The Rozabal Line (19 page)

The soldiers used to joke that the appropriate epitaph for anyone serving at the camp would be: 'And when he gets to heaven/To Saint Peter he will tell/ "Just another soldier reporting, sir, I've done my time in hell!"'

Two hundred and thirty soldiers and more than a thousand civilians reported to Saint Peter on 21 July 2012. Job done, Kader al-Zarqawi left Baghdad by road in order to board a flight out of Istanbul. He had been told not to be late for the conference in Frederick County.

And a fourth angel sounded, and one-third of the sun, moon and stars was darkened so that one-third of the day became dark.

Wyoming, USA, 2012

Shamoon Idris was dressed as a garbage-collector. In front of him was a large dustbin that could be rolled forward on a set of wheels. A close observer would have noticed that he was not collecting any garbage. The dustbin remained tightly shut.

What exactly was he doing inside the Yellowstone National Park?

America's best-known national park was the centre of the tourist circuit as it was home to a large variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk. The most important attraction, of course, was the 'Old Faithful' and a collection of the world's most extraordinary geysers and hot springs. Why was Shamoon here?

Some minutes later, Shamoon rolled the dustbin onto a boat as it sped into the centre of Yellowstone Lake. Having reached the pre-determined point, Shamoon donned a diving suit and threw the dustbin overboard. Instead of floating, the dustbin submerged itself and came to rest on the lakebed.

Scientific studies of volcanic activity at Yellowstone National Park had shown the existence of a massive volcanic bulge at the bottom of the lake.142 Shamoon needed to ensure that the dustbin was correctly positioned on the hump and detonated before currents could move it elsewhere. Accuracy was the key.

The powerful bomb that exploded on top of the hump ruptured the bulge on the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and set in motion a chain reaction that tore apart the 114

underground magma chamber. As the magma chamber erupted, the ground shook as portions of the park imploded into the caldera underneath and then exploded in a massive eruption of lava, embers, dust and soot.

21 August 2012. One thousand seven hundred and twelve dead and countless injured. Shamoon wasn't around. He had already reached Bozeman, Montana, from where he travelled to Hagerstown Regional Airport. He needed to be in Frederick County on time.

And the fifth angel sounded, and a star fell from heaven unto the earth and to him was given the key of a bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke like that of a great furnace and the atmosphere became black.

Jakarta, Indonesia, 2012

The Bung Karno Stadium, one of the world's largest, had been built in 1962. The stadium had a registered capacity of 100,000, but at times the audience could swell to over 120,000. Named after Sukarno, Indonesia's first President, the stadium was undergoing a huge renovation exercise to host the next Asia Cup. The Football Association of Indonesia, in the meantime, had reintroduced a national cup competition featuring seventy-four clubs within the country. The first match of the series was on 21

September 2012.143

Unfortunately, since half the stadium was under renovation, the fans who turned up for the match that day were herded together like cattle into the remaining usable half of the stadium. There was an air of excitement in the usable half of the stadium but cement-mixers lay silently in the area of the stadium under renovation.

As half-time was announced, the crowds started moving towards the toilets, which was when the mixers were mysteriously turned on. The anthrax spores were transported by aerosol delivery through a special spraying device built into the mixers.144 As the spraying continued, bacilli anthracis were inhaled by thousands of spectators in the stadium. Hundreds died over the next few days.

The contracting firm providing the mixers was a small outfit called Bermis Bakti PT Mohammed Yusif, the owner of the contracting firm, held 100 per cent of the equity shares of his company; however, all his equipment had been procured on leases. The leases for the equipment were held by Samba, the Saudi-American Bank. The future cash flows from the leases had been discounted and securitised. The securities had been sold to a small investment trust in the British Virgin Islands called the Isabel Madonna trust.

Yaqub Islamuddin was on a Garuda flight, musing, 'It's quite amazing, the things one can plan when one has time inside prison. But it's nice to be out. This conference in Frederick County will do me good.'

. . .and out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth . . .

New South Wales, Australia, 2012

The plains of New South Wales were quiet and meditative. The vast fields of wheat and cotton stretched endlessly and the population density was extremely low.

The quiet was about to be broken by a deafening buzzing. An isolated swamp created by the previous year's rains had been well cultivated by Adil Afrose. As he 115

detonated a bomb in the centre of the swamp, the grasshoppers formed swarms that would travel more than 500 kilometres searching for food.

Weeks later, the Australian Plague Locust Commission reported that a single swarm over just one square kilometre had contained over fifty million locusts and had consumed eleven tonnes of vegetation every twenty-four hours. Tens of millions of dollars in damage had been done to crops, pastures, orchards, gardens and sports fields in a single day.145 21 October 2012. Adil was also flying, like the locusts. He was on a Qantas flight; desti-nation Frederick County.

. . .and unto the locusts was given the power to hurt men that did not have the seal of God upon their foreheads.

Grozny, Chechnya, Russia, 2012

Yahya was in Argun Mosque coordinating efforts centrally. Soon, from 2,000

mosques across Chechnya, a battle cry was heard: 'Miyarsh Noxchi Che! Long Live Free Chechnya!' Coinciding with the war cry, hundreds of Chechen rebels mounted their horses and charged upon the Russian base near Vedeno in the south of Chechnya led by Yahya Ali. A hundred and twelve Russian soldiers were killed. This was just the beginning.

On 21 November 2012, the Vnukovo Airlines flight bound for Moscow from Grozny was completely full. The plane, a Tupolev 154, took off at 8:40 am from Grozny and was scheduled to land in Moscow three hours later. Immediately prior to landing, Yahya and his two men took over the aircraft and diverted it to Istanbul. In Istanbul, they were joined by another colleague, Kader al-Zarqawi, who had arrived by road from Baghdad. They were provided passage to Prince Mohammed-bin-Abdel Aziz airport in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

When the flight arrived in Saudi Arabia, the four men held the 128 passengers hostage till a getaway vehicle was provided. As they sped away, they remote-triggered the device that had been stored in the overhead luggage rack of one the seats.

Ninety-three dead, thirty-five injured.

The getaway vehicle took them to Kuwait, where they separated. Yahya switched identities and took an Emirates flight to the United States. He had done his job well. He deserved some rest in Frederick County.

And the sixth angel sounded, and was asked to let loose two hundred thousand horsemen to kill one-third of humanity.

Waziristan, Pakistan-Afghanistan border, 2012

The Sheikh's Master, the beneficiary of the Isabel Madonna trust, was busy recording a DVD. He was seated on his rug, wearing his trademark camouflage jacket.

The DVD would be released to the world on 21 December, in the midst of universal turmoil. The Sheikh watched his Master as he recorded his statement.

Praise be to Allah, who created the universe for his worshippers and commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind. To proceed . . . peace be upon he who follows the guidance.What has already transpired is merely a forerunner. The destruction of the Vallee Blanche glacier in France; the burning down of millions of dollars worth of natural resources in Bolivia; the destruction 116

and devastation caused to the Three Gorges Dam in China; the massive oil spills in the English Channel; the blast at the Petronas Towers in Malaysia; the poisoning of river waters in India; the dramatic explosions of oil assets in Iraq; the volcanic eruptions in Wyoming; the anthrax attack in Jakarta; the plague of locusts in Australia; and the hijacking and blowing up of a Russian passenger plane that was headed out of Chechnya . . . these were mere appetisers. If you think that these events were hell, you have not yet seen the wrath of God. The main course is yet to come!I say to all of you, accept the will of Allah and prevent your destruction. Give Muslims their rights, their lands, their oil, and their political power, otherwise we shall continue to rain fire and chaos upon you. Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security. And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian or Helper. All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance. Be on your guard, for Armageddon is finally here!

Click. The Sheikh, who was behind the camera, shut it off and pulled out the recordable DVD. He efficiently sealed it in a 3M-Scotch cushioned envelope so that it could be delivered to Al-Jazeera television at the appropriate time. The Sheikh was wondering how he would meet his end of the deal. Commitments made within the Crux Decussata Permuta were not to be taken lightly. It was these commitments that had ensured the spread and growth of the two largest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam. He knew that his Master did not think the same way.

Chapter Nineteen

Goa, India, 2012

Vincent and Martha fell instantly in love with Goa. The place was filled with famous churches, including the Se Cathedral, the Church of St Anne at Talaulim llhas, the ruins of the Church of St Augustine, the Reis Magos Church built on the banks of the Mandovi river, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, the St Cajetan Church, the Church of St Paul, the Church of Mary Immaculate Concep-tion, and the Church of St Francis of Assissi.

Vincent was pained to note that Goa's magnificent temples of Christianity were pretty much a legacy of ruthless Portuguese colonisation. Christianity had been forced upon the local population with religious zeal by the Portuguese, particularly during the Inquisition. This had involveda massive pogrom to destroy Muslim mosques and Hindu temples and had continued till the end of the Inquisition in 1812. Unfortunately, many of Goa's beautiful churches had been built on sites of former temples and mosques. The lands had been forcibly taken over by the Church.

Which wasn'tsurprising, thought Vincent. After all, Pope Leo X had said to King Manoel of Portugal in 1515, 'Receive this warlike sword in your always victorious and warlike hands . . . use your force, strength, and power against the fury of the infidels!'146

The first step Vincent and Martha decided to take was to attempt to decipher the 117

document handed over by Terry to Vincent. The document said: It is enough, O Lord, it is enough, the two angels said. Mastrilli, without doubt, made the best silver bed. But to carefully guard a secret of the dead, Ignatius's gold cup is better than a silver bed. The city is located between 15deg48' and 14deg53'54' north and between 74deg20' and 73deg40' east.

The problem lay in the latitude and longitude provided. It covered almost the whole of Goa. Hence this could mean almost any church in Goa.

Then it struck Vincent! The envelope in which Terry had handed over the documents to him had the words 'Bom Jesus' scrawled on it by Terry. Furthermore, the Church of Bom Jesus contained the tomb of the Spanish missionary, Saint Francis Xavier. It was claimed that the body remained in a permanent state of preservation within a silver casket constructed by Mastrilli. The reference to Mastrilli meant that the document they were searching for must have been stored in the Basilica of Bom Jesus.

They needed to get to the Basilica immediately.

It was past 9 pm when Vincent and Martha arrived at the Basilica. The church was located in old Goa, which had been largely abandoned after the fall of Portuguese rule. All that remained were a few churches, a monastery and a convent. In the quiet of the night, they made their way inside the church. In the dim candlelight they togethergasped at the beauty of the gilded altar, the extravagant frescoes and the intricate inlay work.

To the south of the church stood an airtight glass coffin ensconced in a silver casket designed and executed by a Florentine craftsman of the seventeenth century.

The embalmed body of St Francis Xavier lay within. Under the casket was a pair of stone angels holding a message, 'Satis est, Domine, Satis est!' Translated, it meant, 'It is enough, O Lord, it is enough!'

They began to look beneath the casket. 'Are you looking for this old parchment?'

the voice resonated. They froze. It was a nun. Her feet shuffled along the marble floor as she walked towards them. 'You are searching for the documents hidden here by Alphonso de Castro, aren't you? Here, I have them,' she said as she threw the document in Vincent's face.

It was only when she was right beside him that he noticed the Japanese face and felt the cool hardness of the metal nub of a 9-mm pistol pressed against his ribs.

Martha looked on helplessly as Swakilki led Vincent out of the church and into a waiting car. The woman had been quietly firm: 'One false move and I'll kill him.'

After a few minutes of remaining frozen, Martha sprang into action. Swakilki had obviously known that they were after the original of the document handed over by Terry Acton to Vincent. She also had a copy of it in her possession. This meant that someone besides Terry had known of its existence. Moreover, Swakilki had followed them to Goa. There was only one person who had known why Vincent and Martha were in Goa--Thomas Manning! Vincent should never have trusted him!

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This was a bigger conspiracy than they could handle. The local police would be of little help in this. Who could she turn to? Swakilki was a dangerous foe. 'For heaven's sake! Who can help me save Vincent?' muttered Martha under her breath. She then recalled her conversation with Terry Acton a couple of days before his death.

While it had been a well-known fact that Terry was researching various religions and was deeply involved in past-life therapy, what had generally not been known was that his research was sponsored by the Illuminati. Terry had been convinced that modern-day Christianity, as taught by the Roman Catholic Church, was far removed from the Gnostic spirituality of Christ. The Illuminati had believed that the findings from Terry's research could possibly neutralise the power of their primary foe--the Roman Catholic Church. Terry had revealed to Martha that his Rhodes Scholarship and Skull & Bones connections had led him to the Illuminati; after all, the origin of Skull & Bones itself lay in the Bavarian Illuminati. And the contact point had been Terry's close friend from his Yale days--Stephen Elliot.

Martha remembered Stephen because he had visited Terry in London several times after the death of Terry's wife, Susan. Stephen had even asked Martha to help pick out a gift from Harrods for his fiance, Alissa. She needed to get in touch with Elliot.

She wondered how Alissa would react to these developments, but she realised that she had very little choice in the matter.

It was as she was racing towards the church door that she saw the document the nun had flung in Vincent's face before abducting him. It was lazily stretched out on the cool marble floor, not in the least bit concerned about the chaos that it had just caused.

New Delhi, India, 2012

RAW. The name sounded earthy and rough. That's because it was. RAW stood for 'Research and Analysis Wing' and was India's premier intelligence agency, which had over 12,000 agents operating around the world. The chief of RAW held the rather meek title of 'Secretary (R)' in the Cabinet Secretariat, which was part of the Indian Prime Minister's office. RAW's primary responsibility was that of gathering external intelligence. This role was complementary to that of its cousin, the Intelligence Bureau, which was responsible for gathering and analysing internal intelligence. The two organisations were meant to jointly report to the National Security Council, headed by the Prime Minister.147

Secretary (R) General Prithviraj Singh was pondering over the tip-off that he had received from his old friend in the SAS, Stephen Elliot. Prithviraj was among the old-guard elitists within the security apparatus of India. Educated at Eton, with a Ph.D.

in mathematics from Yale, the white-moustached, bow-tie wearing, Montecristo-smoking veteran was a gentleman in every sense of the word, except for his intellect, which was razor-sharp.

As a Yallie, he had excelled in Game Theory. He had delighted himself by not answering exam questions--he would instead write detailed and well-reasoned explanations on why there were inherent flaws in the framing of the questions. His intellectual arrogance had been a source of lively debate on the Yale campus.

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He stared at his friend from Mossad, Zvi Yatom. Yatom had been involved in some of the Israeli intelligence agency's most successful operations. In 1981 he had spearheaded the destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Some years later, Yatom had masterminded the assassination of Abu Jihad, Yasser Arafat's most loyal aide within the Fatah party.148 Zvi had flown down to New Delhi from Tel Aviv to assist Prithviraj in figuring out exactly where the bomb could be headed.

Prithviraj was now wondering how he should brief the Prime Minister. A priest kidnapped in Goa by an international assassin on behalf of a group called the Crux Decussata Permuta, a group that had already succeeded in bumping off an English professor because of his anti-Church research! A nuclear device smuggled into India, a land of 3.28 million square kilometres and a population of 1.02 billion people, with no clear indication of where it was headed! It was like looking for a needle in a haystack!

He paused outside the Prime Minister's office door and then knocked twice.

'Enter!' came the voice from within. The general sighed, opened the door and walked in along with Zvi. The octogenarian Prime Minister accorded them his trademark smile, the one that had won him the last general election. Behind the smile was a Machiavellian streak that could turn foe into friend, defeat into victory and opposition into dust.

'What was so urgent, General Sahib?' asked the Prime Minister, using the respectful Indian suffix as he motioned both men to sit.

'Sir, we have reliable information from our American friends that the Lashkar-e-Toiba or a sub-group within the Lashkar has managed to procure a nuclear device, roughly of the capacity used at Hiroshima. The Pakistani and North Korean connection seems quite evident. The reason for the urgency is that this device, according to American intelligence, is already in Indian territory. Unfortunately, we have no indication of whether it is still on Indian soil or whether it is headed to some other destination such as Israel.' Brief. Concise. Matter-of-fact.

'What are our options?' asked the octogenarian. Zvi spoke up. 'It seems that this could be the work of Ghalib, sir. It is likely to be the twelfth attack in a series of attacks that have been happening on the 21st of each month this year, including the attack that India had to cope with in Katra. The key question is, who facilitated such a nuclear transaction with the Pakistanis? Our sources indicate, quite incredibly, the involvement of a fringe Christian group called the Crux Decussata Permuta that is using the nuclear deal as barter for something else.'

'What could that be?' asked the PM.

'There is one person who could have helped us answer that question. Professor Terry Acton, who obviously knew enough to get taken out by the Crux. According to our friend at the SAS, Stephen Elliot, Terry Acton's research was shared with a priest, Vincent Sinclair. Unfortunately, he was kidnapped last night in Goa. Efforts are on to locate him, although that's easier said than done. I need your clearance to deploy one of our four Rapid Action Divisions in order to help me trace him,' replied Prithviraj.

'You have it,' came the immediate response, 'but keep this matter under wraps, gentlemen'.

'We shall be as quiet as the dew!' retorted Prithviraj, taking a leaf out of Emily 120

Dickinson's poem as he gently closed the heavy oak door of the PM's office.