Undisclosed

by Steve Alten

  Before she could wrap her fingers around Elizabeth Hull’s slender throat, the electrical circuits woven into her jumpsuit engaged, unleashing a ten second, 40,000 volt burst.

  When Jessica opened her eyes, she was stretched out on the floor.

  Elizabeth Hull leaned over her. “Council needs your help, Dr. Marulli, but there remains a few members among those in the inner circle who are a bit paranoid about allowing you access. It’s not just the threat of dealing with your mother; there’s also your fiancé.”

  “I’ve never said a word about my work to Adam.”

  “True. But now you’re engaged to be married.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me anymore … I quit.”

  “That option no longer exists. Anyway, in a few days your new clearance will give you access to hidden knowledge reserved only for a privileged few, and I promise, you’ll be over the moon. Not to mention a salary that more than compensates for respecting our code of silence.”

  “Money doesn’t compensate me for this torture.”

  “Oh please, don’t be so dramatic. So we kept you awake for awhile and hit you with the equivalent of a taser. Navy SEAL candidates endure far more for far less. Consider this a valuable conditioning exercise … an ounce of protection that ensures a pound of loyalty—and with it, your family’s safety.”

  * * *

  She heard no telltale rumble. One moment the tracks were clear, the next the Maglev train had simply appeared, the windowless seventy-foot steel bullet’s chassis riding above the tracks on a magnetic cushion.

  A side panel slid open. Jessica entered a plush cabin lined with rows of reclining bucket seats. The MP set her bags inside and left—she was the only person on board.

  A message flashed on a wrap-around LED screen:

  PLEASE TAKE A SEAT AND BUCKLE UP.

  She sat down in the nearest seat and snapped the belt in place—

  —the Maglev pulling two Gs as it accelerated effortlessly on a velvet cloud, its lone human passenger slipping into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  “Jess? Jessica, wake up dear.”

  She opened her eyes. The Maglev had stopped, its side panel open. Disoriented, she was not sure if she had slept ten minutes or ten hours.

  The dark-haired, blue-eyed woman seated next to her was in her mid-fifties, her face very familiar.

  “I know you.”

  “Actually, your mom knows me. Lydia Gagnon. I was one of Council’s inner circle of twelve who interviewed you.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Let’s call it Oz.”

  “I suppose that makes me Dorothy. Are you Glynda, the good witch?”

  “I like that … Glynda.”

  “Are there any wicked witches down here I should know about?”

  “Just one. And she’s married to the Colonel. We’ll discuss him later.”

  “Seriously, Lydia, where am I?”

  “Jess, you’ve been granted Cosmic Clearance, but it’s conditional.”

  “In other words, I’ll be working in an underground complex for the next six weeks with no concept of where I am.”

  “It’s not so bad. Up until now you’ve lived in a black and white world. I’m here to show you the colors of the universe.”

  15

  ADAM FOLLOWED INTERSTATE 64 west through Virginia, the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge Mountains accompanying him as he made his way through Rockfish Gap. Rising along the steep elevation, he was greeted by a breathtaking view which enticed cars to pull over (illegally) along the shoulder of the road to snap photos with their iPhones.

  A road sign at the highway’s crest confirmed he was heading in the right direction: Charlottesville–12 miles.

  He had received the message on his cell phone during his Friday morning staff meeting. The call was from Steven Greer.

  “Mr. Under Secretary, my bodyguard tells me you’d like a private get together. I can meet you at three p.m. on Friday; after that I’m busy for the next few months.”

  Adam already had plans; Randy had seats behind home plate for the night’s Nationals vs. Giants game. For nearly an hour, he debated the pros and cons of meeting with Greer before cancelling with his brother.

  Adam exited the highway in Charlottesville. He got lost twice on country backroads before locating the entrance to the Greer’s sixty-five acre farm. After being buzzed in at the gate, he followed a gravel road up to the two-story, five-bedroom house.

  He was greeted at the front door by the warm smile of a gray-haired woman in her early sixties. “Hi, I’m Adam Shariak. I’m here to see Dr. Greer.”

  “I’m Emily, Steve’s wife. Come in. I’m so glad you made it in before the fog; the driving can be treacherous. Steve’s in his study, getting everything ready for our group. Fortunately, most of them arrived at the hotel earlier this afternoon. Do you think you’ll be joining us?”

  Before he could answer, Dr. Greer emerged from the study, extending his hand. “Mr. Under Secretary, thanks for driving all the way out here on short notice. Why don’t we talk in my study. Em, can you get me at five? I need to meditate before our guests arrive.”

  Adam followed him into the twenty-by-thirty-foot room—part library, part office. Furnishings had been moved to the periphery to accommodate fifteen folding chairs which were set up in a circle around a Persian rug, the leather high-backed office chair reserved for Dr. Greer.

  “Are you comfortable in that folding chair, Mr. Under Secretary?”

  “Fine.”

  “So then, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m not sure exactly. To be honest, I feel a little bit like one of King Arthur’s knights, sent on an impossible quest to find the Holy Grail.”

  “The Holy Grail being …?”

  “A zero-point-energy device.”

  “Interesting. And who put you on this quest?”

  “Bill Clinton.”

  Dr. Greer threw his head back and laughed. “I’m sorry, but there’s a delicious irony to all this.”

  Adam told Dr. Greer about the changing of the suite door numbers and the invisible ink and flashcards.

  “Clinton really did that? With his access, you’d think he’d have used something from this century.”

  “The guy seemed pretty determined to deliver the message.”

  “The guy was president for eight years. If he really wanted to deliver the disclosure message to the masses, all he had to do was go off-script during a live State of the Union address, and the genie would have been out of its bottle. Like I said during my talk, presidents have become place holders. The real power is held by a secret cabal made up of high-ranking members of the Federal Reserve, four private banking cartels—who also happen to own four of the largest oil companies in the world—and defense contractors.”

  “Technically, that includes me … at least it did. I was managing director at Kemp Aerospace before they nominated me to be Under Secretary.”

  “No offense, but you’re a peon. We’re talking about guys like Dick Cheney—there’s your poster boy for the secret government; lots of blood on his hands. These guys don’t care, Shariak … they don’t care because they don’t feel. Caring about other living creatures is not in their algorithm; they’re immune to emotion. You think these ghouls want clean, free energy? They’re all about war and population control; they don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.”

  “In your talk a few days ago … you said you briefed Clinton.”

  “I said I prepared his briefing. Laurance Rockefeller delivered it. Laurance supported our efforts, but like Clinton, he felt it was too dangerous for him to personally pursue disclosure.”

  “Be honest; am I wasting my time?”

  “Probably. Don’t feel bad; it’s a question I’ve asked myself a million times.”

  “How do you even know these zero-point-energy devices are real? What if it’s all—”

  “They’re real. I have a close friend who is the third highest ran
king official at the Naval Research Lab; he told me he’s been inside the NRL’s secret vault and saw papers dated October 1954 that confirmed and referenced mastering gravity control through a bubble in space time generated by zero-point-energy We also have government and military witnesses who have testified about the existence of Alien Reproduction Vehicles which incorporate both anti-gravity and zero-point-energy technologies. Hundreds, if not thousands, of witnesses have seen them accelerating at thousands of miles an hour, only to stop on a dime and reverse directions. Then you have the occasional scientist who doesn’t need the reverse-engineering instruction manual; he’s made a breakthrough on his own. He knows if he tries for a patent, the Federal Government will confiscate his work. So he attempts to sell the device in secret, only the contacts he’s speaking with are all MAJI or CIA, or DIA, and he still ends up dead. Sadly, I’ve seen that happen several times.

  “But you yourself have never personally seen one?”

  “No, Mr. Shariak. The closest I came was when Bill Colby, the former CIA Director, had made arrangements to deliver one to me, along with $50 million in seed money … they killed him before that happened.”

  “No disrespect, but how do you know—”

  “According to investigators, Colby suddenly, and for no apparent reason, decided to go canoeing on the Potomac River at 8:30 at night. Nine days later the police found his body at a spot where they had already searched—nine days being enough time to hide the real cause of death from a coroner.”

  “If they killed Colby, why haven’t they gone after you?”

  “Oh, they have. The first time happened while I was staying at the St. Moritz Hotel in New York City. I was in town to meet with several VIPs about the Disclosure Project. At four in the morning, I suddenly started convulsing from a seizure brought on by a directional psychotronic weapons system.”

  “What exactly is a psychotronic weapon?”

  “It’s a high-end electronic beam which falls under the military’s Orwellian ‘mind fuck’ term of ‘Non-Lethal Weapons Systems.’ The head of this secret program is another sociopath named Colonel Alexander Johnston, also known by his nickname: Dr. Death. Using this faster-than-light EM pulse, Johnston attempted to forcibly extricate my soul from my physicality—it literally felt as if I was being microwaved from the inside out. Had they succeeded with the astral extraction, it would have killed me. Fortunately I knew how to fight back, having experienced something similar during my near-death experience as a teen, but it was still quite terrifying.

  “These EMP attacks continued every night for a week. One of the worst experiences actually took place during a congressional briefing … this was in April of 1997. The colonel decided that he needed to be at this meeting. When I refused he said, ‘Oh, I’ll be there anyway, Dr. Greer.’ He wasn’t there physically, but during the briefing I was struck by a pulsed electromagnetic energy wave which hit me so hard it nearly knocked me out.

  “Six months after these attacks, Congressman Steve Schiff of New Mexico and I both contracted skin cancer, and my assistant, Shari was diagnosed with breast cancer. Congressman Schiff had been trying to get the Roswell information out. All three of our cancers metastasized. Metastatic means that the cancer originated from a primary tumor somewhere else. And yet in all three cases, our oncologists could find no primary tumors anywhere.”

  “What do you suspect happened?”

  “I can’t prove it, but I’m convinced our cancers were induced electronically. At a subtle level of electromagnetism, you can transmute elements and transfer something from one place to another, infecting someone electronically. Dr. Death has apparently mastered this technique.”

  Dr. Greer cleared the emotion in his throat. “Shari and the congressman both died. My survival was a fluke. Our family had a golden retriever named Yami; the dog always stayed close to me when I was home. We must have both been hit at the same time; our veterinarian found a malignant sarcoma on the dog’s left triceps muscle and had to remove his leg. To this day, I’m convinced Yami absorbed enough of the intensity from the EM weapon to save my life.”

  “And they haven’t gone after you since?”

  “I’ve become a very public figure, plus I’ve created a ‘Dead-Man’s Trigger.’ If something happens to me, there will be hell to pay.”

  “This cabal sounds like something straight out of a James Bond movie.”

  “MAJI’s not all bad; in fact a silent majority among the cabal’s younger generation now believes zero-point-energy should be released. Unfortunately, it’s the hardliners—like the colonel and a certain former Vice President—who maintain order in the ranks by terminating people like Bill Colby. Fear goes a long way, Mr. Shariak.”

  “I know; I have my share. What I’d like to know is why Bill Clinton chose me.”

  “Clinton was just the messenger … a figurehead whose ‘personal aura’ forced you to take this quest seriously. I really don’t know why you were chosen. You’re not exactly someone who carries an impressive resume, plus you only have a Q clearance. Hell, my mailman has a Q clearance. You need Zebra or higher just to access the subterranean bases where these reverse-engineered technologies are being kept.”

  “The guy I met with before you—he said these energy devices are game-changers. No more poverty … no more pollution—”

  “Correct. Zero-point-energy essentially replaces jet engines, steam ships, internal combustion engines, gasoline, oil, public utilities, rockets, and paved roads. In the aggregate, you’re talking about several hundred trillion dollars of world activity; by comparison the entire U.S. budget is a mere three to four trillion dollars. But this isn’t just about money, Mr. Shariak, it’s about control. Free energy is a tide that raises every country’s boat. No more haves and have-nots; every nation on equal footing. Do you think the United States or Britain want that? How about Trump’s pal, Putin? Do you think he wants to lose control over his neighbors to the south? Whether you believe it or not, we’ve mastered the technologies that will eradicate poverty, hunger, climate change, and disease, and we did it back in the mid-1950s. Only a bunch of rich oil oligarchs, bankers, military suppliers, and the top dogs at Goldman-Sachs don’t want the world to change; they like things just the way they are.”

  Dr. Greer looked up as his wife entered the study. “Is it five o’clock already?”

  “No, but I’ve been listening to the weather report. A cold front is moving in. The highway patrol has closed the Interstate because of fog. I called the hotel but they’re booked solid, mostly with our group. The B and B’s too.”

  “What does that mean,” Adam asked.

  Dr. Greer forced a smile. “It means, Mr. Under Secretary, that you’re our houseguest for the night.

  16

  Subterranean Complex—Midwest USA

  JESSICA FOLLOWED LYDIA GAGNON out of the Maglev train. She was barely able to keep her eyes open, the nine-minute catnap doing more harm than good. “I can’t do this, I need sleep!”

  “That’s first on the list.” The older woman wrapped an arm around her waist, leading her across a deserted platform to seven pairs of elevator doors. “We’re going to check you in, order you a nice hot meal, then let you get a good night’s rest before we begin your orientation.”

  Lydia inserted her identification card in the security slot servicing the last elevator on the right, and then stood before a twelve-inch-square section of dark glass, submitting to a retinal scan.

  After twenty seconds the set of elevator doors labeled #7 opened, revealing an interior entirely different from the ones servicing the underground complex beneath Edwards Air Force Base.

  Larger than a freight elevator, the compartment looked like something out of a futuristic subway train. Fifteen one-inch-in-diameter vertical poles were anchored from the floor to the ceiling. Set in three rows of five across, each held a small plastic seat which swiveled 360-degrees around its pole.

  Jessica watched as Lydia mounted one of the seats so that she was
facing the pole. Swiveling around to face the ‘smart-glass’ mounted on the wall to her right, she said, “Display subterranean facility.”

  The voice-activated system illuminated a three-dimensional map of the complex, enveloped in a hologram. Six rectangular objects were moving through the grid like hamsters in a habitat, some traveling up or down, others racing laterally. The seventh elevator remained stationary at the bottom of the hologram at Level-9.

  “That’s us,” Lydia said, pointing to the car situated on the Maglev level. “As you can see, the complex has nine levels divided into twelve zones. These elevator cars can move horizontally as well as vertically—a necessity when dealing with the upper floors, which can run for miles in any direction. Our Cosmic Clearance allows us access to any compartment inside the facility; however it’s always best to use Elevator-7, which is reserved just for us. Now, if you’ll take a seat …”

  Jessica straddled the pole two rows down from Lydia and eased her weight onto the spring-loaded supporter.

  The doors sealed.

  She held on, her feet locating the chair’s foot rest as the elevator launched vertically straight up its shaft. Reaching Level-5, the car slowed to a steady crawl before suddenly racing east, pulling a quick Gee that sent both women spinning around their support poles.

  Jess held on, the butterflies in her stomach causing her to smile. A moment later, the car zagged to the south before settling at its destination and locking down, its doors opening to what looked like a hotel lobby.

  Lydia led her to a “smart desk” which was overseen by a woman about Jessica’s age, her blonde hair a shade darker.

  “Dr. Gagnon, good evening. And this must be Dr. Marulli?”

  Jessica gritted her teeth at the English accent. “You’re not from Mickleover, are you?”

  “Derby? Lord no, I’m from Kent.”

  Lydia smiled, knowing the source of Jessica’s angst. “Dr. Marulli, this is Kirsty Brunt. Kirsty sees to the needs of all us Cosmic Clearance crazies.”