by David Kersey
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
The next morning John’s secure cell phone rang while he was shaving. It could only be Sheriff Chip. “Find something new?” John asked.
“I think you should stop by my office before you go into work. Yes, John, it’s new and huge. You should make it high priority. Can you come now?”
“Give me a half hour. What’s it about?”
“You’re not going to believe it.” Chip hung up.
Chip led John into the Sheriff’s office and closed the door behind him, which was unusual in that every previous meeting had been open door.
“Want some coffee?”
“How long will this take?”
“Once you hear it you’ll be in no rush.”
“I’ll have some coffee.”
“So how did the probes go?”
“She was about to crack last night, in fact she did, but I didn’t ask the big question about Phalah. If what she says is true, and I think it is, she’s in it for money, I just don’t know whose money. It’s not very much, just twenty grand, but in her world that’s a lot, I suppose.
“John, at four a.m. I received a call from someone who would not identify themselves. I kept pressing as to who it was but each time the caller said that I didn’t need to know. Let me get some notes I made because this gets wound up in a knot. But first I’ll give you the bottom line and then fill in the rest. I think you’ll want to hear the whole story. I should also tell you the guy had a British accent.
The bottom line is that the caller’s organization is willing to offer Marlene a half million dollars, US, delivered in one hundred dollar bills with no tax consequence if she’ll lead them to her son Adnan Phalah.”
“Whoa, who would know about her being here except her own Ops people, and how does your caller know about Phalah?”
“Of course I kept trying to get that out of him but he refused each time. How he knew about her, well, nothing surprises me anymore. But it’s obvious he knew that you and I were working on it, else why would he know to call me and not you. They, that is his organization, had been waiting for the opportunity to make the offer, and he told me he wants you to convince her to turn in her own son. I could guess that Curran, the guy from Iowa, tipped him off, but that’s conjecture. I don’t know how he knows. So do you want to hear the rest?”
“What do you think? And don’t get up, I’ll find the coffee pot myself.”
“Ok, let’s see. This gets convoluted as hell and I’m just following my notes. Number one, I’ll start with President Putin. For three years now the Russians have been negotiating with Syria and Turkey for the rights to build a natural gas pipeline from Syria, through Turkey and Armenia. They’ve spent millions in preliminary engineering plans and contract negotiations. So Putin wants the Assad regime in Syria to stay put and has assisted them against the liberation rebels that are fighting Assad. Ok, so do you see that Russia wants the Syrian government to prevail?”
“So far so good.”
Number two, the Saudi’s have been providing the rebels fighting the Syrian government with material and personnel because they want the Assad regime to fail. The Saudis want to solidify their influence of oil pricing and supply. Removing the current Syrian government would be an initial step. So do you see that Russia wants one thing and the Saudis want the opposite?”
“Sure.”
Number three, Saudi Prince Bandar has threatened Putin by saying that his rebels would cause major terrorist disturbances at the Winter Olympics scheduled for February of next year in Sochi, Russia if Putin continued to support Assad and his Syrian government. He said the American and Russian athletes would pay a heavy price. Still understand?”
“The Russians and the Saudis are not on the same page concerning Syria, so the Saudis are threatening Russia.”
“Perfect. Number four, Putin is hell bent to thwart a terrorist attack at the Winter Olympics. The Russians have spent an astronomical amount of money on the Olympic preparations, wanting to show the world that Russia is back. He’s elevated the Russian army’s status to regional preparedness. And he made his own threat to enter the Syrian conflict against the rebels and also aim his missiles at Saudi oil sites should the Saudis make a mess at the Olympics.
“My God, Chip, what in Heaven’s name does any of that have to do with my little world?”
“I’m getting to that. The caller said that Adnan Phalah is not only involved in the Olympics plot, but is one of the higher-ups that is orchestrating it and recruiting jihadists as we speak. The terrorists are seriously planning on making a mess, so the caller said. So he wants to find Phalah and others in the worst way, and that’s why he’s making the half a mill offer to Marlene. But he made a veiled threat, saying that he knew the whereabouts of Charles Johnson, which is Marlene’s legitimate son. See what he’s doing? He is putting her in the position of knowing one of her sons will die, even though one is illegitimate, so it’s a matter of which one. Dirty pool don’t you think?”
“Have you thought about what we should do?”
“Not really since I’ve been trying to get the story straight right up until now. You and I have to start preparations for something, I just don’t know what it would be unless you can get Marlene to comply. But it’s a rock and hard place. If she complies by taking the big money, the Saudi terrorists may kill her in retaliation of Phalah’s assassination. If she doesn’t, the Russians will kill her son Charles and probably her too. I’m sure of that. You don’t mess with the Russians. And to make it more of a mess, I wouldn’t doubt that Homeland Security monitored the call to me this morning. So then you’d have the Americans strong arming her as well. But I would bet the DHS would be wringing their hands in delight if they did eavesdrop on my call. Having the Russians kill the guys who I think were behind last year’s attack on US soil would be a humongous gift. The virtual Golden Goose.”
“Let me think a minute. So the guy making the 500K offer wants Phalah and the Olympic threat to go away. And I am involved because Phalah’s real mother is in my house. So I am led to believe that the Saudis want Marlene to destroy any evidence that Saudi Arabian rebels could be implicated in last year’s terrorist attack in the United States, for which service she gets paid 20K. In a way this mess goes back to the conspiratorial irregularities with ACC doesn’t it?
“Yes, but I’d say it goes back a lot farther than that. Try Christmas Eve, 1990. It started with the rape. Philosophically though, if you want to take it way back, it started with Adam and Eve.”
“Why do you think Marlene is really here?”
“It’s to destroy the snooping devices you’ve been using that could implicate her son and by extension some entity that seriously doesn’t want to be identified, or it’s to learn about your dog. Which do you think?”