The 13th Enumeration

by William Struse

  As Sam was talking, David did a quick YouTube search and found the video. Sam heard him whistle under his breath. “Man . . . that is an incredible jump to make without any backup. You can even see what must be the chalk marks Zane left where his fingers found that crack. Pretty amazing.”

  Changing gears, David continued, “Sam, have you heard of a new encryption software on the black market called Anaj? It is of some interest to the intelligence community, and since you’re in the business, I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

  “Haven’t heard of it, David, but if you can send me a copy I’ll take a look. I know most of the private talent out there, and if it is one of them I will be able to tell.”

  “Thanks,” David replied. “If I can get permission, I’ll send you a direct copy of what we have here at the FBI.”

  “Oh, and David, check out what AQES did today while you’re at it.” Sam said this last bit with a touch of triumph in his voice.

  David already knew that AQES had jumped hard on Darius Zarindast’s announcement, but he couldn’t help but goad Same one last time. He replied, “Don’t tell me, let me guess: they delisted the stock?”

  “Nope, just look at it.” With a laughing good-bye, Sam hung up the phone.

  Chapter 20

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates

  Watching the computer screens in front of him, Dylan Gallos was undeniably excited. He was watching a unique event in the history of the world. The world was changing today, though many would not realize it for some time yet.

  At his fingertips was the power to make or destroy nations. On his left computer monitor was a live feed of the dedication given by Darius at the museum. The next screen had the bid and ask, order cue, size, and other pertinent details on AQES.BB. Two minutes after Darius announced the new technology, someone bought every open order on the board. Some poor fool had set a one-cent limit sell order for several million shares of AQES.BB. Dylan was sure whoever set it had thought he would never have his limit order hit. Well, those 3.5 million shares were bought up in premarket trade, and every open ask price was hit up to ten cents. There was an open limit order for ten million shares at ten cents. It was still five minutes to market open, and AQES.BB had gone from $.00012 cents a share to $.10 on just an unproven announcement.

  When Darius had finished speaking, Dylan saved a copy of the video file and inserted it into an e-mail to several of his friends and acquaintances on Wall Street. For the first couple of years, his friends had pumped him for information on what he was doing. He never gave them anything more than what was common knowledge at the time. Finally, after a couple of years and no news, they had stopped asking. Now, with AES’s new technology officially public knowledge in Israel, he could send them a heads-up which they would receive before the rest of their competition on Wall Street.

  He addressed an e-mail to his select few friends, showing the CC of all other recipients. After they each had placed their own orders they would forward the e-mail, and within thirty minutes of receiving the news, all of Wall Street would be buzzing with it. The e-mail was short and to the point:

  Take a look at the video. This is what I have been working on for the last five years. It just became public knowledge this morning. It’s the real deal.

  Dylan

  Dylan knew those he sent it to well. Before they even started to play the video, they would have pulled up the stock price of AQES.BB. They would see the premarket activity and realize something was going on. Those who knew him well enough would be buying any open orders as soon as the market opened. Dylan glanced up at the clock. Three minutes until the market opened. He hit send, and his e-mail was sent at light speed to inboxes around the world.

  He looked at the board. The premarket orders were piling up. Now there were orders for fifty million shares from five cents up to fifteen. Dylan had purposely withdrawn all premarket liquidity he had been adding to AQES.BB over the last year and a half. Of the two billion shares which traded on an average day, 1.9 billion were a direct result of Dylan’s black-box algorithm. Dylan had programmed his algo to gradually withdraw the liquidity during regular market hours as the stock price increased. He wasn’t sure how the price would act once the market opened, but he knew it was going to be one wild ride.

  Fifteen seconds. Dylan could feel the adrenaline and the racing of his heart. Who needed drugs? This was the ultimate rush! On one of his trading monitors he heard the ding, ding, ding of the opening market bell.

  AQES.BB opened up at fifteen cents, over a thousand times Wednesday’s closing price. The poor fool who had set his 3.5 million share limit sell order at a penny was probably thinking of shooting himself right now. Dylan watched as sixty million shares traded at fifteen cents. Another one hundred million were traded at sixteen cents, then someone tried to unload a one-hundred-million share order, which dropped the price to nine cents a share before it was filled. The share price gradually crept back up to fourteen cents and spent the next two hours between twelve and fifteen cents a share. The volume was incredible. In the first two hours of trading, five billion shares traded hands. This was basically the entire publicly available share float in the first two hours of trading.

  Dylan keyed up the second-to-last monitor on the right side of his command center. This screen showed the status of his algo. He typed in a few commands and watched the numbers on the screen. Yes, that would do it, he thought. He wanted to keep the share price in the ten-to-fifteen-cent range for the rest of the day. The formal demonstration of the technology would not take place until next week, and by that time he estimated the share price would be between fifty cents and a dollar. Darius had instructed him to sell two billion shares in the fifty-cent range and another two billion shares in the dollar range. The share float could use the additional liquidity, and Darius really needed the money—unbeknownst to everyone but himself and Dylan, Darius had basically spent his last dollar to get them to this point. AES was running on fumes. It was going to take a couple billion to build the new production facilities and transform this operation into a multitrillion-dollar company.

  As soon as the money was in the account, Darius was going to authorize Ralph to proceed with construction of the new production facility. If Ralph could make good on his estimates, then a few months from now Aquarius Elemental Solutions would be producing one hundred of the AES-100s and ten AES-1000s a day. After the first year, AES elemental water separators could be producing up to one-hundred-and-fifty-billion gallons of freshwater each day. Average human consumption was estimated at fifty gallons a day. So in theory at least, after twelve months, Aquarius Elemental Solutions would have enough units to produce half of the world’s freshwater supply if everything went according to plan. With over forty percent of the world’s population living within a hundred miles of coastal areas and that percentage increasing every year, most of the units could be connected to already existing infrastructure.

  Dylan shook his head in wonder. AES had the potential to control fifty percent of the world’s freshwater production in the next two years. Not to mention the millions of tons of raw materials the machines were capable of separating from the seawater. Once mining companies saw the writing on the wall, they would be the biggest customers. No open-pit or deep-tunnel mines. No more environmental pollution. Just clean, pure water as a byproduct of their mining. Heck, the smart companies could give the water away for free as a community outreach program. Even with his background in mathematical and theoretical modeling, it was hard to fathom just how much the world was about to alter.

  While Dylan was thrilled with the money he would be making, he was also proud to be part of something which had the potential to fundamentally change the world for good. He turned back to the monitor, which showed the exchange data feed for AQES.BB. He whistled under his breath. Man, AQES.BB was cooking. He might have to raise the range from ten-to-fifteen cents to fifteen–twenty by the end of the day. Maybe his projections were on the low side.

  L
ooking at the numbers flashing by on his screen, excitement grew to awe which grew to euphoria. Finally, he just jumped up from his chair and started hollering and hooting like a crazy man.

  “Would you look at her run!” he yelled at his bank of computer monitors. “Un . . . freaking . . . believable! Man, oh, man!”

  Completely losing his cool, he started dancing around his office. “Eat your heart out, Wall Street! Dylan Gallos is the big man on the street now!”

  Chapter 21

  Jerusalem, Israel

  Jacob Neumann was perturbed. Perturbed and surprised Darius Zarindast had not told him the importance of the Persian tablet. Any other nation would have heralded such a historical artifact with great fanfare, but not Israel. They had to be sensitive, even embarrassed about their history. The Arab press had already picked up on the story. They were calling the artifact a Zionist conspiracy to justify the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Jacob was taking heat for not notifying his superiors about its political implications.

  “Political implications!” Jacob said aloud to the silent walls in exasperation. This was a world turned upside down. He was an archeologist, not a politician. All day there had been protests in Jerusalem, calling for the removal of what protestors called the “fake temple artifact.” The Western press was playing the pictures over and over again: pictures of angry mobs in the West Bank, Gaza, and several other Arab cities. Western diplomats were calling the museum display insensitive and counterproductive to the current peace process.

  To make matters worse, Jacob had been fielding calls all morning from several major Christian leaders calling for the removal of the “fake” tablet because it undermined some of their most sacred beliefs about the divinity of Jesus Christ. If it wasn’t so serious, he would be laughing right now. He couldn’t remember a time when fundamentalist Christians and Muslims were united in their opposition to something. What insanity. The fact was this tablet confirmed the accuracy of the accounts of Ezra and Nehemiah, thus confirming the scriptural account of the Second Temple era.

  “Why does Israel have to act embarrassed about its history?” he shouted at his empty office. Well, he wasn’t embarrassed, and he was not going to cave to the pressure to remove the tablet. “Politics be damned,” he muttered. He would just have to wait out the storm.

  His thoughts turned to Darius. Either the man was clueless about the repercussions, or he just didn’t care. Or was there something more? Last night he had watched Zarindast closely when he was speaking. Maybe it was his imagination, but Darius had seemed to enjoy his not-so-subtle insults to both Christians and Muslims. He had almost been too eager to give his controversial opinions.

  Well, he was wasting time trying to figure out Darius’s motivations. What was done was done. Jacob went through a few more reports and then called Efran Finkelstein on his interoffice intercom.

  “Efran, could you come here a moment? I would like to discuss the Capernaum license.” This would at least be a distraction. On Jacob’s desk was a request by one of Israel’s top archeology organizations to dig in the Capernaum area. Parts of the prospective dig area were owned by the Greek Orthodox and Franciscan churches. Both had already granted their permission, and now final approval was up to his office. Once he granted it, the license work would begin sometime in the spring, weather permitting. CPBH, Christians for the Preservation of Biblical History, was funding the dig. One of the largest such organizations in the United States, over the last ten years they had raised millions of dollars for digs in Israel.

  Efran Finkelstein entered Jacob’s office and sat down. He was a slightly bent man of no great height, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows. An ordinary man in many ways, his one distinctive feature was his large, hairy hands. Efran had started out as a volunteer on a dig site twenty years ago and worked his way up through the ranks until he was now assistant to the director of Israel Antiquities. Efran wasn’t particularly brilliant, but he knew how to play the system.

  What his boss did not know was that Efran had a problem: greedy and self-indulgent, he liked to live outside his means. Over the years he had sold or falsified information for gain. When he could get away with it, he also stole artifacts and sold them to his contact.

  “Good morning, Efran,” Jacob Neumann said, preoccupied. After a moment he looked up. “Tell me, what did you think of Mr. Zarindast’s performance last night?”

  Always the political animal, Efran thought carefully before answering. “Well,” he said tentatively, “it sure complicates our lives for a while. I had no idea he was going to make such a big deal about his artifact.”

  Jacob replied, “What’s done is done. I will not remove the artifact. It is a priceless testimony to our past existence. It also confirms our holy Scriptures. In this day and age, every piece of evidence we can add to our history is of great importance. This brings me to our current topic.” He motioned to the Capernaum file on his desk. “I have read your review and recommendation of the dig license. Do you have anything you would like to add before I grant this license?”

  “No, everything appears to be in order.”

  “Well then,” Jacob said, “I will approve the license. Efran, I would like you to personally oversee this dig. I know this is not customary, but CPBH is an important supporter of Israeli archeology efforts. Considering the current circumstances, we need this dig to go smoothly. They’ve raised millions of dollars to fund dig efforts in this country, and they’ve been a staunch supporter of Israel for several decades. Let’s not offend them. After this fiasco with Darius’s tablet, we don’t need any other problems with our Christian friends.”

  Efran nodded, and Jacob continued, “The head archeologist on this dig will be William Flinders. Oh, and my daughter will be involved. You know her interests in archeology. She will be on one of the dig crews this spring. Please keep an eye out for her, if you will. That will be all. Thank you.”

  As Efran left the room, Jacob looked at the picture of his late wife on his desk. She would have been excited about this upcoming dig—it was much like the one where they had first met. She was a member of a CPBH dig team back then. She was a Christian college student, and he was a just-graduated Israeli archeology major overseeing one of the crews. It seemed like an unlikely match to both of their families and friends, but Constance was an uncommon woman who gave more than her best. Whether it was shoveling dirt on a dig site or investing in their marriage, she didn’t have any quit in her. Their daughter was built of the same stuff.

  He sighed and put away the Capernaum file. Looking at Constance’s picture once again, he whispered, “You would have loved to get your hands dirty in the town where your Messiah based his ministry, wouldn’t you, my dear? Well, our daughter will be there. She is so much like you, my love. Why did God take you from us so soon?” Jacob wiped away the tears in his eyes.

  God, how he missed her.

  Chapter 22

  Tel Aviv, Israel

  Efran returned home and sat down at his computer. He logged into his Google e-mail account and clicked on the junk mail folder. Google’s filter algorithms, with a high percentage of accuracy, identified most spam e-mail. On the off chance some of the mass-mailing e-mails which fit their criteria were not spam, they sent it to the junk mail folder, where it sat until the folder reached its maximum capacity. Looking through yesterday’s junk, he scanned the e-mails until he saw one that had been mailed at the correct time. Sure enough, he found what he was looking for. This would mean another late night of typing and cooking.

  He clicked on the e-mail, and an advertisement for discount pharmaceuticals came up. A large portion of the e-mail was blanked out, with a message that read, “This picture has been blocked for security reasons. Right-click to download the picture.”

  Efran downloaded the picture from Google’s servers. This time the picture was of an attractive, scantily clad woman holding a bottle of pills. He copied the picture file to his electronic clipboard, then opened his Anaj encryption
software and pasted the picture into the open window. Another window opened and requested his encryption key. Efran checked Israel’s New Lotto numbers for yesterday’s drawing and typed them into the open window along with his personal ID number. The picture disintegrated into tiny bits and pieces and reassembled itself into two lines of terse text. It read:

  Interested in new museum and related information. Want an updated account of current and prospective digs.

  Accordingly, he wrote a report detailing the museum opening as well as the current and prospective dig schedule. He highlighted the Capernaum dig, wrote a few facts about its potential, and hoped this would whet the appetite of whomever he was communicating with. He sure would like to make a big score in his Jordan account. With Jacob’s request that he oversee the dig personally, he would be in a better position to commandeer any valuable artifacts. He encrypted his report on the flash drive, encapsulated it in lead, cooked up another batch of treasonous pastry, and confined the leaden messenger to its sewer submarine. Checking his watch after a couple of hours, he noted it was time. He flushed his sewer pastry down the toilet, sending it on its way to the underworld.

  Efran cleaned up the evidence of his activities, and undressing, climbed into bed. He really didn’t like Jacob Neumann. Not because he had anything particular against him—other than that he held a position Efran coveted. Maybe he could use the current events to his advantage. If Jacob Neumann were to get fired or resign, Efran would have a good chance at getting the job of director, making him privy to much more valuable information. He would also be in a position to clandestinely acquire certain items that just happened to get lost or misplaced. Hopefully, the dig would turn up something of value his contact could use. He was playing a dangerous game, and he wanted to get compensated for it.