‘Sleeper assassins,’ the President acknowledged. ‘Similar programs were uncovered in Russia after the Cold War.’
Jarvis nodded.
‘MKULTRA developed an overseas arm, MKDELTA, which was responsible for the spraying of aerosolized LSD onto the village of Pont–Saint–Esprit in France in 1951. The event resulted in an outbreak of mass psychosis, with seven French citizens dead and more than thirty committed to mental institutions.’
‘Not our finest hour,’ the President said, well aware of the now–public nature of the CIA’s more extreme programs of the previous century. ‘How does this all tie in with the United States government admitting culpability in all of that?’
‘A man named Frank Olson,’ Jarvis said, ‘one of the CIA operatives involved in MKULKTRA who witnessed a terminal interrogation in Germany under Project Artichoke, resigned his position and was later found dead after a suspicious fall from a Manhattan building. He was buried without autopsy and his death ruled a suicide, but the family fought for and won an exhumation and an independent autopsy which resulted in a coroner stating that Olson died before the fall. In 1975 our government admitted that Olson had been dosed with LSD and that the CIA and the state of New York had been covering up the details of his death for a quarter of a century. The government settled with Olson’s family out of court.’
The President fell silent for a few moments as he digested what Jarvis had told him.
‘What’s the connection between MKULTRA and this new threat?’ he asked finally.
Jarvis gestured to the screens.
‘The direct threat to our country’s security comes at the moment from this man,’ he said, ‘Abrahem Nassir. However, we believe that he is only one component of a much larger threat that’s been operating behind the scenes for many decades. Our agency has labelled this threat by the name it has used in the few documents that attest to its existence: Majestic Twelve.‘
The President’s eyes narrowed. ‘Go on.’
‘Majestic Twelve is a cabal of powerful industry and military figures,’ Ethan explained after Jarvis gestured for him to speak. ‘They were supposedly formed in 1947 via an executive order issued by President Harry Truman to control the recovery and investigation of alien spacecraft after the alleged crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.’
‘So we’re back to aliens again?’ the President asked.
‘Roswell, if it actually happened, was merely the catalyst the formed the group, which was attached to the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations,’ Lopez said. ‘The FBI actually took the existence of MJ–12 seriously enough to look into its existence some years ago, but they came up with nothing and reported that the cabal was likely a hoax of some kind. Chances are, the OSI simply ensured that the Feds could gain no access to any data supporting the existence of the group, the funding of which is reckoned to be either private finance or our government’s own Black Budget.’
‘That sounds too easy,’ the President said. ‘We can’t sit here and pretend that the FBI couldn’t get anywhere, that anything amounting to evidence of a conspiracy must remain hidden because it’s in the Black Budget. That’s how conspiracy theories start.’
Jarvis smiled. ‘However, now we believe we know why they found nothing,’ he said. ‘We have evidence Mister President, that the FBI is at least in part tied–in to operations conducted by Majestic Twelve.’
The President leaned back in his seat, his eyes fixed upon Jarvis. ‘You’re accusing federal agents of being part of a conspiracy against this country, perhaps even against me?’
‘I know how it sounds,’ Jarvis admitted, ‘but the evidence is mounting against the agency for harboring at least one individual who is working for, or perhaps a central figure within, MJ–12. It makes sense that a cabal dedicated to subverting United States policy for profit would ensure at least some of its members or affiliates occupied high office within the government or the administration. Such high–level intelligence would be invaluable to their success.’
‘And how would such a cabal coordinate their actions?’ the President asked. ‘If they’re so secret, how could they exist in a world where even our most trusted agents, such as Edward Snowden, can steal sensitive data and transmit it to the media of the world?’
‘I’ve come to believe that the Bilderberg Group and its annual meeting is to some degree the vessel through which Majestic Twelve coordinate their activities,’ Jarvis said.
‘Bilderberg?’ the President echoed. ‘I’ve attended that meeting every year since I took the presidency. It’s no conspiracy meeting!’
‘No,’ Jarvis agreed, ‘but an annual gathering of the world’s most powerful men, and one into which the world’s media is not just uninvited but actively prevented from reporting on, does make the perfect location for men of power to conspire does it not?’
The Bilderberg Group, formed by Joseph H. Retinger and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, was charged with the post–war take–over of the democratic process. The measures implemented by the group provided general control of the world economy through indirect political means. The meeting itself allowed each of the hundred or more participants to speak their mind freely because no media representative was permitted inside; nor would there be any news bulletin about the meeting or the topics discussed. If any leaks occurred, the journalists responsible were “discouraged” from reporting it. Bilderberg took its name from the Bilderberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, Holland, where the first meeting took place in 1954.
‘Bilderberg represents the perfect meeting point for the members of MJ–12,’ Lopez said. ‘And we think that we’ve identified one of them.’
‘Who?’ the President demanded, directing a stony gaze at Jarvis once more.
‘Director LeMay of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,’ Jarvis replied.
A long silence filled the bunker as the President stared into the middle distance as though frozen in time. For what felt to Ethan like hours he merely sat in silence as though reflecting on some memory, and then he spoke with a soft, almost resigned tone.
‘And what is your evidence?’
Ethan took the lead, aware of how Jarvis had put himself in the spotlight by revealing LeMay’s suspected involvement with MJ–12.
‘For some time now, Nicola and I have been pursued in our work by a man named Aaron Mitchell, who seems both well connected and financed. We knew that he was working on behalf of MJ–12 but we had no idea who was handling him, so to speak, who was giving him his orders.’
Lopez picked up the story.
‘A few months ago, a man named Stanley Meyer was murdered and for a time Ethan and I were suspects in the case, which was pursued with extraordinary determination by the Bureau despite being an otherwise unremarkable homicide. During our investigation we were able to determine that Mitchell had been at the scene of the crime.’
‘How so?’
‘Because as it turns out,’ Ethan replied, ‘Mitchell has supposedly been dead for a couple of decades. He’s a former Marine and Navy SEAL, and having met him twice now I can personally vouch that for a dead man he’s in surprisingly good mettle.’
Jarvis joined in.
‘The FBI investigated Stanley Meyer’s crime scene and analyzed the blood found there. That analysis reported that no DNA match was found in any government database.’
‘So?’ the President challenged. ‘Doesn’t that prove that he wasn’t at the scene?’
‘No,’ Jarvis replied, ‘because the FBI Agent in charge of the investigation for some reason decided to take a second sample that she did not send to the Bureau and instead had tested by a private lab. And guess what they found?’
The President folded his hands on the table before him. ‘Mitchell’s DNA?’
‘Alive and kicking,’ Lopez replied.
‘How does that tie this Mitchell to Director LeMay?’
‘Ethan and Lopez were dispatched to Abu Dhabi on another mission that again concerned things of in
terest to MJ–12,’ Jarvis explained. ‘They were being pursued by Mitchell while I was in a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting with LeMay. The Director wanted to know where Ethan and Lopez were, so I gave him their location – except I made a deliberate mistake and sent him in the wrong direction. As expected, Mitchell turned up with agents at his side exactly where I’d informed LeMay that Ethan and Nicola would be.’ Jarvis sighed. ‘He’s involved Mister President, and Mitchell is the agent he uses to get his dirty work done for him. Two men were killed at the site in Abu Dhabi, one of them crushed to death beneath a twenty ton shipping container. Neither Mitchell nor LeMay care whose lives they take and now we have a situation where Majestic Twelve may have reason to allow Abrahem Nassir the chance to slip through our net and attack you directly.’
‘Why would they do that?’ the President asked.
‘Because your administration’s policies on the restriction of free trade and support for red–tape preventing the excesses of major banks and corporations interferes with MJ–12’s main business of profit making,’ Ethan explained. ‘The profits of major corporations are reduced if they have to care for their workers better or can’t use overseas sweatshops, or their weapons are banned by international treaties that your administration supports. These men of MJ–12 make most of their money off the back of the suffering of others less powerful, Mister President, and everything that you’re doing is threatening that. I don’t believe for one moment that they would directly conspire to assassinate you, but if they have the means to know that Abrahem Nassir is in the country and intent on attacking you, and the FBI has the lead in protecting us from that attack…’
The President nodded silently, already knowing how such a conspiracy could play out.
‘Some of the country’s biggest corporations finance presidential campaigns in order to ensure that any administration is allied to their business interests,’ he said finally. ‘I managed to win the election without such support, but it wasn’t easy.’
‘Then now is the time to strike,’ Jarvis said. ‘They have no hold over you, no way to control you, but once your time in the White House is over how long do you think it will be before a new President with less moral fibre is sitting in that chair?’
The President folded his hands over and rested his chin on them for a moment before he spoke.
‘Organize the Joint Chiefs of Staff and send word to the CIA,’ he said finally. ‘We can’t just arrest LeMay, but perhaps we can let him implicate himself should Nassir make it into the city. Ensure that the FBI is prevented from accessing any of the information that we have learned and let’s distribute Abrahem Nassir’s image to every law enforcement agency in the country.’
Jarvis stepped forward.
‘I suggest you hold off on tomorrow’s Trans Pacific ceremony too,’ he said as the President stood to leave the bunker. ‘You’re going to be a target.’
The President smiled. ‘I’m always a target, Mister Jarvis.’ He looked at Ethan and Nicola. ‘You have my authority to stop Nassir any way you can, and I assure you that for the time being at least the FBI will not be able to stop you. Track him down and stop him; whatever it takes.’
***
XXXIII
Broad Kill River,
Delaware
The waters of Cape May’s Harbor of Refuge were silent and black as the small boat chugged its way north west toward a long stretch of Delaware coastline known as Slaughter Beach. Abrahem Nassir could not help but feel a grim amusement at the choice of names for the location of his entry into the United States.
The state of New Jersey was visible across the bay to his right, betrayed in the darkness by twinkling lights that were reflected across the rippling surface of the water. To his left beyond the sparsely populated coastline, just a hundred miles to the west, was Washington DC.
The enemy was close, he reflected, but he was closer. The narrow escape from the American soldiers in Somalia had cemented in both his mind and that of Tariq that there was no longer any time to waste. The Americans would locate the vessel Abrahem had used to travel from Kuwait to Somalia, interrogate its crew and learn of his movements. Abrahem doubted that the Somalian pirates would have held any loyalty to his cause once overpowered by the Americans, and it had only been Tariq’s quick thinking that had allowed them to escape among the women and children, overpowering two Americans on the way out and scattering into the sparse bush with the coming of the dawn. With too many targets to follow, the Americans had been misled and both Abrahem and Tariq had escaped south.
His journey across the Atlantic had been facilitated on a private jet owned by Tariq out of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Kenya, the customs officials at the airport easily bribed. The flight had landed in Dakar, Senegal, to refuel before making the long flight across the Atlantic Ocean to land in the Dominican Republic. From there he had boarded a maritime ship bound for Maine before once again leaving the vessel en route off the coast of Delaware and being picked up by a smaller boat out of the town of Bowers, on the shores of the equally grotesquely named Murderkill River.
A deck hand approached him with a small cup of hot, sweet coffee. Abrahem took the cup with a nod and a smile of gratitude, his bones still aching from the bitter chill of the North Atlantic. Despite the provision of a life raft and food, Abrahem had been forced to wait over an hour for the small boat to locate him as he floated alone on the dark waters, praying to Allah that the United States Coast Guard would not stumble across him first. Good fortune had been on his side and he had remained undetected. Now, he sat wrapped in blankets as he waited for his muscles to warm up once more as the boat approached the shore.
America.
He had never seen the country before, despite hearing so much about it and having hated it with all the considerable passion in his heart for almost half of his life. The tranquil shores and twinkling lights against the starry sky reminded him somewhat of Basra, and for a moment he once again allowed himself the thought that perhaps the people of the two countries were not so different. It was the politicians who were to blame, the warmongering “hawks” of the American Senate and their thirst for oil, money and power. Everybody in their right mind in the entire world knew that the invasion of Iraq had been a business venture, a hostile take–over undertaken beneath the thin veil of the liberation of a country from the rule of a tyrant. What they didn’t shout so loudly was that one tyrant had merely been replaced by another, the flag waving democracy of the United States that had raped Iraq of its finances, its soul, and then abandoned it to crumble beneath the blind corruption of Islamic militants and warlords. Furthermore, it was now widely accepted around the world that America’s administration of the time had lied in order to justify the war; there had never been any evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and anybody who had raised such a point had been ridiculed and even betrayed by that same administration.
Abrahem’s resolve hardened. The American people had voted for their leaders, who touted their democracy to the rest of the world as an example of leadership by the people, for the people, despite the fact that they then so brazenly acted without any consideration for those people in whose name they claimed their positions of power.
Abrahem recalled his youth, of the day when the Americans had first rolled into Basra to cheers and cries of gratitude. Abrahem had cheered with them, ecstatic at the presence of troops from a country where the voice of the people actually mattered, overjoyed at where their protection might take Iraq. And then the troops had fired all of the police and the army, and then the American companies had come into the city and begun rebuilding things that did not need rebuilding, repairing things that the Americans themselves had destroyed during their fighter–bomber attacks of “shock and awe“, had refused to employ the impoverished builders and artisans of Iraq in favor of paying their own people via the American government.
Throughout this, the Iraqi people had suffered more hardship than they had under Saddam Hussein
, and when the uprisings began in Mosul and Basra and across the country the American companies abandoned their unnecessary projects unfinished, claiming a “lack of security”. Having created dissolution, poverty and dismay among ordinary Iraqis sufficient to cause a revolt, they then blamed that revolt for their failure to complete the rebuilding programs they had been paid such vast sums to undertake. They left, their pockets lined with all of the money in Iraq and abandoned hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or dying, Abrahem’s beloved parents, siblings, wife and children among them.
The cup in his hand shattered and crashed to the deck. Abrahem blinked as he looked down and realized that he had crushed it, the jagged debris cutting into the palm of his hand. Blood glistened in the faint light as a deck hand approached, concern on his features.
‘Are you okay?’
The young man’s voice was tinged with the lilt of Arabic but also stained with the twang of an American. An immigrant, who had perhaps fled Iraq as Abrahem had been forced to do.
‘I am fine,’ he replied, his voice gravelly with pain and grief as he clenched his bloody fist. ‘How long until we make landfall?’
‘Ten minutes,’ the boy replied. ‘Our berth is just up river from here.’
Abrahem nodded but remained otherwise silent as he watched blood ooze from between his fingers and drip onto the deck at his feet. The deck hand watched him for a moment longer and then shrank away as so many people did, sensing somehow the unrivalled hatred that emanated from Abrahem like something alive. The time for his vengeance was now close and he vowed that this would be the last time the blood of his family would be spilled in the fight against American colonialism.
The Identity Mine (Warner & Lopez Book 3) Page 21