The Alexandria Connection (5 page)

‘And we are not being true to the Prophet, peace be upon him,’ Tayeb Jamal interjected, no longer able to contain his frustration. ‘We, the Taliban, have a delegation in Doha in Qatar, waiting to make peace with the Americans and the Kabul government. They’ve been there for years, and what do we have to show for it? They’ve done nothing but live in air conditioned villas and drive around in luxury cars, while we’re out here on the ground doing the fighting for them,’ he continued angrily. ‘A peace process has to be on
our
terms . . . and the people in Kabul need reminding of that, and of the Prophet’s teaching, peace be upon him. A government in Afghanistan has to be true to Islam and ensure that Sharia is obeyed.’

‘And if the Infidel won’t recognise our rights, then we should join with our al Qaeda brothers, and start attacking him again on his own soil,’ said another.

Sitting in the shadows, General Khan listened intently, quietly nodding in agreement.

Mullah Akbar had remained silent during the fiery speeches, but now he intervened. ‘Our delegation in Doha has already agreed not to launch any offensives outside of Afghanistan. We have some things in common with our al Qaeda brothers, but they are focused against the West. Our focus is here, in Afghanistan,’ he warned.

‘All the more reason we should support them.’ Jamal’s response was respectful, but his dark eyes were blazing. ‘The Infidel continues to kill our women and our children with his drone strikes . . . here and across the border in Pakistan. His soldiers have killed dozens of our villagers in this valley alone, and he thinks nothing of taking our livestock. The drone strikes will not stop until we bring him to his knees with another 9/11.’ Jamal’s fiery interjection was greeted with a chorus of agreement from the younger fighters.

At the conclusion of the shura, Mullah Akbar and General Khan retired with Hakim Babar to the latter’s stone hut on the edge of the village clearing. They sat on the worn carpets, and waited until the women had served them with tea and a platter of raisins and almonds.

‘So, Farid. What’s the current view in Islamabad?’ Mullah Akbar asked, stroking his reddish beard. ‘Are you still in touch with those in power?’

‘My friends inside the ISI keep me very well briefed, and the major concern is still India,’ General Khan replied. ‘She already threatens our borders in the north-east of Kashmir, but if New Delhi gains more influence in Afghanistan, then Islamabad fears Pakistan will suddenly have a threat in the west as well. The Taliban can help prevent that so the ISI will continue to support them.’

‘And the United States? Still pressuring your president, I see.’

‘Our president has made a very big error in cosying up to Washington, and the people won’t let him forget it. The Americans like to see themselves as some sort of shining beacon of democracy, but it’s a democracy they impose with bombs, bullets and drones, and the Pakistani people have had enough. Over 90 per cent of Pakistanis dislike Americans, so it doesn’t matter what our president says or does, the ISI will continue to support you on both sides of the border.’

‘That is good to know,’ said Mullah Akbar, cradling a chipped china cup. ‘This fight has a long way to run yet.’

‘Not for the Americans,’ replied Khan. ‘The American public is very tired of the body bags. Within a year, perhaps two at the most, the Americans will have very few troops left on the ground. Will you make peace with Kabul?’

‘That will depend,’ said the Taliban governor. ‘We are continuing to work to convince the Afghan people that we are a legitimate political force, and the incompetence in Kabul is helping us. A lot of people are turning to us to resolve disputes, because we provide a solution a lot more quickly, and the formal system is corrupt. The government has very little authority outside of Kabul, but if we are to gain legitimate power, it will require patience, which is often in short supply among the younger generation.’

‘And al Qaeda?’

‘Protecting al Qaeda immediately after 9/11 was very costly to us, so publicly, we will continue to deny any support, but up here . . .’ Mullah Akbar opened his palms and smiled enigmatically. It was all the confirmation General Khan needed.

Their weathered, brown faces dimly illuminated by the light of a flickering oil lamp, General Khan, Tayeb Jamal, and Omar Yousef, the young, battle-hardened commander of al Qaeda in Kunar Province, sat around a rough-hewn wooden table. High in the granite mountains, the village was even more remote than Laniyal, and here, the pine, oak and spruce trees reached through the mists toward the night sky. In contrast to the slightly built Jamal, the bulky Yousef worked out in a makeshift gym, with concrete-filled petrol cans at the ends of star pickets substituting for weights. His thick neck was supported by a broad chest and shoulders, his dark hair closely cut, and his brown eyes ever suspicious.

General Khan fired up the satellite connection to his laptop. ‘I have a plan to bring the Infidel to his knees,’ he began, and he gave the young warriors the bare essentials of his intentions. The scheme had been conceived by Pharos, and once put in place, Khan was due to report back to the shadowy group of international powerbrokers at their annual meeting in Alexandria. The young Taliban and al Qaeda ideologues might have seen themselves as martyrs for Islam, but as far as the Pharos were concerned, the Taliban and al Qaeda were just cannon fodder for their extraordinary agenda.

‘The plan will be executed in three stages, and all communications are to be through the chat room on the website stampgeekcol.com. This is the code list,’ Khan said, handing over what appeared to be a catalogue of stamps. ‘Each of those stamps has a corresponding letter of the alphabet marked beside it, and there is more than one choice for each letter. The additional stamps have phrases attached to them,’ he continued, handing over a separate list, ‘and you have each been assigned an innocuous login name. To give me forty-eight hours warning of the attacks in Phase One, you simply go to the chat room and put up a notice that you’ve acquired a US #231 1893 Columbian Commemorative stamp.’ Khan pointed to the American Bank Note Company’s violet-brown two-cent stamp depicting Christopher Columbus coming ashore at Guanahani in San Salvador, where he had claimed the land in the name of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. ‘A stamp collectors’ website is the last place the Infidel will look.’

‘And the Australian and British stamps?’ asked Yousef.

‘They refer to our operations against the Infidel’s sycophantic allies . . . and the cells we’re building to attack those countries,’ explained Khan. ‘So to announce that an attack is about to begin in Australia, you would post that you have acquired the 1963 five-penny Blue Mountains Crossing stamp,’ he said, pointing to the dark blue stamp that contained images of the explorers Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson. In 1813, the three explorers had finally blazed a route across the previously impenetrable Blue Mountains west of Sydney, and they were pictured looking toward the as-yet unexplored western plains from the top of Mount York. ‘To let us know an attack has commenced in the United Kingdom, you simply post an acquisition of a 1941 King George VI two-and-a-half-pence stamp. None of these stamps are particularly rare, but they’re rare enough to warrant announcing that you’ve added them to your collection. Phase One is an attack on this choke point here, with the best launch sites here, and here,’ Khan said, outlining the details of the first of the attacks on the West. ‘Once that attack is successful, we will wait.’

‘Why?’ Yousef demanded. ‘Why give the Infidel time to recover?’

‘There is no point in executing the next two phases while the Infidel is at a heightened state of alert. To attack then risks failure,’ Khan lied, knowing the delay was essential for the shadowy powerbrokers in the West to take advantage of it.

‘Phase Two is to take place when
I
post an acquisition of stamps,’ Khan said, pointing to the 1971 issue of the Republik Österreich two-schilling stamp featuring the Austrian nitrogen plant at Linz. Khan smiled at the irony of the code. Linz had featured prominently in the early life of Adolf Hitler.

‘Once Phase Two has been executed, we will wait again, but the final attacks in Phase Three will be the most devastating of all, and they will start when I indicate I have acquired the 1960 American four-cent stamp,’ Khan said, pointing to the blue and red stamp inscribed with George Washington’s entreaty to ‘Observe good faith and justice to all nations’. ‘The Infidel has ignored the wishes of his first president, and that will be his downfall.
Insha’Allah
, these final attacks will plunge him into the abyss.’

The conversation was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a Chinook helicopter. Suddenly the night sky was lit up with a fireball, and the explosion reverberated around the snow-capped mountains.

Yousef and Jamal cheered and General Khan smiled.

‘Your fighters have not taken long to get the new missiles into action.’

‘No . . . and with your help, we can get many more of them, yes?’

‘It will be difficult, but not impossible, my friend. In the meantime, the Infidel will be looking for us, so it’s time for me to leave. When next we meet, the plans for the attacks on the choke point and the other two phases will be well advanced.’

Yousef and Jamal chorused in unison. ‘
Insha’Allah
!’

E
VRAN, the world’s largest energy and arms multinational, dwarfed companies like Chevron, ExxonMobil, Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems. EVRAN’s chairman and silver-haired CEO, Sheldon Crowley pushed a button under the desk in the stone-walled study of his château, high in the hills above Sartène on the French island of Corsica, and a huge screen rose silently from the depths of a cedar sideboard. Crowley switched on CNC to find the news was not good. The newsreader was outlining a dramatic shift in White House policy.

‘Speaking in Huntsville, Ontario, before a meeting of the leaders of the G7 countries, President McGovern described global warming as our greatest challenge. Here’s a little of what he had to say.’

The camera cut to vision of the president. ‘The warming of our planet is the greatest crisis facing humankind today.’ Standing at the edge of a lake in Ontario’s Muskoka Municipality, the tall, distinguished Texan cut a powerful figure. ‘97 per cent of scientists now agree – this warming is primarily due to human activity, and in particular, our burning of fossil fuels,’ the president warned. ‘After the failures of the climate change summits, especially in Copenhagen, it will be up to countries like the United States and the other members of the G7 to show leadership. To that end, in the United States, I will shortly be introducing legislation on carbon that will see tough new emissions standards, particularly for coal-fired power stations.’

Crowley watched the broadcast, his anger growing. EVRAN’s stakes in the coal industry were massive. The multinational controlled some of the world’s largest coal mines, over half of the power stations in the United States, and many more around the globe. Emission controls would slash hundreds of millions from the EVRAN bottom line.

‘We need market-based solutions to climate change,’ the president continued, ‘and for the big polluters, that will mean a charge of around US $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. It will also mean an increase in the price of fossil fuels. We can’t leave it to the fossil-fuel industry, which is driven by huge profits, to regulate itself; we need to level the playing field so that wind, solar, and wave technology can compete. So I’m very pleased to see that China, now the world’s second largest and fastest growing economy, has been invited to attend the G7 meeting here in Canada, and I’m very much looking forward to my discussions with the president of the People’s Republic.’

‘A radical change in policy for President McGovern,’ the news anchor intoned, ‘and as some analysts have observed, it’s doubtful that McGovern would have pushed for a fee on carbon emissions if he were facing re-election, but as a man in his second term, he perhaps sees this as the legacy of his presidency . . . Now to news at home. Convicted murderer Wesley Robinson’s last-minute bid for clemency has been rejected by the governor of Oklahoma. Robinson was convicted of the assassination of oil executive Marshall Bradley, and will be executed by lethal injection at ten a.m. tomorrow at Oklahoma’s State Penitentiary in McAlester. In other news —’

Crowley angrily flicked the switch and the screen disappeared into its recess. He rose from his desk and stared through the château’s large double-glazed windows, toward the distant coast of Corsica thousands of feet below, and the blue Mediterranean beyond. The castle dated back to the fifteenth century, when the viceroy of Corsica built it to control the central area of the island, and its original purpose mirrored Crowley’s plans for the wider world. But if Washington was going down the carbon-tax route, the impact on EVRAN would be catastrophic.

Crowley had always been a big donor to both sides of politics, including to McGovern, whom he’d met with several times. He’d urged the president to can any idea of punishing business for emissions, but clearly that influence was waning, and for Crowley, getting his own man elected to the White House – someone he could control – was now the only way forward. If successful it would perfectly complement Pharos’s broader strategy. But there was very little time: nominations for many states would be closing soon. It would necessitate either getting one of the declared candidates on side, or a relatively late entry. In the meantime, Crowley needed a replacement for his hit man, Wesley Robinson.

He picked up the phone and punched in a series of digits. Protected by AES 256-bit and Twofish algorithms and ciphers, the EVRAN system was virtually unbreakable.

‘Yes, sir?’ The phone was answered immediately by Eugene Reid, a convicted felon appointed by Crowley to head EVRAN’s Area 15. Located over 8000 kilometres away on the secure top floor of EVRAN’s headquarters in Dallas, in one of two glass-fronted twin towers, Area 15 was the code name for EVRAN’s top-secret commercial intelligence unit. It had amused Crowley to designate the unit with the reverse code of the notorious Area 51 in Nevada, one of America’s most sensitive military bases. But unlike its desert cousin, which focused on military threats, EVRAN’s Area 15 was tasked with commercial espionage, targeting other energy giants like British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil. And Area 15 had more sinister purposes.

‘Elias D. Ruger,’ Crowley said. ‘He’s about to stand trial for murder in Chicago. We need to put in a fix to get him in front of Judge Braydon O’Reilly.’

‘I’m on it, sir.’

In the 1980s, the FBI had conducted Operation Greylord, a three-year undercover operation to expose endemic corruption in Chicago’s courts, which at the time included a ring of clerks, in effect ‘bagmen’ tasked with passing bribes to corrupt judges. Judges’ chambers had been bugged, and the US Department of Justice had authorised dummy cases for undercover agents and lawyers to ‘fix’ in front of those judges suspected of taking bribes. The last judge to be caught in the sting was Judge Thomas J. Maloney, convicted of taking over US $100 000 in bribes to acquit hit men and murderers. Crowley smiled to himself. The gap left by Maloney had been more than adequately filled by Judge O’Reilly.

Crowley put down the phone, confident that his man would be acquitted. Unlike other countries, once an accused was acquitted in the United States, the district attorney was prevented by law from appealing, even if new evidence emerged.

Crowley got up from his desk and moved toward a heavy steel door set in the inner stone wall of his office. He punched the fifteen-figure code into the lock. The door swung open noiselessly on its finely engineered bearings, and Crowley switched on the lights to illuminate the subterranean passage. He had been down here countless times, but as always, he felt a surge of adrenalin as he descended the fifty stone steps that led to an underground vault carved out of the rock. At the end of the narrow passage that led from the base of the steps, Crowley punched in a longer code that opened the final steel door. It had taken over two years and some three million dollars to construct, but the state-of-the-art gallery within was equipped with conservation and preservation systems that would not have been out of place in either the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City or the Louvre. Computers controlled the temperature and light levels. To guard against mould, sensitive psychrometers provided readouts on the relative humidity, and 20-watt LED lamps minimised infrared and ultraviolet radiation, all enemies of ancient masterpieces.

Crowley threw a switch to override the computers, and soft lights illuminated a dozen priceless paintings. He moved silently across the sprung wooden floor, and stood in front of Rembrandt van Rijn’s
Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee,
the Dutch master’s only seascape. Crowley had acquired the Rembrandt and many others through Zachary Rubinstein. The Rembrandt was part of the proceeds from the heist of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. On 18 March 1990, thieves stole thirteen priceless works that had never been recovered. In addition to the
Storm on the Sea of Galilee
and Vermeer’s
The Concert
, they made off with three other Rembrandts, including a self-portrait housed in the Dutch Room on the second floor, as well as Manet’s
Chez Tortoni
and five other masters. The FBI, Crowley knew, had spent countless hours on the case, and despite the Gardner Museum offering a reward of US $5 million for information leading to the recovery of the works, their whereabouts remained a mystery.

Crowley smiled to himself. It gave him deep satisfaction that he and he alone was able to view the only seascape Rembrandt had ever painted. Crowley never ceased to be moved by Rembrandt’s
chiaroscuro
– the artist’s use of both light and dark to create the extraordinary tension in the seventeenth-century oil on canvas. The small sailing boat, with Christ in the stern, was about to be engulfed by a huge wave, and Rembrandt had used the boat’s wind-torn mast to effectively divide the painting in two. To the left, he had captured a dramatic yellow light that shafted through the storm clouds, drenching the torn sail; but below the mast, where Christ was admonishing the disciples who were bailing desperately, Rembrandt had rendered the stern in semi-darkness, a darkness that was devoid of hope. Crowley nodded approvingly. Rembrandt had added an extra crew member, with a face bearing a striking resemblance to the artist himself, something Rembrandt occasionally included in his paintings, almost as an additional signature.

He paused at Vermeer’s masterpiece,
The Concert,
showing three figures around a piano. Valued at US $300 million, the stolen painting was the most valuable ever to disappear from public view. The paintings of Jan Vermeer, of which there were only thirty-five known to exist in the world, invited interpretation, and Crowley had sometimes wondered whether Vermeer was depicting an illicit love affair between two of the three figures by the piano. Alongside it hung JMW Turner’s 1813 work,
Landscape in Devonshire.
Oil sketches on paper by the great artist were very rare, and this was part of the proceeds of a robbery at the Leeds City Art Gallery in 1998. Turner was known as ‘the painter of light’, and Crowley never tired of studying the wonderful contrasts in the landscape. Climate change researchers from the Academy of Athens had started to examine the old masters to give them clues as to what the skies looked like before records were kept, and Turner’s work, with his astounding sunsets and use of natural light, was being used to provide an estimate of aerosol optical depth – the amount of dust, smoke, volcanic ash and sea salts in the atmosphere. This was one Turner that would not be available to them, he mused, as he moved to admire yet another of his stolen acquisitions, Vincent van Gogh’s
Poppy Flowers.

It had been painted in 1897, shortly after Van Gogh had moved to Paris from the Netherlands, and it was in Paris that Van Gogh experimented with Impressionist styles, influenced by the likes of Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin. Van Gogh began to introduce vibrant colours into his work, of which
Poppy Flowers
was one of the finest examples. Valued at US $50 million, it had been stolen from the Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Cairo in June of 1997. Ten years later, it was recovered in Kuwait, only to be stolen again from the same museum. Now it was Crowley’s, and the authorities didn’t have a clue. Crowley allowed himself another rare smile. General Khan, he knew, wanted the painting desperately, but when Crowley had discovered it was on the black market, he had immediately offered US $5 million more and gazumped the Pakistani. Rubinstein had always been amenable to the highest bidder, although Crowley had been furious when he discovered the dealer had inadvertently given Khan a clue as to where
Poppy Flowers
might have finished up. Now there was an even bigger prize, and Khan had already put the mask of Tutankhamun on the table as a price for his cooperation in the Hindu Kush. But it was one thing to offer a priceless icon, and quite another to actually hand it over. In Crowley’s world, the sly little general had a use-by date. Thoughts of the Jewish dealer turned his attention back to the Euclid Papyrus, and he made his way past the Van Gogh to a glass display case on the far wall. Crowley had brought in a renowned expert from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, ostensibly to advise on the preservation of a minor papyrus scroll he had purchased legally some years before. The EVRAN CEO had listened intently while the papyrologist explained that like the masterpieces at the other end of the gallery, papyrus was also vulnerable to oxidation, hydrolysis and acidosis, and to light. The pigments and metallic inks used by the ancient Egyptians often contained arsenic, which was especially sensitive to light and could fade entirely. In the past, the salt content of the Egyptian soil in the Nile Valley had provided a natural defence against microorganisms and fungi, so under the careful guidance of the papyrologist, Crowley had ensured that the environment of the Valley of the Kings had been faithfully replicated.

Crowley stared at the priceless fragment, browned by the centuries and secured between two pieces of three-millimetre glass by Japanese paper tabs and wheat starch paste. The contents of even this small fragment were explosive, and Crowley was in no doubt the scribe had been guided by a very high-ranking Egyptian official, perhaps Ay himself, the grand vizier or prime minister of Egypt when the nine-year-old Tutankhamun had been installed as pharaoh in 1332 BC. Crowley and many professional Egyptologists suspected that Ay might have been responsible for the king’s death at the young age of eighteen. Recent X-rays of Tutankhamun’s mummified body had revealed that the boy king had suffered a massive blow to the back of the head, and it was Ay who had most to gain from the king’s death, succeeding him as the penultimate pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of the New Kingdom.

The eons had turned the ancient black ink to grey, but it was still legible, and for the umpteenth time, Crowley wrestled with the translation of the hieroglyphs: pintail ducks and scarab beetles, feathers and claws, interspersed with male and female figures, ropes and bowls, and signs for water. Crowley possessed an intimate knowledge of both the alphabetic elements and the logographic representation of whole words. To the EVRAN CEO, the first words on the Euclid fragment were clear enough.