The silence was real now; almost oppressive.
Richard tried to keep a cool manner. “Well, we know for a fact that Mr McCarthy had nothing to do with the robbery. Medical records tell us that he’s something of a beanpole at 6'3" while the suspect is at least six inches shorter than that. To avoid any misunderstanding on this, the police have told me that Mr McCarthy is not a person of interest in their enquiry into the robbery itself. You do raise a good point, though, and in hindsight I accept that Billy couldn’t have known what was coming. You’re probably right in thinking that Mr McCarthy simply released his “work” at an opportune moment when he knew it would find an audience. One other thing that might be worth mentioning at this point is that Mr McCarthy has been clinically diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality Disorder.”
Every reporter scribbled this down beside Dan’s name, spelling it as best they could. Richard suppressed a smirk; he knew fine well that it had been worth mentioning.
“Now, I’m no expert, but I’ve been told that people with his condition often have odd beliefs and paranoid tendencies. Perhaps that might manifest itself in thoughts like, I don’t know, “aliens are real and the government are lying about it.” As I say, I’m no expert. And one final, final thing about Mr McCarthy: despite working as a part-time barista, he’s a talented writer. I doubt many of you will have read his article in Blitz Digest last year, but he quite imaginatively linked the search for extraterrestrial life to a lake in Antarctica. I only mention this because it highlights his pre-existing interest in the subject at hand and shows that he has the capacity to create fantastical stories with almost-plausible sources. Now, I’d really like to say something about China.”
The same reporter who had grilled Richard moments earlier had another question. This time he raised his hand.
“Very briefly,” Richard said.
“Of course. Leaving aside the source and content of the leak, do you have any comment on the graphologist at Yale who is willing to stake his reputation on the assertion that all of the handwritten documents in the leak were indeed written by you?”
Richard snorted. “Graphologist as in handwriting expert? Okay, I’ll play. How many people in this room can name a handwriting expert? Go on, raise your hands.”
Most of the reporters did.
“Now, how many of you can name a handwriting expert apart from the charlatan in question?”
Every hand fell.
“And how many of you had heard of him before today?”
They all stayed down.
“As I thought. He’s an opportunist, just like Mr McCarthy.”
Richard’s expression then changed, as though one of his own thoughts had just angered him. “And look at the time frame McCarthy is using. “Looted from Altausee,” he says. That was 1945! Even if it took a decade for us on the winning side to learn about this truth that we’re supposedly still covering up, is there really a suggestion that every president since Eisenhower has been in on this? Are people really prepared to believe that none of them have ever slipped up? That someone like Valerie goddamn Slater is capable of keeping a secret like this from our nation’s finest scientific minds?”
The silence said it all.
“And that’s without even considering the thousands of everyday administrators who would’ve had to cooperate with this cover-up at some stage,” Richard went on, incredulity dripping from the words. “Or indeed the foreign infiltrators and domestic whistleblowers who have plagued our country in recent years. Why would they ignore the biggest story of all time if there was even a hint of truth to it? It’s just not credible.”
Ben Gold, sensing that Richard’s frustration was reaching the point where he might say something even more regrettable than his comment about President Slater, deftly stepped in front of him to address the reporters. Richard didn’t object.
* * *
“We only have a few minutes before five o’clock,” Ben said, inventing the deadline as he spoke, “so we really must address the China situation.”
Beijing’s recent proclamation that Chinese astronauts would establish a research base on the moon within eight years and walk on Mars within twelve had caught the whole world off-guard. And, despite Richard’s best efforts, serious American investment in space had died with the Soviet Union. The price of this complacency was only now becoming clear.
President Slater and the rest of her administration understood that cold economic reality rendered an unplanned space race with China utterly unwinnable. And everyone with even a passing interest in military affairs knew that control of space — the ultimate high ground — would mean control of everything. The celebratory scenes which followed the announcement in Beijing turned as many stomachs in Colorado Springs as they did in Washington, and it took every ounce of Richard’s political experience to present a brave face.
Richard patted Ben on the back and took a few deep breaths. “I recognise at least one face who was in this very room on the day we opened the IDA’s doors,” he said, tipping his head to the smiling female reporter who remembered it just as well.
“I was a lot younger then, and certain memories were a lot fresher,” Richard continued. He then deliberately traced his finger along the prominent scar which ran from the inside of his mouth and stopped halfway to his ear.
Everyone knew the story. Everyone had seen the famous footage of Richard, then an unknown GI, being wheeled across the airfield, high on morphine, with a smile on one side of his face and a roughly stitched gash on the other. Everyone remembered the unseen reporter asking how he felt, and everyone remembered Richard’s response:
“Well, I might not be able to whistle like I used to or drink through a straw, but I’ll be damned if I don’t find some way that I can still serve my country.”
When the reporter asked what kind of accident Richard had been in, his eyebrows lowered.
“Accident?”
“Your face,” the reporter clarified. “May I ask how it happened.”
“You may.”
“Uh, how did it happen?”
“Two Vietcong and six inches of cheese wire,” Richard deadpanned. “Don’t ask again.”
45 years later, no one ever had.
Richard had never spoken of his incarceration, even when unanimously advised to cash in on it when his presidential campaign began to falter. He sometimes said “don’t ask again” after dodging a particularly difficult question, but that was all. On the rare occasions when he was asked about his wartime experiences in general, Richard gave a stock reply that many American prisoners had been much younger and got it much worse than he had, especially those held prior to 1969.
Because of this unbroken history of downplaying the scar and its origins, the manner in which Richard was now drawing attention to it took everyone by surprise.
Ben looked more than a little concerned, worried again that Richard’s emotions might take him off-script. Ben stepped forward once more. This time, Richard pushed him back.
“You all know about the successes and failures that led me to assume my position here at the IDA,” Richard told the crowd, his expression hardening, “but some of you may be too young to remember what I said on the day I took charge. And although much has changed since then, such as the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union being overtaken by the yellow stars of China as the greatest threat to our freedom, my commitment to this office remains as steadfast as ever. Our nation’s well-earned national security advantage is something I take very seriously. I don’t care how many billion of them there are; the United States of America will not… back… down.” Richard thumped his podium with each of the last three words.
“So with that in mind,” he continued, “allow me to reiterate what I told the world back then: There will be no red flag on the red planet. Not today and not tomorrow. Not on my watch.”
Ben’s face now left no doubt that Richard had said something he wasn’t supposed to, and the fact that Richard began limping to the door
immediately after saying it only added extra emphasis to his already inflammatory remarks. Ben stood awkwardly at the podium for a few seconds before joining Richard on his way out.
Reporters fired questions from all angles — “alien” this and “China” that — but Ben followed Richard’s lead in ignoring them all.
As the door swung closed and the two men reached the relative peace of the building’s main corridor, Ben voiced his anger. “What the hell was that?” he half-whispered-half-shouted. “I know you wanted a soundbite to shift attention away from all this McCarthy talk, but are you trying to start a war?”
Richard’s face was a picture of serenity. “Life is chess, Benjamin,” he said, and he limped away.
D minus 91
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan McCarthy sat on his couch in silence, utterly stunned by Richard Walker’s press conference.
Although the initial shock of hearing his own name had been tempered slightly by Richard’s confirmation that Dan wasn’t a “person of interest” in the police investigation, the whole thing was overwhelming.
After posting the contents of the Kerguelen folder online, Dan had spent a busy half-day at work looking fearfully over his shoulder. The police would be on his case in no time, he thought, or maybe even government agents. But no one had come, and Dan arrived home just in time for the press conference about China, feeling like he had gotten away with it.
Oblivious to the whirlwind fallout from his own leak, Dan expected to have missed the beginning of Richard’s speech when he got home and turned his TV on. He smiled gleefully as his eyes scanned the screen and took everything in. The presenters were talking in excited tones, with words like “Toplitz” and “cover-up” written in sub-headlines to the right of the main picture.
“Richard Walker is already five minutes late,” one of the co-hosts said to the other. “Is there a chance that he might be switching out his speech about China for an impromptu disclosure of something even more significant?”
Dan couldn’t help but wonder if he was imagining things or if he really had just heard the D-word spoken on a mainstream news network in the context of this kind of government cover-up.
Sarah Curtis, host of the Blitz News 4 O’clock Bulletin, pressed a finger to her ear at 4:18. “I believe we now have none other than Billy Kendrick on the line,” she said. “Are you with us, Billy?”
“I sure am, Sarah,” Billy said. But as soon as he appeared in the shadow of an arena somewhere in Nebraska, the feed abruptly cut to the IDA’s press room.
“It looks like this is it,” Sarah Curtis commented over the footage. “Richard Walker is about to address the media. Hopefully Billy Kendrick will bear with us for his reaction in a few minutes, but for now we’re going to fade over to the IDA for this historic moment.”
Richard then embarked on his marauding speech, grabbing Dan by the collar and dragging him through a labyrinth of emotions. First came the shock of hearing his name; then the relief that the police weren’t interested in him; and ultimately the hope that people would see through Richard’s overt attempt at a character assassination.
Dan’s earlier fears of being held accountable for some combination of publishing stolen documents and leaking government secrets no longer existed, because Richard Walker had just publicly denied that either of those things happened.
Richard’s decision to instead dismiss “Mr McCarthy” as a mentally ill self-publicist struck Dan as an act of desperation. And by focusing on Dan rather than the content of the leak, all Richard had really done was drawn more attention to the whole issue. He hadn’t quite made a martyr out of Dan, but he had certainly turned him into a lightning rod for the already captivated media.
As if to prove this point, the headline on Blitz News now read: “Source identified only as Dan McCarthy of Colorado.”
Even Sarah Curtis, a host with more experience than anyone else at Blitz News, didn’t know where to start. “Is Kendrick still waiting?” she said to someone off camera, breaking the cardinal rule of news broadcasting.
The feed cut back to Billy Kendrick as abruptly as it had left him a short while earlier.
“Oh, I’m here,” Billy said, beaming so broadly that it looked like the wind had changed and frozen his smile in place.
D minus 90
Lexington Arena
Lincoln, Nebraska
If anyone could relate to Dan’s current position as the subject of a campaign of ridicule, it was Billy Kendrick.
Currently in the middle of a 52-date coast-to-coast speaking tour, Billy Kendrick was without doubt the most prominent UFO researcher of his generation. Billy objected to the “UFO researcher” moniker — clarifying at every opportunity that UFOs were only one small part of the picture, and a relatively unimportant one at that — but he always took care not to appear angry over what most casual observers saw as a minor detail.
When asked, Billy usually described himself as a Disclosure Activist. Eleven years had now passed since the publication of his seminal work, How And Why: Five Scenarios For Disclosure, and sales of the recent paperback reprint continued to surpass all expectations.
Never had Billy’s work been more relevant than in the wake of Dan’s leak, which caused the same news networks that normally treated Billy as a figure of fun to fall over themselves in trying to secure an exclusive interview for his first reaction. Billy opted to speak first on Blitz News, who enjoyed a regular viewership larger than that of their four nearest rivals combined.
At 55, Billy’s hair was already greyed to near whiteness, but he kept it short and fashionably styled. His facial hair was also carefully curated, with tapered sideburns and a fine stubble. Somewhat ironically, Billy looked a lot more polished in his fitted grey suit and white shirt than he had during his time as a respected professor of archaeology, back when he sported the ponytail, beard and jeans uniform so common among those in his new field of alien studies.
Billy still stood smiling into the camera, waiting for a question.
“Your thoughts, Billy?” Sarah Curtis eventually asked.
“Well,” Billy said, “forgive me if I’m lost for words. I’m just not used to saying I told you so.”
Billy’s voice was gentle but authoritative — like a therapist, or a good teacher — and tailor-made for the radio show with which he had first found an audience. He moved into podcasting when everyone else did and now hosted a hugely successful podcast featuring celebrity guests whose fans followed them everywhere. Utilising the power of such mainstream crossovers, Billy had built a fanbase of his own. Dan McCarthy was one of more than 300,000 twice-monthly listeners.
With Sarah Curtis still faltering in her own hosting duties as too many voices fed suggestions into her earpiece at the same time, one of her co-hosts spoke up: “Hi Billy, Shawn Pike here. Are you telling us that you take the word of this Dan McCarthy character over Richard Walker’s?”
“I don’t know much about Dan McCarthy,” Billy said, “but Walker has spent half his life lying for a living. So yeah, that’s what I’m tell—”
“Those are not the views of Blitz News,” Sarah interrupted. “Richard Walker has served—”
This time it was Billy’s turn to interrupt. “Look,” he said, pointing diagonally into the camera. “There are four other news vans parked right across the street. If you don’t want to let me talk, you might as well say so now so I can walk on over there and your viewers can change the station to follow me.”
Dan nodded at the screen, glad that Billy wasn’t taking any of their crap. For once, Billy held all the cards. For once, the truth had a chance.
After a few tense seconds, a small disclaimer appeared underneath Billy: “Views expressed by interviewees do not reflect the views of Blitz News or Blitz Media.”
“Okay,” Sarah said. “But moving away from Mr Walker, what are your views on the content of the documents? It must have been a surprise to see your own name in there.
”
“That’s the least important part,” Billy said, echoing Dan’s thoughts. “I don’t want to talk about that. If you want to talk about what’s interesting, what about Hans Kloster? I won’t pretend to have known too much about him before today, but if the “Mr Kloster” who sent the requests to block exploration at these sites is the same Hans Kloster that people are talking about, then I really think this might be it.”
“This might be what?” Sarah asked, back in command of her role.
“Pants-down disclosure,” Billy said. His beaming smile returned. “The fourth of my five scenarios. I expected it to start with a whistleblower on the inside rather than the way it’s turned out today, but I predicted that pants-down disclosure could occur if the truth found its own way out and the government was eventually forced to admit it. This is the scenario they’ve always feared more than any other, because the only thing a politician hates more than being wrong is being embarrassed. Just look at what happened in London a few hours ago!”
“Hmmm,” Sarah said. “Richard Walker didn’t sound like a man with anything to admit from where I was sitting.”
Wary of being dragged into an argument, Billy opted to ignore Sarah entirely and say his piece while he had the biggest audience he likely ever would. “If we can get back to the point,” he said. “Someone who works at the IDA has said that there’s a picture of Richard Walker shaking hands with Hans Kloster hanging in one of the building’s corridors. Now, it turns out that Hans Kloster was one of the Nazi rocketeers our government recruited in Operation Paperclip. They tried to lie about that, too, by the way. Anyway, when we have evidence of a Nazi-era scientist trying to block exploration at two locations which we already know as the sites of suspicious Nazi activity, and when this evidence turned up in a folder that belonged to Richard Walker, right beside a note about an alien craft…” Billy paused for a deep breath. “Not to mention the names of two U-boats which we know for a fact surrendered on the wrong side of the world three months after the war was over! That’s what we should be focusing on: the evidence. We should be analysing the replies to Kloster’s letters.”
Not Alone Page 4