He watched as the black man walked away from the door and toward a car parked in the front of the pawnshop. The other man went to the passenger side.
'Excuse me, gentlemen,' Farbeaux called in his best down-home American accent. 'This town's as confusin' as Houston in a snowstorm. Can you tell me where to find the Flamingo Hotel?'
Mendenhall looked closely at the stranger. The cowboy hat was cocked at a lazy angle on the man's head and his boots were the snakeskin sort he himself yearned to buy one day.
'Yeah, it's down three blocks. You come to an overhead walkway in front of Caesars Palace, make a right there, you run right into it,' he answered.
Farbeaux was close enough, but to make sure, he stepped two feet closer to the big soldier.
'Three blocks you say?'
Mendenhall opened the car door. 'That's right, can't miss it, buddy.'
'Well, I'll be damned; I was right there and didn't ever see any walkway.' The stranger turned to face Willie and held out his hand. 'Thanks a bunch, partner, wife's gonna give me hell and rub it in eight ways to Sunday.'
Mendenhall hesitated a moment, then took the man's hand and shook. 'No problem, buddy.'
The Frenchman coupled his other hand over the black man's, lightly pushing the button on the small tube. A fine mist of hydrochlorinolphysiline filmed the top of Mendenhall 's hand. It was nontoxic and dried immediately with no odor or color. The man never knew he had been 'tagged' by a substance that could be tracked by the molecule- sized plutonium abstract that had entered the pores of his skin. A Centaurus satellite would relay the information to a ground station, actually a small backpack-sized unit sitting in Farbeaux's car that Centaurus didn't know he had taken from company stores before he left L.A. The amount of chemical would only be enough to track, and the big black man would feel nothing other than the smallest of headaches. It would be four hours before the abstract wore off, and Farbeaux hoped this man didn't fully shower until he got to the Event complex or, better still, the crash site.
Farbeaux released the sergeant's hand and nodded once. 'You gentlemen have a good night and thanks again.'
The two men climbed into the car and never gave the well-dressed cowboy another thought.
He walked back and opened the car door and sat behind the wheel. He removed the mustache and dental wadding and tossed them and the cowboy hat into the backseat. As he did this, his secure phone started to ring, but Farbeaux ignored it. It was his secure line, so it had to be Hendrix wondering about his second team of missing men. Or maybe he had found them, Farbeaux thought. No matter, he was hot on the trail of the Event Group and the ultimate prize, a whole new technology to be sold off.
'Now, Senator Lee, make my year and tell me you have the saucer.'
Jack, Niles, Lee, and Alice were in the Group's command room located just below the main conference room. Maps of southeast Arizona lay spread on the massive planning board. Alice was furiously scribbling notes and writing down directives delivered by Collins for his planning of the Discovery phase of the operation.
'Now, when do I let the rest of the Discovery team in on what we are really looking for?' Jack asked, looking from Niles to Lee.
'Hopefully never,' Niles said.
'I'm not one who likes putting people's lives at stake by not giving them the full story. Their thoughts on-site could be very valuable,' Jack said as he straightened up from the map table.
'What we suspect can never become general knowledge, even among our own people, Jack. The mere thought of some race of beings trying to wipe us out would run like a cancer through the Group. We have duties here that need to be done. If the animal is dead, I want all our people concentrating on their jobs, not what's coming next.' Lee looked up from the maps.
Collins saw that the old man was speaking slowly, with a drooping mouth on his left side, as if part of the muscles in his mouth were failing. The white shirt was unbuttoned at the top and his silver hair was shooting off in different directions. Jack looked at Alice, who sat stock-still while taking the briefing notes. A few minutes before they'd started the breakdown and logistics needed for this mission, Jack had informed Niles, the senator, and Alice about the connection with Farbeaux, Centaurus, and Genesis. Lee had had his worst fears confirmed about another element operating inside this country. That they now knew it had to have been these people who had eliminated the Group's team back in '47 only underscored the fear that this company, Centaurus, was operating with impunity.
'If I have even an inkling of evidence that this animal has survived the crash, I will immediately inform not only the initial Discovery team, but anyone who comes on-site what we may be up against. There can be no negotiation on that fact,' Jack said, looking from face to face. 'I have never kept troops in the dark or lied to them about what they're up against. I hope I'm clear and you back me on that. I've had some experience with people above me not giving my men and myself a clear picture of what we were up against, and it always turns out bad.'
'You have my word, Jack. If it's alive, you have permission to inform everyone.'
They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Niles called out and Commander Everett entered and held out a file folder to Jack.
'The Discovery team is assembled and waiting with the exception of Mendenhall and Jackson, who will join us at the airfield.'
'Thank you, Mr. Everett, we'll be right in.' Jack took the file folder.
Everett left the command room and closed the door. Jack turned and faced the three expectant faces.
'I explained earlier about Centaurus and Genesis. Now I think you should know who is behind them. But I believe you already have guessed. We had this package made up for you and just received it back from photo recon.' Jack handed Lee the red-bordered Eyes Only file. He dipped his head and left the command room to brief his team.
Lee turned the file over and peeled away a red piece of tape and reached in and took out first the hard copy of the report Jack had already covered with him. This he handed to Alice. Then he pulled the blowups and computer-enhanced prints from the file. He looked at the first photo of a dark-haired man taken at a banquet. The only indication he recognized the face in the foreground was the momentary widening of his good eye.
'Now that's a face I never thought to see again,' Lee said as he handed the picture over for Alice to see. 'It has to be his son.'
After a moment, Lee removed the last picture from the file and looked at the smiling face of the Frenchman. 'Well, Jack and the boys earned their money. With this photo we have visual proof of just who it was Farbeaux's been working for all these years,' he said, shaking his head. Then he sat up and looked at the picture more closely. Standing behind Farbeaux and unaware of the camera, die same as the Frenchman, was a face that Lee knew. He lowered the picture and closed his eye.
'What's wrong?' Alice asked.
Lee opened his eye and looked at her and handed her the last picture.
'Farbeaux?' she asked.
'No, not him, the rather tall gentleman standing behind him.'
'Oh, God, is that the president?'
Lee didn't say anything.
'You mean the president knows Hendrix?' Compton asked as he took the picture and looked at it.
Jack had confirmed what Lee had suspected for fifty years or more, that their enemy from the time of the Roswell Incident to the present wasn't a foreign agency, but the mythical Men in Black who had always been but a rumor. It was now highly likely that their foe was a privately held company that existed with the help of some of the federal agencies, at least initially in the company's earlier formation hi the forties and fifties. The Centauras Corporation, and the think tank Jack mentioned, the Genesis Group, also led by Hendrix, were the people who sat in judgment on how to exploit the finds and discoveries they had gleaned from the crash wreckage they had stolen almost sixty years ago.
'Let's keep this knowledge to ourselves for a bit, shall we? We don't know how deep the connection goes between Centauras and the president. After all, it was a Washington event and the president was a young senator then, no crime in his being there. I suspect that maybe it's only certain elements that are assisting this corporation
