“Because she knows he’s untouchable,” Jack said, speaking through a confusion of resentment and mentorly pride.
“And?”
“And she wants the rest of us to know it, too.”
D minus 16
Lake Maggiore
Ispra, Italy
All too full to move after the bona fide feast laid on by Timo in Varese, the trio spent their evening resting at his lakeside villa; Clark under the Italian sky’s brilliant moon, Dan and Emma under the living room’s polished wood-panel ceiling.
Dan was reading a novel about a manned mission to Europa while Emma listened to Blitz News and reviewed Dan’s social media metrics on her phone. As she had been counting on, his Overall Approval Rating stat was so high that no major conservative-leaning outlets even questioned his meeting with Angelo diMasso.
The only type of people still attacking Dan in public were those whose business models depended on contrarianism and invoking outrage. The most-shared critical posts came from Joe Crabbe, the hardline shock-jock still ranting about the “globalist agenda” he first brought up during his clash with Dan on Focus 20/20 a full nine days earlier. Emma’s metrics correctly identified that an overwhelming majority of those sharing Joe’s posts were doing so mockingly.
Emma mulled over this near total absence of anti-McCarthy rhetoric with a smile, glad to see that the weight of evidence had resulted in a seismic shift to the point that only a handful of public figures her system identified as “provocateurs” were still making the kind of derisive comments about Dan that had been commonplace in the immediate aftermath of Richard Walker naming him as the source of the leak.
She looked up from her phone and over to Dan, who was still lost in his reading. He hadn’t changed his own story once, she reflected; people had just started to believe it, one by one, as new evidence trickled out. And though he hadn’t so much come out of his shell as been forced out of it, he had dealt admirably with all the demands she had placed on him. He might never be as forceful as she was nor rival Clark’s dominant presence, but Emma was realising now that Dan was as strong as either of them in his own way.
“Phone,” Dan suddenly said, his eyes shooting up to meet Emma’s before the high-pitched sound even registered in her mind.
Emma looked at the screen. “It’s Maria.”
“Janzyck? From ACN?”
Emma nodded and called Dan over to listen in. “Maria?” she said, not pretending to have any idea why she was calling.
“Hi,” Maria said. “I know you’re busy over there, but I got the weirdest call a few minutes ago.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Someone called the network to say they had a big scoop but would only give it directly to me. The network gave them my number, and two minutes later I got the call.”
“What was the scoop?” Emma asked, interrupting before Maria could get to it.
“That’s the thing. There was no scoop. The guy just said what he had to say to get my number, and he only contacted me because he didn’t know how else to reach you. He claimed—”
“Who was it?” Emma pressed, doing the same thing again.
“He claimed to be Ben Gold.”
Emma instinctively lowered the phone to her chest and turned to Dan. He stared back at her, speechless.
“I didn’t give him your number,” Maria said, the voice distant until Emma raised the phone to her ear again, “but I took his. Do you want it?”
“Definitely,” Dan blurted out.
Maria laughed nervously. “No one else is listening in, right?”
“No,” Emma said. “What’s his number.”
Maria passed on the number of the man who claimed to be Ben Gold. A minute or so later, Emma was calling it with her own number withheld.
“This is Emma Ford,” she said when the man picked up.
“Are you with Dan?”
Dan whispered in Emma’s ear: “That’s his voice.”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Emma asserted. “Where are you?”
“At work. I’m in my—”
“So you’re at your computer?”
“Y-yes,” Ben stammered.
“Give me your email address and I’ll start a video call.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Ben did so. Emma ended the voice call and launched a video call using the address Ben provided.
“It was definitely him,” Dan said.
Emma didn’t say anything. A rotating circle filled her phone’s screen as she waited for Ben to accept the call.
“Maybe you typed it in wrong?” Dan said after what felt like too many full rotations. “Try it again.”
But as Dan finished speaking, the circle vanished. The screen then flashed white and the next thing Dan saw was a nervous man at a desk, sitting in front of a window which overlooked the familiar streets of Colorado Springs.
“Hello, Mr Gold,” Emma said.
Ben Gold visibly gulped and looked into his laptop’s embedded webcam. “Hello.”
* * *
The angle of Emma’s phone allowed Dan to see the screen without being picked up by its front-facing camera. Emma had turned the phone to this angle deliberately, so Dan didn’t move.
“I think Richard might be lying to me,” Ben said, responding directly to Emma’s question as to why he was calling. “He didn’t show up for work again today, and I can’t even reach him at home.”
Emma was genuinely lost for words. She didn’t know whether to be more surprised that it had taken Ben this long to see through Richard’s lies or that he had finally seen through them at all. Even though Ben qualified his suspicion with words like “think” and “might”, the fact that he was voicing it in any terms was a sign that the penny had belatedly dropped.
Like most, Emma had never heard of Ben Gold before the leak; and like most, she had since known him only as Richard Walker’s loyal number two. Dan had explained more than once that Ben had dedicated his career to the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life and had risen to prominence in related communities, so Emma understood why Walker kept him close. She tried to imagine how Ben must have been feeling now that he finally realised that his trusted boss had been hiding the evidence right under his nose.
“When did you last speak to him?” Emma asked.
“Friday afternoon,” Ben said, “at the end of his press conference. So after he knew about the Kloster video, but before the Blitz audio and the folder video.”
Emma paid close attention to Ben’s face. More than shame or sorrow or regret, she saw fear.
“And now Jack Neal is all over me. Him and President Slater think I know something, just because I’m so close. But Slater signs Richard’s cheques, and no one is blaming her.”
“Is Jack in Colorado again?” Emma asked, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.
“I hope not. He kept calling me last night, demanding Richard’s real address. I gave him it, but now today he’s just called again and told me Richard wasn’t there. So now they think I deliberately sent them down the wrong path. Slater is angry at him and he’s angry at me. He’s threatening me with prison time and visits from “problem solvers” and…” Ben trailed off. He looked broken.
“You really don’t know where Richard is?”
“No!” Ben said, more forcefully than he meant. “This search should be the high point of my career,” he went on, mumbling and rushing his words to the point of near incoherence bubbling, “but I know it’s going to be the end of it. Whatever I say, my reputation is gone. My name is dirt.”
“Not necessarily,” Emma said, exaggerating her empathy in an effort to loosen Ben’s lips. “We just need to think about what’s happening. Can you think of a motive Richard might have that no one has picked up on?”
Ben shook his head, evoking a resigned child. “It has to be what the letter says. The things he says about China aren’t an act; we’ve argued about them enough times. You’re going to think I’m stupid, but I honestly think
he believes he’s doing the right thing. It’s not like there’s any glory in this for him. And look at the things he said on Friday; those Kloster quotes about “legacy before ego” and “serve posterity, not power.” I watched the press conference back today, and after what came out on Friday night it almost seems like that speech was Richard’s own confession.”
“And what about the robbery?” Emma said, delighted by how freely Ben was talking. “Does he really think the guy who dropped the folder had something to do with China?”
Ben hesitated, for much longer than before. “Well, I don’t know if this was another part of his mind games to make me think the Kerguelen folder was a hoax, but all through the day of the robbery he kept talking about the other documents that had been stolen.”
“What kind of other documents?”
“I don’t know. He said he didn’t want to worry me with it, but I’ve never seen him so worried about anything. You have to remember: Richard has been consulting on top-secret projects for longer than you or McCarthy have been alive. There’s no telling what kind of things were in there.”
Already interested in these “other documents”, Emma was now positively intrigued. “Do you have any ideas at all what kind of things might have been in there?” she pressed. “What else did he talk about? Tell me something. Anything.”
“Well, he knew from the start that it was nothing to do with Slater.”
“What was nothing to do with Slater?”
“The robbery. I suggested she might have been involved, half-seriously, because Richard always used to say she was looking for an excuse to get rid of him. He doesn’t see eye-to-eye with many people these days but with Slater it’s genuine hatred, both ways. But he said there was a folder about Slater and that if someone had found it on her behalf, he would already have been in custody. He told me not to ask any more questions about the Slater folder, so I didn’t.”
“And the other folders?”
“I don’t know,” Ben said, over-stressing the word “know” in a way that amplified his helplessness. “I just don’t want to go down for this. I don’t want to go down for something I didn’t even do.”
Emma, whose usual impatience with self-pity was curtailed by both Ben’s vulnerable expression and Dan’s fondness for him, tried to ease his mind. “You’re not going down for anything. I don’t know about Slater, but Jack Neal doesn’t really think you know anything, and neither does Dan.”
“He doesn’t?” Ben said, relief almost oozing through his pores.
“No,” Emma reiterated. “But for the next few days, you really shouldn’t make any kind of comment to anyone about anything. Just let the search in Argentina play out and—”
“Holy shit,” a deep voice called as Clark made his way across the room from the door to the pool. “Is that Ben Gold?”
“I should go,” Ben said.
“Lie low,” Emma replied, her last words before ending the call.
Clark looked at her. “What’s going on?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Obviously,” Clark said. “But why were you talking to him?”
“He went to Maria to get to us,” Dan answered. “He finally saw through Walker on Friday night and now he’s worried about going down for the cover-up because Slater and Jack Neal are on his case. He was almost crying.”
“Yeah,” Emma confirmed. “He was pretty pathetic. I don’t understand how someone so weak can get so far in politics.”
“He’s not in politics,” Dan said. “He’s in science. That’s why Walker keeps him around: he adds legitimacy to the IDA. I’ve always said that.
“Besides,” Clark chimed in, unexpectedly defending Ben. “Trusting people isn’t weakness. Okay, he bought Walker’s bullshit all the way up to Friday. But there’s a fine line between seeing the best in people and being blinded by loyalty.”
No one said anything for a few seconds.
“Like Dan,” Clark went on, turning to face him. “You see the best in everyone, but it doesn’t block out everything else. You trusted Emma pretty quickly. But I bet your guard wasn’t totally down, so if she was telling an obvious lie you probably would have spotted it, right?”
“Yeah,” Dan said.
“Right. But maybe if I was lying to you, you wouldn’t see through it because you trust me so much. It wouldn’t even matter if the whole world told you I was lying; until you saw the lie for yourself, you wouldn’t believe it.” Clark turned back to Emma. “And that doesn’t make him weak. That makes him human.”
“Yeah,” Emma said, “but there’s a difference between trusting your brother and trusting a politician.”
“You trust Jack,” Clark retorted.
Emma chuckled defensively. She could have said “Jack’s not a politician,” but she knew he was the next closest thing.
“See,” Clark said. “You feel like you know him beyond his job title, just like Gold thought he knew Walker.”
Dan rejoined the conversation after listening for a while as a new questioned popped into his head: “Will Walker go to prison when this is over? When we get capital-D Disclosure, I mean.”
“No way a guy like that goes to prison,” Clark said. “He’ll kill himself first.”
Dan looked at Emma, waiting for her answer.
“I haven’t even thought about it,” she said.
“Think about it now.”
Emma took a few seconds.
“Well?” Dan pushed.
“Ben hasn’t seen him since Friday and he isn’t answering any calls,” Emma said.
“Which means…?”
She shrugged. “I think Clark might already be right.”
WEDNESDAY
D minus 15
Seafront
Miramar, Argentina
As the sun began its lazy ascent and the sea fog began to lift, Miguel Perez raised his ADLTV-branded binoculars and looked out to the water.
Miguel, a retired printer by trade and a man with no prior interest in the sea, knew too little about optics and ships to know what kind of vessels he was looking at or how far away they were.
All he knew was that this conspicuous new formation was near enough to shore for his binoculars to make out the Argentine flag and the number on the side of the largest vessel. This ship — 0012 — dwarfed anything he had seen so far in his six days at the seafront.
Though it was very early in the morning, Miguel nudged the sleeping man next to him. He handed the binoculars to his fellow sea-watcher and pointed to the ship.
The man’s mouth fell open when the formation came into view. He lowered the binoculars and had to pull his eyes away from the sea to meet Miguel’s.
“Well?” Miguel said.
Rather than reply, the man pushed his chair back, knelt beside Miguel, and hugged him.
“Hectór,” Miguel laughed. “What did you see?”
Hectór whispered in Miguel’s ear: “Today is the day, my friend. Today is the day.”
D minus 14
Cavalieri Observatory
Trento, Italy
Dan wandered in awe around the Cavalieri Observatory on the outskirts of Trento, taking in every word uttered by his knowledgeable guide.
Timo Fiore walked proudly alongside Dan and Dr Louisa Conte, the observatory’s director and acting tour guide. Like Timo, Louisa had been born in Switzerland. She told Dan that the team in the observatory today was mostly Italian, with one German research assistant “to make sure we stay efficient.” Timo and Louisa both chuckled slightly, but Dan didn’t really get it.
Emma and Clark followed behind, chatting amongst themselves. Neither had much interest in their current surroundings and both were glad of the peace provided by the total lack of cameras.
To Dan’s equal delight, this visit was truly a visit; no photo-ops, no speeches, no agendas. Dan knew that the plan for Thursday involved a busy day of “media stuff” on the other side of the Swiss border, but that was the furthest thing from his mind as
he gazed at an endless array of equipment, each piece more impressive than the last.
When Louisa led Dan into a small control room, four researchers stood up to greet him. All four seemed utterly surprised to see Dan, and from the satisfied look on Louisa’s face he drew the safe conclusion that she hadn’t told them he was coming. The four researchers — two young women and a young man, along with a much older man in more formal attire — greeted Dan warmly.
The room, much larger than it looked from outside, felt like something from the spaceship in the book Dan was reading about Europa. Everything was made of metal and glass, with almost every surface appearing to be some kind of touchscreen interface. A row of printers filled one side wall. The other wall contained a whiteboard and a canvas display for the projector mounted on the central pillar which dominated the room. The whiteboard was full of equations and notations so far beyond Dan’s level of comprehension that the numbers might as well have been spelled out in Italian.
As Dan walked around the central pillar to see everything that the room had to offer, Louisa, still conversing in perfect English, mentioned to the others that Dan was with Timo. The senior researcher stepped outside to see Timo and hugged him like an old friend.
“Who would like to show our guest the telescope?” Louisa asked.
Everyone volunteered.
“Alessandro,” Louisa decided, motioning to the young man. “Take him up.”
“Up?” Dan said.
Alessandro pressed an unseen button on the central pillar. “This is the elevator,” he said, surprising Dan with an accent much less pronounced than his flowing jet-black hair and bronzed skin had made Dan irrationally expect.
Sure enough, the lowest part of the pillar soon parted to reveal a capsule-like elevator. Dan couldn’t understand how he had missed the door’s outline on the pillar now that he’d been alerted to it, but it did blend in remarkably well. He stepped inside.
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