The President studied Jake for a moment. “How close are you to arresting Senator Thornton?”
“We aren’t. We know he’s involved at the upper level of this organization, but we don’t have anywhere near enough evidence to even bring him in for questioning. Right now, he’s untouchable.”
The President walked over and sat at his desk, pulled a three-ring binder from the left-hand drawer and opened it. He flipped pages until he found the correct place. “Senator Thornton may be untouchable by you, but he’s not by me.” He wrote on a sheet of stationary, signed it and took a seal out of the drawer, embossing the document before he handed it to Jake.
“The two of you and Major Stafford now work directly for me. You will report your progress and findings to only me. Understood?”
Jake and Honi nodded in agreement.
“I have a special military unit of thirty highly-trained soldiers that will be available to you from this point on. Major Stafford will be your liaison with my unit. He will be teamed up with you, as well. Any questions?”
“Yes, sir,” Jake said.
The President looked up at him.
“Secret Service Agent Ken Bartholomew has been a great help to us. I would like him to join us, if that’s okay with you, sir.”
The President looked over at General Davies.
“Agent Bartholomew is very capable, sir. He was instrumental in locating the evidence against General Teague. He’d be a good addition.”
“Very well,” the President replied. “General Davies will be available to you at all times. He will read you in.” The President got up and left.
Jake looked at the document in his hand. It was an executive order: signed, numbered and embossed with the Seal of the President of the United States, authorizing the arrest and interrogation of Senator Thornton by any means deemed necessary.
“I don’t understand,” Jake said, as he handed the order to Honi.
“You will,” General Davies replied. “We have to pick up Agent Bartholomew first. Let’s go.”
General Davies, Major Stafford, Jake and Honi left the White House and climbed back into the General’s limo. The driver took them the short distance to the Secret Service building. Ken was standing on the sidewalk waiting for them. The limo stopped and Jake opened the door.
“Get in.”
“All they told me was to be down here immediately,” Ken said as he came through the limo door. “What going on?”
General Davies turned toward the front and spoke to the driver. “Take us to the safe house, and isolate the back section.”
“Yes, sir,” the driver replied. He closed the partition and a green light came on above the glass barrier, indicating that the passenger section was secure from all surveillance.
“The four of you now work directly for the President of the United States until further notice,” General Davies said. “We have received a demand from the Phoenix Organization you are investigating. Yesterday’s solar storm was a warning, a demonstration of capability, if you will. This Organization is demanding that every nation on the planet submit to their rule and authority, unconditionally. The larger nations, the U.S., Russia, China and Great Britain, are to coerce all of the smaller nations into compliance with the threat of nuclear annihilation. All nations must comply and submit no later than fifteen days from now, midnight, Universal Time. Failure of any nation to comply will result in the destruction of the planet. It’s everybody in or we all die. A representative of the Phoenix Organization must be installed as the ruling figure for each nation by the deadline. “
“We survived this solar storm,” Jake said. “Maybe we can survive another.”
General Davies shook his head. “The next solar storm will be a thousand times stronger than yesterday’s event. Every living creature left above ground will die from the radiation. We can’t protect enough people. We have to find a way to stop them.”
“I assume compliance is not an option?” Jake asked.
“Not an option,” General Davies replied dryly.
“In two weeks the earth’s geomagnetic shield will be less than ten percent of its normal strength,” Jake said. “They had to know the pole shift was going to happen well in advance of this for the ‘Event’ to take place. How did they know, when we didn’t?”
“We did know,” General Davies said. “Years ago. We didn’t want the public to panic. The pole shift was supposed to pass during the solar minimum, so we thought the actual danger was minimal.”
“How are they creating the solar storms?” Jake asked.
“I’ll let the Professor explain that. We’re almost there.”
The limo pulled into an underground parking area for a new apartment building and came to a stop in front of a glass-enclosed stair and elevator. Camo-clad soldiers stood in a ring around the enclosure, each holding an MP5 machine gun.
“None of the apartments are rented,” General Davies said. “Parts of the building are still under construction. It’s about as out of the public eye as we could manage under the circumstances.”
The driver opened the limo door. General Davies led the way into the elevator and up to the fourth floor. The hallway was lined with unpainted drywall and bare wood trim. The floor was dirty plywood, with splotches of joint compound and white dust scattered about. The scent of pine and drywall compound filled the air. A soldier opened an apartment door as they approached. General Davies walked in, with Jake, Honi, Major Stafford and Ken following.
“Professor, these are the people I told you about,” General Davies said. “I’m not going to make introductions as a matter of security.”
The Professor was old and thin, with white unkempt hair. He wore glasses and a sweater even though the air was warm. He sat in a padded chair with his right hand clutching an old wooden cane. His left hand rolled back and forth with a tremor. Folding chairs had been set up in a semicircle in front of the old Professor. General Davies stood as the rest of the group sat.
“I’m ninety-four years old,” the Professor began in a shaky voice. “I probably look fairly good for having been dead for the last five years.” He chuckled. “That’s when I got out of the Phoenix Organization. The Defense Intelligence Agency helped stage my death so the Organization wouldn’t hunt me down.” He looked each person in the eye, moving his head from left to right.
“From the beginning?” General Davies said softly. The Professor nodded.
“I was a bright, new PhD in theoretical physics back in 1947. Thought I was hot stuff back then. Had no idea how much I didn’t know. I was assigned by the university to do a research project for the military. I was flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio in September of that year. Couldn’t imagine what the intense security was all about. But I found out — a hanger under the ground with a damaged flying saucer inside. My job was to figure how the danged thing worked. Eventually I got a basic understanding of what the drive system was all about.
“I was subsequently hired by a corporation to reverse-engineer the drive system of that saucer for the military. Year after year, we set up experiments and built prototypes. Early on in the process, a vice president of the corporation pulled me aside and gave me huge cash payments to see that every experiment didn’t work in some way. I was so stupid back then. I took the money. After sixteen years of failure and billions of dollars down the drain, the military walked away — abandoned the project. Little did I know that the corporation was secretly building prototypes in another country, out in the desert.
“We had unlimited funds and equipment. Everything we wanted we got. Twenty years later we had a functioning anti-gravity drive and our own saucer. We even managed to duplicate the Magnetic Field Disrupter that reduced inertia to one ninth of what it would have been.”