Habitat Zero (Sam Reilly Book 15), page 15
Sam turned his attention to the sphere. On closer inspection, it wasn’t a perfect sphere. It was shaped evenly, but what appeared like a smooth globe of obsidian had some imperfections in the form of deep recesses and crevasses.
He focused on a large one near the bottom of the sphere. There was something familiar about it. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The recess looked like something he’d seen on a nuclear submarine.
To Dr. Smyth, he said, “Can you get a close-up picture of that opening, for me please?”
“Sure. I’ll see what I can get.” Dr. Smyth took a couple photos, zooming in as close as she could to the opening. She handed him the camera, “See if you can make anything of it.”
Sam stared at the image. His mouth opened in shock.
Major Marazzato glanced at him, “What is it? What do you see?”
Sam grimaced, fixing his gaze directly on the major. “James, we’re trapped on the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean, in a bubble not much bigger than the iron coffin of the last generation’s deep-sea divers. In all likelihood, there’s a very good chance we’re not going to make it to the surface again. You understand that, don’t you?”
Major Marazzato nodded. “Yes I do.”
“Good.” Sam met his eye. “That being the case, can you answer me something honestly?”
“Shoot,” Marazzato said.
Sam expelled a deep breath. “Is the sphere one of ours?”
Marazzato held his breath. “Of course not!”
“Are you sure?”
“Good God! Do you think we’d have even been allowed to dive if the sphere was our technology? Hell, the Pentagon wouldn’t have even let you investigate the Carpe Diem if it was going to lead you to their own secret technology.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Whoever that craft belongs to – if they are still alive - they’ve won the game. It’s not a game changer – its game over for the rest of us.” Marazzato balled his fists, as though he might actually win that sort of fight trapped inside a submarine on the seafloor. “Why are you so certain it’s one of ours?”
Sam turned the camera around so that all three of them could see the image clearly. It depicted an opening into the sphere. Despite its massive size, the opening was very similar to the lockout trunk of a nuclear submarine.
And at the bottom right hand corner, painted onto the hull, was the flag of the United States of America.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Dammit Major Marazzato!” Sam said, “How long have you known that this was down here?”
Marazzato bit his lower lip. He met Sam’s eye, and then expelled a deep breath. “Look. I found out about it forty-eight hours ago.”
“They knew about it and yet they sent us here anyway?”
He nodded without saying anything.
Sam asked, “Why?”
“Because they didn’t really believe it was true.”
“What was true?”
“That the sphere really existed.”
Sam tried to blink the confusion out of his eyes. “What are you talking about? They either knew about it or they didn’t.”
Marazzato frowned. “I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.”
“Bullshit!” Sam slammed his fist on the control panel in front of him. “It exactly that simple. We’re going to die down here because of you, so I think it’s fair that you at least let me know why?”
Marazzato nodded, almost accepting that it was a reasonable idea. “They’ve known about the sphere since the sixties.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “The sixties?”
Marazzato took a deep breath. “Middle of the cold war they found it floating in the Atlantic Ocean twenty miles off the coast of Chesapeake Bay.”
“A giant sphere with a diameter of a thousand feet washes up that close to Washington and no one suspects an attack?”
Marazzato raised the palms of his hands. “No. They had serious doubts it had come from the Soviets.”
“Really? Haven’t they ever heard of a Trojan Horse?”
“Apparently not.” Marazzato handed Sam the camera back. “And besides, I believe this already answers the question of who built it. The question now is, when was it built?”
Sam arched his eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that we don’t currently have the technology to build something like the sphere today. Certainly nothing in the US Navy. You said yourself that the dome that’s keeping the three of us alive is the cutting edge of deep water submersible technology, and it only has a diameter of under ten feet. Do you really believe we have the technology to build something as grand as the sphere?”
“So if the US Navy didn’t build it, who did?”
“Not who. We know it was built by us. That’s not in dispute. The door even has our logo.”
Sam persisted. “But you’re saying the US Navy didn’t build it?”
Major Marazzato sighed heavily. “No. I’m saying the US Navy hasn’t built it yet.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“You seriously think it’s come from the future?” Sam asked, without even trying to suppress his skepticism.
Major Marazzato shrugged. “You got a better explanation?”
“Yeah, I do,” Dr. Smyth said.
Sam grinned. “Well, don’t keep us all waiting in suspense, Dr. Smyth.”
“All right,” Dr. Smyth said. “I think it’s some sort of secret weapon being developed by DARPA.”
Sam considered that for a moment. DARPA stood for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense. They specialized in high tech defense research projects, many of them highly clandestine.
“It’s a possibility. Unlikely, but always possible.”
Marazzato shook his head, defiantly. “There’s no way they could build a structure of that magnitude to survive the crushing pressure of the sea at this depth. No way!”
“Maybe it wasn’t supposed to end up down here at all?” Dr. Smyth suggested. “Think about this for a moment. What if they were towing it somewhere and somewhere in the process, they lost control of the sphere. Or maybe it was on the surface and then sunk.”
Marazzato said, “That still doesn’t explain how it could survive the crushing pressure at this depth.”
“Sure, but what if these doors lead all the way through the sphere, meaning that by now it’s filled with water, equalizing the pressure inside and outside of the sphere?”
Sam gave that some thought. “In that case, the sphere would have no pressure difference to withstand. Yeah, it’s physically possible. Certainly, a more likely scenario than a time traveling weapon built by us from the future.”
“I’m not buying it,” Marazzato said, emphatically.
Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t be guessing much longer.”
“Why?” Marazzato asked.
But nobody answered him.
Because, a door opened from within the massive lockout trunk inside the sphere. A giant truck drove out the door on stainless steel caterpillar tracks. A single borosilicate dome covered the machine’s single occupant. The machine had two glowing headlights at the front, that looked like giant bug eyes. Positioned at the front of the machine was a large suction dredge cutter head, and a large storage container at the back.
“Holy shit!” Sam whispered. “Someone’s worked out how to mine at 36,000 feet.”
The driver met Sam’s eyes.
And a moment later, the deep-sea mining machine turned sharply, heading straight toward them.
Chapter Forty-Four
On Board Tahila, South of Guam
Elise opened the encrypted email.
It was from the Secretary of Defense, and had passed through a series of proxy-servers, designed to wheedle out any signs of tampering or eavesdropping viruses. She went through a series of standard checks to ascertain that the email was in fact legitimate and then clicked open.
A single page of words appeared.
The words were little more than gibberish. In addition to its array of digitally secure communication systems, the email retained a unique unbreakable code to be used for open communication. This one relied on a secret key cryptography to obscure its meaning. This type of code was a variation of the one-time pad – the only truly unbreakable code in theory. To decode the message, a listener had to have both the book and the key. Only in this case, it wasn’t just a book, but a complete works of books.
Elise opened a second document on her laptop.
This one contained digital copy of all of the classic works of Charles Dickens. Elise had very little direct communications with the Secretary of Defense, but when they did communicate it was as vitally important as it needed to be secure.
Traditionally, secret key cryptography employs a single key for both encryption and decryption. In this case, a message was sent by the Secretary of Defense using the key to encrypt the plaintext and send the ciphertext to the receiver. The receiver applies the same key to decrypt the message and recover the plaintext.
Because a single key is used for both functions, secret key cryptography is also called symmetric encryption. When using a cipher, the original information is known as plaintext and the encrypted form as ciphertext. The ciphertext message contains all the information of the plaintext message – yet isn’t in a format readable by human or computer without the proper mechanism to decrypt it.
Elise opened both the email document and the digital copy of Charles Dickens’s complete, unabridged, works.
She scanned the email, ignoring all letters, and searching for individual numbers only. They were scattered throughout the document.
She collected them and placed them together to form a date – 1854.
Elise then opened the table of contents, listing release dates of all of Charles Dickens’s books. Her eyes stopped on the only one released that year.
Hard Times, by Charles Dickens – 1854
The book focused on an unsympathetic look upon utilitarianism – an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number
Elise smiled, and wondered if the Secretary of Defense was hinting at something else to her.
She made a note, and then continued to decipher the code, by opening the document containing the book, Hard Times. She withdrew the key to the code from her pocket. Today was December 3 – thus she had to add the year, ignoring the first two digits, to the day’s date. So, 3 and 18 made 21. She then opened the book to page twenty-one. December was the 12th month, so every 12th letter on the page would be discounted.
Using the key, she then went through the painfully slow process of deciphering the code until the series of individual letters made a recognizable series of words.
In this case, those words provided a link to G-mail account and a password to access it. The account would have been set up just before the Secretary of Defense had sent the original message.
Elise opened up the email address and downloaded the single email sitting in the draft box.
Inside were a series of photographs taken from old Ivy League University graduation ceremonies dated 1961.
There are several black and white photographs. Each one depicting the graduating class from various Ivy League Universities. She ran her eyes across the university names – Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, they were all there. The best educations that old money could buy. Each photo had somewhere between twenty to fifty people, all with their matching names at the bottom in an index. A few faces, as many as five or six per photograph had been circled with a red pen. There was just one photograph that didn’t depict a graduating class. This one, appeared to be of an ocean. The photo itself was of poor quality, but seemed to delineate some sort of dark sphere floating on the surface.
Elise put the photos in a document and then read the email.
The truth needs to come out. Search the names, and pull the strings. Only you can put this all together.
And break the code to Habitat Zero.
Chapter Forty-Five
Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Pentagon
General Painter picked up the phone.
He had been expecting the call. It was going to go badly, he knew that now, but sometimes it was better to deal with the most painful duties first.
This one came from a secure line, direct from the center of the maze within the 8th Continent.
“General Painter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking,” he said, using his full title.
“Painter,” the man on the other side of the line replied, ignoring it. “We had a deal.”
“With my predecessor, not me.”
“All the same, a deal’s a deal, and you must come through with it.”
General Painter swallowed hard. “It was nearly seventy years ago. Hell, it was before I was born. You can’t seriously believe I’m going to go through with it now.”
“Seventy years isn’t that long really… just a blink of an eye when you live as long as we do.”
“Yeah, lucky you. I’m still not going through with it.”
“But you have to. The natives have revolted against me in the 8th Continent. You need to fulfill your part of the bargain. I’m a damned prisoner in my own home.”
“That’s not my problem. It goes to show you can’t suppress your people to remain subservient forever.”
“What do you expect me to do? If I stay here, they will kill me?”
“From what I hear, the Master Builders are a dying race. Maybe it’s time for you to join the rest of your people.”
“After all these years, are you really going to turn your back on the covenant that John F. Kennedy signed?”
“Yeah. Why not? An alliance is only useful when both parties have something to gain – and right now, you’re shit out of luck.”
The man laughed. “Do you think we’ve survived in the shadows for thousands of years out of luck? You think it ends like this?”
“I don’t see how you have any real choice. Your time is over. What other card do you have left to play?”
“I could always give it to the Russians?”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“If we offered you a deal in the sixties, why wouldn’t we offer one to the Russians?”
Chapter Forty-Six
On Board Tahila, South of Guam
The gentle swell grew overnight, and the crew of the Tahila awoke to large rolling waves. The wind picked up. The Tahila rode the swell with ease, but even she would struggle to maintain her position when the full brunt of a category five cyclone reached them.
Elise continued to search through the names of all the faces.
They read like a horror story. Something that Stephen King would write, some sort of bad luck tale, in which an entire group of graduates died, one after the other in simultaneous, seemingly unrelated events, tied together by an invisible string of bad luck within a year a graduating. Everyone of them had been the best in their field. Some had been engineers, doctors, scientists, biologists, all had been extraordinary in their own right.
She had searched every one of the names down.
There were thirty in total. All men. All now dead.
Some had died from car accidents. It was common in the sixties. No seatbelts, and everyone drove intoxicated. One drowned. Three had hired a small plane to fly to Texas together for a conference on engineering. On the way, the plane got into trouble and crashed, leaving no survivors. Another was struck by lightning.
The list went on.
It would have been the basis of a true horror story.
If she believed any of it.
The wives disappeared, too. Every one of them. They went to visit their relatives, they traveled overseas, and one way or another, they all disappeared.
Elise took the first face and ran it through a database of newspapers, social media, politicians, scientists, and athletes using facial recognition software.
It came up with nothing.
She then inserted the entire set of faces into the program and pressed run.
The clock on her program indicated that it would take two hours to complete the search.
She stood up and stretched her legs.
Overhead, she heard the sound of a military helicopter hovering. It took off again a few minutes later, less three passengers.
Tom, Genevieve, and a young boy came down from the helipad.
Elise said, “Welcome back. How was your vacation?”
“Good,” Tom said, “But it turns out the Russians look like they are illegally burying nuclear waste beneath the waters of the Andaman Sea of the coast of Myanmar.”
“This is Katale by the way. He’s going to show us exactly where it’s being buried. He’s going to be staying with us for a while, until we can investigate what’s happening and bring it all out in the open.”
Elise said, “Pleased to meet you, Katale.”
“Thank you,” Katale replied, his eyes searching the command center of the Tahila, as though it was some sort of gift from the Sea Gods.
Genevieve said, “Come with me Katale, I’ll show you around.”
As they left, Tom asked, “Any news from the submersible?”
Elise shook her head. “Not since its umbilical line was severed twelve hours ago.”
Matthew stepped into the room. “Welcome back, Tom. Just in time, we’re going to need to head off soon if we’re to outrun this cyclone.”
Tom’s face hardened. “We’re not waiting for Sam?”
“No,” Matthew said. “It will be too risky. Sam knows about the cyclone. He’ll wait down the bottom until this thing passes.”
“What about the Yantar?” Tom asked. “Any news about what it’s still doing here?”
“Spying I guess,” Elise said. “What other use does a Russian spy vessel serve? You saw that sphere. It looks almost like a spacecraft. No wonder the Russians are interested.”
He focused on a large one near the bottom of the sphere. There was something familiar about it. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. The recess looked like something he’d seen on a nuclear submarine.
To Dr. Smyth, he said, “Can you get a close-up picture of that opening, for me please?”
“Sure. I’ll see what I can get.” Dr. Smyth took a couple photos, zooming in as close as she could to the opening. She handed him the camera, “See if you can make anything of it.”
Sam stared at the image. His mouth opened in shock.
Major Marazzato glanced at him, “What is it? What do you see?”
Sam grimaced, fixing his gaze directly on the major. “James, we’re trapped on the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean, in a bubble not much bigger than the iron coffin of the last generation’s deep-sea divers. In all likelihood, there’s a very good chance we’re not going to make it to the surface again. You understand that, don’t you?”
Major Marazzato nodded. “Yes I do.”
“Good.” Sam met his eye. “That being the case, can you answer me something honestly?”
“Shoot,” Marazzato said.
Sam expelled a deep breath. “Is the sphere one of ours?”
Marazzato held his breath. “Of course not!”
“Are you sure?”
“Good God! Do you think we’d have even been allowed to dive if the sphere was our technology? Hell, the Pentagon wouldn’t have even let you investigate the Carpe Diem if it was going to lead you to their own secret technology.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. Whoever that craft belongs to – if they are still alive - they’ve won the game. It’s not a game changer – its game over for the rest of us.” Marazzato balled his fists, as though he might actually win that sort of fight trapped inside a submarine on the seafloor. “Why are you so certain it’s one of ours?”
Sam turned the camera around so that all three of them could see the image clearly. It depicted an opening into the sphere. Despite its massive size, the opening was very similar to the lockout trunk of a nuclear submarine.
And at the bottom right hand corner, painted onto the hull, was the flag of the United States of America.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Dammit Major Marazzato!” Sam said, “How long have you known that this was down here?”
Marazzato bit his lower lip. He met Sam’s eye, and then expelled a deep breath. “Look. I found out about it forty-eight hours ago.”
“They knew about it and yet they sent us here anyway?”
He nodded without saying anything.
Sam asked, “Why?”
“Because they didn’t really believe it was true.”
“What was true?”
“That the sphere really existed.”
Sam tried to blink the confusion out of his eyes. “What are you talking about? They either knew about it or they didn’t.”
Marazzato frowned. “I’m afraid it’s not quite that simple.”
“Bullshit!” Sam slammed his fist on the control panel in front of him. “It exactly that simple. We’re going to die down here because of you, so I think it’s fair that you at least let me know why?”
Marazzato nodded, almost accepting that it was a reasonable idea. “They’ve known about the sphere since the sixties.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “The sixties?”
Marazzato took a deep breath. “Middle of the cold war they found it floating in the Atlantic Ocean twenty miles off the coast of Chesapeake Bay.”
“A giant sphere with a diameter of a thousand feet washes up that close to Washington and no one suspects an attack?”
Marazzato raised the palms of his hands. “No. They had serious doubts it had come from the Soviets.”
“Really? Haven’t they ever heard of a Trojan Horse?”
“Apparently not.” Marazzato handed Sam the camera back. “And besides, I believe this already answers the question of who built it. The question now is, when was it built?”
Sam arched his eyebrow. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that we don’t currently have the technology to build something like the sphere today. Certainly nothing in the US Navy. You said yourself that the dome that’s keeping the three of us alive is the cutting edge of deep water submersible technology, and it only has a diameter of under ten feet. Do you really believe we have the technology to build something as grand as the sphere?”
“So if the US Navy didn’t build it, who did?”
“Not who. We know it was built by us. That’s not in dispute. The door even has our logo.”
Sam persisted. “But you’re saying the US Navy didn’t build it?”
Major Marazzato sighed heavily. “No. I’m saying the US Navy hasn’t built it yet.”
Chapter Forty-Three
“You seriously think it’s come from the future?” Sam asked, without even trying to suppress his skepticism.
Major Marazzato shrugged. “You got a better explanation?”
“Yeah, I do,” Dr. Smyth said.
Sam grinned. “Well, don’t keep us all waiting in suspense, Dr. Smyth.”
“All right,” Dr. Smyth said. “I think it’s some sort of secret weapon being developed by DARPA.”
Sam considered that for a moment. DARPA stood for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an agency of the United States Department of Defense. They specialized in high tech defense research projects, many of them highly clandestine.
“It’s a possibility. Unlikely, but always possible.”
Marazzato shook his head, defiantly. “There’s no way they could build a structure of that magnitude to survive the crushing pressure of the sea at this depth. No way!”
“Maybe it wasn’t supposed to end up down here at all?” Dr. Smyth suggested. “Think about this for a moment. What if they were towing it somewhere and somewhere in the process, they lost control of the sphere. Or maybe it was on the surface and then sunk.”
Marazzato said, “That still doesn’t explain how it could survive the crushing pressure at this depth.”
“Sure, but what if these doors lead all the way through the sphere, meaning that by now it’s filled with water, equalizing the pressure inside and outside of the sphere?”
Sam gave that some thought. “In that case, the sphere would have no pressure difference to withstand. Yeah, it’s physically possible. Certainly, a more likely scenario than a time traveling weapon built by us from the future.”
“I’m not buying it,” Marazzato said, emphatically.
Sam shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We won’t be guessing much longer.”
“Why?” Marazzato asked.
But nobody answered him.
Because, a door opened from within the massive lockout trunk inside the sphere. A giant truck drove out the door on stainless steel caterpillar tracks. A single borosilicate dome covered the machine’s single occupant. The machine had two glowing headlights at the front, that looked like giant bug eyes. Positioned at the front of the machine was a large suction dredge cutter head, and a large storage container at the back.
“Holy shit!” Sam whispered. “Someone’s worked out how to mine at 36,000 feet.”
The driver met Sam’s eyes.
And a moment later, the deep-sea mining machine turned sharply, heading straight toward them.
Chapter Forty-Four
On Board Tahila, South of Guam
Elise opened the encrypted email.
It was from the Secretary of Defense, and had passed through a series of proxy-servers, designed to wheedle out any signs of tampering or eavesdropping viruses. She went through a series of standard checks to ascertain that the email was in fact legitimate and then clicked open.
A single page of words appeared.
The words were little more than gibberish. In addition to its array of digitally secure communication systems, the email retained a unique unbreakable code to be used for open communication. This one relied on a secret key cryptography to obscure its meaning. This type of code was a variation of the one-time pad – the only truly unbreakable code in theory. To decode the message, a listener had to have both the book and the key. Only in this case, it wasn’t just a book, but a complete works of books.
Elise opened a second document on her laptop.
This one contained digital copy of all of the classic works of Charles Dickens. Elise had very little direct communications with the Secretary of Defense, but when they did communicate it was as vitally important as it needed to be secure.
Traditionally, secret key cryptography employs a single key for both encryption and decryption. In this case, a message was sent by the Secretary of Defense using the key to encrypt the plaintext and send the ciphertext to the receiver. The receiver applies the same key to decrypt the message and recover the plaintext.
Because a single key is used for both functions, secret key cryptography is also called symmetric encryption. When using a cipher, the original information is known as plaintext and the encrypted form as ciphertext. The ciphertext message contains all the information of the plaintext message – yet isn’t in a format readable by human or computer without the proper mechanism to decrypt it.
Elise opened both the email document and the digital copy of Charles Dickens’s complete, unabridged, works.
She scanned the email, ignoring all letters, and searching for individual numbers only. They were scattered throughout the document.
She collected them and placed them together to form a date – 1854.
Elise then opened the table of contents, listing release dates of all of Charles Dickens’s books. Her eyes stopped on the only one released that year.
Hard Times, by Charles Dickens – 1854
The book focused on an unsympathetic look upon utilitarianism – an ethical theory that determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It is a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number
Elise smiled, and wondered if the Secretary of Defense was hinting at something else to her.
She made a note, and then continued to decipher the code, by opening the document containing the book, Hard Times. She withdrew the key to the code from her pocket. Today was December 3 – thus she had to add the year, ignoring the first two digits, to the day’s date. So, 3 and 18 made 21. She then opened the book to page twenty-one. December was the 12th month, so every 12th letter on the page would be discounted.
Using the key, she then went through the painfully slow process of deciphering the code until the series of individual letters made a recognizable series of words.
In this case, those words provided a link to G-mail account and a password to access it. The account would have been set up just before the Secretary of Defense had sent the original message.
Elise opened up the email address and downloaded the single email sitting in the draft box.
Inside were a series of photographs taken from old Ivy League University graduation ceremonies dated 1961.
There are several black and white photographs. Each one depicting the graduating class from various Ivy League Universities. She ran her eyes across the university names – Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, they were all there. The best educations that old money could buy. Each photo had somewhere between twenty to fifty people, all with their matching names at the bottom in an index. A few faces, as many as five or six per photograph had been circled with a red pen. There was just one photograph that didn’t depict a graduating class. This one, appeared to be of an ocean. The photo itself was of poor quality, but seemed to delineate some sort of dark sphere floating on the surface.
Elise put the photos in a document and then read the email.
The truth needs to come out. Search the names, and pull the strings. Only you can put this all together.
And break the code to Habitat Zero.
Chapter Forty-Five
Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Pentagon
General Painter picked up the phone.
He had been expecting the call. It was going to go badly, he knew that now, but sometimes it was better to deal with the most painful duties first.
This one came from a secure line, direct from the center of the maze within the 8th Continent.
“General Painter, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking,” he said, using his full title.
“Painter,” the man on the other side of the line replied, ignoring it. “We had a deal.”
“With my predecessor, not me.”
“All the same, a deal’s a deal, and you must come through with it.”
General Painter swallowed hard. “It was nearly seventy years ago. Hell, it was before I was born. You can’t seriously believe I’m going to go through with it now.”
“Seventy years isn’t that long really… just a blink of an eye when you live as long as we do.”
“Yeah, lucky you. I’m still not going through with it.”
“But you have to. The natives have revolted against me in the 8th Continent. You need to fulfill your part of the bargain. I’m a damned prisoner in my own home.”
“That’s not my problem. It goes to show you can’t suppress your people to remain subservient forever.”
“What do you expect me to do? If I stay here, they will kill me?”
“From what I hear, the Master Builders are a dying race. Maybe it’s time for you to join the rest of your people.”
“After all these years, are you really going to turn your back on the covenant that John F. Kennedy signed?”
“Yeah. Why not? An alliance is only useful when both parties have something to gain – and right now, you’re shit out of luck.”
The man laughed. “Do you think we’ve survived in the shadows for thousands of years out of luck? You think it ends like this?”
“I don’t see how you have any real choice. Your time is over. What other card do you have left to play?”
“I could always give it to the Russians?”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“If we offered you a deal in the sixties, why wouldn’t we offer one to the Russians?”
Chapter Forty-Six
On Board Tahila, South of Guam
The gentle swell grew overnight, and the crew of the Tahila awoke to large rolling waves. The wind picked up. The Tahila rode the swell with ease, but even she would struggle to maintain her position when the full brunt of a category five cyclone reached them.
Elise continued to search through the names of all the faces.
They read like a horror story. Something that Stephen King would write, some sort of bad luck tale, in which an entire group of graduates died, one after the other in simultaneous, seemingly unrelated events, tied together by an invisible string of bad luck within a year a graduating. Everyone of them had been the best in their field. Some had been engineers, doctors, scientists, biologists, all had been extraordinary in their own right.
She had searched every one of the names down.
There were thirty in total. All men. All now dead.
Some had died from car accidents. It was common in the sixties. No seatbelts, and everyone drove intoxicated. One drowned. Three had hired a small plane to fly to Texas together for a conference on engineering. On the way, the plane got into trouble and crashed, leaving no survivors. Another was struck by lightning.
The list went on.
It would have been the basis of a true horror story.
If she believed any of it.
The wives disappeared, too. Every one of them. They went to visit their relatives, they traveled overseas, and one way or another, they all disappeared.
Elise took the first face and ran it through a database of newspapers, social media, politicians, scientists, and athletes using facial recognition software.
It came up with nothing.
She then inserted the entire set of faces into the program and pressed run.
The clock on her program indicated that it would take two hours to complete the search.
She stood up and stretched her legs.
Overhead, she heard the sound of a military helicopter hovering. It took off again a few minutes later, less three passengers.
Tom, Genevieve, and a young boy came down from the helipad.
Elise said, “Welcome back. How was your vacation?”
“Good,” Tom said, “But it turns out the Russians look like they are illegally burying nuclear waste beneath the waters of the Andaman Sea of the coast of Myanmar.”
“This is Katale by the way. He’s going to show us exactly where it’s being buried. He’s going to be staying with us for a while, until we can investigate what’s happening and bring it all out in the open.”
Elise said, “Pleased to meet you, Katale.”
“Thank you,” Katale replied, his eyes searching the command center of the Tahila, as though it was some sort of gift from the Sea Gods.
Genevieve said, “Come with me Katale, I’ll show you around.”
As they left, Tom asked, “Any news from the submersible?”
Elise shook her head. “Not since its umbilical line was severed twelve hours ago.”
Matthew stepped into the room. “Welcome back, Tom. Just in time, we’re going to need to head off soon if we’re to outrun this cyclone.”
Tom’s face hardened. “We’re not waiting for Sam?”
“No,” Matthew said. “It will be too risky. Sam knows about the cyclone. He’ll wait down the bottom until this thing passes.”
“What about the Yantar?” Tom asked. “Any news about what it’s still doing here?”
“Spying I guess,” Elise said. “What other use does a Russian spy vessel serve? You saw that sphere. It looks almost like a spacecraft. No wonder the Russians are interested.”
