The next morning, when Will opened the bedroom door, Mark was cocooned to the bed, immobile in a gray wrap. Tears were streaming down his red face. He turned his head to Will. There was hatred and betrayal in his eyes. “I missed my exam.” Then, “I peed myself.”
Will cut the tape away with a Swiss Army knife and Mark heard him mutter a thick apology through his hangover, but the two of them never spoke again.
Will had gone on to fame and renown doing admirable things, while he had labored a lifetime in obscurity. Now, he remembered what Dinnerstein had said about Will that night in Cambridge: the most successful profiler of serial killers in history. The man. Infallible. What could people say about him? He clenched his eyelids tightly.
The darkness triggered something. Ideas started forming, and given the speed of his mind, they were forming quickly. As fast as the ideas crystallized, another part of his brain tried to melt them so they would wash away harmlessly.
He shook his head so vigorously it hurt, a dull, pounding pain. It was a primitive impulse, something a very young child might have done to shake evil things out of his head. Stop thinking these thoughts!
“Stop it now!”
Shocked, he stood up, realizing he had just shouted out loud.
He went outside onto the deck to calm himself by scanning the night sky. But it was unseasonably cool and swarms of wispy clouds obscured the constellations. He retreated to the kitchen, where he drank another beer while sitting uncomfortably at the dinette on a high-backed chair. The more he tried to squelch his mind, the more he left himself open to swirling feelings of anger and disgust rising like brackish floodwater.
Day from hell, he thought. Fucking day from hell.
It was after midnight. He suddenly thought of something that would make him feel better and dug his cell phone from his pocket. There was only one way to medicate this epidemic of a day. He took a breath and retrieved a number from the phone’s address book. It rang through.
“Hello?” A woman’s voice.
“Is this Lydia?”
Sweetly, “Who wants to know?”
“It’s Peter Benedict, from the Constellation, you know, Mr. Kemp’s friend.”
“Area 51!” she squealed. “Hi, Mark!”
“You remembered my real name.” This was good.
“Of course I do. You’re my UFO buddy. I stopped working at McCarran, if you’ve been looking for me.”
“Yeah. I noticed you weren’t there anymore.”
“I got a better day job in a clinic right off the Strip. I’m a receptionist. They do vasectomy reversals. I love it!”
“That’s cool.”
“So what’s up with you?”
“Yeah, well I was wondering if you were free tonight?”
“Honey, I’m never free, but if the question is whether I’m available, I wish I were. I’m just heading over to the Four Seasons for a rendezvous then I’ve got to get my beauty sleep. I need to be at the clinic early. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“Oh, sweetie! You call me back soon, you promise? Give me a little more notice and we can definitely hook up.”
“Sure.”
“You say hello to our little green friends, okay?”
He sat for a while longer and, thoroughly defeated, let it happen, succumbing to the emerging plan that was galvanizing in his mind. He’d need to find something first. What had he done with that business card? He knew he’d kept it, but where? He went searching, urgently covering all the usual places until he finally found it under a pile of clean socks in his dresser.
NELSON G. ELDER, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, DESERT LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY
His laptop was in the living room. Eagerly, he Googled Nelson G. Elder and started absorbing information like a sponge. His company, Desert Life, was publicly traded and had been tanking, its stock near a five-year low. The Yahoo message boards were awash in investor vitriol. Nelson Elder was not beloved by his shareholders and many had graphic suggestions about what he could do with his $8.6 million compensation package. Mark visited the company’s website and clicked through to the corporate securities filings. He scrolled though screens of legalese and financials. He was an experienced small-time investor, familiar with corporate documents. Before long he had a comprehensive understanding of Desert Life’s business model and financial condition.
He slapped the laptop shut. In a flash the plan rushed in, fully formed, every detail in vivid clarity. He blinked in recognition of its perfection.
I’m going to do it, he thought bitterly. I’m going to fucking do it! Years of frustration had built up like hot, gassy magma. Fuck the lifetime of inadequacies. Fuck the truckloads of jealousies and yearnings. And fuck the years of living under the weight of the Library. Vesuvius was blowing! He looked again at the reunion photograph and stared icily at Will’s ruggedly handsome face. And fuck you too.
Every journey begins somewhere. Mark’s began with a furious rummage through one of his kitchen drawers, the overstuffed one where he kept a grab bag of old computer components. Before he collapsed onto his bed, he found precisely what he was looking for.
At seven-thirty the next morning he was softly snoring at fifteen thousand feet. He rarely slept on his short commute to Area 51, but hadn’t gotten to bed until very late. Below him the land was yellow and deeply fissured. From the air, the ridge of a long low mountain range resembled the spine of a desiccated reptile. The 737 had only been airborne for twelve minutes on its northwesterly course and it was already starting its approach. The plane looked like a stick of candy against the hazy blue sky, a white body with a nose-to-tail cheerful red stripe, the colors of the long defunct Western Airlines co-opted by the defense contractor EG amp;G for its Las Vegas shuttle fleet. The tail numbers were registered to the U.S. Navy.
Descending toward the military field, the copilot radioed, “JANET 4 requesting clearance to land at Groom Lake, Runway 14 left.”
JANET. Radio call sign for Joint Air Network for Employee Transport. A spook name. The commuters called it otherwise: Just Another Non-Existent Terminal.
On wheels down, Mark awoke with a start. The plane braked hard and he instinctively pushed against his heels to take the pressure off his seat belt. He raised the window shade and squinted at the sun-baked scrubby terrain. He felt cramped and uncomfortable, sick to his stomach, and wondered if he looked as strange as he felt.
“Thought I was going to have to nudge you.”
Mark turned to the fellow in the middle seat. He was from Russian Archives, a guy with a fat tush named Jacobs. “No need,” Mark said as matter-of-factly as he could. “I’m good to go.”
“Never saw you sleep on the flight before,” the man observed.
Was Jacobs really from Archives? Mark shrugged it off. Don’t be paranoid, he thought. Of course he is. None of the watchers had fat asses. They were nimble sorts.
Before they were permitted to go subterranean, deep into the cool earth, the 635 employees of Groom Lake Building 34-commonly called, the Truman Building-had to endure one of their two dreaded rituals of the day, the S amp;S, aka strip ’n’ scan. When the buses dropped them off at the hangarlike structure, the sexes split toward separate entrances. Inside each section of the building were long rows of lockers reminiscent of a suburban high school. Mark walked briskly to his locker, which was halfway down the long corridor. Many of his coworkers were perfectly happy to dawdle and make it through scanning at the last possible moment, but today he was in a hurry to get underground.
He spun the combination lock, stripped down to his briefs, and hung his clothes on hooks. A fresh olive jumpsuit with SHACKLETON, M. embroidered on the breast pocket was neatly folded on the locker bench. He threw it on; the days were long gone when employees could wear street clothes into the facility. Every item a Building 34 employee brought on the commute had to be left in the lockers. Up and down the line, books, magazines, pens, cell phones, and wallets were shelved. Mark moved fast and got himself near the front of the scanning line.
The magnetometer was flanked by two watchers, humorless young men with buzz cuts who waved each
