The Orion Protocol (30 page)

72

February 15/PBS Studios/Washington, D.C.

A phone bank was set up at the PBS station and staffed, just like pledge week, with volunteers poised to handle the expected tidal wave of calls. Additional security was laid on, both inside and out, with instructions that nobody go in or out without a verbal okay from Miriam.

Once the
Science Horizon
staff understood that the show was going “live” and why, everyone was too excited to complain about the restrictions, which extended to e-mail and phone calls: a full lid was down.

A video team was dispatched to cover Augie on location at his NASA office, the PBS soundstage was set up and lit, and a Chinese take-out feast was making the table groan in the greenroom. Jake’s whereabouts, however, remained a mystery to everyone for safety’s sake: he’d be calling in his interview from an undisclosed location.

Leading Marvin Epstein, the junior attorney, into the greenroom, Angela and Miriam looked at the clock and then addressed the buzzing staff and crew, who were busy loading plates full of Kung Pao chicken and vegetable chow mein.

“As you know, this may be a little like Orson Welles’s
War of the Worlds
tonight,” Angela said, “except we’re dealing in fact not fiction.”

Miriam then introduced Epstein.

“So, everybody say hi to Marvin, from the PBS legal department, who is here to provide his counsel and support for the duration, just in case.”

The greenroom crowd shouted, “Hi, Marvin!” The slightly abashed
young attorney waved hello back, and then got in line with Angela for the dim sum.

Across town at the Mayfair Hotel, Richard Eklund and a cadre of Mars Underground comrades had taken over a high-floor suite. A green felt poker table with fresh decks of cards and a rack of clay chips was already set up.

Overtipping the exiting room service waiters, who’d laid out a small buffet with sandwiches, soft drinks, and coffee, Eklund put the “Do Not Disturb” sign out and locked the door.

“Okay, no outgoing calls, nobody leaves the room until it’s over. And anybody hungry better eat now.”

He retrieved several laptops hidden in the bedroom closet and his colleagues began networking them off the business suite’s DSL connection.

“Richard?”

“Yep.” Eklund tuned in PBS on the hotel TV.

“Are you gonna tell us what’s up now?”

“First, give me a hand here.”

Eklund and another Underground techno-god opened and shuffled the decks, dealing out hands of stud and setting stacks of chips in front of each empty chair.

“So, we’re not gonna play cards?”

Once the poker table looked more like a game-in-progress, Eklund abandoned it and put the hotel TV on mute.

“All right. We’re tuned to PBS and wired into
Science Horizon
because they are airing a very important special tonight, a program that’s going out
live
, for reasons you will understand when you see it. Our job is to protect the show’s Web site and all the mirror sites, and believe me, we’re gonna see a huge number of hits. Huge. You’re gonna need to work fast to manage volume and at the same time be ready to react quickly to serious signal jamming. I mean, cyberspook, heavyweight hack attacks, so get your game on.”

“Must be a helluva special.”

“You could say that.”

“What kind of jamming?”

“Won’t know till it happens. But expect the full Monty.”

“What about
Science Horizon
? Is that all we get to know?”

Eklund took a roast beef sandwich from the room-service buffet and began to make quick work of it. He’d been too busy to eat since Miriam Kresky had taken him to lunch and asked him for help.

“I can’t tell you what we’re going to see before we see it.”

He paused and chased a mouthful of sandwich with some diet Coke.

“But if this thing goes on as planned and we can
keep
it on, I can promise you we will remember where we were, who we were with, and what we did tonight for the rest of our lives.”

73

In his office at NASA, Augie Blake stood stiffly in a beribboned Marine colonel’s uniform and massaged the keys on his computer, revisiting his e-mail.

Across the room, the remote-camera operator was tweaking the shadows, and a sound engineer, who’d fitted Augie with a clip-on mike, was setting levels.

“Say something, Colonel. In your normal speaking voice.”

“Testing, testing, one-two-three . . .”

A few blocks away, Augie’s plush Lincoln Navigator was parked somewhere near the Jefferson Memorial. Inside, Commander Jake Deaver shuffled through some three-by-five cards with his prepared statement, tuned in the public-radio simulcast, and talked to Miriam on the hands-free phone.

“Can you hear me now?”

“Loud and clear, Commander. But turn down your radio.”

“Jake? You ready?”
Angela said, and heard Deaver’s disembodied laugh.

“Ready or not. Will Augie be able to hear me?”

“Yo, Daddy-o. We are good to go . . .”

In her booth above the PBS soundstage, Miriam orchestrated the elements: Angela down on the floor, Augie’s on-camera remote, and a still
picture of Jake and the phone-patch audio from his still-undisclosed location. She glanced at the clock: time to call CNN, which had won the live feed in secret bidding.

“Wolf? Miriam Kresky. We’re live in five . . . no, so far so good . . . thanks, you, too . . . and buckle up.”

Miriam put on her headset and looked down through the double-paned glass, seeing Angela on her mark, with the red light up on Camera One. She glanced at the monitors, turned to Marvin Epstein, who was sitting nervously behind her, and gave him a conspiratorial wink. Then she got on the talk-back.

“Okay, everybody. We are
live
, no jive, so if you screw up just keep on going, there’s no going back. Angie? This is it, kiddo. In thirty . . . break one.”

She acquired eye contact with Angela and raised her right hand, the way she had done a thousand times before. But this would not be like any time before.

“I’ll count you in . . . five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .
and
. . . go!”

The monitors in the booth and televisions all across America that were tuned to
Science Horizon
now showed Angela Browning standing in a tight pool of light on a dark soundstage, speaking to the camera.

“This is Angela Browning. And tonight, this special edition of Science Horizon is coming to you live in order to offer a forum for two very special guests, Apollo astronauts
Commander Jake Deaver and Colonel Augie Blake . . .”

Across the street, a plainclothes snatch team had taken over Flowers Not to Reason Why, a florist shop with a view of the PBS Building entrance. Hiding behind a “Closed” sign and a large spray of yellow spider mums, they’d been hoping to catch Deaver going in or out. So far, no luck.

Still with nothing to report, they checked in with Bob Winston.

The President’s adviser for national security was taking his calls in the NASA Administrator’s office, where he and Vern Pierce were watching Angela Browning on a bookshelf TV.

“Commander Jake Deaver, who is on the phone with us, and Colonel Augie Blake, speaking from his office at NASA, have asked to make personal statements for the first time concerning their Apollo 18 mission to the Moon in 1973, and
Science Horizon
has agreed to provide a platform for them tonight.”

“Jesus . . .” Vernon Pierce said, pacing behind his desk.

A damning government psych profile and press kit on Deaver had been printed up and was already in the hands of the NASA PR staff, along with Pierce’s own carefully crafted official statement. Pierce was still nervous.

“Anyone interested can also access supporting materials and streaming video on our Web site at www.ScienceHorizon.org/TOLAS.”

Winston, sitting alertly on the couch, was confident that he had assets in place for every contingency. Taking down the
Science Horizon
Web site would be easy; they’d make it look like it got swamped by hits. For the show itself, blocking the satellite feed, if necessary, meant taking the whole satellite off-line: messy, but doable. Ingraham was in charge of that.

“Commander, are you there?”

“I’m here, Angela.”

“Commander Deaver will speak first, reading a prepared statement.”

The screen was divided into windows: Angela at PBS, Augie in his NASA office with the remote crew, and a third window with a still picture of Jake.

“Go ahead, Commander . . .”

Deaver’s window was enlarged as he began reading his statement.

“Thank you, Angela. In 1973, Colonel Augie Blake and I had the extraordinary privilege of undertaking for NASA, and for the United States of America, the Apollo 18 mission. Four years earlier, Neil Armstrong had been the first among mankind to take that historic step . . .”

At home in her Georgetown town house, Dr. Paula Winnick watched Jake’s image fill the screen, and listened to his speech with equal parts fear and fascination.

“But what the Apollo 18 mission discovered, which we are now confirming
publicly, is that Man was not the first intelligent being to set foot on the Moon.”

“We shall reap the whirlwind,” Winnick said out loud to the empty room. Then the phone began ringing, the first of a dozen people calling to tell her to turn on the TV. She ignored it.

Inside the Mayfair Hotel room, Eklund and his Mars Underground colleagues had been distracted from their work. They were shouting in astonishment and staring at the Moon photo of Jake and Augie now being posted on the Web site.

“Oh, my god!”

“Hoo-yah!”

Eklund turned up the volume on the TV and cracked the whip.

“KEEP THOSE SITES UP!”

The video lights had heated up the NASA office and Augie was sweating in his uniform. He fiddled with his earpiece: Jake’s cell phone was going in and out of phasing static. Angela’s voice interrupted as the connection got bad.

“Commander Deaver? We’re starting to lose you.”

“Sorry . . . maybe I should move.”

“Yes, go ahead and see if you can find a spot with a stronger signal. We’ll talk to Colonel Blake for a bit. Uh, Colonel?”

“Yes, Angela.”