Wild Storm (16 page)

Karlsson smiled and continued: “But even though I knew men weren’t for me in the way that women were, I wasn’t sure if I could ever really have a true relationship with a woman. Most of the women I was attracted to physically were not attractive to me in other ways. I wasn’t really sure I could be a true-life partner with any of them. This sounds conceited, but I didn’t think any of them could be my equal. I certainly wasn’t ready to share equally with them, to give and take and compromise the way you have to if you are to succeed in a relationship. Then I met Brigitte and everything changed. She was what I had been looking for even before I knew I had been looking for it.”

Her gaze again went distant. Then she returned her attention to the room and said, “Please don’t share any of this with the press. These are not things I want to read in the tabloids.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Thank you. Brigitte and I talked frequently about living more openly, because we’re proud of who we are. It’s not like we were ashamed of anything. Our families certainly knew the nature of our relationship, as did our close friends. But we just didn’t feel like it was anyone else’s business. No one talks about the sexuality of the CEO of UPS or FedEx. Why should mine be an issue?”

“I understand,” Storm said.

“Anyhow, we were not married in the legal sense, because neither of us wanted to recognize the hegemony of a nation-state, nor did we want the complications of a religious union. I’m not sure either of us could have decided which religion we actually practice”—she interrupted herself with a laugh—“but we were married in the emotional sense. There was never going to be another woman for me, or for her. And I don’t think it ever occurred to me we wouldn’t live to a ripe old age together. Then the plane crash…”

Storm shifted in his seat, which creaked with the ancientness of wood that had held many bodies before his. He could tell he had lost Ingrid to her thoughts again, so he brought her back by saying, “Which is, of course, why I’m here. Jedediah Jones tells me you’ve developed some information about who’s behind this?”

“Yes. It turns out fifty million dollars buys a lot of cooperation from people who otherwise wouldn’t be very helpful to anyone. These terrorists claim to be undyingly loyal to their causes and their ideals, but it’s amazing how fast their fealty fades when you dangle enough money in front of them. Have you ever heard of the Medina Society?”

“The Medina Society. A violent splinter cell of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Storm said, as if reciting from a textbook. “Named after the city in Saudi Arabia where the Prophet Muhammad fled after being forced from Mecca in the year six-twenty-two. This journey, known as the hijra, is considered the beginning of the Islamic era. The siege of Medina was the first major military victory for Muhammad and his followers, who eventually conquered all of Arabia. Medina is also where Muhammad is buried, which makes it a holy place to followers of Islam, second only to Mecca in its importance. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter portions of the city.

“Let’s see here, what else…Much like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Medina Society promotes the Koran and the Hadith as being the only proper basis for a properly pious society. Also, like the Muslim Brotherhood, it rejects most forms of Westernization, modernization, or secularization. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, which has tried to gain power lawfully by putting up slates of candidates for election, the Medina Society attempts to accomplish its goals through force, fear, and intimidation. Among its objectives are the total elimination of the Israeli state, the reversion of Palestine to Muslim control, the banishment of non-Muslims from government, the reinstatement of Islamic theocracy…How am I doing so far?”

“Pretty good. You left out that they also favor the return of women to traditional roles, the widespread use of clitoridectomy to staunch female sexuality, and the legalization of honor killings.”

“So, basically, they’re a bunch of guys who make the Taliban look like moderates,” Storm concluded.

“Very good. Jones has prepared you well.”

“Nah, I just read the newspaper. Anyhow, what makes you think they’re behind this?”

“Because as I said, fifty million dollars buys a lot of information. And it also buys offers of assistance. I’ve yet to infiltrate the Medina Society itself, but I’ve now had several groups contact the people I’ve put on the ground in the Middle East. I’ve now heard from three separate sources that the Medina Society is behind this. And…are you ready to suspend your disbelief for a moment, Derrick?”

Storm said, “Consider my disbelief disengaged.”

Ingrid smiled and perched closer to the end of her seat. Her voice grew hushed. “According to my sources, the Medina Society has created an incredibly powerful, futuristic, high-energy laser beam. It is powered by a substance called promethium, which was previously thought to be so rare as to effectively not exist in nature. But they have apparently found a large store of it. It sounds sort of wild to me, but once again it is something we have confirmed through multiple sources.”

Storm sighed. “Well, fortunately and/or unfortunately, my intelligence lines up with yours on this one. I can confirm they have made a promethium laser beam. I captured one myself. But, obviously, they have at least one other.”

“From what I understand, they have the capacity and the materials to make more. The weapon that shot down the planes headed for Dubai is potentially just one of several. What I’ve yet to determine is how they have the expertise to make such a sophisticated weapon.”

“I have,” Storm said, who then told Karlsson about William McRae, the missing scientist.

“And no one in the United States government was even concerned this man was missing,” she said, shaking her head. “It is so typical of government: once a citizen’s usefulness is perceived to be through, the citizen is treated as disposable.”

Storm let Karlsson’s political diatribe go. “Let’s focus back on the big picture. How do we stop these lunatics before they zap anything else? Have your informants told us where we can find this Medina Society?”

“That’s the tricky part, apparently,” she said. “According to what I’ve been told, the Medina Society is very savvy. It has learned not only from its own mistakes but also from the mistakes of others, everyone from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Osama bin Laden himself. It does not use the Internet to communicate, ever. Not even in code. It does not permit its members to use cell phones. Its leaders move around a lot and are hypervigilant about cloaking those movements. They know that the Americans have satellites powerful enough to see the dirt under their fingernails and they act accordingly. These are some of the smartest terrorists anyone has ever seen.”

Storm realized he had been clenching his lower lip in his teeth. He released it. He was in a position where he had to make a snap judgment about someone he had just met—whether to trust her or not. It was the kind of position in which a spy often found himself, and sometimes it was a life-or-death call. This time, it wasn’t just Storm’s life that was in jeopardy. It was potentially thousands. Maybe millions.

“Ingrid,” he said deliberately. “I know you and Jedediah Jones are…friends.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call us that,” she said. “I would say we’re people who have used each other for our mutual convenience from time to time. You are familiar with the story of the frog and the scorpion, I assume?”

“From
Aesop’s Fables
, yes? The scorpion who cannot swim needs to cross the river and asks a frog to transport him to the other side. The frog says, ‘No, you’ll sting me.’ The scorpion says, ‘No, I won’t, for if I do we’ll both drown,
’
” Storm said. “The frog relents, but then halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog anyway. As they go down, the frog says, ‘Why would you do this?’ And the scorpion says, ‘I am a scorpion. It is my nature.
’
”

“Very good. To me, Jones is the scorpion. But as long as you understand what his nature is, you can handle him accordingly.”

Storm’s smile was a knowing one. “I understand. Believe me, I understand. So I have to be honest with you: Jones’s interest in this incident may not actually align fully with yours.”

“Please explain.”

“He wants the people using this weapon to be stopped. We all want that,” Storm said. “But he also wants this technology and the resources behind it to be recovered for future military use by the United States government. And while I am a proud American citizen, that is not something I want my government to be able to deploy in the field of battle or anywhere else.”

“I concur with you,” she said. “My allegiance is not to any government but to humankind itself.”

“Good. Then what I’m about to tell you can’t reach Jones’s ears. Agreed?”

She nodded.

“I may have a lead that will help us find the source of this promethium,” he continued. “Have you or anyone in your network of informants ever heard of a company called Ahmed Trades Metal?”

Her shoulders actually slumped. “Why do you ask?”

“From what I’ve been able to learn, Ahmed Trades Metal may be the source of the promethium being used to power this laser beam.”

She was now shaking her head. “Well, you’re right and you’re not right. I’m afraid ‘Ahmed Trades Metal’ is not a company. It’s a rallying call for members of the Medina Society. It’s like when Americans say ‘Remember the Alamo’ or ‘Remember the
Maine
.’ A man named Ahmed was one of their earliest martyrs. Some of their leaders have actually changed their names to Ahmed or named their children Ahmed, so it’s become quite a common name within the movement. ‘Trades metal’ is one of their slang terms for making a bomb or improvised explosive device, because it’s like trading metal with the enemy. ‘Ahmed Trades Metal’ is sort of their way of saying, ‘Let’s go blow up some stuff in the name of Allah.
’
”

Storm felt his own posture failing, too. “So I haven’t really learned anything, have I?”

“Well, it’s one more concrete indication that the Medina Society is behind this. But other than that? I’m afraid we are lost.”

And then, in that uncanny way he had, Jedediah Jones inserted himself into the conversation via a buzzing in Storm’s pocket.

“Well, look who it is,” Storm said.

“I’ll leave you to take the call,” Ingrid said. “Find me when it’s over and we’ll discuss what to do next.”

She rose and, as she reached the doorway, paused for a moment. “I asked Jones to send me his best man. I’m glad he sent me a good man as well.”

AS THE WARRIOR PRINCESS DEPARTED
the room, Storm pressed the button to receive Jones’s call.

“Storm Investigations.”

Jones did not bother with niceties or small talk: “Have you made any headway?”

Storm relayed the brief version of how he ended up a guest aboard the
Warrior Princess
and provided some of the details from his conversation with Karlsson Logistics’s CEO.

“The Medina Society?” Jones said when Storm was through.

“You don’t think they’re behind it?”

Jones paused just a little. It was the delay that told Storm his boss was, as usual, hiding something. “No, actually, I’m not surprised,” Jones said. “That explains why we’ve heard so little about this. If it was one of the other extremist groups over there, we would have had ten different agents who would have been able to put schematics of this weapon up on a wall for us. The Medina Society is the nut we can’t seem to crack. We have been completely unable to infiltrate their ranks.”

“Yeah, not even Ingrid’s money has been able to,” Storm said. “They seem to be pretty careful, but they do have one vulnerability.”

“What’s that?”

“The promethium. It seems to be the limiting factor here. It’s incredibly rare, and finding a large supply of it is what has enabled them to make this weapon. Yet because it has such a short half-life and decays so quickly, they’ll constantly need more of it. They’ll want continual access to their source. I say we go full-court press after the promethium. If we do that, it’ll lead us to the Medina Society.”

“Funny you should say that,” Jones replied. “Because we had reached more or less the same conclusion over here. We brought the weapon you recovered back to the lab and have been crawling through every aspect of it. The weapon itself doesn’t turn out to be that complicated. It’s the promethium that makes it powerful. So we had our chemists study the promethium very closely. It turns out there may be a lead for us embedded within it.”

“Do tell.”

“Promethium is a metal, as you are aware. And, like all metals, it has magnetic properties. The way it interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field means that certain information about it is, in essence, recorded within it. If you study it under a powerful enough electron microscope, you can tell from the way the nuclei align themselves where the promethium was at the moment it came into its current form.”

“Sort of like nature’s version of a GPS,” Storm said.

“Something like that. In any event, one of the techs is a whiz with this kind of stuff. And she was able to determine the approximate coordinates of where this promethium came into being. The promethium used to make that laser came from 25.77392 north, 31.84365 east. That’s accurate to within plus or minus one point eight miles, within a ninety-nine percent confidence interval.”

Storm quickly scribbled down the numbers. “And what did you find when you had the satellite look at those coordinates?”

“Nothing. Sand. That one-point-eight-mile radius means we’re looking at ten square miles. We’ve looked at it as carefully as we could, but we could have missed something. It’s a stretch of the Sahara Desert not far from the Nile River in Egypt. And, of course, that’s just what’s on top of the Earth in that spot. Most rare earths come from inside the Earth.”

“Which means you need someone who probably looks a lot like me to go there and do some digging,” Storm said.

“Precisely. I’ve got Clara Strike on her way.”

Storm felt his brain hiccup on the name. He and Clara Strike had a complicated history, like two quarrelling clans whose members kept intermarrying. Sometimes they made love. Sometimes they made war. The only constant was the passion behind both impulses.