“That I can’t say. I only know what
“The debris, was it just more of the same as in the shed?”
“Pretty much, just a
“Not a dent?”
“Well, it made a dent, but then the damn stuff went back the way it was. It was right out of Ripley-you could bend it but you couldn’t crease it. But you know, those rods were just as weird as the magic tinfoil.”
“Rods?”
“Yeah, that stuff I told you about, that was light as balsa but didn’t seem to be wood? They ranged in length from a few inches to a yard. Flexible stuff, but hard! We couldn’t break that shit or burn it; didn’t even smoke!”
The same couldn’t be said for Marcel; my eyes were burning from his Camels.
“But the truly bizarre thing,” he said, and I was certainly glad we were getting around to something bizarre, “was the markings on them, the writing.”
“Writing?” I had to smile. “Outer space writing, Jesse?”
“I don’t know what it was, symbols, maybe numbers … but not our numbers. It reminded me of hieroglyphics only without any animal-like characters: purple and pink embossed writing on the inner surface of the rods, which were kind of like I-beams.”
“Maybe it was Chinese or Japanese or Russian …”
“No, I have some familiarity with those. That’s not what it was.”
“You saw nothing you recognized as man-made?”
Marcel shook his head, smirking humorlessly. “You know, I’m interested in electronics and kept looking for something that would resemble instruments or electronic equipment, ’cause then we’d know what the hell we were dealing with. But I came up empty on that front, though Cav found a black, metallic box, several inches square. There was no apparent way to open it, so we threw it in with the rest of the stuff. I don’t know what became of it, but it went along with the rest of the material back to the base.”
“Did you gather up all the debris?”
The buggy eyes bugged again, eyebrows climbing his high forehead. “Hell, no! We worked all morning and most of the afternoon, loading up the jeep carryall and transferring it to the Buick staff car’s trunk and backseat, then filled the carry-all again.”
“So how much were you able to haul?”
He shrugged. “A fraction. But after we got back to the base, Colonel Blanchard took a look at the wreckage, then the next morning sent Cav and Major Easley back, to cordon off the field. Thirty men cleared it.”
“How did the press get ahold of the story?”
He grinned, which made his weak chin seem weaker. “It was a press release straight off the air base! Walt Haut, the lieutenant who was public information officer, was kind of an eager beaver, and it would’ve been like him to jump the gun.”
“You can hardly blame the guy. It’s not every day the Air Force finds a flying saucer.”
“Yeah, but when I asked Walt about it, he claimed Colonel Blanchard personally dictated the press release to him, that same morning, and instructed him to hand-deliver the release to the two newspapers and the radio stations, there in Roswell.”
“Why would your commanding officer have done that?”
“I understand word about the saucer was getting around town, and Blanchard prided himself on good relations with the community, and keeping ’em informed. Or maybe he wanted some glory. They say he always resented he didn’t fly the
“But within twenty-four hours, it was all retracted.”
Marcel’s eyes flared. “Hell, that same day the colonel ordered me to fly to Fort Worth and make a personal report to General Ramey. A B-29 was loaded up with all of the wreckage, most of it boxed up, the bigger pieces wrapped up in brown paper; damn plane was stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey with that debris. When we got to Fort Worth, the wreckage was transferred to a B-25, which I heard later was flown to Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. Me, I was taken to General Ramey’s office, with a box or two of debris, which I showed him, making my report. He listened, politely, nodding, and I left the samples of debris behind when we went to the map room, ’cause the general said he wanted me to show him on a map where we found the wreckage. After we had dinner at the officers’ mess, there was a press conference, and I was instructed to keep my mouth shut, let the general answer all the questions, while I bent down and smiled for the camera with the debris … only it
I’d seen the newspaper wire photos in Pearson’s clip file: Marcel had posed with the crumpled remains of a weather balloon and its trailing radar target-aluminum foil, balsa wood, burnt rubber. Only a total chump would have mistaken this stuff for something from outer space.
“I was the fall guy,” Marcel said, grinning like a skull, “the Army Air Force major who ‘goofed,’ who mistook a weather balloon for a flying saucer. Big joke.”
Now I knew why he was talking to Pearson, intelligence officer or not; like most soldiers, Marcel would have been willing to die for his country, but it’s much harder to play the fool for it. To play the sap.
“What do you think that really was out in that pasture, Jesse?”
The eyes tightened and weren’t buggy, anymore. “It wasn’t a goddamn weather balloon, I’ll tell you that much. I was familiar with every kind of gadget we used in the Army for meteorological observations, and was in fact fairly familiar with everything in the air, at that time. Not just our own military aircraft, mind you, but other countries’, too.”
He pitched the still-burning butt of his latest Camel down the granite steps and it trailed sparks like a dying comet.
Then he said, flatly, “That was not a terrestrial object. It came to earth, but not from this earth.”
Laughter echoed gently across the Potomac.
I put a hand on his shoulder. “What was found north of Roswell, Jesse? What were you hinting at, earlier, when you said I should talk to other people?”
He was lighting up yet another Camel. “No hearsay, Nate. I told you that.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jesse, we’ve come this far. At least point me in the right direction.”
Marcel exhaled a mushroom cloud of smoke. “Well, that would be northwest, wouldn’t it? Where they say the craft itself came to rest. Where they found the four little bodies.”
And suddenly, as we sat there on the steps of the Water Gate, I was fresh out of questions.
8
On Monday morning at the Pentagon, as a matter of good form, James V. Forrestal attended the swearing-in ceremony of his successor, lawyer Louis Johnson-chief fund-raiser for the Truman campaign-as the new Secretary of Defense. Custom had it that the outgoing cabinet officer would then proceed to the White House for a final exchange of respects with the president, a task Forrestal-being a creature of protocol-dutifully performed.
At the White House, however, the former Defense Secretary was surprised by President Truman with an assemblage of government dignitaries, including the entire cabinet and the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Reading from a presidential citation, Truman honored Forrestal for “meritorious and distinguished service,” pinning the Distinguished Service Medal on Forrestal’s lapel.
Flustered, Forrestal said, “This is beyond me …”
And Truman warmly clasped the deposed secretary’s shoulder and said, “You deserve it, Jim.”
God knew what Forrestal read into that remark.
After much applause, and many impromptu tributes, Forrestal did not make a thank-you speech. The papers, reporting this event, found Forrestal’s tight-lipped non-response in keeping with the innately emotional complexion of the occasion.
