"Black Vault" by Alma Katsu

Published on Kindle by Amazon Original Stories on August 8, 2023

“Black Vault” is a timely spy story — a longish short story — drawn from recent congressional investigations into UFOs. The timeline alternates between 2006 and the present.

Craig Norton is a career officer in the CIA. In 2006, his career is going nowhere. Norton is arrogant and cocky but he doesn’t have the success or pedigree to back up his attitude. He’s running an unimportant asset in the Russia Division. When the asset is transferred to an assignment in Mongolia, Norton follows him. The relocation places Norton under the supervision of the China Division. The China Division harbors an institutional hatred of the Russia Division. Norton is not made to feel welcome.

Norton arranges to meet his asset at night in the middle of a field. The asset never appears, but Norton sees some strange lights in the distance moving at angles and speeds that defy physics. With some trepidation, he writes a report about what he saw because reporting anything unusual is part of his job. After all, maybe he saw an experimental Chinese aircraft.

Norton is cautioned against submitting the report by a CIA officer who reviews reports and tells agents not to say anything stupid. Norton disregards the advice. Head of Station soon complains that Norton has become a laughingstock and has tainted the rest of the office by writing a report about a UFO. Craig learns that Alvin Lee, chief of the China Division, was particularly critical of his report.

Norton’s career comes to an abrupt dead end. He’s eventually reassigned to the US, where he’s given pointless tasks to fill his time until he reaches retirement age. Norton made the mistake of bringing his wife to Mongolia. She left him as a prelude to divorce. He never really connected with his son. He used the classified nature of his work as an excuse to avoid meaningful conversations.

A few months before he’s able to retire, Norton is assigned to a new task force that was formed in response to a 60 Minutes story exposing the government’s suppression of information about UFO sightings. The task force is composed of other deadenders until Norton mentions to the Deputy Director of Operations that the task force will never accomplish anything without young agents who haven’t lost their curiosity. After suitable agents are assigned, Norton begins to learn why his initial report was buried.

Modern spy fiction tends to develop the theme of bureaucracy and professional infighting as impediments to accomplishment. As Norton digs into the aftermath of his 2006 report, he discovers that people who took his report seriously went to war with bureaucrats who thought UFOs were embarrassing. The notion that UFOs might exist, that their secrets might be investigated by Chinese rather than American scientists, was a potential career killer for anyone who scoffed at Norton in 2006. Now it’s looking like the suppression of inquiry should have been a career killer. The theme of government agents stepping all over each other to cover their mistakes by blaming others is always fun, if only because it always seems plausible.

Craig’s relationship with his son comes across as an afterthought, a way of forcing human interest into the story, but Norton benefits from careful characterization in other ways. He feels abused, overlooked, and underappreciated, to some extent with good cause.

The plot is tight, as a short story plot should be. Alma Katsu was wise to develop her concept in short form. The concept may be insufficiently substantial to carry a novel. The story eventually leads to a resolution that will be familiar to fans of spy fiction, at least after the UFOs are set aside. The mixture of fresh and familiar makes “Black Vault” an enjoyable read for fans of spy fiction and UFO conspiracies.

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