Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) (18 page)

THE MARINE HELICOPTER SET DOWN at the East 34
^th
Street Heliport. It took two men inside the craft, one on each arm, pulling and Marcum pushing from below to get Emanuel Heller aboard.

Heller and Marcum strapped in and the craft immediately lifted off for the 90-minute hop to Washington, D.C.

Heller looked out the window to catch a quick glance at One World Trade Center, better known as the Freedom Tower, the signature landmark on the south end of Manhattan. If anyone had listened to Heller, the beacon would never have been erected. Why build a 1,776-foot target to taunt enemies who need no taunting?

The pilot banked to the south east and the East River and Williamsport section of Brooklyn slipped below.

Emanuel sat back and sighed. His first move against Alexander was not a total disaster, but close enough to go in the loss column. Heller had already pieced together enough seemingly random events to suspect that the megalomaniacal billionaire was up to some evil deeds. The pages captured from Alexander’s journal confirmed those suspicions, but did not provide the detail to prove—or avert— anything.

“Did you enjoy dinner?” he shouted to Marcum above the roar of the rotors.

“It was amazing, boss,” Marcum hollered back.

“Then why didn’t you eat the cheese?”

“I’ve never had a chance to acquire the taste,” Marcum responded, shocked that Heller noticed anything he ate or didn’t eat at the Madison Club.

“We’ll work on that,” Heller yelled.

Heller smiled, knowing the distress this would cause his aide-decamp.

Emanuel thought of his lifelong friend. Wannegrin was ostensibly retired from the necessity of work, having built several international companies that were being run with spectacular success by his sons. He split his year between a condo in the One57 Tower, a five-hundred-acre equestrian estate in Fairfax County, Virginia, and a mansion built inside a fortified wall of stone and iron atop the rocks overlooking the Sea of Galilee in Tiberius, Israel.

Wannegrin was a friend of politicians and movers and shakers in both countries. Heller never asked him which country held his highest allegiance. He didn’t have to. Heller knew Wally was a Mossad sayanim—volunteer helper. Wally undoubtedly shared state secrets he picked up about one country with the other, but Heller trusted that Wannegrin fundamentally had the best interests of both Israel and the US in his heart, so he sometimes threw Walter a juicy morsel to barter with. Yes, Wannegrin had a good heart, but it didn’t mean he was averse to making an extra million or two with forbidden knowledge he acquired from his friend.

For the first time in his relationship with Walter Wannegrin, however, Emanuel Heller wondered if he could trust his friend. Something was wrong.

Heller remembered a
Wall Street Journal
article outlining a deal the two titans had explored together more than twenty-five years ago. Was that the ground zero of Wannegrin’s hatred of Alexander? He would look up the details. It was smart to keep tabs on both enemies and friends.

I know you, Wally. Something’s up. You’re not being totally honest with me. Why didn’t you deliver the goods? Why does it feel like Alexander didn’t get your best shot?

With no companies to lead had Wannegrin lost his edge? Was it age? When had he ever seen the Israeli accept failure with such emotional detachment? What wasn’t Walter sharing? Did Alexander have something he was holding over Walter’s head? Did he have a way of damaging Wannegrin’s fortune? If there was one weakness in his lifelong friend, it was avarice.

Heller knew that greed was one of the most vulnerable, unprotected, and self-blinding sides a man could offer the world—especially his enemies. Had Alexander found a foothold?

Heller decided as a young man that public service, not personal gain, would drive his life. His family was well off but nothing close to the wealth that often surrounded him most of seventy-two years. He had lived contentedly and comfortably in the same brownstone townhouse in Georgetown that his parents bought him forty years ago. Not quite grand, not quite modest. Just right. None of the furnishings or decoration had changed in all those years, except a new leather recliner in his study once a decade. At four hundred pounds he was not easy on the only item of furniture he used religiously every day.

Heller clicked off his vices in his mind. Food, drink, cigars, books, and work. Not bad, he thought. I have somehow avoided the two time-proven ways to pierce a man’s fortress: women and money. He was not asexual or homosexual. Heller assumed he was heterosexual. But what he knew for certain was sex didn’t have the same pull on him as it did for most men. In theory sex sounded wonderful. In his reality, it was rather uncomfortable and disconcerting. That’s not something he shared publicly. People wouldn’t understand. Thank God, his ex-wife was not the kind to air dirty laundry to the world.

Heller had reached out to Wannegrin almost nine months ago— long enough to have a baby—knowing the Jewish billionaire would help him even if it cost him a small fortune. Why was he so sure? Heller assumed that Wannegrin loathed Jonathan Alexander with every fiber of his being. Was it because Alexander was wealthier? That was conventional wisdom but Heller suspected it had to go deeper than that. Truly, it was not even guaranteed that Alexander was the wealthier of the two, no matter what the order
Forbes
listed them in. Both men had created a convoluted network of corporations to make it nearly impossible to discover just how much they were really worth.

Heller understood the value of keeping things unclear. His own role with the State Department was vague. He had reported to nine different men and women who held the title as Secretary of State. Not all were fans of his. One obvious reason was that as his legend grew, he sometimes reported directly to one of the six presidents he had served under. But none of the men or women he worked for ever dared raise a hand against him. It was known he was a genius. More importantly, it was known he was protected by his encyclopedic knowledge of the secrets of America’s enemies—and friends.

No one knew if Heller was Democrat or Republican. Not even his parents ever knew how he voted. Heller was most comfortable being alone in the shadows and that’s how he liked it and wanted to keep it. If the lights were turned on at his home, he intended to have a report or a book in hand to read, classical music playing in the background. Oh how the walls of his home had closed in on him during that awful year of marriage.

If your job was to be the official liaison between the various official security agencies of the United States Government—the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, National Clandestine Service, the Office of Special Plans, and too many other three-letter offices and departments to count—it was much wiser to not advertise for the enemies of your nation that you might be the most important
adversary they faced in the world. His administrative assistants—it took three to keep up with the outflow of his mind—and his other key underlings were instructed to gossip about his long three martini lunches—which wasn’t always a lie—falling asleep in meetings—also not always a lie—his grumbling that no one knew what they were doing and never listened to him anyway, and his alarming memory lapses. Only the last rumor didn’t have its roots in truth.

In the world of assessing threats and determining what agency or what person could best address it, he wanted the invisibility that accompanied being underestimated. If it was whispered in the halls of power that he was suffering from a combination of dementia, alcoholism, and failing kidneys, thus relegating him to the status of a has-been who didn’t need to be monitored, so be it. The only time his reputation as an angry, forgetful sot had backfired on him was 9/11. The lesson he learned from that was that he had taken his cover so far that the one man who should have trusted and listened to him, ignored him. That would not show up in the history books.

From that moment on, he worked hard to make sure a few select levers of power inside and outside the government could be counted on to do his bidding, no questions asked. Wannegrin was one of those levers. He wasn’t the only person Heller used when he wanted to make something happen that couldn’t be attributed to the government, but Wannegrin was incredibly reliable.

Until now.

36

Sana’a, Yemen

THE IMAM WAS PLEASED. THE two minarets of the Great Mosque of Sana’a had sounded the call to worship and the faithful had thronged to stand and then bow shoulder to shoulder, united as brothers in worship and love of Allah. A few women worshiped in a curtained galley to prostrate themselves before Allah. That was acceptable, he thought, but most women, as was even more honorable and befitting, worshipped from home as the Prophet instructed.

The narrow streets of the Old City that fed into the plaza outside the Great Mosque were clogged with pedestrians to the point that it was nearly impossible to arrive in time for worship if one hadn’t started early. Many men had to be turned away. They would be one part angry and one part sad. That was good. It showed the fervor of their devotion.

Let the casual and convenient Muslim—the kind that dishonored the Prophet and the devotion of true followers through lax morals and collaboration with the enemies of Allah—travel to the Saleh Mosque outside the city. The fact that it was named after a politician and not a great Imam descended from Mohammed; the fact that it allowed non Muslims inside not just as tourists but to observe worship; the fact that it was built as much for comfort and show as worship; that was all he needed to know about the state of spiritual affairs in Yemen. It was his
job to remind men to live up to the meaning of the word Muslim: slave of God.

Those who have reinterpreted Muslim to mean a mere “follower” of Allah show, with their softening of the Prophet’s words, their lack of commitment.

The Great Mosque was the first mosque built outside Mecca or Medina. Though some tried to explain otherwise, the Imam was convinced the Prophet of Allah ordained it. It housed the oldest extant copies of the Quran. Though not all agreed with him, he believed it was once a Byzantine cathedral, converted to the one true religion by Mohammed. That made the mosque even more beautiful in his eyes.

His sermon was short. Obey Allah. Flee corruption. Pursue holiness. Spread the beauty of Islam to the entire world by whatever means necessary. Whatever means. He preferred those means to be peaceful, but that was not always possible.

It was better to keep sermons short. That gave more time for the faithful to pray. That gave more time for the reading of the Quran.

As worship came to a close he smelled a trace of garlic in the air. Surely no one was cooking or had brought food inside the mosque. He would have to investigate and punish accordingly.

He watched with joy but a trace of concern as more than one thousand faithful took one last look toward the mihrab, the semicircular recess in the mosque that pointed to Qibla—the exact direction of Mecca.

Yes, I will investigate to see if anyone has defiled the mosque.

Anaheim, California

THE YOUNG BOY LET OUT a cry of wonder and amazement as purple, green, red, white, and other brightly colored streams and circles exploded over the Enchanted Castle at Wonder World. He was perched
on his father’s shoulders. He looked down as his mom comforted his little sister who was crying hysterically. The sound and lights scared her.

She is a big baby!

He looked back up and felt something much different. It was as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. A brilliant white light blinded him and sent stabbing arrows of excruciating pain into his mind. He felt his father begin to crumple beneath him. Sound came back as people all around him shrieked in horror.

He felt the first shards of metal rip into his body before there was nothing.

Bentonville, Arkansas

JUDY GARRISON WAS STRUGGLING TO fall asleep. She didn’t like it when Dwight wasn’t next to her. The love of her life. She kept hearing sounds as the little house creaked and groaned as wind and rain raged outside. She had gotten up once to get a glass of water and check all the locks on the doors. She got up a second time to check on the children. They were asleep but both four-year-old Dwight Jr. and seven-year-old Rebecca were tossing and turning. They must be feeling the same unease niggling at her.

What was going on with Dwight? He arranged for a guest preacher to take over the pulpit for at least the next two Sundays. He simply told her that she must trust him that there was something only he could do—but that he couldn’t explain. But in Switzerland? He flew out of the Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport that morning for Atlanta. He would transfer to a Delta Boeing 777 flying to Zurich. He already had a train ticket from Zurich to Geneva. He had reservations at a modest hotel on the Bahnhofstrasse. He would call her to let her know he had arrived safe.

Dwight was the same as always, but in recent months had been secretive about some meetings he attended in Fayetteville. If she didn’t trust him implicitly, she would have suspected he was having an affair. Not possible with her husband.

Judy turned over and suddenly sat up in bed. She smelled gas. She was sure everything was turned off in the kitchen.

As her feet hit the floor beside the queen size bed, she was tossed across the room as an explosion rocked the house. Her head broke a jagged hole in the drywall. Groggy, she scrabbled to her feet. She must save her children.

She stumbled to the door. Grasping the knob she felt the heat sear into the palm of her hand. She pulled it back with a piercing scream.

Then she was slammed back into the far wall of her room by a whoosh of ravenous flames.

As she felt her skin melting from her face, Judy thought first of the fires of Hell that had scared her so much as a child. Then her spirit embraced a divine light she knew must be heaven.

Various Cities, Europe

WITHIN THE SPACE OF AN hour, bombs ripped through nightclubs and discothèques in Berlin, Moscow, Turin, Milan, Paris, and London.

The carnage and death toll was devastating and the world was shocked as TV cameras projected young survivors huddled in blankets and rows of body bags lined on the streets of Europe’s grand cities.

The tall man smiled as he watched coverage from a dingy flat in Milan, Italy. His apprentice was wrong. The world was paying attention. They had succeeded.

Donets’ka, Ukraine

THE FARMER LOOKED UP THROUGH the break of dawn to locate the sound of an airplane engine. A small cloud of orange dust trailed behind it, falling on his fields.

It was a chilly morning in Donets’ka.

Harvest was only a week away. What good could this magic fertilizer do in such a short time? The conditions of his crops didn’t promise a great harvest, but he had seen worse. He was one of the few that balked at the offer of assistance from the International Farming Initiative. But how do you say no to the largesse offered by a department of the UN? That was what Vladimir Shavchuk, the man who had offered to buy his entire crop at a premium price had said. The farmer didn’t like Shavchuk. He drove an expensive SUV and wore a fancy suit. It looked like he had his fingernails manicured at a salon. He had never tilled the earth. What would he know of the farming cycle? Fertilizer weeks before harvest?

The farmer didn’t like the way the man smiled. He looked too confident and prosperous to work for the government, although most elected officials had a hand out for bribes.

The farmer doubted Shavchuk had ever set foot outside a big city, much less on a farm. He had tiptoed over broken stones and mud from his car to the front door, trying to keep his shiny leather shoes clean. He was pushy, even if his papers were in order, including a fancy document with a gold embossed FAO seal of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

But what could the farmer do? It was smarter to work with the FAO than demure; he might need their help in some future year if his fields failed to deliver a reasonable yield.

The farmer did what he knew he must do. He signed the papers and received a 10% deposit check. How did the man know how much the total yield would be for without first knowing his crop projections? He never even asked.

Shavchuk told the farmer to expect a crop duster in the next few weeks. That had been two weeks ago—and here it was, right on schedule. When was the government ever on schedule? This piqued his curiosity and suspicion even further.

The two men threw back shots of vodka and shook hands before Shavchuk left his house. The farmer watched him drive off. Afterward, the farmer called a few friends and acquaintances on farms in his region, all of who had received similar offers. What had the scientists come up with that was going to make them so much money they could throw
hryvnia
at them like it grew from trees? Maybe it will put us all out of business next year. How am I supposed to know these things?

His farm was relatively small. How big of checks had men like Nazarenko, Rudenko, and Vovk gotten? All had more than two thousand acre spreads.

Farming was all he knew. He didn’t see how a newly discovered miracle fertilizer would increase his crop yield so close to harvest. But the premium being paid to test this dramatic new wonder product made resistance foolish and futile. He had already spent the deposit money on next year’s seeds and a new engine for his decrepit combine. If his crop yield was greater than the Shavchuk’s impromptu estimate, the man promised him a ten percent bonus on top of the premium.

Maybe his son could go to university in America and get out of this quagmire of political intrigue that the Russians—always the Russians—had created.

With rumors of more soldiers being deployed from Moscow, maybe it was time for the whole family to move to America. Years earlier, he had attended a trade show in Kremenchuk to look at impossibly expensive
new farm equipment where he heard a professor of agriculture from the University of Nebraska speak through a translator.

What was the professor’s name? He had repeatedly told his audience to just call him Bobby.

He liked him. He was real. Ever since that conference, he felt Nebraska would be a nice place to live. He watched the crop duster turn on its side as it circled back to lay another orangish cloud of its miracle load.

Just what did they think it could do this late in the harvest season?