From Murderer to Conqueror

by Jeff S.

  "Okay," said the young man. "I have a contact in the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. He could get the list implemented."

  "All of this," said the older man, "needs to happen no later than mid-November."

  A week later, both agents were in Paris. While the woman arranged for materials and other resources, the man contacted his associates in the Paris Muslim community. He met with four of his contacts in an apartment in one of the no-go zones of Paris. All four secretly worked for the American agency, acting as go-betweens with the radical Islamists. Not long after that meeting, one of the men, Nawal Hari, drove to another apartment and met with his contacts.

  "Do we have enough men to pull this off?" Hari asked.

  Kateb Racim nodded. "But do we have the materials for the bombs? Guns? Ammunition?"

  "I'm pretty sure I can get everything you need," said Hari. "Don't worry about that. We need to attack the stadium. I'm pretty sure the president will be there on Friday, November 13. We don't need to kill him, but we need to send a message."

  "We will," said Racim. "We will. And we can use the justification that these are in retaliation for air strikes on ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Tomorrow, I will contact Fabien Clain. He can give authorities prior warning of the attacks, vague enough to stir things up. I will let Abdelhamid Abaaoud be the leader of this plot. If anyone is able to track him down, it'll end with the names Mahmoud Karbasi and Gadi Ohana, fictitious dead-ends."

  "Very good," said Hari. "Very good, indeed."

  By Friday, everything was in place. Bilal Hadfi, a twenty-year-old French citizen attempted to enter the Stade de France. He was to set off his bomb in the stadium, forcing an evacuation which would drive people into the streets. There, his two accomplices would blow up the bombs strapped to their bodies, increasing the death toll by dozens, if not hundreds.

  At the stadium entrance, Hadfi was patted down by a security officer. The officer easily discovered the suicide vest and attempted to hold Hadfi, but the Muslim man broke free and detonated his vest several meters away, killing one bystander.

  Five minutes later, there was a shooting at the rue Bichat, closer to the center of Paris. Gunmen targeted people outside a café and bar named Le Carillon, then ran across the street and shot at patrons inside Le Petit Cambodge restaurant.

  Another five minutes later, one of the outside bombers near the stadium, grew frustrated that their plan had not worked and set off his own vest killing only himself.

  Two minutes later, another shooting took place at the rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi, outside Café Bonne Bière, killing five and injuring eight.

  Four minutes later, a shooting took place at the rue de Charonne. Shots were fired for several minutes at the outside terrace of La Belle Équipe restaurant. Nineteen were killed and nine critically injured.

  Another four minutes later, a man who had placed an order at Comptoir Voltaire café, detonated his vest, killing himself and injuring fifteen others. At the same time, three men entered the Bataclan theatre and began shooting, killing 89.

  Thirteen minutes after the Bataclan theatre was attacked, the third bomber at the stadium set off his vest, killing only himself.

  Seven minutes later, the three attackers at Bataclan theatre took dozens of concertgoers hostage. Nearly three hours later, the French police had ended their siege of the theatre, and all three men had set off their vests.

  When all was done, 130 people had died, with 368 injuries, nearly a hundred of them serious.

  Rutger van Eyck was happy to hear that all mission objectives had been accomplished. Despite the successes, though, the climate conference proved to be a dismal failure. Too many of the delegates had become suspicious of the "climate change" rhetoric. The global governance for which the elite had hoped would have to wait for another day.

  Chapter 7: Ancient History

  John van Eyck counted himself lucky to be alive, and at age 94, he was in surprisingly good health. He owed his survival, though, to the kindness of others after he had done so much to save the lives of so many, in spite of the conspiracies of his fellow elite.

  He stood on a skyscraper balcony, overlooking the deserted city of New York. Snow stood several feet thick throughout the metropolis, despite the calendar declaring it the middle of July. In every sense of the word, the long winter had again gripped planet Earth.

  Instead of the predicted global warming scorching the Earth, climate had been far more predictable. Finally, the Holocene interglacial had ended. That ending had taken far less time than most interglacial conclusions, but not a record. Other interglacials had ended in as short a period of time.

  Because of the cold, rain and other precipitation had become scarce. Deserts were already becoming far larger and new deserts were forming. Storms were stronger and more frequent as the frozen climate reached closer to the equator, ratcheting up the thermal potential to its highest possible levels. Sea levels had already dropped six inches from their highest in 2020. This proved to be quite remarkable, because the oceans were still increasing in volume from the thermal expansion set off by the post Little Ice Age warming.

  New York had once been one of the most vitally alive cities in the world. Now, it lay dead below him. No more taxicabs, no more subways, no more lights on Broadway. The greed of Wall Street lay buried under several feet of snow.

  Most everyone who had lived here was now dead from the government incarcerations, the epidemics, the wars, starvation and the increasingly cold climate.

  In this year of 2090, the population of Earth was estimated at 283 million. That over seven billion people had died in the previous century could be owed, in part, to the re-glaciation of the planet after the abrupt end to the Holocene interglacial period. Another part of the reason so many had died came from their lack of preparation for the great cooling that had always been inevitable. The lie of "stopping climate change" lingered in John's thoughts as he remembered what now felt like an ancient past. Rutger van Eyck had lied to the world that warmth was a problem, when the only real danger was from the cold.

  As far as John knew, he was the only one in all of the elite families who had survived. Their plan to rule the Earth had crumbled under the weight of its own corruption. They had used selfishness to destroy much of humanity and had found the selfishness of others to be far stronger.

  John had long ago realized that Rutger van Eyck and his fellow elites had been trapped by their own egos and selfishness, blinded by that ego into thinking themselves superior to their fellow humans.

  But now, selfishness had given way to unselfish compassion. Those who had survived the near death of civilization had turned to altruism instead of self-concern. For now, money had ceased to exist. Instead of the van Eyck master plan of Lords and serfs, people helped one another and no one took more than they needed. Everyone gave what they could without any need of reimbursement.

  The Earth that John van Eyck had been born into no longer existed. That was all now ancient history. All fifteen million Americans lived in the gulf states and California. Canada was now a frozen wasteland. If any Canadians had survived, their number was in the thousands or mere hundreds. The frozen wasteland now included New York and even as far south as Maryland. Chicago was empty. Lake Michigan's ice cover was now estimated at fifty feet thick. All of the Great Lakes were now permanently frozen and covered with a few dozen feet of snow.

  In Europe, Scandinavia was lost. Northern Germany, France and Great Britain also suffered from permanent cold. The bright white of snow cover was increasing the albedo of Earth, reflecting ever more sunlight back into space, accelerating the climate's drive toward a frozen environment.

  John van Eyck wondered if he could have done anything to stop the death that had ensued after the international global cooling campaigns had been started. If he had gone public with his knowledge, would he have survived? Would the other families have had him killed to protect their dirty secrets?

  Countless times, John had wondered if the eli
te could have been arrested and the world warned of the coming cold in time to prepare them for it. With seven billion people, there may have been enough resources and manpower to end the current Ice Age and to usher in a new Garden Earth. With the industrial might of the 2010s, humanity could have created millions of black panels to help melt the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica—to calve off chucks of ice as fresh water for the existing deserts. Satellite reflectors could have added to the sunlight hitting the deep oceans, adding to the warmth, instead of humanity fearing that life-giving force.

  Long after billions had died, John did his own calculations and found that well over 300 billion people could be living on Earth, if the Ice Age were to end. Not all of them would have automobiles or yachts, but they could have led productive lives. Perhaps with space travel, resources from the asteroids and other planets could have given everyone the opportunities of prosperity now lost.

  With all that John had done, using his fortune to help keep people alive, he still felt guilty for the crimes against humanity perpetrated by his grandfather and his associates. By 2025, the New Little Ice Age had started with a vengeance. With all of the geoengineering the elite families had started, Earth plummeted into a deep freeze, just as they had planned.

  When their government agents had released the pathogens, creating the epidemic of 2027, millions died within days. People were herded into quarantine centers and given vaccines which killed them within hours. More than ninety million had died that year from the epidemic or the vaccines.

  Everything Rutger van Eyck and his fellow elites had planned was coming true. But chaos is never an easy thing to control. Within a year, elite families had lost their chain of command. And when the public-at-large had found out that the elites had helped to create the mass slaughter of their fellow humans, the elite were given a hasty trial and then executed. All their trillions of dollars could not have saved them.

  As John stood on that balcony, looking over the ghostly skyscrapers of an empty metropolis, he remembered a lesson from history class. One of the English kings had been a monster and many of his subjects had risen up in revolt. After several lost battles, the king asked to speak with the leaders of his opposition to make peace with them. When the leaders were gathered, the king's men had swooped in and slaughtered all of them. By his dishonesty, the king had made his own problems go away. His mass murder was seen by some as a stroke of genius. But John van Eyck had learned that it takes a psychopath to appreciate the actions of psychopaths. Such people know the difference between right and wrong, but don't care. And that had been John's problem all along: he could never stop caring.

  French biologist, Jean Rostand once wrote, "Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." John disagreed with the "god" appellation, and felt uneasy about the term "conqueror." For him, the more famous quote of Lord Acton made much more sense—"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

  John knew that he had much to do to make up for his own crimes against humanity. Though he had not killed anyone directly or by any order he had ever given, his own inaction had done plenty of damage. He had feared for his own life. If he could teach his younger self anything, it would be that a life lived in fear of doing the right thing is not a life lived at all.

  "Sir," said one of his younger assistants. "We now have the information. We need to go."

  John took one more look from the balcony and wished he had risked his own life far sooner so that he could have saved far more lives. By that, he could have prevented so many crimes against humanity.

  COLLECTION II

  Chapter 1: Job Offer

  Joseph Nketia loved his career and his lifestyle. Ninety percent of the time, he spent partying or working on his tan. As an African-American, getting a tan seemed to be a requirement, because his complexion was too pale for the average colored person.

  Kids in grade school had beat on him, because of his light skin color. His features looked African-American, but his color was lighter than most mestizo Mexicans. Yet, he knew the truth. Race was a meaningless idea meant to separate people from one another. He was living proof of that. When Obama had become president, and everyone called him "black," he had laughed at the irony. The man's mother was white. It was almost as if white didn't matter—that black was so much stronger than white, that it overpowered and wiped out any evidence of the white. Of course, he knew this was a false perception, but perception is so much of reality.

  Some of the nastier kids had called him "Creampuff." After the fifth time being beaten up, he decided he was going to get hurt anyway, so he may as well make life more interesting by hurting them back. He put so much fearless energy into hurting them back that the other boy almost died. After that, no one in grade school ever touched him again. When he reached high school, his reputation for ruthlessness had made him untouchable. Yet, he had only beaten one kid years earlier. His reputation had taken on a life of its own.

  Nketia resented people calling him "black" or "African-American." He was proud of his mixed heritage. When anyone ever called him "black," he told them that they were disrespecting his mother and grandmother—both of whom were Caucasian. Even then, though, he had held his feelings in check. His few quiet words had carried great weight with the other kids.

  Over time, he played with how little he needed to say to have an impact. Frequently, he need not have said anything to stop a fight or to get a bully to back down, even when he was not the harassment target. Squinting his eyes or raising his pointer finger was all it took to gain peace.

  He had enjoyed that level of power. As he neared graduation in high school, the prospect of being without that authority troubled him. All the bullies had dropped out, but he still needed to graduate. Yet, the idea of working for a living began to depress him. A minimum wage job was not the kind of place where he could use his special talent. Then, he realized that most of his power came from a reputation he hardly deserved and could never take with him. He had beat up one kid nearly nine years earlier and he had done nothing to build on that reputation since. That reputation would likely evaporate upon leaving high school.

  Still, he had liked the idea of people fearing him. He liked the power that came with it. The trouble with power, though, is that sometimes people want to take it away from you. If only there were a way to keep the power without anyone ever jeopardizing it.

  Then, he saw a documentary on the Kennedy assassination. His teacher loved to explore conspiracies and to debunk the idea that they were fantasies. Nketia became fascinated with the notion that there were hundreds of new conspiracies starting every second, on average, somewhere in the world. So, the film on Kennedy's death was about one very potent conspiracy. In that film, it became apparent that Oswald could not have been the shooter. Everything pointed to him having been a cleverly prepared patsy, from his top secret job in the military, Russian language lessons, his defection to the Soviet Union, and the all expenses paid trip to that communist country. Nketia became obsessed with the real shooters. When later he heard of the deathbed confession of E. Howard Hunt on that man's own small part in the Kennedy assassination, he knew that this was the kind of power he had always wanted. An assassin is anonymous, so it becomes far harder for anyone to take the power away from him.

  He learned to shoot, becoming a world-class marksman by the age of 19. He got his first job at age 20 and became one of the world's most hired assassins by age 24. Now, at age 32, he was a seasoned professional, demanding, and receiving, a minimum $100,000 per job.

  In the last twelve years, he had diversified in his techniques, earning him the praise of his employers and opening doors to far more jobs. After all, some jobs required creativity and other talents than mere marksmanship.

  At the moment, Nketia lay face down on a lounge chair, soaking in the intense sun of Aruba, thirty kilometers north of Venezuela, South America. The woma
n laying on the lounge chair next to his was today's eye candy. She looked good at dinner and at bed time, though she was dreadful with conversations. As living work of art, she was perfect, but her intelligence was near nonexistent.

  Three times she had asked if she could put suntan lotion on him. The first time, he had said, "No," and had left it at that. The second time, he explained that he didn't trust suntan lotion—that it might cause skin cancer. For thousands of years, humans had been soaking up the sun without any difficulty and with great benefits of vitamin D. No manufacturer was going to do research on the safety of their product, if that study might put them out of business. The third time she asked, he merely looked at her and asked, "Where are you sleeping tonight?" Perhaps confusion more than understanding had finally shut her up.

  He rolled over on his lounge chair and settled in for a few minutes of frontal tanning. As he relaxed into the position, he thought about finding someone else with whom to spend his days and nights. Money made it easy to find new escorts. One who could hold a conversation, as well as his amorous attention—that was the ideal.

  A buzzing sound riveted his attention. After several weeks of relative bliss and relaxation, it was now time to go back to work. Reaching underneath the chair, he grabbed his mobile phone and answered.

  Leaving the bliss had become effortless, because he had long ago given up all attachments. He knew that there would always be more opportunities for physical delights. This time, the dullness of his companion made it even easier to switch from playboy to work mode.

  "Dark, here," he said.

  The voice which replied had a familiar, husky tone. "New customer—wants a meet."

  "Meet? I don't like the sound of that."

  "I understand," said his agent. "Most customers will never know what you look like. This one already does."