by Brad Thor
1.Decrease current human population below five hundred million and keep it in perpetual balance with nature.
2.Guide reproduction wisely—improving fitness and diversity.
3.Unite humanity with a “living” new language.
4.Redistribute global wealth under the more acceptable term “global public goods.”
5.Rebalance personal rights with “social duties.”
6.Replace passion, faith, and tradition with reason.
7.Make clever use of new technologies to go around national governments and establish direct ties with citizens.
8.Rebrand global governance as equitable, efficient, and the logical next step in human evolution.
9.Discredit, delegitimize, and dismantle the idea of the nation state/national sovereignty.
10.Prepare a mechanism to neutralize any challenges to United Nations’ authority.
Ben Mordechai couldn’t believe what he was reading. It was a blueprint for revolution. If Che Guevara was right and revolution wasn’t an apple that fell when it was ripe, but rather was made to fall, then it looked like the Plenary Panel was shaking the entire global tree.
They identified the biggest obstacles to achieving their goals as the United States and Israel. With the two nations overwhelmed and laid low by a massive event, the panel was confident that no one would stand in the United Nations’ way.
Damien’s focus on weakening both countries began to make more sense. What wasn’t clear, though, was what this massive event was intended to be and when it would take place.
In the margins were Damien’s handwritten notes. There was a three-letter designator, A-H-F, followed by words like pathogenicity, absolute risk, and dose response.
Mordechai had more questions than answers. Did the notes refer to a chemical attack? Biological? Something else entirely? When was it set to take place, what was Damien’s role, and who were the other members of the panel?
The only thing Mordechai knew for sure was that they couldn’t kill Damien. Not now. Not with so many unanswered questions.
After photographing all of the documents with his phone, he reassembled the laptop and put everything in the room back the way he had found it. Then, he radioed the team that they had to abort.
Nava was livid. The Institute was going to be furious. She demanded to know why. Mordechai told her to trust him and then broke off communication as he slipped out of the hotel the same way he had come in.
He no longer cared about the pain in his hands. All he cared about was the information that he had discovered in Damien’s room. The idea that a cabal within the United Nations hierarchy was planning a coup involving something so catastrophic that Israel and the United States would be too overwhelmed to respond was almost unimaginable. Almost.
He had seen enough to know that anything was possible, especially when it came to those who sought power. Around the world, the majority of countries were ruled either by dictatorships or some form of Democratic Socialism. In those nations, power resided in the state. Only a handful of countries were truly free, with power residing in the hands of individual citizens. Any attempt to seat some sort of global system of government would have to sideline Israel and the United States first, or it would never succeed.
In his notes about dealing with the United States, Damien had scribbled two letters—MC. Were they initials? Roman numerals? He was anxious to have minds back at the Mossad unpack everything and begin connecting the dots.
While Nava had been angry about Mordechai pulling the plug on her operation, when he showed her the documents, she eventually conceded that it had been the right thing to do.
Once they were back in Tel Aviv and had turned over all the materials to the Institute, all they could do was wait.
Their biggest expectation was for what would be pulled off Damien’s hard drive and cell phone. Both turned out to be a bust. He was using a new form of encryption that they had never encountered before. Without his passwords, there was no telling how long it would take to crack. And even if they could crack it, there was no telling what they would find and if it would be in time. That was why Mordechai had decided to activate Helena.
With her background working for a human trafficking NGO, it didn’t take much to align her with a program at the United Nations in Geneva. She used her Eastern European passport. There was nothing in her file or the apartment that had been set up for her to connect her to Israel.
The fact that she was not a UN employee, but rather working on a co-UN/NGO trafficking program, was especially important. Damien wouldn’t have wanted to run afoul of the UN’s code of ethics regarding dating subordinates. It happened all the time, but he took his role as Under-Secretary-General seriously. He didn’t need a scandal hovering over him. Not with everything he had planned.
All Bentzi had to do was to “dangle” Helena. Damien’s dick would take over and do the rest.
He was well-known for the attractive women he dated. His relationships were like monsoon season, steamy and short. He showered his girlfriends with gifts and expensive trips and as soon as he grew bored, he was on to the next.
He liked the ambiance of the bar at La Réserve Genève hotel. The views were exceptional, they had an excellent selection of whiskeys, vodkas, and cognacs, and their sushi chef was top-notch. The fact that it was close to his apartment was icing on the cake.
Bentzi parked Helena in a provocative but stylish cocktail dress at La Réserve Genève and let nature take its course.
Damien wasn’t shy. He made a beeline right for her, and she played him like a pro. They had one drink together before she announced that she had to leave. He offered her a ride home. She declined. He asked if he might have her phone number. She said no. He offered her his personal card with his cell phone number written on the back. She placed it on the table and didn’t bother to pick it back up.
The only personal information she had revealed was that she was temporarily assigned to a human trafficking project at the UN.
The next day, there were flowers on her desk. Inside the envelope was the card Damien had handed her and which she had left on the table the night before. She gave the flowers to one of her colleagues.
The cat and mouse game continued on with Helena playing disinterested and hard to get. It drove Damien wild. He wasn’t used to women saying no to him.
He kept “coincidentally” bumping into her. His unsettling manservant-cum-assistant, Jeffery, had been following her. She had spotted him each time, but had never let on. Finally, she gave in and agreed to dinner.
To his credit, he didn’t overdo it. He picked a small, local restaurant with exceptional food. He was a gentleman and very charming.
For their second date, he asked her what kind of food was her favorite. She said Italian. He flew her to Rome in his private jet, and she ate the best meal of her life.
After their third date, she began sleeping with him. It was the best sex Pierre Damien had ever had.
Bentzi had given her one task—to capture the man’s passwords so that they could access his hard drive and cell phone.
To do that, she had been issued what looked like a wall charger for her cell phone, but what in reality was a covert keystroke logger. It had the ability to sniff, decrypt, log, and report all keystrokes within its immediate vicinity. It even had a small, rechargeable internal battery that allowed it to work even after being unplugged. All she had to do was to position it near Damien when he was logging onto his devices.
As she had explained multiple times to Bentzi, that was a lot harder than it sounded. Damien never used his laptop around her and the only phone she ever saw him use was his iPhone, which he unlocked with his fingerprint. Eventually, she assured him, she would get the passwords. It would just take time. But then everything changed.
Bentzi had told her she was being recalled and told h
er to go back to her apartment, wait for his call, and not have any contact with Damien other than to feign illness. How Bentzi thought he would ever be able to get anyone closer to Damien was beyond her. He was going to toss it all away, toss his precious Israel to the wolves. It was beyond insane.
Then her phone had rung. It was Bentzi. He wanted to make her an offer, or more appropriately, he wanted to offer her an incentive.
“Go ahead,” she had said.
Gripping the phone, she listened as the Mossad agent laid it all out. Her first reaction was panic. He had used a name they had agreed never to speak of. Like Damien previously showing up every time she went out, she didn’t believe this was a coincidence either. Bentzi was either lying to her, or had been lying to her all along.
“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.
It was one of the biggest enticements he could have ever placed in front of her. The Israeli known as “Enoch” ran the trafficking ring that had kidnapped her back home and had forced her into the sex trade. She wanted to exact her revenge on him almost as badly as she wanted out of her life with the Mossad. Almost.
Offering up Enoch was an act of desperation. Bentzi knew he couldn’t pull off his operation without her. Whatever Damien was planning, it was already in motion. If it was as devastating as the Mossad feared, they needed to get to the bottom of it, now.
She, on the other hand, didn’t care what happened to Israel. She didn’t care what happened to the United States either. If everything went according to her plan, she would be so far away from both, anything could happen, and it wouldn’t matter. All she cared about was getting out.
But if she could figuratively run over Enoch and drag his corpse through the parking lot as she made her exit, it would close several disturbing chapters in her life and allow her to move on from a very troubling part of her past.
Bentzi knew she had been dragging her feet, he just didn’t know why. After threatening to recall her to Tel Aviv, he was now offering her an incentive to stay and finish the job. Typical Mossad—stick first, then carrot.
She was going to have to push things, which meant there was a good chance she might screw up and walk away with nothing. But it was too good an opportunity to pass up.
Taking a deep breath, she opened her lingerie drawer and said into the phone, “Deal.”
CHAPTER 21
* * *
CONGO
Harvath never took his eyes from the man or his deaf son. Speaking to Jambo, he said, “Ask him again.”
The translator did, and Harvath studied the man’s face for any indication that he was lying. He was looking for microexpressions, sometimes referred to as tells. They were subconscious facial cues that indicated that a person was under duress because they were lying or had intent to do some other type of harm. So far he didn’t see any.
When the man replied, Jambo translated. Harvath didn’t see any signs that the man was lying. In fact, everything about him suggested he was telling the truth.
“Ask him about the video,” Harvath said. “Who filmed it?”
Jambo posed the question and then listened to the man’s response. Finally, he turned to Harvath and said, “He took the video.”
“He did?”
Jambo nodded.
“With what?”
Jambo asked the man and then replied, “With his cell phone.”
Harvath didn’t believe him. There was no reception anywhere near this village. “Tell him I want to see his phone,” he said.
Jambo bobbed his head up and down as the man spoke and then turned back to Harvath. “He doesn’t have it anymore.”
“Where is it?”
“He hid it in one of their trucks. The men who killed everyone in the clinic and then killed everyone in the village.”
“Why?”
“He was worried he would be killed too,” said Jambo. “There is no cellular service here. He pressed send and then hid the phone in a truck. He assumed that eventually the truck would pass into an area with reception and the message would be sent.”
Smart. Harvath had to give the man credit. There was something, though, that was bothering him. “How did he know where to send it? How did he know that email address?”
Decker cleared her throat, and all eyes turned to her as she looked at Harvath. “Didn’t you see all the signs in the clinic?” she asked. “The banners?”
Harvath had seen lots of things, but he had been focused on figuring out what had happened. “What signs?”
“The ones advertising CARE International’s support of the clinic. Each of them has CARE’s web address, as well as an email for more information. That’s the address the video was sent to.”
Harvath turned his attention back to the villager and said to Jambo, “Tell him I want to know about the trucks.”
Jambo asked him, and the man rattled off a short description. There were no distinctive colors or markings. They appeared to be commercial, not military. Nothing special.
“How about the men themselves?”
“Mzungu,” the villager replied.
“What’s mzungu?” Harvath asked.
“It’s Swahili for white people,” said Decker.
“White people?”
She nodded.
Harvath asked Jambo, “Were they military?”
Seconds later he replied, “Apparently they carried rifles, but they were not wearing uniforms.”
“How about their hair? Long? Short? Any beards? Mustaches? Tattoos? Anything at all that stood out?”
Jambo asked the man and then said, “They acted military. One man gave orders and the others followed. They all had short hair. No beards, no mustaches. No tattoos.”
“How many were there?”
“He says somewhere between eight to twelve.”
About the size of a military squad, Harvath thought. “What language were they speaking?”
Jambo translated the question and then said, “He’s not sure. He didn’t recognize it. He says maybe German. Or Russian.”
“Would he recognize any of them if he saw them again?”
Jambo asked the man, and then nodded.
Harvath stepped outside, retrieved a pen and a piece of paper, and walked back into the dwelling.
“Tell him I need his cell phone number,” he said, handing the pen and paper to Jambo.
Once he had it, he left Decker with Jambo to ask more questions and stepped back outside.
Positioning his Iridium system, he fired up his phone, waited until he had a strong signal and then placed his call.
When the man on the other end picked up, he apologized for waking him and then said, “I need you to locate a phone for me. It was tossed into a truck in Congo several days ago. The battery is probably dead, but I want to know all the other towers it touched. I also want a list of phones that touched those same towers at the same time, as well as where those phones are now.”
“How soon do you need it?” the man asked.
“Right away,” Harvath replied. Ending the call, he stepped back inside to join Decker. Jambo was in the middle of translating the villager’s tale.
His name was Leonce, and he talked about a stranger who had shown up at the Matumaini Clinic, sick with a high fever. No one knew how he had gotten there. He lost consciousness soon after coming in. He had no ID, no money, nothing.
They placed him in a bed, started an IV, and began trying to figure out who he was and what was wrong with him.
He regained consciousness twice, but only briefly. Both times he screamed to be protected and begged the clinic staff not to “send him back.” They were never able to figure out what he was talking about. A nurse said she thought he might be Muslim, a very minority community in Congo, as it sounded at one point as if he had moaned the word for the Muslim god, “Allah.”
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Per their protocols, they contacted the Health Ministry hotline in Kinshasa. The rather blasé bureaucrat told them it was probably nothing, but to take full protective measures.
An hour later, the clinic received a call from the World Health Organization representative in Kinshasa telling them to prep blood and tissue samples and deliver them to the airport in Bunia for transport. The rep also asked to be emailed pictures of the patient.
The clinic had one very small, very old, and very unreliable car. Leonce offered to make the trip to Bunia. When the clinic staff agreed, Leonce invited his son, the deaf boy named Pepsy, to come with him.
The staff took great pains to make sure the samples were completely airtight and properly packaged. Leonce was given money for fuel. Any food or lodging would be his responsibility. They had already given him all the petty cash they had.
Leonce had been to Bunia many times and knew the route well. He had a relative there, and he and Pepsy would spend the night before returning the next morning.
With their package safely on the backseat, Leonce ground the gears of the little car, he and Pepsy waved out their open windows to the staff, and they began their journey.
Their problems began almost immediately.
First came the rain. It was so heavy, it sounded like rocks being poured onto the roof of the car. Each enormous drop landed with a great splash.
Leonce activated the wipers. They swung to the left. They swung to the right. Then, they stopped. He and his son had to try to use their shirts to keep the windshield clear, but the rain was so bad, that they could barely see the road. Then they hit a roadblock.
“Roadblock?” Harvath asked.
“It would be more appropriate to designate it a toll,” Jambo clarified. “Bandits set them up to extort money from motorists.”
Ash and Mick, who had been listening to the interrogation, shot Harvath a look.
“Does Leonce know who these bandits were?” Harvath asked.
Jambo nodded. “FRPI. The Front for the—”