Secrets

There were twenty-four men and women gathered in the boardroom at the State Department building. Two armed guards stood outside the armour-plated door, which was designed with the intention of stopping anyone trying to eavesdrop on any meeting being held inside rather than defeat a terrorist bomb or bullet. That was the job of the two immaculately dressed guards who stood at the head of the corridor. The large guns they carried helped maintain the impression that they were totally dedicated soldiers, unswerving in their duty. Nothing and no one could have entered that room except over their dead bodies. A fact they seemed to be proud of.

The room itself was small, fully air-conditioned, and sparsely furnished. There were no pictures on the walls, or plants of any kind. Absolutely nothing was permitted in the room that could cause any kind of distraction. There was only a magnificent mahogany table that stretched practically the whole length of the room, a row of leather backed chairs aligned on either side. Each chair filled with a hand picked specialist.

An electronic projection machine sat on one end of the table facing a large flat white screen. One of the grey haired Generals had just completed showing the slides to the men and woman gathered round the table. It had been for the fifth or sixth time, he couldn’t remember which. But he knew that the pictures were so important a mere clerk could not be trusted with the information being shown. In fact, no one outside of that room would ever be trusted with the information being divulged that day.

The table was so highly polished it easily reflected the faces of all the people sitting there. They were all key people in their fields ranging from electronics, chemistry, metallurgy, pharmaceuticals and weapons experts. The only thing they all had in common was the fact that they were all grim-faced and tired after spending half the night sifting through the documents and slides before them. Generals, Airforce Captains, secret service men, Admirals. All high-ranking serving United States service men and women or government officials, which included Benson, the man holding the meeting.

"Would you switch off the machine now Tom?" asked Benson. "I don’t think we need to see the pictures anymore. Are we all agreed gentlemen?" he asked politely, knowing full well that he had the attention of every one in the room.

Benson was the head of the secret service special projects office. It was his job to take care of the unusual. The potentially most hazardous cases. The cases that could pose a potentially deadly threat to the security of the United States. He never imagined he would ever have to hold a meeting like this one. None of them did.

"Well gentlemen. You have all seen the evidence many times now. What do you think?"

"Could it be a hoax of some kind. Some wise-ass somewhere who has only done this as a publicity stunt" said Admiral Horner. He was having real difficulty understanding the implications of what he had seen, as had half the men in the room.

"It’s no hoax Jack. It’s the real thing. We are certain of that" replied Benson, and he looked slowly around the room at each man and woman in turn. "You’ve all seen the evidence. It’s for real" he added, wanting everyone to be certain that this was deadly serious.

"Anyone else got anything to say. Anything useful that is" he asked in his soft spoken voice which oozed authority like treacle dripping from a stick.