The Ganymede Project

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  “You’ve just gotta get their attention,” he said with a grin as he yawed the Cobra around, pulled up and gained airspeed.

  Gottlieb made a mental note that he would need a cover story for the incident.For every action, there is an equal and opposite bureaucratic reaction .

  He began to feel much better. Chisholm made fewer maneuvers, and his stomach had nothing else to contribute.

  They pulled up, rolling over a ridge, skimming the top of a mesa in nap-of-the-earth flight, stopping at the edge. Chisholm popped up for a careful peek. In the canyon below, they saw it—metallic remnants, scattered like trash across the canyon floor.

  “There,” Chisholm said, pointing.

  Next to a large object, which Gottlieb assumed to be the crew cabin, were three figures. One of them looked up at the helicopter.

  “Okay boss,” Chisholm said. “What next?”

  “Just follow procedures. Just...” He waved his hand ambiguously.

  Chisholm nodded and armed weapons again, sluing the cannon toward the target. An abruptbr-whIRRRrrr vibrated through the craft as they streamed 30mm rounds toward the earth. The figures collapsed in heaps of splattered flesh.

  They hovered next to the mesa’s edge, observing, waiting for any sign of movement. When nothing happened—when the figures appeared as inanimate as the canyon’s stone walls—Gottlieb breathed a deep sigh. “Call them in,” he said.

  Chisholm flicked on the KY-58 secure radio to the preset frequency. “Pounce One to Pounce Two, Over.”

  Noise squawked from the radio, then, “Roger, Pounce One, over.”

  “Target’s neutralized—”

  Gottlieb tapped him from the front seat. “The Devil is in the details,” he wheezed “Make sure they bring plenty of dry ice.”

  10. MIND PROBE

  June 1981

  Langley, VA

  “I feel like I’m being psychoanalyzed,” Yuri said.

  “So,” Martha Grimsley said with a grin, “you feel like you’re being psychoanalyzed?”

  Yuri frowned.

  “Just kidding.” Martha tossed long, drooping brown hair away from a pencil and pad, then pushed big, round-lensed glasses up the ridge of her nose. “Actually, it is a kind of therapy. The couch helps you relax and remember. I’ve found that darkening the office lets the mind see better in the shadows.”

  “Let’s get this over with. I’m—”

  “Fearful of bad memories?”

  Yuri didn’t answer.

  “Look, Yuri, I’m going to level with you. As I said, I’m not your therapist. But one big issue here is—you. How much of it was real and how much of it was—”

  “Hallucination? I saw what I saw.”

  “Right. You were submerged in dark water for a very long period of time. And under a lot of stress. Anxious. Cut off. Under those conditions—sensory deprivation—the mind plays tricks. The brain, in the absence of input, starts making things up. People hallucinate.”

  “You think I have an active imagination?”

  “Under those conditions,anybody would have an active imagination. When I was a kid and it was dark, I used to think I saw the Bogeyman.”

  “This was different. The Bogeyman didn’t bite.”

  Grimsley gnawed her pencil for a moment, looking into Yuri’s dark eyes. “In the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear—it’s the Midsummer Night’s Dream effect. There really is a principle behind it. The mind is an active instrument, not passive. We see what we expect to see—even when reality sharply diverges from expectation. There was a famous perception experiment done by two researchers, Bruner and Postman. They asked subjects to identify playing cards after a short exposure. Many of the cards were normal, but some were unusual—for example, a red six of spades or a black four of hearts. After each exposure to a card, subjects were asked what they saw. Even after several seconds, many couldn’t correctly describe the anomalous cards. They weren’t what they expected.”

  “I can see the Poljarny card in my mind very plainly. It’s the ace of spades.” Then a smile flitted across his face. “You think I’m not playing with a full deck, don’t you?”

  She patted him gently on the arm. “I shouldn’t say this, but your personality profile says youare a very creative person. Youdo have an active imagination. For some types of Company missions, that can be a good thing. Other times, it gets you in trouble.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  She sighed, pushing back in her chair. “We’ll get through this. Think of Poljarny as just one stage in your development. Everyone gets tested in some way. That’s just part of life. Some people pass the test, other people...” Her voice trailed off. “You’re still very young.”

  She carefully labeled a tapeTop Secret , stuck it in a palm-sized recorder, and hit the switch. “The subject is Lieutenant Yuri Sverdlov, U.S. Marine Corps. The topic is Whalebone. Classification is Top Secret. This is tape number seven in sequence 81 dash oh-six dash twelve.”

  She could see the microcassette turning inside the voice-activated device. Everything was operating properly, so she began. “Lieutenant Sverdlov, your report says the vehicle was tracked. Is that true?”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Like a tank.”

  “Good. Were the tracks the same as the ones in Holy Loch?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “I wish you would say, Yuri. The whole purpose of this debrief is to reconstruct what happened, as best we can, in the absence of—”

  “I had a camera. We took some pictures, but—”

  “I know—it’s in the belly of the whale. Like Jonah. All our hard evidence is fish food.”

  Yuri nodded as his face turned ashen and his stomach rumbled with tension.

  Martha Grimsley shook her head, biting into her lip. “I know this was tough for you. But. This was an expensive mission. The Company would like to get some payback. Okay? Even if it’s only your recollections.”

  “What if it’s only hallucinations?”

  “We want them, too.”

  “The tracks were the same,” he said.

  “Good. Did you see anything on the vehicle that could have been an acoustic signaling device?”

  “No Ma’am. But I heard—”

  “Whale sounds?” She flipped through pages. “That’s what your report says.”

  “Yeah. I mean, yes, Ma’am.”

  “But how do youknow the sounds were made by the vehicle? Couldn’t it have been made by the whales? The Orcas? See what I’m saying? You may have been confused.”

  “The sounds were different, but the same. The Orcas—”

  “What about this strange light?”

  His hands opened and closed in a rhythmic movement, groping for words as the scene played back in his head.

  “It was hard to see them. Just a faint light. Burning through the top, from early morning sun. But daylight was supposed to be hours away. The light wasn’t supposed to be there. But there was a light and it came from a sphere floating above the surface, moving. Underwater the light was scattered and diffused. When I looked up at the surface it was like a kaleidoscope. Shimmering, shifting. The waves from underneath look like thousands of jagged mirrors. Alice’s looking glass. On this mission, we pushed through the looking glass. And I didn’t see the monsters at first. But when I did see them, it was up close. Like seeing Death up close. They’re two-toned, you know. Black and white. No gray. Like that oriental symbol—what-do-you-call-it—Yin and Yang. And the teeth were sharp. And they were filled with meat. Human meat. And I remember. I’ll always remember.”

  Grimsley stopped writing, listening to the stream of consciousness, not knowing what to say.

  Yuri’s hands rolled into two clenched fists. They opened and closed a few more times, then finally relaxed.

  He got up from the couch and walked to the door. When he opened it, throwing a wedge of light across her face, he said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “Yuri... I’m
sorry, too. For pushing you. We all have a job to do. Mine is a lot less heroic than yours. I just try to put the pieces together after the fact. Like a detective. I’d appreciate it if you’d... work with me on this.”

  “I’m quitting the Corps.”

  Grimsley heard the door close and Yuri’s footsteps grow faint in the hallway. She sighed, rewound the last few seconds of tape, then pressed PLAY. The recorder dutifully reproduced the words:

  “—And the teeth were sharp. And they were filled with meat. Human meat. And I remember. I’ll always remember.”

  11. MEDICINE MAN

  July 1981

  Fort Dietrick, Maryland

  Billy covered his mouth with a hand, coughed quietly for a moment, looking out the window, then turned to Fritz Gottlieb. “Did you bring my medicine?”

  Gottlieb smiled. “Yes. Both of them.” He tugged at fine leather straps, opened a case and handed Stanton a bottle. “This is for your cough. Your health. And this,” he said, reaching into the bag again, “is for your programmatic prosperity.” The second item was a stainless steel Dewar flask with a bold, triangular marking.

  Stanton put the flask aside, opened the bottle of cough syrup and took a slug, closing his eyes and grimacing, as though swallowing a stiff whiskey. “Can’t seem to shake this cough,” he said, “Must be nerves. The pressure.” He put the cap back on the bottle. “This definitely helps.”

  “You wanted to talk to me about a few things?”

  “Yes. I want to talk.” Billy’s stiffness, and the hacking cough, seemed to melt away at the thought of finally sharing information with Gottlieb. “You need to know all about the program.”

  “And the technology.”

  “Yes. Especially the technology,” he said, relaxing into his padded chair, tipping back.

  “Which is?”

  “We call them Thought Tunneling Devices.” He picked up the flask, tilting it this way and that. “We’re still maybe a decade away from understanding them and exploiting them. But there are spin-off technologies that have more immediate applications. One of them is a Biefeld-Brown effects generator. We’re using the Martin Norris Company as a cover to funnel the device to NASA.”

  “Interesting. I’d like to know more about that.”

  “Of course. And there are other things I’d like to get off my chest. It’s good medicine. Good therapy. Thanks for listening, Fritz.”

  12. IMAGES

  August 1981

  Annapolis, MD

  In a crowded bar filled with lonely people, amid the strains of a band that played only slow dances, Yuri Sverdlov watched male and female bodies hug each other for emotional support, twisting rhythmically with the music. Then he swirled brown liquor in a glass, shifting ice cubes like a dirty kaleidoscope, and remembered the distinctions Martha Grimsley once made in a debriefing session.

  Perception, she said,is seeing things as they are. The Poljarny incident is over, so whatever you think you’re seeing, no matter how vivid, is not perception. Memory is a mind-filtered view of the past—seeing things as they were. A faithful reconstruction is the best we can hope for. Imagination is a vision of what might be. It will be one of your most important contributions, since we’ll need help in planning countermeasures against the Soviets. But of all the different types of mental images, there are certain ones we must always avoid. They’re not easy to spot, but they can systematically infect an analysis, and reduce its usefulness to zero. I’m talking about hallucination—the confusion of reality and illusion. And delusion—a false judgment or conclusion. And paranoia. And dreams—These are the mental contagion .

  A feminine hand briefly touched his forearm, interrupting his thoughts. “My name’s Carrie. Want to dance?”

  “Not really,” he said, looking up. On the high ceiling above their heads, a chandelier with a thousand prismed facets rotated slowly, playing sparkles of light around Carrie’s face and hair. It was a pretty face, with deep, dark eyes that seemed to connect with shadows in the barroom.

  “You should get together with Greta Garbo. She always ‘Vants to be alone.’“

  Yuri laughed. “You must watch really old movies. I just don’t dance very well.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she said, “the best dancers here lack conviction, and the worst have a passionate intensity.”

  “I’d step on your feet, then you wouldn’t like me.”

  She smiled, waiting for more of a response.

  “My name’s Yuri,” he said, finally.

  “Yooo-RI,” she repeated, slowly, inflecting the last syllable. “Swedish?”

  “Russian. And it’s pronounced ‘YOO-ri.’ My father liked the ring of names from the Old Country. And where does the name Carrie come from?”

  “Don’t quite know, actually.” She smiled at him a long moment, then put a hand on his, gently peeling away his emotional barriers. “But maybe it means ‘caring.’ That’s what I’d like to think, anyway. I have this knack for spotting people in need of TLC.”

  In the hour that followed, Yuri discovered that Carrie was a good listener, but not much of a talker. Right now, that suited him.

  He talked to her about baseball, and about growing up in New York and Annapolis. He talked of his Russian parents, and of joining the Marine Corps. He revealed that he was in trouble, and was trying to cope, but was careful to avoid any discussion of his work. This one side of him resisted all prying. It was a door firmly shut. He skirted around it, ever so gently, knowing all the while it was the root of his problems.

  When they left together, it seemed like a natural consequence of the evening. The chance meeting at an Annapolis bar seemed to resonate with mutual, sympathetic chords. And when he pressed her body close to his in the intimacy of his own bedroom, he was grateful that on this night, while he was in this emotional state, chance had somehow delivered a moment of luck.

  Skin slid against skin, bodies arched boldly, and then ecstasy slipped away to exhaustion, sleep, dreams.

  * * *

  Yuri’s eyes blinked open, forehead damp with sweat. Carrie was no longer beside him. He remembered shouting. He remembered dreaming.I’m not much of a bed partner , he thought, throwing his feet onto the carpet, standing up.Carrie’s probably sleeping on the couch now .

  As he walked into the hallway, feeling the need to apologize to the woman with whom had shared a moment of passion, the after-images of a dream still seared his brain. He remembered Alexander Sverdlov’s eyes—diamonds set in a thick, chiseled face—burning through shadows of a darkened chamber.

  “The trick is to anticipate the melody,” Alexander had whispered, in a vision.

  You’re dead, he remembered thinking.

  Sverdlov’s demon tapped a forehead and replied to Yuri’s thought. “Not here. Not in your mind.” His father’s ghost ceremoniously removed a black coat, loosened a tie and rolled up the sleeves of a white shirt, exposing thick, muscular forearms. One burning eye winked mischievously.

  “You are always so somber, so focused, Yuri. But can you dance? To survive, you must learn to dance.”

  An unseen balalaika and accordion played a Russian folksong with a heavy beat. Alexander’s mouth opened in a wide grin that exposed perfect white teeth. He threw back his head and laughed.

  Then his father raised an index finger and shook it at him. “Anticipate the melody,” Alexander whispered, intimately. “That’s the trick to dancing.”

  Yuri remembered how the music picked up pace, as the balalaika competed with the accordion. Alexander’s feet moved deftly to the tune, his body arcing in a widening gyre, faster and faster. An unexpected violin jabbed a long, poignant strain that locked the other instruments into a slower tempo, but bolder rhythm.

  A spotlight suddenly turned his father’s face an ice-blue hue. Then, the voice spoke loudly, plainly, as if still alive. “Do you hear the music, Yuri? Can you anticipate the melody?”

  Those were the last elements of the dream he remembered.

  As he appr
oached the entrance to the living room, he heard Carrie’s voice, talking quietly to someone else.

  “Possible post-traumatic. He could be unstable, but still compartmentalizes very well. My recommendation...”

  Yuri quietly moved back to the bedroom, loudly cleared his throat, then announced “Carrie?” As he moved noisily again toward the living room, he heard the telephone quietly click in place. “Carrie?” he called, again.

  “I’m right here, Yuri,” she said in the darkness.

  When he flipped on the light, she was standing by the phone, fully dressed.

  “I didn’t want to wake you,” she said. “I just called a taxi. Gotta be at work early tomorrow. You understand.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  She rubbed his cheek, now rough with fine stubble. “Sure. I was just going to leave you a note.” She jotted down a number on a pad beside the phone, pressed the note in his hand, and gave him a long, lingering kiss. “Call me,” she whispered as she went out the door.

  Once again alone in his father’s house, he unraveled the note.Was it really her phone number ? He wondered, picking up the phone, whether he could stomach the answer.

  A thought occurred to him. He pressed the REDIAL button. The phone rang once, then picked up.

  “You have reached two-oh-two-five-nine-six-five,” the voice said. “Please leave your message at the tone.”

  He hung up, recognizing the protocol.Only CIA and NSA answer this way. The line is a voice drop .

  * * *

  “Well,” George Nathan said. “I want to dispel certain images you may have. We are not the KGB.” He opened Sverdlov’s dossier, flipping quickly through his service record and security background investigation, staring for a moment at a photograph of Yuri in a Marine Corps uniform. It closely resembled the man sitting across from him—close-cropped hair, somewhat rough, chiseled features, military posture—but he knew they were not the same person. The man in the photograph had never seen people die a violent death, never questioned his own sanity, never felt betrayed by authority. But the man in front of him had experienced all those things.