Hulagu's Web The Presidential Pursuit of Katherine Laforge

by David Hearne

  She closed her eyes and tried to connect again to Katherine’s mind, but there was nothing but her own thoughts. The noise of her own mind was blocking any communication from Katherine’s mind. She finally gave up and drank a large glass of wine and watched the waves roll about. The waves were hypnotic and suddenly she felt the visions of Katherine returning. She tried to breathe normally and stay calm, so her mind would act only as a receiver to these scenes. It worked. They flowed in, scene after scene after scene. She had connected.

  Katherine was in a Humvee, somewhere in some desolate place, perhaps a desert. As Zoe tried to decipher the images, she would disconnect from Katherine. But she became better at retaining the images in her mind, and she knew from the little she observed that Katherine was alive and probably hiding in the desert.

  She suddenly wanted to phone Katherine, but she knew her location would be traced immediately. Something deep inside her made her want to reconnect to the whole world and feel its pulse, but that was impossible for now. In that and so many other ways she and Kat shared common traits.

  * * * *

  Rounding the Horn of Africa, Wilson pointed the Black Phantom north-north-west and hugged the South African coast. From Namibia’s Conception Bay, he swung west-north-west across the South Atlantic on a new heading for the Brazilian coast. With good seas and favorable winds, they made the ocean crossing without incident.

  Late one afternoon 200 miles off Brazil’s eastern tip, the wind turned and dark angry clouds boiled out of the south, swept quickly overhead to obscure the sun. Wilson sent Zoe below for their foul weather gear and safety harnesses while he and the crew battened down the Black Phantom for the approaching storm. They barely got the sails reefed, and into their gear when the first squall hit. Huge isolated drops became sheets of rain that hammered the polished deck and crew in violent bursts.

  Lightning flickered and thunder rolled, a strobe-like staccato display that highlighted the Black Phantom’s bow lifting and plunging through the raging sea. A rope tore loose from a deck cleat, whipped back and forth in the frenzied wind. Disregarding Wilson’s orders to stay in the lea of the wheelhouse, she hooked her safety line and inched along the rail toward the flapping rope.

  A huge wave caromed across the deck, just as she reached the rope. Lifted her effortlessly from her feet and slammed her against the railing. Frantic, she clawed at the wood and steel with both hands. Zoe managed to wrap her bad arm around it and held on with all her strength as the brute force of the cascading water threatened to carry her up and over the barrier.

  Poised on the brink of forever, time seemed to stop. Numbly, she stared at the frothing waves suspended above the deck, poised with an infinite patience that she could not match. Had it all come down to this? Her ordeal in Iraq. Her flight to Al Qushlah and the Black Phantom. The idyllic moments spent with Wilson. All rendered meaningless by a galvanic force of nature?

  Time’s bubble burst. The wave’s surge tore at her grip, and threatened to hurl her into the churning sea. Then the safety line jerked taut. Like a hooked fish, she hung suspended between life and death. Engulfed in the wave, Zoe struggled to breathe. The safety harness straps dug cruelly into her shoulders and midriff, but it stopped her from a headlong plunge overboard.

  A hand seized her trailing hood, and hauled her back aboard. Pulling Zoe to her feet, Wilson crushed her against him, and cried into her ear against the fury of the storm, “I thought I’d lost you again.”

  Her tears mingled with the rain and the sea spray, and she had no voice to answer him. He led her to the hatch cover, saw her down, and sealed it behind her against the storm surge. When the storm abated and he came to her in the night, their lovemaking was frantic, desperate. Even in sleep, Zoe clung to him and to the safety he offered.

  * * * *

  Zoe woke with a clear mind. The long, lazy days at sea had rejuvenated her. Exercise had relieved the stiffness in her arm and done wonders to lessen the pain in her hip. The voyage had been a time of healing for both her body and her mind. And her soul--for Wilson had uncovered passion and desires Kat’s memories only hinted at. Zoe now had experiences that Katherine Laforge did not possess, could never possess, new memories all her own.

  With little effort she might spend the rest of her life with Wilson. But she suffered no illusions. The CIA would search until they found her or until they were satisfied Katherine Laforge’s missing clone was safely dead.

  But I am no longer just a clone, she affirmed. Zoe closed her eyes, pressed her fingertips to her temples, delved deep into her own mind where lies were transparent and truths were often harsh. Kat was there, and Zoe, and Kat’s own memories of other clones. Multiple personalities? She chuckled. A shrink would go bananas in my mind.

  Zoe managed a cleansing breath, ordered her thoughts. For good or ill, I have become a real person, she affirmed, complete with Katherine Laforge’s energy, drive, and dreams.

  Her emotions pulled her in different directions, but Zoe knew intuitively that when the Black Phantom reached Texas, she would board the Saturn inflatable dingy for the trek to the beach. She would wade through the surf and walk up the sand away from Wilson Lawson. It would hurt her deeply, but she would do it.

  I have to find out who I am, what I am meant to be, she thought with mingled sadness and elation. Even if I throw away a chance at happiness, which may never come again.

  Even now, she pictured the inevitable in her mind. Pausing just before she lost sight of the beach. Lifting one lone hand she waved a final goodbye to a man, who would always own a piece of her heart and soul.

  * * * *

  Vince’s narrative was suddenly interrupted by two men flashing badges and identifying themselves as FBI agents. One of the agents looked straight at me and asked me for my identification. I pulled out my wallet and handed him my driver’s license. He examined it, studied my face, and handed it back. Apologetically he said, “Sorry to bother you sir, but we are trying to collect information that might help us in our investigation of the attack on Senator Katherine Laforge. Would you mind coming with us to answer a few questions?”

  My wife looked at me with obvious fear in her eyes and grabbed my hand. “Agent Snyder, whatever questions you have for me, I can just as easily answer here. What I know is not any state secret.” I lied straight face to them.

  The two agents exchanged glances and then the older one shrugged and pulled a chair over to our table. “If it doesn’t bother you, it doesn’t bother me.” He said smiling. The other agent remained standing with a notebook in his hand.

  “How long have you been acquainted with Senator Laforge?”

  I thought to myself, what an asinine question. He knows we have been acquainted all our life. “I have known Katherine, since she, and I were running around in diapers.” I replied.

  “Okay, but more recently when did you start working with her campaign people?”

  “I am not sure if I was ever working for her campaign people. If work means getting a paycheck, I haven’t been working for her at all.”

  “Sir, we know you have been involved in the Senator’s campaign providing her research assistance and advice. We simply want to know when that all started. You were not doing anything wrong. We just want it for our records.”

  I sat there trying to decide whether to answer or not, and then finally concluded that it really didn’t matter. I was not doing anything wrong, and I wasn’t getting paid. So there wasn’t much I needed to fear. “I started supporting Katherine’s campaign over a year ago. Just doing some basic research work for her free of political bias.”

  “Were you close friends with Senator Laforge?”

  “A long time ago I was, but now we are just acquaintances.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “My wife and I visited her last night at her campaign bus.”

  “What all did you talk about with her last night?”

  I thought about this for a few moments and then realized
that what I knew, could not help find her, but if I made a mistake in any of the facts that I gave them, I could find myself accused of lying to a Federal Agent.

  “Agent Snyder, I worked for the government myself, as you probably know, and I realize that under section 1001 of U.S. Code Eighteen that I could be prosecuted for lying to you, if you misinterpret anything I might tell you. So let’s postpone this interview until I can have a lawyer present and the interview recorded. The truth is, I am sure I know nothing that would help you with Katherine’s disappearance.”

  The words hung there and I saw looks of consternation from Tom and Vince.

  Agent Snyder looked upset with my response, but hid it in his voice. “I am sure you are aware sir, there is a great deal of urgency involved in this investigation?”

  “Yes I am, but my knowledge will be of no help to you in solving this attack because we never talked politics at all. We just reminisced about years gone by, drank some wine, and my wife helped Katherine color her hair.”

  He looked directly at me with irritation burning in his eyes. “I can’t force you to talk right now, but I can quickly get a subpoena to make you cooperate.” His tone was malevolent, “We will be talking more and soon.” With that, he quickly got up, sneered at me and angrily pushed his chair back under the adjacent table.

  I felt a little guilty, but I knew this investigation would become big with an attack of this magnitude on a United States Senator. I needed to watch myself, and I had taken an oath that I would not divulge what I knew to anyone, and that I think included the FBI. The two FBI agents walked quickly away, and I saw the man with the notepad hurriedly scribbling something in his book. I was sure I would be seeing them again.

  Part Nine

  War in Iraq

  The wait for word about Katherine had become intolerable, and I could feel myself becoming increasingly agitated. The scene in the auditorium had become noisier, invasive and threatening with every second that crawled by. I succumbed to taking another xanax. It might have been the second or third one, I had taken since we arrived at the auditorium. I really had loss count, but I washed the pill down with a gulp of coffee and then focused my mind on the TV’s news.

  CNN was taking a break from covering the Laforge story and was doing a live feed from the Tigris River in Mosul, Iraq about a downed U.S. helicopter. They were reporting that a OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopter, attached to the 101st Airborne Division had crashed into the river while searching for a missing soldier, whose boat had capsized earlier that morning. Now members of the search team were also missing.

  A stern faced commentator ended the report with the latest death toll for U.S. forces in the Iraq conflict. The count was now 513 dead, and he emphasized that the majority of these deaths happened after the President’s May 1st 2003 declaration that major combat operations in Iraq were ended.

  A report from a Washington correspondent stated that David Kay, the former head of the Iraq Survey Group responsible for searching for weapons of mass destruction was quoted as saying that he no longer believed stockpiles of WMDs existed in Iraq.

  The sad news made my stomach ache even more from all the acid that had nothing to eat away at except my organs.

  The news reminded me of how the war started on the eve of March 17the 2003, when President Bush gave Saddam Hussein and his sons 48 hours to leave Iraq or necessary military action would commence to remove them from power. One headline asserted that the United States regarded the use of force its obligation to assure its own national security and this type of action was within its sovereign authority. Buried among the myriad reports of the impending war was a report from an Iraq News agency that American CIA agents and subversive Iraqi operatives had abducted Senator Katherine Laforge and her primary physician from Ibn Sina Hospital.

  The news of her escape stunned me, and I tried to imagine the impact it would have on Kat and those that were involved with operation Hulagu. She had remained secreted away from the public for months now and the possibility that her twin was now free within Iraq would be very unsettling to her. Before the day was over, the status of her escaped changed radically by a report claiming the charred bodies of Senator Laforge and her doctor had been found in the smoldering remains of their apparent escape vehicle just south of Baghdad. It did not give details of what had happened to the car. It was not known if her death was the result of an accident, CIA assassination, or by some Iraqi element that was responsible to thwart her escape.

  The last report struck hard at the Senator’s Houston office. Many of the campaign staff were devastated by the news and people openly cried as they listened to the report of her death. Most of them had been hoping that the campaign would take hold again and Senator Laforge would have a fair chance to win the primary. Senator Laforge’s staff was sickened with the news.

  For Katherine however, the demise of her twin in Iraq was a situation that would allow her to reemerge on the political horizon and attempt to rekindle her campaign. On that very day, March 18th 2003, Kat and her inner circle went about with an all day strategy meeting to plan how to introduce her back into the world.

  As the plan evolved it became apparent how important it was to have Kat in Iraq as our troops moved onto Iraq soil. This would provide a way to introduce Senator Laforge back into the political landscape as a survivor who had escaped from the clutches of Saddam and the Baath party. The war and its resulting confusion would provide the perfect subterfuge for her reemergence. It was decided that as long as no contradicting reports of her twin were heard of, it would be safe to implement this operation. Senator Laforge would be fitted with the appropriate medical prosthetics, casts and makeup to appear as identical as possible to her now demised twin. Under the current state of chaos in Iraq, it would be very credible that CIA agents had abducted Kat from Ibn Sina Hospital. The report of her death by the Iraqi news would be dramatically proven false by her reemergence with her rescuers in some coalition occupied area of Iraq. It would be the perfect conclusion to her captivity and possibly give great impetus to her stagnant Presidential campaign.

  As soon as the plans were conceived and agreed upon, they were immediately implemented. The next day March 19th Kat found herself wearing a full burka. The CIA agent in charge, Jim Anderson had bought it to help her conceal her identity. After an emotional filled embrace and a teary good-bye with Ira, Kat was driven to Houston’s Ellington Field.

  Since Operation Hulagu went awry, Kat had felt totally out of control of her life. Being sequestered at a secured location in Houston, Texas and isolated from her daughter for months had felt like imprisonment. But now with a glimmer of hope of taking back her existence, she still could not free herself of the feeling of being a minor cog of an entity that had taken on a life of its own.

  Wearing the gray burka, Kat boarded a military plane that would take her to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Agent Anderson accompanied Senator Laforge on the trip. At Andrews they transferred to another plane to get them to their final destination, Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.

  On March 20th 2003, they arrived in Ali Al Salem Air Base. This air base affectionately called the “Rock” is located on a hill overlooking a slightly undulating stretch of desert 39 miles from the Iraqi border. The Rock’s vantage point provided a panoramic view of the dun-color 120 degree arid desert plains. The base was a community of trailers, tents and some old buildings. The population of the camp had swelled from around 2,000 to the current 12,000 inhabitants. A large segment of the new population was elements of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force that would soon be entering Iraq.

  As soon as the plane taxied to its final stop, a dusty sand colored sedan pulled up alongside of it. The air-conditioned car sat on the sweltering tarmac as its two bearded occupants waited for the plane to debark. When Senator Laforge, wearing her burka, appeared on the steps of the plane, they quickly exited the vehicle to greet her. They were both CIA agents of Iraqi heritage; born and brought up in the windy city of Chicago.
In the last three years, they had infiltrated into the social structure of the Basra posing as Shiite radicals searching for other disgruntled Shiite’s. They were considered the perfect team to help Kat and Agent Anderson implement the new operation.

  The two agents drove Senator Laforge and Anderson to an old concrete building a short distance from the busy airstrip. They parked in front of a masonry wall pock marked with countless bullets holes. The Iraqi’s had used this building in 1991 to mass execute hundreds of Kuwaitis. The cratered wall was left as a testament to the savagery of that era.

  Just as they exited the vehicle, a loud siren started to wail over the camp. The agent who had been driving the car yelled, “Incoming, take cover” and raced to the front of the building. The agent’s urgency unsettled Senator Laforge and she found terror gripping her as she hobbled behind him in her bulky burka. Once inside the building, she heard the sharp crack of a missile exploding somewhere in the distance.

  Her heart started to quiet as she gulped in a deep breath of air. Her nostrils were met with the musty smell of the old building penetrating through the fresh scent of pine-sol used to mask the foul air in the small austere room.

  Agent Anderson formally introduced Kat to the two panting CIA agents. One man was named Ahmed and the other Dawood. According to Anderson, they were perfectly fluent in Iraqi Arabic and could easily move about Basra as locals.

  The four sat down at an old wooden table and Dawood offered a little contraband wine to the rest.

  “We need to celebrate your arrival and the chance to work with you on this mission.” Dawood said.

  He continued, “Sorry for the fireworks display, but Mr. Hussein is trying to throw a little hardware at us in retaliation to our bombings in Iraq. Those were Scud missiles you just heard exploding. Not very precise, but they can do some major damage, if they hit you.” He chuckled.

  “We have some real work ahead of us, if this is all going to go as planned.”