“Actually, I thought it was over altogether, you spent more than two hours with her. I have great news to tell you, grandpa,” Ali was beaming, “I just got a call from the Supreme Council of the Navibahais.”
“So what?” Tarek grew curious, “I see you cannot resist sharing.”
“It’s a secret, grandpa. Keep it for yourself,” Ali said, as if he had already said too much. But it was too late now, and his grandfather would have found out anyway. “The Council, which you know, means Farlimas, has made the decision that I will be the first Navibahai pilot to train for Space Elevator missions.”
Tarek stood up and hugged his nephew, “So proud of you, Ali,” he said, “One day you will take me with you, promise!”
“Well, it will take some time. I will undergo six months of ground training, then a few extra months as co-pilot.”
“Sounds good, so by the end of the year you will take me to the stars, right?” Tarek snapped back.
Ali mumbled something, but Tarek could not hear it, because in that moment the convertiplane of Helena flew way above their heads, its turbines roaring at full power.
From the window, Helena saw Tarek and Ali standing next to each other, the tea tray in front of them. She quickly turned away, as if she feared to be caught spying. Then, she turned her eyes back again, but the compound had already disappeared and only the sea was visible below her. She waited a few minutes, then, as soon as the plane reached cruise level in the direction of Stockholm, she looked into her contact list and called Dinesh on the secure line.
“Helena, is it you?” Dinesh was genuinely surprised to receive the call, “Anything wrong with Louis?”
“Hi Dinesh, not really, but quite close,” she said, “Just let me know one thing, how many clinics in Europe can find out if someone has got an MND-2 implanted?”
“Not that many, Helena, it’s relatively new technology,” Dinesh thought as he spoke, “I would say the best place today in Europe is the Schwabing Klinik in Munich, Germany. More are being qualified as the product spreads…why are you asking me? Louis needs further checks?”
“No I was just curious,” Helena replied briskly, “Could you just fly one of your MND-whatever experts there? Right now? I will tell you why, later.”
Dinesh was taken by surprise but did not hesitate.
“Sure, Helena, I would do anything for Louis, you know that.”
“Thanks, Dinesh, I know I can count on you,” Helena answered, in the kindest tone she could manage, and hung up. She then moved to the cockpit, looked at the captain and ordered,
“Call European air traffic control right away. We are changing routes. Make a stop in Munich before continuing to Stockholm. Duration undefined,” she stated, “However, make sure you communicate the route change only when we have left the Egyptian airspace. I need to place a few more calls and then could use some sleep, so do not disturb me in the cabin. Wake me once when we have landed.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the captain confirmed. “We’ll see you only when we reach Munich.”
Chapter 19
Yaakov looked at the data once again, as he had done hundreds of times in the last two weeks, and decided he needed to get out of the house. He sped down the hill of the Mount of Olives, and continued along the road that led to the Monastery of Getsemani. The mild spring temperature energized him to step up his pace and go over all he had learned once again.
The MND-2 that had been found in Helena two weeks before had been designed to activate in six months, a longer time than the one used on Louis. This time, the target was Louis, and, given the circumstances, there was little doubt that the drone had been implanted in Egypt, at Tarek’s mansion, to be more precise, as it was the only place visited by Helena outside Sweden, where she was under high security like Louis.
This was already disturbing, but even more than that, it was the analysis done by the experts of Dinesh. Both drones belonged to a lot that had been shipped to the United States, to hospitals run by Jewish organizations. The recovery of the second intact drone had made it possible to decode the software embedded in the drone, and it was clearly not the work of medical software developers, but somebody way more skilled, familiar with weapon development. One of the developers had even put his initials, GG, in the comments to the most difficult coding sequences, as if he wanted to reuse his work somewhere else.
All this, Yaakov and Helena agreed, pointed to some connection between Tarek and the Mossad. But why, if the target was Louis, not kill him right away, together with Dorian, a few weeks before?
It was not easy at all to figure out. If anything, this program at Mossad would be classified with the highest security, and any attempt by Yaakov to use his sources to gather more information would be immediately detected, letting their enemies know that they knew, whoever the enemy might be. For the very same reason, there was no point in confronting Tarek directly, and alert him that someone in his circle was against them. After all, they had six months to do their own research. Wrong, Yaakov corrected himself immediately, five months and a half.
As he ran past the Monastery of Getsemani, Yaakov could not help but notice that the usual line of pilgrims had dwindled down time and again. On the other hand, the road was busy with lorries that brought construction materials to Bethlehem, where the Navibahais were building a new, massive temple that would dwarf the Basilica of the Nativity. Apparently, Christians were losing faith in the divinity of Jesus by the day, but, contrary to what Yaakov thought, they didn’t become Jews. They converted to Navibahaism instead. He realized he was drifting astray from his line of thought, so he changed direction, heading towards the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, and continued thinking.
He felt once again that he had to restart from the two initials. GG. For some reason, a software developer had managed to break all the security rules and had signed his work, just like an artist. He could not leave a full name, obviously, it would have been detected by the compiler, but a couple of initials in the middle of an otherwise purely technical comment to a code sequence, were innocuous enough to let the compiler think it was only a typo.
How to find out more? He reached the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, and saw a small kiosk that used to sell refreshments to pilgrims, in the place right at the beginning of the stairs that led to the Tomb. It was about noon, and the kiosk used to be busy serving pilgrims, both Christians and Muslims, but again, the old crowds had disappeared. Yaakov decided he would help, so he stopped and ordered a lemon-based integrator.
The kiosk owner turned out to be a Jewish Russian, who had a small television set tuned to the main Russian news channel. Yaakov started drinking his bottle, when the Breaking News titles started sliding across the screen, by passing a seemingly excited anchorwoman. The images moved to show the Kremlin, and long motorcades of dark cars and vans moving in and out of the Spasskaya Tower.
The kiosk owner looked at Yaakov and volunteered to translate, but Yaakov thanked him and said he could understand the language, so the owner immediately started talking in Russian to Yaakov.
“What bullshit,” the owner said, “This new guy that has replaced President Irina Kanchelskaya, Anatoly Gorshkov, he is a real asshole. The perfect appartchik, completely nekulturniyj.”
“Irina did not manage to resist the flood of revelations,” Yaakov commented, “It’s a real pity, she was a great president.”
“Assholes,” the owner was visibly upset, “My compatriots have tolerated tyrants and thieves for centuries. Now, the most powerful Russian woman since the time of Catharine the Great, the general who defeated the Chinese at the Jenisej river during the war, has to resign because of the wave of shit that popped up a few months ago, because it became known, among many other corruption scandals engulfing their colleagues, that she had had an affair with an Arab, when she was serving the Rodina as a secret agent in the Emirates seventy years ago. Assholes!”
Yaakov raised his eyebrows, showing he shared the pessimism of the kiosk owner.
“She is not the first politician to fall,” he commented, “also in the JRC and in the Strip, careers have been taken away by the Great Leak. My name is Yaakov, by the way,” he said, extending his hand.
“I am Lev, nice to meet you,” the owner said, shaking hands, “Thanks for keeping my business alive today. It is my last day here. Tomorrow I move to Haifa, at the Navibahai’s first temple.”
“Following the business, I guess,” Yaakov said, “thanks for telling me anyway, I’m glad I chose your kiosk.”
“Yes, following the business,” Lev confirmed, “you see Farlimas, he emerged as the purest leader on Earth and his flock keeps increasing. Money follows flocks, I follow money, easy. My former army comrade Gursky has set up a kiosk in Haifa and cannot cope with the demand, so he asked me to join him, there is glory for everybody, he told me and…”
“What did you say?” something popped up in Yaakov’s mind, “What’s your friend name, you said?”
Lev gave Yaakov a strange look, and tracked back the flow of his speech,
“My friend, you mean? Gursky, Ben Gursky. He’s a Jewish Russian like me, we served in the Army in Cyprus and then..” he hadn’t finished his sentence, that Yaakov had shook his hand and waved him goodbye. He headed directly home. Lev looked around, there were just five people that looked at his kiosk, but then they decided to go downstairs to visit the Tomb first.
“Never mind, Lev,” he thought, “Tomorrow in Haifa will be a lot better.”
When Yaakov reached home, he rushed to the safe where he kept his memory sticks. He picked the one where he had stored the data of the third decade of the century, and inserted it into the spinal jack at the base of his head. The file system structure appeared in his mind, and he searched for the keyword ‘Gursky’. Many documents appeared in his consciousness, he added the keyword ‘discipline’ to the search, and there it appeared, the detailed record of Guil Gursky.
Yaakov read carefully through, the file held the history of an extremely talented developer, who had worked in the team that had developed the software for the first generation of killer flies, but had the weakness of boasting too much and to the wrong people about his work. In his case, the wrong people had happened to be his wife, who had denounced him to the Shin Bet. He had to be dismissed from the team, and later found another job in a private company, right after having divorced from his wife.
Yaakov disconnected the stick and put it back into the safe. He then went to his computer, and searched for Guil Gursky, getting only links to outdated social media pages. It looked as if Guil Gursky had disappeared from real life years ago. Was he still alive? If not, what would be the most efficient way to find out? The public registry would not disclose data to a private citizen like him, nor could he use his channels. Was Gursky dead or alive? This is what he had to find out right away. After a few minutes of pondering, he rang the call center of the Ha’aretz newspaper, and asked to be connected to the obituary department. He was eventually connected to a human operator.
“Hi, I am calling because one of my army comrades died, but I forgot where the funeral is taking place,” Yaakov said, “I heard this from a friend who read the obituary in your newspaper.”
“Alright, and the name of the person is?” the operator asked, sounding somewhat annoyed.
“Gursky, Guil Gursky,” Yaakov said, “I think he passed away in the last couple of days. Anyway, you don’t publish that many obituaries nowadays..”
Silence followed, then the operator asked, “Are you sure? I have only one Guil Gursky on record, but his obituary dates back to two months and a half ago.”
“Oh, um,” Yaakov simulated surprise, “Ok, maybe my comrade had drunk a bit too much vodka, you know how it goes with old comrade parties. In any case, could you send me the announcement? There is always a family grieving to visit, and…”
“Sure, Sir,” the operator replied, impatiently, “Just give me your email address.”
Yaakov hung up. So Guil Gursky had eventually gone too far, with his pride and need to show off his technical abilities. Yaakov reviewed his record, a man who loved knowledge but had lost every restraint taking care to protect his work. If you take the fear of God away from a Jew and leave only the love for knowledge, what is left to differentiate him from an Ancient greek?
Chapter 20
Tarek was sitting in the shadow of his studio, when Ali entered the room, visibly excited.
“You used to announce yourself by knocking on the door,” Tarek remarked, surprised, “Did your enthusiasm make you forget your manners? Also, don’t leave the door open, otherwise the desert wind of May will cover the room with sand.”
Ali felt struck by the comment, he closed the door behind him, and then moved inside the studio to sit on the couch opposite to Tarek’s desk, his eyes fixed on his grandfather.
“Um, well, yes, grandpa. It’s just that I finished my training as Space Elevator pilot with top marks. In two days I am leaving for my first, real life mission. I am taking a payload of carbon dioxide to the geostationary orbit,” Ali spoke incredibly fast, sometimes stumbling on his words, then took what looked like a shirt from his backpack, “Look, check out my uniform!”
Tarek understood the enthusiasm of his nephew, as he was unfolding the white-and-golden outfit of the Space Elevator pilots’ guild.
“Very cool,” Tarek commented, then chuckled, “You will look much better in it than in your usual navibahai outfit. I think Amina, your girlfriend, would agree with me.”
Ali did not seem to like how Tarek had mentioned Amina. The smile from his face disappeared and he turned to the the giant screen on the wall. The images from the Al Ahram news channel, the Egyptian broadcaster, showed the release on bail of Louis Picard, who was shown leaving the Stockholm prison with Helena to his right, a small child in her arms, and a very well-dressed man behind him, most likely a lawyer. Ali watched for a few seconds and then asked Tarek,
“This is dating back to two weeks ago, why do you keep watching it?”
“Exactly, Ali, two weeks ago,” Tarek repeated, “Yet in two weeks neither one of them, Louis nor Helena, bothered to drop me a call to share what it was like being out of prison, or even how the little baby is doing. I was not expecting an invite to dinner at their home, just a call to say hello.”
“I think they realized that you no longer belong to their team, you can no longer help them spread their evil,” Ali said, then he added, as if in reproach, “Even though you never quite told them full out about your conversion. Are you ashamed? Or what?”
Tarek grew irritated.
“Ali, I do not understand why you allow yourself the right to preach to me, something that not even Farlimas ever did all the times I met him since I first traveled to Yamassoukro last year,” Tarek continued, “Things need time to mature - you should know. I also do not understand what you intend by evil. We wanted to do good with Telomerax, but it spun out of control.”
“Yes, sorry for my reaction, I didn’t mean to offend you, grandpa,” Ali’s voice subsumed, “but it spun out of control big time, and now we have to take people back to the fear of God, thanks to Farlimas, the new Messenger of the Almighty, our faith is spreading, hopefully God won’t unleash his wrath upon us….even if we have deserved it big time.”
Tarek waited for his nephew to stop, then asked, softly, “Ali, you talked about the wrath of God….it reminds me of what the Honourable Elder Sergei said in the last Supreme Council, he talked about the time when God will punish us for the perversion of mankind…in a very concrete way…”
Ali became suspicious, and was not able to hide it quickly enough, “You shouldn’t read too much between the lines…people in the Supreme Council of Farlimas use to talk by using metaphors…and you’ve become part of it only recently, you don’t appreciate all the nuances…”
Tarek decided it was worth exploiting the weakness shown by Ali, so he waited for his first pause and jumped in.
“Ali, I know I am the newest memb
er of the Supreme Council, and I know I skipped all the steps just because of Farlimas’ personal decision to admit me…I do not know why he treats me like his favorite, I didn’t do anything to gain his respect, it just happened.” Tarek looked at Ali and continued,
“Nonetheless, I am not stupid, and I know this has probably raised some jealousy in other members of the Council, and even more in those who were patiently waiting in line for their turn to enter and all of a sudden found themselves overtaken by this new convert, so…” Tarek let a few seconds pass, “…I am just asking for your advice to create less trouble as possible to Farlimas, our beloved leader. I need to know what is going on, otherwise I might accidentally say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Either that, or not say the right thing at the right time.”
“The wrath of God…” Ali repeated, “..well, the Honourable Elder Sergei was referring to the disorders that happened following the Great Leak, and, in all the pain that ensued, also helped many people to find the path of truth once again.”
“Yes, indeed, and this made me wish to go back to being a nonbeliever..” Tarek said, abruptly, “..I still find it somehow miserable to rejoice in disasters just because they give the Almighty the opportunity to show He is a great handyman.” Tarek had his eyes set on Ali, who paled, “However, Elder Sergei ended up his speech stating that the whip would strike again. Was that just a metaphor?”
Ali kept silent for a while, looking down at his hands, then looked back up at Tarek.
“It was just a metaphor. You do not need to be a prophet to figure out that catastrophes and disasters will continue, until the world does not find its right course.”
“Alright, Ali, let me remind you of something from my previous life as a nonbeliever,” Tarek turned harsh, “I have a lot of evidence that the Navibahais are meddling in things they shouldn’t, if they lived by their talk. You were with me when I raised the point to Farlimas. He doesn’t endorse these types of things, and he probably doesn’t like them either, but he is forced to tolerate them, to some extent…” Tarek was weighing his words, “…I am afraid that there are too many people around him that take advantage of his leadership and charisma to pursue their own political agenda…just like in any church, by the way.”
The Last Enemy - A history of the present future - 1934-2084 Page 46