The Alexandria Connection (13 page)

O’Connor steadied himself against the door pillar as the pilot banked hard where the Pech River met the Kunar, and they headed west above the Pech River road, toward the villages of Andraser and Watapur. A bare two kilometres further on, O’Connor braced as a line of red tracer pierced the night. He could hear the
crack-thump
of the rounds as they passed perilously close to the rotors.

‘Gangster One . . . this is Alley Cat Seven,’ O’Connor’s pilot radioed the northern Apache. ‘I’m taking ground fire, estimated 800 metres ahead near the village of Managai . . . could be coming from the suspension bridge, over!’

‘Gangster One, copied, wait out.’ The pilot of the Apache on the north side of the river was flying close to the mountains, and he could see the tracer clearly. ‘Gangster Two,’ he radioed the Apache on the opposite side of the river, ‘a pity, but I’m going to have to take this sucker out.’ All of the pilots were aware of the enormous effort the Coalition had put into improving the roads and bridges in the Pech River valley, as part of a program to try to win the hearts and minds of the locals, and the Malkana Bridge connecting the village of Managai with the other side of the river was no exception. The heavy oiled timbers had not long been restored.

‘Gangster Two, copied.’

The pilot of the northern Apache banked toward the bridge, giving his gunner in the front seat a clear view of the target. The gunner activated the laser rangefinder and locked on to the Taliban insurgent. The terrorist was firing from the middle of the suspension bridge and the gunner’s night-vision system picked him out clearly.

‘Engaging!’ The Hellfire missile left the port stub pylon in a blaze of flame and smoke, its computers reacting to the onboard radar system. Seconds later, the bridge erupted and the firing stopped.

O’Connor looked over the door gunner’s shoulder as they tore past. The middle of the bridge had been completely blown away, and the ends were hanging drunkenly into the water on either side of the river. The engineers who had so recently restored it wouldn’t thank them, but there had been no choice.

Minutes later, O’Connor’s lead Black Hawk banked savagely again, and they headed south into the Korengal Valley, notorious for some of the most ferocious fighting of the war. Here the river was flanked on either side by soaring, forested, snow-capped mountains. The stone huts of remote villages were perched precariously on the ridges.

The pilot of the lead Black Hawk flared the aircraft and brought it to a hover above the old vacated Korengal Outpost. The crew chief flung the thick, coiled rope out the door and watched it tumble to the small clearing ten metres below the chopper. He turned and gave the thumbs up and O’Connor led the way, reaching for the rope with his gloved hands. He flung himself away from the chopper and fast-roped to the ground. The rest of the team followed and they quickly spread out from under the Black Hawk’s powerful downdraft and took up defensive positions.

‘Incoming!’ The call was from the furthest edge of the clearing. A Taliban or al Qaeda machine gun, O’Connor wasn’t sure which, opened up from a ridge across the other side of the river. Then a second, and a third. Fiery red tracer arced across the gorge from three different positions. It was going to be an interesting day in the office, O’Connor thought grimly.

O
n the last evening of the conference, Sheldon Crowley strolled along a path in the heavily guarded Kashta Palace gardens. Louis Walden, the world’s most powerful media mogul, accompanied him.

‘It’s not a problem to get behind him, Sheldon, but Carter Davis? Is he the best we can do? Somewhere in Montana there’s a village looking for its idiot,’ Walden grumbled.

‘Lobster Davis – million-dollar body, or at least he did have when he was first elected, and a head full of shit,’ Crowley agreed, ‘but unlike the other candidates, we’ve got him on toast. He ran for governor on a platform of pro-family, but that doesn’t stack up. We’ve done a bit of digging on our friend Davis, and he’s got form in more than one bedroom.’

‘I’ve always taken the view that if you’re not in the bed, or under it, you don’t really know what’s going on. How good are your sources?’

‘They’ve been under the bed, electronically speaking. If we can get Davis into the White House, he’s ours.’

‘That’s a big “if”,’ said Walden. ‘Even if you get him through the primaries, how do you think he’s going to stack up in a national debate? The bastard’s all tip and no berg.’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I’m putting my personal assistant, Rachel Bannister, in charge of the Davis campaign. It would be handy if you could assign someone on your side.’

‘Hmm . . .’ Walden fell silent. ‘I’ll get one of my editors to call you,’ he said finally. ‘Joe Humphrey. He’s a complete asshole, and he’s helped to unseat more than one government overseas, which is why I employ him.’ Walden chuckled. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than the power he wielded through his media empire, and given the plans of the Pharos Group, he was about to wield a whole lot more. ‘What’s the campaign theme?’

‘Same theme as he used for the gubernatorial campaign . . . family man, clean living, anti-drugs and the usual guff on jobs and the economy.’

‘Christ – does anyone in the media have a whiff of the real Davis? Because if this stuff’s already out there, he won’t make first base.’

‘We’ve got a list of the women he’s screwing, and we’ll pay them out. Whatever has to be done, will be done . . .’

On the final day, just before lunch, Crowley sought the company of the chairman of Crédit Group, René du Bois.

‘I have it on good authority there will shortly be further instability in the Middle East,’ Crowley began.

‘What do you mean by “further instability”? The place is already going to hell in a hand basket.’

‘Let’s just say I have intelligence there are going to be more attacks . . . major ones. They’re not likely to have a lasting impact on the stock market, but the initial fluctuations will be very significant. We need to be in a position to take advantage of that. In the short term, the price of oil will go through the roof.’

‘If that happens, the market and the super funds will be nervous – there’ll be a corresponding fall in the other stocks,’ Du Bois observed.

‘Precisely, and that will include the banking sector, which is where you and I come in.’ Crowley confirmed the list of key banks Pharos was targeting covertly. Both men knew well that if either Crédit Group or EVRAN reached a 30 per cent holding in those registered on the London Stock Exchange, under the British City Code on Takeovers and Mergers, they would be forced to make a cash offer to the remaining shareholders at the highest price of shares in the preceding twelve months. ‘As long as neither of us go past the 30 per cent mark, when the time comes to move, between us, we’ll have well over fifty per cent of the voting rights.’

Du Bois smiled. UK law had a specific provision to prevent companies ‘acting in concert’, but given the Pharos code of silence, that would be impossible to prove. ‘Pity it wasn’t that easy in the US,’ he said.

Crowley nodded. Under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934, an acquirer who purchased more than five per cent of the voting shares of any company registered in the US was required by law to file their intentions with the Securities Exchange Commission. To counter this, the Pharos Group had formed myriad front companies, each holding between four and four and a half per cent of the big Wall Street banks. ‘It hasn’t been easy,’ Crowley agreed, ‘but the latest figures are encouraging for us. The big five on Wall Street have had to downgrade their earnings estimates by more than a billion.’

‘I saw those figures,’ said Du Bois. ‘Those bastards are running into some pretty strong headwinds. Some of their legal fees are going through the roof and when the Fed stops printing money, we’ll be in a very strong position to achieve control.’

The Pharos conference was drawing to a close, and it was time for Crowley to address what he considered to be the biggest threat. ‘The latte-sipping left wingers in governments around the world want to cripple us with a carbon tax,’ he said, opening the argument on the last item on the agenda.

‘Having served as this president’s secretary of state in his first term, I think I know him pretty well,’ Bradley Guthrie replied. ‘He’s failed in the Middle East, and there’s precious little to show at home. Healthcare’s bogged down on Capitol Hill, he’s up to his armpits over WikiLeaks and the NSA spying on Americans, not to mention the French and the Germans. Even the Australians are pissed off with him for allowing contractors access to material that should have been much more tightly held. The economy’s still sluggish, and the president will want to take steps on the environment to ensure he leaves a legacy. He’ll go hard on this.’

‘All the more reason we’ve got to stop him,’ Crowley growled. ‘Carbon tax in Europe peaked at US $30 a tonne in 2008, and now it’s down to less than US $4, but they’re still talking about US $20 a tonne in Washington. It will cost us billions.’

‘Part of the problem is one of McGovern’s advisors on energy, Megan Becker,’ offered General Bradshaw, the former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. ‘Degrees in environmental science and international relations. McGovern parachuted her into the goddamn CIA when that lost city of the Inca thing with O’Connor and Weizman blew up a couple of years ago.’

‘She did enough damage back then,’ Crowley agreed. ‘Now she’s even more dangerous.’

‘Can we get rid of her?’ pondered Bradshaw.

‘I’m working on that. And don’t worry, if I get who I’m thinking of to refute Becker and McGovern’s crackpot ideas on global warming, we’ll consign climate change to the trashcan. If they can do it in Australia, we can do it in America.’

An hour later, Pharos brought the final session to a close, allowing the staff to wheel in a buffet of Maine lobster, beluga caviar, Périgord truffles, and a host of other delicacies.

Once the staff had departed, Pharos addressed his colleagues. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, looking briefly at the framed quotes on the wall behind him. ‘President Theodore Roosevelt put it this way. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. The founder of the House of Rothschild, Mayer Rothschild, was well known for his view that whoever issues and controls a nation’s money cares less about who writes the laws. Much of our wealth might come from energy and arms manufacturing, but with Washington hell bent on bowing to the greenies and the loony Left, and their push for taxes on fossil fuels, it’s time for us to put Roosevelt and Rothschild’s observations into practice.’ Pharos raised his glass of Dom Perignon.

‘Join me in a toast. To the New World Order!’

‘K
eep driving toward them,’ Assaf ordered. He checked the silencer on his Czech CZ 75 and put the nine-millimetre pistol back in the side pocket of his trousers.

‘What has happened?’ the police sergeant demanded of Assaf when they reached the gates. The sergeant’s driver, a young, recently graduated constable, looked nervous.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ Assaf replied, feigning nonchalance. ‘We had an alarm, but everything is secure.’

‘What do you mean, nothing to worry about?’ the sergeant demanded. ‘There’s a dead guard in the ticket booth! And which unit are you from? Why are you driving a civilian van?’ he asked. Suspicious, he reached for his radio.

Assaf withdrew his CZ 75 and fired twice, hitting the sergeant in the chest. He was dead before he hit the ground. His driver gasped and reached for his weapon, but Assaf fired twice more, and the young policeman collapsed over the wheel. Barely a hundred metres beyond the museum, Cairo’s chaotic traffic continued to stream along Meret Basha toward Tahrir Square, the occupants of the cars, trucks and buses oblivious to the muffled gun shots.

‘Mahmoud! Abdul! Get the bodies into the van. The museum guard too. Quickly!’ Assaf retrieved the sergeant’s radio and both policemen’s identity cards.

‘Mahmoud, get the mask and come with me in the police car. Abdul, you follow in the van. We’ll take the desert road to Alexandria.’

‘What if we’re stopped?’ Kassab asked nervously.

‘Why would a police patrol be stopped? Leave the blue light on top of the van. But if we are stopped, leave the talking to me.’

Assaf, driving the police car, eased out of Wasim Hasan Street and on to Meret Basha.

‘Papa Charlie One Zero, sitrep on the museum, over.’

Assaf reached for the handset. Mindful that the duty officer in the command centre might pick up a change in voice modulation, he kept his response brief. ‘Papa Charlie, false alarm, back on patrol, over.’

‘Roger, out.’

Assaf breathed a sigh of relief, and headed on to the 6 October Bridge, named in honour of the Egyptian Army’s successful crossing of the Suez Canal during the 1973 Yom Kippur War against Israel.

A little over an hour later, he turned off at Wadi Nashat, a small collection of buildings on the desert road to El Alamein. ‘Park the van behind that small sand dune,’ he ordered Kassab.

Assaf rigged the van with plastic explosive, connected the old Nokia cell phone to the detonators, and poured petrol over the bodies of the policemen and the guard.

‘Why don’t we blow it now?’ Kassab asked. ‘What if someone finds it?’

‘What if this . . . what if that,’ Assaf muttered, getting back into the driver’s seat and slamming the police car into gear with a grinding crunch. Kassab was starting to get on his nerves. ‘Just get in the car.’

Assaf headed north-east across the desert toward El Hamam on the outskirts of Alexandria. The high beam on the headlights was blown, and Assaf peered into the pre-dawn darkness. ‘You’re such a worrywart, Abdul,’ he said. ‘If we blew the van now, you’d see it for miles around. We’ll blow it once we’ve handed the mask over and boarded our own jet. Even if they do find the van quickly, it’ll take them days to identify the bodies, and by that time we’ll be back in France. Provided we get rid of this heap of shit before it’s due back in the yard, they’ll never connect us.’

The three black Mercedes were waved straight through the VIP security gates at Alexandria’s Borg el Arab International Airport and on to the tarmac where the EVRAN corporate jet was waiting, pilots strapped in, and engines quietly turning. Crowley did not like to be delayed.

Leaving Rachel to organise the bags, Crowley strode up the short set of stairs at the front of the aircraft. ‘Cargo on board?’ he asked the chief steward.

‘Loaded and secured, sir.’

Crowley and Rachel settled into the plush, beige leather seats in the for’ard cabin as the steward appeared with two crystal glasses of 1995 Salon, one of the world’s rarest champagnes. It was made from the first pressings of a single variety, chardonnay, from a small vineyard in Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, south of Reims in northern France, but only from the very finest vintages. Such was the quality control of the fruit, the world had only seen this champagne on thirty-eight occasions in the past ninety years.

The Gulfstream tore down the runway, powered into the air, and crossed the desert coast, the dark blue-and-white livery and the stylised volcano logo of the EVRAN Corporation gleaming in the harsh morning sun. Climbing steeply, at over 3000 feet per minute, the Gulfstream quickly reached its cruising altitude and the steward reappeared with hot buttered croissants.

Crowley switched on the live news feed. All of EVRAN’s jets were equipped with the latest integrated systems that allowed reception of Ku-Band Direct Broadcast Satellite or DBS television signals and Crowley had access to the whole spectrum of programs available from the DBS satellites. News of the daring robbery was being carried to thousands of stations in nearly 200 countries, and Crowley flicked on the Al Jazeera English channel.

‘In what has been described as the most daring robbery this century, thieves broke into the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities in Cairo early this morning and made off with just two artifacts, the funerary mask of Tutankhamun and his priceless falcon pendant,’ the newsreader began. ‘We’re joined now by our political correspondent in Cairo, Muhammad el-Masri. Muhammad, do we know who discovered the theft, and if the police have any leads?’

The picture switched to the stocky, bald-headed el-Masri standing in front of the salmon-coloured museum, now roped off with police tape.

‘I think it’s fair to say that the Egyptian Tourism and Antiquities Police, who are responsible for the security of hundreds of ancient sites throughout Egypt, are astounded by the brazen nature of the robbery. Just after midnight, the thieves, posing as police responding to an alarm, turned up to the museum and tricked security staff into letting them in. I’m joined now by Colonel Halabi from the Tourism and Antiquities Police. Colonel Halabi, thanks for your time – can you explain what must be one of the biggest lapses in security in modern history?’

The strain was showing on the swarthy face of the deputy commander. ‘As a result of the protestors, our security had recently been upgraded, but when thieves are dressed in police uniforms, the lapse, although regrettable, is understandable.’

‘You say regrettable, but we’re talking about one of the world’s best-known icons here, along with a priceless pendant. Who would want to steal them? Either would be almost impossible to sell?’

Colonel Halabi nodded. ‘This is not the work of amateurs,’ he said. ‘Over three billion dollars worth of art and artifacts are stolen every year from collections around the world, and many of those finish up on the black market, or are sold to museums by using false provenance documents. But the Tutankhamun mask and the falcon pendant would be
very
difficult to sell, even on the black market, so we suspect that this has been done to fill a contract for a private buyer.’

‘Was anyone injured in the robbery?’

‘We are not sure. One of the guards is missing, and two policemen are also missing. We found the police vehicle near the airport at Alexandria, but there is no sign of the officers.’

‘Could they be involved?’

Colonel Halabi shrugged, well aware that the bulk of the Egyptian police force was poorly paid, albeit some of the ‘lucky’ ones. Since the overthrow of the Morsi Government, tourism had all but ceased and over half the population, more than forty million Egyptians, were living on or below the poverty line, many on less than US $2 a day. ‘We hope not,’ said Halabi, ‘but we are not ruling anything out.’

‘Do you think the Tutankhamun mask and the pendant could already be out the country?’

‘Again, we’re not ruling that out, and we’ve put out an alert to airports around the world.’

‘Colonel Halabi, thanks very much for joining us.’

The image faded back to the newsreader in the studio. ‘And that was our political correspondent, Muhammad el-Masri, reporting from Cairo. Not only a loss for the Egyptian Museum,’ said the newsreader, ‘but the world at large. Tutankhamun assumed the throne of ancient Egypt in 1332 BC when he was just ten. He was arguably the best known of the Egyptian pharaohs, largely because his tomb was discovered intact. Hundreds of artifacts remain in the Cairo Museum, but the best known of all, the funerary mask, containing over eleven kilograms of solid gold, is now missing. Heaven forbid that it would ever be melted down,’ the newsreader said, turning toward camera two. ‘Now to news in the United States. In a surprise move in Chicago, where notorious gangster Elias D. Ruger has been on trial for murder, Judge O’Reilly has dismissed the charges on the basis there was insufficient evidence to convict. And in another surprise move, furious Cook County District Attorney Glenda B. Mitchell has spoken out against what she has termed inequities in the United States justice system.’ The vision faded to Chicago where Attorney Mitchell was addressing a large contingent of media on the courthouse steps: ‘We are surprised, and more than a little disappointed with this acquittal. In our view, the case against Ruger was very strong, and in any other country, there would be an immediate appeal, but in the United States, that avenue is denied us.’

‘Turning to politics, the Republican Party is deeply split over its nominees for the presidential primaries, with the Tea Party seemingly moving further to the right —’

Crowley flicked off the broadcast.

‘Pretty brazen, that theft,’ Rachel observed, puzzled by the lack of reaction from her boss.

‘It happens. Security at some of these museums in developing countries is pretty minimal,’ he said, opening an online copy of the
Daily News Egypt
. The headline ‘STOLEN!’ took up half the front page.

Beneath it, a huge picture of the Tutankhamun mask, along with the falcon pendant, took up the rest of the page.

Thousands of feet below, near the desert wadi of El Alamein, a mobile phone rang and a battered white van exploded, burning the bodies inside to ash.