“One final question, please.” Darius pointed to a man in the front of the room who did not look like a reporter. “Yes sir, what is your question?”
“Mr. Zarindast, what does your company do?”
Darius had to hand it to Alexandra—she had somehow managed to get this question asked. He wondered who the distinguished old man serving as mouthpiece was. He replied, “Aquarius Element Solutions, or AES, for the past fifteen years has been involved in research and development for a cost-effective means of separating elements from seawater.”
The old gentleman replied, “Have you had any success?”
Darius nearly smiled. “Well, I had not planned on making the announcement here, but yes, we have had amazing success. Next week we will be holding a demonstration of our new technology in Dubai. We have perfected a way of removing sodium and several other elements from seawater in a cost-effective manner. In fact . . . we have reached a ninety-five-percent efficiency rate.”
“Ninety-five percent?” the old man replied incredulously.
“Yes,” Darius replied. “I know it sounds incredible, but we have in fact done so. You are most welcome to come and see our demonstration next week in Dubai. We have a one-million-gallon-an-hour model that has been in continuous production for the past two years. It has produced over ten billion gallons of drinkable water from the sea. We have made several advancements over the past couple of years and can economically separate several other elements besides sodium from seawater. If you would like to attend our demonstration, please get in contact with Alexandra Riley later, and she will give you the details. Now, let us continue this evening’s entertainment. Again, I would like to thank each of you for your part in making tonight possible.”
His comments had their desired effect. He could see the press correspondents furiously typing text messages into their phones as he left the lectern.
As he sat back down, he noticed Mr. Neumann was somewhat subdued. The prime minister, a sober look on his face, leaned over and quietly asked him if his technology was really what he had claimed.
“Yes,” he replied, and finished with a humorless but meaningful laugh, “and, Mr. Prime Minister, I have not told the half of it.”
The chamber music played by the string ensemble was very nice, and afterward Jacob Neumann’s daughter Rachael, with a barely noticeable limp, walked up to the lectern in a beautiful beaded black evening gown. In her hand she held what appeared to be a small book with a brightly colored bookmark.
In a confident voice she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your indulgence for a moment.” Her father’s normally veiled expression showed momentary surprise.
She continued, “A couple of weeks ago I had an accident and was seriously injured while in a remote mountainous area. If it hadn’t been for a young man’s help, I would not be alive today. This mysterious stranger risked his life to rescue me, and because of a severe loss of blood, I became unconscious. He carried me over half a mile to medical attention. Somehow, no one got his name, and he has disappeared without a trace. To this young man I say thank you, you are my hero. The piece I have been requested to play tonight is by Ludwig van Beethoven and was written in honor of his friend and benefactor Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky. Today I play it in honor of my unknown benefactor. Here then is ‘Sonata Pathetique,’ Opus No. 13 by Ludwig van Beethoven.”
As she said the final words, she raised her little black book of Psalms and mouthed the words, “Thank you.”
With the grace of a lady who would have made her mother proud, Rachael walked over to the concert grand piano. She played flawlessly, and the music came alive. The audience loved the performance, and she received a standing ovation. She walked back to her father’s table and sat down. Reaching under the table, she squeezed her father’s hand, and he returned the gesture with a warm, “Well done, my dear. You’ve never played it better. And that young man will not be able to hide from you much longer.”
She laughed warmly. “No, after tonight, I don’t suppose so.”
Chapter 18
Dallas, Texas
Zane watched the dedication ceremony through live streaming from IBN, Israel’s public broadcasting network, on his computer. He was surprised when he realized Darius Zarindast was the CEO of Aquarius Elemental Solutions. One and the same company Sam had talked David and him into so foolishly wasting their money on so long ago. Well, maybe if they really had invented something, he could get his two hundred dollars back. He was happy for Sam. Zane laughed. Now he would have to find something else to give Sam a hard time about. Speaking of Sam, he was probably watching this dedication himself—he followed every piece of news about AQES like a bloodhound. This would mean a phone call from Sam in the next several minutes.
Zane sat up with interest when Aaron Klein asked about the tablet and its implications to fundamentalist Christians. He listened with the growing realization that Darius was explaining on international TV some of the very same conclusions he had reached in his own research regarding the prophecy of Daniel’s seventy weeks. He didn’t like what he was hearing.
As the dedication continued, Zane groaned inwardly when Rachael explained the events surrounding her rescue. His anonymity was over. He bet it wouldn’t take the tabloids more than a few hours to figure out that he was responsible for her rescue. He had to admit she did not do anything in half-measures. She had called him out on live television. She sure made it sound like he was some kind of hero. He didn’t see himself that way—he’d just done what needed to be done. But taking her book of Psalms up on stage and raising it was a nice personal touch to her very public thank-you. He acknowledged to himself that the more he saw of this young woman’s actions, the more intrigued he became. Her words were few, but her actions spoke volumes. For the first time since rescuing her, he thought she was someone he might like to know better.
His phone rang. That would be Samuel. He picked up the phone and said, “Hello, Sam.”
It wasn’t Sam who answered. A strong masculine voice on the other end of the line replied, “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“Hey, David, hello to you too. What the heck are you talking about?”
“Admit it, it was you.”
“David, what are you talking about?”
A touch of mock frustration in his voice, David replied, “Zane, you were never a good liar, my friend, and I am in the FBI. Just by your answer I can tell it was you. And bro, did you think I wouldn’t notice the fluorescent pink piece of climbing rope she had in the book when she mouthed the words ‘thank you’? Sam and I gave you that pink rope for your birthday as a joke. I’ve never seen another one just like it since. Frankly, Zane, when she said a young man rescued her and then mysteriously disappeared, you were the first person I thought of. That is classic Zane Harrison. Stepping up and doing what it takes and then not waiting around to collect the credit.”
Zane interrupted, “What the heck were you doing watching an Israeli museum broadcast anyway?”
David laughed. “So it was you, wasn’t it?”
“Okay, okay,” Zane admitted with a touch of embarrassment. “I helped her out of a difficult situation. It was no big deal. Certainly not the big deal you all are making it out to be.”
“Not a big deal? She thanked you on Israeli national TV. When the news media picks this story up, and they surely will, millions of young men all across this world will be wishing they were in your shoes. Quite a woman you helped there, Zane, quite a woman! Whew, some guys . . . some guys . . .” His voice trailed off. “Take care, my friend. I have got to go, just wanted to congratulate you.”
Zane put away his own phone. He was touched. He had just been given about the greatest compliment he could think of. David was the real deal. David, Sam, and he had met at summer camp in high school one year. There they had been introduced to climbing, and from that day forward they had become the three musketeers of sport climbing. They spent all their spare time together climbing anything they could hook a ro
pe to.
The phone rang again. Sam was even more excited than normal. “Dude . . . you weren’t making that up then, were you? You really rescued that girl like you said!”
“Well, I tried to tell one of my best friends, but no-o-o, he wouldn’t listen,” Zane said.
“You said she was beautiful, but man, you didn’t say that she was beeaauutifuuul . . . man alive, Zane, she is incredibly attractive. Let me see if I have this right: she’s a climber, beautiful, a concert pianist, and her dad is an important government official. If she is even half as intelligent as she acts . . . man alive. I am speechless.”
Zane could hear Sam muttering under his breath. “And on international television, no less. Are we going to have to start calling you ‘sir’ or something?”
Zane laughed. “That’s England, Sam, not Israel.”
“Speaking of not believing your friends Zane, didn’t I say that AQES would do something someday? Didn’t I?”
Zane interrupted. “Man, we’re talking like one thousand times just for us to get back to even on our investment. How likely is that?”
“Weren’t you listening?” Sam replied stridently. “If what he said is true, they’ve discovered the holy grail of elemental separation. Don’t you realize that your two-hundred-dollar investment will be worth millions in the near future?”
Zane laughed again. “I’ve got to hand it to you, Sam, your optimism knows no bounds.”
Sam’s voice was concerned—so much that it caught Zane off guard. “Just promise me you won’t sell until you have talked to me first. Promise?”
More seriously, Zane said, “I promise, Sam. How many months do you think it will take before we break even?”
With a note of triumph in his voice, Sam said, “Turn on your computer, dude. The market just opened a few minutes ago, and AQES opened up at fifteen cents. Your two hundred dollars is worth three thousand right now.”
Zane opened the Bloomberg financial news on his computer. Sure enough, the stock had opened up at fifteen cents. “Well, I guess you were right, Sam. I am sure going to miss giving you a hard time about AQES.”
Sam’s tone grew even more serious—Zane wasn’t sure he had ever heard his friend sound so earnest. “Zane, if this technology is for real, then the world just changed. Do you realize that if they really discovered a way to separate elements from seawater that is ninety-five-percent efficient, the world will never be the same? They’ll be able to produce unlimited amounts of freshwater—unlimited. Just think in terms of the Middle East alone. They have huge, inhospitable deserts that now can be inhabited and farmed. If this technology is for real, food prices are going to plummet. The prices for many commodities will fall. And that’s just the beginning. At ninety-five-percent efficiency, they have obviously found a way to generate an incredible amount of heat or energy from the water. This method, whatever it is, will radically alter our dependence on hydrocarbons—on oil, dude. It’s going to change our way of life in so many ways that most of us cannot even imagine right now.”
Zane couldn’t help but feel some of Sam’s obvious excitement. He said something clumsy to show his friend that he was taking him seriously, and he was about to say good-bye when Sam interrupted him again.
“Zane,” Sam said tentatively, “you know, I have always had an interest in symbols and symbology, especially as they relate to religion and religious institutions.”
“Yes,” Zane said with a skeptical note creeping into his voice that he could not hide. Here comes another one of Sam’s conspiracy theories.
Sam continued, “Well, don’t you think it just a little strange that this event was scheduled on the thirteenth of October? If you remember, I’ve told you on several occasions that this was the day Jacques de Molay, a Knight Templar, and many of his fellow knights were rounded up and arrested. Some believe this is the origin of the superstition surrounding Friday the Thirteenth.”
Zane interrupted. “How could the date have anything to do with this? It’s just a random date.”
With a little disappointment or irritation, Zane was not sure which, Sam continued. “You didn’t let me finish. Anyway, as I was saying, this world-changing announcement just happened to take place on the thirteenth of October. Those who belong to or share the views of secret societies place much emphasis on dates and symbology. Also, the last piece of music for the evening was Beethoven’s Opus No. 13. As your new girlfriend said, it was written for his benefactor Karl Alois, Prince Lichnowsky, who was a member of a Masonic order. Lichnowsky was a patron of Mozart as well. Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute is full of symbology and metaphor related to the Masonic secular humanistic philosophy. It is considered by some to be a Masonic masterpiece. One of Beethoven’s early teachers was Franz Joseph Haydn. Haydn spent a large portion of his life on the estate of Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy under his patronage. Prince Esterhazy was also a member of the order. Contextually, these men lived in the later 1700s and early 1800s—about the same time as our nation was being organized.”
Zane had almost tuned his friend out, but Sam’s pitch rose as he reached his crescendo. “What I am trying to get at in an obviously clumsy manner is, if you listened to Darius’s speech, he used many of the same metaphors and ideas of the Masonic order and others of a similar ‘enlightened’ perspective. Mankind’s destiny is in our own hands. Jesus was just another great man who reached enlightenment. This type of symbology and ideology, intentional or not, bears watching. Darius Zarindast will likely be an incredibly powerful man in this world if what he says about his technology is true. But I wonder if there’s something more behind him.”
Zane’s first thought was to give a flippant, joking reply. But truthfully, some of what Sam said actually made sense. Darius’s statement that Jesus was just a man like other men was contrary to the Scripture, and this school of thought was becoming more prevalent in recent years, it seemed. With the “emergent” movement philosophy, it had even made inroads into mainstream Christianity.
But what bothered Zane the most about Darius’s speech was that he had found some of the man’s statements regarding the chronology of Ezra and Nehemiah to be correct. This, used in the context of undermining the divinity of Jesus, made him more than a little uncomfortable. The words of his father came back to him, “You don’t have to be afraid of the truth.” So why did he feel so much like his faith was being undermined by doubt?
Sam remained silent as these thoughts went through Zane’s mind. “Sam, I’ll think about what you said. Some of your concerns hit pretty close to home right now. Thanks for calling, my friend . . . I’ve got to go now. I am already late for class.”
Zane hung up the phone, hurriedly picked up his books, and headed out for class.
Chapter 19
In New York City, David sat at a government-issued gray metal desk in a drab cubicle of the FBI counterterrorism unit. He was jockeying a desk as an intelligence analyst. He hoped, eventually, to work in the field, but for now he analyzed reports on suspected terrorists in the New York area. David had just come from a departmental briefing given by his boss. The only item of special note was a drop in electronic chatter in suspected al-Qaeda networks.
It was being whispered that the Mossad was especially concerned because several of the cells they were able to monitor had gone completely silent. Normally this portended an attack of some sort. US intelligence organizations had noticed a similar reduction in chatter before 911. It was theorized Iran was involved, if not directly then surely indirectly.
His boss had passed out a report on a new encryption software which had shown up in several places. So far, the NSA had not be able to break it. The software did not appear to be anything that was commercially available, so finding its source was a priority. Unbeknownst to the general public, many encryption software companies created a back door which, under certain extreme circumstances, they could use to allow the government to access files. It did not appear there was any such back door in this software. The extremely
robust nature of the software was what had the NSA concerned. It was type of encryption software normally produced by governments, not the private sector.
David knew Sam was in the encryption business, so he thought it wouldn’t hurt to give him a call and see if he had heard about it. The report his boss had handed out gave several locations where the software could be found on the Internet.
David picked up the phone and dialed Sam.
“Hello, David,” the voice on the other end said when it picked up.
David laughed. “How did you know it was me?”
“Your number shows up on my system as a potential governmental agency, thanks to my handy software. Since you are the only government official I know in New York, I figured it was probably you. Did you hear about Zane’s heroics?”
“Yes,” David replied, “I talked to him yesterday. I’ve got to hand it to him, he sure pulled it off this time.”
Sam laughed. “For someone who tried his best to stay out of the limelight, his plan sure backfired. You should see the Israeli tabloid press going after his story. By tomorrow I’ll bet the American tabloids will be picking it up. Supposedly they interviewed Miss Neumann, and she described Zane’s climb in great detail. Would you believe it, one of the Israeli TV stations found the site of the accident and hired what they claim is one of Israel’s top sport climbers to try to duplicate Zane’s climb? You should check out the YouTube video. You can see a big bloodstain on the wall, and the poor fellow has tried to make Zane’s final jump four times. I can’t even imagine trying to make that move without a rope to catch me.”
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