by Don Hoesel
Looking across the table at her, in uniform but still sporting the sling, he saw that she looked as tired as he felt. He took another sip of the bitter brew.
In one sense, the room’s atmosphere reminded Brent of the coauthoring sessions he’d undertaken back when he was trying to get his name out there, collaborating on a book with a well-known name and scholar in order to enhance his own career. He’d work until he couldn’t mumble a coherent word, then collapse for a few hours before rising to do it all over again. In this case, though, the room also contained a somber air—the specter of their fallen friend.
“What I don’t understand,” Rawlings said, “is how people can let themselves be led around by the nose.”
Although Brent had given Richards an overview of his new theory—that some entity was nudging the world into panic for the purpose of profiteering from it—they’d done little groundwork. Most of the energy spent in this building over the last few days had gone into investigating the murder of Anton Petros. The professor understood the need to do right by the man, but the part of him that saw the big picture knew that their time should be focused on the broader investigation.
“What I mean is, why do people take everything they see on TV as gospel? Some newsperson says something and everyone just eats it up.” Rawlings paused as if considering his own words, then shook his head and said, “And it’s not just television. I can’t believe the number of people who read something on an Internet message board and buy into it without any critical thought.”
Brent kept a sardonic chuckle to himself. “People have a need to think that something bigger than themselves is going on.” When Rawlings answered with a puzzled look, Brent added, “For most of human history, people had gods to believe in. It gave them the assurance that something existed that transcended their own small, pathetic experience. Since World War II, though, God’s slowly been taking a backseat, and that’s leaving people scrambling for something else to latch on to.”
“What does God have to do with World War II?” Maddy asked.
“Nothing.” Then he paused and said, “Or maybe everything. Who really knows? What I’m trying to say is that World War II saw the juxtaposition of two events that have shaped the American collective consciousness. The first was the move toward secularism—humanism, scientific inquiry, that sort of thing. The second . . . well, that is tied to the war.”
Brent enjoyed an audience, which was why he’d ended up teaching. As he looked around the table now, he saw some of the same interested expressions he could pick out among his students back at the university.
“The bomb,” he said.
“What? You mean nukes?” Snyder asked.
“The Manhattan Project,” Brent said. “If you look back through the history of the presidency, you can argue that the Manhattan Project was the event that solidified the federal secrecy concept.” At registering the non-grasping faces around the table, he said, “I’m sure most of you are aware that the project was such a secret that not even the vice-president knew about it, right? In fact, the level of infrastructure that had to be created to keep it all quiet was a pretty big accomplishment, logistically speaking.”
“Right,” Rawlings said. “But what does that have to do with the gullibility of the American public?”
“Everything,” Brent said. “Think about it. For more than a hundred and fifty years people went about their lives assured—probably naïvely—that the government was acting in their best interests. At the same time, they had the secondary assurance that even if the government took a misstep, they could count on providential design. Then all of a sudden you get something like the bomb, along with professors and scientists telling you that God is dead, and you’re left wondering if everything you’ve ever been told is a lie.”
He saw a few lights go on.
“I guess that would be a scary place to be if you’re not used to it,” Maddy mused.
“Is it any wonder people see conspiracies everywhere?” Brent asked. “Or that some people can buy into just about anything someone says?”
Maddy frowned at that.
“I would think it would be just the opposite,” she said. “Wouldn’t never knowing who was telling you the truth force you to think critically?”
Brent was smiling and shaking his head before she’d finished the question. “Most people don’t want to do the heavy lifting. They just want something to believe in.”
In the silence that followed, Rawlings jumped to the logical conclusion.
“So this polarizing event you mentioned—that has to be something like a terrorist attack, right?”
Brent understood the underpinnings for that line of reasoning. As a military man, Rawlings was wired to think that way. And in truth, something like 9/11 made the most sense to him too.
He’d discussed it with the colonel that morning, before the rest of the team arrived. And the big problem with the idea was that, according to the colonel, there was no chatter on any of the terrorist networks that would indicate an imminent attack. Brent shared that with Rawlings now.
The man frowned. “A domestic act wouldn’t show up on the terrorist hotline.”
Brent didn’t know enough about how those hotlines worked to form an opinion, so he took Rawlings’s statement as the truth. Still, he didn’t think another Timothy McVeigh lurked out there, waiting for a signal to unleash hell. For one thing, by his understanding, no domestic group had ever shown the ability to conduct operations overseas to the extent necessary to account for the number of events in the data set. Americans had a leg up in a lot of things, but seeding terrorist cells throughout the world was not one of them.
“Look, I don’t think the methodology the government uses to locate prospective terrorists before they strike will work here,” he said. “You have to think differently. Think like some rich guy who wants to make an anonymous statement on December twenty-first.”
“It would help if we knew who the rich guy was,” Maddy said. “Or rich person, so as not to be sexist.”
“We’ve already been down that road,” Brent said. “You’re the one who said that investigating stock rolls was time-consuming. And we don’t have a whole lot of time.”
Maddy didn’t answer. On the flight back from Afghanistan they’d discussed how to develop a short list of candidates, and Maddy had suggested a canvassing of the stock market to find any individuals or entities who had experienced unusual growth. She quickly dismissed the thought, though, as she considered the logistics of such a thing in the eight days that remained.
Brent, who wanted to err on the side of caution, said, “That doesn’t eliminate the need to find some way to develop a list of rich men—or women—who have the wherewithal and general meanness to ravage the world for profit.”
“Meanness casts a wide net,” Maddy said. “But throw tremendous wealth in there and we should have a short list.”
“So let me see if I have this, Dr. Michaels,” Colonel Richards said. “We have eight days to not only find out who is responsible for manipulating puzzle pieces all around the world to produce a profit, but also to uncover some pending event that will cause massive destruction and probable deaths if it’s allowed to happen. Does that about sum it up?”
Were this his first experience with the man, Brent would have withered beneath the sternness of both the colonel’s words and eyes. However, ten days spent in his orbit had given the professor a better understanding of the man, enough so he could locate the slight trace of humor in the man’s words.
“That’s it in a nutshell,” Brent agreed.
The colonel harrumphed and offered a headshake. Then he sent his eyes over the rest of his team, as well as the civilian who had been brought on for a short consult but who it seemed had fused, at least temporarily, into the group.
“Maddy, I need you to work Homeland Security and get them to leverage the SEC. They can go through the stock records a lot quicker than we can. And tell the HS guys we want Level 4 securit
y on this.”
Maddy nodded and the colonel moved on.
“Snyder, did that explosives report come in yet?”
“Yes, sir. The chemical signature of the PTEN traces back to a production facility in Vancouver.” He riffled through some pages on the table in front of him, finding one with a section circled with a highlighter. “They had a shipment go missing three months ago. They suspected the driver was in on it but couldn’t prove anything, so they canned the guy.”
“Did the shipment cross the border?”
Snyder nodded.
The colonel pursed his lips a moment and then said, “Ask Homeland Security to put some pressure on the driver. See if he can give us a name.”
Brent could almost feel the man’s distaste for having to ask for assistance from Homeland Security, but even Brent understood that the military’s ability to conduct investigations on civilians was minimal. Only HS had the clearances and the reach to push Richards’s agenda.
“The rest of you,” Richards said. “I want you to turn over every stone you can think of and find this polarizing event. If it’s going to happen in eight days, I refuse to believe that we can’t find it. You can’t hide something that big.”
After a last look around the table, Colonel Richards dismissed everyone and then stood and left the room.
December 15, 2012, 9:14 A.M.
As Dabir navigated the busy sidewalks of downtown Atlanta, he did his best to keep from succumbing to the urge to consider the sights and sounds through the eyes of a tourist. Unlike most of his countrymen, he had the benefit of having traveled a great deal, including his schooling in London, but even he was not immune to the sheer size of the city, the diversity of its people, the loudness of it all. In many ways it was like one of the many bazaars in his part of the world, except on a much grander scale. The chief benefit was that a place this size granted him the anonymity he needed.
Indeed, it was not just the size of the city that lent him that veil. He’d found that as he strode the sidewalks, people there didn’t bother to look at him, even if he passed close by. Feeling like something of a ghost, he stopped and hailed a cab.
One of the truths of any major city was that within it one could find a pocket of virtually any people group. It hadn’t taken him long to find his people, or to solicit the name of someone who could facilitate a business transaction.
Exiting the cab two blocks away from his destination offered him the opportunity to familiarize himself with this part of town, as well as avoid revealing the destination to anyone checking records for the taxicab company. While the Eritrean community in this southern metropolis paled in comparison to those in other large American cities, it gratified him to see how they had claimed a portion of the city for themselves, preserving culture and community amid a sea of influences.
The business he sought was nondescript, occupying the corner of a two-story building that ran the length of the block. When Dabir had received its name, he checked it against the Yellow Pages at the front desk of his hotel, but did not find it listed. He suspected that was because no one searching for a pawnshop would come to this neighborhood unless they lived there. And anyone who lived there would know of the pawnshop.
Before entering he took a few additional steps to glance down the cross street, only to find it an alley that met a crumbling concrete wall some fifty feet away. A battered green dumpster sat flush against the wall of the building, and Dabir saw a trio of men huddled in the far corner, where the concrete wall and the next building met.
Finally he entered the shop. There was only one other customer, a man combing through a bin of used DVDs. Looking past him, Dabir saw the proprietor. He was in Western dress, and except for the clothes could have been lifted from any street in Dabir’s more familiar world.
Dabir went to the counter and addressed the man in their common language.
“Honored sir, I come on the word of Mahmud, who says you are able to supply that which others cannot.”
The shopkeeper didn’t respond but instead called out to the other customer and ordered him to leave at once. Without a word of complaint the man hurried away, exiting out the front door. It was only after the door had swung shut behind him that the shopkeeper returned his attention to Dabir.
“And you would have?”
“A Taurus 627,” Dabir said with no hesitation.
The shopkeeper ran a clinical eye over Dabir, who was dressed in a new pair of jeans and a plain white shirt. “Eight hundred,” he said.
Dabir’s eyes narrowed at the markup for a weapon that, had he the necessary paper work, he could purchase for $450. But had he the necessary paper work, he would not be reliant on this man.
“Done,” Dabir said, and the man on the other side of the counter showed only mild surprise. “I trust you have it in stock.”
The shopkeeper returned a slow nod but did not move from his spot. He would not produce the gun until his customer handed over the agreed-upon sum.
But rather than reach for his wallet, which courtesy of Standish/Canfield, contained more than enough to meet the man’s terms, Dabir placed his hands on the countertop and leaned in closer.
“There is something else,” he said. “I require a CheyTac M100.”
At this request the shopkeeper took a step back. He studied the man in front of him and then shook his head. “I have nothing of that quality here.”
“Then you will have one sent,” Dabir said, his tone firm.
At some point during the exchange, the power had shifted from shopkeeper to customer.
After a long pause, the man nodded and said, “I can have one in three days.”
Dabir considered that, wondering if he could wait that long. “I would prefer two,” he said with something close to a smile.
“I will do my best, but I am dependent upon my suppliers for such an order.”
Dabir nodded and then asked him the price, knowing the man would weigh his desire for profit against his instincts for self-preservation, and in doing so advance a figure that would benefit them both.
“I can have one here for seven thousand dollars,” he said.
Dabir thought he could accomplish the feat for five thousand, but he did not say as much. The man deserved to profit from his work. Dabir would not hold that against him. He fished his wallet from his pants and paid for the gun he would take with him, leaving a deposit for the other.
—
In Albert’s opinion, the fact that he hadn’t worked on the Charger in almost forty-eight hours was his wife’s fault. Had she not badgered him into making some phone calls, he might have remained blissfully ignorant of the things that now bothered him about the Antarctica job.
Albert had a penchant for dismissing from his mind anything with the potential to disturb his otherwise tranquil lifestyle. A jury summons? Lost beneath the mountain of mail on the kitchen table. A planned dinner with the couple down the street, whom his wife was keen on striking up a friendship with? Forgotten in favor of a trip to the hardware store. The fact that he hadn’t yet received a workman’s comp check? Barely worth noticing.
The problem was that the more calls he made, the more this thing took on too solid of a shape to dismiss in favor of the Charger. For Albert’s concern wasn’t only about the whereabouts of Ben Robinski but the issue of his missing checks. Now that his wife had forced him to give the matter his attention, he couldn’t just forget it. Instead, it would nag at him relentlessly—that is, until he got to the bottom of things.
The big issue was that, while Sheffield Petroleum was a monstrous corporation with holdings all over the world, with drilling operations in nearly every geographical area where it was possible to set up a drill, the people he’d spoken with insisted there was no crew in Antarctica, nor had there been in quite some time. To make matters worse, it seemed no one had ever heard of Miles Standish, the man who’d recruited Albert. It was the sort of wall that Albert didn’t know how to climb. He’d expected a runaround on h
is compensation checks. That was only natural. But to have the company refuse to even acknowledge he’d worked for them? That was an entirely different matter, and a puzzling one at that.
The impasse forced him to do something he rarely did: he cleared enough of the junk away from the computer to reach the power button, and as the machine booted up he repeated the process until he had unimpeded access to the keyboard. It took almost five minutes before the ancient machine reached a state where he could access the Internet. Then he spent the next half hour searching for information about the company, specifically an employee directory. Soon he came across an interactive map that listed all their active drill sites. Albert noticed Antarctica didn’t have any blinking red dots on it. What he couldn’t find was a company directory. After thinking for a moment he returned to the search engine and entered the name Miles Standish. He was elated when the computer came back with several references to the mysterious Mr. Standish.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said.
It took him only a short time to realize that the Miles Standish the computer had located for him could not possibly be his man, seeing as this one had died in 1656. And that he had something to do with the pilgrims.
With a sigh Albert pushed away from the computer.
Up to now he’d given little thought to the Antarctica job—a job that, for him, was cut short as he was forced to evacuate for medical reasons. On some level he’d understood that the whole thing was a bit off, even if the mechanics of it were simple: drill a shaft, drop a charge. He just hadn’t given much thought as to why Sheffield Petroleum needed a few hundred miles’ worth of shafts, as well as enough explosives to sink the continent. Consequently, once the chopper pulled him off the ice, he’d rid himself of such questions.
In retrospect he wondered if the reason none of the Sheffield people seemed to know about the Antarctica job was because it had been a secret one, not on the list of official projects. That would explain a lot.