The Joshua Stone

by James Barney

  Shit.

  Ignoring the pain in his head and his aching muscles, Califano gradually made his way down the connecting shaft to the old Foster Number 2 mine, heading back the way he’d come in. This time, he did not need to perform the trial-and-error method to find his way out. He’d memorized the entire layout during his journey into the mine.

  As the minutes ticked by, Califano’s muscles gradually loosened up, and he was soon able to pick up the pace to something close to normal walking speed. Ninth shaft. Turn right and then left. Eighth shaft. Turn left. He was making good progress at this, and even starting to feel a little better, when he suddenly started thinking about the two men with gas masks and guns he’d seen on the way in. Who were they? Were they responsible for the dead bodies in the lab? And the explosion? Suddenly, he stopped walking.

  Where are they now?

  Instinctively, Califano placed his hand on his weapon, reassuring himself that it was still in its holster. He stood motionless for some time, listening carefully to the ambient noise in the mine. Those men could still be down here, he realized. Lying in wait. For nearly a minute, he listened intensely but heard only the rhythmic echoes of dripping water and his own heavy breathing. He was alone.

  He continued on, much more cautiously now. Fourth shaft. Turn left, then right. Third shaft. Left again, then right. Eventually, he reached the long ingress shaft where he’d originally entered and walked straight along this shaft for about ten minutes. He could feel the incline gradually getting steeper. He was getting close. Finally, he saw light at the end of the tunnel. Except instead of daylight . . . it was moonlight.

  Califano slowly approached the mine’s entrance and puzzled over this fact. Why was it nighttime? He still had no answer to this question as he emerged cautiously from the mine entrance and enjoyed his first breath of crisp autumn air. The clean air felt good in his lungs and helped alleviate some of the throbbing pain in his head. But something wasn’t right.

  Without moving, Califano looked up and saw a crescent moon high overhead in a starry sky. Strange. Before him in the moonlight was the thick tangle of old wooden timbers that he’d originally crawled through to get into this mine. Beyond that, he could see only the dark outline of the mountain forest and little else. He remained in this position for some time, straining to detect any evidence of danger. But, once again, the only sounds he heard were those of nature.

  He checked his watch: 1:45 P.M., which was exactly what he expected. He’d entered the mine around 11:00 A.M., and he couldn’t have been down there longer than a couple of hours. Right? He pondered this question for a few seconds. Was it possible he’d passed out for the entire afternoon? He shook his head and eventually gave up trying to figure this out. Something was definitely awry.

  Califano tapped the switch for his radio, and he heard it crackle slightly in his ear. “Ana?” he said quietly. “Bill?”

  No response.

  He let the radio time out and tried again. “Hey, guys, it’s Mike. You there?”

  Silence.

  Califano looked around one last time and then slowly began climbing his way through the thicket of old wooden beams. With his sore muscles and painful head injury, this proved much more difficult than it had been the first time, and much more time consuming. When he finally emerged from beneath the last wooden beam that separated the mine entrance from the surrounding forest, he scanned the dark tree line before him and immediately realized something was wrong.

  He heard a noise and reached for his gun. But it was too late.

  “Don’t move!” shouted a deep voice from somewhere in the woods. “Keep your hands where we can see them.”

  We?

  Suddenly, the entire area was awash in blinding white light as two pole-mounted spotlights in the woods suddenly switched on with the loud click of an electromechanical breaker.

  Califano was momentarily blinded. After all the time he’d spent in the dark mine, the bright light was like a knife to his brain, making his head hurt much worse than it had before. He squinted and shielded his eyes as best he could with his hands. Through the blinding light, he could just barely make out three or four figures. They appeared to be wearing military fatigues of some sort. And they were carrying machine guns. Califano squinted harder and could now tell they were aiming their machines guns . . . at him.

  Someone was now approaching from behind the spotlights. Califano could hear the crunching of feet on the dry leaves, and he watched in disbelief as the person’s face gradually came out of the blinding light and into focus. It was a large man in camouflage fatigues and combat boots. No insignia. No name tag. And he looked serious.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Califano demanded.

  The man said nothing and proceeded to frisk Califano thoroughly, shoulders to feet, front and back. Within seconds, he had removed Califano’s Glock from its holster, dropped the clip out, and ejected the chambered round. Obviously, this man knew what he was doing.

  “Mr. Califano,” said the man in a deadly serious tone. “Please come with me.”

  29

  OVER SOUTH CAROLINA, EN ROUTE TO DULLES, VIRGINIA

  Ana Thorne cursed and pushed redial on her secure satellite phone. The CIA was still working out the bugs in its dedicated worldwide phone network, which had been put in place after the embarrassing “outing” in Lebanon of several of its agents, whose commercial cell phones had been hacked. Of course, the fact that Thorne was now traveling at 480 knots at an altitude of 20,000 feet didn’t help, either. She pressed the phone to her ear and waited for Bill McCreary to pick up again.

  “Yeah?” said McCreary after the first ring.

  “Bill, it’s me again. The call dropped off. What were you saying about the names I gave you?” An hour earlier, she’d asked McCreary to research the people Reynolds had identified as Dr. Holzberg’s “acolytes” at Princeton in the late 1950s.

  “As I was saying,” said McCreary, “Gary Freer worked for Bell Labs for thirty years and then Xerox. Retired in 1998. Died of colon cancer in 2005. He’s survived by his wife and two daughters, and seven grandchildren. I couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary about him. Irwin Michelson disappeared in 1959, just about the same time as Holzberg. Official report was a small plane crash near Portland, Oregon. But I suspect he was involved in Winter Solstice. I bet he was down in the Thurmond lab with Holzberg.”

  “Makes sense. What about the woman, Opal?”

  “Yeah, I wanted to ask you about her. Are you sure you got that name right? I couldn’t find anything about an ‘Opal’ that matches the information you gave me. No record of anyone with that name ever being at Princeton or in any way associated with the Institute of Advanced Studies. Is it possible you got the name wrong?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ana. “I wrote it down and double-checked the spelling with Reynolds. I’m almost positive that’s the name he gave me. Did you come up with any women at Princeton in the late 1950s who might have been part of Dr. Holzberg’s inner circle?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s odd.” Ana’s voice trailed off as a new thought suddenly occurred to her. “Opie,” she said.

  “Hmm?”

  “One of the names Dr. Holzberg muttered before he died was Opie, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Could be a nickname for Opal, right?”

  “Could be. But I still didn’t come up with any women matching the description you gave me.”

  “That’s weird,” said Ana quietly. Opal the mystery woman. “Hey, can you check one more name for me?”

  “Sure, who?”

  “Benjamin Fulcher.”

  “You mean Nobel Prize–winning, famous physicist Benjamin Fulcher? You want me to check him out?”

  “Yeah, I do. Thanks.”

  Ana hung up the phone and reclined in her seat, pondering the day’s events. Something just didn’t add up.

  30

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Wel
l, look who it is,” said Bill McCreary. He spoke these words to Mike Califano, who had just emerged from a black Apache helicopter at the rear of the CIA headquarters building. The two men quickly cleared the rotor zone and made their way to the headquarters building, where they stopped just short of the entrance.

  Califano was still badly shaken up. His face and shirt collar were covered with blood, and his hands and clothes were filthy. He had a jagged, two-inch laceration and large scrapes on the right side of his forehead, which were thoroughly caked with blood and dirt. A green thermal blanket was draped around his arms and shoulders.

  “What the hell?” said Califano. “You sent a bunch of SEALs to grab me in the woods? I thought they were going to kill me!”

  “Sorry, Mike. We couldn’t take any chances.”

  “Bullshit! You could’ve just called me on the radio if you wanted me to come in.”

  McCreary held out his open palms. “Mike, you’ve been missing for three days.”

  Califano’s face suddenly twisted into an expression of confusion. “What?”

  “Yeah. It’s Monday night right now. You went down into the mine on Saturday morning. We weren’t sure if you were ever coming out of there, or what condition you’d be in if you did. I had those guys camped out in front of the entrance just to make sure you got back here safely. And they had to disarm you because . . . well, to be honest, we didn’t know what kind of physiological or psychological effects there might be. And by the way, those weren’t SEALs. Although some of them used to be.”

  Califano still looked utterly confused. “But I . . . I was only down there for a couple of hours.” He extended his left arm. “Look at my watch.”

  “I know,” said McCreary. His tone was calm and soothing, almost patronizing. “I’ll explain it all when you get to the workroom. But first we need to get you looked at. Medics should be here any—”

  Califano cut him off. “I saw the lab.”

  “You what?”

  “I saw it. I went in. And then someone blew it up. Almost blew me up with it.”

  Now it was McCreary’s turn to look confused. “You mean just now? Just when you were down there?”

  “Yeah, man. Just now. I was down there, and I saw a bunch of stuff. There was some sort of swimming pool–type test rig, and Atomichron clocks, and instrument panels. Then all of a sudden I heard a beep and noticed there were explosives all over the fucking place. I ran like hell and barely got out of there before it blew.”

  “Shit,” McCreary whispered. His eyebrows were scrunched together in an expression of confusion.

  “Oh, and there were bodies. I counted at least five, including one in the cooling pool. They looked like they’d been shot recently. And there were two men leaving the mine just as I was going in. They were wearing gas masks and carrying guns.” Califano paused and took a deep breath. “Seriously, Doc, something really strange is going on down there.”

  McCreary was just about to say something when his phone rang. He answered it quietly, listened for a few seconds, then turned back to Califano. “Med staff’s on their way.” Moments later, an ambulance pulled up to the circular driveway behind the building, and two paramedics jumped out.

  Califano waved them off. “I’m fine,” he yelled to them.

  “Michael, you have to go with them. They need to look at your head.”

  “No offense, Doc, but I really don’t want any CIA people examining my head, okay?”

  “Come on, you know what I mean.” McCreary pointed to his bloody right temple. “Your cut. It needs stitches.”

  Califano lowered his voice to nearly a whisper. “Just tell me this. Am I gonna end up strapped to a bed like Holzberg? Drugged up and crazy?” He held McCreary’s gaze for a moment. “Well . . . am I?”

  “No,” said McCreary reassuringly. “Of course not. They’re going to stitch you up, run some basic tests. Blood work, that sort of thing. And you’ll be back with us in a couple of hours. Look, we’ve got a lot of stuff to cover, so we don’t want you out of commission any longer than necessary. All right?”

  Califano accepted this assurance and felt a little better. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Good. Now go get yourself fixed up. You look like shit.”

  Califano managed a smile. Then he turned and made his way over to the ambulance.

  It was nearly 11:00 P.M. when Califano finally returned to the workroom in building 1. Ana Thorne, who had just gotten back from Florida, was still in the process of updating Dr. McCreary and Admiral Armstrong about what she’d learned.

  “I’m back,” Califano announced, entering the room with Steve Goodwin.

  McCreary, Thorne, and Admiral Armstrong all rose to their feet to greet him.

  Califano looked much better now than he had a few hours ago. He had showered and was now wearing a set of clean gray sweats, courtesy of the folks in the medical unit. He also had twelve stitches on the right side of his head, neatly dressed with a small, square bandage.

  Ana was the first to speak. “Michael,” she said in a tone that was somewhere between Glad to see you and I can’t believe you’re still alive. She walked over to him and gave him a quick hug.

  A hug from Ana Thorne? Califano marveled over this and quickly reciprocated, making the embrace last just a little longer than intended.

  “Michael,” said Admiral Armstrong, putting his hand on Califano’s shoulder. “Looks like you got yourself pretty banged up there.”

  “Yeah, just a bit.”

  Armstrong’s grip tightened on Califano’s shoulder, and his tone suddenly sharpened. “And just what the hell were you thinking going down into that mine all alone? Completely unprepared. And without one iota of authority?”

  “Yeah,” Califano mumbled. “Not my brightest idea, I’ll admit.”

  Armstrong shook his head and let out an exasperated breath. “And yet, amazingly, not your stupidest either. Not by a long shot.”

  Finally, McCreary spoke. “Michael, we’re all glad you’re back.” He motioned toward an empty chair. “Come have a seat and I’ll catch you up with where we are. Then I want to hear all about your adventure in the lab.”

  They all took seats around a small conference table in the back of the room, except for McCreary, who remained standing. “Michael,” he said. “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified.”

  “Isn’t all of this stuff?”

  “Yes, but this gets into a whole different channel. I wasn’t authorized to tell you this before—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Califano, stiffening in his chair. “You weren’t authorized?” An incredulous look spread over his face as he digested this comment. “Dude, I almost died down there. What, exactly, were you holding back?”

  “Calm down, Michael,” said Admiral Armstrong. “He’s getting to it.”

  “Look,” said McCreary sternly. “You weren’t even supposed to go down there, okay? You violated protocol, not me. So don’t start casting stones.”

  “Okay, we get it,” said Armstrong, trying to keep the peace. “We’re all on the same team here.”

  Califano exhaled and nodded. Shit. They were right. He’d crossed way over the line by going down into that mine. And he had no one to blame but himself for his injuries. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “Guess I’m still a little worked up.”

  “It’s okay,” said McCreary. “You’ve been through a lot.” He paused for several seconds to collect his thoughts. “Okay, let me first explain about the time.”

  For the next twenty minutes, Dr. McCreary explained in great detail about the “time dilation” technology at the heart of the Winter Solstice program. He explained that time dilation is a phenomenon whereby two different observers in two frames of reference experience time differently. He explained the classic example of the “twins paradox.” One identical twin stays on earth while the other travels through space at nearly the speed of light. When the traveling twin returns, he is chronologically much younger than his sibling, because
of time dilation. That is, because time ticked by much more slowly for the traveler than it did for his brother back on earth. Finally, he explained that all of this was precisely as predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity.

  “And it’s been proven?” asked Califano.

  “Absolutely,” said McCreary. “A very simple example is the clocks on our GPS satellites. They have to be adjusted by about thirty-five microseconds per day to account for the effects of time dilation. There are actually two different opposing effects at play there. Time runs a bit slower on board the satellites due to their high speed relative to the earth’s surface, and it runs a bit faster because of the difference in gravity between where the satellites are and where we are. Those two effects offset each other so that, overall, the clocks run a tiny bit slower on board the satellites than they do here on earth. And this has all been proven in countless experiments.”

  “I knew about the speed thing,” said Califano. “But I didn’t know that gravity also causes time dilation.”

  “According to Einstein, it does. What Einstein’s theory of general relativity says is that time and space are flexible. They can be stretched. And what stretches them are objects with mass. So if you take a massive planet like earth and you plop it onto the so-called space-time continuum, it will distort that continuum and cause other objects to be attracted to the depression in the continuum, just like water circling a drain. According to Einstein, that is the real explanation for gravity. It’s a phenomenon we observe because of the disruption of space-time. The farther you get from a massive object, the less distortion of time and space you are subjected to, and, therefore, the less gravity you feel. In simplistic terms, gravity slows time down by distorting it. And as you escape a gravitational field, time speeds up.”

  “Can you feel it slowing down and speeding up?” asked Ana.

  “No. Each person in each frame of reference experiences time perfectly normally. So a second always feels like a second and a minute always feels like a minute, no matter where you are. It’s only when you compare two things in two different frames of reference, like a clock on a GPS satellite versus a clock on the ground, that you notice the effects of time dilation.”