The God Complex: A Thriller

by Murray Mcdonald

  “And ignored everything that makes us who we are?”

  “He stopped being one of us the day he coveted your father’s position,” said Blake.

  “But the investigation was thorough. It was an accident.”

  “And we don’t have any knowledge of a group that can do that?”

  Antoine nodded dejectedly. “They’re watching him now.”

  “Bertie Noble is the single biggest threat to our success. He is a loose cannon who believes he should be king and I don’t just mean of the Nobles,” said Blake.

  “I can’t order him killed,” said Antoine. “His watcher might. Her orders are to protect the family and myself from anything he might try.”

  “Clever,” Blake said thoughtfully. “But I’m afraid you need to make that call. He is a liability that we can ill afford. There are precedents in the past, the grand council has the power to take the decision to take a Noble’s life, but it must be unanimous.”

  Antoine considered Blake’s proposal. His ambiguous instructions were already sitting heavily with him. Asking for another Noble’s life to be taken, even given what Bertie had done, was against everything they believed. He had been surprised when Bertie had fallen for his bluff in the PEOC, obviously Bertie thought Antoine was capable of breaking their most sacred rule, something he most certainly was not. Nobles did not kill Nobles

  “I’ll have him brought back to Anieres and placed under house arrest. We’ll keep him within our control.”

  “That is your decision to make but rest assured, his ambition has not been satiated,” cautioned Blake, taking a final sip of water and stood up, lifted his cane, and left the room.

  Antoine picked up his phone; council or Bertie. He thought of Blake’s caution. The wise old man was telling him to deal with it once and for all. But that wise old man wasn’t the one who’d be calling the vote or leading the council to a decision.

  He hit the speed dial. The cell rang out and went to voicemail. “Leave a message,” instructed the female voice in a seductive Eastern European accent.

  He dialed the number again. It was his call anytime, instant connection to Katya number. He was the only one with the number and as the client, would always be answered , but it went to voicemail again.

  He called Conrad. “Get someone over to Bertie’s place now!” he commanded.

  Conrad called back within thirty minutes. His people couldn’t get in. Bertie’s house was surrounded by police. A number of ambulances were in attendance but all his men could see from the road were body bags being loaded into them.

  Chapter 46

  Travis Davies had just finished his latest draft for Cash when the notification of a new message pinged into the inbox of his secret Hotmail account. No one knew the address, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get offers to enlarge his manhood or earn money from any number of bizarre sources. He saved the draft and clicked on the inbox icon. Bertie Noble was the sender. He had never given Bertie Noble the address. The Senator with too many unanswered questions hanging over him for Travis’ liking had just added another question to the list.

  Travis clicked on the message. It was empty, save for the subject heading, four letters, capitalized: ‘HELP’. Travis clicked the reply symbol and began to type. Good afternoon, Senator, I believe you may have sent me this message in error. He stopped. Senator Bertie Noble didn’t do errors, certainly not to email addresses he had no business knowing even existed. Everything Senator Noble ever had or did was calculated and deliberate.

  He checked the sender email address and not only the displayed name. It wasn’t from the Senator’s senate account, it was from a Hotmail account. Whatever message he was sending, it wasn’t going to show in his system.

  Travis reached for his phone and dialed the Senator’s office. He was told that the Senator was working from home that afternoon. Nothing unusual, thought Travis. He dialed Bertie Noble’s home office number and the call was answered instantly.

  “Hello?” replied the voice Travis recognized as the Senator.

  “Senator—”

  “Ah. Mr. Davies,” he cut him off. “I was expecting your call. I believe those two young men have been causing us problems again. What a shame we missed shooting them down when we had the chance.”

  The two men he had vouched for and who he had faked shooting down.

  “Although if you ask me, there’s only really one of them that’s a problem, the other one just listens and does what he’s told.”

  “Well I thought I should keep you in the loop, Senator. We’ve tracked them down and are about to take them out. You did say you wanted to be kept in the loop, sir.”

  “Most definitely, I’m very keen to be kept in the loop.”

  “Leave it with me, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Excellent, thank you.” The Senator hung up.

  Travis had quickly caught on. Somebody was listening. The Senator had cut him off before he could say anything that would have exposed the cry for help. If Travis understood the situation correctly, the Senator was telling him that there was one person holding him and that he wanted Travis to come and get him. Of course he could have been completely wrong, it was as clear as mud; but nothing else seemed to make any sense. The call itself didn’t, certainly not given their prior conversation about Cash and Rigs.

  Cash and Rigs would have been perfect for the job.

  He picked up his phone, and stopped. He was about to call his Clandestine Services Director, a man he had known for twenty years, but he was wavering. It was ridiculous. He placed the call and arranged for a team to visit the Senator’s house, to check things out.

  ***

  Katya had listened in to the Senator’s call with passing interest. It had not been dissimilar to many of the other calls he had received throughout the day, nor any of his subsequent calls. She watched the screen in front of her, it was mirroring his emails, both in and out. He was behaving and taking the threat seriously. She did not know about his burner smart phone, the one he had smuggled into the restroom and with which, over the past few visits, he’d sent his help message to the CIA, entering a couple of letters at a time until at last he hit the send button.

  The first sign of a problem to Katya was the birdsong stopping. To most people the random and occasional sound of birds was undetectable. To Katya it was a warning. The Senator’s house was unsurprisingly, given his family name, grand. Sitting on top of a small hill, the mini White House style mansion was surrounded by lush and extravagantly furnished gardens securely enclosed by eight-foot walls.

  Katya was on her feet and reaching for her MP7 sub machine gun, a compact high powered machine pistol.

  “Stay there!” she commanded to the Senator, moving to the window. She looked down into the back garden. No movement. She moved across the hallway and looked out the front. The second floor gave a view out across the walls to the street beyond. No movement, no cars going past, no pedestrians. The street was closed.

  Katya looked back at the grounds. No movement. She listened . Not a sound.

  “Shit!” she said.

  “Senator, with me!”

  The Senator was in no position to argue. Her demeanor had changed, her beauty was gone completely, all that was left was a killer.

  He was placed in a small restroom at the end of the hallway. Katya closed the door and slid the bolt she had added to lock him in place. With him secure, she grabbed her ammo belt and placed it around her waist before venturing downstairs in a classic stance. Her weapon was up at the ready, and she swept the area in front of her. A pistol and knife were strapped to the ammo belt, along with a number of extra magazines and kit.

  The first floor was clear. She hesitated at the top of the stairs that would take her to the ground level. She listened. She heard whispered voices below her. They were in the house. She reached around and withdrew a flash bang from her belt. They hadn’t heard her. Their whispers continued. They were making plans.

  She edged towar
ds the top of the stairs, keeping out of sight of those below. She carefully removed the flash bang pin, counted to three, and tossed it below, closing her eyes when the initial flash exploded. She rolled down the top few stairs and into a crouched shooting position as the flash dissipated. Four men were caught in its glare. She swept across them, two bullets to each, then rushed back up to the safety of the floor above, avoiding the bullets which began to ping where she had been standing.

  A tirade of bullets soon rained down on the staircase as the men below pushed towards her. Katya moved back and waited. Bullets were exploding all around her. The small room she had stepped into was nothing more than a broom cupboard at the top of the staircase. She remained calm when two bullets blasted through the door, one catching her side. She felt the blood flow but ignored the pain. The bullets moved off beyond her. The men assumed she had moved further into the house and had not stayed near the staircase. Katya waited while the footsteps tentatively worked their way up the stairs.

  “Check that door?” she heard, and the footsteps neared. She was cornered. Never a good place to be.

  Katya crouched, ignoring the pinching of flesh from her side where the bullet had pierced her. The door opened. She paused, the man’s view was head height, not two feet from the ground. With no initial reaction from the door opener, his colleagues had moved their attention along the corridor. That infinitesimal pause was all Katya needed. She had them on the back foot. Her silenced pistol put a bullet through the chin of the door opener even before he had looked down to where she was crouched. Before his body had even reacted to the trauma, it was being shoved out of the way and Katya was already shooting. Three head shots, four more down and out of the game. Katya didn’t like to be cornered.

  She listened for more voices or noises. Nothing from below, but there was plenty from above. Helicopters. They had come at them from top and bottom. Stealth choppers. From the number of footsteps rushing across the floor above it was fight or flight. She heard the Senator’s voice booming from above.

  “It’s one woman, what are you waiting for?!!”

  They had him. She had failed. Fight or flight.

  “No, let me stay…” she heard him shouting, his voice disappearing.

  He was already gone. Flight. Katya disappeared into the night. She would fight another day.

  Chapter 47

  Kyle rushed to his mother and gave her a hug. “You didn’t even said goodbye!” he said irritably. He may have looked like a strapping young man but he was still a boy at heart.

  Cash smiled. “Hey, Kyle.”

  “Hey,” he mumbled in return, turning to Rigs. “Hi, Rigs, how’s it going?”

  Rigs looked briefly and half smiled in response, before being embraced by Uncle Bill.

  “I think you’re on the shit list!” Sophie whispered.

  “Oh,” said Cash disappointed.

  “That’s good,” said Sophie. “It means he cares!”

  “Where’s your grandma?” she called across to Kyle, who was loading bags into the truck with Bill.

  “She’s making dinner and didn’t want to leave it.”

  “Oh dear God,” said Cash in mock horror.

  “What?” said Sophie.

  “Oh, nothing, I just remember your mom’s cooking,” he grimaced. “The green thing,” he shuddered.

  “It’s not that bad!” She slapped him on the arm. It was solid and stung her more than him.

  The steward stepped up from behind him. “I wanted to say thank you for a few exciting days!” said the steward, admiring Cash’s muscles.

  “Thank you and the captain.” Cash waved up at the captain, who was keen to get going. “You’ve looked after us fantastically well.”

  The steward gave Sophie a quick hug and was gone. By the time they were driving away from the runway, the small jet was already leaping into the sky.

  “Should we not have kept them here?” asked Sophie, realizing they were effectively stranded.

  “It costs thousands of dollars an hour to have them sit here doing nothing,” said Cash. “And anyway, they’re only going to Seattle tonight, which is less than an hour’s flight away.”

  Cash was pleased to see dinner was not the green thing and he wondered whether Mrs. Kramer’s culinary skills had improved in the last fifteen years. Cash smiled at Sophie when he took his first bite and Sophie smiled back.

  Cash looked around as everybody dug into their meal. Rigs had paused after his first bite. He was a man who liked MREs and even he was struggling. Uncle Bill smiled painfully and Kyle, who knew what he was doing, kept his head down and ate.

  “Mom, Cash was asking if you still made your wonderful chicken and celery dish?”

  Chicken and celery. Oh dear God, the full horror of the dish came flooding back. He wanted to tell everyone to enjoy what they were eating, since they had no idea what was in store for them. Cash smiled at Sophie, before turning to Mrs. Kramer. “That’s not fair, you’ve already cooked us a wonderful dinner tonight. We can cook tomorrow.”

  “Not at all, I insist!” she said. “I’ll make it for lunch tomorrow!”

  Lunch? Not even twenty-four hours to recover, thought Cash.

  Once dinner was finished and cleared away, Sophie got down to work. Charts were spread across every available workspace in the kitchen. Cash hovered for ten minutes and was unceremoniously dismissed for breathing too loudly. He sought out Kyle, who was learning the finer details of fly tying. Uncle Bill was taking him fly fishing in the morning. Cash hung around but seemed to get in the way. Mrs. Kramer had turned in early, as she had most nights, in order to grieve on her own.

  Cash went in search of Rigs, who he found lying on a sun lounger on a darkened terrace staring intently at the sky above.

  “Amazing?”

  Rigs nodded. “It makes you feel very insignificant.”

  “It’s a big place.”

  “Big enough for more than just us,” Rigs remarked.

  Cash turned to him. “You think we’re hunting things from out there?”

  Rigs shook his head. “Nope, I think we’re hunting them here; whether they originally came from out there is the question.”

  Chapter 48

  The helicopters had spent the entire day ferrying Atlas Noble staff to and from the hospital ship. Clad in full biohazard suits, the doctors and nurses had worked tirelessly to find and help anyone they could along the Sepik River. When darkness had fallen fully, the living stood at only two hundred thirty one men, women and children. The dead were nearing one thousand times that. It was the single biggest tragedy to have hit the world since the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and was expected to be even greater. The ten helicopters from the hospital ship had covered most of the river’s length but there were still a few villages to visit, though little hope was held out for any more than a handful of survivors.

  Doctor Ernesto Rojas, the nun, and the little girl were among the first to be recovered. Ernesto had passed on every detail he could to the staff who had taken care of them. He provided details of the day before the tragedy. It had been a day like any other, nothing, he repeated, nothing was untoward. The doctors had talked to him from behind their masks, asking him countless questions: The water, was there anything different in its taste? Did he have the same water as everyone else in the village? Did it rain? Was there a flood recently? What was his heritage? His racial background? The questions went on and on as the doctors and scientists searched for a clue as to what had happened.

  Ernesto wracked his brains for anything he thought was significant but he could think of nothing. The little girl with the nun had heard a loud buzzing during the night, which had elicited a significant amount of interest from all around. When she heard the same noise again, everyone looked around. It was the noise of the plane landing on the deck of the ship. The little girl was adamant the noise was the same. The doctors wrote everything down.

  The day progressed, and the number of survivors boarding dropped. Fewer
and fewer helicopters came back with anything other than news of more dead. Ernesto noted that all the survivors had one thing in common, none of them were Iamult. The vast majority were like him, aid or charity workers. A few were from tribal clans that had been doing business with the Iamults and, in a couple of instances, had married into the tribe. These were the most devastated. Their families had been wiped out, husbands, wives, children. Even although they weren’t Iamult, their children were half Iamult and that seemed to be enough. As the day wore on, the number of doctors asking questions reduced, but the questions were the same and just as probing. The same answers came back, nothing out of the ordinary, nothing different, a few people had heard a plane.

  With darkness falling, the survivors were sent up onto the deck. A ship lay off to the starboard, a small cruise liner, tiny in comparison to the enormous hospital ship.

  “The facilities on board this ship are fairly basic and really only meant for sick patients,” said Bea Noble through a megaphone. “We’re going to have to quarantine you until we can figure out what has happened here but we feel you deserve a more comfortable environment, given what you’ve been through.”

  “Would we not be better in a hospital?” shouted one of the charity workers.

  “As far as we can tell, you’re all perfectly healthy. However, we will be monitoring you very closely. A team of physicians will stay with you on the cruise ship and you will stay next to us here. Should an outbreak occur, we can have you in an operating theatre within ten minutes.”

  “I don’t mind staying here,” said a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor. “I’m an infectious diseases expert.”

  “That’s very kind of you to offer but I’m afraid you are to be quarantined. Not our decision, but the US government’s, which has taken over authority of this ship.”

  “I’m an American citizen,” came two shouts that Bea Noble could hear.