Robert Doherty: The Citadel

"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 order 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."