Andropov wandered around with his sensor, ignoring the on-going argument.
Jake and Honi stepped away from the cave. “So what do you think?” Honi asked.
“About what Andropov said?”
She nodded.
“Frankly, I don’t know what to think. The official position is that UFOs don’t exist, but apparently they do.”
“I’ve seen reports. Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, March of 1967. A UFO flew over the base, hovered over the ICBM silos and shut everything down. All of the nuclear weapons were deactivated. It took months to get all the systems working again. The Russians have had similar experiences. So have NATO and the British. In every encounter, the nuclear weapons were deactivated, and the entire control system had to be replaced. If a UFO was involved here, why take the weapon? Why not deactivate it and leave it behind, like they have done in the past? Again, just too many things aren’t adding up.”
Jake wandered over to the edge of the hill. “I can’t believe I’m having to deal with UFOs now. An hour ago, I couldn’t have imagined such a development. What do we tell Stafford?”
Honi shrugged. “We know it wasn’t on the FedEx plane. It was unloaded here.”
“And put on a UFO? Is that what we tell Stafford?”
Honi shook her head. “Even if it’s true, I don’t think we can tell him that.”
Jake looked into the emerging dawn light, breathed deeply and tried to refocus his mind. “But that doesn’t mean it didn’t get to LA by some other means. The weapon being here in the past isn’t conclusive. It could be anywhere now.”
“Either way, I think Stafford needs to complete his search. He has to make sure it isn’t there.”
“Agreed. But that doesn’t get us any closer to where it actually is. Hell, it could be anywhere.”
“It could. What piques my curiosity is why and how Andropov got placed in our NEST unit.”
“By General Davies. He obviously knows something that we don’t. When are we going to find that out?”
CHAPTER 13
When Jake and Honi returned to the NSA building later that afternoon, Ken Bartholomew was waiting for them in the lobby.
“So why am I here?” Ken asked.
“We’ve got some money issues for you to help us explain,” Honi said.
Once down in B6, area 4, Jake and Honi showed Ken the display for the new project. Brett explained the color code and the correlations they had made so far. Ken studied the display for a few minutes.
“How do I get more information from the display?” Ken asked.
“It’s interactive,” Brett said. “Touch any node on the screen.”
Ken walked over to the display and touched one of the dark green spots. A rectangle popped up identifying the Central European Bank, its location, and eight menu options, including ledger sheet, account balances, transfers and reserves. Ken touched the upper right corner of the rectangle and the information disappeared.
“And all of this is some kind of a criminal enterprise?” Ken asked.
“Yes,” Honi replied.
“This is huge.”
“Yes, it is,” Honi replied. “It runs through every country in the world.”
“I didn’t mean that kind of huge, but yeah, that, too. Just being able to correlate all of this information is amazing. But you’re missing something important.”
“Like what?” Brett asked.
“There’s an underground economy that dwarfs what you have here. People deal with gold, silver and cash all of the time. They just don’t use banks.”
“Like General Teague and his shipping container,” Jake said.
“Exactly. You don’t have any of that on your display.”
“That’s because the information’s not available,” Honi said.
“Actually, a good portion of it is,” Ken said. “The Secret Service has been building its own database to assist with counterfeiting investigations. We also track gold and silver transactions. I bet you don’t have the Bank of International Settlements in Geneva on your system, do you?”
Brett typed and looked at the display. “No, we don’t.”
“There’s a whole system of bullion banks that deal only with gold, platinum and silver. No paper money, no credit, no electronic transfers — just the physical precious metals in bullion and coins,” Ken said. “I can get you that database.”
“Please do,” Honi said. “The sooner, the better.”
“If you’ll escort me out, I can have that for you in an hour.”
“I’ll go with him,” Jake said.
When Jake and Ken returned an hour later, Grigori Andropov was waiting in the lobby of the NSA building. Jake approached him and glanced at his ID card clipped to his shirt pocket, unsure of what name he was using.
“Russell, good to see you again. This is Ken Bartholomew from the Secret Service.”
The two men shook hands as Honi came walking over.
“Everybody ready to go to work? Then, let’s go.” She led them down to B6, area 4 and introduced the new member to Brett and Tracy.
“Here’s where we need your help,” Jake said. “If I understand correctly, you were here.” Jake pointed to the university from which Andropov graduated. “Thirty-two percent of the money went into theoretical quantum physics.”
“All of these other universities were also working on this project?” Andropov asked.
“Yes. But it wasn’t all physics. Twenty-one percent of the money went to electrical engineering, three percent to chemical engineering, and fifty percent went into materials engineering.”
Andropov staggered and grabbed onto a cubical partition. Brett rushed into another cubical and got a chair.
“Sit,” Brett said. “Are you okay?”
Andropov sat down. “I was told all of the work I did was primarily theoretical, pure research. I didn’t know about the engineering. I guess I should have known, with all of the ‘what if’ scenarios they asked. And then there were times I was stumped, and they guided me in a new direction. I just thought they were working with other physicists. I never dreamed they were actually building one.”
“Building one what?” Jake asked.
“An anti-gravity drive spacecraft,” Andropov replied.
“A what?”
“In the past, all of our satellites and spacecraft have used liquid propellants to create motion or maintain position. The fuel takes up a crippling volume, not to mention the weight. Think of the solid rocket boosters and the giant main fuel tank that were needed to push your Space Shuttle up into orbit.”
“Okay,” Jake replied.
“Now imagine if you could use a very strong static electrical charge to manipulate the gravitational field in front of, and behind a space craft, such that if literally falls in a direction that you control,” Andropov explained.
“You mean you could make something fall up?”
“Faster than you can imagine,” Andropov replied.
“How did you find out about this?” Honi asked.
“I left the university ten years ago. That’s when General Davies recruited me. I didn’t learn until well after I started working for the General that such a thing could exist.”
“I have what may be a strange question,” Ken said. Andropov looked up at him. “Did all of the money for equipment, materials and people go through the university account, or were there freebies?”
“We had very expensive equipment,” Andropov said. “If it was available on the market, it went through the university funding account. But we also had some exotic custom-made instruments. Those were just dropped off in the middle of the night. No paperwork, no records. They were supposedly ‘on loan,’ but I don’t know where you would get something like that to loan to anybody. They were very specific, custom-made instruments.”