The Bergamese Sect (24 page)

‘
Can he do that?’

‘
Sure, he’s a powerful man.’

Petersen shook his head in disbelief and took another sip of bourbon.

‘
But it’s worse than that. He’ll probably try to silence us for good.’

Petersen shook his head again, shocked. ‘This saboteur? What’s he trying to do?’ he asked.

Walsh raised his eyebrows and stared back at Petersen. The agent was one of the best, one of the most trustworthy of his operatives. And Walsh, in his haste to reveal Sewell, had dragged him into an impossible situation. It was time for honesty.

‘
What do you know about Sebastian?’ Walsh asked.

‘
I know he’s a dangerous man.’

‘
Yeah, but you don’t know why he’s dangerous, right?’

Petersen smiled. ‘It’s not my job to know. It’s my job to protect information, whether or not I know what that information is and whether or not I agree it should be protected.’

Walsh smiled in return. ‘Absolutely right.’

‘
I assume Sebastian knows something we don’t want made public, right?’ continued Petersen. He took another sip of bourbon.

‘
Yes.’

‘
And that information could implicate the federal government?’

‘
No.’

‘
No?’ repeated Petersen, genuinely surprised.

‘
Sebastian knows an important truth,’ explained Walsh, ‘and, yes, it’s a truth that could change the world. But it’s not a truth we’re trying to hide because it involves the men who wield power in this country. It’s a truth we want to discover so we can avert the catastrophe it threatens.’

Petersen scratched his head, looked vacantly at Walsh. He reached for his glass and downed the remaining bourbon. ‘So what does this Sebastian know?’

‘
I don’t know for sure. But you know what we’re talking about here?’

Petersen nodded. ‘Sure, I know this is a level one security issue. Alien intelligence.’

‘
That’s right. We’re talking specifically about abduction by aliens. Think about that for a moment. There’s a lot of people out there convinced it’s a reality, many of them with good reason. And who do they think is to blame? Apart from the grey people with huge eyes.’

‘
You mean who do the conspiracy theorists blame?’

‘
Yeah, they blame the government, right? They think we’re in collusion with extra-terrestrials, that we’re participating in these abductions. That we’d do anything to cover that up.’

‘
Okay, but you’re saying we’re not involved?’

‘
Well, not the way the conspiracy theorists imagine.’

‘
So why is this Sebastian a threat?’

‘
Because he knows what’s really going on.’

‘
And what’s really going on?’

Walsh just shrugged his shoulders, noncommittally.

‘
So is abduction a reality, or not? I’m confused,’ Petersen said, a deep crease crossing his brow.

‘
Difficult question. And one for which I don’t have the answer. But our intelligence has proved conclusive – something is certainly going on. It’s not all an invention by crackpots.’

‘
And Sebastian has the answer?’

‘
That’s right.’

‘
But if he knows the truth, and it’s not damaging to the government, why do we want to silence him.’

‘
We’re not going to silence him, at least, not in the way you mean.’

‘
So why are we so desperate to find him? Surely it’s in the public interest to discover the truth, particularly if it vindicates the government.’

‘
No, it’s not in the public interest,’ Walsh said, an odd smirk creasing his mouth.

‘
I’m confused again,’ said Petersen.

‘
Okay, say Sebastian knows the truth and it turns out that people really are being abducted by aliens. Whisked off somewhere, then their memories erased. What would that revelation do to the world?’

Petersen thought about this for a moment or two. ‘Well, I’m not sure. Less than you might think, I imagine. Remember the SETI people? The guys who look for radio signals from extra-terrestrials. They’ve studied this kind of scenario before. How would people react if we received a message from outer space? They concluded there’d be an initial phase of panic but nothing like the hysteria you might imagine. They think society is ready for the revelation. It’s well documented.’

‘
Sure, but a message from outer space is a completely benign phenomenon. Abduction is something entirely different. We’re talking about superior beings, perhaps even malign life-forms, performing acts that break all our moral codes. At the very least they violate what we perceive as a basic human right – the right to remain unmolested.’

‘
Sure,’ Petersen conceded.

‘
Under those circumstances,’ Walsh continued, ‘things would be very different. It would be like rolling all history’s most evil dictators into one and telling the world they’re now answerable only to him. There’d be a catastrophic breakdown of law and order. Mass revolt, mass suicide, global iconoclasm. A total disaster.’

The impact of Walsh’s words struck Petersen like a freight train. ‘Shit!’ he said.

The two men went silent for a moment.

‘
That’s why this is so important,’ Walsh said. ‘We have to find this man. Partly to learn the truth for ourselves, but mainly to stop him telling the world.’

Petersen was nodding, almost imperceptibly. ‘You’re convinced there’s something worth hiding?’

‘
I don’t know, but I’m not willing to run the risk of letting the world find out.’

‘
What about Sebastian?’ said Petersen. ‘I’ve been waiting for this guy to surface for months. Now he has, I find I don’t actually know anything about him.’

‘
He’s someone deep within an underground organisation we’ve been investigating. We suspect they’re in some way involved in alien abductions. We know very little about him, almost nothing about his organisation. But we were recently made aware of his defection. For whatever reason, he’s decided to come clean, invited these subversives in to do his laundry.’

‘
Who’s ‘we’, Larry?’

Walsh paused, eyeing Petersen. ‘Let’s just say a committee I’m on,’ he said.

‘
And your saboteur is protecting the laundry man?’

Walsh sat and stared for a moment, puzzled. Sewell’s motives still had him mystified. The chairman was intent on destroying Argent’s grip on Sebastian’s trail, and to keep that aim hidden from Daedalus. And at any cost. Why?

‘
Yes,’ Walsh replied, ‘but I’ve no idea why. He should be a paragon of loyalty. He should want nothing more than to find Sebastian and learn the truth, neutralise his information, to protect the public. But he’s doing his best to destroy our chances of success.’

Petersen glanced out the window, pausing for a moment. ‘His name’s Sewell isn’t it?’ he said.

Walsh’s expression dropped. ‘How…?’ he said, but Petersen interrupted.

‘
You used the name when you called Troy Neumann. I gathered you were testing him, to see if he knew the name.’

Walsh caught his breath again, relieved. ‘Yeah, that’s right.’

‘
So, who’s this Sewell?’

‘
Bob Sewell. You won’t know him. He’s a bit of an ethereal figure in the intelligence community. Don’t ask which agency he works for; it doesn’t officially exist. Even the National Security Council wouldn’t know his name, or the details of his group.’

‘
So who sets his agenda? Who does he answer to?’

‘
Very good questions. I’ve no idea. Probably no one.’

‘
Shit, that’s scary.’

Walsh just stared at Petersen, his agreement obvious. He drained his glass of vaporous brown liquor and pushed the glass into the centre of the desk. ‘His group are involved in projects of the utmost secrecy; projects the bureaucrats have no idea exist. The kind of stuff no one else is willing to touch.’

Petersen remained silent. He stood slowly and wandered over to the cabinet. Opening it, he grabbed the bottle of bourbon and returned to his seat. Unscrewing the aluminium cap, he splashed another slug into each glass. Both men downed the drinks in one gulp.

‘
What are you going to do?’ Petersen asked, wiping the moisture from his glistening lips.

‘
Get away from here as soon as possible. Try and get to Lewis – hope he stays on the trail of the London contact. It won’t be easy, but if I can help it, Sewell will answer for this.’

Walsh was thinking, then went on, ‘I’m concerned about Lewis and his partner.’

‘
They’re professionals.’

‘
Sure, but they’ve now got some formidable covert capabilities after their necks. How long do you think they can stay out of trouble? Particularly since Sewell has them in the palm of his hand. They haven’t a hope.’

Petersen nodded. ‘There’s not much we can do for them,’ he said.

‘
I know,’ Walsh said dejectedly. He looked up. ‘Did we hear from Lewis?’

Petersen shook his head. ‘I just checked. There’s been no contact since Sunday.’

‘
Shit! We need those men, but we don’t have time to get NRO involved now. Damn that bastard!’

Walsh looked around at the window, an angry grimace on his face. The horizon was becoming golden with the approaching sun. It seemed to make the lump in his throat throb.

Suddenly, he stood. ‘Anyone here?’ he asked.

‘
Yeah, a couple of guys in one of the surveillance rooms, that’s all.’

‘
Okay, let’s go down and take a look at Sewell – if we can find anything on him.’

―
§ ―

The operations room was a brightly lit football field packed with the most powerful digital espionage equipment in the world. Spaciously planned, enormous irregularly shaped desks were dotted through the clean, white expanse. On the desks sat workstations of incredible power, their network bandwidth colossal. They displayed information gleaned from arrays of data storage devices held in adjacent rooms. They requested calculations performed by lightning-speed parallel processing systems housed in other parts of the complex. And they conversed with the electronic universe through the vast conduits of fibres in the basement of the Masheder Building.

The two men took seats at Petersen’s console. Before them were several screens displaying reams of information culled from the unsuspecting global networks. Most of it was unintelligible to Walsh, just columns of meaningless characters.

But Petersen was right at home. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘maybe we should try something obvious. We have access to all government file servers, whether they realise it or not. We could we just scan for the name. I’m assuming he uses it in official business.’

Walsh nodded. ‘Though I’d be surprised to find anything relating to his clandestine work.’

Petersen clicked on a browser window and pulled up a web page with various text boxes and buttons. Typing the name in a box, he clicked on the button that said ‘search’.

‘
We keep a central index of the entire federal file server network, re-indexed automatically every hour, but this script will check for changes in the last hour.’

On Petersen’s terminal, the addresses of file servers and their directory structures began scrolling rapidly up the screen. Another window was filling up with search results.

‘
Okay,’ said Petersen, ‘there’s a lot of stuff from the CIA here, some from the office of the Director of Central Intelligence and from the National Intelligence Council. One or two from military nodes and the FBI.’

Walsh was leaning forward to see what Petersen was deciphering. It was still just meaningless computer garble to him. ‘Sewell used to be in the CIA,’ he said. ‘In fact, he was my commanding officer for a while. I’d expect to see a lot of stuff from them, but most of it’ll be historical, or irrelevant. They might have some useful background though.’

Petersen nodded again. ‘I’ll start downloading everything that’s coming up.’ He reached past Walsh and grabbed a magnetic tape cartridge from another desk, slotted it into the small grey box on top of his computer tower. In another window, he typed a command and the green light on the tape machine flickered as the files were saved.

‘
This’ll take a bit of time.’

‘
Okay, let’s get ready to leave. Clear your desk of anything you want to keep. In a few days you won’t officially exist.’

―
§ ―

Walsh returned to his office. He eyed the bottle of bourbon, standing almost empty on the desk, but decided against another slug. Opening the desk drawers one by one, he took out anything of personal value. A few spare keys, a small digital camera, a pocket flashlight. It was precious little. He put his padded coat over his jacket and placed the items in the pockets.

On the wall hung a certificate given him with the CIA’s Distinguished Intelligence Medal. It was meaningless trivia itself, though he was proud of the achievements it reflected. Walsh unhooked the frame from the wall and took a last look at the award. He smiled and returned it, but as he raised it above the hook, he noticed something. A tiny hole in the plaster hid below the brass fixture.

‘
Shit!’ said Walsh, his eyes wide.

He span round, grabbed the letter knife, and gouged at the speck. Out flicked a thin wire, a tiny black pinhead on its end. He yanked at it but it was strong. He cut the wire with the letter knife.

‘
Shit!’ he said again. ‘Why didn’t I check?’

He raced out the office, across the corridor and into the operations room. Petersen was there, wearing his coat, staring at the computer screens.