Deception Point

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Deception Point book cover

Deception Point (2001) is a thriller novel by Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, and Digital Fortress.

Plot summary

Intelligence Analyst Rachel Sexton is in her mid-thirties, is single, and works for the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office). Her father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton, is a popular presidential candidate surpassing the incumbent President of the United States Zachary Herney. The President sends her to the Arctic as part of a team of experts to confirm and authenticate findings made by NASA deep within the Milne Ice Shelf. NASA's new Earth Observation System (EOS,) a collection of satellites constantly monitoring the globe for signs of large-scale change, has found an extremely dense spot in the Milne Ice Shelf. NASA discovers a very dense meteorite. In it are fossils of bugs very similar to--but not the same as--species on earth. NASA claims this as proof of extraterrestrial life. This find is something NASA needs desperately, as the agency’s success rate on other fronts has put it in a bad light. Senator Sexton uses this as an example of government overspending and failure to further his campaign.

A group of four civilian scientists has already been studying the find and has confirmed NASA's claims. It is only hours before the President and NASA plan to go public with the discovery.

However, one of the scientists is startled by something he sees in the icy water in the pit from which the meteorite was removed, and before he has a chance to tell the others, he is killed by the Delta Force, a special forces unit of the U.S. Army.

What the experts and scientists don’t realize is that their every move is monitored from a listening post just a few miles away by Delta Force members controlling a tiny flying "microbot."

The other three civilian scientists and Rachel make the same discovery as their martyred comrade. They are unaware of his death. They have found evidence of seawater contamination, suggesting that the ice shelf is not pure freshwater as glaciers are supposed to be. They examine further, discovering that there is a shaft of frozen seawater directly below the extraction pit. It appears that the meteorite has been inserted from below.

During Rachel's and the scientists' excursion out of NASA's temporary settlement to investigate the contamination, they are attacked by the Delta Force. One of the scientists is killed, and Rachel and the other two narrowly survive, being rescued by the USS Charlotte.

The three, armed with a strong suspicion of NASA deception, set off to investigate further. Their goal is to either reconfirm or deny NASA's claims before President Herney stuns the world with a possibly false announcement. They fly to the research ship of one of the scientists, investigate the chemical makeup of a meteorite sample, and look up the fossilized organism found in the meteorite. They discover that the organism does in fact exist on earth in the Mariana Trench and that the chemical makeup of the meteorite could prove it to be a terrestrial rock. The scientists come to the conclusion that the meteorite is false well after Herney has publicized the find.

Suddenly, the Delta Force tracks down the group and destroys the ship. The three scientists narrowly escape once again, managing to kill the Delta Force team in the meantime. Rachel learns that the NRO head is actually the Delta Force controller for that operation.

They are suspicious of the entire NASA organization and the administration. Rachel faxes the information about the meteorite's makeup and the organism to her father, knowing that he will not be afraid to go public. However, she arrives in time to discover that her father is taking corrupt bribes from private space companies who wish NASA's demise. With help from Sexton's assistant, she replaces envelopes containing NASA's incriminating information meant for the press with ones containing photos of Sexton's lewd sexual encounter with his assistant.

Soon after, Herney makes the announcement to the world, retracting his statement from the night before. This almost guarantees his second term in the White House.

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Alternate book cover

Main Characters

• Rachel Sexton: An intelligence analyst working for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). Daughter of Sedgewick Sexton.
• Michael Tolland: Oceanographer, producer of documentary films, and captain of a SWATH class research vessel known as the Goya, he was called in to produce a film on the Arctic discovery. He becomes Rachel's love interest. He also ends up seducing Rachel and having sex with her in the Lincoln Bedroom.
• Zachary Herney: President of the United States who is running for a second term and one who believed in playing fair.
• Senator Sedgewick Sexton: Corrupt United States Senator running against Herney for President. Father of Rachel Sexton. Amazing seductive powers. Had sex with his assistant and his neighbor while married.
• Lawrence Ekstrom: NASA administrator. While he initially appears to be the villain, this possibility is eventually discredited (see red herring).
• William Pickering: Director of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). He is revealed to be the controller of the Delta Force team, the mastermind behind the Delta Force killings and the manipulator of events throughout the novel.
• Marjorie Tench: Senior advisor to Zach Herney. She is killed by a car bombing organized by William Pickering when she began to become a nuisance to his plans.
• Gabrielle Ashe: Personal aide to Sedgewick Sexton. Seduced by Sexton early on in their partnership, she eventually grows wary of his corrupt nature. Upon hearing his plot to commercialize the space exploration industry, she secretly helps end her boss's political career.
• Corky Marlinson: A brilliant astrophysicist with a somewhat high opinion of his abilities. He is a friend of Michael Tolland and is one of the outside parties called in to examine the discovery. He, Rachel, and Michael are the only three of the original five still alive by the end of the story.
• Delta-One, Delta-Two, and Delta-Three: Agents of the Delta Force, they are responsible for the majority of the numerous civilian casualties throughout the story. Delta-One drowns to death when the helicopter he pilots sinks into the ocean. Both Delta-Two and Delta-Three are killed by hammerhead sharks.
• Norah Mangor: Glaciologist from the University of New Hampshire. She is knocked unconscious by the Delta Force's ice rifles. They then kill her by stuffing her throat with snow.
• Dr. Wailee Ming: Paleontologist who is the chairman of paleontology at UCLA. He is first to discover bioluminescent plankton in the extraction pit. While he is bending over to get a sample, the Delta team flies their remote control robot into Ming's eye causing him to slip and fall into the extraction pit. He drowns minutes later.

Other Characters

• Charles Brophy: A Canadian geologist who was 'framed' for the discovery of the meteorite. The Delta Force team makes him read a message about the meteor shortly before he, along with his sled dogs, are killed by the Delta team by throwing him from a helicopter into the chasms and crevasses below. They made his death seem accidental.
• Chris Harper: Section manager of PODS (Polar Orbiting Density Scanner) at NASA. He made an error in the PODS anomaly software and was forced by the NASA administrator to lie about it, saying in a press conference that he had found a fix.
• Yolanda Cole: Content editor with ABC News. She is friends with Gabrielle Ashe, and gives her advice.
• Katherine Wentworth Sexton: Senator Sexton's late wife. She died in a car accident on Thanksgiving night.
• Celia Birch: Michael's late wife. She died of lymphoma, and he has had trouble letting go.
• Diana Pickering: William Pickering's late daughter. She died in the Red Sea while training to become a navigator, stationed on a small navy ship.
• Xavia: The Goya's onboard geologist. One of Michael's crew. She helps Rachel, Michael, and Corky test and confirm a theory about the meteorite.

Trivia

• The main plot may have been inspired by ALH84001, a meteorite found in Antarctica and believed by some experts to contain fossils of extraterrestrial (Martian) life. This claim is still disputed.
• William Hayward Pickering, ONZ KBE (December 24, 1910—March 15, 2004) was a New Zealand born rocket scientist who headed Pasadena, California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for 22 years, retiring in 1976. He was a senior NASA luminary and pioneered the exploration of space.

Agencies involved

• National Reconnaissance Office
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration
• Delta Force
• USS Charlotte (SSN-766)

Code solution

The code that appears at the end of the book, after the main plot

1-V-116-44-11-89-44-46-L-51-130-19-118-L-32-118-116-130-28-116-32-44-133-U-130

is decrypted by looking at the first letter of the first paragraph on the chapter decided by the number. For example, the first letter of the first paragraph of chapter 116 is "C". The resulting text is

TVCIRHIOLFENDLADCESCAIWUE

Decryption is performed using a columnar transposition cipher, termed a "Caesar Square" cipher in the book (this is unrelated to the Caesar cipher). The letters are arranged into a five-by-five square:

TVCIR

HIOLF

ENDLA

DCESC

AIWUE

and read each column from the top down.

THEDAVINCICODEWILLSURFACE

Add spaces and correct capitalization, and you get the plaintext,

The Da Vinci Code will surface

a reference to the book The Da Vinci Code, also by Dan Brown.

Artistic license

As is customary with his novels, Brown opens with a statement asserting the veracity of all information in his work. Specifically for Deception Point, it is claimed that "All technologies described in this novel exist." While the author claims no artistic license in regards to fact and technology, some of the claims in Deception Point are somewhat suspect.

Marianas Trench

Brown says that the "meteorite" is actually a rock taken from the bottom of the Marianas Trench, the deepest underwater trench in the world. He says that the trench is so deep that no manned craft has ever explored it, and most probes sent to the bottom have been crushed by the pressure. In fact, the trench was explored by man as early as 1960.

Canadian sovereignty

Much of the novel takes place on Ellesmere Island "in the high Arctic", within the base set up by the US military and NASA there. The base includes a habisphere and landing strip. In reality, Ellesmere Island is part of the Nunavut Territory of Canada. It is highly unlikely that Canada, which has a military base on the island (Alert), would allow the US to build a base on the island, or be unaware of it having done so. The Canadian Space Agency would also likely be involved in any such operation since it is a close partner of NASA and a member of the International Space Station. If Canada was not alerted due to the secret nature of the operation, then the president's international address in the book outlining the discovery would likely result in a diplomatic crisis, as the entire exercise would be a violation of international law.

Disputed technology

The foreword to Deception Point includes the line "all technologies described in this book exist." However, this is not true, as several technologies in the book are either non-existent or impossible.

The most notable non-existent technology is the remote controlled flying "microbot", which is a robot as small as a fly that can recharge by locating close to a power outlet, charging power from the induced electric field. It can also take and send digital pictures wirelessly over long distances. No current man-made wireless airborne technologies can come close to this small size described in the book, and with those features.

The following weapon technologies also do not exist, or are impossible:

• an underwater rifle which can send jets of liquid water with enough force to break bones.
• a snow rifle which compacts snow into ice projectiles similar to bullets.
• a desert rifle which can melt sand and mold it into glass projectiles similar to bullets.

• The underwater rifle is the most feasible of the three weapons mentioned. However, it cannot be as powerful as Dan Brown claims.

• The snow rifle is not feasible, simply because ice is unsuitable as ammunition. Firing an ice bullet would, under most circumstances, melt it, either due to friction or the heat of the propellant. And if the bullet does not melt, it will shatter since ice is brittle. The feasibility of an ice bullet propelled by gunpowder has been disproved by the Discovery Channel program MythBusters. Alternatively, as the point of the ice weapon was to concuss and not to kill, a weapon very similar to a paintball gun (using compressed air) is inside the realm of possibility, with similar uses as rubber bullets.

• The desert rifle is also not feasible, or even advantageous, because the temperature needed to melt sand into glass (in excess of 1500° Celsius) requires a power source that will take up much more space than regular ammunition. There is also the problem of insulating the heat from the molding unit to prevent burns to the soldier or heat stress to the weapon. In addition, very few deserts on the planet are sandy deserts.

• Brown's hypothetical weapons may be an extrapolation of a real military field manual titled TM 31-210 Improvised Munition Handbook (ISBN 0-9759009-0-0), published by the Department of Defense. However, this book describes improvisation methods such as field-made gunpowder, makeshift projectiles, etc. No allusion is made to rifles that are capable of manufacturing ammunition of the kind mentioned in the novel.

• The hologram gun used by the military to project large virtual images into enemy air space (as described in the book) does not actually exist. It is most likely impossible since one would need two light sources on opposite sides of the projection to make a three-dimensional hologram. Otherwise the light will propagate away from the source into infinity, creating no hologram.

• The Aurora aircraft mentioned in the novel has long been rumored to exist, but its existence is highly speculative and without any concrete proof, although articles have been released about this craft to the public. [1]

• An F-14 is described in the novel as having a 1,500 mph supercruise and being capable of a 3,000 mile flight. In reality this speed of travel is reflective of a maximum speed attainable only in short sprints on full afterburner due to fuel and engine considerations, with supersonic supercruise capability only seen on modern fighters such as the F-22 Raptor. On one occasion (September 1989), an F-14A (Plus) (probably "clean" or without external stores or stations) briefly demonstrated a supercruise capability. Presumably this is a capability common to similar configurations of the more advanced F-14B and D models, which share the same powerful GE engine (but not the Lockheed 345 engines cited by Brown, which are pure fantasy; Lockheed-Martin builds aircraft, not engines). Supercruising, or extended cruising flight at supersonic airspeed, about 760 mph near sea level, decreasing to about 660 mph at 30,000 feet, is done by fighter aircraft at only slightly greater than the speed of sound (mach 1) and not the mach 2.5 airspeed suggested by Brown. Additionally, the novel does not mention the numerous in-flight refuels required for a journey of such long duration in an aircraft with a somewhat lesser range. The plausibility of landing a fast jet designed for carrier operations on an improvised ice strip is also somewhat suspect.

• Counter to reality, both the OH-58D Kiowa Warrior and HH-65 Dolphin described in the book have rather capable radar systems. While the Coast Guard's HH-65 Dolphin does carry an on-board weather radar, it is doubtful it has the capability to track both air and surface targets. While the Kiowa Warrior does carry some sensing equipment, it is related to threat detection. The helicopter used to carry a version of doppler radar, but it was only used for navigation. The extreme range and flight duration given to the Kiowa Warrior in the novel is certainly beyond possibility without refueling stops that go unmentioned in the novel. The Kiowa is also described as carrying more than fifteen Hellfire missiles, which is rather excessive both in terms of weight and physical space. In reality, the Hellfire payload of the aircraft is only four missiles. Also in the book, the Kiowa is said to have transported four people, three Delta Force Agents and the Controller to the Goya. The specifications for the Kiowa only allow 2 crew members.

• Unlike the submarine described in the book, no Los Angeles class submarine has an anechoic chamber. There is simply not enough space to house such an unnecessary piece of equipment. Additionally, people inside the chamber would cause reflections of sound energy, thus negating the entire purpose of the chamber.

Misuse of Title "Agent"

During his first meeting (in the context of the novel) with Rachel Sexton, her boss, NRO Director William Pickering, greets her as "Agent Sexton". The term agent has a specific legal meaning for U.S. Government employees, such as special agents or consular agents. Intelligence analysts are never called agents, not even informally.