by Bart Kosko
The eyes of the airport watched for Joel Davis. Makeup and a white Shiite headwrap had so far deceived the security cameras and guards who scanned the airport crowds for the assassin. Half the staff and customers of the Gusher had given their images of Davis to the handheld artist of the Azer police. Soon Iranian intelligence had matched the final image to the images they had on file. They learned at once that the image was that of Israeli AMAN agent Joel Davis.
Now the Davis chiphead waited in line and gave its palm print. Alarms did not sound and no one seemed to notice him.
The light came up green.
Joel Davis did not walk through the clear frame of the metal detector. He instead walked over to one of the two young Azer guards who had thin black mustaches. He opened and held out his brown fake leather satchel. The guard nodded and put both hands in the satchel.
The young guard stopped when he came to a thick stack of Azeri bills wrapped in a paper tissue. Davis nodded. The young guard searched with his left hand while his right hand rolled up the bills and cupped them in a fist. Then he waved Davis on to rejoin the ticketed passengers.
The bribe did not work.
Azer police and airport guards rushed Davis from the front and back. Two Sufis joined them in the disguise of green-clad airport guards. Davis saw the bearded bodyguard of Aminzadeh who had the massive chest and the pocket full of gold Singapore dragons. The bearded guard pointed at Davis and screamed at him in Farsi. The guard ran at Davis and called him an Israeli dog in a great shrieking bellow.
One of the policemen shot Davis in the back of the right knee.
The soft copper bullet passed through and destroyed most of his kneecap. The chiphead fell to his left knee. He looked up at one of the video cameras that had tracked him.
Davis ripped open his white cotton shirt. He dug his thumbnail deep into his belly fat. He screamed as he tore out the red arsenic capsule that an AMAN physician had long since implanted.
Davis bit it just as the first batons fell on him.
The chip melted and the flesh died long before they stopped beating him.
Chapter 24
Cyberspace
It took the meltdown of the Hombre to push aside the bombings of Dhahran and Eilat on the Wireless News Network.
The Hombre had even beaten out the meltdown of miles of the Tamraz pipeline. Azerbaijan was just too far from Florida to matter much to a media culture still centered in Los Angeles and Washington.
That changed with the deaths of Ibn Aminzadeh and Joel Davis. Images of the two corpses filled the wireless skies of the world and the wired hubs of the internet.
*
WNN Channel 2: The New York announcer warns that the next images are graphic. Children should not view them. A coroner shows the buttock wound on Aminzadeh and then blood assays that list the levels of brucine and potassium. Joel Davis looks straight ahead and tears open his shirt and digs out the arsenic pill and bites down on it. Azer police beat him with clubs. The next scenes come from Azerbaijan state TV. Joel Davis hangs upside down outside the Azerbaijan palace. Young men and old women push and shove to get close enough to spit on the corpse. The Azer parliament meets to choose a new leader and to decide how to respond to the Tamraz pipeline disaster and the assassination. The Parliament at once declares martial law in Baku to stem protests and looting. The announcer returns and reports that the Azer government seems to have lost the corpse of Joel Davis.…
*
WNN Channel 5: Saudi ambassador to the United States Mohammed Akhdar explains the new OPEC position to a WNN journalist in Washington. “The facts are clear. Israel opposed President Aminzadeh’s call for an oil embargo. Then the Greens destroyed the Tamraz pipeline. Israel is responsible for the Greens it supports. Israel knew it risked an embargo. So it sent an agent to kill Aminzadeh. We have embargoed all oil to Israel and to its main suppliers. Let the spot price of oil rise to $600 a barrel. We do not care. We will decide soon whether to embargo oil to the United States as well.…”
*
WNN Channel 12: Six NATO experts debate whether Russia will invade Azerbaijan. The panel has split on the issue. Half the experts think Russia will invade to secure its own pipeline and to lay hold of the rich oil fields in Azerbaijan and offshore in the Caspian Sea. The other half does not think Russia will invade under the pretext of stabilizing the country or under any other pretext. That would risk revolt along the long southern frontier of Russia. It would risk reprisals from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and perhaps from Uzbekistan or Afghanistan. One expert suggests that it is more likely that Iran will invade its rich Shiite neighbor or launch a small tit-for-tat strike against Israel itself.…
*
WNN Channel 18: A French news crew interviews the owner and bartender of the Gusher. The two men match their smart-art image of Joel Davis to the passport photo the French have retrieved from Air France. The program shows older video clips of the dance stage in full swing. It shows the wigs of burned-out green snakes and the melt hole in the black plastic floor where the EMP thunder ball went off. Only two white candles bum in the guest room where Aminzadeh died among the pillows.…
*
WNN Channel 23: Israeli prime minister Ezekiel Sharon holds a press conference in Tel Aviv. He denies that Israel sent an agent to assassinate the president of Azerbaijan. He dismisses the video footage of Joel Davis as doctored and challenges the Azerbaijan police to prove their claims and surrender the corpse of the alleged assassin. He further denies any link between Israel and the bombing of the Dhahran oil fields or between Israel and the nanomeltdown of the Tamraz pipeline. Israel will not fund their repair. Sharon accepts the OPEC oil ban but demands an apology from Azerbaijan.…
*
WNN Channel 37: The teenage belly dancer Astrad from Baku sits on a Moscow tabloid show and tells of having forced sex with the president of Azerbaijan. She shows the gold ankle band Aminzadeh gave her and the nude photos his men took of her and him and other dancers. She says she forgives Aminzadeh. Astrad of Baku holds up a smart-art image of the assassin whom she saw shoot Aminzadeh with the heart dart. She cries and then begs the Russian people to help her troubled country to the south.…
*
WNN Channel 40: Green Democrat President Vance Jackson announces that he has signed a presidential order that bans Intel from selling military software or hardware to Saudi Arabia or Yemen. He says the United States will ignore embargoes against it and will ignore calls for it to join in an oil embargo against Israel. Jackson sees the recent near doubling of the spot price of oil as all the more reason to proceed with plans to fully wean the United States from oil. He says he is still reviewing the report of a special energy panel that has called for a ban on gasoline in the United States.…
*
WNN Channel 45: Azeris riot in the Tabriz region of northwestern Iran. The crowd burns an effigy of Ezekiel Sharon. Crowd leaders call for the bombing of Tel Aviv and the death of Sharon. Teenagers set fire to a row of Iranian shops. Other protesters call for Tabriz to secede from Iran. Support riots erupt in the Kazakhstan oil fields of Tenghiz. There protesters burn the main office of Chevron. Other support riots break out in the lesser oil fields of Chelecen on the coast of the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan. Azer tanks shell the region of Nagorno-Karabakh as the Armenians make a new armed bid for independence from Azerbaijan.…
*
WNN Channel 76: The Shiite ambassadors from Azerbaijan and Egypt and Iran hold a press conference at the United Nations in New York City. They announce an oil and gas embargo on Israel and all countries that sell oil or gas to Israel. The Azer ambassador says this includes the United States and Great Britain. The Egyptian ambassador says that the Israel Defense Forces killed Aminzadeh to end Saudi pressure on Israel to pay for the bombing damage at Dhahran. He says that Egypt and Iran may take further action against Israel for the murder. The Iranian ambassador agrees. A reporter asks him what Iran will do if OPEC members do not support the oil embargo against the United S
tates and Japan. He says Iran will “deal” with them.…
*
WNN Channel 91: A panel of graduate students and post-docs at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab discuss the nanoscience of the Hombre and Tamraz meltdowns. A teenager with long blond hair shows his equation of the Hombre decay rate and argues that standard nanoengineering could have produced the superacid. Other students feel the terrorists botched the meltdown since only Azer sections of it melted. They all feel the two meltdowns mark the start of nanoterrorism in the age of postinformation warfare.…
*
WNN Channel 165: Indians from the southern Mexican state of Chiapas hold Pemex staff hostage at an oil field in the coastal city of Paraiso. The Indians wear red and blue bandannas over their faces. They demand that Mexico share its oil wealth with its southernmost state. The rebel leader swings his machete and cuts off the head of the Pemex manager in plain view of the news cameras. He threatens to cut off one head per hour until Mexico meets his demands. A reporter from TV España claims that the Chiapas Indians have taken over much of the prostitution and slave trade in Central America. He also claims that they plan to take over oil rigs in Guatemala and Venezuela.…
*
WNN Channel 189: Istanbul state news runs a profile on the clean-shaven General Atef Mosarian of Azerbaijan. Old news clips show Mosarian in talks with President Aminzadeh at the Baku palace. Mosarian watches a parade of army troops and long-range cruise missiles in front of the palace. Then he meets with the commander of Sudan’s army. Recent news clips show Mosarian walking through the oil spill of the Tamraz pipeline. He addresses his honor guard in a speech and calls for retribution against Israel and its sympathizers. The program suggests that Mosarian arranged the assassination of Ibn Aminzadeh.…
*
WNN Channel 307: A BBC reporter stands outside the night lights of the Kremlin. The reporter claims the Kremlin is in special session to deal with demands from the restless Siber province in the east. The Sibers want to force an oil embargo against Israel and want the United States to back it or face the partial nationalization of the 23 U.S. oil firms in Siberia. Yakutsk may make like demands. The reporter claims the Sibers have not threatened to harm the Japanese and Chinese oil firms in Siberia.…
*
WNN Channel 472: U.S. Secretary of State Gloria Rosen sits in a Tel Aviv studio and takes call-in questions on a Washington-based talk show. A caller from Tangiers asks when the United States will end or at least reduce its foreign aid to Israel. Rosen defends the $9 billion it gives each year to Israel and the $2 billion it gives to Lebanon as an investment in Middle East peace. She says it is a cheap way to further peace talks among Jews and Palestinians and thus to further American interests in the region. A caller from Calcutta asks if the Hombre oil spill will help make the United States join India and the Netherlands and outlaw the gasoline engine. Rosen says the U.S. economy is not ready for such a radical step.…
*
WNN Channel 668: Graphs show how the internet betting markets view recent events in the Middle East and the United States. 93% of the world’s net gamblers believe Israel played a key part in the death of Ibn Aminzadeh. 76% believe there is a link among the Dhahran bombing and the Hombre sinking and the Tamraz meltdown and Aminzadeh’s death. 43% believe that Russia will invade Azerbaijan. Only 23% believe Iran will invade Azerbaijan and only 6% believe Turkey will.…
*
WNN Channel 803: Precious metal prices continue to climb. Gold has just reached $1,400 per troy ounce and platinum has crossed the $2,000 mark. Palladium hovers around $800 per troy ounce. Private currencies based on gas and oil continue to fall. The Ukrainian eagle and Thomson petrol have both lost over 8% of their value as the spot price of oil has reached $460 per barrel. The dollar has risen from 31 yen to 34 yen based on heavy buying from African and South American central banks. Daiwa metal and Zurich fiat still lead the private currencies.…
*
WNN Channel 809: The Shanghai Stock Exchange. Tired Chinese pit traders wave their wireless deal-makers at the crystal spikes in the rows of trading pits. Trading volume has more than doubled in the past 24 hours. Chinese investors have raised the value of the Tokyo Stock Exchange by 2%. Japanese and Korean investors have in turn poured much of their new capital into the stock exchanges in Shanghai and Taipei and Hong Kong and even Sydney. The volatile Shanghai Stock Exchange has increased a record 19% in value since the Dhahran bombing.…
Chapter 25
Southern California
“Tell us about the Israelis.”
“Fuck you,” John Grant said. “Give me back my raisin.”
“Not yet.”
“I know my rights. Give me my goddamn raisin!”
“We matched the blood on your hands to the blood of Denise Cheng in her house at Wrightwood. The DNA match was better than 99%. They used to gas people in this state on less evidence than that. It sure as hell will keep you in Chino until you’re old and gray and have grown bitch tits from the steroids.”
“Who are you guys?”
John was tired and sore. The two men had not fed him or let him sleep or drink coffee. The baton welts on his ribs hurt each time he took a breath.
John still did not know where he was. He had been in this small bare room when he came to after the beating and the taser jolts. The two men sat at the cheap white table across from him. They wore trim black suits and white shirts and dark blue and black striped ties. The quiet one on the far end sat with a small black taser in his right hand and John’s raisin in front of him.
John did not know if they had tried to decrypt his raisin. He could only hope that if they did then they would trip the raisin’s self-destruct routines. Both men watched John and did not smile or try to make small talk.
“I told you. I am Carsten Catton and this is Mr. Pierre Rittenhouse.”
“You guys are with the CIA?”
“We support many of the intelligence agencies. The Central Intelligence Agency is one of them. Tell us about the Israelis.”
“I’m sure you know more about the deal than I do. The Israeli government licenses my patent on a light-laser method to extract hydrogen from water. The learning scheme might also work for an atomic laser.”
“You mean the Israeli government used to license your patent.”
“You think you scared them off?”
“The United States government has suspended your patent pending your arrest for murder.”
“That’s bullshit. I filed and paid for that patent fair and square. And I am not under arrest for murder.”
“Let me explain a bit of patent law. The government has the right to use the technology you patented. It has to pay you only a fair fee for that right and it gets to decide what fee is fair. Your criminal behavior complicates the issue. That behavior began when you and your vehicle fled from the highway patrolmen this morning.”
“You know this is make-believe. I wasn’t even driving.”
“It was your car. The state will argue that you drove it or that you gave instructions to your PDA here to drive it for you. Then you resisted arrest at the blockade in Diamond Bar.”
“I didn’t resist. The bastards shot tear gas through my window.”
“The state will argue that you fled the murder scene after you killed Denise Cheng in an equity dispute.”
“You lying fuck.”
“I am only telling you what the state will argue. Look at the screen. We have the source and some of the contents of your wireless transmissions for the last two days. That’s right. We’ve been watching you and we have every legal right to do so. You are a threat to the nation’s security.”
John looked up at the white board on the wall as it came alive with the date and time of his calls in the Jeep and in Richard’s warehouse.
The screen fluttered and showed a noisy image of Eytan Baum as he spoke to John in Nevada the day before. John had never heard of signal processors that could eavesdrop even partially on a signal sent
with triple spread spectrum. The white board did not play the sound of Eytan’s voice but it did not take much science to read his lips.
“You guys bugged me?” John said.
“That’s classified.”
“I want my lawyer.”
“Not until we’re through.”
“You can’t do that.”
“I continue,” Catton said. “We know you work with Israeli intelligence.”
“I work with the Israeli government. Are you guys really with the CIA? Show me your badges.”
“We know the Israelis approached you about working with some businessmen from the Texas oil firms of Green O and Energon. We have transcripts of their conversations as well.”
“Whose? The Israelis or the Texans?”
“The state will argue that you acted on the news of the deal. You at last saw profit coming from the Texans and you wanted to beat your partners out of it. The state will argue that you tried to buy or perhaps even extort shares in Water Dragon from Ms. Cheng. You did this after you already swindled her out of over $400,000 of her proceeds from trading financial futures.”
“Swindled?”
“Yes. You took her money and promised to marry her. You even got her pregnant to secure the deal.”
Now there was no reason not to do it.
They had him and had thrown at him all they needed to throw so that they could keep him as long as they wanted. So what the hell. He might as well throttle this neat middle-aged man in a suit and take as much pleasure from it as he could.
John jumped over the table and jabbed at Catton’s upper lip with his right fist.
The fist only grazed Catton’s mouth. By then Mr. Rittenhouse had slammed his left palm down on the small of John’s back and juiced him behind the ear with the taser.
John shook in an all-body spasm and did not pass out this time. He had already started to forget the searing pain of the first taser stun in Diamond Bar. Now the pain suspended him somewhere over a fire in empty space. John seemed to have come back to where he would always be.