Genocide of One: A Thriller (23 page)

The top-secret operation in which he was placed was directed not at enemy countries
but was psychological warfare aimed at the American people. The Burns administration
was in the midst of planning an attack on Iraq and needed to persuade the public to
support the impending war effort. They selected some eighty retired military officers
who would do what the Pentagon told them to and dispatched them to the media as supposedly
independent military analysts supporting the invasion of Iraq. It is all too easy
to use the media to manipulate public opinion. As the commentators on TV repeated
the line that Iraq was an imminent threat, President Burns’s public support quickly
shot up.

At the same time, the CIA snuck thirty Iraqi Americans into Iraq, and they determined
that Iraq had abandoned the development of weapons of mass destruction. The only proof
that Iraq still was developing these weapons—documents that purported to show that
Niger had exported uranium to Iraq—turned out to be fake. The nuclear material in
question had already been purchased as futures a few years in advance by several countries
in Europe and by Japanese corporations. But the Burns administration ignored these
reports and went ahead with its war plans.

After he took care of the assignments he was given, Rubens was free to closely observe
events, and he quickly concluded that this was a war of aggression aimed at securing
Iraq’s oil resources. An unjust war, but one that profits the country. Rubens paid
particular attention not to abstract concepts like the nation or the military-industrial
complex but to actual people. The personality of the nation was none other than the
personalities of the decision makers involved.

The key leaders of the invasion were those lining their pockets through the war. Chamberlain,
a former secretary of defense who had supported outsourcing some military duties to
private contractors, stepped down with the change in administrations to become head
of a private enterprise doing business with the government, a move that made him huge
profits. Under the Burns administration he made a comeback, returning to the White
House as vice president, and was at the forefront of pushing for the attack on Iraq.
Before the invasion even took place he had begun to outline plans for the postwar
reconstruction effort. Naturally, after the war, the company that contracted to rebuild
the Iraqi infrastructure was none other than the energy company he had led. Since
then he’d increased his private wealth by tens of millions of dollars.

There were any number of politicians within the administration who used the neoconservative
philosophy to gloss over their own greed. Even Lattimer, the secretary of defense,
had deep connections with munitions companies.

The most difficult thing for Rubens to fathom was President Burns himself. From his
public comments it was clear that he had a deep hatred for the Iraqi dictator, but
Rubens couldn’t figure out why he loathed him so much he would kill him. This wasn’t
just to profit the country or to push pork-barrel projects for the military-industrial
complex. There might even be an unconscious motivation that Burns himself was unaware
of. Here Rubens followed the limited reports in the media on the president’s upbringing
and constructed a hypothesis. Burns saw his autocratic father reflected in the Iraqi
dictator and wanted to overthrow him. Rubens mocked his own analysis as simplistic,
based on insufficient data, but if this insight were indeed true it was a frightening
prospect. More than a hundred thousand people died, all because of one man’s relationship
to his father. And once he reached his goal and had overthrown the enemy, Burns must
feel a sense of emptiness, because this wasn’t his real enemy. All he’d done was kill
the opponent he’d fabricated deep in his psyche.

At any rate, the war began, and while the killing was still going on all over Iraq,
Burns declared victory. Several hyenalike nations, under the pretext of helping the
reconstruction efforts, established themselves in the defeated country. Governments
didn’t like the idea of their troops continuing to die after victory had been declared,
and a black comedy ensued, in which private mercenaries were hired to guard regular
troops. Other nations that showed themselves willing to follow the intentions of the
United States in this pathetic enterprise were given a small portion of the leftover
spoils of war—partial rights to some of the oil fields. Blinded by the inhumanely
acquired profit their countries could reap, the leaders of these nations used the
excuse of weapons of mass destruction to deceive their citizens, or else the citizens
pretended to be deceived, and they indirectly contributed to killing the Iraqi people.
Behind this, the energy industry made enormous profits, and citizens were able to
enjoy a better lifestyle, while many of the troops at the front lines were deeply
wounded physically and emotionally.

The American leaders who spearheaded this, one of the most idiotic wars in human history,
would, when their lives were over, no doubt be thrown into the pits of hell by the
God they professed to believe in.

Around the time the postwar reconstruction was getting bogged down, Rubens, by then
promoted to senior analyst, decided to leave the Schneider Institute. He’d seen everything
he could see at the think tank. The next thing he wanted to observe was the regenerative
power of the United States. The American people weren’t stupid. Pushback against the
lunacy of the Burns administration was bound to come. It was even possible that in
the next election America would elect the first African American or woman president.
If he joined the staff at the headquarters of the leading candidate he’d be able to
observe even more closely the mentality and brutality of someone seeking to become
the most powerful person in the land.

Around this time Rubens was called to a meeting by another section of the institute.
Waiting for him in the secure conference room was the external affairs section chief,
the liaison between the institute and the CIA and NSA and the rest of the intelligence
community.

“I’d like you to read this,” Rubens was told and handed a copy of a report entitled
Research into Factors Leading to the Extinction of the Human Race, and Policy Proposals
. He was surprised to find that the author was listed as Joseph R. Heisman, PhD, senior
researcher at the Schneider Institute. Dr. Heisman’s field was theoretical physics,
but he was well known, a prominent scholar well versed in all scientific fields. He
was a particular authority on the history of science, and Rubens had read several
of his books. Rubens had no idea that Heisman had been on the staff of the Schneider
Institute thirty years earlier.

Rubens read the Heisman Report with great interest. What really impressed him was
how much of a complete pacifist its author was. It must have taken a lot of courage
to submit a report like this during the height of the Cold War. Rubens’s admiration
for Heisman grew all the more.

“What’s your take on the report?” the external affairs section chief asked.

“He makes a lot of sense,” Rubens said briefly.

“Take a look at this,” the chief said, and handed him another document. “The Africa
bureau of the NSA intercepted this e-mail out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
It was sent by an anthropologist named Nigel Pierce to a fellow researcher. I’d like
you to examine the contents, evaluate it, and submit a report within a week. The main
thing is the message’s credibility—whether this kind of thing could really happen
or whether it’s a misconception on Professor Pierce’s part.”

“Mind if I clarify two points?”

“Go ahead.”

“Why me? Isn’t this a job for analysts at the NSA or CIA?”

The chief smiled faintly. “They can’t handle it. You’re the only person qualified
for the job. The warnings in the Heisman Report seem much more real now, and they
turned to our institute to take care of it again.”

Rubens nodded and asked his second question. “Don’t I need to know some background
on Nigel Pierce?”

“You can refer to this,” the chief said, taking a report out of a folder.

Rubens looked through the report. According to a background investigation done on
Pierce by the CIA, he was a forty-seven-year-old Caucasian male, the heir to a large
import-export firm, Pierce Shipping. But Pierce himself was a scholarly type, so he
gave over the family business to his younger brother and received a doctorate in anthropology
at age twenty-seven. He spent his time after this mainly doing fieldwork, and at forty-one
he was appointed professor of anthropology at Roslyn University.

Pierce didn’t have much of a reputation as a scholar. His thesis on the Mbuti Pygmies
was sharply criticized as “fascinating as travelogue but lacking in scholarly value.”
In fact, Pierce was only able to continue as a professor through the generous research
funds provided by the Pierce Foundation, run by his family. The CIA report included
a personality profile that said he was “quite sound psychologically. He has little
sense of competitiveness and ambition in regard to scholarship and pursues it more
as an avocation.” He seemed like a frank, laid-back sort of person, the complete opposite
of a typical politician.

A photo was attached to the report. Rubens studied the tanned, bearded face, then
turned to the intercepted e-mail.
TOP SECRET
was stamped on the pages. Expecting it to be a report on the lethal virus, Rubens
was nothing less than astounded by what he read.

After he finished reading the e-mail, Rubens had to be careful not to let his excitement
show. His workplace didn’t welcome anyone who got emotional. “I’ll have the evaluation
ready in a week,” he said simply, and left the conference room.

Rubens was once again amazed at the surveillance capabilities of the United States.
The world’s largest intelligence organization, the NSA, which far exceeded the CIA
in size, operated a worldwide wiretapping network called Echelon with four other English-speaking
countries. The system was able to intercept and listen in on all means of communication—landlines,
cell phones, faxes, e-mails. But since it couldn’t handle all the data collected,
the computers had a program that automatically extracted messages that touched on
national security. This dictionary program had no doubt flagged some of the words
used in Pierce’s e-mail—probably, in this case, keywords such as
rebel forces
,
prime factorization
,
highest-level
,
RSA code
,
American government
,
Defense Department
,
shock
, and
fighting
.