“Save your breath,” de Clerk told Crabbe, rising to her feet. “We’re not airing any rants. Everyone cut. Two-minute break.”
Most of the panellists also stood up, but Joe Crabbe stayed in his chair, calmly taking notes. He didn’t look like the same man whose face had been purple with rage only moments earlier.
“Are you playing a character?” Dan asked, unsure whether he would be heard.
Crabbe looked up, confirming that he’d heard the question, but didn’t answer.
Emma stood and pulled Dan out into the corridor.
“How am I doing?” he asked.
“A lot better than I thought,” Emma said, very honestly. “But don’t get dragged into a mud-fight with Crabbe. Even if it doesn’t air, he’s not the kind of guy who’s going to respect a non-disclosure agreement or a gag order.”
“He’s basically the only one asking questions, though,” Dan said.
Emma shrugged. “You were talking to Marian for forty minutes, so that will fill most of the segment, anyway.”
“Forty minutes?” Dan echoed in disbelief. He thought it had been more like fifteen. “How long do we have left?”
“About twenty. He is playing a character, by the way. That’s his whole deal. He’s kind of the opposite of Billy Kendrick; he has his show and he has his audience, so all he does is pander, pander, pander.”
“Billy’s not like that,” Dan said.
Emma blew air from her lips. “Agree to disagree.”
Dan shrugged it off. “I still don’t understand why he’s talking about Agenda 21, though.”
“I don’t even know what the hell that is,” Emma admitted.
Dan tried to explain what was a contentious issue in some circles as succinctly as he could: “It’s basically an old UN thing about sustainable development, but when people mention it now they’re usually talking about forced depopulation and a tyrannical one-world government.”
“That sounds like the kind of thing Crabbe’s audience buys into,” Emma said, “so he’s just giving them what they want. Don’t take it personally.”
A door opened behind them. “They’re back,” a producer said.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Emma said to Dan. “We’re almost there.”
D minus 68
10 Downing Street
London, England
“What’s the latest on McCarthy?” William Godfrey asked, sitting on the edge of his bed and talking into his phone.
“He’s doing Focus 20/20 tonight,” John Cole replied. “They’re filming it right now.”
Godfrey’s eyes widened. “With Marian de Clerk? That’s a serious show.”
“I know.”
“Who’s representing him? He must have signed with an agency to get near a show like that.”
“I’ve no idea, boss.”
“Find out,” Godfrey said. “And when you do, tell them our interests align.”
D minus 67
RMXT Studio #2
Amarillo, Texas
After the unscheduled recess, Joe Crabbe picked up right where he left off on the Focus 20/20 panel. “You and your kind would welcome an enemy threat from above,” he said to Dan, “because you want a new global order. You want a one-world government to rise from the chaos.”
“It doesn’t matter how many times you try to frame this as a threat,” Dan said, “people won’t buy what you’re selling. We live in a culture obsessed with war, so people like you project that. But any species which has pooled its resources enough to achieve interstellar travel will surely be beyond war.”
Crabbe scoffed. “Beyond intra-species conflict, maybe, but not beyond conquest. Not beyond dominion. Tell me, in your dystopian globalist future when humans are “beyond war”, won’t we still fish the oceans? Won’t we still mine the earth? Won’t we still do whatever is necessary to procure resources?”
Emma did the universal slit-throat hand gesture, warning Dan off this train of argument.
“I’m just here to talk about the cover-up,” Dan said. “You know how I feel about speculation.”
“How can you be so blasé?” Crabbe snapped, as though another switch had been flipped in his head. “Even if there was a cover-up, have you really never considered that it might be because they’re hostile?”
Emma pumped her fist, delighted that Crabbe had so explicitly made the kind of hypothetical concession she had told Dan to avoid.
“We’ve been over this,” Dan said. “Knowledge is power, and for the people behind the scenes in Washington that’s all that matters. Power isn’t a means to an end for these people, power is the end. All they care about is power for its own sake, truth be damned.”
“As opposed to truth for its own sake, consequences be damned?”
Dan glanced at Emma. She nodded. “Well… yeah,” he said. “I know that Billy Kendrick has made this point to you before, but since you don’t seem to have grasped it I’ll make it again. People like you talk about how there would be panic and violence if the public learned a frightening truth, but people don’t riot when they’re scared. People riot when they’re angry. And the best way to make people angry is to hide things from them and to patronise them by saying they’re not strong enough to handle the truth. Who are you to decide what we’re grown up enough to handle? Who is President Slater to decide that? My position on this couldn’t be any clearer: we deserve to know the truth, whatever it is. We have a right to know the truth.”
Emma mimed an enthusiastic round of applause. Dan tried not to laugh at the sight.
“Speaking of truth,” Crabbe said, undeterred.
“Very briefly,” de Clerk ordered.
Crabbe nodded curtly. “I have a good friend at Blitz Media — The Daily Chat to be precise — and she, uh… or he, has been kind enough to share with me a story they’re going to publish tomorrow. It seems that they’ve unearthed some old schoolwork of yours, Mr McCarthy, which just so happens to mention your lifelong desire to, quote, be the first person to find the proof, unquote, so you could become rich and famous. Care to comment?”
Dan wracked his brain for some memory of such a piece of schoolwork, but he couldn’t remember anything. He didn’t think it was a bluff, though, so he couldn’t risk denying something which could quickly be proven.
To the side of the camera, Emma held up Joe Crabbe’s dirt sheet, replete with sufficient detail to end his marriage and career in one fell swoop. She shrugged at Dan, who was deep in thought.
“No,” he said after a long pause. “I’m not going to lower myself to the level of the gutter press and their gutter tactics. If they investigated real issues instead of people they hold grudges against, maybe this cover-up would have been exposed years ago. And as for my schoolwork… what do you want me to tell you? I used to be a child, guilty as charged. It’s going to be a crowded prison if we’re all punished for that.”
Joe Crabbe said nothing.
“Can we bring in the historian?” de Clerk asked someone off-camera. “We’ll edit him in earlier, because I want to finish on the discussion about truth. And Joe, you should know better than to mention a competitor’s name.”
Humbled, Joe Crabbe maintained his silence. Like de Clerk’s words, it sounded good to Dan.
The historian appeared on screen, both to Dan and the rest of the panel, from his own remote location in Ottawa. de Clerk introduced him as Professor Mark Shaw and, with time running out, got straight to the point by asking for his opinion on the likelihood that alien artefacts may have been smuggled to Argentina on board one or both of the named U-boats.
“It’s actually a novel and intriguing take on a series of tired conspiracies,” Shaw said, surprising everyone with a refined English accent.
“Enlighten us,” de Clerk said.
“Well, as has been documented in the media over the last few days, the crew of U-530 did indeed surrender at Mar del Plata in Argentina a full two months after the end of the war in Europe. Then of course U-977 did t
he same another five weeks later, by which point we were well into August of 1945. The conspiracies arise from the discrepancies between Argentine and American interrogation reports, as well as a general scepticism over the stated reasons for travelling all the way to Argentina.”
de Clerk waved her hand to hurry him along. “Which was…?”
“The official line is that the crews considered Argentina a safe haven and viewed surrender to the Allies as a fate worse than the death they risked by making the journey. This falls down when we consider that the captain of U-977 learned a full eighteen days before surrendering that U-530 and its crew had already been handed over to the Americans. If he was alive and with us today, I would ask why he continued into the now hostile Argentine waters. Of course his options were limited, but bear in mind that his crew had undertaken a near-suicidal journey with the express purpose of avoiding surrender to the Allies.”
“So what were the other limited options?” de Clerk asked, professional as ever but with a hint of impatience creeping through the words.
“Uruguay might have been one,” Shaw said, almost inflecting it into a question, “and suicide was another. The fact that they continued to Argentina hardly quashes speculation of a precious cargo. Let me quickly stress that Adolf Hitler was not part of this cargo, in case any of your viewers get the wrong idea. The survival myths are verifiably nonsensical; these U-boats left Europe when Hitler was alive and accounted for.”
“So the survival myths are nonsense but the rest might not be?”
“There’s no might. None at all. U-530 and U-977 reached Argentina and quickly ended up in American hands. I could show you photographs of the American crews bringing them north. I could tell you when and where they were sunk for target practice. None of this is at all controversial.”
“Okay,” de Clerk said, striving to find a useful angle. “But can we read anything into the fact that Dan McCarthy knew the names of these U-boats, or is that common knowledge?”
“There’s a middle ground between secret knowledge and common knowledge,” Professor Shaw explained. “If I were to ask you the population of Lesotho or the name of Saturn’s fifth largest satellite, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell me. If I gave you twenty seconds with an internet connection, I imagine you would. You see, the stories of these U-boats aren’t part of the traditional narrative we teach our children in school, but nor are they esoteric facts that can’t be found and verified with a few mouse-clicks.”
“And if I had to push you for a position on Mr McCarthy’s claims?” de Clerk asked.
“Certainly worth exploring,” Shaw said. “U-530’s interrogation reports suggest that documents were thrown overboard along with ammunition, so the suggestion that some kind of sphere was dumped from U-977 as it neared Argentina — where the crew knew the Americans were waiting — isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. Whether that sphere is earthly or not is another story altogether.”
“Thank you, Professor Shaw,” de Clerk said. “And on that note, we say a big thank you to Dan McCarthy, Kaitlyn Judd, and the rest of today’s panel. Tune in next week for another exciting edition of Focus 20/20.”
* * *
The ceiling lights in Dan’s mini-studio came back on.
“Where have you been hiding that?” Emma asked.
“Hiding what?”
“The fire in your belly. The passion. The conviction. Joe Crabbe riles people up for a living and you held your own against him.”
Dan didn’t really know how to answer. “I guess I haven’t spoken to anyone else who doesn’t believe me. Apart from Clark, at first.” He looked at Emma. “And you.”
“Anyway,” Emma dodged, “you should be proud of yourself. I think we should ask them to leave the thing about the Daily Chat’s story in. I mean, it’s going to be published, anyway, and at least this way people will hear your response before they read the article.”
“Yeah,” Dan said.
“Okay, stay here. I’ll tell them what we do and don’t want to make the cut. de Clerk and her team know better than to make you look stupid or take anything you said out of context, anyway.”
Having seen the kind of dirt sheets that Emma’s firm kept on people, Dan didn’t doubt that.
A man wearing a Senior Technician lanyard entered Dan’s studio to do something with the camera and made a passing comment congratulating Dan on his performance. Dan thanked him. As the technician was leaving, he stopped at the door. “How do you know Emma Ford, anyway?”
The question caught Dan off guard. “Thanks again,” he said carefully.
The man took the hint and left. Dan didn’t mention him when Emma returned a few minutes later.
As they walked down the corridor together, Emma told Dan about a new opportunity to do a live show on Tuesday evening. “It was the firm’s idea and I said no at first,” she told him, “but after seeing how well you handled yourself there, I think you’re ready.”
“What show?” Dan said.
“Nothing is set in stone, but it’s a good way to get your face out there to a whole new audience. Most people don’t watch the news or current affairs shows, so even if you had actual proof there would still be a lot of people who didn’t know.”
Dan let the “actual proof” jibe fly, still reluctant to mention his smoking-gun Kloster letter until it was fully translated and he had shown it to Clark. “This isn’t the way we came,” he suddenly said when they reached an unfamiliar corner.
Emma didn’t reply.
“What’s going on?”
“There are some people I want you to meet,” Emma said.
“What kind of people?”
“Advertising people.”
Dan did a 180-degree turn and kept walking.
“Twenty thousand dollars,” Emma said. “You keep the cash.”
He stopped in his tracks.
Emma walked until she caught up with him. “Lexington Cola. It’s a thirty-second spot and you’ll be in and out in two hours, max. All they want you to do is stand in front of a green screen with a can in your hand, look into the camera, and say a few lines.”
“Not a chance in hell,” Dan said.
“Thirty grand.”
Dan shook his head.
“Fifty.”
“How much is the firm making out of this if you can afford to negotiate my pay up by 250%?”
Emma’s expression changed. “You keep an $85 cheque on your wall and you’re seriously saying no to $50,000? You’re not thinking straight. You have to make the most of your fifteen minutes.”
“What fifteen minutes?” Dan said. “This isn’t a flash in the pan. I found evidence of an alien cover-up. I have the evidence. We can talk about money when the truth is out, but until then I’m not listening.”
“Dan…”
“No. It’s not even a moral thing. If I take money for ads, that’s it. Game over. I literally become the guy who’s in it for the money. That’s all the ammunition that Walker and Slater and Crabbe and the rest of the liars and shills will ever need.”
“We have to make hay while the sun shines,” Emma said. It was corny, but it was all she could muster. “And I already told you that the firm are recalling me next Sunday…”
“Emma, I can’t do it.”
“Okay,” she said, setting off back along the corridor. “But ads are the biggest payday you can bring, so I don’t even think they’ll let me stay until Sunday.”
Dan walked beside her. “How does this sound,” he said. “If you help me win, I’ll do the ad and you can keep my fee.”
“Define win…”
“When someone in the current government admits that intelligent aliens exist,” Dan said. “When that happens, I’ll do it. Deal?”
“We had offers from Mansize Clothing and Beanstox Coffee, too. If you promise do to all three, I might be able to talk the firm into letting me stay. That’s if I can convince them that there’s even the slightest chance of your winning scenario actua
lly coming true.”
“Fine by me,” Dan said. “Unless you don’t want to stay? You could probably be making more money with another client, right?”
Emma shook her head briskly. “Well, yeah… but I’ll get a good commission if you do the live show on Tuesday. And trust me, this is a lot more fun than my usual work. You’re not like the other clients.”
“Because I’m telling the truth?” Dan said with a grin.
Emma laughed. “Something like that.”
D minus 66
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan arrived home in the small hours of Monday morning. Emma went inside with him to charge her phone for a few minutes while the chauffeur waited outside, the phone’s battery having been stretched beyond its limit by heavy use throughout a long day and particularly by streaming Focus 20/20 when it aired at 9pm.
Dan came across very well on the show, and Joe Crabbe came across like the obnoxious lout he was. As Dan watched himself, he felt like he was looking at someone else; even a day after getting it cut, he kept forgetting how short and straight his hair now was. And weatherman jokes aside, he couldn’t deny that the designer glasses and the makeup artist’s deft touch had him looking thoroughly presentable.
Someone from Emma’s firm called immediately after the show to express their satisfaction and they ultimately agreed that Emma should stay in Colorado for at least another week or two. The phone had died shortly after that but she and Dan were both pleased by the news, growing quite fond of each other’s company as they became something of a formidable team.
Now, in Dan’s living room, Emma sat down to watch the news while she waited for her phone to turn on. Quite surprisingly, President Slater hadn’t responded to Prime Minister Godfrey’s latest speech and Richard Walker still hadn’t said anything since Friday. Emma wondered whether he would show up for work at the IDA on Monday morning. There would be a media scrum if he did, she reckoned.
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