“Nothing but the best.” Jessica opened the front door for the driver. “You can take these two suitcases; I’ll be out in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She shut the door, turning to Adam. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Upstairs for a quickie. It’s a private jet… they can wait.”
Adam opened his eyes, feeling refreshed from the afternoon nap. He was still naked in Jessica’s bed, his fiancée’s scent mixing with his own; her perfume lingering in the bedroom though she had kissed him good-bye over an hour before.
Reaching for his prosthetic leg, he pulled the harness over his stump, making sure the electrodes commanding the smart joint were all aligned. Twenty minutes later he emerged from the bedroom in jeans and a polo shirt, wondering what there was to eat.
Adam headed downstairs, his eyes glancing at the photos mounted along the wall on his right, the assorted colors and sizes of the frames laid out like a jigsaw puzzle.
He was halfway down the steps when he saw the worn black and white image.
The photo had been taken outdoors, the three women and a child posing in front of a Lockheed U-2 spy plane. The blonde on the right was a younger version of Donna Hare, one of the eyewitnesses who had testified in The Disclosure Project video. The dark haired, blue-eyed woman on the left appeared to be a test pilot, a jumpsuit tag identifying her as L. Gagnon.
As for the attractive woman in the middle holding her two-year-old daughter — it was Dr. Barbara Jean Marulli, Jessica’s mother.
The 6,538-square-foot waterfront estate was located on a private two-acre lot in Annapolis, Maryland’s prestigious Wardour on the Severn. A housekeeper led Adam past the grand entrance and through the gourmet kitchen to the foyer. “She’s waiting for you out back by the pool.”
“Thanks, I know the way.”
Adam exited out the French doors. The late afternoon sun was at his back, the July heat at its worst. The emerald green waters of the Chesapeake were spread out before him, sparkling beneath a cobalt blue sky. Three small docks and deepwater slips were anchored along the private shoreline shaded by a cluster of towering pine trees.
The stone path led to an Amish-built carriage home set between the main house and the waterfront. He found Jessica’s mother sunning herself in a padded lounge chair by the outdoor pool. She was dressed in a white and navy trim tennis outfit from an earlier match, her eyes concealed behind designer sunglasses.
Dr. Barbara Jean Singleton-Marulli was in her mid-sixties, though she could have easily passed for fifty. A competitive gymnast in high school, it was her athleticism that had blossomed in Jessica… along with a passion for science.
Adam scuffed his shoes on the cement, attempting to alert his future mother-in-law that he was there without startling her.
“Hello, Adam. I heard you when you rang the doorbell. There’s a spread by the bar. Grab something to eat and join me.”
He entered the cottage through the open sliding glass door. A deli platter and assorted rolls, breads, and desserts occupied the bar — leftovers from an earlier lunch. Tossing two slices of rye bread onto a paper plate, he made himself a turkey, mayo, and Muenster cheese sandwich, grabbed a bottled water from a cooler of melted ice, and headed back outside.
Barbara Jean was finishing a text message on her iPhone with one hand, the other dabbing sweat beads with a towel.
“Captain Marulli around?”
“He’s at the club.” She looked up, offering Adam a cold smile. “So? How is my daughter? I hardly ever hear from her. You’d think she’d want to be more involved in her own wedding plans.”
“She’s been busy.”
“Frankly, my husband and I were surprised when she told us the two of you were engaged. Jessica is like me — a workaholic. I was twenty-three when Kelly Johnson recruited me straight out of Cal Tech. My first project was the F-117 Stealth Fighter, and I ended up marrying one of the pilots. Thirty-two years I worked at Skunkworks, spending fourteen-hour days in the lab right up until I went into labor with Jessica.”
She powered off her cell phone. “Okay, Mr. Deputy Under Secretary, what was so important that you needed to drive all the way out here to talk to me about it?”
“Jess has an old black and white photo of the two of you taken at Lockheed; she can’t be more than a few years old. There’s a woman standing next to you; her name is Donna Hare. I saw her on a YouTube video done in May of 2001 at an event called The Disclosure Project. She testified about seeing undoctored NASA photos taken on the far side of the moon which revealed… structures.”
“What kind of structures? Oh, good God, you drove all the way out here to ask me about aliens?”
“And other things.”
“Adam, I didn’t know Donna Hare. We had a mutual friend in Lydia Gagnon, the test pilot in that photo. I don’t know anything about moon bases or aliens… Jesus.”
“What about the F-117’s design?”
“What about it?”
“How much of it was reverse-engineered?”
“Reverse-engineered from what?”
“A downed UFO.”
Barbara Jean covered her grin. “This is a joke, isn’t it? Did Juice put you up to this?”
“You worked in Lockheed’s Skunkworks Division. I thought maybe you might have had access to the stuff Colonel Corso wrote about in his Roswell book.”
“Adam, Phillip Corso was bat-shit crazy. Do I need to worry about you now?”
“Someone I know wanted my opinion about the subject. I was curious if you knew anything.”
“About UFOs?”
“More about the energy source that supposedly powers them.”
Barbara Jean wiped the sweat from the back of her neck. “It’s too hot out here, let’s go inside.”
He grabbed his bottled water and paper plate and followed her inside the cottage, feeling foolish.
Barbara slid the glass door shut behind them and locked it. “What do you know about wine?”
“About as much as I do about UFOs, I suppose. Why?”
“So your trip out here isn’t a total waste of time I’ll give you a quick lesson; that way you can impress my daughter the next time you two go out to dinner.”
Barbara led him through a short alcove off the kitchen to an arching wooden door. Opening it, she felt for a light switch before descending a narrow spiral staircase that took them into the basement.
Artificial legs were not designed to maneuver down tight spiral stairwells, forcing Adam to hop a step at a time. Sound seemed to mute as he followed her deeper into the bowels of the foundation and into an expansive wine cellar. The floor, racks, and cabinetry were made of cherrywood. Bottles of wine lined both walls.
Barbara searched the racks for several minutes before selecting a dust-covered burgundy. “Clos de Vougeot, Grand Cru, Leroy 1961. It’s the captain’s favorite.”
She placed the bottle on a granite-topped island situated beneath a white panel of light in the ceiling. Opening a side drawer, she located a cork screw and expertly popped open the bottle. Sliding two inverted wine glasses out from an overhead rack, she poured just enough for a taste test into each one.
“There are four basic steps in evaluating a wine. The first is color. It’s best to hold the glass up to a white background.” Barbara demonstrated, using the overhead panel. “With a red wine, we’re looking for a darker color which occurs during fermentation when the juice is left in contact with the skins. A dark color is associated with a more intense flavor. Brown means the wine is old. All red wines eventually brown with age, but you don’t want too much cloudiness. Blush wine grapes are fermented with only limited contact to the skin; white wines are fermented with no contact.”