Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) (13 page)

29

New York City

“JONTO! RELAX. THIS IS NOTHING more than a minor setback,” a voice with a thick accent said over the phone. Despite his jocularity, the caller was nervous. How was he to know the man was writing something of import in his journal?

Alexander’s look was impassive. He said nothing into the phone line. He and Nicky were in the office of his Upper Eastside townhome.

Nicky sat across from him—dark, handsome, patient, loyal, and deadly. He had just reported on his time in the Saudi Peninsula. Something was going right. His boy had done well. Good kid, even if he wasn’t a kid anymore—he had worked for him for almost twenty years.

Nicky had been a blur of activity on his chartered flight from Cairo and once he hit the ground. He ordered Jules off the hunt for Pauline to take care of other pressing matters. He dispatched trusted men from Geneva to Luxemburg. He quickly set up a defensive network around the townhome. He gave explicit directions on how Pauline’s recovered phone was to be handled.

Maybe the boy is ready to assume executive duties.

Nicky’s father and Alexander’s older brother, Nikolai, wanted little Nicky to be everything he wasn’t, especially legitimate. Alexander was
happy to support his brother’s wishes. He paid his nephew’s way to London School of Economics—it cost almost as much to get him admitted as it did to pay for the hefty tuition. Nicky showed great promise at the LSE—just not as a student. Street work was in his blood, just as obviously as legitimacy ran through the blood of Alexander’s own son. Nicky hustled the proven ways to make money on the wrong side of the law while in London: girls, guns, and gambling. Alexander’s machine got Nicky out of there in one piece, with no arrest record and a shiny diploma from LSE.

Alexander tried to reason with his brother that there were better ways to employ Nicky’s gifts, but the man would not be moved. So Alexander moved Nicky from position to position in his vast network of companies, keeping a close eye to see if there was a perfect match. To his brother’s grave disappointment, there wasn’t. Except on the side of the law the two brothers had scrabbled up, Nikolai with many slips and stumbles along the way, Jonathan—Jonto—a sure-footed irresistible force. More often than not, brother Nikolai heeded the siren call that had shipwrecked their father. The bottle. Didn’t matter if it was ouzo, vodka, wine, moonshine or Japanese whiskey. One innocent sip always led to the entire bottle.

His father’s way was not for Nicky. It wasn’t that he was lazy. He was a disciplined worker—as long as the work wasn’t based in an office and as long as it involved guns, knives, fists, fast cars, secrecy, coercion, evasion, and a late night rendezvous with a beautiful woman as a cherry on the top.

Alexander was not unsympathetic of his brother’s plight. After all, his own son wasn’t wired the same way as his father either. Along with his wife, Alexander loved his son as much as he could love anyone. He wasn’t disappointed—maybe a little relieved—that he picked up his mother’s basic goodness with none of his own ruthlessness. He was the son his brother Nikolai had wanted so desperately.

Alexander knew he had to protect both himself and his son, so when he sent Jonathan Jr. to the Wharton Business School at the
University of Pennsylvania, it was with a new and perfectly legal name, Jason Anderson.

To the world, Alexander’s son, Jonathan Jr., Johnny, was dead. That took some delicate work in the aftermath of the car crash that had stolen the beauty and mind of his beloved wife, Helena, a onetime model and B-level European film actress. Alexander didn’t flinch when called to the scene of the wreckage, but instantly saw and seized the opportunity to protect his progeny. He put an iron curtain around the crash site outside of Nice, France. The first responder, a public servant of modest means, had a daughter who was of university age and he was easily motivated to assist. Other bribes were paid to allow Alexander’s hastily assembled technical team to investigate and report on the tragic accident.

Helena, I would have granted you freedom to pursue another life. You didn’t have to do what you did.

It took Klaus less than 24 hours to find a body to play the role of young Jonathan. A teenager had crashed a BMW racing motorbike weeks earlier. His parents were already close to pulling the plugs on the life support that was maintaining his vegetative state. It was not hard to provide an inducement to do the inevitable. With gentle maneuvering, the boy was declared dead, his body sent to a crematorium. What the technician on duty put into the ovens Alexander didn’t know or want to know. He sincerely hoped the parents believed the ashes in the urn were the remains of their son.

The young man’s actual body was described in detail as part of the accident report.

The world press wrote moving accounts of Alexander’s great tragedy; his son dead and his wife in a near comatose state.

Alexander hastily secreted Jonathan Jr. to the one place no one but a few trusted advisors knew about; the Isle of Patmos. Birthplace of his own father. Alexander dreaded the conversation with Jonathan Jr. to let him know the mechanizations he put in place that would force him to embrace a new identity. The talk went surprisingly well. Helena had
not kept her husband’s brutal past nor present as a secret from their son. He jumped at the opportunity to become a new man, set apart from the shadow of his father.

Did that hurt? Of course. But Alexander knew that greatness— immortality—required profound sacrifices.

Loss was also something he was acquainted with from his earliest days. He and Nikolai were actually half brothers—some people found even that hard to believe with Nikolai’s tangled shock of black hair and Roman nose in contrast to Jonathan’s thin nose and fair features that he inherited from his mother. No two brothers could look less alike.

Nikolai’s mom had died in childbirth. A year later, a nineteen-year old French beauty had fallen for the dark, swarthy Greek fisherman she met in a harbor café in the city of Skiathos. She and the boys’ father embarked on a passionate love affair that spawned Jonathan. After Jonto’s birth, his father resolved again to quit the bottle, which made him a raging bear to live with in contrast to his gentle drunkenness. His mother had enough sooner than later and was gone before Alexander reached his second birthday. All that remained of her for Alexander was a faded photograph on the day she and his father had posed with him for his baptism.

After the faked death, Alexander still saw his son once a year at great risk to the plan. The reason was simple. Johnny loved his mother deeply. That was not the only reason, but it was a substantial reason Alexander spared no expense to keep Helena’s shattered earthly existence as comfortable as possible, with a 24-hour team to tend to her every need. He brought the music and art to the house that he knew she loved. When back at the estate outside of Geneva, he would sip a small glass of brandy and hold her hand each evening. It was the closest he ever felt to her or anyone else, even if she tensed at his touch. It didn’t hurt that his ministrations as doting husband were some of the few ways that scored points for him in the court of public opinion.

He actually didn’t care what the public thought of him but a reasonably positive impression was good for business.

Alexander had never been faithful to his wife, but what people in his inner circle knew was he sincerely loved once-beautiful Helena dearly.

Once a year Klaus would arrange a maze of clandestine travel arrangements to bring Johnny—Jason Anderson—to Switzerland to hold his mother’s hand and engage in stilted conversations with his father. Never in the open air where prying eyes in the sky could witness the return from the dead of the son.

At all other times his son was Jason, a successful young man who had lost his parents as a child. Jason had done okay as an investment banker. Nothing earthshattering, but nothing to be ashamed of as a father. He earned an MBA from New York University after Lehman Brothers, his employer, died in the crash of 2008. Alexander tried to warn him but Johnny didn’t listen to him.

Alexander often wondered why Johnny hadn’t gotten married yet.

“Young men wait these days,” his nephew Nicky would say to him. “What’s the hurry? There’s a lot of options to explore.

Nicky was married with four kids but kept his options open. That worried Alexander a bit, but realistically, he understood Nicky would always need the challenge of a new conquest.

Alexander’s own nightly visits with Helena never wavered, even as her mental condition worsened. Helena was and would be the only love of Jonathan’s life. Some days she knew her husband, but more days she didn’t. Those were the best. To move forward in life, some things are better forgotten, including a mother who deserted him as an infant.

The man on the phone, a most unlikely ally, knew he had pushed his longtime friend too far by calling him by his childhood name of Jonto. He knew that was the least of his worries. He plunged into the awkward silence, saying, “I am working to contain the situation from multiple angles.”

“A situation you created.”

“What choice did I have? We have carefully cultivated our mutual animosity and loathing of each other for both public and private consumption. Not participating would have thrown that into question.”

“But you did not contact me.”

“You were the one who put a moratorium on communicating with each other as events approach.”

“I would have made an exception had I known you were hiring mercenaries to infiltrate me.”

“But look how little was discovered. I had confidence in your defenses and it was well placed confidence.”

“Words, important words, I committed to paper have been revealed.”

“But what do they mean? They will confuse our enemies more than provide clarity to what is unfolding. Your secret—
our secret
—is safe.”

“I only have your word on that, which doesn’t reassure me at the moment.”

The man on the other end of the line wanted to say Jonto, but caught himself and answered, “Jonathan, it hurts to hear you question my commitment and loyalty to the cause—and to you, the author of our cause. How long have we been friends? Who can you trust more than me?”

Alexander looked at Nicky. Nicky scowled and moved his head from side to side, slowly.

“I’m sure no one,” Alexander said with a wink at his nephew who was listening intently to the conversation. “And I’m sure you will prove yourself. This is a minor setback. All the more reason to be more vigilant than ever.”

“Is that even possible with you, my friend? I know no one more vigilant than you.”

“Apparently more vigilance is possible. For someone was placed close to me.”

“And still got nothing.”

“Not true. Eleven private handwritten pages is very much something.”

“But nothing detailed. Nothing incriminating. The simple musings of a man on the state of the world. No intent was expressed to pursue a course of action.”

That part was not quite true.

I should have waited to begin my writing. Now it puts Patmos at even greater risk. It makes me look foolish.

Alexander broke the silence diplomatically: “I am sure you are right, but even so, this is not good. You know the agents placed against me. I want to trust you, but I want you to prove your trust. After all, my friend, you have everything to lose if you have stirred a hornet’s nest that cannot be contained.”

“Jonathan. Jonathan. Trust me. First of all—and please don’t take this as disrespect—I had no idea that there was anything to find. I would never do anything to harm you and the work you have undertaken. As you said, I have as much to lose as you do. I will nip this in the bud. Even as we speak, the operatives are being hunted and will soon face termination. With the few who might read the words, I will bring insight into the writings that cast them in a different light. Your trust shall be rewarded.”

“Make it so. With the Middle East so volatile, who knows how America’s only assured ally in the region might be deleteriously impacted.”

The threat to the country the man loved was palpable.

Why in the hell did Alexander write down that he was the Beast of the Apocalypse? It’s been years since we’ve met in person. Is he losing his marbles? Are the rumors of a stroke true? “I will be the Beast”?

Alexander pushed a button to disconnect the secure line. He hated to use telephones, though each of his residences had a separate connection that sent encrypted calls through a series of switches and
relays that were impossible to follow. Supposedly impossible. The technological geeks will truly rule the world if I don’t, he thought.

He looked at Nicky and shook his head. Trust his caller? Never. The man played every angle. No. Alexander didn’t trust him. He trusted no one. There was no benefit in it. Not Klaus who organized his life and knew all his secrets. Not Jules who would put his body in front of a bullet for him. Not Patton who headed up the scientific aspects of Patmos. Not even Nicky, soon to be anointed as his second in command, who was blood. He mostly trusted Nicky—though his disloyalty to his wife and children might indicate a willingness to betray others he loved, namely his uncle. So he would not trust even Nicky totally. Besides, when in history had blood proven to be failsafe? History was littered with patricide, filicide, and fratricide. So no, he would never totally trust anyone, including Nicky, who was heading up the more violent operations of Patmos.

Always best to keep another set of eyes on those guarding you.

30

New York City

BURKE WAS GROWING MORE WORRIED by the second. None of his street soldiers were at their posts. What was going on?

He cut over to the Peninsula Hotel and headed to the rooftop bar. Using a pair of military quality Bushnell binoculars, he could spot two of his watch points. No one on duty. He didn’t have an angle to check other Jonathan Alexander chokepoints he was monitoring.

What next? Burke wanted to attack. But Alexander would be on high alert and had probably set up defenses accordingly, even if his psychopathic bodyguard was not with him. It would be a quixotic suicide.

It grated at him that with his failure in Northwest Arkansas, he was now running blind. He had no actionable Intel.

What of his street soldiers? No chance they had a simultaneous call from nature and headed for the comfort of inside plumbing. Watchers didn’t worry about misdemeanor tickets for public urination.

Were they captured? Most would not be taken without a fight. Dead?

He had succumbed to the biblical sins of pride and greed, Burke thought ruefully. Others were paying the price for his reckless hubris.
He needed to get back to Europe and reconnoiter with Henri. The two of them would come up with a meticulous plan to hit the man hard, possibly with a long-range sniper rifle. No way would he get paid for a blotched assignment, but going after Alexander was no longer a matter of money.

Time to move. Better to be the hunter than the hunted.