by Ty Patterson
‘This is quite different from pressing a lever on a gun,’ He had said in a superior tone.
Zeb looked up and shook his head at Roger’s raised eyebrow. ‘Loads of stuff in here that connects all the dots, but nothing on The Man yet.’
‘Give us time, Zeb.’ Meghan said impatiently.
‘And get outta here. These geeks need room to think,’ Chloe chimed in.
Bwana narrowed his eyes at Zeb once they were outside again. ‘You know who he is, don’t you?’
‘I know how to find him.’
One month later
The principal exited his limo, nodded a greeting to the restaurant manager who held the door open for him and escorted him to his seat. His security detail flanked out and positioned themselves inside and outside the restaurant.
The restaurant, on Fourteenth Street, was a discreet one which catered to the powerful and the wealthy. It had earned a reputation for being a safe haven, where its patrons could dine and discuss business without fear of being eavesdropped on or harassed by paparazzi.
The principal had been frequenting the eatery for several years and was treated like royalty – which he was.
He sat on the comfortable cushion with a gentle sigh, looked around and didn’t see anyone he recognized.
They all recognized him of course; his face was splashed on TV regularly. The waiter approached and placed a cup of coffee in front of him, made to his liking. He thanked the man wordlessly and picked the menu up even though he knew what he was going to order.
It was the same order he placed every day, every year. A Southwestern omelet made with two eggs, seasoned with the herbs of his choice accompanied with a plate of finely sliced bacon and a large glass of freshly made apple juice.
He put down his menu to place his order and started at the sight of the man sitting opposite him.
The stranger was lean, brown haired and had dark eyes that seemed to swirl and eddy.
He looked behind at two of his security personnel who were rushing toward his table, their hands reaching inside their jackets. He shook his head imperceptibly. The man was empty handed; it wouldn’t do for his men to be violent in the presence of other guests.
‘I am having a private breakfast,’ he told the stranger. ‘I would appreciate it if I were left alone.’
‘I am sure you would. But today you have me for company.’ The man snapped out his napkin and placed it neatly over his lap. He helped himself to a glass of water and drank it, his eyes never leaving the principal’s face.
‘I’m sorry I don’t know you. I really don’t want company.’
‘I am Zeb Carter. You have probably heard of me. Relax; I’m here just to talk.’ The stranger did not acknowledge the two security men standing behind him.
The principal’s face didn’t change. Years of being in the public eye had taught him to master his emotions, but a chill raced through him.
Carter!
Despite his iron control, something must have shown on his face since Carter smiled slightly.
‘I bet you never imagined I would reach you here. Wasserman promised he would take care of me, didn’t he?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Carter. I don’t know anyone called Wasserman. If you don’t leave me alone, I will have my men eject you.’ The principal put steel in his voice and his eyes flicked to the two men behind Carter.
They stepped forward, placed their hands on Carter and lifted him off his chair. He didn’t offer any resistance.
‘Don’t you want to know what happened to Wasserman?’
The principal hesitated, covered it up smoothly and nodded to the men. They dropped him back on his seat and stepped back.
‘Humor me, Mr. Carter. What’s this about? It might pass the time while I dig into my breakfast.’
‘Why don’t you get your goons to search me? You can speak freely once you know I am not wired.’
The principal eyed him suspiciously and then gestured at one of his men. One man held Carter’s arms, while another patted him down thoroughly, removed a Glock, spare magazines, a wicked looking knife, a long cable and a phone.
‘No wire?’ McDermott asked.
The two men shook their heads. One of them removed the magazine from the Glock, another inspected Carter’s phone, removed its battery and rendered it dead. They pushed Carter back in his seat when they had finished.
The waiter came forward at a hand signal from Carter and placed a plate in front of the principal from which rose aromatic flavors.
The waiter placed a similar plate in front of Carter and when the principal raised an eyebrow, the man had the temerity to grin.
‘I’ve never been to this place before. Heard a lot of it. I might as well sample the fare while I’m here.’
‘You played a good game, Shane McDermott,’ Carter waved his fork at the principal and on hearing his name, McDermott went cold.
‘You’re the Special Advisor to the President on Middle Eastern Foreign Policy. You have access to the most sensitive intelligence in the country. Heck, you have the president’s ear. You shape what we do in that region, how we react to events. Not a single policy decision is taken without your influence.’
‘There are very few people of Arabic origin in politics, and none more senior than you. But nobody suspects you. You can do no wrong.’
‘You were born to an Iraqi father who immigrated to this country long before you were born.’
‘He settled in Wyoming, made a life for himself, built a ranch, married into the local community, and raised you. You inherited the ranch when your folks passed away, got a pile of money from some great aunt in Europe. All that only added to the feel-good story about you. You were the American dream come true. Born to an immigrant, making it to one of the most powerful positions in the country.’
‘This isn’t anything new, Carter.’ McDermott moistened his lips and tried to make his tone as dry as possible. ‘My story has been covered innumerable times by the media. The president wouldn’t have appointed me if I hadn’t passed all the background checks and withstood the scrutiny.’
Carter ignored him and his fork jabbed in the air. ‘So where did it go wrong, McDermott? What made you turn against our country?’
A fire burned inside McDermott, but he kept an outward calm. He took a cooling sip of water, proud that his hands didn’t tremble when holding the glass.
He laughed scornfully at Carter. ‘Are you seriously accusing me of some kind of conspiracy? Of plotting against the nation? I would sue you out of existence if it wasn’t funny.’
‘I am not accusing. I am stating.’ Carter replied calmly. ‘You engineered the assassination of the former Saudi and Venezuelan oil ministers and then got your own appointees in place. You used several fronts to acquire fracking companies and gas and oil deposits and then shut down the drilling.’
‘You planned and executed all this to attack the country’s energy independence.’
McDermott sucked in his breath sharply, but Carter didn’t pay any attention to him. He turned to one of the men behind him. ‘Can you turn that wall TV our way and get the manager to tune into any news channel?’
The close protection agent was nonplussed for a moment but went to do Carter’s bidding after a glance in McDermott’s direction.
McDermott kept his rage in control; he had negotiated with hard-nosed presidents and dictators. This Carter was a nobody. An inconsequential person. Carter would not derail his plan. His vision would come true. Wasserman would – his train of thought came unstuck at the rolling ticker on the TV.
Several fracking companies under investigation.
A serious looking reporter explained that various regulatory agencies were looking into the suspicious acquisition of several exploration companies. They were not only investigating the sources of funds but also the management of those companies.
He rattled out a series of names and a deep burn pierced through McDermott.
All tho
se are mine. He dimly heard the FBI getting into the act, looking for explanations why exploration had stopped at all those companies. The reporter assured the nation that all these companies were small. They would have no impact on oil and gas production in the country.
‘We timed the media release so that you wouldn’t have advance warning.’ Carter swiveled back in his seat to face McDermott.
‘The plan was to buy more companies, buy larger ones. Take a significant stake in the country’s energy resources. You would turn off some wells. You would use the cash flows and balance sheets of others to acquire more.’
McDermott thought fast, composed himself and patted his lips delicately. ‘Carter, do you have any idea of how markets work? Reducing supply will drive the price up of a commodity. If you knew anything about our country’s energy situation, you would realize that we need higher oil prices.’
‘The Saudis are the ones who want to destroy our energy independence. They have created a glut in the oil market due to which prices are low, knowing that many of our companies cannot survive for long at these prices. If by shutting down a few of our companies, the price goes up, that’ll only benefit our fracking industry.
He waved a hand carelessly at the TV and allowed another disbelieving laugh. ‘And you think I am behind all that? Can you comprehend the sums of money to execute this fantasy? It has been fun knowing you, but I must get going. Some of us have more important jobs than spinning a fanciful story.’
He let steel show in his eyes. ‘Carter, next time you shoot your mouth, you’d better be able to back your words up or I’ll have you cleaning toilet bowls in Idaho.’
He rose to leave and found his way blocked by Carter. ‘Sit down. I don’t need proof. This isn’t a court of law.’
Something in Carter’s eyes and voice made his hair rise. He made a show of glancing at his wrist and settled down.
‘I can spare another fifteen minutes.’
Zeb watched the Special Advisor seat himself and put on a game face.
‘High prices weren’t what you were after. Control of assets was your game. Manipulation and destruction of the country’s energy and financial systems was your goal. But this wasn’t your creation alone. Someone else was behind you.’
McDermott’s face blanched. He drank his water in one swallow and once he had finished, color returned to his face.
‘You would have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for Elena Petrova. She heard you in that hotel all those years back. She started investigating and when you got wind of that, you ordered her killing.’
McDermott opened his mouth to protest, but Zeb continued relentlessly. ‘She died before she could reveal how far she’d gotten with her story. What you didn’t know is she sent a letter.’
McDermott’s composure deserted him for the first time and his fingers trembled slightly.
Zeb smiled easily. ‘She didn’t name you in that letter otherwise you wouldn’t be sitting here. You would be incarcerated in a prison. Or maybe you would have had a convenient accident. She left clues in the letter, but we couldn’t crack them initially.’
‘Who’s we?’ McDermott blustered.
‘A bunch of people who care more for this country than you.’ Zeb paused. ‘You wanted to know about Wasserman. He’s dead, if you haven’t worked that out by now. We took him out in your ranch in Wyoming. Your go-to man didn’t talk, though. He died before he could.’
A thick sheen of sweat had appeared on McDermott’s forehead. His eyes looked away for a moment when Zeb mentioned Wasserman’s death.
‘All we had to go on was Petrova’s letter. I studied it again and this time it came to me. Petrova’s clue to your identity was so simple which is why we overlooked it.’
He stopped to drink from his glass and felt McDermott inch closer.
‘She wrote her letter in Aramaic. Guess how many politicians in D.C., those who really wield power, have a university degree in that language? How many speak it fluently and have published papers in that language?’
Zeb continued when McDermott made no protest. ‘Once we knew about you, evidence became easy.’
‘Bahamas.’ Zeb mentioned a bank and date. ‘That was when Wasserman and you opened an account for the slush fund for Wasserman to use. You think banks like those keep their secrets?’
He shook his head. ‘You’d be surprised at how fast they’ll cooperate when the United States threatens to drive them out of business. They gave names for the account holders. Aliases, but guess what? They had photographs and fingerprints and those nail your identity. Wasserman’s as well.’
‘The money trail from that bank account leads to your go-to man. He paid law firms from that account. He moved money to other offshore accounts. Those other accounts belonged to assassins that Wasserman hired to kill some workers.’
‘You could still explain all that away. You could say Wasserman turned rogue. He acted without your knowledge. Unfortunately for you, Wasserman recorded all his calls.’
‘They were encrypted, of course; he wasn’t a fool. But the people I have with me, they break that kind of encryption in their sleep.’
‘Most of those calls were bland, but one stands out. Your commissioning him to hire an international assassin to kill the Saudi minister. You didn’t say that bluntly, but with all that we have, it’s easy to make out what you really meant.’
He waited for McDermott to counter his delivery, protest, rage, but the Special Advisor had gone pale. His fingers were twitching, his eyes were unreadable.
‘Then there is the evidence Petrova collected. She made a dossier, which you never found, and mailed that along with the letter.’
‘Wasserman? When did he die?’ McDermott’s voice was hoarse.
‘I was wondering when you’d ask. More than a month back. You wouldn’t know because you had stopped communicating with him. We maintained his email account, all his correspondence and managed the ranch, giving the impression he was alive.’
Carter’s eyes were cold, colder than any pair McDermott had seen. He controlled a shiver when his voice continued, flat, hard.
‘The ISIS are behind you, aren’t they?’
McDermott’s knife fell on his plate with a loud clatter. He picked it up clumsily and when he raised his eyes, Carter was sporting a thin smile.
‘Your dad wasn’t a radical Muslim, but somewhere down the line you turned, you started believing in them, started following them.’
McDermott found it hard to breathe. How much does he know?
‘You met their emissaries during one of your visits to Iraq several years back. It was then you hatched this plan, didn’t you?’
He knows that too. The words pounded a throbbing beat in McDermott’s mind, drowned out all thought.
‘How?’ He forced the words through lips that felt like they had taken a beating.
‘You’ve heard of the Butcher of the Middle East?’
McDermott nodded dumbly. Everyone had heard of the masked Al Qaeda killer who went after ISIS commanders in Iraq and Syria.
‘The Butcher didn’t just kill. He took photographs, made recordings.’
‘One of those recordings was of a group of senior ISIS leaders in a heavily-protected apartment in Mosul. They were making plans, strategizing.’
‘With them was a white man, a man in disguise. We never found out who he was then, but once I knew who you were, I went back to those photographs and the recording.’
Carter pointed a finger at McDermott’s forehead. The finger moved to his ears. ‘It was dead easy to see behind the wig and beard once we knew your identity.’
‘That recording places you with the ISIS. It makes sense. They have the enormous sums you mentioned. Funds to buy companies and influence politicians and governments. You had smart people helping you.’
Their waiter came to clear the plates away. Carter looked at him once and he vanished without saying a word.
‘You got the two oil ministers killed so that yo
ur men would be appointed. Candidates that you had cultivated for a long while. You bribed ministers and entire departments so that they would be front runners.’
‘Their role was to cause chaos in the markets with periodic statements and off-the-cuff comments. Sure, they would back track later, but the damage would have been done. Acquisition of assets in tandem with spooking the market.’
Carter shook his head in disbelief. ‘You worked for years on this project. Years of living a double life. Your official role gave you all the inside information you needed. You would have continued executing your plan. Going after bigger assets. Maybe using lobbying firms too, to smooth your way.’
McDermott couldn’t keep his eyes away from the dining knife that Carter was toying with. The man’s voice was as sharp as its blade. ‘I am guessing at some point, when you had control of a certain number of assets, ISIS would reveal themselves as the masterminds. Maybe they would time that to a brutally violent act.’
‘Like taking out the president or some other very high profile person; with you as an inside man, anything was possible.’
The words were loud in the room, but no one turned around in their direction.
‘Financial systems would collapse. The people’s confidence in government and commercial institutions would vanish. If ISIS owned several energy assets, could assassinate at will, what couldn’t they do? The country would take years to recover.’
‘That would be the ISIS’s victory. And it could work, because everyone associates those terrorists with crude, shocking violence. No one credits them for financial terrorism and long term, stealthy planning.’
The pounding became harder, faster. ‘How do you know all this?’
Carter’s eyes were a bottomless ocean.
‘I’m the Butcher.’
McDermott sat winded. He looked at the man in front of him who showed not a flicker of emotion, whose eyes were cold and merciless and then he knew why one Pentagon General had said softly. If Carter is after you, you might just as well commit suicide.
‘Why, McDermott? This country gave everything to you. What made you betray it?’
