Francis nodded slowly. “I don’t know, Mike. I promise I’ll get word to you once this is over and it’s safe for you to return home.”
“Not good enough.”
“What else can I do?”
“I’m coming with you.”
Francis shook his head. “Out of the question. For one, you have a family. I don’t know what I’m going to find in – where I’m going, but it’s too risky.”
“Really? That’s what you’re worried about? Not the fact that I might slow you down?”
“It’s a factor. I’ve been doing this for a long time, Mike. I have no doubt that you’re a good agent, but it’s not the same.”
“Bullshit. I don’t buy it. I appreciate your concern for my health, it’s very touching. But like you said, I’m a father and a husband. I don’t want the people I love just living some hand-to-mouth existence. Not as long as there is something I can do about it.”
“Is there anything I can say to make you change your mind?” Francis said.
“Yeah, you can tell me right now that the coast is clear and that I can take Susan and Josh home and not have to worry about anything. Can you say that?”
“You know I can’t.”
“Then it’s settled. I’m coming with you.”
Francis considered this in silence. When he finally looked up, it was with the faint trace of a smile. “Are you sure this isn’t just a ploy because you’d miss me if I was gone?”
“Fuck off,” Mike said, but he was smiling, too. “Besides, you’re not exactly a spring chicken yourself. I have a feeling you might need someone to watch that prized behind of yours before this is over.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Francis said.
“What did Mandy and Jess have to say?” Mike asked.
“They’ll be fine. I plan to come back for them as soon as I can.”
“When are we leaving?”
“In about fifteen minutes.”
Mike nodded. “Come on then, we better go say goodbye.”
Chapter 52
Aurora
Sunday 23 July 2006
0900 EEST
Mitch was standing on a dock, looking up at what had once been a Soviet nuclear submarine. She was over a hundred and twenty yards long and looked every bit as menacing as she had during her decade of service with the Baltic Fleet. Behind the conning tower two enormous hydraulic doors built into the top of the hull were slowly opening.
“I don’t know what to say,” Mitch said to the man standing next to him.
Aurora’s dockmaster, a young man in his early twenties wearing a navy blue jumpsuit like his own, pointed to the far side of the small subterranean lake where a large oil tank stood on a concrete platform. “This side’s for cargo; that one’s for fuel. We use a lot of it here.”
“Where the hell did you get it from?” Mitch asked, unable to take his eyes off the submarine.
“We bought it.”
“You bought a nuclear submarine?”
“Not exactly. This is a first generation Victor-class, built in the late sixties. She was retired in ‘82 after running aground. The Russians stripped her and sold her for scrap to a company in Norway. We found her sitting in a port in Trondheim. The reactor and turbine had been removed, of course, along with almost everything else.”
“And you rebuilt it?” Mitch asked. It was a stupid question, but the only one that came to his lips.
“From the ground up. I’m sure Captain Williams will let one of the crew show you around if you’re interested.”
Mitch was about to ask the next of a hundred questions he had when a man approached them and said, “Where do you want the generator, boss?”
Mitch watched as a large wooden box branded with the Caterpillar logo was pulled from the hold by a large crane on the dock and set down on the bed of a wide, and very futuristic looking, truck with a bubble-dome window. A hand tapped him on the shoulder and he turned around to see Sarah. She had changed out of her jumpsuit into jeans and a white blouse.
“Hey you!” she said.
“Hey yourself,” Mitch said. “What happened to the boiler suit?”
“It’s my day off. Well, it’s supposed to be. I thought you might like to visit the museum.”
“The museum?” Mitch asked.
“It should answer some of your questions,” she said.
The access road to the dock snaked around an outcrop of rock onto a concrete platform surrounded by a narrow channel of water that ran all the way around the perimeter of the cave. Beyond the two small bridges connecting the platform with the rest of the facility the ground was covered in lush green grass and trees. Set into the high, steep walls were three stories of windows and balconies that made them look like apartment buildings chiseled out of rough stone.
They reached the intersection and turned right across one of the small bridges into what looked like a small New England fishing village. Mitch had seen it the day before, but the wonder he felt as they passed first a barber shop and then a small convenience store, was no less intense. The sight was so out of keeping with the rest of the place. It looked like a Hollywood film set built inside a giant indoor studio lot. There was a small cinema currently showing The Da Vinci Code and Disney Pixar’s Cars, a clothing outlet and an English style pub called One Eyed Jack’s. Several people waved at them as they passed. A woman who looked old enough to be Sarah’s mother waived and Mitch found himself waving back, so surreal was the scene.
“Pinch me,” Mitch said.
“Why?”
“Because I feel like Alice in Wonderland.”
She smiled. “Wait until you see the museum.”
Aurora
Chapter 53
New York, New York
Sunday 23 July 2006
0330 EDT
“What the fuck am I looking at here, Jack?” Bosch said.
They were upstairs in the operations room. Marius had three news channels playing on three separate screens. On the first, a young female reporter was talking to the camera from the shore of a lake. Behind her in the distance the black tail fin of a large airplane was sticking out of the ground. A column of smoke rose from the wreckage, painting a sharp black line across the blue sky. The headline running across the bottom of the picture read: HIJACKED PLANE SHOT DOWN OVER US-CANADA BORDER.
The second screen was showing the chaotic scene on the edge of the runway in La Tuque. A motley and chaotic jumble of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances were scattered across the tarmac. The headline in this picture read: STATE DEPARTMENT PLANE HIJACKED IN QUEBEC.
On the third screen there was a picture of Amanda Hinsdale and Jesse Corbin above the words: MORISSON HOSTAGES STILL MISSING.
The three networks were shifting rapidly back and forth between the two stories.
“Jack?”
Jack seemed not to hear him. His eyes were fixed on the screen in the middle, where a Canadian police officer in a captain’s uniform was making a statement from behind a small podium, in front of what looked like the town hall.
“Jack, can you please tell me what the hell is going on?” Bosch said.
Marius looked at Jack, his eyes pleading.
“Please tell me this has nothing to do with us,” Bosch said.
Before he even knew he was going to do it, Jack had pulled his silenced nine-millimeter Beretta from under his left arm. Marius tried to scream but all that escaped his throat was a pathetic squeal. Jack pulled the trigger twice. Marius turned his head and stared in horror as Bosch sank to his knees and fell forward onto the floor.
“Help me move him downstairs,” Jack said, putting the gun back in his shoulder holster.
Marius didn’t move.
“We need to get him out of here,” Jack said.
When Marius still didn’t move Jack took his head in both hands. “Titov told me to do it. He wants the body out of here before he arrives.”
That got Marius moving.
“Take his feet,
” Jack said and knelt to roll Bosch over onto his back.
They carried him to the elevator. Marius moved like a man paralyzed by a concoction of fear and bewilderment. When they were inside Jack dropped the body and pushed the button for the basement.
They dragged the body down a long corridor, past the boiler room and into a small loading bay to a white van sitting in the far corner. Jack opened the back doors. “Help me get him inside.”
– – –
Ten minutes later, they were back upstairs.
“I need you to access the camera system and erase the footage from inside the elevator and the basement,” Jack said.
Marius nodded and sat down in front of one of the computers. When he was done he said, “I still can’t believe it. I mean, Carl? He worked for the director, didn’t he?”
“For two years,” Jack said. “It just goes to show you can never really know anyone.”
“When is Titov getting here?” Marius asked.
Jack considered the question for a moment. “Did you erase the footage?”
“Yes.”
There was a loud thump followed by a crash as the monitor in front of Marius slid off the end of the desk in front of him and fell to the floor. Jack put his gun down and lifted Marius’s head off the keyboard. There was no exit wound but the face looked distorted somehow. One of his eyes seemed to have ruptured from the inside and turned red. A single line of blood ran from his nose to his upper lip and began to drip onto the keyboard. Jack set the head down and put the gun back in its holster.
He hurried downstairs to Bosch’s office and opened the safe hidden behind an enlarged reproduction of van Gogh’s Portrait of Doctor Gachet on the wall by the desk. He removed four bundles of hundred dollar bills, stuffed them into his pockets and replaced them with several sheets of paper, including a map of the Baltic Sea.
Twenty minutes later Jack was driving the van across the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. On the seat beside him next to a German passport was a Delta Airlines economy class ticket to Zurich in the name of Dietmar Klein.
Chapter 54
Aurora
Sunday 23 July 2006
1000 EEST
Mitch was standing in front of a large, framed picture that Mike Banner would have recognized. But unlike the picture Mike had seen on Reginald’s computer, this one contained two overlapping images. One was a close-up of the ship, the other a computer generated graphic depicting Origin in a detailed outline. At the bottom of the frame a small brass plaque said: Origin – Voyager II, July 1979.
Sarah was standing next to him but seemed more interested in looking at Mitch than in what would arguably be the most incredible discovery in the history of the human race, and clearly also the biggest joke.
“So what is this?” Mitch said. “Some kind of art project?”
According to the annotation in the picture, the ship was supposed to be over twelve miles long. That was the distance from Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix to his parent’s house in Wedgewood Park, a trip that took twenty minutes in clear traffic and over an hour when it got busy. The idea that a man-made object – and there was a joke for you – could ever be that big just made the whole idea that much more ridiculous.
“What do you mean?” Sarah said.
“The picture of the giant spaceship,” Mitch said. “It’s an art project or something, right?”
She looked puzzled. “An art project?”
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s good. In fact it’s very good. I used to know a guy back in college who did a lot of digital stuff like this. He got a job at DreamWorks.”
Sarah was looking at him, practically staring him down. Mitch felt the start of another hot flush crawling up his neck and into his cheeks. People in the real world didn’t stare at you like that because it was rude. To Sarah, who had apparently never lived in the real world, it was simply her way of showing him that he fascinated her. Or so he thought.
“Mitch,” she said, “what do you think all this is? I mean, what do you think we’re doing here?”
Mitch considered the question for a moment. “Well, I haven’t seen anyone making Kool-Aid, so I’m ruling out mass suicide.”
“Mitch, I’m being serious.”
“Okay, I guess I’m assuming this is a research facility of some kind. Something run by Skyline Defense?”
“Oh my god!” she said. “What the hell did Brendan tell you?”
“You mean General Eisenhower?”
“Yes, the chief. Didn’t he tell you anything?”
“Err… nope. Just that my being here wasn’t his idea. Actually, I got the impression he’d be happier if I was locked up in the dungeon.”
“What an asshole,” she said. “Mitch, the spaceship is real. Origin is real.”
As Mitch studied her face the smile on his own grew wider. “First of all,” he said, “you’re talking to a man who’s done a fair bit of reading up on the subject of space travel. Nice try, though. I’m pretty sure the Saturn five was the biggest thing NASA ever built. I’m prepared to believe there are a few feasibility studies kicking around for making something bigger. Like the Russian orbit assembly idea for a manned scout to Mars. But –”
“Mitch,” Sarah said, “we’re not building a spaceship. Origin isn’t a project. It’s been there for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. It’s why we’re here. It’s why we’ve built all of this.”
When she didn’t return his smile, Mitch let out a sigh of exasperation. “I can’t believe I’m actually having this argument, but fine. I’ve seen most of the project traffic at NASA. I’m not saying there aren’t things going on there they don’t want anyone to know about. There are. But assuming something like this was discovered, there is no way I wouldn’t know about it. I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’ve actually seen some of the things our government is trying hard to keep out of the public domain. There’s some pretty crazy shit, but on the subject of extraterrestrials it’s mainly a lot of old men sitting around talking about how UFO sightings and stories about alien abductions have a way of turning into budget increases. What I mean is, there are no little green men out in Nevada, but no one will ever come out and flatly deny it because popular superstition is a hallmark of the American psyche and the basis for much of what goes on in our political system.”
“Are you done?” Sarah said.
“Yeah, I’m done. I just –”
“Come with me,” she said.
She led him outside and across the bridge onto the road that looped around the back of the cave. They passed the east corner where a crew of about a dozen men in yellow jumpsuits were busy burrowing two large holes. Mitch was mesmerized for a moment by the sight of a tractor that must have been electrical because it made no sound even as it moved forward and scooped up a bucket full of loose rock.
“Where are we going?” Mitch said.
“There’s someone you need to meet,” she said.
The glass panes opened automatically as they approached the doors on the platform at the other end of the road. Sarah led Mitch into a round tunnel about forty feet long that ended in another set of glass doors, although these were tinted almost black. The Roman numeral “VIII” had been etched into the wall above them.
“Wait here,” she said. “I need to find him.”
Mitch waited.
When a quarter of an hour had passed and he was still waiting, he stepped closer to the doors and was surprised to see them open.
The room was at least a hundred feet across and appeared to be a perfect circle rendered in smooth polished concrete. The ceiling was a conical shape that began about twenty feet above the floor and rose steeply, ending in a wide circular shaft that led up into darkness. Directly below the shaft a pole about ten feet high jutted out of the ground. It was roughly ten inches in diameter and appeared to be made of solid steel. It arched out at the top, making it look like a giant golf tee.
A thick concrete counter protruded fro
m the wall and ran all the way around the room, broken only by the door behind him and an identical one on the opposite side of the room.
Mitch walked to the counter and examined one of the flat-screen monitors mounted to the wall above it. Below the monitor a pane of dark rectangular glass with a thin chrome frame was set into the counter itself. These workstations were duplicated at intervals all the way around the room. In fact the only things that didn’t appear to be a permanent fixture were the strictly functional brushed aluminum chairs sitting in front of each terminal.
Mitch walked to the strange metal pole in the center and examined it for a moment. He reached out and touched it with his index finger. It was as smooth as glass.
“Hello?” Mitch said. “Anyone here?”
There was no reply.
He waited another minute or so, then, unable to help himself, he walked back to the computer terminal by the door and sat down in front of it. The monitor was both larger and thinner than any he had ever seen. At the bottom of the screen the letters TSI were etched into the white plastic frame. He found the same logo on the glass pane on the counter. Mitch, who prided himself on knowing just about everyone in the computer business, had never heard of TSI.
Convinced he had been forgotten, Mitch decided it would be best to find someone and let them know where he was before the chief or one of his guards walked in and found him in violation of his parole. As he stood up his hand brushed the glass plate on the counter and a keyboard suddenly appeared in crisp, bright lines and characters of neon blue. When he looked up a cursor was flashing in the top left-hand corner of the screen.
– – –
He had no idea how long he had been sitting at the terminal, only that what he was seeing so captivated him that the rest of the world had all but ceased to exist. When someone spoke up behind him Mitch was so startled he almost fell off the chair.
Origin - Season One Page 28