Old Earth

by Gary Grossman

  “You fucked up.”

  “Dr. McCauley, can we keep this at a respectable level? If it’s any consolation, I think you’re criticizing me much too harshly. Here I am admitting mistakes. I also acknowledge that fulfilling our charge is becoming increasingly difficult. A new pope brings new leadership. The nonstop hunger for news gives muckrakers and blowhards louder voices than journalists and intellectuals. Things will change in time. Ultimately, we may be unable to contain our secrets. I pray it will not be because of my shortcomings or unwillingness to act. I fear for the world if and when that happens.”

  Gruber pointed his umbrella at Katrina, then McCauley.

  “There is an expression,” Gruber continued. “It’s Latin. Have you heard it? Cui bono?”

  “Yes,” Katrina said. “To whose benefit.”

  “Very good. It’s attributed to the wise Roman judge, Lucius Cassius, who was known for asking, ‘Cui bono?’ It often suggests that a person who’s guilty of committing a crime may be someone who has something to gain.

  “Cui bono, Dr. McCauley? Let’s be truthful. You believed you would benefit. Research. Publication. Dr. Alpert’s positive review. Yes, I know these things. Tenure. Lectures. Fame. None of it possible if you truly knew. The cost to civilization is far too great.”

  McCauley remained silent.

  “Your site in Montana has been destroyed. The same here. There is nothing for you to report. No reason to light the fuse. We’ve contained that which would surely affect the present and change the future. Cui bono? The world benefits.”

  The old man took another cleansing breath. His expression changed. “There was a man, a cardinal, Francesco Barberini. Are you familiar with him?”

  “Yes,” McCauley acknowledged. “Why?”

  “Just a footnote in history. It’s of no matter.”

  Gruber checked his watch again. “I must admit, this was a most engaging discussion. One of the best in quite some time. But now I have other things to do. And you must take a walk with my colleagues while I begin down the hill.”

  Katrina gasped.

  “We won’t be seeing one another again.”

  Gruber motioned with his umbrella for Quinn and Katrina to head toward the edge of the cliff they’d seen hours before.

  “Good-bye Dr. McCauley, Dr. Alpert.”

  As they were marched off, they heard the old man repeat the single, simple word. “Secretum.”

  Eighty-two

  “Do not turn around. Keep walking. No talking.”

  The paramilitary soldier’s command was sharp and direct, uncompromising, non-negotiable.

  Quinn and Katrina stepped through overgrowth that reached up to their thighs. The swooshing of their feet was the loudest sound, but boots rhythmically filled in behind them.

  After two minutes, the weeds gave way to rocks. Now they only heard their own breathing and footsteps. Quinn figured the mercenaries had taken up their final positions. He squeezed Katrina’s hand as they approached the ledge.

  “They’re going to make it look like we jumped off,” she whispered.

  McCauley glanced left and right, trying to scope escape routes, at least one for Katrina. The landscape was too open for any successful run. “Maybe we can angle toward a soft landing.”

  In another minute they were at the shelf. They stopped and faced a two hundred foot drop. Below, sharp boulders and dead trees. Katrina and Quinn looked deeply into one another’s eyes and dared a kiss. A deep, loving kiss.

  Quinn didn’t know when or how it would come, but if the kiss was the last thing he’d know, he wanted it to last.

  And it lasted. For ten seconds. For twenty. For thirty.

  McCauley slowly released Katrina, turned toward his captors and opened his eyes.

  They were gone.

  Eighty-three

  Makoshika State Park, MT

  Five weeks later

  The early morning sun cast long shadows westward. The ground was wet from a late night thunderstorm. A family of turkey vultures squawked overhead. Aside from the birds, the only other sounds that cut across the landscape were the footsteps of four curious explorers.

  They walked single file. Each carried a heavy backpack. Two knew where they were going. Two didn’t. Only one of them knew why McCauley was playing Kinks hits on his iPhone—Katrina Alpert.

  Quinn McCauley was a great deal more careful now. McCauley was also attentive to a word that had echoed in his mind for more than a month. Secretum.

  Katrina was second in line. Like the others, she wore a long sleeved shirt with a hoodie, jeans, and work boots. Her backpack contained even warmer clothes.

  Behind Katrina was Peter DeMeo. He was alive, and quite amazingly in love with the Italian woman he’d met at the Vatican. McCauley’s concerns were apparently unfounded.

  Last in the line, Al Jaffe, the only member of the summer class McCauley had invited back for this venture.

  After trudging through the mud, McCauley brought them to a halt in the middle of the flats. Directly ahead—the hillside. The base was strewn with splintered rocks from the Cessna’s impact. Every piece of the plane had been painstakingly recovered and removed by the NTSB investigators. Remaining strands of police tape that had cordoned off the area fluttered in the light breeze. Soon all traces would be gone.

  “The wind and weather are already taking their toll,” Jaffe said softly. “Like you said when we met, Dr. McCauley, we’re just visitors here.”

  “No, Al, I was wrong. We’re more than visitors. We’re partners. We have been for a long time.” He pointed at the challenge that faced them. “Let’s see what we can learn about the earth.”

  McCauley started walking in the direction he’d indicated.

  “Wrong way, Quinn,” Katrina quickly corrected him. “To your right.”

  McCauley stopped and smiled mischievously.

  “What?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “What?” she demanded.

  Jaffe walked to her side and also smiled broadly.

  “What?” she said for the third time. “The plane crashed there!” She pointed to a slightly different position, off axis of where Quinn was heading.

  He walked back to her. “You’re absolutely right, sweetheart. That is where the plane hit, but I gave Al an assignment while we were driving to LA. Research a man named Maskelyne. Jasper Maskelyne. I think you were asleep at the time. My oversight for not mentioning it to you.” He laughed. He hadn’t intended on telling Katrina.

  “Dr. McCauley had me look up what Maskelyne accomplished at the Port of Alexandria during World War II,” Jaffe added.

  “So?” DeMeo was equally confused.

  “Jasper Maskelyne was a vaudeville performer who enlisted in World War II,” McCauley explained. “A countryman of yours, Katrina. He believed his special talents would translate from the stage to the theater of war.”

  “A clever turn of phrase. But what talents?” she asked.

  “He was a magician,” Jaffe noted.

  “A master magician. Masterful in fact,” McCauley continued. “He wanted to demonstrate that trickery had value to the Allies. He believed his illusions could help defeat the Germans.”

  “I don’t get it,” DeMeo said.

  “Well, neither did the British commanders at first. However, Maskelyne knew how to divert the eye. Deflect attention. Make his audiences focus on something they thought was real, but wasn’t. He was an expert in the art of deception. So to convince the officers, he created the illusion of a large German warship floating on the Thames. He used only a model and mirrors. From a distance and the correct angle it looked real. Absolutely real. Having proven his point, they gave Maskelyne a commission in the Royal Engineers. Soon he deployed to North Africa. For some time he simply entertained the troops. But in January, 1941, Maskelyne was allowed to pull together a team which he called ‘The Magic Gang.’ They consisted of a carpenter and painters, an architect, chemist and electrical engineer, and, this
is vital—a stage set builder, all the people he’d need to put on a spectacular show.

  “You’ve heard of Erwin Rommel?”

  “Of course. He was the German general who rolled across North Africa,” DeMeo answered.

  “Well, Maskelyne slowed him down. Rommel was poised to take out a British desert division. Surveillance told him the enemy’s strength and where they would be. Reports were based on aerial observations. Rommel prepared for a strategic and lethal strike, especially because the British tanks were advancing without support. Their supply trucks were heading in another direction rather than sticking with the tanks. As a result, the tanks were exposed; an easy target for Rommel.

  “But that was what Maskelyne wanted the Germans to believe. At night, he and his Magic Gang painted and reframed the tanks, disguising them as trucks and transports. They also added cardboard, wood siding and tubing to the actual trucks, masquerading them as tanks. Diversion. Deception. Distraction. Rommel’s spotters saw what they thought were tanks. They went after them, only to leave their flank exposed to the real British firepower bearing down from another direction.”

  “Unbelievable,” Katrina remarked.

  “Yes, but his masterpiece was Alexandria, Egypt.” McCauley now cued Jaffe to explain.

  “His greatest illusion of all: the Port of Alexandria. German bombers were prepared to destroy the target. So, Maskelyne moved it.”

  “Moved it?” Katrina said incredulously. “How?”

  Al Jaffe continued. “The city’s ancient collections were priceless. The libraries and museums were too important to lose. It was the main British base in the region and Alexandria, in particular, held great strategic value for re-supplying oil to the Allies. Jasper Maskelyne did what only a magician could achieve in a short period of time. He moved the Port of Alexandria.”

  “The whole city? Everything?” DeMeo was completely bewildered.

  “Depends on your perspective,” McCauley replied.

  “Actually he created a grand distraction,” Jaffe explained. “The British calculated that the German bombers would head over the Mediterranean at night. The pilots had their compasses and charts. However on cloudless nights they’d rely on the port’s lighthouse to guide them in. They’d trust their eyes on the bombing run. Except for the fact that Jasper Maskelyne and his Magic Gang had been at work. As the lead German bomber approached the target, he observed that the lighthouse beam and the city lights were just a few degrees off compass. Not much, but enough to question his German mapmakers. So he banked his plane slightly, lining up for a straight-in visual attack. All the bombers similarly adjusted their flight plans and simply, unquestionably followed the leader. When they flew over ground zero they dropped their bombs and left. They did it night after night. The city was in ruins. A total success.”

  “But I thought?” Katrina interjected.

  “A total success for Maskelyne. Not the Germans. He’d successfully moved the Port of Alexandria.”

  “But you just said the Germans destroyed what they saw,” she exclaimed.

  “Absolutely. They destroyed what they saw. It wasn’t the real lighthouse or the city. The true objective was completely in the dark. The Germans obliterated a wooden replica – a model of Alexandria, geographically close enough to the real city, structured on the same urban plan, but on a much smaller scale. They bombed the living daylights out of a fake wooden target built by set designers. They trusted their eyes over their compasses. Maskelyne saved Alexandria.”

  “Brilliant!” DeMeo exclaimed.

  McCauley corrected him. “Magic.”

  Now it was time to take his team behind the curtain he’d created. “How’d you like to see the tunnel we discovered and not what Al set up as the target?”

  Eighty-four

  Minutes later

  Al Jaffe had camouflaged the entrance to the actual cave as perfectly as he had fashioned the false one—the airplane’s target. He’d replicated Maskelyne’s magic.

  They removed the brush and the rocks he had piled up. Once clear, McCauley led the team through the passages. He stopped and commented on the Native American cave drawings, now more meaningful.

  DeMeo was awestruck.

  “Stay together,” McCauley instructed as they advanced. “I’ll need everyone to…” McCauley’s voice suddenly echoed into darkness. “Okay, slowly take out the propane lamps. Time to light them…carefully.”

  He’d had five weeks to think about returning. Ultimately nothing could dissuade him from seeking answers. In some way, he believed the old man in Italy wanted him to understand why the secret was too great to share. McCauley had invited the others, explaining they didn’t have to come. It might not be safe. The trio never objected.

  Katrina, Pete DeMeo, and Al Jaffe pulled up behind McCauley. They continued until there was utter darkness ahead. Zero black darkness.

  “Oh my God!” DeMeo exclaimed. “More incredible than you described.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it,” McCauley stated. “No light reflects back. It’s all absorbed.”

  “So where are we?” DeMeo asked.

  McCauley recalled Father Eccleston’s comment. When?

  He moved forward and groped around the black wall. McCauley exhaled when his fingers touched the depressions that made up the prime pyramid.

  “We’re here,” he quietly said.

  “Are you sure you want to go further?” Katrina replied with a warning tone. She knew what might come next, but not why.

  McCauley smiled. “Yes. Yes, I am.” As he reached for the apex of the pyramid he said, “Turn your lamps off now.”

  The lamps dimmed and went out. The darkness and the quiet was enveloping.

  McCauley gently slid his fingers across the wall and located the sequence of notches within the prime pyramid. Just as he had done in Italy, he pressed the two indentations on the second row and the four in the fourth row exactly together.

  The same five seconds passed and then the pressure changed, followed by the wall slowly rising.

  “Now watch,” he said.

  The scene that unfolded didn’t disappoint. Darkness slowly morphed to white as if programmed on a slow rheostat.

  “Incredible!” DeMeo exclaimed. “There’s no actual light source.”

  There wasn’t. Yet light now engulfed the environment. From the floors. The walls. The ceilings. Everywhere. It defied reason. It operated under its own physical laws.

  DeMeo barged forward with youthful enthusiasm.

  The others advanced more cautiously, enthralled by the perfection of the technology.

  “This can’t be man-made,” DeMeo said. His voice should have echoed, but it was actually muted.

  McCauley had his own thoughts, but no way to confirm them. Not until…

  “Damn!”

  DeMeo, well ahead of him, doubled over.

  “What?” McCauley asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I bumped into something. It’s right in front of me, but I can’t see it. Damned thing blends into the rest of the whiteness. I’m holding onto it, but that’s the only reason I know it’s here.”

  “Don’t move.” McCauley walked straight toward DeMeo, but more carefully now, not knowing whether there were more obstructions.

  “Okay, right here, boss. Feel,” DeMeo offered.

  McCauley extended his hand across what felt like a desk or table top. It was as smooth as the wall and likely made from the same material. But the surface cast no shadows since it was illuminated with the pure white light that bathed, or more correctly emanated from within everything and everywhere.

  He continued to feel around the edges to the sides, noting the size was roughly four feet square. The width was approximately two inches. The entire top was supported by a single post that was anchored without seams to the ground.

  “Everyone stand around the sides. Let’s try to visualize some definition to this.”

  They took positions. Katrina to his left, Jaffe opposite him and DeMeo o
n his right.

  It helped give them perspective. Next McCauley ran his hand along the top. Suddenly he stopped.

  “What?” Jaffe asked.

  “Another dent.” It was closest to Katrina. “Put your finger on it.”

  Katrina placed her hand over McCauley’s. He guided her finger to the spot. Then, with palms flat and his fingers extended, he slowly swept across the surface, finding another dent higher up near Jaffe. “Here, Al.”

  McCauley continued and came to another also within Jaffe’s reach. He tapped the spot and Jaffe automatically put his index finger on it.

  The Yale professor looked at where the hands were and made an assumption that another might likely complete the shape. It was there. “Pete, this one’s yours.”

  “So what is it?” Jaffe wondered.

  “A square?” Katrina noted. “No, more like a rectangle, but slightly askew.”

  “Another puzzle. Another lock,” McCauley ventured.

  Katrina’s left hand was free. She rested it on the surface and another depression.

  “Whoa. Here!” She tapped the point. From McCauley’s perspective it was slightly left of her corner.

  “What’s in your pockets?” McCauley asked excitedly.

  “Car keys, wallet, cell phone,” DeMeo said.

  “Pretty much the same, Coins.” Jaffe added.

  “Same here,” Katrina replied.

  “Coins. Let’s go with coins. Easiest to see. Place one on each of the spots.”

  With their nickels, dimes and quarters they were able to see an off-center box with one coin to the left.

  “Feel for more,” McCauley continued.

  Katrina found another close to the last. Jaffe added one more beyond it near the end of the surface.

  “More coins?” McCauley stated.

  “Here,” DeMeo said.

  They marked them.

  “Any more? Feel all around.”

  There were no more.

  “Okay, what is it?” DeMeo wondered. From his perspective it looked like a shovel.

  “I don’t know, a pot? A crooked broom?” Jaffe proposed.