Slowly, almost feebly, McEwen fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a white box and took out a capsule. Bahr filled a paper cup at the cooler as McEwen, with hands visibly shaking, stuck the capsule in his mouth. He swallowed it after a couple of tries, and coughed weakly. “What do you think we should do, Julian?”
“First, sew up last night’s incident tight. That means blackout of all news stories, and indoctrination of the cities and towns where the power failed. Make up a cover story to give them, and make it good. BURINF can take care of that . .
With an obvious effort of will John McEwen straightened up. “If there’s a leak . . . if even a hint gets into circulation . . . it could be worse than the crash.”
“There won’t be a leak,” Bahr said confidently. He turned to Carmine. “Well keep everything to do with this incident and any new ones under top security . . . .But most important of all, don’t use the word aliens in any communications. Don’t hint at it, don’t joke about it, don’t say it, or write it, or think it. Because if there are aliens . . . .”
Carmine nodded and left the room, pad and pencil in hand. McEwen watched him go, and then looked at Julian Bahr, shaking his head with the slow, baffled uncertainty of an ineffectual parent.
With all the speed, force and precision of a guillotine blade, the blackout fell on the incident of the Wildwood Power Plant raid.
The coverup was fast, and skillful. Frank Carmine talked to BURINF, at Bahr’s orders and over McEwen’s signature and political support, and the greatest communications network in the world jerked as if it had been hit by a whip.
From somewhere in BURINF emerged a newscast story of a power-line failure between Wildwood and St. Louis, causing a power blackout the previous night. It was a clear, simple, convincing story, broadcast over a tightly controlled net to reach only St. Louis and its suburban centers, and it reassured everyone and explained everything, even though it was a complete and deliberate lie.
North of Wildwood, Road Washed Out signs went up on all wheel-strips leading within twenty miles of the crater, with DIA field units spread out in a wide perimeter around the site of the blast. ’Copter units maintained air coverage to keep unwanted small craft out of the area. Major Harvey Alexander’s absence was covered, and the cordon of young, serious-faced DIA men circulating in the plant area proper was convincingly explained as a team of auditors evaluating the plant operations to prevent another breakdown.
In the great Vanner-Elling calculators in Verdon Caverns, the key words “Wildwood,” “atomic,” “explosion,” “demolition,” “DIA,” “alien,” “mystery,” and scores of other journalistic leak-words were unobtrusively loaded into the electronic censors that tested every story, column, ad and byline for any contextual association with the Wildwood raid, with results screening continuously into the huge BURINF clearing house.
Likewise, an integrated check-system monitored the TV-casts, and thousands of concealed microphones in playgrounds, washrooms, cafeterias, bars and other strategic places—long the standard emotion-samplers and information-gatherers of the government Stability program—went on active to test the rate of occurrence of any of the key words.
And all this was done so swiftly, so silently, that even the TV stations, press rooms, and standard information services did not suspect that a continental alert was on.
Which was why, when the leak came, it was so unexpected.
Station WDQM-TV in Jefferson City, Illinois, reported on a newsbreak flash that a local hunter in the bush had been wakened during the night by an explosion in the region of the Wildwood Power Plant. A forest ranger had also seen the blast, and noticed the concentration of helicopters in the area.
Bahr only caught the last few lines before the commercial, after a frantic signal came through from the local telecast monitor, but that was enough. Cursing, he ordered the story squelched, and the phone line to WDQM began buzzing. In New York an ace copywriter had a recording of the broadcast and Bahr’s personal instructions ringing in his ears began to create, out of nothing, a cover-lie. DIA ground cars intercepted the station’s TV field unit en route to the scene, and took the driver and technicians into custody for interrogation and indoctrination.
But the move was not fast enough. Even while the cover-story was being written, Station BCQN in Canada, on a network that was not under DIA censorship, called WDQM for details. Someone at the station blundered and said the story had been killed. Fifteen minutes later, in a scheduled newscast, the Canadian station opened the dike.
“A mysterious explosion last night in the vicinity of the Wildwood, Illinois, Atomic Power Project, has become the subject of a furious DIA censorship move,” the announcer said. “Earlier this evening Station WDQM-TV reported two eye-witness accounts of the strange blast, which occurred shortly after midnight, but further details have been totally suppressed. In spite of the censorship move, however, an amateur radio group TBX-57HC3 picked up some police-frequency radio chatter last night, tentatively identified as originating in the blast area. TBX has been able to provide us with a tape recording of this chatter, which we have edited somewhat in preparation for this rebroadcast.”
Bahr was on the phone personally before the first sentence of the newscast was finished. He listened as the call went through to make sure it was going to be as bad as it sounded. Finally he was connected with the manager of the BCQN station.
“This is Julian Bahr, Assistant Director DIA, speaking for the director,” he said. “We’ve just caught the beginning of your broadcast, and you seem to have some misinformation about the situation here at Wildwood.”
“Really?” the manager’s voice said languidly.
“We’ll be glad to give you a complete picture of the situation in another half hour, but we’d like to request that you . . . er . . . hold off on that broadcast,” Bahr said. “It might cause some . . . er . . . confusion to have different interpretations of the event in circulation.”
“Yes, I should think it would,” the manager said.
“Then you’ll cancel the broadcast?”
“Oh, I’m really afraid that would be out of the question, Mr. Bahr.” The voice was infinitely regretful, but quite firm.
Bahr caught the remark from the radio about the tape recording, and realized instantly that TBX was a cover code for one of the Canadian intercepts for BRINT. He covered the mouthpiece with his hand.
“BRINT picked up our ’copter chatter last night,” hp said, looking at McEwen’s white face.
“They’ve got to kill it,” McEwen said hoarsely.
Bahr uncovered the mouthpiece. “We would appreciate it very much if you could hold that broadcast, somehow,” he said, throwing up the lure. There was no time to lose.
“Er . . . do you think we could get a reporting team into the area?” That meant, of course, a BRINT intelligence team.
“I doubt it,” Bahr countered, curious to see just how eager BRINT was. “We’ll give you a complete report.”
“I’m not sure that would be completely satisfactory.”
They were eager. Very eager.
“Well, but the Wildwood plant is a highly classified government project,” Bahr said, “and our security people are naturally leery about commercial news agencies which aren’t subject to our security regulations nosing around . . . not that I doubt your discretion . . . .”