‘You got any idea at all what this is about?’ Ethan asked, more to change the subject than anything else.
‘Like I said, Jarvis didn’t reveal much but I do know that this isn’t just a DIA gig. Vaughn told me they’ve got a team of boffins from NASA assembling at the DIA Headquarters Building, and all of them are in a state of excitement about something.’
‘Hellerman there?’
Hellerman was Jarvis’s assistant, a scientist and verifiable genius who liaised with the agency on technical matters. A firm admirer of Lopez, he too had suffered since she had been shot months before.
The SUV pulled into the base, security checks delaying their passage as the vehicle and its occupants were thoroughly searched before they were allowed into the DIA’s complex. The SUV pulled up close to the south entrance and allowed Ethan and Hannah to disembark. The dawn sky above was brightening quickly as two armed escorts approached them and hustled them inside.
The DIA’s south wing entrance, in front of which was a fountain before broad lawns, made up only a tiny part of the agency’s sprawling complex. Huge, silvery buildings with mirrored black windows contained some of the most sensitive intelligence gathering equipment in the world, including vast 24/7 Watch Centers manned by specialists monitoring events across the entire globe.
In all Ethan and Nicola had conducted eight investigations for the Defense Intelligence Agency since Ethan had been plucked from Cook County Jail by Jarvis and given a new life working for one of the most clandestine units ever created by the intelligence community.
Hannah took the lead as they moved through the intense security measures, including full-body X-Rays and pat down searches. They finally passed through the last of the checks in time for Jarvis to meet them in the main foyer of the building, the polished tile floor emblazoned with a large DIA emblem in the manner of all the senior intelligence agencies. For a change, Jarvis’s characteristic easy smile and casual demeanor was absent, replaced by genuine concern and urgency.
‘Ethan, how are you doing?’
Ethan shook the old man’s hand. ‘I’m fine. What’s the story?’
‘Come with me,’ Jarvis replied. ‘I’ll show you.’
Ethan followed them, aware of the large number of civilian staff walking through the building. Uniquely to a highly secretive intelligence agency, two thirds of the DIA’s seventeen thousand employees were civilian, which allowed selected freelance operatives like Warner and Lopez to act in concert with official employees like Jarvis. Represented in some one hundred forty countries and with its own Clandestine Service, to which Warner and Lopez were now attached, the agency’s only weakness was a lack of influence in law enforcement, forcing them in past cases to work alongside, or against, local police and federal law agencies around the country.
Jarvis led them to an elevator shaft, which in turn carried them deep into the building’s subterranean sections far from the prying eyes of even the most sophisticated surveillance cameras and electromagnetic scanners.
‘A NASA Watch Station at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, detected an unknown signal this morning coming from Earth orbit,’ Jarvis announced as they travelled down in the elevator. ‘It’s got the Joint Chiefs of Staff running about like headless chickens, and for now the President is out of the loop until we can provide a decent explanation for what the signal is and what is means.’
Hannah Ford frowned. ‘What kind of signal?’
‘You’ll need to hear that to believe it,’ Jarvis replied.
‘I never like it when you say things like that,’ Ethan said, recalling previous expeditions he and Lopez had conducted at the DIA’s behest. ‘It usually means something dangerous is gonna happen.’
The elevator doors opened and Jarvis led them out into a Watch Station used by the new department that Jarvis was heading up. Formerly employing only Ethan and Nicola Lopez, the events of recent investigations had brought the department to the attention of the current administration, with the result that staffing had increased. Ethan saw at least a dozen specialists working at computer stations before the large screens that dominated the walls, all showing news feeds from around the world.
‘So what’s so special about this signal?’ Ethan asked.
Jarvis grinned conspiratorially as he led them to a briefing room, outside which awaited Mickey Vaughn. The former FBI Agent shook Ethan’s hand and offered him a genuine smile.
‘Good to see you back.’
Vaughn ushered them into the briefing room, where sat Lieutenant General J. F. Nellis, the Director of National Intelligence. Nellis was a former United States Air Force officer who had recently been appointed DNI by the current president. Jarvis had been selected by Nellis to run a small investigative unit designed to root out corruption within the intelligence community while remaining beyond the prying eyes of senior figures on Capitol Hill. Jarvis had been chosen due to his prior success in operating a similar unit within the DIA that had conducted five investigations into what were rather discreetly termed as “anomalous phenomena,” which had attracted the attention of both the FBI and the CIA and eventually been shut down. Jarvis had spent some twenty years working for the DIA and been involved in some of the highest-level classified operations ever conducted by elements of the US Covert Operations Service. Most of them he would never be able to talk about with another human being, even those with whom he had served. Jarvis knew the rules and had obeyed them with patriotic fervour his entire career.
‘Please,’ Nellis gestured to seats around a long table with long, elegant hands. ‘Take a seat.’
Ethan sat down among several scientists, all of whom were whispering excitedly among themselves as Vaughn shut the briefing room door and all eyes turned to Nellis. The tall general, gray haired and imbued with an air of great authority, spoke softly but clearly.
‘My apologies for the speed with which you have been mobilized but there is little time and we need to act fast. At oh four hundred hours this morning, Eastern Seaboard Time, an anomalous signal was detected by NASA engineers at Cheyenne Mountain’s Surveillance Base in Colorado Springs. This signal has now been confirmed by signals officers at Arecibo in Puerto Rico, and Signals Inteligence stations both at Joint Base Edwards and multiple listening posts across the globe. So far, we have been able to use our satellites to intercept these signals so that they cannot be detected by non-military or non-US assets on the ground.’
Ethan frowned.
‘How did you manage that so fast?’ he asked. ‘Surely people could have detected the signals themselves? It will be all over the Internet by now.’
General Nellis smiled.
‘That would be true had we not already known about the object making the transmissions. Fortunately, we have been aware of its presence for over a century.’
The scientists around Ethan gasped, their eyes wide as they stared at Nellis.
‘A century?’ Hannah Ford echoed. ‘But we haven’t had satellites in orbit for that long.’
‘Indeed,’ Nellis agreed. ‘That’s because the satellite does not belong to us, and we have been able to conceal its presence for decades because we already knew that it was there. The object was placed in orbit long before mankind first launched a satellite into space.’
Ethan’s curiosity got the better of him. ‘How long has it been there?’
General Nellis folded his hands before him.
‘The object’s rate of decay, when measured against its mass, provides scientists with the means to calculate how long the object has been in orbit around our planet by back-tracking its orbital path to the point where it was first captured by Earth’s gravity.’ Nellis breathed out softly as though unwilling to impart his next sentence. ‘They have calculated that the object, now code-named Black Knight, has been in orbit around the Earth for approximately thirteen thousand years.’