O’Connor nodded. ‘The reports we’re getting out of Iran indicate they’re constructing a new uranium enrichment plant near the old city of Qom, but it’s buried so deep into solid rock it will be almost impossible to attack, at least with ordinary bombs. The Pentagon is developing what it’s dubbed a “massive ordnance penetrator” that contains thousands of kilograms of explosives. It’ll be delivered by the stealth bomber, but even that may not be enough to deal with blast doors that are deep underground.’
‘Which probably explains the pressure we’re now under to fast-track our experiments here,’ Jackson said grimly, ‘which is madness.’
‘Dangerous?’
‘The science is untested, which is reason enough to be cautious.’
‘Try telling that to the Vice President.’
‘Exactly. Or some of the gung-ho brass in the Pentagon. Have you seen the proposals for Operation Aether?’
‘Not the detail.’
‘It’s in three phases. The first involves a burst of three billion watts to heat and raise the ionosphere, to see if we can deflect a missile off course, and the last phase aims to develop ways of controlling the weather, which the military have been trying to do since Vietnam. But as dangerous as those experiments might be, it’s the second phase that worries me most.’ Jackson loaded a thumb drive into the computer on O’Connor’s desk and fired up a PowerPoint presentation. It was headed ‘Top Secret’.
‘The second phase involves the generation of extremely low frequency, or ELF, waves directed at the earth’s core, rather like the way the mining industry uses seismic tomography to search for deposits of oil and natural gas.’
‘But the mining industry only uses power of about thirty to forty watts?’
‘Precisely. At higher power levels we know we can X-ray the ground, and that can be useful in providing imagery on tunnels and bunkers, but the Pentagon wants to know if we can generate power levels at the extreme end of the range that can actually destroy underground installations – Iran’s nuclear facilities being high on their list.’
O’Connor let out a low whistle. ‘Are we seriously thinking of bombarding the earth’s core with three billion watts?’
‘There are powerful forces in Washington who are determined to see if it will work, and I’m afraid the director is just a puppet who’ll do as he’s told. Are you familiar with the Chandler wobble?’
O’Connor nodded. In 1891 an American astronomer, Seth Carlo Chandler, discovered that the earth wobbled on its axis by up to fifteen metres.
‘Well,’ Jackson continued, ‘a highly respected Indian seismologist has pointed to data from the International Earth Rotation Service. In the three months leading up to the devastating earthquakes and tsunamis of 2004, the Chandler wobble increased significantly. Normally we might get one earthquake a year above seven on the Richter scale – what we call a “great earthquake” – but in 2004 there was a massive earthquake in the Macquarie Trench off New Zealand on 23 December, and that one measured 8.1. Just three days later, we had an even bigger earthquake… around nine if I remember correctly… triggering the tsunamis that killed hundreds of thousands on the coasts of Asia. The frequency of those great earthquakes is increasing, and the Chandler wobble is maintained by mass distribution within the molten outer core, as well as the crust and oceans.’
‘So if we start bombarding the core with billions of watts of electromagnetic energy… ’
‘We might generate an even greater wobble. It’s madness, but the admirals and the generals aren’t listening.’
‘Neither are the politicians. Is there any other data to connect the wobble with the frequency of earthquakes?’
‘In 1967 two Canadian scientists came up with the Mansinha-Smylie theory connecting the earth’s wobble with the big earthquakes, but mainstream science has largely ignored it. And it gets worse.’ Jackson turned to one of the centre’s computers, keyed in a series of commands and pulled up an extraordinary photograph taken from the Hubble telescope. The space shuttle Discovery had carried the eleven-tonne Hubble into orbit in 1990. Bigger than a truck, the telescope orbited the earth every ninety-seven minutes. ‘At a height of 360 kilometres, Hubble is free of any of the distortions of the earth’s atmosphere, which enables us to take very clear photographs of some of the most distant objects in the universe. That’s the galaxy NGC 1300, which in the scheme of things is actually quite close. It’s about sixty-nine million light years away from earth, and 88 000 light years in diameter.’
O’Connor stared at the stunning image of the barred spiral galaxy, a massive swirling red-and-blue catherine-wheel in the Eridanus constellation. ‘Huh. Eighty-eight thousand light years wide… big doesn’t seem to do it justice.’
Jackson grinned. ‘No, and that’s especially so when you think about the size of the universe. There are somewhere between 200 and 400 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy alone. Multiply that by another 200 billion galaxies in the cosmos, and size is difficult to picture. With trillions of planets out there, it’s absurd to think that earth is the only one with life on it, but I’ve chosen a photograph of the NGC 1300 galaxy because it’s similar to our own and its centre is clearly visible.’ Jackson pointed to the swirling image on the screen. ‘The centre is a black hole of unimaginable gravitational and electromagnetic energy.’
‘It looks flat – almost like a disc.’
‘Precisely. As you and I both know, black holes are so powerful they flatten everything around them. Nothing, not even light, can escape, hence the term ‘black’, and it’s that power that keeps a galaxy’s stars and solar systems in orbit. However, once every 26000 years, our solar system travels through the same plane as the black hole in the middle of the Milky Way. In effect, if you imagine that black hole being in the middle of a dinner plate, our solar system rises to be level with the edge of the plate.’ Jackson paused, weighing the impact of what he was about to say. ‘That 26 000-year marker comes up again in 2012,’ he said finally, ‘at which time we’ll be exactly opposite the black hole.’
‘And that may explain some of the wild weather patterns?’
‘Yes. And we’re messing with the balance of the earth when its orbit is at its most unstable. On top of which, the earth’s magnetic field is now at its lowest level in recorded history. The poles are skipping across the wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic at over thirty kilometres a year. If you couple that with the latest NASA data on sunspots, which are at an unprecedented power level, the planet faces an uncertain future, to put it mildly.’
‘I’ve seen the magnetometer printouts,’ O’Connor agreed, his mind racing at the size of the abyss the experiments out of Gakona might generate.
‘And the sunspot power is still rising dramatically,’ Jackson added, pulling up an image of massive explosions on the surface of the sun. ‘NASA estimates sunspot power will also peak in 2012, at levels we’ve never seen before. Could be the Hopi Indians and the Maya were on to something.’
‘You think there’s something in all that mystic mumbo jumbo?’
‘Perhaps. As a civilisation we think we’re fairly advanced, but back in 850 AD, the Maya predicted that at 11.11 a.m. on Friday 21 December 2012 our planet would line up precisely with the Milky Way’s black hole. Astronomers have now confirmed the Maya were right, down to the last second. If the Maya could make a prediction that accurate, 800 years before Galileo picked up the first telescope, maybe we should be sitting up and taking a lot more notice of their warning.’
23
V ice President Walter Montgomery was due to host some senior CIA officers at an evening function on the lawns of his official home, a stately white nineteenth-century mansion overlooking Massachusetts Avenue. He’d asked DDO Wiley to come early for a meeting in the first-floor library.
The vice presidential library was finished in white timber with light-beige wallpaper and matching lounge chairs. It had a certain New England charm about it, in the midst of which both men seemed distinctly out of place.
