Night Talk

by George Noory

  Ali came back to the car with the tablet in a box. As she unwrapped it, she told him that they were in a wireless hotspot for the Internet.

  “Ethan may not have the actual files on the flash drive. NRO national security files will be huge. He probably hid them somewhere in a cloud. In that case, I’d expect him to have a link to wherever he hid the files on the flash drive. It may take hours to find the file and access. Maybe days. Maybe the rest of our lives.”

  “Why?” Greg asked.

  “Ethan had the ability to crack complex programs and protect them. God only knows how many levels of encryption we will hit.”

  “God only knows how much time we’ll have to try and access the file before Mond finds us and sticks garden hoses in our mouths.”

  “Does what?”

  “Waterboarding.”

  Nervous energy drove Greg out of the car while she inserted the drive into the tablet to check on its content. He walked around feeling uneasy, even antsy, ready to boil over and confront her.

  The story she fed him about innocently passing on the name of a secret project to Ethan had never set right. She said she wasn’t a hacker—yet she could hack into the internal security files at the NRO, one of the world’s largest and most secure spy agencies.

  He didn’t have a problem giving her a motive for leading Ethan on. If she was a hacker, she probably had the same insatiable urge to crack into the project as Ethan had, but didn’t have Ethan’s talent for doing it. Even if Ethan did the actually cracking, if she was in on it with Ethan, why didn’t she have the file or at least have some notion as to where it was?

  He did believe the reason she gave for contacting him. If she had been connected to the theft of a secret file and didn’t have it and was frightened that she would get arrested at any moment, getting it back to the government or at least finding out what was in it would be high priority.

  Greg also didn’t think that she was faking her concern about being arrested. She was scared for sure. And his gut was telling him that she was more heavily involved in whatever Ethan had been up to than she claimed—but not involved enough to have the file. Could she be working for Mond or some other federal agency? What do the cops call it when they get a suspect to work for them? Turning them? Hooking her onto him to get him to lead her to the file? If that was the case, they—whoever they were—would be unpleasantly surprised to find out that he actually didn’t have the file.

  He thought about making up an excuse to get her out of the car and leave her standing on the street, but couldn’t go through with it. He didn’t completely believe her so he didn’t totally trust her, but he also wasn’t ready to dump her when it might mean throwing her to the wolves—not to mention that if he abandoned her to Mond’s tender mercies, she would reveal the car he was in and that Franklin had supplied the car and phone.

  He had to consider whether he was misjudging her, too. He recognized that she was reserved and was not being completely open with him but he didn’t know if that was because she was instinctively cautious with others or if she had something to hide. Probably both, was his call.

  A frown and puzzlement on her face brought him back in.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I got by a layer of encryption and I’m into one that will maybe take me an hour to crack, but I’m sure I’ll be able to do it. I’ve seen the type of encoding before.”

  “We need to find somewhere to hide out while you work on it.”

  She shook her head. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What?”

  She stared at him, the wheels in her head turning. She looked away for a moment before she came back with an answer. “It’s too easy.”

  “You said it could take an hour.”

  “That’s the point. No security program Ethan would use could be broken in an hour. But the program on the flash drive let me break into step one in minutes and I’m not near as good as Ethan and most crackers. And I recognize the encryption class used for the next step and I’m sure I’ll be able to crack it.”

  She shook her head again. “This isn’t how Ethan would do it. If he did something you thought was easy, you would soon find that you were in a digital maze and play hell trying to find a way out. This just doesn’t read like Ethan. It’s like looking at a signature to see if it’s genuine, and it’s not his.

  “You have to consider something else. Why would Ethan encode a file he prepared for you? He knows you’re not into computers, knows you couldn’t break even the simplest encryption. So why would he bother putting any encoding on access to the file when he knows you wouldn’t be able to break it but that any mid-level hacker could easily crack?”

  “It’s a setup,” Greg said. “That’s the feeling I’ve been having in my gut while you were working on it. Everything has been too easy. Ethan’s mother welcomed us in without blinking an eye despite the fact she had already been visited by Mond.”

  “As if she was expecting us.”

  “Right, as if she was expecting us. And directs us to the girlfriend who conveniently has a flash drive in her cat litter. Remember what his mom told us—they even X-rayed the walls and cereal boxes? Think they would have left cat litter untouched?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They’re not stupid. I’ve heard of searchers taking toilets off the floor to see if something is hidden in the pipe underneath. They would have checked the cat box.” He banged his head with his palm. “I should have thought about it. The cat litter was clean. Hell, it was cleaner than the kitchen counter. And we didn’t see a cat. I’ll bet she doesn’t even have a cat.”

  “But why would Mond set us up with a flash drive containing false information if they believe we already have Ethan’s stuff?”

  “It may not be Mond. It may be someone who knows we don’t have whatever Ethan stole.”

  “The black ops Franklin mentioned? But what good would it do to give us a useless flash drive?”

  “To track us.”

  “My God, you’re right. Let’s get rid of this damn thing.” She rolled down the window to toss the flash drive and he stopped her.

  “No, that makes it too easy for them to figure out that we ditched it. Let’s find another way.”

  He spotted a bus approaching a stop on the street next to the mall parking lot not far from where they were parked.

  He jerked the flash drive out of the tablet and slipped out of the car. “I’ll be back.”

  He was waiting at the stop when the bus arrived. He went aboard and immediately flopped into an empty seat.

  “Fare,” the driver said.

  “Oops.” Greg slipped the flash drive in the crack where the bottom seat met the back. “Wrong bus.”

  43

  He got out of the bus and hurried back to the car.

  “What now?” Ali asked.

  “There’s someone else that factors into both Ethan and Rohan. A UCLA professor, Carl Murad.”

  “How does he fit in?”

  “He’s the one who supervised the sleep study which Rohan said he’d been abducted during. He’s also a skeptic and debunker of anything paranormal, from Bigfoot to E.T. He claims stories of abduction come out of movie watching. I’ve had him on my show several times to give another view and we always end up butting heads. He simply rejects all incidences of paranormal encounters without bothering to deal with facts. Some experiences are contrived, but others need to be investigated and some need to be thoroughly investigated when no cause was discovered other than the contention that it was a paranormal event.”

  “What’s his connection to Ethan?”

  “Rohan. He had something going with Ethan. I think Rohan was using him to hack into Murad’s computer system.”

  “You think Rohan was behind the NRO hacking?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m sure he and Ethan had something going. Rohan had an obsession about Murad. He believed that the professor ran the sleep study to provide drugged people to aliens so they ca
n be examined. He called Murad a whore master for aliens. He made that accusation in his books and talks over and over, so it’s no surprise if he hired Ethan to get into Murad’s system for evidence.”

  “With Rohan running around accusing Murad of conspiring with aliens, it sounds like fertile ground for a defamation of character lawsuit.”

  “Murad claims suing him would have just given Rohan free publicity and another platform from which to hurl accusations. Rohan once told me he’d make a deal with the devil for a peek inside Murad’s computer.”

  “Ah, you think Ethan did it.”

  “I’m leaning that way, plus it’s a little more in line with what we’re dealing with. Lately Rohan had kicked his attack on Murad up a notch, claiming he was getting proof from an unimpeachable source showing that Murad was working for an entity that sought world control.”

  “That unimpeachable source being the file Ethan was cracking?”

  “It seems to fit. There’s something else, too. Rohan knew Ethan had died shortly after it happened.”

  “How did he find out? Could he have been there? Saw it?”

  “I had a phone message from him shortly after Ethan died. He lives in Marina Del Rey, said he used a neighbor’s phone because he was worried that his was tapped. I think he was telling the truth. That means someone told him, someone who was at the scene.”

  “The killer?”

  “I don’t know. He got the word somehow. But I’d like to find out what Murad knows about Ethan. I’m only going to find out if I talk to him.”

  “You’re going to risk calling him?”

  “I was thinking more in terms of a cold call.”

  He started to pull out and she said, “Wait.”

  A black SUV came by with a white van following behind it.

  “It’s used,” Greg said, referring to the SUV. “Not something the government or rogue ops would use.”

  The vehicles continued in the direction of the bus.

  He pulled out of the parking lot and drove the other way.

  THE McMINNVILLE UFO PHOTOS

  Paul and Evelyn Trent lived on a farm about nine miles outside of the town of McMinnville, Oregon. On May 11, 1950, at about 7:30 p.m., Mrs. Trent was feeding her animals when she saw a large, metallic-appearing, disk-like object in the sky. It was heading in her direction and moving slow.

  Mr. Trent was in the house and she yelled for him. He came out and also saw the flying object before going back inside the house and getting a camera. He snapped two pictures of the UFO before the object left the area.

  Like other pictures portraying UFOs, the Trents’ pictures are not without their controversy, but unlike others, their pictures and they, themselves, have passed considerable scrutiny by skeptics, and their photographs are generally accepted as among the most telling shots of a UFO ever taken.

  Their pictures are viewable at Wikipedia and the McMenamins UFO Festival site (ufofest.com).

  44

  As Greg drove toward UCLA, Ali asked, “How are we going to waylay Murad? Wait for him outside a classroom?”

  They had already confirmed with a call to his home that Murad was on campus supervising a Saturday research project.

  “Not a good idea. It would put us in the campus a long way from a getaway car we’ll need in case Murad starts shouting ‘Murderer!’ and yelling for the campus police. Considering the way violence is happening at schools, half a dozen people would pull out guns and start shooting. Even if we got away alive, it would cause a lockdown and we’d have every police agency for a hundred miles gunning for us. Not that they’re not already.”

  “Thanks for reminding me how weird the world has become. Getting shot at a mall or school doesn’t sound paranoid at all to me.”

  “I’m paranoid enough to have you keep the motor running as I get out of the car to lie in wait for Murad.”

  “Then we need to lure him into the parking lot.”

  “I think I have it. He drives a classic Mercedes. On his author’s book cover picture he’s sitting in it wearing sunglasses and a beret. Something about the picture made me dislike him even more.”

  They drove around the faculty parking lot nearest to his office until they found a classic Mercedes. Being the only one in the parking lot, it had to be Murad’s car by default. Decades old, it looked like it just came off the showroom floor.

  “Murad treats his car better than he treats people,” Greg said.

  Ali called the psychology department secretary to report that her car had made physical contact with the professor’s car in the parking lot.

  “It’s just a small scratch,” she told the woman who answered, “on the door. I’m sure he won’t even notice it.”

  She hung up and told Greg, “You’re right about the car. She said when she tells him I’ll be able to hear his scream from the parking lot.”

  Ali was parked on the street out of sight as an obviously agitated Murad hurried to the faculty parking lot. He found Greg waiting for him.

  “It’s okay,” Greg said, “it’s a false alarm.”

  “I see. You’re being clever.” Murad’s hand went to his side pocket.

  “If you pull out that phone, we won’t be able to talk.”

  “Sorry, but my wife is waiting for me. I was just going to let her know I’ll be a little late.”

  A lie, of course. “You can call her afterwards.”

  Murad shrugged. “Fine. From your tense body language, I suspect this won’t take long. What did you want to talk to me about that’s important enough to put up such pretense and an ambush?”

  Murad had broad, heavy features, a flat nose and cheeks, thick lips, a boxer’s cauliflower ears and a bad complexion. He combed his unruly hair with his fingers only because he believed wild hair added to his intellectual persona. Short, stumpy, like a doctor who knew he saved lives, he radiated impatience and arrogance without even having to open his mouth to tell you that he was too intelligent to have time for mere mortals.

  “Rohan is dead,” Greg said. “So is Ethan Shaw.”

  He raised his brows. “I understand Mr. Shaw left a provocative dying declaration about you. It would seem that people associated with your show have an unusually high mortality rate. Should I be worried?”

  “I’m the worried one. Rohan said he spoke to you. Those were just about his dying words.”

  “He was a crazy bastard. Excuse me for speaking ill of the dead, but the fact that Rohan has died doesn’t wipe away the harm he’s done in his lifetime. That he was besmirching me with his dying breath comes as no surprise.”

  “How much does being murdered redeem him?”

  “He can burn in hell for all I care.” Murad smirked. “How he got headfirst from a balcony to a street below apparently is something that the authorities want to discuss with you.”

  “You must have an inside track on their sudden deaths. Neither Rohan’s nor Ethan’s deaths are being reported on the news.”

  “One of my former students keeps me informed. He’s with the police. But now that you’ve waylaid me, is there something I can assist you with? Frankly, I’m very busy.”

  Murad pulled the phone out of his pocket and pretended to check the time.

  Greg said, “Rohan called you.”

  “Oh, yes, one of his usual rants. I change my number periodically but he has someone hack into phone company records to get the new one. And the call came through identified as my wife. Childish. Ditto for hacking into my computer.” He tapped his forehead. “Anything I have to hide is all up here.”

  “You might try aluminum foil to keep out probes from satellites. What was he ranting about?”

  “The usual, of course. He wanted me to talk to him about controllers, the grays, snakes, cockroaches from the beyond, whatever the kooks who claim to see them to get their fifteen minutes of fame are calling the things they imagine are controlling the world. He said he finally has the proof that I’m the procurer, whoremonger, quisling, whatever label he w
as pinning on me at the moment, for alien entities taking over the world. He said that that crazy old woman from the UFO program is going to help rat me out.”

  He raised his eyebrows and smirked again. “I have to confess, if I had a choice between aliens light-years ahead of us and the miserable human beings of this polluted planet, I’d sell out.”

  It was the sort of over-the-top assertion Murad liked to make during his speech circuit.

  “He had Ethan Shaw hack you?”

  “The hacker could have been Satan herself for all I know. I don’t really care. There was nothing to get from my computer except poorly reasoned student papers and the well-reasoned bad grades they received. You know, you haven’t done the world a favor by providing an outlet for weirdos.”

  “I let you on the show. As for my callers who have seen, heard or want to talk about the strange and unusual, things that seem preposterous at one point of time in history often end up as the gospel later. People like you who deny solid evidence that we have had visitors remind me of the cardinals who refused to look into Galileo’s telescope for fear they wouldn’t see heaven.”

  “That’s not historically correct.”

  “That’s okay, it perfectly describes the attitude of self-serving ignorance that was used then and is still used to batter down anyone who dares ask questions that others find sacrilegious. There are unimpeachable sightings and encounters that get swept under the carpet because someone doesn’t want the facts known. Anyone who has the courage to speak out gets ridiculed.”

  “Ignorance cuts both ways. Rohan tainted an important scientific study of how sleep and dreams shape the mind and body because he had polluted his own mind with one recreational drug too many. I worked hard on that project and he made it a joke and got rich and famous doing it.”

  Murad hadn’t done badly himself, running around demeaning and ridiculing people.

  Murad glanced at the time again. “I’m afraid that’s all the time I have in which to enlighten you. Besides, the way things are going in your life, standing next to you I might get hit by a meteorite.”