The Milestone Protocol

by Ernest Dempsey

  Magnus stared out at the passing homes and businesses on the street for another three seconds, then turned to face Kevin. “I do not take offense, not often. Second, one of the secrets to controlling everything is knowing that you don’t control everything.”

  Kevin stared back at him, blank-faced.

  “People are not robots, Dr. Clark.” Magnus returned to the window. “Sheep, definitely, but not robots. They think for themselves unless otherwise guided. Whenever possible, it is always best to remain in the shadows. Could I have pulled strings to get that man the help he needed? Of course. But it would have taken time. We don’t control all the police, all the hospitals, all the doctors, all the politicians. There are still some out there who could cause problems. They are not problems we can’t handle, but I tend to lean toward efficient usage of time.”

  “So, you killed him to save time?”

  “Yes,” Magnus answered plainly. “We barely escaped with our lives from that ambush. I must admit, though, I underestimated Sean Wyatt and his friends.”

  Kevin thought he detected a hint of pride in the man’s statement. “What happened with Sean Wyatt?”

  “Hmm?” Magnus looked over at Kevin.

  The driver drove up another ramp and back onto the highway, heading toward the city.

  “You were some kind of benefactor or something for Sean? What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. Sean’s and Tommy’s endeavors have proceeded just as I had hoped. It was I who put the seeds into their minds that grew into the careers they chose. I knew of Tommy first because of his parents and their reputation for finding the unfindable. We analyzed the boy’s test scores, his grades in school, and a few other metrics. Same for Wyatt, by the way. The order has access to every state-issued test you’ve ever taken from first grade all the way through to your postgraduate entrance exam.”

  That statement unnerved Kevin, but he hid it from Magnus and let the man continue.

  “Wyatt had incredible test scores and also the gift of improvisation. He could think on his feet, change course in the blink of an eye when put into rigorous situations. He was a perfect candidate for government work.”

  Magnus sighed and took a drink from a water bottle sitting in the cup holder to the side. “Eventually, though, he made his own decision and joined Axis, one of the few agencies we have no control over. Fortunately, they still operate as one of our puppets. We simply use references from the other agencies.”

  “References?” Kevin puzzled.

  “Yes. We do not have direct access to Axis, but when we need a job done, we simply have one of the other agencies—CIA, for example—call the president, tell them it’s a top-level job, and the president contacts the Axis director to fill them in on the issue. It’s an extra hoop or two we have to jump through, but it always works. Sooner or later, everyone works for the order.”

  “I’m starting to see that.”

  Magnus flashed a toothy grin and raised the bottle. “You’re on the winning side, Dr. Clark. There can be only one, and the Fellowship is it.”

  Kevin let the words sink in for nearly a minute. He turned and looked out the window at the skyscrapers, the colorful churches and business façades, the homes, the people walking on the sidewalks and driving down perpendicular streets that ran under the highway. They were all sheep, he realized. They would all go about their day believing that they were in control of their fates, their futures. They would read the news on their mobile devices or watch it on television and believe everything they were being told as though it were gospel.

  The world was living a lie.

  And those who didn’t believe the fiction spewing forth from the media would be called deniers or conspiracy theorists—two labels that almost magically discredited anyone who ever uttered the words deep state or controlling body. Kevin had seen it before.

  Few people in his field bought into such far-fetched theories. Archaeologists and anthropologists were largely focused on data, evidence that could be measured and seen and not be refuted.

  Those few colleagues, however, who believed the wild theories were relegated to academic exile. Some were tenured professors who, because of their years of service, could not be fired but were instead stuffed into back offices in the far reaches of campus, denied speaking engagements, and faced a reduction of class schedules.

  Kevin had known the reality of things for some time. It was Magnus who funded the search for the lost cities of Sarai. While Kevin wasn’t comfortable seeing friends and peers murdered in cold blood, it was join or become one of the billions of dead that would soon litter the planet.

  In the new world the Cult of Thoth would create, Kevin would be one of the foremost archaeologists; above all others. Magnus promised he would be well cared for, given riches, homes across the globe, and unlimited funding for his research after the chaos ended. He would be part of the ruling class that controlled everything. It was that, or die. Initially, the choice had been a difficult one for Kevin, but it didn’t take him long to come around.

  Now he was sitting with the most powerful person in the world. In his car. And they were being driven to a location in the Arctic Circle where an ancient pyramid stood deep within a snow-covered mountain.

  “You’re having second thoughts?” Magnus asked, breaching the silence that had settled over the car’s interior.

  “No,” Kevin said a little too quickly. He kept his eyes focused out the window. “I was just thinking about all those people out there, the sheep. They’re not robots, as you say, but they’re pretty close to it when you watch them go about their days.”

  “Yes,” Magnus agreed. “In a way, you’re right. Do you want to know the secret to making them believe whatever we want?”

  Kevin faced the man again and found that Magnus was staring at him with cold, steely blue eyes.

  “Yes,” he answered, though deep down he wasn’t sure he did want to know the answer.

  “You make them believe they have a choice.”

  Kevin frowned at the answer. “How do you do that?”

  “You give them choices,” Magnus answered matter-of-factly. “It’s simple, really. Think about everything in your life, Dr. Clark. Two major cola manufacturers, two fast-food chains, two carmakers, and two political parties.”

  After a few seconds of consideration, Kevin responded. “Yeah, but there are other burger places, other carmakers—by the dozens, and you have all kinds of soft drinks out there. Other nations have lots of political parties, too.”

  “Yes, that’s true. All those lesser companies are usually owned and run by the two major ones. And yes, while there is always a third, less major but still large entity, it is overshadowed by the largest. In regard to the political parties, the rest of those nations fall in line according to two major superpowers and how they dictate the flow of economics, commerce, health, science, and war. Do you really believe that a small European nation has the same power as the superpowers?”

  “No,” Kevin said. “I guess not.”

  “We have long experimented with various forms of government to see which ones the people will take to better.”

  “Take to?”

  “Yes,” Magnus clarified. “The more people accept their way of life, the less chance there is of revolt, not that they could push back against us. We run the two most powerful armies in the world. All the others follow suit.”

  “The false dichotomy,” Kevin realized. “You give them the choices you want them to have so that, either way, you win and continue to maintain control.”

  “Yes.”

  Kevin looked out the window again, thinking about all the times he went to the polls to vote for a candidate. All the while, he wasn’t really making a decision. He was being herded into a corral where there were only two exits.

  “And all of this is for what?” Kevin wondered. “Power? Control? I know it’s not for money because the order controls all the money.”

  “Yes. Currency is merely another t
ool we utilize. We can crush or elevate currency with the push of a button. But our purpose is not for power or control. We already have those. And maintaining it, while an impossibly big task, has been done for centuries. Our purpose, as I’ve explained before, comes back to one simple thing.” He paused for effect and stared at Kevin, holding his gaze. “We must ensure that the human race continues on. We are not the bad guys, Dr. Clark, we alone have the power to make certain our species survives the worst enemy it could ever face. Ourselves.”

  “And so humanity can survive, and thrive, we have to trim some of the dead leaves. Just like with a healthy plant.”

  “Precisely.” The Swede turned toward the window again. “As I’ve said before, I do not like the killing. I’m not some sadistic sociopath who wants to murder billions. But it is for the good of humanity that sacrifices must be made, and the burden of deciding of who lives and who dies falls on me. So it has always been. So it will always be. Someday, a new leader will take the reins of this organization. The council will choose another when I am gone to my rest. I have no illusions of immortality, though we have searched for that holy grail for centuries without success.”

  Magnus took a deep breath and exhaled. “All of this,” he said, motioning to the city around them. “The wonders of humanity. We have accomplished so much in such a short time. And have also wreaked so much destruction on our only home. After the machine is activated, we will not lose the progress we’ve made. And we will be given a much-needed head start for a better future. Colonization of other planets in conjunction with better technology here on Earth will allow us to expand indefinitely. We will save billions upon billions of people from suffering death by starvation or disease or anarchy.”

  Kevin mulled over the statement with resignation in his chest, but he couldn’t argue with the logic. It made sense to him, as much as he didn’t like it or want it to.

  “I’m honored you chose me,” he said finally.

  “And we are honored to have you, Dr. Clark. You are about to see wonders you couldn’t have ever imagined. All that time you spent in your life studying history, and now you’re about to help make it.”

  43

  The Arctic, En Route to Svalbard

  Sean stared out the plane’s window at the dark ocean below. There wasn’t much to see except for whitecaps foaming at the crests of swells, illuminated by the moonlight. Above, though, the spectacular aurora borealis shimmered and glowed with streaks of green towering into the stratosphere. He couldn’t recall a time in his life when he had been this far north. Alaska was the farthest toward the North Pole he’d been. Now, he and his team were well beyond that line, flying toward the frigid island of Svalbard.

  Emily’s friend Matt Prichard had been flying over the waters between Estonia and Finland for more than a decade. He’d helped her on a mission once and had promised that if she ever needed assistance again, he’d be there for her.

  The De Havilland DHC-8 plane was built like a crossover between a cargo transport and a passenger plane, with enough cargo room in the back and plenty of seats in the front to accommodate the entire group and then some.

  What the aircraft lacked in amenities, it made up for in muscle and reliability. The De Havilland line was famous for use in colder climates, particularly in Canada and Alaska, but had also gained notoriety in other parts of the world as a true workhorse.

  Sean’s mind wandered through the events of the last few days, the last decade, and then back to the present. Magnus Sorenson was still out there. The man who’d done so much for him in his life, opened so many doors, and had been a good friend through the years, had actually turned out to be the most insidious villain on the planet.

  He controlled most of the secret societies in the world, including the Syndicate that had roped Adriana and Allyson Webster into a sick game years before in what they called the War of Thieves. Sean hadn’t heard anything from Allyson in years. The last thing he did learn about her was that she’d been bouncing around the globe, keeping a home base in London.

  There was no telling where she was now, and he didn’t mind the ignorance of that fact. She was trouble on many levels, and while they had parted ways with a tenuous alliance, he had no desire to test that bond.

  “What’s on your mind?” Adriana asked from the seat next to him.

  “Oh,” he said, jogged from his thoughts. “Just thinking about all of this. It’s just, everything seems so strange now. And sad.”

  “Because your friend betrayed you?”

  “Partly,” Sean admitted. “Magnus was a mentor to both me and Tommy. He gave me a huge head start in life. Both of us, actually. I doubt either of us would be where we are without Magnus Sorenson’s help.”

  “And that’s confusing for you, isn't it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t tell what paths you chose in life or which ones were deliberately laid for you to follow, perhaps without your awareness.”

  He looked over at her and smiled. “You have good intuition.”

  She shrugged. “It’s how I would feel. In a way, it’s how I feel knowing the truth about Miyamoto and my father, my family line.” A darkness settled over her face.

  “No word from Madrid?”

  “We’re on an old airplane flying over the Norwegian Sea, north of the Arctic Circle. Not exactly the best place to get cell service.”

  “True.”

  The group had boarded a train to Estonia a few hours after leaving the farmhouse outside Moscow. In the city of Tallin, they had met up with their pilot, Matt Prichard, and had flown to Helsinki where they refueled and picked up some crates before heading to Oslo.

  Matt had greeted them with a broad smile from behind a thick red beard. He wore a beanie that covered short blond hair. Prichard was a big guy, standing two inches over Sean. Bulging muscles stretched his jacket and pants, making the guy look more like a Viking in disguise than a cargo pilot.

  After filling him in on the details, the group boarded the plane, and Matt made arrangements to fly to Oslo to drop off the crates from Helsinki and pick up a shipment of seeds to take to the Global Seed Vault on Svalbard—an underground bunker operated by the Nordic Genetic Resource Center in partnership with an organization called Crop Trust. The location on Spitsbergen Island was ideal because of the absence of tectonic movement, and the permafrost helped with preservation. It was also over four hundred feet above sea level, which would keep the site dry in the catastrophic event that the ice caps melt.

  To Emily’s surprise, Prichard said he’d made the run to Svalbard on two occasions, the first being to deliver some equipment to the seed bank. That was the first time he’d heard about the odd storage facility, and that knowledge served him well this time around on his journey to the far northern island.

  Sean looked around the cabin at the other members of their team. Their weapons were safely stored in compartments below, and because most of the focus would be on the cargo and getting it moved to a transport truck, there was little concern that the authorities in Svalbard would even check their additional luggage.

  “We’ll be landing in fifteen minutes,” Prichard announced over the speakers.

  Sean craned his neck to the side to get a better look forward through his window, but he still couldn’t make out their destination in the archipelago.

  Adriana noticed that he still seemed pensive.

  “It’s unfortunate,” she said, “that you have to face someone you trusted, and who you cared about as a personal friend. If it comes down to it, I will pull the trigger.”

  He twisted his head around and stared into her dark eyes. She never wavered, even under his piercing, searching gaze. Then he nodded. “The man I believed Magnus to be never really existed. There’s no telling how many people he’s killed throughout the years, how many executions he’s ordered. He was going to have you, Tabitha, and Niki all killed at the farmhouse, like you were nothing more than insects.”

  Tabitha heard the conversati
on from the seat in front of them and turned around, leaning over the top of the cushion. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation. If you get Sorenson, I get Kevin Clark. That little weasel killed more than a dozen members of his own excavation team. I’ll happily put him down if I get the chance.”

  “I hope you do,” Sean said. Then he had another thought. “What’s your story, by the way?” Sean asked. “You said you’re with MI6, but how’d you get into that role?”

  She sighed, and her eyes briefly looked up to the ceiling as if recounting a long, dramatic tale of how she arrived at that moment.

  “Not a very interesting story, I’m afraid. Grew up in the city in London. Parents were both working blue-collar jobs. They never made much money, but enough to send me to university. I earned a degree in political science, but I was always more interested in a more active role with the country. So, I went through the process, the training, and ended up working a desk job for four years before I was moved into field duty. And voilà,” she said, opening her palms. “Here I am. On a plane. Flying over the Arctic Ocean.”

  Tabitha was a little skimpy on the details, but that was to be expected. She was, after all, part of a very secretive organization. Sean decided not to press her.

  “I used to be the same way,” he said. “Thought I wanted more of the action, more adventure. Then I realized all I really wanted was a nice bungalow on the beach and warm sunshine on my face.”

  Adriana nudged him with an elbow.

  He chuckled. “Turns out, what you want isn’t always what you need. Or what the world needs.”

  “You were with her, weren’t you? At Axis?” Tabitha flashed a glance toward the front of the plane where Emily sat alone in the forwardmost seat.

  The corner of Sean’s right eye tightened slightly. “You never really know who worked for them.”

  Tabitha nodded. “I see how it is.”