“Hell, as long as you bring it in and take it away,” Phil shrugged. “But how big are we talking?”
“That’s all I needed to hear,” Emma said, walking to the quiet side of the lot and the parking space which Trey’s Blue Dish Network van had barely left in the five days since arriving.
Clark followed and quickly overtook her. He recognised the name Blue Dish Network from Dan’s story about the guy who helped him with the translator and assumed the guy in question was the one currently returning a camera to the back of the van. “You’re Trey, right?”
“Dan’s brother?” Trey said, seeing something of a facial resemblance.
“Right.” Clark held out his hand; Trey shook it enthusiastically. “Seriously, that was a good thing you did. Not telling anyone.”
Trey leaned in. “Is that the decisive evidence? The handwriting he was translating?”
“I need a big screen,” Emma said, arriving at walking pace. “Like a drive-in. Tonight. Options?”
Trey blew air from his lips. “What’s the budget?”
“Don’t worry about that. Just give me some options.”
“Well, you obviously can’t get a real drive-in screen delivered and installed today, so I guess the main options are a standing projector screen or a wall canvas.”
“Which is better?”
“For an outdoor location with a big crowd at short notice? I would definitely go for something on the wall. It can be as high or as low as you want, and it’s going to be easier to get one in time.”
“And that’s all we need?” Emma said. “Just a canvas?”
“You’ll need a projector, but you can get that pretty much anywhere. I can take care of sourcing one if you want, but you need to make sure you’re paying for installation when you order the canvas. You need the right fixings and ladders and all kinds of stuff I don’t have. There’s definitely a place in a Denver that could do it today, but it won’t be cheap.”
Emma took her phone from her pocket, ready for some early morning business calls. “Thanks for keeping quiet about everything, by the way. Dan didn’t even tell me until a few hours ago.”
“It was nothing. He gave me his trust, I gave him my word.”
“Are you doing well out of this?” Emma asked, changing tack without warning. “Like… where’s the money?” Her words weren’t loaded or accusatory; she sounded genuinely curious.
Trey laughed. “Pretty much gone. My business is built around getting footage of breaking stories before anyone else, but as you can see… I’m not exactly the only show in town. International outlets all have deals with the big networks, and all of them except Blitz are here. There’s a few places I can send this bugging thing, but they won’t pay big when it’s going to be everywhere else. It’s all about exclusives; that’s why Saturday morning was so huge. That one interview Dan gave made me more than I usually earn in weeks, because only me and ACN had the footage and everyone needed it for their morning cycles. To be honest, I’d be better off getting back in the field now that this place is saturated, but I don’t want to miss anything. This thing feels bigger than money, you know?”
“We’ll work something out for you,” Emma said.
“What do you mean?”
“Cash-wise.”
“I couldn’t accept any—”
“It doesn’t have to be actual cash. We’ll give you an exclusive on something in the next few days. I know you’re having a kid soon; I saw your wife on Saturday.”
Trey didn’t say anything.
“And don’t think it’s charity, either. You could have sold Dan out or filmed him paying you for the translator. That’s what the rest of this lot would have done.”
“I guess. Anyway, you better start passing that memory card around.”
Emma looked at the time; Trey was right. She handed him the card, which he quickly slotted into his computer.
“Let me know if you need help with the projector,” Trey said. He turned to Clark. “Nice meeting you, man.”
“Yeah,” Clark said. “It’s Clark, by the way. And thanks again. Seriously, we owe you.”
Emma then gave the memory card to Maria from ACN, who had been keeping a respectful distance despite being in the closest vehicle to Trey’s. Emma had built up enough rapport with Maria that she didn’t need to reaffirm the pre-6am embargo.
Clark watched as she made her way around the lot. Two thoughts circled in his mind.
The first: Emma Ford was more capable than he ever imagined and had an unplaceable “It Factor” that made people listen to everything she said. She was a powerful ally.
The second: come 7pm, Birchwood, Colorado would be the media capital of the world.
D minus 42
White House
Washington, D.C.
“What do they have?” President Slater demanded.
Jack Neal, equally in the dark, watched the computer screen silently.
“I’m talking to you!”
“Right, uh, yes.” Jack peeled his eyes from the screen, which now showed a wide-angle view of the drive-in, buzzing with activity as Emma passed the bugging footage around. “I don’t know any more than you do, but she wouldn’t have set a time and talked it up so much if it wasn’t something big. She knows how difficult it is to win people back when you over-promise and under-deliver. There’s no way she would demand everyone’s attention if she didn’t think she could meet their expectations.”
The President picked up her phone.
“Who are you calling?” Jack asked.
“If she won’t listen to reason…”
Jack reached over the desk and grabbed the phone from the President’s hand.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“It’s over,” Jack said. “Whatever this secret is, it’s out. Listen to me, Valerie: you have to distance yourself from Walker. That’s what we can still control. The whole world is waiting for McCarthy’s next announcement, so trying to shut it down now would be absolute suicide.”
President Slater eyed Jack with a concerned look mirroring his own.
“Emma’s a lot of things, but she’s no fool,” he went on. “She wouldn’t have stuck with him if it wasn’t worth it, and she’ll have everything uploaded and set up to be posted automatically if anything happens to them. We can’t stop this.”
“We? What about me?” Slater yelled forcefully. “How does it look being played for a fool by Richard fucking Walker? Hmmm? How does it look for him and his tinpot agency to keep this from the President?”
“This thing started more than seventy years ago. None of your predecessors knew anyth—”
“And Godfrey,” Slater sighed, elbow on the desk, her head collapsing into her palm. “Godfrey is going to have a field day.”
If Jack’s mind had still contained any modicum of doubt over how much Slater knew, the pained expression on her face would have crushed it. “We can still come out of this clean if you act now,” he said, as reassuringly as he could. “If you distance yourself from Walker today and shoot for humility, we can survive.”
“And Godfrey?” the President repeated.
“I’ll take care of that later. We have to focus on Walker.”
President Slater sat upright. “What about Fiore? Timo. Where does he fit in here? Did Ford put him up to it?”
“Timo?” Jack said, buying himself some time. Any suggestion that Emma did urge Timo to put up the $100,000,000 bounty for leaked evidence could land her in serious trouble, and Jack didn’t want to risk that; not when it wouldn’t benefit President Slater in any tangible way. “I don’t know; Timo is Timo. He probably reached out to Kendrick and asked to announce it in front of his crowd.”
“And what do we know about McCarthy’s brother? That was him in the car with Ford, right?”
Jack leafed through his notes. “Clark McCarthy. Military, straight out of high school. Let’s see… flawless record until he was struck with a serious respiratory problem three year
s ago. Given a desk job when the health issues kept him from active duty. Couldn’t hack it. Details, details, details. Eventually left on good terms fourteen months ago and moved into private security. Less stringent medical requirements, I guess.”
Slater nodded, taking everything in. “Do you happen to know what time Walker usually arrives at the IDA?” she asked out of nowhere.
“Around 8:30 local time. Why?”
“Never mind why,” Slater said, rising to her feet. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
D minus 41
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
Dan spent the morning in his room rehearsing the statement Emma prepared for him.
Emma, having taken the car to see about the big screen and projector she wanted for the night’s big reveal, had been gone for almost two hours by the time Dan felt confident he could deliver the speech adequately. Though he had made his live TV debut on Marco’s show the night before, this was on another level. Thanks to Emma, the letter reveal had morphed from an announcement into a news event and a bona fide media happening.
Between writing Dan’s speech and leaving for the AV store in Denver that Trey recommended, Emma had spent fifteen minutes designing T-shirts online. Dan saw the design — a plain black background with the slogan “Now Now Now” written in three bright colours, one word per line — and asked Emma what it was all about. She told him that it was part of an idea she’d unsuccessfully suggested to the firm; an idea called The Now Movement.
Once the T-shirts were ordered, she spent another twenty minutes or so working on a promotional video. Video editing wasn’t Emma’s forte, but she was capable of churning out something basic. She used footage from the small protest at the IDA building on Monday morning, which had allegedly ended with Richard Walker assaulting one of the protestors.
Emma spliced and auto-tuned audio from the calls of “Walker lies, truth now!” into a new and more impactful chant: “Truth, Truth, Now Now Now!”
She added rough cuts of protest footage and a picture of Richard Walker grinning, all arranged in a deliberately gritty and unpolished way. The video ended with the Now Now Now logo from the T-shirts. Dan didn’t really understand but readily deferred to Emma’s expertise. She then quickly posted the video on social media using a dummy account, mentioning Billy Kendrick and other public figures as well as herself. Finally, she signal-boosted the post with her real account, which was seldom used but well followed and constantly monitored.
As Dan finished feeding his fish after memorising as much of the statement as he ever would, he heard Clark’s voice.
“Dan!” it yelled.
“One minute,” Dan said. Before he could even put the tub of fish food down, he felt the floor shaking as Clark bounded towards his room like a child on Christmas morning.
The door swung open. “Dan, get through here. They found it!”
“Found what?”
“The sphere!”
Dan climbed across his bed, knocking his alarm clock to the ground with his hand, and sprinted to the TV.
* * *
“That’s not it,” Dan said after the briefest of glances. “That’s a pressure sphere. Titanium. Probably Soviet.”
The TV was tuned to ACN, relaying footage of a local Uruguayan reporter talking to a middle-aged man 150 miles east of Montevideo. The footage was live, with a sometimes-hesitant translation dubbed over the audio. A red banner headline of “BREAKING: SPHERE DISCOVERED IN URUGUAY” filled the bottom of the picture.
“The guy says his dad found it in 1992,” Clark said, filling Dan in on what he’d missed. “He was a fisherman.”
“I’m not saying he’s lying, it’s just not our sphere. Spheres like that turn up every now and then. The news talked about them on Friday night because one of the leaked documents mentioned them. There was a famous one in Argentina in 1991, so this could maybe be from the same vessel.”
While the Uruguayan man continued to answer the local reporter’s questions, stating that he hadn’t thought the sphere was important until he saw the news coverage from the United States, the ACN headline abruptly changed.
“UPDATE: SPHERE BELIEVED TO BE RUSSIAN IN ORIGIN.”
“See?” Dan said. He sat on the couch.
Clark joined him, disappointed. “I finally read the end of the letter, by the way.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I’ve been thinking about Walker.”
Dan frowned slightly. “What about him?”
“I’m not sure he’s the bad guy,” Clark said.
“What?”
“I dunno. It’s more like… I don’t think he thinks he’s the bad guy. No one ever thinks they’re the bad guy. You know what I mean? For him, you’re the bad guy.”
Dan shook his head in disbelief. “Guys like Walker are in business for themselves.”
“But what does he gain from this? Maybe Kloster and Walker really were just trying to protect the country?”
“Trying to protect the military industrial complex, more like,” Dan said. “They’re worried there will be no more pointless wars when everyone knows we’re not alone. And the idea of peace coming from an alien discovery isn’t some flowery hippy bullshit, before you say that. Ronald Reagan said it in speeches, more than once.”
“You watch your mouth,” Clark said firmly, rising to his feet and walking to the kitchen before he lost his temper.
“I didn’t say all wars were pointless,” Dan called after him.
Clark didn’t reply.
Dan’s eyes returned briefly to the TV, which still showed the Uruguayan man but now on only half of the screen while the ACN newsreaders emphasised on the other that his was not the Kerguelen sphere.
The sound of a car turning into the driveway captured Dan’s attention. He walked to the door and saw Emma stepping out of the car and removing a cardboard box from the back seat.
“Dan McCarthy!” she said, smiling broadly, as though mocking her own XPR-era chirpiness.
“What’s in the box?”
“T-shirts. Have you seen how The Now Movement is trending? It’s crazy. I knew it would work, but the stupid firm didn’t want to risk losing control of the narrative or turning it into a “leaderless movement” like Occupy or whatever. They never see the big picture.”
“I guess not,” Dan replied passively. “Did you see the sphere in Uruguay?”
“I heard about it. Your car doesn’t have a TV.”
“Ha ha.” Dan walked outside to help Emma with the box, which was heavier than it looked. “How many did you get?”
“Enough for tonight. Anyway, guess who I just got a call from?”
“Jack Neal?” Dan guessed.
“Nope.”
“Richard Walker?”
“I think I would have told you by now if it was him, genius.”
“Billy? Timo? I dunno. Who else is there?”
“The woman we met last night,” Emma said. “Remember, the one who called herself Mr Magnifico’s management?”
Dan snorted derisively at the memory. “What did she want?”
“They wanted to do another show tonight at ten.”
“What did you—”
“I said no, obviously.”
“Good,” Dan said.
“Yeah. It’s probably better if I don’t tell you how much they were willing to pay.”
“Probably,” Dan grinned. He dumped the box of T-shirts on the couch.
“But don’t think I’ve forgotten about those ads you’re going to do after the big capital-D,” Emma said, grinning even wider.
Clark emerged from the kitchen with a can of beer wrapped in a wet paper towel. In that moment, Dan saw more of their father in Clark than he ever had before.
“Hey,” Clark greeted Emma, lowering the can to his waist as though he didn’t want her to see it. “Did you get the screen sorted?”
“Yeah. They’re on the way to install it.”
“How much?”
“Gratis,” Emma said, exaggerating the pronunciation. “I made them understand that having their logo on the edge of a screen that’s going to be seen by everyone and their dog is worth more than ten grand or whatever it should have cost. That’s why I had to drive out there; it’s easier to really talk to people when you can see them. Besides, when a pretty little thing like me has driven all that way, who could say no?”
“Good work,” Clark said. He sat down, placing his can on the floor beside the couch.
Emma took two T-shirts from the box and gave them to Dan and Clark. “I take it you’ve been over your speech?” she asked Dan.
Dan nodded and put the T-shirt on. It was a good fit, and the Now Now Now logo looked much better than it had in the online mock-ups.
“Good,” Emma said. She turned to Clark. “What about you? Have you been watching TV all day?”
“Pretty much,” he replied. Emma had a natural air of authority that made Clark loath to disappoint her, so he quietly hoped that he wasn’t supposed to have been doing something else.
“Has the news said anything about Walker?”
Clark shook his head, relieved that this was why she’d been asking. “Not on ACN, anyway.”
Emma changed the station to Blitz News.
“Why, what’s going on with Walker?” Dan asked, folding his new T-shirt neatly and placing it next to the box.
“I dunno,” Emma said. “That’s the thing: he didn’t show up for work today, and no one knows where he is.”
D minus 40
Stevenson Farm
Eastview, Colorado
The landline in Richard Walker’s weekend home rang for the second time in as many minutes. His dog, Rooster, barked wildly at the sound.
“I know, boy,” Richard said, staring out at the corn.
Rooster and Richard both relaxed as the phone stopped ringing. Only Ben Gold was supposed to have the phone number of the cottage, and Richard had told him in no uncertain terms that it was never to be used in anything less than a life-threatening emergency.
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