Other Books by Hans G. Schantz
The Art and Science of Ultrawideband Antennas,
2nd edition, Artech House, 2015
1st edition, Artech House, 2005
The Biographies of John Charles Fremont,
Kindle Direct Publishing, 2015
The Hidden Truth:
A Science-Fiction Techno-Thriller,
Kindle Direct Publishing, 2016
A Rambling Wreck:
Book 2 of The Hidden Truth,
Kindle Direct Publishing, 2017
The Brave and The Bold
Book 3 of The Hidden Truth
Hans G. Schantz
2018
www.aetherczar.com
The Brave and the Bold
Book 3 of The Hidden Truth
by Hans G. Schantz
ISBN-13: 978-1-7287-2274-0
ISBN-10: 1-7287-2274-8
All rights reserved.
This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, major blockbuster film, epic Broadway musical, or otherwise – without prior written permission from the author, except as provided under fair use provisions of copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, institutions, actual Deep State conspiracies attempting to lead us to a New World Order, and/or historical, current, or future events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Hans G. Schantz
All rights reserved
Cover Design by Steve Beaulieu
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
To “[t]he fond and the faithful few…”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1:The Art of Deception
Chapter 2: Into the Dragon’s Den
Chapter 3: An Inauspicious Start
Chapter 4: Where We Go One…
Chapter 5: …We Go All
Chapter 6: Independence Day
Chapter 7: A Risky Gambit
Chapter 8: A Familiar Scent
Chapter 9: Actions Have Consequences
Chapter 10: The Inner Circle
Chapter 11: An Inconvenient Truth
Chapter 12: The Prisoners’ Dilemma
Chapter 13: Facing Fearful Odds
Chapter 14: The Ashes of Their Fathers
Chapter 15: The Temples of Their Gods
Chapter 16: A Fatal Disclosure
Chapter 17: Epilogue
About The Brave and the Bold
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter 1:The Art of Deception
The interrogator looked right through me. Then he glanced down at the dancing needles of the polygraph. “There appears to be a pattern of deception here,” he observed, looking back up at me. “Let’s start from the top one more time. Is your name Peter Burdell?”
“Yes, it is,” I answered. I imagined the scratching of the needles on the instrument in front of me trying to burrow into my soul.
After a long pause, the interrogator continued. “You were born on October 29, 1986?”
“Yes.” More silence. More scratching. I tried my best to amplify the tension and stress.
“You graduated from Lee County High School in 2005?”
“Yes.” I suppressed the temptation to fill the silence with more babbling and allowed free rein to my discomfort. I imagined myself teetering at the edge of a cliff and savored the intense anxiety. I felt the hairs rising along my arms and on my back. These were the control questions against which the interrogator would compare my responses to the relevant questions. If I could amp up my discomfort high enough on the control questions, it might mask the more subtle signs of deception on the relevant questions.
“Are you sitting in a chair?”
“Yes.” I imagined a swarm of bees stinging me, buzzing around my head, crawling in my ears while I did my best to remain impassive. My sphincter tightened.
Finally, the examiner asked, “Your parents are dead?”
“Yes.” Another control question. I allowed myself to relive the emotions of that awful day. I felt tears welling in my eyes and a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“They were killed in a drunk driving accident Thanksgiving weekend in 2004?”
“Yes,” I lied, sticking to the official story. This was surely another control question, so I gave free reign to my anger. I relived the outrage at the discovery of how the Civic Circle murdered my parents. The cabal that changed the past to control the present so they could rule the future would do anything to hide the truth.
And now, I would do anything to stop them.
My opportunity was coming. The Civic Circle would soon host their Social Justice Leadership Forum on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia – the biennial meeting where the world’s movers and shakers gather to decide which way to move and shake.
My path to the Social Justice Leadership Forum was through my summer intern position at Tolliver Applied Government Solutions – TAGS. That job required a security clearance. The security clearance required that I successfully pass…
“Is there anything in your background,” the interrogator interrupted my thoughts, “that would disqualify you from getting this job?”
“No,” I answered. Finally, we were back on relevant questions. I visualized myself lying on the beach. The waves were slowly moving in and out… in and out… as the sun beat down from overhead.
“Besides what you already told me, have you ever lied to get out of trouble?
“No,” I answered, imagining the beautiful blue waves slowly lapping at the golden sand. I had to dampen my physiological responses on the relevant responses so the interrogator would be convinced I had nothing to hide. I could feel myself calming down.
“Besides what you told me, have you ever stolen anything else?”
“No,” I replied, catching myself as I began to calculate the value of the many hundreds of books I’d helped steal from the Tolliver Library before it burned down. Relax, I willed myself. Focus. Calm. A peaceful alpine meadow, the green grass under a brilliant blue sky. I imagined the opening scene of The Sound of Music.
“Do you have any conflicts of interest that might impact your work for TAGS?”
I pretended to think about that a moment. “No,” I lied. TAGS was a subsidiary of Tolliver Corporation, founded by my ancestor Jake Tolliver over a century ago. The family had never forgiven Mom for running off with Dad, but lately Uncle Larry had been trying to lure me back into the family. In a weird sense, I think Larry was avenging himself against my father by inculcating me in what passed for Tolliver family values – the Machiavellian quest for power and status within the Civic Circle. Dad would never have approved. Larry had arranged my job at TAGS working as an assistant to the company President, Travis Tolliver, but Larry intended me to be his spy at TAGS, and hopefully within the Civic Circle, too. I continued my focused relaxation.
The interrogator interrupted my peaceful reverie. “Do you have any reason to believe the Civic Circle was involved in your parents’ death?”
Uh-oh. That was a dangerous question. “No,” I lied. He knew. Now he was deliberately trying to provoke a response to detect if I knew. What was he up to? I had a momentary image of Nazis searching through my mental abbey.
“That was the weekend of the Tolliver Library fire,” the interrogator observed dryly. “Do you have any knowledge of who may have started that fire?”
“No.”
Of course, my interrogator knew all about that fire. He stared as if trying to peer into my
skull. I relaxed, and focused on the beach again. The sun warming me, the waves moving in and out slowly in time with my breaths.
Eventually, the interrogator continued. “About the incidents of this past year at Georgia Tech… You were involved in the student protests for social justice, were you not?”
“Yes, I was.” Of course, at the same time, I was also a key player in the efforts to subvert and undermine the social justice protests.
“Your linear circuits teacher, Professor Muldoon, said you were a ‘menace’ and ‘not to be trusted.’ Is his assessment correct?”
“No.”
“Did you, in fact, cheat to obtain an advantage on his midterm exam?”
“No.”
“You worked for Professor Wu Chen in the Gamma Ray Astrophysics Lab, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know his whereabouts?”
“No,” I lied. I’d smuggled him out of the physics building right under the noses of the Civic Circle’s Technology Containment Team, and, with the help of another “Friend of George,” I took him safely to the Chinese restaurant that served as the front for the Red Flower Tong in Atlanta. The Red Flower Tong was a Chinese fraternal organization – they called themselves “the Brotherhood.” I also suspected they had ties to organized crime. They had a fascinating history stretching back hundreds of years. The Civic Circle itself had roots back to a much older Chinese entity now calling itself “Xueshu Quan.” Some called him a god, others called him a demon. Whatever he was, hundreds of years ago during the Chin Dynasty, Xueshu Quan taught his secrets to monks at a monastery in Fukien Province, including the basics of electromagnetic theory, centuries before those concepts were rediscovered in the West. These closely-held secrets and others gave the monks great power and capabilities. They easily defeated a much bigger force of enemies, and earned the gratitude of the Emperor. When the monks refused to join him in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor, however, Xueshu Quan turned on them. Xueshu Quan almost wiped them out. A few scattered survivors banded together as the Red Flower Tong, preserved many of Xueshu Quan’s secrets, and swore to avenge their fallen comrades. The Red Flower Tong continues to fight against Xueshu Quan and the Civic Circle today.
“Did you have any reason to believe he was an agent for a foreign power?”
“No.” Another completely truthful answer. The Red Flower Tong was not a foreign power. Not exactly. The Circle had concocted that espionage cover story to justify their manhunt for him when they discovered he had a connection to the Tong.
The interrogator continued his questions. “You also worked with Professor Marlena Graf?”
“Yes.”
“The professor behind that rather remarkable declaration approving of sexual harassment in the workplace?”
Approving of sexual harassment? Hardly, but it wouldn’t help for me to take issue with the interrogator’s characterization. “Yes,” I answered. Professor Graf stood up for Professor Chen when he became the subject of a social justice witch hunt for wearing a sexist shirt to a press conference. Then, when the Civic Circle began to realize that Professor Chen had friends in the Tong, Professor Graf was targeted along with him. First, they tried to recruit both professors to work at a secret government facility in Nevada where they could be more closely monitored. When that failed, the Civic Circle concocted an espionage case against Professor Chen and accused Professor Graf of being his accomplice.
“You said that the last time you saw Professor Graf was at the reception at GammaCon in Chattanooga. Do you know where she is now?”
“No,” I lied. I’d helped Professor Graf vanish, with the assistance of my best friend Amit, my uncle Rob, and Sheriff Gunn. The Civic Circle attempted to poison the professor. Amit and I swapped out the poisoned beer to convince the Civic Circle their poisoning had succeeded, and then Uncle Rob laid out a false trail up in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Professor Graf was safe and sound, hidden at Uncle Rob’s place up in the mountains – Robber Dell. That was our secret refuge. If the Civic Circle knew about it…
“Your uncle’s place. Up in the mountains. That’s where you’re hiding the professors, isn’t it?”
“No,” I lied, before seeking my safe refuge back on my imaginary beach. I didn’t like the implications of that question. I couldn’t imagine being asked that question unless the game was up, and the interrogator knew, or strongly suspected, that I’d been busily disrupting the Civic Circle’s plots.
“Have you heard of Oliver Heaviside?”
“Yes,” I acknowledged. This interrogation was running through a minefield. Heaviside was one of the pioneers of modern electromagnetics. His contemporaries, James Clerk Maxwell, George Fitzgerald, and Heinrich Hertz were all killed before they could bring Maxwell’s remarkable theory to fruition. Perhaps the Civic Circle dismissed Heaviside as a harmless eccentric, but from his cottage in Devon, he’d taken an intriguing step forward. Heaviside discovered how electromagnetic waves exchange energy as they pass through and interfere with each other. His simple yet counterintuitive result extended Maxwellian electromagnetic theory in directions the Civic Circle found dangerous. They suppressed Heaviside’s work and removed all mention of it from period texts. I became aware when I found a mention they’d overlooked in an old book. The Circle found evidence of my search, but they thought a friend of my father, Jim Burleson, was the one poking into their secrets. They killed him, and my parents, too, to make sure their secrets were safe.
“Have you ever had any dealings with the Red Flower Tong?”
“No,” I lied. The interrogator knew I’d been in contact with Professor Chen’s allies in the Red Flower Tong and was using his knowledge to provoke a response.
“What about the Ordo Alberti?”
“No,” I replied.
I saw a smug smile develop on the interrogator’s face. “Clearly you know of the Albertian Order, though, don’t you?”
Blast. I should have pretended confusion instead of denying it outright.
“No.” I insisted. The Albertians were a secret order of Dominicans. Their motto was “Investigare, Cognoscere, Defendere,” or “To Investigate, To Understand, To Defend.” They and the Red Flower Tong both fought a secret war against the Civic Circle, trying to unlock the hidden truth. The Ordo Alberti had rescued and shielded great scientists, like Ettore Majorana, who’d fallen under the scrutiny of the Civic Circle. They’d tried to rescue Professor Graf, almost derailing my own plan to save her. No interrogator would risk mentioning either the Albertians or the Red Flower Tong unless they were certain I already knew all about them.
“Have you heard of Angus MacGuffin?”
Oh, shit. “No.” I suppressed my anxiety with difficulty. Angus MacGuffin had been erased from history by the Civic Circle. His memoir, Suan Ming or the Art of Chinese Fortune Telling, one was of the books I’d saved from the Tolliver Library fire. The contents were explosive and the Civic Circle would summarily silence any and all who came close to the secrets it contained or even the name and history of the author. Focus. Calm. Relax. It was getting harder to do.
For an interrogator to mention Angus MacGuffin, author of the suppressed memoir describing the history and methods of the Civic Circle and the Circle’s closely guarded tie to Xueshu Quan…”
“Do you know of Xueshu Quan?”
“Who?”
“Xueshu Quan,” the interrogator repeated, apparently relishing my discomfort.
“No.” I replied, realizing the game was up. No way would an interrogator mention Xueshu Quan. No way. As I tried focusing intently on my imaginary beach, there were storm clouds on the horizon. Anyone who knew anything about the mysterious Mr. Quan had a bad habit of ending up dead. The too-bright light above me was drying out my eyes. I blinked.
The interrogator looked neutrally at me, as if my eye-blink were yet another sign of my guilt.
“Xueshu Quan,” the interrogator said the name slowly, calmly, coldly. “The Red Flower Tong.” He stared
at me. “Ordo Alberti.” He was just saying the names, not asking questions. I remained silent. “Angus MacGuffin.” He looked at me with cold contempt. “I’m not seeing confusion in your responses. I’m seeing familiarity. It’s plain as day. You claim you’ve never heard of any of these?”
“No,” I lied. With an effort, I slowed my breathing and returned his stare. I could feel the calm and relaxation pervading my body. Was he lying about my reactions? Or was I truly giving myself away somehow? I suppressed the urge to fill the silence as the interrogator’s eyes drilled right through me.
“Your responses indicate a pattern of massive deception,” the interrogator insisted. “I submit that you are part of a terrorist conspiracy to attack the Civic Circle. Isn’t that right?”
“No,” I lied.
He scrutinized the wiggling needles I could hear furiously clawing away at the instrument’s paper, and he shook his head sadly. “I submit that you and your band of conspirators helped Professor Chen and Professor Graf evade the authorities, and even now you are helping shield these fugitives from justice. Isn’t that correct?”
“No,” I lied.
The interrogator looked down at the scribbling of the needles on the graph, snorted in contempt of my evasions, and continued.
“Your friend, Amit, and your uncle, Rob Burdell are part of this conspiracy you call ‘the Reactance,’ aren’t they?”
“No,” I insisted.
“I submit that you have access to the secret memoirs of Angus MacGuffin, and that you are even now trying to unlock the technical secrets and uncover the hidden truths that the Civic Circle and its Technology Containment Team protect from public scrutiny. Isn’t that correct?”
“No,” I lied.
“We have evidence that you and your ‘Reactance’ conspirators plan to infiltrate this year’s Social Justice Leadership Forum on Jekyll Island and the G-8 Summit on Sea Island. Is that correct?”
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