by David Archer
“Of course it is,” Sam said. “Now, we just have to hope that we round up the right party.”
9
With nothing left to do but wait, Sam and Indie decided to go back to the hotel. Ken and Gary were happy to see them, especially when they were brought up to date on the pope's response. Both men wanted to hear all the details, and as soon as Sam and Indie were done talking, it became obvious that Gary had just as much to say.
“So, okay, I've been doing a lot of digging,” he said. “Remember, just before you left, we were speculating on who Chandler might have been referring to, in those cryptic last words of his. Well, I went on the assumption that it would be someone easily recognizable to the American public, but also to the rest of the world, and that it would be someone that at least a fair number of people would regard as a potential world leader. Now, if we add in the fact that it has to be a woman, it don't matter how you try to slice it, you're only going to come up with one name. Now, I realize that we're all sick and tired of conspiracy theories, but if you go back through all of Chandler's personal files and notes, an awful lot of the things they said about Mrs. Ross have at least some basis in truth. You are aware, aren't you, that she's been accused many times of being the antichrist? Well, try this on for size. Back when she was first lady, there was a rumor that went around that she decorated a Christmas tree with some…” Gary glanced at Indie, and turned a bit pinkish before going on. “Well, that she used condoms and little male figures who were, um, let's just say they were obviously very male, that's the rumor that went around. But I got to poking around in some of Chandler's personal files that I copied from the office network, and I found a couple of amazing photographs of a tree decorated exactly that way, and would you like to guess who's in those photos? That doesn't really have much to do with this situation, but if you're looking at the overall picture, it shows some pretty strange vibes, wouldn't you think?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Pretty strange, yeah, I'll go along with that,” he said. “But what does any of this have to do with Chandler? Or any kind of connection between them?”
Gary grinned and nodded, his glasses bobbing up and down on his nose. “I was getting to that,” he said, “don't be so impatient! I can show you about three dozen different files that connect Sandra to an organization called the Muslim Sisterhood, and a number of documents showing that she deliberately arranged for certain Christian organizations to be stifled while at the same time, and very publicly, she was promoting tolerance and acceptance of Muslim principles. She and her top aide, Huma Abedin, both members of the Muslim Sisterhood, are apparently pretty close to other members, who include the wives of high-ranking officials in many Muslim countries. Man, this lady has Chandler written all over her!”
Ken shook his head at Sam. “Don't let yourself get excited,” he said. “Don't get me wrong, I'd love to pin this on her, but I have my doubts. I mean, first off, if she were really the one Chandler was grooming for all of this, I can't believe he would've let all these rumors go crazy. He could pick up the phone and make anyone disappear, anywhere in the world, and we know that to be a fact. That being the case, I just can't see him allowing all of those rumors to fly around Sandra if he really had any inclination towards using her in his plans. And frankly, I can't see why in the world he'd want to use her. I mean, after what happened in Benghazi and so many other screwed up situations, and then the whole thing about her having some blood clot in the brain – I don't know, but to me, all of those things would make her 'hands off,' if I were the one making those decisions.”
“Then, you're not swallowing any of this, this whole concept that she's the one Chandler wanted to put in place? I don't know, I've got to admit that from what little I know, she almost seems like the ideal candidate. And let's face it, she's got the political clout. There are still people who think she'd make a great president.”
Indie shuddered. “Oh, Lord, I hope not in my lifetime, or my daughter's!”
Sam laughed at her. “Baby, I'm in complete agreement,” he said. “The thing is, none of this is getting us any closer to figuring out what to do next.” He looked at Gary. “Now you're getting a taste of what real investigation and fieldwork is like,” he said. “It's mostly just sitting around and waiting, hoping to get the next clue in time to do something with it.”
“Oh, I understand that,” Gary said. “I had to go through every debriefing report, every after action report, every analysis report – some days I thought my eyes were going to fall out from staring at the monitor.” He looked at Indie. “You ready to get to work? You can set up on the other side of this table, and we can coordinate our searches so that we're covering twice as much data.”
Indie smiled. “Sure, glad to. I feel like I'm just in the way, standing around here like this. Give me a minute.” She grabbed her laptop case and got it out, and had it set up a moment later. Gary gave her the log-on instructions for the super Wi-Fi the government kept at the Royal Palace Hotel. Moments later, she had her computer live and running. “Okay,” she said, “where do you want me to start?”
Gary grinned. “I'm sending you some links; these are pages online that are secretly connected to Chandler's plans. You'll be going in through a proxy I've set up, so you won't need all the passwords for each site; what I want you to do is search them for anything you think might give us any idea of what to do next. Turn Herman loose, and see what he can find, y'know?”
“Okay,” she said, “I see them. So I'm running through your computer to get to these pages?”
“Yep,” Gary said. “I'm already logged in, so by running through the proxy in my system you don't have to worry about logging in to each and every one of them. Using those links, Herman can go in and scan all of the pages without any problem.”
Indie smiled. “Sweet! I'm on it!”
Sam sat down beside Indie, and the two of them started discussing search parameters for Indie to feed into Herman. That meant that, since she had already given him the links to search, they needed to tell him what to look for.
“This Mesopotamian God that Chandler seemed to worship was called Shamash. Let's look for any reference to him, especially to any prophecies concerning him. That would give us at least something to start with. Then, let's look for any reference to Mrs. Ross. If he's honestly got her in his plan to be the figurehead, then we ought to be able to find some mention of her, somewhere.”
Indie nodded. “Yes, but the more I think about it, the less I believe it. He would want someone believable in that position, someone reliable. She said so many gaffes that it's just beyond comprehension to think that anyone would accept her as the new world leader.”
Sam shrugged, but looked her in the eye. “Really? If you studied your history, you know there was a time when a fair number were prepared to accept a man like Adolf Hitler. You'd be surprised what people will accept, when they think it will make life easier for them. I always got a kick out of psychology professors, with their references to prime motivations. In my experience, the prime motivation of mankind is always nothing more than, 'Me! Me!' People want what makes their own lives as easy as possible, and they don't really give a rip how it may affect anyone else. If she steps up after the disasters Chandler planned, then yeah, I could see the world accepting her. You got to remember that we live in a very sick society.”
Indie made a face. “Yeah, I know,” she said. “Still, makes you wonder how sick it could be.” She tapped her keys, giving Herman his instructions and then turning him loose to do his thing. The program almost instantly started dinging to tell her it had found something, and even Indie looked surprised. She glanced at both Sam and Gary before she clicked on the first link to appear. It was in a page of Chandler's notes, apparently, like a journal he was keeping. Indie read it aloud, so that they could all hear it at once.
“M has no idea just how important she is to the whole plan, but I'm sure she is the one Shamash refers to in the ninth line of the twenty second prophecy: “The wo
man of power is made first among my councils, and is given the place of leadership, for my hand shall be hidden, I say, behind her veils.” As far as I can tell, this means that the world's new leader is to be female, and won't that be a shock to all those Muslims. Shamash wants his real power, which is me, to be concealed. I'm to be the real ruler, while M takes the credit and gets the praise. No wonder I've always been the one to work behind the scenes. That was always Shamash, preparing me for the most important role I would have to play.”
Indie read the passage again, as Sam and Ken looked at each other. “Who is 'M?'” Sam asked. “That's the question we have to answer.”
Ken nodded. “Yeah, but at least we do know we're looking for a woman. Just having that confirmed is a pretty big plus, right now.”
“Yeah, I have to agree,” said Sam. He turned back to Indie. “Now the question is, how to identify that woman. If it is Sandra, I still say there should be some reference to her, somewhere. If it's not, then we ought to be finding something to indicate who it is.”
“Herman's still looking,” Indie said. “We gotta give him time. Be patient, baby, he'll come up with something. Doesn't he always?”
There had been a few more chimes while the reading and talking was going on, and Indie turned back to the computer to see what they were. She clicked on the first link in the list, and found another page of notes. She scanned through them quickly, but didn't find anything that told them anything new, so she skipped on to the next one. This one looked like a page with links to other websites, and for a moment she got excited. When she clicked the first of the links on the page, it went to a news story about the Benghazi incident, a story that pointed out how Sandra Ross had avoided repeated orders to testify about what happened there. Seeing that, Indie thought she might be onto evidence that Mrs. Ross was the M they were looking for, but when she clicked the next link she found a story about a train derailleur derailment in India, and then the next one was about an election in an African country. None of them seemed to be related at all to Chandler's plans, but then it suddenly hit her.
“Sam!” Indie said. “Look at this!” She pointed out the reference to Benghazi, then the train derailleur and the election, which the article indicated had not gone the way the people expected to go. The next article after that one was about the death of an ambassador from Nigeria, and the one after that detailed the bombing of a US military installation in Afghanistan.
Sam looked, read through the articles as she showed them to him, but then just looked at her. “Babe,” he said, “I don't get it. What do all these things have to do with Chandler's plot, or with finding out who M is?”
Indie grinned. “I didn't get it at first, either,” she said. “We told Herman to find things that were related to Chandler's plans, and that's exactly what he did. The trouble was that we were thinking of things he was planning that were yet to come, while Herman put two and two together and figured out that all of these were parts of his plot, as well. The death of our ambassador in Benghazi? A train goes off the rails in India? Take a good look, in every single one of these incidents, someone powerful is eliminated. In Benghazi, the US ambassador died, and was, of course, replaced by someone else when the time came. In India, when that train went off the tracks, over a hundred people died, and three of them were government officials. If you catch the footnote on that story, they were the three who were opposing India's leadership on some new governmental reforms. The Nigerian ambassador to Egypt is assassinated, and a week later there are some new agreements between those two countries that nobody thought were possible under the old guy. Sam, all of these are things Chandler arranged, every single one of them.”
“She's right,” Gary said, and Ken echoed him a second later. “That's exactly what he did, he arranged things like these in order to create vacancies that allowed him to put puppets of his own into place. I'll be honest, it never even occurred to me that Benghazi could have been one of his, but when I look at it now, it's pretty obvious.”
“Ironic, isn't it?” Ken asked. “I was using Benghazi to justify why I didn't believe he'd want to use her, and now it turns out that she was basically just holding the bag for him on that one. Sort of looks like he stuck it to her, doesn't it?”
Sam nodded. “It does, but it doesn't necessarily eliminate her as a candidate, either. We don't know what arrangement might have been made on that, or how it might conceivably have benefited her.”
Indie crinkled her eyes at him. “Benefited her?” She asked. “Sam, she got raked over the coals on that one. I don't think there was much benefit to her in it, anywhere. I'm not defending her, don't get me wrong, but I can remember all that stuff on CNN about how the senators and congressmen were screaming for her blood over that.”
“Yeah, I remember that too,” he said, “but it's quite possible that was nothing but camouflage. They may have wanted that big fuss, just to keep anyone from speculating on what have been behind that event. Since everyone was looking at Sandra, screaming that she should have done something or somehow prevented that tragedy, no one was paying any attention to whoever it was that stood to gain from it. Maybe we should be looking at that.”
Ken shook his head. “I don't think so,” he said. “Just the very fact that not one of us can think of who took over after Chris Stevens was killed says it's probably not that great a connection. It was passed off as a terrorist act, an attack by terrorists against the United States. Stevens and the others who died were supposedly just collateral damage, but now that we know Chandler was involved, then we know that someone stood to gain something, and probably from the fact that Stevens died.”
“Laurence Pope,” Gary said, staring at his monitor. “He was appointed as ambassador to Libya in October 2012, about a month after Stevens was killed. Anybody want to take a guess who was behind his appointment?”
“Oh, let's see,” Sam said, “would that be Sandra Ross?”
“Nope!” Gary said. “The suggestion for the appointment came from none other than Grayson Chandler, who is listed as an advisor to the president on matters related to diplomatic relations with Muslim nations. On the other hand, Mr. Pope had retired back in two thousand, and had to come out of retirement to fill that slot. His entire career in the diplomatic corps is about as exemplary as it could get. I mean, this guy has never had a blemish of any kind on his record, not even the slightest little black mark. He's about as clean as a man can get, and at seventy years old, he's pretty well retired, again, now. I can't find anything to indicate a connection to Chandler, no real benefit that he might've gained from Stevens' death.”
Sam leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “So we're back to square one,” he said. “Seems like this whole thing is twisted around in so many directions that is almost impossible to figure out where any part of it could be going.”
“Well, if you were Chandler, isn't that the way you'd want it?” Indie asked. “Let's face it, nobody would want their plan to take over the world to be completely obvious to everyone, would they? If you were doing it, wouldn't you build it in such a way that every clue someone thought they found simply led them down another dead-end road?”
“I guess I'd try,” Sam said. “On the other hand, how hard would it be to anticipate every possible attempt to figure out what you're doing and throw roadblocks up in front of them? Any mind that could do that would be pretty frightening. I know I could never pull off something like that, and frankly, I don't think I know of any other human being who could.”
Ken suddenly looked up at Sam. “A thought just ran through my head,” he said. “Remember the other day, we were on the way to DC when Harry called. He said something that I thought was odd, he said that Chandler seemed to be scared that you were going to stop him. Remember that?”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”
Ken cocked his head to one side. “Here's what's bothering me,” he said. “Up until you got involved with me, Chandler had never even heard of you. And yet, for som
e reason we don't know, as soon as he heard you were involved in my efforts to stop him, he started getting nervous. Now, why is that, I wonder? Anybody got any ideas?”
No one did. Gary turned to his computer and started tapping keys rapidly. “I'm telling Mad Maggie to run a search on any correlations between Chandler and Sam Prichard. Let's see if there's a connection somewhere that we're not aware of.”
Gary turned his computer loose, while they all continue to watch what Herman was up to. Every few minutes there was another ding from Indie's computer, and they would all look to see what Herman had come up with next. There were links to more of Chandler's notes, but none of them gave any further indication of who the infamous M was, and there were links to more news stories about events that probably had Chandler's fingerprints all over them, but nothing that seemed to be useful. Time was passing, and everyone was getting uptight.
Suddenly, Mad Maggie signaled a result, and Gary spun his chair and rolled back to his side of the table. Everyone waited while he looked at what Maggie had reported, but when he gave a low whistle, they all hurried around to see for themselves.
“Okay,” Gary said, “this is a page from a scholarly work on the prophecies of Shamash, from a Doctor Abdul Teresh, who actually interpreted some old Mesopotamian tablets that were found about a hundred years ago. He was particularly interested in the prophecy of what he calls, 'the bright one,' which is the name that he gives to a prophesied figure whose purpose is to ferret out unworthy people in the high councils of Shamash. In other words, the bright one is supposed to be someone unknown, who comes out of nowhere, to defeat and destroy those who try to use their position for personal gain, rather than serving the true will of Shamash.”