The Orion Protocol

by Gary Tigerman

  “All right. It’s show time.”

  PART

  IV

  Give your heart and soul to me, and life will always be la vie en rose . . .

  —Edith Piaf, “La Vie en Rose”

  42

  February 6/Washington, D.C.

  Leaning against the doorjamb in Angela’s office and watching her partner powering through the on-line database of the New York Times, Miriam noted a certain hyperenergized focus that made her wonder if something more had happened in Colorado than Angela had been ready to divulge.

  “Don’t forget. We’ve got a meeting on the Hill.”

  “I didn’t forget.”

  Miriam decided it wasn’t so much her energy—she just seemed happier than when she left. Angela waved her on into the room.

  “Miriam. Check this out. New York Times, December 1959. The Brookings report . . . headline: ‘Public Warned to Prepare for Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life.’ This is what Jake turned me on to.”

  Miriam stood behind her and read the subhead over Angela’s shoulder.

  “ ‘Blue Ribbon Panel Makes Recommendation to Congress,’ blah-blah-blah, ‘President Eisenhower requested the yearlong Brookings Institute study’—”

  But Angela was already skipping ahead, scrolling down the long document to something else she wanted Miriam to see.

  “Sorry, sorry. Just bear with me. It’s right near the end.”

  “Is this the morning-after buzz from a Rocky Mountain high?”

  “Wait. This is it.” Angela ignored the Miriam mind probe, found the paragraph she wanted, and highlighted it. “Miriam, it all goes back to here. This is where it all got started. It’s un-fucking-believable.”

  Angela read the text aloud.

  “ ‘The government should consider withholding from the public . . . any discovery of alien artifacts on Venus, Mars, or the Moon.’ Now, does that sound like a basis for policy, or what?”

  “Just hold on, speedo, let me see this.” Miriam read it slowly through.

  “ ‘Withholding from the public’ . . . they actually say that.”

  “On the front page of the New York Times.”

  “And who’s Eisenhower got making these recommendations?”

  “Just wait.”

  Angela zoomed to the end, highlighting the contributing science folk, etc.

  “Voilà: the crème de la postwar crème: Rockefeller, Dr. Werner von Braun, yada-yada-yada, opinion coauthored by Dr. Margaret Mead and . . .”

  Angela pointed at the name on screen and let her partner read it off.

  “Dr. Paula Winnick.” Miriam sounded just as shocked as she was.

  Angela sat there a moment, letting it sink in before she spoke again.

  “Someone of the highest stature. Someone trustable with the nation’s darkest secrets for forty years. Somebody with unlimited access and unimpeachable integrity, who just might need to see the truth told before she dies.”

  “Jesus, Angie.” Miriam turned and stared out the window toward the Capitol rotunda and the congressman’s office where they were about to go have their meeting. Numerous possibilities for what this Brookings Institute report might mean competed for her attention. One of them won out, hands down.

  “Well, I guess there’s no reason our Deep Cosmo had to be a man, is there?”

  43

  Congressional Offices/Capitol Hill

  They waited in the anteroom to Chairman Lowe’s office, flipping through magazines splayed out on an Early American maple coffee table.

  Representative Phillip Lowe, Democratic chairman of the House Committee on Space, was charged with the responsibility of bird-dogging both NASA and, on paper, the Pentagon’s growing space program as well.

  Back home in his secure North Carolina district, Lowe was well liked but not revered in the same way his father, the late Senator Everett Chambers Lowe, had been. On Capitol Hill as well, the view was that Old Ev’s favorite son was certainly bright enough, but: “What’s the boy ever done?”

  The Space Committee chair was the first leadership position that Phillip Lowe had overtly campaigned for in eight quiet terms in Congress: not a sign of overweaning ambition.

  Angela snapped through the normally guilty pleasure of a People magazine and checked her watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. By comparison, Miriam was an atoll of calm, perusing the compendium of old news that she was surprised to find was the current Time magazine.

  “Oh, I reached Dr. Winnick.”

  “And?”

  “Tea on Friday in Georgetown. I didn’t say why.”

  “Good.” Angela tossed the People back on a pile, her mind racing ahead. “You know, Jake Deaver and Paula Winnick go way back. Maybe he should be in the room.”

  Angela was finding it very hard keeping Deaver’s story a secret, but she was honor-bound. There was one thing, though, that’d simply slipped her mind.

  “By the way, and don’t get mad because it was the right thing to do, I let Jake scan a copy of the Moon photo into his computer.”

  Miriam rolled her eyes.

  “You fucked him, didn’t you.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  “Look, all I’m saying is controlling who sees this stuff and who can connect it to us is the only way we have to protect ourselves here.”

  “Miriam, Jake gave us Brookings, for Christ’s sake. He’s a good guy and I trust him. Absolutely. And I didn’t fuck him.”

  “You mean not yet.”

  Angela let that one go and changed the subject.

  “So, how is it you know this guy Lowe, anyway?”

  Miriam smiled and glanced past a young receptionist fielding the endless onslaught of phone calls, then smoothly got to her feet.

  “Later,” she said, her smile widening as the Congressman’s longtime secretary approached from Lowe’s inner office.

  “Judith, lovely to see you.”

  “Miriam, how wonderful.” Judith Chen’s silver-gray hair was held back from her face by a carved jade piece that looked collectible, lending her the academic air of an Asian-lit professor at Barnard College.

  They exchanged brief hugs and Miriam made the introductions.

  “Angela, Judith Chen—without whom the Congressman would never be anywhere, know anything, or have any friends left in town.”

  “A pleasure,” Chen said, offering her hand. “I’m just sorry to keep you waiting. Come on back. Angela, we love Science Horizon, by the way.”

  “Thank you. I’m glad.”

  “We record it every week, standing orders.” The diminutive secretary led them toward tall, hardwood double doors with immense brass fittings. “Fair warning, I just reminded the Congressman he has a voice vote on the floor in twenty-five minutes. Anyway—Miriam, you look wonderful.”

  “Thanks. You, too.”

  Angela caught her colleague’s eye with a questioning look, but Miriam ignored it as she strode into Lowe’s office.

  “Jesus, Miriam . . .” Lowe said, gathering his thoughts behind an otherwise poker-faced expression. He had examined the whole package: glossy 11” × 14”s of the leaked TOLAS/Mars Observer photo of Cydonia, a highlighted copy of the Brookings report, and a three-page brief including Miriam’s account of the postshow meeting with Professor Weintraub.

  “Well, first off, I want to thank you both for coming in. It’s not the kind of thing you want to wake up and read about it in the Washington Post.”

  “Not if you’re Space Committee chairman.” Miriam noted more gray hair at the congressman’s temples than she remembered. “So, what do you think?”

  Lowe gave both women an open look, laying his hands flat on the desk.

  “Well, if it’s true, it’s of profound significance. What’s your agenda?”

  “All we want, Phillip, is for people to know the truth.” Miriam turned slightly to include Angela. “We’re not interested in any witch-hunts.”

  “Or the Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bai
ley Circus,” Angela added.

  “The main question is,” Miriam continued, “do you think it would precipitate hearings if we did a show on all this?”

  The Congressman shrugged. “Not necessarily. It depends.”

  “Let me put it this way.” Miriam shifted her weight and gifted him with her most disarming smartass smile. “Is there a way to present this material on PBS that would be most likely to give Congressman Phillip Lowe the ammo he would need to call for a public hearing, should he so desire?”

  Lowe leaned back and retreated behind a more closed expression. Out the window, the Old Senate Office Building could be seen, a site where many a state secret had been revealed and heatedly bargained over behind closed conference-room doors.

  “What are you thinking, Phil?”

  Miriam asked this as if she had not been asking men the same question all of her adult life.

  “I’m thinking about my old friend Admiral Jim Ingraham, late of the NSA. Recently coaxed out of retirement to oversee the unmanned space program at JPL in California. Including the remote satellite exploration of Mars.”

  “James T. Ingraham. The most decorated intelligence officer in U.S. history.” Angela nodded, looking at her partner.

  “We didn’t know that,” Miriam said, getting it: Why would the government put a grand spymaster in charge of data acquisition from NASA’s Mars mission satellites if there wasn’t something there that they wanted to control?

  “I’m also wondering who to trust for a second opinion.” Lowe indicated the Mars Observer photos. “Satellite experts tend to already be either on the NASA payroll, or working for the Pentagon, or desirous of doing so in the future.”

  Angela began taking notes: a kind of momentum was building. Lowe seemed sympathetic, cautious but interested in doing something, going forward in some way. It’d make all the difference if he became an ally.

  “Congressman, we can work up a short list if you like.”

  “But let’s say you get independent confirmation, Phil,” Miriam said. “Beyond a reasonable doubt. How do you feel about the idea of public hearings?”

  “With umbrella protection by congressional subpoena for anyone called to testify?” Lowe nodded. “Well, unless something shedding a similar amount of daylight can be worked out with NASA and the Pentagon. Frankly, I’d prefer if all this came out in a more straightforward manner. Though if they thought they might head off a public hearing . . .”

  “Could these hypothetical congressional subpoenas cover both current and former NASA employees, military and civilian? And would the hearings be closed door or televised?”

  “The people pay for the space program, and by NASA charter, the fruits of the space program belong to the people. They deserve to know the truth.”

  The U.S. and North Carolina state flags supported by standards to the left and behind his chair lent a sense of authority to Chairman Lowe’s populist position, resonant with overtones of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Miriam found herself sitting up straighter in her chair.

  “That’s why I told Angie we had to see you, Phil, before we did anything. Sometimes people just need to be intelligently led.”

  “Thanks. It’s nice to be thought of in those terms.” Lowe repackaged the material they had given him and tucked it into a briefcase leaning up against the American flag. “For fifteen minutes, anyway.”

  He made an un-Capraesque face that communicated an insider’s lack of illusions and provoked a good laugh. Then the intercom buzzed with his floor-vote prompt.

  “Congressman? It’s time.”

  Rolling down his sleeves and grabbing his suit coat off the back of his chair, Lowe came around from behind the desk.

  “Give me a week. And thanks, again, for coming in.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Chairman.”

  Miriam stood up, offering her hand.

  “Oh, please.” He waved off the handshake in favor of a hug. “You look great. Sorry to cut it short. Call me if I haven’t called you.”

  “No problem,” Miriam grinned, extricating herself from his arms in a graceful bit of choreography. Lowe and Angela shook hands.

  “Ms. Browning . . .”

  The Congressman then dashed out to be counted.

  Once their staccato heels could be heard clacking their way through the marbled corridors-of-power, Angela eyed her partner and decided she had looked about fifteen or twenty years younger back there in the congressional clinch. Miriam leaned toward her, leading the way out of the building.

  “Some bombshell about NASA and the spook-meister.”

  But Angela was not interested in discussing Admiral James T. Ingraham.

  “You know what I want to hear about,” she said, sounding like Roz Russell flashing her press credentials at a gun moll in a city room deposition. “Spill, sister.”

  Miriam paused a moment at the top of the Capitol steps and surveyed the famous fountain below before offering up a wholly unregretful confession.

  “We were very young, I was very blond, he was very married, it was very brief.”

  She then descended toward the fountain and the cab stand beyond with as much dignity as she could muster with Angela, giggling like a teenager, in-train behind her.

  Behind them, a nondescript man in his mid-to-late thirties carrying an unremarkable leather briefcase followed at a casual distance. In his tailored suit and overcoat, he could have been any number of things: a corporate lobbyist, a congressional investigator, a lawyer for any of a myriad of big-business interests hustling access to lawmakers on behalf of a client.

  But like the last choice on a ballot sheet, he was none of the above.

  44

  Across town, Sandy Sokoff was thinking about his impending meeting with the President and how to say some of the difficult, even disturbing things he believed he now had to say as he steered his black Ford Explorer out of the basement parking in his building and nosed into rush-hour traffic.

  The contract operative falling in two cars back in a stealth-bronze Buick LeSabre didn’t know what the President’s counsel had done to attract the extreme displeasure of his employers and he wasn’t paid to guess.

  He didn’t know Sandy Sokoff was counsel to the President of the United States and wouldn’t have cared to. Accelerating up a ramp behind Sokoff and merging onto the beltway, the operative had only two things on his mind: getting a positive visual ID on the target and making certain the target was alone in the vehicle. Once satisfied on both counts, he fell back a few lengths for safety before pushing a button on a tiny handheld electronic device that sent a signal to a tiny explosive device hidden in the Explorer’s left-front wheel well, blowing the tire and sending Sokoff’s truck careening in a shower of sparks until it slammed to a hard stop against the meridian.

  Mission accomplished, the operative swerved past the crash and sped away. Relaxing, he loosened his tie and began looking forward to the third thing on his “to do” list: a big pancake breakfast with link sausages and bacon, hot coffee and cold orange juice.

  He imagined the crash truck and the busy D.C. cops coming to the accident scene, scratching their heads at the worn-out blown left-front tire. If they were at least half smart they would then check the right-front tire, which the op had also stealthily replaced with another discount Firestone “blem.” At which point, it would be game over. Case closed.

  Seeing the exit sign for the International House of Pancakes, the contract op carefully looked over his shoulder and changed lanes.

  The half-smart cops would conclude that the accident victim had made a bad bet on cheap tires that he should’ve at least rotated with the rear pair, which looked almost new. It was so simple, it was kind of a shame.

  But then again, he thought, happily steering off the beltway toward his IHOP breakfast, that was kind of the beauty of the thing.

  Sokoff stepped shakily down out of the pranged black Explorer. There was a ringing in his ears, but he could still hear the approaching sirens. Somebody m
ust have called it in right away. He’d been in too much shock to think of doing so.

  With looky-loos slowing down to gawk on both sides of the median, he took a quick personal inventory; the air bag had saved him, but it had hurt like hell and his favorite sunglasses had left deep red indentations where they’d broken on his face.

  But the shades seemed to be all that was broken. He noticed his hands were shaking and his brain seemed both frozen and way overamped.

  “Jesus.” He bent at the waist, letting blood flow to his head.

  By the time the ambulance pulled up, he wasn’t dizzy anymore and he’d had the presence of mind to call Mrs. Travis on his cell phone and reschedule with the President.

  Then the paramedics were all over him, checking his eyes for dilation and other signs of shock or concussion and helping him over to their red-and-white van.

  “Sir? We didn’t see any passengers in the vehicle; were you alone?”

  “No passengers.”

  Submitting to the paramedics’ tailgate physical, he learned that his right knee was banged up from smashing into the dash. It’d probably get black and blue.

  “Does that hurt, sir?” The medic pressed on the bruise.

  “Ow. Fuck, yes. Remind me not to press on it like that.”

  His scalp also had a swell little knot from smacking into the b-pillar, making the argument for side head air-bag protection. But no nausea meant no concussion: all in all, the President’s counsel was a very lucky man.

  Once his lucidity returned, Sokoff buzzed the medics with his White House ID and talked them into giving him three Tylenol and a lift to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. He’d been prepared to insist that the fate of the republic was in his hands and the President of the United States was waiting to see him, but it hadn’t been necessary. Which was probably just as well.

  On a gurney inside the ambulance, waiting for his drugs to kick in, Sandy had time to think about the crash and knew in his gut that it had not been an accident.