THE ANGOLA DECEPTION: An Action Thriller

by Dc Alden

  ‘Death is easy to cover up in places like Iraq.’

  The door chimed and an elderly couple shuffled inside, bulging shopping bags clutched in their hands. They fussed around a window table, unwrapping coats and scarves. Tattoo girl hurried over.

  Roy sipped his brew. ‘What’s Messina, Frank? Why did it get Jimmy killed?’

  Frank’s eyes wandered around the cafe before settling on Roy.

  ‘Your brother’s service jacket was impressive, that’s why he was hired by TDL. For a while he did the standard stuff; pipeline security, close protection duties, but he was flagged as a potential candidate for Messina because he possessed three crucial qualifications—professionalism, dedication, and most of all discretion. He passed a battery of psych tests and got reassigned to Terra Petroleum, down on the Iraqi coast. Terra is a front for Messina. He got well compensated, eight thousand dollars a week—’

  ‘Jesus,’ Roy blurted, ‘why so much?’

  ‘Discretion and loyalty cost money, Roy. Messina is highly classified and compartmentalised, so much so that your brother and his team were unaware of its true purpose. Hundreds of tons of construction and laboratory materials were shipped into the country via the Terra facility at ABOT. Your brother’s team would provide armed escort for those shipments to and from the Messina site, a disused drilling platform out in the desert, about a hundred clicks southwest of Baghdad. From the outside it looks just that—disused, fenced off, but below ground it’s a different story. Your brother was there when they were fitting out the sub-surface labs. He saw the biohazard equipment, the military spec security systems, and joined a couple of dots. He asked questions, took pictures, broke into the program offices. That’s what led to his death. Now, three years on, Messina is fully operational. And production is about to begin.’

  ‘Production of what?’ Roy murmured. He found himself mimicking Frank’s conspiratorial tone, his furtive body language. The story that rolled off the American’s tongue had an air of unreality about it, like the plot of a Bond movie. All that was missing was a gorgeous bad girl with a European accent. Roy realised Frank was still speaking.

  ‘Sorry, say that again?’

  ‘The Angola virus,’ Frank said.

  ‘What about it?’

  The American leaned a little closer. ‘That’s what they’re about to start manufacturing at Messina.’

  Angola.

  The word had become synonymous with death. Roy recalled the outbreaks that had wiped out the populations of two prisons in the country of the same name. There were other epidemics too, in South America, China, Eastern Europe, sparking a world health scare that killed thousands and faded as quickly as the SARS panic a few years before.

  Roy frowned. ‘Did you say they were making the Angola virus?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I said. They’ve been developing it for years in secure labs across the globe, testing different strains on vagrants, drug addicts, runaways, people with no kin. Those outbreaks in Africa and other parts of the world were early field trials. Now it’s ready and Messina is where they’re going to mass produce it. That’s what your brother stumbled on. It’s why he was killed.’

  Roy stared across the table at Frank. ‘What do you mean it’s ready? Ready for what?’

  Frank spread his hands. ‘Worldwide distribution. So they can eliminate over half of the planet’s population. That’s why they called the program Messina. It’s a port in Sicily, where the Black Death was introduced into Europe back in the fourteenth century. That outbreak killed sixty per cent of the world’s population too.’

  Roy sat back in his chair. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘You think Jimmy’s death is funny?’

  The smile vanished. ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘You said he was scared. Did he scare easily?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then ask yourself, why would a guy earning the biggest dollar of his life risk everything to find out what his employers were doing out there?’

  Roy didn’t respond immediately. He watched the mums, the older couple, chatting, smiling. Music played quietly in the background. It was peaceful, ordinary. What Frank was talking about was pure fantasy. Yet Jimmy had died because of it. Frank was right, his brother’s death was no joke. So he had to pay attention, really listen. Then he would decide whether Frank was the real deal or not.

  ‘Okay, Frank. Let’s say Jimmy died because of Messina—’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And Messina is where they’re going to manufacture Angola?’

  ‘Pretty soon. And distribute it.’

  ‘So they can wipe out half the human race?’

  Frank nodded.

  ‘So you’re telling me Jimmy was working for terrorists?’

  ‘The biggest on the planet.’

  ‘You mean ISIS? Al-Qaeda?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘I’m talking about an organisation that transcends any terrorist group you’ve ever heard of. One that hides behind an intricate facade of legitimacy, accountability and normality. They’re everywhere, and they hide in plain sight because most people are blind to them.’

  Roy pushed his empty mug to one side. ‘I hate to keep repeating myself, Frank, but what the hell are you talking about?’

  The American finished his coffee and did the same. ‘It’s better if I start from the beginning. But bear this in mind, Roy—you’ve been conditioned to reject what I’m about to tell you. It’ll seem implausible, but try and stay with me, okay?’

  Roy nodded.

  Frank settled into his chair.

  ‘Back in the nineties a group of people from some of the world’s biggest energy companies got together to voice their concerns about oil production. This group—we’re talking top executives, eminent geologists, engineers—they believed that the world had already passed the point at which total global oil extraction had been reached, and that we’d entered the very first stages of terminal decline. They met secretly, and eventually they compiled a report confirming their findings. They had a truckload of data too, and their objective was to go public with their conclusions and begin preparations for a planet that could no longer rely on fossil fuels as economic bedrock.’

  Tattoo girl drifted by their table and took their empty mugs. Frank waited until she was out of earshot.

  ‘I read their report. The short-term projections were sobering enough; gas rationing, restricted public travel, phased brown and blackouts, soaring food and energy prices, crippling unemployment. And that would just be the beginning. The long-term picture was much, much worse—we’re talking full global economic collapse, poverty, starvation, riots, martial law. It would be a crisis so bad it would make the Great Depression seem like Thanksgiving. As the lights went out around the world, governments would crumble and democracy would fail, and the resulting resource wars would consume every nation on the planet. The clock of human progress would be dialled back a hundred and fifty years. Pretty soon we’d be standing on the edge of the abyss. But it didn’t turn out that way because we had a guy on the inside.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  Frank held up a hand. ‘Just hear me out. Our guy was a senior executive at Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s leading oil producers. His engineers were reporting that thirty per cent of the product being pumped out of their biggest field at Ghawar was water. It all went into the report. But our guy also informed The Committee.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Let me ask you a question, Roy. You ever hear of the New World Order?’

  Roy shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s an urban myth, pandered around by conspiracy theorists for decades. It goes something like this; the world is actually being run by a secretive group of elites with a globalist agenda who plan to seize ultimate control by replacing sovereign nation states with a single world government. One that will control everything, and everybody.’

  Roy shrugged. ‘No, never he
ard of it.’

  ‘Most people haven’t. Sounds crazy, right?’ Frank leaned a little closer. ‘It’s not. It exists. And it is very, very real. That’s The Committee.’

  Roy waited to see if Frank’s stony face cracked a smile. It didn’t. Instead he pulled a pen from his pocket and drew a rough triangle on a napkin, which he divided into three sections.

  ‘The Committee believe that global power takes the form of a pyramid, one made up of tiers of influence. Everyone on the planet falls into one of these tiers.’ He tapped the napkin with his pen. ‘This bottom section, the biggest, that’s tier one. Tier one represents the bulk of humanity—the poor, the destitute, the street-sweepers, factory workers, the billions who survive on minimum wage. Tier two constitutes what most would call the middle classes, people with professional jobs, working for established institutions like governments and major corporations, and entrepreneur types, employing tier one people, helping economies grow, contributing to the system. That’s the second tier. Tier three, well, now we’re talking serious people with serious money. Bubbling to the top of that tier is the wealthiest one per cent of the world’s population. Do you know how many billionaires there are in the world, Roy?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Two thousand, give or take. Most of them make up that one per cent. But there’s another group—’ Frank drew slow circles around the tip of the pyramid ‘– right here, at the very summit. The people who form this capstone group number around a hundred, and they are the richest, most influential people on the planet. These are the super-elites, a group of mega-wealth individuals and dynastic families who between them own eighteen of the twenty biggest multi-national corporations in the world. A group who, by corporate extension or financial interconnections, directly influence almost every other major conglomerate on the planet across a whole range of industries—we’re talking energy production, banking, finance, communications, transportation, healthcare, manufacturing and the biggest of them all, the military-industrial complex. Their worldview is global, unrestricted by political affiliation, national sovereignty or physical borders, and in utmost secrecy they influence the agendas of governments, NATO, G7, G8, the G20, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation among many, many others. Their power flows not just to each other but also to powerful and influential individuals in the tiers below them, forming a collective, where members think and act in unison to preserve their economic domination. The Committee’s ultimate goal is to consolidate that growing power, to sweep away the chaos of national self-interest, to dismantle governments and the myriad of international organisations and replace them with a single entity, a global corporate body that will oversee and govern every resource and every human being on the planet. That is The Committee, Roy. Are you still with me?’

  ‘I think so,’ Roy stuttered. It was difficult to accept what Frank was saying but the man was on a roll, becoming more animated as he spoke, the words tumbling from his mouth. It was a confession, Roy realised. And he wasn’t done yet.

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. ‘But it goes deeper, and far darker. Their multinationals consume smaller companies like a whale swallowing plankton, divvying up billion-dollar contracts to hundreds of other companies eager to suck from the teat. It’s a corporate labyrinth of Byzantine proportions, and at the centre of that maze is The Committee, pulling the levers, like Oz behind his curtain. And it’s not just the corporate world. They have key people everywhere; governments, the military, federal agencies, academic institutions, public policy groups, global media, PR and marketing. All the bullshit on TV, the mass entertainment, the news, it’s all about distraction and distortion, about maintaining illusions and deflecting blame from the ruling classes when times get tough. Less cash in your pocket? Blame the banks, or climate change, or the goddam immigrants, right?’

  ‘Right,’ Roy mumbled. It felt like he was on a rollercoaster ride, hanging on by his fingertips as he plummeted up and down. Then suddenly the ride slowed. Across the table Frank seemed to catch his breath.

  ‘But they’re not finished yet. Remember the whistle-blowers? Well, their findings terrified The Committee. A world without oil, with billions fighting for control of dwindling natural resources, that kind of chaos isn’t in their playbook. So the wheels were set in motion. They reached out to the whistle-blowers, swore them to secrecy, duped them into thinking they were about to get the backing of the US administration. Finally, when all the pieces were in place, they were lured to New York where they handed over every scrap of their precious data. Once The Committee had it, they drove a plane into the building. That was the North Tower of the World Trade Centre. That was Nine Eleven.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ Roy blurted.

  Frank shook his head. ‘You know the rest. Events ran their course, giving The Committee what they wanted—unrestricted access to Iraq’s massive oil and gas reserves. They’ve been stockpiling it ever since, in huge storage facilities all over the world. Afghanistan was part of it too, but they needed time to get the military infrastructure in place. Once they did, the geologists went in. I’ve seen their reports; the country is a gold mine, literally. We’re talking huge mineral deposits—natural gas, copper, gold, cobalt, lithium—so much of it that years from now Afghanistan will resemble one giant quarry, the biggest and most productive mining facility in the world, with the Afghans themselves providing the labour. Well, those that survive the Transition.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Transition.’ Frank’s finger tapped the table. ‘Look, you have to see things from The Committee’s perspective. They’ve secured vast amounts of natural resources for future consumption, that’s all good. As an added bonus, the whistle-blowers might have got it wrong; new exploration and extraction technologies have opened up previously undiscovered energy fields in East Africa, Asia and the South Atlantic. And then there’s the whole fracking thing too, tapping into more resources than they previously thought possible. So now The Committee is sitting on these huge reserves and the new fields are coming online and everything’s rosy, right?’

  ‘I guess,’ Roy shrugged.

  ‘Wrong, because now you’ve got a much bigger problem.’ Frank’s face darkened. ‘The world’s population is seven billion plus. In a few years’ time, thanks to rising living standards and falling mortality rates, it’ll be eight billion. In twenty years it’ll be over ten. So whatever reserves we think we’ve got now, it’s never going to be enough. I told you already, The Committee wants to govern the world under the banner of a single corporation, controlling the future and managing natural resources. How you gonna do that with ten billion people and rising, all demanding food, water, fuel, technology, consumer goods, healthcare, living space? That’s why they’re going to initiate the Transition, an event that will wipe out over half the population of the planet. After that, the numbers will be strictly controlled. They’re looking at a figure of two, maybe three billion tops. In their own sick way they’re the ultimate environmentalists.’

  Roy shook his head. ‘This can’t be real.’

  ‘It is. A lot of very important people have discussed population control in the public forum for decades, but the masses are generally too distracted to notice. That’s the corporate media at work, doing what they do best. It’s real, Roy. And it’s headed straight for us.’

  That’s when Roy’s penny finally dropped. ‘Messina.’

  ‘Exactly. The delivery method of choice is hand dryers, the public washroom variety. For the past couple of years a TDL subsidiary has been fitting specially modified units in airport washrooms, right across the Middle East—’

  ‘Why there?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘It’s a tactical decision. The Committee have always been uneasy about Islam. Religious fundamentalism continues to spread across the world, and those guys can’t be bought or bargained with. The plain truth is, wherever Islam goes, violence follows. You take Islam out of the equation and suddenly the world is a considerably less violent place. Th
at’s why they’re targeting the Middle East first. There’re dispersal units in Latin America and the Far East too.’

  ‘Dispersal units?’

  ‘Yeah, the hand dryers. At some point in the very near future small, pressurised containers of the Angola virus will be slotted inside these modified dryers. After that, a measured dose will mix with the normal blast of hot air every time someone punches the button. Angola is airborne too, so by the time the container is empty the air in those washrooms will be highly contagious. Thousands will be infected, and they’ll be travelling all over the globe. It’ll spread so fast that the world won’t be able to react in time. And it kills half the people it infects. Don’t ask me how, it’s all done on a genetic level, like the way mosquitoes bite some people and not others. Billions will die.’

  ‘Holy shit,’ Roy breathed. ‘Isn’t there a cure or something, an antidote?’

  ‘Sure. Everyone in the programme is immune, plus millions of ordinary people too, although most of them don’t realise it.’

  ‘You mean I could be immune? Max, Vicky?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘Doubtful. You’ve heard of Kansas, right? Kansas is America’s biggest producer of wheat. For the last four years selected state water supplies have been treated with the antiviral, like adding fluoride. The big grain producers, the farmers, suppliers and distributors, most of them will live. It’s the same with other critical industries, like energy supply, military bases, major hospitals, educational communities, and a heap of other people and institutions that are vital to The Committee’s interests. They’ve been marked, Roy. Some won’t make it, that’s been factored in, but many key personnel will survive. As for the rest, they’ll die in their billions. That’s the Transition, and one day soon the only thing they’ll be talking about on the news is Angola.’

  Frank laid a hand on Roy’s coat sleeve. ‘I tried to get you the anti-viral, Roy, but things didn’t work out. That’s why I’m urging you to get as far away as possible. You can survive this. You’ve got enough time.’