Turcotte nodded. “I imagine you would probably have been able to see them from space.”
“Visually, yes, when they reflected sunlight,” Nabinger said. “But even more importantly, given the angle of the sides of the pyramid, if they are viewed above thirty-eight degrees from the horizon — i.e., from space — they would have painted a radar picture with a directivity factor of over six hundred million for a two-centimeter wavelength.”
“Not exactly the Stealth bomber,” Turcotte noted.
“No. Such a radar picture could be seen from a long way away from the planet, to say the least.” Nabinger leaned forward. “The first question I asked myself when I originally saw the pyramids many years ago was the most basic. Why did the ancient Egyptians choose that form? No one has ever been able to give an adequate reason. If, given the building capability of the time, you wanted to build a massive structure that could be detected from space, the pyramid is the best choice.”
The archeologist was warming to his subject matter.
“Hell, think about all the other symbols that have been etched into the surface of the Earth by the ancients! The giant bird symbols on plateaus in South America. Symbols in chalk in England. We’ve always wondered why early man was so intent on drawing symbols that could only be seen from above when they themselves would never have been able to see it from that perspective.”
“That still doesn’t answer any of the questions that we need answers to,” Turcotte said. “If we don’t come up with something to support Von Seeckt’s contention that the mothership mustn’t be flown, all we’ve done is put ourselves in a deep shit-pile with no way out.”
“That is what we will find at Dulce,” Von Seeckt said.
“Well, we’re just about there,” Kelly said. “I hope someone’s got a plan.”
“I’ll have one by the time we get there,” Turcotte said, looking in the drawers below the console and checking out some of the equipment stored there. He glanced up at Von Seeckt. “Mind telling us what’s at Dulce?”
Kelly nodded slightly to herself. She was beginning to like Turcotte more and more. There was a lot of fog swirling about this situation: different agendas by the four people in this van, unclear government objectives, secrets piled on top of secrets. She just wanted Johnny and then she was going to break this wide open. To get Johnny, though, she was going to have to trust Turcotte’s skills. She knew that Turcotte was going to have to trust Von Seeckt to the same degree — and he didn’t. She didn’t either. Her reporter’s sixth sense told her the old man was holding back.
“I told you,” Von Seeckt said. “It is another government installation, an offshoot of the installation at Area 51.”
“Have you ever been there?” Turcotte asked.
“I told you. Once. Just after the end of World War II. It was very long ago and my memories are not that good.”
“I know you said that,” Turcotte said. “And I asked you again because I don’t understand why you never went there again if this place was such an important part of Majic-12 and you were one of the founding members of the board, so to speak.”
The sound of the van engine and the tires rolling sounded abnormally loud in the silence. Kelly decided to see if she could keep the ball rolling. “Want to hear what is suspected to go on there?” she called out.
“I’d appreciate any information, even rumors, at this point,” Turcotte said. Kelly brought her research to the forefront of her brain.
“Among the UFO community it’s said that Dulce is the site of a bioengineering lab. That it’s a place where our government turns over people to the aliens whose craft we are flying at Area 51. We know the first part is true.”
“And we know the part about turning people over to aliens isn’t true,” Turcotte noted.
“Are you sure?” Kelly asked.
“No, it cannot be!” Von Seeckt cried out. “I would have known if we’d had contact with whoever left the bouncers and mothership. We would not have had to struggle so hard for so many years. We just got into the mothership this past year. It sat for so long, a puzzle we couldn’t break.”
“Maybe something changed this year,” Kelly suggested.
She had Von Seeckt off balance and she knew from experience that she had to keep up the pressure. “I have heard that the government is doing testing on mind control at Dulce. They are supposedly working with memory-affecting drugs and EDOM.”
“What’s EDOM?” Turcotte asked.
“Electronic dissolution of memory,” Kelly said. “I did an article on it a few years back. Of course, the people I interviewed were only talking about it theoretically, but it always seems that our government likes to take theory and see if it can work. EDOM is used to cause selective amnesia. It creates acidic croline, which blocks the transmission of nerve impulses, which in the brain stops the transmission of thought in the affected area.”
“Ever hear of that?” Turcotte asked Von Seeckt.
“I have heard…” Von Seeckt began, then he paused.
When he spoke again, his voice was hesitant. “I will tell you the truth. I will tell you why I never went back to Dulce after my visit in 1946.”
They all waited.
“Because I knew who was working there.” Von Seeckt’s voice dripped disgust. “I met them. My fellow Germans. The biological and chemical warfare experts. And they were continuing their experimental work that they had started in the concentration camps. I could not go there. I could not stand to see what they were doing.” Von Seeckt told them about Paperclip.
“Surely most of these people are dead now,” Kelly said when he was done. “But I imagine that the work is still continuing there and that explains a lot of the Nightscape stuff and why everything is classified. But what’s the connection with the mothership?”
“I have not been there, true,” Von Seeckt said, “but Gullick and the others he trusted — they traveled to Dulce often. Something changed this year. They changed.”
Kelly sensed blood in the water. “Changed? Changed how?”
“They began acting irrationally,” Von Seeckt said. “We always had secrecy in Majic-12. And Dulce has existed for many years, as Captain Turcotte says. But something is different now. The urgency to fly the mothership. What is the rush? Even getting into it. For so many years we could not penetrate the skin, then suddenly they pick a certain spot and try a new technique, and they succeed after decades of trying.
“Even how quickly they have mastered the controls and the instruments. It is as if they know much more than they should.”
“Could they have broken the code on the high runes?”
Nabinger asked. “That would explain some of it.”
“Some of it, yes,” Von Seeckt agreed. “But I do not think they have broken the code, or if they have, it does not explain why they are acting so strangely and in such a rush.” Von Seeckt threw his hands up in the air. “I do not understand.”
“Do you know where the facility is?” Turcotte asked.
“Not exactly. Just somewhere on the outside of the town of Dulce. I do remember a large mountain behind the town and that we went around the mountain on a dirt road. Then we went into a tunnel and it was all underground.”
Turcotte rubbed his forehead. “So you don’t exactly know where it is and you don’t exactly know what goes on there?”
“No.”
Kelly looked up in the rearview mirror. Turcotte met her eyes, then spoke. “Well, we’ll be there shortly. And we’ll find out what’s going on and get Johnny Simmons out of there.”
Kelly opened her mouth to say something, then shut it.
She turned her eyes back to the road and drove.