New Rome Rising

by Rene Fomby

  “I don’t need to tell you, the situation across Southern Europe right now is quite dire. The Greek parliament is meeting in emergency session even as we speak to vote on joining Mr. Tulley’s so-called Roman Empire. The rebels here in Italy have already thrown in with him, encouraged, no doubt, by the historical relationship between Rome and her sister city to the east. If Greece falls, my people tell me we can expect most of the remaining countries between Italy and Istanbul to throw in the towel, as well, along with possibly a secessionist group that has now poked its head up in the southern coast of France. Plus, of course, Catalan, which needs Tulley as a fallback to help them in their coming war with Spain.”

  The Spanish representative spoke up. “And I now give you all official notice that we will be invoking Article Five on that. With their terrorist attack on our parliament, Catalan has attacked Spain itself. Such a crime cannot be allowed to go unpunished, so—”

  Rossi reached down and temporarily muted the Spaniard. “Yes, well, as I said, let’s stay focused, here, ladies and gentlemen. We have enough on our plates tonight already, so let’s not allow this meeting to wander off into the woods on other issues. And—I may be off base here, but I seem to recall that Spain claims Catalunya is still Spanish sovereign territory, so Article Five doesn’t really apply in this particular situation.” He pressed unmute to resume. “As I was saying, Europe appears poised to split in two—with the southern half following the dictates of what can only be described as a deranged madman—unless we act, and act fast. Demetrios, what is your read on how your government is going to vote tonight?”

  The Greek foreign minister looked like he had just swallowed something foul. “I wish I could say otherwise, but there is a strong sentiment in favor of joining up with New Rome. The austerity measures imposed by Germany and many of the other northern countries of the EU have made economic conditions in Greece almost unbearable, heaping even more of a burden on my people, who were just barely eking by as it was. The idea of making a new start—and thumbing our nose at the rest of Europe in the process—that is a very compelling argument among my people.”

  “Is there anything the rest of us can do to forestall that vote?” Rossi asked.

  “No, I’m afraid not, not this late in the game. That would take the EU backing down entirely on its economic sanctions, something I am quite sure your governments couldn’t agree to in time to make a difference. So right now the vote could go either way.”

  Rossi nodded grimly. “Well, let’s all apply as much diplomatic pressure as we can in the meantime. Carrot and stick, anything that will buy us a little more time. Turkey?”

  The Turkish representative, a low-level associate foreign minister none of them had ever met, was waving his hand to be recognized. “Yes, speaking of Article Five, what does NATO intend to do about the brazen and cowardly attack on Turkey? Tulley seized our largest and most cherished city, and no doubt has murdered a great many of our people. What action do you propose to take it back? Because I assure you, if we don’t come out of this meeting with an agreement on a counterstrike, my country will go it alone.”

  “Counterstrike?” Rossi was thunderstruck. “You plan to just rush in there with guns blazing, when he almost certainly has a dirty bomb in place that could kill tens of millions of people? That’s just madness!”

  “My country does not believe he has such a weapon, nor do we believe the coward would ever use it upon himself.”

  “But the samples he sent to the U.S., England and France—”

  “Are just that. Samples. It is one thing to accumulate small amounts of such material, and the polonium itself you could harvest from old watches, or anti-static brushes, but enough radioactive material to build a large-scale dirty bomb? Impossible!”

  Rossi had been informed through back channels that the Americans were even now planning a possible sneak attack on Istanbul, but that was knowledge he couldn’t possibly share with this group, particularly with the Turks in the meeting. Or even the Greeks, given the way they were perched squarely on top of the fence on the issue of loyalty to NATO. He nodded toward his French counterpart for support.

  “I would have to disagree with our Turkish friend. The sample, I am told, it is consistent with similar materials that have been developed very recently by the Russians. In fact, we found a small bomb with an almost identical radiation signature in Eastern Ukraine, presumably provided to the Ukrainian separatists by Mother Russia herself. So France’s position is that we should move slowly in this regard, and not precipitate a catastrophe that would have global repercussions. Particularly one that could leave the mouth of the Bosporus Strait uninhabitable for many lifetimes to come.”

  The Turkish representative almost came through the screen at them. “Bah! All lies! You must know, my friends, that the Islamic world will not tolerate NATO’s continued dithering on this issue. Many among our people see the assault on Istanbul by a prominent American industrialist—apparently with full American support and encouragement—as merely the first step in a coming war against the nations of Islam, against the nations of Allah. We here in Turkey have been assuring them that is not true, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to make that claim. And it does not help that he uses that word, ‘crusade’, to describe his intentions. To describe Western intentions toward our peaceful religion. It is a word we Muslims have not forgotten in the East, the barbaric nature of you Christians, your brazen attacks on our peaceful culture. We have tolerated your attacks on our lands, on our religion, for far too long. Prove to us now that we are wrong, or you will soon feel the sharpened blades of Islamic steel against your throats.”

  With that threat hanging wetly in the air, Rossi decided to try a different approach, one that might calm the Turks down for at least a few more days and buy the Americans a little more time to try their sneak attack.

  “Why don’t I suggest this? We don’t seem to have any answers here tonight, so why don’t we all retire for the evening and meet again tomorrow. That will give all of us an opportunity to discuss developments with our respective governments, and then maybe we can devise a solution to the Istanbul problem that will make all of us happy. Va bene? D’accord?”

  Each of the delegates nodded their agreement and started winking out of the videoconference, leaving Rossi sitting alone, still nervous about Turkey’s immediate plans. They had a habit of shooting first and asking questions later, a general problem within the Muslim world, where the leaders all too often mistook braggadocio for strength, and arrogance for determination.

  As he clicked out of the meeting himself, he thought about Samantha Tulley. She had been in the hunt for William Tulley from the very start, beginning with the night a year earlier when her father-in-law burned down her home back in America. And almost took her life along with it. Along with the life of her baby daughter. It was quite possible she just might have an inside scoop on whatever plans the Americans were putting in place to capture him …

  117

  USS Carl Vinson - Tuesday

  Bob Sanders’ head was buried in his tablet as Sam finally caught up with him.

  “Good news or bad?” she asked, trying to sneak a peek at what had him so entranced.

  “Not sure.” He clicked off the screen and looked up. “Just got the first reports back from the server hard drives we pulled out of Tulley’s cave complex. They were finally able to hack into the emails, and some of that stuff is pretty interesting, even if most of it is not all that useful at the moment. No magic key codes to get into the Old City, no videos of Tulley with Russian prostitutes …”

  “Wow. They hacked in already? I thought you said they used 256-bit encryption on that system. How did they manage to crack it so quickly?”

  Sanders grinned and glanced around guiltily. “W-e-l-l, I probably shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but—”

  “Out with it, Bob Sanders. You’ve got no secrets from me, not with all we’ve been through the last few months.”

&nb
sp; “Yeah, you’re right, Sam. Well, the key to it was, we needed to figure out one of their master passwords. You know, at the administrator level. That would let us reset everyone else’s passwords, so we’d have access to all of their emails.”

  He motioned for her to join him on a nearby bench. “So the woman we captured in Tulley’s office, they pumped her to the gills with some kind of narcotic, then started questioning her in one of the interview rooms in the brig downstairs. Wouldn’t give us a thing, not even her name, so the interviewer got frustrated and left her in there alone, but like an idiot he forgot and left his laptop behind, along with an active connection to the Internet. All after informing her of our plans to sneak into the city tonight through the underground tunnels and nab Tulley in his sleep. As soon as he was gone, she grabbed the laptop, logged onto her email server and sent Tulley a warning.”

  Sam slapped a hand over her mouth. “What kind of a fool—I can’t believe he’d make that kind of mistake! Now the whole operation is compromised—”

  “You’d think, right?” Sanders was smiling even more broadly now. “And I’m pretty sure none of it would have worked if she hadn’t been sitting there high as a kite. But it did.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “You see, the laptop wasn’t hooked up to the Internet after all. We knew what the email server’s interface looked like, that part wasn’t encrypted, so it was a piece of cake to rig up a fake logon screen. She thought she was sending a legit email to her boss, but instead she just handed us the keys to the entire kingdom. Server-wise, that is. And now we even know her name. Simone, Simone Duval, apparently Peter Boucher’s second in command. But Boucher’s gone missing—even Tulley doesn’t seem to know where he is—so Duval got promoted to acting field general. We were very lucky to have snared her in our little net, because in the long run, the info we’re pulling off those servers may turn out to be priceless.”

  “Like what, might I ask?” Sam had leaned in close, too, the two of them looking for all the world like old ladies sharing gossip over coffee.

  “Like the fact that Turkey had nothing at all to do with the plane crash. That was all Tulley’s doing, a two part operation to take out any possible opposition within the Catholic Church to his plans for reconciling the two branches of the old Church, all while simultaneously planting the seeds for his ultimate objective, a new Christian Crusade against the Muslim world that would destabilize the entire region and give him the wiggle room to take over all of Europe.”

  Sam’s eyes had widened to the size of saucers. “You got all of that just off the emails?”

  “Yep. We put one analyst on Tulley’s email chain, and another on Boucher’s. It didn’t take long to put two and two together on that.”

  “But that’s great news! Now we can release all of the evidence, and Turkey’s off the hook. Everybody can finally settle down and stop beating the drums of war.”

  Sanders shook his head slowly. “No, not yet. First we have to get our hands on Tulley. Otherwise, we’ll just be caught up in the old he said, she said conundrum. And in this world where fake news is suddenly everybody’s real news, at least half of the world is going to start hollering about how we just cooked up some fake evidence to help out our Arab friends and keep the oil flowing.”

  Sam chewed on the end of her thumb as she considered this. “Unfortunately, I think you may be right about that.” Then another thought came to her in a flash. “But—you said the first objective for the attack on the Vatican was to take out the Church’s top leadership structure. But that wasn’t entirely true. One man, the top guy, managed to survive the attack—the pope.”

  “The Miracle pope? Yeah, imagine that. He gets sick and is whisked out of the sealed conclave just minutes before Tulley’s plane hit the Sistine Chapel and killed everyone. Killed anyone and everyone who could have challenged his claim that Orso was the very cardinal they had just chosen to be their next pope. Mighty convenient timing, don’t you think?”

  “They say God works in mysterious ways, but that’s a stretch even for Him. Wow. I always knew my father-in-law was brilliant, but this is a game of chess that would stump even the most powerful supercomputer. One move sliding seamlessly, effortlessly into the next, and now—”

  “Now he’s managed to seize control of one of the greatest cities in the world, he’s on the brink of unifying all of Southern Europe under his resurrected bogus empire, and he has the entire world on the very edge of the greatest war mankind has ever faced.” Sanders leaned back against the bench, grimacing. “And it seems that the future of the entire world right now rests on the success of this one quite desperate mission. If we don’t stop Tulley now, if we don’t stop him tonight, who knows what horrors will be waiting for us in the days ahead?”

  Sam stood up and reached out a hand to give him a boost up. “Then I guess we better get moving on this, don’t you think? It’s our move, now, maybe our last. And the clock is ticking. Knight to king’s pawn, Mr. Sanders. Time to execute our own damned game plan.”

  ※

  Jack sucked in a deep breath, trying to clear his mind of distractions. With everything happening so fast and in so many different directions, it was hard to believe that this very same group had met in this very same room three days earlier to plot the assault on the underground city in Göreme. One thing had changed, however—Booker had a large bandage wrapped tightly around his left upper arm, and despite all his objections was going to be a scratch for this operation.

  “Listen up, boys and girls, we’re counting down to zero here, so let’s get this right.” He pointed to a map that he pulled up on a flat screen monitor at the far end of the room. “We need to wait for nightfall before attempting the insertion. I’ll take the lead at first, in case we run into any resistance. Mehmed’s Gnat will follow, then the rest of you, Alpha Team on point, then Bravo and Charlie. With almost no traffic currently running up and down the strait, we’ll go in low and fast, and make our turn here.” He circled a small spot on the map with a laser pointer. “That’s where Mehmed’s pilot will overtake me. I’ll split out to his right flank to cover. Alpha Leader, you’ll have his left.”

  He looked across the table, where Alpha Leader simply nodded.

  “Okay, then, as soon as we have the target acquired, Mehmed will peel back. Booker, you’ll hang back in the trailing position, then escort the professor back to the Carl Vinson. Everyone got that? Any questions so far?” He glanced across the table at each of his team leaders, and got a thumb’s up all the way around. “All right. Once inside the tunnel, things will get a little bit more fluid. We may have some cave-ins to deal with, and almost certainly we’ll have to go underwater about a mile in from the insertion point, so everyone check your rebreathers before we leave, and pack a spare for each team. No wardrobe malfunctions once boots hit the ground.”

  He circled another spot on the map near the bottom. “This is our ultimate objective, Topkapı Palace. That’s where our intelligence says Tulley has set up camp.” He pressed a button on his pointer and the image zoomed in to show a close-up view of the palace. “Best guess is he’s making bivouac in here, in what’s known as the Harem, because, no shit, that’s where the old sultans kept their harems. Sanders is sending in some infrared drones right after nightfall, so hopefully we’ll be able to track any movements within the palace and get a better fix on Tulley’s actual location for the last stages of the attack.”

  Sanders leaned in. “One other thing about that. We were able to crack the encryption on the servers last night, and we have them up and running. My IT guys thought it might be a good idea to reconnect the email server to the Internet, to flood Tulley and his people with misinformation. That might also buy us some higher quality eyes and ears as to what’s happening inside the palace before you guys burst in there blind.”

  “You think that’s wise?” Gavin asked. “You give his people a way to communicate among themselves, that could rear up and bite us in the ass.”

  “I hear you, son,�
�� Sanders responded with a knowing look. “And ordinarily I’d agree. But our plan is to send Tulley some messages that can only serve to keep him a little more off-balance. And we’re only lighting up his account. We have administrator privileges on the server, so we’ve turned off the encryption. That way we’ll see anything and everything he’s doing in real time.”

  Sam’s phone dinged and suddenly everyone’s eyes were on her.

  “Something important?” Sanders asked gruffly as she quickly set the phone on silent and checked the message.

  “No, sorry about that. Just an update from my law partner back in Texas. He won a big case today and wanted to let me know.”

  Everyone turned back to the planning while she thumbed off a short congratulations, mostly just to let him know she was okay, so he wouldn’t be too concerned about her safety. But he will, anyway, bless his sweet little worrywart heart.

  118

  New Rome - Tuesday

  “Your Excellency, the email servers out in Göreme have come back up, at least partially, and you’ve got an incoming message from General Duval.”

  “Bring it to me,” Constantine grumbled. His headaches were getting more and more frequent and seemingly more intense every day. His eyes swung wildly around the room. Where did he put that damned Cup?

  119

  USS Carl Vinson

  As the sun settled on the western horizon, the Black Gnats lifted off one-by-one, with Jack taking point and Mehmed’s Gnat tucked in right behind, heading toward a lightly populated area just north of Istanbul. They stayed low, coming in over the Bosporus, just a foot or so above the waves. The Turkish government had closed the strait to boat traffic during the crisis, and with their lights off the train of Black Gnats was all but invisible from the coastline.