by Peter Parkin
Mike looked up at his friend. "Settle down, Jim. We need to talk about a lot of things—not just this. It's about time I brought you up to speed."
Jim stopped pacing, stood in front of Mike and put his hands on his hips. "Okay, what's the deal here? Is there stuff you've been holding back from us?"
"Troy's in the loop—you're not. Give Troy a ring and get him down here. We need to tell him about this latest thing anyway, and we'll both bring you in on the rest of the story."
*****
Two hours later the air had been cleared between the three friends. Troy and Mike told Jim about what they had discovered in Brazil and Mexico. Mike told them about the blackouts since the lightning bolt accident, and the other strange symptoms he'd been having. He confessed that due to the so-called kidnapping of his kids, Cindy had kicked him out of the house. He showed them the birthday card that his daughters had been given. He even told them about his mistaking Cindy for Amanda and his suspicions about absorbing some of Gerry's thoughts and skills from the lightning bolt. To wit, how had he suddenly become a skilled boxer? There was no logical explanation for that.
When he'd finished sharing his feelings with both of them, there were a few minutes of eerie silence in the room. Then Jim broke the spell.
"Whew. I wish I had known about all of this. Why didn't you guys tell me?"
Troy put his arm around Jim's shoulder. "Because we were afraid you would react exactly the way you are reacting now. I can see the stress all over your face, Jim."
"Sure, I'm stressed. I'm in one hell of a position of conflict here. I'm the Chief Financial Officer. We have impaired assets. The Balance Sheet needs some provisions, just as Christine suggested. You've lied to the Board."
Mike glared at him. "Fuck off, Jim. Don't go 'official' on me. Remember, I'm the CEO. My own responsibility is much larger than yours."
Jim lowered his head. "True, but I feel guilty now and I haven't even done anything...yet."
Mike grimaced. "I understand that, but we're just trying to buy time right now. What's done is done, and hopefully the foreign properties will just sell quickly and we'll be rid of this problem without anyone knowing. Remember, I've been set up here. It looks like I inflated assets and diverted funds. I need your support. And your silence."
Jim looked at Troy, who simply nodded in agreement. With a look of resignation, Jim replied, "Okay, I'll play it your way. You can count on me. But don't you guys leave me out of anything again. Sure, I'm not as cool as you two but I'm your friend and if I keep quiet about this like you're asking me to, it means we're all in this soup together. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
Jim continued. "We have some damage control now to think about. This incident at the funeral—we won't know for a day or two whether someone captured it on video. So, we shouldn't worry about that for now. I think, however, that our immediate concern has to be this David Samson character. What if he presses charges against you? We don't want you going to jail but even worse we don't want the company to have that kind of publicity. Think what that would do to stock prices."
Mike lowered his head and shook it from side to side. "I know, I know. It's a worry." Snapping his fingers, he looked up. "Why don't you contact Samson on my behalf and offer him some compensation to shut him up. We'll need a signed release of course, but he may be satisfied with some kind of payment—say, start at $25,000 and go as high as $50,000? And tell him we will agree not to re-open the criminal investigation of his embezzlement five years ago. You should have his phone number in your personnel file."
Troy spoke up. "I think that's a good idea. Let's try it. We have to be proactive to fend this off at the pass."
Jim nodded in agreement. "Yes, let's put one fire out at a time. Okay, I'll call him and see what he says. I can easily classify the expense under 'Legal Fees.' He's a lawyer after all, so we can hide it that way."
Mike got up from the couch. "I don't give a shit how you classify it. Those things are just mechanics. Make it happen."
Troy rose from his chair as well. "Tell me, Mike. What was going through your mind just before you beat this asshole up? You said there were images? It might be helpful if we understood what set you off like that. You'll remember that pretty much the same thing happened with you and that lawyer, Juan, in Rio. Maybe it's lawyers you have a hard-on for?" Troy chuckled.
Mike frowned, not appreciating the joke. "Well, suddenly I saw images of being back in high school—you know: school pranks, football, and places I used to hang around. It was all so familiar to me, but I have no idea why those visions popped into my head. Then in an instant it was like the movie reel changed, and I was seeing myself going through a door into a tenement house—but it didn't really feel like me at all. And this Samson character was sitting at a desk, laughing, mocking me. Don't ask. I haven't got a clue as to what that all means. But I remember feeling that he was a killer, feeling the danger, and I experienced this incredible rush of hatred for the guy."
Mike ran his fingers through his hair. "Then I just slugged him. And it felt right."
Jim rested both hands on Mike's shoulders, leaned forward and stared straight into his eyes. "Mikey, I heard you tell him that you were going to kill him to keep him from killing anyone else. What possessed you to say something like that?"
"Jim, that's the weird crux of everything that's been happening so far. What in God's name is possessing me?"
*****
After lunch the next day, Mike sat in his office contemplating the events since the accident in Florida. And he thought of David Samson and the man's reference to the sympathy card he had sent him. Mike yanked open the lower drawer to his credenza and pulled out the cards he had received and hadn't yet acknowledged. He felt a bit guilty looking at the pile, but quickly forgave himself. He had been busy, to say the least.
He flipped through the various cards until he came to the one that Samson had sent. He read it over again to refresh his memory. Suddenly, he felt a jolt in his gut. He jumped up and hurried over to a cabinet next to the door, unlocked it and took out the birthday card that was given to him on the day his girls were taken. He went back to his desk, laid the two cards side by side, and examined them. No doubt about it, the distinct handwriting in each card was identical!
*****
David Samson looked in the mirror and wasn't pleased by what he saw. His chin was still swollen and had colored to an ugly shade of purple. He admonished himself for being so unprepared for Mike's sudden outburst. He couldn't understand what had caused him to react like that. And he wasn't even aware that Mike knew how to fight. It brought back memories of what Juan down in Brazil had reported to him.
There was more than just anger going on—the man had a genuine ability to box. David didn't like being unprepared. He had vowed after his high school years that no one would ever pick on him again. In school he had been scrawny, nerdy—and worse than that, he had been a visible minority: the only Arab boy in a Toronto school of 3,000 students.
Those had been the worst years of his life. He had wanted so much to fit in, to be accepted, but due to the efforts of a few "leaders" he had been subjected to unbearable and unrelenting humiliation. There were a lot of other kids who had also been weak and nerdy, but most of them had been left alone. He knew that because he was dark-skinned, and probably because he was an Arab, he became the favored target. He dreaded going to school each day; had even contemplated suicide several times.
The jocks were the worst, one jock in particular. He had been captain of the football team, hockey team, and generally just the 'Big Man On Campus.' Everyone followed him, did his bidding, wanted to be his friend. No one wanted to be the victim of his bullying.
Back then David Samson had been Dawud Zamir. That foreign name made things even worse. Just going from class to class had become a fearful adventure. He would get yelled at, have his books knocked from his arms, pushed to the ground, spit on, called a faggot. There were usually girls around; the jocks usually pi
cked the times when girls were watching. He could always hear their cruel giggles and cackles, and could still hear them ringing in his ears to this day. Vividly.
At the end of the day, Dawud would usually sit on the floor near his locker until all of the kids had left. Then he would begin the walk home. No way did he want to come out the front door of the school and end his day with another barrage of insults and mocking jokes that the school "leaders" would hurl at him.
He wanted peace, but could never enjoy it. He tried to keep a low profile, but they always found him. The worst humiliation came when he had been stripped in the locker room and tossed through the door of the gymnasium right in the middle of a basketball game. At least two hundred students were in the gallery watching the game, when his naked body flew through the door onto the court. The game instantly came to a stop. There was a collective gasp and then utter silence in the crowd. Well, almost silence— the one and only sound being Dawud's banging on the door begging to be let back into the locker room. The only other sound was a flurry of giggles coming from some girls in the gallery.
His banging on the door went unanswered. The gym door to the locker room had been locked from the inside and the perpetrators had fled. It took a full ten minutes for the coach of the basketball team to wind his way from the gallery through the school to the inside of the locker room to unlock the door and let him back in to the relative safety of the smelly room. They were ten of the most humiliating minutes of his young life— everyone staring at his naked torso, snickering, probably talking about what a loser he was. No one offered him a jacket or towel or anything else to cover up with. None of the teachers in the audience even approached him. It was like he had a disease.
Since high school, David vowed to never be a loser again. He embarked on a regimen of anabolic steroids and spent years obtaining his sixth degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. No one would make fun of him again. He became committed to his Muslim heritage and, in a strange paradox, committed himself also to enjoy all of the sins of the western way of life. It was one form of revenge. He wanted their world too, but protecting his world had become an obsession. If he had to wear "sheep's clothing" to blend in, he was prepared to do that—plus at the same time enjoy the decadent pleasures that these infidels enjoyed. In some small way, he relished the irony of it.
He looked different now than he did in high school—heavily muscled, his face had filled out, he had a confident air about him. None of his old enemies would recognize him now. He knew he looked like a totally transformed person but deep down inside he was still Dawud Zamir. He was a proud Palestinian. He understood the endless persecution and second-class citizen status that his ancestors and countrymen had endured for generations—and still endured. He understood it so well. Their living conditions in Gaza and the West Bank were no better than what zoo animals enjoyed. The Israelis, supported by Jews and Christians around the world, would never allow the Palestinians to have their own state.
Israel pretending to want peace merely extended the slow genocide while the rest of the world watched and pretended right along with them.
David also understood hate now. A hate so deep and entrenched he knew that only his death would cause it to leave his spirit. Because of that hate, he had been an easy recruit for the Abu Nidal Organization. He wondered sometimes whether it would have been different if he had enjoyed a happier life as a youth; not ridiculed and humiliated so badly by his peers. Would he have been so easy to recruit?
No matter. When they had come for him from Beirut, he listened and signed in blood.
He wondered also—did Mike Baxter now understand hate as well? And why had he accused him of being a murderer? What did he know? How did he know?
And did Mike Baxter, 'Big Man On Campus,' ever think back—way back—and remember a skinny little naked Palestinian boy named Dawud, frantically banging on the gymnasium door?
Chapter 21
Mike could see Stephanie out of the corner of his eye, jerking her head up as he dashed past her desk. She was so startled she almost spilled her coffee. Stephanie yelled after him, "Is something wrong?" He almost answered, "You bet your ass!" but wisely decided against it. Instead, he just waved her off and continued his breakneck pace.
Skidding to a stop in front of Jim's office and bursting through the doorway, Mike shouted, "Don't phone him!"
Jim looked up, eyebrows raised in surprise at the sudden intrusion by his friend.
"Don't phone who?"
Mike leaned against the doorway, attempting to catch his breath.
"Samson."
"Sorry, too late. We already talked about an hour ago. Surprisingly, he actually seems like a nice chap. He'll take $35,000 to keep his mouth shut. Why the panic?"
Mike slammed his fist against the doorframe. "Damn! I discovered something. Come down to my office right away and bring Troy with you."
*****
It couldn't become personal. The Nidal officials who David met with in Toronto had made that very clear. They said that if emotion got in the way, a terrorist couldn't function and would make mistakes. He knew they were right, but he also knew that his own personal experience with discrimination and bullying had scarred his soul. So he had a secret agenda in accepting their generous offer. He had decided right away that some of what he would use his newfound power for would definitely be personal. David figured that he could easily kill two birds with one stone. He would take care of their business while at the same time exact revenge on those who had ruined his teenage life, and who in his mind were typical of the infidels who the Nidal cells were attempting to terrorize anyway. It was just a slight sidetrack, buried in with all of the other activities— but it was indeed personal.
David had been recruited while he was a student in university. He chuckled to himself as he thought of all the newspaper articles that wrote of impressionable young Arabs being lured to jihad while they attended mosques. Typical western naivety. They liked to think of terrorists wearing robes and head garbs, praying and talking death in the same breath. That was the stereotype they painted in the minds of the world, however westerners were too ignorant to know that it would be an insult against the Qur'an to conduct conspiracies in holy places.
The recruiting was done in a sophisticated fashion. Nidal operatives approached bright young men and women who were identified after extensive research, and who were almost always propositioned on university campuses. In his case they offered to pay for his education but made it a requirement that he continue on to law school. Funds were also provided to buy his mother a house, and David himself was paid a substantial "signing bonus."
They wanted him educated and easily equipped to blend in with western society. After all, he was to become one of their "bankers," so he had to be respectable. David had no problem with that—he wanted all the riches and decadence he could get his hands on. Of course he didn't tell his recruiters that.
As a banker, he was told he would be the central figure in the Nidal terrorist network in Canada. His job would be to infiltrate businesses by coercion. He would raise money by capitalizing on the fear, greed, or lust of business executives. He would threaten, extort, and kill as deemed necessary to get that money. And he would have a large team of operatives right across Canada.
With the monies obtained he would be expected to plan and execute strategic attacks. Occasionally he would be told by his controllers who or what to attack, but mostly he would be left to his own designs. However, a specified percentage of all funds would have to be transferred by David each month to Beirut for the use of the "mother" organization. David saw this as comparable to the usual obligation of regional company operations in the business world. This was simply the terrorist version of capitalism.
David had made many trips over the years to Beirut, Lebanon as well as Tripoli, Libya. Sometimes for weeks at a time. He received extensive training in electronic hacking, firearms, sabotage tactics, assassination techniques, explosives, and biological weapons. He blende
d in as just one of many other recruits enlisted from around the world. David had met many wonderful comrades, people that he would be able to network with.
It was made clear to all recruits that at no time would the Abu Nidal Organization claim public credit for terrorist attacks. As far as the world was concerned, the Nidal group had been inactive for at least two decades. It was to remain that way. Claiming credit was just egotistical and silly, not to mention suicidal to the organization. Who the hell cared who was responsible? The key objectives were to terrify and to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians. Only fake organizations like Al-Qaeda claimed credit, and they usually did so for every Nidal attack. Nidal wanted to stay under the radar and do their work without scrutiny. Arabs around the world were well aware that Al-Qaeda was simply a creation of the CIA, and it served a useful purpose for the U.S.A. to have an "enemy" that would justify perpetual war, an excuse to attack innocent countries, steal their oil and their sovereign rights. One day the truth would come out, but in the meantime Al-Qaeda served a purpose for everyone. All attention was focused on a ghost instead of the real perpetrators.
Raising money was key. All former sources that had been available prior to 9/11 were now cut off, so funds could no longer be raised through charity front organizations. Whoever had knocked down the Twin Towers— and it certainly wasn't the ghost Al-Qaeda—had planned in advance for the movement of money to be strangled. This caught groups like Abu Nidal by surprise. Now as a result, money had to be stolen. David thought that the extortion of business executives was an excellent strategy; the Nidal people were brilliant to have thought that one up. And the irony was titillating.
Terrorist attacks were expensive. Operatives had to be paid, officials had to be bribed, and materials had to be imported or created from scratch. The black market supply of explosives, biologics and weapons was opportunistic— prices were outrageous. And shipping costs and the expertise in disguising those shipments? Very expensive. So David had to have many sources of income. The ten companies that he presently had his hooks into—correction, only nine now after the untimely death of Colin Spence—had to be squeezed and squeezed until the juice was drained or until it became obvious that they could be drained no more.
