leaning tower. Windows were untidily boarded up. Along its front stretched a tumbledown porch ringed by a crumbling rail. Finally, scattered around this strange scene lounged half a dozen scruffy little children.
But Nixon’s eyes were drawn inexorably back to the dusty bare-dirt driveway, and what was suspended above it. Parked up on blocks sat a battered thirty-foot metallic saucer, the type which would have embarrassed even the most short-sighted B-movie special-effects supremo.
The President was about to ask what sort of insane practical joke this was when he took a closer look at one of the children who had now turned at his approach. It stared back at him through huge almond-shaped black eyes set in a featureless grey face. He checked the others again. They were all the same. These weren’t children, they were … they were … When the thing that was staring at the President saw his shock, it sprang into jerky action. Seeing this, the others followed suit.
From beneath rag-torn dungarees and hopelessly stained gingham frocks they produced an assortment of musical instruments out of nowhere and got down to work. Banjos and home-made double-bass were much in evidence. It looked like the Walton family had got into a fight with a nuclear reactor and lost. With a quick glance around to see that all were ready, the creatures started to play what appeared to be a rehearsed song. Except that it was a song which had no rhythm, no timing and no tune.
A grim-faced Becker turned to his guest. ‘The Visitors like to greet their new ‘‘Big Pink Chief’’ with this traditional cultural display. They maintain they’ve brought it all the way from their home planet, though personally I have my doubts.’
He coolly continued to study Nixon’s open-mouthed, goggle-eyed face. ‘Best to show polite disdain, that way it doesn’t go on for too long. Eisenhower made the mistake of looking impressed and they kept it up all day. We had to shoot three of them to make ‘em stop.’
If anything, the wild revels seemed to be growing in intensity. Two of the more sprightly aliens grasped each other’s slender arms and did a fair impression of a Highland jig, the blonde pigtails of a wigged ‘female’ twirling as it spun. Perched at the rear, granpaw-alien’s harmonica playing became so frenzied he fell off his rocking-chair, though it didn’t seem to bother him much. Meanwhile the hand-clapper-and-stomper at the front put his foot through a rotten board.
Nixon looked on aghast. ‘But they’re …’
‘Idiots. I know sir. Cosmic trailer-park grey scum. Call them what you will. It seems the universe is full of hillbillies. Our top minds have been trying to figure it out for the past twenty-two years.’
‘Twenty-two years! It’s been going on that long?’
Becker shrugged. ‘Maybe longer.’
Taking it in, Nixon forced himself to adopt a bit of composure. ‘So, these top minds of ours – what did they conclude?’
For the first time Becker displayed a modicum of unease. ‘At present we have only non-positive results to show for considerable endeavour.’
‘Meaning we’ve got jackshit.’
In the darkness next to him Nixon’s host gave the faintest shake of his head.
Like many before him the President looked perplexed. ‘But how did they get here? It makes no sense. We spend billions on our space programme, employing the best Nazis money can buy, and it’s all we can do to launch a monkey round the moon. Then these space freaks turn up and show us how primitive we really are. It’s beyond reason … And, frankly, it’s not fair.’
The Dark Man looked about to say something, wavered, then decided to go for it. ‘There is one possibility – a malignant theory that slowly and painfully extends its tentacles of proof by the day. But I have to warn you, Mr Chairman, the rest of the Committee are reluctant to look at my evidence in a rational manner. The policies they pursue might even unwittingly aid whoever is behind these extraterrestrial aberrations.’
‘God in heaven, speak English, man. What’re you talking about?’
If Becker was offended by this outburst, he didn’t show it. ‘It’s long been calculated that our uneducated brethren would not cope well with the sudden undeniable proof of alien existence. Our most covert think-tanks tell us this knowledge would cause a paradigm shift from which the human race might never recover – a shock so great it could break us as a race. But for whoever’s behind this scheme even that does not seem enough. It’s as if they want to rub our under-evolved noses in it. I believe we are the victims of … a manipulation. What better way to scupper humanity’s infatuation with science and technology, to cast us back into a dark age of unreason and superstition, than by showing us another darker path offering better results? Someone or something wants to make us paranoid and superstitious, and they’ll go to almost any lengths to do so.’
Nixon squinted at the man again. He wasn’t sure he liked him. ‘Let me get this straight … You think this isn’t it? You think there’s more, that someone’s hurling brain-dead aliens from the sky at us to make the poor old human race feel bad? What sort of half-assed theory is that?’
Becker drew himself up to his full impressive height. ‘The Committee must end their policy of encouraging conspiracy theories and paranoia – it will play directly into our opponents’ hands. There’s even talk of leaking information on our grey friends – doctored of course to make it appear we have the situation under control. Sir, I need your help to convince the Committee they’re wrong.’
Nixon looked at him, puzzled. ‘Why should I do that, if I don’t believe you either?’
Becker judged it a good time to give him the evidence. ‘Read this, Mr President.’ He handed over the package he’d held throughout their meeting – a thick blue folder. ‘Read it, sir. And try not to weep.’
Present day, Tonopah, northern Nevada
Frank pressed himself flat against the damp wall of his shabby apartment, further crumpling the ancient Che Guevara poster in the process. He knew from careful experimentation that in this position he couldn’t be seen from the street below, though he could peer behind the tattered tinfoil-lined curtains at the frenetic street scene beneath.
The van was back again, two minutes thirty-seven seconds earlier than the day before. So they were varying their routine, trying to catch him out, but he could see through their shallow games. The operative was apparently busy serving a fast-growing line of eager children, handing them towering ice-cream cones and pocketing their payment, no doubt every cent going to swell the black-budget coffers that bankrolled the insidious Shadow Government. That in itself was a give-away. The real ‘Mr Frosty’ never gave more than two scoops. What a shit-kicking amateur!
As Frank had been taught during his days with the ill-fated Michigan Militia, the best form of camouflage was often to be seen but ignored. ‘The human scarecrow approach,’ his crazed Boer weapons instructor called it. Once Frank had pointed out that trying to teach him anything about military field-craft was like teaching a Federal employee how to waste taxes (which he’d done by ambushing the South African as he took a thigh-trembling dump into a plastic bag in the bushes behind their firing range), they’d instructed the class together. What Frank had been able to pass on from his dimly remembered days in the military had served the band of flabby-bellied, flabby-brained fanatics well – but in the long run it had done them little good. After Waco and Oklahoma City their troop had been busted faster than you could say ‘One World Government’.
But that had been in better days, before this intense harassment began, before the United Nations funded Gestapo had started bombarding his head with voices and flashbacks – some of them most disturbing. It seemed at times he was being made to remember details of his former life. It seemed microwave energy was good for more than just heating waffles and frying the brains of gullible mobile-phone