* * *
At ten a.m., the circulating pump in Joe’s condo turned on, and five minutes later the water heaters’ thermostat called for heat. Both gas control valves received the twenty-four-volt signals and opened, sending four-hundred-thousand BTUs worth of gas down the plastic tubing and out into the empty garage. By this time, all ten forced-air furnaces had kicked in and were sucking the garage air into the building’s ventilation system, along with the ever-increasing mixture of natural gas. Surprisingly, it took twenty-three minutes for the gas/air mixture to reach optimal combustibility. One of the furnace blower motors was on its way out, and it periodically sent out a little spark of electricity between its wiring and the motor housing. When it ignited the mixture, the resulting explosion ripped apart the condo and blew out the windows of all surrounding buildings. The explosion broke the three-inch gas main to the building, causing a tremendous torch of fire that ignited every piece of flammable material within fifty feet.
By this time every street in lower Manhattan was blocked with traffic, so the fire department could not respond to the fire. The flames finished what the explosion had left and then spread to the buildings on both sides of the condo. The two closest firehouses were twelve and sixteen blocks away, but they could not get their fire trucks out the door. Unwilling to just stand around watching their city burn, the firefighters grabbed their hoses and other equipment off the trucks and jogged down the street to the fire. Luckily for them, the order to shut down New York’s water system was still working its way through the bureaucracy. They still had one and a half hours before they lost access to water. Their herculean efforts subdued the fire in one hours and twenty-five minutes. Joe’s condo and three surrounding buildings were completely destroyed.
At eleven a.m., the mayor of New York City came on television and tried to calm everyone’s fears. He told New Yorkers that while they had only found contaminants in lower Manhattan’s water supply, as a precaution they began to shut down the entire water system of New York. All private and government employees, except emergency personnel, were told to stay home and not go to work. A market holiday was declared as of ten a.m. Eastern time, and all US exchanges were to remain closed until further notice.
* * *
Dylan was in his command center watching the world markets when he noticed a drop in the futures of the DOW and SP500. He searched several of his online news sources and saw no real news events that might cause the sharp declines. Turning to the financial news blog Zerohedge, he saw a story that had just been posted of possible contaminated water in New York City’s financial district. Just as he was reaching for the phone to call some of his contacts in New York, his phone rang. It was Darius.
“I just received word from some of my associates in New York. It appears there may have been another terrorist attack. At this time the details are still sketchy, but it seems the water system of the financial district has been polluted. Dylan, I want you to keep AQES as steady as a rock. No matter what happens, I want it to hold its current price plus or minus two dollars. Is that understood?”
“No problem,” replied Dylan. “I was able to sell those additional two billion shares over the last three days for an average of thirty-four dollars a share. Minus what we have transferred to our operating account, over the last couple of weeks, we have raised over a hundred-and-twenty-billion dollars in cash.”
“Well done, Dylan. Let’s wait and see how AQES reacts. If you have to step in, do so. When it looks like these events have reached a maximum point of fear—in relation to the markets, I mean—I want you to step in and buy as many future contracts on iron ore as you can get your hands on. I will also be e-mailing you a list of companies I want you to buy as many shares of as you can. When these events settle out, I want to be a major shareholder in each one. I will leave it to your discretion as how to go about this. You know how to play this game. Use all the money we have—only keep us five billion in cash reserves. Any questions?”
Dylan was silent for several seconds, trying to pull his incredulous thoughts together. “Just to make sure I understand you, Darius. Once I have stabilized AQES you want me to use up to one-hundred-and-fifteen-billion dollars to purchase iron ore and the stock of companies on the list you will be forwarding to me?”
“No, I don’t want you to use up to one-hundred-and-fifteen billion. I want you to use every last dollar of it. Have I made myself clear?”
Darius’s tone was frightening calm and serious. “Yes, perfectly clear,” Dylan replied. He could not help but give a half-nervous, half-excited laugh as he continued. “You know, it’s not every day someone tells you to spend every last cent of one-hundred-and-fifteen-billion dollars. This will be something to tell the grandchildren about, that’s for sure.”
“Make it happen, Dylan,” Darius said. Then he hung up the phone.
Dylan sat thinking about what Darius had told him to do. The futures on the DOW and SP500 were now down six percent. If this was a real terrorist attack, then it was likely market trading would be suspended for a day or two or longer depending on how serious it was. That would give him time to write some special algos for the specific stocks Darius wanted purchased. If he got his timing right, he would really be able to make Darius a lot of money. Heck, he had just sold fifty million of his own personal AQES shares at around twenty-five dollars a share. He had a billion dollars of his own money. If he piggybacked off Darius’s hundred-and-fifteen billion, he could make multiples on that as well. They couldn’t have asked for a better setup, even if Darius had planned it himself.
Chapter 30
Phoenix, Arizona
Like most of America, Sam was glued to his television. The news reports coming out of New York were disturbing. There were no reported deaths due to the contamination of Manhattan’s water system, but according to various experts who were being interviewed, it would be extremely hard if not impossible to remove the diesel fuel contamination from the pipes. When news broke of possible plutonium contamination, everyone who could decided to leave Manhattan.
Sam picked up the phone and dialed David’s cell phone. On the third ring David picked up.
“David, what’s going on there? Is it as bad as they’re saying on the news?”
“Sam, I really can’t give you any specifics from my end, but from what I’ve seen of the news reports, they are pretty accurate. By the way, your report on Anaj was kicked upstairs. After today’s events, I think we’ll be able to get a subpoena for Google. I’ve got to go—as you can imagine, things are hectic right now. I’ll be in touch.”
* * *
A week later trading resumed, but not out of New York. All trading was being routed through the Chicago exchanges. Now Dylan had a front-row seat as far as the data feeds went. With New York offline, there was no one faster than him. His algos would eat up and spit out anyone who tried to mess with AQES stock. He now also had top bandwidth for his purchase of the iron ore mining, fabrication, and pipeline companies.
Today, with trading on the US exchanges resuming, it looked like the US markets were going to open twenty percent down. There was a lot of fear out there. He would just watch for a few days before he made his move. When he did get in the game, he would start by buying options on every stock on Darius’s list. If he could time his purchases close to the point when the market fear was almost exhausted, he might be able to turn things around. Or at least get credit for it.
The aftermath of events in New York City had the world mesmerized. Manhattan Island was a ghost city. Without water it might as well have been the Sahara Desert. It took five days to completely evacuate Manhattan, and emergency personnel said it was the smell that was hardest to deal with. Without running water, the waste could not be disposed of, and every building and alleyway reeked of it. The smart ones watching the tragic drama unfold from their own concrete jungles realized just how dependent they were on those things they almost always took for granted. In a moment of stark clarity, many realized that in an e
mergency, they could not depend on the government to bail them out. Many sat down at their kitchen tables and drew up lists of things they would need if a similar situation occurred in their city. Others decided they needed to move to a more rural setting to provide the security they thought they needed for their families. On balance, it was a needed wake-up call for many Americans.
* * *
In Tel Aviv, Efran Finkelstein once again sat at the computer and downloaded a picture from his junk mail folder. This time the picture was an advertisement for Russian women looking for husbands in the West. Efran looked at the picture and shook his head. He doubted any of the Russian women looking for husbands at that agency were like the woman in that picture. She almost made him want to get married again. No, he thought to himself. No woman was that pretty.
Efran pasted the picture into the Anaj encryption software, and a new message appeared on the screen. The message told him to mark the outside of all future messages with the number thirteen. That was strange. They had never before requested that messages be marked. The only thing he could think of was that they needed to be able to identify his capsules specifically. Could that mean someone was especially interested in the Capernaum dig? This might mean a bigger payoff if he could find something of value to skim when no one was looking. “When no one is looking,” he muttered to himself in disgust. With the Neumann girl on the dig, he would not have much chance of that.
Efran naturally hated those who had something he wanted but was not able or willing to achieve. Rachael, he knew, did not trust him. That made her an enemy. It would be difficult if not impossible to acquire any dig artifacts for his contact while she was watching. He really needed to find that one opportunity which would set him up for life. Being in charge of the Capernaum dig might offer him that opportunity if he could escape her ever-watchful eyes. Well, if the opportunity presented itself, he was going to do his best to take it. He could not live the lifestyle he deserved on what he made at this job.
Typing out an acknowledgment of the new instructions and a brief summary of the Capernaum dig, he encrypted the file on a fresh flash drive. Getting up from his computer, he walked over to the cabinet and removed the necessary supplies to make his little sewer submarine. A few hours later he sent the lead-encased message marked with the number thirteen on its dirty journey to the sewer underworld.
Chapter 31
Manhattan, New York City
It took twenty-four hours before police detectives learned that Gerhard Schroeder had been using a fake passport and driver’s license. The medical examiner ran Schroeder’s fingerprints through their database and came back with Joe Douglas, a convicted felon still on parole. The New York Police Department was contacted, but due to the clogged streets, it was three days before they could dispatch a detective to Joe’s last known residence. When Jack Dunaetz arrived at what was left of Joe’s condo, he knew it was going to take some time to gather any evidence.
Jack was a thirty-year veteran of the New York Police Department. He was a short, stocky, and mean-tempered man, but he was one of the most experienced detectives on the force. His gut, and he had an ample gut, told him the fire was not just a coincidence. Seeing the wet debris of the burned-out building, Jack was not about to step into the rubble unless he had it checked first for radioactive contamination. It was still kept hush-hush, but the department had indeed confirmed radioactive contamination in the water system of Manhattan. There had been tens of thousands of gallons sprayed on this fire, and he sure as heck wanted it tested before he stepped a foot in the ruins.
Two hours later, a special-operations officer arrived to test the debris. He climbed into his special suit, and with his Geiger counter, entered the ruins of Joe’s condo. The readings spiked much higher than any water samples yet taken. After several minutes of climbing over the condo’s remains, he found in the swimming pool what was left of the four steel barrels with hardened puddles of lead on the ground under them. His meter was screeching at him, telling him this was more than just the background radiation from the water sprayed on the fire. The officer quickly climbed out of the rubble, and one of his assistants sprayed him down with a portable water canister. He undressed and called his superiors. They had found the source of the terrorist attack on Manhattan.
Jack Dunaetz walked over, and the special ops officer explained what he had found. “My gut told me not to step into that mess,” Jack said with a satisfied grunt of self-congratulation. “Sure glad I didn’t. Looks like we found the source.”
The FBI was called in, and they began to dig into every piece of Joe Douglas’s background. Without much trouble, they found he attended one of the more fundamentalist mosques in New York. The mosque had been on their watch list for some time due to its connections to al-Qaeda and Iran. They weren’t able to find the origin of the passport or driver’s license, but they were able to trace the credit card to an offshore corporation of Iranian origin. Whoever had provided it had been sloppy. The ease of the trace seemed almost too convenient. Was Iran being set up? As of right now it sure seemed like all of the evidence was pointing to Iran and its al-Qaeda satellites.
With no other leads and the American people calling for retribution, the president, who had extremely low approval numbers, against his advisers’ recommendations spelled out the evidence so far against Iran and called on them to answer the charges. The inflammatory president of Iran responded by calling the attack a Zionist conspiracy to undermine the credibility and sovereignty of the Iranian state. Then, in a moment of extreme political stupidity even considering his normally inflammatory rhetoric, he said he was glad about the attack and that his only regret was that it hadn’t affected the entire state of New York.
The American people were enraged. Both Democrats and Republicans now had a common enemy toward which to direct the anger of the American people. With Congress’s approval numbers even lower than the president’s, they immediately drafted legislation that placed crippling sanctions on Iran. The president, with the backing of both houses of Congress, bullied America’s allies into following suit. For once even Russia, normally a supporter of Iran, stepped back and distanced itself. The United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to impose crippling sanctions as well, effectively isolating Iran from any dealings with the Western world.
* * *
Arash was one of the few Persians pleased with the political and social pressure building inside of Iran. The leadership of Iran was blindsided by the events. Normally very canny in their dealings with the West, they had never pushed their hand too far—until now. There had been mounting pressure from the people of Iran ever since Darius Zarindast had offered each Iranian the shares of Aquarius Elemental Solutions. Now, with the events in New York, the pressure had reached a breaking point. The Assembly of Experts was called to challenge the rule of Ayatollah Khamene’i and the president of Iran. The special assembly was set for the end of the month Aciyadiay, or November, in the holy city of Qom.
Arash had already placed the 235X into trusted hands at the water bottling facility. The batch of water to be used in two weeks at the Assembly of Experts would be ready and waiting for the unsuspecting leadership of Iran. It was likely that many of the top military leadership would be there as well. They were never far from their political masters. With luck, a few weeks from now, Iran would no longer be ruled by religious fanatics. Iran would once again be ruled by a son of Hystaspes.
Chapter 32
Dallas, Texas
Zane was back in his dorm room at college. His classes had not been too taxing. Everyone on campus was talking about the events in New York. Sam had filled him in on his conversation with David, who had been in both of their thoughts and prayers a lot lately. Zane sighed, thinking about how easy it had been for one person to cause so much havoc. Now there was a chorus of calls for retribution against Iran. From the evidence which had been shared with the public, it sure seemed like the country was rushing to judgment on this one. Sure, Iran was an
enemy of America, but Zane couldn’t help but wonder if different decisions would have been made if Congress and the president were not in such disfavor with the American people. It seemed as if many times in history, when things were not so good economically or politically, the political class turned to war as a means of diverting the people’s attention and anger. They sure had the attention of the people now. And their anger was white hot and full of vengeance. This was not a good environment for making reasonable decisions.
Shaking his head again, he tried to focus on his research paper. Zane looked at the list pinned to the wall over his desk. He had accomplished the first item: identify the potential starting points for the prophecy of Daniel’s seventy weeks. Daniel 9:25 read in part,
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks.
When Daniel was given this prophecy, the First Temple had been completely destroyed. The armies of Nebuchadnezzar had looted and burned Solomon’s temple, leaving nothing except the scattered stones. Now, according to the text of verse 25, “Messiah the Prince” would come seven “weeks” from the “command to restore and build Jerusalem.”
The books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Chronicles, and Kings each gave details about “commands” to restore and build Jerusalem. The first recorded command Zane had found came from Cyrus, king of Persia. The book of Ezra recorded that Cyrus in his first year claimed YHWH had “charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem.” So Cyrus’s decree was given in 536 BC.
The next recorded command to build Jerusalem came from Darius, son of Hystaspes, in his second year—about sixteen years after the first decree. From the account of Ezra, Zane had learned the construction efforts had stopped sometime during the sixteen years between the first year of Cyrus and the second year of Darius. Darius was petitioned by the settlers of Jerusalem to be allowed to restart construction of the Second Temple. Darius checked the records of Persia and found that, indeed, Cyrus had allowed construction of the temple, so he gave his own support and blessing to the project, and the construction resumed in 520 BC.
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