Fracture Event: An Espionage Disaster Thriller

by W. Michael Gear

  Skip nodded as Helmut walked over. Using degreaser on his hands, he caught a glimpse of the photo Skip was studying. “Ah, Stephie,” he said.

  “You know her?” Skip asked, turning.

  “She used to date a client of mine. He was involved in developing weapons… computer-guided targeting systems for the latest NATO tanks. Very sensitive. I provided security for them a couple of times.”

  “How’d it work out?”

  Helmut’s eyes went dull. “He died in a skiing accident. Probably an accident. Not sure. His body was found the following spring. Avalanche, they said.”

  “If I bump into her, maybe I’ll introduce myself.”

  “Bad idea, Skip.” Helmut narrowed an eye.

  “Why?”

  “After they find your corpse, I’ll be left to rescue Anika French alone.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  As Stephanie led her down a long hallway, Anika silently studied the laboratories they passed. Behind the glass walls, people in hazmat suits moved around tables.

  One lab made Anika stop walking. There were no people behind the glass, just row after row of small vials that looked like something you’d see in a biological weapons storage facility. She expected to see the vials labeled anthrax, ricin, and other deadly compounds. Unfortunately, they were too far away for her eyes to read anything.

  “What is this place?” she asked Stephanie.

  “Vaccine storage. One of our goals here is to develop vaccines against genetically engineered viruses. It was one of Zoakalski’s specialties when he was in Russia. Now, keep walking. Trust me, you do not want to be late.”

  At the end of the hall, Stephanie swiped a key card, punched in a code, and an elevator door opened. “You first,” she said gesturing to the door. When Anika stepped inside, Stephanie punched the button for the second floor.

  Anika stepped out into another hallway. There was no more see-through glass, just blank white walls and metal doors.

  Stephanie led her to the third door on the right, swiped her card again and entered another code. As she did, she said, “Everything is monitored. Security knows who has been in which room. All access is checked against the central computer. Anyone acting outside of clearance is immediately flagged.”

  “What happens to the people acting outside their clearance?”

  “You don’t want to find out.” Stephanie opened the door and ushered Anika into a wonderland of desks, computer workstations, and frenzied activity. People in white shirts, the men wearing ties, bent over keyboards, eyes on the screens before them. Most wore headsets. Every wall was covered with monitors. Numerical sequences scrolled across the bottoms of the screens. Anika’s first impression was of a NASA control center.

  Stephanie noted her expression. “Welcome to the ECSITE nerve center. From here, the staff keeps track of global financial markets—banks, commodities, and the various stock markets.” She indicated the large wall monitors. “These data reflect what our analysts are processing.” She pointed to a large computer room. “Not even the New York Stock Exchange has a larger system.”

  Anika’s eyes narrowed. “You’re analyzing the data using portions of my model, I see.”

  “All preliminary,” Stephanie replied. “Your former professor was not particularly helpful when it came to the finer details of your model but our people got the gist.”

  Anika continued to follow her down an aisle, glancing at the screens as she passed. Most made no sense. They were just strings of numbers, graphs, and text flashing across the screen. But occasionally she caught a piece of her model in action.

  At the far end of the room, a single wooden door had been set in a blank wall. Stephanie knocked.

  A muscular man, head shaven, with hard black eyes opened it. He wore a black suit, white shirt and tie, and a clear wire ran from his earpiece to disappear behind a thick neck.

  “Anika French has an appointment with the Big Man.” Stephanie said it deferentially.

  Bullet Head nodded. His blunt face betrayed no expression. He just stepped back to allow them to enter.

  The room might have measured ten by ten paces; the walls, like those in her room, were holographic. The images, however, were not of scenery but other offices, most occupied by men behind desks who watched her enter with interest. She seemed to have stepped into the midst of a virtual conference where she was the topic.

  “Stand back here for the moment,” Stephanie instructed.

  Most of the men, Anika noted, were Asian. Two wore North Korean military uniforms. Pictures of the North Korean dictator hung on the walls behind them. The others, dressed immaculately, reminded her of corporate executives.

  Then she turned her attention to the man who sat behind the room’s single, incredible desk. The polished and carved wood almost dazzled. Even the size of it conveyed wealth and power. Sixtyish, he had white hair. She’d never seen a picture of Mikael Zoakalski but his imposing presence left no doubt about his identity. She took in his wrinkled face and sagging jowls. The man’s nose might have belonged to a barroom brawler. The glinting blue eyes, however, cut through her like a Siberian wind.

  “I see you’ve noticed my desk. It once belonged to Ludwig the second,” the Big Man said. “After his death, it was disassembled and shipped to the Vatican. Four popes sat where I now do. By curious circumstances, it ended up here.”

  Zoakalski waved a hand and the walls went blank, the faces vanishing to be replaced by a soft green luminescence.

  Then Zoakalski stood. He was a little over six feet and his blue silk suit was too shiny for her taste.

  Stepping around the desk, he offered his hand. “Dr. French, I ask you to forgive the rudeness of your abduction and transport to Oberau.”

  “Your supply chains are being devastated. Anything I can help with?”

  He smiled at that. “Just walking past the computer monitors, you gathered that?”

  “You’re using my model to analyze how it happened. Of course, I noticed.”

  “Well, that’s excellent! Actually, you can help. The meeting you just witnessed concerned a delivery problem. One of our clients claims that the components we delivered are not correct. The factory that produces them claims they delivered what was ordered. What was received was definitely a different part than that which was placed in the boxes at the factory. We are tracking the delivery route to determine if someone made a mistake. Unless it was the shipper, an unknown party has made a substitution.”

  Anika nodded and absently said, “Supply chains are particularly vulnerable. From what little I gathered, your problem is centered in India.”

  His thick white eyebrows lifted. “Yes, I think so too. Can you hypothesize who’s behind it?”

  “Not America, if that’s what you’re worried about. Someone who knows you better. They’ve programmed my model based upon your known reactions. Your emotional psychology.”

  Zoakalski sank down on the edge of his desk. “You really are a master at understanding how to manipulate emotional variables.”

  Careful, Anika. “As you have just observed, no matter how precisely you plan, the frequency of random errors will increase exponentially as complexity increases. As the inevitable becomes apparent, predictability decays at the same rate that social dysfunction escalates.”

  His eyes narrowed. For a time, he just studied her. “You are very different than your predecessor, Dr. Schott.”

  “How so?”

  “He was a pedigreed buffoon.”

  She nerved herself enough to shrug. “He didn’t really understand the model or how it uses four human emotions to predict outcomes.”

  “Did your American team use my emotional psychology when it tested the model in Washington?”

  She shifted uneasily. “Why would you think we tested the model?”

  The corner of his lip quivered. “Subterfuge is not necessary, Dr. French. Why else would the Defense Department have rushed you straight to the White House? A great deal of time pass
ed before you left. You must have been doing important work while there.”

  She didn’t answer.

  He flicked a hand as if shooing away an irritating fly. “Don’t worry. The things you worked on in DC are irrelevant to me.”

  Anika stared at him. His psychology was everything. Why would he say that? “Then what is relevant?”

  Zoakalski reached up with thick fingers to stroke his chin, and the frown lines deepened across his brow. “Dr. French, unlike your American colleagues, I know how fragile civilization is. It doesn’t take much to bring it down. My Russian heritage goes back to the 1400s in Bessarabia. My beloved grandfather was in the small town of Kishinev, the capital, when the anti-Jewish rioting broke out in 1903. It was based on the false belief that Jews used Christian blood in rituals. The massacre was a festival of murder, bludgeoning, and rape. Grandfather barely escaped with his life.”

  “What’s your point?” Filipchenko. Lundborg. The search to create a true genetic elite…

  Zoakalski’s white brows lowered. “I learned valuable lessons from my grandfather. First, everything boils down to how misinformation warps into mythology. Second, every act we take is a byproduct of what we believe and feel, not what we know. Without an understanding of these critical elements, men are nothing more than pawns in the hands of governments.”

  “Hence, my model.”

  He leaned closer to her. “Hence, your model. Let me be straightforward. Myths lead to unthinkable acts. You’re going to help me create what people believe. You may do it—”

  “For what purpose?”

  He glared at the interruption. “You may do it from the pleasurable surroundings of your current apartment, enjoying fine food and decent clothing. Or, shall we say, under less desirable circumstances.”

  An adrenal rush flooded Anika’s brain.

  “Now,” Zoakalski straightened, “I have to find out what happened in India that caused the error in the guidance systems we sold the North Koreans. Once you’re settled, I’ll expect your expertise in this matter. Stephie, please escort Dr. French to our conference facility and introduce her to her new team.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Just before they reached the door, Zoakalski said, “Oh, forgive me, Dr. French. I almost forgot. Your father asked me to tell you hello and let you know that he’s fine.”

  “My… my father?”

  The Big Man off-handedly sorted through pages on his desk. “Don’t worry about him. He’s being well-cared for.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Maureen watched Fred Zoah remove his bottle-bottom glasses and look around. Data files had been streaming in all morning, some to their laptops, others delivered in box after box, all marked ‘Top Secret’.

  The conference room seemed filled with despair. All but Zoah, who had an oddly euphoric expression on his face. Maureen shared everyone else’s sense of being overwhelmed. Where, in this mountain of data, was the key to stopping ECSITE? Surely another genetically targeted virus was on the list to be released in the near future.

  “Most interesting,” Zoah said at last.

  “Finally, a word from the maestro,” Sinclair said.

  Maureen asked, “Do you have something, Fred?”

  Gale Wade had a sour look on her face as she ignored them to pore over a folder full of tables.

  “Did you know that most of Zoakalski’s accounting is handled by a firm in India?” Fred asked.

  Maureen pulled her hair back, arching her back where it had cramped. “Many large companies transfer their accounting work electronically to firms in India. The savings in labor is huge. What does that have to do with Israel?”

  Wade thumped a pack of cigarettes, pulling one out. “So his accounting is in India? That means… what?”

  Zoah tilted his head back, lost in thought.

  “Fred?” Maureen prodded.

  “Oil.”

  Baffled glances met Maureen’s. “Go on.”

  “He has a significant presence in the Indonesian petroleum extraction business. One of his clients, an energy minister, defaulted on a loan. The oil was collateral.”

  Sinclair’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and shook his head. “And the Pleistocene led to the Holocene. For God’s sake, Fred, we’re trying to stop a nuclear war. What’s your point?”

  “Paychecks,” Zoah said as if it explained everything.

  Maureen took a deep breath. “Fred, you’re way ahead of us. Tell us what you’re thinking.”

  Zoah gave her a report he’d been reading. “Systems. The flow of information. Information leads to production and distribution.”

  “And?” Her skin had begun to crawl from sheer frustration.

  “Zoakalski’s in Europe. His administrators on the ground are in Jakarta, a whole world away. The computers that monitor production, labor, and accounting are in India.”

  “So?” Maureen said sharply.

  “Computers run on programs,” Fred said with satisfaction. “What happens if the computers are told production is dropping? Then, a day later, an administrator sends an email to the personnel office to reduce the labor force to bring it in line with the latest production figures?”

  “You want us to hack into his email accounts to disrupt his distribution system?” Sinclair said.

  Fred blinked at people around the table. “No. I want the CIA to.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Anika made it out the door but had to prop herself against the wall. She was breathing hard, her legs trembling to the point that she had to lock her knees.

  Stephanie said, “He’s good, isn’t he? He’s perfected the subtle art of intimidation. Actually, you didn’t do too badly. I expected him to turn you into a sobbing mess when he told you he has your father.”

  Anika’s thoughts were drowning in a haze of neurochemicals. She couldn’t find words.

  Stephanie smiled. “I do hope you don’t force him to ‘encourage’ your creativity and genius. I’m not sure what would be left of your father.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Skip hunched over Q and watched the monitor. This was as close as he could get, given the cramped desk on which the monitor stood. The white-walled room, with its curtained window and small kitchen, looked about as nondescript as an apartment could.

  From the street outside, it was just another suburban row house with a small walled yard, gated at the street. Two upstairs bedrooms could be reached by a narrow staircase.

  Q carefully tilted the joystick, and the image on the screen veered slightly. “That’s the access road.”

  Skip bent closer to the monitor with its greenish image. Technology still amazed him. The tiny drone was no bigger than a sparrow, but it could fly for six hours before its electric motor exhausted the battery. Under the plane’s belly hung an infrared camera that broadcast, via an antenna, to a receiver that decoded the digital data and displayed it on the monitor.

  “There,” Skip said, craning forward. “That’s the compound.”

  As the drone sailed over the gated entrance, Skip felt his heart begin to pound. “You’re recording this?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Q jockeyed the stick as the image wiggled. “Bit of wind there. Afterwards, we can pore over the images, study every detail. Right now, we need an up-close view of how things are laid out. Think she’s in the palace?”

  “Got me. From what we’ve seen through the scopes, most of the activity is behind. Up in those apartments. Hardly anyone comes or goes from the palace.”

  “My call is to inspect the perimeter first. See if they’ve left any weakness. Then, we’ll do the buildings.”

  “Yeah,” Skip tugged his beard. “Let’s pick this place apart. Before I go in, I want to know everything.”

  “You’d better because what I’m seeing so far… well, it’s state of the art.” The image showed a top-view of two armed men walking along the fence line. “Old school, too. We’ll clean up the image later, but I can already see they’ve got e
arpieces.”

  For the next hour, Skip forgot the pain in his back as the little airplane crisscrossed the night above Zoakalski’s compound. Mostly, he didn’t like what the camera showed him.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  For two days, Mark Schott rode the Ducati, following behind Harry Rau’s BMW. The long hours, alone inside the helmet, left him with a growing sense of clarity. He’d been over and over everything his team at Oberau had worked on, trying to find the variables to decipher what Zoakalski was up to, and he was just beginning to get an inkling.

  He’d heard on the hotel TV last night that there was a strange new virus that only seemed to attack men with the Y Chromosome R1a variant and resulted in sterility. Speculation was running rampant around the globe. One conspiracy theorist said the virus had been created by Iran and was designed to wipe out all Jews worldwide. Another theory claimed it was an Arab plot to get Israel to attack Syria and Iran, thereby leading the United States into a direct conflict with their ally Russia, and ridding the Islamic world of two opponents at once. Both were ridiculous. The variables didn’t add up. But human actions were rarely based upon facts. Stir up enough fervor, and passion would win out every time. Anika’s model proved it over and over again.

  The only thing that made sense was that ECSITE was responsible for the virus, but he didn’t have enough information to work the variables to discover Zoakalski’s desired outcome.

  Mark pulled into a petrol station and paid in cash from his diminishing stack of Euros. He was running out of Michelle’s money fast.

  He got back on the motorcycle and rode away.

  As Mark learned the proper use of throttle control, clutch, and brakes, he added Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland to his list of countries. He stared longingly at the spectacular scenery and experienced moments of sheer joy. But after each bout of delight, he felt guilty. He was running, scared out of his wits, but free. Anika, on the other hand…