Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  “I wasn’t aware that there was a situation,” she’d told him. And Octavio had chuckled, his voice low and in her estimation his accented English very sexy.

  “I didn’t want to bother you with something you could do nothing about, or until things began to get out of control.”

  She’d been alarmed, this call coming so soon after the Hutchinson Island business. “Tell me.”

  So he had explained about the CIA’s chief of station who’d been snooping around him and his business dealings, presumably involving not only there in Venezuela but elsewhere, which would have included Anne Marie. “I was told that she had chartered a private jet to fly her to Washington.” And the timing on the heels of a certain event in Florida was enough for him to take action.

  She’d been afraid at that moment, because Octavio was talking about the assassination of an important CIA officer, an act that U.S. authorities would investigate with extreme vigor, but also because he’d made some sort of a connection to her and Hutchinson Island.

  “How could you have been sure that the CIA was investigating you?” she’d asked, almost using the pronoun us instead.

  “I wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but after reading the documents that she meant to carry to Washington, I was glad that I followed my instincts,” Octavio said. “And you should be glad of it as well, because not only were you and I linked, but the woman was making a case for a connection between you and me and the Florida business.”

  “Me, by name?” Anne Marie had asked.

  “Yes,” Octavio said. “But my security people assure me that this connection may have only been speculation, un teoria, a theory, because there have been no attacks on any of my online accounts, looking for information. Have your security people detected anything?”

  “No,” Anne Marie had assured him, and afterwards she had called Gunther to alert him of the possibility and he too had assured her he’d detected no increase in interest.

  “Did you admit anything to Miguel?” Wolfhardt had asked sharply.

  “No.”

  “He didn’t press you about Hutchinson Island?”

  “No.”

  “Good.”

  And finally her encrypted phone chimed again less than one hour ago, and Jeremiah Thaddeus Schlagel was practically shouting like he did in his sermons. “If I’m reading this right, it’s about time,” he’d bellowed. “I’m here, at the Raffles. Meet me in that whorehouse of a bar upstairs at eight.”

  She’d gotten dressed in a simple black Versace pantsuit and a plain white silk blouse, and riding over now to Dubai’s newest and most famous hotel in the back of her Mercedes Maybach. Some of the fear she’d felt after Octavio’s call had begun to fade, because the next phase of her operation for al-Naimi and the Saudi royals was about to begin.

  About time indeed. Fourteen months ago after she’d set Wolfhardt on the task of creating a nuclear power station meltdown, proving nuclear energy was far too vulnerable to attack and far too dangerous a method with which to generate electricity, she’d contacted one of her largest investors back in the States and invited him to come over to Dubai to talk.

  “Money’s getting a bit tight, darlin’,” he’d told her in his fake rural Kansas drawl. “Unless you got something interesting. Something I could set my teeth into.”

  “You’re an ambitious man, Jerry,” she’d told him.

  “Yes, I am, I admit it.”

  “And you would make a fine president.”

  For the first time since she’d known the man he’d had nothing to say.

  “But you would need a cause. Something you could get behind on your television and radio networks. Something the religious right, your flock, could become enthused about. Wildly enthused, enough to push you to the top.”

  “I’m listening,” Schlagel had said that day, his Kansas drawl replaced by his flat Midwest accent. He’d been born and raised in Milwaukee, and whenever something unexpected overtook him, the Wisconsin in him came back.

  “Not yet. But when it happens it’ll be deadly, with a promise of more to come unless the right man is there to lead the charge.”

  “Something like al-Quaeda? Another nine/eleven?”

  “Bigger,” she’d promised.

  “When?”

  “This’ll take a bit of work, so I want you to remain patient. But I also want you to get your organization geared up to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Tell them you had a revelation that something stupendous is in the wind. God spoke to you, and commanded you to get your flock ready, because they’d be needed.”

  Schlagel had chucked. “Not bad, darlin’,” he’d drawled. “Not bad at all.”

  * * *

  Her chauffeur dropped her off in front of the hotel built in the style of an ancient Egyptian pyramid in glass and steel instead of limestone, with the apex completely sheathed in windows so patrons of the city’s most famous drinking establishment, the China Moon Champagne Bar, could see the entire city right out to the edge of the desert.

  Inside the mammoth lobby one of the white-gloved attendants scurried over and escorted her to the elevators, a service the hotel provided for everyone who walked through the doors.

  It was a weeknight, but Dubai was a business city, so the lobby was bustling, a half-dozen people riding up in the elevator with her, at least two of them speaking with German accents, and another speaking French with a Chinese woman and an Arab male dressed casually in jeans, an open-collar shirt, and a khaki jacket.

  Schlagel was seated in a high-backed red upholstered chair at a low table in the far corner of the large room, and when he spotted Anne Marie coming over he got to his feet, a big grin on what she’d always considered was a broad peasant’s face, perpetually filled with cunning and deceit. And except for his crudeness, almost total lack of manners or social graces, he was an extremely bright man, a good judge of human nature, and a shrewd investor, who at her last financial reckoning was worth at least two billion dollars, much of that hidden in offshore banks, including the UAEIBC here in Dubai, against the inevitable day his empire collapsed and he had to run.

  “No way I’m going to end up like Brother Jim Bakker,” he’d told her once. “Just hedging my bets like you and your old man before you.” He’d done his homework on her as she had on him before she took any of his money.

  Finding out about him, the real man behind the public image, hadn’t been easy because he’d been very good at covering his tracks and inventing a new persona for himself, but Gunther had put the right people on the project about eight years ago and slowly most of the pieces came together.

  His real name was Donald Deutsch, and he’d been born to a working-class family from the wrong side of Milwaukee’s tracks; the one bit of his public background that wasn’t far from the truth. He’d left home when he was seventeen or eighteen and joined the army where he learned how to take care of himself physically, and where he used his street smarts to run several illegal operations at each base he was assigned to; gambling and prostitution rings as well as trafficking tax-free booze and cigarettes from the PX, which he sold on the black market in Europe.

  But he’d apparently run through the money he’d made, and after the army he’d ended up broke and busted in San Francisco at the age of twenty-one. Newly released from the county lockup he’d stumbled into a small storefront church that fed the homeless, and it was there, according to Gunther’s researchers, that Deutsch found his salvation — his financial salvation.

  Changing his name, he took up the old-time religion, which initially included faith healing, to conceal the exact amount that his growing flock of believers invested in God through the Reverend Jeremiah. He opened storefront churches all up and down the California coast, raking in money by the tens of thousands at first and then into the hundreds of thousands.

  And Schlagel was not only very good at his preaching, he was a charmer, Gunther wrote in his report. Parishioners gave him money, which he supposedly invested for them, g
iving them a good return and only keeping a tithe for the church. In actuality he’d been running a highly successful Ponzi scheme that depended on the continual growth of his ministry and investors, and the provision that if a member left the church, his or her investments would remain with the church — to do God’s will.

  Eventually he sucked in beat cops, then police chiefs, local businessmen, and finally the mayors of some of the small towns where he preached, as well as state legislators.

  He bought his first radio station in Fresno in the late eighties, then another in Port Angeles, Washington — by then he had branched out to a half-dozen western states, so that he was raking in enough money from ordinary contributions that he was able to pay off the last of his Ponzi scheme investors.

  Then eleven years ago Schlagel moved his ministry to McPherson, a small town in western Kansas, built a huge church and television studio and started his own Soldiers of Salvation (SOS) Network that was initially based on Pat Robertson’s 707 Club on the Christian Broadcasting Network. Within five years, his television and radio networks, as well as newspapers and magazines across the country, made him not only one of the most popular preachers on air, but brought him to the attention of presidents, and just three years ago Time magazine had named him Man of the Year, and called him, “America’s man of God, the spiritual adviser to the White House.”

  Besides money and the good life he led in secret, Schlagel’s chief ambition had become the same as Pat Robertson’s; he wanted to be President of the United States, and he was willing to do whatever it took to get there.

  They shook hands when she reached him, and she smiled. She was going to get him the White House, and Hutchinson Island would be his start as well as her salvation.

  “You’re looking particularly chic this evening,” he told her. He was dressed in a smartly tailored charcoal gray suit, and the look on his face was that of a man who was supremely confident that he was about to be handed the universe.

  “Thanks,” Anne Marie said, and they sat down.

  Schlagel had already ordered a bottle of Krug champagne, and he poured her a glass. “It’s your favorite,” he said. “I remembered, though when I’m alone I prefer a cold Bud. Simple tastes for a simple man.”

  Anne Marie had to laugh at his disingenuousness. “Bullshit, Donald,” she said softly, and he became suddenly wary, like an animal who figured he was being backed into a corner and wanting to get out rather than fight.

  “Interesting name,” he said, his smile fading.

  “Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea you coming here. We shouldn’t be seen together.”

  “After tonight we won’t be,” he said. “But something like this cannot be trusted to some Internet connection, or satellite phone, even if it’s encrypted.”

  “What do you want?” Anne Marie asked.

  “Is Hutchinson Island the opening gun?”

  “Yes,” Anne Marie said, and she watched as the ramifications of the disaster began to hit him, what it could mean for him, and how it could be manipulated to his advantage.

  “What’s in it for you?” he asked.

  “I want you to turn public sentiment against nuclear energy. It’s your new cause. You had your revelation that something like this was going to happen, and now it has. Nuclear energy is against the laws of God and nature, and should be damned. The devil’s business.”

  “Never preach to a preacher,” Schlagel said. “All I want to know is what’s in it for you, because I don’t even want to hear how you pulled it off. Where’s the gain for you, ’cause sure as hell you can’t believe that simply shutting down the hundred or so nuclear power plants in the States will have any serious effect on the price of oil. Anyway you’ve been selling short, so you’ve made money on the way up and on the way back down.”

  “Never talk financial dealings with a Harvard MBA and a hedge fund manager who has no risk of going broke anytime soon.”

  Schlagel laughed. “But Hutchinson Island is just a start. I can make it something my people will believe in, but there’ll have to be more.”

  “Even if it was possible to cause another meltdown, it’s too risky.”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?” Schlagel asked. “You ever heard of Eve Larsen, an environmental scientist working for NOAA?”

  Anne Marie shook her head. “Should I have?” she asked, but something in Schlagel’s change of attitude all of a sudden was bothersome.

  “Yes, because she’s just become my new cause. Hutchinson Island is good, the timing is perfect, but Dr. Larsen has become even better.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She’s been preaching alternative energy sources. She wants all the nukes to be shut down, but she also wants to shut down coal-fired electrical plants as well as natural gas facilities and she wants all cars to run on electricity.”

  “Won’t happen anytime soon,” Anne Marie said. “People hammering away at that idea are a dime a dozen. Everyone listens, but just to be polite. Oil is here to stay at least through the end of the century.” But even as she said it, something in the way Schlagel was watching her made her afraid.

  “She wants to buy an oil platform and put it in the Gulf Stream, and stick some sort of paddle wheels into the water to generate electricity. She says she can supply all the electricity we need without burning coal or gas or use nukes.”

  “Wouldn’t work.”

  “Wait, there’s more,” Schlagel said, his deep brown eyes flashing. He was into a sermon, but he was enough in control to keep his voice low. “And it keeps getting better. Where do you think she wants to put her rig? Right offshore from Hutchinson Island. She wants to send her power through underwater cables to the plant’s electrical distribution system, and shut down the reactors.”

  Anne Marie had heard nothing about this, and she knew she should have. “Coincidence?”

  “Doesn’t matter. She’s promising not only cheap electricity to power our trains, planes, trucks, and cars, but she’s preaching that she’ll change the weather. Get rid of all those nasty hurricanes and such.” Schlagel’s grin broadened. He was reaching his point. “Now that’s God’s work she’s setting herself to do. Her own private little God project.”

  Anne Marie’s anxiety eased a little. “The woman is a crackpot.”

  “Well, the crackpot has just gone and won herself the Nobel Peace Prize, what do you think about them apples?”

  Anne Marie sat back, trying to see the advantages, because surely they were there, hidden somewhere in the clutter. “She’ll have to fail,” she mumbled half to herself, but Schlagel picked up on it.

  “You’re damned right. Hutchinson Island will be my rallying point, but the woman’s God Project will be my battle cry, and I’ll need as much time as possible to get my people behind me — to get the entire country so up in arms against nuclear power, and against the kind of tinkering she wants to do on God’s playing field that our oil will be king. At least through my lifetime.”

  “And afterwards?” Anne Marie asked, though for the life of her she had no idea why.

  Schlagel laughed. “Haven’t you grown up enough, darlin’, to realize there ain’t no hereafter?” He leaned forward. “I want you to get one of your good old boys to give the little lady her platform, and maybe help with the money for her waterwheels. And you can leave the rest to me.”

  It was never about anything else but timing, of course. In that Schlagel was right. Nuclear energy had to become unpalatable to the public, which he would help bring about, and Dr. Larsen had to fail, for which she would arrange for a little insurance just in case something happened to the good reverend.

  She raised her glass of champagne. “The God Project,” she said.

  “Leave it to me,” Schlagel said, clinking glasses.

  * * *

  That same evening back at her penthouse apartment, Anne Marie telephoned Wolfhardt, and explained everything to him.

  “I’ll call on Mr. DeCamp, immedia
tely,” he said.

  “Yes, do that.”

  “But I don’t think waiting for her to actually get her oil platform and perform her experiment is such a good idea. She needs to be assassinated.”

  “It could come back to us,” Anne Marie said. She was thinking about al-Naimi, and she almost said the Saudis, but she held off.

  “Nothing would reflect on your oil interests, I can practically guarantee as much.”

  “Who then?” she asked, but she suddenly realized that Wolfhardt was only stating the obvious; when fingers were pointed they would be toward Schlagel and his people. She chuckled, the noise coming all the way from the back of her throat. The irony would be delicious, actually pitting her and the reverend — two allies — against each other. Actually in concert with each other. Asset multipliers, such operations were called.

  “I think you know,” Wolfhardft said.

  “Of course,” Anne Marie agreed. “And I trust you implicitly, but with care, Gunther, and with fail-safes and contingencies.”

  * * *

  It was two in the morning when she called Schlagel’s encrypted phone. He was still at the Raffles and after five rings when he finally answered she could hear at least two women giggling in the background. “This had best be very good, darlin’,” he said, and he sounded drunk.

  “Can you talk?”

  “I can always talk. What do you want?”

  “I want you to start now.”

  Suddenly Schlagel was sober, and he sounded guarded. “Something happen?”

  “Let’s just say I had an epiphany,” Anne Marie told him.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Go after Dr. Larsen right now, sharp and hard. Send a couple of your soldiers after her. Shoot up her car, burn down her apartment, attack one of her lab assistants, maybe smash some of her scientific equipment. I don’t care what.”

  Schalgel was silent for several beats, and Anne Marie could almost see him figuring the angles, working out the percentages. “I want the bitch aboard the oil platform.”