The Sword of Cyrus: A Thriller (A Rossler Foundation Mystery Book 4)

by JC Ryan

  “All right. Are the Board members here at the moment?”

  “As far as I know. The Board is in session, but they don’t meet every day. Day after tomorrow is an off day.”

  “Perfect. Day after tomorrow is the day, then.” Addressing the room at large, he added, “Everyone needs to be here and in place by 6:45 a.m. The early birds start arriving at 7, yes Luke?”

  “Right.”

  By ten a.m. two days later, all the known spies from the translation department had been rounded up. Karsten and Alica were in custody, and the three Middle Eastern Board members were just discovering that the ‘special meeting’ was a ruse to get them in one place so they could easily be taken into custody. Reza Mokri, true to his leadership from the beginning, was the one to demand answers, but first he tried diplomacy.

  “I am sure there has been a mistake, my friends,” he said, his broad white smile flashing as if he were confident of his statement.

  “No mistake, Mokri,” Luke said. “Your countrymen have been caught spying red-handed. You’re involved; we know all about it.” The last statement was an assumption, but it was a classic deception of law enforcement agents to tell suspects that their co-conspirators had already talked.

  “You cannot arrest us, we have diplomatic status. What is the meaning of this?” Mokri said, changing tactics immediately.

  “Oh, I’m afraid that isn’t true,” Lewis interjected. “You see, the Rossler Foundation is a private corporation. Nothing to do with government. Board membership is a privilege, but you aren’t ambassadors. You have no status.” A wolf-like grin gave him a frighteningly predatory expression. Mokri blanched.

  “Where are you taking us?” he demanded.

  “We’ll be transporting you to the FBI Denver field office, where you’ll undergo questioning.”

  “I demand a phone call,” Mokri said, still relatively calm. The other two watched the exchange with wide eyes.

  “Sorry, friend, it doesn’t work that way. Spies, terrorists and their collaborators are handled a little differently than normal police procedure. You’ll get your call when we say you do. Not before.”

  Still protesting, Mokri was led out in handcuffs, along with the other two Middle Eastern board members, who were wisely keeping their mouths shut. Lewis asked Luke if he’d like to accompany the party and sit in on the interrogation. After a brief discussion with Daniel, he accepted and went to get his car to follow them to Denver.

  Within twenty-four hours, a discouraged investigation team realized they had a very sophisticated group on their hands. Karsten Adler was no use at all, just a tool in the hands of the sophisticated Alica Cindric. They hadn’t managed to crack her cover story, nor to get her to talk. The translators were nearly dead-ends; it seemed this network was only two people deep, and none of them reported to the same person. In most cases they had not met the person they were reporting to, let alone known where to find him or her. They weren’t even aware that others of their co-workers had been doing the same thing they were. Until they could round up the second tier, the investigating agencies were at a standstill for locating the ultimate destination of the information the translators had stolen. That is, unless they’d left a digital trail.

  Now the best cyber-experts in the agencies were called in to inspect the personal computers found in the translators’ apartments, conveniently located in one or two buildings owned by the Rossler Foundation. Search warrants were sought and approved quickly.

  Mokri and the two other Board members had been placed in separate interrogation rooms, and received visits throughout the first day and night from investigators who chipped away at their fatigue and apprehension. No one was allowed to lie down, even on an uncomfortable bed in a cell. The interrogators were running on sheer adrenaline as they began to realize the expertise with which the spy ring had been put together. This was no industrial espionage caper. They began to take the national security angle seriously. At three a.m., unable to get anything from the Turkish or the Saudi board member, Lewis himself paid a visit to Mokri. He was too late.

  Mokri was slumped against a wall and had vomited down his shirt front with no apparent attempt to avoid fouling himself. Mokri’s skin, previously a light golden, was ruddy. Lewis kicked himself for not having the man searched beyond a check for weapons. He suspected a cyanide capsule, and autopsy would prove him correct. It didn’t matter now how he’d died; the most promising connection to the top echelons of whoever was behind the spying was now broken.

  One thing stood out, though. Suicide in a leader was no small thing. If Mokri had chosen to make use of this way out before the questioning even got unpleasant, they must have a very serious matter on their hands. He left the room to notify the others and have someone pick up the body. What had Luke Clarke gotten him into this time?

  The deployment

  Late May, 2020, Esfahan

  After the explosion that destroyed their lab in Esfahan, the Middle Eastern scientists were most interested in finding a way to carry the fuels that would be both safe and undetectable by modern security scanning. It wasn’t the fuels themselves at issue, it was the container. Traditionally, radioactive materials were contained in an inert gas inside a steel container, which in turn was sealed in concrete. Clearly, it was too bulky for stealth, which was one of the reasons for using a different fuel altogether.

  How to contain it in something that would pass through airport security scanners was a major undertaking. It was only after that explosion that they realized how little of the fuels they would need for each nanonuke. Someone came up with the idea of creating a carbon containment system, which he called a nanobox, just over three-tenths of a centimeter square that would hold a few grams of either fuel substance. Put together, the contents of just four of these fuel containers placed in an everyday object with a way to trigger it, like a cell phone, would be able to take out a city block. If that same device were exploded half a mile in the air above the target it would not only take out the city block and kill all the people within the perimeter, the electromagnetic pulse will also fry any electronic device within a radius of about two miles.

  The scientists envisioned hundreds of the tiny bombs, looking like abandoned soda cans or lost cell phones. Jahandar urged them to think bigger. He wanted fewer chances for the bombs to be discovered while maintaining the ability to destroy a ten-kilometer radius with two or three of them. Reminding him that exploding the devices in the air was the most efficient use of them, they struck a compromise. Dozens of bombs instead of hundreds or just two or three. The redundancy made it less likely that the discovery or failure of one would keep the objective from being met. On the other hand, the need to construct thousands of them was avoided.

  The objects themselves would not have to be transported through security checks, only the critical components. Feverishly, the scientists worked to create a simple enough device that an untrained person could assemble from pictures and insert into containers that could be carried by drones.

  With everyone working on the problem, it took only a few weeks to come up with a plan for a device that was no larger than a carton for half a dozen eggs, but carried a charge that, combined with two or three others arrayed around a single city block, would level ten square kilometers around it and destroy all electronics for up to 20 kilometers. Detonated over the right city blocks at defined intervals, ten or twelve of the devices would take out the centers of most of the target cities, or the heart of a military base. Now to manufacture the critical components. Everything else was readily available in any electronics or home improvement store in any modern country.

  Aside from the fuel, the second critical component was a trigger. They’d known from the beginning that something to fuse the fuels for the reaction would be required. During assembly of the weapons, the fuels would be taken from their nanoboxes and combined in a carbon-lithium nanotube that would breed more tritium to make a larger explosion when the trigger was activated. At first they tried t
raditional types of detonation devices; caps, cords, even wires connected to an electrical source. Nothing worked except the laser that had been used to detonate the explosion that destroyed their first lab. But, how would they conceal a powerful laser in a small, innocuous object? And how would they power and trigger it?

  The answer came, coincidentally, from the Rossler Foundation not long before the massive effort to manufacture the end product was to begin, and well before the roundup at the Foundation took most of their communications network down. One of the translators had seen Roy’s demonstration of his laser toy. From a distance, she watched as he pointed an object she couldn’t see, engulfed as it was in his hand, at a boulder the size of a car and cut it in half like a melon! When she reported the phenomenon to her handler, it went up the line and back down to Alica, who got Karsten to show an interest. Within a few days, the plans were in their hands, and no one was the wiser. Even when all of the conspirators were arrested, Karsten never thought to confess to such a small event.

  Roy’s little toy was the very thing the Iranian scientists needed as the core of a tiny Continuous Laser Energy Compression device, the big brother of which had created such a bang in Esfahan. Incredibly powerful for its size, the laser only required the addition of the focusing material that compressed the beam to heat the fuels to an unimaginable temperature, creating a tiny sun in the moments before the explosion. Anyone who happened to be looking at the device when it went off would be blinded a split second before being blasted into oblivion. No one on the Iranian team cared.

  ~~~

  Early June, 2020, Tehran

  In the meanwhile, Jahandar, through the expertise of Oleg Zlatovski, had set in motion the gathering of an army of assemblers. Some were found in the target countries already. They were given only such information as they absolutely needed to do their jobs. They would die in droves; it was inevitable. But, they would be martyrs, their place in Paradise secure.

  Materials manufactured in Iran were being transported out, concealed as part of the clothes of the carriers. At some point, a large amount of materiel was going to have to go into the US, where security was tighter than anywhere except Israel. Then it may be best to smuggle it in as a large cargo, maybe through the same tunnels that al Gadahn had used to enter the US before last year’s bombing in Boulder. A way to smuggle it into Israel was also under consideration. Many of the most important targets were there.

  Jahandar thought it amusing that the method of delivery for the bombs would be purchased in the open, online. It seemed that Americans didn’t believe terrorism was real, unless the bombs exploded right under them. Their security was laughable for this type of commerce. Anyone could purchase the means to make a very destructive bomb, and no one would question it. Even sophisticated drones could be had for a price. And flying model airplanes as well, though it would take a certain amount of skill in controlling them to get the bombs in place with any precision. The main advantage that the latter had was that they were quite a bit less expensive; more could be purchased.

  The assemblers had been trained as carefully as the spies that were sent into the Rossler Foundation, most of whom were in custody now, a few having been sent home when nothing could be proved against them. The focus of Jahandar’s program had moved to the deployment stage. Everything they needed to destroy the entire political infrastructure of the target countries, including government and military as well as much of the financial system and even the controlling echelons of major industry, was well in hand. The date was set, and only the details of the delivery were still incomplete, only because the manual labor was time-consuming. However, they had more than a month to be ready, and from all reports of the assemblers, they were on schedule.

  Jahandar was satisfied with the progress. His only regret was losing one of his twelve lieutenants. Reza had been a valuable contact. A search was on for a replacement, for in the aftermath of the planned Hajj attack, Dalir believed he required at least twelve influential supporters for the rest of his plan; his own takeover of the government of Iran. His first act would be to restore the great name of the Persian Empire to his country. After that, he would follow in the footsteps of Cyrus to annex the rest of the world to his empire.

  It's about time

  June 16, 2020, Boulder

  Though plenty of Sturm und Drang was playing out within the Foundation, word of the security breach had been confined to only those who needed to know. During the entire time that first Luke and Raj and later the government security team were investigating their co-workers, others in the translation department went about their assignments unaware of the spies among them. There was little day-to-day interaction among the employees who’d been at the Foundation from near the beginning and the new translators. Their assignments were different, their cultural orientation was different, and they just didn’t have much in common outside of work, though the Middle Easterners had made an effort to fit in at first. Now they just exchanged civil greetings

  While Luke and Raj were finding and decoding hidden messages from the Middle Easterners, Ilse Abernathy was struggling with a difficult passage that Sinclair had assigned her. It was unlike anything she’d worked on before, written in a future tense for some reason, and it seemed to predict a disaster, though the dates were wrong for the 10th Cycle’s cataclysm as it was referred to elsewhere. Ilse was certain she had mistranslated something, but the more she worked to tease out the actual meaning of the words, the stranger the document got. In the middle of it, she’d actually found references to a section of the library code that contained pictures. Nowhere had anyone found pictures. How could they, when the code was written in stone, literally? Furthermore, unless she was completely wrong, it was talking about pictures of the future. She had to be wrong, what could that possibly mean?

  Ilse struggled with the document for a week before she reluctantly took her problem to Nicholas. No one liked doing that. In the first place, it called their competence for their job into question. And in the second place, it was humiliating to watch Sinclair read it as if it were written in today’s newspaper. However, she had taken it as far as she could, and still had no idea what the document was actually saying. She was sure she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere, and equally sure that Sinclair could straighten her out.

  “Sinclair, do you have a minute?” Ilse asked, after knocking at his open door. Sinclair looked up from his work and spotted one of his favorite employees. Ilse was a solid worker, and not too hard on the eyes, either.

  “Of course, Ilse. What can I do for you?” He smiled at her and gestured to a chair beside his desk.

  “I’m stuck, Sinclair. I’ve been beating my head against the wall over this section of the code for a week, at least. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Do you mean, you can’t read the words? Is it perhaps written in a different language?” Sinclair doubted it, but what she’d said didn’t make much sense, either. Ilse was a stellar student of the language.

  “No, I can read the words. But they don’t make sense. It’s all in future tense, for one thing. And it seems to be talking about pictures!” Ilse’s frustration was manifest in the pitch of her voice, which had risen so much by the time she got to ‘pictures’ that Sinclair could have characterized it as a wail.

  “Hmm. That doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  “That’s what I said!”

  “Sorry, dear. Forgive me for repeating the obvious. Well, did you bring a printout?” Sinclair didn’t want to show the girl up, but his eyes sparkled as he savored the idea of a challenge for a second.

  “Yes, right here. The original, and my translation.” She handed the pages over to Sinclair, who took a quick glance at the page of symbols representing the Linear A language that they still called Minoan for easy reference. Scanning rapidly, he found the word Ilse was translating as pictures. He would have said images, but her point was valid. What images? How could there be images coded in the stones of the pyramid? He backed up a few li
nes and read again, his blood beginning to run cold as he read.

  Clearing his throat, Sinclair fought to maintain control of his voice. “Ilse, I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave this with me. The old brain isn’t what it used to be. I see what you mean, and I’m going to have to give it some thought.”

  “Okay. Do you want me to keep working on this section?” she asked, twirling a strand of her long hair around her finger.

  “No, no. Let me tackle it for the moment. Why don’t you pull an assignment from your group’s list and get started on it?”

  “Okay. Thanks, Sinclair”

  Then his thoughts turned to the passage Ilse had brought to him. Pictures from the future? That’s what it said, but could it possibly mean that? Was Ilse playing a trick on him? Or was someone playing a trick on Ilse? His gnarled fingers flew over the keys as he pulled up the data for the original passage she was translating. He ran it through the program that translated the stones’ code to symbols, and compared it to the printout. It was identical. A tremor rattled the paper in his hand as the blood drained from his face. Could the 10th Cyclers really have been able to visit their own future? Is that how they knew when their cataclysm would occur? What else did they know? What did they know about our cycle?

  Who should he tell? What should he do to be certain before he told anyone? The last question sent him searching once again through the database of every word in the original Minoan, for the word ‘future’. Hit after hit populated his screen, and he read snippets of the passages around the words. Many of them referred to something he translated as ‘future viewing’, or a device for that purpose. Faith and begorrah, this was huge! Shaken, he reached for his bottom desk drawer, where just the medicine he required was stored for times like this. The Jameson was an adequate whiskey, and his pour was generous. Sure and a lad deserved a wee nip after a shock like this.