“So we’re back to the Professor,” Jake said. He pulled his phone and called General Davies.
This time General Davies took them to a small abandoned farm house in the rolling hills of West Virginia. The President’s military unit was there guarding the Professor.
“Why does the President’s Unit use false names?” Jake whispered to Stafford. “I mean, they’re all called Smith.”
“It’s a matter of security. Every member is single with no living family, so they’re not subject to undue influence. They all lead low profile lives and no one knows what they do for a living. Anonymity is their primary protection. They use a different last name for each mission.”
They entered the small building. Folding chairs were set up as before with the Professor sitting in a padded chair.
“Thank you for meeting with us again,” Jake began. “We have more questions.”
The Professor nodded warily.
“We believe the Phoenix Organization you worked with goes back farther than your involvement with them. We know there was a lot of money involved, and that doesn’t happen by itself. What can you tell us?”
The Professor looked at General Davies, who nodded.
“As a graduate student, I was involved in the Manhattan Project,” the Professor said. “I knew Robert Oppenheimer. He was trained by Max Born at the University of Gottingen in Germany. He was close friends with Werner Heisenberg and Enrico Fermi, did you know that?”
“Heisenberg,” Stafford said. “That name is vaguely familiar to me. What did he do?”
“Heisenberg was in charge of Germany’s atomic bomb development program,” the Professor replied.
“Germany was working on a nuclear bomb?”
“Oh, yes. In many ways they were months, if not years ahead of us. It was part of Hitler’s wunderwaffe, or wonder weapon program. I worked with several German scientists on the corporate side of the anti-gravity drive reverse engineering. They had a very deep level of understanding of the physics and the machinery we were working with. I initially was working on the broken saucer from Roswell. The Germans recovered a crashed saucer in 1936 in the Black Forest, so they effectively had an eleven year head start in their reverse engineering efforts. Some of them said Germany had successfully developed its own saucer design by the end of the war, but none of them would admit to actually being there.”
“What about a connection to Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay or Bolivia?” Jake asked.
“The German scientists I worked with came from Argentina,” the Professor said. “Buenos Aires was a stronghold of Heinrich Himmler’s Schutzstaffel, or German SS Officers after the war. They were the most powerful and feared officers in Hitler’s Third Reich. Much of the communications that came to me were sent directly from Buenos Aires. The SS Officers controlled the scientists there, just as they did in Germany.”
“Was all of your work directed from Buenos Aires?”
The Professor glanced at General Davies and then back to Jake. “Yes.”
“So you’re saying there are Nazis behind all of this?”
The Professor shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. Near the end of World War II everything changed. Germany surrendered, but the SS didn’t. They broke away from Germany and the rest of the world. Many of the people who were involved in the secret SS projects were incorporated into other country’s technical programs. Wernher von Braun, for example, headed the Nazi V2 rocket program in Germany. When Germany surrendered, von Braun was brought over to the US under Operation Paperclip. He ran our rocket development program, and eventually ended up in a top position at NASA. The same kind of thing was happening in Russia. German scientists were recruited to work on special projects, just as I was.
“Because of their expertise, SS members were brought into the American CIA, the Russian KGB and other organizations. All of the ideological lines that divided the countries in World War II became blurred and intertwined. Enemies became partners based not on nationality, but on their desire for power and control. The SS was absorbed into the Phoenix Organization. German scientists became focused on the advanced technology because of their more extensive experience and natural ability for technical systems. Wealthy families in Asia, Europe and America took over the financial aspect of the Organization. Military commanders became part of the mix, as did aspiring politicians. The Phoenix Organization became an invisible monster, its tentacles reaching inside every aspect of the world’s power and control systems.
“You still think in terms of political opponents, and military conflicts. That’s not the way it really works. The Phoenix Organization is entwined into every country’s political, military, academic and financial structures, remaining invisible, yet controlling, directing and influencing all of it. Like the old German SS, the Phoenix Organization is composed of people who no longer consider themselves bound to any country or any set of laws or standards of civility. They have broken away from our civilization and are effectively above the law wherever they go. They have their own system of finance and control three-quarters of the world’s wealth, cash-flow and assets. They own your world and you don’t even know it. You have no idea what you’re taking on.”
“What else aren’t you telling us?” Jake demanded of General Davies once they were back in the limo.
“Nothing that I’m aware of.”
“How much do you know about the Professor?”
“I’ve read his debriefing file. It contained a lot of jargon and technical details that I didn’t understand. Beyond that, I have control over him and I’m responsible for his security. That’s about it.”
“So why didn’t he tell us about the connection to the SS and Argentina?”
“I didn’t really know about the South American part. As for the rest, I don’t think he wants to be associated with or seem sympathetic toward the Nazis.”
“We need that debriefing file and Andropov.”
“They’ll be waiting for you at the NSA when you get there. By the way, the President has put forth his new plan to protect the Earth from future solar storms. The other countries are settling down some. They now stand united as long as the satellites all launch on time.”
“And how long before the Phoenix Organization sends a saucer out and destroys the satellites?”
“We’re thinking they will wait until closer to the final solar storm. No point in tipping their hand too early in the game. That way we wouldn’t have any time to come up with another plan.”
“So the President knows the satellite plan can’t work?”
“Of course. Your investigation is our only real hope.”
As promised, Andropov was waiting in the lobby of the NSA building, holding a sealed shipping box.
“I was told not to open this until we were in the room downstairs,” Andropov said.
“Yeah, about that,” Jake said. “It’s not light reading. We need you to digest the contents and turn it into words and concepts we can understand, okay?”
Andropov smiled. “That good? This sounds interesting.”
“I hope so. We need something good to happen, and soon.”
When the group arrived in B6 area 4, Andropov was given his own cubical. Once he started reading the file he appeared very excited.
At least someone is entertained by that level of technology, Jake thought.
“We have a lot of holes in our search for names attached to cell phones,” Brett said. “And many of those are on university campuses.”