The Inner Circle (15 page)

Mansfield always knew when he had an opponent beaten and he saw the defeated look on Earl's face. He led the timid man back to the limousine, where they sat in silence for the rest of the trip to the airport. He followed Earl inside the terminal and took care of getting the ticket and seeing that the middle school science teacher boarded his plane.

"Have a safe trip, Mr. Ackerman. I’ll be in touch."

Mansfield extended his hand and Earl cautiously took it, still somehow afraid that the man could do something awful to him just by touching his sweaty palm. Earl turned to leave when Mansfield said one last thing.

"And Mr. Ackerman, don't forget. The government has ways of seeing all and hearing all."

Earl nodded before disappearing into the terminal.

CHAPTER TEN

"Are you’re sure he's on board?" the president asked.

It was late at night, as Marshall and Mansfield attempted to relax and talk about the day's events in the privacy of the Oval Office. They drank nearly half a bottle of expensive brandy, a bottle given to the president as a gift from the President of France upon Marshall's White House victory. The two men had been waiting for a special occasion to open the bottle, but they’d always figured the occasion would be for some kind of joyous moment. Finding out that a deadly comet was threatening Earth was certainly not a joyous moment, but they agreed that no news would ever be as important as this.

"He's on board all right," Mansfield answered, a devilish grin splashed across his face. His head felt light as a balloon, while the belly full of brandy warmed his entire body without the usual burning that occurred when he drank other brandies.

"How can you be so sure he'll keep quiet?"

"I don't think you want to know that, sir."

"Fair enough."

Their topic of conversation soon turned to the subsequent discussions the president had had with Wilson and Armour while Mansfield brought Ackerman to the airport.

"Armour seems to think we need to send an astronaut into space to make the trip to the comet," Marshall said.

Any drunken relaxation Mansfield might have been accumulating came to a sudden halt when he heard this sobering news.

"What the hell for? To bring one more person into our 'Inner Circle'? It's bad enough dealing with five people who know about the comet. Why would we need to send a sixth to his grave by going on a suicide mission?"

"Armour made some good points," the President said. "He seems to think that having an experienced astronaut aboard would increase the chances of the mission's success. NASA seems to lose space vessels all the time due to computer failure and that's something we can not risk. If there was a communication problem between NASA and the probe and we couldn’t control it from Earth, there would be the possibility that someone on board could fix the problem and finish the mission."

Putting an astronaut aboard did make sense and who better than the head of NASA – and former astronaut – to know the best plans for a space mission.

"Finding someone for the mission won’t be easy," Mansfield said.

"No, I don't think many people would fight for a job that meant certain death. But Armour assures me there are ways to find the right candidate. He said he would start looking for someone right away."

President Marshall saw that it was a few minutes past midnight and he was much more tired and tipsy than he ought to be.

"I need to go to bed. I have to leave for the Africa trip tomorrow."

Mansfield had forgotten all about the president's four-day trip to Africa that left the next day. The trip had been a major concern for Mansfield the entire past week, but today's events had completely wiped away any worries about Marshall's mission of mercy. In fact, Mansfield was surprised the president was still planning to make the trip and wondered why Marshall wouldn’t simply cancel it.

"I think you've had too much to drink tonight, Peter," Marshall said. "If you had been thinking like this during the election, I would have never become President. I couldn't possibly cancel this trip at the last moment. The key to keeping the comet a secret is for all of us to live our lives as we normally would."

"Of course, sir," Mansfield said, standing up slowly from the couch, trying to steady himself.

The president draped his suit jacket over his shoulder and began to walk out of the Oval Office.

"While I'm away, I really need you to tackle a lot of work on this comet thing. I need you to find out all the information as you can, but make sure nothing gets written down on paper."

"Yes, sir," Mansfield said, getting out his pocket PC, finding the gadget much more confusing to work at this moment.

"I need you to find out about the person or people who discovered the comet and anybody associated with them. Someone out there had to have discovered it and we have to make sure they don't realize it’s gone missing from its original path. Also, I'm going to need you to talk to the people responsible for discovering the Russian form that described the comet and the black hole. Armour told me only three people worked on this data and I'm sure he'll be able to set up a meeting for you to speak with each of them. Be careful what you ask them, though, and make sure you deal with any problems that might arise."

"Of course, sir. Good luck on your trip to Africa. I will be in touch if I find anything out."

With that, the two men left the Oval Office and went their separate ways. The president was on a mission to maintain his normalcy, while his Chief of Staff was off to make sure no obstacles would get in the way of that normalcy.

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Peter Mansfield sat in the same large conference room where the three database workers had inputted all of the Russian space data. Mansfield had already talked to two of the workers briefly and had been convinced that neither of them had ever known, or at least remembered, the note mentioning the comet and the black hole. If the third member demonstrated no recollection of the comet, then the first part of his Comet Clement background research would be completed without a problem.

The third database worker looked much younger than the previous two and Mansfield correctly assumed that this was his first job after college. His spiked hair was dyed black and his unkempt appearance allowed Mansfield to deduce that the worker was still trying to cling to his sense of self-image, a tendency that many younger people nowadays possessed until a much later age. The two shook hands and Peter felt the weak, almost womanly grip of the computer geek’s hand. Mansfield immediately disliked him.

“Thanks for coming today, John,” Mansfield began, looking down at the young man’s file provided by Armour. John looked around the room tentatively, wondering why he was back in the same room so soon after the grueling, two-month project had finished.

"You can call me, J," John said.

Mansfield fought the urge to cringe. Was the youth of America really losing such a grip on the reality of the business world?

"So what's this all about? Does the government got more work for us to do?"

"Have."

"Huh?"

"It's 'does the government
have
more work for us to do?'” Mansfield answered.

"Thanks for the English lesson, but I hope you don't
have
more of those forms for us to work on. That job was really a pain in the neck."

"No, there aren't more forms for you to work on. I'm actually here today at the request of the Pentagon, which is currently analyzing the data put together in your reports. The reason for this interview is so I can gauge just how much information you have personally retained from all the forms you worked on. I know it was previously explained that this information is classified, which means you aren't allowed to talk about it to anyone."

"I know what classified means," John said. "Besides, most of those forms were just all numbers that I had to type into the computers. Once I saw the first few thousand digits, all of the numbers began to just blend together, know what I mean? The only reason I was brought in to work on it was because I understand Russian, but any idiot could have plugged those numbers into the database. There were only a few occasions where I needed to know the language anyway."

Mansfield leaned forward in his seat now, knowing that this conversation was leading in the direction he needed.

"Do you recall any of those occasions?" he asked.

"Mostly it was just to read the labels next to the numbers. You know, degrees and altitudes of the U.S. satellites and stuff like that. The database was set up to look just like the forms, though. It was childish stuff, I could've taught a five-year old how – "

"But what about other times, besides the actual forms themselves? Was there anything else you read that seemed important?"

John wondered why someone from the Pentagon would travel all the way to this NASA compound and wouldn’t be interested in what he had to say about the workings of the database. It was an awfully long way to travel just to chat and while this guy seemed like he was skirting around a broad topic, John could not help but think this man was trying to find out specific information about something that he had seen.
But what could he be talking about?

A light suddenly went off in John's head.

"Oh yeah, I do remember one thing I read. Actually, I had forgotten about it before now. But at the time, I told myself I should really look into it, even if just on my own. You see, I'm a bit of an astronomy freak, but I guess that's pretty obvious since I work at NASA and all. I didn't always want to work on computers, I actually wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger. But then I realized I would have to become a pilot first, and I didn't think the Air Force would appreciate my sense of style – "

"You were mentioning that you had read something?" Mansfield interrupted.

"Oh yeah, there was this form I ran across that didn't have any numbers filled in. Instead, there was a note about somebody witnessing a comet colliding with a black hole."

"Do you remember anything about this comet?"

"Comet Kliment," John answered right away. "That was the name of it. I looked it up on another database later that day, but I couldn't find anything with that name. I meant to look it up under different spellings. Russian translations are never a hundred percent, you know. Anyway, I guess I forgot all about it until now. You think it could have really happened?"

“Do I think what could have happened?” Mansfield asked.

“The comet colliding with the black hole. I don’t think things like that happen every day.”

"I don't know," Mansfield lied. "I don't think the government would be very interested in something like that."

"I guess not. But I'm sure plenty of astronomers would. I've never heard of a person witnessing something like that before. I can't believe I even forgot about it reading that note, I'm glad we had this interview."

This isn't good,
Mansfield thought. Would this kid really try to pursue looking into the comet? Was he even smart enough to discover anything on his own? He certainly didn’t look intelligent enough, but the youth of America today – while strange – could prove quite surprising. Mansfield thought about warning John to just forget about what he found, but that would be like admitting there was more to the story and there was no way the 'Inner Circle' could include this kid.

This was the second time in two days that Mansfield had to deal with a potential security leak, but the main weapon he used on Earl Ackerman – intimidation – might not work on this kid. Mansfield had read up on all three of the database workers and found that John had no family. Therefore, there was nobody who could be threatened to keep him silent. This left Mansfield with very few options, none of which were likely to end well for the kid.

"Thank you for coming here today," Mansfield said, extending his hand once again, surprising John that the interview was ending so abruptly. Before he exited the room, Mansfield had one last request.

"This might sound strange, but could you just hold off on that comet research for at least the next couple of days?"

"Sure, no problem."

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Mansfield had always been successful at handling most kinds of problems. But as he and Marshall advanced in the world of politics, the problems he'd had to manage became increasingly precarious. Problems arising at each higher step of the political ladder became more delicate to handle, as there were undoubtedly hundreds of people who would have loved to see Marshall engulfed in some sort of scandal. The future of this administration – as well as the state of Mansfield's legal freedom – relied on the Chief of Staff remaining extremely careful when dealing with problems such as John Piechowski.

When Marshall became President of the United States, one of the first things that Mansfield did – without his boss's knowledge so the president could later claim ignorance to the situation if he needed – was set up a network of contacts to deal with such problems. The final rung on the ladder of contacts never had direct communication with Mansfield or even direct communication with the first group of contacts to whom Mansfield would talk. Messages and 'job directions' were filtered through so many different people that any investigator who started with the last person in line would find it impossible to trace even a few contacts further up the network ladder. Although he was always nervous when it came to dealing with such things, Mansfield remained supremely confident that his network would never lead back to him.