The Citadel Read online

  "It's a strange place," Royce said absently as he stared at the material on the tabletop.

  "What is?" Tai asked, confused by the sudden shift.

  "The Records Center," Royce said. "Did you know they had a fire there in 1973 that destroyed the top two floors of the old Records Center? Which also conveniently destroyed the personnel records for those men involved in the government's nuclear testing in the late forties and the fifties, and also the records for those troops that had been exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam.

  "Sort of put the crimp in all those lawsuits the government faced from all those same personnel who had come down with various ailments they claimed were a result of those two government actions."

  "Convenient indeed," Tai said.

  "I got a crash course in the place when I went," Royce said. "I naturally had the highest clearance, and they assigned me a full-time research archivist. In the new archives, you have seventeen acres of paper hidden underground with an eight-story office building housing other federal agencies above it. Papers tucked away in the building run from old social security records to the original plans for Fat Man, the first nuclear bomb. As both of you know, the U.S. government runs on paper, and the National Personnel Records Center is the temporary storage place and clearinghouse for every imaginable type of government record. Even the Organization can't keep a lid on everything."

  Vaughn was growing a bit impatient with Royce's recollections, but Tai gave him a look that indicated he needed to listen, so he forced himself to say nothing.

  Royce continued. "Unclassified records are in folders placed inside cardboard boxes, which are stacked on rows and rows of shelves. The secure 'vault' contains all the classified records. Every scrap of paper produced by the numerous organizations, and every piece of paper relating to any person that ever worked for the government, are all kept in the Records Center."

  "So there's a lot stuff there," Vaughn said, unable to hold back.

  "Yeah," Royce agreed, "a lot of stuff, including this." He indicated the desk.

  "And that stuff is?"

  Royce picked up a folder on top. "Organizational record. Every Army unit keeps them. Regulation. Most are just boring recitations of facts filled out by some second lieutenant as an extra duty." He held up the folder. "But this one-Lansale sent me looking for a specific type of unit. Engineer units, 1949. That served in a cold weather climate. And this one fit the bill: it had photos in it."

  He opened it and spread out twelve photos showing a desolate winter landscape and bundled-up men working on some sort of structure dug deep into the snow. Several of the photos were obviously posed, the men aware of the camera, but others showed them hard at work. One photo caught Vaughn's attention and he picked it up. About fifty men were gathered around a crude, hand-lettered sign that read: A COMPANY: THE CITADEL.

  "That's doesn't make sense," Vaughn said.

  Tai looked at the photo. "What?"

  "The Citadel is the military college of South Carolina in Charleston. That sure isn't Charleston."

  "I think they're referring to something besides a military college," Royce said.

  Vaughn looked closer. Right behind the men was a metal shaft with a hatch on the side. In the faint distance were three massive mountains looming out of the snow-covered landscape. He turned the picture over. Printed in neat lettering was: 12 MARCH 1949. 48TH ENGINEERS. LIEUTENANT MACINTOSH.

  "I asked the archivist who was helping me," Royce said, "about what that Citadel thing could refer to. She said it was probably some unit nickname."

  Vaughn shook his head. "A company wouldn't be called the Citadel."

  "That's what I thought," Royce said. "They've been trying to put as much as possible into digital form at the Records Center, so I had her do a search for the term in the unclassified data base, accessing armed forces installations. We started with the Army. It didn't take us long to learn there were no listings for Citadel. We then moved on to the Air Force and then the Navy with the same negative results. We even checked the Marines. Nothing. What that meant was that this one file folder of photos was the only record in the entire Records Center of such an installation. Or at least in the unclassified records."

  Tai frowned. "Why did Lansale send you after this?"

  "There's more," Royce said. "This unit history was just the start of what I dug up there. The photos there cover a four-month time period from February through May 1949. It's obvious they were taken in a very cold place, so we checked Alaska. Nothing. Greenland. Nothing. Iceland. Nothing.

  "So we checked the unit, the 48th Engineers. Went into the stacks where every unit in the military has their records shipped eventually. We found a box from the 48th Engineers from 1949 through 1950. It was full of the usual stuff: copies of orders, promotions, citations, operations plans, and the various other forms of paperwork that Army units churn out in the course of business. I learned right away that the unit had been stationed right here in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks."

  "That isn't Hawaii," Tai said.

  "No shit," Royce said. "I found orders detailing two platoons, heavy construction, from the battalion to support Operation High Jump in late 1948."

  "What was High Jump?" Vaughn asked.

  "We'll get to that," Royce said.

  "And what does this have to do with the Organization?" Tai asked. "Besides the fact Lansale sent you after this stuff and then put it together for you to get three months after his death?"

  "Have either of you ever heard of Majestic-12?" Royce asked, instead of answering the questions they'd posed.

  Vaughn shook his head, but Tai spoke up. "Something to do with aliens and Area 51?"

  "That's the cover story," Royce said. "It's also sometimes called Majic-12." Royce spelled it out. "Majestic-12 was formed by presidential decree, this one"-he pulled out a copy-"which was buried deep in the archives among Truman's materials that weren't sent to his presidential library. He signed it into existence in 1947. When he did, he also authorized the building of two classified installations. One at Area 51. The other was called the Citadel.

  "Majestic remains one of the most highly classified groups in the United States for the past sixty years." Royce picked up another piece of paper. "The original roster consisted of the first Director of Central Intelligence; the Chairman of the Joint Research Board, Dr. Vannevar Bush; the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal; the chairman of the precursor to NASA, and others. A lot of the power of the military-industrial complex was wrapped up in Majestic."

  "What does Majestic have to do with the Citadel, whatever it is, and the Organization?" Vaughn asked. "Are you saying Majestic-12 is the Organization?"

  "I think Majestic was either part of the Organization or used by the Organization," Royce said. "Majestic actually had a previous operation several of its members were part of. One that was formed as World War II wound down."

  Royce paused and then pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He stared at the folders from the case. "It's a tenuous thread I'm weaving for you right now, but David wouldn't have made me get all this, then put it together and send it back to me like this, knowing I would get it if he'd been killed, unless there was some validity to it."

  "All right," Vaughn allowed. "Weave it for us."

  "Operation Paper Clip," Royce said. "A rather innocuous name for a very deceitful operation. As the Second World War was ending, the United States government was already looking ahead. There was a treasure trove of German scientists waiting to be plundered in the ashes of the Third Reich. That most of those scientists were Nazis mattered little to those who invented Paper Clip.

  "Paper Clip used OSS operatives along with Intelligence officers from the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency to go after what they wanted. In some cases they were actually snatching Nazi scientists away from Army war crimes units. Both groups were hunting the same men, but with very different goals in mind. This happened despite the fact that President Truman had signed an executive ord
er banning the immigration of Nazis into the United States.

  "Paper Clip brought in a lot of German physicists and rocket experts-the V-1 and V-2 men. NASA got its start through them. Also brought in were those most haven't heard about-the biological and chemical warfare specialists. With plenty of human beings to experiment on, the Germans had gone far beyond what the Allies had even begun to fear. While the Americans were still stockpiling mustard gas as their primary chemical weapon, the Germans had three much more efficient and deadly gases by war's end: Tabun, Soman, and sarin-the last of which the American military immediately appropriated for its own use after the war."

  "And the Black Eagle Trust?" Tai asked.

  Royce nodded. "Paper Clip did more than just gather scientists. They grabbed a lot of loot. Everything the Germans and Japanese had plundered, Paper Clip went after. When Majestic was formed, Paper Clip came under its control."

  "Wealth and knowledge," Tai said. "That's what Majestic-12 went after and controlled."

  "And they appeared to have been headquartered in Area 51, on the Nellis Air Force range," Royce said.

  "The alien place," Vaughn said.

  "Good misdirection cover story," Royce said.

  "What the hell does that have to do with these guys standing in the snow?" Vaughn held the original photo in his hand.

  "Because Majestic sent them there," Royce said simply.

  "To do what?" Vaughn asked.

  "That's the critical question, isn't it?" Royce asked in turn.

  "To find something?" Tai wondered.

  Vaughn was still staring at the photo. "Maybe to build something-they were engineers after all."

  "That isn't all that was in the packet," Royce said. He pulled out a folder with TOP SECRET stamped in red letters across the cover. "The U.S. military ran another operation in Antarctica from 1955 to 1956. Called Operation Deep Freeze. They went back to the site of the original base camps that supported High Jump and found most had been destroyed by the weather. Once again they established a main base at McMurdo Sound-which has remained to this day the primary research facility in Antarctica. Again, I believe Deep Freeze was a cover for the Organization to go back to the Citadel."

  "And do what?" Tai asked.

  Royce opened the folder. "I don't know what was put in the Citadel in the forties during High Jump, if anything. But this is some of what was put in it during Deep Freeze." He slid photos across one at a time.

  Vaughn stared for several seconds at the bulky object set on a trailer behind a large snow cat. "A big bomb?"

  "Literally and figuratively," Royce said. "You're looking at a Mark-17 thermonuclear weapon. After the first Soviet nuclear test in August 1949, President Truman authorized the development of bigger thermonuclear yield bombs than had previously been contemplated."

  "Bigger is better, right?" Tai said with sarcasm.

  "Back then it was," Royce said as he looked at a piece of paper in the folder. "The scientists had several problems back then. The first, as you can see, was indeed the large size. But as difficult, if not more so, was that the first types they designed used liquid deuterium as the fusion fuel, which needs to be kept at a constant freezing temperature to remain viable. Ivy Mike, the first one they built, in 1952, was so big it filled an entire warehouse, weighing over seventy-four metric tons, and the entire warehouse had to be kept freezing. Its yield, though, was large: ten point four megatons."

  "What good is a warehouse-sized nuclear weapon?" Tai asked.

  Royce continued. "They worked on making it smaller and lighter, and eventually they ended up with the Mark-17, which to this date remains the most powerful nuclear weapon ever built by the United States. Even in the classified documents David uncovered, the yield wasn't quite certain, as none of them were ever tested-they were just too powerful. Estimates range around twenty-five to thirty megatons of blast."

  "Damn," Vaughn whispered. "That would take out an entire city."

  "Yeah," Royce said dryly. He glanced at the old paper. "The Mark-17 was rushed into production as 'emergency capable' weapons in 1954. Each weighed eighteen point nine metric tons and was over twenty-five feet long. Officially, all the Mark-17s were retired in 1957 in favor of smaller, lower-yield bombs that could be carried by a variety of airborne platforms."

  "'Officially'?" Tai noted.

  "According to these documents David sent me, four Mark-17s were unaccounted for in the final decommissioning tally. A fact that was made highly classified and swept under the rug."

  Vaughn looked at the photo of the massive bomb on the trailer. "So they were sent to the Citadel."

  "I believe so," Royce said.

  "That's a long time ago," Tai said. "Surely the weapons can't be viable anymore?"

  "They're cryogenic," Royce said. "As long as the bomb is kept below freezing, it could still be viable. What was a design flaw could turn out to be a design strength if the bombs have been sitting in Antarctica all these years."

  "Okay." Vaughn said the word slowly. "But why is this an issue now, today?"

  "Because of something I noted on the FedEx form when I received it."

  "And that is?" Vaughn asked.

  "I'm not the only person David Lansale sent this information to."

  Hong Kong

  The penthouse suite commanded one of the best views of Hong Kong 's harbor and was empty most of the year. Only when a member of the elite group that owned the building was in town were the rooms occupied. The present occupant had been there for what was a record: three months. She was a middle-aged Japanese woman with a slender build. She always dressed in black pants and turtleneck and often wore a long black leather coat.

  She was always accompanied by two hard-looking men who never spoke and whose eyes were hidden behind wraparound sunglasses. The bulges under their coats indicated they carried heavy weaponry. The fact it was so obvious also meant they did so with the tacit support of the government, which meant this woman was not only rich, but carried considerable political clout.

  For Fatima, these things only confirmed what she had come to Hong Kong suspecting: the Japanese woman, who went only by the name Kaito, was an emissary of the Organization. Fatima was a slight Filipino woman with long flowing hair that she kept bound in a ponytail that stretched down her back. She moved softly and quietly, so much so that the old couple from whom she was renting a room across the street from the office tower rarely knew when she came and went.

  They also would never have guessed that she was now the head of one of the most infamous terrorist groups in the world-the Abu Sayif. She had assumed that mantle upon the death of her "uncle," Rogelio Abayon, three months ago. Which had coincided with the death of her father during the failed attack on Oahu.

  While it appeared those deaths could be laid at the feet of the United States, Fatima did not buy into such an easy explanation. Abayon had always suspected that there was something darker and deeper at work in the world. Something that was even bigger than the United States. Some force that sought to oppress the majority of people while benefiting its own members.

  And Fatima believed this woman she had been watching for a week was one of those on the other side. Abayon had sent a trusted lieutenant here to Hong Kong three months ago with orders to sell a treasure. Part of the Golden Lily. A slice of the plundered wealth the Empire of the Rising Sun had devoured during its expansion across the Pacific Rim during World War II.

  Her organization still had the gold hidden in various places. But her "uncle" had sent Ruiz here to sell off much of the art. He had been half successful. The first night's auction was a rousing success, bringing in many millions of dollars to the hidden accounts of various organizations the Abu Sayif was allied with. But there had been no second night as planned.

  Ruiz had disappeared. Along with the rest of the art he planned to sell.

  And Fatima knew this woman had been the cause of the disappearance and the theft. Her contacts had traced the sale of some of the objects set for th
e second night's auction back to her.

  Abayon had believed that the Golden Lily had been a cover for the Organization's own desires. That the Japanese looting had been sanctioned internationally. And that all those other slices of the Golden Lily that the Abu Sayif had not taken during the war had been coopted by the Americans and others, all still stooges for this Organization.

  Today, she planned to learn more about the Organization, if she could. If she couldn't achieve that, at the very least she could achieve revenge for Ruiz. She had thousands of men and women under her command. Many ready to die for her. Yet she was here alone.

  She knew Abayon would have approved. To those thousands, she had to prove her ability to command. In the week she had been watching, Fatima had picked up only one pattern to Kaito's day: she went to a local dojo to work out at the same time every morning. It was commendable discipline but bad for security. This morning, Fatima was already at the dojo, waiting. Kaito worked out in a private room set off to the rear, the outer door protected by her guards.

  Fatima checked her watch. Kaito had been in there thirty minutes; she usually worked out for forty-five. Fatima walked in the front door of the gym, flashing the membership card she'd paid for with cash three days earlier. She turned down the corridor leading to the private workout rooms, shutting the double doors behind her and sliding the bolt. The two guards watched her approach without much concern considering that combined, they were over four times her weight. She wore loose pants, a sweatshirt, and carried a towel in her hands.

  When she was within six feet of the door, one of them held up his hand and spoke in Chinese: "Private."

  "Yes," Fatima replied in the same language without halting.

  As the men were exchanging confused glances, Fatima fired, the suppressor on the gun making a slight puff as the first round left the barrel. It hit the left guard directly between the eyes. She fired again as the second guard was reaching for his own weapon. Again the shot was straight on, right between the eyes. Both men slid to the floor, dead before they were down.