I pulled the door open slightly, just enough that they could see half of me, and one of my eyes that I gave an intimidating look out of.
“Good morning, ma’am. We’re looking for Dr. Justin Dickerson.” Mr. Suit said.
“Who are you?” I asked, wondering what had I done now.
“I’m from the NRO . . .” Mr. Suit said, then paused, apparently thinking he should explain those initials. “National Reconnaissance Office, ma’am. My name is Jeffrey Rice.” I nodded like I knew who that was. He said his name like I should. Without trying to give away how clueless I was or my complete lack of interest in who they were, I looked over at the other man.
“Morning, ma’am.” The guy with the red beret nodded. “I’m United States Air Force. Lt. William Zuick.”
I could see that, but then he said, “Blue Light Division.”
‘Blue Light Division?’ I wasn’t sure I should believe that. Aren’t their berets supposed to match the name of the group they’re in?
“What can I do for you?” I asked
“Are you Dr. Dickerson?” Mr. Suit spoke.
Before I could answer, Nikhil Chandra came up the walkway to my house. Dressed in full priestly regalia.
What? Does he just hang around my house and office?
“Hi, Justin,” he said, and stood there with his hands folded in front of him.
“Hi, Nikhil,” I said.
Nikhil nodded at the two guys. No one said anything, until Nikhil spoke again, “Let’s all go in, shall we?” He squeezed past me and the two men and walked into my house.
Oh, well.
I opened up the door all the way and swept my arm toward the interior of the house.
“Come in,” I said.
I pointed toward the living room, and said, “You’ll have to excuse me for a minute, I left something cooking in the kitchen,” I lied. “Have a seat. Nikhil, you’ll see to our guests won’t you? And I’ll be right back.” I turned and walked – initially, out of the living room until I had rounded the corner into the hallway, then I ran to my study. Bending over the desktop I Googled ‘USAF Blue Lights’. The very first entry caused me to sit down and swallow hard. Oh my God. Who had I let in my house?
It was a Wikipedia file that was only a couple of paragraphs long. It said that the Blue Lights were a Special Forces unit in 1980s but hadn’t existed since then.
Well, they existed somewhere because one of them was sitting in my living room. I looked over toward the door to make sure they hadn’t followed me.
It said that they were involved in counterterrorism . . .
Oh my goodness.
The article compared them to the Delta Force. I didn’t know what that was. But it didn’t sound good. The article didn’t say much more. I clicked the back button.
Scanning the rest of the page from my initial search, I saw a couple entries down a link that said, The Secret Shadow Government. “Oh shoot,” I said out loud. “Secret government? What the heck!” Without opening the link, I saw underneath it the words “USAF Blue Lights” all in bold. Making circles over the link with my mouse, I debated on whether to open it or not. I chose ‘not’.
I didn’t want to know what it said.
For some reason, all of a sudden, I felt better that Nikhil was there.
Then I typed N-R-O in the search box. I was thinking that I would have to type the full name in, but it came up on the first try. Once on the website, I had to click on the “About” link to find out anything. It read, “When the United States needs eyes and ears in critical places where no human can reach – be it over the most rugged terrain or through the most hostile territory – it turns to the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). The NRO is the U.S. Government agency in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites . . .”
Intelligence satellites?
Now I was really confused. What could they want with me?
I took a deep breath and pushed myself up from the desk. Only one way to find out. I headed back to the living room, then I remembered I was supposed to have been in the kitchen. So, I turned around ran into the kitchen and banged some pots around and opened and shut a drawer. That didn’t help because they were auto close draws. So I opened a cabinet and shut it hard, and ran back down the hallway.
Getting to the living room, I slowed down and caught my breath, rounding into the room, I saw they had made themselves comfortable. Mr. Suit was on my couch, and Mr. Wrong Color Beret in a chair. Nikhil was peering out the front window. He was standing somewhat to the side of it, and peeking out like he didn’t want someone out there to see him. Before I could say anything, Mr. Suit started talking.
“I’m sure you must be wondering why we’re here, Dr. Dickerson.”
I sat down on the opposite end of the couch. “What’s your name, again,” I asked.
“Jeff Rice. Here’s my card,” he said, leaning over and handing it to me. “I apologize. I should have given you that right off.”
“No problem,” I said, looking down at the card. Looking back up, I noticed Nikhil still fiddling over at the window. “Nikhil, would you like to have a seat?”
“No.” He smiled. “I’m fine.”
Mr. Suit looked at me. “We just have a few quick questions for you. If you don’t mind?”
“No. Go ahead.”
“We understand that you are an archaeologist and are currently teaching over at Case Western Reserve.”
“Mm-hmm.” I nodded my head. That really wasn’t a question. “That’s right,” I said, answering just the same.
“A biblical archaeologist?”
“Yes.”
“Any experience in geology?”
“No.”
“Astrophysics?”
“No.” I pursed my lips, and furrowed my brow.
“Have you any knowledge of nuclear fission?”
I raised my eyebrow and shook my head.
What was this all about?
“Have you come by any information on nuclear activity that took place at any time that could have, let’s say, destroyed lands or peoples?”
Oh. Now I see.
“No,” I lied.
Nikhil turned from the window for the first time and looked at me.
“Are you the author of In the Beginning,” Jeff Rice asked.
“Yes,” I said. “A work of fiction.”
“Just fiction?” he asked with a smirk.
“Just fiction,” I said.
Suit nodded to Wrong Color Beret and they both stood up as if they were ready to leave. Why two of them came, I don’t know because, Mr. Wrong Color Beret never said a word.
“Is that all?” I asked.
“If we need to speak to you about anything else, would it be okay to contact you again?”
“I’m not sure what you needed or wanted this time,” I said.
Mr. Suite gave me another one of his smirks and walked toward the front door. I followed him. I guess they were finished with me. Nikhil still stood sentinel at the front window.
“Have you deciphered the Voynich Manuscript?” Nikhil said to me after I came back from seeing the two government men out.
“Uhm. No.” I said.
Glancing over at me, he said, “You’ve been doing some traveling, Justin.”
That didn’t sound like a question to me, either, so I didn’t answer him. Was he now taking his questioning methods from Mr. Suit?
“Still looking?” he asked.
“Still looking?”
“For answers. Are you still looking for answers?”
“Yeah,” I said to Nikhil. “I’m still looking for answers. I’m just trying to cover all my bases.”
“You need to cover your bases a little better. I told you,” he said, sitting down in the chair. “I couldn’t keep you safe, but it looks like I might have to find someone who can.”
“What are you talking about?”
“For one, that dark blue Taurus that was p
arked out in front of your house. Did you ever find out who that was?”
Was I supposed to find out who he was? I thought I was just supposed to avoid him, so he couldn’t kill me.
I went and peeked out the window. “I don’t see a car out there.”
“That’s because they took off after your visitors left. Perhaps they know each other.” He looked at me sternly. “So, was talking to those two guys also a part of this ‘covering all your bases’ plan that you have?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea who those guys were,” I said, and looked him directly in his eyes. “But part of my plan may have something to do with you. Are you a part of the Bilderberg Group?”
“No. Quite the opposite.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Before he could answer, I thought of another question. “Then why was it on the back of your card?”
He smiled. “I’m glad you saw that. I hoped you would. But still not as quickly as I would have thought.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sure you noticed it was hand-written on the card.”
“Yeah.”
“Certainly, if I were a member of the group, I wouldn’t have written that in. Especially on the back.”
“Why did you write it?”
“So you could check them out. Perhaps that would motivate you.” He tugged at his collar.
“Check them out?” I didn’t understand him or his cryptic messages. “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “They ruled themselves out of the equation. I can’t get a straight answer from them, a phone conversation, or get in to meet with them.”
“I think you did just have a meeting with them,” Nikhil said, giving me the same smirk as Mr. Suit had.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Professor Abelson believed that there was some ancient symbol used as a marker to designate where codes stopped and started in the Voynich Manuscript. She had written that the language of the book appears to be an ancient language, but not any of the European languages. She did think, however, that ancient European languages were derived from the language in the book.
Well, if the book was from the Ancients, then that certainly would be true. They would have come with a language. And to follow along with her logic, that language would be the one in the Voynich Manuscript. Then, she reasoned, other languages such as Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ge’ez, Sanskrit, and more came from it.
She also said that it could not be a Vigènere or Caesar cipher because you don’t have an alphabet base in order to do a shift. Can’t go three letters down an alphabet you don’t know. In fact, she dismissed totally it being a cipher. She said it was a code. And there was a key. Not that that helped me much.
Where would I find a key?
I glanced over at the book that I wrote. The one in which I said I would provide proof of our migration. I did have the original AHM manuscripts, but would that be enough?
I flipped through the pages of my book. All the things I figured out from the AHM manuscripts. All the things I had purportedly figured out, because I still couldn’t prove any of it. All the things that I wrote in my book that I vowed I would show proof of. The Ancients’ laboratory on Madagascar. How they used iridium to manufacture an object that could be hurled through space and change the climate on Earth.
I turned the page and saw the picture of the Nazca Plains in Peru. The symbols used were written to show the Ancients, who were not part of the chosen people, where they could find the Saboteurs. So they could find their people. I traced my finger over the picture of the spider.
There were straight lines, and birds, lizards, monkeys and snakes.
Snakes . . .
Those same symbols were found at Göbekli Tepe, in caves in Sumer, and on the walls of the Mithraeum I saw at Yale.
The symbols that they used, I believed, and that I had demonstrated in my latest book, were what was used to direct late comers from Mars. Or, those that had been cast out among the stars to die, in case they ever made it back.
Those were the symbols . . .
“Oh, my God.” I stood up and had to steady myself. When the light-headedness from my realization passed, I grabbed my purse and the keys to my car. I needed books. Lots of books.
I think I just figured out the key to decipher the Voynich Manuscript.
Chapter Sixty
Senator Bruce Cook (R) of California was on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Senate Committee. He was also the Chair on the Subcommittee in Science and Space.
The Subcommittee had responsibility for science, technology research and development; as well as civilian aeronautical and space science and policy. The committee also had oversight of the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
Because Senator Cook chaired the committee, although he had no background in science, he thought that made him an expert.
“I followed your guys from Dr. Justin Dickerson’s house. The NRO guy and USAF officer,” Robert Kevron said to Bruce Cook. “I got curious when I saw them. I had just got back from a meeting at the Pentagon about NASA’s interest in Dickerson.” Kevron leaned forward in his chair, looking squarely at the man sitting across the desk from him. “I’m assuming now you have a shared interest in her?” Kevron asked.
They were sitting in Senator Cook’s home office in One America Plaza, the tallest building in San Diego. Cook’s office was covered in dark wood, and decorated with dark rich colors. He sat in a burgundy leather tufted chair, behind an ornate mahogany stained desk.
Robert Kevron got up from his seat and walked over and stood in front of the long wall of windows. He stared out across the shoreline at the boats moving along the Pacific.
“It is part of my job as the Subcommittee Chair. Dr. Dickerson had some information in her book that she probably shouldn’t know. And there’s more going on over there at NASA that she definitely has to keep her nose out of.”
Bruce Cook sat behind his massive desk. He was tall, at least 6’2”, and lean, with broad shoulders. His hair was almost completely white except for the brown tinge around his hairline. He wore his hair combed back off of a chiseled face that housed pock marks, evidencing past problems with acne. Cook was a multimillionaire, and he was also the Chairman of the Bilderberg Group.
Kevron ran his hand over his buzz-cut, gray hair, wishing he was back home fishing. Those two guys that went to Justin Dickerson’s house were a scare tactic, he was sure. But, he learned, they had found out nothing from her.
“Yeah,” Kevron said. “Like I told you, Jack Hughes, Air Force guy that works at the Pentagon, was a bit suspicious of her, not quite sure why. He called me back, though, after he got to know her, and said he thought she was okay. But I stayed on it because the Pentagon showed some interest.”
“Kevron, I’m going to need you to stand down on this one. I’ll deal with the Pentagon, this little problem, and her from here on out. I’ve had my people get me updated on what she’s being doing. Quite odd, if you ask me. She’s visiting islands in the Indian Ocean, going to Italy for a conference on an undecipherable book.”
“She is an archaeologist,” Kevron said.
“She’s an archaeologist that knows about a nuclear reaction on the surface of Mars. And while a lot of people know there’s radioactive material up there, their assumption is that it came as a result of the absence of a magnetic field. They don’t know about the people that had been up there.”
Kevron raised an eyebrow. “The people who had been up there?”
“Some things are above your pay grade, Mr. Kevron. Especially since now your pay grade is a check that we mail to you once a month.
“She sent out several letters to members of the Group, requesting information,” Cook said. “Asking for a meeting. Perfect cover for me to get her in here and find out what she knows. We’ve got something going on at NASA and she is getting her information from somewhere. She just might be a threat to our agenda.”
“Maybe she is. Maybe she’s not. You ask my opinion, she’s no threat. Plenty of people wrote books about the things she did.”
“Didn’t ask your opinion,” Cook said. He pushed his chair from the desk. “People can innocently and inadvertently be a threat. Not for you to determine who they are anymore.”
“She’s in her fifties,” Kevron said. “A little overweight. Teaches at college up in Cleveland.”
“Like I said, I’ll invite her in response to the letters my Group received from her. For some reason she has an interest not only in Mars, but what my group is trying to do.”
“What is it your group is trying to do?” Kevron asked.
Cook laughed harshly. “Mr. Kevron,” Cook said, tilting his head, his blue eyes beaming. Apparently holding back something that couldn’t be shared.
Kevron let out a chuckle of his own. “Is it one of those things that if you told me, you’d have to kill me?”
“No. We’d kill your family, and then make you work for us doing our little dirty work.”
“Don’t have any family. And I don’t worry about too many things, or too many people, Mr. Cook,” Kevron said, his voice keeping a schooled calmness. “The best course of action is to find out what Justin Dickerson knows, and then use that little line of yours on her. As you said, I’m off of this. I’m back to Alabama so I can pick up my check.”
Chapter Sixty-One
I found every book I had on my bookshelf that had to do with ancient symbols, all the new ones I had bought to learn Ge’ez and every book I had to translate Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin. Then I went to the library and borrowed all the ones I could find and whatever they had on South American plants now and back as far in history as they could go. I didn’t find much, so I was going to have to scour the Internet and find more. Then I went to the Barnes and Noble on Euclid and Half-Price Bookstore out at Golden Gate Plaza and searched their shelves.
I was almost sure that I had figured out the key to decoding the Voynich Manuscript.
Irrefutable Proof: Mars Origin I Series Book II Page 24
