Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

P olypropylene rustles and smells like a new shower curtain as I shake open a pair of folded coveralls. In addition to self-contained breathing apparatuses, we have battery-powered in-ear headsets to amplify what’s said over a secure telephone landline.

“The hardwired phone is encrypted, and when it rings you pick it up and switch it to speakerphone.” Lucy directs this at me. “Everyone will need to talk loudly and clearly. That’s how we’ll communicate during the examination.”

“When you’re ready, exit there through that airlock.” Tron points to a steel-clad outer door that’s scratched and dented, the dull metal freckled with rust.

She and Lucy leave the same way we entered, and Marino and I are alone. But that doesn’t ensure privacy. I’m mindful of possible hidden cameras, and don’t want to mention my suspicions out loud. Nor should I have to, but Marino is too excited to pay attention.

“How is it possible we’ve never heard of this place?” he marvels as we sit down on benches across from each other.

“I suspect there are a lot of places we’ve not heard of,” I reply as we bend over to unlace our boots. “If there isn’t a legitimate reason to share information, we aren’t going to be informed by anyone, including Lucy and Benton. Or Sal Giordano for that matter. Frankly, if there isn’t a reason to know, I prefer not to anyway.”

“You’ve been working with the Armed Forces M.E.s all your career. And you swear you never got a hint about Area One? Or the SLAB?”

“I haven’t.” I tuck my pants cuffs into my socks.

“Seriously?” He’s not sure he believes me. “You’ve never once gotten the slightest indication that something spooky might be going on at Langley Air Force Base? And probably their NASA neighbor? I guarantee they’re in this together and have been all along. They’ve got to be.”

“My guess is that most of my colleagues in the military and otherwise have no idea about Area One. I doubt most NASA or Space Force people do either.” I begin putting on the bright yellow coveralls over clothes still clammy from the rain. “And those who know can’t talk about it any more than we can. That included Sal.”

“Did he ever see a UFO?” Marino shoves his big stockinged feet through plastic pants legs. “Maybe he was inside one, maybe at a crash retrieval? I wonder if he ever saw an ET dead or alive?”

“He never said.”

“Maybe he dropped a few hints?”

“Not to me.” I work my arms into the sleeves. “But certainly, he believed other intelligent life is out there and was trying to communicate with it. He was convinced that Mars was once habitable before something catastrophic happened.”

“Earth was plan B. It’s where the Martians escaped thousands of years ago when their own planet was about to be destroyed,” Marino replies as if it’s commonly known.

No doubt he learned this and more from All Things—Unexplained , Ancient Aliens or one of his other favorite podcasts and TV shows. He and my sister both tune in religiously, and it makes for lively dinner conversations when all of us are together.

“Dorothy’s into the SETI stuff the same way I am,” Marino is saying as we pull on rubber boots. “Not telling her about this place and what we’re doing right now is going to kill her. She’ll never forgive it.”

“Not if she doesn’t know.” I give him a look, trying to shut him up, but he’s not getting the message.

“How am I supposed to keep quiet? And why the hell should I?” He’s getting overheated by our conversation and the PPE’s thick plastic. “Last I checked we don’t work for the feds.” He gets up from the bench. “I have a right to talk about my life. I’m not a damn spy.”

“You have a right to do anything you want as long as you’re prepared for the consequences.” I zip up my coveralls.

“Well, we’d better decide on a good story to tell Dorothy about where the hell we’ve been today. Or we’ll never hear the end of it.” Grabbing a towel off a stack of them, he mops his sweaty face and the top of his head. “You know how she is when she wants to know something,” he adds, and he’s just as bad. Worse, actually.

“A military mortuary is as much as we need to tell her and anyone else.” I continue looking around for cameras while being careful what I say, and he ignores my cues. “Beyond that, the case isn’t something we can discuss. Marino. This is serious business.”

“I’ll tell you what I’m wondering.” He works his hands into a pair of thick black rubber gloves. “Maybe those freezer drawers we just saw have to do with Roswell, which you probably don’t believe was the real deal.”

“By real deal I assume you mean of an extraterrestrial nature. I’m no expert and don’t know the details.” I pull on two pairs of nitrile gloves instead of rubber ones because I have to feel what I’m doing during an autopsy.

“Trust me, what crashed in New Mexico wasn’t a weather balloon,” he replies. “It was a spacecraft with aliens on board who used vibrations to move in and out of different dimensions. I’ve seen official memos and other intelligence. You wouldn’t believe the information Janet finds for me. She knows what I want and downloads it directly into my email. I don’t even have to ask.”

“And you’re aware that much posted on social media and elsewhere isn’t necessarily real or to be trusted?” I buckle the respirator blower around my waist, making sure the batteries are charged.

“Janet helps me know what’s real and fake,” Marino replies. “She thinks the truth about Roswell was covered up immediately after the whole thing happened. The government knew damn well it was a flying saucer.”

“Janet is an AI algorithm that’s the result of human input. She isn’t a person and doesn’t actually think for herself.”

“The hell she doesn’t.” He acts insulted on her behalf. “Janet thinks better than anyone I know and comes up with stuff nobody else would. And I don’t have to deal with her making judgments about me. Anything out there, she’s going to find it, including facts about Roswell, which definitely was real. I don’t care what you say.”

“I didn’t utter a word.”

“You don’t have to for me to know you think what I’m saying is stupid.”

“You might be surprised by what I think,” I reply without telling him the rest of it.

I can’t share what happened toward the end of my tenure at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Marino would be far too interested in what I came across one day while in a largely forgotten storage room. I was excavating for paperwork relating to the donation of Robert Hooke’s seventeenth-century microscope, and found myself in an area of the basement where I’d not been.

Shelves crowded with glass jars of pathological specimens and rows of fireproof filing cabinets were coated in a fuzz of dust. Skeletons on wheeled stands showed anomalies like Marfan syndrome, gigantism, dwarfism, rickets. They stared with empty eyes and grimaces while I riffled through musty files, happening upon one jammed in the back of a drawer where it didn’t belong.

Sealed in layers of red tape accompanied by warnings not to open and stamped TOP SECRET , it was labeled Roswell Incident, 1947 . Judging by the weight, I suspected there were hundreds of pages of documents and possibly photographs inside. I carried the file upstairs to the curator, a by-the-book retired Air Force colonel, tall and thin with a clipped mustache and the ruddy complexion of a drinker.

Getting close to eighty, he began his career with the Armed Forces M.E.s during World War II and had little use for women doctors. He spent his days running the museum as a volunteer, and I walked into his office, placing the file in front of him. For a flicker he was stunned, then rattled. He went from polite and pleasant to stern and distrusting, his gray eyes turning to slate.

Why were you looking for this? He spoke to me in a way he hadn’t before. Who told you about it?

No one. I found the file by accident.

I described exactly where it was, explaining that I had no reason to think something like this was here. Therefore, I couldn’t possibly have been looking for it.

Something like this? he echoed accusingly. Sounds like you opened it.

No, sir, I brought it straight to you. As you can see for yourself, it hasn’t been opened since it was sealed many years ago, possibly decades ago, I said, and his demeanor changed again.

Gotcha, didn’t I? He winked with a phony grin.

I’m sorry…?

A hoax, a prank . He’d never make it as an actor.

If I opened the file like most people would, I’d discover nothing’s inside except blank sheets of paper, and the joke was on me. That’s what he said, and I was sure he was lying as he went on to order me never to mention what I found.

It would be misunderstood, he said sternly.

I wasn’t to repeat our conversation, and I haven’t. The one exception was Sal, and his response was a Mona Lisa smile. He had no comment beyond the usual about the government’s need to obfuscate the truth in the name of security.

Not just the White House and Ten Downing Street but the Vatican, he often said. What it’s really about is keeping humanity in the dark.

Marino and I pull on our yellow hoods, our voices muffled through the rubber speaking diaphragms, our in-ear headphones amplifying sounds. We push through the airlock, greeted by bright lights inside a small autopsy room.

Sal’s pouched body is on top of the pedestaled stainless steel table attached to a sink, a surgical cart set up nearby. Behind glass on the second floor is a pantheon of distinguished witnesses, and my heart lifts at the sight of Benton. Seated in the front row, he’s wearing a midnight-blue suit that accentuates his lankiness, his platinum hair and strong chiseled features.

He looks as fresh as he did while we were getting dressed this morning. I envision us drinking coffee in our bedroom when we hadn’t a clue what the day would bring. Everyone has taken a seat inside the observation area, and I know some of the notables gathered. The director of the Secret Service, Bella Steele, looks unusually grim in black, her long dark hair tightly pulled back.

I can tell she’s distressed, her strong vibrant face slack, and I know she and Sal were friendly. The last time the three of us were together at the White House, it was obvious they were fond of each other. She’s talking to General Jake Gunner, the commander of the U.S. Space Force, dressed in camouflage, his rugged face granite.

Next to him is Gus Gutenberg from the Central Intelligence Agency, nondescript with gray hair, a gray beard, everything about him colorless and vague like a faded daguerreotype. I recognize the director of the Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), and next to him the former U.S. senator who now heads NASA.

I’ve met the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) aerospace engineer several times at the Pentagon, and know the agent from Interpol’s Washington, D.C., bureau. The National Security Agency is here, also the U.S. secretary of state, and a scientist from NASA Langley. I imagine Sal amused, wanting to know what all the fuss is about. He’d have something risqué to say about being naked and dead on a cold steel table in front of such an esteemed audience.

Marino and I get our bearings in the unfamiliar environment, walking around. The white tile walls and floor, the scratched zinc countertop probably go back to when the blockhouses were built. I’m reminded of medical school days spent in old hospital morgues. Only this one is stocked with every modern necessity, including total containment body pouches like the ones I use.

White-painted cabinets with glass doors offer the same supplies ordered for my district offices. Parked next to the autopsy table is a portable C-arm x-ray machine, and I roll it closer, turning it on. The display runs through the start-up routine as the landlined black phone begins to ring from the countertop. I stop what I’m doing to answer it.

“Hello.” Pressing the button for speakerphone as Lucy instructed, I look up at her through the observation window as we begin talking to each other.

“How do you read me?” Her voice sounds in the headset under my hood.

“Loud and clear,” I reply.

“We’re hermetically sealed between an airlock and thick glass up here,” Lucy says. “This is the only way to hear each other. Marino, hello, hello?” She then says when he remains silent, “You there?”

“Yep,” he answers gruffly.

Lucy moves out of the way, and Benton leans closer to the phone upstairs.

“We very much appreciate Doctor Scarpetta and Pete Marino taking time to be here,” he begins, as if we had a choice. “We apologize for the inconvenience of being airlifted to an undisclosed location with little notice.”

“You mean flying in tornadoes and lightning with a freakin’ dead body on board that might be contaminated? You referring to Lucy almost killing us?” Marino feels compelled to vent his frustrations while she stares down at him.

“We were fine,” she says. “But it was a bit like a mechanical bull.”

“I’m not getting back on it any time soon. Hopefully never,” he promises.

“I know you appreciate the importance of what we’re doing and the need for discretion,” Benton goes on. “By now, it’s apparent that Area One isn’t a topic of discussion. I’ll remind you of a few guidelines you’ve heard before. I’m saying this mostly for your benefit, Pete, since you don’t have a security clearance.”

“And I’d like to keep it that way. I don’t feel like spending my life buried under a shit-pile of secrets.” Marino glares up through his face shield.

“You know how things have to be done,” Benton says with nothing in his tone.

“Yeah, I know the drill,” Marino says rudely, and I’m reminded of our conversations inside the helicopter.

At least he no longer hates my husband, who’s not going to give him emotional traction. No one better at playing the indifferent card than Benton. There’s much he won’t forgive or forget when it comes to Marino, and the feeling is mutual. At best, they tolerate each other, occasionally suffering flare-ups when Marino is heavy into the bourbon.

“The minute you pulled up to this facility you were granted an OTRI.” Benton is going to brief him, doesn’t matter if Marino doesn’t want to hear it. “A one-time read-in, a temporary top-secret clearance.”

“Otherwise, you couldn’t be here,” Bella Steele reminds him.

“I’m not the one who invited me,” Marino answers.

“What goes on here can’t be shared with anyone unauthorized, including family. One’s spouse, for example. Regardless of how badly the person wants to know.” It’s General Jake Gunner saying this, and no question he’s referring to my sister.

As I suspected, when Marino and I were talking in the locker room, we were monitored. He complained about how unhappy Dorothy will be if he doesn’t tell her the details of what we’ve been doing today. The commander of Space Force and possibly everyone else in the observation area was listening.

“You can’t mention anything you observed or learned while here. Once you leave, it never happened,” Bella says.

“Better hope I don’t have to take a polygraph, because I won’t pass it.” Marino shakes open a black plastic bag, lining a bucket with it.

“If you play by the rules, there’s no reason for a polygraph.” The NSA’s comment sounds like a warning.