Night Talk (15 page)

“We don't question orders. Are there any images of the apartment building from drones?”

Novak checked. “Just up to the point of Nowell parking. We didn't think it was necessary—”

“Obviously you were wrong. That's the problem with having the finest equipment and programs on the planet. The people using them are not as capable as the equipment. You should have had the drones as a backup. Roll it back to the beginning when Nowell arrived and parked.”

As Nowell parked, a white van parked up the street from where Greg parked and then a red convertible Mini Cooper passed by as Greg was walking to the apartment building.

The small convertible was driven by a woman.

Mond said, “The brake lights in that red car went on as it neared Nowell walking into the apartment building.”

“What, uh, do you make of that, sir?”

“A Freudian slip.”

“Come again, sir?”

“The car's not really slowing down as it passes Nowell's car and the front of the building, but the driver's unconsciously revealing her interest by touching the brake pedal. The woman also looked over, interested in his movements. But she barely moved her head, obviously not wanting to expose her interest even though Nowell had his back to her. She probably was hiding her interest in case she was filmed by the building's camera. Fast-forward so we can see if we still had satellite coverage when she came around again.”

The car came around again. This time the brakes lights only went on in front of the building.

“Check the car's registration,” he said. “Back up the street there has to be an ATM, business or apartment building with a camera that showed the plates.”

Novak ordered cameras in the area to be brought online and found one in a supermarket's parking lot that picked up the Mini Cooper's license plate well enough to read.

She ran the license plate through the California Department of Motor Vehicles and it came back as belonging to an Alyssa Neal.

Mond told her to bring up Neal's driver's license.

“There's just one thing wrong,” Mond said, looking at the driver's license picture. “The woman driving the car is not Alyssa Neal.”

 

30

Alyssa looked at a loss for words and gave Greg a nervous laugh. “You're right, I did. You caught me.”

“So why are you pretending to be so innocent?”

“I am innocent, at least when it comes to the God Project. Whatever Ethan got out of it, he never shared it with me. Maybe he was trying to protect me. He knew that cracking open a top-secret file would mean real jail time, the life sentence variety.”

Greg kicked it around for a moment. “Maybe he intended to give it to me. What's the good of hacking into secrets if you can't send shockwaves around the world with what you find? Besides, he was very idealistic when it came to spying on our own people. Ethan might have thought of me as the way to get the dirt out, if that's what he found. But that doesn't explain why he made a bizarre accusation, saying I had killed him. Or how and why money from my bank account got transferred to him. That took a good hacker and he's the only one I know—other than you.”

“Rest assured that I know more about the theory of hacking than actually doing it. Like succeeding at most anything, the fine art of hacking is serious work done by people who make it their life. I know enough to call people who know how to crack a site and have them tell me how to do it.”

“Including the God Project.”

“No way, that's out of the class of anyone I know except Ethan.”

“Since you have access to Mond's reports, let's get into them and find out what's going on.”

“Can't do it. When I entered, alarms went off in the system. I got in, downloaded his most recent report and got out before the system slammed the door. Now that vulnerability is closed permanently and I don't know how to open another. Even if I called someone who could help, it would take a couple days to get back in and they will have set a trap, tracking intruders.”

They continued walking as Greg digested what she told him. His gut told him to trust her—but not completely. He asked, “Are you sure Ethan actually hacked into a secret program as opposed to just bragging about it?”

“I haven't seen the actual files he got into, but I know he did it. He contacted me after he succeeded in cracking the program. He was high and pretty weird, rambling about how they really were trying to play God, something about remaking people in their image. He believed that some sort of entity, alien or some life force different than the rest of us, was trying to dominate the world. Did he tell you that?”

“He talked about it on the air briefly, but he was so wasted on whatever his drug of choice was that we had to cut him off.”

“I know people talk about that sort of thing all the time on your show. Is that what you believe? That E.T. has landed and wants to take control?”

“You make a joke out of it because you've been brainwashed to believe that UFO sightings all stem from people photographing Frisbees as a joke. But catch this, Ali Neal. From the earliest advent of people on this planet, there has been a general belief that we are controlled by extraterrestrials.”

She did a double take. “Wow. I have a niece who would call that statement epic because it's so astonishing. I know there's some drawings scratched on cave walls that look like flying men or chariots, but I don't recall reading in any history books they gave me at school that most people have always believed we're controlled by aliens.”

“Sure you have, you just never made the connection. It's in a very old book your parents and my parents had at home and that we learned from every Sunday. It's called the Bible. God and angels are classic extraterrestrials. They live in outer space, are invisible, have super powers and pretty much control our lives. They can strike us dead for disobeying them. And that's been the case since prehistoric people scratched their beliefs on cave walls.

“In ancient times it was the gods of Olympus or the Nile manipulating mankind, and then the Eastern and Western religions came along and now are almost universal. But gods East and West either start out or end up as extraterrestrials. When you call people paranoid because they believe extraterrestrials or some terrestrial entity is out to control their lives, they are simply reflecting what humans have always thought.”

“So they believe aliens in flying saucers are controlling us rather than the God of the Bible.”

“I didn't say that. There is no contradiction between a biblical entity and aliens crash landing at Roswell or hovering over a lonely highway in the desert. We are an infinitesimal part of a vast universe that we are constantly probing deeper into and learning more about. We know that there are planets that can support intelligent life, so many of them that it's inevitable that someday intelligent life will be found—or will find us. There is no reason God isn't the deity of extraterrestrials as He is with the life on Earth.

“You think it's a joke to believe in intelligent life other than what you've personally experienced. But you have to have your head stuck in the sand if you don't look up and ask yourself what else is out there.”

“Is that what you do—look up to see what else is up there? What do you believe in?”

He instantly tensed. It was too much, too deep into him to explain to this woman what he believed and what happened to him to shape his beliefs, but felt she deserved an answer. As much as he would reveal.

“There are some questions that have perplexed mankind since time immemorial. I think in some sense most women and men have asked the questions in one form or another.”

“You mean, who are we, where did we come from, where are we going?”

“Yes, those are eternal questions, but the world we experience is many times the size of the one that our ancestors did. We are bombarded with global events every time we go on the Internet, turn on the TV or radio or pick up a newspaper. At the same time our space telescopes look back billions of years, back to the beginning of time and the universe. We're now sure that we are not alone in the universe, so I've added some more questions to those that people have asked over the ages: Who are
they
? What do
they
want? What will
they
do with us?”

“You're absolutely certain there is a
they
?”

“Of course I am. I think most people also realize that there is life beyond our own planet. And we believers have a strange bedfellow: the Vatican is already developing doctrine that includes extraterrestrials as part of God's creation. The Church is hedging its bets because it's pretty much a given there is something out there and it is either already here or is coming.”

“I hear true belief in your voice, not just preaching about it, or an intellectual analysis of the existence of extraterrestrials. It sounds like you're angry about the notion we could have had visitors from another planet.”

“Perhaps what you heard in my voice was fear about what type makes first contact.”

“Gets there first? Like a contest?”

“Like a contest. It's a sure bet that if extraterrestrials find us before we do them, they will have vastly superior technology. And that translates into superior weapons.”

“Muskets against arrows like we did with the Indians?”

“The history of progress has been the conquest of civilizations that were technologically inferior to the conquerors. Iron ruled stone, steel cut iron, city destroying atomic bombs beat bunker-busting bombs. We're now to the point where we can fry the entire planet with the rotting, decaying, leftover nukes from the Cold War but our weapons may be child's play compared to those of an entity that has traveled light-years to get to us.”

“Why do you think they will come as conquerors? Maybe they'll be enlightened, far advanced culturally and will help us barbarians who are polluting our planet with our human and manufacturing excretion.”

“That's a possibility. But why are they hiding if that's the case? Why do they keep their presence a secret and treat humans like guinea pigs? If they are so far advanced morally and intellectually, why don't they come into the light and help us share the wonders of the universe? You hear about people coming to the aid of other people, even dolphins coming to the aid of people. Have you ever heard about aliens saving a falling plane or sinking ship?”

“Maybe in a movie. Sorry, not trying to be facetious.”

Greg said, “Some people believe that we have been visited by both good and evil aliens and that the war in heaven related in the Revelation will be an apocalyptic battle between them.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “Do you lay awake nights thinking about this stuff?”

 

31

“Doesn't everybody?” He gave her a smile. “Just kidding, but it's a part of my life.”

“Is that why you host a paranormal show? It's in your blood? Part of your soul to find answers for those eternal questions?”

Bull's-eye. She had struck a chord. He was a seeker, searching for answers. The quest had consumed him and affected every aspect of his being—including his personal life.

“Right now the answer I'm looking for is who framed me.”

“One last question. Do you believe in God?”

“One last answer. I believe everyone is entitled to hold their own beliefs and keep them private if they want. And that's what I do. But I will share this with you—the world and its occupants are too wondrously incredible to have come about by accident in some soupy primal sea.”

They walked without talking. Trying to get his head around everything that had come down, he tuned out the action of Muscle Beach. He realized there was a more serious danger than getting arrested. People were getting murdered.

Greg said, “Rohan was murdered in a way that would have made it look like suicide if me and a kid on a skateboard hadn't been around. It's a sure thing that Ethan was murdered in a similar way. The suicide dive from high up would be too much of a coincidence. Mond and your NRO are looking for the wrong people. I didn't kill them and neither of us is capable of throwing men out windows.”

“Thanks. I appreciate the confidence. So we have to avoid getting murdered while we hunt for the file.”

“You make it sound like a joke.”

She shook her head. “It's no joke, I just don't know how to handle it or what to do about it. I can't go to the police for protection because I'll be locked up for the rest of my life. The only option is to find the file Ethan stole, copied, whatever he did with it.”

“Why do you think we have to find the file?”

“It's the only negotiating wedge we have to get the feds off of our backs and to take care of whoever is killing the people involved. Aren't you thinking the same thing?” she asked.

He was. He didn't have what Ethan stole and whoever did was covering their tracks and leaving Greg as the fall guy. Or were so intent upon getting back the file that they were leaving a trail of murder behind them.

He saw something in the sky and thought it was an airplane. She followed his look and said, “A drone.”

“We need to get undercover.”

They went into a store that sold T-shirts and caps with Venice style. Inside, they separated and looked around. After a couple of minutes he stepped outside. The drone was not in sight.

He stepped back in and came up behind Ali while she was looking at a rack of T-shirts.

“Ali.”

She didn't react.

“Ali?”

She spun around. “Sorry. I was, uh, thinking.”

“I thought for a moment you didn't know your own name. It's gone.”

They walked outside, checking the sky again before they went on.

“We should start with Ethan,” Greg said. “Mond has probably already put Ethan's entire life history under a microscope but there's always hope when the government is involved that bureaucratic morass will stifle whatever they're trying to accomplish. And that people won't tell things to cops that they might tell to Ethan's friends. Ethan has a mother somewhere. He mentioned her during a show. Claims she listens to my broadcast. We can start with a cold call on her. If we let her know we're coming, Mond would probably be waiting for us.”