The Alexandria Connection (9 page)

‘Changing that culture of capitalism will not be easy, especially in emerging consumer economies like China,’ observed Samuel P. Talbot, the baby-faced former Head of the World Bank, ‘although I agree with the thrust of the argument. We can use the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to increase control over developing counties, but we need continued control of the majority of the world’s media to ensure the real picture is not reported,’ he said, looking at Louis Walden, the short, balding media baron.

‘Changing the culture is difficult but not impossible,’ Pharos observed. ‘Our own energy and finance multinationals will continue operations unabated, and once we have more of our people in bodies like the UN, we can start a campaign aimed at getting the masses to agree to a post-capitalist world. Through the media, we create the perception that the capitalist system is riven with corruption, and driven by pursuit of blind profit. We begin to make a very strong case that people will be much better off under the control of a revitalised UN – essentially a world government whose finances we control, and where universal production brigades produce only what is needed on a sustainable basis. The lunatic Left embraces it, and the masses rise up against greed and corruption to embrace a wiser system of ration quotas and an acceptance of duties assigned to them. But first,’ he warned, ‘we have to gain control of the world’s political systems from within.’

Pharos turned to a new section of his folder. ‘You will see from your briefing notes at Flag B that the only political systems we can predict with any certainty, at least for now, are those of China and Russia. For China’s chairman, Xi Jinping, it will be business as usual, although he will face growing pressure from the hundreds of millions of his countrymen who are not sharing in China’s newfound wealth. And therein lies an opportunity to destabilise the regime, although that may be a couple of years off yet . . . Any thoughts?’

Pharos listened intently as the discussion ranged from likely GDP growth rates, to future labour problems under the one-child policy that had produced a birth rate that was the lowest in Chinese history.

‘And we should be mindful of another weakness which we can turn to our advantage,’ Louis Walden added, ‘and that’s the internet. Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, is starting to give the wider public a voice, and although the government has managed to maintain their censorship controls, they’re vulnerable to cyber attacks.’

Pharos made a note as the participants probed the weaknesses of the Chinese regime, before the discussion turned to Russia.

‘Vladimir Putin is firmly in control,’ said Pharos, ‘and the Russians have plans.’ Pharos flicked the remote, bringing up a map of what Pharos analysts predicted Europe might look like with a resurgent Russia. ‘With the annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine, Russia has gained the rights to huge oil and gas reserves in the Black and Azov Seas off the Crimean coast – ten billion barrels of oil and four trillion cubic metres of natural gas, and that’s just the start.’

‘Apart from Germany and France, the Eurozone is still a basket case,’ Du Bois agreed, ‘but there are weaknesses in the long term. Russia badly needs capital investment, and if the oil price drops, we can exploit that, because that will impact on the Kremlin’s ability to improve living standards.’

Again, Pharos listened intently before he brought the discussion to a close. ‘As long as Vladimir Putin’s there, the political systems in Russia are going to be a tough nut to crack, but the situation in the United States is very different,’ he said, with a rare smile. The discovery of large-scale shale oil deposits had the potential to finally bring the United States self-sufficiency in energy and free her from the shackles of unfriendly regimes in the Middle East and other tenuous overseas supplies.

‘The problems in the United States start with the current administration,’ Crowley observed. ‘McGovern made a speech in Huntsville the other day – the usual left-wing nonsense about climate change, when half the country’s digging themselves out from under snow drifts, for Christ’s sake. But McGovern’s not taking any notice of that, and now, for the first time, we may see a move toward legislation taxing carbon emissions. One of the greatest threats we face to our operations in coal, oil and gas is a tax on carbon, and it’s got to be stopped. We need the Republican Party back in power.’

‘And we would need someone in the White House we could control,’ the former secretary of state Bradley Guthrie observed. ‘Someone we could count on.’

‘And to guarantee that, we need someone with skeletons in his closet. I’m working on that,’ Crowley said, an air of confidence about him.

T
he massive great white zigzagged toward O’Connor and Aleta, its lower jaw extended, vicious serrated teeth now horrifyingly visible. O’Connor moved in front of Aleta to protect her. Great whites, he knew, often took a sample bite out of humans, but would mostly let go and move on. But O’Connor wasn’t about to become part of the sampling process. He pressed his fins against the submerged sphinx, propelled himself toward the attacking shark and smashed his heavy metal diving light into the animal’s sensitive nose.

O’Connor was slammed back by the force of the impact and the torch tumbled out of his outstretched arm, but he had struck the shark at its most vulnerable point. At the top of the food chain, with no predators, great whites were not used to prey that fought back, and the huge animal scraped along the side of the sphinx as it abruptly turned and swam away.

‘Okay?’ O’Connor signalled with his forefinger and thumb.

Aleta’s face was ashen behind her mask, but she managed a smile and returned his signal.

Just to be sure, they waited for five minutes, but when the graceful animal didn’t return, O’Connor gave the signal for Aleta to follow him. He set his compass heading at 90 degrees magnetic and they swam due east for 600 metres, with O’Connor constantly checking behind to ensure the great white hadn’t returned. Abeam of the western breakwater, O’Connor changed his heading to 142 degrees and they entered the harbour through the main channel, which at its deepest was only nine metres. Its western counterpart was one of the oldest ports in the world, handling over three quarters of Egypt’s shipping trade, but the eastern harbour they were entering was not navigable for large vessels and it sloped gently upwards toward the shore. The water was murkier now, although the coarse grey sand of the bottom was still visible. Two reefs lay to the east, and after another thousand metres the submerged island of Antirhodos appeared in the distance.

Aleta took the lead and O’Connor followed her around the royal island, which had once stood two metres above the sea. Aleta swam slowly across the paved white rocks of the Roman roads, across fallen red granite columns to a magnificent statue of a priest of the goddess Isis, and on to a sphinx, the face of which bore the image of Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra’s father. A school of double-banded bream drifted among the sunken ruins, oblivious to the two divers.

Aleta turned north, crossing an area that had once been a royal port. Two hundred metres on, she pointed out the ruins of the Timonium, a small, luxurious palace built by the Roman general Marcus Antonius. Antonius had taken refuge there after he and Cleopatra had been defeated by Octavian at the Battle of Actium. O’Connor and Aleta reached the main peninsula of the Poseidium, and the ruins of the Temple to Poseidon, where mariners once offered prayers for safe voyages. Both divers paused, knowing they were now opposite their hotel. They were getting close to where the old library had been indicated on the papyrus map. O’Connor withdrew the waterproof copy from his belt bag and placed it on the old Roman road, orienting it with his compass.

Aleta, her face animated behind her mask, indicated ‘one hundred metres’ and gestured toward the north-east. O’Connor nodded in agreement and switched on his underwater GPS. Prior to the dive, he’d hidden the satellite radio antennae beside some rocks just out from the eastern shoreline, enabling communication with the satellite above. The transducer in the water converted the satellite signals to acoustic signals which O’Connor’s GPS was now picking up. In the murky conditions, the range of the system between transducer and wrist display was restricted to less than a kilometre, so O’Connor had relied on his compass when they were outside the harbour; now, O’Connor knew it was accurate to within five metres. He indicated with one forefinger behind the other for Aleta to follow, and they set off on a bearing of 63 degrees magnetic.

As best they had been able to calculate from the papyrus map, the ancient library lay submerged at 29˚ 54’ 17” east, 31˚ 12’ 27” north. Minutes later, the GPS flashed a warning they had reached the preset location, and O’Connor turned to indicate to Aleta that the library might lie beneath. He expected a look of disappointment. The sand had built up over the centuries, and there wasn’t much to see, but O’Connor didn’t have Aleta’s archaeologist’s eye. Instead of showing disappointment, Aleta swam determinedly toward the sand.

Without the benefit of a precise satellite location, other divers would not have seen it, but Aleta had noticed something. She held her fingers up in a ‘v’ to one eye, signalling ‘look’, and then she pointed to the rocks in the sand. Aleta slowly swam along their length, running her hands above those that formed an unnaturally straight line. She stopped suddenly, indicating where the line intersected another at right angles.

O’Connor swam toward her, following the faint outline. When he reached her, he could see the excitement in her eyes. They had found the top of a long, ancient wall. Whether or not it was the library was open to question, but it did not take the pair long to confirm that Aleta’s excitement might be justified. O’Connor reached for the small trowel he’d attached to his belt, and the centuries-old sandy silt came away in clouds, revealing the start of what was a series of stone recesses which, in the old library, would have reached almost to the ceiling. For the next hour, the pair dug down at random locations along the buried walls, revealing more storage areas, some large, some small. Both knew that none of the hundreds of thousands of papyri would have survived, but to have located the most famous library in the world . . . it was on a par with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

O’Connor checked his wrist display and the oxygen partial pressure. By his calculations they had just over thirty minutes left. He formed his hands into a ‘roof’, meaning it was time to go home, but Aleta had found something else and she gave the signal for ‘wait’. O’Connor watched as Aleta unearthed four tiny canopic jars at the back of a lower recess. The jar covers were shaped to resemble the four sons of Anubis, the god of death and embalming.

Aleta carefully placed the small jars in her carry pouch. The ancient Egyptians used larger versions to store the organs of the deceased, and the jars would normally have been found in the sarcophagus of a pharaoh’s tomb, separate from the mummy lest they cause it to putrefy and decay. Duamutef, the jackal-headed god representing the east, watched over the stomach; Hapi, the baboon-headed god of the north, protected the lungs; Imseti, the human-headed god of the south, cared for the liver; and Qebehsenuef, the god of the west, protected the intestines.

Aleta was about to follow O’Connor when she noticed the round lid of another, much larger jar poking through the sand and silt at the rear of the recess. She checked her wrist display, signalled again to O’Connor to wait, and gently eased the artifact from where it had rested for centuries. Noting the lid was firmly sealed with pitch, Aleta pointed to O’Connor’s pouch for a calico carrier and together they cautiously slipped the polished pottery jar into the bag.

From his position on the ramparts of Fort Qaytbey, Omar Aboud watched through his binoculars as the pair emerged on to a small strip of sand, not far from the modern library of Alexandria. What, Aboud wondered, was in the calico bag?

R
achel Bannister handed Crowley the dossiers on the Republican candidates for the presidential election. ‘Pre-dinner drink?’ she asked.

Crowley nodded. ‘Chablis.’

Rachel selected a Valmur Grand Cru from the well-stocked fridge in Crowley’s suite, and settled into a Louis XV chair that was finished in fine red silk.

‘Is
this
the best the Republicans can do?’ asked Crowley, a quizzical look on his face.

‘Well might you look surprised,’ said Rachel. In a practised move that accentuated her cleavage, she leaned toward the gold-legged glass coffee table. ‘They’re not a particularly impressive lot. Of the twenty-one candidates who have declared, there’s only three or four of them who are in with any sort of a show.’

‘The first four?’

Rachel nodded. ‘William J. Stephenson is a two-term senator and as you’d expect, coming from North Dakota, he’s a strong conservative. He supported both the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and he’s anti-abortion, a climate change sceptic and anti-federal healthcare.’

‘So am I.’ Crowley scowled. ‘I’m fucked if I’m going to pay for those lazy sons of bitches who don’t want to work, and want everything as a fucking entitlement. Any dirt?’

‘We’re working on it . . . but he’s a strong Catholic.’

‘So was Kennedy. What about this next guy . . . Weaver?’

‘Bennett Weaver, current governor of Idaho, and another strong conservative. Similar views to Stephenson, and vehemently opposes same-sex marriage.’

‘Anything on him?’

‘He’s a Lutheran, but despite his outspoken opposition to gays, there are rumours he may be a closet homosexual.’

‘Wouldn’t be the first time,’ Crowley chuckled. ‘Who was that dickhead evangelical pastor who was thumping the pulpit against gay marriage every other week, and then had to own up to paying for gay sex?’

‘There’s been a barn full of them. The guy you’re talking about is the evangelical from Colorado, but I’ll let you know about the Idaho governor.’

‘And the woman?’

‘Martha Wylie, South Carolina. In her third term in the House of Reps. Another strong evangelical Christian, and no skeletons . . . at least none that I can find.’

‘Jesus Christ, we’re surrounded by God-botherers. Are
any
of these any good to us?’

‘It’s still early days, but even after you make a sizeable donation, there’s no one on that list who’s likely to come into our tent.’

‘What about Davis?’

Rachel’s eyes widened. ‘
Carter
Davis? The governor of Montana? You’ve got to be kidding. He’s as thick as hog shit.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Sheldon . . . I’ve met that moron. It’s not common knowledge – yet – but he can’t keep his dick in his pants for more than twenty-four hours.’

‘We should get some proof of that.’

‘That won’t be a problem. How many bedrooms do you want bugged?’ Rachel replied, rolling her eyes.

‘Three should be enough. He wouldn’t be the first one in the White House to play around, and he won’t be the last. But that’s my point; he’s got a wife and three young kids, and skeletons in his closet that will give us leverage. Don’t forget Woodrow Wilson. The likes of the Rockefellers and Rothschilds needed their man in the White House, and they had Wilson over a barrel.’

‘Woodrow Wilson had skeletons in the closet?’

‘Oh yeah.’ Crowley chortled, relishing the little-known revelation about one of the country’s heroes. ‘While he was a professor at Princeton, Wilson had a long-standing affair, writing hundreds of passionate letters to a woman he’d met while vacationing in Bermuda. Everyone has a skeleton in the closet. See what you can find out about our friend Davis, and if there’s enough there, set up a meeting with him when we get back to the States.’ Crowley savoured his wine and picked up the second folder, on the Democrats. ‘What are the latest polls?’

‘Hailey Campbell’s still dominating with a 61 per cent approval rating. That’s down from when she was secretary of energy, but she’s still way out in front of Vice President Bilson and the rest of the field.’

‘But she’s vulnerable?’

Rachel nodded. ‘Yes . . . and as much as it pisses me off to say so, she’s vulnerable because she’s a woman.’

Crowley’s eyes wandered to Rachel’s cleavage. ‘But feisty, like you.’

‘That’s not going to cut any ice with the lunatic Christian Right. What is it? The woman must obey the husband and all the rest of their crap and carry-on. And gender’s not the only thing she’s got going against her. Campbell is on the record as being pro-choice, pro-universal health care and pro-climate change; but on the plus side, Americans trust her. She will make climate change an issue.’

‘Which is why we’ll need a scientist of Ahlstrom’s calibre on the Davis campaign. He’ll need to blow every one of her arguments on climate change out of the water.’

Rachel nodded and made a note. ‘And the other issue is terrorism and the war in Iraq. She’s been against the war right from the start, but the wacky Christian Right and half the Tea Party see that war as God’s war against the Muslims. Campbell’s everything the Christian Right loves to hate. As far as the evangelical bloc is concerned, in this election it’s going to be ABC.’

‘Anybody But Campbell. You’re right, and we can turn that to our advantage. There are over forty million of these evangelicals, a sizeable number of whom will turn out for whichever candidate their pastor endorses. In a country where it’s not compulsory to vote, that’s a very powerful bloc. Bush’s campaign manager, Karl Rove, knew it well. Without the God-botherers on side, George W. wouldn’t have beaten Kerry in 2004, let alone Gore in 2000. Davis doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to have his moment on the road to Damascus.’

‘And how do you intend to achieve that? Apart from Christmas, Easter and the Fourth of July, Davis wouldn’t be seen dead in a church.’

‘Pastor Matthias B. Shipley . . . our new secret weapon.’

Rachel rolled her eyes. Shipley was a favourite of Lillian, Crowley’s fervently religious wife. On one occasion, Rachel had had to suffer through one of Shipley’s tub-thumping sermons on the evils of homosexuality, followed by tea and scones at Shipley’s Hermit Road mega-church.

‘What makes you think someone like Shipley is going to support a dirt-bag like Davis? For starters, has it occurred to you Davis has been divorced? The evangelicals are pretty keen on quoting JC on that little number. If I recall my Bible and Matthew, it went “But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”’

‘I didn’t know you were religious,’ Crowley said, a look of astonishment on his face.

‘I’m not. It’s just that I was brought up in a convent,’ Rachel said, shuddering at the memory of it all.

‘Well, the evangelicals got behind Reagan in 1980, and we can take a lesson out of that campaign. Reagan was divorced, remarried, and he’d signed a bill on legalising abortion when he was Governor of California –
and
he was running against Jimmy Carter,’ Crowley said. ‘You couldn’t get a more Christian candidate than that guy – he started out teaching Sunday School and took Bible study when he was in the Navy.’

‘You seem to be forgetting that Reagan had the likes of Billy Graham behind him, and Reagan had charisma. What was his remark to the evangelicals? “I know you can’t endorse me . . . but I want you to know that I endorse you and what you’re doing.” That brought the house down, with two thousand evangelical pastors all cheering and shouting,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m willing to bet Shipley won’t have a bar of Davis, let alone work to get two thousand pastors in to back him.’

‘Two nights in Cannes says we can, so we’ll need to persuade him. See what dirt you can dig up on Shipley, because you’re going to run the Davis campaign.’

‘What! You can’t be serious. Who’s going to look after you?’ Rachel demanded.

‘I’ll manage. I’ll have a word with Louis Walden, and we’ll get Omega Centauri behind your campaign. The rest of the media will follow. And if you get our guy up, there’ll be a very big bonus,’ Crowley added.

In Crowley’s world, everyone had their price. But he had misunderstood his assistant’s motivations, and it would cost him dearly.

In the first break between discussions the next morning, Crowley sought out General Khan and asked him to take a stroll. He chose a path shaded by palm trees, some distance from the palace. Security guards shadowed the pair at a distance, and the guards on the roof followed their progress through binoculars, reporting their position to the command centre in the basement. Crowley turned the discussion toward the three-phase attack he had charged Khan with executing.

‘As a result of the global financial crisis, we’re in a very powerful position,’ he affirmed, ‘but we need those peaks and troughs to continue, Farid, at a much greater intensity. Unlike the other banks and big investors, we’ll know when they’re coming, so we sell at the top, just before the crashes, and then buy in again when the market hits rock bottom.’

Khan felt a surge of power flow through his very being. It had taken him a while to understand the Pharos strategy, but eventually he’d realised the ruthlessness of the plan. The Pharos Group’s massive holdings on the world’s stock markets enabled it to sell off huge amounts of equity, which in turn could drop the markets up to two percentage points. But Khan had also come to realise that for the group, this wasn’t enough. They were out to crush the other banking groups, one by one, until they had complete supremacy. Pharos needed prior knowledge of events that would cause lemming-like panic on Wall Street and the other bourses, so they could sell before manipulated drops. But to manipulate the market to that extent, Pharos needed Khan’s help. Badly.

‘The subprime mortgages served us well, but they’ve run their course,’ said Crowley. ‘How did your discussions with our friends in the Hindu Kush go?’

‘The plans are in place,’ Khan replied evenly. ‘Where it suits their purpose, the Taliban and al Qaeda will take every chance to hit the West.’

‘Good, because it’s time to put the Arab Spring to our advantage. Washington’s stepping up its drone strikes, and we need to move before they have a greater effect.’

‘The drone strikes are actually having the opposite effect to what Washington wants,’ Khan ventured, ‘and in the long term, they’re doing us a favour. Washington’s been very successful in killing off the older leaders, but many of those were tired of the constant conflict, and they were prepared to sue for peace. The younger generation who have replaced them are different. Firstly, Washington is now struggling to profile them, and secondly, the younger Taliban and al Qaeda leaders have much more fire in the belly. They’re rash, and they’ll take some heat over the Chinook they’ve just downed, but we can harness them.’

‘Phase One?’

‘In preparation . . . and they have the stamp codes for the website. That will give you forty-eight hours notice.’

‘Good.’ Crowley savoured the thought of yet another global financial crisis. ‘What the markets hate most is uncertainty, and if there’s uncertainty with oil supply, oil prices will skyrocket and other stocks will slump.’

‘The attacks on the choke point will take place just as soon as my contacts can get in position,’ said Khan. ‘But if they’re successful, the markets could stay down for quite a while.’

‘The headlines will be full of doom and gloom,’ Crowley agreed. ‘But I assure you, it will be short-lived, and that will leave Du Bois free to work on the money supply. Once the markets rise again, we will strike with Phase Two, causing another crash, and then we strike again with Phase Three.’

‘The anti-ship missiles – where are we at with them?’ asked Khan.

‘We’ve got that covered. They’re already en route, and you will get them the same way as the Scorpions.’

‘Taipans?’

Crowley nodded. ‘And to ensure the Middle East remains thoroughly destabilised, I’m arranging for a second shipment to follow out of Brazil.’ Four years earlier, Crowley had successfully lobbied Congress for a US $200 million EVRAN defence grant to develop variants of an anti-ship missile.

‘Taipan is based on Boeing’s SLAM-ER, but this one can be launched from a vehicle as well as fighters. It has a range of over 200 kilometres, which is more than adequate for our purposes, and it’s more accurate than anything else on the market . . . the trick will be to get the vehicles into position.’

‘I’m quite capable of managing all this, but it’s very dangerous work, and I’m the one who’s running the biggest risk here.’

Crowley glanced at the wily little Pakistani, anticipating what was coming next. ‘Meaning?’

‘The mask of Tutankhamun is a very attractive inducement, but at the moment, it’s just that – an inducement, and there’s no guarantee such a well-known icon can be procured. But as an indication of good faith, there
is
an additional article that might be already available. Like you, I am an admirer of the great masters, particularly Vincent van Gogh. There is one painting in particular that I have long sought for my collection:
Poppy Flowers.
I had hoped to acquire it through an art dealer in Venice, but unfortunately, one of his clients beat me to it. Given your interest, and the very high risks you want me to take, I was wondering if you might assist me?’