Night Talk (26 page)

“Unbelievable,” Ali said.

“Routine,” Greg said.

“I'm surprised you never went on Greg's show,” Ali said.

“I haven't gone public with what I know because I'm ashamed. I was able to do my job honestly a lot of the time because most sightings can be explained. It usually wasn't difficult to do a psychological analysis of a person who claimed to have seen aliens or had been abducted by them and disprove their claim because they had a history of seeing things that weren't there. By the time I got to reasonable people describing credible sightings, they were angry, defensive and humiliated by the ridicule they received from everyone around them. Even with credible people, it wasn't hard to label their sighting as a misinterpretation or an overworked imagination.

“But of course, it was inevitable that someday I would start hating myself as I swept people's lives into the black hole. It was a sighting by a police officer that did me in, one of those close encounters out in the desert where he was the only witness and the officer's dash cam was found to have malfunctioned; at least, that's what our investigators said. For sure it wasn't working after they got through with it. But he was a brave man who refused to back down and it ended his career, his marriage and finally his life when he overdosed because of shame and frustration.

“It was because of him that I had to face my demons and admit to myself that I had not been hired to fairly evaluate people, but to discredit them. Oh, I had a good excuse. I was a single mother of a child with special needs and I had to stay on the job for the benefits. Lacking the courage to go public, I stuck around until I was able to get a university teaching position.”

She threw up her hands. “So there you have it. I have been wallowing in self-pity, angry with myself for my lack of courage, afraid to go on Greg's show and expose the fraud to the world. My mother was a survivor of the Holocaust, a woman of substance with an iron rod for a backbone. If she were still alive she would be ashamed of me. I'm ashamed of myself.”

Greg asked, “What were you working on with Rohan?”

“Yes, Rohan. He arrived at my door with his story of having been labeled delusional because he experienced being abducted during a university sleep study. I spent several weeks going over his story and emotional state before I reached a conclusion that he had in fact been abducted. He wanted me to go public with my support of him and reveal how many other people had been labeled as psychotic. I have been wrestling with my conscience and my courage about going public with my diagnosis of him.”

“Rohan is dead,” Greg said.

She sighed. “Yes, I know; so little, so late on my part. Ethan has also crossed the great divide. I only met Ethan briefly. Rohan had referred him because Ethan was very curious about the onslaught of extraterrestrial activity starting in the forties. Also, Rohan thought I might be able to help the young man with his addiction. I'm afraid I was of little help to him. He saw me only once, asked me many questions about extraterrestrial sightings and didn't come back when I asked if he wanted to consult me about his addiction. He wasn't ready to deal with his personal demons.”

“Has Mond been here?”

“No. He's very much aware that it would be futile because I won't speak to him. I haven't gone public and he'll leave me alone as long as he thinks I will keep my mouth shut. He worked for the interagency when I was there. I knew of him but never quite understood his function except that mention of his name would bring an uneasy silence with people having coffee in the break room. A prototype man in black, pitch black with not a hint of light, working among those of us who were only in shadows.”

“Will you continue to keep your mouth shut?” Ali asked.

“I think I'm ready to go public. I worry about it, but I'm getting old and I would hate to be on my deathbed agonizing over the fact I hadn't shown even a smidgen of the courage my mother had.”

“My show is temporarily off-hook,” Greg said, “but when I get back to it, I'd like to have you on. Assuming that there will be a show after Mond gets through with me. He's a fascinating creature—like looking at a snake under glass in a zoo.”

“Just don't stick your hand in the cage,” Inez said. “We can talk about how to get my message over to the public if you two manage to stay alive or not get shut away in some black-op prison.”

She smiled at the look on their faces. “But I may be able to help a little in that regard. You need friends, allies in a better position than an old woman with dry bones. The opportunity to do this is with Aaron.”

“Who's Aaron?” Ali asked.

“Aaron isn't a who but a what. It's a group of people interested in making sure that the Internet and Web are kept free of control by governments out to enslave people and ideas.”

“Hackers,” Greg said, “a secret organization of them.”

“Hackers? I don't know, I've never asked about their methods. You've heard of them?”

“No, but I suspect they've chosen a name in honor of a young man who was accused of hacking into MIT and killed himself when the government charged him with serious crimes.”

“I admit I don't know anything about them except for their goal. I was contacted by them after I met with Ethan. I got a call from a woman who asked if it was all right if someone from the organization dropped by to talk. A few days later a young man about Ethan's age came by.”

“What did he want?”

“The same as you. He asked about the UFO invasion and how the government dealt with reports of extraterrestrial encounters. Particularly as to whether we had reports of electronics such as computers or programs that were far beyond human capability.”

“Were there reports?”

“Yes, I heard about one now and again, usually someone claiming their computer had been taken over by some unknown entity. Unfortunately, in this world, where most of us are linked through our computers and smartphones, there are so many Trojans, back doors, rootkits and other malware that aliens would have to get in line behind the local invaders.”

“Was Ethan an Aaron?”

“He said they were helping him with a project. I didn't get the impression that he was an Aaron, especially since he used his real name with me.”

“Can you arrange a meeting with these people?” Ali asked.

“It's already been done. The phone call a few minutes ago was confirmation. An Aaron will meet you at Universal CityWalk in an hour.”

“You called them after you buzzed us in,” Greg said.

“I actually returned their call. They called earlier and asked me to let them know when you showed up.”

Greg exchanged looks with Ali. How did the hackers know they would end up at the woman's place?

“Did they mention both of us?” he asked.

“Only you. You're wondering why only your name. I can't help you with that. Perhaps because you're so well known.”

“The person meeting us—no name but Aaron?” Greg asked.

She nodded.

“How do we make contact? CityWalk's big and usually crowded.”

“The Aaron will find you. I'm not sure what they meant but I'm to tell you to stand by the big guitar but don't make it obvious. The Aaron knows what you look like and that you will be with Ali.”

“You don't know if it's a man or a woman?”

She shook her head. “I've spoken to both.”

Greg asked a question that had been bothering him. “I wondered how you knew both that Rohan and Ethan were dead. Was it the Aarons who told you?”

She slowly nodded. “If you want to know if that scares me, the answer is yes. But I am determined to just close my eyes and keep taking steps forward.”

 

49

They were back on the street, on their way to the car, trying to spot anything out of the ordinary and not look too obvious, before they spoke.

“Do you believe Kennedy was assassinated because he was going to expose a UFO cover-up?” Ali asked.

He let the question hang for a moment as he wondered if Inez had been honest about her dealings with Mond. It didn't seem likely that Mond would back off from harassing her as easily as she indicated. But it was possible he didn't push her because she knew so much.

“The interesting thing about the Kennedy assassination is that there are a large number of reasonable conspiracy theories about why he was killed and each of the theories has identified a perpetrator having a motive. The most bizarre thing is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting on his own, didn't appear to have a motive. Jack Ruby silenced Oswald so quickly that we'll never know the truth about Oswald or Ruby. Mafia, CIA, Cubans, Russians, J. Edgar Hoover, Vietnamese are just a few of the dozens of alleged conspiracies that have identified over two hundred people as potential conspirators. A UFO cover-up fits as well as the rest of them.

“A while back, a British tabloid put out a purported letter from Kennedy to the director of the CIA demanding information about UFOs shortly before he was assassinated, but the word ‘defense' was spelled in the British manner, with a
c
rather than an
s,
raising questions about whether a White House secretary would use it that way.”

“So the letter was a hoax?”

He shrugged. “I don't know what it was. Bad spelling by a secretary? A hoax prepared with an obvious flaw to make it appear that the notion of Kennedy being killed because he sought information about aliens was ridiculous?”

After they got into the car she said, “You know how your head is telling you that everyone else seems to know more than you? Well, that's what mine is telling me. I just don't know how much of it is true.”

 

50

CityWalk was several blocks of tightly packed cafés, night spots, shops, entertainment and dining venues for tourists to throw money at before entering the Universal Studios Hollywood tour. There were enough bright, flashing, garish lights to entertain astronauts on the International Space Station.

Greg and Ali parked as close as they could get to the big guitar but the complex was large enough so that even what was called “front gate parking” made a quick getaway impossible.

The brassy big guitar Inez told them to hang around was in front of the Hard Rock Café. The restaurant stood like a neon-trimmed Rock of Gibraltar at an intersection where the Walk split into two lanes.

It was a good spot to hide in plain sight because of the colorful eye candy for tourists, who could take pictures of each other and buy things that would be shown to friends when they returned home and eventually end up at a yard sale.

Greg and Ali shied away from the big guitar itself because a group of Japanese tourists were using it as a backdrop for pictures. They wandered in the area, trying to fade into the crowds while looking for someone that they hoped would stand out like a sore thumb. If an interagency tech was watching on the cameras that kept the Walk under constant surveillance, she would have easily spotted Ali and Greg because their attempt to act like carefree tourists was belied by their tense body language and the fact they looked at people and not things.

There hadn't been much discussion between Greg and Ali about the Aarons on the way over. That there was a secret organization involved in tackling the nation's electronic spy apparatus didn't surprise him. Snowden wasn't the first to attempt it, and after his revelations, more people certainly would try it. The fact Ethan had dealt with them gave Greg hope that the group could provide information about what the hacker had done and maybe even offer him and Ali safe haven.

He didn't know how long they could duck being discovered while running around in Franklin's car and hoping someone would give them a bed for the night. It wouldn't be long before they had to attempt to get money from an ATM for gas, food and a roof over their heads. Both were certain that a cash withdrawal would result in their capture.

He realized Inez's narration about the history of UFO sightings wasn't just to inform Ali, but to make him comfortable with the fact that there had been genuine encounters with visitors from the beyond. That wasn't necessary when it came to him. He knew that the encounters that had begun in the forties and were still going on today involved too many people who were hard to discount. Hoaxes, natural phenomena of one sort or another and earthly aircraft explained most sightings, but it was a stretch to discount those that happened when weather was reasonably clear and the reports came from people who had credibility.

The phrase that came to Greg's mind was that where there's smoke, there's fire. But how Ethan and the NRO fit into the sightings was something he hoped the shadowy Aarons would answer.

A child, a girl about ten, ran up to them.

“Hi, Mr. Nowell.” She handed him an envelope and dashed away.

Inside were two VIP passes to the studio tour.

“Close to eight hundred dollars for two,” Greg said, showing Ali the passes. “I treated important guests with VIP passes. The Aarons must have somebody with money behind them.”

“What are we supposed to do with them?” she asked.

“Do what comes natural: take the tour. Let's find the VIP entrance.”

In the VIP section they were directed to a trolley driven by a woman and took a seat in the back row. They were the only passengers and the trolley didn't move. Aaron apparently hadn't arrived. Greg wondered if Aaron, he or she, was watching to see if the coast was clear.

“Interesting,” Greg told Ali. “If we are being watched, it won't be easy for Mond's people to commandeer a trolley and chase after us. They'd look like the Keystone Kops.”

“I wonder where we're going. Getting the whole tour?”

The answer to that question climbed aboard and took a seat in front of them.

“Welcome aboard. I'm Aaron.”