The Book of Truths (11 page)

Like Nero, she kept her desk sparse. A wide space with just a secure phone and stacks of folders. She had added a computer, but like everyone else in the black world, preferred to deal in paper that could be shredded and contained. Since her office was three hundred feet below the “crystal palace” of the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, her distrust of electronic communication was not paranoid but an acceptance of the modern world’s reality. She had no doubt those upstairs were very interested in what happened in her office. She was not of them, but separate, different, and in the world of government bureaucracy, such a thing was both dangerous and envied.

Some of the very few in the sort-of-know wondered if her organization drew its name from the location of the underground office, but of course it didn’t. The Cellar had been formed (although not mandated for another six years) in December 1941, as smoke still rose above Pearl Harbor and the last, desperate taps echoed out of the USS
Oklahoma
. (Some of the men trapped inside the capsized ship lasted two weeks before finally dying.) This
was long before the NSA was founded and the building above her constructed. If the Nightstalkers could trace its lineage to Trinity, the Cellar could trace its heritage to Pearl Harbor.

Like the Nightstalkers, the Cellar had initially been housed where it was most needed: at the War Department in Washington, DC, in a basement office of the building that currently held the State Department. The years had brought many changes, one of them the founding of the NSA in 1952, growing out of and separating from its predecessor, the Armed Forces Security Agency.

The CIA have its Memorial Wall with a single star representing each of those who had fallen in service. The current total was 103. Many of the names those stars represented had still not been released and some would never be. The NSA had its National Cryptologic Memorial listing the names of those who had fallen in service, underneath an inscription which read:
They Served In Silence
. That current total was 163.

There were no stars or plaques or inscriptions or museums for Nightstalkers or Cellar employees who died in service.

What only Nero had known, and Hannah now knew, was that a handful of those stars and names had been the result of a Cellar Sanction, corralling in rogue agents.

Nothing was ever exactly as it appeared in the covert world.

The NSA had recently outgrown the facility above her. Interestingly the organization’s need for power had grown larger than the electrical infrastructure surrounding the facility, so an adjunct facility was being built in Utah. Hannah would remain here though. As the Nightstalkers needed to be near Area 51 because that’s where the initial problems they had to solve had originated, the Cellar needed to be near Washington, DC, because most of the problems Hannah had to deal with originated there.

The Cellar, the Nightstalkers, and other small but powerful secret agencies officially began sprouting like snakes on Medusa’s head in 1947 when President Harry S. Truman formed a committee named Majestic-12. That organization has long been cited by UFOlogists as having been started after the 1947 Roswell incident. Majestic-12 was accused of suppressing information of extraterrestrial visits and keeping aliens locked up in Area 51.

If only that were true.

Although it also wasn’t totally false. The opening of the first Rift at Area 51 in 1948 and the “invasion” of Fireflies had caused great concern throughout the highest echelons of the government. Scientists, working on the cutting edge of physics combined with the new field of nuclear power, had opened a Rift, best speculated as a tear in our universe. Fireflies came through, beings of pure energy that took over animate and inanimate objects. Since 1948 there had been twenty-seven recorded openings of Rifts. Each had been shut, and the Fireflies annihilated (along with whatever they possessed), but it was a threat that no one knew the full scope or nature of.

Majestic-12 were the most powerful men in the United States intelligence and military communities. Truman gave them the mandate to bridge the gap between domestic and international security (and into whatever space a Rift consumed), in essence covering what the FBI and CIA couldn’t quite grasp and protecting the world from threats that might be, well, not human. Like Fireflies. Overall, Majestic-12 operations were meant to transcend petty bureaucratic infighting, and even national enmity, and look to the greater good. While the Nightstalkers focused on scientific mishaps, the Cellar was on top of all Majestic-12 groups, because any elite operative or organization can be a double-edged sword.

The secret cops for the secret agencies.

The ones who tracked down and took care of transgressions by highly trained operatives that no normal police force could capture. The specialists who could never see the inside of a courtroom because of the secrets they knew—thus producing stars on the wall at CIA headquarters, those who were now serving in eternal silence.

The Cellar operated outside of most laws because it had been formed directly by presidential decree, which made it legal for the operation to do the illegal.

Wrapping one’s brain around that was difficult, so Hannah Masterson believed in working with a light touch.

Until a sledgehammer was needed.

She had a feeling hammer time was approaching.

Hannah’s phone buzzed. She hit the speaker. “Yes?”

“Ms. Jones for you, ma’am,” said Lois Smith, the ancient secretary who had served Nero for decades and now served Hannah. Smith was no Miss Moneypenny. She was the type of old woman with a graying bun and functional clothes you’d walk by on the street and not give a second thought to. She was efficient and, most importantly, could keep secrets.

“I’m not running a whorehouse, so don’t call me ma’am.”

“That would be madam,” Smith corrected her. It was a game they played every so often, a very subtle way, after years of interaction, of judging the forecast. Today it was stormy, with a chance of a tropical storm blowing in, if not a hurricane.

“Connect me, please,” Hannah said. There was a click, then the secure line was open to the Ranch. “What can I do for you, Ms. Jones?”

“My people just did an operation in Nebraska. A Bent Spear.”

“Summarize, please.”

Ms. Jones did so in three minutes, even more succinct than Moms had been in her office upon returning to the Ranch during debrief.

“And your concerns?” Hannah asked when Ms. Jones came to an end.

“Naturally, my first priority is that a nuclear missile under the control of SAC was targeted at Area 51.”

“That is troubling,” Hannah murmured.

“I have not been able to ascertain what Pinnacle refers to,” Ms. Jones said. “I am also concerned about the weapon being reported as destroyed. Forgotten or lost is one thing. But someone deliberately covered this up.”

“Someone quite a while ago,” Hannah said.

“This incident happened this week. Over the years I have had concerns about the handling of nuclear warheads. There have been too many incidents. Perhaps there are more warheads that are believed dismantled that were never taken to depot?”

Hannah leaned back in her chair and considered that as she hedged on answering. “The impending treaty has everyone on edge.”

“Do you know what Pinnacle is?” Ms. Jones asked.

Hannah closed her eyes. It had just been a matter of time before the Nightstalkers crossed paths with Pinnacle.

“The Cellar has lost four agents investigating Pinnacle over the years,” Hannah replied. “Mr. Nero advised me to leave it alone, but perhaps times have changed.”

There was just the slight hiss of static on the phone as Ms. Jones waited for clarification.

Finally Hannah spoke again. “Pinnacle is a program the military started in the very beginning.
Our
very beginning, right after World War II. When that first Rift opened and Majestic had
to deal with it, and other problems. Some of the men on that committee were military and while they were handpicked by Truman, they still owed allegiance to their services.”

Ms. Jones was quick to the mark. “They didn’t trust we could handle a Rift. So they targeted Area 51 with a nuke.”

“No one knew what a Rift or Firefly was,” Hannah said. “We still don’t. And the unknown frightens people. And frightened people act in irrational ways.”

“The question I have,” Ms. Jones said, “is that the only nuke in Pinnacle?”

“No.”

“How many are targeted at Area 51?”

“We don’t know.”

“And how many more are targeted elsewhere?”

“We don’t know. But Pinnacle is concerned with more than just Area 51. Treaties such as SALT, START, RAD, and others always bothered many in uniform.”

“That is troubling,” Ms. Jones said. “How can my team help?”

“I’ll contact you when needed. Until then, call off your Acmes checking on Pinnacle, please.”

Hannah cut the connection and leaned back in her seat. She felt the buzz. Misanthropes might call it woman’s intuition, but Nero had described it to her and it was not gender specific. It was a sixth sense of information beginning to coalesce into intelligence. The world was full of information; the Internet boiled over with more than any human could ever dream to process even in a thousand lifetimes.

Intelligence was useful information. Hannah had the ability to process large amounts of information from sources, both deliberate and random, and distill out of that quagmire threads to be pursued. Sometimes they led nowhere. But sometimes they led
to great unravelings. The fact that Ms. Jones had seen fit to call about this was part of it. But there were rumblings in DC and Hannah paid attention to that.

Hannah knew from Neeley’s report of the package being compromised that someone in the CIA wanted that family dead. They never planned on paying out 25 million to some Pakistani garbageman and, more importantly, they wanted to keep their Zero-Dark-Thirty glory. That was very apparent. It was why she had co-opted the extraction mission rather than let the CIA send in a merk team to be massacred with the resulting bad press. She knew she’d made more enemies over at Langley by doing so, but it was better to know one’s enemies and accept there were no friends.

Hannah had already made some slight nudges, some pebbles thrown into the dark, scummy surface that covered covert operations.

It was going to be interesting to see which of the ripples brought the desired results.

The scientist held the case containing the hypodermic needle with the same care believers would hold a chalice containing the blood of their Lord. Of course, it was all an act, setting the stage for the big “reveal.” He waited with the impatience of knowledge watching ignorance in action as the contractor poured water into the towel draped over the detainee’s face.

Enhanced interrogation.

The CIA contract thugs had no idea what
enhanced
was.

The scientist knew they’d been doing this to the subject for six years. What was another few minutes to them? Cavemen. That was what they were. The two doing the work were not government, because even though various judges and the Department of Justice had tacitly, and not so tacitly, approved enhanced interrogation, no one with a federal pension wanted to get their hands dirty. So much easier to pay the contract muscle to do the grunt work.

In fact, the two doing the work weren’t even American. They muttered in low voices to each other as they worked, something that sounded Eastern European. They wore black balaclavas to hide their faces.

The detainee gagged and spit as the wet towel was pulled off his face, retching, nothing more than tainted water coming up as
he’d long since emptied his stomach of anything of substance. He had not done the same with information. Not during the six years he’d been held in Guantanamo. And not now.

He wasn’t in Cuba anymore. He was in a strip mall in Springfield, Virginia. In a room with two merks, two scientists, and one soldier. It had once been a lingerie shop, but the front glass was presently covered with sheeting that looked like plywood to the outside—another small business victim of the economy—hiding metal plating covered with thick soundproofing on the inside. All the walls were lined with the same material, except one, which had a twelve-foot-long plate of dark glass from floor to ceiling. On the other side of that glass were twenty-four chairs, stadium seating, to view the room. The viewing room had once housed an adult bookstore.

The scientist looked at Colonel Johnston and raised an eyebrow.

Colonel Sidney Albert Johnston was a distant relative by blood and the years between, but he was close in spirit to the general of the same name who took a bullet behind the knee at the Battle of Shiloh and bled to death because he’d sent his surgeon to care for some “damn Yankee” wounded prisoners. Johnston glanced at the pane of dark glass. According to the memorandum, on the other side were staffers for the congressmen and senators on the committees who voted money to who the hell knew what or wanted to know; high-level Pentagon aides who would go back and brief their bosses; and some suits from the alphabet soups: CIA, NSA, FBI, NRO, and a few that had no initials because they thought they were even cooler that way. They all wanted to be one pane of glass removed from the indictment that might come someday if the bureaucrats and politicians suddenly grew a conscience and remembered America was founded
on principles that didn’t include torture. Not likely in Johnston’s opinion or experience with bureaucrats and politicians.