Diablo Mesa

NINETY MINUTES LATER, Nora exited the main door of the Institute into the bright April sunlight, carrying a box and a backpack toward her car. Her rage was starting to cool, replaced by bitter regret and second-guessing. If she'd handled the situation differently; if she hadn't pushed back so hard; if she'd only said she needed to give it some thought; if she hadn't called the project tacky or Digby a toady…maybe she could have talked her way out of it and sloughed the excavation off on him. Beyond that was the sheer stubbornness that kept her from taking the resignation offer. It was going to be hard enough to find another position in the current academic job market, but with a dismissal on her record…What was she thinking? And yet the thought of submitting a resignation letter now, after all she'd said, was just too much humiliation for her to bear.

And she couldn't help but worry about her brother, Skip, who also worked at the Institute. He was likely to quit in a huff as soon as he heard she was fired. He was in a tougher position than she: he hadn't exactly put his Stanford physics degree to good use. How many collections manager positions were there in Santa Fe? But even if he didn't quit, Weingrau might fire him just to spite her. Nora didn't want to see him spiraling back down to the dark place he'd been in a few years before.

A vehicle was idling in the parking lot, blocking the way to her car. As she walked around it, wrestling with her stuff, a man got out.

"Dr. Kelly?"

She stopped. "Yes?"

"Could we have a moment to chat?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm really busy and I've got to go." Whatever he wanted, whatever he was doing here at the Institute, was no longer of interest to her. She resumed her walk.

"Here, let me help you with the box," he said, hurrying over.

"No thanks," she said sharply. She arrived at her car, fumbled out the key, unlocked the doors, and threw the box in the back seat, tossing the backpack in after it. She slammed the door and realized the man had come up and was standing behind her.

She ignored him, opening the driver's door and getting in. He placed a hand on it, preventing her from shutting it in his face.

"I take it you quit?" he said.

She stared, momentarily flummoxed. Had word gotten around already? Nobody knew that, not even Skip.

"Who the hell are you?" she asked.

He smiled. "Lucas Tappan." He held out his hand.

She stared at him, really seeing him for the first time. He was around her age, mid- to late thirties, in a linen jacket, black lambskin cowboy shirt, jeans, suede Lanvin sneakers, with curly black hair, gray eyes, white teeth, cleft chin, dimples. She immediately disliked him and his smug I've got unlimited money but it hasn't really changed me look.

"Get your hand off my door or I'll call the police."

He complied, and she slammed it and shoved the key into the ignition. The engine started and she twisted around to back up, pressing the accelerator harder than she intended and spinning the wheels in the gravel.

"I'm glad you quit," he said, raising his voice to be heard through the window. "Now we can work free of encumbrance."

She jammed on the brakes, rolled down the window. "What?"

"I was hoping this might happen. Frankly, I wasn't looking forward to working with that Weingrau lady."

"You were hoping? This is ridiculous—"

"Look, can we talk? Just for a moment?"

Nora stared at him. "I really don't have time for this."

"You have all the time in the world. You don't have a job."

"Thanks for that. You're an asshole, you know? And you're crazy. UFOs. Roswell. What a crock." All her anger spilled out.

"Okay, fine. I've been told all that before and worse. Five minutes? Please?"

She was about to drive off, but then stopped. All of a sudden, she felt herself deflate, as if her energy had escaped along with her anger. Had the last two hours really happened? Earlier that morning, she'd been in her office, working on one of the final Tsankawi write-ups…and now she had no office, no job, only a couple of burned bridges still smoking in her rearview mirror.

"Oh, for Christ's sake. Five minutes, then." She waited behind the wheel, crossing her arms.

"Do you think maybe we could not have this conversation through a car window? I want to show you something."

Against her better judgment, Nora eased the car back into the parking space and got out, then followed Tappan to what was obviously his vehicle. An ice-blue Tesla. Of course.

"Would you mind getting into the passenger seat?"

She did as he requested, sliding onto the buttery white leather. The dashboard gleamed with burl wood, satin nickel, and a large computer screen.

She shut the door; the man pushed a button, and the windows magically darkened. He reached under the dash and removed a large rolled-up document, which he proceeded to unfurl.

"Take a look." He held it open so she could see.

Nora immediately recognized it.

"It's a ground-penetrating radar survey—" he began.

"I know what it is," said Nora impatiently.

"Good. Now, do you see this area here? This is our target area—where the UFO is said to have crashed. What do you see?"

Nora looked closer at the grayscale image. It was clear, right off the bat, that something had happened there.

"You tell me: Is that disturbance consistent with the crash of a weather balloon?"

She looked still more closely. She could see, just barely, a blurry but deep-looking furrow or groove in the sand, along with other evidence of extensive and widespread disturbance.

"Not really," she replied.

"That's right. And look how it's surrounded by old traces of earthmoving equipment and vehicles. The GPR also revealed two faint roads leading from the area, and another one circling around it. At one time this was a heavily trafficked place. Suggestive, don't you think?"

"Isn't this kind of small for a UFO? I mean, that groove isn't very wide. And it could be anything—a missile, small plane, even a meteorite. I don't see evidence it was a UFO."

"The point is," said Tappan, "that something happened here totally inconsistent with a balloon or nuclear monitoring device crash. And then you can see where topsoil, here and here, was moved to bury the target area and cover up all these tracks—and smoothed over. Why would they have gone to so much trouble to cover up a balloon crash? That's a lot of earthmoving."

She scrutinized the survey more closely in the confines of the car. There were signs of a lot of old activity extending from the target area.

Tappan smiled. He took out another chart and unrolled it. This was obviously a magnetometer survey, a tool archaeologists used to record the magnetic properties of soil for mapping subsurface terrain. There were various anomalies and dark spots in and around the target area. The disturbed area with its faint furrow was also vaguely delineated.

"All those dark spots and smudges are what we laymen would call 'buried stuff,'" said Tappan. "Stuff that your excavation will unearth."

"It could be anything," Nora said. "Rocks, tin cans, trash."

Tappan tapped the charts with a finger. "Maybe so, but this proves one thing: The government lied. There was no weather balloon or secret nuclear surveillance device. Why would they lie?"

He stared at her with gray, searching eyes. It was a fair question.

"And the lying goes on," Tappan said. "A few years ago, the government allegedly declassified its files on UFOs. There was some startling stuff in there, as you probably know—videos of objects taken by fighter pilots and so forth. But even earlier they had released documents indicating the Roswell crash was not a weather balloon, but a classified government device, developed at Los Alamos for detecting aboveground nuclear blasts. It was being tested but got away in high winds and crashed at the Roswell site. The 'disk' that witnesses described was actually a radar reflector, used for tracking purposes."

"Sounds reasonable," she said. "That might explain the furrow—the thing getting dragged along the ground, perhaps."

"The furrow is at least fifteen feet deep. No—the nuclear device with a radar detector attached was also misinformation: a second layer of it. First a weather balloon, then a secret surveillance device. All disinformation. Nothing to see here, folks! The real Roswell files—and the artifacts and debris they found at the site—remain secret."

She shook her head. "And the alien bodies?" she asked sarcastically.

He smiled. "Look, the point is, there's more to be found at the crash site. You can see it in these two surveys. A professional archaeological excavation would reveal what, exactly: not only a ground disturbance, but something more…perhaps much more." He rolled up the maps. "What do you say, Nora?"

"Um, are these charts all you've got?"

"All? I think it's quite a lot. Look, I didn't want the Institute. I wanted you. I thought you'd probably quit when you heard the proposal, and I was right."

"You were wrong. I was fired."

He chuckled. "Now that I've met you, I can see how that might have happened. Digby, that poor homunculus…" He shook his head sadly. "Have you really been reporting to him these last six months?"

Nora deflected the question. "Why me?" she asked. "There's plenty of archaeologists out there."

"I followed the Victorio Peak treasure story with great interest. And then I acquainted myself with the work you did at Donner Pass and, before that, the Quivira site. I don't want some slope-shouldered academic. You've got all the qualities I need: courage, ability, perseverance, judgment. I built my business by finding the right people."

She watched almost with regret as he snapped rubber bands back on the charts and put them away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I can't do this. I just can't."

"I'm not asking you to make a decision now. All I'm asking is that you come and see the site for yourself. Meet the team, look at the evidence. The site is on Bureau of Land Management property. I've got all the federal permits, equipment, engineers, a couple of semidomesticated postdocs—everything necessary for a first-class excavation. All I need is a credentialed archaeologist. I'm offering a good salary."

She shook her head.

"My chopper is waiting at Sunport Aviation. We can be at the site in just over an hour, and you'll be home by six. Or if you decide to stay, you'll have a custom Airstream to yourself for the night."

She sighed. The "good salary" part, at least, was tempting. She and Skip shared a house, and they were always scrambling to pay the mortgage. Santa Fe was an expensive town, and the Institute was not exactly generous.

"I'm very sorry," she said, opening the door and getting out. She turned to see Tappan looking back at her with surprise and dismay. He clearly wasn't used to having people turn him down. "Thank you for the offer, but I'm afraid I have to decline."

She closed the door and went back to her car, wondering as she did so if she'd just made the worst mistake of her life.

NORA ARRIVED HOME at their small house on the south side of town. She dropped her box of stuff on the kitchen counter, tossed the backpack in the corner, put the pot on for coffee, and flopped down in a chair. Mitty, their golden retriever rescue, came rushing over, wagging his tail so hard his entire back end was swaying. He pushed his nose into her hand. She petted him absentmindedly, wondering what the hell she was going to do now. It was one o'clock and the day stretched ahead endlessly. Maybe she should start sending out CVs.

"Nora! You're home!"

She just about jumped up as Skip came rushing in.

"So are you," she said. "Why aren't you at the Institute?" She had a sudden fear that Weingrau had fired him, too.

"I quit!"

Oh God, no. She tried to keep the dismay out of her voice. "You quit? Why?"

"I got a new job!"

The kettle started whistling.

"I'll make the coffee for us," Skip said, "and tell you all about it." He busied himself with the grinding and filter while Nora absorbed this new information. Skip? What better job could he possibly have gotten?

"So what are you doing home?" Skip asked, spooning grounds and then pouring water into the French press.

"Um, I was fired."

Skip halted. "What?"

"Fired."

"What do you mean, fired? You're their star archaeologist!"

Nora sighed. "They asked me to dig up a UFO. I said no."

That was followed by a sudden silence. Skip went back to pouring the water. "A UFO?" he repeated feebly.

"You know that crazy Roswell conspiracy theory about a UFO crash and dead aliens? They actually wanted me to direct an excavation of the site. I told them I didn't want to become the laughingstock of the archaeological world. One thing led to another—and Weingrau fired me."

Skip fussed with the French press. The silence stretched on. Nora began to feel a creeping sense of unease. "Skip?"

"Yes?"

"Tell me about your new job."

Another long silence. "Why do you think the Roswell story is so crazy? I mean, there's a lot of evidence supporting it. A lot. There are witnesses. There are documents. Retired military officers have come forward and said they were there, that they saw the wreckage, even saw the alien remains."

"Um, Skip? By any chance is your new job working for a guy named Tappan?"

He came over with two coffees, set them down defiantly on the table, and took a seat. "As a matter of fact, yes."

She shook her head. This day was just getting worse and worse.

"Nora, will you listen to me for a moment? First of all, Tappan's done a huge amount of research. This is a serious effort. Nothing flaky about it. He's already done magnetometer, lidar, and ground-penetrating radar surveys. He's got all the permits, everything."

"How much is he paying you?"

"Sixteen hundred a week."

"Is that all?"