Sergei drove the Sebring rental car with Maran sitting shotgun in recognition that this was his day, the shining glory of all his trials and tribulations, and he reveled in the scenery painted by spring flowers as they tooled off 3rd Street NW onto I-395 S and turned into the ramp to Richmond and took a right on exit 8C to merge into US 1 and into Crystal City, a complex of government buildings, hotels, office high-rises, underground shops, and huge apartment buildings. After getting a tetanus shot, an antibiotic, and stitches in the hospital, Maran had a bandage over the wound in his neck where Vangaler had bit him.
Marriott’s Courtyard Crystal City stands a mile from Reagan Washington National Airport on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, a model of shining modern hospitality. Major General “Bull” Luster presided over a private celebration ceremony in a reception room at the hotel located in the cluster of them off Jeff Davis Highway. U.S. military law allows for clemency and an Honorable Discharge to a former service member whose prior service was deemed less than honorable for “exemplary post-service conduct” so Maran’s honor had been restored quietly by the White House. General Luster knew there’d be no official ceremony celebrating that fact.
Smiling at Maran from the podium, Luster paid tribute to the reinstated operator.
“Victoriae!” he started. “A slogan that Mack Maran has upheld to its letter. In so doing, he has reminded us that it can only live up to its promise if it is balanced with integrity, honor, and judgment.” The crowd in the conference room applauded. Mack sat on stage with Tracha, who sat in a wheelchair still recovering from his fractured skull and chest injuries. The doctors predicted he’d recover ninety percent of his motor skills.
“I am proud to be here tonight to celebrate the reinstatement of the full privileges accorded to an honorably discharged member of the United States Armed Forces and to pay respect to a man who has extended an olive branch to the world.”
The crowd applauded.
“Bad things happen, as the current world situation proves. Colonel Maran and his team captured, arrested, and rid the world of one of the most obscene gangs of transnational terrorists in history. He has closed down the shop of criminals at the Special Operations Group Command. Crushing this double threat has surely saved us from a depression and the terrorism that would have again reached our shores.”
The crowd applauded.
“While it may not be publicly recognized by this administration, he put an American face to the virtue of honor in those places where it counts. Tonight, his reputation precedes our own armed forces fighting terrorism in dark, secret places around the world. Terrorist leaders who spurred their lackies into forfeiting their lives are now running for their own. Colonel Maran has single-handedly brought the Sleeping American tiger to its feet.”
The crowd applauded.
“As a result of his investigation, the United States government has closed a relationship with CryptoCop, the Zurich-based spyware company, that never should have been opened in the first place. I feel confident in saying we will never again leave ourselves open to risk by relying on foreign providers for such critical components to our national protection system.
“Mack Maran’s persistence and dedication is a tribute to the spirit of the American people and to the training and resolve of its military. Today, the men and women of our Armed Forces are sending out a message that is being heard by our enemies. No matter how far you run, how hard you hide, or how deep you burrow your rat holes—you will not escape the justice of this nation. God bless America.”
The crowd applauded yet again, uproariously.
Left unspoken was the story of SAWC’s raid on Boyko’s mine to rescue Maran and Amber and the obliteration of al-Ebrahyim’s ricin weapons factory in Mali.
SIXTY-TWO
New Brunswick
Early fall. The Canadian maples were going red as Maran and Sergei relaxed at the fishing cabin BANG! had rented at the Blackville Inn on the Miramichi River in Doaktown, New Brunswick, one of Maran’s favorite places from the early days. The Atlantic salmon fishing season had begun. Maran looked out the kitchen window over the front porch. It still smelled of fresh paint. He saw the big, silvery fish breaking the surface of the river and arcing in the air. The cabin was still furnished the same. He sat in a big, beat-up, old leather easy chair in the living room, looking through a wide entryway into the kitchen, sparsely furnished with a handmade wooden pine table and ladder-back chairs with wicker seats. A wood stove for cooking and heating bath water leaked smoke as it boiled a cast iron pot of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee to the richness he demanded for his preferred Coke and Dunkin’ blends. The one improvement was the one Maran had brought with him, an Iridium 9555 satellite telephone that sat on an old mahogany side table next to the recliner. Anyone could reach him now. Sergei reminded him that he could have used the phone in the African jungle and he had earned the luxury of the easy chair.
Next to him sat a copy of a book that had come in the mail. Maran had started reading it: David Kennedy’s “Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War.” The diamond debacle and its effect on the stock market piqued his interest in Kennedy’s theory that markets are driven by psychology and that there was little linkage between the 1929 Crash and the Depression and that FDR’s New Deal failed to reverse the catastrophe—that it took WWII to do that.
Sergei sat in front of the wood stove. He looked at Maran, reading.
“Switching from Ludlum to thumb-suckers?” he laughed, shaking his head.
“Hard to believe it’s all over, isn’t it, Mack?” He was moving to Boston to join Maran at BANG! Inc. They were getting a lot of new inquiries. Business looked more than just promising.
“I’d love to believe it,” Maran said. “This just came from the tribunal.”
He handed Sergei a sheaf of documents.
The International Criminal Court tribunal in The Hague had completed its trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity levied on Grigol Rakhmonov Boyko.
Sergei read:
Since the most powerful nations, with the exception of the United States, have lacked the political grit to use force to end war crimes, the U.N. has developed as a deterrent a system of policing, indictment and trial of those suspected of violating humanitarian law.
Our goal is to uncover the deeper truths behind the atrocities of which Grigol Rakhmonov Boyko, a/k/a, the Animal of Angola, stands accused of the verified deaths of 10,000 people, dead or missing and presumed dead.
Among those truths are Mr. Boyko’s background, one that, like many of the principals in this case, reflects the exploitation of human beings by dictatorships and their evil supporters.
The defendant has entered a guilty plea and has conceded that he was responsible for crimes including murder and rape, forced labor, unlawful detention, cruel and inhumane treatment, illegal poaching of protected wildlife species, and the mass destruction of cultural and sacred objects.
However, the tribunal finds that the defendant’s past misfortune in his life has contributed to an unstable mental state. The circumstances behind his background are remarkable and filled with acts of cruelty against him, which clouded his sense of humanity. He responded by superseding those acts as a way of escaping his own unrelenting pain.
What Mr. Boyko never could have expected was the incredible human impact that would be visited on him in caring for a young boy, Amber Chu’s kidnapped son.
We also take into account Ms. Amber Chu’s written affidavit:
“After hearing my son’s account of his time with Grigol Boyko, I have been awakened to the value of forgiveness. Living through such a horrible experience has taught me that the way to liberate myself from hatred is to reject it. My forgiveness is liberation; it does not condone nor excuse, but it makes permanent and thoughtful note.
“I forgive Mr. Boyko in order to rise above revenge, not because I absolve him but to affirm the power of human compassion.
“To this end, I
dedicate myself to working to end the continuum of hatred and violence. In not bringing about this end, we are all diminished.”
We acknowledge Ms. Chu’s request for compassion. Therefore, we drop the genocide charges and accept Grigol Rakhmonov Boyko’s confession to the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity.
We hereby sentence him to life imprisonment with no possibility for parole in his lifetime.
Sergei handed the document back.
“What they don’t say,” Maran noted, “is that they were embarrassed that they couldn’t succeed in bringing charges against those government officials who are equally as guilty. If they did, they might antagonize Washington. That’s all you can expect from justice today I suppose. Half a loaf.”
“Symbolic,” Sergei observed, always pragmatic.
Maran responded, switching gears. “I still can’t believe how they turned that mine into a synthetic diamond factory. I don’t care how ‘real’ those stones are; they’re still manufactured, synthetic. Can you believe the cutting-edge equipment they had in it,” he said. “A high-pressure, high-temperature, split cylinder multi-anvil hydraulic press made from top secret plans stolen by Alberta Chiang from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in partnership with General Diamond Corporation in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. GD’s diamond manufacturing process is still to this day one of the most closely held industrial secrets in the world, capable of achieving fifteen hundred tons of pressure at fifteen hundred degrees Celsius and manufacturing unlimited tons of perfect gemstone diamonds.”
“This whole thing started with industrial espionage? Christ! Alberta Chiang? Why? Boyko’s diamonds?” Sergei asked.
“Disappeared along with her, but that is only the beginning. Turns out she’s in fact Anita Li, the daughter of General Li Shau Yung, Director of the Ministry of Science and Technology for the People’s Republic of China. Before she joined GD, she worked at Livermore as Director of the Diamond Film Research Center. She became one of the most respected high pressure geo-scientists in America,” Maran explained.
“What was she doing there?”
“It’s hard to believe, but she worked her way into being chief assistant to the Director of R&D for the National Ignition Facility.”
“What do they do?”
“They operate Blue Gene/L, the world’s fastest supercomputer.”
“What’s a supercomputer got to do with diamonds?”
“Diamond technology is at the core of laser beam tests at our 192-beam, stadium-sized facility designed to knock out missiles launched from hostile satellites,” Maran said.
“Or launch hostile missiles?”
“Correct. The FBI has indicted her. The indictment is still secret—stipulates that her theft has cost U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.”
“Where is she?”
“No trace. For now.”
“Strange world,” Sergei shrugged. “America’s open society, its strongest and weakest attribute.”
“Poetic justice. The new Angolan government is using funds from the sale of clean diamonds to open food kitchens and AIDS clinics throughout the country. But you’ve got to admit Boyko’s brilliance in having hired Hope Valentine’s former publicist to deflect his criminal activities onto PFLEC. Too bad we lost dos Sampas,” Maran said. “But his people still carry on their bid for freedom.”
“And KoeffieBloehm?” asked Sergei.
“Cleared.”
“Abe Cone, the mole at the Diamond Dealers Club?”
“Just another soul crippled by twisted politics,” Maran continued. “Waiting trial with Abner Dolitz and the Storekeeper guy from DRAMS. Cone tipped off Dolitz on all the Diamond Dealers Club’s plans. That’s how Sergeant Major Jake Woodruff managed to sandbag me in Alexandria. He also gave up my ‘Rodney Davis’ journalist alias. That’s how they traced me to Belgium or wherever I used the ‘Davis’ credit card from the Diamond Dealers Club.”
“Stash and his gang of intellectual, armchair generals and One-World apologists?”
“Dimwits and unwitting partners. Outside of his loose official connection with Long Bow, they could never prove Stash’s knot to Baltimore’s off-book U.S. arms garage sales. Cleared.”
“So,” Sergei said, looking at Maran standing in the doorway. “Amazing. You can’t make this stuff up, as Imus would say—‘A for Argonaut’ was campaign code to elect the United States President with Islamist terrorism’s money.”
“Islamist terrorism’s blood diamond money, more precisely.”
Maran grinned, stretched his long legs out on the ottoman and folded his hands behind his head. In front of them, a fire blazed in the large fieldstone fireplace.
In his lap, a page one headline topped the copy of the Boston Herald:
US TO FUND DECISIVE ATTACK ON AIDS IN AFRICA
The article continued on a jump page. Next to it, a box informed readers that the U.N. Secretary-General “condemns in the strongest possible terms the appalling atrocities committed by members of the U.N. peacekeeping forces in the provinces between Cabinda, Angola, and the two Congos.” That article referred to the latest affronts against humanity in the region.
“Things really do change.” Maran laughed. “Bull Luster will love it.”
He recalled Bull’s proverb, “There’re no truths anymore: Only theories, guesses, and dreams.”
I wonder how this story might change it.
EPILOGUE
The cabin had no electricity, no door chimes. The hand-cut boards of the front door led directly to a wraparound porch furnished with Adirondack rocking chairs that overlooked the roiling river. Mack had just gotten up from one of them. His head had been clear for a while; it didn’t hurt anymore. The panic attacks were gone. No more headaches. The pain was gone from his leg. He had taken off his Bose headset, the volume on his Droid was high and he could still hear Toby Keith singing “I Should Have Been a Cowboy” as he set it down on a side table. He took the Parodi out of his mouth, smiled at the sloppy stump that he so relished to chew; he liked the old-fashioned advertising flash on the package: “Ammazzati … 5 Toscano Style.” He flipped the unlit stogie into the bushes and headed to go inside to join Sergei for a Scrabble game.
Outside, above the door, a rusty, hand-pull bell rang.
“The IRS,” Maran joked. “Hell. Don’t tell me we’ve been discovered. Soon as it looks like we’re going to make a little money consulting, they’re here.”
Sergei walked across the room to answer the door. Maran took a gulp of his latest coffee concoction: espresso, coconut milk, and guava. Sergei needled him for going uptown.
Amber Chu walked in with Tony in trail. She was dressed in tight black leather shorts and a gold satin halter-top cut deep in the neckline. Outrageous as ever.
He opened his arms to her. She folded against him.
When her tears dried and she had regained her composure, Amber simply said, “Thanks.”
She was talking about Maran’s generous gift for Tony’s school tuition and something more.
“I guess the New York Diamond Dealers Club was happy,” she said. “My country wants me to thank you for helping to get such a gift to fight AIDS in West Africa.” As part of the “New Angola,” President Bombe had appointed her Assistant to the Director of the new U.N. Office of Gender Equality in Cabinda.
Maran looked at Sergei, thought about the poor women at the Café Tabernacle in Bakamba, and knew that they were safe finally as a result of Amber’s indomitable spirit.
The phone rang. Sergei answered.
“For you, Mack.”
It was Ae Sook Maran. He took the phone.
“Congratulations,” she said. “Dennis would be proud.”
His eyes dewed. A grin cracked his face.
Amber Chu stood there, waiting.
About the Author
MICHAEL J. STEDMAN, South Boston born and bred, is a former political columnist, magazine writer, and intelligence consultant to major corporation
s. Formerly on the New England board of the Association for Intelligence Officers, he has been both a practitioner and critic of the spy world. Stedman, a former U.S. Army Reserve soldier with the 94th Infantry, has served as chairman of the New England Chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition and President of his local Rotary Club. He lives outside of Boston with his wife. They have three sons, three daughters-in-law, and seven grandchildren, including identical twin boys.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
'A' for Argonaut Page 34