The Ganymede Project

by Susan Glinert Stevens

  “How will he know?”

  “It’s easy for him to see what’s going on. Maybe he’s watching us right now.”

  * * *

  Across town, in his laboratory near Johns Hopkins, Richard Chandra pressed his fingers together, planning and strategizing, while a tiny part of his brain guided a small animal through a duct running from Billy Stanton’s White House office.

  Good arguments, Billy, he thought.We’ll see what develops on the Whit Constantine front .It’s not just project goals at stake now. It’s a matter of survival. Personal survival. I didn’t want it to be this way .

  Survival. Not just of the human body named Richard Chandra, but of the extended organism—an organism which absorbed perceptual information from other animals; an organism which distributed memories, information and even emotions redundantly among several brains; an organism which projected control and personality beyond the conventional boundaries.

  How I think is what I am.

  The implications of Ganymede were becoming clear to Richard Chandra, a species of animal no longer limited to a single gene pool or a single multi-cellular configuration.

  I can build a factory, he thought.

  He did a few calculations in his head.Any non-human species will do—as long as it can be dominated .Rats work just fine, with litters at two-month intervals and a two year lifespan. I can make millions of hosts.

  He smiled.If the issue is survival, I’ll beat them at their own game.

  39. DISMAL DAY

  3 May 1994

  Jack’s funeral reminded Yuri of the day they buried his father. It was the same Cossack clouds—riding like a multitude of gray horsemen above the headstones, piercing hearts. The same earth—severed like a raw, brown wound, awaiting the cleansing action of maggots. They gathered around, listened to a few inspirational words, observed the impact on shattered lives, then left Jack Dugan’s body at peace.

  Jack’s family was there—a matronly wife, whom Yuri had met only twice, a college-age daughter, and a high school-aged son.

  Yuri gave his condolences, offered the family his help if they needed it, and commiserated with friends. Jerry Ramos, the Filipino technical wizard from the FBI Surveillance Center was right behind him. “We have to talk,” he whispered, as Yuri moved away from the circle of family and friends.

  Yuri stood alone, watching others slowly depart, until finally, Jerry was able to say what was on his mind.

  “This probably isn’t the time to kick a friend in the cahoonies, but I think you should know, Yuri. The situation with the Surveillance Center is unraveling—on both the NSA and FBI sides.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “Some of the NSA big-wigs were here at the funeral today. Said they’ve spent a lot of money and haven’t seen product. I get the feeling there’s more to it than that. And guys who said they were FBI came into the Center yesterday while you were out. They wanted to know what you were doing, questioned everybody, then offered the opinion that we were using obsolete technology. Imagine that! We’ve got state-of-the-art stuff.”

  “We’ve attracted attention. Now there are two bureaucracies taking potshots.”

  “None of this looks good, Yuri. Maybe there’s something you can do. Maybe not.” Ramos shrugged, then patted Yuri on the shoulder. “My condolences.”

  “Thanks,” Yuri said, watching him leave.

  40. HONEY TRAP

  3 May 1994

  The male species is so predictable, she thought.

  Sverdlov had acted like an infatuated school boy when they finally connected on the phone, stammering about the need to talk privately, agreeing to meet on her terms.

  And now she waited at a fashionable restaurant near Georgetown—a place with hypnotic soft lights and classy ambiance. It was an intimate place. A vulnerable place. A honey trap.

  She used the window as a mirror, straightened an unruly lock of hair with a dab of saliva, and adjusted the strap on her low-cut black evening dress.

  Tonight is not for information, she thought.That will come later. Tonight is for bonding, and bondage .

  The first element of bondage would be photographs, taken surreptitiously, documenting an indiscreet relationship between the FBI man and a known Russian spy. She would build on that error, until there was enough to damn him. Then, and only then, would she ask for information about the American penetration of the Russian SIGINT Center.

  Nikolai Gallagan had carefully planned the strategy—a classic, KGB-style ‘honey-trap.’ Somewhere outside the curved window that wrapped like a glass carapace around the rooftop restaurant, Vladimir Fontanov watched with a telescope and camera. He would take pictures as they dined. He would follow them to her apartment.

  She lit a cigarette, watching for a response. In the darkened office of an adjacent building, a flashlight acknowledged by signaling three times.Everything is in place.

  She knew it was difficult for Vladimir. “Don’t do this,” he had pleaded. “If he touches you, I’ll kill him.”

  “I want him to touch me,” she had replied. “I will entice him to the apartment. I will drug him. I will pose him. And then you will photograph us. He will be ours.”

  She felt sorry for Sverdlov, just as she felt sorry for John Anderson. But that was the job.You did what you had to do .

  “Excuse me. Ms. Fontanova? A phone call.”

  Her thoughts returned to the restaurant. A waiter wearing a black tuxedo and white carnation handed her a wireless telephone. She took it, smiled briefly, and watched the waiter depart.

  “Fontanova,” she said.

  “I am terribly sorry.”

  She recognized Sverdlov’s voice. “Where are you?” she asked, looking at her watch.

  “I’m calling from a place just five blocks away. Something came up. We got a break on the case. I have to leave here in just a few minutes, but if you come over, I’ll brief you on what we found.”

  She looked out the window again, toward Vladimir.Things aren’t working out as planned. Still, there must at least be face-to-face contact. That’s the only way to get close .

  “Give me the address, please.”

  * * *

  The music was loud, raucous and western. The air was thick with cigarettes and beer. The patrons were elbow-to-elbow, dressed mostly in jeans and tee shirts.

  As Katrina Fontanova crossed the room toward Yuri Sverdlov, she endured a cacophony of hoots and howls. Drunken hands clutched from the crowd, touching her expensive black evening dress. She slapped them away. By the time she reached Yuri, her face was red, her patience short.

  “I am very sorry,” Yuri said, talking loudly into her ear, “But this couldn’t be helped. I’m on another case.”

  “I can’t even hear you!” she yelled, angrily.

  “What?”

  “I said I can’t hear you!”

  “Sorry!” he replied, with a smile, taking her hand. “Let’s go outside.”

  They moved through the crowd to a side door, then out into an alley, dropping the noise by several decibels. A single spotlight created an island of visibility in a sea of litter near the tavern door.

  “I can’t stay long,” Yuri said. “I just wanted you to see this place.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s where they dumped my partner’s body. Jack Dugan.”

  She hugged her arms, trying to keep warm, eyeing him with a puzzled expression. “He was killed? I’m sorry.”

  “So am I,” Yuri said. “They eviscerated him with a knife, rolled him out of a car, over there, and left him for dead next to a pile of garbage. Two drunks from the tavern came out this door to take a piss and found him. Those red marks on the ground are where they dragged his entrails.” He watched her reaction. “Does that shock you, Ms. Fontanova? A man’s life—turned to garbage?”

  “I have seen men die before,” she said softly.

  “Do you know what the most interesting thing is about this case?”

  She shook her head
.

  “We think he named the killer. You can still see the word scrawled in his own blood on this wall.”

  The writing on the wall drew her gaze—symbols of death and violence that she found both fascinating and horrifying.

  “Can you read it, Major Fontanova?”

  It hit her. She felt a wave of nausea radiate from the pit of her bowel as she realized Sverdlov had set her up. “You’re wrong,” she said, angrily. “Very wrong.” She marched into the tavern, slamming the door in his face.

  He slapped at a bottle atop a trash can, uncorking the anger, resentment and confusion that frothed in his soul. The bottle hurtled against the alley wall, shattering into a thousand pieces.

  All he could say was, “Shit.”

  41. EXECUTIVE ORDER

  TS-10222-OM

  3 May 1994

  It was just before midnight on Tuesday when Zfar opened the thick file on Operation Majority. There was a yellow Post-It note from Deke on the top document. It said,Read this one first—Deke .

  Below the note was the text of a Presidential Executive Order:

  * * *

  Immediate Release

  EXECUTIVE ORDER TS-10222-OM

  CLASSIFIED ANNEX TO

  NATIONAL DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS

  OPERATION MAJORITY

  The overall security classification of this document is Top Secret Majic (TSM). Certain portions are designated Confidential Majic (CM) and Unclassified (U). Handle only within Majic channels. Declassify on Authority of the President.

  (U) By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Defense Production Act of 1950 and section 301 of title 3, United States Code and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States, it is hereby ordered as follows:

  PART I - PURPOSE, POLICY AND IMPLEMENTATION

  Section 101. (TSM) Purpose. This order delegates authorities and addresses national defense policies and programs under the Defense Production Act of 1950, specifically related to products, capabilities, phenomena and biological entities of extra-terrestrial or suspected extra-terrestrial origin.

  Section 102. (TSM) Policy. The United States must have an industrial and technology base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to all threats to the national security of the United States, including potential threats of extra-terrestrial origin.

  Section 103. (TSM) General Functions. Federal departments and agencies responsible for intelligence, defense acquisition and security shall:

  (a) (TSM) Identify requirements for the full spectrum of national security emergencies which could be triggered by the appearance or manifestation of capabilities, activities, or phenomena produced by intelligent extra-terrestrial biological entities (EBEs);

  (b) (TSM) Assess continually the capability of the domestic industrial and technological base to defend against, nullify the effects of, or otherwise conceal the origin of capabilities, activities or phenomena produced by EBEs.

  (c) (TSM) Assess continually the motives, capabilities and objectives of EBEs.

  (d) (CM) Be prepared, in the event of a potential threat to the security of the United States, to take actions necessary to ensure the availability of adequate industrial resources and production capability, including services and critical technology for national defense requirements.

  * * *

  The more Jafri read, the more incredible it all seemed. The 1947 Roswell UFO crash left two alien survivors and a hopelessly damaged ship. One of the survivors died within a few days of the crash. The other was murdered by Operation Majority security personnel. The alien had been captured. But it held captivity captive. It demonstrated an ability to control humans by manipulating their thoughts and ideas. It escaped, made its way to the crashed craft, and destroyed selected devices onboard.

  Operation Majority changed tactics after the incident. There was a standing order to kill EBEs on sight and refrigerate their bodies as rapidly as possible for study. In the course of approximately 50 years, the government destroyed seven EBEs.

  Then there was another turn of events. In the early 50s, the shootdown of a U-2 over the USSR publicly humiliated a President of the United States and exposed him as a liar. The doctrine ofplausible deniability failed. This led the administration to reconsider the consequences of exposure in the case of Operation Majority. A Top Secret RAND study suggested that public knowledge of extraterrestrial contact could throw domestic and international relationships into chaos, especially if it became known that the U.S. had acquired alien artifacts, that it had killed aliens and that it had kept this information secret. The potential for social catastrophe, not to mention political catastrophe, was high. There were too many people in the loop. Security mechanisms were significantly impaired by the U.S. Constitution.

  The administration decided to cut Operation Majority free from the Federal government, but allow it to use government activities and assets for cover. At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. It became a government within a government. Security documents cited the authority of the President, but the President no longer knew.

  Operation Majority inducted and trained each new National Security Advisor and each new Director of Central Intelligence. There was an unbroken chain of culpability. Funding came through sale of certain government-acquired assets, including drugs, property and private business units. The Operation achieved tight security through an internal balance of terror and a policy of ruthlessly terminating leaks and other potential sources of embarrassment.

  Jafri read aboutProject Pounce , whose objective was to recover downed extraterrestrial craft.Project Grudge created a database of scientific, technological, medical and socio-political information related to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), Identified Alien Craft (IACs) and Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EBEs). There were a variety of other, smaller programs, includingProject Ganymede , a program for reverse engineering Thought Tunneling Devices found in EBE neural tissue.

  42. DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE

  4 May 1994

  Next morning, Katrina Fontanova walked briskly toward the embassy, eager to tell Gallagan. The late night search of the embassy’s database revealed that Sverdlov’s partner, Jack Dugan, was an analyst assigned to the National Security Agency.NSA !

  Some of the puzzle pieces came together. Others remained a mystery. If Sverdlov and Dugan planted the bug in the SIGINT Center, and if someone killed Dugan and attacked her, then there could be a third party at work. But who? And for what purpose?

  A complicating factor was Sverdlov, who now played out some paranoid fantasy.

  “Ms. Fontanova! Wait.” Sverdlov’s voice came from behind, footsteps racing. He finally caught up. “We didn’t finish our conversation last night.”

  “Yes we did,” she said, continuing to walk.

  “Did you know Jack Dugan?”

  She slowed to a stop, trying out a new tactic. “The NSA man who helped bug the Russian embassy?”

  Yuri’s eyes probed her face with a wild intensity—his only response.

  “Never heard of him,” she said, smiling, continuing to walk. Yuri kept up, grabbing her elbow. “What did Jack Dugan stumble on?”

  “Let me go! I’m a diplomat. If you have questions, write them down and submit them to the embassy.”

  “I know you can hide behind diplomatic immunity, Ms. Fontanova, and I know you can simply leave the country if things get too hot. But Jack was my partner. I need to know the truth.”

  “If you don’t—”

  A police car interrupted with a burst of siren, flashing its lights, passing them by, screeching to
a stop in front of the Russian Embassy, where a noisy crowd of militant environmentalists blocked the entrance. Katrina saw other police cars were parked nearby, lights flashing, officers inside. It was like a carnival with emotional rides.

  She angrily pulled away from Yuri, breaking into a jog.

  Members of the crowd held signs sayingRussian Nukes Kill ;Chernobyl, Tomsk, Now This ;Stop Plutonium Production, Now ;Kamchatka Subs Leak Radioactive Death ; andVladivostok Waste Site Poisons the Planet .

  The speaker, standing on a box surrounded by followers, was like a lit match—face fiery with anger. The crowd was a powder keg of raw emotions.

  “It’s time to take the gloves off,” he yelled.

  The crowd whistled and yelled in agreement.

  “When Chernobyl happened, they said they were sorry!”

  The crowd booed.

  “When the Tomsk plutonium plant exploded, they said it wouldn’t happen again!”

  The crowd jeered.

  “Now they’ve been caught selling bomb-grade material.” He held up a newspaper headline as proof.

  They beat sticks against the Russian Embassy’s iron fence.

  “Stop plutonium production. Now!”

  The crowd exploded in approval.

  Katrina pushed toward a policeman standing near the edge of the throng. “Stop this,” she pleaded, “before someone gets hurt. My friends are in there.”

  He shrugged. “They have a parade permit. I can’t do anything unless—”

  A wave of people knocked the officer to the ground, herded Katrina to the center, and surrounded her with a thick human fence. “She’s a Russian!” someone shouted. “From the embassy!”