‘I’ll get on it in the morning,’ Rabinur promised. ‘What are you going to do next?’
‘We can’t question the pilot,’ Ethan replied. ‘He most likely believes us to be dead and I want it kept that way. I’ll need to speak to Jarvis though and I’ll need you to conduct the interrogation of the pilot, make it look like a homicide case: if he thinks he’s up for killing two Americans, and the government suspects the same, he might be willing to talk. Likewise he would have been paid to attack us, as would the crew who fitted the aircraft with live missiles, maintenance and so on. Track them down, and we’ll find out who was behind the attack.’
‘Got it,’ Rabinur replied. ‘We’ve got a secure link here to Washington if you need to use it.’
Ethan checked his watch: ten in the evening in Madagascar made it roughly five in the evening in DC. ‘Do it,’ he replied, ‘and no visual images, just audio.’
‘Okay, it’s this way.’
Ethan followed Rabinur to a small room that looked like a little library, with bookshelves and a wicker rocking chair. Rabinur pulled one of the books from the shelves, and the entire wall revolved to reveal a communications station replete with radio set and a telephone.
‘Very James Bond,’ Ethan said as he picked bits of mud and foliage out of his hair.
‘It’s a Cold War safe house,’ Rubinar replied as he sat down and switched on the communication panel. ‘The radio is state of the art though, untraceable as it runs direct through DIA satellites: no way to intercept the signal, and even if somebody could they would still have to break the encryption.’
‘Good,’ Ethan replied. ‘I want you to shut all of that off and make this a normal–sounding call, routed out of the city and not this safe house. Can you do that?’
Rubinar seemed surprised. ‘Well, yes, but why would you want to…?’ Then he got it, and smiled.
Ethan watched as Rubinar contacted the DIA Headquarters and was passed on to Jarvis in the ARIES Watch Room.
‘Jarvis?’
Ethan let Rubinar vacate the seat as he sat down and spoke clearly to Jarvis, hoping that his own voice carried clearly enough to be recognizable to his boss.
‘This is Agent Foxx, Madagascar Station, I’m afraid I’m here to report the loss of two agents in the field this afternoon, local time.’
There was a moment’s pause and Ethan felt he could almost hear Jarvis thinking thousands of miles away.
‘That’s truly regretful,’ Jarvis replied. ‘Do you have the names of the agents in question?’
‘Warner, Ethan,’ Ethan replied, ‘and Lopez, Nicola. We believe that they were killed during a routine investigation in the interior. We only have limited witness reports suggesting an attack by a Madagascan Air Force jet, but reliable intelligence is thin on the ground at this time.’
A brief silence this time.
‘I will arrange to have their next of kin informed as soon as possible,’ Jarvis said. ‘What is the investigative plan to find out who was behind this attack? You do realize that if this was indeed an attack by a Madagascan Air Force jet then this will become a national incident involving both governments and may be considered an act of war?’
Ethan smiled. Jarvis was well on the ball already and knew that any Madagascan government listening post would be hearing the radio chatter and panicking like never before.
‘We will endeavour to ask the government here to detain all personnel capable of flying the aircraft in question within the hour,’ Ethan replied. ‘Any injury that they might receive before we question them will likely be seen as government complicity in the crime, so either way we’re going to get to the bottom of this. Wherever it takes us, we’ll follow.’
‘Understood, Agent Foxx,’ Jarvis replied. ‘I’ll inform the Secretary of Defense of what’s happened, and we’ll brief the President in the morning. Let’s hope the Malagasy government do the smart thing and hand over the pilot behind this as soon as possible. I’d hate to think what would happen if the American people heard of the death of two US agents in the country and demanded military reprisals? Madagascar would cease to exist overnight.’
‘Precisely,’ Ethan agreed. ‘I’ll have Agent Rubinar contact the consulate first thing in the morning and find out what’s happening, and report back as soon as we know what the Malagasy position on this regrettable incident is. Foxx out.’
Ethan switched off the communication suite and looked around at Rubinar. ‘It’s all yours, Christiano. Find out what you can when they hand the pilot over and pass it directly to Jarvis on behalf of “Agent Foxx”. Whatever trail you uncover, we’ll pursue.’
Rubinar was about to reply when the sound of rattling pipes was followed by a screeched “For Christ’s sake” that echoed through the safe house as Lopez’s voice cried out.
‘Have you people never heard of hot water, damn it?!’
Rubinar sighed and headed off to the antiquated boiler somewhere else in the house.
*
ARIES Watch Room,
DIAC Building, Washington DC
Jarvis had only moments ago set the phone down after his mysterious call from Ethan Warner when Hellerman knocked at his office door and peeked in.
‘Boss, we’ve got something.’
Jarvis pushed himself up and out of his chair as he followed Hellerman through the Watch Room to his office, where Hellerman closed the door and pointed at the chromium sphere in the vacuum chamber. The scientist had brought the object up from the ARIES R&D department earlier that day.
‘I’ve figured out something about how this thing operates, and more importantly why.’
‘Go on,’ Jarvis encouraged.
Hellerman recounted something of the history of the device first.
‘You’ll recall that the first mention of Die Glocke, or “The Bell” in German, appears somewhere around 1937, when an object matching its description was described as having crashed into a Bavarian lake. Another sighting was made in 1945. Then there was another sighting in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, in 1965, this time of an airborne object that was witnessed by hundreds of citizens in the town and later covered up by the military. Both objects appear identical in their descriptions to the object that was first detected in orbit around our planet by Nikola Tesla in 1899.’
‘I know the history, Hellerman,’ Jarvis said. ‘Cut to the chase.’
Hellerman, enthused as ever, pointed to a monitor displaying historic events.
‘Well, each of the purported sightings and captures of these devices, referred to later as Black Knights, corresponds to major events in human history. The production of continental scale electrical signals by Tesla, the atomic bomb attacks on Japan that ended the Second World War, the Vietnam War and the first true operational satellite launches: each of these years seems to have triggered the appearance of one of these Black Knight, bell–shaped objects to have appeared on Earth.’
Jarvis frowned. ‘So, they’re responding to something?’
Hellerman nodded eagerly.
‘More than that, I think that they’re programmed to respond to significant events,’ he replied. ‘They’re orbital platforms and they’re designed to come down to Earth when certain events occur. It’s already been noted by many observers that the frequency of UFO reports increased dramatically during and after the Second World War.’
‘And it’s been noted by many that paranoia and fear also provokes rashes of UFO sightings,’ Jarvis countered.
‘Maybe, but here we have evidence that Die Glocke or whatever you might want to call it is a real object,’ Hellerman insisted, ‘and it came down recently due to further human activity on our planet. Maybe climate change or something.’
‘And how would it know to do that?’ Jarvis asked.
‘Because of its shape,’ Hellerman explained. ‘Die Glocke is a bell, a shape specifically designed to emit sound but one that is also particularly good at detecting those same sound waves. Our planet emits radiation, sound and so on across all freq
uencies on a daily basis and Die Glocke appears particularly well designed to detect those frequencies.’
‘I’ll need more than that to take this to General Nellis.’
‘I know,’ Hellerman agreed, ‘which is why you’ll need to understand what this sphere does. We’ve managed to crack some of the fluid dynamics after you suggested that the patterns in the sphere might correspond to a small–scale Coriolis Effect. It’s fearsomely complex, but combined with the shape of Die Glocke that we have on record from Ethan and Nicola’s expedition to the Antarctic, I’m pretty sure that what we have here is a form of monitoring device.’
‘Monitoring?’ Jarvis echoed. ‘Like a spy satellite?’
‘In a sense,’ Hellerman agreed, ‘although I can’t say that it’s designed specifically to spy on anybody. Apart from the signals that betrayed its presence to humanity in 1899, 1926 and more recently during our expedition, Die Glocke appears to be a mostly passive device: it reacts accordingly to a set of parameters that we’re still trying to identify. So far, we’ve managed to figure out the following: that Die Glocke’s signals corresponded directly to the experiments conducted by Nikola Tesla in Colorado Springs in 1899, to the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and to recent changes in the composition of Earth’s atmosphere that many believe are the product of human activity on the planet.’
Jarvis thought for a moment.
‘You think that it’s designed to respond to the emergence of technology,’ he said finally, ‘to the presence of intelligent life.’
‘Precisely,’ Hellerman confirmed. ‘More than that, I think that it also would have sent other signals out into the cosmos as that intelligent life emerged, as technology appeared and began to transmit signals into outer space, which we’ve been doing as a species for over a hundred years now. Because radio waves propagate at the speed of light, it is highly probable that any intelligent extra–terrestrial species on any planet within one hundred light years of Earth knows that we’re here.’
The room suddenly seemed oppressively silent as Jarvis considered the implications of what Hellerman was saying.
‘You think that such a civilization exists?’
‘It must,’ Hellerman said as he gestured at the sphere, ‘because we’re looking at something that is highly technical and could not have been built by human hands. Not only that, but at what I can only assume was a predetermined time these things started dropping out of Earth orbit so that we could collect and examine them. They’re out there, Doug, and they’re listening in on us. These devices didn’t fall from orbit by accident. They’re here to tell us something.’
Jarvis stared at the sphere for a moment longer. ‘So, if the Black Knight is the bell, the sensor, then what’s this thing for?’
Hellerman grinned. ‘It’s the data chip,’ he replied. ‘It records everything in three–dimensional quantum foam.’
‘Quantum foam?’
‘Yes, the tiny particles zipping in and out of existence in their billions all around us, patterns so complex that only fluid dynamics is capable of the variation in appearance required to record such vast quantities of data in a manageable form. Just like the 5D memory discs I was talking about, but immensely more powerful.’
‘Can we use it?’
Now Hellerman’s grin was as wide as a mountain range. ‘By altering the magnetic field around the sphere, we can input data and retrieve information relevant to that data. It’s just a numbers game, so if you input sufficient data regarding say, bank accounts, you retrieve the codes to those accounts in seconds because this device will run through every possible numerical calculation in the universe in a matter of moments. It is, in effect, a miniaturized universe of possibilities.’
Jarvis peered at the device. ‘So you could use it to hack the accounts of Majestic Twelve, freeze everything?’
‘Just give me the accounts and I’ll give you the access codes.’
‘I’ll send them,’ Jarvis said, ‘you send me the codes by return. Let’s keep this to ourselves okay? I don’t want to run to Nellis with something this big until we know for damned sure it will work.’
‘You got it,’ Hellerman agreed.
Jarvis’s cell phone buzzed. He retrieved it and answered, heard General Nellis’s voice on the end of the line.
‘Jarvis, we’ve had a report from Rome. Felix Byzan, one of Majestic Twelve’s members, has been found dead in his apartment. It’s a homicide.’
Jarvis gripped his cell tighter. ‘Mitchell.’
‘How the hell did he identify Byzan?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jarvis replied, maintaining an even tone, ‘but we’re going to have to find him and fast, or he’ll take the entire cabal down.’
***
XXVII
Ethan awoke to the dull light of another gloomy Madagascan dawn, thick fog banks rolling in off the cool ocean and the forested mountains draped in veils of ethereal mist. He dragged himself out of bed and padded to the open windows, then out onto a veranda that was damp and yet warm to the touch.
The entire village was silent, the hills and jungles steaming in the humid air and creating a scene that it seemed could have just as easily been seen a hundred million years before by dinosaurs and not by a DIA agent in the twenty first century. Ethan turned back inside and poured himself a coffee, boiling the water in an antiquated kettle.
Lopez emerged from her own hotel room a half hour later, apparently equally lethargic in the oppressive heat and humidity. Only the gentle breeze gusting in off the nearby ocean offered any relief.
‘You heard anything from Jarvis yet?’ she asked as she strolled in wearing shorts, sneakers and a loose T–shirt and flopped down onto a wicker chair in the corner of the lounge.
‘Ball’s in our court,’ Ethan replied. ‘Rabinur should be working the pilot of the MiG over by now, if our ruse worked. As soon as we have what we need we can get the hell out of here and back on the trail.’
Moments later, Rabinur knocked on the door to the hotel room and Ethan let him in. The agent hurried inside and shut the door behind him, excitement emanating from his every pore.
‘It worked,’ he gasped in delight. ‘The Air Force investigated the sortie the moment I contacted them and they sent the pilot over late last night.’
‘What happened?’ Lopez asked.
Rabinur took a seat on the couch, gesticulating wildly as he marvelled at the conspiracy going on right beneath the noses of the air force.
‘The mission sortie was a navigation exercise,’ he explained, ‘totally standard training for our pilots. However the aircraft was supposed to be unarmed, fitted only with fuel tanks. Somewhere along the line those tanks were replaced with munitions, giving the pilot the ability to attack the site in the forest.’
‘And us,’ Ethan reminded him. ‘What did the pilot say?’
‘The Air Force was unaware of the incident until the reports of blasts and fires in the jungle,’ Rabinur said, ‘which it was already investigating when somebody high up must have been informed of the radio chatter between our station here and Jarvis in DC. They already knew that they had a jet in the area at the time, and they folded the moment we showed up. As for the pilot…’
Rabinur opened a folder as he read from the contents.
‘The pilot was paid an undisclosed sum to carry out the attack. He claims that he was approached by two men who offered him the money a week ago, but he turned the offer down and refused to carry out the attack. He was intending to report the incident to his superior officer, but when he got home he found an envelope in his doorway that contained photographs of his wife and children. The two men returned the following day and made it clear that they wouldn’t offer the money again and that if he declined, his family would pay the price.’
Lopez frowned. ‘He could just be saying that in order to offload responsibility for the attack.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ Rabinur said, ‘so I got the names of the maintenan
ce team who fitted the live weapons to the MiG. Their stories matched identically: some happily took the bribe, but others refused and were subject to similar threats as the pilot.’
Ethan sipped his coffee thoughtfully. ‘And you’re sure that the air force was unaware of these events, that nobody higher up the chain was approached by these men?’
‘I’m not seeing anything that says there’s been a cover up,’ Rabinur replied. ‘As soon as the air force feared reprisals of any kind from the USA, they folded totally. We’re investigating the accounts and movements of a number of senior figures who perhaps could have orchestrated this, but we’re coming up blank right now. It looks like an outside job.’
Ethan nodded.
‘Which means whoever is behind it doesn’t have much sway with the government here,’ he said. ‘They targeted lower–level servicemen rather than trying to buy politicians. Did you manage to follow a money trail?’
‘Tried,’ Rabinur said, slightly deflated, ‘but it went cold at a shell corporation in the Cayman Islands. Maybe the team back at the DIA could figure it out but I’m stuck here.’
Lopez gritted her teeth as she looked at Ethan. ‘Back to square one again. We’re chasing our tails here.’
Ethan looked out across the jungles once more. The disease that had been placed out there had to have got there somehow. The only way into the interior was via the dangerous tracks through the jungle, unless an aircraft like the Icon A5 was used, or perhaps a similar design from which samples of the disease could have been dropped into the jungle.
‘There must have been a very specific time frame for all of this to have occurred,’ he said, thinking out loud. ‘If they planted the disease as a test, then they must have had a time limit before it had to be destroyed, before it got out of control.’
‘Agreed,’ Lopez said, ‘but if MJ–12 is behind this then why didn’t they just send one of their own aircraft to deposit and later destroy the disease? They could have avoided any contact with the Malagasy people all together.’
The Extinction Code Page 18