The CleanSweep Conspiracy (9 page)

“Guess who designed and supervised the construction of the wall around the Warsaw Ghetto, the one that kept the Jews trapped inside? The grandfather. He oversaw every detail of the construction and intended to use it as a template for other cities. Matt had copies of photographs, blueprints, identification cards, and other documents to back up the story. There is even one photo of the old man striking a petulant pose in front of the ghetto wall, hand on hip, flashing a wicked smile for the camera. He’s still alive, still filling Claussen’s head with that old evil, dressing it with modern words.”

Susan’s resulting self
-
hug wasn’t about being cold. She shivered at the thought of parallels in political rhetoric now
—
people were still demanding walls to keep others out.

Carl stood and started pacing. “We have to get moving. I don’t like being out on the street like this.”

Susan sighed, stood, and on an impulse walked over to her cameraman and embraced him. Carl pushed her back gently and lifted her head by placing his finger under her chin. They looked at each other, and Carl admitted to himself that he was in love.

Susan was crying soft tears as they began to walk again, arm in arm, like lovers out for an evening stroll. But it didn’t last long. Susan stopped abruptly.

“All right, how do I look? We need to get to that motel and meet with Tremain, find out what’s been going on since we last met, and figure out a way to stop it.” She smoothed her hair back and put on her best news
-
reporter face.

This was Susan the professional, the one he had fallen in love with through the camera lens.

Her stride became steady and determined as the large sign for the Europa Motel drew them forward like moths to the light.

“Left, right, left, right,” Susan ordered, trying to sound like a drill sergeant.

They had been walking for over two hours, and Carl’s pace had slowed considerably, his limp from a blister becoming more pronounced.

“Harummph,” Carl muttered, drawing the sound out. “I have to warn you, the only good thing about the Europa,” he said, gesturing, “is that sign. Whatever website rates motels these days doesn’t even bother grading a dump like this. It’s a tie with the one on Lakeside.”

“As long as I can sit and kick these shoes off, I don’t care if it has fleas,” she said
—
a comment she would later regret.

“If you can find someplace clean enough to sit, be my guest.”

CHAPTER 10

Europa Motel

T
he clerk behind the registration desk looked old enough to be well past retirement age, but he obviously didn’t have a good pension plan. Graham
—
according to his name tag
—
looked up and quickly stubbed out a cigarette when Susan and Carl pushed through the door. The motel was so low
-
tech that an old
-
fashioned bell jangled when the door opened. Graham coughed as he tried to urge the smoke cloud away with a wave of his hand.

Carl peered over the counter at a half
-
finished crossword puzzle.

After his bout of coughing subsided, Graham looked at the two and said, “Ninety
-
five dollars for the night. I can let you have it by the hour if you wish. There are clean sheets on the bed
—
”

Carl slapped a hundred
-
dollar bill on the counter to cut off any further explanation. “Keep the change,” he said, with a sharp tone. “A guy named Kyle will be here soon and will ask what room Susie is in. Give him our room number. If anyone else asks,” he said, leaning forward and flashing a fifty
-
dollar bill, “you haven’t seen a thing.”

“At my age, I don’t see much of anything,” the clerk said. His hand made the money vanish like a magician. He pushed a registration card toward Carl, who wrote two fake names on the register.

Carl picked up the key and looked quizzically at the clerk. “What room?”

“Room 231,” Graham said. “At the back, ground floor. Do you need a wake
-
up call?” He looked at the registration and added, “Mr. Churchill
…
Winston?” The question precipitated a rheumy laugh that followed them out the door.

“I need to pee,” Susan said as Carl opened the door to the room.

Once they were inside, Carl admitted it wasn’t quite as bad as he remembered, but it would be a reach to rate it as even a one
-
star motel. As he looked around, he saw Susan go into the bathroom. He smiled at her attempt to close the door for privacy. The wood was warped, and she finally gave up trying to shut it all the way.

He turned his attention to making sure the drapes were closed tight. He turned on a table lamp and walked to the wall to turn off the overhead light. He heard her washing her hands in the bathroom sink.

Sitting on the edge of the double bed, the side nearer the window, he picked up the small clock
-
radio from the nightstand. He adjusted the dial until there was a hint of music, but he was unable to completely tune out the static. He frowned in annoyance. “What the hell?”

“What?” Susan stood in the doorway to the bathroom.

“It’s nothing. We need some noise. These walls are probably paper
-
thin. I’m trying to create some background noise to cover what we say.”

“At least they won’t be hearing
—
” Letting the comment go unfinished, she flushed, embarrassed.

She walked over to the other side of the bed, and her face reflected her revulsion as she assessed her options. She finally made a decision to sit on the edge of the bed and began to remove her shoes. She let her body fall back, her head resting on a pillow she had stuffed beneath her. She stretched her arms behind her head and stared up at the ceiling.

“Damn, this
is
a dump. It’s even worse than I expected. Your description didn’t do it justice. How could it get any worse?”

They both knew she wasn’t really talking about the room. They were startled by a loud rap on the door. Three quick raps were followed by three slower knocks, and after a pause, three more short raps. It was Morse code for SOS.

“That’s Matt.” Carl jumped up to unlock the door.

When the door opened, the pasty
-
faced man standing in the doorway looked close to collapsing. He turned, looking left and right, before stepping into the room.

“My God, man, you look like a train wreck.” It was the only thing Carl could think to say.

Matt Tremain wore his fear like a suit and radiated a fetid, sweaty odor of tension. His jacket was soaked, and his shirt and slacks looked as if he had slept in them for days, which was indeed the case, as he soon told them. He stepped through the door, snapped the deadbolt shut behind him, and fastened the security chain in place.

“As if that will do any good,” he muttered. He tossed his jacket on the only chair in the room. He carried a small leather shoulder bag and clutched it as if he were afraid to let it go.

Carl slipped a media card into his small video camera, ready to record the meeting.

“I have it,” Matt said with a slight shudder, sitting down in the chair as though he’d just finished a marathon. Reaching into the bag, he took a deep breath and handed over two flash cards to Susan. “Look at this one first.”

Then Matt took out a netbook, opened it, and waited for it to boot up. Carl used the time to plug in the power cord to his small recorder, ensuring it would remain fully charged.

“Here it is,” Matt finally said. He finished typing, and the screen changed to show a video of Matt and another man. “This is Tanner. This was recorded during our last meeting,” he muttered, slightly embarrassed at the unexpected wave of emotion flooding over him. “He is
—
was
—
a great hero. In my book, anyway.”

Carl turned off the lamp. The only light in the room came through the door to the bathroom and from the screen in front of them. The three watched as the video played. They listened intently to Tanner’s voice.

“Claussen thought he should have a biographer, to make sure everyone understood his significant contribution to the world.”

Susan and Carl watched the screen as Tanner talked, suddenly becoming real to them. Matt Tremain had told them about his source, but actually seeing a principal player
—
the mole in the CleanSweep operation
—
dishing the dirt was too much for words.

“He’s that sure of himself?” They heard Matt ask the question.

“More than that, even. He expects to receive the highest honors, and said he would relinquish his citizenship for a knighthood.”

They listened as Tanner explained how he got the information. “Nobody paid much attention to me. They just assumed I was OK,” he said, then paused. “With the click of a mouse, I could crawl through it all, read every word, sneak into electronic places they thought were secure.” He started to laugh. “Well, you can’t bury your secrets
and
hide them from the person who builds your security system. When I finally realized what the real scope of their plan was, I had no choice. I had to tell someone. If this stays in play, it’ll be our own version of mass genocide, with Claussen deciding who goes in the line to the left and who goes to the right.”

Tanner’s sad face turned and stared at the video camera.

“He outlined his plan for CleanSweep in much the same way that other wicked man did in writing
Mein Kampf
. People now have forgotten just how evil that book really was, haven’t they?”

The back of Matt’s head was visible as he occasionally lifted a glass to drink. “Just keep talking; I’ll listen.”

“It didn’t come out like that, you know
—
the truth pouring out all at once. I learned about it in bits and pieces. But this is how it comes together in the end.” He handed over a paper as proof. “You can cross
-
check it with the other stuff I gave you. Claussen wrote in one e
-
mail that all it would take was to make sure the right party was in power. Then he could use fear and greed to influence government decisions.

“He wrote that they would need a powerful contact burrowed deep inside. He wrote how he bankrolled the candidate he believed would be perfect to carry out his plan. Claussen used his own considerable wealth, but spread it around through private funders, organizations, and storefront donors. Nobody would realize it was all coming from him. Claussen has money in so many offshore accounts that it would look like a huge, tangled spiderweb to anyone trying to trace it to the source. Claussen doesn’t care about legality. He just spent and spent until he was satisfied he had the right government in his pocket. He even thought his e
-
mail correspondence with senior government officials was going through a secure server as private communications.”

Tanner smiled as he riffled through a pile of papers and held one up for the camera.

“It
would
have been private and secure, except that it had to go through me, my system.” Tanner’s self
-
satisfaction was evident in his expression. “In one, Claussen wrote about needing a straw man to stir up trouble, scare everyone
—
someone to cause people to look the other way so he could do his magician’s sleight of hand behind their backs.

“In another e
-
mail, he explained how he came up with the perfect solution. Claussen was secretly financing a group of skinheads out west. One man in particular showed signs of the ‘capable’ leadership Claussen was looking for, someone who could put a face on evil. Claussen learned this guy had an uncanny ability to spout the horrid philosophy favored by that fringe element. I can’t remember his name.”

Tanner looked thoughtful for a moment. “Wait, it was something like Brunner. Yes, that’s it: Brunner. Claussen paid for Brunner to move to a place where he would have more fertile ground to grow goose
-
stepping, swastika
-
wearing fanatics. It wasn’t long before Brunner was using Claussen’s money to build a camp for his sizable following. They strutted around taunting blacks, gays, Jews, and anybody else they considered appropriate targets of hate. Now they can add Muslims, or anyone who they think even
look
Muslim, to their shameful list.”

Tanner’s distaste for what he was saying clearly showed on his face. “Claussen never met Brunner in person. He orchestrated his play via remote control. Even though they never met, though, they shared common ground. I remember Claussen once writing to explain to Brunner how ethnic cleansing wasn’t enough. He instructed Brunner to read about the history of holy wars, crusades, and jihads. He was passionate about pointing out the racism inherent in the early expansion of the United States, how the government orchestrated propaganda to demonize people of Mexican heritage
—
misinformation that still influences thinking today.

“Claussen saw that the thread of racism ran deep, and he said it still does. He told Brunner to pay particular attention to the nation’s collective, systematic eradication of Native Americans and Mexicans. He once bragged about attending a Klan rally in the Florida Panhandle where the speaker ranted against, as he put it, ‘Niggers, Jews, and Catholics
—
and not necessarily in that order.’”

Tanner stopped, and the anguish over his own role in the matter was plainly visible in his body language. “I’m sorry I said that
n
-
word.” He rubbed his shoulder.

“In yet another e
-
mail he wrote that he had examined the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. While he admired the numbers they’d chalked up, he considered them crude, said it would have been better to have a systematic, thought
-
out plan.”

The video camera captured the fear and anguish on Tanner’s face as he paused. The hint of a tear bled from one eye, a bead of moisture he quickly wiped away.

“Claussen was proud that he helped influence the decision to hold another global symposium, similar to the 2010 conference in Toronto, the one that drew energetic and violent protests. He said rioting needs to be targeted to be effective.”

Tanner kept talking about Claussen’s e
-
mail.

“‘The new international conference would be a better target,’ he wrote. He saw it as an opportunity to create a perfect storm for his cause. He would make sure massive rioting took place, creating even more disorder. He was convinced it would create the right atmosphere to implement CleanSweep. Brunner’s army was ordered to create havoc
—
as much destruction as they could
—
and it was even suggested that some bodily harm might be in order. Claussen then sent them a map of the city, indicating the areas he wanted them to target, adding that the civic center was to be left undamaged. He claimed the violence would cause people to cry out for protection
—
his protection. He would then have the public support he needed to implement the CleanSweep program, and he would be there to provide the safety they craved. People would be willing to pay his price, no matter how high.

“He used his influence to make sure a second global conference would be hosted in a large city, even though many spoke out against his recommendation. Many leaders around the country wanted to avoid a repeat of the 2010 version. They recommended a lower
-
profile location, but their arguments went unheard at the top. Claussen had spent years developing his own constituency, and he had the government eating from his hand.

“He used Brunner to beta test his plan during other riots, reviewed videos of their rallies the way coaches review videos of games in sports. He had Brunner flying from his enclave out west to rant his hateful message at rallies, whispering discontent to true fanatics. Some small
-
scale rioting targeted Planned Parenthood, gay rights groups, and other organizations considered ‘unsuitable.’ When the rehearsal riots were in full stride, legitimate protesters were shoved aside by stiff
-
armed salutes, beatings, window smashings
—
and worse.”

The screen went blank. After a short pause, Tanner’s image reappeared, and he continued. He was wearing different clothes.


“They used the practice from the first experimental riot to predict that the next one would follow Claussen’s plan to a
t
. Riots would spread throughout sections of the city. Smaller synagogues that couldn’t afford costly security systems were targeted. Clubs and locations frequented by gays and lesbians were to be torched. While the riot was taking place, people were to be dragged away and beaten, many never to be seen again. Homeless men and women were made to disappear, ending up as corpses in back alleys. Claussen hinted in one e
-
mail about an abandoned mine shaft as a safe place to get rid of bodies, but I actually think he favored a public display. He wanted people to remember the riots. ‘Smoke from so many fires will fill the air, and the sound of police sirens will become a constant reminder of the threat to public safety,’ he wrote.”