wasn't even the right thing to be asking. The right question is, what's the plan for us? The answer is maybe that plan is embedded in our past, now here we are, how did we get to this point, were we helped along, did elements just happen to combine and by fluke of nature we arrived here without us killing each other off?'
'Maybe we are just smart enough to realize how far we can push it. No divinity; maybe it's just as you say, a fluke,' Collins countered.
The senator laughed out loud for the first time, then settled and looked at Collins once again. 'It's like you read my thoughts of over sixty years ago, son,' he said as he punched a button.
On the screen, a color picture flickered to life as the major looked on; the computer-controlled autofocus adjusted the view to fit the screen. When it cleared, it showed a panorama of an immense chamber. Buried into the walls of this chamber were what appeared to be rows of banklike steel vaults built into the solid bedrock.
'The only other person in the world who can tune in to this chamber is the president of the United States, our boss'--Lee hesitated--'and for better or worse, still your boss as well.'
Collins nodded his head, viewing the screen with interest. Some of the vaults were enormous, some as tall as 150 feet, others as small as eight. The larger ones had stairs on either side; others had glass-viewing areas built into the sides of the massive steel doors. He saw numerous security cameras sweeping the entire long, curving corridor.
'The president is a frequent visitor here, as every president since Franklin Roosevelt has been. This facility, Jack, was their favorite place to be. And before that, the likes of Woodrow Wilson and Hoover frequented our very first facility in Virginia.'
'Okay, Senator, you have my attention,' Collins said.
'Good, Jack, good,' Lee said as he punched another button on the control panel. A picture came up of what Collins assumed was the interior of one of the larger vaults. The camera shot was obscured for a moment as a man in a white lab coat walked by the lens on his way down a catwalk.
'Here at Group we have over a hundred computer technicians, thirty-five on-staff archaeologists, twenty-five top-notch chemists and biologists, two quantum theorists, four astrophysics people, five forensic specialists, one hundred field security men and women, consisting of army, navy, air force, and marine personnel, and twelve geologists.' Lee took a much needed breath. 'And this is not counting butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers.' He smiled. 'These are the best the country can offer, Jack. Their education is ongoing and continued by professors from MIT, Harvard, Jet Propulsion Lab, Cambridge, Princeton, and more, some with longer and far more expensive- sounding names. We spare nothing at the Event Group, Major Collins, and everyone from our cooks to field leaders have a right to furthering and deepening their minds. We don't want nor do we need puppets.'
'Who pays for all this?'
Garrison Lee laughed. 'There we have made some enemies, I'm afraid. As our budget comes out of the coffers of all the other agencies in the federal government and is hidden amongst their budgets and scattered to the winds, our front agency, the National Archives, takes a beating, but they live with it.'
'I could see why that would cause concern with the other areas of government,' Collins said.
'Our work is far more important.' The senator waved his hand and again tapped the screen with his old wooden cane, drawing Jack's attention back to the largest of the vaults. The doors were closed and looked formidable in size and security.
'Now that looks like it belongs at NORAD, in Cheyenne Mountain,' Collins said, looking at the screen.
Collins watched as the older man spoke, his one steely blue eye fixed on the screen, and when he started speaking, he never once turned to face Collins, as if he were concentrating on telling the story right, or he was trying to imagine or live it, so it could be told right. Jack knew this was the hook that was to be fed him. The senator's cane was still held on the large plastic-coated screen by his liver-spotted hand.
'I find myself drawn to this vault quite often,' he said softly. 'What you're seeing here, Major, was the first Event, what we here refer to as the Lincoln Raid.' The senator paused and stared a long while at the screen. Lee's features didn't tell anything much about what the man was feeling. 'It's a very well documented Event. Diaries and logbooks, all firsthand accounts, give an almost surreal telling of its discovery and acquisition.'
He finally turned and looked at the major with a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. 'I guess it gives me a sense of peace, indescribable really, or maybe it's just my age.' He chuckled to himself at this last remark.
Jack said nothing; he just looked the senator in his one good eye, looking for that flicker of untruth.
Suddenly, Garrison Lee deftly tapped the tip of the cane against another button on the control panel. Collins watched as another camera, from higher up in the vault, he assumed, came on and produced an image of an object that caught the major off guard. He didn't quite know what it was he was looking at, but it was enormous and undoubtedly ancient. Its raggedness gave the giant object a ghostly appearance. Without knowing he was doing it, Jack stepped closer to the large screen. A deeply buried, almost familiar memory started to burrow its way out of his mind. It was an unclear, distant thought, or was it a memory? Perhaps a memory of something he had seen as a child. But the harder he tried to remember, the more elusive it became; like the feeling of deja vu, it came and left, leaving only a bare trace of its being there at all. Jack furrowed his brows and peered harder at the screen.
Lee stepped back to admire the view the vault camera gave them. Technicians were milling around it. Some were chipping away at it with instruments Collins had never before seen, others were writing on clear plastic clipboards, while still more manned huge diagnostic systems arrayed against one of the far walls. The giant object looked as if it had been made out of wooden beams of some kind, but had long ago petrified into near rock. The beams were curved and swept, high at one end and sloping down at a great angle toward its torn and sheared opposite end. As he watched, a three-man tech group was in the interior of the enormous object. They had a small chemical lab set up right there and were analyzing substances he wouldn't even guess at. He looked more closely at the exterior. There were massive holes in its side and on what Collins assumed was its sloping floor, or was it a deck? It now hit him that he was looking at part of a vessel of some kind. The petrified planks of what was once wood were laid out perfectly as a deck would be. It was long, at least three hundred feet from the view they had, and looked as if it was only half there as it ended in a jagged wreck. He was still struck by how ancient the object looked. But that feeling of
'What is it?' Collins asked of the hauntingly familiar shape.
'Don't you know, Jack?' the senator asked, still smiling at him. 'Well, in all actuality neither do we. There are a lot of opinions, but one thing we do know, we can't tell the people of the world we have it, it would stir the souls of men, and we just can't predict how they would react.'
Collins continued to study the image as the old man looked as if he was thoroughly enjoying the moment.
'The reason I am showing you this particular vault first, Major, is twofold. Number one, this was the very first Event. And number two, it shows the value of the military in our fieldwork. And believe me, Jack, fieldwork is even far more dangerous today than it was in Mr. Lincoln's time.'
Collins's eyes never left the senator's lone one. He nodded in understanding, but said nothing.
'It started in 1863,' Lee said, still looking at the major before letting his eye go back to the screen. 'After the battle of Gettysburg, when the war had finally turned in the Union's favor, the president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, was persuaded by a discredited Norwegian immigrant, a history professor from Harvard, to put together an expedition to what was then known as the Ottoman Empire.' The senator paused and turned from the screen and limped the short distance to his high-backed chair beside Niles's desk.
'This meeting between the professor and the president brought forth an unusual truce between North and South the history books will never mention, and one you will find no documentation for in the National Archives, save for ours,' Lee added. 'A meeting was engineered through the office of the then U.S. secretary of state, William Seward, and the expedition was on. It would be mounted by six hundred Union soldiers and captured Confederate prisoners, and six American ships of war.'
At this, Collins turned and looked at the man sitting behind that huge desk, then up at the portrait of Lincoln above the man's head.
'Their task,' Lee continued, 'as ordered by the president, was to search for, find, and bring back an object believed by some to be the greatest archaeological find of all time--not one that would fill the depleted U.S. treasury with riches for pockets already lined beyond measure.' Lee had picked up a pen and was tapping it against his blotter. 'The mission was to bring back the object you see there before you.'
