“Of course it doesn’t make sense. One giant corporation with enough power to activate its operations without government sanction or even knowledge. Nope, no sense there.”
“Josh, what are you talking about?”
“Vortex.”
“Vortex?”
The buzzer sounded ending the first half down below. Bane and Jorgenson sat silent while the few fans seated in their section moved into the aisle toward the refreshment stands.
“You’ve never heard that term before?” Bane wondered.
“Not that I recall. What’s it all about?”
“Something to do with making objects disappear and then reappear. My involvement began with a Flight 22 into Kennedy eight days ago….” And Bane went on to tell him about Jake Del Gennio’s vanishing 727 and the events of the subsequent days. Putting all the facts together at once made the story seem ludicrous. If he wasn’t telling it himself, he never would have believed it.
Jorgenson’s eyes were bulging as he finished. “That’s incredible.”
“There’s more,” Bane told him, “all centered around a fifteen-year-old boy who has apparently developed psychic powers as a result of Flight 22.” And then he told Jorgenson about Davey Phelps, everything he knew right up to the point when Scalia nabbed him from King Cong.
“Oh my God,” Jorgenson muttered. “It’s out of control. COBRA has this boy now?”
“His body would have been with the others otherwise, and if he’d escaped, he would have found me. He’s in San Diego by now.”
Jorgenson nodded. “Chilgers will see this power he’s developed as a potential weapon to be uncovered and exploited. But you say not all the passengers were affected.”
“The ones with no outward symptoms might have been in a negligible way or one that hasn’t shown up yet, I’m not sure. The common denominator with the advanced cases like Davey is the mind. During the period that the jet dematerialized, the missing forty minutes, different parts of the brain went haywire causing depression, catatonia, madness, and in the boy’s case telekinesis in the most advanced form I’ve ever heard of.”
Jorgenson shook his head, ran his hands over his face. “You’ve got to believe me, Josh, this is the first I’ve heard of any of this. Chilgers has broken off, he’s gone mad. Only that doesn’t tell us what in hell he’s discovered.”
“We believe it has something to do with Einstein.”
“Einstein?”
Bane nodded. “Metzencroy’s background dictates that, as does the latest batch of scientists COBRA has retained.”
“Metzencroy died last night.”
“Chilgers had him killed.”
“Good God … Why?”
“To begin with, Trench told me Chilgers was disenchanted with his behavior in recent days. Trench seems to think that Metzencroy was trying to make Chilgers abandon Vortex or postpone it. The professor must have discovered something and it all goes back to Flight 22. Vortex, whatever it is, didn’t work exactly as it was supposed to. I’m betting that Metzencroy found out why, so Chilgers snuffed him and what he uncovered. The colonel will go to any and all lengths to prevent his plans from being disrupted. He won’t tolerate delays or any man who suggests them.”
“You seem to have quite a handle on him.”
“He’s the enemy, Arthur. It’s no different from Nam. You live or die by your knowledge of the enemy, intuitive and otherwise.”
“Nam’s a long way gone, Josh.”
“Maybe not.”
Jorgenson found himself unable to meet Bane’s stare. “Let’s go back to yesterday. You’re saying Chilgers had the Center hit?”
Bane nodded painfully. “Everything was coming together for him. He had a line on the boy and Metzencroy was out of the way, meaning Vortex has to be all but ready for activation. Janie, Harry Bannister, and I were the last people who could hurt him but he only got one of us. I’m betting his plan all along was to take me out after I made contact with you, using Scalia as a backup. What’s been bothering me about all this is the timing. Things have been happening too fast. Chilgers seems to be in a rush. There’s got to be a factor here I’m not considering.”
Jorgenson’s mouth dropped. Gooseflesh prickled his skin.
“Art?”
The DCO chief stared vacantly ahead. “You can’t consider it because you’re not aware of it. Oh my God, I should have known, I shouldn’t have let them agree to it.” Fear swam in his voice and eyes. “Let me give you a brief scenario, Josh, and tell me the first thing that comes to your mind. Let us assume that Chilgers has sold the President on something he calls Project Placebo, an experiment designed to monitor one missile installation’s reaction to stress up to, during, and after launch.”
“After?”
Jorgenson nodded slowly. “All similar previous tests have stopped at the crucial button pushing moment, potentially the most important period of all. But Chilgers has gotten around that. He’s fitted a new shipment of MX missiles headed for a bunker with dummy warheads that will defuse as soon as they hit three thousand feet.”
Bane’s palms felt cold with sweat.
“What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?” Jorgenson asked him.
“Flight 22. Like I said, everything comes back to it. Jake Del Gennio was vehement about the fact that the jet didn’t just vanish from sight, it vanished from the radar screen as well.”
“Precisely …”
“So if Chilgers can make a 727 disappear, he can do the same with those missiles. He’d be able to slip all thirty-six of them by our fail-safe and abort systems. They’d be on their way to Russia, the end result being a first strike on our part leading directly to World War III.” Bane paused deliberately. “The only thing that doesn’t fit into the scenario is Metzencroy. Everything’s set and ready to go when, according to Trench, all of a sudden he uncovers something and gets cold feet.”
“And then dies conveniently before he can pass the information on to anyone else….”
“We—” Bane stopped when two men squeezed by on the way back to their seats. “We can be reasonably sure of a few things anyway. To begin with, Metzencroy has been working on Vortex probably for as long as COBRA’s been paying his salary. It was under his guidance, then, that this whole operation was developed and activated. So whatever spooked him must’ve been something awfully big.”
“Flight 22 again,” Jorgenson concluded.
“As I said before, that’s the indication.”
Jorgenson thought briefly. “What it did to the people, perhaps. What exposure to the forces of Vortex did to their minds.”
“Doubtful. People have nothing to do with launching MX missiles for Project Placebo. No, the people were just an offshoot, a tangent at best. It was something else.”
“Any ideas?”
“None. But Metzencroy thought enough of it to throw away twenty years of work in addition to his life.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway, Josh, because I’ve got enough to take to the President and lay on the line for him.”
“Will he listen?”
“He’ll postpone Project Placebo which will give us the edge we need to turn the rest of Vortex up and deal with Chilgers.” Jorgenson seemed to shiver. “Project Placebo went into its first stage this afternoon, Josh, and after tomorrow afternoon we could be looking World War III right in the eye.”
“Why tomorrow?” Bane wondered.
“Because that’s when the shipment of MX missiles, loaded with God knows what, are scheduled to arrive at Bunker 17.” Jorgenson watched Bane’s eyebrows flicker. “That of any interest to you?”