‘So if we start bombarding the core with billions of watts of electromagnetic energy… ’
‘We might generate an even greater wobble. It’s madness, but the admirals and the generals aren’t listening.’
‘Neither are the politicians. Is there any other data to connect the wobble with the frequency of earthquakes?’
‘In 1967 two Canadian scientists came up with the Mansinha-Smylie theory connecting the earth’s wobble with the big earthquakes, but mainstream science has largely ignored it. And it gets worse.’ Jackson turned to one of the centre’s computers, keyed in a series of commands and pulled up an extraordinary photograph taken from the Hubble telescope. The space shuttle Discovery had carried the eleven-tonne Hubble into orbit in 1990. Bigger than a truck, the telescope orbited the earth every ninety-seven minutes. ‘At a height of 360 kilometres, Hubble is free of any of the distortions of the earth’s atmosphere, which enables us to take very clear photographs of some of the most distant objects in the universe. That’s the galaxy NGC 1300, which in the scheme of things is actually quite close. It’s about sixty-nine million light years away from earth, and 88 000 light years in diameter.’
O’Connor stared at the stunning image of the barred spiral galaxy, a massive swirling red-and-blue catherine-wheel in the Eridanus constellation. ‘Huh. Eighty-eight thousand light years wide… big doesn’t seem to do it justice.’
Jackson grinned. ‘No, and that’s especially so when you think about the size of the universe. There are somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Multiply that by another 200 billion galaxies in the cosmos, and size is difficult to picture. With trillions of planets out there, it’s absurd to think that earth is the only one with life on it, but I’ve chosen a photograph of the NGC 1300 galaxy because it’s similar to our own and its centre is clearly visible.’ Jackson pointed to the swirling image on the screen. ‘The centre is a black hole of unimaginable gravitational and electromagnetic energy.’
‘It looks flat – almost like a disc.’
‘Precisely. As you and I both know, black holes are so powerful they flatten everything around them. Nothing, not even light, can escape, hence the term ‘black’, and it’s that power that keeps a galaxy’s stars and solar systems in orbit. However, once every 26000 years, our solar system travels through the same plane as the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way. In effect, if you imagine that black hole being in the middle of a dinner plate, our solar system rises to be level with the edge of the plate.’ Jackson paused, weighing the impact of what he was about to say. ‘That 26 000-year marker comes up again in 2012,’ he said finally, ‘at which time we’ll be exactly opposite the black hole.’
‘And that may explain some of the wild weather patterns?’
‘Yes. And we’re messing with the balance of the earth when its orbit is at its most unstable. On top of which, the earth’s magnetic field is now at its lowest level in recorded history. The poles are skipping across the wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic at over thirty kilometres a year. If you couple that with the latest NASA data on sunspots, which are at an unprecedented power level, the planet faces an uncertain future, to put it mildly.’
‘I’ve seen the magnetometer printouts,’ O’Connor agreed, his mind racing at the size of the abyss the experiments out of Gakona might generate.
‘And the sunspot power is still rising dramatically,’ Jackson added, pulling up an image of massive explosions on the surface of the sun. ‘NASA estimates sunspot power will also peak in 2012, at levels we’ve never seen before. Could be the Hopi Indians and the Maya were on to something.’
‘You think there’s something in all that mystic mumbo jumbo?’
‘Perhaps. As a civilisation we think we’re fairly advanced, but back in 850 AD, the Maya predicted that at 11.11 a.m. on Friday 21 December 2012 our planet would line up precisely with the Milky Way’s black hole. Astronomers have now confirmed the Maya were right, down to the last second. If the Maya could make a prediction that accurate, 800 years before Galileo picked up the first telescope, maybe we should be sitting up and taking a lot more notice of their warning.’
23
V ice President Walter Montgomery was due to host some senior CIA officers at an evening function on the lawns of his official home, a stately white nineteenth-century mansion overlooking Massachusetts Avenue. He’d asked DDO Wiley to come early for a meeting in the first-floor library.
The vice presidential library was finished in white timber with light-beige wallpaper and matching lounge chairs. It had a certain New England charm about it, in the midst of which both men seemed distinctly out of place.
‘I trust that asshole O’Connor’s enjoying the delights of Gakona,’ the Vice President said, indicating Wiley should take a seat.
‘It’s about as close to Siberia as I could send him, Mr Vice President. He’ll stay there until I work out something more permanent.’
‘Good. Now, have you seen the latest claims by that Weizman bitch?’ Vice President Montgomery flung a copy of the latest edition of The Mayan Archaeologist onto the elegant white coffee table. The cover was dominated by a striking photograph of Dr Aleta Weizman, standing beside the Pyramid of the Lost World in the jungles of Tikal, Guatemala. The headline read: Weizman Claims CIA Involvement in Guatemalan Genocide Allegations made against the School of the Americas
Wiley knew the reality behind that headline lay deep in the Guatemalan jungle, and his reasons for ensuring that the truth didn’t surface were far more pressing than those of the Vice President. Should he brief Montgomery on the diaries the CIA’s man in San Pedro, the ex-Nazi commandant of Mauthausen, had kept? Diaries that were now missing -
‘I need hardly remind you, Howard, that we go to the polls shortly,’ Montgomery thundered on, ‘and right now we’re up to our bootstraps in hog shit in Iraq and Afghanistan. The last thing the President or I need is the media spotlight back on Intelligence or secret prisons and water-boarding. Or the fucking Guatemalans, for that matter. Or the Mexicans, Venezuelans or anyone else from that garbage dump down south. Nixon got it right about Central America. Nobody gives a fuck about the place.’
‘I agree, Mr Vice President. It’s a shit box.’
‘I don’t care how you do it, but put some heat on this Weizman woman. Find out who controls archaeologists’ licences and send them a donation from a grateful nation with the proviso she gets blacklisted. Anyone who thinks that someone other than Columbus discovered America doesn’t deserve to have a licence. And put her under surveillance. If she even looks like exposing our operations in Guatemala, Paraguay or anywhere else, get rid of her. Meantime, keep the CIA out of the fucking media.’
‘Leave it to me, Mr Vice President. By the time I’ve finished with Weizman, and O’Connor for that matter, the AP numbers will look even better.’ Wiley and Montgomery had both been greatly encouraged by an Associated Press poll that had claimed twelve per cent of Americans had either never heard of the CIA or couldn’t rate it.
As the DDO left the vice presidential residence later in the evening, a move was already taking shape on Wiley’s sinister chessboard. It was a move that would require the recall of O’Connor from Gakona, but it would eliminate Weizman permanently.