Dawn of Hope- Exodus

by Dobrin Kostadinov

  No one stopped him at the entrance since he already had a pass for all NATO’s institutions. With a fast pace and determination typical for the thousands of men of the officer corps, he strode towards that corps where General Müller’s newly-built fancy office of was housed. When he arrived at the respective floor, the secretary threw herself in his way, trying to block his passage, but he stormed into the office and slammed the door with all his might. Müller and a woman from the Accounts Department sitting across from him froze in their chairs.

  ‘Get out!’ Leckerman yelled at the top of his lungs, but the young woman kept sitting, frightened, not knowing what to do. ‘Are you deaf, beat it!' he screamed again even more menacingly, even dragged back her chair to make her get out of it.

  ‘You again?’ the General started pouring fire and brimstone against the newcomer and reached for the phone to call the security. But Hans banged the file with the documents on the desk right under Müller’s nose. ‘Read unless you want things to get bad for you!’ Hans ordered him. The officer put the receiver down and looked at Leckerman who fixed his bloodshot eyes on him, visibly vexed and on the edge of losing his control.

  ‘Is everything all right, Sir?’ a few military officers who were outside in the hall went in, having heard the commotion.

  ‘Everything is under control, leave us alone,’ the commander ordered and felt impelled to first take a look at the sheets he had in front of his eyes. A few minutes later he was already talking with a different expression on the face.

  ‘You’re making accusations on the grounds of some extracts and bank accounts?’

  ‘It’s not just that, but apparently it’s all you’ve seen! Let’s put the financial scams you and Radeberg have pulled aside. Further on I’ve described the insurance payouts you received for the stolen weaponry owned by Konrad and they have been under your watch,’ he began hurling his accusations.

  ‘You don’t have enough evidence to put me in jail,’ the officer responded and got out of his chair, enraged.

  ‘Think again, I have enough to have you removed from office and to file a large-scale financial fraud suit against you.’

  ‘Hahaha,’ Müller burst out laughing. ‘What hatred, you couldn’t bear it that I threw you out of here like a dirty kitten last time, huh? You wanted to ruin me, but all you managed to do was sting me,’ the General kept laughing, but he was yet to face the situation he was in as it was.

  ‘Yes, that’s true, I stung your weak spot. These documents are going straight into the Prosecutor’s Office and if you’re pronounced guilty, a new suit will be filed against you aiming to remove you from your position. Once they find evidence for the financial scams you’re involved in and you get convicted, the two of you will be held liable for the stolen weapons–the ones whose insurance payout you got and if they prove you to have been working in tandem in relation to this, too, you’ll be sued for the death of those people in Belgrade. All 8,017 deaths. If they find you guilty on all three charges, you won’t see the light of day ever again as you‘ll be rotting in some regional prison,’ he explained to Müller in detail what sort of destiny he was about to face and stood up so he could look him in the eye. ‘Confess now and testify against Konrad. I know he’s pulling the strings and needs to be convicted; as for you I’ll try to get you a minimum sentence for all they convict you of.’

  ‘But how, I don’t understand?’ The color of his face changed from normal to paper white and he broke out in a cold sweat. He was gripped by fear that threatened to come out, fear that was unfamiliar to him–one that planted its roots in him the moment Konrad made his offer.

  ‘Confess,’ the investigator cried again, but Müller did not utter a word, the cat had gotten his tongue. He got worried and his blood pressure rised as the drops of sweat kept breaking out on his face. ‘Confess or you’ll be publically humiliated along with your family!’ Hans kept adding more fuel to the fire. The General panicked. He had no clue what to do, all he could hear were Leckerman’s bitter reproaches and that drove him out of his mind. He clutched his head and started acting up.

  ‘Shut up, darned pseudo-sleuth! Shut up! I said shut up!’ he started screaming in fury. He reached for the drawer of his desk and took out his service pistol. He pointed it at Hans’s face, ready to pull the trigger, and the investigator rose his hands up in the air.

  ‘Don’t do that. You want yet another thing to be sued for, ah?’ he sounded a bit scared, but he still had the courage to tell the truth to an armed man.

  ‘I’ve made a mistake or two, but I’d never do the things you’re accusing me of. I’ve got nothing to do with what happened in Belgrade,’ he explained in a hysterical voice, brandishing the loaded gun.

  ‘All right, just confess so we can get to the truth. Our conversation is being recorded on a device outside the base, so if something happens to me, the tape and a copy of these documents will arrive at NATO’s headquarters. Don’t shoot, you can still get yourself out of the mess you’ve made,’ he tried to make him calm down and at the same instant a few of his bodyguards rushed in.

  ‘Sir, don’t,’ one of the men piped up, his colleagues pulled their guns and pointed them at Müller once they saw where things were headed for their deranged boss; was the guard’s words or his fears that changed his mind remained unclear, but the General realized he had lost the game and that it was time to surrender. He slid into his chair feebly and slowly put the gun back into the drawer. He gripped the left side of his head–it had started pounding–and uttered the magic words the investigator longed to hear.

  ‘I want a lawyer,’ he mumbled and fell silent until it was time to talk to the prosecutor.

  The Officer admitted everything–the financial scams, the striking of disadvantageous deals related to the base and the mission; the purchase of equipment many times its original price and many other suchlike affairs. He did not forget to mention that only a limited number of people would have the right to buy a piece of land on Menoetius and that Helios was going to be the only company that would sell plots of land on the newly discovered planet. A plan that was kept hidden from society behind an iron curtain and was now taken out into the light of day to be canceled and destroyed. No more lies, everything that the General knew was now uncloaked. Hans kept his promise and made everything within his power to minimize Müller’s sentence. The base’s commander-in-chief was removed from office and tried for financial fraud and treason, Konrad in his turn was yet to be sued and sentenced to more than electrocution . . .

  On May 19 at nine in the evening Konrad received a call from an inside agent he had in NATO.

  ‘Mr. Radeberg, NATO has issued an arrest warrant for you. Charges have been pressed against you, they also have a witness on the case.’

  ‘What?’ the rich man cried in shock. ‘Who’s the witness and what have I been framed for?’ he tried playing the innocent card, as usual, but the truth was that this time the situation was grave and he was not prepared for that.

  ‘I still don’t know, I have no access to such information, it’s classified. If I hear something, I’ll call you again, that is in case my colleagues don’t get to you first,’ the informant said and hung up.

  ‘Bastards! It‘s full of traitors everywhere!’ he started cursing and damning the people who work for him–he had no idea who the witness could be. ‘Is it possible that Harry has survived and is now talking about the fraud?’ he asked himself aloud, pacing nervously around his enormous apartment. And while he was musing on what to do–run away or stay and take things for what they are, there was a knock on the door.

  ‘I know you’re in there, Radeberg, open up!’ said a familiar voice. ‘Open the door or we’ll break it down!’ The voice came louder and more insistent this time. Ben has come for me, just as he warned me, he thought and decided to accept the consequences, believing that his wealth will keep him out of jail. As he walked to the door he prayed he was charged only with the minor crimes. He opened the door and got completely
taken aback when instead of Ben he saw an old acquaintance accompanied by a few military officers. He got startled at the sight of the young man who worked for him a while ago and was now standing at his doorstep ready to arrest him.

  ‘What brings you here, dratted P-eye?’ haughty as usual, he said condescendingly to his ex-employee. The detective was, however, in no mood for insults or jokes. He decided to introduce himself first and to prepare the billionaire for the gravity of what he was facing.

  ‘My name is Hans Leckerman and I am an investigator with NATO Military Crimes Division. You’re under arrest for large-scale financial frauds and ethical misconduct. These two and a few other deeds were the initial charges. You have the right to an attorney and it better be a good one. Arrest him!’ The three military officers snapped the cuffs around his wrists.

  ‘Haha! Is that all? You know I’ll pay my way out anyway and I´ll be free in a few days. Radeberg grinned like a Cheshire cat in relief he was not a suspect in the Tehran massacre.

  ‘Oh, that’s just the beginning,’ Hans exclaimed. ‘If you’re found guilty, and you will be, you’ll also be charged with misappropriation of the insurance payouts of the stolen weapons as well as with taking away the lives of the people in the Belgrade plane crash. He repeated the same charges that were pressed against Müller and then the smile on his unscrupulous face froze.

  ‘Yes, I did take the payouts because I was truly robbed, but I have nothing to do with that,’ he hollered and went hysterical, even though his hands were cuffed behind his back, the officers were barely managing to hold him. The billionaire was not at fault for the crash, but he did not know if they were not going to mistakenly accuse him of that, too, because they still needed a scape goat.

  ‘Wait,’ Leckerman commanded before Radeberg was taken out of his apartment like a sack of potatoes. ’Look at my back and my ribs.’ He took off his T-shirt to show him the grazes and bruises which covered his arms and his entire body and made him look like he had been tortured.

  ‘What’s that? What does it have to do with me?’ Radeberg asked in amok.

  ‘That’s the pain I brought back with me from Tehran. I got lucky, but many others didn’t. The last memory of a mutual acquaintance of ours remained there. Does the name Ben Robinson ring a bell, a friend and a colleague of mine?’

  ‘Yes, what’s happened?’ he asked perplexed, not understanding what he was being told under all the pressure he was at that moment.

  ‘Nothing that would touch you. That man is no longer among the living. And I can smell your dirty fingers–they have been dipped into the cask with shit all the way up to Iran.‘ Furious, the detective pulled his T-shirt back on. Konrad was deeply shocked by what he had just heard. One of the few men he actually respected had departed the world and he was to blame for his death. What have I done, he thought, regretting his extreme actions, but it was too late for that and the only thing he could do was remain silent.

  ‘Get him out of my sight!’ Leckerman uttered through gritted teeth and the president of Helios was dragged down to the car that waited to take him to the court of law. But the law enforcement system was operating in slow motion and he was to be tried only for the scams; the rest of what Konrad had cooked up had neither beginning nor end. The responsibility for the Tehran massacre was thrown on the gangs running the ghettos. They were the most suitable culprit regardless of the facts and the events.

  Shortly after that the extremes in human thinking started popping up. One of them reached its peak. That were the bulwarks–looked at from cosmic distance they served to divide the cities into regions, or more precisely, into classes. Now the poor were completely isolated, like herds locked up in cages without food or medications. More solid than ever and reinforced by the military, after the bloody attack, the walls were everywhere. That was going to unleash the last wave of the human desire for freedom . . .

  The men in Al Nadir waited for the right time to take action. At the same time the three revolutionaries along with Harry made their lists of people who they wished to save. Family, friends and relatives formed part of all three lists. Under Omar’s orders the Croatian had booked the most seats. But in fact they were not meant for his closest ones and acquaintances, but for other people. Eight thousand soldiers and commanders, personally selected from Mirkovich were going to be assigned to the gigantic flying machines to keep us safe. In exchange they could take their families along.

  The other one who had gathered a large number was the Balkan. The German 138 infantry division was one of the most elite military units in Europe and Milev knew that since he was a personal acquaintance with each one of them. They numbered a thousand men and they were part of the force that was going to change Menoetius. The rest of the seats General Saadi was going to allocate randomly. To that end he put together a team that was to sift through the lucky few picked from all over the world who were to be shipped to Moneuteus. The men who were tasked with the selection had a clear idea of the size of the spacecraft as well as of the cargo that was going to be transported. The first interplanetary passage on a mass scale was not aiming at a small migration. On the contrary. The number of seats was limited due to the technologies that were going to build up the New World. Excavators, cranes, robots, heavy metallurgy machines and even a small refinery. They were all to be uploaded into the steel mountains. That and the spacecraft’s staff made up half of the room on the ships. But despite the tools for human progress, there was still space for us. The ship could hold about two hundred thousand people apart from the engineers and the crew. But that was an insignificant number compared to the billions who needed that exodus, yet there was no room for them, at least not that time. The odds were stacked in the favor of the first ones to go, but if people, on a global-scale, showed the physical and the mental strength to endure it all a little longer their turn would have come, too. Passengers who served the public like medical doctors, reporters, bankers, administrators, firemen, salespeople and so on were so chosen as to form a new middle class. Thus, they could populate the planet if they had to, make the first steps to refresh the population with newborns. It sounded like we, humans, were a bacterium whose only purpose was to survive and spread inside a new host. Rude is it might sound, there was barely any difference . . .

  Everything was well thought-out and the plan was kept under wraps by those who organized it and by the ones who received a second chance. Over the last two days short messages were sent to the selected ones, indicating the coordinates of the locations at which they were going to be picked up. They were kept a secret until the last moment of their official announcement. I wondered how many would turn up at the meeting, it was all entirely up to them, but were they going to decipher the message correctly? The riddle was not really hard to solve, but it took courage and determination to go alone and prove you were worthy to fly off.

  Chapter Five

  All or Nothing

  On May 21 year 2121, four days after the launch of Iris 1, occurred something with no analogue whatsoever. An event that marked a turning point in the development of human society on a global scale. The suffering and the isolation which more than 80 per cent of the population was experiencing as well as the additional tension were about to took their toll . . .

  Early in the morning Omar arrived at the base worried and thoughtful. Something was disrupting his peace of mind. Instead of going to work, he had his secretary cancel all his engagements for the day so he could go check on his subordinates. Shortly after he crossed the entrance of his base he found the person he actually went to see.

  ‘Phillip, I want you to make a few drills here on site and see how the freelancers are doing. A bit of shooting, a bit of tactics and attacking, nothing else, just stir up some movement around here,’ the officer instructed.

  ‘I’ll do my best, but organizing all this will take quite some time. A day maybe, we have a lot of people as you know.’

  ‘Do what you can, but in the meantime I want you to be ready for ac
tion!’ the General kept on demanding his employees to be on a war footing.

  ‘Roger that, Sir!’ the mercenary saluted and both man set out to run errands.

  At the same time Harry and Alice were sleeping, they had not been assigned any tasks; Milev, on the other hand, was one of the early birds in the base. Omar looked for him in the headquarters where the offices were housed, but he was not there. After ten minutes of searching he managed to find him. The Bulgarian was at the control room with the screens which monitored the base and the other locations under their surveillance. Saadi walked in and his eyes fell on the Bulgarian who was vividly following something.

  ‘What are you watching that early in the morning?’ the Iranian asked.

  ‘A live broadcast from Berlin’s Supreme Court. The trial of our “friend” Konrad Radeberg is on,’ Milev chuckled. He was happy that the person who nearly had him killed was finally going to get what he deserved.

  ‘What are they suing him for? I know only about the large-scale fraud charges,’ the officer said.

  ‘Oh, many things–frauds, treason, insurance money laundry and others, I didn’t remember them all, but I’m sure there’s much more the prosecutors don’t even know about. I think he’s a big criminal fish who needs to get a sentence,’ Dimitar responded.

  ‘You know what, I’m feeling anxious. I believe I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately and I’m starting to have blood pressure issues. We’re flying off in a few days’ time and I don’t even know how much longer I should wait for a sign or an event to adumbrate our path, that’s why I’m thinking of setting the takeoff for three days from now. Your thoughts on it?’