by Andrew Watts
Lena sat back down across from him and said, “Now, where were we? You were telling me about the innate goodness of mankind?”
He began to feel the nervous shiver of a man trapped. “Who are they?”
She didn’t look at them. “My colleagues. And just so you know, I would not characterize them as two fine examples of mankind’s good nature. They can be violent. But only if I require it.”
Satoshi’s hands began shaking under the table. “Who are you?”
“My name is Lena, just as I have told you.”
“And why have you come to see me? Why have you really come, if you are not a reporter?”
“Because the man I work for is forging a great future for our world, and he hopes that your work will be a part of it.”
“You want to use bitcoin?”
She nodded.
He began to think about her questions. “You want to control bitcoin?”
She said, “It will be the world’s first truly global currency. Think of the power one would wield if they could manipulate its value. You created bitcoin transactions to be anonymous. That works out perfectly for us. It helps us to retain anonymous control. A world that thinks it is free is a happy world. Ignorance is strength.”
His eyes showed anger and fear. “You can’t do that. I won’t allow it. Besides, that’s not possible, I’ve designed—”
She shook her head, clicking her tongue. “You will make it possible. And we will give you great support and incentive.”
He crossed his arms. “What? You’ll physically hurt me if I don’t help?”
She leaned forward. “Oh, yes.”
The way she said it sent another shiver through him. The two men standing behind her didn’t blink.
Lena said, “You will come with us now, and disappear from the life you know. If you do this, we will not hurt you. You will also provide us your very best effort to assist us in completing our goals.”
“What if I do not—”
She didn’t wait for him to finish his sentence. “If you do not comply, we will still not hurt you.”
He was confused.
Lena said, “We will hurt the ones that you care most about. Great change requires great sacrifice.”
His mouth was open. His shaking hands were clenched into fists under the table, but he had no will to raise them. “Look at you. How could a woman like you say such things? How can you be so…evil?”
Lena stood and looked down on him. “Mr. Satoshi, there is much evil in this world, but I am not it. I am but an instrument, a tool. I have a duty to create change. Some of it may be ugly, violent, and despicable to you. But mine is an honorable duty with a noble cause. You can now be a part of this great cause. One day I hope that you will see this as a gift.”
She held out her hand to help him up. Her face transformed into a brilliant smile. “Come help us create a better world.”
He didn’t take her hand.
She stayed there for a moment, holding out her hand and waiting for him. Seeing that he made no move to get up, she raised her hand into the air and snapped her fingers.
The two men stepped forward. Satoshi noticed that one of them held a syringe.
Chapter 1
The Persian Gulf, Present Day
Fifteen Nautical Miles South of Abu Musa Island
Hamid rubbed his eyes with the back of a greasy glove. He then looked at the analog clock positioned next to his boat’s magnetic compass. Almost time. He peered out into the sea. He could hear nothing but the drone of the loud diesel motors.
This was madness, he thought to himself.
The sailors under his command didn’t know any better. They would follow orders, just as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN) had trained them to do. But as the boat rocked in the blackness of the sea, Hamid knew just how unusually dangerous their task was.
He called out, “Cut the engines.”
One of his sailors pulled back a lever and the noise of the engines dropped to nothing. Then he looked at Hamid with curious, expectant eyes. The dim yellow light hanging from the pilothouse ceiling illuminated his face. They stood quiet, looking at each other for a moment. Nothing but the sound of the small waves of the Persian Gulf tumbling into the hull.
Hamid said, “You have a question for me?”
The second sailor climbed up the ladder to the pilothouse. He too looked curious. The first sailor said, “No, Chief.”
“Good. As I told both of you before we left Abu Musa, it’s best not to ask questions about what we are doing tonight. Whatever you see out here, you are never to speak of it. Never. To anyone. Just remember to do as you’re told tonight, and don’t ask any questions.”
The sailors nodded. They were good men. Not men. Boys. The older of the two couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Hamid had picked them because they were hardworking and trustworthy. And also because they had no families on the island. He hated himself for it, but that had been a consideration.
“The stores are laid out on the main deck as you asked, Chief.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s enough supplies to feed a company of soldiers for a month. I’m not sure who would need that out here…” The sailor seemed to realize that he was asking a question and stopped. He said, “Is there anything else we need to do before the rendezvous? I checked the charts, and this is the right location.”
Hamid had triple-checked the time and location himself. He didn’t want to upset any of the men that worked in the Grey Buildings on Abu Musa. Life could get very bad for Hamid and his men if those men became unhappy. They had a schedule, and Hamid was but a component in the machine that produced according to that schedule. If things were not delivered on time, those men got angry. If anyone spoke of the work they did, they got angry. And when they got angry, Lt. Col. Pakvar got involved. No one wanted that.
Hamid had seen firsthand what happened when the rules of secrecy were broken. They had forced Hamid to watch the punishment of someone who had threatened their secrecy. Pakvar had looked him in the eye and told him that the same would happen to him if anyone ever found out what he knew. That was almost three years ago now.
Pakvar was Quds Force—the elite Special Forces branch of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. English-speaking countries referred to it as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Men in Hamid’s unit whispered that Pakvar had spent much of his time in Iraq, leading guerilla units in training, and planning attacks against US troops. He had arrived on Abu Musa four years ago, with the foreigners.
That was when the construction started. The Grey Buildings went up in a matter of months. Shipments of electronics and personnel arrived in a flurry. Sometimes by plane. Sometimes by ferry. On rare occasions, the shipments would be transported like they would tonight. Hamid knew that these shipments were one of the biggest secrets Pakvar’s men held.
The Grey Buildings were three stories tall and had very few windows. A grey stone exterior. No other markings. This was strange for the Iranian military. Normally there would be propaganda plastered up on just about every bare surface.
None of the men Hamid worked with knew what went on inside these buildings. The men who worked inside the Grey Buildings almost never left. They always arrived on their transports at night, wearing masks, and departed in the same fashion. Food preparation, resupply, and trash collection to the structures had strict procedures that the IRGC support staff had to follow. It allowed the buildings to remain completely closed off to the rest of the island.
There were many rumors about what went on there, of course. Some said it was a secret Iranian military base to spy on foreign ships in the Persian Gulf; others claimed that it was a nuclear weapons facility or a chemical weapons research lab. Half of the island was an Iranian military base, so it made sense for the Iranian government to locate a secret installation there.
Abu Musa was located at the western end of the Strait of Hormuz, in the hot waters
between Iran and Dubai. Every day, oil tankers and warships passed the island on their way in or out of the Gulf. Over the past few decades, Iran and the United Arab Emirates had had several disputes over who actually owned the land. Then Iran had stationed military personnel there, and the disputes didn’t much matter. The Iranian Air Force had begun placing jets there in the mid-2000s.
Hamid had joined the IRGCN over fifteen years ago and had risen to the rank of chief petty officer. He had always liked the ocean, growing up near Jask, another Iranian oceanside city. When the chance to work on patrol craft had come up, he had jumped at the opportunity. Years of hard labor, baking in the hot sun while on these patrol boats, had taken its toll on him. But he still loved being at sea, regardless of the mission that they trained him for.
He looked at the large-caliber machine gun that sat on a five-foot stand on the aft deck. These sailors that Hamid commanded had probably chanted “death to America” with their teenage companions during boot camp. They probably looked at that weapon and were eager for the chance to use it in combat. Hamid wasn’t sure when his personal beliefs had begun to stray from the politics of his organization, but they had.
Perhaps it had been the first time he had looked up at a US Navy aircraft carrier steaming past his patrol craft at twice his speed. The sheer size and formidability of those floating city-sized ships made Iran’s patrol craft seem like some silly joke.
But Hamid didn’t think that was why he had lost faith in his country’s regime. The futility of preparing for war against a great foe had not changed his beliefs. More likely, his internal beliefs had changed when his wife had given birth to their first child. Hamid had spent his days on the steamy waters of the Gulf, and his nights placing his finger into the tiny, perfect hand of his new son.
The man that Pakvar had murdered in front of him that night had a son, too.
Hamid still heard that poor boy’s screams in his sleep. It had been late at night, three years ago. Hamid was tying up his patrol craft to the dock. Pakvar was standing at the end of the pier and called him over. They drove to the Grey Building and Hamid finally found out what lay inside.
Pakvar brought Hamid down a series of concrete stairs, deeper and deeper underground. Hamid couldn’t believe how far down the structure continued. They passed rooms filled with computers. Thousands of computers. Small square boxes, fans humming. No monitors. They were lined up on shelves, stacked three rows high. Every room had wires and piping connected to the network. There were very few people who actually worked here, Hamid realized. Whatever this place was, it did not appear to be what any of the gossipers on the island had thought.
When they arrived in the dungeon-like room Pakvar had been taking him to, Hamid covered his mouth in horror.
There was an Asian man and his family, each naked and bleeding, sprawled out next to each other on the cold concrete floor. The Asian man was older. He looked to be in his fifties. The woman that Hamid assumed was the man’s wife lay next to her boy. None of them moved. A few of Pakvar’s goons stood over them, machine guns in hand. The Asian man looked up at them all, terror in his bloodshot eyes.
Pakvar clutched Hamid’s arm and said, “Today you begin working for us. You will provide us with logistics transportation using your patrol craft. All of our activities need to remain confidential. Is that understood?”
Hamid nodded. He looked at the family on the floor.
Pakvar leaned forward and whispered into Hamid’s ear. “No one can know of our secrets.” He turned to one of the uniformed men in the room and nodded, his thick and dark eyebrows furrowed as he shouted a command. Then the family was dumped alive into some type of oven. Pakvar walked to the wall and flipped the switch. He stared at Hamid as he did it.
The screams were like nothing Hamid had ever heard. He looked away, the taste of bile on his tongue, his knees weak. The heat from the oven made him sweat.
When the flames overcame them and the screams subsided, Pakvar walked up to Hamid. His words were like ice. “This man tried to tell others of what we were doing here. You cannot. You can take your boat and flee across the sea at any time. But I am told that you have a family residing on this island. I promise you this: if you ever speak of what you see us do…or if you ever flee…your family will suffer this fate that you witnessed here tonight.”
Hamid’s eyes watered, both from the furnace and the horror. He nodded agreement.
As they walked back up the steps, he found himself wondering just where the smoke exited the building. Would others on the island notice the smokestacks? Not this late at night. Were there bits of human ash floating up into the air and then falling into the sea? Would his ash someday be scattered into the sea the very same way? A dull, helpless feeling overcame him.
After that night, every day had been a prison sentence. Hamid became the ship driver for those who worked in the Grey Buildings on Abu Musa. His normal chain of command knew that he was getting his orders from Lt. Col. Pakvar—and they knew not to ask any questions. On a typical day, Hamid would patrol the coastal waters of Abu Musa and then return home to his family at night.
But about twice a month, a message would arrive that he was to report to the Grey Buildings at a certain hour. There, Pakvar would give him a rendezvous location and a time. Out into the Gulf he would travel. Sometimes he was to bring supplies to the rendezvous point. Sometimes he was to pick something up. Always at night, and always in secret.
Usually, these transfers had been conducted with other small vessels. Smuggler speedboats from Dubai or somewhere else on the other side of the Gulf. An occasional passing tanker. Fishing vessels. Once it was a tug.
Sometimes he was tasked with personnel transfers. Those were interesting. Hamid was pretty sure that none of the men and women he transported were Iranian. They always wore masks, and they never spoke to him. Hamid had always gone alone and had kept quiet about what he saw.
Tonight was different, however. Tonight he was not alone. Something about tonight was extra important. Pakvar had made that clear. Hamid was sorry that he had to drag these young men out to help him, but Pakvar had made it mandatory. There was some heavy equipment tonight.
“Hamid!” Youthful excitement in the voice.
Hamid looked down at the main deck and saw his sailors looking out into the dark water. An enormous submarine mast rose up out of the water, twenty-five meters ahead of them. It came almost straight up, froth and swirls of black water reflecting the night sky above as it rolled off the submarine’s hull. It was bigger than any of the Iranian Kilo-class submarines that Hamid had seen at Bandar Abbas.
“Is that what we are here for?”
“Eyes out front. Mouths shut. Do as I say.”
“Yes, Chief,” the men said in unison.
A hatch opened and red light spilled out of it. Then a stream of men climbed out, holding on to grips on the mast and heading down to the platform area on the front of the hull. They all wore dark masks with small eye and mouth holes. Hamid could hear a few of them speak to each other. Chinese, he was pretty sure. The same language that the foreigners in the Grey Building spoke.
A voice called across from the submarine in thickly accented Persian. “We are ready to receive.”
Hamid called back, “Stand by to take lines.”
He took his patrol craft out of idle and inched it forward at one knot of speed. He called to his men, “Throw over the fenders.”
The two sailors threw over the long white rubber cylinders. They splashed in the water and floated, cushioning them as the submarine impacted the patrol craft.
Hamid yelled, “Cast lines.”
Masked men on the hull of the submarine held out their hands, waiting.
Hamid’s two sailors threw bow and stern lines towards the men on the submarine. The men on the submarine wrapped them around some type of cleat and headed over to the patrol craft. The two vessels were joined. For a moment, the groups stood, staring at each other.
A red spotlight
shone down from the mast, illuminating Hamid’s patrol craft. He could make out two men standing behind the light. One of them fixed a bulky machine gun to a turret on the mast. The other man, adjusting the red light, shouted orders to his subordinates below. Two of the men on the hull set up a small gangway that allowed the men to walk from the submarine hull to the forward deck of the patrol craft. The submarine sailors quickly moved onto Hamid’s ship and began picking up the supplies.
Hamid pointed to several dozen cases sitting on the aft deck of his vessel. “It’s all here.”
The men didn’t say anything; they just began lining up to transfer them back to the submarine. Before long, they had formed a chain of twenty men. They passed the cases of supplies to one another, hand over hand, moving each box onto, and then into, the submarine. They moved fast.
Hamid looked up at the men behind the red searchlight. They reminded him of prison security men in a guard tower, watching over the yard while the prisoners worked.
Every day since that night is like a prison sentence.
About halfway through the transfer, several of the masked men carried one particular wooden crate that Hamid recognized as important. This was the heavy equipment that Pakvar had emphasized must get aboard the submarine. He had been told that this crate was more critical than any other piece of cargo on board.
DM-B3 Mono Pulse RADAR was stenciled on the outside of the crate.
Hamid didn’t think that the Chinese needed radars like this on their submarines. This radar was used in an Iranian cruise missile. Why they wanted that monstrous piece of equipment underwater, he had no idea. He walked back into his ship’s pilothouse.
The unloading process took about twenty minutes in total. Hamid made sure that his sailors helped where they could and stayed out of the way when needed. They each worked up quite a sweat in the humid Gulf air.
Hamid heard a crackle on his ship-to-ship radio and climbed the ladder back up to the pilothouse. He listened for a moment but didn’t hear anything. He scanned a few of the Iranian military frequencies and heard nothing. He then set the radio back on the bridge-to-bridge radio frequency. Nothing. Then he realized that the volume was almost all the way down. One of his young sailors must have turned it down without Hamid noticing. They should know better than that. He moved the dial up and immediately heard a voice speaking in English.
