The Prometheus Effect (30 page)

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Your sister told me you were here.” Coffey was leaving his CIA friends out of the loop for the time being.

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Jesus, Annie told you? You'd better not have...”

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Relax. She is perfectly fine. She is in good health, just a little pissed that your boys tore her house apart looking for you.”

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Yeah, that's their style.” Adam said looking deep into the golden liquor.

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So what's your story then?” Letterman asked, intrigued that Coffey was clearly also on the run.

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Oh, I would have thought you would know that, having your fingers in so many pies?” Coffey did not feel the need to volunteer information as yet.

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I guess you were a temporary solution to an ongoing issue huh?” Letterman said knowing full well that Coffey was not part of the Prometheus team.

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Very temporary although I've seemed to have outstayed my welcome.”

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I know the feeling.” Letterman added as he finally took a seat.

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So what do you know?” The agent inquired, wondering how much of his story to tell. Coffey paused and sipped his Bourbon.

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You're a CIA undercover operative. Highly skilled in the astrophysics department. You worked at Kennedy. You were drafted on to the Prometheus project. Now you're one of the top ten most wanted men in the western world. You don't seem such an offensive guy so I’m guessing that you've either fucked the First Lady or you know something that might be detrimental to the US governments... 'war' effort?”

Letterman leaned back and sighed, the weight of the world was surely upon his shoulders.

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Oh but I don't thinks it's all as simple as that...” Coffey added as he detected the stress upon the agents face. Letterman grimaced and confirmed Coffey's suspicions.

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There's no fooling you is there?” He said still unwilling to give up his position of secrecy.

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OK, so you were an agent at Kennedy working on an unrelated job and just so happened to impress, climb his way up the ladder to the most secretive project in NASA history, so secret that NASA don't even have records of the project. Funds, personnel, materials, all records diverted, rerouted through the system. It's clear to me that anyone working on that project would never have got there by accident or good fortune. They knew you were CIA that much is clear.”

Letterman smiled as Coffey attempted to hypothesise the series of events.

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So you're a whistle blower, an insider that got cold feet except that you haven’t blown the whistle yet, you're just taking a deep breath in readiness? Maybe you're waiting for the right time, maybe you're just scared of getting caught. You were certainly not so precious about the whole global scam to have stopped the project in its tracks before it ever came to fruition. I'm thinking that after the event, something pissed you off so much that you wanted some kind of payback. Maybe you didn’t realise that in order to carry off the illusion right, hundreds, thousands if not millions might die in the process? Maybe it's not about millions of innocent people, maybe it's about one? Someone close to you?”

Letterman looked around the room avoiding any kind of eye to eye contact with the rugged, bearded man opposite who had a magnetism about him and a charisma which might lend itself well to a military interrogator.

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You seem to have a lot of facts at your disposal. Surprised myself that you haven’t already exposed the whole plot? Letterman said snidely. He was right to wonder why Coffey was too bottling the facts.

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Oh I have contacts. One in particular that might be capable of breaking a story, but before that I need more tangible evidence and right now, I'm sitting opposite the most tangible evidence I have.”

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You know as well as I do that if we went public with any of this, we'd be hunted down and killed by every government employee and loyalist, we'd be dead before the scoop hit the printing room floor and you know it.” Letterman was obviously a man living in great fear.

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Well from what I can gather, you're pretty much there in terms of 'most wanted' anyhow. I guess maybe it will come down to how you want to play out the remaining hours of your life and just how guilty you feel about being part of the biggest act of terrorism the world has ever witnessed?”

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You're all heart Coffey.” Letterman’s face was already a picture of guilt and emotional torture, Coffey knew that he needed a release.

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OK Adam. I tell you what we're going to do here. Let's start from the beginning and work our way through this. I'm not about to leave you out to dry in order to get the information I need. I just need top names, material evidence, accounts, anything that's going to cause a big hit in the confidence of the general public in relation to this crazy alien fallacy. You've done pretty well avoiding the heavies so far, I'm not going to get in the way of that.”

Letterman nodded slowly and swirled his drink around the glass in contemplation.

CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

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You know there was never going to be an Adam Letterman: Lawyer, Adam Letterman: Postman. From the moment I sucked my first breath on this planet I was earmarked for Prometheus. I know you think that you're somehow in possession of the facts and you're probably real important in the whole scheme of things but baby, I can tell you you're nothing.”

Coffey smiled graciously at the agents curious taunts, this was getting interesting.

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The one thing you have to understand from the start is this whole affair has been in the making for fifty years. You think it's clandestine and intriguing, I can tell you that you don't know and could not possibly know even a tenth of it.”

Letterman stood up to reach for another slug of whiskey.

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I know you were a military man. I'm sure there are things you know that would blow people's skirts up and you think nothing of it. I have lived my whole life with the burden of secrecy and lies. I'm fed up with it.

My father was a military man. A Colonel in the Army until he retired and moved into electronics, specifically for the aeronautics industry. He was essentially a good man but a man with passionate views about the state of the world, I guess he could have been a politician. I remember him shouting at the television during political debates. He was also the kind of guy who knew a million people. The phone would ring all day and sometimes all night. When he was home, he was out. My mom just put up with it, she was loyal and hard working of course.

You see, when I was born, my father and his associates had already made plans for me. They had my future mapped out from the start and at every point in my life where I reached a crossroads, my father was there to take the decision for me. From which school I attended to what classes I took, which girlfriends I chose to date and which books or television programmes I watched; I was being moulded into the person I am today. I guess at the time, there were periods where I was glad to have him take the decisions but as I grew older, I realised that I was never going to have a normal life like the other kids. My objects of affection were placed in front of me, I was offered women to pursue, handpicked from all across the country. They were like me, raised for a purpose by a group of ideological men and women who had a clear long term objective that they were willing to devote their whole lives to. Can you imagine what it must be like to be steered into a single direction, with no deviation allowed. It was not freedom as you know it.

My father belonged to a group of people with an ideology that grew from some kind of utopian dream. It was conceived by a small society of disaffected people shortly after the second world war. It was a group of people who had a strong idea of what their world should be like; they shared a vision of more cohesive and less divisive society. They understood though that war brought out the best in people, a community spirit, an inner strength. It also set aside petty squabbles and pulled factions together under a single, unified and strong leadership. Look how Nazi Germany, a country ravaged by its losses attributed to the Great War almost conquered the world twenty five years later under a strong and motivated leadership. My father looked on at the world and despaired; he would always extol the virtues of strong leadership and vow to put an end to greed and corruption if he had the power to do so. He of course knew that one man could never change the world for the better, it required a number of highly motivated individuals, so motivated that the good intentions that the acquisition of power corrupts, could not be quashed. It would require a race of specialised and capable intellects who had but one purpose in their lives; to carry out the role that they had been born to fulfil.

I know you may think that it is far-fetched but most of the people that now hold power in this country and others around the globe are all exclusively bred members of this nameless organisation that was borne out of nothing and ends in everything. I, as a fully certified member of the club do not even know in certainty who its members are.
I'm not even really sure how far its influence stretches although it is clear that it is a global phenomenon.”

Coffey rubbed his chin as he took in the amazing revelation.

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You see Coffey, you may think that this was an intricately produced false flag operation but you don't know the half of it. The whole pretence relies heavily upon the psychology of the average man on the street. Without the overwhelming material evidence to suggest an invasion, our people knew that a deep, almost hereditary awareness of alien culture would be required if they were to carry off such a coup. Of course it is only now that a civilisation is so technically adept that such a grand deception could be carried out anyway, but our guys were patient. They bided their time, knowing that whilst they waited for the capability to carry out the show, they could do all they could to sow the seeds of fear and distrust. Even scepticism was a good thing, it bred debate and brought it further to the forefront of people's minds. The trends caught on, media took hold of the alien imagery and ran with it. The occasional sighting, abduction, it was all feasible and relatively easy to do within time constraints and budgets. The Roswell incident in the fifties was a prime example of a piece of prime propaganda that still lives to this day. The production of hoax video's and photographic evidence became so easy to produce it didn't cost a dime to the organisation but perpetuated the mysticism.

By the time I was ten, my father had already pushed me regarding my education. I was being tailored to work on the Prometheus satellite, it's technology an untried but realistic option for adding the final coup de gras to the grand illusion.”

Coffey was beginning to understand at least why Letterman was involved at this level but his concern was another who had been involved.

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What about Niemechek? Are you suggesting that he too was part of this secret organisation?”

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Absolutely. I don't know what happened there. Maybe he just realised like I did later that this was all one step too far and could not be justified no matter how well meaning the motivation.”

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Except you did your part then decided that it was wrong after the event?” Coffey was brutal in his condemnation. It had not escaped his consideration that if Paul was involved then most likely Jill was too. The anger was building. Perhaps Jill was holding something back when he had last spoke to her. Perhaps she and her children were still alive somewhere, protected by the organisation? If that was the case, then it was a relief but there was no anger like that of having been played for a fool.

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Look, you fail to understand. I was bred for that moment. The expectations of my late father and mother were pretty fucking heavy on my shoulders. I knew I was an integral key in the whole operation. It was my collective experience and intellect that made the damn thing happen. I was under extraordinary pressure to perform from the bottom up. Did you know the President himself rang me on the morning of the mission to personally thank me for my efforts?”

Coffey chuckled and nodded.

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So I guess then being up there delivering your baby to space, I must really have been the fly in the ointment. No wonder I didn’t fit in!”

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Timing was critical. NASA couldn’t afford to put a shuttle up there without a full complement of crew. It would scream out that it was irregular. You filled the gap, you were expendable.”