The Inner Circle (9 page)

"Don’t worry, sir, I’ll make sure we give them nothing important."

CHAPTER SIX

President Marshall sat in the Oval Office a few days later, reading over the stack of newspapers brought to him on a daily basis. He grew increasingly angry after every paper he read through, furious that his Russian deal only made the front page of
USA Today
. The
NY Times, Wall Street Journal
and
Washington Post
– the only three newspapers that really mattered as far as Marshall was concerned – did not feel the story merited front page headlines.

"What is wrong with these people, Peter? Don't they realize how hard I had to work to get this deal done? There has never been a U.S. President who has made such bold moves so early on in their administration."

"I don't know, sir," Mansfield answered. "You know how these idiots at the newspapers work, no deal is ever big enough for them to..."

"Not big enough? What do they expect us to do, trade nuclear bomb secrets with each other after my first meeting with Metachenko?"

Peter Mansfield was used to these outbursts. He had been with Marshall for the past ten years, serving as his primary aide ever since Marshall made his way to Washington, D.C., as a junior House of Representative member from the state of Ohio. Mansfield was only 32 years old when they had first met, but it did not take long for Marshall to realize how bright this young man was. Mansfield quickly became Marshall's main political strategist – as well as a close friend – and together, the two men rose through the political ranks faster than anyone before.

When the party leaders approached Marshall about the idea of running for the presidency, Mansfield originally thought it might not be such a good idea. After all, George Marshall had still been a relatively new face in D.C. and was much younger than the opposing party's candidate. Peter thought it might be smarter for George to wait out another election or two before making a serious bid for the White House. George chose not listen to Peter’s advice, though, and was only too eager to accept the candidacy.  

His opponent in the presidential election had attacked Marshall's youth and inexperience – just as Peter had predicted – but they were able to turn his youth and vigor into a positive, promising the American people that George had the strength and energy to be a more active administration. To bolster this idea of youth, Marshall’s vice-presidential running mate was another young House Rep, Andrew Brighton, a man two years his junior. Their strategy worked and Peter Mansfield's plan to get George Marshall elected was rewarded with the position of Chief of Staff.

"I wouldn't worry about it, Mr. President," Peter said, trying to calm Marshall down. "The Russian deal will have a positive effect in the long run. When the press realizes the full long-term potential of what you've done, they won't be able to write enough good things about you."

This was the exact answer Marshall wanted to hear. Peter always had a way with words and immediately perked up the president when he was feeling his worst. Now that he'd gotten his attention, Peter took a ten-page report out of a folder.

"Mr. President, we received the first shipment from the Russians today. This is the report of everything contained in what they sent to us."

He passed the report across the President's desk. Marshall opened the folder and flipped through the pages in a matter of a few seconds, passing it back to Mansfield without reading a single sentence.

"Summary?"

This was another reason Peter knew the president would always keep him around. As well as being able to deal with problems whenever they arose, Peter always kept on top of every report that was sent the president's way. Only the people closest to Marshall knew how much he hated to read, especially if it was something that wasn't about him. Peter was always ready to summarize anything for the president. While some people might have thought this was an annoying part of the job, Mansfield realized just how much power this gave him. He was solely responsible for providing the President with most of his information, at least when this news came via reports and not directly from his Cabinet members. If Marshall could’ve had his way, he would have used Mansfield as a middleman to deal with the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of whatever…

"Well, sir, the Russians gave us a lot of the same kind of fluff we gave them. Normal things, our submarine movements they tracked with their satellites, telephoto images of a lot of our politicians."

"Anything of me?"

"Yes, sir. But nothing you wouldn't find in an everyday newspaper."

"Yeah, unless I've accomplished something major, in which case the newspapers would totally forget about me,” Marshall said bitterly.

Peter thought that some reporter would sure love a story about how self-important the president acted at times, even worse than most of the politicians controlling Washington.

"Okay, anything else I need to know about it?"

"Not really, just that most of the information they sent us so far has to do with how much they know about our space program. They sent us details about how they've been spying on our satellites for the past 15 years. I haven't seen it yet, but I hear there were 10 huge crates full of boxes stuffed only with forms and paperwork about the positioning of our satellites in space."

"Wow, that's really interesting," President Marshall said in an off-hand manner. "Is there anything
important
I need to know?"

"No, sir. I suppose not. I will send all of the space information to NASA, the military information to the Pentagon and I'll let the Department of Defense deal with the rest. I'll have each agency write up reports on their findings."

The President was again reading the article about himself in the USA Today and didn’t seem to care less what Mansfield did with the information.

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It took two deliverymen nearly an hour to move all of the boxes full of forms and paperwork into the main building of NASA headquarters. By the time they were done, they had filled an entire storage room, stacking boxes three deep in many places just to fit them all inside.

A team of three database management workers was assembled outside the room after the deliverymen left. Their supervisor had informed them earlier in the week that they were being pulled from their regular work detail in order to tackle a special job, one that came with orders directly from the President of the United States.

"I don't get it," one of the workers said when she saw the room full of boxes. "What are we supposed to do with dozens of boxes filled with forms?"

"Each form has a certain set of information written on them. One of our computer programmers has written a program to incorporate all of the information in those forms into a database," their supervisor explained to them. "It's your job to transfer that information into the database."

The three looked at each other as if they'd just been fired, stunned looks of disbelief etched on each of their faces. None of them knew quite what to say. Finally, one of the workers did a quick count of all the boxes.

"There must be hundreds of thousands of forms in there. If you pull each of us off of our jobs until we finished this… well… this looks like it will take at least a year to finish."

"That's a shame," a gruff voice said from behind the three workers. "Because I promised the President we would have a report to him in only a few months."

The two database managers that had been working here for close to a year were stunned that this man was talking to them. They had only seen him a few times and that was only for a few seconds as he walked through their building, performing cursory inspections of each of the departments. The third worker, however, had only been working at NASA a few months and did not recognize the older man wearing the expensive designer suit with a cheap, mismatched NASA wind-breaker.

"You're just going to have to tell the President that he does not have a group of miracle workers here," the newer employee said.

"I must apologize for my worker, sir," the supervisor said. "He must not realize how important this job is."

"That's okay, Bill," the older man said to the supervisor. "From the looks on his two coworkers' faces, I can see this young man must be mistaken. Do you two think this job can be finished by the end of next month?"

"Yes, sir," the woman said.

"Yes, sir," the third worker agreed.

The newer employee looked at his two coworkers and realized something was going on that he obviously didn’t know about.

“What’s your name, son?” the older man asked, extending his hand.

“John Piechowski, sir,” the third worker answered, taking the man’s hand, feeling the vice-tight grip.

“I like your hair, son. I’m sure a lot of people think it’s weird, but I like individuality,” the man said, noting the strange appearance of the young database worker.

“Thank you, sir.”

"So John, do you still think this job can't be done?" the older man asked.

"I must have been mistaken, sir. If everybody else thinks it can be done, then we must be able to."

"Good man. That's the kind of positive attitude I like to see," the older man said, clapping the younger man roughly on the shoulder. "I'm sure Bill here will fill you in on the rest of the details, but I just want to emphasize something to you three. You are all fluent in Russian, are you not?"

"Yes, sir," Bill answered for them. "We made sure to find those who knew the language."

"Good. Now, I am sure most of the information in these forms and reports will be straightforward, but if you happen to run across anything that seems strange, I want you to put it aside. I will personally deal with anything unusual that comes from these reports."

When the older man walked away, the supervisor showed the three workers into their new office, a large conference room that had been set up with three desks and computers. Their new workspaces were much bigger than their normal desk. They were also issued new key cards, which they were to carry at all times. The three workers and the supervisor would be the only ones with access to this conference room or the storage closet full all of the boxes.

Once they were informed of everything they needed to know, the supervisor left the three workers to get started on their new, high-priority job.

"Is anybody going to explain what I missed earlier with that old guy? He was kind of strange, talking like he was best friends with the President."

"You moron," the woman said. "That was James Armour, Chief of NASA. How long have you been working here and you don’t recognize the boss?"

"Jimmy Armour, the old astronaut?"

"Well, he didn't get to become head of NASA by being some clueless database manager," the other man answered.

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The three workers constantly worked twelve-hour shifts for the next month, sometimes working more when they wanted. For the most part the job was easy, as most of the forms were similar to one another. Slowly but surely the number of boxes in storage began to dwindle and with three weeks to go before the report was due to the president, they were more than halfway done.

"This is strange," John said out of the blue one day.

In his hand he held a form with none of the usual numbers filled out. Instead, there were words written in Russian on the bottom of the page, scribbled in writing that was nearly illegible.

"What have you got?" the woman asked, glad to have some sort of distraction after hours of boring work.

John told her about the form and she asked what the words said. He loosely translated, telling her about the discovery of a black hole and how a "Comet Kliment" nearly disappeared into it, instead being deflected onto a new path. The coordinates of the new path were listed, but the numbers meant nothing to any of the workers.

"No government secrets? Never mind then," the woman said, going back to typing the form information into the database.

"What do you think I should do with it?"

Unlike some of his other coworkers – who had come to NASA strictly because they were experts in database management and the job paid well – John wanted to work at the space agency because he had a genuine love for astronomy, not administrative work. When he found this note about comets and black holes, it piqued his curiosity.

"Put it in the special folder with the rest of the junk. Maybe it will mean something to someone else."

The young worker wrote a quick note and attached it to the form, writing the time and date of when he came across the strange information. He then put it in a folder that would eventually make it to the desk of Chief Armour.

CHAPTER SEVEN

James Armour was 54 years old but had the energy and vigor of someone half his age. At one time, he had been the best and brightest of NASA’s astronauts, putting in hundreds of hours in space, always succeeding in difficult missions that NASA did not even considering trusting to anyone else. Whenever there was a new shuttle that needed the best possible pilot at the helm, Armour was given the job. Whenever the Administration needed more funding from the government, Armour was the one sent to address Congress. He was likable when trying to raise money, tough when he needed something done correctly, but always fair and loyal to everyone he ever worked for or who worked for him.