Free Forty-Eight X by Barry Pollack Page A

flight he figured the base was probably in the Arizona or Nevada desert somewhere. He mused that he was in Area 51, that infamous and secret military installation that hid top secret aircraft and maybe even the remnants of alien spaceships and spacemen.
    On the same day that Professor Wagner met with Joshua Jaymes, he met five other world-renowned scientists. All were transported to him with the utmost secrecy. Employers, colleagues, family were all provided plausible but untrue stories for their departure.
    Dr. Wagner’s interviews were conducted like stealth attacks, quick and quiet. Should anyone refuse the offer he presented, they would be returned immediately to their homes. They were sworn to secrecy with the severest of threats and, having had their routines disrupted for just a few hours, they induced little suspicion from others. Over the last several months, Dr. Wagner had had several meetings like this. He was providing men who lived for science an opportunity to have unlimited resources at their disposal in a project likely to advance their careers and the knowledge of mankind in months rather than decades. Few refused.
    Joshua Jaymes had just spent the last six months preparing his latest application for National Institute of Health funding. He spent as much time, if not more, preparing proposals as doing research. His current proposal for a research grant would complete an initial peer review in about a month. Another six to eight weeks would pass as the proposal was sent around the country for external peer review comments. Then, if there was consensus and if funding was still available, the application moved to a second level for review by a main advisory council. Another two months would pass. If the project was then approved, the grant funds would be awarded and checks would arrive about a year and a half after the initial process began. However, most of the time, the council would ask for revisions and the process would begin anew. Dr. Wagner was offering him a blank check for his research, a home for him and his family on an island paradise, and a hefty salary, tax free.
    Every question that Jaymes had anticipated was answered affirmatively. These people had done their homework well. It all seemed too perfect. There had to be something he could ask for that would elicit a “no” response. Was there something he was missing?
    “Do they have Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in the stores there?” Dr. Jaymes asked. As soon as the question flew out of his mouth, he wondered how he could reel it back in. What foolishness.
    But Professor Wagner pondered the question seriously and then turned to whisper to one of the army officers by his side. The officer pushed a paper and pen to Dr. Jaymes.
    “What flavors would you like, Doctor?” the officer asked.
    Jaymes smiled and scribbled his favorites on the paper. He was committed. Wagner smiled, too. He had another member of his team, another exquisitely trained mind, who would be exuberantly dedicated to the tasks ahead. How bizarre, Dr. Wagner thought, that the fate of an entire nation could depend on Cherry Garcia.

A politician—one that would circumvent God
.
—William Shakespeare
     CHAPTER     
EIGHT
    W e’re going to move five from Commerce to Homeland,” Leland Bruce offhandedly told his legislative aide, whose job was to make his boss’s decisions known to the rest of Bruce’s committee.
    U.S. Senator Leland Bruce of Maine had been head of the Senate Appropriations Committee for five years. Bruce wrote personal checks at home for dollars and cents, but at work in his offices in the Senate’s Hart Building, when he spoke in the numbers one through hundreds, everyone knew he meant billions.
    Nearly three decades earlier Bruce had been a wealthy contributor to the Republican Party. He began his rise as a wiry, ugly duckling teenage computer geek with a reedy voice and the standard techie wardrobe of button-down shirts, a pocket protector