by Lee Rudnicki
Zig disregarded the attempt to shut him down. “General Hastings, can I talk to you? Please.”
Sensing that Zig had no intention of leaving, Agent Jones grabbed his arm. “Sir, even though you’re a NSA employee, I have to ask you to leave now or you will be subject to arrest.”
“But I need to talk to the general,” he said loudly. “I have something to show him.”
Agent Jones tightened his grip on his arm and called for backup. Zig pushed him away. The papers flying into the air marked the exact moment when the situation had officially passed the point of no return.
The Secret Service moved fast. Zig shouted as the agents wrestled him to the floor. “General Hastings! I need to talk to you! Please! This is important!”
General Hastings stood to the side and silently watched the raucous wrestling match. When Zig was finally in handcuffs, he stepped right over him and into the elevator.
Zig desperately called out to the general one last time as the doors closed. “Operation Tristan!”
3
Berlin, Germany
Professor Richter enjoyed his stroll down the Unter Den Linden, the grass pedestrian mall named for the linden trees that have stood there since the 1600s.
Despite its long and proud history, many of the buildings along the Unter Den Linden are relatively new. In Berlin, it is said that you can tell if a building was around during the Second World War by whether or not it has bullet holes. If it doesn’t have bullet holes, it wasn’t there.
On the day that Professor Richter walked down the former path to the palace of the Prussian kings, however, bullets were not flying through the streets of Berlin. Germany had the blood of freedom pouring through its veins and the Unter Den Linden was beautiful again.
The professor decided to make the biggest announcement of his career at Humboldt University for two reasons. First, the school was a legend in academic circles all over the world; it had been home to some of Germany’s finest minds of the past 200 years, including his hero Albert Einstein and more than twenty-five Nobel Prize winners.
The second reason was more personal to Richter, as a writer. The campus is infamous for the night that the Nazis burned 20,000 books authored by Jews and other so-called degenerates in the nearby Bebelplatz. That horrible evening featured a speech by Joseph Goebbels and showed the world what was in store for it with Nazi ideology. Richter felt that if he had been a writer back in the 1930s, his books would have been on that burning pile. If not himself.
Richter stood above the small hidden memorial that marked the spot where the Nazis burned the books and said a silent prayer. Just below ground level, bookcases with shelf space for 20,000 books lined an all-white room. There was not a book to be found on the shelves, but a plaque bore the famous Heinrich Heine epigraph: “Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Boucher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende ouch Mencken” (“That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they ultimately burn people”).
The Nazis had always fascinated Richter, especially their well-documented interest in the occult. But he didn’t admire them. Instead, he wondered what could have driven an entire country off the deep end like that. He didn’t think it was because the German economy was in free fall, nor the fact that Hitler had been a charismatic leader who was at the right place at the right time. Instead, Richter was convinced that true evil had been responsible for Hitler’s messianic rise to power—perhaps the manifestation of Satan himself. If only the world had known how truly close Hitler had taken us to the brink, he thought.
Just outside the university gates, Richter stopped at a row of tables from which the school sold reprints of the books that the Nazis burned in the Bebelplatz. As he browsed, a student asked him to sign a copy of Pyramids and Aliens. He scribbled his name on the inside cover and sent the kid on his way. He drew comfort from the fact that Pyramids and Aliens was still generating interest. His research had not been the best, perhaps, but his fans loved the book. The 70,000 copies that it had sold over the last few months got him onto a few talk shows and paid the bills; not a bad thing. There were even rumors of a movie deal, but that hadn’t quite panned out yet.
Richter enjoyed the fame and benefits that came with a best seller, but his perspective changed when the mysterious dossier arrived in his mailbox. At first, he thought the document was a joke or perhaps an anonymous work penned in tribute to his own books. But, his life changed when he went to Prague and began to retrace the journey of the two German soldiers—that’s when Richter found himself in possession of the scoop of the century. And with the person who sent him the top-secret dossier unwilling or unable to disclose their identity, the story was all his.
Professor Richter looked around at his surroundings one last time before he went into the school. He knew that the world would be a far different place when he emerged.
Julia panicked when she saw him walk towards the front door. She didn’t have a plan, but she tried to buy Zig some time. “Professor Richter! Professor Richter!”
Richter heard her call out, but he had no intention of stopping. He signed one book, but he couldn’t sign them all—the press was waiting.
He went inside. When Julia tried to follow him, a security guard in a blue blazer stepped in front of her. “Student ID, please.”
Julia reeled backwards, not sure what to say. “I don’t have student ID, sir. I’m just here for the lecture.”
The guard looked at his clipboard. “Name, please.”
“Julia Heckmann. I’m not on the list, but I’ve traveled a long way to hear Professor Richter speak. Please, you’ve got to let me in.”
“You’re not on the list.”
“I know that I’m not on the list. I just told you that. I’m a huge fan of Pyramids and Aliens. Have you read it?”
The security guard shook his head. By his irritable demeanor, she instantly knew there was no point in appealing to his literary tastes.
“Can I please come in for the lecture? I cancelled plans with my family to be here. I’ll behave and I’ll leave right after it’s over. I promise.”
The security guard shook his head.
Julia sighed and walked away. A few steps later, she gathered her courage, blended into a group of students and tried to sneak past the guard again.
When the irate guard blocked her way for the second time, he pushed his sport jacket aside to reveal a small silver pistol in a shoulder holster.
“You’re not on the list.”
4
Ft. Meade, Maryland
The elevator door opened and General Hastings towered over Zig. He had been absolutely convinced that the kid was a lunatic. That certainty disappeared as the elevator doors closed. “What the hell did you just say?” he bellowed.
“Ook,” Zig responded. Agent Jones had his face pushed down into the carpet.
“What?”
“Ananrannaggupupyyzzrzoozananannnnawhhhhoppkknssssssssoyyeaawwoookookkkkieezzzzeszzzz. Uruururru.”
“Get him up. I can’t understand a goddamn word he’s saying. Take the cuffs off,” Hastings ordered.
Agent Jones pulled him to his feet and took the handcuffs off. Zig cringed when Hastings grabbed him by the collar and looked him in the eye.
“Who the hell are you?”
“Michael Zigmund, sir.”
“Are you going to tell me what all of this nonsense is about?”
Zig glanced nervously at the Secret Service and other people in the hallway who had been attracted by the commotion. Sheppard stood outside of his office with his arms crossed, looking like a math teacher who just caught some kid cheating on the final.
“This is highly confidential. Can we talk in private, sir? Please?” Zig asked.
General Hastings sighed. Then he turned to his security detail. “Did you search him for weapons?”
Agent Jones nodded.
“Shep, can we use your office?”
Sheppard stepped aside, but he wasn’t happy about it. Zig picked his paper
s up, winked as he passed Sheppard and went into the office. Hastings followed him in and shut the door.
“Okay Mr. Zigmund, I’ll play. What kind of goddamn, low-rent, turkey raffle bullshit is this? What is so important to risk your career and personal liberty over?”
Zig held up a copy of Pyramids and Aliens.
The general knew the book; his wife Maureen wouldn’t stop talking about it. “I hope you’re not about to tell me that the theories in that book are real,” he warned. “Because if you do, I’m going to kick your ass right here, right now. Step two will be your arrest on federal charges for assaulting a Secret Service agent.”
Zig smiled. “No, sir. Pyramids and Aliens is complete tabloid bullshit. Well-written entertainment fiction. Fun to read. It might even make a great movie. But nothing in that book is real. Nothing at all.”
General Hastings breathed a sigh of relief. The kid at least had half of a brain. “Get to the point.”
“A friend of mine heard that Professor Richter is going to speak at Humboldt University today, in Berlin. She thinks he’s going to announce his next book.”
“So what.”
“He isn’t going to announce his next book. He’s going to announce something much, much bigger than that. And if what he shows people in that presentation is real, there could be trouble. A lot of trouble.”
“Why are you so interested in that guy’s kooky theories? He claims to have proof that the Pyramids of Giza were built by Martians. How the hell do you know he’s not cooking up another publicity stunt to sell more books?”
“I hacked into his laptop.” Then Zig showed him the dossier. “It’s all here—I printed it out.”
General Hastings was stunned speechless. He had just spent the morning testifying to an antagonized Congressional subcommittee about the NSA’s new warrantless electronic surveillance guidelines. The incident that Zig just admitted to was a textbook case of what Congress and the civil liberties groups were up in arms about. He wondered if his next day on the Hill would be spent explaining and apologizing for this crap. On C-SPAN.
“Who told you to do that? Who authorized you to scan his laptop?” Hastings asked.
Zig just stood there.
“Did anyone at all approve it? Anybody at all?”
“Nope.”
Hastings hit the roof. “How goddamn stupid can you be? Don’t you know how big this issue is right now? If the press gets wind of this, they will eat us alive—so will Congress!”
“I understand, sir.” Zig put his head down in shame. He wondered if they were going to let him clean out his desk. Then he wondered if he could get a new job with a felony on his record.
As Zig turned to leave, General Hastings grabbed his arm. “Wait a minute, son.”
“Sir?”
“Let me see what’s in that file.”
5
Langley, Virginia
Patrick Waldon leaned back in his chair and pushed his breakfast across his desk, away from him. In his six years as Director of the CIA, the secret had come close to being revealed twice. Both times he had successfully dealt with the situation. It wasn’t pleasant, but he did what he had to do. The stakes were too high to play by the rules.
Waldon knew the secret would probably get out someday, but he vowed that it wouldn’t happen on his watch. In fact, one of his principal jobs at the agency—besides killing off the remnants of Al Qaeda and its various splinter groups—was to ensure that the secret didn’t get out. Under a classified Presidential directive, he was authorized to take any steps deemed necessary to prevent that from happening, including the use of deadly force in any jurisdiction.
When he heard that the topic of the meeting was Operation Tristan, he got worried. Worried enough to have CIA chief counsel Charles Corgan in the office with him. “Are you ready?” he asked.
Corgan nodded and pulled out a yellow legal pad as a three-dimensional hologram of General Hastings appeared in front of them. The lawyer was amazed by the latest and greatest toys that Waldon constantly got his hands on, but the new 3D technology was just a little too realistic and creepy for him.
Waldon got right to the point. “How bad is it?”
“Someone stumbled onto Tristan again,” General Hastings replied.
“Who?”
“Gerhard L. Richter III, a semi-celebrity and very strange writer from Vienna. They call him ‘the professor,’ but he doesn’t teach anywhere, he just writes shitty occult books. In fact, we can’t find any evidence that he even has a college degree. We’re not sure who gave him the information about Operation Tristan, but it appears to have been a significant security breach. He’s been visiting the locations described in the dossier.”
“How certain are you that he has good intel?”
“100%. One of our analysts hacked into his goddamn laptop.”
Waldon still didn’t panic. They had contingency plans to deal with anyone who got too close. They also had a heavily armed Delta Team on standby in London, 24/7. “Why did you authorize this surveillance in the first place?”
“I didn’t authorize squat,” Hastings replied. “In fact, I didn’t even really know anything about this Richter character until this morning. Our analyst, Michael Zigmund, is a big fan of his books. So is my wife.”
“Did he have a search warrant?” Corgan asked. He didn’t fully understand the situation yet, but he was running the usual legal scenarios through his mind.
“No one authorized Mr. Zigmund to do anything,” General Hastings replied. “He’s an overly-curious and hyperactive nerd, just out of college. He couldn’t wait for Richter’s next book to come out. He had to know what was next. Lucky for us.”
Corgan thought the solution was simple. “No problem. We’ll get the German courts to issue an emergency restraining order to prevent him from going public.”
“That will buy us some time,” Waldon said.
“Agreed,” Corgan replied. “Germany’s laws are much more restrictive than ours when it comes to Nazi bullshit. In fact, if you give the Hitler salute, you can go to jail.”
“I hate to veto the CIA’s mutual admiration society, but you don’t understand what’s going on here,” Hastings interrupted. “Richter conned his way into a classroom at Humboldt University; his lecture starts in a few minutes. Because of the success of his latest idiotic book, the press might actually show up to hear what he has to say.”
Waldon remained unconvinced. “No one will believe him anyway. With a little covert and malicious PR, we can discredit him so bad that he won’t get an invitation to speak at a middle school science fair for the next forty years. If that fails, we’ll drug him and get photos of him in flagrante delicto. There’s a tabloid website in Los Angeles that will be all over it.”
General Hastings sighed. There was no way around it—he had to tell them. “Listen to me, gentlemen. Professor Richter is not some run of the mill moron who will be deterred by risqué photos. The document that Zig lifted from his laptop is not a collection of half-assed UFO theories. We don’t know how he got it yet, but it’s Dossier #6561—the same top-secret dossier that was prepared for President Truman after the war; the same dossier that no member of Congress has ever seen. Get the picture?”
Corgan put his legal pad down and closed his eyes. The atmosphere in the office went ice cold.
It finally happened. Goddamn it, Waldon thought. His heart and his mind raced. The United States government suddenly faced its most serious crisis since the Second Korean War. “Did you notify the Chancellor?”
“She was in a closed-door session mediating the latest skirmish between Greece and Turkey. She didn’t get the message fast enough or didn’t appreciate its significance. Either way, there was a catastrophic failure in communication and we didn’t reach her until a few minutes ago. The German feds and FBI are on the way to Humboldt University, but they won’t get there in time. We can worry about who screwed up later, but we need to fix this. We have seven minutes. Ready, go.”
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Waldon threw his breakfast against the wall and screamed. “Fuck!” It had been three years since he had thrown food, but a little food throwing during a national crisis was good for the soul. That danish was stale anyway, he thought. I hate lemon danish. Fuck lemon danish.
The lawyer got him to snap out of it. “Are there any other food groups that you want to attack before we decide on a course of action?” Corgan asked.
Waldon didn’t answer—he was already running solutions to the crisis through his mind. “We’ve gotta take him out,” he muttered. Then he punched a button on the speakerphone. “Gilman!”
“Sir?” came the voice on the other end.
“Get the German Chancellor on the line.”
“Yes, sir!” came the reply.
“Not so fast,” Corgan interrupted. We have to contact the President for approval first.”
“No time.”
“But under the law...”
“Under the law, I have the emergency power to take these actions without Presidential approval. I don’t care if we have to launch a fucking tomahawk cruise missile into that building. We will not allow that lecture to proceed.”
Corgan remained unmoved. “Sir, you are obligated under federal law to get the President’s approval prior to conducting targeted assassinations in NATO countries. There is a procedure. A protocol.”
“Screw protocol and screw the three years that you spent in law school. We’re in deep shit right now. Duarte has been the leader of the free world for less than a week—we don’t have time for him to get over the sticker shock.”
Waldon turned back towards the hologram. “General, who do we have on the ground?”
“Only one agent is close enough,” Hastings replied. “Julia Heckmann. Fortunately, she’s been following Richter.”
