," he declared. "Yes, we need to get this information to the right people in your organization. But it has to go further than that. It has to get to the Hyadeans too—the right ones. They need to know what kind of people their government is collaborating with. Because they don't question things, they'd be easy to take advantage of. But that would make them all the more appalled if they knew the truth. Maybe I have spent a lot of the last few years staying out of things that matter, but one thing it's done is put me on more than just speaking terms with a few who would be ideal to start with. One in particular that I'm thinking of is very close to Dee. Do you remember her?"
For a moment, Marie registered too much surprise to be capable of saying anything. She collected her wits quickly and nodded. "Dee? Yes. She's okay."
"We need to use her."
"How? What are you talking about?"
"Well, obviously we can't risk alerting Julia," Cade said. "What are the chances of getting a message to Dee somehow, through this network of yours?
"They could do it, sure," Marie agreed. "But in a situation like this, it's best to assume that anyone who comes to mind as a natural contact will have been marked by the other side too. That means they're likely to be watched and their lines tapped. It could take some time."
"Then the sooner we make a start, the better," Cade said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THEY GAVE JOHN DETAILS of how Dee could be contacted, along with an instruction that she was to mention it to nobody. After that, there was little else to do but wait. There was no way Cade could use a credit card, write a check, or present ID without being picked up. The confidence of the people sheltering them evidently grew over the next two days, or maybe their story was authenticated somewhere. More of John's friends began showing up at the house, many of them at night. John himself stopped by from time to time to check up on things and drink a coffee or beer with Cade and Marie. Times had grown bad since the coming of the aliens, he told them, and that seemed all that was needed to establish cause and effect. Cade wasn't aware of any activities on the Hyadeans' part that would depress U.S. agriculture, and from what he had heard attributed it more to rising Third World productivity and changes in East-West relations, but there was no arguing with the local wisdom. Cade wondered how typical this might be of thinking across the country. Maybe he had been getting more out of touch than he had realized. Marie borrowed a laptop and encrypted as much as she knew of Reyvek's story in a file that she entrusted to John for consignment to Sovereignty. So at least there was some safeguard now in that respect.
Meanwhile, the news brought reports of more operations by security forces, and an apparent act of retaliation in Minnesota, where a stretch of roadway was blown up while a military convoy was passing over, causing over sixty fatalities. Globalist Coalition fighter-bombers were shown in action against "bandit" forces in South America, long portrayed as organized by drug and other criminal elements to disrupt lawful land transfers and development programs that threatened their business. Cade didn't believe it anymore. Another clip showed Hyadean military advisors training Brazilian counterinsurgency troops in the use of prom guns, which were apparently being introduced into the bush fighting with devastating results, along with other Hyadean innovations and methods. Cade recalled what Marie had said about the real motives behind the assassination of Lieutenant General Meakes. He wondered how long it would take for similar provisions to be introduced in the U.S.
He found he was beginning to see things in a new light. In one of their conversations he asked Marie what was going on behind it all, the big picture. What was it all intended to bring about? She told him he had already half figured it out. It was to serve the elite who controlled the Hyadean power structure. Did she mean by profiting from dumped products that had no value back among the Hyadean worlds, and the resale there of cheap Terran labor? Yes, he could see all that. Hadn't he been involved on the fringes of it himself?
But it went further than that, Marie told him. They were moving in to take over choice parts of Earth as their own private preserves. Huge tracts of places like western Brazil, eastern Peru—and now they were talking about South Africa—were being transformed into estates and palaces for the Hyadean ruling clique to escape to from the drabness and overdevelopment of their own worlds. And the properties came with willing managers and domestics that outperformed Hyadean AIs, and none of the political difficulties associated with hiring subservient labor back home.
A freshly sculpted planet, Cade recalled. Unique in its biological vigor and stunning geology among the planets the Hyadeans had spread to. So finally, he had gotten to the bottom of it. That was what was really going on.
"So what happens to the people who live there?" he asked Marie in one of their ongoing debates between games of bézique, rummy, napoleon, and taking in the news and a few movies.
"The old story," she replied. "Obviously, if you want to take over their land, they have to go. So you call them bandits and send in the gunships."
"I never realized."
"Most people don't. It's been a long time since there was any genuinely free reporting."
Cade thought about his conversation with Vrel and Krossig when they were out on the yacht. "I'm not sure it's all that different for the average Hyadean," he said. "They think they're here to protect Earth from itself and introduce it to the benefits of a superior system. This is supposed to be an outpost to protect us from the Querl. It's kind of crazy, isn't it?"
Marie snorted. "I don't recall hearing anything about us ever asking for protection. From what? We don't even know who the Querl are. What have you been able to make of them?"
"Supposedly, they're too unruly and ideologically misguided to make the Hyadean system work," Cade replied. "So one day they'll try and take what they need." He showed his hands and shrugged. "But I've even heard Hyadeans questioning that line."
"You amaze me. I didn't think they were capable of questioning anything."
"I'm beginning to think the Querl are something like their version of our bandits. They want to get away from the glorious Hyadean system."
"Which means they can't really be the big threat that we're told, can they?" Marie said. "So why do the Hyadeans need a military capability?"
Cade could see only one answer. "To keep their system together. They talk about orderliness, but the truth is it has to be held in place by force too. Just the same as ours have always had to be."
"My, you really have been doing some thinking. Is this really the same Roland?"
"Don't be patronizing. Or is it matronizing?"
"But seriously, the aim is to gain control of the U.S. as the focal point of global affairs. That's what the AANS nations are resisting, and why we support them."
"You think that terrorizing people over here is the right way?"
For the first time, Marie's manner became short. "That's pure propaganda. The people's own government has become the terrorists. We're trying to wake the people up!"
"But you'd take it to an open struggle, maybe eventually involving Terrans and Hyadeans directly."
Marie spread her hands. "Look at what's happening. You've got us on the verge of a civil war here, right now."
Cade looked hard at her, as if trying to gauge how serious she really was. "Training programs in the mountains and rhetoric are one thing," he said. "But can you really condone it: firing on American defense forces?"
"Hell, Roland. What kind of defense? They're mounting military assaults on American citizens already!"
* * *
The next day, John delivered a reply from Dee. Vrel was anxious to learn whatever it was that Cade wanted to convey. Not knowing where Cade was or his situation, he had arranged in his official capacity as observer to visit a U.S. military base near St. Louis and report on the activities of a Hyadean contingent sent there as technical advisers. That, of course, left
the question of how Cade and Marie were to get to St. Louis, since with violent incidents escalating nationwide, all modes of travel were subject to routine checks and searches.
The answer came in the form of two nameless people who arrived the same evening to dye and restyle Cade's hair, stain a distinctive birthmark onto his forehead, and then photograph, fingerprint, and voiceprint him for a false set of ID documents, according to which he was now "Professor Wintner," described as a political scientist. Marie was similarly transformed into a social psychologist called "Dr. Armley." Cade doubted if it was mere coincidence that the professions fitted so well with Vrel's official work. The document forgers obviously knew their business, and came across as being intimately familiar with the official records systems. But those systems were interconnected, which meant that for the false IDs to work, appropriate data profiling the personas would need to be in there. Could it really be that thorough? Cade was intrigued.
"I said you'd be surprised how much support there is out there," Marie told him when he asked. "Sometimes the ones who work for government in the day are secretly our biggest allies. They know what goes on."
And they did work. Notification came via John that accommodation had been reserved for Professor Wintner and Dr. Armley at the St. Louis Hilton as guests of the Hyadean Office of Terran Cross-Cultural Exchange, which was the department that employed Vrel. They could book themselves a flight first-class, charged to a Hyadean account. It made a crazy kind of sense, Cade had to admit on reflection—the last place that Terran security would be looking for fugitives. Sometimes Hyadean logic managed to surprise him still. Being Hyadean, Vrel wouldn't be subject to the same scrutiny and restrictions as a Terran trying to make comparable arrangements.
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