Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1)

by M. K. Gilroy

  If your job was to be the official liaison between the various official security agencies of the United States Government—the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Clandestine Service, the Office of Special Plans, and too many other three-letter offices and departments to count—it was much wiser to not advertise for the enemies of your nation that you might be the most important adversary they faced in the world. His administrative assistants—it took three to keep up with the outflow of his mind—and his other key underlings were instructed to gossip about his long three martini lunches—which wasn’t always a lie—falling asleep in meetings—also not always a lie—his grumbling that no one knew what they were doing and never listened to him anyway, and his alarming memory lapses. Only the last rumor didn’t have its roots in truth.

  In the world of assessing threats and determining what agency or what person could best address it, he wanted the invisibility that accompanied being underestimated. If it was whispered in the halls of power that he was suffering from a combination of dementia, alcoholism, and failing kidneys, thus relegating him to the status of a has-been who didn’t need to be monitored, so be it. The only time his reputation as an angry, forgetful sot had backfired on him was 9/11. The lesson he learned from that was that he had taken his cover so far that the one man who should have trusted and listened to him, ignored him. That would not show up in the history books.

  From that moment on, he worked hard to make sure a few select levers of power inside and outside the government could be counted on to do his bidding, no questions asked. Wannegrin was one of those levers. He wasn’t the only person Heller used when he wanted to make something happen that couldn’t be attributed to the government, but Wannegrin was incredibly reliable.

  Until now.

  36

  Sana’a, Yemen

  THE IMAM WAS PLEASED. THE two minarets of the Great Mosque of Sana’a had sounded the call to worship and the faithful had thronged to stand and then bow shoulder to shoulder, united as brothers in worship and love of Allah. A few women worshiped in a curtained galley to prostrate themselves before Allah. That was acceptable, he thought, but most women, as was even more honorable and befitting, worshipped from home as the Prophet instructed.

  The narrow streets of the Old City that fed into the plaza outside the Great Mosque were clogged with pedestrians to the point that it was nearly impossible to arrive in time for worship if one hadn’t started early. Many men had to be turned away. They would be one part angry and one part sad. That was good. It showed the fervor of their devotion.

  Let the casual and convenient Muslim—the kind that dishonored the Prophet and the devotion of true followers through lax morals and collaboration with the enemies of Allah—travel to the Saleh Mosque outside the city. The fact that it was named after a politician and not a great Imam descended from Mohammed; the fact that it allowed non Muslims inside not just as tourists but to observe worship; the fact that it was built as much for comfort and show as worship; that was all he needed to know about the state of spiritual affairs in Yemen. It was his job to remind men to live up to the meaning of the word Muslim: slave of God.

  Those who have reinterpreted Muslim to mean a mere “follower” of Allah show, with their softening of the Prophet’s words, their lack of commitment.

  The Great Mosque was the first mosque built outside Mecca or Medina. Though some tried to explain otherwise, the Imam was convinced the Prophet of Allah ordained it. It housed the oldest extant copies of the Quran. Though not all agreed with him, he believed it was once a Byzantine cathedral, converted to the one true religion by Mohammed. That made the mosque even more beautiful in his eyes.

  His sermon was short. Obey Allah. Flee corruption. Pursue holiness. Spread the beauty of Islam to the entire world by whatever means necessary. Whatever means. He preferred those means to be peaceful, but that was not always possible.

  It was better to keep sermons short. That gave more time for the faithful to pray. That gave more time for the reading of the Quran.

  As worship came to a close he smelled a trace of garlic in the air. Surely no one was cooking or had brought food inside the mosque. He would have to investigate and punish accordingly.

  He watched with joy but a trace of concern as more than one thousand faithful took one last look toward the mihrab, the semicircular recess in the mosque that pointed to Qibla—the exact direction of Mecca.

  Yes, I will investigate to see if anyone has defiled the mosque.

  Anaheim, California

  THE YOUNG BOY LET OUT a cry of wonder and amazement as purple, green, red, white, and other brightly colored streams and circles exploded over the Enchanted Castle at Wonder World. He was perched on his father’s shoulders. He looked down as his mom comforted his little sister who was crying hysterically. The sound and lights scared her.

  She is a big baby!

  He looked back up and felt something much different. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. A brilliant white light blinded him and sent stabbing arrows of excruciating pain into his mind. He felt his father begin to crumple beneath him. Sound came back as people all around him shrieked in horror.

  He felt the first shards of metal rip into his body before there was nothing.

  Bentonville, Arkansas

  JUDY GARRISON WAS STRUGGLING TO fall asleep. She didn’t like it when Dwight wasn’t next to her. The love of her life. She kept hearing sounds as the little house creaked and groaned as wind and rain raged outside. She had gotten up once to get a glass of water and check all the locks on the doors. She got up a second time to check on the children. They were asleep but both four-year-old Dwight Jr. and seven-year-old Rebecca were tossing and turning. They must be feeling the same unease niggling at her.

  What was going on with Dwight? He arranged for a guest preacher to take over the pulpit for at least the next two Sundays. He simply told her that she must trust him that there was something only he could do—but that he couldn’t explain. But in Switzerland? He flew out of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport that morning for Atlanta. He would transfer to a Delta Boeing 777 flying to Zurich. He already had a train ticket from Zurich to Geneva. He had reservations at a modest hotel on the Bahnhofstrasse. He would call her to let her know he had arrived safe.

  Dwight was the same as always, but in recent months had been secretive about some meetings he attended in Fayetteville. If she didn’t trust him implicitly, she would have suspected he was having an affair. Not possible with her husband.

  Judy turned over and suddenly sat up in bed. She smelled gas. She was sure everything was turned off in the kitchen.

  As her feet hit the floor beside the queen size bed, she was tossed across the room as an explosion rocked the house. Her head broke a jagged hole in the drywall. Groggy, she scrabbled to her feet. She must save her children.

  She stumbled to the door. Grasping the knob she felt the heat sear into the palm of her hand. She pulled it back with a piercing scream.

  Then she was slammed back into the far wall of her room by a whoosh of ravenous flames.

  As she felt her skin melting from her face, Judy thought first of the fires of Hell that had scared her so much as a child. Then her spirit embraced a divine light she knew must be heaven.

  Various Cities, Europe

  WITHIN THE SPACE OF AN hour, bombs ripped through nightclubs and discothèques in Berlin, Moscow, Turin, Milan, Paris, and London.

  The carnage and death toll was devastating and the world was shocked as TV cameras projected young survivors huddled in blankets and rows of body bags lined on the streets of Europe’s grand cities.

  The tall man smiled as he watched coverage from a dingy flat in Milan, Italy. His apprentice was wrong. The world was paying attention. They had succeeded.

  Donets’ka, Ukraine

  THE FARMER LOOKED UP THROUGH the break of dawn to locate the sound of an airplane engine. A small cloud of orange dust trailed behind it, f
alling on his fields.

  It was a chilly morning in Donets’ka.

  Harvest was only a week away. What good could this magic fertilizer do in such a short time? The conditions of his crops didn’t promise a great harvest, but he had seen worse. He was one of the few that balked at the offer of assistance from the International Farming Initiative. But how do you say no to the largesse offered by a department of the UN? That was what Vladimir Shavchuk, the man who had offered to buy his entire crop at a premium price had said. The farmer didn’t like Shavchuk. He drove an expensive SUV and wore a fancy suit. It looked like he had his fingernails manicured at a salon. He had never tilled the earth. What would he know of the farming cycle? Fertilizer weeks before harvest?

  The farmer didn’t like the way the man smiled. He looked too confident and prosperous to work for the government, although most elected officials had a hand out for bribes.

  The farmer doubted Shavchuk had ever set foot outside a big city, much less on a farm. He had tiptoed over broken stones and mud from his car to the front door, trying to keep his shiny leather shoes clean. He was pushy, even if his papers were in order, including a fancy document with a gold embossed FAO seal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

  But what could the farmer do? It was smarter to work with the FAO than demure; he might need their help in some future year if his fields failed to deliver a reasonable yield.

  The farmer did what he knew he must do. He signed the papers and received a 10% deposit check. How did the man know how much the total yield would be for without first knowing his crop projections? He never even asked.

  Shavchuk told the farmer to expect a crop duster in the next few weeks. That had been two weeks ago—and here it was, right on schedule. When was the government ever on schedule? This piqued his curiosity and suspicion even further.

  The two men threw back shots of vodka and shook hands before Shavchuk left his house. The farmer watched him drive off. Afterward, the farmer called a few friends and acquaintances on farms in his region, all of who had received similar offers. What had the scientists come up with that was going to make them so much money they could throw hryvnia at them like it grew from trees? Maybe it will put us all out of business next year. How am I supposed to know these things?

  His farm was relatively small. How big of checks had men like Nazarenko, Rudenko, and Vovk gotten? All had more than two thousand acre spreads.

  Farming was all he knew. He didn’t see how a newly discovered miracle fertilizer would increase his crop yield so close to harvest. But the premium being paid to test this dramatic new wonder product made resistance foolish and futile. He had already spent the deposit money on next year’s seeds and a new engine for his decrepit combine. If his crop yield was greater than the Shavchuk’s impromptu estimate, the man promised him a ten percent bonus on top of the premium.

  Maybe his son could go to university in America and get out of this quagmire of political intrigue that the Russians—always the Russians—had created.

  With rumors of more soldiers being deployed from Moscow, maybe it was time for the whole family to move to America. Years earlier, he had attended a trade show in Kremenchuk to look at impossibly expensive new farm equipment where he heard a professor of agriculture from the University of Nebraska speak through a translator.

  What was the professor’s name? He had repeatedly told his audience to just call him Bobby.

  He liked him. He was real. Ever since that conference, he felt Nebraska would be a nice place to live. He watched the crop duster turn on its side as it circled back to lay another orangish cloud of its miracle load.

  Just what did they think it could do this late in the harvest season?

  37

  Washington, D.C.

  HELLER SAT IN HIS OFFICE. He and Marcum returned to D.C. on a military chopper after his dinner with Walter Wannegrin. He rarely slept more than four hours a night. Tonight he would not sleep at all. Reports kept arriving on the secure line. What was going on? This was orchestrated chaos.

  Al Qaeda? ISIS? Of course. But in the pit of his enormous gut, he somehow sensed that the series of macabre events went deeper.

  He picked up the phone and made a quick call, giving a terse command: “Move on the son.”

  “We don’t know if the kid is right for the job.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Heller said. “He’s all we got.”

  “You gave us a week to get to know him.”

  “We don’t have a week,” Heller said. “Get him reconnected with Anderson, now,” he ordered before cutting the line.

  Heller sighed. So much to do, so little time. He considered the levers available to him. Until he did further research, Wally would be put on the bench. But if he couldn’t trust his longest friend in the world, Walter Wannegrin, who could he trust?

  New York City

  “SO YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOUR classmate at NYU, Jason Anderson, was Jonathan Alexander’s son?” Greene asked.

  “Of course not,” Patrick Wheeler answered. “I thought Alexander’s son was killed in a car crash. Is this some sort of a game?”

  “Do we look like we play games?” Green asked. “Tell us again how well you know Anderson.”

  “Like I said, we had a couple classes and a couple drinks together. He wasn’t very outgoing—not sure how many friends he had—but he seemed like a regular guy. I knew he wasn’t hurting for cash, but he sure didn’t act like he was the son of one of the richest men in the world.”

  “How good of friends were you?”

  “Jason and me? I don’t know. When you are grinding through grad school, you sort of get close to people. You form a bond. But I haven’t talked to him in a year. Not since graduation. So it’s probably safer to say we weren’t BFFs.”

  “What is a BFF?” Agent Greene asked suspiciously.

  Really? There’s someone that doesn’t know what a BFF is?

  Before he could enlighten Greene, Rasmussen interjected, “Best friends forever.”

  Wheeler looked in surprise at the man that he had named “the Sphinx” in his mind. So he can speak. I do wonder if these guys have first names. Or maybe the FBI only hires guys who are named Agent. Will I have to legally change my name if this conversation is going where I think it is?

  “But you have his cell and email in your phone?”

  “Yes. Yes. I’ve told you that a bunch of times.”

  “Just wanted to make sure I am getting things right,” Greene answered.

  “Did you put other classmates in your contact list?” Rasmussen asked. “Or just BFFs?”

  “Some. Sure. Not everyone.”

  What was this? BFF? That sounds creepy coming from Agent Rasmussen.

  “And he never reached out to you since graduation?” Greene asked in a slightly different form for the fifth or sixth time.

  “If he did, I missed the call.”

  “Never?”

  “No!”

  A little more than a day after entering his apartment to discover two FBI agents sitting in the tiny living room of his apartment, he still hadn’t returned to work or been in contact with KPMG.

  This better be legitimate or I’m officially unemployed.

  Wheeler wondered for the hundredth time if this really was a job interview. He kept a steady banter of protest going, reminding the agents he had a great job and was up for a promotion, but truth was, he was intrigued. He was going nowhere fast with KPMG so a change was welcome. Becoming an FBI agent? That held an incredible, almost irresistible, allure to it. But being grilled around the clock felt all wrong. So he kept fighting his two interrogators, who more and more felt like captors.

  Why do I feel like I’m being looked at as a suspect in a crime?

  He had spent almost twenty-four hours in a nice but nondescript conference room in the Financial District. It looked like you would expect an FBI conference room to look. The wood grained laminate table, like everything else, looked good but not too good. L
eather or more likely some synthetic leather chairs were comfortable and practical. The only breaks they gave him were to eat sub sandwiches and heed the call of nature. Wheeler felt sweaty and dirty. He longed for a shower and change of clothes. His pants felt glued to his skin. He was exhausted—Agents Greene and Rasmussen looked like they were just getting started.

  Is this a test?

  Wheeler decided that no matter how alluring a job with the FBI might seem, he was done spilling his guts to these guys. He let the silence extend. Were they waiting for him to say something else? Was there something he was supposed to add? Had he said something wrong?

  He opened his mouth to say more, but told himself, just shut up and wait. Then he felt a flicker and remembered something. He had seen Jason.

  “I did see Jason once this past summer.”

  The two agents looked at him impassively. Did they already know that?

  “I forgot because it was only in passing and we didn’t get a chance to talk.”

  “Go on.”

  “He was leaving a bar while I was going in.”

  “And?”

  “Simple as that. He was with a group of friends. I had worked late—and drank a little too much that night. That’s why I forgot.”

  “Remembering anything else Patrick?” asked Greene, the man who had conducted most of the interview the entire time.

  “No. That’s it. All we did was nod at each other.”

  “Name of the bar?”

  “The Cutting Room. It’s on 26th.”

  Wheeler braced himself for an hour of grueling, grinding questions to elucidate this chance encounter with a former classmate who looked like anything but the son of a multi, multi billionaire. But no one said anything for a moment. Then a door opened. A man entered and placed a briefcase on the middle of the table. He unsnapped two side fasteners and opened the lid of the hard-shelled thin, classic case that you only saw in movies from the 60s and second hand stores. Maybe I have entered the Twilight Zone, Patrick thought.