Times of Turmoil: Christian End Times Thriller (Book 1)

by Cliff Ball

  Chapter 10

  Most plans Gregory planned for the Middle East seemed to fail, but discontent was brewing anew, especially with the United States. Gregory found it another opportunity to bring his plans closer to fruition. Time after time, Israel had fended off invasion after invasion of their Arab neighbors, even when those neighbors had been fully armed with modern weapons supplied by Gregory’s weapons dealers. Gregory, being a person that never gave up, would keep trying until he found success.

  Now, the anger seemed to have shifted to the United States, especially with a weak President who had no idea what he was doing. The influential people in the Middle East thought it was a perfect time to begin an overthrow of American supported leaders, specifically in Iran.

  Another one of Gregory’s latest schemes had involved denying the American people oil from the Middle East, making them wait in long lines to get gas for their cars, and then he sent some scientists out to claim that oil was getting scarce around the world. One of Gregory’s cronies even came up with an idea to “save” the Earth by telling the poor and uneducated people around the world that they needed to stop using up Earth’s supposedly limited resources, because the Earth was cooling to unhealthy levels because of the use of these resources, and an ice age was imminent.

  Later, Gregory would have scientists claim that the Earth was warming because of human activity and Earth’s supposedly limited resources couldn’t handle the impending super heat wave. All he would need to do now was to have educators in liberal universities, the media, and politicians in key spots start showing this made-up data to the people to get them to believe it. He knew there would always be people who would believe everything the media, their teachers, or their government told them. The problem was the minority of people who always thought for themselves. Eventually, those free thinkers would have to be disposed of so Gregory and people like him would have free reign and no one would be questioning them.

  With that in mind, Gregory arrived in Paris in the summer of 1978 to find out who was willing to lead the new Muslim revolution he had heard was percolating just beneath the surface. He wanted to encourage the zeal to stoke passions even hotter. He had helped stoke civil unrest in Iran against the Shah and hoped the man he would meet with would overthrow the Shah in the coming months. Gregory really didn’t care that he was dealing with Muslims, for their cause – ridding themselves of Christians and Jews and forcing everyone to live under a tyrannical system of government – suited his own plans.

  The thought never once crossed Gregory’s mind that, if they could, they’d separate his head from his body and tear him limb from limb because he was a heathen in their minds. The only reason he wasn’t harmed in this sea of extremists, is because he had power and money, something everyone all over the world admired. Without that, Gregory would’ve been dead years ago.

  Gregory stepped into the meeting room at the hotel he and the men he was meeting with were staying. While there wasn’t going to be but five men meeting with him, apparently the hotel staff had set-up the room as if there would be two hundred people showing up. Gregory rolled his eyes and decided he would talk to the hotel owner later about this mistake. He paced the floor waiting, until the other men entered and Gregory went to shake their hands.

  Unlike in the past when he met with Hitler and his associates, this time Gregory didn’t notice the darkness that filled the room when Muslim cleric Ruhollah Khomeini and his associates entered, for Gregory too was filled with spiritual darkness. Khomeini was just the person Gregory wanted to rule over the unwashed masses. They two agreed that the masses needed supervision and the cleric would rule with an iron fist.

  The American thought this would be a great experiment to see how well such a system of government would work world-wide. Khomeini, not one who ever looked happy, said to Gregory, “I’m here, now what do you want to talk about?”

  “Straight to business, I see. Good. I’ll get straight to the point: I want to help you depose the Shah and then help you put yourself in power over your people,”

  Khomeini looked at Gregory curiously for a minute before he replied, “What’s in it for you, heathen?”

  Gregory chuckled. These religious types and their grandiose self-righteousness never fail to amuse me, he thought to himself. Then he said out loud, “I seek to bring down the Christian and Jewish influence over the world. I have to start somewhere, and with your help, we can do it,”

  “While I do believe in crushing those unbelievers in Allah, why should I let you help me? From where I’m standing, I need no help,”

  “You need my help because I provide something everyone universally needs, whether you admit to it or not,”

  “Get to the point, heathen,” Khomeini crossed his arms while putting a bigger scowl on his face. His associates didn’t look very happy either.

  “You need money for a revolution of this magnitude and I have it. Does this sound like something that would interest you?”

  “Excuse me while I talk with my associates,” replied the Iranian, as he took his associates a few feet away to discuss Gregory’s proposal to offer money.

  Minutes passed as Khomeini discussed the offer of money with his associates. When they were through talking, Khomeini walked back over to Gregory, and asked, “If I were to take your money, what’s the catch and will I have to do anything in return?”

  “There’s no catch and you don’t have to do anything in return. All I want is for you lead your people in the way you want to without interference from the West and it’ll show your friends in the Middle East that the United States and its allies are nothing but paper tigers. Eventually, your friends in the region will overthrow western-backed leaders in your region and then all of you can wipe out Israel with help from all of your Muslim brothers. What do you say?”

  “I need the Shah gone before I ever step foot in Iran again. Tell me, how will you get rid of him?”

  “The Shah is easily bribed. All I have to do is offer him a good sum of money to leave and he will,”

  “Interesting. The United States won’t be happy with this development. How do I avoid my overthrow by that government?”

  “No need to worry about that,” Gregory answered with contempt in his voice, “the President is an idiot and so is everyone in Congress. Destroy the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and they’ll leave you alone. Now, will you take my money or are you going to pester me with questions all day?”

  “Yes, destroying the Embassy does seem like a good plan. I’ll have my followers plan that once I gain power. I believe you have answered all of my questions for now, so I will gladly take your money, Mr. Evans, and then we can bring revolution to the people of Iran.”

  Gregory wrote a large check to Khomeini, and then he decided to fly to Tehran to talk to the Shah, Mohammad Pahlavi. Pahlavi was for modernization of Iran, including being very pro-western, and always spoke to business leaders about bringing their business to his country. All of these ideas irritated the religious clerics of Iran, who thought the United States in particular was the Great Satan and was corrupting the people of Iran, so civil unrest was currently happening all over the country. Gregory cared nothing about that as he waited to meet with the Shah.

  Pahlavi finally arrived, shook hands with Gregory, and asked, “What can I do for you Mr. Evans?”

  “I need you to give up your power and leave Iran,”

  Pahlavi laughed, and replied, “You must be joking. Why would I give up power?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because your life is worth more to you than your position?”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “Not at all. There are people who plan on overthrowing you in the next year or two, and if you value your own life and that of your family, you’ll take your leave of Iran,”

  “And who are you to order me around?”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of men behind the scenes who are the real powers in the world. Correct?”

  “Of course,”r />
  “I’m the main power. You don’t do what I want you to do and I can make your life very miserable, even more than it is currently with the civil unrest around Iran. I have a plan that requires you and your family leaving without making a fuss. You can either go quietly or not, but you will vacate your position. What do you choose?”

  “I’ll leave quietly. I suppose my family could use a vacation, but do we get to return?”

  “No. You’ll exile you and your family to the United States and I’ll inform the government that you are not to be extradited back to Iran just because the new powers-that-be insist on it. Thank you for your time. I expect you to leave shortly.” the two men went their separate ways.

  Early in 1979, Shah Pahlavi announced suddenly that he and his family were going on vacation. A month later, several million Iranians welcomed Khomeini back to Iran. His revolutionaries began taking over the government institutions and once that was completed, Khomeini made it clear that any other revolt by the people was against Allah and was blasphemy.

  Later that year, a demand was made of the United States to return the Shah. When it didn’t happen, followers of Khomeini stormed the United States Embassy and took hostages. The United States President, Jimmy Carter, blustered that the country wouldn’t yield to blackmail, but when he attempted to send in a rescue operation, the mission failed, ending in the deaths of eight Americans and the destruction of two helicopters. The whole episode made the United States look weak.

  Gregory Evans’ plans were right on track until Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, decided to invade Iran for no apparent reason, then the Shah died, and Algeria offered to be the mediator between the Iranians and the Americans. The hostages were released after being held for four hundred and forty-four days and the new American President, Ronald Reagan, got all the credit for it; which irritated Gregory, because he didn’t think the American people would’ve voted for him if Carter hadn’t been such a nincompoop. Gregory decided he would have to eventually start interfering in American elections so he could get the result he desired.

  Terrorism was on the rise throughout the rest of the 1980’s due to Iran’s encouragement of it, so Gregory decided to invest in the terrorists. Most of them wanted to start big, hit government buildings or financial centers, and try to bring down governments. Gregory thought they should start small: hijack airlines, blow up military outposts, and kill masses of civilians before they started in on destroying governments and economies.

  Some of the terrorists Gregory tried to control decided to stay rogue. They didn’t want anything to do with a heathen from America and would not be told what to do, even if he did have a lot of money. One such group was known as Islamic Jihad, who began their campaign of terror during the Civil War in Lebanon. They began with the bombing of the French Embassy in Beirut, followed by the bombing of the United States Embassy a year later, and then the bombing of a barracks containing a multinational force of French paratroopers and American Marines. The group also went after civilians, assassinated the President of the American University in Beirut, and also attempted to assassinate the Kuwaiti ruler, but that failed. Eventually, their downfall came about when they tried to abduct Soviet diplomats, but the KGB came down hard on the group, which caused some other Middle Eastern countries to enter the fray. Eventually, Islamic Jihad merged with Hezbollah.

  Other terrorists around the world did what Gregory wanted. They hijacked passenger planes and the occasional cruise ship, bombed places where people gathered, blew up buses and trains, assassinated various world leaders, but the United States and other Western powers barely did anything about it. The United States did retaliate against Libya for bombing a nightclub in Berlin, but in general, the United States seemed more interested in bringing down the Soviet Union and interfering in Central America. This was because a couple of Reagan’s advisers, the Vice President, and one member of his Cabinet, were paid by Gregory to re-direct the President to other activities, which were hobby wars in places like Granada. Gregory even had the United States supply weapons to the Taliban in Afghanistan so they could fight the Soviet Union, and Gregory knew that doing so would eventually come back and bite the United States.

  In the meantime, he held the terrorists back from attacking the United States itself, there would be a proper time to strike, and Gregory told them it would be sometime in the next ten years, they needed to be patient.

  The Soviet Union collapsing at the end of the 1980’s was a complete surprise to Gregory, he had honestly thought they were as strong as they said they were, but apparently they weren’t, and he thought that maybe his age was causing his mental faculties to be impaired, which was why he thought he missed the signs. Except for the United States, the rest of the Western powers were all on the decline too, thanks to Gregory’s manipulating of their economies and their governments.

  Unfortunately, despite Gregory’s best efforts, the United States refused to go down the drain. He was beginning to think it would take another generation or two to bring the United States to the same level of decay as the Europeans. That disappointed him, since he wanted to see it happen in his lifetime.

  Fortunately, Michael was turning out to be the son that Jason never had been, and he would more than likely see the eventual downfall of the United States and its irritatingly Christian influence. The only thing left to do was for Michael to graduate high school in 1992, and then enter the radicalized halls of Harvard. At his advanced age, Gregory was looking forward to finally turning the reigns over to Michael.

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