WE HAVE CONTACT (The Kurtherian Gambit Book 12) (15 page)

Melissa noticed that a few other academic-type people had closed around the two of them, “Origin of the modern concept of constitutional rule.”

Terry bit his lip, and then smiled, “You’re referring to the Magna Carta signed by King John at Runnymede in A.D. 1215.” She nodded her head in agreement.

“Okay, we jump ahead a few hundred years. What was invented that was essential to the modern economy and administration.” The two of them heard some murmuring from the people surrounding them.

“I think you’re referring to the invention of the watch in 1509 A.D.?” He raised an eyebrow to confirm if he was right or not.

She agreed.

“You are an American, correct?” He nodded his head, not sure where she was going with this. “Okay who developed the first petrol driven car?”

Terry considered the question. She must not be talking about Henry Ford since she claimed and asked about his nationality. “Okay, you are referring to Benz in 1885 A.D.”

She paused for a few moments, “Something I feel is a little bit more pertinent to this meeting, considering,” Melissa looked around at the people surrounding her and in this room, “the people I see here.” She paused a moment before continuing, “JAL flight 1628 in 1986.”

Terry opened his eyes wide, and started looking around with interest at the people surrounding him, “Okay,” he turned to face her again, “I get your hint. JAL flight 1628 in 1986 is the Japan Airlines flight on November 16, where they described a UFO as being three times larger than an aircraft carrier, flew beside them for fifty minutes over northeastern Alaska. The objects were intermittently picked up by both civilian and military ground radar at the time. What makes this particular incident impressive was the amount of time the object was seen, the credibility and quantity of witnesses which included the crew and all of the passengers, and of course, the fact it was also picked up on radar. Those factors instantly rendering it as one of the most impressive UFO sightings on record and one that remains unexplainable today. As a side note, the final icing on this cake, is the crew of the civilian airliner was willing to discuss the incident in public.” Terry pumped his fist, a huge smile on his face, “Yes!”

Melissa was surprised at his rendition. He truly had to have a photographic memory to be able to describe so many of the aspects of this particular request. She had already confirmed he had no headphones in his ears, and he had no glasses that he could be looking at the information while staring her. She moved a little closer to see if he perhaps had contact lenses with information on them. His face, one she would describe as ruggedly good-looking, was surprised by her movement toward him, “Problem?” He asked her as he leaned backwards just a little.

“No, I just want to make sure you don’t happen to have some sort of special contact lenses giving you the answers. If this is going to be a true test, we can’t have any cheating, can we?” There were many nods of agreement around the two of them.

Terry smiled and leaned forward taking his right hand and opening the top and bottom around his eyes wide to give her a better look, “Nope, no contact lenses.” Terry leaned around to his left and allowed those close to him to confirm he had nothing in his eyes before doing the same to those on his right.

 
One of the guys in the audience did pipe up, “Nope, nothing in his eye.” There were murmurs of agreement that Terry was clean.

“Final question, Mr. Walton.” Melissa leaned back against the table behind her, “Tehran, September 19, 1976.”

 
This time, quite a few heads nodded in understanding. Terry smiled, “This one's a gimme,” he jerked a thumb to his left, “even most of these guys have it. You are referring to the predawn hours of September 19, 1976, when Iranian jet fighters were sent to chase after a wildly maneuvering UFO in the skies over Tehran. They were sent after several radar stations picked the anomaly up on their screens. The pilots encountered problems every time their jets flew near the craft because it affected the aircraft’s systems when they got too close, rendering electronics equipment inoperable. Further, one of the plane’s weapons systems failed to complete a firing sequence as it closed to attack.
 

This particular incident is regarded as one of the premier UFO encounters ever, on any records. Not only due to the quality and preponderance of all of the evidence but because of the direct impact it had on instrumentation and radars of the several and varied aircraft involved in the pursuit. The skeptics, this time, were met with laughter when they tried to explain it away as an especially bright planet Jupiter sighting.”

She held out her hand, “Pleased to meet you TH, you can call me Melissa.”

—

TH and Melissa got together after the first four hours of the meeting, “Can you believe,” she hissed at him as she opened her lunch box and took out the chocolate cookie first, “We are going on a modern day archaeological hunt?”

Terry took out his turkey sandwich, “Is it an archaeological hunt, when what you might be digging up from the ground is more advanced technology than what you have right now?”

Melissa was chewing on her cookie, thinking about his question, “Yes, if we’re digging for information from the past it is archaeology. The fact that the technology is advanced is not in question. Consider,” she pointed at him with her half eaten cookie, “the pyramids and other digs in Egypt right now. There is a lot the ancient Egyptians accomplished we still have no idea either A), what they used it for or B), how the hell they did it in the first place.”

 
There was a long pause before Terry answered, “True, but it doesn’t mean that the technology is from aliens, just because we can’t understand it.”

Melissa was finishing her cookie as she unrolled her roast beef sandwich, “No, it doesn’t mean that it came from aliens, but it can mean that we had a highly evolved society on earth before we lost the technology. For instance, why is the largest pyramid built the way it is? There are a lot of conspiracy theories about why it was done that way. It could be that we had one human being in power with such a convoluted religious belief that he spent decades and decades, and who knows how many lives, building a stone edifice to himself.”

She peeled back the paper on her sandwich, “Or, they had advanced knowledge of some sort of energy capabilities we don’t know yet.” She punctuated her statement by taking a large bite of her sandwich.

“Well, personally I hope we find ourselves on one of the groups that go to South America,” Terry mentioned. When he noticed one of her eyebrows raise up, he continued, “if they have us searching in the middle east we could find ourselves in the midst of a war zone. Then, we’d be just like Indiana Jones with the Nazis. Except this time, we won’t be eating popcorn and enjoying it.”

He looked around, “And,” he continued, “I really hate snakes.”

Kaifeng, Henan Province

Second Lt. Zi Shun had looked around the dark, small restaurant before he saw his group at a back table. He nodded his head to the guy behind the bar and stuck his finger up to tell him he wanted a beer.

Dodging a harried waitress who didn’t realize he was there, Shun made his way between two full tables and squeezed into the small table and nodded to the group. Everyone was nursing their own beers and by how full their beers were, he wasn’t far behind them. A moment later, the waitress brought him his and Zhu paid her. “Grab the next round,” Zhu told him.

“So, is it true?” Zhu asked, keeping their voices down. They weren’t in uniform, and this was the least likely place to be having this conversation the four could think of to discuss what they knew and what they thought they knew.

And what rumor said.

Rumor, the bane of the top brass in every military in every country since people had joined together to fight others. It spread faster than it could be tracked, it was more virulent than mustard gas, and it killed people by sucking their belief and trust in the mission as surely as a bullet at the wrong time.

“Look,” Shun began, “let’s get this straight. What I’ve got are rumor and comments. I don’t have anything that your mother probably already told you before she tucked you in bed.”

“My mother never told me about people turning into cats,” Bai said.

Zhu slapped his arm, “Bai, that’s because you're city born. Those in the city don’t know the old stories, they don’t pass them down.”

“I remember,” Shun interrupted before the two of them could get into the same old fight they always did. Zhu was sharper, but born in the country, and Bai was a little slower but lorded his city experience over Zhu. “I remember the stories of the Sacred Clan my mother told me. How they had Kings that run the clan out in the countryside. They are worse than the stories of silent warriors coming in the night to grab bad boys in their sleep. You can supposedly tell a Sacred Clan member from their eyes.”

“Yellow,” Jian spoke. The three turned to their normally quiet friend. He held his beer in both hands like he was praying to it, “yellow eyes. Like a cat’s, their pupils slit up and down.”

Then, that was it. Shun waited another ten seconds for him to add anything, but Jian was done. He shrugged, “Yes, the pupils I have heard about.”

“So, the Kings are the powerful ones?” Bai asked, “Do I have this correct?”

“No,” Jian interrupted a second time. Damn near a record, being twice in one night. “They are waiting for a leader, a Leopard Empress for them to follow.”

Shun’s face went slack. “Did you say a Leopard Empress?” The stories his mother told him, and any he had ever heard, never mentioned a Leopard Empress. Jian just nodded.
 

Shun looked around the restaurant casually before leaning towards his friends, “Then the rumors might be true. I’ve never heard about the Leopard Empress, have you, Zhu?” Zhu shook his head. Bai shrugged, but he didn’t know any of the stories. “No? Me neither. But, the rumors running back on the base say the Sacred Clan has a Leopard Empress and she growls from her temple in the mountains at night.”

“What do we care if she growls?” Bai asked, “Wouldn’t she die with a bullet shot, like any other leopard?”

Bai was surprised when all three of his team members looked at him and shook their heads, “What, she can’t be killed?”

“Of course,” Shun agreed, “We just don’t know how to do it. In the stories I know, you can’t kill most of the Sacred Clan with simple bullets, or stabbing them. That assumes you could do either one. They are so fast, you can’t see them.”

“Silver,” Jian added, his third comment.

“Ok,” Bai said, “that’s the third comment you have made. Something is bugging you about this, why don’t you just tell us what you know so we all don’t have whiplash every time you speak?”

Jian took a long drink of his beer and nodded sharply, like he had a long discussion with himself and finally the one who wanted to talk won.

“The Sacred Clan and their stories are relevant in my family. Why I can’t tell you.” He looked to his friends, “Not because I don’t want to, but I can’t. My mother would never share why she knew so much, and my father would get upset if I even mentioned it to them. I never saw my grandparents, and if my parents had brothers and sisters, they never spoke to them. So, no cousins.”
 

The three friends nodded their understanding, “I’ve tried to find out more, but in secret. Always looking over my shoulder.” Jian lifted his bottle of beer to the bartender and Shun looked at the other two bottles and his own and stuck his hand up beside Jian’s with four fingers.

The four men watched as the waitress swept by the bartender and grabbed the four beers and brought them to their table. They handed the waitress the empties and the men turned to speak again.

The waitress raised an eyebrow to the bartender who shook his head and shrugged. She was surprised. Normally, when four single men were sitting speaking with each other, they would always ogle her as she walked away. She made sure to give them a good show, it helped with the tips. Unfortunately, the bartender Ai just informed her the show was for nothing.

Something was more interesting than her. She frowned, she hoped it didn’t screw up her tip, she needed a little extra cash for the broken air conditioner.

Jian continued his discussion, “So, I have looked, and the closest stories I have to the Sacred Clan information my mom shared was the werewolf stories from old Europe and now American films. My mom mentioned one time that silver hurts them. When I asked her a couple of stories later about that comment, she acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about. The problem was, I could see fear in her eyes, like knowing that information could be dangerous.”

“To her?” Zhu interrupted but Jian shook his head.