“They won’t,” Emma replied, almost a grunt. “Besides, pretty much the only thing I know about preppers is that they don’t like sharing their stuff with people who aren’t prepared.”
“Yeah, but it’s us we’re talking about,” Clark said.
Emma rolled her eyes and focused again on the TV, where the flustered reporter was searching for a less potty-mouthed interviewee.
“What does your app say people think about the accident?” Dan asked. “That it was an accident?”
“No reliable data,” Emma said. “That usually just means they haven’t decided on the exact wording of the yes/no statement yet. It might take a few hours.”
Dan shrugged.
And then they heard it: outside… at the back door…
Three firm knocks on the glass.
* * *
For a moment, they sat in silence.
Clark acted first.
“Who’s there?” he yelled. He stayed in the armchair, with one hand out to keep Dan and Emma quiet.
“Open up!” a male voice yelled back. Three more knocks.
Not knocks; bangs.
Clark jumped to his feet. “Dad’s room,” he mouthed to Dan. He signalled with his hand that he was talking to Emma, too. “Now.”
“I’m not leaving you,” Dan said.
Clark walked over to Dan, covered his mouth with one hand, grabbed him by the collar with the other, and lifted him from the couch. The movement was effortless, like a lion lifting its cub. Dan struggled at first, but Clark dragged him towards Henry’s room. Clark looked over to Emma and tilted his head towards the same room. He didn’t have to tell her twice.
“Shut your mouth,” Clark whispered in Dan’s ear before releasing him at Henry’s door.
Three more bangs on the door. “Open up!”
“You’re going to stay in there until I tell you to come out,” Clark said, opening the door to Henry’s room and unceremoniously shoving Dan inside. “Whatever happens, you don’t come out until I say it’s safe.”
“Please!” the voice at the door shouted, banging over and over again. “Let me in!”
The change in tone gave Clark pause. The voice still wasn’t familiar, but it now sounded more pleading than aggressive. He pointed Dan to Henry’s bedroom window, which faced outside to the back.
“I can’t see him,” Dan whispered a few seconds later. “He must be right against the door.”
“Cameras!” Emma said, suddenly remembering. “The console is in the kitchen.”
“So’s the back door,” Dan said to Clark. “Whoever he is, he’ll see you.”
“He already knows we’re in,” Clark said. He then closed the door and ran to the kitchen as quietly as he could. The man outside was still banging intermittently but no longer talking. Until Clark reached the kitchen and his shadow crossed the door, that was, at which point the pleading resumed.
“Dan?” the man said, guessing wrong. “Please… you have to let me in. We’re in serious trouble. Both of us.”
Clark hadn’t yet reached the camera console, but these words stopped him in his tracks. “State your name,” he said, rolling up his sleeves and inching carefully towards the door.
“Is that Clark? Please, just let me in so—”
“State your fucking name!” Clark barked.
“B-Ben,” the voice stammered in reply. “Ben Gold.”
Clark unlocked the door and yanked it open. “Get in and shut up,” he said.
Ben nodded like a scared child and shuffled inside. He was panting heavily. There were tears in his eyes. “Wh-where’s Dan?”
“Dan!” Clark shouted. “It’s safe.” He pushed Ben against the closed door, no harder than necessary, and frisked him thoroughly. He finished just before Dan and Emma appeared at the other side of the kitchen, both wearing expressions that would have been equally fitting had Ben been an alien.
“They know everything,” Ben panted, speaking too quickly for his lungs to cope. “They know. I think they might already have Richard. We’re next. They know!”
“Ben…” Emma said, talking in her calmest work voice. “Slow down. Who knows what?”
“Everything. They know everything!”
“What’s everything?” she asked, focusing on one thing at a time and trying to maintain her facade of composure through the frustration and fear she felt inside.
“They know what we did.”
“The aliens?” Dan asked, butting in. Billy Kendrick and Miguel Perez’s bear-poking concerns circled in his mind.
Ben shook his head and leaned back against the door. He covered his eyes with his palms, leaving his trembling lips exposed. “There’s something you need to know,” he whimpered.
Emma raised her hand to keep Clark from yelling impatiently. “Tell us,” she said as softly as she could.
Ben lowered his hands, rubbed his eyes, and looked to the floor. “There are no aliens.”
For five long seconds, no one heard anything but their own heartbeats.
Clark broke the silence. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Another uncomfortable pause followed as Ben Gold closed his eyes and grimaced, as though expecting a blow to the head. Eventually, Ben took the deepest breath of his life and forced out the four-word sentence that pierced Dan McCarthy’s heart like a rusty dagger:
“It was a hoax.”
D plus 32
Drive-In
Birchwood, Colorado
Amid chaotic scenes eclipsing anything that had come before, a heavy police presence descended on the old drive-in lot.
Members of the public were cleared from the area and instructed to return home.
Phil Norris and Mr Byrd stood safely inside New Ker-grillin’ Bar & Grill, looking down at the crowd.
“This is going to get bad,” Phil said. “Real bad.”
Mr Byrd said nothing.
D plus 33
McCarthy Residence
Birchwood, Colorado
“You’re lying,” Dan said, utterly rejecting the idea that any part of the leak could have been a hoax.
Ben Gold solemnly shook his head. “Not anymore.”
“Why would I believe someone who says they’ve been lying for months but they’re telling the truth now?”
“I have more proof than you’d ever want to see,” Ben said. “A photo of Kloster with the sphere when it was being made; a photo of Richard beside a blackboard with plans for what would be on the plaques; two other variations of Kloster’s letter; the actual dash-cam that recorded you finding the folder… all of it. You have to believe me. I’m not lying.”
“Bullshit,” Dan said, more out of denial than defiance. “Why would you keep so much proof of your own lie?”
“In case something went seriously wrong and we had to prove it was a hoax,” Ben replied.
“Bull. Shit.”
Ben coughed to clear his throat. “You don’t want to die for that,” he grunted, mimicking the voice he had used in a moment he still remembered just as vividly as Dan.
Dan’s eyes closed of their own volition. His legs momentarily buckled, forcing his right hand to catch his weight on the back of the couch. “It was him,” he said, mainly to Clark. “He’s the guy who dropped the folder.”
Emma dug her nails into her forehead and looked at Clark through her fingers. Only Clark kept his eyes on Ben, who didn’t know where to look.
“So he’s the guy who flashed a gun at you?” Clark said. He cracked his knuckles and moved towards Ben.
Emma quickly stepped in front of Clark and put a hand on his chest. “We need him,” she said, almost silently. She then sat down.
Cowering against the door, Ben took several shallow breaths. The ticking of a clock in the living room was the loudest sound in the house.
“Talk,” Clark demanded.
Ben looked at the floor.
“You talk or you bleed,” Clark snapped, unnervingly convincing in his delivery.
�
��I came here to talk,” Ben squeaked. “That’s why I’m here. We’re in trouble.”
Emma and Clark shared a brief glance. Her eyes told Clark that she would lead; he got the message and sat down next to her, firmly instructing Ben to take the seat opposite. Dan stayed by himself in the living room, leaning against the couch. He felt sick; dizzy; disoriented.
“Why would you do this?” Clark snapped at Ben. “What kind of psychopath would—”
“Clark,” Emma said under her breath. He stopped talking. “Let’s start with how.”
Dan walked through the open door between the living room and the kitchen. “No,” he said. “Why.”
Emma shrugged and looked at Ben. “Go. Everything, starting with why.”
“The short answer is China,” Ben said. He focused on Emma and sometimes Dan, trying to ignore Clark’s cripplingly intimidating presence. “That’s why it happened when it happened: to keep China off Mars. Richard hid his intentions in plain sight over China, but the whole thing started with Kloster. He wanted a decisive weapon. A lot of people did in the ’80s; that’s what the IDA was really for. Richard knew the plan to plant fake evidence could work, but he was never interested in the weapon. That wasn’t why he went along with it.”
“This isn’t a game where you say one part and I ask what you mean,” Emma said, frustrated by Ben’s pause. “You talk until I tell you to stop.”
Ben nodded feebly. “Richard knew that Kloster’s idea could work if they ever needed it to. Kloster sold it to him as an emergency stop — a giant reset button in case the Soviets took the upper hand in space or we were ever losing a war. The two of them were working on this before any of you were born. All of the letters, the comments, the videos… they set it all up to look like evidence of a real cover-up.”
“What about you?” Dan said, spitting out the words.
“I never met Kloster, and Richard only brought me in a few days before you found the letter. He told me about the plan he’d had in place for so long and said he needed my help to start the leak sequence. I didn’t like it, but he told me this was humanity’s one chance to secure peace by uniting against an outside threat. Real peace through fake panic, he said. He sat me down and said that the dream so many millions professed to share — the dream of world peace — was finally within reach. He said it was selfish to let an abstract notion like truth stand in the way, because peace doesn’t make itself.”
“And you bought that shit?” Dan challenged.
“He meant it,” Ben said. “Richard didn’t really care about peace — he just wanted to stop China — but he knew it would be a side effect. He was right: everyone did pull together. And peace built on a lie is still peace.”
Dan shook his head in disgust. He had no words.
“Was the DS-1 explosion an accident?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know why it wouldn’t be,” Ben said. “There’s no angle. This doesn’t just make China look bad, it makes the whole GSC look bad.”
“And when did you last speak to Richard?”
“Three days ago. I’ve been trying to reach him all night but I couldn’t get through. His phone is switched off, his car is still there, the doors are locked, and his dog was barking non-stop. I knocked on every door and every window. I don’t know where he is. I left my car there — hidden, obviously — because I couldn’t exactly drive it here.”
“So how did you get here?”
“On foot.”
“You walked?” Clark said. “Where the hell is Walker’s place?”
“Three or four miles south of here,” Ben said.
“Jesus,” Emma sighed, stunned by how totally Richard had pulled the wool over their eyes and amazed by his audacity to stay so close. She rubbed her temples. “Start again. How much of the story was fake and how much was real?”
Ben hesitated as he considered the best way to put it. “It was all fake,” he eventually said, “but they built it around reality. Kloster was at the heart of everything; they used his story as the base of the lie then sold the lie as a secret. They dressed it up as a cover-up.”
“So where does Dan come in?”
“Richard read his Vostok article,” Ben said, talking directly to Emma as Dan stared vacantly at the table. “He checked him out and liked what he saw: Dan was young, local, had the right kind of look and the right kind of background. A fireman’s son and a soldier’s brother? It writes itself. Richard told me that before Dan, his best option was Kendrick. But he always thought Kendrick was too slimy for some people to believe. He wanted someone pure. Idealistic.”
And gullible, Dan thought, cursing himself.
“We didn’t know he had you on his side until you slapped that hypnotist on TV,” Ben added.
Dan paced the few steps to the table and sat down on the empty seat. “Why didn’t you just do my part?” he asked. His voice sounded less angry now; more defeated than anything else. “Why did you have to bring me into it?”
“There’s no way I could have played your part,” Ben said. “There’s not an actor in the world who could have played your part, just like no one else could have done what Richard did. After I ran into your bike and dropped the folder, all I really had to do was stand beside Richard and not shout out that he was lying. I didn’t speak to the press until the “truth” was out and the hard work was done.”
“What about that video call when we were in Italy?” Emma asked. “When you said you thought Richard might be lying. Does that not count as acting?”
“That was the hardest part to pull off,” he recalled. “But Richard was sitting opposite me with an A3 sheet of card filled with pre-written responses. He was listening in and pointing to what I should say. You were basically talking to him through me. I’m not blowing smoke up his ass when I say that no one but Richard could have even come close to pulling any of this off.”
The room fell silent again.
“I thought using a civilian was risky,” Ben went on, “but Richard said we just had to sell the lie to the right person and everyone else would buy the secret; we only had to fool a truth-seeking shepherd and the herd would follow. He knew you would post it online or go to the media, and everything was set from there. All of the breadcrumbs Richard and Kloster had been leaving for thirty years were ready to be found. And Richard never stopped; he kept creating more evidence to incriminate himself. He filmed the footage of Dan finding the folder, and he played Jan Gellar like an absolute fiddle. You know, when he ordered her to have this place bugged? He knew that by forcing her into the bugging and then calling Blitz out for doing it, he would provoke her into leaking the call that “exposed” him. She was the only other person he really used, apart from Raúl.”
“So the security guy doesn’t know, either?” Emma asked.
Ben shook his head. “No one else knows.”
“Literally no one?”
“Well, they didn’t,” Ben said. “But if someone has taken Richard, maybe it’s because they found something.”
“What about Godfrey?” Dan said.
Ben was shaking his head. “Godfrey was a godsend. But if you listen to what he said, he didn’t commit to anything until the breadcrumbs started piling up. And you heard what Diane Logan said: he was only using the drama over the leak to take attention away from his own problems. Godfrey was the second biggest stroke of luck Richard had.” Ben looked at Emma. “He couldn't have even dreamed that someone like you would show up. The plan would have worked just as well without Godfrey — maybe a little slower — but you made everything happen. You forced the issue.”
Emma said nothing.
“And then when Kendrick brought Timo in…” Ben said, sounding almost nostalgic. Emma had no intention of telling him that she had been responsible for soliciting Timo’s offer, too. “That gave us another hundred million dollars’ worth of free momentum. The only thing that caught Richard off guard was when Dan didn’t post Kloster’s letter straight away. He had to be careful not to deny anything
that hadn’t been brought up yet!”
Ben accidentally met Clark’s piercing gaze for a moment. It humbled him, lowering his tone back to something more sombre and appropriate.
“At first I asked Richard if a plan like this could really work now that everyone online thinks they’re an amateur detective,” Ben went on, focusing again on Emma. “But Richard just smiled and said that’s the thing with the internet: sure, it makes it harder to hide the truth, but it also makes it a hell of a lot easier to spread lies.”
Emma had been in PR long enough to know that.
“He said that as long as the nuts and bolts and dates and names checked out, we’d be fine. Because when people are desperate to believe in something, they’ll believe in anything.”
Dan stood up and walked to the back door. He opened it and took several gulps of fresh air, trying to clear the taste of sickness from his mouth.
No amount of air would ever be enough.
D plus 34
JSLC Launch Area 4
Dongfeng Aerospace City, China
“I have to give them something,” Jack Neal said, interrupting a quiet meeting between President Slater and William Godfrey which had already far exceeded the “an hour at most” line Jack used to keep the handful of international media personnel at bay.
John Cole sat in the vast meeting room with Godfrey and Slater, but his body language suggested that he hadn’t participated much in their discussions.
Slater glared at Jack. “I told you to wait until we—”
“He’s right,” Godfrey interrupted. “Thanks, Jack. Give us ten minutes.”
“Okay.” Jack opened the door to leave.
“Wait,” Godfrey called. He turned to John Cole. “John, go next door with Jack and tell our reporters that everything is under control and we’ll have a full statement for them soon.”
Cole nodded and used the arms of his chair to raise his substantial frame. “I’ll hold the fort,” he said proudly.
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