Scarecrow (30 page)

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower,

Farewell address to the nation, JANUARY, 1961

 

UNITED STATES EMBASSY LONDON, ENGLAND 1400 HOURS LOCAL TIME (0900 HOURS E.S.T. USA)

‘
In their opinion, the war on terror isn't going far enough. While the members of Majestic-12 didn't plan the September 11 attacks, make no mistake, they are taking full advantage of them
 . . .'

The man talking on the television screen was Benjamin Y. Rosenthal, the Mossad agent who had been killed on the roof of the King's Tower an hour ago.

Book II watched the TV intently. Behind him stood the State Department guy, Scott Moseley.

Arrayed on the desks around them were documents—hundreds of documents. Everything Benjamin Rosenthal knew about Majestic-12 and this world-wide bounty hunt.

Book scanned the pile of documents again:

Surveillance photos of men in limousines arriving at economic summits.

Secretly-taped phone transcripts.

Stolen US Department of Defense files.

Even two documents taken from the French central intelligence agency—the notorious DGSE. One was a DGSE dossier on several of the world's leading businessmen who had been invited to a private dinner with the French President six months ago.

The second document was far more explosive. It outlined the recent capture by the DGSE of 24 members of the terrorist organisation Global Jihad, who had been planning to fly a tanker plane into the Eiffel Tower. Like Al-Qaeda, Global Jihad was a truly world-wide terrorist group, made up of fanatical Islamists who wanted to take the concept of holy war to a whole new global level.

The document that Book now saw was especially notable because one of Global Jihad's leading figures, Shoab Riis, had been among those caught. Normally the capture of such a high-profile terrorist would have been publicised worldwide. But the French had kept Riis's arrest to themselves.

Rosenthal had added a comment in the margin:
‘All were taken to DGSE headquarters in Brest. No trial. No newspaper reports. None of the 24 was ever seen again. Possible connection to Kormoran/Chameleon. Is France working with M-12? Check further.'

But the most revealing evidence of all was in the Mossad videotapes of Rosenthal's interrogation.

Put simply, Rosenthal had been sitting on dynamite.

First, he had known the composition of Majestic-12:

The Chairman: Randolph Loch, military industrialist, 70 years old, head of Loch-Mann Industries, the defence contractor. L-M Industries manufactured spare parts for military aircraft like the Huey and Black Hawk helicopters. It had made a fortune out of Vietnam and Desert Storm.

The Vice-Chair: Cornelius Kopassus, the legendary Greek container-shipping magnate.

Arthur Quandt, patriarch of the Quandt family steel empire.

Warren Shusett, the world's most successful investor.

J. D. Cairnton, chairman of the colossal Astronox Pharmaceutical Company.

Jonathan Killian, chairman and CEO of Axon Corp, the vast missile and warship-building conglomerate.

The list went on.

Apart from the absence of a few retail fortunes—like the Walton family in America, the Albrechts in Germany or the Mattencourts in France—it could have been a list of the Top Ten Richest People on Earth.

And as Major Benjamin Rosenthal had discovered, they were all men whose fortunes would be considerably enlarged by one thing.

Rosenthal on the screen: ‘
Their fortunes are based on military action. War. World War II was the foundation of the Quandt steel empire. In the '60s, Randolph Loch was one of the most vocal supporters of the US going to Vietnam. Warfare consumes oil. Warfare consumes steel. Warfare calls for the construction of thousands of new ships, helicopters, guns, bombs, pharmaceutical kits. In a world of big business, global warfare is the biggest business of them all.
'

And at another time:

‘
Look at the “War on Terror”. The United States dropped over four thousand bombs on the mountains of Afghanistan, and for what result? They didn't destroy bridges or supply routes, or military nerve centres. But when four thousand bombs are used, four thousand bombs must be replenished. And that means buying them. And what happened after Afghanistan? Surprise, surprise: another fight was found, this time with Iraq.
'

Another cut:

‘
Do not underestimate the influence these men wield
.

They make Presidents, and they break them. From Bill Clinton's impeachment to the rise of a former KGB agent named Vladimir Putin to the Presidency of Russia, Majestic-12 always has a say in who sits in the seats of world power and for how long. Even if it doesn't directly bankroll a given President's campaign, it always maintains the ability to bring him down at any given moment.

‘To this end Majestic-12 has forged strong links with leading figures in the world's major intelligence agencies. The Director of the CIA: a former business partner of Randolph Loch. The head of MI-6: Cornelius Kopassus's brother-in-law. That Killian fellow has been a regular visitor to the Paris home of the Director of the DGSE.

‘
After all
,' the Mossad agent smiled, ‘
who knows more about a country's leaders than that country's own intelligence service?
'

On the TV screen, Rosenthal became serious:

‘
More than anything else, though, the war that M-12 loved the most, the war that garnered them more wealth than they ever dreamed of, was the one war that was never actually fought: the US–Soviet Cold War.

‘
Desert Storm. Bosnia. Somalia. Afghanistan. Iraqi Freedom. They pale in comparison to the absolute gold-mine that was the Cold War. For as the US–Soviet arms race continued apace and indirect Cold War clashes occurred in Korea and Vietnam, the members of M-12 amassed fortunes of monstrous proportions.

‘
But then in 1991 the impossible happened: the Soviet Union collapsed and it all disappeared.

‘
The Berlin Wall fell and like a dam breaking, American consumerism flooded the globe. And the biggest winners in the globalised world were no longer American military manufacturers. They were American consumer goods retailers: Nike, Coca-Cola, Microsoft. Or European companies like BMW and L'Oreal. I mean, honestly, make-up retailers!

‘
And so ever since, the members of Majestic-12 have been looking for the one thing that will, without question, restore them to their former glory
 . . .'

At that moment, with a flourish, Rosenthal extracted another document from one of his files and held it to the camera.

‘. . . 
a new Cold War
.'

 

Book II now held that very same document in his hands.

The TV screen in front of him was paused, the image of Rosenthal frozen.

Book scanned the document. It read:

Names and numbers leapt out at Book, and at first he couldn't make head or tail of it.

But then, slowly, parts of it began to make sense. He recognised the two most repeated names.

Shahab-5 and Taep'o-Dong-2.

The
Shahab-5
and the
Taep'o-Dong-2
were missiles.

Long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Shahab-5 was built by Iran. The Taep'o-Dong-2 by North Korea.

If international terrorist organisations like Al-Qaeda or Global Jihad were to ever get their hands on missiles that could deliver nuclear strikes against the West, it would be the Shahab and the Taep'o-Dong.

And each of the missiles was nuclear-tipped, as evidenced by the notations:
TN-76
and
N-8.
The TN-76 was a French-made nuclear warhead; the N-8 was North Korean.

But this list didn't belong to any terrorist organisation.

It belonged to Majestic-12.

And then it hit Book.

Could this be Majestic-12 impersonating a terrorist organisation?

He turned quickly, unpaused the image of Rosenthal on the screen.

The Israeli agent spoke again: ‘
This new Cold War is an enhanced War against Terrorism. A 50-year War on Terror.

‘
Majestic-12 are utilising two US projects to execute their plan: one is called “Kormoran”, the other “Chameleon”. Kormoran encompasses the launch vessels: missile-launching warships disguised as container ships or supertankers. These supertanker shells are built by the Kopassus Shipping Group, while the missile-launch systems are inserted into those shells at Axon plants in Norfolk, Virginia and Guam. These ships—ordinary-looking supertankers and container ships—can sit in harbours and ports around the world and yet never be noticed. That is Kormoran.

‘
The “Chameleon” project, however, is far more sinister. Indeed, it is perhaps the most sinister program ever devised by the United States. It centres on the missiles themselves. You see, the missiles mentioned in the document are not pure Shahabs or Taep'o-Dongs.

‘
Rather, they are US-built clones of those missiles. What you have to understand is that every major missile in the world has its own personal characteristics: flight signature, contrail wake, even the blast signature left after an impact. Chameleon is designed to exploit these differences. It is a deep-black US project under which America is building intercontinental ballistic missiles that mimic the characteristics of ICBMs built by other countries.

‘
Clone missiles.

‘
But Chameleon isn't limited to Iranian Shahabs and North Korean Taep'o-Dongs. Other missiles that have been cloned include the Indian Agni-II, the Pakistani Ghauri-II, the Taiwanese Sky Horse, the UK Trident-II D-5, the French M-5, the Israeli Jericho 2B, and of course the Russian SS-18.

‘
They are designed to start wars, but to make it look like someone else fired the first shot. If ever the US needs an excuse to wage war, it simply fires a clone of whichever country it seeks to blame.

‘
The thing is, just as the Chameleon Project has been contracted to the Axon Corporation, the Kormoran supertanker shells are built by Kopassus Shipping. And that is the key. Both projects are contracted to companies owned by M-12 members.
'

‘
At 11.45 on October 26 we are going to see a rain of nuclear missiles. A rain such as the world has never seen. Co-ordinated. Precise. Missiles falling in fifteen-minute intervals, to accommodate the global news media. One missile hit is reported just as another lands, then another—striking major cities around the world. London, New York, Paris, Berlin. The world is plunged into chaos, wondering which major city will be next.

‘
And when it is over, the investigation begins, and the missiles—by their flight characteristics and blast signatures—are determined to be Iranian and North Korean.

‘
Terrorist weapons.

‘
The world is aghast. Then, naturally, horror turns to anger. The War on Terror must be expanded. It has already been going for two years. Now it runs for another fifty. A new Cold War has begun and the military–industrial complex is mobilised like never before. And Majestic-12 makes billions
.'

 

Book's mind raced.

Disguised supertankers. Cloned missiles. And all of it created by his own government. He couldn't believe it. He knew the US Government could do terrible things, but setting up other nations with false missiles?

And now these cloned missiles were to be fired—not by the US Government, but by the missiles' builders, the men of Majestic-12—on major cities around the world: New York, London, Paris and Berlin . . .

New York, London, Paris
 . . .

And now Book saw the decimalised numbers on the list in a new light.

They were co-ordinates.

GPS co-ordinates of both the launch boats and the targeted cities.