Thirty.
“They’re about to start rolling,” Sergeant Akers said to the Secret Service agent when they had reached Level Four. “Ambler won’t like the interruption.” He’d seen the alien’s silver eyes and felt a shiver of not fear—he was far beyond fear—but wonder and anticipation. He was about to ask Can’t it wait, but he knew it could not.
“My responsibility,” Tempest One One said, and he motioned Dave, Ethan and Jefferson on along the corridor. Jefferson couldn’t help but give both the Marine guards a little flippant salute as he passed them.
The group reached a door marked studio and the agent told Dave to go in. Dave opened the door to a brightly lit room with softly colored green walls, a vanilla-colored sofa, a coffee table, and various overstuffed chairs. Through small speakers in the ceiling played music that Dave equated to a Main Street parade, but Jefferson correctly identified the piece as a John Phillips Souza march, all American with bursting pride and shiny buttons. He had used such music to stir patriotism and open wallets at Fourth of July celebrations in New Eden. Three rooms went off from this central chamber, all with closed doors. The Secret Service agent went to the furthermost door on the left and knocked at it. Almost at once it was opened and there stood a sharp-chinned man in a dark blue suit, white shirt, gray-striped necktie, and an American flag pin on his lapel. Ethan had seen this man on the garage level as he’d been brought in, but had not seen him since.
“They want to speak to Derryman,” the agent said, moving aside so this new man could see them. “Urgent, they say.”
The sharp-chinned man gave Ethan a hard, cold stare before he spoke. There were equal measures of repugnance and fear in it. “You know he’s busy. Beale’s just out of makeup, they’re going to be rolling in about three minutes.”
“Yeah, I know that. Just tell him they’re here. Tell him the alien says the Gorgons and Cyphers are going to attack again.”
“Hell of a time.”
“Screw the protocol,” said Tempest One One, reaching a ragged edge. “Everything’s gone out the fucking window. Tell Derryman.”
The other man withdrew into the room and closed the door without another word.
“Just wait,” the agent told his charges, as the John Phillips Souza tune marched along with bass drumbeats and cymbals and shiny notes from long-dead trombones.
Nearly a minute passed. When the door opened again, Vance Derryman’s face was strained with tension and pain that Ethan could feel like a blade drawn along his own spine. Behind the glasses, Derryman’s eyes were red and swollen. He had changed into a black suit because the gray one he’d worn previously had been marred by rock dust.
“I said I needed time,” he told Dave. His voice was slow and deliberate and a little too loud because his hearing was still impaired.
“We don’t have that luxury,” Ethan said. “I want to know…how did you get here?” He saw his answer in Derryman’s mind in a matter of seconds. “Where’s the helicopter?”
Derryman had thought the entire trip through—Air Force One from Washington to Salt Lake City, from the airport by black SUV to the secure hangar and helipad, then the flight here. He knew of course the alien would’ve picked it from his mind as quickly as he saw the mental images. Ethan surely already knew where the VH-71 Kestrel was kept, but Derryman spoke for the benefit of the others. “We have a helipad on the other side of the mountain. It’s camouflaged. The ’copter’s in a hangar there.”
“That can get us to the S-4 area,” Ethan said, a statement of fact.
“In about three hours. But I told you already…” Derryman paused. His jaw worked. The pain and pressure in his head were still killing him, fouling up his thought processes. “You want to see one reason he can’t leave this place? Come in and follow me.”
Derryman took Dave, Ethan and Jefferson through another seating area to a door with a red light above it and a sign that read on air, but it was not illuminated. He opened the door and ushered them into a dimly lit space where there were a couple of rows of theater seats. Three men wearing headphones sat at a large mixing console and control panel that sparkled with small green lights. Beyond a large glass window, the President of the United States stood behind a podium that bore the Presidential seal. A bank of spotlights was aimed at him, along with a pair of professional-looking television cameras. The two camera technicians also wore headphones. Up on a ladder, another man was adjusting the spotlight beams. A gray-haired woman wearing jeans and a blue paisley blouse was dabbing powder on Jason Beale’s damp forehead. Behind the President and the podium was a set of library shelves that held not only a few dozen hardcover books but items like a small bust of Abraham Lincoln, a set of praying hands cast in bronze with a Bible leaning against them, framed color photographs of Beale and the First Lady along with their two college-aged children James and Natalie, a world globe, and other items as might be found in the White House. Everything was displayed on shelves high enough so the cameras could catch them.
“What is this?” Dave asked. “How is—”
“Sit down,” Derryman said. “He’ll be giving his speech in about a minute.” He pointed at a digital clock counting off the seconds just above the window.
One of the men at the control console pressed a button. “Kathy, he’s still got some shine on his nose.” He sounded tired and lackluster, as if he’d gone through this a hundred times but it was his job and he was performing it to the best of his ability. The woman nodded and applied the powder brush.
Derryman sat down in the first row beside Dave, with Ethan between Dave and Jefferson. At the end of the row sat the First Lady, who spared them not a glance. She was drinking from a glass with liquid and icecubes in it. Dave smelled alcohol.
“Am I all right?” Beale asked, looking upward at what must’ve been a speaker mounted on the wall on his side of the glass.
“You’re fine, sir,” said the console controller.
“Mandy? Am I all right?” Beale’s voice was thin and fragile, a far cry from what both Jefferson and Dave remembered of previous speeches, though Dave hadn’t heard many of them, and he was not fond of politics. Before the aliens had come, his opinion was that politicians disdained the public until they needed votes.
“Yes, you’re all right,” the First Lady said, but she wasn’t looking at him and she was taking another drink.
“My most trustworthy critic,” Beale announced, with a nervous laugh, to anyone who was listening. He was wearing the same dark blue suit, white shirt and red-patterned tie Jefferson had seen him in previously. He was immaculate in his clothing and his makeup was expertly applied. The dark circles under Beale’s eyes and the deep lines in his face could be hidden, but no makeup could hide the feeling of sad and tragic desperation that Ethan knew everyone in the room could sense.
“Sir,” said the console controller, “any glare on the teleprompter?” The way the man spoke this, it sounded like a rote question.
“No glare. It’s good.”
“We’ll give you a countdown to showtime, as usual. Kathy, finish him up. George, you’re done. The lights look fine.” The makeup lady instantly stopped her work and the technician came down the ladder and folded it up to prop it against the stage set’s far wall.
Jefferson leaned forward. “What’s going on here?” he asked Derryman.