Mrs. Vo nodded and pointed a laser pen to scan Rick’s badge. “We’ll let you know if and when time becomes available. Thank you.”
As he returned to his office on the second floor, Rick wondered if he’d get a meeting any time in the next month, and if so, how much. Heston’s meetings were often notoriously short, rarely took place sitting down, and he expected a rapid-fire rundown of facts and figures. When Rick got back to his desk, he was surprised to see a red-flagged e-mail pop up on his screen. Opening it, he read, “Mr. Heston will see you next Tuesday at 11 a.m. Clear your schedule: You may be staying for lunch.”
Rick smirked. “Those key-logging gnomes know everything.”
Before Rick accepted the job at GlobalMAP, he had been a U.S. Air Force Captain in the USAF Cyber Command (AFCYBER). His specialty had been database fusion and data mining. Air Force tech recruiters tapped him while he was in his final year of college in Texas at Rice University, pursuing a Masters in computer science. Their Direct Commission program included a hefty “critical skills” signing bonus that paid off nearly all Rick’s college debt. Just a week after graduating, he attended the USAF Direct Commissioning Selectee Orientation Course (DC-SOC), which was commonly called the “Direct Commissionee’s Charm School.” It was held in two eight-week cycles each summer on the campus of the USAF Officers Academy near Colorado Springs. This was an intensive series of short courses in military law, drill and ceremonies, military etiquette and courtesy, military report writing, along with some fairly superficial background courses on military history, strategy, Air Force warfighting doctrine, and weapons systems. Most of his classmates were destined for either USAF drone programs or the Cyber Command. Any of them who had already earned postgraduate degrees came into the service as First Lieutenants rather than as Second Lieutenants.
Not surprisingly, Rick’s first and only duty assignment for his six years in the Air Force was The Hole -- the USAF Cyber Command’s “Cyber Warfighting Platform” at Offut Air Force Base, ten miles south of Omaha, near the town of Bellevue. This extensive underground bunker was built early in the Cold War and was the former home of the U.S Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), and even earlier it had housed the Strategic Air Command (SAC). In 2025, after USSTRATCOM relocated to Colorado, AFCYBER relocated from Lackland Air Force Base to Offut and took over most of the empty office space in The Hole.
There was a delay of six months after he graduated while Rick waited for his full-scope security clearance Special Background Investigation (SBI) to be completed. He spent most of that time working on online officer development courses. The next five and half years while based in Eastern Nebraska went by in a blur. He was hip-deep in joint service data mining, database fusion, Computer Network Exploitation (CNE), Computer Network Attack (CNA), and database exploitation, at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. He always lived on base and never had much of a social life. He held a Top Secret security clearance with SCI access and was read onto numerous intelligence and cyber compartmented programs.
In his second year at Offut, the Ebola DRC pandemic made its outbreak in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It was the world’s most devastating pandemic since the Black Death. It depleted the world’s overall population by 15% overall and a devastating 60% in Africa. Hardest hit were the sub-Saharan regions that had already been decimated by HIV/AIDS. The new Ebola strain had a 45% mortality rate in Africa’s general population, but a 95% mortality rate among those who were immuno-suppressed. .
The worldwide economic effects of the pandemic were profound. The prices of many commodities went into slumps, and currency inflation briefly abated. Demand for durable goods such as automobiles, appliances, and factory machinery sagged. Skilled workers and even manual laborers were more highly valued. Drone aircraft and autonomous ground vehicles became increasingly important.
The Ebola DRC outbreak also gave a huge boost to the growing dominance of the Thirdist movement. For the five preceding years, the Thirdist mullahs had been prophesying a global pandemic “in the near future” that would cleanse the world of unrighteousness. They called the predicted pandemic “The Great Cleansing.” And when it did come, they smugly crowed about it.
Rick felt relatively safe at Offut since pandemic precautions were scrupulously maintained by the active components of the US military. But he lost one aunt and one grandfather, both on his mother’s side of the family, to Ebola DRC. The pandemic had nearly burned itself out by the time Rick was promoted to Captain, in his third year of service. And by the time Rick left the Air Force, new Ebola DRC cases were no longer reported in 190 countries, with just a few isolated hot spots in China and Mongolia.
Even before he left the Air Force, Rick had been eyeing GlobalMAP as a potential employer. He liked the fact that it had an outspokenly Christian management team. He also thought that CEO Harry Heston’s pro-gun stance was admirable. Rick had read that Heston often joined his security guards at the shooting range. And the thought of moving to Scotland, now perhaps the freest nation on earth, appealed to his libertarian sensibilities. Rick considered himself a Life First libertarian, meaning that the sanctity of life was paramount to individual liberty, and hence true libertarians could not consider themselves “pro-choice” if that choice resulted in the death of a baby. To wit: The baby’s life trumps the liberty of the mother or the whims of a eugenicist government. Rick also considered himself a staunch individualist. He rejected collectivism and all “progressive” schemes, including taxation -- especially progressive taxation that penalizes the most productive members of society and seeks to redistribute their wealth for political gain.
Rick had only two points of reluctance in taking a job with GlobalMAP. The first point was that Scotland had legalized abortions in 1967 and that they were ongoing. If he was leaving the American genocide, then he would have preferred that his destination be a nation where it was illegal to murder unborn babies. To leave the scene of one genocide only to witness another deeply saddened him. The majority of countries where abortion was illegal were in Africa and in Latin America, and any of those would have been his preference. The only country with this distinction in Europe was Ireland, but Ireland’s draconian gun laws bothered Rick nearly as much as the abortion issue in other countries.
His second point of trepidation in addition to the expected background investigations and drug screening was that the company made all employees consent to key logging. Every keystroke and mouse click that he made would be accessible to the company’s security office. The thought of that chafed him, but he didn’t consider it too much different from his experience in the Air Force, where he had lived under a microscope.
The e-mail from Mrs. Vo granting a lengthy meeting with Harry Heston raised Rick’s suspicions that the company’s security department might have somehow become privy to his meetings with Meital and Alan. He wondered if they had somehow been able to eavesdrop on him. He muttered aloud, “Maybe they deduced it, based on my web page searches. Clever.”
Meital had been raised in a non-observant Jewish home near Tel Aviv. Her father was a very successful raw materials import/export trader and broker who mostly handled purchases of billet steel. Her mother had worked for just a few years as a legal secretary before devoting herself to child-rearing. Meital became a Messianic Jew while she was attending art history school at Escola Superior de Disseny (ESDi) in Sabadell, Catalonia. Her recognition of Christ as the Messiah was prompted by seeing the Hebrew language documentary film Other Side of the Cross (“Ovi Ha Kora”).
Once they heard that she had “Gone Yeshua,” her Sabra parents disowned her. They made it clear that they would cease supporting her and that she would not be invited to any family gatherings until she regained her senses. It was her secular aunt and uncle who stepped in to pay for Meital’s last year at ESDi and who helped establish her in the art world. Her wealthy uncle was a benefactor of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. With her uncle’s referral, she got her first
job as an art auction cataloger with Bonham’s in London immediately after she graduated with a baccalaureate degree in Art History.
After just two years as a cataloger, Meital Landstuth (or Kathe M. Landstuth, as she was known professionally) started “bringing in estates” -- the auction world’s parlance for negotiating the sale of collections that included artworks, antiquarian books, collections of autographs, ancient arms and armor, fine wristwatches, saddles, and even wine collections. Her mastery of languages (Hebrew, English, German, Spanish, Catalan, Latin, and Arabic), her near-photographic memory, and her charming but subtly forceful personality all contributed to her becoming an art broker before she was 30 years old. One of her early estate acquisitions was a group of John Constable landscapes that had long been anticipated in the art world. That auction was a huge success and cemented her position as a fine art broker. Although she was still formally associated with Bonham’s, she was no longer on their payroll, instead becoming an independent contractor.
In addition to auctions, Meital also arranged private treaty sales between buyers and sellers. This work was tricky and involved a lot of travel. These brokered sales also required great discretion, because the sellers were often gentry families who were having financial difficulties. They usually didn’t want their names mentioned until after the buyer’s bona fides and clear intent to buy were established. Non-disclosure agreements were the norm with private treaty sale clients. So were eccentric personalities among the sellers and buyers.
When Meital met Rick, she was in Edinburgh on an indefinite (“two-year plus”) contract to catalog a wealthy Blackhall family’s large collection of paintings, sculptures, and swords. In this case, the 1,800-piece collection was being cataloged and appraised, but not for auction or for sale. Rather, this catalog was needed to equitably divide the monetary value of the collection between five future heirs. Simply passing out the paintings, “one for you, and one for you…” would be absurd when their values ranged from less than 1,000 NEuros to as much as 3,000,000 NEuros.
Meital had a room at a monthly rate at the Cairn Hotel on Windsor Street, a half mile from the Waverly train station. This modest older hotel was convenient to transportation and was the closest hotel to the mansion where she was doing her cataloging, in Blackhall. The family in Blackhall loaned her a 2040 Mist Mini (powered by hydrogen fuel cells) to drive during her contract. The small car reeked of cigar smoke, but it was reliable.
Rick’s move to Scotland was easy, because he already held a Scottish second passport. He qualified for this passport because his paternal grandfather was born in Scotland, a policy that existed before Scotland gained its independence from the UK.
Rick missed his family in the United States, but he considered the country “a lost cause.” The nation was saddled by trillions of NEuros in debt that would take several generations to repay, it was mired in bureaucracy and over-regulation, the nation had become a moral cesspool, and civil liberties were just a memory. Furthermore, it no longer even had a currency of its own: The U.S. dollar long ago inflated itself into collapse and was replaced by the Euro.
Rick’s small leased house was in the Fairmilehead district, on Buckstone Road. It was originally an estate house’s guest cottage, but the owners decided to lease it when they retired to provide some extra income. The neighborhood was convenient, since it was just south of his office in Morningside. It was also less than seven miles to his church in Silverknowes, about a 20-minute drive via the A702. He could ride his bike to work or even to his church in good weather -- but given the region’s climate, that wasn’t very often.
From Rick’s home, Swanston and Midlothian were to the south, Liberton to the east, Morningside to the north, and Oxgangs was to the west. A few miles beyond Oxgangs was the Edinburgh airport, and Rick could reach that by bus or taxi so he wouldn’t have to pay to use the “Long Stay” lot for his car when he traveled. And if he wanted to travel by train, Edinburgh’s Waverley and Haymarket railway stations were also easily accessible.
His car was an old but serviceable Audi E14 Series that had been manufactured in 2038. With a fresh set of lithium nanowire batteries, it had a 280-kilometer range. In exchange for 300 NEuros and a bottle of Glenlivet single malt whiskey, his car mechanic illicitly removed the car’s governor circuitry so that it could accelerate to pass other cars more easily. This gave the car a top speed of 125 kph, albeit with greatly reduced range. Part of this “Overtaker” modification was a switch that allowed Rick to selectively disable the Audi’s GPS transponder so that he wouldn’t be e-mailed tickets for exceeding the speed limit.
Coming from a conservative Reformed background in the United States, Rick was aghast when he came to Scotland and found that most of the “Reformed” churches had very weak and liberal-leaning doctrine, and that some of them even had female pastors. He eventually found and regularly attended North Edinburgh Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland. They met on Sunday mornings at the Craigroyston Community High School on Pennywell Road, in the Silverknowes district. The congregation was small, and they had the tradition of meeting for lunch at the homes of members every Sunday after church.
Rick was feeling very anxious when again he approached Mrs. Vo’s desk at 10:55 on the following Tuesday morning. She smiled and pointed him to the private elevator. There, one of the brawny security guards scanned his badge. But he was spared the indignity of a pat-down, because he was a Level Three Cleared employee. The security guard asked, “How are you feeling today, sir?”
As Rick answered, “A little nervous. This is the first time I’ve met Harry face to face,” he realized that this was probably normal procedure in vetting employees who might be harboring murderous rage or perhaps any who might be contagious with a flu.
The other guard turned and said, “We’ll need to have you leave your mobile phone, your wristwatch, and any other electronic devices. You may, however, carry a data stick if you have a prepared presentation.”
Rick did as asked, leaving his phone and watch in a Faraday pouch that was placed in a cubbyhole behind their desk.
The elevator door opened at 10:58, and the ride up to the fourth floor took only seconds. When the door opened, Rick was greeted by another security guard -- this one armed with an HK UMP submachinegun slung across his chest. The guard scanned his badge, and said, “Just a moment, sir.”
The suited man tapped the keyboard at his standing desk and spoke a few whispered words into his slender cheek mike. A dish-shaped bioscanner mounted at waist level on the wall switched from showing red to blue. Then the guard pressed his left palm to the scanner, and it switched from blue to green. The heavy oak-paneled door beyond them opened with a loud metallic clanking noise.
The door powered open to reveal a large windowless office that was set up “war room” style, with a half-circle of flat panel monitors. Standing there was Harry Heston, wearing casual khaki pants and a blue polo shirt and carrying a Glock pistol in a hip holster on his right side with a pair of spare magazines in a pouch on his left side. Known for his eccentric informality, he was also wearing a pair of shearling sheepskin slippers. Turning to look his way, Heston said with a smile, “Rick Akins. We have a lot to talk about.”
“A great pleasure to talk with you in person for the first time, sir.”
Rick was surprised to see their words automatically transcribed on one of the computer monitors.
Harry noticed Rick’s distraction with the monitor and explained, “Everything spoken in this room is ‘on the record’ because it might someday be needed for Due Diligence. Follow me, and we’ll go talk in the atrium.”
Heston opened a door behind him, and they walked into the foyer of a sunlit atrium that also had banks of full-spectrum lights. Then they walked through a double airlock door, designed to keep the atrium’s captive birds from escaping, and into the 20-foot tall glass room. The atrium was rectangular, 60 feet long, with a peaked roof. It was configured much like a public arboretum, with large lush tropica
l plants and a small gurgling artificial rivulet and oblong birdbath pool. More than 30 small colorful birds hopped and fluttered about freely and occasionally chirped and meeped. At the far end of the room was a semicircle of couches and a low table. As they walked in, the atrium keeper, who was carrying a dustpan and a spray bottle, discreetly walked out.
Heston motioned to one of the couches and said, “This is my quiet room. No mikes. No cameras. And the windows are constantly kept vibrating in different patterns, so not even laser microphones can pick up our conversation.”
As they sat on couches that were nearly facing each other, Heston said, “Before you begin, I’ve got to say that while your idea is not entirely original, it has great merit. I should also mention that I have reason to believe you’ve been talking about this with Alan Pilcher, in our Political and Nation States Studies group, as well as with a Jewish Israeli art appraiser.”
“Yes, both of them. And by the way, she’s actually a Messianic Jew.”
“That’s good news. So, tell me: Does she have any Mossad or Shin Bet connections or ties to any other nations, intelligence agencies, banking or major corporations?”
“I’ve asked her directly, and she’s told me ‘no’… I trust her word fairly well. And I have it on good authority that the Mossad and Shin Bet don’t recruit Messianics.”
As they spoke, Rick found that Harry Heston’s port-wine stains, a facial birth defect, were distracting. These were large irregular purplish blotches that covered Heston’s left cheek and continued up to his left forehead. Rick had seen them many times before, in photos and videos, and when he’d seen Heston from a distance at public events. But from less than eight feet away, they were an uncomfortable distraction.
Heston put his palms together, and said, “I’ve taken the liberty of asking Alan Pilcher to join us in this meeting. Do you mind?”
Land of Promise (Counter-Caliphate Chronicles Series Book 1) Page 4
