Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) (19 page)

37

Washington, D.C.

HELLER SAT IN HIS OFFICE. He and Marcum returned to D.C. on a military chopper after his dinner with Walter Wannegrin. He rarely slept more than four hours a night. Tonight he would not sleep at all. Reports kept arriving on the secure line. What was going on? This was orchestrated chaos.

Al Qaeda? ISIS? Of course. But in the pit of his enormous gut, he somehow sensed that the series of macabre events went deeper.

He picked up the phone and made a quick call, giving a terse command: “Move on the son.”

“We don’t know if the kid is right for the job.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Heller said. “He’s all we got.”

“You gave us a week to get to know him.”

“We don’t have a week,” Heller said. “Get him reconnected with Anderson, now,” he ordered before cutting the line.

Heller sighed. So much to do, so little time. He considered the levers available to him. Until he did further research, Wally would be put on the bench. But if he couldn’t trust his longest friend in the world, Walter Wannegrin, who could he trust?

New York City

“SO YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOUR classmate at NYU, Jason Anderson, was Jonathan Alexander’s son?” Greene asked.

“Of course not,” Patrick Wheeler answered. “I thought Alexander’s son was killed in a car crash. Is this some sort of a game?”

“Do we look like we play games?” Green asked. “Tell us again how well you know Anderson.”

“Like I said, we had a couple classes and a couple drinks together. He wasn’t very outgoing—not sure how many friends he had—but he seemed like a regular guy. I knew he wasn’t hurting for cash, but he sure didn’t act like he was the son of one of the richest men in the world.”

“How good of friends were you?”

“Jason and me? I don’t know. When you are grinding through grad school, you sort of get close to people. You form a bond. But I haven’t talked to him in a year. Not since graduation. So it’s probably safer to say we weren’t BFFs.”

“What is a BFF?” Agent Greene asked suspiciously.

Really? There’s someone that doesn’t know what a BFF is?

Before he could enlighten Greene, Rasmussen interjected, “Best friends forever.”

Wheeler looked in surprise at the man that he had named “the Sphinx” in his mind. So he can speak. I do wonder if these guys have first names. Or maybe the FBI only hires guys who are named Agent. Will I have to legally change my name if this conversation is going where I think it is?

“But you have his cell and email in your phone?”

“Yes. Yes. I’ve told you that a bunch of times.”

“Just wanted to make sure I am getting things right,” Greene answered.

“Did you put other classmates in your contact list?” Rasmussen asked. “Or just BFFs?”

“Some. Sure. Not everyone.”

What was this? BFF? That sounds creepy coming from Agent Rasmussen.

“And he never reached out to you since graduation?” Greene asked in a slightly different form for the fifth or sixth time.

“If he did, I missed the call.”

“Never?”

“No!”

A little more than a day after entering his apartment to discover two FBI agents sitting in the tiny living room of his apartment, he still hadn’t returned to work or been in contact with KPMG.

This better be legitimate or I’m officially unemployed.

Wheeler wondered for the hundredth time if this really was a job interview. He kept a steady banter of protest going, reminding the agents he had a great job and was up for a promotion, but truth was, he was intrigued. He was going nowhere fast with KPMG so a change was welcome. Becoming an FBI agent? That held an incredible, almost irresistible, allure to it. But being grilled around the clock felt all wrong. So he kept fighting his two interrogators, who more and more felt like captors.

Why do I feel like I’m being looked at as a suspect in a crime?

He had spent almost twenty-four hours in a nice but nondescript conference room in the Financial District. It looked like you would expect an FBI conference room to look. The wood grained laminate table, like everything else, looked good but not too good. Leather or more likely some synthetic leather chairs were comfortable and practical. The only breaks they gave him were to eat sub sandwiches and heed the call of nature. Wheeler felt sweaty and dirty. He longed for a shower and change of clothes. His pants felt glued to his skin. He was exhausted—Agents Greene and Rasmussen looked like they were just getting started.

Is this a test?

Wheeler decided that no matter how alluring a job with the FBI might seem, he was done spilling his guts to these guys. He let the silence extend. Were they waiting for him to say something else? Was there something he was supposed to add? Had he said something wrong?

He opened his mouth to say more, but told himself, just shut up and wait. Then he felt a flicker and remembered something. He had seen Jason.

“I did see Jason once this past summer.”

The two agents looked at him impassively. Did they already know that?

“I forgot because it was only in passing and we didn’t get a chance to talk.”

“Go on.”

“He was leaving a bar while I was going in.”

“And?”

“Simple as that. He was with a group of friends. I had worked late—and drank a little too much that night. That’s why I forgot.”

“Remembering anything else Patrick?” asked Greene, the man who had conducted most of the interview the entire time.

“No. That’s it. All we did was nod at each other.”

“Name of the bar?”

“The Cutting Room. It’s on 26
^th
.”

Wheeler braced himself for an hour of grueling, grinding questions to elucidate this chance encounter with a former classmate who looked like anything but the son of a multi, multi billionaire. But no one said anything for a moment. Then a door opened. A man entered and placed a briefcase on the middle of the table. He unsnapped two side fasteners and opened the lid of the hard-shelled thin, classic case that you only saw in movies from the 60s and second hand stores. Maybe I have entered the Twilight Zone, Patrick thought.

The new man pulled out a document that was at least fifteen pages long and slid it across the table to Wheeler.

“Read it, please,” was all he said.

“Is this a job offer?”

“Read it.”

Greene and Rasmussen watched him expressionlessly.

Patrick looked at the stoic agents. He would find no clues to what was on the paper from these two.

What a strange turn of events. Who would have ever guessed that Jason Anderson was the son of a billionaire?

He started reading. If the document in front of him could be believed, he was going to be paid a lot of money as an independent contractor to attempt to reconnect with him—and spy on the son of one of the richest men in the world.

Could that be true?

He started over at the first page and read every word carefully a second time.

Washington, D.C.

Gwen Hampton twirled a strand of hair with her forefinger. She pulled the tress into a straight line and examined the black and white streaks. To color or not to color? Once you started down that road, it was a commitment to one more task on the to-do list.

She was disappointed in Markham’s report. If she was to go to the president to let him know that Jonathan Alexander was a threat to national and global security, she needed more than the the bits and pieces Markham overheard and brought to her.

She knew she shouldn’t, but after watching five TV monitors with alarming events for the past few hours, she couldn’t resist. She pulled the emergency pack of Kools from her bottom left desk drawer. She popped a cigarette from the pack, lit it with a cheap Bic lighter with Betty Boop on it, and inhaled deeply. How far behind was the vodka she kept hidden behind the ice cube trays in the kitchenette of her office suite?

Los Angeles. Turin. London. Moscow. Berlin. Paris.

Why did she suspect that these were just preliminaries and the real carnage was to follow?

Then there was the question of Emanuel Heller. He was on to something and up to something. He was involved with Jonathan Alexander in some way. Hopefully on the side of the angels, she thought.

Markham confirmed as much, but added no details or insights.

Hampton had near-unfettered access to the president, but it wouldn’t stay that way if she bugged him with rumors that may lead to nothing more than rabbit trails. He was a hunter and had made it clear, he didn’t want to shoot rabbits; he was only interested in the big game.

Bring her suspicions on Alexander organizing mass chaos or sit and listen while others speculated?

Time to go home. She might not get any sleep, but at least she could catch a shower.

Thirty minutes later Gwen Hampton’s neighborhood was rocked when four pounds of c4 exploded as she opened her back entry door.

Her husband was on business in Kansas City. He was rushed to the Richards-Gebaur Air Reserve Station and flown to D.C. in the co-pilot’s seat of a Convair F-106 at a speed of more than 1,500 miles-per-hour.

He was not brought to the morgue to identify his wife’s body. There was nothing left of her to identify.

38

The Isle of Patmos

CLAIRE STEVENS SAT ON THE balcony of her apartment overlooking the Aegean Sea. She nibbled from a small plate of fruit and cheese. She took another sip of Chardonnay. She had expected to be with Nicky. He sent her a cryptic message that he was treading water and it would be awhile before he saw her again. Nothing else. No “I miss you” or explanation.

She didn’t know if that made her angry or hurt her feelings. Cynically, it just confirmed that men were often inconsiderate brutes. Except her father. He was definitely the exception. The problem was she didn’t think she could be attracted to a man like her father. It was men like Nicky that stirred her passions.

Or could it be that it was Nicky, the crown prince and heir of Patmos, who singularly awakened desire in her?

All she could do now was wait for the Sana’a results. When she told the scientific team the name she had given to the Chimera, they were curious as to the meaning behind Mariama. Patton and Dolzhikov laughed at her sentimentality. Starnes started to make a joke out of it, saw her expression, and said in his folksy Middle America vernacular: “Hot damn, Dr. Claire, I think you picked a winner. Mariama has a sweet ring to my ears.”

That was it. Mariama it was. That pleased her, but she couldn’t show it. One thing Claire could not stand was not being taken seriously in the first place.

Claire felt restless. She stood up and leaned over the rail. Had she done the right thing? What would her parents think if she explained why she had done it? Would they even let her explain?

She looked at the distant waters. Patmos was the ark. Soon the waters that teemed with death would rise and begin to flood the earth. Not all of it. Just the parts that needed to be cleansed. According to Nicky, speaking with too much wine in him, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East were targeted for the brunt of the mass executions. Asia because of its uncontrollable population growth; Africa because of its brutality and to give unfettered access to its abundant resources; the Middle East because of its religiously motivated designs on world domination—a rigid world where progress and enlightenment went to die.

Central and South America would be hit more strategically. Drug fields and centers of drug traffic would be eviscerated—the everyday people would stand up and call what they did to these predators blessed. Massive slums from Mexico City to Buenos Aires would be decimated by bombs, disease, and famine. Borders to the West would be barred shut with walls and armies. Progressive countries of culture would be preserved as much as possible.

What of Israel? Could it be quarantined from the holocaust around it?

“My uncle has made a deal,” Nicky had told her. “If terms of the deal are maintained, the country will be protected. If not; all bets are off.”

“I thought Israel was where the Battle of Armageddon was to take place in End Times prophecy,” she pointed out to Nicky. “If your uncle is to be the Beast, doesn’t that mean Israel becomes a battlefield.”

“He doesn’t believe in all that stuff literally,” Nicky responded. “He just likes the the poetry of the concept. He does intend to build
heaven on earth. The plans he has to move resources to the survivors are genius.”

“So why all the attacks in Europe and the United States?”

“He knows he must show the West in small measure what would be done to them if the barbarians had the means to do so. He is assuaging their collective conscience on the part they must play to facilitate the removal of those who bring nothing but misery to the world—and getting their own homes in order.”

Claire slid the balcony door back and walked to the small bathroom. She opened the cabinet behind the mirror and selected the unmarked brown bottle that contained 90 Pristiq pills she had not used since joining The Aristotle Research Company, the shell that provided cover for Patmos.

Nicky’s terse note had worked itself inside the whorls and valleys of her brain. Did she need one now? She hesitated. Taking 50mg of the square brown Pristiq tablet would undoubtedly take the edge off the angry rumbling that was welling inside her, but even if Pfizer promised otherwise, it also took the edge off her best thinking. Her choice since grad school at University of Chicago, at least in her mind, had always come down a simple question: Do you want to be brilliant or happy?

She put the bottle back on the shelf. Patmos was the most effective drug she had ever taken and she wanted to keep it that way. Brilliance was what mattered in the grand scheme of saving the planet.

The first phase had begun. The rise of the Beast. This was a moment to savor fully.

She stepped back outside. Somewhere in the darkness Claire sensed a presence. Her mind went back to Mariama and all the other prepubescent girls she wanted to avenge. She was doing it for their future—even if many would not be alive to experience it personally. Like Mariama they would be dead, but no longer victims of paternalistic societies that brutalized the weak—especially the female weak.

When Claire called a colleague to find out how Mariama, the girl, not the Chimera, was doing she was given the news that her father had killed her shortly after the family visited the GlobalHope mobile clinic.

Only a few short weeks before hearing the news, Claire’s heart would be broken. She would cry herself to sleep at night for months. But that wasn’t the case with Mariama’s death. There would be no grieving. Claire had no time for tears. Her heart was already set on the direction her life must go. She would make sure that Mariama never truly died.

Are you watching me now, Mariama? Do you know I am doing this for you?

Claire felt a little better. As she watched distant wave caps, some of the melancholy she was feeling lifted. She was doing the right thing. She was sure. It was for a little girl in a remote village of Guinea, Africa, who was floating in and out of the lungs of worshipers in Sana’a, and who would soon be introduced to others through the sharing of human fluids and other contact—and applications to population centers that were more than a whisper.

How many? How far would Mariama travel? Would she cling to life as she took it?

Stay alive, Mariama, Claire murmured. Do your work. Help me create a new world.