The Orion Protocol

by Gary Tigerman

  “Stopped building big boosters, I imagine.”

  “Confiscated every copy of Titan-class plans, cut up the ones they’d already built into scrap, and melted ’em down. Every goddamned one of them.”

  “Scared shitless.”

  “Hell, so were we. At one point, they asked this KGB guy Douchenko, the guy in charge of the SR-21 program at Baikonur: if these folks came back today, did the Russians have something we didn’t know about, something we could defend ourselves with, if necessary? He just laughed and said, ‘Nyet.’ That’s when the idea of collaborating on planetary defense started getting kicked around. What eventually became the Strategic Defense Initiative.”

  “Was that Reagan’s idea or Gorbachev’s?”

  Augie looked out at a helicopter setting down on the tarmac.

  “Bush. Bush the Elder. The old spymaster sold the space-shield concept to Reagan as a strategy for winning the Cold War. But it was a smoke screen for a two-track deal. Reagan tripled the national debt and fast-tracked SDI knowing the Soviets’d go bankrupt trying to match it. That gave the black budget program a head start and gave Gorbachev the internal argument he needed to outflank the hard line anti-perestroika, anti-glasnost factions at home and initiate real talks.”

  “But Star Wars was a bluff. We couldn’t have built it.”

  “Hell no, not then. But we needed a way to end the Cold War and get Project Orion, the real-deal space shield, started. Now we’ve got supercomputers on a chip and science and resources from France, England, Japan, Germany, Brazil. And it’s finally going up even as we speak, podnah. Thanks to what you and I found up there, in 1973.”

  Jake thought about his trashed cabin and the intel ops trying to pick him up.

  “So, that’s why . . .”

  “That’s why.”

  Deaver took that in along with everything else, brooding over it.

  “Was there any guess on how old that habitat is up there?”

  “Micrometeor abrasion says ten to twelve thousand years, give or take.”

  “God. And if they had all that ten thousand years ago . . .”

  “Can’t even imagine what they’d have at this point. Can you?”

  Jake just shook his head, unable to wrap his mind around it.

  “So, what happens now?” he said.

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that.” Augie looked Jake directly in the eyes. “And I say it’s time.”

  He spread his hands like a blackjack dealer showing he wasn’t palming any chips. Deaver leaned back away from the table.

  “Why now?” he said, looking as wary as he felt.

  Augie grinned across the breakfast plates and empty shot glasses.

  “ ’Cause if we wait till we’re dead, Daddy-o, the bad guys win,” he said, and then laughed. “Look, we’re sitting here because push has come to shove. And I don’t see another way out except by means of extreme daylight.”

  “For me, maybe. I thought you still had something to lose.”

  Looking honestly contrite, Augie finished his coffee, taking a couple of beats to think about what he had to say before he said it.

  “Look, podnah, we’re joined at the hip, you and me, like it or not. But the main thing is, I owe you. You were right and I was wrong. I should have backed you when you wanted to say no to NASA and Nixon and that whole sorry-ass crowd. But I didn’t do it. I stood up and lied like a man for duty-honor-country instead of having the guts to tell the truth and damn the torpedoes. The only satisfaction I ever got was seeing that lying ski-nosed bastard chased out in disgrace. Even now I look around and I see why people distrust and despise the leaders they vote for. It’s because they expect to be lied to when the chips are down, and that’s serious long-term damage. But fuck it. Point is: I’m sorry. I’m sorry for my part in the bullshit. I’m sorry I hated you and your righteous integrity. I’m sorry I watched you quit and walk away and sneered at you behind your back: ‘Flaky Jake, what a shame.’ But then, I guess you never do forgive the man you have wronged. So let’s just say I want a chance to make it right. You swabby-ass, lime-sucking pothead son of a bitch.”

  Augie offered his hand across the table.

  Jake looked at it and then took it. It was starting to feel a little like the old days, the good old days. Augie grinned and flagged down their waitress.

  “Darlin’? We need a pot of coffee, high-test, and another cup. And tell me, you ever been up in a helicopter?”

  Deaver left Augie flirting with the waitress.

  “Extreme daylight,” he mused, not really sure what that would be like, but starting to get an idea. Unsteady on his feet thanks to the shooters, Jake made his way toward a door marked CABALLEROS and the pay phone next to it. He badly needed to talk to Angela, but she was going to have to call him back from another pay phone.

  PART

  VI

  When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

  —Yogi Berra

  69

  February 11/CPB Building/Washington, D.C.

  Angela was feeling both scared for Jake and personally responsible for the spot he was in. She was elated to know that he was safe, for the moment, but he was by no means out of the woods. And Angela didn’t feel better about the situation until they had worked out a plausible way forward, a way, though, that involved both of them taking a risk.

  Now that she was free to tell her partner everything, the two women had strategized together after Miriam’s initial shock wore off. They honed their pitch until they were ready to walk into the offices at PBS legal and get what they needed.

  “That’s some story,” Arthur Maclewain said, giving his knack for laconic understatement some exercise. Marvin Epstein, the attorney’s young associate, spoke without looking up from their tightly crafted two-page proposal.

  “So, you’re saying you want to offer Science Horizon as a forum for Colonel Blake and Commander Deaver to make a public statement about discovering an extraterrestrial city on the Moon.”

  Angela turned toward the junior attorney.

  “It will be the science story of the decade. Like getting the first Apollo Moon landing exclusive to PBS.”

  “But we won’t just be scooping the networks. We’ll make ’em bid to share our feed,” Miriam added. “No reason not to make it good business as well as landmark television.”

  “That’s not the issue.” Maclewain fiddled with a gold Cross pen.

  “You mean, is it covered speech? You tell us.”

  The senior attorney looked extremely uncomfortable.

  “Whether it’s protected under the Constitution or not, you’re putting your careers, Science Horizon, the station license, and the corporation at risk.”

  “Like Edward R. Murrow taking on McCarthy. Or Dan Schorr and Vietnam.” Angela sounded as tough and defiant as she felt.

  She and Miriam looked back and forth between the two lawyers.

  “So, is it constitutional free speech and free press or not?” Miriam repeated.

  “I don’t know,” Epstein said, turning to the senior counsel with an odd light in his eyes. “But I want the ball.”

  70

  Returning from Denver on Air Force transport, Colonel Augie Blake had a car pick him up at Andrews AFB and drop him at the NASA building in D.C. Stopping in his own office, he checked messages and e-mail, including a cryptic note and a small video file from Jonathan Quatraine, the grad student in Australia.

  Huh . . . Augie looked at the time, then opened the file.

  Since he was already aware of Project Orion, the short quick-time sequence of the secret weapons test was surprising only because the Aussie grad student had picked up on it and, impressively, even gotten it on tape.

  “Well, good on ya, mate,” Augie said, in a Dundee drawl.

  He was playing the file back and wondering how to reassure Jonathan about what he had done when something caught his eye. Augie played the Orion test again. And then again, until he was sure of what he was seeing.
<
br />   “Those cowboy sons of bitches.”

  He then hustled upstairs to join the crisis management meeting already in progress in the office of the NASA Administrator.

  71

  Office of the NASA Administrator

  “I talked to Deaver. After you folks’s little fiasco.”

  Augie was splitting his attention between Vern Pierce behind his desk and Bob Winston, who was sharing the office couch with Admiral Ingraham. Winston wasn’t giving away much, but Pierce seemed anguished.

  “I hope you told him it wasn’t supposed to have been like that.”

  “Yeah, those stuntmen did pretty well screw the pooch.” Augie laughed lightly. “I don’t know whose dick was in whose hand out there in Colorado.”

  The attitude alone was almost enough to make Winston walk out, but the dour presence of the Admiral beside him quashed any such impulse: Ingraham hated prima donnas.

  Augie turned to the two Intelligence heavyweights, who seemed to be competing for the grim face award.

  “I’m afraid y’all’ve got one pissed-off Apollo astronaut on your hands, outside the tent and ready to start pissing in.”

  “Where is he?” Ingraham said. Augie shook his head.

  “Someplace safe, I’m sure. And ready to face the media with a hundred-percent hangout, whether we like it or not.”

  Pierce looked pale.

  “He wouldn’t dare! Justice would be forced to indict.”

  “Validating Jake’s story,” Augie pointed out. “Not to mention bringing it all crashing down on our collective heads. Unless . . .”

  Augie paused, as if reconsidering his own suggestion.

  “Unless what, Colonel?” Ingraham said.

  But the National Security Adviser was already there.

  “Unless the one man, the one and only eyewitness who could cast doubt on Deaver’s testimony, contradicts his story,” Winston said, letting it hang out there.

  Ingraham studied the idea from different angles. Pierce was slack-jawed.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Maybe it’s a bad risk.” Augie shrugged, as if having second thoughts or feeling reluctant at being fitted for the Judas role. But the Admiral was warming to it.

  “Better a live fool than a dead martyr.”

  “What exactly are you imagining here?” Pierce said.

  Augie explained.

  “What if Jake and I go on Angela Browning’s PBS show together, the both of us, and we let Commander Deaver flat-out tell his story . . . ?”

  “But that’s insane. It’s out of the question.”

  “Wait, Vern, this is just a backup.” Winston held up his hand like a traffic cop. “Let’s play it out.”

  Augie leaned heavily forward, resting his forearms on his knees.

  “Just so we have no illusions here, gentlemen: unless you find him first and take him off the street, former Apollo Commander Jake Deaver is gonna say what he’s gonna say in one public forum or another, like it or not, or grits ain’t groceries. All I’m saying is, if I’m at least there when he does it, I can set it up so that Jake says his piece first, and then when it’s my turn, I can reluctantly and compassionately decline to confirm the Commander’s version of events.”

  “Jesus . . .” Pierce said, weighing the potential PR nightmare.

  “Then you, Vern, have your spin-flacks all geared up with tabloid handouts about Flaky Jake’s psychotherapy, Flaky Jake’s Buddhist-cult practices, Flaky Jake and his psilocybin adventures, ‘Drug Bust Astronaut Sez: “Alien City on the Moon!” ‘ Shit, who the hell’s gonna run it as a straight news story?”

  “While you and Colonel Blake take the high road.” Winston nodded. “ ‘Commander Jake Deaver was a courageous, respected member of the Apollo family and always will be, regardless of any unfortunate personal circumstances,’ blah-blah-blah.”

  “So, Deaver tells all and becomes the latest Jay Leno joke,” Ingraham said, savoring it. Augie made a face, but did not disagree.

  “After which he can say absolutely anything, folks, and nobody who matters will give a good goddamn.”

  But Pierce appeared unconvinced.

  “Look, I just don’t think . . .”

  Ingraham silenced him with a look, then focused his intelligent black eyes on Augie like the arch-spook interrogator he’d once been.

  “Colonel, I know there isn’t that much love lost between you and Deaver.” The Admiral’s voice was an intimate rasp. “I just want to be sure you could do this.”

  Augie understood and took his time before responding.

  “Admiral, I know Jake Deaver. And I know that when he’s mad, he’s one stubborn son of a bitch. Well, right now he’s as pissed off as I have ever seen him, drunk or sober. That old boy is ready to walk, head high, through hellfire, draggin’ yours truly right along with him. And he’s not askin’ anybody’s opinion or permission, least of all mine. What his old podnah might want, or how what he does affects me and the rest of my life, is totally off his fuckin’ radar. Now, I may know him like my idiot brother and I may understand why, but forgive me if I say fuck that noise to the bone. And if I have to save his sorry butt to save mine, so be it. That said, Admiral, there is one thing . . .”

  Augie leaned in close, his voice sinking to a quasi-confessional register.

  “Jake’s made some bad choices, all right? So, the way I see it, he is forcing my hand. And I can and will consign my old podnah to permanent public irrelevancy. But make no mistake.”

  Augie turned to include Winston.

  “If an unidentified assailant robs him and leaves him dead in the street, or there is some tragic, fatal hit-and-run accident? Or CNN reports he was found overdosed on heroin, or some other shit he does not use, in his cabin in Colorado? You know what I’m saying. If Jake Deaver so much as chokes on a goddamn chicken sandwich, instead of dying in his sleep a very old man, I will know who did it. And I will track you down and put each one of you down like rabid, feral dogs.”

  Winston was afraid to look over and see what Ingraham’s reaction might be. But the stern-faced Admiral was actually rather amused, although he believed Augie Blake meant exactly what he said, 100 percent. They all ignored the NASA chief, who was too busy eating his tie to say anything.

  “I don’t suppose he’ll thank you,” Winston said.

  “No.” Augie relaxed back into his chair, looking oddly pensive. “I don’t suppose he will.”

  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 f
or 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.