GENESIS (Projekt Saucer)

by W. A. Harbinson

  Epstein raised his eyebrows. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Okay. I know. It sounds crazy. Anyway, Irving followed this up and discovered that in 1959, the same year Ruppelt performed his abrupt about-face with the revised edition of his book, Jessup informed Dr Manson Valentine – currently curator honoris of the Museum of Science of Miami and research associate of the Bishop Museum of Honolulu – that he had reached some definite conclusions regarding the Philadelphia Experiment and wanted to show Valentine his manuscript. According to Valentine, he arranged for Jessup to come for dinner on the evening of April 20 that year – but Jessup never made it that far. According to the Miami police, Jessup, some time before sixthirty that evening, drove his car to Matheson’s Hammock in Dade County, Miami, and committed suicide by attaching a hose to the exhaust of his car and running the hose inside the vehicle.’

  ‘Was the manuscript found in the car?’

  ‘According to the Miami police report, no.’

  Mary rubbed at her forehead and swept the hair from her eyes, then she stood up and visibly shivered and started pacing the room. Epstein watched her, entranced. She was lovely, and she was also a stranger to him, a shadowy figure in the moonlight.

  ‘That made Irving worse,’ she said. ‘He started to drink even more. He wouldn’t talk about it unless he was drunk, and then he seemed incoherent. Incoherence or craziness? I swear to God, I don’t know. He was obsessed with the idea that important UFOlogists were marked men, that they always ended up in a bad way, either crazy or dead. He pointed out to me that Ruppelt had had a lot of problems during his final few years and that those problems might have contributed to his heart attack. He reminded me constantly about McDonald’s last few years, about the Air Force’s fear of him, about his low standing in the eyes of the CIA and the ridicule heaped upon him by his fellow scientists. Then, on June 12, 1972, precisely one year after McDonald’s suicide, another proponent of the UFO phenomenon, scientist and inventor Rene Hardy, was found dead, apparently a suicide by bullet – and this made Irving paranoid.’

  She stopped pacing and stared around her, eyes blinking, slightly unfocused, then she bent down and picked up her glass and disappeared in the darkness. Epstein listened to the bourbon being poured, felt the tension within himself, wondered how they had all come to this… to this fear and confusion. When Mary returned, the glass already to her lips, she drank and gazed around her again and then sat down, her legs crossed, her hands shaking.

  ‘Irving had problems sleeping. He started pacing the house each night. He would get up and pace around his study, muttering under his breath. He often looked out the windows. He always looked up at the sky. He started saying that they were coming to get him… I never found out who they were. He’d been working on something special. He was very secretive about it. The more he worked, the more frightened he became and the less he could sleep. Then one night he was really drunk. I drank with him and we talked. I asked what it was that had him scared, and he attempted to tell me. It wasn’t easy for him. The drink had made him incoherent. He started babbling about his colleagues, about how the ridicule had increased; he said the university was putting pressure on him and he might have to leave. Naturally I was shocked. God knows, I was shocked. Then he said that he thought he was being followed, that he just had this feeling.’

  Mary shook her head and sighed. She seemed remote and somehow lost. She gazed at Epstein and he saw her brown eyes, the pain buried behind them.

  ‘There are lots of stories,’ she said, ‘about mysterious men who contacts people investigating UFOs. Since most of these stories come from the lunatic fringe, they’re rarely given serious attention. Nevertheless, they worried Irving. He told me that in 1955, during that famous UFO flap, Dr Jessup had been called in for an interview at the ONR – the Office of Naval Research in Washington, DC. There it was explained to him that one of his books had been mailed to the chief of the ONR, Admiral Furth, and had subsequently been examined by both the ONR Special Projects Office and the Aeronautics Projects Office. Precisely what was then said between the ONR and Dr Jessup remains unclear, but according to Irving, Jessup started having severe personal problems from then on – and those problems led directly to his suicide… Crazy, yes? Well, I thought it was crazy. No matter: the story fascinated Irving and fitted in with his theories.’

  She had another sip of bourbon. The clock ticked on the wall. Epstein thought of what the police of chief had said… something about melodrama.

  ‘Irving thought he was being followed by three men,’ Mary said. ‘He had seen them in a car, outside the house, outside his office, and he felt that they were coming to get him and take him away. Of course, I didn’t believe a word of it. I put it down to his illness. I just thought that all those stories about mysterious, nameless visitors, men usually dressed in black, had sunk into his subconscious and mixed in with his increasing paranoia. But Irving was adamant. He couldn’t let the subject go. He talked about how a lot of the UFOs were described as being surrounded by a glowing, plasma-like cloud; about how the USS Eldridge had also been described as disappearing within a luminous green cloud; about how the Bermuda Triangle and the Devil’s Triangle are on approximately the same line of longitude and how many of the airplanes and ships that were lost in those areas were often described as disappearing in similar clouds. Irving thought there was a connection. He thought Jessup had found the connection. He thought that the disappearing airplanes and ships were tied in with the UFOs, and that the Navy might have stumbled onto the truth through the Philadelphia Experiment. Irving also talked a lot about McDonald, about Edward Ruppelt and Rene Hardy, about how too many reputable people had come to a sticky end – and about the mysterious men in black who harassed UFO witnesses, often claiming that they were from the CIA. All of this scared Irving. It made him pace the house at night. Then, just a few days ago, Irving read about Chuck Wakely… and that final bit of news was too much for him.’

  ‘Chuck Wakely?’

  ‘Yes. Chuck Wakely was a young Miami pilot who almost lost himself in a luminous cloud above the Bermuda Triangle. He was so shaken by his experience that he started to investigate the whole subject – writing about it, lecturing about it, appearing on TV and radio, and generally digging up a lot of old bones. A few days ago Chuck Wakely was shot through the window of his apartment in Miami, reportedly while working on his research. The motive and assailant are still unknown.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ Epstein said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Mary said. ‘But that coincidence didn’t particularly help Irving. In the end he just thought of the men following him – and became paranoid.’

  Epstein leaned forward, feeling cold, slightly unreal, his gaze drawn to the moonlight in the garden, to the stars in the night sky. What could he say? What could anyone say? The story was too bizarre to be accepted and contained by mere logic.

  ‘What was Irving working on?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mary said. ‘That’s what frightens me most. I went through his study today and couldn’t find a damned thing.’

  ‘No papers?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But he must have kept a file!’

  ‘He had a file as thick as War and Peace, but it’s disappeared.’

  Epstein sank back again, feeling colder, disorientated, the fear creeping inexorably over him and making the silence sing… Death. Suicide. Careers broken and good men lost. He thought of Irving in his car in the desert, of McDonald and Hardy. Suicide by bullet. Or carbon monoxide inhalation. Suicide and murder and madness: an inexplicable catalogue… Epstein had to know the answers. There was nothing else left to know. He grew old and his time was running out and that invited obsession. Yes, that was the word.

  Obsession : the only word. It was what had taken hold of them all and then driven them ruthlessly. Epstein sighed and leaned forward again, his stubby fingers interlocked, his knuckles forming a broken white ridge that displayed his great tension.

 
‘A strange story,’ he said.

  Mary chuckled bitterly, shook her head and looked away, then raised the glass of bourbon to her lips and had another sip.

  ‘That’s the story,’ she said eventually. ‘That’s my legacy from Irving. God knows, it’s too inane to be true… but that’s what it came to.’

  She drank deeply of the bourbon, let her head fall back and gasped, her tormented eyes focused distractedly on the ceiling and seeing nothing at all. Epstein watched her, entranced, thinking of days long ago, of when his own wife had been alive and they had sat in this room, feeling young and beyond the reach of time, their whole future before them. A sweet innocence had filled those days, had colored Epstein’s fondest memories; now that innocence lay shattered about him and left him with old age. His wife had died five years ago, Irving had killed himself yesterday, and here, in the timeless, moonlit silence, he and Mary were parting. All their dreams had turned to dust. Each possibility had reached its limit. What was left was a teasing, frustrating mystery that might yet make him mad. Epstein studied Mary carefully, saw the fading of her beauty, the spreading of her flesh, the falling breasts, the glint of gray in her black hair. Life approached and then withdrew. It bled away into the night. It was merciless, taking beauty and hope, leaving little to cling to.

  Epstein sighed again. He felt old and very tired. He stood up and gazed nervously around him and then stared at Mary. She was still in the chair. He saw the moonlight surrounding her. Her eyes were luminous and wet with rampant grief, and they tore at his broken heart.

  ‘It’s getting late,’ he said. ‘I’d better go. I’ll try to drop in tomorrow.’

  ‘No,’ Mary said. ‘Don’t drop in tomorrow. I’ll be packing tomorrow.’

  Her voice was flat and remote, a stranger’s voice, a chilling sound, and Epstein stood there and blinked and stared at her, not quite comprehending.

  ‘Packing?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, packing,’ she replied. ‘I don’t want to see you again. I don’t want to see anyone.’

  He almost sat down again, the shock shaking him, draining him, but instead he simply raised one hand and lightly stroked his beard.

  ‘It’s not you,’ Mary said. ‘It’s everything you represent. It’s the UFOs and their victims, Irving’s hopes and their destruction; and, most of all, it’s my fear that he might have been right. I’m too old for this, Frederick. I can’t live within these walls. I want to run from all his friends, from his work and his associates, and I never want to see this house again, to hear a knock on the door. I’m frightened, Dr Epstein. Irving’s fears are getting to me. I’m too weak to stay here and fight it, so I’m packing my bags. I’ll attend to the funeral. I don’t want you to be there. I’ll leave as soon as Irving is cremated, and I’ll never come back. Give me a kiss, Frederick. Do that and then go. Don’t talk to me. Don’t say another word. Kiss me once and then leave.’

  She raised her big brown eyes. They were stricken and wet with tears. Epstein felt a searing pain, a crippling loss, and then he stepped over to her. The darkness surrounded them, dissolved them and made them one. Epstein leaned down and kissed her on the cheek and then he walked from the house.

  Chapter Six

  The air-conditioning in the Fontainebleau Hilton, as in most hotels, condominiums and fleabags in Miami Beach, smacked the flesh with a refrigerated chill that stopped sweat in its tracks. Wilson stood in the lobby, glancing around him, gaze thoughtful, taking in the milling people, the WASP residents and tourists, not amused by the superfluous extravagance and inane conversations. He nodded curtly at Fallaci, who stood beside him, looking elegant, and together they pushed their way through the crowd and went up to the desk clerk.

  There was a mob at reception, all waving hands and shouting, drunk already and flushed with excitement, trying to sort out their room keys. Wilson stepped back, disdainful, thinking of how common they were, as Fallaci, apparently cool in his white suit, pushed his way to the desk.

  ‘Excuse me – ’ he began. The clerk raised a hand and brushed blond hair from his eyes, the eyes turning toward Fallaci, azure blue, opaque with panic, then returning to stare blindly at a man whose elbows straddled the desk. The man had short-cropped red hair, a blotched face, squinting eyes, a garish terry-cloth shirt on his large frame, a cigar between his lips.

  ‘No!’ he bawled. ‘You listen to me! You keep your crap for your hookers!’

  ‘Excuse me – ’ Fallaci repeated.

  ‘No fucking way!’ the big man bawled. ‘We’ve just been to the Ivanhoe, to the Bal Harbour on North Bay Causeway, we’ve been up and down that road, from Hallandale Beach to Lincoln Mall, and we haven’t been offered as much as a fucking john, and now we’re just goddamn tired of it. What sort of jerk-offs do you think we are? You expect us to sleep on the goddamned beach? What the hell do you mean, you’ve got a convention? We come here every year, bud!’ ‘I’m sorry, sir, but – ’

  ‘Don’t fucking “but” me, bud! I’m not here for a goddamned snow job. I’ve got a bus full of people, a fucking Eastern Airlines bus, and I’m not about to drive off again. Fuck you, bud. Where’s the manager?’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Fallaci said, very polite, very firm, taking the desk clerk’s jacket sleeve and jerking the elbow towards him, his tone of voice and steady, insistent gaze making the man take notice. ‘A Mr Vale,’ Fallaci said. ‘He’s coming to see Mr McKinley. Mr McKinley and I have just been for lunch and wondered if he’d arrived.’

  ‘Goddamned lunacy!’ the big man said. ‘Where the hell’s the goddamned manager?’ The desk clerk glanced at him, licked his lips, stared at Fallaci, looked down at his desk pad and whispered, ‘No, sir. There’s no message.’

  ‘Fucking madness!’ the big man exclaimed.

  ‘Excellent,’ Fallaci said. ‘Mr McKinley is in his room and when Mr Vale arrives he wants him to be sent up immediately. Don’t bother to phone.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the desk clerk said, hastily scribbling the details.

  Fallaci retreated, smiling politely at the desk clerk, watching the big man slam his fist on the desk and start bawling again, his passengers milling around him.

  ‘Well?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘He hadn’t arrived yet,’ Fallaci said. ‘I told the desk clerk to send him straight up without using the phone.’

  ‘Good,’ Wilson said. ‘Let’s go up there. Let’s see Mr McKinley.’

  Together they crossed the flamboyant, rococo lobby, passing ladies in bikinis and one-piece bathing suits, feet in sandals and clodhoppers, hair bleached blond and purple, piled high, hanging low, expensive bracelets on thin, suntanned wrists, rhinestone sunglasses gleaming. Wilson was not impressed, never had been, never would be, now just wanting to collect his man and then get out and leave Miami behind him. Nevertheless, he seemed part of it: silvery-haired, deeply tanned, his light gray suit businesslike. He might well have been a native of Broward County, just in town for the day.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ Wilson asked.

  ‘I said we’d just had lunch with McKinley. He’s going to send Vale straight up when he arrives. We won’t have any trouble.’ They took the elevator to the sixth floor, an extremely crowded elevator, the people noisy and in holiday mood: young girls in skimpy dresses, paunchy men in Bermuda shorts, the former giggling, the latter dabbing at sweat as the elevator moved upward. Wilson stepped out with relief, surveyed the corridor, the bland walls, then he made his way along to room 605, Fallaci trailing behind him.

  ‘This is worse than Las Vegas,’ Wilson said.

  ‘I’ve never been there, sir. Every year, I swear I’m going to go, but I haven’t made it so far.’

  ‘This McKinley,’ Wilson said. ‘You’re sure he’s never met Professor Vale?’

  ‘He wouldn’t know Vale from my mother. That’s a hundred percent.’

  Wilson nodded. ‘I hope you’re right. I’d rather not have anything messy. I don’t want any problems.’

  ‘This is it. 605.’

/>   They both stopped at the door, a white-painted door with gold embossing. Fallaci glanced at Wilson, saw the nod, and then pressed the doorbell. Obviously Vale was expected – they heard the footsteps within. The door opened without hesitation and McKinley stared at them. He was ruddy-faced, gray-haired, wearing slacks and a flowered shirt, a steely glint in the green of his eyes, no smile on his face. ‘Professor Vale?’ he asked, glancing from Wilson to Fallaci, his hand still resting on the door, as if preparing to close it.

  ‘I’m Vale,’ Wilson lied. He put his hand out to McKinley. They shook hands and then McKinley indicated Fallaci. ‘Who’s this?’ he asked bluntly.

  ‘My assistant,’ Wilson said. ‘Mr Fallaci. Do you mind? He’s clean.’

  ‘You said you’d come alone.’

  ‘My personal assistant. I’m sorry. But Mr Fallaci travels everywhere with me. He knows everything… Everything.’

  Wilson stepped into the apartment, brushing casually past McKinley, and Fallaci followed with a smile on his lips, a polite smile, remote. McKinley shrugged and closed the door, looking thoughtfully at Wilson, then he waved at the mock-Renaissance chairs and said, ‘Fine. Take a seat.’ Wilson remained standing. Fallaci circled the room. McKinley said, ‘You gentlemen want a drink?’ and headed straight for the bar. He was a big man, but muscular, clearly fit, his movements light. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure you understand: in this business we have to be careful; we have to know who we’re dealing with.’ He reached the bar and turned around. ‘The government watches us – ’ he began. His eyes flicked to the right, saw Fallaci, an upraised hand, and he cursed and tried to duck to the side and then knew it was too late.

  Fallaci’s hand chopped through the air, turned on edge, the fingers closed, a small guillotine that snapped McKinley’s neck with deadly precision. McKinley gasped and went down, his legs buckling, body spinning, and Fallaci stepped out and caught him in his arms before he cell to the carpet. It had happened quickly, quietly, without fuss, and the dead man now lay in Fallaci’s arms, body sagging, leg’s outstretched. Wilson stepped forward and examined him. McKinley’s chin lay on his chest. He had urinated in his pants and the stain was spreading out around his crotch.