“And you think the public have an appetite for such things do you?”
Joshua was surprised at Fernandes' lack of interest at his tantalising offering. A paper man through and through, where had Fernandes' hunger gone, where was the spirit of free speech? Perhaps it was not pertinent to share his knowledge with Fernandes? What if his boss was incredibly part of the insidious plot?
“Sir, I'm taking extraordinary risks coming in here today and speaking to you like this, but it is my belief that I have information which if printed and distributed may possibly send a shock wave across the country and maybe the world. What I am trying to ask is...”
“The impossible.” Fernandes cut across the young reporter sharply.
“What you fail to understand Regan, is that I no longer have the final say around here anymore. The final copy is approved by Jameson and then sent to the production floor. It didn't matter if you uncovered the King has a penchant for sadomasochist orgies and had candid shots of him in his rubber suit and gimp mask. The fact is, that the show's over...”
“Bloody hell man, it's not, it's just that you've given up, conceded the match and long before time might I say. To hell with Jameson, Sir! I need your help to make a difference and you're possibly the only one who can...”
Joshua raised his voice at Fernandes who rose up like a puffer fish about to claim his superiority through sheer size. Even Miss Penny in the reception took a sharp inhalation of breath as he heard Joshua lose his rag.
“Now you just listen here...” Fernandes was about to deliver a parting shot just before his employee was ordered to clear his desk but Joshua did not even give him the opportunity.
“No, bollocks to you Sir if you won't grow a pair. This isn’t a game and my life is at stake with every minute that passes whilst I have this knowledge. Either you will help me or you won't, either way I have to do this. At the end of the day it comes down to the question whether the Messenger is capable of delivering liberation to the people of our country or not. We are at war, Sir and it is not with little green men.”
Joshua stormed out of the office not daring to look back or even turning to see the horrified look on Miss Penny's face on his exit. Slumping down at his own desk, he expected to be pursued at any moment or the phone to ring to receive his marching orders. A minute passed and he waited, breathing hard. A few more reporters ambled in but apart from the usual office banter, it was almost as if his transgression had not come to any event. Perhaps Fernandes had died of a heart attack through the shock of someone standing up to him? Perhaps even he might have been shamed into considering Joshua's plea?
Jameson and his assorted minions appeared at the office entrance from the elevator, their briefcases all matching government issue. The atmosphere was instantly tense as they strode through the room with an air of obnoxious authority. To Joshua's horror, on his way past Jameson stopped and turned to speak to the sweating, nervous reporter.
“Haven't seen you before have I?” He boomed. Joshua shook his head. He had previously had a habit of making himself scarce in his presence.
“What's your role here?” He continued his inquisition. Joshua had dreaded this part. He knew full well that his skill set was the last thing Jameson wanted to see at this institution.
“Showbiz correspondent.” A voice came from the distance much to Joshua's continuing amazement. Fernandes was stood behind Jameson, his face resembled the great bulldog inspired Churchill look. It was one of resilience and bravery.
“I told you Regan if that story isn’t on my desk by Friday then it's not happening, do you understand me? Fucking celebrity crap. Good for sales though, good for the common people of our great country!” Fernandes shook the hall with his resonant reprimand.
“If I were you son I’d get out there and start wearing some leather off those soles. You won't get nothing lazing around here!”
Joshua raised his eyebrows and jumped up from his seat. Clutching his case he acknowledged the on looking Jameson and hastily ambled from his desk to the elevator. With his finger shaking as he pressed the call button for the lift, Joshua grinned as he turned back to see Fernandes' eyes burning a hole in his back. Friday...this was one deadline he could not afford to miss at any cost.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
Fleming Island, Florida
January 4th 2021
Coffey drove down the narrow lane, his lights dipped. Creeping forward, he was thankful for the satellite navigation system which was provided by his CIA colleagues. It was after one in the morning and he had driven it seemed, all day. That afternoon he had made the four hour journey up to Jacksonville from Tampa but had had to deviate from the usual interstate 75 route due to checkpoints. The journey had stretched into more like five and a half hours and for every minute he was out on the roads, he felt insecure and vulnerable to recognition or capture.
His target in Jacksonville, Annie Sacker nee Letterman. Annie was the sister of Adam Letterman, the CIA operative who seemed to hold some kind of key to the whole drama but was annoyingly aloof both for the government agencies that sought him out and for Coffey who was after him for a very different reason.
Coffey was now headed towards a smallholding somewhere near Fleming Island which was several miles south of Jacksonville. The very fact that he was here could be labelled as a success of sorts. Letterman’s sister had been surprisingly forthcoming with information to the outlawed astronaut although it was not an easy encounter for anyone concerned.
Annie Sacker was a woman in her late forties, her husband had perished in a road accident not so many years back and her part in the tragic events was written all over her face and her body. Paralysed and wheelchair bound, Coffey could instantly tell that she had persecuted herself for many years and took the blame over her husband's death. As Chuck and Bradley had intimated, she had already been visited by numerous CIA agents earlier in the week who began on convivial terms then quickly became more aggressive, tearing through her house and property leaving no stone unturned in the search for her younger brother.
Coffey's arrival, although unexpected did not seem shocking to Annie. 'There are always two sides to every story' she often said with a charming wisdom. She invited the fugitive into her home despite his uncouth appearance and dubious reason for his presence. Coffey had trodden carefully. He was in no position to be giving away too much too soon. He did not yet know whether Letterman could be trusted or not. The fact that he was wanted even more than Coffey drew certain conclusions about the amount of potentially harmful knowledge accrued, but it was not wise to jump to conclusions.
The more Coffey spoke with Annie, the more relaxed he had felt in her presence and her confidence as he shared some of the details of his previous months ordeal. Annie was obviously a woman of some intellect but Coffey also detected a dreamer; at times she spoke and digressed at such a tangent, he had struggled to keep up. The mention that her brother might have discovered some kind of global conspiracy seemed to invigorate her. She obviously idolised her sibling and Coffey could tell that their relationship was not one separated by states but most likely by miles. Coffey quickly felt that she knew at least in part where her brother had taken refuge and had made an effort to convince her that he too was in the same situation and that together, perhaps they could work something out to ensure each other's safety.
It did not take more than an hour for Annie to confide in Coffey, what she had not in the bland suited agents as they rapped on her door. Writing an address on a scrap of paper she simply handed the note to Coffey with a timid smile and a assurance that he would do everything in his power to restore her brothers credibility and freedom. On leaving Annie, Coffey pondered on Bradley's description of the woman who stood before him. It was incredible to see how the strength and confidence of an individual could be stripped away so easily by tragedy.
On approaching the dark building which stood on its own at the end of the track, Coffey did not quite know how to play this. It was clear that Letter
man would be armed and trained in lethal force. Scared, isolated, even the most passive introductions could prove difficult. In who was Letterman’s' allegiance placed? Was he simply a simple soul in the wrong place at the wrong time or was there some deeper to uncover here?
In order to provoke as little suspicion or tension as possible, Coffey took the more unusual angle of driving up to the cottage at normal speed with his lights on and beeping his horn loudly as if to announce to the neighbourhood that he had arrived. It seemed a little odd but he figured that creeping up on the house in the dark would have ended with unfortunate circumstances. The house was lit inside but the drapes were drawn tightly shut, only the dim glow of the inner lighting escaped. Coffey stepped out of the car casually and raised his hands above his head briefly to show that he was not holding anything or packing any kind of heat. There was no obvious signs that he was being watched but if Letterman was here, then he was almost certainly hanging on Coffey's every movement.
Coffey stepped up the small flight of steps to the porch and rapped on the wooden door three times.
“Hello? Delivery for Letterman.” Coffey boldly voiced. The absurdity of his statement evident. It was nearly two in the morning.
“No one of that name here. Wrong address.” A muffled voice from inside bellowed. Coffey smiled.
“Yeah, it's true, it's a telegram from the Whitehouse.” Coffey almost enjoyed the coy game.
“Oh yeah? What does it say?” Came the reply after a long pause.
“It says to congratulate your hard work, you've won a free shuttle flight to watch the Prometheus effect first hand. Space sickness pills included in flight.”
There was a very long pause in which Coffey thought he might have played it a little more tactfully. There was a clunk from the door and it inch ajar allowing a stream of light to escape.
“Don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Who are you?” The voice was now clearer but no more steady or relaxed.
“Look, I'm a friend. If I wasn't you know you'd already be dead. Let's just say that I'm someone with some kind of empathy for your ongoing day to day issues. Someone you need to talk to and vice versa.”
The door opened fully. A young lean and tanned looking man stood there in a pair of faded jeans and a silk shirt.
“Jesus, I know you?” Letterman said as he studied Coffey's face closely.
“As many have said before, we're the ones that steal the limelight and get the kudos. I think you'd better invite me in.”
Coffey sat at a pine dining table with accompanying chair set. The small cottage was rustic and homely but it was clear that it was not Letterman’s home.
“How did you find me?” The coy young man asked as he paced around the room with a shot glass of Bourbon in hand.
“Your sister told me you were here.” Coffey was leaving his CIA friends out of the loop for the time being.
“Jesus, Annie told you? You'd better not have...”
“Relax. She is perfectly fine. She is in good health, just a little pissed that your boys tore her house apart looking for you.”
“Yeah, that's their style.” Adam said looking deep into the golden liquor.
“So what's your story then?” Letterman asked, intrigued that Coffey was clearly also on the run.
“Oh, I would have thought you would know that, having your fingers in so many pies?” Coffey did not feel the need to volunteer information as yet.
“I guess you were a temporary solution to an ongoing issue huh?” Letterman said knowing full well that Coffey was not part of the Prometheus team.
“Very temporary although I've seemed to have outstayed my welcome.”
“I know the feeling.” Letterman added as he finally took a seat.
“So what do you know?” The agent inquired, wondering how much of his story to tell. Coffey paused and sipped his Bourbon.
“You're a CIA undercover operative. Highly skilled in the astrophysics department. You worked at Kennedy. You were drafted on to the Prometheus project. Now you're one of the top ten most wanted men in the western world. You don't seem such an offensive guy so I’m guessing that you've either fucked the First Lady or you know something that might be detrimental to the US governments... 'war' effort?”
Letterman leaned back and sighed, the weight of the world was surely upon his shoulders.
“Oh but I don't thinks it's all as simple as that...” Coffey added as he detected the stress upon the agents face. Letterman grimaced and confirmed Coffey's suspicions.
“There's no fooling you is there?” He said still unwilling to give up his position of secrecy.
“OK, so you were an agent at Kennedy working on an unrelated job and just so happened to impress, climb his way up the ladder to the most secretive project in NASA history, so secret that NASA don't even have records of the project. Funds, personnel, materials, all records diverted, rerouted through the system. It's clear to me that anyone working on that project would never have got there by accident or good fortune. They knew you were CIA that much is clear.”
Letterman smiled as Coffey attempted to hypothesise the series of events.
“So you're a whistle blower, an insider that got cold feet except that you haven’t blown the whistle yet, you're just taking a deep breath in readiness? Maybe you're waiting for the right time, maybe you're just scared of getting caught. You were certainly not so precious about the whole global scam to have stopped the project in its tracks before it ever came to fruition. I'm thinking that after the event, something pissed you off so much that you wanted some kind of payback. Maybe you didn’t realise that in order to carry off the illusion right, hundreds, thousands if not millions might die in the process? Maybe it's not about millions of innocent people, maybe it's about one? Someone close to you?”
Letterman looked around the room avoiding any kind of eye to eye contact with the rugged, bearded man opposite who had a magnetism about him and a charisma which might lend itself well to a military interrogator.
“You seem to have a lot of facts at your disposal. Surprised myself that you haven’t already exposed the whole plot? Letterman said snidely. He was right to wonder why Coffey was too bottling the facts.
“Oh I have contacts. One in particular that might be capable of breaking a story, but before that I need more tangible evidence and right now, I'm sitting opposite the most tangible evidence I have.”
“You know as well as I do that if we went public with any of this, we'd be hunted down and killed by every government employee and loyalist, we'd be dead before the scoop hit the printing room floor and you know it.” Letterman was obviously a man living in great fear.
“Well from what I can gather, you're pretty much there in terms of 'most wanted' anyhow. I guess maybe it will come down to how you want to play out the remaining hours of your life and just how guilty you feel about being part of the biggest act of terrorism the world has ever witnessed?”
“You're all heart Coffey.” Letterman’s face was already a picture of guilt and emotional torture, Coffey knew that he needed a release.
“OK Adam. I tell you what we're going to do here. Let's start from the beginning and work our way through this. I'm not about to leave you out to dry in order to get the information I need. I just need top names, material evidence, accounts, anything that's going to cause a big hit in the confidence of the general public in relation to this crazy alien fallacy. You've done pretty well avoiding the heavies so far, I'm not going to get in the way of that.”
Letterman nodded slowly and swirled his drink around the glass in contemplation.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
“You know there was never going to be an Adam Letterman: Lawyer, Adam Letterman: Postman. From the moment I sucked my first breath on this planet I was earmarked for Prometheus. I know you think that you're somehow in possession of the facts and you're probably real important in the whole scheme of things but baby, I can tell you you're nothing.”
Coffey smiled
graciously at the agents curious taunts, this was getting interesting.
“The one thing you have to understand from the start is this whole affair has been in the making for fifty years. You think it's clandestine and intriguing, I can tell you that you don't know and could not possibly know even a tenth of it.”
Letterman stood up to reach for another slug of whiskey.
“I know you were a military man. I'm sure there are things you know that would blow people's skirts up and you think nothing of it. I have lived my whole life with the burden of secrecy and lies. I'm fed up with it.
My father was a military man. A Colonel in the Army until he retired and moved into electronics, specifically for the aeronautics industry. He was essentially a good man but a man with passionate views about the state of the world, I guess he could have been a politician. I remember him shouting at the television during political debates. He was also the kind of guy who knew a million people. The phone would ring all day and sometimes all night. When he was home, he was out. My mom just put up with it, she was loyal and hard working of course.
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