“Which they did!” Sam said, “I recall hearing about the outcome of the investigation years ago. It was all over the news. Are you telling me the evidence was wrong?”
“No. That much was true.”
“So, what did we lie about?” Sam asked.
She made a coy smile, entirely out of character for her. “While DARPA was putting together experiments to disprove the theory that HAARP could manipulate the weather, they discovered the potential for high powered microwaves not to create weather, but to modify the direction of existing weather systems.”
Sam said, “You worked out how to direct a hurricane away from any given city?”
She nodded. “Only, we didn’t implement the theory.”
“Why not?”
“For starters the U.N. had only just issued a moratorium on any projects that might affect any weather system anywhere on the planet, reminding the world that only minor changes here can affect the delicate balance of the global system.”
“And secondly?”
“We couldn’t work out how to produce a microwave powerful enough.”
“How much energy would it take?”
She smiled like the Devil. “About the same amount of energy required to emit a microwave with enough energy to produce a hundred-carat diamond.”
“You think it’s the same person. They’re using his device to shift weather?”
“Yes.”
“That’s why you want to find this diamond-smith?”
She picked up the diamond and squeezed it in the palm of her hand. “No. I need to find Leo Botkin.”
Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Who is Botkin to you?”
“Probably the world’s most dangerous man.”
“I thought he hasn’t made a public appearance in decades. Some think he’s dead.”
The Secretary studied him, with a wry smile on her face. “What do you know about Botkin?”
“Not much. Just that he went to ground twenty years ago, but stocks in his long list of companies have flourished without him.” Sam smiled. “And that he owns the train that we used to escape the Aleutian Portal.”
“Sam. Answer me this. Did you find the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone?’
“No ma’am.”
The Secretary of Defense fixed her green eyes on him. “Sam Reilly, are you lying to me?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Why?”
Sam bit his upper lip. “For the same reason you’re lying to me about what your involvement with the stone was twenty years ago — the truth is too dangerous to reveal.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Sam watched as the Secretary of Defense’s hardened façade fell, revealing in its place a pained expression of regret.
“It was a long time ago, and I made some significant mistakes I regret to this day,” she said. “I was still a junior CIA Intelligence Officer investigating large amounts of funding being siphoned through a relatively unheard-of group of archeologists working at a dig called Göbekli Tepe, in Turkey.”
“What was the CIA’s interest in archeology?” Sam asked. “No one had even heard of the Master Builders back then.”
“At the time, we thought the archeological dig was entirely a business ruse, allowing key players from around the world to siphon money into a small and dangerous organization in the country. You have to understand that hundreds of millions of dollars had been transferred to the accounts of a small archeology firm. There was nothing extraordinary about the dig to reveal the need for such an investment. The CIA doubted that any of that money was being spent on the archeology.”
“It looked like a terrorist’s hotspot?” Sam asked.
“Exactly.”
“So, what happened?”
“My role, like all CIA operatives, was to collect, evaluate, and disseminate foreign intelligence. I would then take it to my superiors, who would assist the president and senior U.S. government policymakers in making decisions relating to the national security. My then partner and I were assigned to infiltrate the lives of key workers at the site. By the time we’d determined it wasn’t a terrorist cell, the team were already extracting extraordinary results from some of the giant T-shaped astronomy pillars.”
“The Göbekli Tepe Death Stone had been discovered and was being deciphered?”
“Yes. Among other things. My superiors determined it was important for my partner and me to stay and continue our assignment.”
“What did you find?” Sam asked.
“An archeologist named Emad Vernon, who uncovered the results of the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone, critically revealing the prospect of an asteroid that passes across Earth every thirteen thousand years, bringing with it species-ending changes to the weather.” Her lips thinned. “The sort of prediction you found by resolving the Nostradamus Equation.”
“So, what did Congress decide to do about it?”
“Nothing. It never reached Congress. The president decided, along with the advice of my boss, to keep the entire problem a secret to prevent total pandemonium and chaos, while at the same time gathering a group of international scientists and experts capable of determining the validity of the information depicted on the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone. The group was only able to narrow the return of the doomsday asteroid to a window of eighty years, and despite enormous resources being applied to the problem, the results were unanimous — efforts should focus on developing a bunker for a small colony to survive, in order to protect the human race from extinction.”
“Where’s the colony?”
“We don’t know. A cohort of five thousand people were sent there to prepare. They’ve been living there ever since.”
“You don’t know where?”
“No. It was determined that the only way to ensure that it wasn’t overrun by an entire world of refugees was to keep its location secret to all but those chosen.”
“You weren’t chosen?” Sam asked, without hiding his surprise.
She sighed. “I declined the offer. At worst, I might have been forty years old by the time the asteroid reached us, and potentially I might be over a hundred years old. Either way, I wouldn’t have been an ideal candidate — and I had no intention of spending my life in a bunker, just in case.”
“What happened to the stone?”
“It was loaded onto the Theresa May, one of our cargo ships at the time, and was to be transferred to Harvard, where a team of experts would verify Vernon’s claims regarding an approaching cataclysmic event. As you’re already aware, the Theresa May sank en route to Cambridge, Massachusetts.”
“Vernon was then sanctioned and killed in what appeared to be a car accident, removing any verifiable claims to the cataclysmic message hidden within the stone.”
She nodded. “How did you know?”
“I met his brother, a man named Dmitri Vernon, in Mount Ararat. The man was one of the remaining Four Horsemen, and a Master Builder. He told me about the stone and about the U.S. government stealing its secrets and destroying any evidence of its existence — including his brother, who appeared to have fallen asleep at the wheel and died in a car accident.”
The Secretary nodded. “He was the first of many casualties.”
Sam wanted to argue the morality of any of it. Who decided to play God and pick who lived and who died? But none of that would have helped and he needed more information from her, so he ignored the brutality and continued. “And I take it the Theresa May never sank?”
“No. It sank all right — it was too risky not to — but the Göbekli Tepe Death Stone was removed first and taken to a remote location in Siberia to be studied. When everything was decoded, it was determined that the stone needed to be destroyed.”