Born of War (5 page)

P
aul Stewart studied the most recent email he had printed out as he spoke to the computer. The email had distracted him despite the importance of the conversation he was having with the woman on Skype.

“Are you ignoring me?” A woman in her mid-twenties, with a natural, simple beauty was on the screen. She had black eyebrows that set off a near perfect face. Her hair was pulled back tightly just like her mother would often wear it.

“No, of course not.” He was, in fact, ignoring her. The email was from his boss, the director of the CDC. It spoke of the smallpox vials that had recently been discovered in a back storage room after being lost in the complex. The CDC was in the center of a firestorm.

The complex campus of buildings held the most dangerous organisms in the world. It was close to Emory and in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in all of Atlanta. Many who lived nearby had always worried, but until now there wasn't a well-known reason for the worry.

“Yes, you are.” She would catch him on occasion and pull him back to earth.

Paul knew this weakness about himself. More than once in the lab, he looked up at the clock and made a mental note that he needed to start closing down the test for the day. In what felt like a few seconds, he glanced up at the clock again and saw that it was one in the morning.

“They are going to name a senior scientist to head up a complete revamping of our security system.” It would become the most important and unlimited job in the most well-known laboratory in the world. The chosen one would have access to every experiment, know all that was going on, and eventually be irreplaceable. He had been pushing for such a job for nearly a decade. Scientists were the worst for being told what they had to do. Protocol and systemic approaches to problems were the heart of science until a system was being imposed upon a team of MDs and PhDs.

“You have that job.”

“I don't think so.”

“Oh yes. If you want it.”

He wasn't sure if his daughter wanted him to get the job or was warning him to stay away from it.

“So, where are you now?” He tossed the email across his already overcrowded desk.

“Still in an airport waiting for an airplane.”

“I am not sure of this.” He squinted over his glasses as he spoke.

“Again?” She gave him a stare just like his wife would. She had her mother's same blue eyes. They weren't clearly visible on the remote computer hookup, but he knew them well. And he knew the blouse she was wearing. It was the same one she had on at Hartsfield several days ago when she left. It was a wildly colored blue and gold blouse, much larger than her petite size called for, made of cotton and bunched up in wrinkles after several nights crossing the Atlantic and sitting in airports waiting for airplanes to arrive. The farther that one went in to Africa, the less reliable the mode of transportation.

“You did this twenty years ago!”

“Yes.” He had heard this argument repeatedly since the idea first came up.

“Fieldwork helped you understand how these diseases spread.”

He couldn't fight the logic of her argument.

“I get it.” He understood, but that didn't make it more agreeable. This was his daughter—not just some bright young medical graduate from Harvard.

“I didn't go to Boston so I would spend the next twenty years in a lab killing mice,” she said

“That's unfair!” He smiled. “I like my mice.”

“Ethiopia will teach me more than anywhere else.” She had to be given credit for her stubborn Scottish background. The Stewart family did have a history of digging their feet into the ground. She had been raised by demanding parents who often sent her off during the summers to camps such as Camp Skyline in the Georgia Mountains. Both parents were professionals. Her mother had been a pediatrician until breast cancer killed her. Paul was the scientist. Somewhere in her past he became “Paul” to her and not “Dad.” The summers at Skyline created self-reliance. When the others would go home from a session, Karen stayed for another round. It was better than an empty house near Emory. She didn't mind.

“MSF's work is invaluable.” It was obvious she knew this conversation was coming and had rehearsed her argument for months. Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, provided what little help could be offered in the most remote places on the planet but also shared scientific knowledge with both the World Health Organization and the CDC. It gave the CDC some chance of staying ahead of the risk of death that now traveled regularly in airplanes and through airports.

“You have said too many times that international flights are capable of pumping everything into our world.”

“Do I need this lecture?” he said.

“Plus, you would never have made it at the CDC without your tour in Africa.”

“What else?” He loved his daughter but was losing patience. “I need to go play with some nasty little friends.”

She laughed.

“Well.” He didn't like to say it but he did. “Get your damn experience and get out of there.”

“Gee, thanks, Dad. I love the vote of confidence!”

Unfortunately, it wasn't the risk of infection that Paul Stewart needed to worry about.

W
illiam Parker left the tarp off the truck that night. The next morning he drove north to Atlanta. The vehicle bore a tag from Stewart County that was registered, like everything else, to a small, closely held company that defined its purpose with the Secretary of Corporations as doing fieldwork.

He pulled into the parking lot of the SunTrust Bank on the south side of the city, near the airport, and headed into the bank lobby. It was purposeful that he used a bank some two hours north of his farm. Few visits were required and it was closer to his Atlanta attorney. While serving as a district attorney years ago, Parker had given his friend his first job. As Parker made fewer visits and only when in need, it made sense that the chosen bank would be one closer to his friend. It was one of several banks across Atlanta where he had the same type of account.

“I need to get into a box.”

The bank secretary recognized him. It was easy, as his bearded, long-haired, and lanky self stood out from the bank's run of customers, particularly in the South. The teller did not know another customer who had the combination of a beard, long hair, and a safety deposit box. She only knew that his name was “Mr. Berks” and he was allowed to sign into the safety deposit box vault with a weak-looking driver's license. It would have barely passed examination at a local bar. But she had been told to not ask questions.

“Yes, sir.”

They headed downstairs to the vault room.

He walked behind her, intentionally so, as he pulled a chain necklace from around his neck and unsnapped the safety deposit box key without being obvious.

“Box 1969?”

“Yes.” He didn't particularly like the idea that she remembered the number.

I need to change banks.
It wasn't so much that she made him mad; it was just important that everything remain in flux.

Parker signed the pass slip with the same “Phillip Berks” he had used before. He signed it awkwardly with his left hand. It would slow down anyone making an effort to compare signatures with another record.

“Do you need a room?”

“Yes, please.” He lifted the box out of the drawer. It was minor but important that she had no sense of its weight. He carried it into the small room, closed the door and opened the box. It was crammed with stacks of used fifty-dollar bills. The box contained more than a quarter of a million dollars, and his friend the attorney had another key. It was resupplied as often and as necessary as he directed Moncrief to contact the attorney.

Parker put two thousand dollars into his shirt and then rebuttoned it. He preferred twenties as the fifties were more noticeable but were likewise less obvious than hundreds. It was important that they were all well used. This was his traveling money.

The truck headed south out of Atlanta on Interstate 85. It took the remainder of the day for Parker to make it to Mobile.

Moncrief had been correct. Parker's wife had been from Mobile. It was a clear sky and cloudless sunset as he crossed over the river on Interstate 65. The smokestacks of the paper mill upriver let out a white, whispery plume that traveled straight up into the air for several hundred feet and then, as the wind caught it, started to spread in an easterly direction.

He drove the next several miles as the highway started to come into the outskirts of Mobile. He knew where he was going. His destination was on this side of the city.

Parker pulled off the exit, cut back to the east under the interstate bridge, and started to slow down.

The streets were now empty and the sun was quickly setting. The parking lot lights were starting to come on. He could see the burned-out shell of the school entrance wrapped in the yellow tape used by the investigators.

There was no specific reason William Parker needed to be in Mobile. He, too, like his wife, had spent much time in the city. He had an aunt who never had a child and Parker would spend his summers with her in Mobile. They would go, religiously, on Thursdays to Wintzell's Oyster House, where he would sit, as a teenager, and read the signs on the walls, one after the other. The restaurant's owner had made his mark by covering the walls with little, pithy signs that gave homespun humor to a subject. It was a seafood version of Cracker Barrel with a unique charm.

The parking lot was covered with piles of trash. All of the investigators had gone and all of the media had disappeared. A short squall must have passed through earlier in the day as the ground had puddles, the trash looked like damp humps of paper and discarded food containers, and—with the humidity—steam was rising from the black asphalt.

“I just needed to see this,” he said aloud.

His truck stood parked on the busy two lanes, up next to the curb. He rolled down the window. The sight made him angry. All bombings were bad, the death of children was shameful, but this struck a chord.

He was only there for a moment.

WOOOP.

A siren went off just behind his truck. At the same moment, a blue circulating light pierced the darkness.

B
ertok Genret sat at the airport in Salalah looking at one of his cell phones. Oman was a quiet port in the storm of the Middle East. The land was home to frankincense. It was a collected sap that drained out of trees that were hundreds of years old. It was used well before Christ walked the earth.

Salalah was a port city to the far western end of Oman. The Romans had passed through the city several thousand years ago.

I'll get my wife a bag of frankincense.
It would be an unusual gift of his travels.

No,
he thought.

This was a mistake he had made before, not often, but before. This week he had told his wife that he was in New York at a trade convention. He made a point of always going through his bags at the airport in Switzerland upon arrival making sure that no items remained that might reveal his lie.

The frankincense trees had endured much. They could be found inland where the desert took over. A day that exceeded a hundred and thirty degrees was not unusual for the high desert of Oman. The shoreline, however, was very valuable property in a quiet world. Countless numbers of beaches existed, sometimes with not a person in sight, or with just a single clay-and-mud home overlooking the ocean.

The ruler of Oman had the love of his people and, despite a lack of great oil deposits, he had managed its finances well. Oman and its leader balanced themselves on the precarious fence of the Middle East. He was one of the few who could talk to both Iran—his neighbor across the Gulf—and America, without losing either. Iran knew he was a valuable outlet that allowed conversations to occur when the United States or Britain could not. Likewise, the American fleet had often used the waters off Oman as a safe haven.

Genret knew that if he kept moving and bothered no one, Oman would let him pass.

I wonder if the Romans had a gun dealer?
The thought passed through his mind as he stared out the window at the green grass and palm trees that formed the shape of the drive into the airport. Away from its shorelines, Oman was brown and brutally dry, a bleak pile of sand and rocks. But where money and the ruler allowed, vast green landscaping had been installed. Water meant vegetation, and green was an oasis. The airport was a simple building only serviced by one airline but it was surrounded by a green, well-trimmed garden.

He would solidify the deal with Abo Musa Mombasa. Musa, a Pakistani by birth, had the title of head of Al Shabaab's security. Faud was the general. It was up to Musa to handle the details.

Al Shabaab, or “the Youth,” as translated, was strategically significant more for their location than anything else. The Horn of Africa required ships coming from the Suez Canal to pass close to shore. Many of the ships made the mistake of following the route south past the coast of Somalia. Al Shabaab's reach extended out into the shipping lanes.

It was the militant arm of the Islamic Courts Union. It was not known to be rich, and the five thousand troops fought just about all of their neighbors. They were committed to waging war against the enemies of Islam. They fought the Ethiopians and Kenya. They fought other clans within Somalia. It was a hodgepodge of jihadists who had traveled from around the world to come, fight, and die for Allah and to be accepted as martyrs.

But other jihadists had suddenly appeared in Syria and Iraq. They were the new flavor of the month. ISIS had the new money, robbing the banks of Iraq as it traveled across the country. It was pulling both money and attention away from Al Shabaab.

Opportunity may be knocking.
Genret pulled out the silk handkerchief and rubbed his hands in it.
We all look at the endgame.

Genret knew that there was a life expectancy in his line of work. If he exceeded the imaginary lifeline, his death would be due to a bullet either from a police officer or a customer. The objective was to get in and get out before that happened.

Ten thousand Leafs would be the final ride. It would allow him to get out and perhaps open a small hotel outside Geneva. There were some who made it. His mentor lived in Austria in a villa and traveled to Paris nearly every month.

It would be easy to get the container to Oman and from Oman to Yemen. That would just be a matter of bribes and cash. He knew a man in customs who often looked the other way. The problem would be getting the container broken down into parts and crossing the Gulf of Aden in a small fishing boat.

He never considered the consequences. A weapon that threatened the power of an aircraft carrier could change the strategic game. The fleet would have to be more dispersed, stay farther away, and thus be slower to react when needed. Piracy could double as the result of just a sighting of such a weapon.

And the weapon was made to move. Al Shabaab would build look-alikes, constantly changing their locations and hiding the real one.

It was perfect for an army that was close to the sea and at the mouth of the natural waterway that forced ships to concentrate in one area. The Suez Canal pulled in the merchant ships and the ships pulled in the American Navy.

A substantial down payment had to be made and Al Shabaab was not known to have the deepest coffers. But such a weapon would distract the American Navy and cause it to pull back from the Persian Gulf. Iran had to be a player in this scheme. Tehran was famous for building reversed-engineered weapons with the help of North Korea and China.

A weapon such as this would pull the world's attention away from Iran.

“Iran will provide the weapon and Al Shabaab the money,” he mumbled to himself as he looked at his cell.

He paused as he considered the thought.

But how would Al Shabaab get the money?