Mystery: Satan's Road - Suspense Thriller Mystery (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Crime Thriller) (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

When Gideon finished his dinner at ‘the farmhouse’, he liked to walk the grounds of Parkhurst. Today, like many days, he glowed with satisfaction. His community hummed like a well-balanced top.

From his headquarters at the southern end of the property, he typically headed north first, pausing to chat with women and children clustered around the community center. This was a gigantic white steel building housing kitchens and the dining areas for the thousands of residents as well as sleeping quarters. Men were rarely seen here except during a communal dinner each night at seven.

It was Gideon’s firm rule that the men were to work in the fields to the north during the day as well as participate in training exercises and lectures in the late afternoon. After dinner, the men were permitted a few hours with wives and children, and then sent back to their barracks at night. Conjugal visits could only occur in designated areas of the community center before ten. At that time, a bell was rung, which many called the “fire alarm”, and designated group leaders then marched everyone back to their proper and safe corners.

Gideon had been an active student of human behavior his entire life. He firmly believed that the greatest threat to humans was something scientists called
emergent behavior
. Weather was an example, where very small changes in normal conditions could create monstrous chaos somewhere else in the system. Evil for Gideon wasn’t about hate or greed; it was lack of control. He needed to control everything around him and Parkhurst was a perfect example of a scientifically controlled environment. His world organization was about controlling thousands of individuals with absolute precision. And when he needed these people to follow through on his plans, they rarely had a choice.

After speaking to several of the younger women in the community center and fixing their names in his exceptional memory, he marched towards the men’s barracks, his head high. He thought of how the spreading and crippling chaos at several large corporations was emerging from a few simple incursions his team had made, basic modification to their systems. That chaos created uncertainty, and soon, unbridled panic. His control over the news media, based on billions spent on advertising campaigns and expensive lobbyists insured that nothing much was being mentioned yet in the popular press. Some of the news blogs, which were more difficult to control, were picking up on how unreliable computer systems were becoming across government departments, but nothing that could be linked back to Parkhurst yet. And very soon it wouldn’t matter.

The march down the gravel road to the men’s barracks was long and dry, a daily trek that took about thirty minutes.

Then he passed through a guardhouse, nodding at the soldiers, past the tall cement walls that enclosed the living areas.

Soon he was walking past perfectly irrigated fields of corn and red Durham wheat, all weeded and tilled by hand. He waved to a team of workers preparing one large field that lay fallow this year. They were laying down cow manure from the milk barns and mixing it into the soil, according to his precise instructions. He smiled, knowing that as millions would soon be starving in surrounding counties, his soldiers would be well fed from their crops and stores. They would thank him with their loyalty. Nothing would be able to stop them.

In the distance he glimpsed the shooting ranges and the mortar testing area. Gideon thought back to 1994 when one of his company's bought Parkhurst. He struggled for months over the issue of how to defend his new acquisition. He would be centralizing his operations here, closing down and selling training centers and campgrounds, factories and warehouses all across the country and moving in hundreds of families. This would attract a lot of attention from his enemies, the FBI, the BATF and powerful commercial interests his father used to refer to as ZOG.

It wasn't until he was almost twenty that Gideon learned that ZOG stood for
Zionists Overtaking the Globe
– a group that his family had both feared and hated for decades. ZOG was never as direct as the FBI or the local State Troopers. Because they controlled the media, they might start with a campaign to bend public sympathy away from the Parkhurst commune and militia – make them all look like child and wife-abusers or religeous fanatics. Then the local police would have to act on a tip or a complaint and start snooping around. An impromptu search would be dangerous considering the stockpile of weapons that was hidden here. That was how Waco exploded.

From down the road, Gideon heard his name being called. He turned to see a noisy quad headed in his direction. It was one of his private security men, whose job it was to stay in the distance until needed. He was holding up a cell phone. It must be an important call to risk disturbing Gideon like this on his daily rounds.

The young man handed the phone to the leaser, seeing the disdain in the older man’s eyes. Gideon abhorred technology, including the noisy gas-burning buggy that broke the silence of the afternoon and sent up a cloud of dust around them. He took the phone and saw immediately who it was on the display screen. He waved the quad away so he could talk in private.

The call must be important. It was one of the key disciples he had deployed worldwide to help run his organization

In order to protect Parkhurst, Gideon had brought in more than 1,000 militiamen and a high-tech security system. But he also needed powerful friends in high places outside of the commune to further his ambitions. His disciples were the key to the first guard program – very generous and well-placed bribes to senior government officials, local councilmen and police officials seeded Gideon’s’ worldwide operation. Never a Jew or a black man though, and that was tough in many jurisdictions. Those people were rewarded with threats and incriminating evidence. Or sometimes simply dispatched by his elite team of twelve.

The Twelve disciples were his most trusted operatives. And they had proven countless times that their lives were on the line for service to the head of the Church of Patmos.

Gideon placed the phone carefully to his ear.

“The worm is in,” the disciple said pointedly, without introduction. The disciple knew the old man was holding the phone to his ear as if it were an insect about to bite. The ‘worm’ was a full-out virus attack they had begun against the Feds that week to keep the Feds off balance. The virus would attack their communications systems and their data centers. Gideon wanted them present at Parkhurst on the big day, for PR reasons, but not fully awake. Despite his discomfort, Gideon appreciated his disciple’s abbreviation. Gideon was always concerned with federal surveillance of his phones and Parkhurst and so insisted on this
code speak.

Gideon looked up at a cloudless blue sky. “I trust my favorite agency is grinding its teeth on the fallout?”

“All the incursions have had their effect. The shop is in panic mode. They just won’t admit to it.”

Gideon nodded his head, pleased. “Who do they suspect?”

“No one has any solid theory yet, but they are whispering Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary in the hallways. Some are even thinking China. The paranoia spreads.”

“Good enough.”

There was a pause, a burst of background traffic noise. It made Gideon cringe at the sound – the whine of civilization. The disciple continued, “One of their fishes suspects something.”

Gideon often referred to intruders or accidental witnesses as
fish.
Something you would grind up for pet food.
“And how do you know this?”

“Gideon, as you know, we have insiders where it counts. As you predicted, threat levels have gone up over the last week.”

“Interesting,” answered Gideon, squinting into the sun. “I don’t truly care what you do at this point.” The disciple would translate this to
do whatever is necessary.
“We are so close to our goal that after the designated hour, it wouldn’t matter if there were millions of fish missing. No one will care. Not a soul. But I do like a clean workspace. As do you. It’s in our nature, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. Closure is compelling.”

“Then be compelled. And feel free to use our software team here. They are chomping at the bit.” Gideon was referring to his killing team. They were growing anxious, waiting for Monday.

“I already have something in mind.”

“God speed.” Was all Gideon said, not interested in the gory details. He waved for the quad to return and the soldier to take the disgusting cell phone away so he could continue his walk.

CHAPTER NINE

According to Tamara, Professor Kaufmann was one of only three American experts on the Dead Sea Scrolls; had lived and studied at the Jerusalem Center for Antiquities behind the famed Father Bedard, the first human to translate the famous Gnostic scriptures discovered buried in an earthen pot in the fifties. He spoke Hebrew, though not a Jew by birth, as well as Greek, Aramaic and French. He met Indra Chapertah at a Conference in San Francisco on mixed disciplines – physicists rubbing shoulders with philosophers; mathematicians with biologists and world famous Big Bangers with skeptic agnostics.

What Kaufmann had in common with Chapertah, and what brought them together that night at the famous Pasha restaurant, was Indian cuisine. Indra was expounding the benefits of using
the darknet
to corroborate research, Kaufmann was complaining about the lack of modern research on the mysterious John of Patmos – the hot Pao Bhaji came to the table, and both of them had an epiphany at the same time.

The Christian disciple John had been banished to the island of Crete in the second century A.D. because of his Christianity by the Roman Emperor. Over the space of several years, from his prison cell, he wrote what came to be called
Revelations
. Because the guards carefully scrutinized his work for any sign of anti-Roman sentiment, he disguised his meaning in images and metaphors his audience would understand, but the Romans wouldn't.

John wrote the original text in a version of Greek, the street language of the Roman Empire called Koine. Years later it was translated into Latin, then English and finally Hebrew. By this time, much of John’s original symbolism was lost or twisted out of context. Even the best scholars struggled with its meaning. The clergy, however, delighted in the fuzzy metaphors that fit every sermon.

Kaufmann was explaining this because Chapertah had apparently mentioned in an off-handed way, following the curried chicken appetizers, that there were seven major nodes to the Internet; seven major computer centers that formed the backbone to the network that serviced the information highway.

Kaufmann had laughed and said that
Revelations
repeatedly referred to a monster with seven heads. Chapertah then added that each of the seven major centers duplicated the seven servers making a total of 49 large computers. Kaufmann stopped, his wine almost at his lips. He then proposed the ghost of a theory that would eventually form the substance of their paper together – that
Revelations
was a prediction both generally and specifically of the Internet two thousand years before the invention of the computer.

Kam O'Brien considered the predictions nonsense; he neither believed in fate or prescience. And he refused to believe the general gist of the theory that a skinny prophet sitting in a Roman jail could come up with the idea that one day the globe would be ringed with thousands of thinking machines. Kam preferred to believe that the paper was a smoke screen for something else – a riddle within a riddle – and even that was a stretch.

“Professor Kaufmann?”

“Yes. Thank you for getting back to me so promptly, Professor O’Brien. Your specialty was History I understand. At Boston U.”

“That was a while ago.”

“I took the liberty, as you know, of calling the police.”

“No, I didn’t know that. What did they say?”

“They said that Indra was the victim of an unfortunate accident.”

“An accident? I was there, Professor. He threw himself from the balcony of the Royal York Hotel.”

“They say he was on drugs. Very unfortunate. Just started the prescription a few weeks before.”

“Drugs? What kind of drugs?”

“SSR’s.”

“Where you aware of this?” asked Kam. SSR’s were serotonin re-uptake drugs. They were used to treat depression, paranoia and bi-polar disorders.

“No. I knew he faced periods of depression. Wasn’t aware how serious it was.” Kam shook his head to clear his mind. Could Chapertah’s state be caused by a new prescription? Suicide had been attributed to new users of SSR’s. Could that be possible? He certainly was manic – almost crazed. That would explain his obsession with
Revelations
.

“Professor, I almost feel silly asking this, but Indra claimed you helped him with his paper on
Revelations
.”

Kaufmann shook his head; the effect, because of the latency of the image, was to turn his face into a gruesome pink blur. “Nonsense, Professor O’Brien. That was completely Indra’s doing. I thought it was a lark.”
A lark! A two hundred-page joke! From a man who had written over a hundred papers on Physics and Cosmology!

“Your name is on it,” said Kam.

”No attribution, I’m afraid. Another example of Indra losing grip on things, as it were.”

“So why do this video call?

“Ahhh. I looked up your picture on Boston’s alumni site. Just wanted to be sure I was talking to the right person. Pretty upsetting, this business. Can’t be too careful.”

At that point Kam could see a person entering Kaufmann’s office from behind him. “Well, I can see you’re busy. I just wanted to ask about the other professors who worked on the paper with you.”

“No problem, Professor O’Brien. But again, this was basically an April Fool’s joke that got out of hand. Mostly a joke on me, the antiquities geek. Before you go though, can I say something to you in confidence?”

“Well certainly, but I see you have company.” The person in Kaufmann’s office stepped back into the frame, medium height, very dark and difficult to make out clearly. He paused behind Kaufmann.

Kaufmann laughed. “You must have a bad connection. I am completely alone at the moment.”

Kam tried to explain. “Kaufmann . . .  I am seeing someone in your room on my screen. There must be something wrong. Or maybe I’m just tired.” Kaufmann leaned back and crossed his arms. Then Kam recognized the other person in the room and he choked harshly, as if something was lodged in his throat. He held the screen out at arms length, his face turning red, blinking to gain focus on the blurry images. It was Chapertah. And he was grinning back at O’Brien.

“So are we done then, O’Brien? I need to contact Indra's family. And frankly, you are unnerving  . . .” At that, the Chapertah character on the screen grabbed Kaufmann’s head in one violent motion with both hands. He began to twist and shake him. Kaufmann’s face became a blur, but his surprise was clear. He let out a yelp of fear then began to moan. He threw his hands out, but Chapertah’s grip was vice-like, almost superhuman. Kaufmann’s arms were swinging in wild arcs, beating at Chapertah’s head and arms, his whole body flailing wildly, his head pinned like an insect in a display case. Kam could see Chapertah's long slender fingers begin to press hard into Kaufmann’s eye sockets, and then the Professor began to scream in earnest. It was a keening mournful cry like a wounded animal.

Kam yelled into the phone, causing heads to turn in the lobby. This was insane and couldn’t be happening. He could see Chapertah’s fingers forced deep into Kaufmann’s eye sockets, blood running freely down his tear-stained beard. They bulged out obscenely.

Kaufmann made one final desperate lunge to free himself. He had his hands on Chapertah’s fingers, but there was no stopping the attack. Chapertah’s strength was frightening.

Kam heard the snap of bones and muscle. Then Kaufmann slumped, his body loose in Chapertah’s grip, gurgling like a drowning baby. Chapertah arched his back, laughed and flicked out his two middle fingers. In one smooth and sickening motion, Kaufmann’s eyeballs were forced from their sockets. They were hanging now by their optic nerves from the old man’s cheeks. Chapertah dropped the head on the table in a careless gesture. Kam heard Kaufmann’s nose crunch on the desktop. Chapertah then bent down and plucked one of the eyes from an exam paper it had landed on. He held it up close to the camera with his bloody hands.

Kam leapt back from his iPhone screen, dropping the phone on the tile floor, knocking the ornate hotel lamp over that sat on the table next to him. As he reeled back, a sharp pain filled his head, and he blacked out.