Boreas dismissed Dr. Woods and greeted the newcomers. “General Eichen, Agent Kirtley, welcome to HAARP.”
Eichen took Boreas’s hand. “Hell of a trip to get here, but I enjoyed it. Great country you have. I imagine the hunting is spectacular.”
Kirtley shook hands without comment.
“Depends on what you are hunting.” Boreas turned to a small cabinet. “Can I get you gentlemen a drink?”
“Hell, yes,” Eichen said. “Scotch if you have it.”
Kirtley declined. “No, thank you.”
Boreas poured the general’s drink, then his own. He sat down behind the desk and slid the glass across the pitted surface.
Eichen glanced at the window. “Busy as heck in there.”
“Yes, they are.”
“I’ve read the documents you sent the expenditure oversight committee,” Eichen said.
Boreas steepled his fingers and considered the general. An investigator arriving now couldn’t be coincidence, not with the project as close to completion as it was.
Eichen looked out the window. “HAARP. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Fancy name. Two billion dollars in research and development money over the last two years. And reading between the lines, nothing really accomplished.”
“Reading between what lines?” Boreas didn’t wait for an answer. “We’ve gathered valuable research information and-”
“The ultimate goal of HAARP isn’t research, is it?” Eichen cut him off. “You briefed the congressional oversight committee that this entire complex was designed to allow full-time strategic communications and data link with submerged ballistic missile submarines.” The general paused to take a sip of his drink. “You and I know that was bullshit, correct?”
“A good cover story, don’t you think?” Boreas said.
Eichen downed the rest of the scotch and slapped the glass back on the desk. “What is it really?”
“It’s a weapon, of course,” Boreas said.
“A weapon from radio antennas?” the general was skeptical. Kirtley had yet to say a word, his dark eyes going back and forth between Eichen and Boreas like those of a spectator at a tennis match.
“A weapon beyond anything you could imagine,” Boreas said. “With it the United States can control the world.”
Eichen snorted. “A bold statement. I’ve been in uniform since I was seventeen as a plebe at the Academy. I’ve fought in Vietnam, the Gulf, and half a dozen other pissant places our President decided to send us. I heard my colleagues in the Air Force say the Stealth fighter and bomber would totally change air warfare, but they didn’t. They said smart bombs would do the job, but they didn’t either, contrary to what CNN and the Discovery channel tout on their specials.
“There’s always a new weapon that will change everything, but in the end it’s always the poor grunt with a rifle in his hand who has to take the ground from the enemy who determines the outcome of war. That’s the ultimate weapon. Always has been, always will be.”
“This weapon is different than those you mentioned. It targets here-” Boreas tapped the side of his head. “What is a soldier without a mind?”
“A good soldier, according to some,” the general replied sarcastically. “One who will follow orders without question. I don’t agree with that, of course. How exactly are you going to affect minds with a bunch of antennas?”
Boreas glanced out the window. A dark part of him appreciated the irony of the questions the general was asking. Plus this was information he needed to brief Kirtley on, so it wasn’t a waste of time. “A radio sends a wave through the air, the distance determined by the power and line of sight for frequency modulated waves-FM. Certain waves, such as high-frequency or amplitude modulated-AM-can bounce off the atmosphere and even go beyond line of sight, again limited only by power of the transmitter.”
“I have worked with radios,” Eichen said patiently.
“This transmitter is on a different frequency than those,” Boreas said. “We have determined that there is a frequency that affects the human mind.”
“Affects it how?” Eichen asked.
“Do you know how your mind functions?” Boreas didn’t expect an answer or wait for one. “Most people haven’t a clue. Do you know what a thought is? Is a thought real? It is real inside your head, isn’t it? But is it real outside of your head?”
Boreas was frustrated after years of trying to explain their work to idiots who only believed in things they could see and touch. The Priory didn’t need the money from the Black Budget-it needed the access to the land to place HAARP on, the satellites that were also to be part of the system, and the scientists the United States could provide.
The Priory had always used existing political structures for its own end. In days of old when a Prior could stand behind a king and whisper in his ear, it had been easier. It was difficult now but even in a democracy there were ways to manipulate power. Out of the paranoia of the Cold War and the legacy of the Black Budget, the Priory had found an avenue to operate within the shadows of the U.S. and Russian governments for decades.
Boreas rapped his knuckles on the edge of his chair. “To you, this is reality. But you will also agree that the voice you hear over your radio is real too. But you can’t see it, can you? What does a radio wave consist of?
“There are levels to reality. And the mind operates on one of those levels, which we call the psychic plane, or the virtual one. ‘Virtual’ means something exists in essence or effect but not in actual form.”
The general, as others Boreas had briefed, focused on one word. “Psychic? You mean like those people who advertise those 1-800 psychic hot lines? Or that fellow who claims he can bend a spoon just by looking at it?”
“All ‘psychic’ means is something that pertains to the mind.” Boreas held his anger in check. “Why do scientists constantly ignore the power of the thing they use the most? The core of our being, that which makes us different from the animals? And why do you military men ignore the vulnerabilities of the mind? Control the mind, you control the man. Destroy the mind, you destroy the man. Target the mind with a weapon, and every man is vulnerable no matter if he is in a highly armored tank or flying at Mach 2 in a plane.
“What we are doing at HAARP is taking warfare to the virtual level. This weapon-the waves that will be broadcast from these antennas-will work in effect but not in form. Once we fine-tune the proper wavelengths for the psychic or virtual plane, there are numerous directions we can pursue research in. There’s so much we don’t understand about the virtual plane, the physics of it. For example, what is distance in the virtual plane? If I can visualize in my mind a place a thousand miles from here, have I traveled that far in the virtual plane?”
Eichen didn’t seem satisfied. “Wasn’t there something on the Russian end like this that caused the recent snafu in Moscow? The nuclear weapons going off?”
“Something like it,” Boreas acknowledged. He knew the general probably wasn’t briefed on Bright Gate or the Russian’s SD-8 and the recent battle-there were only a couple of people in the hierarchy of government who knew of the existence of both Bright Gate and HAARP. In the Black Budget world, everything was compartmentalized so that the left hand rarely knew what the right was doing. Or did the general know about Bright Gate also? If Eichen had been recruited by the other side, he might know much more than he was letting on. Or if he was Nexus, he also might know about both.
“What exactly is a radio wave?” Kirtley asked, breaking his silence. The question surprised Boreas. Everyone he had briefed had either been too embarrassed to ask such a simple question or assumed they knew the answer, which Boreas knew to be wrong in the vast majority of cases.