PHOENIX: (Projekt Saucer series)

by W. A. Harbinson

  ‘Correct. And when he finally awakened from his trance state, he found everyone at the window, all excitedly scanning the sky over Capitol Hill, where the UFO had been.’ Scaduto paused, grinned, and said, ‘You want to hear the rest?’

  ‘You’re a natural-born actor, Tony. Just get on with it, please.’

  ‘Well, you know, this guy is intrigued, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But he’s also annoyed because his notes have been taken from him. So later he has a clandestine meeting with one of his colleagues, who’d been present at the trance session, and asks him if the UFO had been real. His colleague, being drunk and careless with his Irish lip, confesses that it had been, that it was part of a top-secret government project, and that one of the crew on board had been ESP-trained.’

  ‘So the so-called “Woman from Maine” had picked up his thoughts by accident, like someone tuning into a foreign wavelength.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned.’

  ‘But that wasn’t all,’ Scaduto continued excitedly. ‘According to my drunken colleague – who couldn’t stop talking once he’d started – the UFOs reported to have landed at Cannon AFB, Deerwood Nike Base and, apparently, Holloman AFB, were for real... but they weren’t extraterrestrial.’

  ‘Man-made.’

  ‘Right. The products of highly secret activity between the Canadian and United States governments.’

  ‘We’re back to the Avrocar, which was bullshit. I need another beer, Tony.’

  ‘To hell with the beer. Just listen. These aircraft or flying saucers – call them what you will – in no way resemble the aborted projects that were leaked to, then shown to, the media, us poor shitheads included. No, they were highly advanced flying saucers of pretty remarkable capability – and there were a total of about twelve in existence.’

  ‘Only twelve?’ Dwight asked sceptically, thinking of the extraordinary number of sightings over the years.

  ‘Yeah,’ Scaduto confirmed. ‘According to my man, his colleague had been seconded to Royal Canadian Air Force Intelligence, where he was tasked with implementing internal security on the flying saucer project. There he discovered that the project had been run jointly by the Canadian government, the US Air Force and Navy, and a few high-ranking Army officers from the Pentagon. Those bastards had managed to maintain secrecy by locating the underground production plants in the deserted regions of southern Canada, between British Columbia and Alberta; by ensuring that the production of the numerous components of the saucers was distributed between hundreds of different, international companies, none of whom could have guessed what the individual components were for; by undertaking the more specialised research in the top-secret military installations of the White Sands Proving Ground at Alamogordo, New Mexico, and similar establishments all over Canada; and, finally, by deliberately confusing the press and public with a continuous stream of ambiguous leaks and misleading statements.’

  ‘In other words...’

  ‘They’re real flying saucers, they’re being constructed in Canada, and they’re being tested and flown from top-secret American military bases.’

  ‘Do you really think this could be true?’ Dwight asked.

  ‘It sounds crazy, I know,’ Scaduto replied, ‘but I’d like to find out. You want to come with me?’

  ‘I want to go back to Beth,’ Dwight said.

  ‘Love prevails,’ Scaduto said, grinning again. He led Dwight out of the bar and stood beside him on the crowded pavement of M Street. ‘You’ll come with me,’ he said confidently. ‘I know you will. Because you have to find out. You simply have to. You’ve gone through so much by now, you won’t be able to ignore the one opportunity you have of learning the truth. That’s the hook in your throat, my friend. Adios. I’ll call you.’

  He walked off along the sidewalk as Dwight stood there, almost dazed, recalling what his friend had said and accepting the truth of it. Dwight just had to find out.

  Chapter Forty-Two In the early hours of February 26, 1968, Wilson was set down in a field outside McLean, Virginia, by one of his flying saucers and driven from there in a limousine ordered up by Jack Fuller to the Hay Adams hotel, conveniently overlooking Lafayette Park and the White House. When he checked into the hotel, he did so under the name of Mr Aldridge. The real Mr Aldridge was a US citizen who had been abducted many years before, surgically terminated, and used as spare parts for the ongoing cyborg programme. Wilson therefore had all of the unfortunate Mr Aldridge’s papers, with his own picture replacing the original in Aldridge’s passport. The purpose of the visit was to discuss the ongoing activities of the widely publicised Condon Committee. This he did with Jack Fuller over a light lunch in the Tudor dining room of the hotel.

  ‘My so-called Great Northeast Blackout appears to have had the desired effect,’ Wilson said. ‘The Condon Committee being set up, as it were, by you and your friends at Langley Field.’

  ‘Always pleased to oblige,’ Fuller replied sardonically, hiding the fear he always felt when in Wilson’s presence. ‘I have to admit that the blackout certainly convinced everyone that your technology is still vastly superior to ours.’

  ‘So they’re now willing to play the game my way.’ ‘Yes. And the Condon Committee, backed by us, is our way of showing you we mean it.’

  This was not strictly true and both of them knew it. The Condon Committee merely represented another defeat for the US in its cat-and-mouse game with Wilson – they had been warned and had taken heed – but sooner or later they would try to foil him again; then, if they failed, he would punish them... and so it went on.

  ‘I notice that Condon, soon after establishing the committee, started making it perfectly clear that he had little patience with the UFO hypothesis. Was that your doing also?’

  ‘Yeah. Condon also deliberately showed a partiality to obvious crank claims and cases that serious UFO investigators had already dismissed as hoaxes. Eventually he made it clear that he was intent on proving the whole idea of UFOs as nonsense. All that for you, Wilson.’

  ‘But there’s a thorn in our side,’ Wilson said. ‘This Dr James E. McDonald.’

  Fuller sighed. McDonald was a senior atmospheric physicist at the University of Arizona’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences who had been interested in the UFO phenomenon for years. He was now one of the country’s leading authorities on the subject and strongly outspoken in his criticism of the Air Force and the CIA.

  ‘I’m afraid so. McDonald isn’t afraid of ridicule and he’s got a hell of a lot of energy. In fact, his individual research into UFOs has already far outstripped that of all other researchers, save perhaps J. Allen Hynek and Dr Epstein.’

  ‘How did McDonald get into it?’

  ‘About two years ago, in March, 1966, he obtained the National Academy of Science’s approval for a discreet, one-man study of UFOs. But when he heard of the Air Force plans to contract a UFO study to a university, he declined to use the support of the NAS and instead used personal finance. That way he was able to investigate scores of sightings and interview hundreds of witnesses. Thrilled by his success, he then launched a crusade to alert the scientific community to the seriousness of the problem. He also took on the Air Force, repeatedly attacking it for its lack of scientific investigation and its pronouncements designed to soothe the public. Finally, he attacked us, the CIA, for our involvement in the Robertson Panel report.’

  ‘A real trouble-maker,’ Wilson said.

  ‘Yep. And there’s worse to come.’

  ‘I am all ears.’

  ‘In August, 1966, the Condon Committee co-ordinator, Robert Low, chosen especially by me and my colleagues, wrote a memorandum to the University of Colorado’s administrators, expressing his lack of belief in UFOs. For this reason, Low suggested, the Condon Committee’s real objective should be a public relations exercise in which the trick would be – and I quote – “to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear to be a tot
ally objective study, but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer”.’

  ‘And how did they recommend that this be accomplished?’

  ‘To place the emphasis on the psychology and sociology of persons and groups who report seeing UFOs, rather than on the non-existent UFOs themselves.’

  ‘In other words, place the persons and groups reporting UFOs in the firing line of humiliation and ridicule.’

  ‘Correct. However, Dr McDonald has recently managed to get his hands on that old report – which shows clearly that the Condon Committee was formed simply to discredit the UFO phenomenon. This has led to a scientific scandal, the firing of a couple of the leading members of the committee, and, even worse, a Congressional hearing to begin this July.’

  ‘Never mind the findings of the Congressional hearing,’ Wilson said. ‘No matter what conclusion they come to, just make sure that the committee recommends the final, complete closure of Project Blue Book. As for McDonald, I think I should clip his wings in the fullness of time.’

  ‘You do that,’ Fuller said.

  He was trying to be flippant, but when he stared at the icy-blue, penetrating gaze of the silvery-haired Wilson, he knew that he was faced with pitiless intelligence. Wilson had cast off all normal emotions as being superfluous to his requirements; now he lived with a logic so rigorous it had made him inhuman. Fuller thought of Wilson as a mutant. Though born and bred right here in America, he was a true alien being.

  ‘So what about Dr Epstein and our other friends at the APII? What have they been up to?’

  ‘Epstein has brought in two new men – Robert Stanford and Irving Jacobs, both physicists, who between them have produced a thick, detailed report showing that most of the more advanced flying saucers, and certainly the bigger ones, fly on a north-south course – in other words, towards Antarctica.’

  ‘That’s too close for comfort.’

  ‘Right. And the publication of that report has led to a whole spate of articles about holes in the Poles and hidden UFO bases – just like your own, in fact. Luckily, most of them were of the more fanciful variety and we’ve used that as the basis for a continuing programme of disinformation. I mean, the more outrageous the theory, the quicker we’ll use it. So the APII report, while fairly accurate, is being buried in a whole heap of ridiculous stories.’

  ‘Nevertheless, if they picked up on that, we better watch them closely.’

  ‘They’ve picked up on something even more dangerous: the possibility that the flying saucers are man-made.’

  Even Wilson, who rarely registered emotion, looked a little surprised. ‘Epstein?’

  ‘No. Epstein still supports the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It’s the other two: Dwight Randall and, especially, that troublesome kid, Tony Scaduto. He’s obsessed with the notion. Indeed, he’s taken himself up to Canada and is living there temporarily, in Malton, Ontario, to check out the Avro-Canada plant. He has a good nose, that one, and tenacity, so he might have to go.’

  ‘You’re keeping him under observation?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. Keep me informed of what he and Dwight Randall are up to. Is there anything else?’

  ‘No, that just about wraps it up.’

  ‘Then good day, Mr Fuller.’

  Fuller pushed his chair back and walked out of the restaurant, slightly cheered by the thought that Wilson would at least be picking up the tab. This was all he could hope for.

  Chapter Forty-Three Scaduto dropped in on Dwight in November, 1968, two days after Richard Nixon had been elected as the 37th President of the United States. Having spent almost a year working as a barman in Malton, Ontario, which had enabled him to make a living while he sounded out the clients about the jobs they were doing in the local AvroCanada Aircraft company, he was keen to pass on what he had learnt to Dwight.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m back in God’s country,’ he began when he and Dwight had settled in the living room, in front of an open fire, with a couple of beers. ‘I feel like I’ve been in the fucking wilderness. Nice to be back in the real world at last.’

  ‘Hardly God’s country any more,’ Dwight said. ‘At least, not this year. Think of it... One of our spy planes seized by North Koreans, one of our nuclear bombers crashing in Greenland, the most shameful war in our history going on in Vietnam, Martin Luther King assassinated, black riots in most major cities, Bobby Kennedy assassinated, the police indulging in an orgy of Nazi-style violence at the Chicago convention, and now we’ve got a President that no-one would buy a used car from. God’s country no more, I fear.’

  ‘Stop being so pessimistic,’ Scaduto said cheerfully, wiping beer from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Next month, I guarantee it, we’ll have three American astronauts orbiting the moon in the Apollo 8 spacecraft. They might even find a few UFOs up there. I can’t wait to find out.’

  ‘So did you see any UFOs in Ontario?’

  ‘Not quite, but I got close. See, I got me a job as a barman in Malton, near the Avro-Canada plant, and plying the guys from the factory with drinks I picked up enough idle talk to convince me that Avro had continued to work on saucer-shaped jet aircraft long after the public unveiling of that useless piece of shit, the Avrocar. At the same time, in my spare time, I drove around a lot of southern Canada, between British Columbia and Alberta, and found a lot of top-security research plants and aircraft factories. And those places, man, they’re hidden in the forested hills and couldn’t be seen from the air even if you had a giant telescope. Real dense forest up there in Alberta.’

  ‘Well, we did know that before, Tony.’

  ‘Nice to be reminded, though.’

  ‘True enough. So what else did you find out?’

  ‘When I was moving around the area, socialising wherever I could, I became bosom pals with a test pilot, Frank Lomax, who’d once worked for a Canadian-US company involved in the design and construction of highly advanced saucer-shaped aircraft; some piloted and as large as regular aircraft, others only two or three feet in diameter, remote-controlled, and being mass-produced. Both prototypes reportedly based on captured World War Two German designs.’

  ‘What makes you think he was telling the truth?’

  ‘The production plant for the saucers was located in a densely forested, mountainous region that protected it from the eyes of the commercial airline pilots. But Frank, who now runs a private flight-training school just outside Alberta, knows the tricky flight path that takes you over the test grounds for the saucers, and he agreed to fly me over them, in the hope of seeing a parked saucer. Unfortunately, he agreed to do this just after I’d booked my return flight to Washington DC, but I’m going back eventually to take him up on his offer. I want you to come with me.’

  Though instantly excited by the thought, Dwight found himself saying automatically, ‘I’m frightened of drawing attention to Beth or myself. Particularly as Beth’s been plagued again by nightmares about the men in black. I wouldn’t want anyone to know I was doing that – spying on those aircraft companies in Canada.’

  ‘I guarantee that Frank won’t mention your name to anyone and that all references to the flight booking will be in my name. I don’t have a wife and kids, so I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘I don’t think I can refuse this offer, Tony, but I’ll have to ask Beth. She’s in a pretty bad way at the moment and has begged me to stay out of the UFO controversy.’

  ‘But you’ll ask her?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I can tell you’re keen. I might as well get it over and done with, so I’ll ask her this evening over dinner. Did you want to stay, by the way?’

  ‘Nope. Not if you’re gonna have your little talk with Beth. Don’t think I wanna see or hear that.’

  ‘You’re pretty damned cynical about marriage, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s �
�cause I’m not married.’ Scaduto handed Dwight an address card. ‘Here’s the hotel I’m staying at in Dayton. Give me a call when you know either way.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Dwight promised.

  Scaduto stood up, finished off his beer, then went into the kitchen-diner to call out a slightly nervous goodbye to Beth. Though she had nothing personal against him – and, indeed, had once found him amusing – she now disliked seeing him here, because she knew he was bringing news about UFOs and, almost certainly, trying to persuade Dwight to return to UFO work, which she no longer wanted him to do.

  In the event, Dwight didn’t have to wait until dinnertime to broach the subject, as Beth, the instant Scaduto had departed, came out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel and looking grim. She was still an attractive woman, but she looked worn down by nervous tension. ‘So what did he want?’

  Not knowing how to state it gently, Dwight went for the blunt approach, though he tried to make it sound more casual than it was. ‘He just wants me to make a trip with him to Alberta, Canada, then fly over some forested area where we think there may be man-made flying saucer construction plants.’

  The casual sound didn’t work. Beth’s face turned pale with barely suppressed fury. ‘You promised, Dwight. You said...’

  Dwight cut her short by holding up his hand. ‘I won’t go if I don’t have your permission, but Tony did insist that my name won’t be mentioned with regard to the flight and the aircraft will be rented in his name. Besides which, I can’t see how we would attract much attention by simply flying a chartered plane over the mountains. Lots of tourists do it.’

  ‘You’re looking for UFO bases!’ Beth snapped vehemently.

  ‘From an airplane, Beth. Not on the ground.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn. If they see the plane, they’re liable to come up and blow you out of the sky. Who knows? And I don’t want to be left alone here. You know that. I’m scared!’

  ‘You can surely spend a mere couple of days with Nichola. She...’

  ‘Never mind Nichola! I don’t want you to go. I’ll be worried for you and for myself and even for Nichola. Honestly, Dwight,’ she continued, then made an accusation that she had often made during the early years of their marriage. ‘I sometimes think you’re more concerned with UFOs than you are with me. Well, damn it, go if you want to, but don’t expect me to sanction it.’