Gary Tigerman, page 20
Inside, two FBI agents wearing headphones kept vigil, recording everything that was said in Dr. Paula Winnick’s living room.
“I don’t see why the fuck they don’t just swoop on this guy,” the younger G-man said.
“Sure,” his partner said, sipping flat diet Coke and finishing off the soggy end of a Subway sandwich.
“He’s just chillin’ with some fuckin’ TV journalist. Who’s she gonna tell?”
“Oh.”
The dish antenna on the roof of the mock-Verizon truck did a decent-enough job and they were getting everything on reel-to-reel. They just could’ve done without the steady stream of folks from the neighborhood wandering over and trying to peer in through the tinted one-way glass.
The two agents knew why, but it was still a pain in the ass.
“You’d think a neighborhood like this’d already have broadband.”
“Shhh.”
The junior agent shook his head as a housewife braving the cold in a bathrobe and pajamas began rapping on the blacked-out windows.
“We gotta repaint this truck.”
57
Three months earlier/The Great Pyramid/Giza
Urine and bat guano. Deaver imagined the laugh he’d get telling his students about the dominant fragrances to be found inside the Great Pyramid. Breathing in the stale air and bent almost double as he moved down the close corridor, Jake was also aware of an oppressive density that pushed in on him from every direction.
These people were small, he thought, avoiding dusty cobwebs and glad for even the few bare, low-voltage electric bulbs strung haphazardly above them.
But the sense of traveling thousands of years back in time was a palpable thrill, and once they reached the King’s Chamber, Jake was able to stand upright under high vaulted ceilings.
Mancini played the light from his halogen lamp across the surrounding walls, which were covered from the floor to a height of fifteen feet with a gorgeous panorama of hieroglyphs.
“Genesis,” he said out loud, the word echoing off the hard surfaces.
Jake stared at the epic story etched in stone: the Egyptians’ account of the origin of mankind and the birth of civilization. It was a history repeated with small variations in cultures around the world, a celebration of the First Ones, ancient gods who came down from the sky and presided over the artistic and scientific development of human society.
Jake pored over the exquisite carvings, some still holding their vegetable-dye pigments after millennia in the dark.
“My God, Marcus …”
“Come, there is something I want to show you.”
The Italian archaeologist motioned Deaver over to a low section of the vaulted ceiling. He then reached up and removed a stone facing that covered the entrance to a dark, narrow shaft.
“This leads up to the top of the Pyramid at a very precise angle. Take a look.” Mancini moved so Jake could peer up the shaft. Though it was noon outside, he could see a small portion of the sky, black as night, and three stars that were perfectly visible. Deaver recognized them immediately.
“The belt stars of Orion.”
“Si, si, the shaft totally blocks out the sun. Now the interesting thing is, the three pyramids here on the plateau are aligned in precisely the same geometric relation to one another as the three stars there.” Jake considered the symbolic meaning more than the pure engineering feat.
“Like holding up a mirror to Orion.”
“ ‘As in heaven, so on Earth.’ The astronomer priests did real science, tracking the precessional motion of the Earth on its axis.”
“Pre-Copernican.”
“Oh, si. Long before Copernicus. They measured time in epochs of twenty-six-thousand-year cycles, the precessional cycles.” Mancini replaced the stone facing. “They wanted very much to know what time it was.”
“And you have a theory about why.”
“Only a guess at what I cannot yet prove.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
Mancini took a moment, gathering his thoughts on the hypothesis.
“I believe … that part of why the whole complex at Giza was created was to call attention to the recurrence of catastrophic celestial events.”
“Extinction events.” Jake nodded.
“Not just the K/T event that did in the dinosaurs. There were two Taurid asteroids that ended the last Ice Age, impacting in the ocean off Japan sometime between nine thousand and eleven thousand b.c. and then another mass extinction in the Bronze Age that is just coming to light.”
“The underwater ruins off Cuba and Turkey and India.” Deaver could envision a cascade of ancient cross-cultural connections. “So, perhaps the Pyramid is predictive. Like a planetary alarm clock.”
“Si, si. To awaken mankind. To remind us that our solar system passes through dangerous territory in its long journey around the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. To pass down awareness of a cycle of catastrophe, in case we had forgotten.”
Jake made a note to himself to revisit the mathematics memorialized in the Cambodian ruins at Angkor Wat, the geometry of the Mayan pyramids in Central America, and the historic myths of Quetzalcoatl and Plato’s Atlantis.
“Marcus, does this relate to the Mayan calendar?”
“You mean, does the world run out of time on December twenty-third, 2012? I don’t know what to think about that. There is still so much to learn here.”
“I understand.”
The former astronaut’s eyes then fell on a singular object dominating the center of the room: a polished marble sarcophagus. He ran his hands along the coffinlike sides and Mancini moved the light to illuminate the elegant symbols etched all around it. Deaver recognized one picto immediately.
“Horus?”
“Yes, very good, the Great Pyramid was a temple of initiation for The Followers of Horus. One of the spiritual practices of the order, which included the reigning king, was to lie here in meditation for three days.”
Deaver traced another glyph in the stone.
“And this means ‘sun boat,’ right?”
“Yes, sun boat. Or solar boat.”
“May I?” Jake indicated the interior of the sarcophagus, where the high priests and kings of Egypt had lain.
“Of course, of course.” Mancini helped the former Apollo astronaut climb into a different kind of capsule made for a very different kind of star journey. Once stretched out inside the cool smooth marble, Jake took a few slow deep breaths.
“Can you read to me what it says?”
“Sure.”
Mancini’s low voice sounded soothing and almost hypnotic as he walked around the sarcophagus and translated the meaning of the glyphs.
You must cross the sky-river in your solar boat … The Followers of Horus prepare you for your Journey to the First Time … Your Father is waiting for you among the Great Ones whose mouths are equipped … You must fly to be with him in the Du-At …
“Sirius. The star home of the gods.” Jake nodded, closing his eyes.
With his arms across his chest as though lying in state, Deaver began noticing a subtle change in energy, which he experienced as a high-frequency oscillation or hum inside his skull. It seemed to be building in intensity with a rushing, psychotropic quality that was heady but not unpleasant.
It’s my nervous system. I’m hearing my nervous system, he thought, the resonance transposing itself, modulating up the scale to a higher frequency.
Within moments, all jet lag and physical weariness had dissolved, dissipating into the marble trough wherever it touched his body, leaving Deaver’s mind keen and alert. His essential self seemed lighter, or at least more lightly tethered to his body, and he experienced the locus of his consciousness as if it were floating in the hard casement of his head.
But only because he wished it to be floating there.
The idea occurred to him that if he wished to go somewhere else, anywhere he wanted to go, that he could simply go there. And leave his body behind.
But before he could test this idea, the image of an immense hawk appeared in his mind’s eye, rotating slowly and unblinkingly above him.
You must cross the sky-river in your solar boat …
He was awed by this vision, so vivid and dreamlike, though he was certain he was awake. And the words he heard in his mind’s ear seemed charged with meaning and even a sense of personal mission.
The Followers of Horus prepare you …
It was like a mythological riddle was being posed by this supremely intelligent spirit animal; a puzzle for Jake himself to decipher.
Yet Jake was not just himself. He was much more, something profoundly older and more complex, belonging to a noble lineage with sacred duties and tasks that must be performed.
The Followers of Horus prepare you for your Journey …
The spirit animal, if that’s what it was, was speaking to him now, as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Deaver watched in a kind of rapture as the mythic creature began transforming itself from the form of a hawk into something else: a jackal the size of a man.
No, it’s a man wearing the mask of a jackal, he thought.
The creature slowly turned toward him as if angry at being discovered.
Oh, it’s not a mask …
“Unnhh.” Jake opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them.
Dr. Mancini smiled and helped him out of the sarcophagus with an air of ceremony, as if welcoming him back to the dimensional world. He then led the way out of the stone passage toward the light of the sun god, Ra.
“It has a certain power. No?”
“Yes, it does.” Deaver checked the luminous dial on his watch and felt a new respect for The Followers of Horus and their seventy-two-hour ritual entombments: all of five minutes had passed since he’d lain down inside the sarcophagus. Then Mancini’s voice was echoing off the hard stone walls.
“Commander, stay where you are.”
Up ahead he could see the Italian Egyptologist or at least his silhouette at the tunnel entrance. He was in some kind of argument, speaking in rapid-fire Arabic with Jake’s bodyguard, who was gesturing emphatically.
Puzzled, Deaver stood still a moment, hunched over in the dim, low shaft.
Listening beyond the voices of Mancini and the agitated driver, he could just make out the chaos of people shouting in excitement or alarm and the sporadic Orville Redenbacher pop-pop-pop of what sounded like automatic weapons fire.
Jake then hurried up the tunnel toward his host.
“Marcus, what’s happening?”
58
February 10/Washington, D.C.
The morning drive-time traffic crossing and recrossing the Potomac was every bit as stop-and-go as Angela had imagined it would be, although ten hours earlier she hadn’t expected she’d be dealing with it at all.
Before meeting Jake at Reagan National, she had booked a room for him at the Mayfair Hotel on her Science Horizon business Visa. And after saying good night to Dr. Winnick, they’d climbed into Angela’s Grand Cherokee and headed back to D.C., fully intending to go straight to the hotel.
Which we almost actually did, Angela thought, deftly applying eyeliner in the truck’s rearview mirror as she crept along with the traffic.
Certain images kept coming back from the rest of their night together and she found herself grinning into the mirror uncontrollably. Searching for a word with which to characterize Commander Deaver’s generosity as a lover, she settled on lavish and almost swooned at the thought.
“Lavish …”
Especially the second time.
Science Horizon would be billed for the room at the Mayfair, and she thought about not telling Miriam that Jake had spent the night at her apartment. She could avoid the third degree by just saying that she’d taken him to the airport that morning, and get points for saving the company taxi fare.
Angela touched the brakes, narrowly avoiding a collision with a shirtsleeved man in an E 320 Mercedes who glared back at her blissful face.
Of course, if she was going to continue grinning like a maniac, dissembling was not really going to be an option: her partner-in-crime, Miriam Kresky, was a woman of many talents. One of which was that she could read a smile like Barry Bonds reads the seams on a big-league curveball.
Well, hell, Angela decided, adolescently rebelling at the idea of having to hide how she was feeling.
There’re only so many secrets about a man that a person can keep.
59
The Oval Office/the White House
Shit.
Bob Winston was unhappy, but more because of his own miscalculation than anything else: this was not a level of play with much room for error.
The national security adviser was sitting in a yellow, incongruously cheerful-looking chintz-upholstered chair in the Oval Office, paying close attention to the President of the United States now towering over him from behind the desk built for FDR.
A file containing the findings of Sandy Sokoff’s investigation lay open on the President’s blotter, including a brief on the Mars Observer/ TOLAS package that had been given to Congressman Lowe and Lowe’s description of his experience with Winston at the National Archives.
Too angry to sit, the Commander in Chief just stood there staring down at the file in excruciating silence and letting Winston sweat.
A few feet away, Sokoff and an uncomfortable-looking Phillip Lowe shared a couch. Sandy observed with satisfaction how Winston ignored them, as if nonacknowledgment was the same as nonexistence.
Sandy, however, felt quite at ease, in a hardball sort of way. Coming when it had, Congressman Lowe’s unexpected phone call and subsequent revelations had been providential, if not miraculous. Sandy decided he would have to ask his new friend the Jesuit monsignor what exactly was involved in the Church officially recognizing an event as a miracle. He seemed to remember that the convening of a synod of bishops might be required, but he wasn’t sure.
For his part, the President of the United States did not believe much in miracles. He suspected Congressman Lowe’s courage in coming forward might have been driven by ambition as much as by the whispering of angels.
But he’d take whatever he could get. The President closed the file.
“Thanks to an independent investigation, conducted at my request, information regarding Unacknowledged Special Access Projects has been brought to my attention, Bob. Information of crucial importance to any sort of informed executive decision concerning Project Orion. The kind I had hoped to find in the briefing paper you provided me two weeks ago.”
“Within the constraints of time, Mr. President, I thought that brevity might serve best. I take full responsibility if that was a misreading of what you required, sir.” Sokoff watched Winston coolly taking the heat, like the ceramic tiles on the outside of the Space Shuttle deflecting friction fire during reentry. The President appeared unimpressed.
“In any case, Bob, the issues raised by these Special Access projects will provide the talking points at a National Security Council meeting I’m calling for this afternoon. And I expect your contribution to that meeting to be an unabridged disclosure of all current USAP activities.”
“I understand.” Winston accepted the presidential reprimand even as his brain raced way out ahead, looking for wiggle room, calculating the extent of damage to his own position, and how to stop further bleeding, and which endangered species of secrets might yet be protected by a more limited disclosure than the President was calling for.
“If I may speak to the gravitas of the situation, as I see it, sir?”
“Go ahead.”
“Mr. President,” Winston continued, as if they were the only two people in the room, “it cannot be your intention to abandon the preservation of presidential deniability vis-à-vis Special Projects. As your adviser, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to reconsider.”
“Bob, that is exactly my intention.” The President responded in a deliberate, even tone. “I will not make decisions that affect hundreds of millions of people in self-imposed ignorance. And if it puts this office and my administration in political peril down the road, so be it.” Winston knew that this was his cue to back off, but he persevered.
“Mr. President, I still believe it is a grave mistake. And I must formally protest in the interests of national security.”
He had pushed it to the wall with all the dignity he could muster, under the deteriorating circumstances.
“Duly noted,” the President said dryly. “And please have your resignation on my desk today before the council convenes. I’ll hold my decision on it until after the meeting.” It was the shoe Winston had been waiting to hear drop.
“Mr. President,” he said, standing in respect for the Office, if not the man. He then turned on his heel with a certain Teutonic spank and marched out of the room.
Once he was gone, the President snatched up his monogrammed letter opener like a dagger and then drummed it on the dark green blotter.
“He thinks I’m weak because I didn’t fire his ass outright.” From the couch, Sandy Sokoff laughed and shook his head.
“No, Mr. President; he just knows he still has leverage.”
“Because we need to know what he knows and he knows it.”
Lowe shifted his weight and leaned forward, speaking for the first time since Winston had walked in.
“Mr. President, is there a scenario in which you wouldn’t fire his ass?” The President gave that some thought.
“I expect our friend Bob is working on that even as we speak.” 60
Boulder, Colorado
It was not as if Deaver hadn’t been thinking about it. Off and on throughout their drive to Paula Winnick’s house and even while they were there, he had found himself fantasizing about Ms. Angela Browning: as he watched her quizzing Dr. Winnick or when their hands touched as they passed things across the coffee table.
He’d sensed that Angela had had some thoughts along those lines, too.
Still, when she had invited him up for a drink at her place, on the way into D.C., there had been mutual astonishment at how combustible they were together.
The urgency and hunger were evident in the trail of their clothing from the hallway (where they’d finally kissed each other) to the bedroom (the bed almost totally symbolic, at this point) to the puddle of clothes on Angela’s bedroom floor, where they’d fucked in such a frenzy it was more like jungle-animal sex than making love.
