It took him to several different locations and he was aware that Hayes’ men were following him every step of the way. Yet he had pretty decent cover, he was conducting an investigation on the man’s behalf. After many twists and turns along the investigative trail, he reached his final destination. The fairly new and ultra-secret CIA underground records complex was in the middle of three hundred bucolic acres twenty miles west of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello near Charlottesville, Virginia. The CIA had purchased the property over two decades ago for an exceptionally good price that set the American taxpayer back a mere eleven million dollars. That had been, by far, the cheapest part of the project.

The property had barns, stables, paddocks and even a stately brick colonial manor house that was ostensibly owned by a multinational corporation headquartered in Belgium that ostensibly used it for corporate retreats. Indeed, several times a year, long convoys of limos and SUVs with camera-toting, Flemish-speaking executives could be seen heading to the estate along the winding gravel path. The CIA spent about one million bucks a year to perpetuate this myth and considered every dollar well spent.

High-speed elevators inside the manor house and two of the barns allowed access to an elaborate underground labyrinth of concrete tunnels, bunkers and rooms that were protected against any type of eavesdropping. It sounded very James Bond–like, and yet the reality was there were several facilities like this across the country. On two occasions curious souls had managed to open the doors of these structures—one in the Pacific Northwest and one in Nevada—and seen what was actually going on inside. Knox had never known what had happened to those unfortunate folks. Abducted by aliens was probably the myth spread by Agency disinformation teams. It was just the cost of doing business and keeping Americans safe. Well, except for folks who unfortunately opened doors they shouldn’t have.

When complete the underground labyrinth had only set the American people back over one billion dollars, not a cent of it acknowledged in any budget of the U.S. government. The construction workers were relocated, without really ever knowing exactly where they’d been. Yet keeping secrets was an expensive proposition and the CIA had more secrets than most. And governments had hundreds of billions of dollars to spend on projects like this. For that level of coin one did not rent space at Storage Town USA; one built cement cities underneath crappy barns.