‘And you think that because — why? You saw wreckage? You heard an eyewitness account of the accident?’
‘Yes. Both.’
‘Then we did our job well, for you at least. Many people do not believe it.’
‘If it didn’t crash then what happened to the passengers?’
‘The passengers were led into a disused hangar in Cleveland Hopkins Airport and executed, by my team, after which the bodies were loaded into a van, driven to an industrial furnace just outside the city and burned. And your government paid me $40 million to do it.’
She blinks away the absurdity of the statement. ‘You’re saying that you were responsible for 9/11?’
‘No. Just Flight 93. And we didn’t know your government was our contractor until almost two years later.’
She shakes her head. ‘Doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t they just crash the plane and be done with it?’
‘They needed to be assured of at least one positive, uplifting story from that day that they could control.’
‘What? What’s uplifting about that?’
‘Think about it. After 9/11, the passengers on board Flight 93 were heralded as the embodiment of American bravery in the face of Islamic tyranny. They were the “flight that fought back”. Everything they did, from their stoic cellphone calls to loved ones through to “let’s roll”, their call to arms before they attempted to subdue the hijackers — all faked by my people, by the way — created a heroic legacy that was regularly conscripted over the following years to help justify the war on terror and its countless breaches of civil liberties.’
‘You’re delusional.’
‘Why would I lie to you?’
‘You don’t think you’re lying. I’m sure you believe every word of it because you’re delusional.’
He studies her for a long moment. ‘Do you think Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK?’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’
‘Do you?’
She looks at him, takes a moment to answer. ‘No.’
‘When did you realise this?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think about it. When?’
She shrugs. ‘I — the nineties. Early nineties. When that movie came out.’
He nods. ‘JFK. So, thirty years after the fact. But ten years after, if you’d said Oswald was innocent, everyone would have thought you were crazy. Nowadays, if you think he’s guilty, everyone thinks you’re crazy. Well, in twenty years no one will believe al-Qaeda had anything to do with 9/11 either. But by then, who will care? It will be like the truth about JFK, another distant curiosity lost in a sea of tabloid nonsense.’
‘It’s just bullshit. Sorry, but it is.’
‘The money we were paid was laundered twice before it reached us. As I said, it took two years to trace, but the trail ended inside your government.’
She shakes her head, not buying a word of it. He regards her for a moment. ‘There’s other supporting evidence, of course. No senior government figures flew on domestic airlines that day. The Twin Towers collapsed too smoothly to be the result of aircraft impacts. No aircraft wreckage was found at the Pentagon because it was hit by a cruise missile, which even the secretary of defense at the time accidentally referred to. When bin Laden was uncovered in Pakistan they promptly murdered him so he couldn’t tell the world he had nothing to do with 9/11. It goes on.’
‘That’s just crazy conspiracy-theory shit.’
‘Not every conspiracy’s a theory, Ms Jacolby.’ The Frenchman turns back to the controls.
Rhonda tries to process what she’s heard. Does she believe any of it? 9/11 as a false flag operation? Her late father, a military-history buff, had explained the idea of false-flag ops to her when she was a kid and it had stuck in her mind, if only because of its name.
A false-flag operation is a covert government mission designed to deceive the public so that the mission appeared to have been carried out by an enemy, thus clearing a path to war with that enemy. The Department of Defense had considered such an operation in the early 1960s during the Cuban missile crisis. It planned to hijack a US passenger jet then blame it on the Cubans as a prelude to invasion. Operation Northwoods was only cancelled at the last moment by President Kennedy. Many people, including Rhonda’s dad, also believed the Gulf War had been a false-flag operation, the US government giving Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Kuwait through back channels, then using his aggression as an excuse to start the war so they could destroy his newly built military.
Was 9/11 a false-flag operation to clear a path for the war on terror? Would someone, could someone, knowingly inflict that kind of pain on their country? These are not the questions Rhonda asks the Frenchman.
‘What’s any of this have to do with your hijacking my shuttle?’
He doesn’t turn to her. ‘All will become apparent in the fullness of time.’
20
It’s like he’s landed on Mars.
Judd stands outside the small Alice Springs Airport and waits to be picked up. He takes in the jagged, red landscape, punctuated by the occasional nub of weatherbeaten spinifex. To the left a mountain range looms in the middle distance. To the right there’s nothing but red flatness as far as the eye can see.
He checks messages on his iPhone, finds an email from Thompkins’ assistant. There’s been no change in the recovery mission’s status while he was airborne: Atlantis is still missing.
He glances at his Omega PloProf 600. His ride is fifteen minutes late. The vintage dive watch had been Rhonda’s present to him before his shuttle flight. He’d admired its chunky design so she had tracked one down for him. She always thought it funny that a man who wanted to be as far above sea level as possible wore a watch designed to work 2000 feet below it.
It’s Africa-hot out here and Judd’s not dressed for it. Long, dark-grey pants, a white polo shirt, navy-blue sports jacket. He’s even wearing a singlet for Chrissake, absolutely too much clothing for ‘the Alice’, as the pilot called it before they landed. He pulls off the jacket, lies it across his single bag, then polishes his Ray-Ban Aviators with his shirt to remove the red dust.
A car engine strains. He looks up, follows the roadway that snakes away from the airport to a dust cloud that rolls towards him. In front of the dust cloud is a day-glo-yellow ute, the words Blades of Corey roughly handpainted on its door.
It skids to a halt in front of Judd. It is, to be kind, a dented rust bucket. A suntanned man leans out the driver’s window, shoots Judd a crooked grin. ‘You the bloke going to Kinabara?’
‘Judd Bell. Yes.’
‘G’day, Corey Purchase. I’m taking you there. Nice to meet you. Hop in.’
Judd picks up his bag, pulls the door open. It creaks then judders to a stop, half-open.
‘Sorry. It’s a little sticky. Let me send the boys from maintenance over.’ The Australian swivels in his seat, jams both boots onto the door and pushes hard. It grinds open. ‘There you go. No worries.’
Judd slides in with his bag. The ute doesn’t look any better on the inside. It’s a sea of rust and old food containers, the road visible through a sizeable hole in the passenger foot well. He shifts and realises he’s sitting on something.
‘Sorry!’ Corey pulls a flattened sandwich from underneath Judd. ‘Lunch.’ Then he notices Judd’s jacket, draped over his bag. ‘Lovin’ that.’
Judd looks at it. ‘Okay. Thanks.’
A dog pops up in the rear tray and barks loudly, startles Judd. ‘Christ almighty!’
‘That’s Spike. Don’t worry, he’s all mouth and trousers.’