by JC Ryan
Several days passed, while Latet nervously waited for the Agency to wrap up the operation to take the leaders of the OS into custody. Reports indicated that some of the corporations under suspicion of being OS-run were resisting efforts to seize their records. In more than one case, security guards in factories and oil refineries engaged in short gun battles with arresting forces before being overwhelmed. Latet spent each night in a different hotel, weapon at hand, expecting at any moment that OS operatives would arrive to accuse him of working with the enemy, or just to kill him without warning.
On the fourth day after Occidens’ arrest, Lewis called Latet into his office.
“We can’t get anywhere near the Wurzberg or the Turin sites. Do these people know you by sight?”
Latet had a sinking feeling that he knew what was coming, but the only way to secure his safety was to take out the leaders. “Yes, sir, they do.”
“We need you to go in to pave the way for Special Forces. Can you convince them that you’re there to tell them something of such importance it can’t be entrusted to whatever communications you’re using?”
“You know what communications I’m using. Agents have my account names and passwords; they’re watching everything I do.”
“Answer the question.” Lewis had little use for a traitor, and the man in his office was a traitor to both sides. He couldn’t care less whether he’d insulted the guy.
“Yes, I think so. Who do you want first?”
“I think the mother will be demoralized if we take the daughter first. She may even surrender.”
“Don’t count on it,” Latet muttered.
“What was that?”
“I said, good plan.”
“All right, then. Go home and pack. I want you on a plane to Germany this afternoon. You’ll have a Special Forces squad to keep you company.”
Just what I wanted, Latet thought.
Twenty-four hours later, he stood at the front door of a venerable manse, one of the historical homes of the city. Guards frisked him for weapons, and admitted him to the house, where he was showed to a sitting room and told that Septentrio would be with him shortly. Latet was still unused to the title referring to a woman.
When she appeared, Auster’s daughter took Latet off-guard. She looked nothing like her mother, who was tall, regal and a redhead. Septentrio was a petite blond. Amazing that such an unprepossessing figure of a woman could wield the power that this young woman did.
“To what do I owe this unexpected visit, Latet?” she asked.
“You know that Oriens and Occidens have been arrested,” he answered.
“Of course.”
“I have reason to believe you are in danger here. I’m here to escort you to a safer environment.”
“I appreciate it, but I think not.”
Just then, a loud blast interrupted them. Before Septentrio could ask what was going on, Special Forces troops streamed through the front door, guns drawn.
Septentrio flashed a look at Latet as she was being handcuffed. “You! You’re responsible for this!”
Latet grinned. “What are you going to do, tell your mother on me?”
With Septentrio in custody. Latet was flown next to Turin, where he planned to distract Auster in the same way he had distracted the daughter. This time, it wasn’t so easy.
Three of the four supreme leaders of the Society had been identified and arrested with little trouble. The fourth, the middle-aged woman known as Auster and said to be the most powerful, barricaded herself behind her military style guard as the agents responsible for her arrest forced their way into her study, Latet among them. When she recognized him, she shrieked her anger and seized a gun from one of her guards. Before anyone could react, she mowed him down, along with several others, in a burst of semi-automatic fire. She and her guard went down seconds later as fire was returned from the surviving strike force.
The three members who were arrested, including the daughter of the slain leader, proved to be cowards, first trying to bluff with the ‘do you know who I am’ card and then trying to blame the others. Eventually, under harsh questioning, all three broke down, the two men crying like babies, and agreed to hand over records and documents that blew the entire organization open like a dropped watermelon.
Their interrogators and the investigators involved in forensic analysis of the records were shocked at the extent of the corruption. Literally hundreds of years of greed and power mongering had resulted in a network whose tentacles reached into a majority of international corporations. What was worse was the revelation that the organization controlled large portions of dozens of governments and military organizations, both major and minor. Even the Vatican was not immune, nor were quite a few other prominent churches. The list of names was extensive and appalling.
Slowly, it dawned on a stupefied planet that these monsters had truly thought themselves gods, untouchable and above the law. Some believed that they had to be crazy, deluded and in need of a reality check. Those were the naïve ones. The reality was that the four leaders of the Orion Society were neither crazy nor in need of a reality check. They and their forbears had for generations been untouchable and above the law. That the tides had turned did not erase the fact that, for hundreds of years, they had indeed been as gods.
International finance was in chaos as forensic accountants worked around the clock to sort out the convoluted scheme of money laundering that one spokesman described as ‘a one-thousand-tentacled octopus’.
The Orion Society turned out to be major shareholders in more than half of the most profitable big-pharma operations, some of which had benefited from 10th Cycle knowledge, much to Daniel’s disgust. In retaliation, the Rossler Foundation moved immediately to suspend all ties with them and bar them from receiving further information from the Foundation until they had paid full restitution to both business entities and users of their medicines. Stricter controls were subsequently placed on all pharma companies, with periodic audits to be held for assurance that the technology was being used beneficially and without undue profit.
The OS had operatives in high office in the Teamsters Union and several others, owned majority stock in the most profitable multi-national companies in the world including two major oil companies, and controlled nearly half of the banks in Europe. The news dropped the stock market 25%, rivaling the Black Friday crash of October, 1987. Confusion about whether company funds were legal shut down dozens of companies, putting thousands of people out of work.
President Harper was besieged in the Press Room by journalists feeding on a backlash that threatened to flip the expected outcome of the mid-term election. He urged calm. Naturally, they wanted to know if any of the names on the list belonged to members of his administration, or even he himself. The last question prompted a temper tantrum the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Barack Obama’s years in office. The reporter hastily apologized, but insisted that the names on the list be published. Her demand, - ‘name them and shame them’ - became a battle cry on the lips of both parties’ spokespeople.
Elsewhere in the world, prime ministers were being forced to resign, while lower-level politicians were systematically arrested for corruption and graft. Many abruptly announced their retirement for ‘personal reasons’, either poor health or family obligations. The Tea Party in the US gained strength for the coming election, with the popular sentiment that all experienced politicians must be corrupt. ‘Throw the bastards out’ became their rallying cry.
How could this have happened? Everyone wanted to know why no one had tumbled to this massive conspiracy over the centuries. No one had satisfactory answers. More than one head of police and security agencies lost their jobs abruptly. Director Lewis barely retained his job, after testifying before Congress that he had been investigating and cleaning house for the past several years. At least he had known something was up, which was more than other countries’ security agencies could say for themselves.
Appalled by what
his Board had unleashed, Daniel nevertheless felt more secure about his family’s safety than he had since learning of the Orion Society and their vendetta against him. That the world in general was safer, or would be once the dust had settled, was a given. It was the validation that they had done the right thing, irrespective of the consequences. He met with the Foundation employees to assure them that their jobs and the funds that paid their salaries were safe. They now had a little less than three months to mount the second expedition, and to that end, he requested that his employees return to their work and not let the chaos surrounding them distract them from the mission they’d all sworn to uphold: the fair and equitable distribution of the knowledge of the 10th Cycle Library, just as fast as they could translate, test and disseminate it. He received a standing ovation.
Chapter 6 – Team building
Since their return from Antarctica and in preparation for the next expedition, JR had spent the time productively, first taking a two-week between-semester course in project management at the Colorado School of Mines that strengthened his natural sense of order as well as what he’d learned about logistics in the Marines. As soon as he’d finished that, he decided to take Rebecca and visit his parents. Even though he’d seen them at the emotional reunion held for the returning expedition members in lieu of the memorial service for which everyone had gathered, the general chaos that prevailed with their return hadn’t made for a satisfactory visit, and he wanted to present Rebecca to them as not only his colleague and doctor, but as his love.
JR expected that his parents would be crazy about Rebecca, and wasn’t disappointed. Aaron congratulated him on snagging another good one and lamented that he couldn’t find anyone half as special as either Sarah or now Rebecca. Naturally, JR sent him up with a remark that he of course didn’t deserve anyone so special. A wrestling match ensued that alarmed Rebecca until she noticed Nancy laughing beside her. Rebecca had no brothers, so this display of brotherly affection was strange to her.
JR had made his decision. He hadn’t particularly been searching for a wife since his college sweetheart had thrown him over and disrupted his life plans, but he knew that the search was over, anyway. There could never be anyone like Rebecca, and he was lucky beyond measure that she loved him, too. With the clear approval of his parents, JR began a plan of action to give them a second daughter.
Ben and Nancy made it no secret that they were happy for JR. Rebecca was very different from Sarah, but the two were already good friends. It didn’t matter that Rebecca wasn’t a particularly brilliant cook like Sarah. That she loved their son was all that was required for their approval, love and respect. The only thing that could have made Nancy any happier was for Aaron to find a woman as wonderful as Sarah and Rebecca.
~~~
JR and Summers had an unusual working relationship, often volatile, but strangely effective. Summers couldn’t seem to remember that JR was no longer his assistant, but rather the director of the expedition. His clashes with LeClerc had often been the result of his controlling nature, and it started out that way with JR. JR, however, wasn’t having any of it. JR had seen the danger that lack of a clear line of leadership had put the first expedition in, and he had no intention of following in LeClerc’s footsteps. So, when Summers stated a preference for a line of prefab buildings that JR thought inferior, he put his foot down.
“I don’t care if they’re thirty percent cheaper. They’re also at least thirty percent more likely to fail in a gale-force wind. This is going to be a semi-permanent installation. It makes no sense to install inferior buildings that we’ll have to replace next year; that’s false economy. We’re going with Guerdon, and that’s final.”
Frustrated, Summers attempted to argue. JR merely crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, as if to say, ‘do you really want to do this?’ Summers sighed and made a notation in his budget software. Since JR was the brother of the CEO of the Foundation, any budget overruns he insisted upon were on him, not on Summers. Secretly, he was pleased. He had originally preferred Guerdon’s man-camp complexes, but he didn’t think he could swing the funds for them. With JR taking the brunt of the political fallout, he could have his cake and eat it, too.
After that, things went more smoothly, with Summers putting up only token resistance to JR’s insistence on the best equipment and materials. It got to the point of being a game between them, so much so that both would have been disappointed if they got through a logistics meeting without a friendly argument.
On the other hand, JR bowed to Summers’ previous experience in running archaeological digs. He admired the way Summers had divided the expedition into phases to avoid extra expense, knowing that they wouldn’t need the bulk of the diggers for at least four weeks, probably six. The plan was to set up the camp, beginning with core buildings such as the mess and laundry facilities, infirmary and administrative offices. The scientists would each have small labs within the admin building, along with a conference room for any meetings that required more room than their small offices would accommodate. The first dormitory building would be for the use of the scientists as well. As soon as these buildings were up, the scientists would move from tents on the ice into more comfortable quarters, and construction would begin on dormitories to house the diggers.
At the same time as the initial few buildings were going up, a second construction crew under the supervision of JR and Robert together would begin tunneling a route through the cave system into the valley. Robert would be there for two purposes; one, to be sure that the route they took destroyed as little of the beautiful cave structure as possible, and the second to ensure a sound structure by evaluating the transition between the sedimentary and igneous layers.
With each completed phase of the tunnel, tracks would be laid for an electric rail line that would serve numerous purposes. It would be a people carrier, both for the further reaches of the tunnel construction and for delivering both scientists and diggers into the valley later. It would also carry any heavy equipment or other material into the valley when the digging started, and possibly would be used to convey overburden from the excavation site to a dumping ground out in the canyon. Summers hadn’t decided about that yet, and would not be able to do so until he saw the ruins for himself.
One thing he brought up to JR was the necessity of cleaning up the bodies of the seven OS people that they hadn’t had time or equipment to deal with last February. Strangely, it was Summers whose practical nature brought it up. JR knew he’d have to man up for the task, but the thought of seven half-decomposed bodies nearly brought on a waking nightmare. When he spoke to Rebecca about it, though, she assured him that by the time they returned, indeed probably within little more than two weeks after they left, the temperature in the valley would have rendered the bodies to their skeletal remains, even without the assistance of large animals or insects. Bones he could deal with. He didn’t want to see faces. He returned to Summers and assured him that he and Robert Cartwright would be able to bury the remains, or if Summers preferred, transfer them into an out-of-the way room in the cave system that surrounded the valley.
JR was looking forward to seeing Robert again. The big Aussie was good company, almost always in a good mood no matter what. JR’s own demons left him in a foul mood occasionally, but with Rebecca’s and Robert’s help, he’d try to shake them off. However, the excitement of being in on the planning stages of an important archaeological dig had him enthusiastic about his chosen field of study as he hadn’t been since before he dropped out of college just shy of his graduation and joined the Marines. Not even the belated presentation of his undergraduate degree, for which he had earned sufficient credits before joining the Marines and Daniel had arranged to be presented in a special ceremony after the return from Antarctica, had given him this thrill.
With a far different attitude about this expedition than about the last one, JR began to seem like his old self to his family and to Rebecca, who congratulated herself for it though she knew t
hat being entrusted with the responsibility for the expedition went a long way toward restoring JR’s self-esteem. By mid-August, he was interviewing and hiring the base camp and road construction crews, who, despite the OS being in shambles, all had to pass a rigorous background check. This time, Luke was determined that no saboteurs could slip through. Each new employee, whether based in Boulder or heading for Antarctica, was thoroughly vetted back to their childhood, and so were their parents.
Plans were coming along with good speed as August drew to a close and the scientists began gathering for final briefings before the planned launch date of October first, again going through a selection process similar to that of the first expedition.
Instead of being a challenging adventure, this expedition was almost a coveted vacation, with the exception that they would have work to do. Applications came in droves. Candidates were selected, vetted and placed in ethnic groups, from which drawings were held among the most highly qualified. At last, the core group of returning expedition members were joined by two new scientists, a botanist from Jordan named Haraz el-Amin, and a transplanted New Zealander, Nyree Dasgupta, a microbiologist specializing in ancient DNA genome sequencing. Each of the scientific fields represented also had one assistant, which included an Egyptian, a Turk, a Pakistani, and a Saudi, as well as a Chilean and a dark-skinned junior IT specialist from Georgia whose accent was so thick that only Cyndi could understand him.
With such a diverse group, it was to be expected that there might be friction. To prevent it from jeopardizing the expedition, Summers asked Rebecca to arrange for extensive teambuilding and sensitivity training exercises. They turned out to be so much fun that the participants almost felt as if they had been given a day off to play. Afterward, everyone understood that they were expected to respect each other’s cultural differences and treat each other with respect at all times.
