by Tom Abrahams
Holt hung up and cursed his editor. He was stuck in Houston on schlock. True, he was doing everything he could to make it newsworthy. It was still gossip-mongering page six crap. He wanted to be on his way to Barcelona. He wanted to be ogling bikini-clad women playing beach volleyball near Port Olympic as he sipped beer and prepped for the G12 SECURITY summit.
He slugged back the rest of his third Americano, wincing at the bitterness of the cold remnants at the bottom of the cup. He typed an email to the anonymous tipster, agreeing to the price, and suggested a delivery method. Holt went back to his update and within ten minutes had it finished. He recorded a brief video introducing the piece and sent that.
He looked around the coffee shop. There were some moms in yoga pants commiserating about nannies at one table and a couple of businessmen talking oil prices at another. This was not where he wanted to be. However, he was a pro; he would make the best of it. And maybe he’d meet up again with Karen.
*
The assassin thanked her Uber driver and hopped out of his Prius a block away from what served as the Harris County morgue. She was dressed in a cheap black pantsuit, an expensive, shoulder-length mousy brown wig, and dark sunglasses. She was lugging a large, floral-printed canvas handbag.
The assassin had never been to Houston and underestimated the thick, ubiquitous humidity. She was sweating by the time she’d reached an aging convenience store across the street from her intended destination.
She asked the clerk for the bathroom key and agreed to purchase something in exchange for use of the facilities. Inside the cramped space, which doubled as a custodian’s storage room, she slipped out of the pantsuit and into a pair of acid-washed blue jeans and a T-shirt bedazzled with plastic emeralds. She replaced the brown wig with a shorter black one and slipped on some uncomfortable twenty-dollar high heels. The assassin unzipped a compartment inside the bag, which was resting on a mop bucket, and pulled out a vial of saline solution. She squeezed several drops into each eye and held her eyes shut. After a look in the warped, barely reflective mirror, she was ready.
She zipped up her bag and returned the key to the counter with a pack of gum and a bottle of water. The clerk, who seemed oblivious to the change in appearance, took her money and waved her out of the store. The security cameras behind the counter weren’t working. The associated monitors were awash with static.
The humidity hit her like a steam bath when she stepped out into the store’s parking lot. The wig, new and scratchy, irritated her scalp in the heat. She willed herself to ignore the discomfort as she had with so many other things and walked quickly across the wide street to the Forensic Science building in the Texas Medical Center.
Inside the lobby, behind a booth encased in thick glass, was a security guard.
“May I help you?” asked the thin, balding man from behind his Coke-bottle glasses. He wasn’t a threat.
“Yes,” the assassin answered, lowering her sunglasses. Her eyes were bloodshot, her voice salted with a pinch of the Rio Grande Valley. “Please. I am looking for my mother. I think maybe you have her body here.”
“And you are?”
“Hilda Mentiroso. I spoke with your Dr. Corvus. She said she could help me.”
“Let me check.” The man made a brief phone call and hung up. “She’ll be right out. In the meantime, I need you to sign in. And I’ll need an ID, please.”
The assassin stepped closer to the glass booth and pulled a clipboard through an opening. She signed a name and her time of arrival. She noted that all other guests had signed out already. She was the only visitor inside the building. That was a bonus. It would lessen collateral damage.
“I’ll need the ID.” The guard looked over his glasses at her scoldingly. “I can’t let you in without it.”
“I’m sorry.” She smiled. “Here you go.” She fished an identification from her purse that matched the name she’d given them. It was one of her dozens of identities. She cycled through them as needed.
The guard took the driver’s license and compared its photograph to the woman standing in front of him. They looked similar enough. He wrote down the driver’s license number and then slid it back through the pass-through.
“Here’s a visitor’s badge. Please keep it visible at all times.”
The assassin smiled and took the badge. She pinched the clip on its back and attached it to her T-shirt, right between her breasts, noticing the guard pay attention.
“My eyes are up here, sir,” she scolded coyly, giggling.
He cleared his throat and quickly looked down at the clipboard, his lips pursed with embarrassment.
A moment later, a slender, pretty woman emerged through a locked door that led into the lobby. She was wearing a long white lab coat, her hair twisted into a bun with a sharpened pencil at its center.
“Ms. Mentiroso?” the woman said, offering her hand. “I’m Dr. Corvus. I’m so sorry you had to come here to Houston.”
“It is okay.” The assassin shook Karen’s hand with both of hers. “It was a quick flight. And this, I pray, will put to an end so much suffering for my family.” The assassin crossed herself and kissed her thumb before raising it to God.
“You flew here?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. You did get here quickly, then. Where did you travel from?” Karen punched a passcode into the door, nodded at the man at the desk, and invited the assassin into the secure area of the building.
“I came from El Paso,” she lied. “We are from El Paso. My mother, me, my sisters.”
“Tell me more about your mother. What makes you think you found her here?” Karen led the assassin through a maze of narrow hallways. The assassin marked her steps, dropping mental breadcrumbs with each turn.
“Your website said the woman was my mother’s height. She had a tattoo of a cross on her neck. My mother had that tattoo. And she was wearing a pink and green bracelet. That bracelet was a gift from my sister.”
Karen stopped at a wide doorway at the end of a hallway near the rear of the building. She punched in a number to crack open the door and then paused.
“This could be very emotional,” she said to the woman posing as Hilda Mentiroso. “I want to prepare you for that. Your mother will look different from how you remember her. Despite the cold temperatures, organic changes do happen. You may not recognize her, even if the woman is your mother.”
“I understand.” The assassin looked over her shoulder, noting the lack of security cameras at this end of the hall, and followed Karen into the room.
CHAPTER 18
CAMP DAVID
CATOCTIN MOUNTAIN PARK, MARYLAND
“So the British and the French are on board?” President Felicia Jackson stood at the head of a table in the Aspen Lodge. “We’ve got to work on the Spanish and the Italians.”
“To clarify,” explained Brandon Goodman, “we got Downing Street and Elysee Palace on board. I can’t speak to how amenable the British and French people will be to the proposals.”
“The British won’t be a problem,” said a young analyst with expertise in Western European policy. “They’ve already accepted security cameras on every street corner. They won’t balk. The French are another story.”
“How so?” The President put her hands on her hips and glanced at Matti, who hadn’t looked her in the eyes the entire meeting.
“They’re still upset about our government spying on their government for much of the last two decades.”
“WikiLeaks,” the president bemoaned. “I hate those jerks as much as I hate lawyers.”
“The prime minister isn’t bothered by it,” the analyst told her. “He knows the game. However, his people haven’t forgotten about it all of these years later. And they don’t like the idea of the United States bullying its leadership into some sort of surveillance legislation drafted by Americans.”
“We didn’t draft it,” the president corrected. “We just made strong suggestions with recommended language.�
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“Either way”—the analyst shrugged—“it could be a tough sell. The French feel somewhat insulated from terror. Nothing has happened there since Charlie Hebdo in 2015. They have short memories.”
“Joie de vivre?” the president joked.
“As for the Spanish and Italian delegations”—Goodman pushed forward without laughing at his boss’s joke—“it’s more of an uphill fight.”
“Go on…” The president walked around the table as she listened. Her focus, however, was on Matti. Something was off, even more than usual.
“It’s good news that the talks are in Barcelona,” said Goodman. “That means the Spanish are amenable to the idea of the shared legislation. We do know they have reservations about some of the finer points.”
“As in?” The president stopped behind Matti’s chair and put her hands on her aide’s shoulders. Matti tensed at her touch.
“The shared data pool,” said the analyst. “They’re not convinced of the need. They contend they already share relevant intelligence with the CIA. They don’t necessarily believe unfettered access is a good idea.”
“It goes both ways,” argued the president, squeezing Matti’s shoulders. “There’s a trust there. We give, we take. They give, they take. This is a global fight. What happens to one of us affects all of us.”
“That’s where the Italians have a problem,” Goodman said. “They think this falls under the auspices of NATO, the United Nations, the World Court, and the IMF. All of them are affected by this. We’re talking about security, law enforcement, international justice, and banking.”
“The secretary general is publicly opposed to SECURITY or any of its duplicate programs. He says it violates human rights to monitor, gather, and store the data that’s included in the act.”
The president let go of Matti’s shoulders and moved around the table to her seat. “Where is he privately?”
“He doesn’t care,” said Goodman. “Our ambassador tells us he thinks it makes his job easier if we’ve got absolute access to everything. He was never a fan of the Magna Carta.”
“He’s Russian—” President Jackson laughed “—so that’s not surprising.”
“He thinks it would give him leverage in negotiations. It gives him power.”
“How so?”
“There’s a provision in the act that allows for the sharing of collected data with any multilateral organization of which the United States is a member.”
“Did I know that?” asked the president, taking her seat.
“Yes,” Matti said. “We discussed it four weeks ago at a meeting in the Old Executive Office Building.”
“She speaks!” exclaimed President Jackson. “Matti, it’s good to know you’re with us.”
Matti smiled thinly.
“Remember, Matti—” the president stared into her aide’s eyes, waiting for Matti to look away “—you’re with us or you’re against us.”
*
Sir Spencer Thomas felt blessed to be in a fresh change of clothes. Granted, it wasn’t the kind of apparel to which he was accustomed, but it was better than the overstarched, cheap cotton-blend prison uniforms he’d worn for nine months.
Reclining aboard a private Gulfstream 650 aircraft thousands of feet above the Atlantic, he admitted to himself there were times he wasn’t sure he’d be free again. He occasionally lost faith and feared he’d forever remain prisoner 02681-044. It was a calculated risk he’d taken, getting caught with the others as he had.
It was sad, really. The others were either dead or imprisoned. They’d played their parts so perfectly. He reached over and picked up a leaded snifter full of brandy. Sir Spencer dipped his pinkie into the glass and sucked the liquid. He closed his eyes and relished the sweet taste of the distilled wine.
He’d missed this.
He wondered, as his plane screamed toward the next phase of the grand design, if they could pull it off.
Could they succeed, or would they fail as they had before? Would the few men more powerful than he sacrifice him as they had when the Capitol exploded?
For millennia, the Brethren had secretly pulled strings, toppled governments, influenced policy, and redistributed wealth with impunity. In the last half of the twentieth century, their veil was lifted and their power threatened.
A young, brash politician stood before the American Newspaper Publishers Association in April 1961. He told those assembled, “There is a grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of censorship and concealment. We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence—on infiltration rather than invasion, on subversion instead of elections. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine.”
That politician was John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated thirty-one months later. Instead of working hard to again bury their highly efficient machine, a newly empowered group of leaders suggested the acknowledged myth of the Brethren could become more powerful than its denial.
Unlike his father, and his father before him, Sir Spencer was among those contrarians; those who believed they could effect more change by lurking in the shadows than by hiding in the dark.
One summer, at their annual California retreat, a much younger Sir Spencer proposed the grandest of all ideas. He opened with a biblical reference, which surprised his brothers, but had them nodding their heads in agreement.
“The greatest trick the Devil ever played was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” Sir Spencer told them. “Perhaps, had he hinted all along at how powerful he could be, without ever denying the reality of his influence, we’d live in different times than those in which we find ourselves. Maybe we would have already realized the new order.”
Over the next several summers, he and some other powerful Brothers formulated a decades-long plan to reshape their membership. They would stop denying their existence and would use commercialism to reinforce it. Their symbology would be everywhere. It would be so evident it would become invisible, like the mountains to those who lived amongst them. The messaging would be embedded in their minds. They would see it yet be blind to it. It was brilliant.
The Queen knighted him for his loyalty. The Sultan of Brunei rewarded him with immeasurable wealth. His influence and power grew. By the end of the first Gulf War, he was near the top of the Brethren’s hierarchy.
Sir Spencer’s job was to recruit those who could contribute to the establishment of the new world order in a variety of ways. Those recruits would make the new order palatable to the uninitiated. They would welcome it without knowing what it really meant for their lives, for their liberty.
His unofficial title was Brother In Charge of Diversification. He was toasted and regaled whenever news reports subtly hinted at machinations of his doing. From the energy industry, to fast-food chains, food products, and even Hollywood, Sir Spencer found ways to impart his influence.
He’d made mistakes along the way, however. Some of the young recruits in the entertainment industry couldn’t handle their programming. Their minds weren’t strong enough. Despite the fame and riches afforded them by their loyalty to the Brethren, they flaked. Sir Spencer would read about them or see their meltdowns on television and regret his decision to choose them. Many of them died of overdoses or previously undiagnosed heart conditions.
There was the occasional intelligence operative who failed or who suddenly succumbed to a misguided conscience. One FBI analyst named Majors came to mind. He’d stopped providing valuable back-channel correspondence about domestic threats and counterintelligence methodology. He was warned. He didn’t listen.
Others, politicians most notably, strayed from the herd as they absorbed their own power. They thought they were above what got them to their lofty perch. They, too, found the gravity of the Brethren inescapable.
Dexter Foreman was the biggest of those disappointments.
Horus was also one of Sir Spencer’s regrets. His disintegration was more subtle. It wasn’t a publicly self-destructive dénouement, despite his heroin addiction. Instead, he’d chosen to write lyrics and publish music that increasingly hinted at the nature of the Brethren’s plans. The viral symbology morphed into references of abuse and social repression. That was not part of the deal. If he’d just named an album Magna Carta, there’d have been no problem, Sir Spencer laughed to himself.
Sir Spencer shifted in the leather captain’s chair. He was the only passenger among the eight seats, and he sighed aloud at the loss of the musical protégé, considering what had gone wrong with Horus.
What was it that had spooked Horus? Why had he turned? Did he know something he shouldn’t have known?
Sir Spencer took another sip of the brandy and swished it across his tongue. His thoughts turned from Horus to another protégé, one with so much more promise and whose skills had proven so much more useful.
He was eager to land and reacquaint himself with Jon Custos. It would be good to visit with him again, especially since it would likely be the last time they’d see each other.
CHAPTER 19
AVENUE DE LES DRASSANES
BARCELONA, SPAIN
Custos strolled east along the Avenue de les Drassanes, whistling “Danse Macabre,” a haunting piece from Camille Saint-Saëns. His hands were in his pockets, his eyes on the smartly dressed people who lived and worked in an area that had become as elite as the Zona Alta in the hills. At the end of the avenue was a large statue of Christopher Columbus, called the Mirador de Colom. Custos’s eyes climbed to the top of the sixty-meter-high monument and he laughed to himself. The explorer’s likeness was facing into the distance, toward the New World. It was magnificent, except for the fact that the statue pointed in the wrong direction.
