her to get some rest. There wasn’t more to say.
When they were ready to resume their trip, Dane did a visual inspection of the plane with a cup of black coffee in one hand and a flashlight in the other. On wheels-up, he declared brightly, “Next stop Omaha!”
Will wanted to sleep.
Chapter 31
A hundred miles to the south, at double their altitude and almost three times their speed, Malcolm Frazier’s Learjet was passing them, heading for the same destination.
Frazier felt like a punching bag. Secretary Lester’s reaction to the news that Piper had once again slipped the knot was the second coming of Vesuvius. Frazier promptly offered his resignation, and for a few hours it looked like Lester was either going to accept it or just fire him outright.
Then Lester reversed course after staring at his calendar. The Caracas Event was twenty days out. If he replaced Frazier with under three weeks to go to Helping Hand, it would sound alarms throughout the intel community. Instantly, he’d be elevating the hypothetical problem of a potential compromise of Area 51’s security to an actual problem. He’d be obligated to brief the Secretary of Defense, who would probably haul Lester’s ass to the Oval Office to take the heat directly from the President.
They still didn’t know what Piper had discovered in the UK, they didn’t know what Spence intended to do with the 1527 book, and they didn’t know if anyone even remotely had the intention of blowing the lid off of Groom Lake. Medium term, Frazier had to go. Short term, he was better than a backup quarterback. Lester gritted his teeth and made his decision.
Frazier had already gotten used to the idea of being fired, and when Lester called to reverse course, he cycled through a panoply of emotions. On one level, he might have been relieved to walk away from the mess, to leave his BlackBerry on his desk and ride the elevators up to the desert floor one last time. Good luck to them and good riddance. But on another, more visceral level, he hated the idea of going out a loser. The capstone of his career: getting hosed by Will Piper? He didn’t think so!
Piper always seemed a step or two ahead of him, and that scourged his self-esteem. Sure the fellow wasn’t a run-of-the-mill target, sure he’d been an accomplished FBI agent, but please! He was solo, with limited resources at his disposal, and he was up against Frazier’s machine. Based on the DODs he was carrying around in his pocket, he was pretty sure this was all going to end soon, he just didn’t know how.
Lester had given him one last chance for redemption. Whenever a mission went off plan, Frazier had come to rely on one factor to get him back on track-his intellect. He had risen to head of Security because he was a thinker as well as a doer. Most of the watchers were glorified Military Police, order-followers who carried out other men’s plans. He was a cut above, and in his own estimation, he could have been a high-level analyst like Spence or Kenyon if he could ever have tolerated being a deskbound paper-pusher.
So he committed himself to success, and a bit of lateral thinking came through for him. On a hunch, he had his men at the Area 51 Op Center put a filter on the landlines and mobile phones of all known members of the 2027 Club, every retiree in their files with more than a passing connection to Henry Spence. He guessed that Spence and Piper would be communicating on safe phones, but there was at least a chance they’d reach out more broadly.
The key phone intercept wasn’t processed for the better part of a day because of the volume of material. When Frazier received it, he was floundering in White Plains trying to come up with his next move. The audio file was marked highest priority, and he played it on the BlackBerry’s speaker.
Dane, this is Henry Spence, you got a minute?
For you, I got two minutes. I didn’t recognize this number. How’re you doing?
I’m hanging in there, at least for a few more days! I’m on one of those pay-in-advance phones. I think we’re okay, but let me make this snappy.
All right.
You remember the Shackleton affair?
Of course.
Will Piper’s been helping me with a 2027 matter. He went to England for us. He found it.
Found what?
The answers. We’ve got it all.
Tell me.
He’ll tell you. I need you to gas up your Beechcraft-I’ll pay-and fly him somewhere. Frazier and his boys are after him.
Fly him where?
Be at the general aviation terminal at Westchester County Airport in New York tomorrow at 2:00 P.M. He’ll give you the details but pack a toothbrush. Are you in?
Is the Pope Catholic?
Frazier now had a new outlet for his pent-up rage: Dane Bentley. An ex-watcher, one of his own! The ultimate betrayal! He had always half liked and half disliked the guy. It was hard not to be drawn to Dane’s affable side, but Frazier was always bitterly suspicious of his close ties with the worker bees. He’d never been able to pin any transgressions on him, but his suspicions kept Bentley out of his inner circle.
Immediately, he had one of his men check on Bentley’s DOD and when he got it, he was disappointed with the result.
Via the FAA database, the Ops Center quickly looked up Bentley’s plane registration and before long they had a filed flight plan: White Plains to Laconia, New Hampshire to Cleveland, Ohio, to Omaha, Nebraska, to Grand Junction, Colorado, to Burbank, California’s Bob Hope Airport. They also now had the number of Spence’s prepaid phone, and that might prove exceedingly useful.
“Los Angeles,” Frazier growled when he got the news. “He’s returning to the scene of the crime.”
“He’s going for the memory stick, isn’t he?” DeCorso asked.
Frazier nodded. “Let’s get our asses to L.A.”
Will was amazed that Dane could be so energetic at that hour of the day. It was a good night for flying, with no significant weather on their route, so Dane was happy to concentrate much of his attention on Will’s story, which he assured Will, Spence wanted him to hear.
Will walked him through it, his tongue thick with fatigue. Dane was not an educated man, but he was excited about the Shakespeare connection and thought the Nostradamus angle was fascinating. He’d never heard of John Calvin, but he wasn’t sheepish about his lack of knowledge. He listened, spellbound by the account of the monk scribes and their mass suicide but was matter-of-fact about the Finis Dierum revelation.
“I don’t think the world’s gonna end just like that. I know Spence is into that kind of talk but, hell, I won’t be around to see it.”
Will looked at him sidelong.
“Yeah, I was a naughty boy. I got Spence to look me up before he retired. I’m outta here in 2025 at the not so ripe age of seventy-four. I’ve got to cram in a lot of hell-raising between now and then. You’re BTH, right?”
“Is there anything about me you don’t know?”
“Hey, the 2027 Club’s a bunch of old guys who get together to shoot the shit! Your Doomsday case finally gave them something to talk about.” He got distracted by some chatter on his headset. “I’m sorry about that girl and her grandfather. Sounds like you had a connection with her.” The way he said connection sounded loaded. Dane was on his wavelength when it came to women.
“Is it that obvious?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not my proudest moment.”
“Hey, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. That’s my motto.” He confirmed his altitude to an air traffic controller, then said to Will, “I want to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For helping Henry. His ticket’s punched for day after tomorrow. You’re letting him go out scratching and clawing instead of watching the clock. Personally, I’d like to go out in the sack with a swimsuit model.”
