Nothing New Under the Sun, page 20
“Yes, sir I will do that. Thank you.”
Chapter 27
They shook hands
A week after his sixth wedding anniversary, Carter met with Jim Rhodes again and told him about the letter he’d found in Will’s Bible.
“I’m glad you found it. I have this feeling you might have turned me down if you hadn’t found that letter.”
“It did sway my decision.” Carter smiled
“So I take it, it’s in order to say welcome aboard?”
Carter nodded. “Do you want me to sign my name in blood?”
“Nothing so formal,” Rhodes laughed. “We’ll look each other in the eyes and shake hands on it. I will let my people know, and that is all we need to do. Twenty years ago, it was good enough for your grandfather and me. Today it will be good enough for his grandson and me.”
They shook hands.
Over lunch, Rhodes told Carter about some of the work his grandfather had done. Carter listened intently and connected the stories with some of his grandfather’s long absences over the years. It explained why he would vanish for months at a time, then return carrying a chair from Afghanistan or a woodcarving from Borneo. Rhodes talked about his grandfather’s sense of humor and duty.
“He never let a job remain unfinished and managed to see humor in every situation. He was deadly serious about everything he did,” Rhodes explained. “At the same time, he could come out of left field and hit us with a quirk that would make us explode in laughter. I remember the director of the CIA glowering at him for 30 seconds after one very tense meeting when your grandfather had fun at the director’s expense, and the man failed to see the humor.”
“I’m glad to know I wasn’t his only victim,” Carter grinned.
Over lunch, a partnership was born between the two men.
“There are countless things we can’t afford to ignore,” Rhodes said and repeated some of their previous conversation. “Through history, governments and kings have tried to get their hands on holy relics and artifacts which were supposed to bring them power. Most were mere symbols, but even a symbol has a power all of its own.
“Before the Second World War, the SS sent an entire detachment to study in Tibet, assured they were tracing the origins of the lost Aryan race. It didn’t stop there. We know the Nazi scientists of the Third Reich were developing a machine called ‘Die Glocke.’ Apparently, it was a device made out of a hard, heavy metal about 9 feet wide and 12 - 15 feet high, and shaped like a bell - hence the name Glocke.
“It is thought to have been operated with a metallic liquid substance, code-named Xerum 525. When this machine was in operation it would crystalize animal tissue, turn blood into a gel-like substance and plants into a grease- like substance in an area up to 200 yards around it. A reported eyewitness said that five of the seven original scientists working on the project died in the course of the tests.
“We still don’t know its purpose or even if it really did exist. Some say it was some kind of time-travel machine, that it showed images of the past. Others say it was a death-ray weapon, and some people think it was an effort to build a star gate. Most scholars assume it was a ruse to deceive the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA. We may never know, but the fact is there is some truth in the whole story. The Nazi’s were working on Die Glocke, and no one knows what happened to it – where it ended up. For all we know, it could be sitting in a cave or an underground chamber somewhere.”
“One would hope the good guys would get it before the bad guys.” Carter murmured.
“That’s our work Carter; we can’t sit back and hope that it turns out okay. We have to be proactive. These are the types of things we have to pursue. We have to get them in our hands before anyone else does. As I mentioned the last time we met, we are up against some deadly people, and it is not preordained that good will win over evil. In this shadow world, you can trust very few people.”
“I get the picture,” Carter commented.
“Let’s talk about your training,” Rhodes continued. “You’ll start with a one-month orientation course. Afterward, we’ll call you for two weeks or more of specialist training as opportunity permits. Do you have some free time coming up in your university schedule?”
“I can arrange for it and let you know.”
The conversation continued for a while longer, and then Rhodes left.
Carter watched him out the window as he crossed the street to his car and wondered about the opportunities and challenges this new chapter in his life was going to bring.
The next day he spoke to the Dean of the faculty and arranged for a one-year sabbatical from the university. His official reason was to pursue independent research and spend more time with his family.
Chapter 28
Give this to the Sultan
Hassan sat in his office reading one of the many foreign news feeds about the continuing conflict in Syria and Iraq. Hassan had matured over the years. His beard now had white streaks in it, but he had not lost his strength or vigor for his cause.
He bookmarked a few stories to read later and paid close attention to what his rivals on either side of him were planning. He trusted the Allawi in Damascus only a little less than the people who ran the Islamic State. Either one would kill him the first time they felt it expedient to do so.
Leaning back in his chair, he recalled the destruction when the Islamic State took control of the ancient city of Palmyra. It was horrible what they did to anyone against them, and the ruins of a beautiful city showed the kind of barbarity they were prepared to unleash on the world should they ever have the opportunity. They dynamited and tore down Roman and ancient temples that were the pride of Syria. In their savagery, the Islamic State used the ancient amphitheater for public beheadings of their enemies
It was abhorrent what they did to the elderly government archeologist who tried to stop them. Dr. Khaled Assad was butchered for the crimes of ‘overseeing idols’ and ‘attending infidel conferences’ as the official representative of Syria. The man was in his 80’s, and they decapitated him in a public square. They hung his body from a Roman column he’d spent his life trying to preserve.
Hassan thought about the gruesome death as he looked at another email from a representative of the Islamic State to his south. They had some ancient sandstone tombs in the way of an anti-aircraft battery. They claimed it was necessary to remove the tombs to provide their weapons with an unobstructed view to keep out the Russian bombers. Hassan was puzzled as to why the Russians had not carpet-bombed their holdout by now.
Hassan dispatched a team of men to take out the towers with the standard instructions for payment. They were to receive half of the money before, and the other half after the job was completed. His team was also to bring back any artifacts they could safely transport, and that might be of interest to him.
A week later, his demolition crew carried out their assigned task, wiring the charges in the old towers, while representatives of the Islamic State looked on. One of the towers, built to hold the ancient remains of the town’s once great families, stood four stories in height. It exploded in one flashing ball of white fire while the spectators roared and chanted in approval. Hassan’s men, dressed in the black robes of the Islamic State, waited until the dust settled and walked up to the rubble to inspect it. They didn’t think it would take long, and then they could go home.
The rubble, however, revealed something unexpected as they approached the site of destruction. Their commander ordered the men to halt, and he went forward alone to examine a large hole in the ground where the building previously stood. The hole was much bigger than he expected. With his rifle slung over his back, the commander, a man named Moussa from Homs crawled around the rubble and leaned over to look into the hole. He was worried the explosion had opened up a cavity beneath the former building, which might create a sinkhole in the middle of the town. It wasn’t his concern, but he didn’t need Hassan giving him the order to return and clean up the mess he’d created. There was something down there, but with all the dust in the air, he couldn’t tell what. He motioned for the rest of his men to approach. The other members of his demolition squad came closer and took position behind their commander.
It was a hot day, as most are in the Syrian lowlands, and the dust had coated everything when the charges destroyed the buildings. They moved carefully behind him as he began to navigate his way down the rubble that partially filled the opening at the bottom of the crater caused by the explosion.
After a half hour of removing and clambering over the debris, they reached the bottom and looked around. It was cold and clammy below the surface, and the men with Moussa were nervous.
He produced a flashlight and examined their surroundings. They appeared to be in a chamber 15 x 24 feet and approximately 30 feet below the surface. Moussa left one member of his team alone at the entrance to the hole with a machine gun and told him not to hesitate to use it should someone try to follow them down.
They found no inscriptions on the walls and were about to return to the surface when Moussa felt a rumbling beneath his feet. One of the stone slabs on which they stood broke loose and tilted downward, dropping him and his squad onto a subbasement floor. They praised Allah for surviving the fall and shone their lights around as they regained their footing. The slab remained in place behind them, which meant they, at least, had a way to get back up.
Their lights illuminated a scene the likes of which they could not describe. Directly in front of Moussa and his squad was a table with a group of shapes sitting around it. He walked closer to it and blinked his eyes a few times. The figures appeared to be human skeletons but were made of crystal. The flashlight sent rays dancing off the crystal shapes and sparkled across the room.
“Beard of The Prophet!” one man exclaimed behind Moussa. “What kind of hell have we found?”
Moussa walked closer to the table to inspect the crystal statues. He pulled his cellphone out and started taking photos. A few minutes later, he told his men, “We’re going back up, but we’re not leaving this area unattended. I need to let the Sultan know what we’ve found.”
When they emerged from the hole in the ground, Moussa went up to the nearest ISIS representative and told him they’d found a staggering amount of unexploded bombs underground in a chamber no one knew existed. He would send the youngest member of his squad back to the Sultan and ask for guidance. They would need men to help disarm them. In the meanwhile, they would guard the entrance from anyone who wanted to look, since one wrong move might detonate the bombs and destroy the entire town.
The ISIS soldier saw the wisdom in what Moussa wanted to do and ordered the crowd back to the edge of the city.
When they were told about the unexploded bombs, the people quickly lost their curiosity and vanished.
“Give this to the Sultan,” Moussa instructed the young man he was sending back to Hassan as he handed him an SD card that contained the pictures he had taken with his cell phone. “Tell him what you have seen, but tell no one else.”
Moussa made camp that night with his squad. He looked up at the stars and waited for Hassan to arrive with his troops.
Chapter 29
A-Echelon
On the first day Carter reported for the orientation course, he learned the name of the organization he would work for in the future - A-Echelon. The A was for Archeology. Their covert workspace and offices were hidden in some of the secret underground facilities below the Smithsonian Institution Building known as The Castle. The Institution hosted a number of different research centers, as it was involved in a wide range of top-secret initiatives and programs across the globe.
A-Echelon’s location was specifically chosen to be out of the public eye, close to the Smithsonian Institution’s secret vaults, libraries, and research facilities, and in close proximity to DARPA’s headquarters as well as Capitol Hill. The organization had no official existence. It did not have an official address where its offices were located, and only a select few people knew it even existed.
The director, Hunter Patrick, did not appear on the list of federal employees. None of his employees, research associates or field operatives could talk about their work, past or present. Their families only knew it was connected to the Smithsonian. Each employee of the institute was sworn to secrecy under an obscure act of Congress, which allowed the executive branch of the government one agency for which it would never be held accountable. The people involved in the institute, all of them, liked their jobs and knew that keeping them was contingent upon not discussing them. The institute employed two people for internal affairs, and it was their duty to run background checks on any potential candidate for employment.
The first four weeks after Carter’s arrival, he was put through a demanding crash course in basic spycraft. He quickly confirmed his suspicions that James Rhodes was an ex-CIA spy instructor and field agent.
Although Carter was not entirely unsuspecting of what his training would entail, he was surprised at the level of physical and mental intensity required of him.
His days would start at 7:00 am with a one-hour self-defense session conducted by Rhodes, followed by one hour on the shooting range with various types of handguns.
The first morning’s sparring session with Rhodes reminded Carter of the second day he attended Master Hong’s Center of Harmonious Gratitude where he endured the humiliation of 30 minutes of beating by the other students. Despite Carter’s years of tai chi training and managing to beat Rhodes in the end, after 20 minutes on the mat sparring with the older man, he could see why Rhodes was in such good physical shape at his age. He moved around and fought with the skill and ability of a man half his age.
A-Echelon had a close working relationship with the CIA and DARPA, as they would, from time to time, request skilled resources to assist with their covert operations. The Directors of the CIA, DARPA, and their agents, who had worked with A-Echelon before, were counted among the few people who knew of the institute’s existence and the nature of its work. For Carter’s orientation, a few CIA instructors joined the training team.
In addition to the hand-to-hand combat and weapons training, he was also tutored in secured electronic communications techniques, encryption of messages, covert surveillance and counter surveillance techniques, and a lot of human behavior related psychology.
Rhodes and the CIA instructors were hard taskmasters. Carter received no TLC from any of them. They pushed him to the limits on all fronts and didn’t allow him much sleep either. But Carter persevered. He absorbed everything they threw at him and thrived. He never second-guessed his decision to take up his grandfather’s place.
At the end of the second week, Jim attended an assessment meeting with Director Hunter Patrick. “Jim, how is young Devereux holding up?” Hunter inquired.
“Hunter, we’ve got a winner here.” Rhodes smiled. “The guy is an enigma; he’s like the Rock of Gibraltar. He has had no military training and spent most of his life behind a desk or in a classroom full of starry-eyed students, but I have yet to hear one single complaint out of his mouth. Whatever we throw at him he takes on with a smile on his face. I think he’s actually enjoying all of this.
“He has a photographic memory. I’ve never seen anything like this. No wonder he can speak seven languages, and God knows, understand and read how many more. The instructors feel like morons most of the time. There’s nothing wrong with his attitude either. He is a very humble man with the best attitude I’ve ever encountered. His questions reveal deep insight; his observation skills are unparalleled. To see the ease with which he assimilates new information and how he masters skills in one session, which would take others weeks and months is just mindboggling.”
Hunter smiled. “That sounds like Will Devereux’s boy. I’m really glad to hear that.”
The fifth and final week was set aside for briefings and mission preparations with Director Hunter Patrick and James Rhodes, who would be Carter’s handler and partner for the future.
Patrick was a stocky man, in his mid to late sixties, who radiated self-confidence. This was the first time Carter had met him. He reminded Carter of a career government man, such as Allan Foster Dulles, who ran the foreign office after World War 2.
“I’m impressed with your results, Carter,” Patrick beamed. “I don’t think we have ever seen anyone who did as well. I believe you out-scored your grandfather. He did great work for us, and I expect you’ll do the same.”
“My grandfather will be a hard act to follow, Sir,” Carter told Patrick. “In my eyes, there have been few men of his caliber in history.”
“You may call me Hunter.” He smiled. “At least you have your grandfather’s example to follow. Not too many men have such an exemplary role model.”
“Thank you, I appreciate it.”
“Time to get down to business,” Patrick said as he brought up a file on the large screen on his office wall. “Here are the essentials of the mission - Jim can fill you in on the finer details later.”
Carter and Rhodes nodded.
“You may have heard rumors about evidence of nuclear weapons used in prehistoric times,” Patrick said. “Do you have any opinion about it?”
“I’ve heard about it and done a bit of reading on the subject, but I haven’t seen much physical evidence in support of it,” Carter responded. “Have you found something worth investigating?”
“Rumors and second-hand information are widespread. As Jim has already told you, we can’t ignore it -- that’s our job. We have to investigate. You know even Robert Oppenheimer, the Professor of Physics, known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb, must have had some notion of an ancient nuclear blast if you read between the lines.”
