Devlin Sub Rosa: Book Three of the Devlin Quatrology

by Jake Devlin

  “No need for the translation, Amber; I can read Russian.”

  “Ah, right. Well, it's coming with it.”

  “I can use that, Amber.”

  “Right, Jake.”

  “Okay; good.

  “Next – and I have to say I'm super skeptical about this – we're gonna take a field trip to one of our research facilities to see – again, I'm skeptical – to see what some of our scientists claim is a device that can – now, don't laugh, please – that they claim can send objects back in time.”

  “What?”

  “I know, Gordy; I'm having trouble believing it myself.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I know, Pam. But Amber has the data and” –

  “And I was on the phone with one of 'em when an object appeared out of thin air, watched it on a video later. It sure looked real.”

  “In any event, we've got a flight set up for tomorrow morning, and they promise to give us a demonstration.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “The flight's at nine, so no need to get up early.”

  “Good; I'm still a little jetlagged.”

  “You should be fine, Gordy.”

  “Right.”

  “But now let's take a break and get back here in an hour and deal with the four big issues that we're facing: Putin, that spinoff from from Al Qaeda – it's called Khorasan – ISIS and the New World Order conspirators.”

  “And Gaza and Israel, Jake.”

  “Ah, right; thanks, Amber. So five big issues.”

  - 124 -

  September 3, 2014

  9:17 a.m. local time

  Bonita Beach, Florida

  “Another beautiful day, isn't it? Ma'am? Ma'am?”

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “See anybody else out here?”

  “Do I know you?”

  “You've seen me around the beach, haven't you?”

  “Should I have?”

  “Your name is Rosemary, right?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “It is, isn't it?”

  “Why is that important to you?”

  “I like to know the names of people I'm talking with.”

  “What makes you think I want to talk with you?”

  “Don't you wanna be sociable?”

  “What makes you think I would?”

  “Look, lady, I was just trying to make conversation and you happened to be close.”

  “Proximity does not equal permission.”

  “What?”

  “Just because I'm nearby does not mean I want to talk with you.”

  “Okay, okay. I'm gone. Have a nice day.”

  “Whew.

  “Hi, Janet.”

  “Hey, Rosemary. Was that that Gaetano guy out there with you?”

  “Yeah. Saw him coming and shut him down before he could get going.”

  “Good for you. Where's Gordy? Haven't seen him in a couple days.”

  “He's meeting with an editor up in New York.”

  “How's it going?”

  “I don't know. Haven't talked with him.”

  “Really? Not at all?”

  “Nope. I'd guess he's tied up in meetings.”

  “Hope it's going well.”

  “Yeah; me too. Where's Norm?”

  “He's bringing the drill and umbrella down. Shouldn't be more'n a minute.”

  “How's he doing? His knees okay?”

  “Nah, he's still deciding whether to have 'em replaced.”

  “Still? Gee, he's been thinking about that for – what – two years now?”

  “Three, at least.”

  “What's the problem?”

  “He's talked to a few people who had bad problems after surgery, and he's scared.”

  “Really? Everybody I know who's had 'em done has never had a problem, all went well.”

  “Oh, you can't convince him.”

  “Oh, well – oh, excuse me; it's Gordy. Sorry.”

  “No problem. There's Norm now. I'll go help” --

  “Hi, Gordy. Fine. On the beach, with Janet. Hey, Janet, Gordy says hi.”

  “Hi, Gordy.”

  “Did ya hear that? Kewl. So how's it going up there? Really? Oh, kewl. Oh, dear. How much longer? Darn. So when will – Saturday? Want me to pick – oh, right. Well, coming over for dinner? Great. Love you, too. See ya then.

  “Hi, Norm.”

  - 125 -

  September 3, 2014

  4:44 p.m. local time

  Aboard “Dilemma,” off St. Tropez, France

  “Geez, Jake, this is even nicer than “Defiance.”

  “Thanks, Gordy. But it's two meters shorter.”

  “When did we get it?”

  “Couple months ago. I had Amber check it out and make the buy while I was in rehab.”

  “And 'Defiance'?”

  “Out on a six-month charter, then fully booked through 2017.”

  “But we still own it?”

  “Oh, yeah; never gonna let 'er go. She's been through a lot with me.”

  “Who's been through a lot with you?”

  “Oh, hi, Pam, Amber. 'Defiance.'”

  “What?”

  “'Defiance' has been through a lot with me.”

  “Ah. Right; okay.”

  “And you have, too.”

  “Y'got that right.”

  “Okay. Everybody rested and digested? Ready to dig into the big stuff?”

  “Yup.”

  “Yes.”

  “All set.”

  “Okay; good. Let's start with Putin and the Ukraine.

  “What do we have on him, Amber?”

  “Well” –

  “We've got him bugged?”

  “Of course, Gordy; we've had that office bugged since '81, and his dachas, too, ever since we identified him as an up-and-comer in '83.

  “Go ahead, Amber.”

  “Well, he's got his eyes on much more than the Ukraine, and he's a much better chess player than the guy in the White House, and he's patient. He's wanting to rebuild the old Soviet Union as the Russian Federation, control all the resources he possibly can.”

  “Same motivation as the New World Order clowns.”

  “Right, Jake.

  “Once he splits off and controls Eastern Ukraine, his next targets are Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, all under the guise of protecting ethnic Russians, then Poland. And he's using Europe's dependence on his oil and natural gas for leverage, and we're pretty sure he'll threaten to confiscate assets of Western companies. He'll make his move by January at the latest. And then he'll go south again, to the Stans and Romania, always with the excuse of protecting ethnic Russians. Finally – and our linguists thought this had to be a joke – he wants to invade Brighton Beach.”

  “Brighton Beach in New York City?”

  “Right, Pam; lotsa ethnic Russians there.”

  “He has a sense of humor?”

  “In private, Gordy, but it's very dry, and never self-defecating.”

  “Don't you mean self-deprecating?”

  “Isn't that what I said?”

  “No, you said – uh – oh, never mind.”

  “You were right, Jake; he fell for it.”

  “Sorry, Gordy; she loves that joke.”

  “Ah.”

  “Go ahead, Amber.”

  “Okay. It's not well known, but he has two daughters – he keeps them under wraps, even though they're 27 and 29 – and he and his wife got divorced in March or April. She once called him a vampire, but he's just a classic psychopath, according to Doc Logan. But here's the kicker.

  “He's got a thing for little boys, and he's one of the biggest child traffickers in the whole world. Don't look so shocked, Gordy; we've got video.”

  “Woah.”

  “Yeah. In all those photos of him with his shirt off, ever seen him with a woman?”

  “I don't think – no, I don't think so.”

  “There ya go. He thinks of himself as
a man's man, brutal, all male, testerone-filled and has a mother complex under it all. He and his mom never really got along. So he suffers from delusions of adequacy, but he is extraordinarily clever.”

  “Well, you didn't get far in the KGB if you weren't.”

  “True, Jake, true.”

  “He's outplaying Obama with every move he makes. That kid is in way over his head, and his dithering makes it all much easier for Putin.

  “And Putin's extremely well-protected. We've got contracts from eight different clients to take him out, but none of our teams has been able to get anywhere near him.

  “One good thing about him, he's a pain in the ass to the New World Orderists, as ISIS is. But he's still a top priority for us.

  “As for Gaza and Israel, we've done a few jobs for Israel in Gaza, and we've got contracts for eight or ten more this month alone, and more in the pipeline. They've also given us a list of targets in Iran, mainly their nuclear scientists, and we're expanding into sabotage of those facilities.

  “Now, Amber, what do we have on ISIS, and that Khorasan bunch?”

  - 126 -

  September 3, 2014

  11:51 p.m. local time

  Undisclosed location

  “Ease up, Doc. They'll be looking at the gizmo, not doing a white-glove inspection.”

  “But zis is ze man who is giving us ze money, ze funding, und I cannot haf him sinking zat ve are – vat is ze wort? – schlackers?”

  “We are not slackers, Doc. You and Greg and I have been doing everything we can to move the project forward.”

  “She's right, Dr. F. When they get here, they'll” –

  “Zey? Vat is zis zey? Zere is more zan vun coming?”

  “Yeah, Doc; I think there are four.”

  “Vier peoples? Gott im Himmel! Vier? Four?”

  “Yeah, Doc; four.”

  “Mein Gott. Ve need more chairs!”

  “Hey, Dr. F, we're fine. We've got more than enough chairs.”

  “Yeah, Doc. Ease up. Really. You're gonna give yourself a heart attack. It's fine. We're ready.”

  “But zey vill be here tomorrow und zis lab is filsy.”

  “No, no, no, Doc; it's fine.”

  “Ach, you Americans! You do not underschtand. Vat is ze idiot? Cleanliness is” –

  “Idiom, Dr. F, idiom, not idiot.”

  “Ach, idiom? Veerklick?”

  “Veerklick?”

  “Sorry. Really?”

  “Yeah, really; idiom.”

  “Ja, ja, okay. Idiom, idiom. Okay.”

  “And the idiom you were going for is 'Cleanliness is next to godliness,' right?”

  “Ja, ja.”

  “Well, both of them are next to impossible. So please, please relax.”

  “But” –

  “Doc, put the damned sponge down, now! And back away from the counter, slowly.”

  “But” –

  “I said now!”

  “Okay, okay. Vat is wrong vis you, Julie?”

  “Nothing, Doc. I'm just fed up with all your nitpicking.”

  “My vat?”

  “Nitpicking. Picky, picky, picky.”

  “Vait. Vat is a nit?”

  “No, no, no, Dr. F. It's another idiom. It means obsessive.”

  “Obschessive? You sink I am obschessive?”

  “Doc, you are the most obsessive person I have ever met, and I've dealt with a huge number of scientists. You take the cake.”

  “Take ze cake?”

  “Idiom, Dr. F, idiom.”

  “You too, Greg? You are calling me an idiom?”

  “No, no, no, Doc. 'Take the cake' is an idiom.”

  “Ach, idiom. I sink I” –

  “It means the same as 'most,' okay?”

  “Take ze cake,' most. 'Take ze cake.' But you are schtill sinking I am obschessive?”

  “Yeah, Doc, I am. No, no, no, do not go near that sponge!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “And go to bed. Do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars. Directly to bed. Now!”

  “Vat is zis 'Go'? I don't” –

  “Now, Doc, now!”

  “But” –

  “NOW!”

  “Okay, okay, I am going, I am going. Scheiss.”

  “Christ, Greg, he is such a pain in the ass.”

  “I know, Julie, I know he's eccentric.”

  “Eccentric? He's way beyond eccentric.”

  “But he's the guy with the ideas.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Still a royal pain in the ass.”

  “Yeah. But he's our pain in the ass.”

  “Ah, screw it. I'm going to bed. It's almost midnight.”

  “I'm with you.”

  “Hey, what do you want now?”

  “I just vant to put zat sponge in ze sink.”

  “Go back to your goddamned bed, Doc! I'll get it.”

  “Ach, okay, okay. Good night.”

  “G'night, Dr. F.”

  “Screw it; I'm leaving that sponge right where it is. C'mon, Greg. I need a good fuck.”

  “Right behind you, love.”

  “No, not that way. Me on top.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  - 127 -

  September 3, 2014

  1:56 p.m. local time

  Aboard “Dilemma,” off St. Tropez, France

  “It's a lot trickier to dig stuff up on ISIS, especially on the top leaders, even though there's a lot of stuff they put out in public, like those videos of the beheadings they posted.”

  “Like the one of that second American journalist they put out yesterday.”

  “Right, Pam. And they're holding a lot of other hostages, British, Turkish, French and German, in addition to many more Americans and more from other countries. So I think we can expect more beheadings and executions in the near future.

  “Like Putin, their leaders want to re-establish an old empire, the Persian Empire, as a caliphate, and again, the underlying reason is to control as many resources, including people, as possible.

  “But unlike Putin, they're using religion to motivate and control the population.”

  “And they use the First Commandment to build a fanatic intolerance for any other religion.”

  “Right, Jake. Convert, pay a tax or die.”

  “Sorta like Constantine did back at the Council of Nicea. Or the Catholic Church in the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “Yeah; that attitude is not solely Islamic. It's a basic part of any psychopath or sociopath's nature.

  “But when ISIS – or ISIL or IS; I'm not sure what they're calling themselves now – wants to impose their version of sharia law on the entire world, that goes way beyond psychopathic or sociopathic.”

  “Nothing more dangerous than religious fanaticism.”

  “So true, Jake. And their followers are actually looking forward to dying for their faith. 72 virgins awaiting them in paradise.”

  “Actually, that's a typo in the Koran.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. What they really find is one 72-year-old Catholic nun, and she's really pissed.”

  “Oh, Jake.”

  “Oh, Pam.”

  “Geez, Jake. Where did you come up with that?”

  “Don't know, Gordy; it just sorta popped up.”

  “Maybe God is speaking to you.”

  “Oh, Pam, I don't” –

  “Just pulling your leg.”

  “Good one.”

  “Okay, everybody, back on focus.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Sorry, Amber. Go ahead.”

  “Thank you, Jake.

  “What's tricky is that we don't have many of our security and surveillance systems in their leaders' homes and offices, mainly because they don't stay in the same place for very long.

  “We got lucky with one mission. The Mimosa twins took out seven upper-level people in Raqqa, after spending a month tracking them as they moved through northern Iraq and eastern Syria last month.”


  “They also took out eight guards at the complex in Raqqa and eight or nine low-level ISIS soldiers in their exfil back to Turkey.”

  “Right, Jake; great work.

  “What we have been able to do, because we do have our security and surveillance systems in the homes and offices of people in Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait and other countries over there who support ISIS with money, is intercept and divert their funds before they get to ISIS.”

  “Four billion, you told me.”

  “A little over that now, Jake. And we're working to totally destroy their backers financially. We've only bankrupted two of 'em so far, and that's where most of that four billion came from, but we're going after all of 'em, anywhere we can find 'em.”

  “Where were the two you got?”

  “One in Saudi, one in Dubai, both members of the Saudi royal family.”

  “The extended family, you mean.”

  “Right, Jake. There are thousands of 'em all around the world, many in the US and the UK, France, Spain, all over. So whenever we can track the money ISIS gets back to any of 'em, we paint a target on their assets.”

  “Not on their lives?”

  “No, Gordy; we're not planning to assassinate them – well, not many of them. The problem with that is that we then create martyrs that the imams can use to fire up the believers, at least when we take out high-visibility, outspoken religious leaders. We have taken out a few of the more obscure guys, and in all but one case, we managed to make it look accidental or from natural causes.”

  “What happened in the other one?”

  “The guy surprised the KSK triplets when they were adding some 653 to his whiskey decanter, pulled a scimitar off his wall and went after them. So Stacy shot him. It was a mess. They got out okay, but it wasn't supposed to happen that way; it was supposed to look like a stroke.”

  “Whiskey decanter? Another one of those hypocritical Muslims?”

  “Yup, Pam. Lots of 'em out there. And we've got audio and video on hundreds of 'em.”

  “Sexual perversions?”

  “Of course. And tons of other stuff: corrupt business deals, bribing politicians, laughing at the ignorance and stupidity of the believers, plotting blackmail, extortion, drug-running, kidnappings, murders, torture, assassinations, everything you can think of.”