Chapter Fifty-Eight
“A secret island?” Sam asked, skeptical. “You want me to believe the entire population of the cruise ship ended up on an island that doesn’t exist on any maps?”
“Yes.” The Secretary of Defense smiled. “Quite a coincidence really, isn’t it? The island has no name, location or existence except for the fact that we financed its development in the sixties and lost it to Robert Cassidy in the eighties.”
“So where should this island be?”
“It comes and goes. We’ve come close to finding its location a number of times over the years. The most recent of course, was in 1983. But I’m afraid since then, all signs of the god forsaken Island have disappeared completely.”
“Are you telling me in an age of satellite imaging, we can’t find an island?”
“Yes. But if it makes you feel any better, we didn’t have GPS in 1983 so we were using spotter planes. It certainly made it easier for him to get away. He never would have succeeded if he’d tried these days.”
“The Island moves?”
Margaret nodded. “I’m afraid so, Mr. Reilly. The Island was built into a large iceberg that broke away years ago. The iceberg has a large structure of volcanic rock. This allowed them to build inside it and then tow the island. The ice can be increased or decreased to serve its purpose of concealment. It remained in the northern hemisphere for years, but judging by the aerial photo you sent me of the ice structure you found blocking the entrance to the Weddell Sea, it would appear Robert worked out a way of moving it to the southern hemisphere. None of our scientists can imagine how it was done. Maybe they somehow froze the area below the rock to keep the entire thing from melting and sinking into the Pacific Ocean.”
“Technically it’s not really an island then, is it?” Sam said.
“No. Technically it’s a floating island. It’s made up of porous volcanic rock called pumice and lava tunnels. We found it buried inside an ice wall within the Arctic Circle. Originally, that’s where Cassidy’s scientists worked. One year, when the ice melted and it broke away, most likely as a result of one of Cassidy’s experiments, we discovered it floated quite well. With the entire infrastructure needed already inside the island, a decision was made to keep it as an island for research and development.”
“Broke away, where?”
Margaret smiled. “You see, we worked out that the island naturally floated being made of porous rock. Then we could flood the lava tunnels in order to sink the island if its location ever became known. You see some of the research happening on the island was the world’s best. Governments from all nations, friendly and enemy, would kill to get access to the sort of information it was turning out.”
“Could it move?”
“Not on its own. But a series of ships could theoretically tow it, but it would be slow. About ten years ago one of our nuclear submarines disappeared whilst in dry dock for maintenance. We believe Mr. Cassidy was behind that.”
“Someone stole one of our nuclear subs and no one reported it missing?”
“It was intentionally documented as a mechanical fault leading to decommissioning.”
“Why did he want a submarine?” Sam asked.
“Because underneath the island was a large cavern with air inside. The submarine could surface there and move people and equipment inside the island without anyone noticing from above.”
“Okay, so we’ve been searching for this island for how many years now?”
“Since 1983.”
“So why haven’t we found it?”
“One of the many projects being performed on the island was a device that creates a fake cloud overhead.”
“They create rainclouds?”
“No. They send out a signal that even the best of our satellites picks up and interprets as impenetrable cloud cover. The shape is often different and unless you knew the island was below you would never see it. Despite the simple fact that the sky above was clear.”
“So why not search for a cloud the size and shape of the island?”
“Because the island is comparatively quite small.”
“How small?”
“Five square miles. Think of the equivalent of a few modern aircraft carriers lined up together to make one giant raft. From the surface it looks like a beautiful island, but underneath it’s a monstrous submarine. It’s incapable of driving itself, but can be slowly towed by surface vessels.”
“I have a theory… and you’re not going to like it. What if Robert looked at his beautiful island and decided he just wanted to live by himself?”
“He was never by himself. He had a small population of scientists living aboard. Nearly a thousand people in total.”
“You mean, at the height of the cold war, when people were frightened of what was to become of them, we built Robert Cassidy his own private paradise?”
“Yes.”
“How does he even feed that number of people?”
“If they’re still alive, he’s been bringing food in from somewhere. Which is why I think he stole one of our submarines – so he could use it to bring in food and supplies without being detected.”
“Is it much larger below the waterline?”
“Yes. Like an iceberg - it’s the areas you can’t see that are often larger, and submerged. Cassidy’s not stupid. The clouds that he creates change and at times are ten times the size of the island, whereas at other times they don’t even cover the island.”
“When that happens can’t you pick it up by making an exact match on images taken on satellite passes?”
“No. The island itself keeps changing. The topside where you can see it is often covered in ice, but it doesn’t have to be. There are large heating and cooling systems designed to cover the entire island within minutes.”
“The blizzard that nearly killed me when I was searching for the Pegasus on Ellsworth Land – it was caused by the island, wasn’t it?”
“Exactly.”
“Now it makes sense!” Sam felt the fog of confusion lift.
“What does?”
“When I boarded the Antarctic Solace, Alexis was certain the blizzard had only raged for fifty five minutes, while Tom and I were certain it had carried on for nearly three days.”
“Go on,” she said.
“The cooling systems were facing us. That’s why the storm didn’t show up on any synoptic charts. It was a truly localized storm, because it was artificially created on the island.”
“That would make sense.”
“Then when the island moved, the direction of the blizzard changed momentarily and headed towards the Antarctic Solace – making it appear to only rage for fifty five minutes.”
“Before the island opened its doors and flooded the lava tunnels, causing it to sink and disappear – which means the island is still nearby.”
Sam shook his head in disbelief. “All right, tell me exactly, what was Cassidy’s Project?”
Chapter Fifty-Nine
“The Project came about as a secondary discovery during our initial tests involving high altitude nuclear explosions above the Pacific during an operation code-named Starfish Prime.”
Sam tensed his jaw. “If I recall the story, Electro Magnetic Pulses were wreaking havoc from New Zealand in the southern hemisphere to Hawaii in the north in response to those tests – which disrupted electrical fuses and damaged communication systems for thousands of miles.”
“That’s right. Of course such a concept had tremendous potential. If we could strike the Soviet Union with an EMP capable of taking out their communication system, we could then eradicate them with a first strike nuclear attack without any fear of repercussions.”
“There’s a great thought,” Sam said.
“Hey, you weren’t around during the height of the Cold War. The Russians were trying similar experiments on their side of the planet. Mark my words, it was a race run on many platforms. If they’d won it, we wouldn’t still be here today.”
“So why didn’t someone succeed?”
“The problem was the EMP didn’t last long enough. Ultimately, we gave up on the project when we discovered it would never block the Soviet’s communications long enough. That’s where Robert Cassidy came in.”
“Go on, what did he discover?” Sam persisted.
“After determining that a nuclear blast created an EMP, Cassidy discovered that he could create a radio wave on the back of the nuclear event that remained in the atmosphere for years. It could then be used to block communications and electronic signals.” She looked tense. “It had something to do with disrupting the Van Allen Belt or creating a secondary radiation wave inside it.”
“If a standard EMP disrupted electronics for five or so minutes, how long could one of these radio waves theoretically disrupt electronic signals?” Sam asked.
The Secretary of Defense grinned. “Indefinitely – modest projections showed the possibility of blocking the area above the Soviet Bloc for over a hundred years.”
Sam stared at her amazed. “If he’d gone through with it no one would be living inside Russia currently. The refugees alone would have swamped the rest of Europe. And we would have won the Cold War.”
“Exactly. Ronald Reagan tried to sell the plan to the Democratic Party whose members were broadly horrified at the prospect. He took the plan in secret to members of the Republican Party who helped him rise in the political ranks to eventually take Office as the President of the United States. He proved to be a very good President. Who would have believed his entire campaign was developed in secret by a group of men who wanted to elect a man with the tenacity to fund the Cassidy Project. To push through Congress a secret Bill to fund a project to enable them to initiate a first strike on the U.S.S.R. with no retaliation.
“It sounds like the project should have worked. The American people would never have gone for it, but the theory appears sound.”
“It was,” she confirmed.
“So what happened? How did we lose Robert Cassidy and his project?”
The Secretary of Defense crossed her arms. “Able Archer 83 happened.”
Chapter Sixty
“Who was Able Archer?” Sam asked.
“Not who, but what. Able Archer 83 was the code name for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization exercise that took place on November the Second, 1983. To this day it was the largest orchestrated movement of nuclear bombers in the world. Historians argue it was the closest the world came to a nuclear holocaust since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Soviet Union was certain the exercise was a ruse for actual nuclear war, and prepared their own nuclear rockets for firing.”
“And what were we really doing?”
“Trying to find the Island, of course – before it was too late.”
“Reagan nearly took us to World War Three because of the Island?”
“No, he nearly took us to World War Three because Robert Cassidy and what he’d nearly finished building. Able Archer spanned Western Europe, centered on the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe known as SHAPE in Casteau, north of the city of Mons. Able Archer exercises simulated a period of conflict escalation, culminating in a simulated DEFCON 1 coordinated nuclear attack. The exercise also introduced a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, and the participation of heads of government.”
“How could someone as intelligent as Reagan have misunderstood how risky such an exercise would have been?”
Margret shook her head even just remembering her first briefing on this bit of history when she became Secretary of Defense. “The realistic nature of the 1983 exercise, coupled with deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and the anticipated arrival of Pershing II nuclear missiles in Europe, led some members of the Soviet military to believe that Able Archer 83 was a ruse of war, obscuring preparations for a genuine nuclear first strike. In response, the Soviets readied their nuclear forces and placed air units in East Germany and Poland on alert.”
“So, why did Reagan go ahead with it?”
“Because he had to – it was the only way to find Robert Cassidy. The Russians were right about Able Archer 83 being a ruse; only it wasn’t because we wanted to start a war, it was because we wanted to prevent one.”
“What do you mean?” Sam felt like he was being strung along in a massive conspiracy.
“Late August 1983 a U.S. Congressman from Georgia attended a clandestine meeting in New York at the express request of Robert Cassidy. A Soviet agent was sent there under the direct orders of Mikhail Gorbachev to meet with the Congressman to discuss a new weapon that threatened to end everything.” She paused and watched his reaction. “Robert Cassidy threatened both sides with sending either or both the American and Soviet countries back to the dark ages if they did not agree to a peaceful de-escalation and de-proliferation of nuclear weapons.”
“He treated them both like naughty children?” Sam laughed. “How did that meeting go?”
“Both sides were pissed,” she said. “It took time and Robert was persuasive. You have to remember, Cassidy may be a megalomaniac and he may be hell bent crazy on sending the world back to pre-electrical times, but there has never been a doubt that he was anything but a complete genius. From what we now understand Robert made some significant advancement towards de-escalation with this threat. Of course it was only the start. He’d convinced some relatively low key members from both sides of the Bearing Strait to agree, but now they had to return to their prospective Commanders and pass on the offer. The meeting was adjourned and a second meeting was set for September the fifteenth when the Congressman was set to return from a meeting in Seoul.”
Sam pushed forward. “What happened at the second meeting? Why did it fail?”
“There never was a second meeting,” she said.
“Why not?”
The Secretary of State took in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Because on September 1, 1983 United States Congressman, Larry McDonald, a representative from Georgia, was on Korean Air Lines Flight 007 from New York to Seoul, via Anchorage, Alaska.”
Sam swore. “That Flight was shot down over the Sakhalin Island, wasn’t it? I was only a kid, but I remember how angry my father had gotten. He was certain the Soviet Union was responsible.”
“Yes.”
“Do we know why?” he asked.
“To this day, we believe the Soviets genuinely believed it was a spy plane. We know a Soviet Su-15 interceptor, near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan, shot it down under the auspice of Flight 007 flying through Soviet prohibited airspace. What we don’t know is whether Konstantin Chernenko, who was already becoming concerned that Mikhail Gorbachev couldn’t be trusted, had planned the attack after discovering Mikhail Gorbachev had sent one of his own men to have a secret meeting with Congressman Larry McDonald. And what Robert Cassidy couldn’t work out was whether the attack was perpetrated by the U.S. or the U.S.S.R – either way, he decided it was the final sign, he needed to disappear so he could finish what he started.”
“He wants to send America and Russia into the Dark Ages?” Sam asked.
“No. He wants to send the entire planet into the dark ages. He wants to return us to the days of Eden when we were simple hunter gatherers. He thought he was working towards resetting the world to the way it was before electricity. He was a devoutly Christian man, who followed the Old Testament implicitly. He had originally become a scientist to challenge religion, but instead found the Old Testament to have all the answers. Why not send the entire world back to the dark ages – to a time without digital money, without computers, to an Eden where man simply had to work to gather food and live with nature?”
“And we let him get away?”
“Ronald Reagan was his greatest advocate, but after Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down, Robert Cassidy disappeared. In an attempt to locate the island before it was too late, Reagan authorized exercise Able Archer 83. It ended on November Eleven 1983
– and Robert Cassidy hasn’t been seen since.”
“So then what’s stopped Cassidy from completing his Project?”
“Power, he needs more power to produce the sort of energy he requires to create a large enough radio-wave to effect the Van Allen Belt and send the entire world into the Dark Ages.”
“What was he after?”
“He’s looking at something more powerful than a nuclear bomb – he needs to utilize a thing called a Higgs Boson particle. And to do that, he needed someone with access to the Large Hadron Collider. That’s why he took the passengers off the Antarctic Solace, he needed just one person from it who could build him what he wants.”
“Alexis Schultz!” Sam’s mind cleared suddenly from the fog of misperceptions.
“Yes!” Margaret looked surprised. “How did you know she was aboard the Antarctic Solace?”
“Because she was the only person left on board when I reached it seven days ago.”
“Christ! She was there when you found it! Why didn’t you say? Where is she now?”
Sam grinned. It wasn’t every day he got to genuinely see the Secretary of State pleased about something. “On board the Maria Helena, why?”
“You left her alone?” She looked horrified.
“Yes, Genevieve’s there. Why?”
The Secretary of State stood up to move. “Because right now she’s probably the most dangerous person alive.”
Chapter Sixty-One
Genevieve was dicing vegetables in the kitchen of the Maria Helena. She’d developed a unique range of skills in life, but cooking had come naturally to her even before she started her apprenticeship under a three hatted French sous chef. Tonight she wasn’t cooking anything so difficult. Instead she was preparing a multitude of nutrient rich vegetables and diced bacon for minestrone soup. She’d already decided it was precisely what Sam and Alexis needed after the troubles of the past few days.
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 2 Page 44