Collision (21 page)

“Well, it's not tracking objects, because it has been shut down for budgetary reasons. To run it costs about fourteen million dollars a year. According to recent figures, the U.S. Air Force spends thirty-five million dollars a year on ‘civic outreach,' such as the Thunderbirds flying team.”

As the Thunderbirds whiz by in a clip superimposed over an image of the Impact Hazard Scale, Taylor continues: “Yes, there are copies of that Impact Hazard Scale hanging on astronomers' walls. But you won't find it in the Pentagon or in the White House. Neither the President nor any other leader in any other country knows what to do if an asteroid threatens to strike the Earth. And nobody knows the best way to get the public ready for a possible impact.”

In a realistic animation, a close-encounter asteroid bears down on Earth. Taylor fades away, but his voice lingers:

“Astronomers sometimes give asteroids names. They call this one Janus, after the two-faced Roman god, because of its odd, double-profile shape. It's been out there for millions of years. But we did not discover Janus until 2009. Astronomers are not really sure about its orbit. We can try to keep watch on an asteroid long enough to figure out its orbit. But it can suddenly shift. If it swerves into a collision path to Earth, we can detect that, and all we can do is pray. It would be coming at us at seventy-five times the speed of sound. There would be a warning time measured in days. A lot of scientists worry about that today. But what they worry about the most is that they aren't able to get any attention from any government on Earth.”

The image freezes on screen and Taylor reappears, standing in front of the image. “There is, in fact, no government out there in space. If people want to mine Janus—or any other asteroids—all they have to do is figure a way to get there and start mining.

“Janus is handy for mining. It is expected to pass closer to Earth than any asteroid recorded in human history. But if its orbit were to take it through a precise region in space, known as a gravitational keyhole, Janus could be on a collision course on its next visit, on the seventh of April in 2035. ‘The keyhole' is a way of describing what happens when Earth's gravity alters an asteroid's orbit in such a way that the asteroid will collide with Earth at some future pass.”

The show ends in a simulation of Janus's two journeys. In the first, it passes so close that backyard astronomers can see it through ordinary telescopes. Its orbit, as scientists hypothesize, takes it through the gravitational keyhole. On its second pass, in 2035, it heads toward Earth.

The simulation suddenly fades.

On screen, Taylor stands before a huge photograph of felled and blackened trees—a Siberian forest leveled by an object that fell from the sky. “The unnamed asteroid that hurtled down here at Tunguska in 1908,” he solemnly says, “weighed 220 million pounds and entered Earth's atmosphere at a speed of about 33,500 miles per hour. The air around it heated to a temperature of 44,500 degrees Fahrenheit, consuming the asteroid in a gigantic fireball and releasing energy equivalent to about 185 Hiroshima-size nuclear bombs.

“There was no warning in 1908. For Janus we have a warning.”

The red zone of the impact hazard scale reappears. “This was a warning that we must heed. We have enough time for all the nations of Earth to find a way to defend Earth.”

*   *   *

When the show ended,
many people headed for Taylor to congratulate him. As they gathered, he looked beyond and saw Stephanie Sinclair-Hardy and Conrad LaSalle walking toward the exit. And a few paces behind them was Agent Sarsfield.

 

38

The next day, Taylor
decided that it was time for him to make the trek out to Goddard Space Flight Center to see if he could find out what Cole Perenchio had been working on and why he left NASA. Rather than hire a limo or taxi to take him to Goddard, Taylor was determined to drive his own car. To hell with Washington's infamous traffic snarls. He wanted to get behind the wheel of what Darlene called his outrageously expensive midlife-crisis car, an Audi A8 L W12, and feel that he was in control. He simply couldn't stand being at the mercy of other people—especially cabdrivers for whom English was the verbal equivalent of a Rubik's Cube.

Through someone he knew in Human Resources, he learned that Perenchio's last assignment had been to a night shift at the Laser Ranging Facility. Taylor decided to talk his way into Goddard and go to the range at night in hope of finding someone who would tell him about Cole.

After Molly left, he spent an hour at the Four-Eyed Monster, visited a vending machine for two packages of peanut-buttered crackers, and went down to the museum's underground parking garage. He had gone scarcely a block before he ran into a snarl owing to a detour that herded traffic away from his chosen route.

Pushed left and right by big orange detour signs, he wound up crawling north on Connecticut Avenue. Seething over the delay, he swung over to Wisconsin Avenue in the hope that there would be a breakthrough, but he found only another long line of cars and trucks puffing out exhaust fumes as far ahead as he could see.

After sitting for almost twenty minutes at an intersection that had been blocked by a major fender bender, Taylor decided he had had enough. He resented the wasting of time, and frustration finally ignited his rage. Running a red light was no capital offense in his mind, and tonight he did just that without the slightest remorse.

He shot through a light on Wisconsin Avenue, then through another one and found himself on a twisting suburban road. A sudden rain etched the darkness ahead. Unfamiliar with the Maryland roads, he peered through his sloshing windshield wipers and realized he was completely lost. A green light ahead changed to red and he shot through it. This ignored red light was at the south end of a single-lane Civil War–era stone bridge controlled by a traffic light at each end.

Halfway across the bridge, Taylor, unaware there was only one lane, saw headlights coming toward him. He twisted the wheel to the right, mounted a low curb, and struck the stone wall of the bridge. The oncoming pickup truck braked, swerved, and slammed into Taylor's prize Audi. Air bags popped all around Taylor, knocking his chest and head back violently. The driver in the other vehicle dialed 911.

A dazed Taylor managed to open the front passenger door. He stumbled out, stunned and confused. As he stood in the chill rain, all the recent days flowed jaggedly through his mind—Hal, Cole, Sarsfield, murder, death, fear. The horn on the pickup truck blared nonstop. The driver, a young man wearing a camouflage jacket and cap, stepped out and glared at Taylor, adding to his confusion and stoking his paranoia. The pickup driver, cell phone in hand, stared vacantly at it in the glare of a single headlight.

Two Montgomery County police officers arrived. When one approached Taylor, he pointed to the pickup driver and shouted, “He's trying to kill me!” Taylor was still convinced that he had been on a two-lane road and been hit by a killer driver who had deliberately swung over from another lane.

The officers helped the two drivers off the bridge, where an ambulance and police cars were parked, lights flashing. Both drivers were uninjured except for bruises caused by the air bags.

“I am in danger, real danger!” Taylor insisted to the officer who was trying to question him.

The other police officer briefly questioned the pickup driver, handcuffed him, and took him away.

Taylor became more agitated. “See? See? He did it!” he yelled. “He tried to kill me!”

A medic tried to soothe Taylor and finally convinced him to get into the ambulance, which took him to a hospital a short distance away.

Two more police cars arrived to handle the jams caused by the ever-growing lines of cars at each end of the bridge.

Taylor, his mind clearing, called Darlene from the hospital. As soon as she was sure he was not injured, she said, “You ran a red light, right?”

“Right,” he replied. He did not tell her that while he was being questioned about the accident, those questions in the rain seemed to run into other questions at the Summerhouse with Cole's body lying nearby. His bewilderment was so profound that the officer knew this was not a driver who had been drunk or reckless. This was a driver who had been confused by an unfamiliar road and a peculiar bridge, perhaps even by some of his own demons. And he had been hit by a driver who was high. The officer did not charge Taylor with running a red light.

 

39

Philip Dake, who had
been in the audience during Taylor's show at the museum, filed a story about the show for the
Post
's Style section, calling it “a fascinating and sobering look at the big lumps of rock that hang over Earth.” Dake praised Taylor for “warning us Earthlings that we must be careful when we treasure-hunt in space.”

Three days after Dake's story appeared, he called Falcone on his private line. Without any preliminaries, Dake said, “Sean, there's a
Grudge
Report
in the works on Ben Taylor—and you're mentioned.”

“About the asteroid show?” Falcone asked. “Another one? I meant to call you to thank…”

“This is a long and rotten story,” Dake answered. “A real tough one, goddamn it. A hatchet job, aimed mostly at Ben Taylor. Full of innuendos. Amateur stuff. No sources, of course.”

“When does it hit the Internet?” Falcone asked.

“I'm told that
Grudge
will put it out around eleven tonight. Will you be home? I'd like to see your reaction.”

“Sure. You still a wino?” Falcone joked. Dake owned an interest in a Virginia wine firm.

“You still pour fifty-year-old brandy?” Dake said, anger gone. “See you around eleven.”

*   *   *

Falcone and Dake sat
on a couch in Falcone's home office. On a remote control he connected his computer to a television wall screen. Before them was the
Grudge Report
, which Falcone's TiVo was recording while they watched it.
THE
THREE
BLACK MUSKETEERS
ran across the top of the screen. Below were three photographs with these captions:

Next came a full screen presented as if it was in a report appearing in a newspaper or magazine:

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1988
: Benjamin Franklin Taylor is working on his PhD thesis, “Formation of Galaxies and Clusters of Galaxies,” at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cole Perenchio is in his senior year at MIT and is top scorer for the MIT Engineers basketball team. Harold Davidson, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, is in his first year at Harvard Law School. When black students at U of M take over a university building to protest campus racism, Davidson goes to Amherst and runs into Taylor and Perenchio, who made the 90-mile trip to Amherst to show solidarity with fellow African-American students. They all get arrested for trespassing, call themselves the Three Black Musketeers, and vow lifelong friendship.

Washington, D. C., now
: Harold Davidson and Cole Perenchio are dead. Benjamin Franklin Taylor, who found Perenchio's body and was briefly held by Capitol Hill police, is a “person of interest” to the FBI—while also being considered for appointment by President Oxley as his Science Advisor.

“Jesus!” Falcone exclaimed. He froze the image and, rising from the couch, pointed at the wall as if it was warning about something dangerous or loathsome. “Where the hell did this come from?”

“Scroll down. Scroll down, Sean,” Dake said calmly, a snifter of brandy warming in his hand.

Falcone unfroze the image and slowly scrolled farther down the story.

Davidson was one of four people shot to death on October 4 in the mass shooting at the Sullivan & Ford Building. Taylor was reportedly out of town on that day. Late the next night, Taylor called police to report finding a body in the “Summerhouse,” a small 19th-century structure on Capitol grounds. The shelter has long been known as a rendezvous for gay trysts. The body was identified as Cole Perenchio, who at one time worked with Taylor at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

“Gay trysts! God damn! They're practically accusing him of killing his gay lover! How the hell does this crap get on the Internet?”

“Keep viewing and scrolling,” Dake said. “When you're finished, I'll give you my theory.”

Falcone gripped the remote and scrolled down. The story went on to say that Taylor had been taken to Capitol Police headquarters and questioned by Detective Willard Seymour and released by Deputy Chief Walter Barnett.

Falcone began reading out loud: “‘Until now, Taylor's questioning by police—and his designation as “a person of interest”—have not been revealed. The
Grudge Report
discovered this possible cover-up from interviews with law-enforcement personnel. Coincidentally, attorney Sean Falcone, hero of the Sullivan and Ford shooting, is representing Taylor. Law-enforcement sources suggested that Falcone, former national security advisor to President Oxley, may have called on powerful friends to keep information about Taylor secret.'”