Were they really here?
But if so, who were they?
And in God’s name, what did they want with him?
He sat like that for a time, until the heat dried his tears.
And then Everett Scarborough remembered the report--the papers that he had tom from the notebook and stuffed into his back pocket. Painfully, almost reluctantly, he reached back, pulled them out, and unfolded them.
He read them.
When he finished, he carefully refolded them and placed them back where they had been.
He fell to his knees, clenching his fists and biting his lip until it bled.
When the worst of the spell passed, he stood and took in a deep breath.
Another.
And then he looked out over the desert and the distant mountains and the cold, painfully blue sky, wishing that he were dead.
But no… he wasn’t dead. He was alive. And someone still had Diane…
He had to find who that someone was.
He stood and determinedly walked back to his friends waiting for him at the Winnebago.
Prologue
Somewhere outside Denver, Colorado, 1953
The extraterrestrials were due at teatime.
Aliens for high tea was not exactly Cranston’s idea of an enjoyable afternoon. However, duty was duty. If he had to meet creatures from another planet, he would do it with the style and taste with which he’d lived the entire four decades of his life.
Mitchell Cranston scrutinized the sterling silver setting at the table. “Dennis, one of these butter knives is smudged.”
“Yes sir.” A short man in a slightly worn servant’s tuxedo scuttled up and removed the offensive article of cutlery. He polished it up with a small towel and then placed it back alongside the fine British china. He stepped back with a bow, expecting a word of thanks or a word of approval, but was met with a scowl instead.
“Dennis, that won’t do. I suggest you obtain a new, spotless butter knife—and return that one to the kitchen with my sternest words to the dishwasher.”
The short, balding man nodded and took the butter knife away a little hesitantly, looking as though he was about to flinch, as though Cranston was about to strike him.
However, Cranston, despite his aristocratic mien, was pure American government, and government people did not strike their co-workers.
At least not physically.
The servant turned to go.
“Dennis, I trust that the food and the beverages are in the proper state of readiness.” His obsessive-compulsive nature coming to the fore, Cranston removed a neatly folded piece of glossy bond from his immaculate English-tailored suit pocket, adjusted spectacles, and read: “Scottish recipe scones. Marmalade. Raspberry preserves. High-grade butter. Shortbread biscuits. My own private supply of gooseberry conserve. Rum cake.”
“Yes sir,” replied the butler.
“And the teas. We’ll have a selection of Earl Grey, English Breakfast, and Darjeeling for them to choose from.”
“All has been prepared, sir.”
“Excellent. This will be a memorable occasion, I think, Dennis. You are going to be party to a definite historical event here.”
It was at this point that the tuxedoed servant’s cool facade cracked a bit. The face betrayed a flash of trepidation, perhaps even of fear. Dennis was, of course, no ordinary butler. Like all the members of the staff out here in “the Bunker,” a government compound listed on no official government records, he was at top-level security clearance. In Dennis’s case, Cranston knew that he’d served with honors in the Second World War and would have gone to Korea but for Cranston’s specific need for him as part of his own private “force.” The butler was top government material—he could be trusted in other quasigovernment ventures—more quasi than government. Cranston had seen the man in a number of crises, and always he kept that Buster Keaton-ish stone face. But now, for the first time, he was showing some kind of fearful reaction.
“Yes sir.”
But then, it wasn’t often that people from another planet came to tea.
Just a flash, though. Dennis’s face returned to its normal stoic composure, and Cranston let the matter pass in deference to the butler’s pride.
“Just think of them as diplomatic emissaries from a particularly exotic country. And perform your duties with your usual excellent punctilious zeal.”
“I will, sir. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just be certain of the arrangements.”
“Excellent, Dennis. You may go.”
The butler left the room.
Mitchell Cranston examined his Swiss pocket-watch. Three forty-two P.M., Mountain Time. They were due at any minute now.
Despite himself, Cranston felt a frisson of excitement.
He’d worked hard, very hard for this moment. He’d called in favors, cajoled, begged, and bullied those few who actually knew about it—and had won. It was his game now, totally, his operation. Best of all, he’d kept it all hush-hush. Not even Eisenhower knew about it.
Though of course, that was exactly who the imminent arrivals thought they were going to be meeting.
Nonetheless, he had to remove all his feeling on the matter, for above all this was a duty. A duty to mankind. And, above even that, a duty to his Illustrious Colleagues.
Mitchell Cranston, though only forty years old, had the demeanor and bearing of a man ten years his senior, carrying responsibility and power with dignity and gravity. He was five-foot ten, but such was his poise that he could pass for six feet tall. He exercised regularly. The lines of his suit had to hide no desk-grown fat. He had a full, thick head of hair, the sides of which had gone completely silver. He wore a mustache as deeply black as his profoundly dark and brooding eyebrows. His eyes were an icy blue-grey, and his cheekbones were sharp and pronounced as though sculpted rather than the product of casual nature. The odor of talcum, hair cream, and pipe tobacco hung around him in the faintest of miasmas: a mixture he’d perfected himself, to portray stem fatherly authority subliminally as support to the overtness of his dress, demeanor, and rich baritone voice.
Cranston moved back to his office beyond the meeting room being prepared for the visitors. His desk was built of sturdy, exquisite teak, polished to a bright finish. His desktop was the very model of neatness and efficiency. He paused a moment by a humidor, selected one of his several briar pipes, removed some quality Virginia shag from the glass, and tamped it into the bowl of the pipe. He lit the pipe with a safety match from a box of Swan matches, and savored the warm stimulation of the smoke against his palate, allowing the smoke to flow from his mouth in sensual streams. Smoking was the one luxury Cranston permitted himself to ease stress, and now he took comfort in the habit as he sat down stiffly in his black leather chair and regarded the phone. He reached out his hand, and then returned it.
What was wrong with him, dammit? They knew where he was. When the visitors arrived, his security men would call him immediately. He was upset with himself at the doubt that had crept into his mind. The men who worked for him were not only the best; they were tried and tested for their loyalty. He had better things to do than worry, for God’s sake.
Still, he really couldn’t blame himself, he thought as he restlessly got up from behind the desk and strode over to the big bay window overlooking the ranch-style expanse of the front yard of the compound. A haze of tobacco smoke trailed behind him, like a lazily curling spirit.
He drew aside the embroidered drapes and gazed out into the Colorado countryside.
To think that it had been six years since that pilot Kenneth Arnold had first spotted the things-1947. Flying disks, he had called them, after the incident near Mount Rainier, Washington. Flying saucers were what the media eventually began to call them. Whether or not those things Arnold had seen were truly alien aircraft had never been actually determined. The government had paid not a great deal of attention. The tremors of attention had certainly been felt along the webs; Cranston, in his placement in the OSS, the
precursor to the CIA, had certainly felt it, and had done the preliminary reports to his Colleagues, who paid little or no attention.
That was, until the Roswell crash.
A vessel, a flying saucer crash-lands in Roswell, New Mexico, killing its crew of creatures from another planet!
The Air Force had nearly blown that one. Word had leaked out to the media, and only last minute, last ditch cover-up efforts prevented every citizen in America from the certain knowledge that there were other intelligences in the universe, other beings. Beings who were watching them.
That had gotten the Colleagues’ notice. Should that knowledge become wide-spread, even in the government, their efforts would all be for naught. It would destroy decades of careful work, planning.
Because of Cranston’s position, he was their natural candidate for placement in the significant government cover-up and investigative measures. Projects Sign, Grudge, and now Blue Book: all under Cranston’s secret directorship.
And so, when the message came, Mitchell Cranston knew about it immediately. It had come from the extraterrestrials:
We wish to meet with representatives of your government.
A letter. No blazing sign in the sky, no descent of iridescent saucers onto the Mall, like in that movie The Day The Earth Stood Still. No, the creatures apparently had used their time to learn the normal routes of earthly communication.
Letters. Phone calls. It had taken much time and effort for Cranston to orchestrate this meeting. But they had agreed. Finally, they had agreed.
Cranston’s grip upon the drapery tensed.
They thought they would be meeting with a representative of the United States government—but of course Mitchell Cranston was that and so much more.
Mitchell Cranston was a member of an ancient and secret pan-global group. Whispers of their existence had susurrated for centuries. Their ancient ancestors had been the Templars. The Illuminati, some had called them. The Order of the Judas Cross. Their numbers had swelled, their order had changed with the advent of the Industrial Age and the riches and progress it had brought.
Now, they were beginning to call themselves the Publishers…
A sound brought Cranston out of his reverie to the here and now. He looked back out the window, past the drapes. The Rocky Mountains, still snowcapped, humped majestically in the distance like sleeping giants of stone. The plain stretching from the Compound was alternately bare and covered with fir and pine trees, and transected by a road that led up to the gate at the fence. Coming up the road now was an automobile.
A cool mountain breeze slipped through the screen of an open window, over the sill, smelling of pasture and mountain and brook—and of chill. Despite himself, Mitchell Cranston shivered. Along with the scents came the sound of the car’s engine and the crunch of its wheels along the gravel road. He watched as the car—a long black Cadillac with pronounced fins rising from its rear like soldered-together sharks—pulled up to the gate.
Cranston saw Jerry Holzer, the guard, step out to the driver’s side. Holzer spoke to the person behind the wheel for a moment, nodded, and then motioned them on through. The black Cadillac smoothed through the checkpoint, up one side of the oval driveway, to the front of the building.
The occupants of the car could not know it, but from hidden vantage points looking out from the basement were gunmen, watching their every move. And when the new arrivals walked through the hallways, every movement would be under surveillance by armed agents. This was not going to be a meeting that Cranston had anything less than absolute control over.
The phone rang.
Cranston knew that it was Holzer, calling him as ordered to tell him that the “guests” had arrived. Normally a man of Cranston’s dignity and reserve would not have been so impatient as to hang by a window, waiting for tea party company to arrive.
But then, it was not every day that extraterrestrials came to visit.
Cranston watched as the aliens got out of the Cadillac.
Chapter 1
Everett Scarborough woke up.
He woke with a start, taking a sharp breath. Looked around. Where was he?
Outside was night. Filtered with moonbeams. A steady, low vibration that made him realize, instinctively, that this was the sound that woke him. He looked around, looked at the shadowy outlines that the moonlight made in the room. It wasn’t a normal room by any means, not the kind of a room that you get in a house or an apartment. For one thing, it was too narrow, a little too cramped with bunks and a kitchenette and shelves and a polyester rug and the general feel of the temporary, a sensation of travel. There was a smell of yesterday’s cream-chipped beef dinner in the air-the aftertaste of yesterday’s breakfast bacon. Sour laundry. Soap. An open beer. Near the far side of the room, Scarborough made out the folds of a curtain, the shine of moonlight on dashboard and windshield.
The recreational vehicle. The RV.
He was in the Winnebago.
It all came back in a rush, a shiver. The escape from the New Mexico Air Force Base. The recreational vehicle on the side of the road. The grey men... The stop, the unconsciousness, the threats, the promise, the incredible revelation of possibility too horrible to contemplate.
“We have your daughter Diane Scarborough. She is safe and well, and she will stay that way if we receive your cooperation in the future. “
His daughter. Diane.
He had to find Diane!
The thought brought a charge of adrenaline flush to his veins.
It kicked him into a fully awake state, and he suddenly became aware of breaths other than his, of other beings.
Sleeping in bunks across from him, he noticed now, were his two travelling companions. A strip of moonlight layover Jake Camden’s nostrils like a Band-Aid. The reporter’s mouth was open. He looked as though he would let out a snore at any moment. There was the reek of alcohol about him; this troubled Scarborough, because Jake had promised not to drink until this business was over, and Scarborough hadn’t seen him drink in the day since the encounter with the two grey men. The open beer had been Scarborough’s.
In the lower bunk, lying in a fetal position, was Air Force Lieutenant Marsha Manning, her face lovely and innocent, almost childlike despite the adult feminine lines that gave away her full womanhood. Marsha Manning, his lover; unbidden, aromatic memories of their recent intimacies came to him, jolting him, arousing him despite himself.
“Jake? Marsha?”
There was something in the air, something wrong, and they should be awake to experience it with him. He wasn’t just a scientist in terra incognita in need of controls for his experiments. He was a very vulnerable, very human being, in need of his friends.
They did not stir. He called again. Still nothing.
Scarborough got out of his bunk. He was fully dressed. Hadn’t he at least taken off his pants before retiring? No, apparently not. And his shoes! His Reeboks—He still wore them. The beer, it must have made him drift off before he’d donned any kind of sleeping apparel.
He looked out the window.
The ragged outlines of mountains and western panorama ridged the starred sky. Outside was a sense of coolness, dry coolness, the breath of the desert drifting through the one set of open louvered windows. Desert flower? Cactus? And yet, there was something sharp, something acrid in the stream from outside, something that made the hackles rise on the back of Scarborough’s neck.
He stepped across the polyester rug, noting the smell of snubbed out cigarette butts in the ashtray. Camden’s Camels. He stepped over to the opposite bunks, leaned down, and shook Marsha’s arm.
“Marsha. Marsha, wake up. Something’s going on.”
The sound, almost subsonic, was getting louder now, deepening, broadening, rising in pitch. Marsha did not wake up. She just mumbled something, rolled over away from him, seeming to drift into an even deeper sleep. He would have tried again, but the tone had risen in volume and he felt a needle of panic jammed through his heart and he nee
ded someone, anyone, quick to help him from jumping out of his skin.
“Jake!” He stood up and he shook Camden’s ann. “Jake! Wake up! Please!”
Jake opened his mouth and an effluvia of stale cigarettes, whiskey, onions, and garlic poured out. “Fuck off, man. I’m sleepin’. “
Just as Marsha had, Camden turned away. This time, in fact, he started up the threatened snoring.
Scarborough, stunned by the rejection, felt a little more at liberty to express his anger with this reluctant ally than he had with an exhausted lover. “Camden! Goddammit! I said, Wake Up!” He shook the man, shook him hard, shook him almost hard enough to pull him out of the bed. Camden did not respond. He just lay there, snoring away, like he was in the deepest of comas.
The sound throbbed and keened now, like something out of one of Diane’s rock records. Scarborough felt as though he was buried in the middle of an amplifier. And yet, loud as it was, it still did not wake up his sleeping companions.
He had to put his hands up against his ears. The sound was so loud it was driving all thought from his head.
It was as though he’d pressed a switch, for as soon as his hands met his ears, a barrage of light poured through every window, every slit of opening possible, filling the entirety of the RV’s interior with bright incandescence. It was as though Scarborough had sunk into the heart of some cool sun.
He screamed, but the keening, throbbing sound was so loud he could not hear the sound of his own terror.
Abruptly, the sound stopped. The light ebbed, down to a soft glow, like the soft afterimages of a pipe organ’s graceful notes to a Bach cantata, visualized.
Scarborough realized he was on his knees. He looked up, and his light-stunned eyes cleared enough to make out what was happening before him.
Two figures strode forward out of the dulled light, two men dressed in black. One of them had a face that was just a blur, an off-center smudge. But Scarborough recognized the other-he was the younger of the duo he had seen in that Tower Records store in Manhattan... The man who had shot Scarborough’s editor in the subway station. The man who’d been working on the tire of the RV when they’d stopped.
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 75