A video monitor showed the professor a sedan at his front gate, something American, something a fed would drive. Pushing the intercom button the professor instructed, “Pull through and wait for me in the carport.” He wasn’t letting this spook in his house.
Having parked in the carport as instructed, Special Agent Grason Kendricks paced in front of his car, studying his surroundings and admiring the opulence of the professor’s Malibu hilltop estate: a four car garage, sprawling courtyard and expansive house with a distant view of the Pacific Ocean. The man had done quite well for himself, he thought, but wondered when a gardener had last visited the yard. Continuing to fidget, Grason tried to remember what the professor looked like; he wore a tweed sports coat in a university yearbook photo that Grason had seen. The vision dissipated, however, once the front door swung open and a sour-faced little man with an unkempt white hairdo stepped outside. Instead of a tweed sport coat, the professor wore a colorful sweatsuit, except the red, white and black jacket was mismatched with blue, green and yellow pants from another outfit. The jacket was zipped midway, revealing a boney chest with a splattering of gray hairs. Grason figured the professor didn’t get out much.
The professor’s stern facial expression advertised his agitation. “Forgive me if I don’t ask you in. I prefer you speak your mind out here, then be on your way.”
“Professor, I think you’re misinterpreting my purpose,” Grason said.
“No, Agent Kendricks. I’ve seen your kind before. It’s been decades, but I know what you’re about.”
“Your past is clogging your mind, professor. The government has changed a lot since the fifties. Since you last dealt with it. We’re bigger now. Segmented. Some might say we’re lost in a sea of segmented secrets.” Grason’s voice was sincere, calming. “That’s where you and I have something in common. We don’t like the secrets. Nor do we have complete faith in the individuals controlling them.”
Professor Eldred remained silent. Skeptical.
“I didn’t come here to meddle. I’m here to help.” As sincere as Grason came across, there was also a seasoned, to-the-point demeanor. He was a busy FBI veteran, with the arrogance that accompanied such an elite position. If the professor didn’t show interest, Grason had better things to do; at least, that was the impression he gave.
“Help me? And how would you do that?”
“We’d actually be helping each other. Excuse me a moment.” Grason leaned inside his car and grabbed a file folder from the front seat. After retrieving an eight-by-ten glossy from the folder, he showed it to the professor. Grason knew he had piqued the professor’s interest when the older man’s eyes widened and he made an elongated oooooh sound. “Any idea what that is?” Grason asked.
The professor stared at a faint, oblong-shaped, amber light against a blue sky, blurred, but an apparent piece of flying technology. “No wings,” he commented. “From the angle and lack of definition I’d say it was flying at a high altitude … and moving fast … very fast.” He continued to study the craft, shocked by a bolt of reality. He had never seen a photo like this before, but he had seen sketches. About fifty years ago. Preliminary drawings. Theories about an anti-gravity craft.
“I had some hunches when I saw it, but nothing scientific,” Grason told him. “That’s why I need someone like you. Someone who can look at it from an engineering standpoint and help decipher the technology. But if I had to make a guess after looking into your past … I’d say someone built your spaceship.”
“Do you have more than this?” the professor managed, amidst flashbacks to his life in the fifties.
“A little, with more coming in.”
The professor never took his eyes off the photo. To him, it was a picture of his past. “Where’d you get this?”
“It’s a still from a video, taken by a rancher in Nevada.”
“Oh, oh, oh! You have a video?” Any remaining skepticism was overtaken by childlike giddiness. It was typical for the professor to show excitement with ohs. His students often laughed when he interrupted his lectures with a subconscious but verbal oh, oh, oh because a new and enticing thought had entered his mind. As in his classes, his excitement had overwhelmed him in an absentminded style that made him forget he was trying to be stern with Grason. “Why is the FBI interested in the topic?” he asked, more abruptly.
“I’m not working for the Bureau,” Grason said. “This is a special assignment. A task force with congressional sanction, but you’ll find very few in Congress who know anything about it. You’ll never have any contact beyond me.”
After a few seconds of further intense concentration on the photo, the professor mumbled, “I’d prefer to have a better idea of whom I’m working with.”
“Sorry, professor. I don’t trust many people. I’ll tell you only what I feel is relevant.”
The professor snickered at the irony of wanting a government agent to trust him. “Then you can elaborate more on your purpose.”
Grason had rehearsed his pitch: “Control over covert operations has reached a level beyond constitutional oversight. Any scholar of military history can tell you what happens when a military becomes too powerful. And with so many technological secrets, the military is extremely powerful these days. I won’t say that anyone has evil intentions, but to protect national security, we have to be sure.”
“Noble thoughts, but you’re going to piss someone off.”
“Exactly the reason for the secrecy. If you decide to cooperate, we’ll enter a formal contract for your services that includes a confidentiality clause, punishable by law.”
“I don’t like the way that sounds.”
“I didn’t expect you to. But I can’t chance seeing you and that photo on Larry King telling the world that Congress is investigating UFOs.” Grason shrugged, as if his hands were tied. “I’ve got to cover myself.”
“Why are you making a UFO connection?”
“I’m not. But the press sure would if they saw that photo.”
“Yes, they would, Agent Kendricks—”
“Call me Grason.”
The professor smiled for the first time. “Okay, Grason. If everything you say about this task force is true, my exposing it would only help the factions of government I despise.”
“That’s why I came to you. I can also offer you financial assistance with your research,” Grason said, hoping that would be additional incentive to engage the professor.
“I don’t need your money. I work on principle now.”
They spent a few minutes discussing the professor’s past and his ostracization from the military-industrial complex. The professor became so enthralled with the conversation that he never bothered to invite Grason inside. Soon, the conversation segued into a discussion about the FOIA documents the professor had in his possession. It would require a lot of the professor’s time, besides what he was already putting in, to study the documents. Plus he now had to budget time for Grason’s materials. An idea crossed his mind: “I have a former student. He just received his graduate degree in aeronautical engineering. I’ve been toying with the idea of asking him to incorporate my work into a Ph.D. dissertation. Maybe instead of paying me, we could use your money to sponsor his research, and make him my assistant.”
Grason cringed. “I have a tight reign on this operation. It’s crucial that I keep it that way. Besides, you know the consequences. Why involve a kid? They could do the same thing to him that they did to you.”