Area 51

CHAPTER 4

“This is Johnny. I’m out of town for a bit. Back on the tenth. Talk to you then. Leave a message at the beep. Bye.”

Kelly slowly put the receiver down, not bothering to leave a message. It was after nine in the morning on the tenth. “Oh, Johnny, you’ve done it now,” she whispered to herself.

There was no doubt in her mind that Johnny Simmons was in trouble. He had a strange sense of humor, but he wouldn’t have sent her that tape and letter as a joke. She knew he was dead serious when he went on an assignment.

After the little he had related to her about what had happened in El Salvador, she could well understand his seriousness. He had listed nine in the morning three times in his letter. He would not have forgotten or blown it off. At the absolute minimum he would have changed his message by remote as he had said he would.

She turned on her computer and accessed her on-line service. To find out where Johnny was, she would have to follow him, and information was the way to start. There were two avenues of investigation to pursue, and she knew they were the same two areas that Johnny would have looked into before he went on assignment. The first would be to get background information about Area 51 and Nellis Air Force Base. The second would be to get more specific and look into the UFO phenomenon as it related to Area 51.

Kelly had more than a glancing background in the field of UFOs, which was why, in addition to their friendship, Johnny had sent her the package in the first place. Her trouble eight years ago with the Air Force at Nellis Air Force Base had had to do with that subject and had for all practical purposes destroyed a promising career in the documentary filmmaking field. What had appeared at the time to Kelly as an excellent opportunity had turned into a disaster.

Kelly took the package Johnny had sent her and went through it one more time, this go-around making notes of key words on a legal pad. When she was done, she looked at what she had:

Kelly accessed her on-line database and set up a Boolean keyword search. She started with the date in question, combining it with Nellis Air Force Base, and drew a blank. Then she switched to both the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of October and accessed any news about F-15’s. This time she got a hit. She drew up the article, from the Tucson Citizen, dated the twenty-fourth of October:

Kelly checked, but there was nothing on the crash in the following day’s paper, which was unusual. Kelly flipped open her atlas. Luke Air Force Base was in Arizona, hundreds of miles from the Nellis Air Force Base Range. She hit the delete key. This had nothing to do with what she was looking for.

Then she paused. Or did it? How often did F-15’s crash? Not exactly every day of the year. Was it just coincidence?

Kelly did not believe much in coincidence. She felt her gut tighten further. What had Johnny stumbled upon? If this F-15 was the F-15 on the tape, the Air Force had gone through a lot of trouble to point the finger in a different direction from Nellis and Area 51. And not only was the plane reported as having crashed, the pilot was dead. He had been very much alive on that tape.

Next, Kelly tried mailbox in conjunction with UFOs. This produced three hits, all of which identified the mailbox as an actual mailbox along a dirt road outside of the Groom Lake complex where UFO enthusiasts gathered to watch for strange craft over the mountains. Obviously the man who had sent Johnny the tape — the Captain — was one of those people. At least she now knew where she could find that link in the puzzle if she needed it.

Trying Dreamland and Groom Lake brought her a wealth of stories about the site there. They were both cross-referenced to Area 51, which was another one of the many names for a place whose purpose was unknown and whose existence was officially denied.

There were many theories, and Kelly was familiar with most of them. There were some who claimed the government had contact with aliens at the site, and they were trading for information and technology. The more radical theorists stated that, on their side of the barter, the humans were allowing the aliens to conduct mutilations on cattle and other livestock and also — from the truly radical fringe — to abduct humans for various nefarious experiments. There were some who even claimed that the aliens were interbreeding with the humans. Kelly shook her head.

These were the sorts of stories that made headlines on the tabloid rags at the checkout counter, not something that legitimate journalists pursued. Another theory was that Area 51 was the place where the government was testing its own supersecret aircraft and that the F-117 Stealth fighter had been test-flown out there. The latest “secret” plane that was supposedly being tested was called Aurora and guesstimates had the plane — no one quite knew what it looked like — flying anywhere from Mach 4 to Mach 20 and being capable of going high enough to place satellites into orbit.

The official government line was that the Groom Lake/Area 51 complex didn’t exist, which was a most interesting position considering the fact that the Air Force had been gobbling the terrain around the area for the past five years as quickly as it could.

Obviously, something was going on at Area 51, Kelly decided from all the information in front of her. And she knew that Johnny must have done the same search, in fact, a much more in-depth one. And after completing that search he had felt it was worth going out there and taking the chance that the tape he had been sent was a fake or, given that Johnny knew about her own Nellis experience, a setup.

Shifting through several of the articles, two names kept popping up: Mike Franklin, a self-styled Area 51 expert living in the town of Rachel, just outside the Nellis Air Force Base range complex; and Steve Jarvis, a scientist who claimed to have worked in the Groom Lake/Area 51 complex and actually seen alien craft that the government was test-flying. Johnny would have seen the same names.

Kelly picked up the phone and got Franklin’s number from information. She dialed and waited as it cycled through five rings. Just as she was about to hang up, somebody came on the line. The voice on the other end was a woman’s and she sounded upset. “Yes?”

“I’d like to speak to Mike Franklin. This is Kelly Reynolds.”

“Mike’s not here,” the woman said.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“He’s not here,” the woman repeated.

“I’m doing an article on UFOs for a major magazine,” Kelly said, used to occasionally getting the cold shoulder, “and I’d like to talk to—”

“I said he’s not here—” the woman snapped. Just as quickly the voice on the other end started sobbing. “Mike’s dead. He was killed in a car wreck last night.”

Kelly’s hand tightened on the phone. “Where did the wreck occur?” “On Route 375, about fifteen miles outside of town.”

“Was he alone?”

“What?”

“Was he alone in the car?”

“Yes. The state police say he must have run off the road, maybe trying to avoid hitting a deer. They acted like he must have been drunk. But Mike never drank that much. He didn’t like it. And someone went through all his stuff here at the house. When I got here this morning I could tell, even though they tried to put it all back in place. I’m scared they’re going to come back here.”

“Who are they?” Kelly asked. The woman gave a high-pitched laugh. “Them. You know.”

“No, I don’t,” Kelly said. “Who are you talking about?”

“Forget it,” the woman said. “Mike shouldn’t have been doing whatever he was doing. I told him.”

“What’s your name?” Kelly asked.

“I’m not talking to no one. I’m getting out of here. I don’t know what Mike was doing and I don’t want to know no more.” The phone went dead and Kelly slowly lowered the receiver.

“Oh, Johnny, Johnny,” she said softly. “You hit the nail on the head, I think, but it looks like the nail was harder than you thought.”

Kelly stood and looked at the dry-erase board where she kept all her appointments and job assignments for the next several weeks. There was nothing that couldn’t be put off for a while with a few phone calls.

After making her work calls she dialed a travel agency and booked a flight out of Nashville into Las Vegas, departing at noon. Then she called information and got the number for a Steve Jarvis in Las Vegas. A male voice answered. “Hello?”

“Is this Steve Jarvis?”

“Who’s calling?”

“This is Kelly Reynolds. I’m a freelance writer doing an article for—” Jarvis cut in. “My fee for a print interview is five hundred dollars. That gets you one hour.”

“Mr. Jarvis, I’m just trying to find—”

“Five hundred dollars, one hour. Cash or a money order. No checks. No free questions.”

Kelly paused and gathered in her emotions. “Can I see you this evening?” “The elephant bar at the Zanzibar. Be there at seven on the dot.”

“How will I recognize you?” Kelly asked.

“I’ll recognize you,” Jarvis replied. “Wear red. Something sexy. Order a slow, comfortable screw from the bartender.”

Kelly clenched her teeth. “Listen, I’m a professional and I’m coming out to Las Vegas to do a legitimate job. I don’t need—”

“Obviously,” Jarvis cut in again, “you don’t need to interview me, then. It was nice talking to you, Miss Reynolds.”

Kelly waited. He didn’t hang up; she didn’t either. Electronic Mexican standoff.

Finally Jarvis spoke. “Do you have the money? Five hundred? Cash?” “Yes.”

“All right. Just ask the bartender for me. He’ll point you in the right direction. I’ll be there at seven.”

As Kelly hung up the phone, a flicker of doubt crossed her mind. Was she overreacting to the situation?

She reached down and pulled the Nellis file out of her desk and stared at it for a few minutes while she thought.

Once before she’d been down this path. But this time was different. She wasn’t just after a story. There was Johnny, out there somewhere, hopefully still alive.

But that didn’t mean she had to walk in blind. She looked up the article on Jarvis again and checked something. Then she picked up the phone and made another call.

Peter Nabinger was also trying to answer questions, but he didn’t understand the information that was appearing on the computer screen in front of him. He was in the research section of the University of Cairo, using their database to check on Kaji’s story. He was glad he had access to such a sophisticated system as the university’s computer, because much of what he was looking for had been reported only in academic and scientific journals or out-of-print books, and the computer held hundreds of thousands of such abstracts. The system also had the advantage of holding practically every bit of information about Egypt and Cairo that had ever been recorded.

There was no record of Germans in the Great Pyramid during World War II; not that he had expected to find any.

But, sorting through bits and pieces of local newspaper articles from 1945, it did appear that access to the Great Pyramid had been restricted for several months during that year and that some strange Allied military activity had centered around the building, as Kaji had said.

Cross-referencing the word Thule with the Nazis brought a surprising result. Nabinger had been familiar with the word Thule in the traditional sense from ancient mythology: a northern, inhabited region. The Nazis, however, had perverted that concept — and many other myths and legends — for their own purposes and they had used the science of archaeology to try to support their claims.

Even nonarchaeologists knew about the Rosetta stone, found in 1799 when Napoleon’s army had invaded Egypt.

In many ways the stone had been the key that opened up study of ancient Egypt, because when Champollion finally broke the code to the traditional Egyptian hieroglyphics and deciphered it, a wealth of information was unleashed. Despite his having studied the history of archaeology in college and graduate school, the information Nabinger was now reading was new to him. What Nabinger had never been told was that in 1842 the King of Prussia had led an expedition to Egypt that had done further work on deciphering ancient Egyptian texts and markings. A German Egyptologist named Richard Lepsius had accompanied the king and remained there for three years, producing drawings and measurements of all three pyramids.

Over the years that followed, the Germans had invested quite a bit of time and energy in the study of the pyramids, hieroglyphics, and high runes. Obviously — if Kaji’s story was true — that effort had borne some fruit.

In the decade just prior to World War I various German groups had used myths and archaeology to weave a strange and convoluted web of doctrine to support their racial and anti-Semitic philosophies. The swastika, a symbol that had been used by several ancient peoples, was resurrected. List, an early influence on Hitler, used his own false deciphering of high runes to justify his beliefs.

Nabinger stopped scrolling the computer for a second and stroked his beard. Although the deciphering of the Rossetta stone had greatly increased understanding of hieroglyphics, it had been of no help in the deciphering of the high runes. Nabinger’s own feeling was that the high runes were older than hieroglyphics.

Nabinger remembered Kaji’s comments about the Germans using some sort of map with markings on it to find their way. What had the Germans uncovered? Had they discovered a way to decipher high rune text that still remained unknown to the rest of the world? Were they using some ancient document or perhaps something drawn by Lepsius in the nineteenth century? Or had they simply used a map, copied from someplace, and still been unable to read the high runes?

Nabinger had heard about the German fascination with the myth of the Holy Grail and the search for the lance supposedly used on Jesus after his crucifixion, but his instructors in school had laughed away the Nazis as amateurs in the scientific field of archaeology, more interested in propaganda than science. But perhaps, Nabinger wondered, there had been other searches with better results?

Nabinger thought of his own hypothesis connecting the high runes in South and Central America with those in the pyramid. He knew he would be laughed at also if he tried to publish his results.

Nabinger read on. At the end of World War I many of the occult groups that had been born in Germany prior to the war grew in strength, feeding off the deep and bitter dissatisfaction of the people with the defeat and peace imposed on their country. The name Thule was appropriated as a cover for these groups.

Nabinger straightened. In 1933 a book had been published in Germany called Bevor Hitler Kam (Before Hitler Came). It was apparently about the connection between Hitler’s National Socialist movement and the Thule movement. The interesting thing was that after publication, the author disappeared under mysterious circumstances and all copies of the book that could be found in Germany were collected and destroyed by the Nazis. The author of the book was named Baron Rudolf von Sebottendorff.

Checking, Nabinger was surprised to see that the computer had an abstract on the book. Sebottendorff had taken the ancient myth of Atlantis and the myth of Thule and reinvented them with his own sick motivations.

According to Sebottendorff, Thule was reported to have once been the center of a great civilization, but was subsequently destroyed by a great flood. This concept was based on an earlier theory postulated by the Theosophical Society. Nabinger said a brief prayer for the computer that gave him the ability to cross-reference so quickly as he requested information on this latest piece of information.

The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 in New York City by a woman named Madame Helena Blavatsky. Her theory had the inhabitants of Atlantis — or Thule, as the Nazis had named it — representing the Fourth Race, the only true line of man, which of course, the Nazis found very convenient to use in their Aryan-race theory. According to the abstract the inhabitants of Thule looked very much like the figures carved into stone on Easter Island.

Nabinger ran a hand through his beard. How the hell had she made that connection?

Nabinger started to feel like he was getting off base, but he read further. The fall of the true line of man — the Atlanteans or Thulians — had come about because they had mated with lesser beings. Voila, the master race needed purity, which also worked quite well into the master-race theory of the Nazis.

So the Nazis had been interested in Atlantis? What did that have to do with Egypt? He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes. Unsettling thoughts floated through his brain as he reviewed what he knew and what he had just learned. Why had the Nazis destroyed the book and what had happened to Sebottendorff? There didn’t appear to be any direct connection here with Kaji’s story other than the word Thule inscribed on the dagger, but Nabinger was used to having to dig intellectually as well as in the dirt. Perhaps there was more here than was readily apparent.

Nabinger opened his eyes and went back to the abstract on the book. Apparently the book had been destroyed and information about it suppressed because Hitler wanted people to think all his ideas had begun with him and were not borrowed from other sources.

Nabinger decided to press on for a bit along the present avenue of research. A search on Atlantis brought a large number of references — over three thousand. Obviously the Germans had not been alone in their interest. Nabinger searched the titles until he found one that seemed to give an overview of the history of the fabled continent.

Atlantis was often regarded as a myth mentioned in original source only by Plato. Most historians thought Plato had made the tale of Atlantis up to stress a point and that it was only a literary tool. For those who did think it represented an actual place, the fingers pointed to various locations. Some believe it to be the island of Thera in the Mediterranean, which was destroyed by a volcanic eruption. The crater of the volcano Santorini had been investigated by leading oceanographers, searching for clues.

Others placed it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Azores were mentioned — the Lake of the Seven Cities on the island of Sao Miguel was a body of water in a volcanic crater. The main city of Atlantis was supposed to lie beneath that lake, or so the supporters of that site claimed.

Nabinger scanned down, skipping most of the middle of the article, looking to see what the latest theories were.

Recent discoveries of large stones closely fitted together off the islands of Bimini in the Bahamas had caused quite a bit of excitement several years previously and the enigma of their creation and location had never really been adequately explained. That struck a bell with Nabinger. A speaker at an archeological conference he had attended the previous year had been from Bimini and had spoken of the site. And, if he remembered rightly, there were high runes there, too, that couldn’t be deciphered.

Nabinger put his briefcase on the table next to the computer and dug through. He had a binder in there with information that he always carried with him when he went overseas to work. In the back were several pages of document protectors, each sized to hold twelve business cards.

He found the card of Helen Slater, the woman from Bimini who had spoken at the conference. He removed it and put it in his breast pocket.

Nabinger hit the F-3 key to print out the article and moved on to another article. This one described a nineteenth century American congressman, Ignatius Donnelly, who had published a book called Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, which had been a best-seller in its own time. Donnelly’s hypothesis was based on similarities between pre Columbian civilizations in America and Egypt. Nabinger felt like he was reading the beginning of his own unpublished paper on the high runes. Both cultures had had pyramids, embalming, a 365-day calendar, and a mythology about an ancient flood. Donnelly’s theories had been torn apart by scientists of his own day, which didn’t surprise Nabinger. The same connection had been made by people in this century and received the same chilly reception, which was the major reason Nabinger’s paper was still unpublished.

Done with that article, he decided to get back to what had led him here: the cross-reference with the Nazis and Atlantis. The Nazis had launched expeditions during World War II to the cold wastelands on both ends of the earth, in search of both Atlantis/Thule and relics such as the Holy Grail. And also to Central America, where there were pyramids, not quite as large or of the exact same design as those in Egypt, but with high runes also.

Nabinger stroked his beard. What had the Nazis found that had led them back to the Great Pyramid and to a chamber that had been undisturbed for over four thousand years? Had they broken the code on the runes and found out important information? Was there something written in these other locations about the pyramids? If Kaji’s story was true, at the very least they had found information that had told them of the lower chamber.

Nabinger cleared the screen and went back to the word search. He slowly typed in the name Kaji had given him:

Von Seeckt.

One hit. Nabinger accessed the article. It was a fifty-year anniversary article about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima. It detailed the development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Nabinger scanned down. Von Seeckt’s name was listed as one of the physicists who had worked on development and testing of the bomb.

But Von Seeckt had been with Germans, according to Kaji. How had he ended up in America in the middle of the war? And why had the Germans brought a nuclear physicist into the Great Pyramid? And, most importantly, what had Von Seeckt discovered and carried out of the lower chamber in 1942?

Nabinger’s fingers halted over the keyboard as something he had written earlier in the day came back to him.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out his sketchpad. He’d been working on the panels in the lower chamber that stood at the head of where the sarcophagus had once been. The partially deciphered rune text was there in pencil:

POWER SUN FORBIDDEN HOME PLACE (???) CHARIOT (???) NEVER AGAIN (???) DEATH TO ALL LIVING THINGS

Curses against interlopers in the monuments of ancient Egypt were not unknown. Did this curse relate to what Von Seeckt had taken out of the pyramid? And why had the Allies hidden all record of the invasion of the pyramid and the discovery of the lower chamber? It had to be something much more important than some simple archeological find.

There was a way to find out. The end of the article stated that Von Seeckt was still alive and living in Las Vegas.

Nabinger turned off the computer and stood. Budget be damned, there was a mystery here, and he was the only one who was on its trail. He left the university library and walked into the nearest travel agency to book a return flight to the States that evening, with one stop en route to see Slater in Bimini.

Once he knew when he would be arriving, he rang through the long-distance operator to information in Nevada. There was a Werner Von Seeckt listed and Nabinger copied down the number. After he’d dialed it, he found himself talking to voice mail. As the beep sounded, Nabinger quickly composed his message: “Professor Von Seeckt, my name is Peter Nabinger. I work with the Egyptology Department at the Brooklyn Museum. I would like to talk to you about the Great Pyramid, which I believe we have a mutual interest in. I just deciphered some of the writing in the lower chamber, which I believe you visited once upon a time and it says: Power, sun. Forbidden. Home place, chariot, never again. Death to all living things. Perhaps you could help shed some light on my translation. Leave me a message how I can get hold of you at my voice-mail box,” and Nabinger left his number.