Verko was connected with several UFO sightings during the 1950s and ‘60s, all reported by villagers in the nearby mountains. The sightings had proven false; at the time Verko was a secret Russian base devoted to a squadron of spy planes. It looked fairly isolated, a good place to arrange a pickup—but only if he could be sure the Russians weren’t using it anymore. Or the guerrillas. Thomas threw himself into researching it, gathering every slither of information he could. He began with the generic, pulling up SpyNet and working from there. The base had been officially closed in 1992, though it hadn’t seen much activity for at least ten years prior to that. Thomas jabbed at the keyboard, calling up a set of satellite photos. He culled through a file, then went over to a collection made by a commercial satellite over the past several years without finding any that showed activity on the runway. He did find shadows undoubtedly related to activity there, though there was no new construction.
