Rise of the Beast: A Novel (The Patmos Conspiracy Book 1) (5 page)

Once Garrison bestowed the blessing of his understanding—a deadly blessing that both killed and gave life to the world—he, Garrison, would be dead. Even if the funds were untraceable to him, it was actually better Garrison hadn’t withdrawn any of the money. There would be no walking the cat back to Alexander once the account was closed. Garrison’s death would be unfortunate but necessary.

“Welcome back Mr. Alexander.”

“Thank you Reverend Garrison.” He paused by the battered front door. “You know you could build something completely new with the donations I have gifted you and your ministry.”

Garrison looked over his shoulder at the structure and said, “It’s not fancy, but this is something my people and I have built with our own means and giving. We’re pretty proud of it. If we built from what you gave, it might not feel like we were trusting God to provide.”

“But feelings can’t always be trusted, Reverend Garrison. I believe it was you who told me that. Perhaps God is indeed providing for you through me. You’ve said such things yourself. I recall a humorous story you told me about a drowning man being offered a row boat and, I believe, a helicopter as well, both of which he refused.”

“Your point is well taken, Mr. Alexander, but I just haven’t found peace on taking your money. Believe me I’ve prayed and will keep praying.”

“When you do feel peace, I cannot wait to see what you build,” Alexander said, thinking again that Garrison’s refusal to access the account would make things simpler.

Actually this would be the last time he planned for the two of them to meet in person or otherwise. He had just a few final questions left to ask. One of them was already embedded within the question of how God provides. Could it be that if God actually existed, he might have been waiting for such a man as Alexander to begin a great purge to cleanse the world? Was he the helicopter sent to save a dying world from the swirling waters of brutality and ignorance?

“It’s mighty tempting to wire a check to the Wells Fargo Bank just to see the expression on the teller’s face when I ask her to confirm that a million dollars has been deposited in the church account.”

“Only one million?”

Garrison reddened and mustered a forced laugh.

The man’s earnestness was truly inspiring. He was the right man to bestow the blessing.

“If you have a change of heart, if you find your peace, please tell me if her expression measures up to your picture of it,” Alexander said.

Garrison just shrugged awkwardly. He actually looked a little embarrassed. He had been praying about the money, Alexander thought.

Alexander looked at the ugly brick rectangle. As he drove for his first visit to where the man pastored a small flock of believers, he had pictured a charming white clapboard country church set on a rise with
stately trees as backdrop. No matter. He liked the man. He always felt a rare peace after meeting with Garrison. He really didn’t expect Garrison to be able to answer his questions. Garrison still didn’t seem to grasp the questions behind his questions.

He is much too earnest for his own good.

Garrison was no Oracle of Delphi. He would not make Alexander drag him to the town square for a beating before bestowing his blessing.

“Let’s go on inside, sir. We can meet in my office.”

As Alexander stepped over the threshold, he reached into the breast pocket of his cashmere jacket and froze.

9

The Isle of Patmos

ALMOST SHOW TIME FOR MARIAMA. At least the curtain for Act I was about to be drawn back. Dr. Claire Stevens looked at the azure sky and black rippling waters of the Aegean Sea as she went through the thought process of their target location one more time.

Sana’a, Yemen, according to legend was founded by Shem, one of Noah’s sons. Along with Jericho and Damascus, it was one of the three oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, people having called it home for at least 2,500 years if archeologists and historians could be believed. The Prophet Mohammed visited the land now known as Yemen. Great Imams taught there. Architectural evidence proved that Solomon’s lover, the Queen of Sheba, was from the land. She was important to Muslims even if she lived more than one thousand years before the rise of Islam—and even if she was a woman.

Was Sana’a a major power center? No. But it was symbolically important. That was a good start. Fomenting religious fervor and violence was a major part of the planning.

But violence was unpredictable if you wanted to kill people— millions—no billions—of people. More was needed and she was certain Mariama would do her deadly work well.

Most of the twenty-three million Yemenis were Arab, but originally it was a Semitic culture—and once a nominally Christian nation under Ethiopian rule. The roots of Islamic Yemen were tied to the Zaydi Order of Shia Islam, founded by the Twelfth Great Imam, Al al-Hadi in the 9
^th
Century. A small majority of Yemenis belonged to the Shafi’I order of Sunni Islam.

For nearly three decades, Yemen was the only democratic republic on the Arabian Peninsula; all other nations were kingdoms or emirates. What was Yemen now? Hard to tell. After the coup by the Ansar Allah—“supporters of Allah”—there was the political chaos created by two seats of government. Yemen had a long history of civil war and would again, she was sure. Sooner than later.

If there really was a God, why would he need supporters? Jews. Christians. Muslims. Buddhists. They all make the same ontological mistake of turning wish into reality.

Yemeni law and the official stance of the Islamic Clergy still guaranteed religious freedom, which accounted for the 3,500 Christians, 40 Hindu, and 500 indigenous Jews that lived and worshipped there, and which was often cited as proof of the nation’s religious tolerance. Claire laughed and shook her head at the irony. Forty Hindu? Why had they stayed? It was just the type of nuanced ridiculousness her parents would lap up as they railed against the notion of God. That religious freedom, however, did not extend to proselytizing Muslims— nor allowing Muslims to convert.

Freedom is a fluid concept.

The unemployment rate in Yemen was 35 percent. The illiteracy rate was nearly 60 percent. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. Only seven books were published in the country each year, all dealing with Islam.

Seven books? Really?

With a divided government putting the country on the verge of a new civil war, historical grievances between the north and south, and unemployment comes unrest and the growth of a radicalism that was
already rooted in the nation’s psyche. Yemen was a fascinating mix of progressive and conservative Islamic thought. It was one of the reasons that Jordan had been eliminated from consideration for the Mariama beta. That country was just too moderate—the radicals they needed to mobilize would probably applaud anything that happened to King Abdullah and his country.

The fact that Yemen bordered Saudi Arabia made it strategically essential to disrupting the wealthy but sleepy peninsula.

Claire argued for releasing a kiss from Mariama in the Al Saleh Mosque in Sana’a. It was Yemen’s largest and most modern mosque. Forty-five thousand men could gather in the 220 thousand square foot hall, with room for almost 2,000 women in the upstairs gallery—another proof of their moderate nature, in this case, for how they treated women. Claire snorted. Dedicated in 2008, Al Saleh was located in the southern outskirts of a city with more than one hundred mosques. It was named for the nation’s first elected president. The Yemen government—or more accurately governments—ostensibly tolerated no religiously motivated violence, but it was well known that the Al Saleh Mosque, despite being a major tourist attraction, despite being in the center of a country where even Sunnis worked hard to curtail Sunni and Shia radicalism, was a center for Al-Qaeda recruiting, training, and planning.

That made it too big and too obvious for the beta test.

That wasn’t her opinion. But she lost the argument. Her face burned at the thought of the man who had recruited her speaking to her as if she was a child.

“Just trust those of us with a little more experience in the Middle East than you,” Dr. Rodger Patton said to assuage her hurt feelings. His condescension had the opposite effect.

Just trust you? Not likely.

Patton was a paternalistic prick … even if he was right in this instance. The group consensus was the mosque was too young to be beloved and too radical to be perceived as innocent. The goal of the beta test, she
was pointedly reminded, wasn’t the amount of immediate carnage but achieving something noticeable enough to gauge efficacy—and just as importantly to measure the response generated. It was hoped what they were doing would induce a strong response, a violent response.

They still don’t believe Mariama will accomplish more than their guns and bombs. Let’s see if they feel that way when she is introduced in Beijing and Moscow and Mexico City and Buenos Aires. She’ll make traditional mass warfare a quaint obsolescence.

So Claire had gone back to the drawing board and presented the Great Mosque in the Old City, home of the oldest extant copies of the Quran. The ancient mosque was built in 634 A.D. by most accounts. Some claimed it was planned and ordered by the Prophet himself. Some claimed it was pre-Islamic and built by the Byzantines, first as a pagan Roman temple and then a Catholic cathedral. Some claimed it was largely a work from the 8
^th
Century Abbasid period. What no one disputed was that it was the center of religious life in Yemen, characterized as devout but not radical. Not radical being relative, of course.

Like the city itself, the mosque was burned into the consciousness and identity of Muslims in all forms and locations.

The group was right.

I get it. I agree. Just don’t talk to me like I’m a child.

That made the Great Mosque the perfect choice. The response to the beta would ostensibly be much more powerful than the provocation itself. That was if the others were underestimating Mariama’s raw efficacy to kill.

I believe they are.

Dr. Claire Stevens shivered as the night breeze ruffled and lifted the edges of her nightdress. She slid the door behind her as she went inside her apartment. She wondered if Nicky was well or even alive. The man wore the souvenirs of his work on his body.

She hoped everyone else was doing their job as well as she was.

Mariama, I could not save you. But I will make sure your name lives forever.

10

Northern Yemen

MALMAK NODDED TO YUSUF. YUSUF wedged the claw of the crowbar beneath the lid of the crate and pried it loose a couple inches. He repeated the process at various intervals and then popped the top off.

Malmak’s eyes gleamed. Surely the Prophet was gracious to hear his prayers. How else could this abundant gift be his?

Sheikh Malmak led a proud but poor tribe based in the Saudi Arabia city of Tarim on the border with Yemen. Most of his tribe lived in the northern hills of Yemen. With these weapons he would finally become a player, not a spectator; an initiator, not a reactor. He would now be remembered not only as a man of pure words, but also as a man of mighty deeds. He would fulfill the destiny of his exalted name.

Hours earlier Malmak had ordered the death of Sulaymon Ibn Abd Allah’s son. But what could the man do about it? His hold on power was long overdue to crash and burn. He pompously had appropriated the name of a great historical leader who had fought to restore the tenets of true Islam, who had fought to destroy the corruption of the infidels, and who had struck terror and death into the heart of Christendom. Sulaymon was not fit for such a glorious name. He had compromised
too freely. He must pay the price for the spiritual drift that infected so many of his subjects. His son’s death was an earnest payment.

The exercise continued for hours. Each crate contained new delights. Lightweight Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPG mortar launchers, and the ammunition to give teeth to the brand new assault jeeps, troop transports, and hybrid tanks that had already been delivered.

The Greek had delivered everything he promised, including a Russian military veteran of the Chechen wars—an enemy of Allah— something he would have to overlook until the man was of no further use—to train his young warriors.

The Greek had also saved him from the disaster of losing Allah’s gift to Sulaymon and his tribe of compromisers and collaborators with the enemies of Allah. He now had the means to do more than cut off the head of the sheikh’s beloved son.

Malmak was a man of history. Full retribution for the Wahhabi invasion of Tarim two centuries earlier would come to full fruition now. The Wahhabi’s had slaughtered and burned the city of his fathers. To add insult to inglorious injury, they had redrawn the border to split his tribe between two countries, insuring their slow, steady, inglorious decline.

Malmak spat a thick stream of qat.

Death to those who destroyed the writings of true Islam and death to those who forget such crimes against the faithful.

11

Devil’s Den Hiking Trail,
Ozark National Forest

THE FOREST WAS PAULINE’S CATHEDRAL. She winded through gloomy arbors, an occasional burst of light piercing and caressing her troubled soul on the path.

I don’t ever want to stop. Can I run until everything that has been done to me, everything I’ve done, is behind me?

Everything Pauline had done the past six months had been a tortured and harrowing lie, except for what she was about to do now. She had always loved to run. Now she depended on her daily outing as a tenuous strand to sanity. Sleeping with a megalomaniacal billionaire could do that to you, she thought.

She needed to run like she needed air. It reminded her that she was not the person she had become. Someday soon she would become her true self. She would not be a victim of her circumstances forever.

She had reached the moment that would change her life, but she wondered how she had ever got here. She wanted to believe her life would work out, filled with happiness and wealth. But she had believed before to no avail.

Running with long smooth strides, breathing hard but regular, she exhilarated in the rare, exquisite feeling of personal power—no one can
touch me here—as she wended up and down the path of a lush forest path that Klaus had found for her.

The second gleaming black Range Rover had brought her to the trailhead at Devil’s Den State Park, about an hour south of the airport. The driver would wait for her to circle back to the same beginning spot of the strenuous, fifteen-mile course—she told the driver she would be back in two hours; he figured it would be closer to three—and then take her to a local day spa where she would be pampered and prepped to look stunning for dinner at Per Se on Columbus Circle just south of Central Park. The flight would be less than two hours and she planned to look ravishing—beyond ravishing—which was, she knew, her only defense in the world of Jonathan Alexander and corporate espionage.

The dress she selected magically wove together strands of provocative and revealing with tasteful and refined. Money might not buy everything but it came close.

Maybe she had become the greedy superficial person she was pretending to be.

Pauline wondered again about Burke, the man who hired her to spy on Jonathan Alexander, pretending to be the billionaire’s mistress. Actually, there was no pretending when she was with him. She was indeed a highly paid commodity in the service industry.

Burke. Was that his first or last name? Strange time to be wondering that. What had he gotten her into? Who was he? She had spent months of preparation with him, but knew so little about him. He was an American. He was well put together physically. Six-three? Six-four? Maybe 200 pounds of muscle. Good teeth and hair. His deportment indicated he was prosperous, but in a non ostentatious way. No suits made from exotic fabrics, just jeans, a cotton oxford shirt open at the top of the chest, and a navy blue sport jacket.

Was he rich? The money required for expensive logistics were no issue with him. She knew that he was working for someone else, someone else was paying the bills. That someone else might be working
for yet another person up the food chain. But Burke was simple. He probably had a fortune squirrelled away.

Pauline felt a pang of sadness as she thought again, Burke was a man I had almost come to believe was a good man. But a good man would not have put her where she was.

The month-long training and briefing with Burke had been simple. Jonathan Alexander had begun to carry a small leather journal in his suit pocket. He had never previously been seen taking or keeping notes. Apparently Alexander had a prodigious memory and plenty of hired help to do something as menial as committing ink to paper. When something changed with a man as powerful as Alexander, even something as simple as starting to ink words on paper, people noticed and got very curious. Getting in on the right side of a Jonathan Alexander deal could make you a fortune or save you from financial disaster.

Whoever was close enough to Alexander to observe the change reported the journal had to be important. It was never separated from the man unless it was locked up. When he returned to his estate near Geneva, the first thing he would do was go to his office and place it in his personal safe. Something big must be in it for him to add an extra layer of security to his already heavily guarded Swiss compound.

How did Burke and whomever he was working for know this? She could only assume that whoever commissioned the assignment had someone reasonably close to the man. Klaus? Impossible to read him. Jules? Not smart enough. He was a jackhammer that bludgeoned Alexander’s problems. Nicky? He was blood related to Alexander. She doubted that Burke knew either. But there was obviously a rat in Alexander’s pantry.

What did a billionaire write in his journal? That was the question for inquiring minds.

“Maybe he writes gibberish,” Burke answered when she raised the question with him. “Maybe he draws cartoons. Maybe he has simply decided he wants to keep a diary. Maybe he is writing a novel.”

She wanted to be taken seriously. So when she pouted at his cavalier joking, he said something that still haunted her: “It is quite possible that whatever he commits to the velum is what is most important to him. You don’t want to know what is in there. If you get the chance to look, close your eyes. Just take the pictures of the pages and make it appear as if it has never been disturbed. Curiosity killed the cat and I am afraid it will kill you, too. Pauline, do you understand what I am saying?”

She had nodded yes meekly as she looked into his burning eyes.

Truth was she had wanted to get a response from Burke, but that wasn’t it.

So whatever it was that Alexander wrote, his friends, enemies, investors, bankers, large companies, and governments desperately wanted to read the words. They wanted to know what was most important to Alexander.

Burke was always professional, but he couldn’t hide his attraction for Pauline. He hadn’t been able to the night he showed up as her knight in shining armor either. Cynically she suspected he wanted to take her for a test drive before placing her in Alexander’s site lines— and bedroom—for the data snatch, but he remained on task. Too bad. How would she have responded if he had tried? She was attracted to him and would love to have seen what might happen. But like a long line of other men, he was using her, even if no sex was involved—at least not with him. And despite a glimmer of hope that once flickered in her heart, how could she think he might be the man of valor and honor she had always longed for? He was sending her on an assignment that required her to sleep with another man.

That had settled what her response would be in her mind. She longed for him to make a romantic move so she could turn him down. She wanted to see a flicker of pain and rejection in his eyes.

Pauline was sure Burke was trying to impress her when he told her that Alexander wrote only with a Fulgor Nocturnus fountain pen made
by Tibaldi of Florence. Alexander won it at an auction in China for a reported eight million US dollars.

After Burke’s firm and unmistakable response the first time she asked him what he thought was in the journal—
you don’t want to know
—Burke ignored any other questions she might raise about what made securing the ink on velum so important. But in their last prep meeting, she thought it was a slip, he told her all of Alexander’s email and phone accounts had been hacked for years—and that Alexander was well aware of the fact. This might be the only record of his true thoughts.

He immediately regretted telling her and told her to forget what he said.

“It is not safe for you to know things about Alexander that a woman in your position would not be expected to know. Believe me, Pauline, it will get you killed if something like that slips out in an unguarded moment.”

A woman in my position? Thank you, Burke. Please don’t forget you put me in this position.

Burke failed to mention that what he told her to do with that tidbit of information was impossible
—how do you forget what you know?

It wasn’t hard to figure out—not even for a beautiful blonde, she smiled—that Alexander’s enemies or competitors thought he was on to something big, something major, some new world-changing business opportunity, that could only be discovered in the ink dispensed by an eight-million-dollar pen.

Stealing the notepad would be simple enough. But her job was to photograph every page and return it into Alexander’s care, undetected. She was told to take no risks—not a real possibility with the way Alexander lived his life under the watchful eye of Jules—and to take as long as needed—as long as that was within sixth months of her start date. The payout was all or nothing. Succeed and earn two million
euros. Fail and get stuck with Alexander’s usual consolation prize of a hundred thousand euros when he discarded yet another mistress.

“Maybe he’ll marry me,” she told Burke defiantly.

“Never happen,” Burke responded curtly. “He’s married. Even his worst detractors know he is fiercely loyal to his wife.”

Huh?

“Don’t ask,” was all Burke added.

Two million euros or one-hundred-thousand euros. A big difference between the sums, but still hard to lose either way, she thought. A hundred thousand euros was nice, but two million changed everything for the rest of her life.

So when Alexander went into the aircraft bathroom to check his hair she nicked the portfolio from his jacket pocket that lay at the foot of their bed on the Gulfstream. Her heart was hammering so hard as she helped him on with his jacket that she nearly ran to the small bathroom for a shower.

“Don’t leave before I’m done darling, I want to see you off,” was all she eked out.

The journal was now carefully tucked in her fanny pack. Pauline knew the grains of sand in the hourglass to successfully complete her mission were nearing the end. No way was she going to settle for a consolation prize after living every day wondering if it would be her last within Alexander’s fortressed life. She had already determined this was the trip to do the deed and alerted Burke it was make or break time. She had been right. This was the one, singular moment she had access to Jonathan Alexander’s Holy Grail—and the promise of two million euros.

She had sex with Alexander most nights, but it was understood she was to return to her own room once finished. He preferred to sleep alone.
Preferred
was not quite an adequate word.
Insisted
was more accurate. But he wanted her to accompany him from London to Arkansas and then on to New York City, and the Gulfstream had only
one small bedroom. Post-coital separate sleeping arrangements were not possible. That had been her cue that it was now or never.

She was a mile down the trail. Better get this done now and then get back to the car. Tell the driver you don’t feel well. Drop the journal under the bed as if it had fallen there. Get made up to look beautiful. Play your role. Mesmerize him. And hope Alexander never suspects you of treachery. He was always kind and patient with her, but she knew that was only a façade covering a dispassionate violence. She shuddered.

Pauline opened the portfolio. He had written in small carefully formed letters on almost every page. She remembered Burke’s words and was just as glad she couldn’t read the Greek alphabet.

I think it’s Greek.

After five months with the man, she knew Burke was right. She didn’t want to know what the words said. She wanted to be done with this business.

She pulled out her smartphone and took a picture of the first two-page spread. Burke had installed a special app that would upload each image to a secure website as it was shot. She fanned the pages and estimated she would take about fifty or sixty pictures. Ten minutes tops she hoped. Probably fifteen. Her stomach knotted and her hands began to shake as she moved to the second and third pages. Would the images be blurred? The camera was designed with a motion stabilizer, but she was really shaking. Not her problem if some of the pictures were fuzzy. She was the one with her neck on the line.

She shuddered. It was as if she could feel Jules’ lifeless eyes on her now.

Just finish and make yourself look so beautiful that all Alexander can think about is being with you. On the plane. At dinner. The promise of the bedroom. Exploit his lust. Dump the portfolio under the bed when you get back to the plane. Let him think he dropped it there while getting ready this morning.

She heard a twig snap behind her and turned with a start.

A deer crossed the path and disappeared into the dense woods. She laughed uneasily. Her breathing was more ragged than when she was running.

She turned another page, centered the new spread on her screen and pushed the camera icon again. The sound of a shutter seemed to echo off the silence of the forest. Why do smartphone makers assume we need sound effects?

Another sound. She looked up. Nothing. Must just be the rustle of leaves in the wind. A trickle of sweat ran down her brow. She barely moved the portfolio in time to keep a salty bead from dropping onto the open page and smudging the ink on the nearly translucent surface. Alexander would have known someone was turning his pages. That would have been a disaster. That was too close.

She slowed her breathing, willing herself to calm down. Burke had taught her how to control her emotions by controlling her breathing. When had she ever panicked before? Her life had not been easy. Not as a little girl in a home with two ex-pat American alcoholics in Brussels and not since she had taken to the street to make a living turning tricks when she was fifteen. She had faced plenty of jams and always kept her poise. She had been in physical danger and instinctively found a way out. She had nearly killed a man by stabbing him in the stomach with a butter knife she snatched from a room service tray. Maybe she killed him. She never checked.

Maybe she would jam Alexander’s precious Fulgor Nocturnus in his heart when this was all over. It would serve him right for making her feel so insignificant and expendable, despite his stern and chilly politeness.