False Flag

Not all conspiracies are theories. This is what Katherine Muller learns when a routine road traffic accident story leads her down the rabbit hole into a world of black ops, assassinations and government conspiracies. Katherine is approaching rock bottom at a rapid rate. After sabotaging another relationship through her drinking and refusal to play by the rules she finds her once promising career heading the same way. So it is no surprise that when she is informed by a former college friend, Molly, that their stories might be linked to something bigger, Katherine jumps in with both feet. Molly reveals that Katherine’s traffic accident victim, Oscar, was not merely a run-of-the-mill employee at the State Department, but an NSA Analyst with a story to tell. She goes on to explain that Oscar approached her weeks prior to the bombing of the US Embassy in Ethiopia, claiming that not only was he aware it was going to happen, but that it was someone within the US’s own Defence Intelligence Agency, not an Islamic terrorist group that were responsible. Molly suggests that his accident may actually have been a planned assassination to prevent him revealing what he knew. With the whiff of a much bigger story in her nose Katherine sets off to learn if she can confirm Molly’s suspicions. A follow up interview with Oscar’s brother and a second attack in Ethiopia seem to be proof enough. Molly’s unexpected suicide a few days later convinces Katherine that the story is real, real enough for her to book a flight to Addis Ababa. At the same time in Ethiopia we learn that the Embassy bombing and subsequent gas attack at the town of Bahir Dar on the edge of Lake Tana were stages of what Hawthorn refers to as Project Nexus, the retrieval of a mysterious artefact from the bottom of the lake. With the retrieval underway in secret, Katherine starts to unravel the inconsistencies in the bombing and gas attack, which in turn make her even more determined to unveil the truth, even if that means tailing Carter’s Special Forces team, photographing them and asking her ex Angela to use the FBI database to identify them. Her involvement of Angela alerts Hawthorn to her existence, who luckily for Katherine is more focused on the retrieval of the completion of Project Nexus than her investigation. That changes once the artefact is retrieved and revealed to be the first intact UFO ever recovered by the US Government. With Katherine still in pursuit of the story Hawthorn tells Carter to tie up loose ends. After an abduction Katherine finds herself in a locked room, facing a simple, but brutal choice as Carter informs her that she can keep the story, or her life but not both.