Lemuria by Burt Clinchandhill (most popular novels of all time .txt) 📗

at a long picnic table next to a large worktop with two sinks. “The smell could be better, but we can sit, and it’s private.”

“Fine by me.” Lindsey walked to the cleaning place. “I’m not sure...?” She looked at Monroe as he followed them.

Bishop reacted immediately. “I’ve no idea why you’re here, but Walker may hear anything you have to say to me.”

Lindsey left it at that and continued on her way, the three men following in her wake.

The fish cleaning place—next to a rundown shed that functioned as ‘bathhouse’—was nothing more than a few wooden beams holding a weathered corrugated iron roof, and a sandy floor. The place smelled of rotten fish. Probably from the trash bins that were emptied bi-weekly.

“Please sit,” Lindsey said, taking off her jacket and laying it on the wooden bench before sitting on it.

Bishop and Monroe sat down opposite the two visitors.

“So, how long has it been, fifteen years? Probably longer,” Bishop said, answering his own question. “What brings you here and is so damned important my boss will lend you a helicopter and harass me on my day off?” He gave a bright smile.

“Almost twenty years,” Lindsey answered. “And my boss called your boss and convinced him of the importance that we meet, so here we are. But let me get to the point. After college, I worked a few years in the private sector before I was recruited as an analyst with the National Security Agency. And basically, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past fifteen years.”

“Nice.” Bishop chuckled. “The NSA? You became a domestic spy.”

“You make it sound fascinating, but forget everything you ever saw on TV,” Lindsey replied. “It’s a 98 percent desk job, and 1 percent is probably the walks to the coffee machine and the water cooler. But, mainly, I do cryptanalysis and ‘signals and communications intelligence’ for U.S. national security systems.”

“Sounds important,” Monroe said. “And if I’m not mistaken, you’re still missing a percent.”

“Sharp.” She smiled. “We’ll get to that in a minute.”

“And you, what is your name, Igna...?” Bishop asked.

“Ignatowski,” the man replied. “And I don’t work for the NSA if that’s your next question.”

Bishop nodded.

“On this subject, the NSA collaborates with another Department of the Defense agency, the National Reconnaissance Office.”

Lindsey crossed her legs. “Iggy here works for the NRO and is an expert in everything that has to do with satellites and is also handy with computers. Hacking them, that is.”

“Wow,” Bishop interrupted. “Members of the U.S. Intelligence Community working together. I guess there’s a first for everything.”

Where the NSA—since its founding in 1952 by President Harry Truman—was always openly secret about their task in cracking secret codes and wiretapping, the NRO, since 1961, had the reputation as the nation’s most secretive intelligence agency. Its existence had been a state secret up until 1992. Nowadays, the ‘spy satellite organization’ doesn’t only produce intelligence for the other members of the Intelligence Community, their imagery’s also used to assess the effects of natural and manmade disasters and to enforce environmental treaties.

“And now for getting to the point.” Bishop stretched his arms over the table.

“Yes, sure. As for the remaining 1 percent,” Lindsey replied. “Let me see. Where to begin? A few months ago, the NRO contacted the NSA about some disturbing findings from their global satellite surveillance.”

Chapter 3 – Occidium One

Lake Tahoe, CA, The Present

The Lake Tahoe Airport was an 8,500-foot single strip of black asphalt in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, south of Lake Tahoe. In 2012 the airport had closed its commercial services due to lack of revenue. Since then, the airstrip has been used for planes contributing to emergency services, disaster relief and forest firefighting in the Lake Tahoe Basin area. Until three years ago.

Three years ago, Eldin Arthur Mulder, the e-tech billionaire, was looking for a location to build his new Logynous Research Center. Since the founding of his Internet company, Logynous, in 2002—a platform matching freelancers—he founded, and sometimes sold, a wide variety of hi-tech companies. His latest adventures included an electric car factory, Logynous Motors; a revolutionary Internet search engine, Logynous Search and an aerospace manufacturer called L-Space. He even ventured into health care with gene-based therapy studies.

Born in the Netherlands, the nationalized American was often considered by the traditional e-tech companies a rogue scientist and opportunistic entrepreneur who exploited his employees. He was also known for his strategy to buy companies, and if they didn’t perform, with no regard to its employees, sell or dismantle them again. Still, employees would line up to work for the handsome, charismatic, extravagant, eccentric and loudmouthed billionaire. His successes overshadowed his failures. Where the big Moloch companies from the previous century had become too big and bulky to innovate, Mulder succeeded.

It was Mulder who located the Logynous Research Center right along the Fallen Leaf shore, a mile south of Lake Tahoe. He did so by buying all the ground surrounding the lake, including the Lake Tahoe Airport. He renewed the roads leading to and from the LRC and the airport, and he developed an airplane taxi service for employees between the larger coastal cities and the center. He also built luxury houses along the lake’s shore to free-house the specialists and their families whom he recruited from all over the world.

Burning under the bright sun, the speckled white Dassault Falcon 2000LX plane landed and with a high-pitched whir, taxied from the end of the runway into a private hanger. Within seconds the motor had stopped, and a staircase unfolded from the plane. A man dressed in dark jeans, a white T-shirt, and black sports jacket, wearing a pair of Persol sunglasses below a blue New York Yankees baseball cap, descended. The medium built, five feet, nine inches tall man took off his cap and glasses as he hit the ground. He squinted his piercing blue eyes, protecting them from the bright sunlight coming through the hangar doors. Then he addressed the woman who rushed toward him and handed him a briefcase.

“Is everything in