Chapter 15
National Secure Archive Facility
Julia knocked back caffeine stimulant. She had accessed the archive and searched for Doctor Campbell. Thousands of hits appeared and she trawled through the story. There were many aspects that were unfamiliar to Julia. She sensed that, though they were not kept secret, they were not widely advertised.
Doctor Campbell's early life was fairly obscure. He excelled at a nondescript school and went on to study at university. He was not a medical doctor but a obtained a doctorate degree in physics – specialising in nuclear physics – by the age of twenty-four.
Julia was intrigued to read about Doctor Campbell’s family. He had two children: a daughter named Kate and a son, James – Omar's father. He raised his family in Mozambique and there he was the director of an orphanage after the end of the civil war in 1992. Apparently, he helped hundreds – if not thousands – of children through his work. He established an educational program that soon began to produce the top performers in Mozambique. Graduates from his orphanage began winning scholarships to Harvard, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge and rubbing shoulders with the privileged elite, the wealthy and political class – rubbing shoulders socially but trouncing them in the exam room. Julia was fascinated. She was beginning to catch a glimpse of who Doctor Campbell was – his humanity. None of this was in the folklore-version told to children and precious little was added during formal schooling in the Ark.
Julia delved deeper into the archived material about Doctor Campbell. She read conflicting reports that he had another son called Armando. He was either Doctor Campbell's son or had married his daughter Kate. Different links that she followed suggested different answers. She searched for a picture of Armando Campbell. She found one. There was no way he was Doctor Campbell's son. The picture of Armando showed a young Negro African; Julia was certain Doctor Campbell was white. Perhaps he was married to the daughter? She came across a video clip that featured an interview with Armando. On an urge she let it play. It had aired prime time across America. The host was a comedian – apparently. He was interviewing a pop diva with a bizarre array of make-up and a costume that was utterly weird. There was some movie star – a man – and Armando Campbell. They were all sitting on a couch. The diva sprawled and was so animated in her gestures it seemed she expanded to fill the camera. The movie star slouched. Armando sat politely with excellent posture. He was dressed in a shirt and tie. There was a schoolboy quality to him; he may have been late teens or early twenties. He was being interviewed on account of winning the US open chess championship. Julia watched as he answered questions about his time in America and how he felt about winning the competition. A lot was made of his young age. There was the barest mention of Mozambique. The interview moved between the guests and the host skilfully managed the witty conversation and supplied a fine barrage of testy remarks to flatter and pique. There was not too much of anything serious and the latest tour and film got a plug. The diva grabbed camera time with an extravagant rant about gossip in the papers concerning her parents. It all stemmed from an insidious question from the host.
“There's been a lot of speculation in the gutter press about your parents trying to cash in on your fame. We don't allow groundless insinuations on this program – we like to get that sort of information straight from the horse's mouth. How are things back home? What do you talk around the dinner table?”
“Oh God!” the diva bemoaned. “I knew this would come up. Yes, the paparazzi have been hounding my parents, camping outside their home. My mom and dad haven't handled that very well.”
“And meal times? How is that mother-daughter thing?” The diva swallowed. A momentary look of confusion passed over her face then she filled with determination.
“The truth is that I haven't sat down at a table to eat with mom or dad since I was fourteen. I pretty much locked myself away in my room. It got to the point where I couldn't stand their endless rules and pontificating about how to live my life. What is it about parents? It's their DNA, their house, their rules and then they complain about how you turn out. I mean where's the justice in that? These days I simply refuse to talk to my dad and I exchange four letter words with my mother.”
“Widely televised four letter words!” The diva rode the verbal punch. She giggled like a silly schoolgirl.
“Oops, that was naughty.”
Armando learned over to the diva and took her hand. She was startled by his tactile gesture but disarmed by the gentleness in his face. His voice was soft but confident. “Excuse me. If I understand ... you are very angry with your parents?” The diva nodded. “In my life, I have found that my parents were the only source of unquestioning love and sacrifice for my future. You need to mend the bridges with your father. You should not choose the path that I chose. I once grew angry with my father and disillusioned. The militia kept coming to our village to take our animals and crops. As a boy, I was frustrated but my father always acquiesced and let them take whatever they wanted and we starved. I grew to blame him.” Armando looked the diva in the eye. “At nine years old I got drunk and was given a gun. I confronted my father and shot him three times while he knelt pleading for my sanity. I burned our house to the ground with my mother inside. I joined a revolutionary movement whose ideals turned out to be cruelty, fraud and rape. I was left with a massive black void where my parents and their love should have been. It made killing easier. The demons pounded in my head and were rarely silent. Ma'am, disrespect and disobedience to our parents – this is a doorway to hell. Mend those bridges and show respect. Please, do this for me. I cannot do it though I dearly wish I could.”
The diva was stunned. Her face contorted between horror and tears. Armando's words were spoken softly but with profound force of entreat. There was absolute silence in the studio. The diva slowly nodded her eyes wide and Armando smiled warmly. The host was speechless and sat immobile and open-mouthed. The chess geek had sunk the show. At last, no doubt prompted in his ear piece, he stammered, “And now a word from our sponsors.”
Julia, who studied the entire video clip watching Armando, felt tears run down her cheeks and she gagged on emotions she could not relate to. This young, serene, inoffensive African boy had confessed to heinous crimes: patricide and matricide. Julia felt Armando had killed many times though he did not actually say so. Every word throughout the interview was carefully weighted, well-enunciated and delivered very matter-of-fact. There was no questioning their veracity. What Julia noticed most of all was that Armando had found some kind of reconciliation. She wondered if she could ever find that for herself.
Chapter 16
National Secure Archive Facility
In continuing her search for information about the Nakba, Julia found a confidential US Government report on Doctor Campbell dated several years before the Nakba. The author was Gary Sanders who seemed to be a top-level operative in Southern Africa restriction the export of nuclear technology. Agent Sanders visited Mozambique to track an illegal shipment. The report described how Agent Sanders followed a shipping container allegedly filled with heavy water to Eden Village Orphanage roughly eighty kilometres north of Pemba. Sanders then posed as an expatriate businessman visiting the institution on the pretext of raising money and support back in the US. He was invited on a tour to see the work. The report stated:
The institution is a well-run operation. The children are happy, seem healthy and cared for. A significant number of the carers are Filipina women rather than local staff. A number of children were clearly not of Mozambique origin. There was at least one teenage Chinese girl as well as several Portuguese-speaking Brazilian boys. The director identified himself as Doctor Campbell and was clearly very proud of the orphanage and was mostly involved in the educational program and delegated the medical work to a Filipina nurse. Doctor Campbell quite willingly allowed me to inspect the illegal container tracked from Pemba dockside while discussing the type of medical aid that might be forthcoming. The contents were described as
medical supplies and comprised intravenous drip bags and drugs – particularly anti-retroviral drugs. These were inspected at first hand. There were no signs of heavy water drums or any storage facilities where they could have been hidden.
Discrete sampling of some orphan children revealed much higher than normal levels of radioactivity to the extent that it would pose a severe heath risk. These were exclusively older children who were housed away from younger children but who could freely mix. Minute traces of uranium were found on clothing items recovered which could not be explained by natural occurrence.
A single micro-particle of uranium metal recovered presents highly unusual and anomalous readings. The particle was 50 microns in diameter with a weight of 1.3 micro-grams. The particle was pure uranium-238 with no other isotopes of uranium detected (i.e. levels were less than one part per million). It is surprising to find such a pure sample of uranium-238. It could not occur naturally and the level of purity exceeds the best isotope separation processes currently available on an industrial scale. It would be expected to find residual of uranium-235 of around two parts per thousand. The origin of the particle is unknown. Critically, the isotope purity is indicative of a uranium separation program that may produce weapon grade material. No quantity of enriched fissile uranium was identified in the samples collected.
While there is no direct evidence of nuclear technology or operations on this site, the older orphaned children have been exposed to radioactive contamination that could come from such activity. This strongly suggests the children are being exploited in an uncontrolled operation to process radioactive waste materials. However, the range of equipment shipped illegally to Mozambique leads to the possibility of an operational heavy water reactor for the production of weapon-grade plutonium from natural uranium ore. The absence of any plutonium traces in samples taken suggests this is at an early stage of development with no significant quantity of plutonium produced. Any processing facility would obviously be located away from the residential buildings at an unidentified location.
The report concluded by calling for further investigation work and noting that the use of child-labour in nuclear waste processing was highly immoral. Julia was perplexed to read an obviously different viewpoint on Doctor Campbell's running of the orphanage. It was abhorrent to think of someone so callous and evil who would exploit vulnerable children in his despicable work. A level of revulsion rose within her that extended even to Omar – he was Doctor Campbell's grandson and heir. Yet she sensed nothing malevolent from Omar. He was someone that Julia readily trusted and Julia did not readily trust anyone – anyone in the Ark. She pondered the report and its implications and decided that she would need to weigh up carefully what Omar might have to say about his grandfather. She expected he would defend and justify him without question. It went without saying that Agent Sanders' report could have been fabricated or was simply misleading. Julia read but could not understand the technical discussion about this-uranium and that-uranium. The science was simply beyond her. All Julia knew was that uranium was used to make powerful bombs and the radiation from these weapons had devastated the Earth and denied life on the surface. They had caused the Nakba. From another continent and separated by nearly two hundred years of nuclear apocalypse, it was difficult to sense the plausibility of the accusations. Julia could simply note the information and wait until one viewpoint was corroborated. Hopefully, the truth would become evident.
Chapter 17
Harvard University, Massachusetts, United States of America
“Zarina, your work is excellent. Truly it is. But as you see, the peer-review agrees with the advice I have given to you all along.” Professor Eisenhaus inwardly groaned. Across his desk sat Zarina Ansari a brilliant graduate student – well on her way to a doctorate – whose paper on global power distribution had been widely slated by fellow academics and would not be published by the journal. Professor Eisenhaus studied Zarina. She nodded in acceptance but with the unshakeable confidence of someone who believed she was right and in time would prove it. Professor Eisenhaus thought that very unlikely. “Your analysis is really ground breaking and well-formulated but the assumptions you make are flawed. I can't understand why you insist on such an unrealistic course of events. Honestly, Zarina, I'm disappointed – for you, not just because it reflects badly on the work of the research group. We have spent years formulating the methodology and this could waste that effort by associating it with such misapplication.”
“But Professor Eisenhaus, I've only assumed that which is inevitable – as much as people want to deny it. It simply...”
“No, Zarina,” Professor Eisenhaus cut her off abruptly – a rather unusual step for him. He prided himself on being one of the more patient faculty members. “Not inevitable.” Professor Eisenhaus fingered the peer-review comments. “Implausible … highly fanciful ... a certain professor over at Columbia even wrote delusional. These are not the remarks of ignorant people drinking in a bar but some of the most respected intellectuals in the field of political science. You can't just disregard their opinions because you don't agree with them.” Professor Eisenhaus sighed.
“Firstly, Professor Eisenhaus, my assumptions are credible and secondly, even if they were not, the consequences outweigh even a highly unlikely set of circumstances. Either way, the article deserves to be published.”
Professor Eisenhaus had to concede the point but in no way would he show it. “Yes, the consequences... You formed a computer-based model of global society including resources, economics, food production, food distribution and military force which you set in motion from nineteen-fifty and projected forward to show that dominance would gravitate to two or three centres with a stalemate broken by the eventual bankruptcy of one nation block. It is a reasonable description of the cold war and soviet collapse. But it is nothing new – merely hindsight. You could easily discard the scenarios that didn't describe historical events...”
“A robust calibration exercise to refine the modelling parameters,” interrupted Zarina.
“But then,” continued Professor Eisenhaus, “you input starting conditions describing the present day – and projected forward. The outcome is...?”
“Unstable power centres that oscillate wildly. Only China seems resilient in terms of political structure but suffers economic hardships due to its export focus,” injected Zarina.
“A prophesy of pestilence, famine and war. The end of civilisation as we know it.”
“Agreed. I assumed only modest loss of cultivated and habitable land due to global warming and rising sea levels. The results were unaffected by influenza pandemics. Neither the eradication of malaria nor AIDS proved pivotal and, if anything, exacerbated the instability. Writing-off third world debt made no difference whatsoever.”
“Which leaves the single, most contentious assumption in your hypothesis.” Professor Eisenhaus considered deeply how to broach this issue. He had reflected at length and even done a bit of background research himself: some of his fraternity colleagues were sufficiently influential in the CIA and DARPA to know the facts. He recalled a discussion over lunch where he had discretely tested Zarina's assertion. The answer was conclusive: it was impossible. He also reflected on what he knew about Zarina. She was born in Iran but moved to Pakistan during her early teenage years and gained entry to Saint Anthony's High School in Lahore. It was an odd move to make but seemed to be her father's decision. Zarina had never openly talked about her father except in connection with the move to Pakistan. As far as Professor Eisenhaus could tell, her father never visited and she never contacted him. Professor Eisenhaus had tacitly assumed that he was dead or something shameful had occurred. From Lahore she went to Cambridge University in England where she graduated top of her class and won a scholarship to the Department of Government here at Harvard. Where better? Zarina was indisputably stunningly beautiful – a real eastern princess. She was twenty-eight but looked barely eighteen years old. It was only when she spoke and articulated h
er views that one realised she was older than she looked.
There was something odd though about her time in Lahore. It had taken eight years to graduate high school which was longer than it should have. It was as if two or three years were missing. It was unthinkable that she needed to repeat years. Perhaps, thought Professor Eisenhaus, she needed time to adjust and learn the language. She was, after all, fluent in at least four languages. Zarina had demonstrated this talent during visits from several foreign dignitaries. Somehow she had perfected Mandarin – a fact that only came to light when guests from Beijing arrived without a translator and their English had been pretty awful. Professor Eisenhaus knew of only one hobby that she pursued: horse archery. She said it was quite popular in Iran – a throwback to the tradition of the mighty Persian empires that once sprawled across Mesopotamia. Her Iranian birth perplexed Professor Eisenhaus. It was just possible that she knew something that the outside world did not fully appreciate and it all came back to the assumption in her analysis that she insisted on so vehemently.
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