Sedona Conspiracy

by James C. Glass

  They took the elevator down to the reception platform at tunnel level. Two guards stood by a jeep. Davis led Eric to the jeep, saluted, and got in the driver’s seat. The vehicle jerked as Eric sat down, backed up, turned into the tunnel and sped for a hundred yards to a turnout on the left. They parked there, opened a metal door in red rock. Hot air rushed out at them.

  They were in a machine shop, a hallway separated from the shop area by a wall of transparent polymer. Several men were in the shop, watching work turning on mills and lathes. Beyond them was a wall flickering with the reflected light of an arc welder.

  At the end of the hallway were three doors, all with cardkey locks, otherwise unmarked. Davis chose the center door, ran his card through the slot of the lock, and opened it. A short hallway led them to a guard in a plas-steel-enclosed booth. Another guard, armed with an M-16, stepped into the booth behind him. Both men regarded Davis and Eric somberly until Davis had swiped his cardkey and punched in a sequence of seven numbers. There was a loud click, and a door adjacent to the booth opened up.

  They stepped into a room the size of a large closet. Another door was across from them, a red light blinking on a panel there. Davis closed the door behind them, turned to Eric. “Just for the record, if I’d changed one of the numbers I punched in back there, you would now be dead or dying.”

  Eric smiled back at him. “Nice of you not to do that,” he said.

  They waited a few seconds, and the light on the panel opposite them turned green. Davis opened the door, stepped aside for Eric to enter ahead of him.

  Heads turned when he entered. Four men sat at a console looking out through glass at banks of lights hanging from a high, rock ceiling. The men were all young, with hard, chiseled features. Two turned away after only a glance, but one studied Eric for a moment with startling, blue eyes.

  Eric and Davis stood behind the men and looked out on a bay half the size of the one housing Sparrow, but full of activity as they watched. Overhead cranes moved freight boxes the size of Humvees to flatcars on tracks. Men walked back and forth with smaller cargo pushed on hydraulic lifters, a large stack of boxes and crates awaiting their attention along the rock wall of the bay.

  “Another shipment just came in. It’ll be a while. Want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” said Eric.

  “How about you guys?” asked Davis, and tapped the shoulder of one of the men sitting at the console.

  “No thank you, sir,” said the man. “We must prepare here.”

  Not Russian, but Slavic, thought Eric.

  Davis brought Eric a foam cup of black coffee, and pointed out towards the bay. “We’re the only two Americans in here, now. We’re not allowed down on the bay floor, but you can see everything from here. Most of the people you see will be leaving soon. The portal itself is that entire wall on the other side of the floor.”

  Eric looked, but saw only a rough rock wall, floor to ceiling. “Pretty well disguised,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw one man at the console studying him, but the man looked away when Eric turned around.

  “There’s a large tunnel beyond the wall, but I have no idea where it leads to,” said Davis. “I don’t like admitting that, but it was all part of the deal to bring Sparrow in.”

  “This whole project must go far up the command chain,” said Eric.

  “At least Chief of Staff,” said Davis. “And all my orders come down through the Pentagon.”

  “Think it might go as far as the White House?”

  Davis shrugged. “Could be.”

  A line of men was now forming on the floor below them. A second line formed quickly, with men steering hydraulic lifters. The lights in the ceiling suddenly dimmed, and several red lights went on along the walls close to the floor. The cab of an overhead crane moved back to a wall, a door opened, and a man descended a ladder there to join the others.

  “Should be any minute, now. They all leave together.”

  The lights in the ceiling dimmed further. The men at the console were murmuring into their headsets, their hands moving over panels in front of them. If there were sounds in the bay, Eric couldn’t hear them through the thick window of the room. The floor was now in gloom, and though Eric’s eyes adjusted quickly it was now difficult to pick out individuals in the lines of men.

  The far wall suddenly glowed deep red, then orange, faint but distinct. Davis pointed, said, “The glow is a kind of protective barrier. I’ve been told it would be dangerous to touch the wall right now.”

  The effect only lasted seconds, the orange glow overwhelmed by a blue glare rising from floor to ceiling in rippling waves and lighting up the entire floor for one instant before disappearing in a blink, and where the wall had been was now inky blackness. The two lines of men marched straight into the blackness, the lifters rolling along with them. When they were gone, the blue glare descended again, a blinding thing. Eric blinked once, twice, and saw only rock on the far side of the floor. The ceiling lights remained dim, but he could see the floor was now empty.

  “Quite a show,” said Eric.

  “Sometimes I wonder if that’s all it is. Brown says it’s an electromagnetic door they’d like to develop here for their own profit if we can complete the Sparrow project with them,” said Davis.

  “Capitalism is contagious,” said Eric, but looked down at a folded piece of paper that had suddenly appeared on the floor by his feet. The men at the console had finished their jobs, pushed back their chairs to stand up. The man nearest Eric, the one who’d been glancing at him from time to time, leaned over, picked up the paper and handed it to him. “You have dropped this,” he said. In the low light, his blue eyes seemed violet in color.

  Eric acted by instinct. “Uh—thank you,” he said, and pocketed the paper.

  They all left the console room, Brown’s people and Eric behind Davis, turning in opposite directions in a hallway. “Where do they go?” asked Eric.

  “They have quarters near here. We don’t go there, either. They even have their own cooks,” said Davis.

  They went through two cardkey-controlled doors and descended in an elevator to a small bay filled with crates. An unlocked door led them into a corner of Sparrow’s bay, a few techs still crawling over the craft in the center of the floor. Dillon was still there with Hendricks, studying something in the flight manual.

  “Get that briefing to me. Keep it short,” said Davis, and walked back towards where they’d entered the bay.

  Eric told the others he’d been on a tour, and had to write a brief on the flight tests he wanted to make. Dillon and Hendricks gave up the table to him, and went away with the manual. The techs continued work inside Sparrow, disconnecting instruments used to measure heat flux earlier in the hour. Eric used a legal pad on the table, scribbled a few words, and pulled the folded paper from his pocket. He unfolded it, and a small photograph of a man was there. On the paper were words written in neat, block lettering.

  ‘The man in the picture is considered dangerous to our project. If he’s ever seen in the portal area he should be immediately detained and arrested.’

  It was signed ‘Mister Brown’.

  Eric looked again.

  The man in the photograph was John Coulter.

  Why am I not surprised? thought Eric.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  NEGOTIATIONS

  Light rain made the streets slick, but did not deter speeders. By a stroke of exceptional luck, Eric found a space in the little parking lot and darted into it. It was just after sunrise, but the Coffee Pot was full. A line of people waited by the door, others crowded in the adjacent souvenir shop.

  John Coulter was seated at a table in the back of the restaurant, and waved vigorously at Eric when he arrived. Eric sat down, shook rainwater from his furled umbrella, and put it on the floor beside him.

  “I bet people don’t even slow down when it snows here,” said Eric.

  “Not that I’ve noticed,” said John, reached over and shook Eric�
��s hand. “Lots of empty country out here. People like to get through it as fast as they can. Takes big city folks some time to get used to it.” He took a long envelope out of his briefcase, and handed it to Eric. “Here’s your contract, as promised. Don’t open it here. Read it at your leisure, edit as you please. If you don’t like the consultant fee I put in there, write in your own number. I’m easy, and it isn’t my money. My client expects the information and services he needs, and your loyalty in providing both. The contract is a formality, of course. It’s only for the eyes of the signers.”

  “And who are the signers?”

  “Yourself, my client, and I’ll sign as witness to your signature. My client’s cipher will be a scribbled symbol, since he must remain anonymous.”

  Eric paused to open his menu, and then said, “I understand why your client wants anonymity, but I have a problem with it.”

  Another pause of a few heartbeats, and Eric studied his menu.

  “And why is that a problem, Doctor Price?” said John softly.

  Eric looked over the top of his menu at John’s steady gaze. “I’m used to knowing who I work for, and what their motivation is for asking me to do what I do.”

  “This is private enterprise, not government. The motive is money, and recovery of stolen property. What more do you need?” John Coulter had a way of narrowing his eyes when he smiled, and it was not pleasant to look at.

  “I don’t like working with intermediaries. Orders have a way of being corrupted when they’re relayed by someone.”

  “I transmit my client’s wishes without corruption, Doctor Price. If I had ever made a single error he would no longer employ me. I could even be dead. You’d be less likely to get accurate information directly. My client’s use of the English language is quite poor, and I must translate for him.”

  “I speak Russian and Polish fluently, also German and French and others. Take your pick.”

  “Ah,” said Coulter, trying to look surprised. “I’ll have to mention that to my client, but it’ll make no difference. His identity must remain unknown to you.”

  So I tried, thought Eric. “My point is that it might become a problem if I’m ordered to do something nasty enough to require a surcharge. I don’t like people negotiating for me with the big boss.”

  Coulter hadn’t opened his menu, was studying Eric’s face as a waitress approached them with a silex of black coffee. “Why don’t we order, now? Perhaps an advance payment and a trial assignment would show our good faith before you sign anything.”

  They placed their orders, and the waitress went away. Coulter pulled out a business envelope bulging with content and heavily taped over the flap. He pushed it across the table to Eric. “Call it a retainer,” he said.

  Eric hefted the envelope. “Retainers are for services to be rendered in the future, so what is this for?”

  “Information, Eric. You are associated with the transfer and development of a technology that will have considerable potential on the open market. My client’s stolen product can control that market if development here is successful, but it seems there have been considerable problems with that. It has recently come to our attention that since your arrival several technical breakthroughs have been achieved. They have been achieved through your own insights and inspirations, far beyond what others have been able to do. Your talents are of interest to my client, and your knowledge of the project would be vital in his development of a commercial prototype. The project leader’s salary would make a federal pension look like pocket change, believe me. But to develop the prototype he needs information in complete detail about every breakthrough you achieve, as it happens. He also marvels at your recent successes. Any references you can give, or names of people who have made useful suggestions, would also be useful to him. We have gone as far as we can with the written materials you’ve had to work with. With your sudden insights, we know you are close to flight-testing. We want to know how you’ll be proceeding with that.”

  Coulter pulled a disk from his briefcase. “Use your home machine to make your reports. Put them on this disk, and erase the originals, and call me when you have something. My number is on the disk. Send nothing electronically. I want your first report within two days. If that seems too soon, then inspect the contents of that envelope.”

  Now Coulter handed him a key. “This goes to a postal box at the post office by the Y. When you’ve called me, put the disk in the box, and I’ll pick it up when I can. When you call me, all you have to say is that the package is ready, and hang up.”

  “I love drama,” said Eric. “Maybe we should adopt code names for ourselves.”

  Even as he said it, Eric knew he’d gone too far in antagonizing someone he already knew was not a friend.

  Coulter’s reply was soft, yet crisp. “I’m not trying to amuse you, Doctor Price. This is serious business, and people have been killed for working with us. The same could happen to you.”

  Eric’s face flushed. “Who has been killed?”

  “A man who was doing very much like what you’re doing now. You have essentially replaced him.”

  “Johnson?”

  “That was the name he used. He was murdered, you know. You were there.”

  “My, how you get around. I suppose Leon told you that.”

  “We have many sources, Eric.”

  “Whoever killed Johnson tried to kill me. You must know that, too. For all I know, your client arranged the killing and now I’m being set up for the same treatment.”

  “Utter nonsense. Johnson was our most valuable asset in the early stages of the project. We think military people killed him. They’re the ones you need to watch out for.”

  “Including Colonel Davis?”

  “We’re not sure about him. He’s an opportunist.”

  “And I’m not?”

  Coulter smiled. “You might be. You have to prove your worth to us, Eric. The envelope there is a token of our faith in you.”

  Eric smiled back, and pulled the envelope to his edge of the table. “Okay, I’ll have my report in your mailbox by tomorrow morning. Just remember that if something critical comes up, I intend to deal directly with your boss.”

  “My client,” said Coulter. “I’ll see what he has to say about that. He might even be willing to accommodate you.”

  “Fair enough,” said Eric.

  Eric pocketed the two envelopes, and a waitress arrived with their breakfast.

  * * * * * * *

  “You think it could be true about Johnson?” asked Eric.

  “No, but at this point I don’t trust anyone, past or present,” said Leon.

  They’d closed the office for the day, and sat at Leon’s desk. The envelope Coulter had given to Eric contained ten thousand dollars in crisp, one-hundred-dollar bills now arranged in five neat stacks. They’d read the contract together. “Nothing sinister, no specifics, more like a consultant’s contract,” said Leon. “I signed one just like it, but my offer was better. I guess he thinks my tastes are more expensive than yours.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “A week ago. We met for lunch. He’s been around town. Yesterday I saw his car in the parking lot at Nataly’s place. He was just sitting there. Didn’t you see him there once?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wonder if Coulter knows you’re seeing her?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. He seems to know everything else.”

  “Either that, or Nataly knows him. I don’t think I’d like that. I know you two are getting close, but I expect you not to share our little secrets with her.”

  “Of course not.”

  “It wouldn’t be safe for her.”

  “No threats are necessary, Leon. If she knew what I was really up to here, she’d probably run like hell.”

  “I hope so,” said Leon. “The other possibility, of course, is that Coulter is watching her. It might be part of checking up on you.”

  “I could ask Nataly if sh
e knows him, claim he wants to do some export business with me.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that. I want to trust her. I want to trust you, too, but you’re still not telling me things. Maybe some new orders from Gil would help.”

  “What things?”

  “Your new breakthrough with Sparrow. Davis had to tell me. He says you’re going to fly that thing. That’s major news, Eric, and I didn’t hear it from you. I’ve complained to Gil just this morning. Maybe he can clarify for you what our relationship is supposed to be like.”

  It would serve no purpose to tell Leon that Eric was following Gil’s orders in not telling him everything. “Okay, let’s see what he says. Are you telling me everything you know? For example, do you really think John Coulter is a lawyer for a big corporation, and if we help him he’ll make us rich?”

  Leon smiled. “He’s more of a business partner, maybe. He seems to be serious about the money.”

  “Tempting, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is. How about you?”

  “I guess I’ve risked my ass for my country for so long it doesn’t make any sense to sell out now. Coulter is no friend of ours, and he lies through his teeth. He tried to tell me Johnson was working for him, and was murdered because of it.”

  “Bullshit,” said Leon. “My office knew more about that guy than he knew about himself. His whole life was science.”

  “Yeah, but he was killed with a military weapon.”

  “Which you or I could buy on any street corner in any large city.”

  “So why would Coulter tell me something like that?”

  “To make you think you aren’t the first. Others have trusted him. You’re part of a team. I don’t know. I sure don’t believe him about Johnson.”

  “So we stop stalling about putting a tail on Coulter, find out where he goes and who he’s seeing. My feelings are getting nasty about this guy.”

  Leon raised an eyebrow. “Mine, too. Say, we’ve found something we agree about. Can we be friends, now?”