Area 51: The Grail-5 by Robert Doherty

ancestors were recruited to be Watchers by the original Watchers, the wedjat. There is a hierarchy in the organization, a split between those who claim a lineage to the original wedjat and those who were recruited, the first and second orders.
    And I wanted to know the truth."
    "About?" Yakov asked.
    "Who the Watchers were. Why we were watching."
    Turcotte leaned forward. "And did you learn the truth?"
    Mualama nodded. "Quite a bit of it."
    'Tell us," Che Lu said. "Who are the Watchers? How did they begin?"
    "Will your information help us get a ring?" Turcotte demanded, his mind focused on the upcoming mission.
    Mualama rubbed a hand through the stubble of his gray hair. "It began when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through it all—mastectomy, 88
    chemotherapy, experimental drags. And none of it worked. When she died, I lost—" He spread his hands, searching for the right words. "I lost all my beliefs. My wife had been a Christian. To the moment she died, she believed she would be going to a better place. But I, who knew of the Airlia, did not know what to believe. I wanted the truth then.
    "I had learned from another Watcher, one of the line of Kaji, about Burton visiting Giza. And I had found reports about Burton in Tanzania where I lived.
    So I began to study him. Then I began to follow his path all over the world, to the many places he had been, trying to discover what he had learned."
    Mualama shook his head. "It is funny that he found the repository of the Watchers, scant miles from his own home, in his dear England."
    "Where?" Yakov wanted to know. "Glastonbury Tor, near the Salisbury Plain, in southwest England," Mualama said. "Burton traveled there in 1864 with John Speke, his companion from their search for the Nile. The Watchers had tried to kill Burton before, so I imagine he brought Speke for protection. Or, more likely, to make sure someone else knew the truth in case something happened to him.
    "During Burton's time as consul in West Africa, an attempt was made on his life after he mounted an expedition in search of the Mountains of the Moon, known to the natives as Ruwenzori, deep in the heart of my continent. It was not the first time such a thing occurred, and it would not be the last. When I learned that Burton and Speke had traveled to Glastonbury, I went there also.
    Especially given that Speke died the next day, supposedly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but I saw the long hand of the Watchers in that death. I as-89
    sumed Burton and Speke had come close to something significant to evoke such a response.
    "I approached the Tor at dusk, seeing the jagged, broken finger of the stone tower at the top. I climbed the long path when I knew there would be no others there, to see what was to be seen. I knew what to look for, and using a flashlight, I eventually found the smallest of indentations in one of the old stones on the side of the ruined tower. I pressed my medallion against it, but nothing happened.
    "I continued my search and was about to despair of finding anything more when I heard the sound of stone moving on stone. A figure robed in brown came out of the pitch-black shadow of the tower. He looked like a monk, with a long white beard and pale skin that had seen little of the sun. I held up my hand, showing my medallion to him, and he in turn showed me his ring."
    "Where did the rings come from?" Turcotte wanted to know.
    "Patience," Mualama told him. "That will be clear shortly." The Watcher signaled for me to turn my light out. "What do you seek?" he asked me.
    "I had thought about what to say if I met another Watcher, and I had decided that the truth was best. I told him I had traveled far from my home and that I sought knowledge. It was the right answer, for he smiled at me. "I am the keeper of our knowledge," he told me.
    "I asked him who he was and he told me his name was Brynn. I knew the roots of the name from my studies of Burton's published writings—it was a