“Summit has a gift?” Dee asked.
“So we’ve heard,” Brian answered. “Clarise told us earlier, but she didn’t tell us what it was. She said we’d find out soon enough.”
“Finally—a fun mystery instead of all this other conspiracy cloak-and-dagger.”
Summit and Fern brought the rest of the drinks. Fern took a seat next to her husband, and Summit squatted down on the floor. Squish suddenly appeared from nowhere and climbed up on the girl’s lap, seeking some attention.
“I guess we can start with us,” Neff said after everyone was comfortable. “I’ll go around and summarize what everyone’s focus is and let people chime in with any personal history they’d like to add.”
He began, “Our operation began roughly eight years ago with me, Clarise, and Ward. I’d been an entrepreneur in several businesses, all of them with an international reach. I’d amassed a lot of money but, to make a long story short, I had a spiritual crisis that caused me to want to do something else—something that had eternal value. I’d led a wicked life before I met the Lord—which happened through Clarise and her sister—and wanted the rest of my time here to matter.
“I really didn’t know what to do with all my money. I had about four hundred million dollars. I started giving it away. Clarise introduced me to Ward a year or so after my turnaround, and that gave me some direction. They’d just gotten married and were thinking about their own future, and our destinies just sort of meshed. I think Ward can explain better.”
Ward nodded. “About two years before I met Clarise, I’d had my own awakening. I was what’s called in the world of crony capitalism an economic hit man. The job was just like it sounds, but instead of targeting people, I targeted developing countries. My job was to represent my employer’s interests—which had ties to US intelligence agencies and the military—by convincing a country’s political and financial leaders to accept huge development loans from large private companies like mine, or international lending bodies like the Word Bank. If the money came from a private company, the deal would usually sound like we were going to develop the country’s infrastructure or help it capitalize on untapped natural resources. Supposedly our involvement would help the country industrialize and make a lot of people wealthy while raising the standard of living for everyone. I had to make it sound like they’d be saying no to a modernized Utopia.”
“I take it you were successful?” Malcolm asked.
“Unfortunately, I was good at it. The goal was to saddle these countries with debt they could never repay so that the US could later pressure them in a variety of ways—either directly or through the investment company that employed me. The debt would neutralize a country politically so that, in return for not calling in the unpayable loan, that country would vote as we desired at the UN or do something else we wanted—say, allowing the US to build a base somewhere in their country.
“The really sinister part of it was that once we developed an industry to take advantage of a region’s resources, the only people who got wealthy were the parent companies and political leaders who saw things our way. The average person got a job if they wanted one, but it was like our own industrial revolution in this country—it created a huge class of working poor. Granted, the working poor in those countries had enough to eat and a roof over their heads, but they were essentially wage slaves. That wasn’t how the idea was presented. I was essentially getting wealthy by putting people in deep poverty or keeping them there.”
“So what turned you around?” asked Dee.
Melissa could see the conversation had touched a nerve.
“My first wife died of ovarian cancer. We thought we had everything life could offer and then discovered that none of it really mattered. We moved to a cancer-treatment center in the South, which I assumed would eventually fix the problem. I should have just quit my job and stayed with her. We certainly had the money. But quitting meant leaving even more cash on the table. Ultimately, the doctors weren’t able to help her. But I like to say that even though my wife died, the move saved her life.”
“Why?” Melissa asked.
“She met a Christian there—a real one. He was a retiree who’d gone back to work part-time as a janitor to make ends meet for himself and his wife. He loved to chat with the patients, including my wife. She and I used to make fun of Christians like they were uncultured simpletons or gun-toting trailer trash, but here was this guy who kept my wife company and gave her comfort. He wasn’t even close to us when it came to money or status, but he showed my wife what life was really about and who Jesus was. I saw her die happy—and not only happy, but full of hope and anticipation at meeting the Lord. The whole experience was a jolt in so many ways.” He paused. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I think I understand,” Melissa replied.
“Anyway, I started searching, and eventually, through Clarise and her sister, I found the faith my wife died with. I quit my job shortly after my wife died. My conscience wouldn’t let me continue there, but I knew I didn’t want to just play golf. I was too young and wanted to do something that mattered. Clarise and I met at a bookstore, but she wouldn’t go out with me. There wasn’t a thing I could do or say to impress her. I’d never been shut down like that before.”
Clarise laughed at the recollection. “I knew the type.”
“Eventually she let me know loud and clear that her issues were spiritual ones, but that was just what I needed. She was able to answer a lot of my questions. We got married about a year and a half later.”
“What about your sister?” Brian asked Clarise. “Where is she now?”
“She’s gone,” Clarise answered. “She passed away from an illness just before we got married. She was young when she died, but she had a tremendous impact on Ward, Graham, and me.”
“So, roughly six years ago, the three of you had the idea to do what you do now?”
“That’s the simplest version,” Neff said. “I met Ward just after he and Clarise were married. I had known Clarise earlier. He was a godsend. His background in finance and the developing world was just what I needed to turn my wealth into something honorable. We spent a couple years laying the foundation for what we do now before going full bore at it.”
“Rather than just running through money,” Ward explained, “Graham needed to be more forward-thinking. We could build things and buy stuff, but he had enough money that, if properly invested, it could just keep paying for everything year after year.”
“So how do you guys finance all this?” Brian asked.
“It took about seventy million dollars to get everything in place,” Neff explained. “We bought properties here and outside the country for safe houses, acquired all sorts of equipment—trucks, boats, planes, helicopters, the big things. But to really understand what we do, you have to know that we essentially operate in two worlds. On one hand, we directly finance dozens of homeless shelters, teen pregnancy centers, abortion alternatives, orphanages, and mission agencies that we believe make the gospel central to what they do.”
“Yeah,” Malone interrupted. “We do lots of service things like building churches, schools, infrastructure—all that sort of stuff. But we know firsthand that if that’s all you’re doing, you’re basically building a Marxist day camp. We have no time or money for that.”
Neff jumped back in. “We hand-pick ministries because we want to be the sole source of their funding to avoid government interference. They’re all set up as non-profits, so each entity can and does take donations, but we devote a specific yearly amount regardless of the donations. They really aren’t that expensive, to be honest, and because of Ward’s genius, the interest on our investments covers all those annual costs.”
“Is all the money invested? What about risk?” asked Dee.
“We have about a hundred million dollars in low-risk savings in off-shore accounts, stable foreign currencies, and Swiss bank accounts. For each safe house we have about fifty thousand dollars in gold in a sa
fe deposit box in a local bank, and another fifty thousand in cash inside the house in a secure safe. Cash is always preferable when we’re trying to move people around. Other operations have their own discretionary spending accounts. What we do personally doesn’t require us to do much spending—we’re in and out. If we need money on the fly, the safe-house cash is adequate and leaves no electronic trail. The whole time in North Dakota we never used a credit card.”
“What about the rental car in Canada?” Brian asked.
“We use a card linked to one of our businesses,” Ward answered.
“To finish answering Dee’s question,” Neff said, “aside from low-risk savings, we’ve got about two hundred million spread out in various ways at different levels of investment strategy. That generates a lot of income every year.”
“What about personal expenses?” Dee asked. “You have to just want something from time to time. How do you do that and protect your identity?”
“We have a central discretionary spending account that all of us can draw on, but we only keep a couple hundred thousand in that. We take mail in town at our businesses, but we only pick it up twice a month unless we have to go to town unscheduled. Anyone here can buy what they need.”
“We should hit the other side of what we do,” Ward said, steering the conversation. “The other half of our operation concerns the network we’ve created to do the kind of work you saw up close—getting women and kids out of the human-trafficking industry. That operates under the radar of law enforcement, political bodies, and, of course, the bad guys. The weapons we have and take outside would draw a lot of unwanted attention, but our posture is defensive.”
“We gathered as much after the border experience,” Melissa noted.
“You could’ve killed them all,” Dee recalled. “I’m not sure I’d have cared after learning what they’d done.”
“We know how you feel, but we’re not about settling scores or starting revolutions,” Ward responded. “We want to prevent harm, not participate in it.”
“Tell me more about the safe houses,” Dee asked. “Are they all like the one we were in?”
“To some degree,” Clarise answered. “We have fifteen safe houses in the US now and twenty more scattered in other countries. Each one of those is run by someone hand-picked by us. We train them in the security protocols we use, make sure they know first aid and CPR, that sort of thing. We pay them well, and they know we’ll meet any material need they have. We look for people who can competently manage operations and who are absolutely in line with the cause. Loyalty is essential.”
“The safe houses focus on women and children in crisis,” Neff added. “We try to keep foreign victims in locations out of the United States since there’s less scrutiny. We finance about a hundred orphanages outside the country. The kids learn English, get an education, and learn about Jesus. We’ve had a few kids who wanted to train for ministry, so we set that up as well.
“We hide the funding sources through a combination of front companies and real businesses, along with the sorts of tricks that drug lords and Arab sheikhs use to hide their activity. The dollar goes a long way in those places, so it’s quite manageable. The bigger problem is staffing, but we’re blessed that a lot of the people we save want to stay to help somewhere in the network.”
“Wow,” Malcolm said, shaking his head in awe. “That’s amazing.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Neff continued, “we aren’t anti-Church. I think it’s more accurate to say we’re ambivalent toward them. We’re glad when God’s work gets done where it gets done, but we aren’t waiting for large organizations to plod through committee decisions. We despise bureaucracy.”
“We also trust ourselves more than organized Christianity,” Ward chimed in. “To be blunt about it, we’ve come to doubt the character of the Church at large. We think it’s worldly. Christians, especially in this country, seem to equate popularity with excellence or God’s blessing. More energy goes into appearance than permanence. We’re just done with that.”
“It is unfortunate,” Sabi offered sadly, “but we feel that many believers are focused on social connection but not devotion. I enjoy friendships and desperately need everyone here, but they cannot replace the inner life.”
“Our mission is simple,” he continued with an open, gentle smile. “We devote ourselves to Jesus with the affection of our hearts; we enjoy His love and forgiveness; we love and enjoy each other; we spend ourselves helping those who are suffering the most. It is a full life.”
“And as long as we’re talking about what we’re not,” Malone added, “we also want to be clear that we’re not survivalists. It’s true we’re prepared for just about anything and could live off the grid for years, but we live this way because it gives us the maximum freedom for our own ministries. When the Lord comes back, we don’t want Him to just find a lot of freeze-dried food; we want Him to find faith.”
“Thanks for that,” Brian replied with a chuckle. “Melissa and I have had some long discussions about our place—or lack thereof—in the normal church situation today. Once you get to know our circumstances, you’ll understand why.”
“I suspected so,” Neff said appreciatively.
“Even without the danger, that’s no surprise given what you write,” Nili surmised.
“Yeah,” Madison agreed. “You won’t hear that stuff in church.”
Neff broke in again. “Keep in mind that all of what we’ve described is just a sketch. We naturally have to equip the safe houses with vehicles, food, clothing, and medical supplies. We’ve got a dozen planes and almost that many helicopters stationed in different parts of the country. All of them need regular maintenance and storage. Then there’s the fuel … It’s a logistic challenge, to say the least.”
“You got that right,” Malone agreed.
“Doug and Fern are in charge of tracking all the logistics and supplies for our stateside safe houses,” Neff said, “along with all the maintenance. Kamran helps them out when he’s not busy with his own area of responsibility—the foreign safe houses. All three of them know firsthand what it takes to make all this work. Doug, Ward, and I also keep an eye on our businesses and travel. We try to visit every operation we finance at least once a year. And we all participate in missions, subject to Nili’s planning.”
“You mentioned ‘real businesses.’ Can you describe those?” Brian asked.
“Well, let’s use Miqlat as an example,” Malone said. “The safe houses are sort of smaller versions of Miqlat, so some of what I’ll describe applies to them. We run two businesses in Bozeman that we use to generate income and to disguise our own transactions. We’re essentially upper management.
“Day-to-day operations are run by folks we’ve recruited and hired. One store sells outdoor supplies and sporting goods. We use that to order things like our long-term food storage, small arms, ammunition, outdoor wear—basically any sort of camping or preparedness item we need. If we want anything more exotic, Neff and Nili handle procuring those sorts of things.
“The other store sells medical supplies. We use that to supply our infirmary and meet any needs Clarise has for research. And we naturally arrange for safe-house personnel to order what they need online from those businesses. We’ve duplicated this model in a couple of the towns where it makes sense.”
“What kind of research do you do?” Malcolm asked Clarise.
“I’m an MD but also have the credit equivalent of a graduate degree in genetics. Neff knew we’d need our own doctor, so after we started this little operation, he sent me to medical school. I finished my residency a year ago. Along the way I took every course I could in genetics. I dabble in it, but sometimes we need to do forensic work.”
“We should let Doug and Fern fill in a little more about their backgrounds,” Neff resumed. “They’re colorful, to say the least.”
“They know we were hippies,” Malone said to his wife, “and recent events led to telling them a little abo
ut your interest in MK-ULTRA. Maybe you can add a little to that.”
She nodded.
“As for me,” Malone continued, “I used to be a weatherman.”
“Like on television?” Dee asked in surprise.
“No, not like on television,” he said in an amused tone. “Like in domestic terrorist.”
“A domestic terrorist? You?” Malcolm exclaimed incredulously.
“Yeah, I was part of the Weather Underground. I was an anarchist.”
“Man, that’s crazy. You just don’t look the part.”
“What exactly does a leftist radical look like?” he asked, chuckling.
“Not you,” Malcolm said with a laugh.
Malone shrugged and looked at the others. “In case you’ve not heard of the Weathermen, it disbanded in 1973 after the Vietnam War ended, the same year that I met Fern. After those events, Fern and I drifted in and out of community organizing groups devoted to the sorts of causes you’d associate with the political left—abortion, global warming, overpopulation, communism, the works. So, while Ward worked firsthand for the corruption and imperialism that right-wing crony capitalism is infamous for, we did the same for liberal fascism. Fern eventually did something useful and got licensed as a psychologist. I just screwed around and lived off grant money.”
“Have you kept up on these sorts of movements?” Melissa asked. “Brian told me a bit about your concerns about global governance and such.”
“The global governance problem is easy to track since it’s decades old, and that’s where most of our knowledge and experience comes from. We try to follow how the ideas are reborn and repackaged today, especially in American pop culture. But it’s honestly hard to wrap your head around the utopian weirdness. Granted, it has roots in our time, but a lot of it is so pagan—all this esoteric, neo-Nazi, fascist religious stuff about root races and occult bloodlines. We have no skills for sifting the wheat from the chaff in what we read there. It makes your head spin.”
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