He walked to the map and pointed to some of the rivers marked upon it.
‘Research by scientists from the Lamont — Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University suggest that the water of the lake is continually freezing and being carried away by the motion of the Antarctic ice sheet while being replaced by water melting from other parts of the ice sheet under high pressure conditions. They estimated that the water in the lake is replaced every thirteen thousand years.’
Hannah looked at Ethan. ‘Isn’t that the same amount of time that Black Knight was estimated to have been in Earth orbit?’
‘Exactly the same amount of time,’ Ethan replied, thinking fast. ‘Doctor Chandler, what’s the chances that whatever Black Knight is, it was placed in orbit at the same time as something descended onto the ice sheet in Antarctica thirteen thousand years ago?’
Chandler stared briefly up at the ceiling as he considered this.
‘It could simply be a coincidence? Why should a correlation be found when there is no causation known?’
‘Because we’re assuming that Black Knight is some kind of alien craft and that it was piloted here by something. But what if that’s not the case?’
‘What do you mean?’
Ethan thought back to Iraq and Afghanistan, to the unmanned aerial vehicles that had soared through the skies and targeted the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from high above, and the satellites and GPS stations that had made the weapons of the United States’ forces so accurate during the conflict.
‘What if it’s not a manned craft at all, but a drone, something looking for life and sending the signals back to wherever it came from?’
Chandler stared at Ethan in amazement.
‘That’s how Nikola Tesla found it,’ he said. ‘He didn’t detect its signals — it detected him!’
‘And began signalling, when it realized that mankind was becoming technologically advanced,’ Ethan added. ‘Maybe we’re looking at more than just a crashed alien craft here. It might be possible that it’s a communication device to whatever species created it.’
XXX
‘This isn’t going to work.’
Michael Vaughn drove the pool car through the densely packed streets north of the Upper East Side and Central Park. The Pierre Hotel was just visible through the trees as Lopez peered at it and replied.
‘It’s going to work better than sitting around waiting for these people to just show themselves to us. Majestic Twelve aren’t going to file out of the front entrance waving at the crowds, y’know, and this is where Wilms went after we lost Mitchell. He hasn’t come out since.’
‘I didn’t suggest that they would,’ Vaughn countered. ‘Just that their surveillance would have ensured that every single point of access and egress would be covered in an area like this. We won’t be able to get anywhere near enough to them to record any visual or audio.’
Lopez smiled to herself. ‘You leave that to me.’
Vaughn shook his head as he drove. ‘It’s really just like having Hannah sitting here.’
‘Hannah Ford is a pale imitation, literally,’ Lopez replied without interest as she surveyed the street ahead. ‘Accept no substitutes.’
Vaughn turned south on 5th Avenue, the trees of Central Park on one side and pale sunlight flickering through the leaves as Lopez searched for a suitable spot. She knew that they could not risk driving directly past the front of the hotel — MJ-12 would not have neglected to post guards who would most likely be on the lookout for her after the failed assassination attempt. That left Michael Vaughn, who would be able to monitor the location while Lopez got to work.
‘There,’ Lopez said as she saw one of the city’s distinctive yellow cabs pull away from the sidewalk.
Vaughn pulled into the gap left by the cab as Lopez opened her door and got out before climbing back into the rear of the vehicle. Vaughn killed the engine and watched her in the rear view mirror as she grabbed a large ruck-sack and opened it.
‘You really think that thing will get us a good enough look at MJ-12 to break the cabal open?’
Lopez unpacked a glossy black device, eighteen inches square with a horizontal four inch blade on each corner set into the frame. Along with it she produced a control unit, similar to those used by the operators of remote-controlled aircraft.
‘Hellerman is a genius,’ she replied as she set the drone down beside her on the seat and opened the battery compartment. ‘He’s bred real bees that he hooks up to electrodes and flies around, controlling their brains. Modifying one of these things is child’s play to him.’
‘Why not just send one of his bees in instead?’ Vaughn asked.
‘Too small,’ Lopez explained as she installed the batteries and then began checking the cameras attached to the underside of the drone. ‘They can’t record footage easily, so we needed something big enough to carry a high-resolution camera and a solid state drive to record the data. Hellerman figures it’ll fly with the camera working for about thirty minutes on these high-density batteries before we’ll need to land it.’
Vaughn looked down the street at the edifice of the distant hotel.
‘If they spot it they’ll shoot it down,’ he pointed out. ‘If they get hold of it the whole thing’s a bust.’
‘Full of optimism, aren’t you?’ Lopez murmured from the back seat as she worked. ‘The drone’s fitted with a data relay device which will send everything it records back here to my laptop computer, which you’ll be monitoring. Once we have a good shot of the group, we’re out of here.’
Vaughn said nothing more as Lopez finished setting up the drone and the computer and then looked at a cell phone attached to the dash of the vehicle. Upon the screen was a small red dot moving through Manhattan and closing in on the Pierre Hotel. Doug Jarvis had deployed a small team of DIA operatives to track Gordon LeMay as he went about his business outside of the FBI, and that business had led them to Manhattan. Whatever the Director of the FBI was up to, he’d decided to fly to New York City and that had coincided closely with Mitchell’s encounter with Wilms, before the enigmatic agent had vanished into thin air.
‘Almost there,’ Vaughn said as he scanned the screen. ‘You ready?’
Lopez leaned across the back seat and opened the driver’s side rear window, the sound of the bustling traffic and a gust of cool air flooding the car as she flipped a switch on the drone and activated her control unit.
The drone’s ducted-fan engines spun up with an electric whine and the drone lifted up off the seat alongside Lopez as she deftly hovered the craft in the rear of the vehicle and guided it toward the open window.
‘Stand by,’ Vaughn said as he glanced in his rear view mirror. A flow of vehicles, cabs and goods trucks eased past their car, and then a gap appeared in the traffic. ‘Go!’
Lopez pushed the control column forward and the drone hummed out of the window and over the street outside. Lopez immediately increased the power and the drone ascended rapidly out of sight into the bright sky above as she switched her attention from the drone to another laptop propped against the rear passenger door opposite her.
Through a camera attached to the bottom of the drone she could see the busy street below the drone as it climbed ever higher into the sky. The densely packed buildings to its right contrasted sharply with the angular expanses of greenery to its left as Central Park came into view. She smiled mischievously as she saw their own vehicle tucked in against the sidewalk.