“Alicia, how are you handling the Snowden controversy about the NSA spying on our own citizens?” asked Desiree.
“We’re conducting business as usual. We have to. We’re constantly under attack from computer hackers, terrorist plots, stealing of industrial and military secrets, stealing of individual’s personal data, viruses, and criminal activities of all sorts. If people knew how dangerous the world is today, they wouldn’t be able to sleep at night. The threat of nuclear annihilation during the cold war was like Happy Days compared to today’s daily attacks. Even though each vest bomb attack is not a grand scale act, the accumulation of daily attacks devastates morale.
Our efforts during the cold war went into large scale threat assessments, and our defense was the Triad. Our assessments of the Soviets capabilities were always inflated to make them appear to be a greater threat than they really were, so the military and intelligence budgets could be larger than necessary. The Triad was ballistic missiles on submarines, ballistic missiles in silos, and B-52s flying with bellies full of hydrogen bombs at holding stations, waiting for the drop codes in case we were attacked. If all out nuclear war was initiated, the world could have been annihilated, but it never happened, it was too horrific. But today any fanatic can be a terrorist by strapping explosives around his torso and blowing himself up in a public place.”
“Speaking of terrorist fanatics, we need your help with a current investigation.”
“I surmised as much, and am glad to help.”
“This thumb drive contains the names, plus some limited background on several powerful individuals we suspect as being involved in terrorism. We’ve drawn some tenuous connections among them, and would like to obtain as much detail as you can provide with your vast resources.” Serena handed Alicia the thumb drive.
“I’ll have my most trusted analyst work on this for you. Can you give me a little background?”
“Of course, but please don’t share the background with your analyst, only the material on the thumb drive.”
“I understand . . . sounds serious.” Alicia looked to Serena and then Desiree for some amplification.
After a brief pause, Serena replied, “We’re most interested in what you can dig up on Frederich von Hapsburg, his daughter Aloisia, and their connections, and Karl, Rolf and Kurt Brandt and their connections. We believe there’s a strong link between the two families which may provide clues to their activities.”
“What about the rest of your POIs?”
“We’re interested in them all, but we need to look into these two families first.”
“Come by tomorrow and I’ll have something for you. Do you have any other requests?”
“Yes. For the time being, is it alright for Desiree to use your systems on a not-to-interfere basis to dig into other aspects of this presumed conspiracy.”
“Of course, you’re always welcome here. I’ll submit a request for all four of you to be able to access our system, and have a monitor set up on my conference table for your use. If you have more ‘need to know’ access than I initially provide, we’ll try to work something out.”
“Thank you, Alicia. We’ll return tomorrow.”
The next morning, Desiree and Serena arrived at Alicia’s office bright and early.
Once they settled in with two cups of black coffee and one cup of chamomile tea, Alicia said, “Speaking of terrorists, I have some good stuff for you.” Alicia typed in her password on her NSA home screen. She tapped on an icon named ‘Whispering Smith’ and entered another password. She selected the icon entitled ‘Four’ on the next screen, and then a folder within the Four folder entitled ‘POI,’ for persons of interest. A page of thumbnail photos filled the screen. “This is quite an eclectic group of POI you have pulled together. Their commonality is rich, powerful, influential, political and genius. Do you have an alternate name for this group?”
“They call themselves the Select, but please don’t record that title anywhere. Let’s call them ‘Specials,’ or some other arbitrary name,” cautioned Serena.
“Very well, Special it is. I had one of my analysts, Cassandra Higbee, we call her ‘Crackerjack,’ look into these Special POIs without giving her any reason for the effort, so we can maintain a tight security lock on your data. I’ve organized the data into three sections, ‘Dossiers,’ ‘Connections,’ and ‘Influence.’
The Dossier section contains dossiers on the Select, I mean Special membership in alphabetical order in greater detail than was on the thumb drive you shared with me.” Alicia opened the Dossier section for Serena and Desiree to peruse.
“The Connections section contains possible ways in which the individual members of the Specials might interact, or be connected to the rest of the group. My analyst has connected all of the top echelon of the Specials by their quarterly meetings in Munich, or Berlin, or Paris, by some of their intermarriages, combining not only families, but business interests in ways that make them even more powerful, and their educational, vocational, and religious, or in most of their cases lack of religious affiliation. If these individuals decided to work together to take over the world, they would have a reasonable chance.
The third section, or Influence section, contains my analyst’s research on the wealth and influence of the members. She estimated that the six committee leaders, and six subcommittee leaders hold as much wealth between them as 4% of the rest of the world. This estimate was extrapolated from a report developed in 2014 which determined that the 85 wealthiest people in the world had as much wealth as 50% of the people in the world. Most of these individuals inherited fortunes, but those who did increased their fortunes, rather than dissipating them. Their influences range from industrialists, politicians, financiers, lawyers, military leaders, doctors, and pharmaceutical company owners, to two university professors.”
“Very impressive research,” said Serena. “One of the pharmaceutical company owners in the book is in prison, and the other is deceased, and both have since passed ownership to the son slash grandson.”
“Noted.” Alicia continued, “When my analyst gave me this data I tried to determine some of the connections between the members of the group and it looks like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon.”
“What do you mean?” asked Desiree.
“You know, Kevin Bacon is linked to most of Hollywood within six persons, for example, he worked in a film with one star, who was directed by the same director in another movie, with another star who worked with Kevin Bacon in another movie, and so on. . .”
“Oh, I see, these people are all linked, some directly, some further apart, but connected in some way through mutual acquaintances.”
“Exactly, for example the Brandts are loosely connected to Frederick von Hapsburg, who likes to be called the Baron. Frederick von Hapsburg is a descendant of the royal Hapsburgs and Heinrich the Fifth of Germany. His claim to royalty includes Uradel or Upper, and hoher Adel, or ancient royalty. Although the August 1919 Weimer Republic constitution ended legal nobility in Germany, the Baron continues to use his title with fierce tenacity. The Baron refers to his wife as a Freifrau, and his daughters Katherine and Aloisia as Baronesses.”
“Other than being pseudo royalty, what else makes the Baron special?” asked Desiree.
“What makes his daughter Aloisia special, is the question. The Baron’s daughter, Aloisia visited the Brandts in Brazil last spring while Kurt Brandt was serving his medical internship in Germany. Kurt, according to passport records, used to return home for spring, summer and winter vacations, but has only been home for brief summer vacations since entering medical school.”
“That’s an odd connection,” Desiree commented. “But, Kurt just completed his internship, so it was probably too difficult to go home more than once a year.”
“It gets odder, Aloisia and Kurt were enrolled in the same colleges for undergraduate, graduate, and medical school, and are serving their internships at the same university hospital. Well, correction, Aloisia completed
her internship last month and Kurt just completed.”
“Was their closeness by choice, or direction?”
“We don’t know.”
“Also, most of the senior level connections among this group are through business dealings, charity connections, civic functions, and sporting events. The oddest part is that most of them are usually in Munich, or Berlin, or Paris, three or four times each year, over the same weekends. It can’t be just coincidence, but we find no obvious reason for them to gather together, no scheduled conferences, business meetings, and so on, and no evidence that they actually get together.”
“They probably meet in very private places to conduct very private business. Special business, is my guess,” volunteered Serena.
“We need to dig into these men’s activities,” added Desiree.
“Do you think they’re a threat to our national or international security?” asked Alicia.
“The Brandts were, and they belonged to this group.”
“If we label them terrorists I can tap into their email and telephone correspondence and see what comes up, if you’d like. . . Billionaire terrorists.”
“Can’t you tap into their correspondence just because you want to?”
“Of course we can, ‘wink, wink,’ but if we need to bring in some big guns, it’s best if we go through the formalities,” Alicia replied.
“Well then, label them terrorists. I have a strong hunch when we turn over some billionaire rocks, we are going to find some nasty critters under there. What kind of business does the Baron own?”
“The Baron owns majority shares of Hapsburg Aeronautical, which produces military hardware such as rifles, hand guns, knives, and helmets, and ultralight aircraft. He has his own ‘skunk works’ where he uses his own, and Hapsburg Aeronautical’s, money to develop special military products. In recent years his company created a new product line for their ultralight aircraft division. The Baron’s current pet project is developing state of the art unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, or drones,” Alicia said.
“Drones are a hot button topic these days. It seems like everyone wants to build them, and everyone from military and police personnel, to archaeological professors, want to use them for everything from environmental surveys, to surveillance missions and border patrols, to blowing things up,” added Serena.
“I wonder if Karl Brandt considered using the Baron’s drones to attack the US with his Notting Hill virus?” asked Desiree.
“Maybe not just the US,” said Alicia.
“The submarine in a hurricane was an ingenious dispersal technique, but fortunately we were able to thwart it, and a drone could be spotted in the air,” said Desiree.
“Not if it had stealth capability,” added Serena.
“It would be a stretch, but maybe we should check into the Baron’s drone development. We need to find out if he is just an arms developer and manufacturer, or if he is a terrorist. There are too many Kevin Bacon-like connections between the Baron, his daughter, and the Brandt’s to ignore,” said Desiree.
“You could dig deeper into the Hapsburg’s business by attending a drone sales conference at the Baron’s aeronautical company in Munich next week,” said Alicia.
Serena’s normally serious demeanor lit up at the possibility. “May I call Jacques on your encrypted telephone?”
“Sure,” Alicia replied.
Serena dialed Jacques number, and waited for him to answer. “Going secure,” she said, and pressed the encryption app icon button on the phone’s screen. The button glowed red indicating encrypted send/receive at each end. “Jacques, you need to go to the Baron’s drone sales conference next week in Munich. The Baron has announced for all interested parties to attend. You can go as a buyer’s representative for the French Foreign Legion.”
“The Legion’s my favorite cover. I’ll check with the Colonel. I’m sure he’ll help me as a special favor for old times’ sake. The last time I spoke to him, he said he was bored with working in his garden and telling war stories to his cronies at his club.”
“Desiree and I will send our findings and our best cover story for this mission to the Colonel in Paris. Wish him our best.”
“I will. Goodbye.”
Serena hung up the phone. “Good, Desiree, you and I will correlate all the names we have from the binder with Alicia’s findings, and determine how deep and wide the Select conspiracy goes, and what each of the members could be contributing. Alicia, I may have to leave, so is it alright for Desiree to continue our research here?”
“Of course. Desiree, I’ll arrange for you to have an access ID and a place to work, and I’ll assign Cassie, that is Crackerjack to provide whatever support you need.”
“Thank you, Alicia,” Desiree replied.
“By the way, what about your work at the CDC?”
“I’ve been working on the data we gathered from the Brandt’s jungle laboratory these past few weeks and need a break.”
“Pretty awful?”
“Karl and Rolf Brandt were modern day monsters. We cleaned all of their equipment and experiments out of their jungle laboratory, and gave the house back to Kurt Brandt, but as far as we know he hasn’t returned home. We don’t think he had anything to do with his father’s and grandfather’s evil works. He told his hospital coworkers he wants to open a free clinic for indigenous Brazilians. We keep tabs on his activities to see if he’s turning to the dark side, but so far he finished his internship, even though his wife was the victim of a hit and run. The hit and run was a reason we went looking for more information about the Brandts, and the overarching terrorist organization, we now know as the Select.”
Eighteen
“Dr. erhlich, i’ve prepared the cultures you ordered, labeled and numbered their Petri dishes, and entered the data into the computer.”
“Very good, Janine, you’re doing a fine job.”
“Thank you, sir. Is there anything else?” she asked coyly.
“Not today. Don’t be late for your immune systems class.”
“I have plenty of time to get there and have prepared well for today’s lecture.” Janine picked up her book bag from the corner of the room, “By the way, do you need help with the new batch of chemicals that arrived today? They’re sitting in the supply closet unopened.”
“No. It’s best that I work with them alone for now.”
“Yes sir. By the way, have you heard when Kurt Brandt and Aloisia von Hapsburg are due to arrive and begin work?”
“The plan is for them to join us, but when I don’t know. Kurt’s father and grandfather were brilliant researchers. It’s my hope that Kurt will follow in his father’s footsteps, but he may choose to go his own way.”
“That’s too bad.” Janine stopped at the laboratory exit, and said, “I always looked up to Kurt and his family and would like to work with him. He was always so serious when he was home from college and medical school.”
Before Janine could say anything more, Dr. Erhlich said, “Now be on your way before I fire you!”
Janine left the laboratory for class with the enthusiasm of a young woman excited about her schooling, her position as an assistant to one of the most respected professors at the University of Sao Paulo Medical School, and her hope for an important role in the world’s future.
Dr. Ehrlich sat on the stool in front of his computer console, opened his encrypted daily log and began entering his notes. The daily log software automatically entered the date and time at the top of the page.
‘My assistant has created cultures for several of Dr. Brandt’s pathogens for which I have cures. I am storing the pathogens and the cures separately. I cannot afford to generate any of his pathogens until I have a stock of at least 10 vaccines for each pathogen. I will not create any of the pathogens he developed that have no curative vaccines. It’s too dangerous. I don’t have a Level 4 laboratory, or a Level 4 qualified assistant. Janine is not qualified. She’s young and bright, but not brilliant, or creative, and would not
serve me well in a crisis.
The Brandts were brilliant and creative, but mad. A pathogen without a cure is too dangerous to have around. If, and when, I am supported with an adequate laboratory and assistance I will continue to work on vaccines for the pathogens which have no cures, but I will use extreme caution, one at a time, in tiny quantities.
Janine is not aware of all of our goals except to know we want to develop the elixir of the ‘fountain of youth,’ and we’re developing vaccines for pathogens ‘discovered’ by Dr. Brandt in the jungles of Brazil. Even though Janine is a daughter of a Select, she is not ready for the complete vision of our goals. She’s too young, and leans toward saving the world like Kurt. Whether Kurt Brandt will be capable of, by talent or desire, achieving the goals of his father and grandfather is unclear, but we have to limit access to our efforts to a very few, and at this juncture Kurt may be more aware of our ultimate goals than even my assistant.
How the Brandts were able to justify introducing the Ebola, Marbury, Aids, and Notting Hill viruses, and who knows what other pathogens, into the world is beyond my comprehension. I don’t know how I am going to be able to justify my providing the Select with this Sarin package, either. God help me. I am against producing the large quantity of Sarin that my superiors have requested, but the consequences of not providing them with the deadly toxin would be, for me, not good for my health. I knew ‘some eggs would have to be broken to make the omelet’ when I signed on, but having the death of hundreds, or even thousands, of innocent people on my hands would be a difficult burden to carry.’
Dr. Ehrlich closed his personal daily log, and opened his heavily encrypted laboratory daily log. Both logs were set to self-destroy if anyone tried to hack into them without the double passwords. He entered, in general terms, the names, and ID numbers of the pathogens he was developing vaccines for, and estimates for when he would have ten doses of vaccine for each one. Ten cures for each pathogen wouldn’t be enough to protect even the inner circle of the Select.
The Noble Mercenary Page 19