‘And various governments know you’re down there?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t belong to any of those governments?’
‘No.’
‘Will you explain that?’
‘Not yet.’
Wilson smiled bleakly and turned back to the window, looked out as if searching for someone, then glanced up at the night sky.
‘Our reconnaissance satellites,’ Epstein said. ‘Is it true that they’ve seen you?’
‘Yes,’ Wilson said, turning back to the front. ‘Naturally. How could they miss us? They’ve been seeing us for years.’
‘Then they’ve been covering up for years.’
‘Of course,’ Wilson said. ‘There’s nothing particularly unusual about that – they’ve been covering up everything.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t you? What about all their secret research programs: their chemical warfare programs, their advanced weaponry programs, their secret achievements in aeronautics and communications and neurology; their covert operations against, and their clandestine agreements with, the Soviets and the Chinese and the Third World countries? The private citizen know precious little. He knows only what they deign to tell him. Governments cover up everything, from their politics to science, and when it comes to something as big as our saucers, they cover up even more.’
‘Why?’ Epstein asked.
‘Because they don’t trust the people. Because there isn’t a government in the world that still believes in Democracy.’
‘What’s your connection to them?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Wilson said.
‘You’re not an extraterrestrial,’ Epstein said. ‘That much I know.’
When Wilson offered a faint, possibly victorious smile, Epstein flushed like a guilty schoolboy, thinking of the cassette tapes in his safe, knowing that Wilson had tricked him.
‘Ah, yes,’ Wilson said. ‘Professor Mansfield. He must have told you a lot.’
Epstein burned and then cooled down, his throbbing stomach now at peace, feeling bright to the point of unreality, removed from his woes. He wondered where Stanford was, wished that Stanford would return. The wind moaned outside, sweeping over the darkened mountains, and he thought of the UFO sightings over the Cascades, of what Scaduto had told them. The truth emerged in small pieces. It lay before him like a jigsaw. There were still missing pieces, gaping holes, and the clock ticked the time away.
‘The harassment,’ Epstein said. ‘The suicides and disappearances. I take it that they’re part of the cover-up and that you engineered them.’
‘Some of them,’ Wilson said. ‘It depends on the circumstances. The actual harassment was usually arranged by your government, but most of the deaths and disappearances were due to us.’
‘Most?’
‘Not all. Occasionally your government steps in and does a job on its own.’
‘Then they work with you,’ Epstein said.
‘On and off,’ Wilson said. ‘As with all political situations, the agreements are tenuous and are prone to break down at any moment. We negotiate with the US government. We also negotiate with the Soviets. We trade and play one against the other because we haven’t much choice yet.’
‘Yet?’
Wilson smiled again. ‘The Nuclear Deterrent, the Balance of Terror, is a precarious business.’
‘And you’re in the middle?’
‘Yes,’ Wilson said. ‘We straddle the seesaw…But we’ll soon tip the other two off.’
Epstein felt very calm now, divorced from himself, the pain in his stomach gone, the fear disappearing with it, the bizarre nature of the whole conversation making it seem unreal. He didn’t know what to think, felt distant, almost placid, well aware that this man had done something to make him accept it all. The revelations were stunning, ambiguous, fascinating, and yet he now thought they sounded quite reasonable, down-to-earth, even commonplace. He wondered if he was hypnotized: stood outside himself and thought this. He saw that Wilson was now standing at the window, staring up at the night sky.
‘You killed Irving,’ Epstein said.
‘Irving Jacobs?’
‘Yes. You killed him. Why did you do that?’
Wilson returned to his chair, sat down, stared at Epstein, not smiling his sky-blue eyes bright, filled with icy intelligence.
‘He was digging too deep,’ he said. ‘He’d found out too much. Your own government was disturbed by his findings and wanted us to get rid of him. They didn’t want to do it themselves. They didn’t dare use their own men. They didn’t want the FIB or the CIA to go anywhere near him. So, we worked on him. We had him followed and harassed. When he grew frightened, when his resistance was low, we used longrange telepathy. We stole part of his mind that way. We made him think he was possessed. In the end we made him drive out to the desert where we came down on top of him. We didn’t need him as a scientist – we have plenty in that field – so we simply stuck the pistol in his mouth and made it look like suicide.’
Epstein should have been shocked, but he felt nothing at all. He thought of Irving and Mary and the old days, but they seemed far away.
‘You use mental telepathy?’
‘Yes,’ Wilson said. ‘Certain brain implants can enhance telepathic powers and actually lead to nonverbal communication. Some of the children, and all of the cyborgs, communicate that way.’
‘Were you involved with the woman from Maine?’
‘Yes. We were experimenting and the woman from Maine picked us up and then told the CIA. The agent she first informed knew nothing about us
or their own government’s saucers; but the Canadian government, when they heard about her, were naturally more concerned, thinking she might have picked up some Soviet signals. Bearing in mind that only a limited number of government and military personnel knew about the existence of the saucers, it was unfortunate that the agents who first interrogated the woman knew nothing about what was going on. However, at the second meeting, some of the military officers present knew all about the saucer programs – and it was they who subsequently buried the incident and transferred the CIA agents who were in the office at the same time, but didn’t know what was happening.’
‘Our informant said it was a Canadian-US saucer.’
‘An understandable error. Unfortunately, it was an error that led to your friend Scaduto spying on the Canadian plants. Mr Scaduto recently died of an unexpected heart attack. You can blame that on Stanford.’
The remark hardly affected Epstein. He felt calm and interested. The man speaking sounded absolutely reasonable; the revelations seemed commonplace.
‘What about Irving?’ Epstein asked.
‘I’ve already told you about him.’
‘You didn’t tell me what he’d found out. I’d like to know that.’
‘Jacobs was interested in the deaths and disappearances of so many of his contemporaries, and this encouraged him to investigate the Jessup case. In doing so, he discovered that the US Navy had, back in 1943, been experimenting with pulsating and vortexual high intensity magnetic fields that might alter the molecular structure of physical properties and render them temporarily invisible. This experiment became known as the Philadelphia Experiment, but contrary to popular belief it was a disaster. What in fact happened was that the Navy inadvertently created a source of electromagnetic energy that produced an infrasound of such intensity it killed every sailor on board the ship and actually split the ship’s hull. In short, the ship rumored to have disappeared actually sank – and naturally, since the Navy didn’t want word of this to leak out, they whipped up a mass of rumors that acted as a cover-up and led to the contemporary myth… However, in investigating this incident, Dr Jessup learnt that the Navy’s basic scientific principles were valid, that the Navy and Air Force were involved in saucer projects, and that those projects were utilizing certain aspects of the original Philadelphia Experiment. Having found out about this
, Jessup had to be removed… Then Jacobs found out much the same thing and also had to be terminated.’
‘I see,’ Epstein said. ‘And those principles were also the principles underlying the invisibility-inducing properties of your saucers?’
‘Correct. A specific quantity of electromagnetic radiation creates a stream of escaping photons of the same wavelength and frequency, which leads either to a glowing, plasmalike shield or to a color source beyond the known spectrum that renders the saucer invisible.’
‘How does this relate to the annotations in Jessup’s book? The ones that stimulated the interest of the Office of Naval Research.’
‘That was something of a red herring,’ Wilson said. ‘In 1955 the Navy was still experimenting with the possibilities of electromagnetically-induced invisibility. They were then, and remain today, unsuccessful. Nevertheless, they were disturbed by some of Jessup’s published remarks – and the annotations in that copy of his book had been made by their own intelligence officers, and related only to the sections that discussed force fields and dematerialization. The Navy wanted to know the source of his information, Jessup naturally refused to reveal it, then Jessup walked out of their office – and that’s all there was to it.’
‘You had nothing to do with the annotations?’
‘No, not a thing.’
Epstein closed his eyes, let himself drifting away, drifting down through the darkness and the long years he had labored, feeling calm, then feeling confused and drifting back up again. He thought of the cassette tapes in his office, of the old man now dead, thought of everything the old man had told him, wondered what it might mean. He had to get the tapes to Stanford. If nothing else, he had to do that. He now knew that they would take him away, and that he would not resist. He didn’t want to resist. His curiosity was too great. He opened his eyes and saw Wilson by the window and felt a great peace.
‘I have to go now,’ Wilson said. ‘When I depart, you’ll fall asleep. When you wake up, you’ll do what you feel like – because the choice won’t really be yours.’
‘I’m confused,’ Epstein said.
‘By what?’
‘You’re not an extraterrestrial, you’re from Earth, and you created the saucers. That’s what confuses me. It just doesn’t make sense. The first genuine UFO sightings were in 1897 – the Great Airship Scare – yet you say you’re the man who created them.’
‘That’s correct,’ Wilson said. He turned away from the window, walked back to the bed, and stood there, staring down at Epstein, his blue eyes exceptionally bright. ‘I’m one hundred and seven years old,’ he said. ‘You, too, can live that long.’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Approaching the lodge after his long day in the mountains, covered in snow and freezing, Stanford desperately wanted sleep, a respite from it all, an escape from the fear that now dogged him every day and was encouraged by his present state of exhaustion. The snow was deep and clean, drifting lazily upon itself, sweeping languidly around trees, the moonlight making it glisten, the wind moaning and scraping at his nerves, the mountains looming above him. Stanford longed for the lodge, for its safety and warmth, but when he saw it, the fear increased greatly and make him stop walking.
All the lights inside were on. The front door was ajar. A beam of light fell from the doorway to the porch, illuminating the snow that drifted along the wood boards. Stanford stood beneath some pines, not moving, his heart pounding, wondering why the lights were on, who was in there, his head spinning with feverish thoughts. He knew he was being foolish, felt ashamed of it, couldn’t stop it, recalling the boys in gray coveralls, the burning ranch and the vanished girl, remembering Gerhardt’s abduction and Scaduto’s recent suicide, and the fact that they knew who he was and might come back again…
Stanford cursed quietly and shivered, wiped snow from his face. He thought of the lights he had seen above the mountains, ascending vertically, abruptly shooting sideways. Not descending: ascending. Not meteors: unidentifieds. Stanford shivered and stared straight ahead, the panic emptying his mind, then he shook his head from side to side, realizing it was Epstein, cursed again, started walking again.
He climbed the wood steps, pushed the door open and entered. Glancing around the living area, seeing no sign of Epstein, he wondered why he had left all the lights on, then went into the bedroom. Epstein was sitting on the bed, wearing pajamas, looking sleepy, his hands folded primly in his lap, his gaze fixed straight ahead.
‘You got my message?’ Stanford asked.
‘Yes,’ Epstein replied.
‘It’s been a bitch of a day,’ Stanford said. ‘They’ve been all over
the place.’
‘Unidentifieds?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind?’
‘Just lights. They’ve been flying all over Mount Rainier, but they
never came close.’
‘No landings?’ Epstein asked.
‘None reported,’ Stanford said. ‘Most of the lights were high up,
standing still, then shooting sideways, racing to and fro across the mountain peaks, disappearing, returning. Then this big light came down. All the smaller lights went into it. Then the big light climbed vertically and disappeared and hasn’t been seen since. That was an hour ago.’
Epstein nodded judiciously, gazing down at his folded hands, very frail in his pajamas, too frail, a man fading away. Stanford noticed the frailty – that and something else: a remoteness, a sort of dreamy look that seemed distinctly unnatural.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ Epstein said. ‘I’m fine.’
‘And how was Paris? What did you find out?’
‘You were right. It was Germany.’
Stanford was taking off his jacket, but he stopped and stared at
Epstein, his shock mixed with fear and excitement, disbelief and wild hope. Shrugging his jacket back on, he took a deep breath and released it slowly, snow melting on the shoulders of the jacket and dripping down to the carpet.
‘Germans?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Epstein said. ‘I assumed so at first, but now I’m not so sure. I’m confused. I don’t know what to think.’
‘What has you confused?’
‘I have some cassette tapes,’ Epstein said. ‘It’s vital that you hear them. From what I was told in Paris, it seems almost certain that the Americans and the Canadians, and possibly the British, have their own flying saucers… But Scaduto was right: there are others involved. I don’t know who they are or where they come from or what they’re up to, but I do know that they’re not extraterrestrials and that they’re advanced to a frightening degree… It’s vital that you hear the tapes. They’re in my safe back in Washington. It’s vital that you go there right now and get them out of the safe.’
‘Right now?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Stanford said. ‘I’m exhausted. Just tell me what’s on them.’
‘There’s no time,’ Epstein said. ‘The tapes aren’t safe anymore. They want me and the tapes and they’ll get both before dawn breaks. You have to get there before them.’
Stanford stepped up to the bed and looked intently at Epstein, thinking that his friend had gone mad, wondering what he was talking about. Epstein was leaning against the pillows, his hands folded on his lap, his gray beard more shaggy than usual, his eyes slightly unfocused.
‘What are you talking about?’ Stanford asked. ‘I’m not sure I heard you right. Who’s going to get you and the tapes?’
Epstein didn’t look up. ‘I had a visitor,’ he said. ‘He murdered the Englishman and Scaduto. Now he wants me and the tapes. He said he’ll have both by first light.’
‘A visitor?’
‘Yes. He came here. He left just before you arrived. He knew all about Irving and Gerhardt and Richard Watson, about you, about me on the beach in the Caribbean. He knew about your encounter with the boys outside the ranch in Texas, and he knows about a lot of other things
that he really shouldn’t know. He’s one of them, Stanford. He told me about saucers. He told me enough to convince me. I’ve no doubt that he’ll get me.’
Stanford sat on the edge of the bed, the melting snow still dripping off him, and stared at his old friend for some time before talking again.
‘Tell me,’ he said.
Epstein recounted the whole story, his voice eerily calm and remote. Stanford was fascinated, at once frightened and excited, his head filling with bright lights and pulsating coronas and glittering stars that moved majestically through black night and then blinked out abruptly. Epstein’s voice sounded tired, almost toneless, distracted, filtering through Stanford’s thoughts and out again. Stanford listened, mesmerized, the room dissolving around him, not fully comprehending what he was hearing, overwhelmed and struck dumb. Then Epstein stopped talking, sighed forlornly, examined his hands, turning them this way and that, and the walls of the room reappeared as the real world crept back. Stanford glanced around him, wondering where he was, who he was, then he managed to get a grip on himself, focusing once more on Epstein.
‘I find it hard to believe,’ he said.
‘It’s all true,’ Epstein said.
‘Jesus,’ Stanford said. ‘It’s too much. I just can’t get a hold on it.’
Epstein coughed into his fist. ‘You have to leave now,’ he said. ‘It’s vital that you get all the tapes before they make me talk.’
‘What makes you so sure you’ll talk?’
‘Because I’m convinced they’ll hypnotize me. Either that or they’ll put an electrode in my brain like they did to young Richard Watson.’
‘You think they’re coming back here tonight?’
‘Before first light,’ Epstein said. ‘So it’s vital that you leave right now and get there before them.’
‘Me?’ Stanford said.
‘I’m not going with you,’ Epstein said.
‘What the hell do you mean, you’re not coming with me? You can’t just sit there and wait for them.’
Epstein’s hands were shaking. ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said. ‘I’ve been trying to unravel this mystery for twenty years and now I’m going to have all my questions answered. They’re going to take me with them. I can’t miss this opportunity. I want to know who they are and where they come from, so I’ll have to go with them.’
GENESIS (Projekt Saucer) Page 47
