Twelve Main was the high security wing where cells were walled with stainless steel to prevent the prisoners from ripping the latrines and sinks out to use as weapons. The sergeant walked to the farthest door and unlocked it, pushing it open as he led her inside.
Cuffed to a table inside was Victor Wilms. Lopez was prepared for the fact that Wilms would have been traumatized, but she was not ready for the sight that greeted her. Wilms’ face was shaded with deep, angry welts of black and blue, one eye swollen entirely shut and an unhealthy shade of purple and yellow. His hair was in disarray, dried blood caking the corner of his swollen lips where he had been savagely beaten. His head hung low on a weary neck, one eye loosely focused on Lopez as she moved to sit opposite him.
‘He’s up for more tests in the morning,’ the sergeant revealed as he moved to close the door. ‘HIV is rife in the system and let’s just say your boy had a rough old night with his cellies.’
The sergeant closed the door and Lopez looked again at Wilms. His skin was pale and haggard, his gaze hidden behind bruised sclera as though he were gazing at her from the far side of the tunnel to Hell.
‘Sleep well?’ Lopez asked brightly.
Wilms looked at her for a moment and then a weak laugh trickled from his lips, gaps visible where several of his teeth had been knocked out. The movement provoked more bleeding and Wilms winced at the pain. His features pinched tightly as his one good eye closed and his shoulders trembled as his bitter laugh dissolved into a pitiful sob.
Lopez watched as Wilms huddled over himself, his shoulders hunched and his head almost touching the table between them. Lopez, despite her hatred, could not help but feel some sort of pity for what he must have endured in the last few hours. That he had probably been gang raped was not lost on Lopez, and the beating may have occurred before, during or after his ordeal. Pedophiles were among the most reviled of convicts, and although Wilms was innocent of that particularly heinous crime he had caused more than enough suffering in other ways during his life to be deserving of such punishment. While other prisoners would have had forged into their psyche the knowledge that to show weakness, especially in front of other men, was to condemn themselves to a life of misery at the hands of others, Wilms had spent his life hiding behind money and power. He had no defense against the rough and tumble physicality of the real world, and such people were referred to inside Riker’s Island as “food”, for the bigger fish.
‘It’s going to get worse,’ Lopez said, keeping her tone stern. ‘We won’t let you die in here, Victor. We’ll make damned sure you survive the rapes, beatings and stabbings. You’ve got years of this to look forward to. Either tell me everything that I need to know or this visit will be the last you’ll ever see of the outside world.’
Wilms continued to sob quietly as Lopez leaned forward further.
‘What is KIL?’ she demanded.
Wilms’ sobbing died away as he sucked in a ragged breath of air and finally managed to lift his head to look at her.
‘I want immunity,’ he said, ‘before I say anything.’
Lopez shook her head. ‘You’re down for life, Victor, that’s not going to change.’
‘House arrest,’ Wilms uttered, his voice distorted by his swollen lips. ‘I want out of here.’
Lopez raised an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘That might happen, but I’ll need something solid before I walk out of here or you’re going straight back to your buddies in that cell, so start talking fast.’
Wilms sighed, and Lopez realized that every last ounce of this man’s resistance truly had been destroyed by a single night in a real jail. She wondered briefly whether she could pull this stunt off with the other members of Majestic Twelve.
‘What do you want from me?’ he asked in a ghostly, ragged whisper.
Lopez felt a tingle of excitement that she suppressed rapidly, unwilling to reveal to Wilms her anticipation of finally learning what everything they had been fighting for was about.
‘Majestic Twelve,’ she said, ‘who are they? What do they want? Why do they know about this base in Antarctica?’
Wilms did not look at her as he replied, his battered face staring down at the grubby Formica between them.
‘The Silver Legion,’ he said.
‘The what?’
‘The Silver Legion of America, also known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist organization founded in 1933 by William Dudley Pelley that was headquartered in North Carolina,’ Wilms said. ‘It was a white supremacist group, based partly on Hitler’s Brownshirts. Two years after their founding, and with Nazi funding, the Silver Shirts had built a fortified headquarters in the Los Angeles hills and had some fifteen thousand members. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 killed off most support for the legion, but a few die-hards remained. They were ready four years later when the Nazis were defeated to bring into America survivors of the Third Reich along with all of the wealth that was pilfered from Germany in the last days of the war.’
Lopez sat stunned in her chair as she digested what Wilms had told her.
‘We’ve been fighting the Nazis all this time?’
Wilms continued to speak, his voice monotone, his eyes cast down as though he were spilling a lifetime of regret across the table between them.
‘After the war, twelve former members of the Silver Legion used their new found wealth to invest heavily into the industrial-military complex, just as their Nazi comrades had done. They prospered, became powerful, and when in 1947 the first hints of extra-terrestrial technology coming into the hands of the United States government began to circulate, they were there to pick up the threads of what had begun in Germany many years before with Die Glocke. Majestic Twelve was formed and the rest is history, although you won’t find that in any of the official records.’
Lopez sat in silence for a moment, reflecting on just how closely MJ-12’s actions and power were based on the Third Reich’s regime of oppression, fascism, deception and financial power. Hadn’t Hitler burned down the Reichstag in order to declare a false-flag war against Communism and waged genocide against the Jews despite being of Jewish descent himself? Lopez was no student of history, but she knew enough to figure that MJ-12 could indeed be descended from Nazi survivors of the Second World War, which also suggested that Wilms was telling the truth. Lopez decided to go for broke.
‘What does KIL stand for?’ Lopez demanded again.
This time, there was no resistance.
‘Kinetic Incendiary Launch,’ Wilms uttered.
‘What?’
‘KIL,’ Wilms whispered. ‘That’s what it stands for.’
‘Explain.’
Wilms sucked in another painful breath.
‘It’s a satellite that my company began putting into orbit in 1974,’ he mumbled, his voice altered by his swollen lips and missing teeth. ‘The purpose of the satellite is to give Majestic Twelve the ability to launch a nuclear grade assault on a target of their choosing anywhere on Earth.’
Lopez stared at Wilms in horror for a long moment. ‘They have a nuclear capability?’
‘No,’ Wilms replied, his voice a hoarse whisper. ‘The Kinetic Launch system relies upon gravitational energy. The impact of any such weapon would equal or exceed a nuclear detonation without the complications of radioactive fallout.’
Lopez’s mind reeled.
‘Where is this satellite of yours?’ she asked.
Wilms looked up slowly at her and despite his suffering she thought she saw a gleam of vengeance twinkling in his one open eye.
‘By now, it should be almost over Antarctica.’