The Orion Protocol (31 page)

Across town, Jake started the Navigator, turned up the radio so he could hear what Augie was saying, and slowly drove off toward the Washington Mall.

“You’re not saying that you saw extraterrestrials up there . . .”

“No, no. At least
I
certainly didn’t. And if I may, I’d like to confine my own remarks to what I personally witnessed.”

“Fine, Colonel. Why don’t you go ahead.”

Nine floors upstairs from Augie, Winston smiled a vaguely reassuring smile in Vernon Pierce’s direction.

“Here it comes.”

The TV screen filled with the live image of Colonel Augie Blake in his office, standing in front of the NASA logo. Augie’s voice was loud and clear.

“On the ground at Sinus Medii, the principal thing which I saw with my own eyes and was able to document on eight-millimeter film was the ruins of a large, degraded, domelike structure of unknown age and origin which was clearly the product of an advanced intelligence.”

“That son of a bitch.” Winston was transfixed with shock.

“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

“Where is he, Vern? What floor is he on? That motherfucking son of a bitch!” Winston snatched up his phone and attacked the keypad. Pierce gasped out the suite number as he hovered, hors de combat, over the office trash can.

In the Black Chamber at the heart of the NSA facility in Maryland, Admiral James T. Ingraham listened and hung up the phone.

Looking over a tech officer’s shoulder at a translucent tracking screen, Ingraham studied the grid map of Washington and the GPS-style flashing dot that represented Deaver’s current position.

“We’ve got him. He’s moving, sir. Between Twelfth and G . . .”

Once Jake had started to speak, his cell connection to the PBS station in D.C. had been quickly traced and jammed, and his location triangulated.

Ingraham looked up from the tracking screen at a waiting Defense Intelligence crew in black jumpsuit uniforms.

“Good luck, gentlemen.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” They saluted in ragged unison and hustled out the door.

“All right. Next . . .”

Moving over in front of an emerald laser holographic display of the Earth, the Admiral was able to see the orbital position in real time of every satellite—commercial, scientific, or military—of every nation to within one-hundredth of an arc second.

“Admiral? When you are ready.” A civilian tech op under NSA contract made some adjustments on a large panel and indicated a red flashing icon in the hologram: the satellite carrying
Science Horizon
among hundreds of other programs.

“How’s the weather on the sun today?”

“Plasma eruptions every hour, sir. It’s sunspot season.”

“Plays hell with our magnetosphere, doesn’t it?”

“And with our satellites, sir.”

“On my mark.”

The Admiral then made a brief phone call on a scrambled line as the tech op sat at the ready.

74

From three TVs in the Oval Office at the White House, Angela’s voice projected out into the room as the President and Sandy Sokoff, surrounded by late-shift staffers, watched both PBS’s and CNN’s live feed of
Science Horizon
.

“Colonel Blake, both you and Commander Deaver have been bound by oath not to publicly speak about this, under pain of federal prosecution—isn’t that correct? Why have you decided to break your silence now, Colonel?”

“There’s a good question,” Sandy said, to no one in particular.

The President made a guttural noise in his throat.

“How many people are seeing this?”

“PBS? A few hundred thousand. CNN? Well . . . that’s CNN.”

“Get me Winston on a landline, Sandy. I want the council here. Now. And I mean everybody.”

75

NASA Station/West Australia

At the downlink station, the Aussie grad student was tuned to CNN and practically bouncing off the ceiling.

“My God! It’s like Galileo! It’s just like fucking Galileo!”

Colonel Augie Blake’s Moon revelations were the most exciting thing he’d seen since The Thorpedo took home all that swimming gold at Sidney in 2000.

“Augie, Augie, Augie!”

Jonathan pumped his fist and shouted, pacing up and down as if tethered to the TV screen, his dog Hudson barking and trailing on his heels.

“Angela, we were assured that the truth would be told, that the American people would ultimately be told ‘when the time was right.’ And frankly, neither one of us has another quarter of a century to wait . . .”

“Augie, Augie, Augie! Oi, Oi, Oi!”

76

NASA Building/Washington, D.C.

“Security! Colonel Blake! Open up! Colonel Blake!”

The soundman looked at the camera operator and shrugged, shaking his head. He’d already boosted Augie’s levels until the mike started feeding back, but the shouting and pounding outside the bolted door was still bleeding in. Augie raised his voice under the hot lights and carried on.

“The thing is, Angela, under the NASA charter, we all have a fundamental right as Americans to whatever knowledge is gained by the American space program. All of us. And if suppressing certain discoveries was justified, in the context of the Cold War . . . that justification is long over.”

A chaos of nightsticks and flashlights began beating on the door, melding into the angry male voices shouting in the outer office.

“Colonel Blake? You obviously have some pretty insistent folks outside your door, there. Can you make out who it is?”

“No, ma’am . . .” Augie glanced away toward the noise. “But listen, if you lose me? Check the bulletin board. There’s an e-mail there . . . Jake? You copy?”

“Bulletin board? Copy that.”

“Augie? I’ve just been told that Wolf Blitzer at CNN is asking if that’s NASA security or the FBI . . .”

“Can’t really say . . .”

“Augie? Marvin Epstein from PBS legal is here and he’s now advising us
that you probably need to find out who they are, and if it is the FBI or the D.C. police, we’ll have to continue this under different circumstances. Okay?”

“Well, all right, then, hold on.”

The camera operator pulled focus as Augie stepped to the door and got a great shot of NASA security guards bolstered by FBI agents exploding into the room flying-wedge–style, like crackhouse raiders.

“GET DOWN, DOWN, DOWN! EVERYBODY DOWN ON THE FLOOR!”

“Hey! Whoa! Hold on there . . .”

Wrestled to the carpet, Augie was quickly handcuffed by the FBI: a scene shown mostly from a low angle, once the camera was knocked to the ground.

“Hey! We’re cooperating here!”

In the booth at PBS, Miriam had not anticipated this. She looked at Marvin Epstein, who was standing up now, his eyes getting big.

“And the whole world is watching.”

“No kidding.”

Then it was over. The shouting and the anarchy of equipment being trashed and Augie and the video crew being dragged out were the last sounds and images broadcast, before one of the Fibbies had the presence of mind to pull the power plug.

Of course that TV minute would be rebroadcast on CNN news every half hour as part of their lead-story coverage for the next three news cycles, which meant maybe a billion people would see it.

With a small crowd around him in the Oval Office, the President watched the fiasco and cursed under his breath.

“Was that the FBI?”

“I believe so, Mr. President.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Has everybody gone insane?”

On-screen now, a visibly angry Angela Browning was giving the federal agents’ performance a scathing review.

“Well, folks, there it is. Something more reminiscent of the former Soviet Union and the KGB. What appear to be agents of the FBI and we’re presuming security guards at NASA, placing Colonel Augie Blake and the
Science Horizon
video crew under arrest after confirming Apollo Commander Jake Deaver’s statement about seeing an alien habitat, an extraterrestrial structure or arcology on the Moon. Our American tax dollars hard at work. Unbelievable. Miriam? Do we have Commander Deaver back?”

Miriam spoke through her headphone mike.

“Angie, sorry, no Jake yet. But we’re getting Wolf Blitzer; he’s got some questions for you. Give me thirty.”

Angela then filled thirty seconds with a recap as Miriam called cameras and fielded a flood of urgent incoming calls. Behind her, Marvin Epstein burned up a phone line trying to track down the whereabouts of Augie and the video crew.

“Angie? We have a still on Wolf. And . . . go.”

Miriam brought up a photo of Blitzer picture in picture along with his live audio.

“Angela, this is Wolf Blitzer at CNN in Atlanta . . .”

Then all the monitors went blue.

Through the glass they could see Angela and the crew staring in disbelief at the prerecorded “technical difficulties” station announcement that had automatically blipped up and started broadcasting itself.

“Shit! We’re off the air,” Miriam said. “They can’t do that, can they?”

Epstein looked up from his conversation with the D.C. police.

“Not without shredding the First Amendment.”

“Miriam?”
The intercom buzzed from up front.
“There are some gentlemen out here who say they are from the Federal Bureau of Investigation . . .”

Miriam raised a cool eyebrow at the junior attorney.

“You wanted the ball . . . ?”

In the suite at the Mayfair, Eklund was working furiously, but he immediately recognized Miriam’s voice on the room phone.

“Richard, what’s happening?”

“It’s the satellite. We’re on it. Can’t talk.”

Eklund hung up. The hotel TV glowed blue in the background as he and the other Mars Underground geeksters smacked frantically at their laptops.

Suddenly their key-clacking and cursing was interrupted by a firm, hard knock at the door that might have been room service with a fresh pot of coffee.

But it wasn’t.