The Aisha Prophecy (10 page)

“You understand, don’t you, that if I should retrieve it…”

“You’ll want something in return. Name your price.”

Leland’s eyes hardened. “I don’t want their damned money.”

“Of course you don’t, Howard. You’re an honorable man. What you’d want is to have a few aces up your sleeve the next time the Saudis try to jerk you around.”

Leland folded his arms. He said, “Go on.”

“Tell you what. We’ll share. I’ll give you some and they’ll be biggies. There are only about a hundred that I need for my purposes and those I will keep; you can’t have them. You can put the squeeze on yours for any purpose you like. In return, you must agree to sit on them for a while. No sharing them with anyone else until you get the green light from me.”

“Charles, I did take an oath. It wasn’t to you.”

“You swore to uphold. You want something to uphold? If we don’t keep this quiet, that flight money’s frozen and they’ll hang the prince by his nuts. Keep in mind, these are thieves. That money should have gone to charity. Tell you what. Most still will. It’s not the money that’s important. It’s knowing who stashed it and blocking their access and blowing the whistle if they don’t play ball. Either way, they’re not getting it all back.”

Leland thought for a moment. “Which charities? Do you know?”

“No, but that kid would. One more reason to find her.”

Leland was still thinking. “Some will be legitimate. Food and medicine and such. But some will be a cover. Some always are. Who would get to decide where that money goes?”

“Would you like to? You got it. Build a hospital. Build ten. The Howard Leland Pavilion in Gaza.”

Leland hesitated. He was rubbing his chin.

“Howard, I can put the hammer to some of these bastards in a way that you can’t as long as you’re in that job. We both know that they have it coming.”

“I will sleep on it,” said Leland. “Goodnight, Charles.”

NINE 

“The Howard Leland Pavilion?” asked the media mogul as he watched Leland climb toward the cabin they shared. “If that doesn’t seduce him, what will?”

“Don’t be smart.”

“And in Gaza, no less. Want a better way to help all those poor Palestinians? Myself, I’d use the money to build them a few casinos. Look how our Native Americans have prospered. Right now, most of Gaza is inhospitable desert, but so, of course, was Las Vegas. See that? In a stroke, I have solved the Mideast conflict. No more fighting because they’re too busy getting rich. Instead of tanks, we’ll have busloads of blue-haired old ladies coming in to play the fifty-cent slots.”

Haskell closed one eye. “Are you through?”

“By the way, you said ‘humbly.’ You were asking him ‘humbly.’ I’m surprised you know the meaning of the word.”

“I did overstep. I had to back off a little.”

“The word ‘humble,’ by the way, would also apply to your description of our intentions. Extortion? Re-embezzling? Giving some of it back? And where’s the grandeur in picking a few Saudi pockets? This is the Bohemian Club, after all. We’re expected to reach for the stars.”

“Well, I had to say something. We were caught off guard. Anyway, it was the truth. Those are our intentions. Are you saying that I should have laid out the whole plan? He’d be on the horn to the White House right now. By tomorrow, we’d find ourselves dragged off to Leavenworth for planning to control Saudi Oil.”

“Not controlling,” said the mogul. “I prefer the word ‘managing.’ Western governments won’t do it, so we must. Leland needs to be brought around to our way of thinking. However, Leland said it himself. It’s always best to reel them in slowly.”

“That’s what I was doing. Until that damned phone call.”

“No, until then you were fixated on this Martin Kessler fellow. You’ll recall that I’ve urged you to get over it.”

“He’s in this. He’s part of it. I can feel it.”

“Because he knows this woman, Stride? And Stride knows some Nasreens? You see this as a ‘gathering’ of Arabic-speakers? Leland’s right. You’re grasping at straws.”

Haskell moistened his lips. He said nothing.

“And there you were with Leland, making a hash of it. You thought you knew all the right buttons to push. Let me try. We’ll meet for breakfast. Just the two of us.”

“Why might you do any better?” asked Haskell.

“Because I speak his language,” said the media mogul. “Leland’s from an old family. So am I. You are not. It’s not a language that one learns in just one generation.”

“Good breeding?”

“Don’t knock it. All you know is raw power. Social standing is quite something else.”

Haskell snorted. “I’m not in the mood.”

“I know. You’ve told me. You’ve no patience with nuance. But that’s because you still don’t understand it, you see. May I offer you a couple of examples?”

Haskell shook his head. “Some other time, please. Right now I need to go take a leak.”

“I’ll be brief,” said the mogul. “You’ve had people killed who need not have been killed. Subtlety is not your long suit. Would it surprise you to learn that I’ve destroyed a few myself just by scratching their names off a guest list? In my circle a snub can be worse than a bullet. Not inviting them to an important event tells the world that they no longer matter.”

“Do any of the people in your circle have bladders? Please. You can educate me later.”

“Another weapon of choice – and it’s a dandy – is ridicule. That’s where the media come into play. I could make a man like Leland look like a fool if he should decide to go against us. Or a liar, or a puppet, or a sleaze ball; you name it. I could fatally damage the man’s credibility.”

Haskell had started to turn away. He stopped. He said thoughtfully, “And not only Leland’s.”

“Um… don’t tell me. Are we now back on Kessler?”

“Of course not. You couldn’t hurt Kessler that way.”

The mogul yawned. “Okay, what’s left? The State of Israel? Been tried. Yitzhak what’s-his-name, the head of the Mossad? He’d probably frame it and hang it on his wall. Oh, I know. Harry Whistler, correct?”

“Say it is,” said Haskell. “What could you do to him?”

The mogul winced. “Will you forget about Whistler? You’ve been burned. Take your lumps. You’re letting these people become an obsession, and obsessions almost always turn inward.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m on top of it.”

“Are you? I’m hearing troubling whispers about you. I hear you have the hots for Elizabeth Stride.”

Haskell bridled. “Who the hell told you that?”

“A little bird. We all have our little birds,” said the mogul. “You’re enamored of a woman who you’ve never laid eyes on. You’ve heard that she’s a knockout and very much a lady except when she’s slicing people up into bait. The sort of woman who belongs on Charles Haskell’s arm and not in the bed of some German who bested you. Sometimes I fear for your sanity.”

Haskell’s color had risen. “Look, wherever this came from…”

“You’ve researched her. Exhaustively.”

“I research all opponents.”

“Friends as well. Never hurts. But this woman especially. Every tidbit you could find. Adopted by a family that worked for Aramco. Family moved back to Texas where she grew up. Returned after college to find her birth parents. Disappeared into a Saudi prison where she was probably raped within an inch of her life. Rescued then recruited by the Mossad. I forget how and why she hooked up with Kessler, but I bet you’ve got it all charted.”

Haskell’s eyes had grown cold. He said, “Enough.”

“Birth parents were athletes. Romanian, I think. Northern Romanian. Good Aryan stock. That’s where she got it. Name a sport, she’s good at it. I bet you have a list of every trophy she’s won and…”

“Hey,” snapped Haskell. “Did you hear me? Get off it.”

The mogul paused for a beat. He softened his voice. “I was hoping to hear a denial.”

“You wouldn’t understand. So shut up about it. Back to Whistler. Indulge me. What could you do to him?”

The mogul sighed. “Well, you know what they say. Bright light is the best disinfectant.”

“They also say he’s untouchable. No one wants to take him on. Everybody I’ve asked says he’s too well connected.”

“Untouchable by whom? The authorities, correct? Not by a relentless free press. He’s a man who lives large, almost riotously, as well known for his charity as his wealth, unsuspected by most of all the blood on his hands. Shine a bright enough light on the right kind of scandal… kidnapping young boys for sex, for example…”

“He does that?”

“Of course not,” said the mogul, “but you get the idea. True or not, the whispers would be with him forever. Those with whom he does business will distance themselves. Certainly a straight arrow like Leland.”

“An interesting idea.”

“You see? You can learn.”

Haskell’s eyes took a shine. “When can you start?”

“Alas, there are one or two flaws in that plan. Harry Whistler has resources. He’d track it down. A libel suit would be the very least of our worries if we should make him an enemy.”

“He’s already…”

“An enemy? No, he isn’t. Or at least he’s not mine. Which brings me to the most grievous flaw in that plan. I would then have an enemy I needn’t have had, one who has a very long reach. I would soon be awakened in the middle of the night by a shadowy figure standing over my bed. To keep my throat from being cut, I would of course rat you out. I would say that Charles Haskell made me do it. Shall I tell you what his… or her… first question would be?”

“It wouldn’t be why. He’d know why.”

The mogul shook his head. He said, “I can hear the words even now. I’d be asked, ‘Charles Haskell? Who the hell is Charles Haskell?’”

“He… knows very well who I am.”

“He might. He might not. The question is, does he care? Your world and his don’t intersect often. Would he even recognize you if you passed him on the street?”

Haskell darkened. He made no reply.

“Get over it, Charles. We have enough on our plates. Let’s deal with that damned Saudi princess.”

TEN 

Haskell’s bladder didn’t make it to nearest relief. He decided that a shrub would serve his purpose. That media mogul. Talk about arrogance. Haskell should have whizzed on his shoes.

His own apparent smugness had put off Howard Leland, but he hadn’t meant it quite the way it came out. What he’d felt when he made that “we run the world” remark was more a sense of wonder at how far he had come. Talk about breeding. He had breeding in spades. And none of it cost anyone a dime.

His father had been a chauffeur for the rich after failing to succeed as a boxer. That experience in the prize ring, such as it was, became an asset; he could double as a bodyguard. And he’d earn extra money giving boxing lessons to the sons of his employers and their friends. He saved his most useful lessons for his own son. Not so much how to box as how to fight.

Haskell’s inner voice said, “No, how to win.”

Well, yes, of course. Why else would you fight? It was street-fighting, really. No gloves. No referee. And never use a closed fist. Skulls are hard. Knuckles break. Use the heel of your hand. Or your thumb for soft tissue. The eyes are the softest. Use the heel of your shoe if they try to get up. Not the toe. Toes break, too. Use the heel.

“Charles, he was no thug. You make him sound like a thug.”

Sorry. Didn’t mean to. No, he was no bully. Tough when he had to be. Easy-going on the whole. But he knew what he knew and he taught what he knew. He’d tell his son, “Don’t you ever pick a fight. But if you’re faced with one that you can’t walk away from, hit fast and hard, no talk, no warning. If someone has to get hurt, make sure it’s him and get it done within ten seconds, max.”

The other reason for the ten second rule was that when it happens fast, no-one’s sure of what they saw. Let them hear you asking, “Oh my gosh, are you all right?” This does two things, said his father. One of them is, you don’t get a reputation. Your skills remain a surprise. The other one is that if the cops are called, you’re a little less likely to be cuffed.

“Now you’re making it sound…”

As if he’d had a fight a week. He didn’t. Just a few. Enough to practice what he’d learned. But the lessons still applied to later situations such as those he would encounter while building his career. Lull them into thinking you’re no imminent threat. Then hit fast and hard. Good advice.

His mother, however, saw his father as a loser. She’d always thought that she was the one who should have had a chauffeur and limo. If not as the wife of a champion fighter, then in her own right as a movie star. His mother had dreamt of an acting career, probably since she was in grade school. She finally walked out when he was only fourteen. She’d decided to give it a shot.

Actually, she wasn’t all that unrealistic. She wasn’t looking for stardom. Not at her age. But getting steady work as a character actress seemed an achievable goal. She’d had characters and roles by the dozen in her head as far back as he could remember.

She’d been diagnosed as having a non-existent illness. Multiple Personality Disorder. It was a fad diagnosis, now deservedly discredited, but he knew it was crap even then. She wasn’t like Eve in The Three Faces Of Eve. She hadn’t invented alternate selves as a shield against some blocked-out abuse in her childhood. Did she alternate? Yes. But between movie roles. Her multiples were all movie roles. Did she talk to herself? So what? So did he. More people should have a good long talk with themselves. It would help them cut through their own bullshit.

She did manage to be cast in some minor stage productions. Mostly she worked as a waitress. But she was never the same waitress two days in a row. She’d be Katherine Hepburn one day, Bette Davis the next. She’d also done the same thing at home. And she was good. She could even cross over and be Orson Welles. She could do Brando; she could do Charlton Heston. She’d memorized speeches from their movies.

Disappointed, and probably clinically depressed, she finally snapped and ended up institutionalized. He’d never gone to see her. There seemed little point. On any given day, she would be someone else. She would therefore, understandably, not know who he was because he didn’t have a role in the movie. When she died, his father went to make the arrangements. He was told that she had carried herself with great dignity during her final hours on earth. He was told a number of things that she’d said. He recognized most of them. He’d heard them before. They were lines from a movie called, Lilies of the Field. She was Sidney Poitier when she died.

His father’s later years were considerably more balanced. He’d come to like working as a chauffeur, never finding it demeaning in the least. And he’d tell his son stories of the rich and the famous. Most were amusing. A few were disillusioning. But all were in some way instructive. Through these stories and a few first-hand glimpses of his own, Haskell began to develop a taste for the sort of lives these people lived. Chauffeured limos, private jets, stately homes, important friends. He’d seen the sort of deference with which they were treated whether they’d earned it or not. He’d seen the presumption that they were superior. He’d seen how people stepped out of their way. He wanted that kind of respect.

“Respect?”

Well, no. That wasn’t the word. He wanted the power that went with real wealth. Not just access to power. The power itself. As a boy, raised sort of Catholic, he had actually knelt and prayed. He prayed to Saint Jude as his mother often had. Saint Jude, she’d told him, was the go-to guy when faced with a difficult quest. A fat lot of good he’d done her.

But this was then, so he gave it a try. He swore that he would always use his influence wisely and for the greater good of mankind. He later liked to tell the story of how Jude responded. The good saint had said to him, “You’re shitting me, right? I’m putting you on hold while I redirect your call. The devil has a better sense of humor.”

It’s hard to hustle a saint. Over time, they’ve heard it all. Jude saw right through his professed altruism. Jude knew that he knew, even at that tender age, that he might have to leave a few bodies in his wake if they should stand in his way.

“Um…”

Okay, that’s not true. He didn’t think that way then. Stepping over people, maybe, but not whacking them wholesale. That would come later after life taught him that half measures seemed to take twice the effort.

His mother might have always been a bit of a loon, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t learn from her. She was forever acting; forever in a role, and he would often be her sole audience. He’d come to know most of her speeches by heart and would often recite them himself, and in character. The difference was that Haskell knew he was acting. His mother, for the most part, did not. From her, he’d learned to be a chameleon. He could seem to be whatever he needed to be. All it took was some study and rehearsal. Add in a little identity theft, a few forged documents, a well-thought out plan and, voila, here he was, Charles Barrington Haskell, with nowhere to go but straight up.

Barrington, thought Haskell. That was a nice touch. He’d found the name on a street map of Chicago.

From the outset, he’d decided to build his career where the money and the fun was. Big Oil. He’d considered Wall Street, but it held no appeal. Sure, one could get rich in the financial game. Obscenely rich. As his banker friend had. Even richer when so many others went under. Bottom-feeding on their scraps while taking government largesse. Some investment bankers found finance exciting, but all they really did was move money around while raking off as much as they could. A criminal mind was certainly an asset, but theirs was a risk-averse criminal mind. That smacked of cowardice to his way of thinking. He felt sure that he’d soon die of boredom.

Big oil, however, was inherently criminal. Unabashedly so. Almost gleefully so. Rough and ready. Bare knuckles. Nor was he being cynical. God had seen fit, in his infinite irony, to put most of the world’s oil in the hands of thugs and despots. The Middle East certainly. No exceptions in that region. Ditto Russia, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola, and especially Iran and the Caucasus. Every oil company, therefore, needed thugs of its own who were ready to “downsize” those who wouldn’t stay bought. Or to “educate” any who resisted being bought. But we don’t call them thugs. We used to call them contractors. That term, however, had fallen from favor after all those unpleasant episodes in Iraq. Now we call them mediators. They reconcile disputes. It has a much better ring to it. Something like marriage counseling. Except that these often end in something more than divorce.

Nor, for that matter, are their actions really criminal. Well, technically they are. There are laws on the books. But none of the industry’s more aggressive undertakings has ever even led to an arrest that he knew of, let alone a criminal conviction. Why? We need that oil. We need all we can get. An adequate and uninterrupted supply is vital to our national security. And no two words in the history of any country had covered a greater multitude of sins than those two. National Security.

He had risen to the top while still in his late thirties. CEO of Trans-Global Oil & Gas and its many “independent” subsidiaries. One of these, called Scorpion Systems, was an oil field security firm. The mogul found it for him. Got it to sell out to him. The mogul had, and still has, something on its founder that would have destroyed him if published. Wouldn’t say what it is. That would stay between them. The mogul likes to keep a few cards up his sleeve. Fine. Just don’t forget who you’re playing with.

“Suffice it to say,” the mogul had told him, “that this flawed, but exceptionally talented man will stay at the nominal helm of the firm and will do whatever is required of him.”

“Answering to whom?”

“Why, to you, of course, Charles. I merely hold the leash to keep him from straying. Perhaps a little tug now and then.”

Scorpion Systems was a gold mine, not to mix metaphors. An oil ministry - Saudi or Kuwaiti, for example - would hire the firm to assess how vulnerable its facilities were to attack. The primary focus was on terrorist attacks, but sabotage by competing oil interests was always a danger as well.

To find likely weak points, Scorpion Systems would, of necessity, be given unlimited access. It would know those installations inside out from well head, whether on land or off-shore, to refinery to the storage tanks at dockside. All of it computerized every step of the way, so his firm had access to those systems as well. It would recommend and implement protective measures against all conceivable threats. But it would also know how to defeat those same measures if and when doing so would benefit Trans-Global.

Beautiful. Couldn’t lose. He had it both ways. They’d be paying for protection from everyone but him, never dreaming that he’d planted a few bugs of his own, especially in their computers. He could shut a field down for a month with one phone call and then he, the mogul and their good friend, the banker, would make a few million off the spike that it would cause in the spot market price of crude oil.

Great fun, but there always seemed to be something missing. It took him a while to realize what it was. After a day of high-stakes machinations, he’d go home to one of his big empty houses and the place would feel like a tomb. No one to talk to. No one to tell. Sure, there were women. The kind attracted by power. Easy pickings. Use and discard. But nothing that could be called a relationship. Or even, for that matter, a friendship. So he’d shopped for a wife of a different sort. Or rather he’d hired a search team to find one. It found several likely candidates and he wooed and married two of them, but neither had worked out all that well.

The first was the socialite. Family fortune in timber. She taught him how to entertain properly and she was, of course, endorsed by the mogul. But a dullard otherwise. Sent her packing three years later. Then the concert pianist. A touch of class there and much better in the sack. Low maintenance, too, because she practiced for hours. That meant fewer demands on his time. No excitement, however. Aside from the sex, she was more of a pet. More like one of his holdings than a wife. He found himself yearning for the type of woman who could match him in daring, in adventurousness, who could challenge him, stand up to him, be a true partner, a woman who could cover his back. Was there such a woman out there? He knew of only one. And that was one more reason to detest Martin Kessler. He has her. He has Elizabeth Stride. And worse, he comes and goes. Why does she take him back? Well, he won’t be coming back from where Charles Haskell sends him. Then maybe she’ll come to her senses.

Where were we? Ah, his holdings. Aside from Trans-Global Oil & Gas, he had interests in several other companies as well, all of which had relevance to national security and therefore basked in that same protection. He was big, but he could have been bigger.

He’d formed a partnership with Artemus Bourne. Bourne was a giant. He was bigger than Trans-Global. A dozen senators in his pocket. Several foreign heads of state. The deal was struck on this very spot. Sitting around a fire. Done with a handshake. Bourne was, of course, a Bohemian. It was a deal that would have been worth tens of millions to himself and to several other members of this club. It would have given them control of Angola. America would have benefited as well. It would have had a substantial guaranteed source. Not a cheaper source, perhaps. This was no freebie. But this country would no longer have the need to pretend that the Saudis are allies and friends.

But Bourne, without consulting yours truly, decided that he wanted the diamond trade as well. This put him into conflict with the Israelis, which is to say Kessler, not to mention with Harry Whistler. Start with Kessler, Bourne decided. Neutralize him. Not kill him, use him. Against the Israelis. How? Very simple. What does Kessler value most? The answer? Elizabeth Stride.