Ice Station - Matthew Reilly [101]
‘Not long,’ Trent said.
As Trent explained, they found the object of their search mounted on a pedestal not far from the fresco itself, a small stone pedestal sunken into the wall of the temple.
It just sat there. All on its own. It was about the size of a shoebox, and the colour of chrome.
It was the silver box from the fresco.
‘Those scientists couldn’t believe their luck,’ Trent said. ‘They called their university back in the States right away, and told them what they’d found. Told them that they may have discovered a gift from an alien civilisation.’
Trent shook his head. ‘Stupid bastards. They did it over a telephone line. An open goddam telephone line. Hell, anyone could have heard them. My unit was sent in to protect them from anyone who did.’
Trent leaned forward in his chair.
‘The problem was, it wasn’t really my unit.’
Trent went on to tell Cameron about what had happened after his unit’s arrival at the temple – in particular, how several of his own men had turned on him when the SEAL team had arrived at the temple.
‘Mr Cameron. The order to plant men in my unit came from a government committee called the Intelligence Convergence Group,’ Trent said. ‘It’s a joint committee made up of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Reconnaissance Office. Put simply, its primary objective is to secure for America technological superiority over the rest of the world.
‘They killed my unit, Mr Cameron. My whole unit. And then they hunted me. For twelve days, they scoured that temple looking for me. American soldiers, hunting me. I stood squeezed into a small fissure in a wall, being dripped on by stinking seepage, for twelve days before they gave up and left.’
Cameron said, ‘What happened to the university researchers?’
Trent shook his head. ‘The SEALs took them away. They were never heard from again.’
Cameron fell silent.
Trent went on. ‘Eventually, I got out of that temple and made it back to the States. It took a while but I got there in the end. The first place I went was my parents’ house. But when I got there I saw two guys sitting in a van across the street, watching the house. They had people there, waiting for me to come back.’
Trent’s face went cold. ‘That was when I decided to find out who’d been behind it all. It didn’t take me long to find a trail, and at the end of that trail, I found the ICG.’
Cameron found that he was staring at Trent. He blinked out of it.
‘Okay. Right,’ Cameron said, regaining his composure. ‘This ICG, you say it’s a joint committee, right? Made up of members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Reconnaissance Office, right?’
‘That’s correct,’ Trent said.
‘Okay.’ Cameron knew about the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he knew little about the National Reconnaissance Office. It was the intelligence agency charged with procuring, launching and operating all of America’s spy satellites. Its secrecy was legendary; it was one of the few agencies that was allowed to operate under a ‘black’ budget – a budget that, because of the sensitivity of its subject matter, did not have to be disclosed to Senate Finance Committees. Throughout the Cold War, the US Government had consistently refused to acknowledge the NRO’s existence. It was only in 1991, in the face of mounting evidence, that the Government finally caved in and acknowledged that it did exist.
Trent said, ‘The ICG is a marriage of two of the most powerful agencies in this country – the supreme commanding body of all of our armed forces and the most secret arm of our intelligence community.’
‘And its job is – what did you say – “to secure technological superiority” for America?’
‘Its job,’ Trent said, ‘is to ensure that every major breakthrough in technology – be it the compact disc or a computer chip or stealth technology – belongs to the United States of America.’
Trent took a deep breath. ‘Mr Cameron, I don’t think I’m explaining this very well. Let me put it another way. The ICG’s job is intelligence gathering, or as they call it in Government-speak, “intelligence convergence”.
‘Its job