Madness

by Bill Wetterman

  She heard the crack as he hit and his yowl of pain. His gun bounced down the steps toward the entry. Agent Loomis banged through the ground floor door and headed up the stairs. Peacock ran back up to the third floor.

  “Keep him alive,” she called back.

  The silence bothered her. Surely, if anyone were still in there, he’d have taken the opportunity to attack while she was busying herself with the chauffeur. Then her eyes spotted a tripwire at the base of a door. She smelled C4. Her training said run. If the booby-trap didn’t work, that device could be set-off with a cellphone.

  “There’s a bomb. Leave.”

  Loomis lifted the chauffeur up. Peacock followed him down the stairs and out the front door. British MI6 personnel approached the building.

  Peacock shouted. “There’s a bomb.”

  Within seconds, the building’s upper floor blew off and the percussion deafened Peacock. An MI6 task force leader stopped them. “Come with us. We’ve cleared this with Sherman. We’ll include you in the debriefing. Then you’ll be flown back to the States.”

  “And the president?”

  “Fine. He bruised himself getting out of the limo. Your people did a right good job.”

  And your people didn’t.

  “They’re keeping us here for the debriefing?” she asked Sherman through her headset.

  “Roger that. I’m staying as well,” he responded. “They won’t be sending our would-be assassin State-side, so we’ll have to make the best of our time here.”

  “I never thought of the Brits as our enemy,” Loomis mumbled after handing the chauffeur over to British security.

  Peacock wasn’t surprised. She was married to a Brit, probably the most dangerous enemy America had ever faced. Thankfully, she’d be in London on Wednesday to rendezvous with him.

  Chapter 3

  Arthur Pendleton practiced deep breathing exercises as his limousine headed for the Widder Hotel. Another career altering motivational speech to deliver, he went through his prep to create the confident look and tonal quality his followers expected. His cell rang and he glanced at the number. “Reed,” he muttered. “His timing is always imperfect.”

  Pendleton popped his cellphone open. “And what could have gone wrong this time?”

  “Sir, I made an attempt on Monroe’s life. It failed. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  “I didn’t order an attempt be made.”

  “I have my own resources, and I don’t like unfinished business.”

  “I don’t have time for this. We’ll discuss it later.”

  Pendleton closed his cellphone, as his driver signaled the approach to the hotel. However, before the cellphone reached his pocket, it rang again. Caller identification said, Russian President Serge Latovsky.

  “I asked you to wait,” Pendleton answered, holding back the anger he felt about Latovsky’s blunder.

  “One of my generals misread a memo,” Latovsky chuckled. “Not seeing the date, he moved on Dashoguz too early. Once across the border, I had no choice.”

  I don’t believe you my greedy friend.

  “What did the Iranians throw at you?”

  “Iranian forces crossed into Turkmen territory at Ashgabat and their combined armies are moving north. We’re coming under heavy missile and artillery fire, but they have no idea what firepower I’m bringing to bear. I’ll chop the head off the beast here and now. I’ll ride into Tehran victorious.”

  “I’ll drink to your success,” Pendleton said, “But I’m delivering a speech now. I’ll call you back.”

  He hung up and his limousine pulled up to the Widder Hotel. As he rushed up to the Penthouse Suite, his mind sorted out his weak and disloyal followers from the strong and loyal ones. Neither Reed nor Latovsky fit the latter. He’d join his fifty or so project leaders for a final run-through of his plans. The world would be his if everything fell neatly into place. If not, pollution and war would seal the doom of the planet, and life as humankind knew it would cease.

  The crowd in the Penthouse Suite stood and applauded as Pendleton entered. He waved at those in the audience and shook hands with the discussion leaders seated in the front row. Then he hopped up onto the platform.

  “I addressed most of you eleven years ago,” he said, as he moved behind the podium and adjusted the microphone on his collar. “Our world situation hasn’t changed. We are the only lifeline to the planet’s salvation. God willing we will prevail.”

  He motioned for them to sit down and waited until the commotion ceased. “The coming war will be short but bloody. Assume mass casualties from the Mediterranean to the Pacific Ocean, plus those humans starving from the wars ongoing in Africa.” He looked at his expert on curbing hunger and asked, “Linda, how is the nutrition distribution logistics coming along?”

  “Each of our seven regions is ahead of schedule.” Linda Farnham, the former Chairwoman of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Birmingham in England, proclaimed confidently. “We’ve been loading nutrient packs containing high protein-high vitamin content onto vessels to distribute as each nation joins the Global Realm. As of today, we have seventy-three fully loaded ships, each carrying four-hundred million 12-ounce nutrient drinks. Each drink is capable of sustaining a mature adult male for a day.”

  “Impossible,” someone called out. “You’re talking over thirty billion cans of nutrient.”

  “Not impossible?” Farnham's voice rang out with a lilt. “Over 1.2 billion cans of soda are consumed worldwide every day. We’ve stockpiled healthy drinks.”

  “Good God, people drink that much soda!”

  “The point is we are prepared to feed the world.”

  Farnham sat as Pendleton continued. “Our friends will be met with grace. We’ll cut off our enemies from our society. If they threaten us, we’ll kill them. Any individual joining us freely will receive citizenship.”

  Milton Rogers, Chancellor of the British Exchequer, and Pendleton’s closest confidant, interjected. “The military might of Western Europe, Australia, and the Eastern European block, headed by Russia, is fully behind us.”

  “They’re not as capable as the Americans,” a project leader called out.

  Rogers grimaced. “The American economy is in free fall. The American president is ineffective. I won’t steal Arthur’s thunder, but we have the capabilities to bring eighty-five percent of the world under our control right now.”

  “By population, only seventy-percent.”

  Pendleton laughed outright. “But the bigger picture gives us leverage to persuade the rest in a few months, instead of decades.” He placed both hands on the podium—legs planted firmly, eyes focused on the center of the room. “Within a week to ten days, American military firepower will aid us in putting an end to religious strife between the Muslim and Israeli worlds.”

  Utter silence filled the room. Not a foot scuffed the floor. Not a paper crinkled in a hand.

  “We will announce to the world our plan for a one-world government and abolish the monetary system. We will replace that system with equal distribution for all and our new allocation plan.”

  Now applause erupted, but Pendleton shut the celebration down. “Don’t rejoice for five years. That’s how long it will take to subdue the rebellious, weed out traitors within the Asian block, and begin to turn world’s pollution problems around and back onto the right path. Some will call this war madness. Not I”

  Those present quieted.

  “You must work harder than you ever have in your lives to save the future of humanity.”

  The door in the back flew open. Pendleton ducked, and three of his bodyguards jumped the man entering and threw him to the floor.

  “He’s my aide,” Rogers intervened.

  “President Monroe was attacked,” the aide managed as the bodyguards helped him back to his feet. “En route to Heathrow, two Secret Service agents were killed and three of the assassins. The BBC is covering the situation live.”

  “What about Monroe?
” Pendleton asked.

  “Knocked himself silly attempting to flee the scene, but he’s otherwise fine.”

  A groan went up.

  “United States agents captured one of the attackers. Oddest thing, the agent who disabled him was a woman.”

  Pendleton’s chest quivered. Lovey! He’d seen her in action. Hercules lied to him again. Damn them! She was on Monroe’s security team. No wonder he would be able to meet her in London.

  He had a more serious problem. Thomas Reed had done only one thing right. He’d called Pendleton to admit his failure. Pendleton had not approved the team Reed sent to kill Monroe. Thomas Reed failed again. Either Monroe possessed nine lives, or Reed was an imbecile.

  He grabbed his cell and turned away from his audience.

  “Reed here,” the deemed imbecile answered.

  “Have our inside man move within the week.”

  “Roger that.”

  “And Thomas . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “This fiasco was your last chance. You’re no longer in my service.”

  #

  With the room emptied and the delegates gone, Pendleton relaxed with Milton Rogers to clear his mind. “The American people will thank me when I take control. They’ll never have to listen to a political or product advertisement again.”

  “Think again,” Rogers lamented. “You’re going to force them into the real world. They won’t be able to live by texting, television, or computer surfing, except while working in our service or during their classroom studies.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “How do you intend to keep control, once you have it?”

  “We’ll put down all resistance with horrific force. The Americans are debase, morally corrupt, and greedy, as are our Western block of nations. The Eastern bloc are religious fanatics or morally bankrupt as well.”

  “Which will be the harder to control?”

  “Not a question to worry over. Every individual has a choice. If they accept us, they will have citizenship and prosper. If they fight us, we will kill them. If they ignore us, so be it. The Global Realm will not help them. Those outside our protection will be thrown into another Dark Age.”

  “To change the subject,” Rogers said, and sipped some coffee. “The highest level of service should be awarded in the environmental clean-up efforts—an incentive to perform.”

  “Ah, but no,” Pendleton said, and bit into a delicious piece of mincemeat pie. “Every job has purpose. Rewards come through being the best at your job whatever it may be. Yes, the highest priority on our agenda after the war will be environmental clean-up, starting with the confiscation of all weaponry outside of Global Realm Security.”

  The look on Roger’s face told Pendleton his friend understood the error of his words. Eliminating individual class and competition was a key to the new world order. People shouldn’t think one contribution as more important than another contribution.

  As they talked, his mind drifted to his concern for Lovey. Tonight he’d drop down on his knees and pray for God to protect her. Soon they would be together for the first time in five months, but who would be behind her eyes?

  #

  “Hold your son.” Pendleton’s mother, Anne, placed George into Arthur Pendleton’s arms. “My hip hurts when I stand with him too long. Chunky little bugger, he is.”

  His father’s blue eyes smiled up at him. So much of his heritage came from his father, a curly-haired laborer with a temper, yet a gentle hand. His mother was a dark-eyed, trim Welsh woman, no taller than her mop. She was spirited. However, Pendleton looked like his father reincarnate, sandy hair, blue eyes, and a tall, slender stature.

  Arthur Pendleton and his brother, Ian, grew up southeast of Trowbridge in Wiltshire County. They lived in a small house in wool country famous for Stonehenge and the Avon Vale, the land where Arthur Pendragon, King Arthur of Camelot fame, allegedly died in the Battle of Mons Badonicus. They say allegedly. No one really knows if there ever was a battle there, or a King Arthur.

  “Why can’t you take George with you when you see Lovey? I’m sure she misses him.”

  The answer was too complicated. He shrugged.

  “Those Americans who took her from George are behind this. Aren’t they?”

  “The whole bloody U.S. government appears to be, Mum. I’ll ring you up after I’ve seen her.”

  “She’s a smart girl. And she cares for you.”

  He didn’t know what she cared for now, or what those fiends might have done to her. Her handlers broke their promise to her by never allowing her to hold George in her arms. He would never forget or forgive the bastards.

  “I love her more than life.” He bent and kissed his mother on the forehead, took his son from her arms, and sang, “A Frog He Would A-Wooing Go.”

  The little treasure in his arms was Laverna’s gift to him, a son to carry on his legacy.

  Laverna Smythe Pendleton, aka Peacock, aka Donna O’Conner, consumed his every moment whether planning the bankruptcy of the United States or the assassination of its president. He’d gladly give his life for his wife. Fate tricked them both, but so long as he had breath, he’d find a way to remove that infernal device from her brain.

  #

  Pendleton kissed his mother, Anne, goodbye Monday afternoon, leaving two of his best security people with her. Once in his office in London, he called Ursa Minor, Lovey’s boss and second in command at Hercules.

  “Define the parameters for my day with Lovey.”

  “You’ll meet in the Hilton Park Lane Hotel by Hyde Park,” Ursa said. “She’ll be in the Clarence Suite by six in the morning. We’ll be escorting her out at midnight. Peacock is under instructions not to reveal what assignment she’s working on.”

  Before Pendleton could speak, Ursa hung up. Pendleton propped his feet up on his desk and threw a wadded up piece of paper in his wastebasket. “I bloody despise that man,” Pendleton said. However, before he could work up a steam, his Red Phone rang. “Pendleton.”

  “Before you yell at me, believe me. Starting this war now is good thing. Yes?”

  “Serge, I urged you to wait one more month.”

  “All right. I’m, how you English say, pressed for cash. Plus, Russia’s running out of oil. I needed to act.”

  Pendleton had held the Russian President at bay for two years. He must support him now. The missile bank technology worked. The missile code program performed flawlessly. As soon as he disposed of Monroe, he would unleash the missiles. “War must be fought to win, totally, and without a conscience. I’ll give you the support you need. I won’t lose this war.”

  “You and I, my friend, will make history and put an end to religious feuding.”

  “I pray for the day,” Pendleton said and hung up. Latovsky blundered. That blunder would cost him his life. He just didn’t know that yet.

  Pendleton kicked back away from his desk. The genesis of a new world lay within his reach. The European Commonwealth only waited for the raising of his hand. The Russians licked their lips, ready to dine on the Muslim and Israeli worlds. Pendleton gripped the world’s monetary system firmly in his hand. All Pendleton had to do was give Professor Cline, his man inside the missile complex, the word, and the United States Space-based missile system would complete the plan. Pity, the Russians wouldn’t be the stars in the History books. Latovsky knew only one eighth of the plan.

  However, his Lovey was coming to see him, and without her, conquering the world seemed pointless. The Americans had invented the brain-computer interface, the BCI, for army battlefield situations during the Second Iraq War. Only in the top-secret labs of this superpower, did the research go into the realm of merging computer and human intelligence, as with the implant in Lovey’s head.

  Pendleton picked up the office phone and turned to the window. Israel boasted the finest brain researchers in the world, and Milton Rogers had procured a team for him.

  “Haifa Medical Research.”

  “Do
ctor Rueben Levi, please.”

  “May I say who is calling?”

  “Tell him, Milton’s friend.”

  “One moment.”

  Pendleton despised recorded music, particularly when interrupted by commercials. Luckily, the pain of the Copacabana-style rhythms lasted less than a minute.

  “Levi.”

  “Arthur Pendleton, thank you, Doctor, for taking my call.”

  “Yes, keep the world green.”

  Those words signaled Levi was a friend of The Sons of Tiw, Pendleton’s Secret Service.

  “I’ll be seeing our friend first thing Wednesday. Is everything in place? What should I do?”

  “You’ll have a team with you?”

  “Yes, I’ll be escorted by my security people.”

  “Immediately upon your arrival at the hotel, flowers will be handed to you.”

  “By whom.”

  “Mossad, they’re friendly. See that the flowers are put in your wife’s hand.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing, keep them in her room.”

  “But . . .”

  “Do you really want me to bore you with technology?”

  “Anything else?”

  “You’ll be debriefed by me when the data is processed. Watch her eyes for recognition and reaction. Remember you can see behavior we can’t hear. People under someone else’s influence say things that don’t match their body-language.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Most important, find out where the implant is attached and what the area around it looks like.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Pendleton’s hands trembled as he set down the phone. From the moment he set his eyes on her, Laverna Smythe owned his soul. He feared that Hercules had killed the blithe spirit within her. Every waking moment brought little gems of her into his consciousness, like pouring his heart out to her about his dreams. Even when his anger flared, she could whisper harp-like music to his soul.

  Damn the bloody Americans for changing her.

  They’d better bring her to him whole when all was written out and accomplished, or he’d kill every last Herculean who’d harmed her.