by J M Leitch
‘And you lost your main informant. So you told Erika to get friendly with his secretary so you could get information that way. I suppose you told her to get closer to Drew, too.’
‘No. She did that all on her own.’
‘But you manipulated Drew. Led him on. Made him think he’d come up with the plan to get my father to Vienna and away from the Americans.’
‘And it was you,’ Rachael spat out the word as if it was poison, ‘you who told Erika to give my father the drugs.’
‘I had to get him away from the Americans. Hospital was the perfect place. I knew Carlos took sleeping pills and amphetamines… I found them when I bugged his penthouse. That’s what gave me the idea. And Erika told me he kept some at the office… the secretary told her. Erika was good at getting secrets out of people. The secretary told her everything.’
Rachael’s face was ashen. But her mind was still whirring. ‘And the Americans thought you solved how Zul got the communications in, when all along you’d come up with the idea in the first place.’
‘That Barbara Lord… she had her people sniffing round me, but NI never did do that stuff very well. They were good on the technical side. It was the Brits who had surveillance off pat.’
‘And my father played right into your hands with his idea for the initiative.’
‘I knew he’d come up with something. If he hadn’t… well… I’d have suggested it. Like I put the idea into the Secretary-General’s mind to cover the launch on UN satellite TV. It was the only way I could beam Zul all over the world at the same time.’
‘And you shamed him into the Clean Up Plan… to give cover to the cabal. And you arranged the protective custody’.
‘You’d have made a good asset,’ Joseph rasped. ‘You’ve got a good logical mind. Like your mother. And your father. He spotted the flaw in what that stupid actress said, although he didn’t pick up on it till it was too late. Even if he’d challenged it at the time, I could have talked him round. Fed him some baloney. After all, he’d taken those drugs. He was very confused.’
Rachael sank her face in her hands.
‘Mossad recruited me at University. After the mission I had at NASA was canned, they moved me to Northrop Grumman. Setting up a cooperative agreement with IAI was perfect cover. It gave me legitimacy. Then IAI took me on and transferred me to Tel Aviv, where they promoted me to head their MALAT Division. That’s where I picked up the laser knowledge. I did business with all the militaries. I had the highest security clearance in the US. They trusted me, the idiots.’
Rachael’s face was white as she listened to the confession of the biggest mass murderer – ever.
‘After the cabal’s intermediary contacted our Director, he picked me for the job,’ Joseph’s voice was a croak, dry and brittle like a frog. ‘None of the other agencies could have pulled it off. Not like we did. Not with just one controller and one asset. We Mossad operatives were always the best. We weren’t just creative with ideas, we incorporated developing technology into our creativity. We had an edge none of the others had. And I was the best of the best. The other agencies? They criticised us. Said in the Mossad twisted ideals prevailed. Said we were fuelled with self-centred pragmatism, lust, greed and a total lack of respect for human life. They were probably right… so what? We never failed.
‘When the Director called me in, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was a dream job. I had carte-blanche. But after all that preparation researching the evolution of densities… coming up with Zul… setting up the technical side… distributing the vitamins… getting all the players in place… clearing all the obstacles those half-cocked Americans kept putting in my way… after your father came up with the Global Consciousness initiative – the perfect vehicle to hook the public – when everything was panning out like a dream,’ Joseph snorted, ‘just two weeks before E-Day the Director called me. To tell me they were pulling the plug on the whole operation.’
Rachael jerked up her head. ‘What?’
‘Lily-livered bastards. So… the next day the Director met with a little accident,’ Joseph struggled up onto his elbow, ‘and I went ahead alone.’ It was only then that Rachael realised every time she thought he’d been grimacing, in fact he’d been contorting his lips into a twisted version of a smile. She smelled his fetid breath and it made her feel like vomiting.
‘You committed genocide, killed six billion people… against orders? You vile diabolical man.’
He slid back down onto the bed. ‘It was necessary. For the human race to survive. And trust me, that secret group? They didn’t have the guts to give the green light, but it’s what they wanted.’
‘How can you say that? You didn’t even know who they were.’
‘I knew they were cowards. The lot of them. They wanted the outcome, but they wanted to keep their consciences clean.’ He snorted. ‘That conscience shit? That never bothered me. Although the Director never disclosed the identity of their representative, I’d known who it was for some time. When I contacted him after, he asked me to head their intelligence agency.’
‘Global Intelligence?’
‘No,’ he rasped, ‘not GI – they’re a bunch of amateurs – no, the agency that spies on GI. I’d proved myself to them, they knew how good I was and they knew they could trust me to get the job done.’
‘Did you ever find out who they were?’
‘I could have. But why bother?’
Rachael was overcome by a great heaviness weighing her down. She felt wretched and weary. So weary. ‘And my parents?’
‘I planned for the Tribunal to arrest your father but I would never have let them put him on trial. Then when your mother plotted the line of sight from my office to his office and his penthouse? Well… I had to kill her as well.’
‘You killed them? What about that sniper?’
‘I paid him to take the rap. Something that important? I had to do it myself.’
Rachael gasped. A tear trickled down her cheek.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he went on, slowly twisting his head from side to side. ‘The way the world is now? It’s what your father always wanted – low population, global unity, global prosperity – it’s his dream. In fact it’s doubly ironic. He died for his dream… he was a martyr, not a monster… thing was, no one knew it,’ and that hideous smile contorted his lips again.
‘And the book?’ she whispered.
Joseph wheezed out a laugh. ‘Yes. I knew about that. Your mother was smart but very naïve. I started hacking into her computer after she interviewed Anita Goodwin. And I kept her under surveillance when she moved back to England. I knew everything she knew. But she never had any hard data until she worked out I’d beamed the lasers from my office in Vienna. She stored the coordinates in code on her computer but never told anyone, so once I’d eliminated her I was safe.’
‘And you knew about me all along.’
‘Of course, I knew about you,’ and Rachael felt a chill of fear inch up her spine, ‘but you were a baby… you were never a threat.’ He lifted his gnarled fingers off the bed for a split second. ‘And as for now?’ He dropped them back down. ‘Now it’s too late. It doesn’t matter who you tell or what you say. No one will ever believe you. And in any case, no one cares.’
‘I care,’ she said, overcome by a surge of violent rage, and sprang to her feet.
***
Hands thrust deep in her pockets, Rachael walked out of the hospital wing and trudged through the driving sleet. She needed fresh, cold air to clear her head.
She couldn’t get the image of Joseph out of her mind. His despicable smile… his fetid breath… the revelation that he, alone, had committed the grossest act of genocide ever. He’d murdered six billion people not to mention her parents, without a single shred of remorse. He’d made it possible for the secret group to take over the world.
And how he’d jeered, in that harsh, cruel way he had. First at her father for falling for the Zul story and then at her mother for thinking sh
e could expose him. As if he was deliberately goading her to retaliate. That’s what had pushed her over the edge.
Even though he was still a big man he was old and suffering with a severe fever, as well as from his leg injury. Besides, the anger charged her with a strength she didn’t know she had. How easy it had been to drag the pillow from under his head. How easy to squash it over his face… to tell the nurse he’d peacefully passed away.
Once again she felt the fury seething inside her.
But when she’d stared down into his soulless eyes as she gripped the pillow with both hands, his endless taunts assaulting her ears… that she was as pathetic as her parents… that she didn’t have the guts to kill him… she caught herself. He was trying to screw with her mind.
So she’d dropped her arms and let the pillow fall to the floor. Because Rachael believed human life was sacrosanct – yes, even his – and that no single individual had the right to snuff out another’s existence, regardless whether it was six billion or just one.
Had she murdered him she would end up being the same as him. And she was nothing like him. Not one bit.
After she’d left his room the nurse told her Joseph’s doctor wanted to speak to her, and she’d sat in his office, still trembling, while he asked if Joseph had told her what was wrong with his leg. After she shook her head, he explained that a few days after knocking it, Joseph had complained of severe pains in his shin. They checked but couldn’t find the cause… there wasn’t even a bruise. Later, however, when his leg grew hot and red they’d run tests and found he’d developed necrotising fasciitis, an intensely painful infection occurring in the deepest layers of skin, otherwise known as the flesh-eating disease.
A new, more prevalent strain had developed since the holocaust, the doctor explained, which was immune to antibiotics. This is what Joseph had. It was an agonising, hideous illness and the only treatment was to remove infected tissue, resulting in large expanses of open wounds covering the body, amputations and eventually death.
The doctor said he could understand why, although Joseph had insisted he wanted to tell Rachael himself, he hadn’t found the courage.
She wrapped her scarf around her freezing face, leaving a narrow slit for her eyes.
Always the tough guy, she had no doubt Joseph would master the pain. But to lie, helpless in bed, watching as doctors hacked away his body piece by piece? For such an arrogant, egotistical man, that would be unbearable.
Of course he hadn’t told her… but it wasn’t because he couldn’t find the courage. Still playing the great manipulator, he’d wanted to provoke her into putting him out of his misery.
So when the doctor asked if Rachael could stay on in Miami and keep visiting Joseph to give him the moral support he’d need as the infection spread, she’d thought about it.
It would be his retribution. To have her with him, day after day, as they both witnessed the result of his infected flesh being sliced away, leaving his body nothing but a suppurating, oozing sore... the perfect visual metaphor to illustrate his purulent, disgusting mind... and although his suffering would never equate to the suffering he’d caused, it would be better than nothing.
And, she remembered, Joseph liked irony. So every day she visited she could remind him how ironic it was that he’d contracted this fatal disease in an institution specifically designed to cure people. And how it was doubly ironic because the doctors, whose job it was to fix people’s bodies, would be the ones responsible for mutilating his, as they carved off one section of his flesh after another.
She’d sworn to Scott she’d do something about all those deaths… and the death of her parents. But now she had the chance, she had no stomach for it.
Rachael knew she could no more watch Joseph suffer the grisly death that faced him, than kill six billion people. And so she walked away.
About The Author
J M Leitch
The Zul Enigma is my first novel. It took me 7 1/2 years to write. I am British and was born and grew up near London but headed out to Asia many years ago. I now spend my time between Assam in Northeast India, Bali in Indonesia, Singapore and the UK.
In addition to writing and reading, I enjoy hanging out with my family and friends. I love laughing, and I try to spend as much time doing that as I can because I believe it keeps me healthy.
My hobbies are reading, tennis and travelling. I also enjoy eating tasty food and drinking good wine.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many individuals have contributed towards this book to a greater or smaller degree – some have done so without even realising – and I’d like to take this opportunity of thanking them all.
However, I want to say a special and sincere “thank you” to the following people:
Maggie Webley for her motivation and feedback in the early, early days;
Alan Hancock for his communications expertise and creative assistance with all technical aspects;
Corrinne Jurenka for her first-hand knowledge of the UN and her first name;
Gus for putting me right regarding American diplomatic channels;
Andrea Schmitt, Lula Maiz and Carlos Casado for their help relating to all things Spanish and Carolina Rollier for correcting my Italian;
Michael Nicklin, Richard Birchfield, Claire and Charlie Johnston, Kent Smith, Jonathan Tilney, Jim and Margaret Forbes, Philip Jolowicz, Joel Puzey, Glenn Harry, Victor Mason, Cheryl Roudnew, Janet Boileau, Judy Fallin, David Hemsley and Diana Bracewell for their honest, intuitive and sometimes painful critiques of parts of, and in some cases the whole manuscript, during its various stages;
David Wilcock for his permission to base Zul’s message on “evolution through densities” as described in an early edition of his book The Shift of Ages;
Michael J Laine and Brian Dunbar for an exchange of e-mails about the Space Elevator;
Jeremy Allan for his advice on getting published;
Judy Goldie for her constant encouragement every step of the way and her daughter Philippa and Steven Castley for sharing publishing experiences;
Bruce Marshall for feedback on the physics;
Bayu for a first-class interior and cover layout;
Jim Davis for a magnificent website;
Jo Egré for her editing expertise;
Jane Walters for saving the day;
Wolfgang Widmoser for his brilliant cover artwork;
and last, but of course by no means least, my family for their patience and encouragement.