by Jerry Ahern
Few “citizens” knew the Secret Service Division had actually been created on July 5, 1865 in Washington, D.C. to suppress counterfeit currency. Chief William P. Wood was sworn in by Secretary of the Treasury Hugh McCulloch. In 1894, the Secret Service began informal part-time protection of President Cleveland.
Following the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, Congress directed the Secret Service to protect the President of the United States. Two operatives were assigned full-time to the White House. In 1908, the Secret Service began protecting the president-elect. Also, President Roosevelt transferred Secret Service agents to the Department of Justice. They formed the nucleus of what would later be the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Permanent protection of the president began with statutory authorization to protect the president-elect in 1913. In 1951, Congress passed legislation that permanently authorized Secret Service protection of the president, his immediate family, the president-elect, and the vice president, if he wished it.
Protection remained a key mission of the United States Secret Service; the Secret Service would provide protection for the president, the vice president, other individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President, the president-elect, the vice president-elect, and their immediate families. That protection extends to former presidents and their spouses, except when the spouse remarries for a period of not more than 10 years from the date the former president leaves office and their children of former presidents until age 16.
They also protect visiting heads of foreign states or governments and their spouses traveling with them, other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States, and official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad. Within 120 days of a general presidential election, they protect “major” presidential and vice presidential candidates as well as their spouses.
As defined by statute, that means those individuals identified as such by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee consisting of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the minority leader of the House of Representatives, the majority and minority leaders of the Senate, and one additional member selected by the other members of the committee.
Up until a few days ago, the workings and mission of the OSS weren’t particularly relevant to Shaw; then, he went to work for them and began to realize the system had a lot of complications and inefficiencies. However, making changes wasn’t going to be easy; bureaucracies were like that. Tim Shaw was professional enough to realize that and street cop enough to know changes were needed. Telling somebody that “your baby’s ugly, and your stuff is broken,” however true, was not the way to ingratiate yourself to the bosses, particularly when you are the “new kid on the block.”
Shaw had long accepted the adage that “your most favorable employee is the last one you hired. That person will ask one question no one else will, WHY?” Now, Shaw was the last one hired; his lack of indoctrination into “that’s the way we’ve always done things” gave him a fresh perspective.
Chapter Nine
John Rourke knew the world had been different in 1952 when the Cold War was at its coldest and the House Un-American Activities Committee was looking for communists under beds. Newspaper accounts from that time covered the “discovery” of UFOs, and he had been privy to CIA records that showed him more. Few people knew it, but as far back as 1956, the U.S. Air Force had a couple of Cold War-era plans to build two round, vertical take-off and landing aircraft that could only have been described as “flying saucers.” One disk-shaped craft was designed to reach a top speed of Mach 4 and reach a ceiling of over 100,000 feet. The Air Force had contracted the construction of the craft to a Canadian company, Avro Aircraft Limited in Ontario.
One report concluded that the flying saucer would work as designed. “It is concluded the stabilization and control of the aircraft in the manner proposed—the propulsive jets are used to control the aircraft—is feasible and the aircraft can be designed to have satisfactory handling through the whole flight range from ground cushion takeoff to supersonic flight at very high altitude,” the report stated. “Additional tests to completely substantiate this performance are shown to be required,” the report noted.
UFO sightings were being called in around the country on almost a daily basis up to and including Air Force pilots reported being chased by flying saucers. The sense of dread was turning to frenzy, and the CIA decided something had to be done.
The deputy head of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, H. Marshall Chadwell, and others in the CIA were fearful the Soviet Union was developing a secret weapon based on the “flying discs” that the Nazis had been developing in the last months of the Second World War. One of their engineers, 31-year-old John Frost, was studying the “Coanda effect,” named after Henri-Marie Coanda, who had said that a turbojet would not only provide thrust by sucking in air, but it could also create a vacuum above the wing and thereby produce extra lift.
Frost’s research was both dynamic and in almost total secrecy. His goal was to develop a vertical takeoff and landing VTOL craft; his company’s management had been overjoyed when the first flights were moderately successful. The Public Relations Department designed brochures to capitalize on the aircraft’s boundless potential as soon as the cloud of secrecy was removed. It would be called the Avrocar, and it would spawn a string of civilian and military spinoffs. There was even an Avrowagon on the drawing board for the family of the future. Plans were being drafted for an Avroangel, an air ambulance that would zip to the scene of an accident and land on the spot and an Avropelican for air-sea rescues and anti-submarine warfare. But alas, the Avrocar became dangerously unstable at heights over 2.5 meters and after an investment of $7.5 million; the Defense Department killed the Avrocar in 1961.
What had always concerned Rourke was where the original concepts had come from. It was, at least in John’s mind, too radical a jump to write off as a result of “brilliant engineering and design.” The questions raised by Roswell and the seemingly quantum leaps in technology were, for John Thomas Rourke, tied together a few years later and answered on a frozen field when he was sent to investigate the crash of an unidentified flying object and saw the craft’s dead pilot.
Rourke had become convinced the technology Avro had been trying to perfect had not originated on Earth any more than the Vertical Take Off and Landing technology the Nazis had been working on the last few years of World War Two. However, all of that remained speculation because Rourke had been forced to destroy the craft to prevent its technology from falling into the hands of the Russian KGB.
Chapter Ten
Tim Shaw was a pragmatic cynic; while he knew coincidences rarely had a place in police work, he also knew that they happened. He was also fond of quoting Steven Wright, an American comedian from before the Night of the War. He had discovered Wright going through John Rourke’s cache of videos he had brought from his old Retreat.
Wright’s deadpan delivery of ironic philosophical one-liners fit Shaw’s personality. Wright was the guy who once said, “I woke up one morning, and all of my stuff had been stolen...and replaced by exact duplicates.” Another of his sayings was, “Borrow money from pessimists; they don’t expect to get it back.” Shaw called them “Wrightisms.”
Steven Drake, the senior attorney assigned to OSS, walked into Shaw’s office unannounced, resplendent in a suit that had to cost $3,000 and began questioning him. “So,” Drake said, “what are you doing?”
Shaw looked up from the mound of paperwork with a quizzical look, “And, who might you be?”
“I’m Drake, OSS’ lead attorney,” Drake said. Without an offer of a handshake, he sat down, not waiting for an invitation. “I want to know how much of a pain in my ass you’re going to be.”
Shaw sat there without a response.
“Let’s get the ground rules established right now,” Drake continued. “I have to review everything y
ou do before you do it; got that? I don’t need and won’t tolerate some upstart mucking up the works here. And by the way, I have a photographic memory.”
Shaw leaned back in his chair and took a sip of coffee and a deep breath; he didn’t have time for this crap. “Okay Counselor, here is a Wrightism for you, ‘99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.’”
“First of all, I don’t report to you. Second, I don’t report to you, and thirdly, I don’t report to you. Now, here is how the Rules of Engagement are going to work with me. If you want to speak with me, call and make an appointment. Provided an equally convenient time can be arranged, you may come to my office, or I’ll be happy to come to yours. Otherwise, the answer will be no.”
“If you have a problem with me, talk to me or talk to the Director. I’m sorry, but this meeting is now over. You will leave my office, or I will remove you. Here is yet another Wrightism for you, Sir, ‘Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don’t have film in the camera.’ You have set the tenure of our relationship; I regret that because from this point forward, if everything seems to be going well, I will assume I’ve obviously overlooked something. Get out.”
After a moment of intense stares, Drake stood, spun on his heel, and walked out slamming the door. Shaw took a sip of the cold coffee, looked around the office, and threw a Wrightism at the walls, “I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.”
Chapter Eleven
In her other life as Natalia Tiemerovna, a former Major in the Russian KGB, she had been surreptitiously adopted as a niece by General Ishmael Varakov after her real parents were killed by the KGB. After their deaths in a “road accident,” Natalia trained as a KGB agent, reaching the rank of Major by the beginning of the war. Married to the unpredictable and often exceedingly ruthless Vladimir Karamatsov—the head of the KGB in America—whom she eventually left after being beaten and otherwise mistreated, she developed a close relationship with Rourke and his family. Natalia’s favorite weapons were a silenced Walther pistol, an M-16, and a Bali-Song knife.
Today, as she often did, Natalia found herself thinking of her adopted uncle, Ishmael Varakov, an absolute warrior and the leader of the Soviet Occupation Forces in America. Varakov many times had also shown himself to be a patriotic, honorable, and reasonable Soviet soldier. He had, at times, helped John Thomas Rourke to stop some of the more extreme plans of the KGB.
Varakov was at his best spewing withering insults at one of his country’s intelligence assets known as Randan Soames. Soames had survived the Night of the War to become a person of importance in the remnants of the U.S. Federal Government; Soames was, in fact, the Commander of Paramilitary Forces for Texas and one of Samuel Chambers’ most trusted confidants.
Soames had been turned by the KGB who was blackmailing him because he was also a pedophile. Varakov had made it clear to Soames that, if he made the slightest error for any reason, Varakov would reveal him to the Americans. He also informed the man that, if he ever harmed another child and Varakov learned of it, Varakov would kill the spy by his own hand.
As it eventually turned out, John Thomas Rourke much later found himself capturing Soames. Rourke had the injured spy at gunpoint and promised him morphine with at least a limited chance for survival in exchange for the means to radio Varakov. Randan Soames’ pain was incredible, and he agreed to the deal, providing a radio. Rourke, however, had lied to him; Soames’ misdeeds could not be allowed to continue. As a perverted pedophile and a traitor to his own country, he had committed crimes both against nature and mankind. Rourke put an end to the story once and for all; he executed Soames both for his past crimes and in the name of final justice.
Varakov and John Rourke were hard men from different circumstances and different political systems, but Natalia had learned, in spite of their differences, she had loved both men; they were both heroic human beings. This lesson she had carried the rest of her life.
Natalia’s world had changed so much since her old life, now married to Michael Rourke the President of the United States; Natalia Tiemerovna Rourke was finding a challenge where one had not been expected. This First Lady status was both far more involved than she had expected, but it was also somewhat unfocused, undisciplined, and ill-defined. The First Lady of the United States, called FLOTUS, first of all is supposed to be the hostess of the White House.
Her uncle had told her once, “If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much room.” While the pageantry of her position was fascinating, the inactivity was choking for a person who thrived on activity and action. The night before, Natalia had read a report Michael had referred to him by the Department of Archeology and Antiquities. It dealt with a recent discovery at an older site that was now under reinvestigation.
Natalia, wearing a black casual outfit with her signature single-strand of natural pearls, found herself intrigued by the prospect of turning to the past in search of something to occupy her present—possibly even her future. She called Dr. William Sloan, the Geologic Anthropologist from Mid-Wake, with a question.
Sloan acknowledged, “Yes Ma’am, you are correct. There are some fascinating new discoveries at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey. I could send you a report and meet with you later today if you wish?” Natalia thanked Sloan and made an appointment to meet him at the White House after lunch.
The report arrived eight minutes later as an electronic transmission. It read:
The following core information was gathered from reports obtained from the Smithsonian Museum and other archaeological and religious reports dating back to the original discovery of Göbekli Tepe.
“Göbekli Tepe, which in Turkish means ‘Potbelly Hill,’ is a hot spot of archeological activity right now; it is located at latitude 37.476300 N and longitude 39.011000 E. NOTE: Göbekli Tepe is not far from the current northern glacial boundary.”
“The site had first been identified in 1964 in a survey conducted by Istanbul University and the University of Chicago; the theory had been the hill could not entirely be a natural feature probably and was the location of a Byzantine cemetery that lay beneath the hill. Early digs had located a large number of flints and the presence of limestone slabs everyone thought were Byzantine grave markers. It had been a Neolithic hilltop sanctuary and is the oldest known human-made religious structure. The site had most likely been erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BCE.”
“Unfortunately, the hill had been under agricultural cultivation, and literally, generations of local farmers had moved rocks and slabs placing them in clearance piles. The damage done to archaeological evidence can only be described as ‘impactful with much destroyed in the process.’”
“Early digs also began documenting the architectural remains of structures, and it was soon discovered there were T-shaped pillars facing southeast. Again, unfortunately many of these pillars had apparently undergone severe damage and destruction, presumably by the same farmers who had mistaken them for ordinary large rocks.”
“The site contains 20 round structures which had been buried purposefully or at least by the sands of time. Only four had been excavated. With diameters ranging from between 30 and 100 feet, each is decorated with massive, mostly T-shaped limestone pillars that are the most striking feature of the site. These limestone slabs, it was reasoned, had been quarried from bedrock pits located around 330 feet from the hilltop, with Neolithic workers using flint points to carve the bedrock.”
“One report states, ‘The majority of flint tools found at the site are Byblos and Nemrik points. That Neolithic people with such primitive flint tools quarried, carved, transported uphill, and erected these massive pillars, astonishing the archaeological world, and must have required a staggering amount of manpower and labor.’”
“The location had been rediscovered only a few years ago. It had been literally lost in antiquity for centuries following the Night of the War. Over the last two years, coordinated digs had been restarted and with new technology had moved forward rapidly. The figu
res on the pillars unearthed so far represent animals of all shapes and class, a literal ‘Noah’s Ark.’”
“Interestingly, Göbekli Tepe is located in the shadow of Mount Ararat where Noah’s Ark was said to have been left after The Flood. This leads to what we are now calling ‘The Noah’s Altar Theory.’”
“The Bible states that the very first thing Noah did when he safely landed was build an altar to God; Genesis 8:20 states, ‘Then Noah built an altar to the LORD.’”
“It is possible that Göbekli Tepe could be Noah’s Altar. This altar could be his work of praise to the Almighty God. What would such an altar look like? Wouldn’t it probably have animals carved on it? Isn’t Noah synonymous with animals?”
*****
Sloan arrived 15 minutes early for his meeting with Natalia. “Here is another ‘strange’ twist to the story,” he said. “We have determined that not only had Göbekli Tepe been abandoned and lost to history millennia ago, but it was also purposely buried by tons of soil carefully packed around the structures until everything was invisible to the naked eye. It was so important to that culture; they wanted to save it from invading hordes or other destruction, even if that meant loss. Whatever their final reasoning, our ancient ancestors had, without even meaning to, actually carefully preserved this amazing archaeological site for us. Otherwise, like so many other locations not so preserved, it would eventually have been reduced to rubble, and we may never have seen it or known about it.”