“I don’t need to see any of this,” he said.
Emma took the sheets back without complaint. “I didn’t think so, either. The firm only wanted you to have the dirt sheets in case one of the panellists knows something about you that we don’t. But I think you should be the guy who rises above petty gossip and brushes personal comments aside. Be the bigger man.”
Someone from next door knocked on the glass again and the TV beside the camera flashed on. “Filming for the China segment is about to begin,” a voice announced through unseen speakers.
“Forty minutes until go time,” Emma said. She signalled for the people next door to close the blinds to give Dan a degree of privacy. “Pay attention to the panellists so you know what to expect from each of them, okay?”
Dan nodded and sat in his chair without saying a word.
* * *
During the early stages of the Focus 20/20 filming, which took place in New York without a studio audience, Kaitlyn Judd said almost nothing and Joe Crabbe held nothing back.
Crabbe was almost Richard Walker-like in his comments about China, saying things like “we cannot give the Chinese an inch” and “President Slater needs to grow a pair and tell the Chinese that space is not for them.”
His “grow a pair” comment drew dismissive eye-rolls and head-shakes from most of the panel until another male panellist, a young filmmaker called Caleb North who neither Dan nor Emma had previously heard of, took it upon himself to demand an apology for the “toxic and sexist comment.”
Crabbe predictably laughed off the request, slamming the filmmaker for his attempt to “win brownie points” and defiantly insisting that “the thought police will be getting no apologies from me.”
Several panellists talked over each other for a few seconds.
Emma turned to Dan. “I don’t have to tell you to stay out of stuff like that, right?”
“Nope,” he replied.
The camera then focused on Marian de Clerk, who had chaired Focus 20/20’s panel for more than three decades. Tangible disappointment was etched on her face. de Clerk had seen debate descend into this kind of thing all too often recently, with it seeming like one side of every argument wanted to offend the other while the other couldn’t wait to take the bait. Each side had its buzzwords, be they “problematic” and “offensive” or “thought police” and “free speech”, but de Clerk and most of her viewers were tired of the holier-than-thou point-scoring from both sides.
“Enough,” de Clerk said, raising her normally restrained voice. “We only have forty minutes for this segment and we need twenty of them. Joe, stop trying to be offensive. And Caleb, stop trying to be offended. Now, can we get on with the show?”
After a few minutes of more polite discussion and with Dan’s appearance drawing ever closer, he looked away from the TV and into Emma’s eyes. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he said. “It suddenly feels real. They’re all sitting together and I’m the outsider, sitting in here alone. It’s more intimidating than I thought.”
“You’re not alone,” Emma said.
“You know what I mean.”
“Just pretend you’re talking to me. Pretend you’re trying to convince me. That’s not intimidating, is it?”
A few days earlier, spending this much time alone with a woman who looked and carried herself like Emma would indeed have been intimidating for Dan, but by now he felt sufficiently comfortable with her for this to be a worthwhile exercise. “No,” he said. “I can do that.”
Emma’s phone vibrated in her pocket. “I have to take this,” she said after looking at the screen.
“Okay.”
“This better be important,” Emma whispered to the caller. “We’re on in eight minutes.”
Dan watched as Emma’s expression changed.
“Right now? Okay. Thanks.” She ended the call but kept her phone in her hand.
“Was that the firm?” Dan asked.
Emma slid her chair over towards Dan’s and held her phone at arms length, navigating to a web page and launching a video.
“What’s going on?” Dan pressed.
Emma tapped the play button. “Godfrey.”
D minus 70
Manslow Monument
London, England
On the 150th anniversary of one of Britain’s worst industrial disasters, William Godfrey laid a wreath at the Manslow Monument. The Prime Minister was flanked by his long suffering Deputy PM Diane Logan on one side and his coalition partner John Cole on the other.
Diane had been the only cabinet member to speak out against Godfrey’s decision to involve himself in the developing story of the IDA leak, while Cole had written much of what Godfrey had said about it so far.
Cole’s eye for controversy and Godfrey’s expert delivery had succeeded in deflecting attention away from Saturday’s anti-privatisation protest to the extent that around half of the questions that greeted them when they emerged from their cars were related to President Slater and Dan McCarthy. Half were still about the thorny issue of the health service, though, so Godfrey knew he had more work to do.
After the respite of the solemn memorial service, the three attending politicians took their position to say a few words as scheduled. As Prime Minister, William Godfrey went first.
“On a day like today, we reflect on what it means to be British,” he began. “To be British is to honour our fallen. To be British is to pursue a world that fits our values. To be British is to value truth. So let us take the example of the families and colleagues of those who fell in the Fire of Manslow 150 years ago today; of those families and colleagues who refused to accept the official line and fought for the truth until it became clear than negligence rather than happenstance lay at the root of this tragic incident.”
Diane Logan tilted her head away from Godfrey, hoping that he wasn’t going where she thought he was.
“And on this 150th anniversary,” Godfrey continued, “let us recognise that another truth is being ruthlessly suppressed even as we stand here to pay our respects.”
“This is disgusting,” Diane Logan muttered under her breath. And then, more loudly, “even for you.” She walked away and stood with the members of the public who had gathered for the memorial, capturing the reporters’ attention for a few seconds before they focused back on Godfrey and Cole.
Godfrey blanked Diane’s words and didn’t even acknowledge her departure. “We are being lied to,” he said, “for what can only be reasons of calculated self-interest.”
As he had during Godfrey’s initial outburst at President Slater, John Cole nodded silently beside him.
“Mr Cole and I, as both representatives of the British people and as citizens of this planet, cannot in good conscious allow shady American interests to control information as important as the kind that Dan McCarthy has fearlessly made public. We call for vigilance in the face of attempts to frame this issue as an alien problem and invite an open dialogue on what may well be an unprecedented alien opportunity. After all, if alien technology was indeed discovered in Lake Toplitz, who’s to say what global problems it could solve if properly used? For this reason, we cannot allow the American government to shape the world’s response to any future revelations, and we cannot allow them to delay those revelations out of calculated self interest. The families of our fallen deserve better than that.”
To Diane Logan’s amazement, people around her applauded the end of Godfrey’s speech. Loath to detract from the memorial service any more than Godfrey already had, she opted to keep her disdain private as John Cole prepared to speak.
“Another thing we’d like to point out,” Cole said in his broad Yorkshire accent, “is that the Americans are in no position to tell us what to say about this. I heard President Slater talking about “irresponsible murmurs from London” as if she has some kind of idea what this city went through at the hands of Hans Kloster and the others whose lies they’re trying to cover up.”
It was Godfrey’s tur
n to nod now. He knew what was about to be said and had decided to let Cole say it since it was a topic he would rather not broach himself.
John Cole cleared his throat. “Hans Kloster was involved in the early stages of the rocketry programme that eventually led to the V-1 and V-2 rockets, slaughtering more than 6,000 British civilians. We deserve to know the true origin of the technologies that led to those weapons. And thanks to the paper trail of Kloster’s correspondence with various government agencies, a picture is becoming clear.
“It’s also important that we don’t forget where the Americans fit into this,” Cole continued. “They recruited an army of mad Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip and gave some of them new identities. For most of the war they were turning Jewish refugees away from Ellis Island, and then the minute the war was over they were sneaking war criminals like Kloster into air bases in Texas! You couldn’t make it up. It’s also worth remembering that Operation Paperclip was a carefully guarded secret back then. With that in mind, the Prime Minister and I can’t help but wonder what other American secrets will one day be taken for granted as indisputable facts. That’s all we’d like to say for now, and we thank you all for coming out to join us in paying our respects.”
As Godfrey and Cole headed to their cars amid further sombre applause, Diane Logan took it upon herself to apologise to the families of the Fire of Manslow’s victims on behalf of her party for the way the two men had hijacked the memorial service. But even as Diane spoke, the public began filing away and the media crews began packing up their equipment.
“He’s playing a game,” she said, but no one was listening.
D minus 69
RMXT Studio #2
Amarillo, Texas
“Holy shit,” Emma said as William Godfrey and John Cole walked away from the Manslow Monument. “The gloves are off.”
“Alien opportunity,” Dan mused. “That’s a good line. I should use that, right? And maybe calculated self interest, too.”
Emma nodded. “Quote Godfrey all you want, but stay away from Cole. Trust me: that guy is bad news. Anyway, the best thing about this is that none of the other panellists know what Godfrey just said, so you’re going to come across as knowledgeable and well informed.”
A producer’s voice filled the room again: “One minute.”
Emma put her hands on Dan’s shoulders and looked into his eyes. “This is your time. Sink or swim, Dan McCarthy… it’s all on you.”
Dan closed his eyes for a few seconds then shook his face alive. “I’m ready,” he said.
Emma moved her chair back beside the camera. The clock was at 18 seconds. “Three things,” she said, still standing, now holding her hand out and getting ready to raise a finger for each point. “Remember why you’re here. Stick to the story. Game face.”
“I don’t need a game face. I’m telling the truth.”
Emma sat down and winked at him.
“That’s starting to piss me off,” Dan said.
A series of shrill beeps then came through the speakers, growing more frequent until a constant shriek played for two or three seconds. The lighting in the room then changed completely, with most of the ceiling panels going dark and the wall behind Dan turning a light grey.
Before Dan’s eyes settled on the screen, which now displayed his fellow panellists, he looked to Emma for some final words of support. She had only two whispered words for him:
“Convince me.”
* * *
Dan dealt with Marian de Clerk’s opening questions as comfortably as he could have hoped. de Clerk’s longevity as host of Focus 20/20 was due in no small part to her interviewing technique, which could be best described as staying out of the way. She had an easy demeanour which encouraged guests to open up, and from there she let them say their piece and only stepped in if the conversation strayed off-track.
On the few occasions when Dan’s eyes flicked to Emma between questions, he saw that she was highly satisfied with how he was doing.
After Dan had tackled most of the pre-approved questions, de Clerk asked another off the top of her head. “To take a step back here,” she said, “why do you think Richard Walker would cover something like this up in the first place?”
Dan’s answer began with “I’m not here to speculate,” which was the one line Emma had been absolutely insistent about. “But I suppose it all boils down to control,” he continued, drawing an approving nod from Emma. “Politics is all about artificial fear and the illusion of control. Politicians and the media create fake threats and play down the real ones.”
Emma raised her eyebrows at the end of Dan’s point, not exactly thrilled with where he had taken it.
“But as I said, I’m not here to speculate.”
She gave him a thumbs up.
“So visitation could be a threat,” de Clerk said.
It took Dan a few seconds to realise that her statement was intended as a question. He saw Emma mouth the words “unhealthy fear”, encouraging him to give another of the stock replies he’d been working on.
“It would be unhealthy to fear alien visitation,” Dan said. “If you think about fears, some are healthy and some aren’t. It’s healthy to fear sharks. Think about it: sharks can rip you apart, but you can avoid them by staying out of the ocean. But with hostile aliens there would be nowhere to hide. You can’t outrun the sky, so what’s the point of holding the fear? It’s senseless, and, although I’m not here to speculate, I am as confident as I could be that no one is hostile. Hostile enemies don’t leave spheres containing information about themselves.”
“You know that the spheres contained such information?” de Clerk prodded.
“The real point is that we have to be wary of the media framing this as an alien problem,” Dan said, somewhat evasively. “Like Prime Minister Godfrey said a few minutes ago, we should treat this as an alien opportunity.”
de Clerk then invited the other panellists to ask their own questions. Predictably, Joe Crabbe jumped in first. “Okay, Mr McCarthy. You’ve already said there’s no visual evidence of alien visitors because they don’t want to be seen and that anyone capable of getting here would be capable of avoiding detection, correct?” He allowed a few seconds for Dan to confirm this. “So if they don’t want us to have any photographic evidence, why did they leave physical evidence? And don’t weasel your way out by saying you’re not here to speculate.”
“That’s a good question,” Dan said, buying himself a few seconds.
“So answer it!”
Dan glanced at Emma. She held both hands out and lowered them slowly, signalling for Dan to keep calm.
“If you’d let me breathe, I will,” he said. “Maybe they wanted to see how humanity would react to the knowledge in the spheres. Maybe the spheres and the craft had been here for hundreds or even thousands of years before they were discovered. After all, there are cave drawings that depict spacecraft. So maybe the visitors haven’t been back since cameras were invented? I don’t know; I’ll leave the speculation to you.”
“It seems to me like there are a lot of maybes,” Crabbe chided. He was grinning. “It seems to me like there’s a lot of uncertainty.”
Without missing a beat, Dan shot back: “It seems to me like there are a lot of people trying to keep it that way, and it seems to me like you’re one of them.”
Joe Crabbe began to respond, but de Clerk cut him off. “Can we hear from someone else?” she asked the panel.
To Dan’s surprise, Hollywood starlet Kaitlyn Judd had a question. And to his even greater surprise, it was a good one. “If there is a cover-up,” Kaitlyn said with her unmistakably Californian cadence, “then doesn’t that mean the aliens want there to be one? Because if they didn’t want the government to keep it secret, wouldn’t they just go over the government’s head and reveal themselves?”
Star-struck was the only word for how Dan felt. He stared at the TV, which had zoomed in on Kaitlyn, for several seconds without speaking.
“Pretend she’s me,” Emma whispered as loudly as she dared, leaning in towards Dan but wary of the camera.
If Dan had squinted, Kaitlyn and Emma would have actually looked a little alike. He tried to think of megastar Kaitlyn Judd as a normal-on-the-inside person like Emma. It worked. “These kind of good questions are exactly why we need clarity,” he said. “I don’t expect hostility, though, because if they wanted our planetary resources then they would surely already have them.”
Joe Crabbe reinserted himself into the conversation without any complaint from de Clerk. “You’re wrong, McCarthy. If Kloster did know something, it had to be bad. Why else would he have asked NASA to stop sending information about our planet into space?”
“People can have selfish reasons for suppressing good news,” Dan answered. “And so can governments. It could be that the only threat these aliens pose is the threat of a good example. They might have superior technology, different ways to harness energy, better ways to distribute resources, someth—”
“A-ha!” Crabbe yelled. “There it is. You all heard him: it all comes down to redistribution of resources. This is the globalist, communist, eugenicist agenda!”
Dan immediately looked at Emma and spoke to her out loud for the first time since the filming started, too confused to keep it to himself. “Eugenicist?” he said. “What the hell is he talking about?”
Emma widened her eyes, telling Dan to look back into the camera.
“You’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Crabbe snapped.
“I’m just the guy who found the folder,” Dan replied automatically.
“Lies! You’re a globalist agent. This is Agenda 21! You want to reduce the Earth’s population by 90% so that—”
“Cut his mic,” Marian de Clerk said. Crabbe’s voice faded.
“You can’t silence me!” he shouted, but it was barely audible to Dan under de Clerk’s calm tone.
Not Alone Page 14