The 13th Enumeration (6 page)

Chapter 10
 

Manhattan, New York City

As Joe opened the door to his truck to make his morning run to the gas station, he noticed a manila envelope on the seat. He quickly looked around, searching the parking garage for anything out of place. Whoever was here had bypassed the condo’s alarm system and left again without being seen. Was this the go-ahead he had been waiting for?

His heart beating faster, Joe opened the envelope. He pulled out the cash first. Thumbing through the bills, he saw they were all hundreds. There must be at least twenty thousand dollars, he thought. Next he pulled out and fingered the key—it looked like a key to a storage rental unit. Reaching into the envelope again, he removed a single sheet of folded paper.

The brief note read, “Proceed with the plan. Start the process on Sunday night, October 31. This key fits storage unit #131 at Manhattan Self Storage. There you will find four fifty-gallon drums which you will add to the process. Do not go to the storage unit until the night of the 31
st
.”

Joe frowned, wondering what his contact wanted him to add to the fuel mixture. Not that it mattered much to him. They all deserved what they had coming to them.

The final items in the envelope were a passport, driver’s license, credit card, and round-trip ticket from Newark to Dubai. The departure time on the ticket was six Monday morning, the first of November. He sure hoped the plane departed before all hell broke loose. Six a.m. was cutting it kind of close.

He opened the German passport and found his face staring back at him. “Looks like I’ll be traveling as Gerhard Schroeder,” he muttered to himself. He sure hoped whoever had forged these documents knew what they were doing.

He looked at his watch. Today was the third of October. He only needed six hundred more gallons of fuel to fill up the bladder tanks. He would be finished with the fueling in two more days. No problem there, but how was he going to add the fifty-gallon drums to the mix? Not knowing what nasty surprises they had in those drums, he sure as heck did not want to handle them any more than he had to. He could dump them into the pool on the first floor. It wouldn’t take much to run a pipe from the pool cleaning system down into the garage and connect it to the tank manifold. He could even reprogram the pool’s IntelliTouch control system to turn on its pump and empty the pool into the fuel bladders’ piping after, say, six hours. Yes, that would work. Most of the diesel fuel would be pumped into the city’s main water line, the pool’s pump would kick in, and ten thousand gallons of pool water and two hundred gallons of surprise would be pumped into the city’s main water system as a chaser.

* * *

The Baker returned to the basement after most of his baking preparations were completed. He opened the secret room behind the closet wall and entered, closing the door behind him, then turned off the heavy-duty battery charger. Hanging over his sewer line was a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves. He put these on, and taking an eight-millimeter nutdriver from a niche in the wall, disconnected the rubber couplings which connected the sewer line from his building to the city’s main sewer line. Removing almost a meter-long section of pipe, he reached into the sewer main and felt around for his daily catch.

At this time of the morning, the water and sewage waste running through the pipe were at a minimum. His fingers felt for the familiar small, leaden objects. This morning there were three, as was often the case. The most he had ever found was five.

Usually there was no trace of the capsule. The water-soluble recipe only lasted two or three hours before it disintegrated. When the magnets captured the objects, they normally broke the weakened capsule, and the lead-encased flash drives fell to the bottom of the sewer pipe. The weight and flat surfaces of the lead kept it within inches of where it had fallen, regardless of the water volume that flowed over it. Quite a clever idea, if he did say so himself. Anyone in the network who had access to a toilet within half a kilometer upstream of the bakery could anonymously deliver their message. No meeting in person, no dead drops under park benches, and best of all, no electronic delivery with traceable origin and destination.

With efficient and practiced skill, the Baker reconnected his sewer line to the city main. Removing a small plastic bag from his pocket, he placed the lead-encased memory drives into the bag. He hung the gloves back over the exposed sewer pipe and replaced the nutdriver in its niche. With a laugh, he thought to himself that he doubted his bakery customers would approve if they knew he played in the sewer in the morning while their bread was rising. With that pleasant thought, he returned upstairs, the plastic bag secure in the pocket of his pants.

Chapter 11
 

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

Dylan Gallos stared at the wall of computer screens in his command center. Darius had allowed him to spend whatever he needed to ensure he had real-time access to every financial market in the world. One of the nice things about the Dubai Tower was that, since it was so new, it had the latest fiber-optic technology for screaming fast speeds. Dylan was running some cutting-edge trading software he had designed. He needed all the bandwidth he could get.

On his main monitor, he pulled up the stock price of Aquarius Elemental Solutions (AQES.BB). When Darius’s company first went public, it was traded on the NASDAQ, which had a minimum share price and capitalization requirement to be listed on its exchange. When a NASDAQ stock fell under a dollar a share for a certain amount of time, it was delisted from the NASDAQ and traded on the Over The Counter Bulletin Board. These companies still had to file the necessary paperwork with the SEC, but on the OTCBB they had no minimum share price, market capitalization, corporate governance, or other requirements to be quoted.

Thanks to the guiding hand of Dylan and a little help from some toxic financing hedge funds, AQES had gone from a share price of five dollars to where it now traded at $0.00012 a share. New start-up companies that did not have the backing of huge hedge funds or Wall Street banks typically went to predatory or “toxic” funding sources that would give the start-ups much-needed cash in exchange for stock shares. They would then create some hype about the stock in order to get the share price up so they could dump their shares. In the business, this was called a “pump and dump.” Once they unloaded their shares, they would then short the same stock using “naked shorts” (or fake shares) and ride it back down to a fraction of the original share price. Naked shorts were illegal, but the regulatory agencies didn’t seem to want to do anything about them. Most companies survived for several cycles of this toxic death spiral and then went bankrupt. Even companies with marketable products or ideas often did not survive long enough to get their products into the general market.

AQES was one of the rare exceptions to this rule. After five years, AQES had gone from five dollars a share and ten million shares outstanding to $.00012 a share and one-hundred-billion shares outstanding. Darius had applied for and received permission for another shelf offering of sixty billion shares, allowing him the flexibility to issue the shares at his discretion. They had used the toxic financing firms for their own means. No one would look at AQES.BB and think twice about what had happened. As far as Wall Street was concerned, they were just another casualty of toxic financing.

When Darius had brought Dylan on board and explained his technology and a general outline of what he wanted to do, Dylan had immediately seen the potential to exploit the circumstances into an unimaginable fortune. Together they set in motion a plan that, if it succeeded, would overturn the very order of the financial world. Somehow they had been able to keep their secret, and now it was only two more weeks until they really began to shake things up.

As part of their compensation, each member of the team had been given one billion shares of AQES.BB. Dylan’s models predicted that once the technology was vetted and accepted as genuine, the share price would trade in excess of a thousand dollars a share. Aquarius Elemental Solutions would be the largest company, by market share, in the world. The six members of the team would be some of the richest people on the planet.

He almost chuckled, then tried to bring himself back in check. A lot could happen before that came to pass, so he had to remain cautious.

Dylan once more checked the filings with the SEC and other regulatory agencies. Everything must be in order. They were going to be making a lot of enemies shortly, and their enemies would not need any excuses to come after AQES. Currently Darius personally owned sixty billion shares of AQES.BB in his name. In an offshore hedge fund set up for Darius, they had been soaking up the excess AQES.BB shares for the past several years. This hedge fund now owned another thirty-five billion shares of AQES.BB stock, or roughly $5.8 million worth. The actual number of shares the public could purchase was about five billion, or $650,000 worth at today’s prices. In order to make it appear that there were more shares in the public float than there were, Dylan had written a black-box program that churned the share float by a method called quote stuffing.

On average, over two billion shares of AQES.BB traded every day. Ninety-five percent of that was Dylan’s black box. Once the public came on board, the thirty-five billion shares in the offshore account would be used to control the stock price so that other Wall Street hedge funds could not manipulate it.

There was no doubt this would be the most heavily traded stock in the history of the world. In the name of their hedge fund, Dylan had purchased an office in the US which allowed them direct access as a market maker to the data transmission feeds for the main exchanges. It would have added several milliseconds to their speed if they could have purchased an office in New York, but all the bandwidth there was already taken at any price. So they settled for Chicago. Dylan considered this the only real weakness of their plan. With a several millisecond advantage over them, some of the big-name hedge funds and Wall Street firms could potentially harm their stock price using algos of their own.

When Dylan mentioned this to Darius, he replied that he did not think it would be a problem. At the time his response had seemed somewhat out of character, as their team had spent the last five years perfecting every detail of the plan. But maybe, since there was nothing they could do about it short of knocking New York into the ocean, Darius had decided not to worry about it. In any case, they would know in just a couple of weeks. Dylan could feel the pressure building.

Chapter 12

             
Darius picked up the interoffice phone and spoke. “Alexandra, do you have a few minutes? I would like to discuss the upcoming museum opening.”

A minute later Alexandra entered his office and sat down on the other side of his desk. She had her electronic notepad and looked up when she was ready. Darius slowly turned a pencil in his fingers. “Have all the artifacts from my collection been moved to the museum?”

“Except for the Persian tablet,” she said as she pointed to the display case which held a prominent position on the far side of the room. “That we will bring with us as you requested.”

“Very good,” Darius replied. This event was the catalyst which would set the plan in motion. “It is imperative we are prepared. Much hangs on the outcome.”

“Yes, sir, I believe we are ready,” Alexandra replied. “We will leave Dubai on Tuesday evening the twelfth and arrive in Tel Aviv a few hours later. The Israeli Interior Ministry will provide transportation from the airport to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. You are scheduled to speak at the ribbon-cutting ceremony on the thirteenth at one p.m. Jerusalem time—about six a.m. New York time.”

Darius smiled. His speech would be completed just before the markets opened in New York. Dylan would have his hands full Wednesday morning. It had taken him years to reach this point, and he was beginning to feel the excitement. The realization of what he had accomplished, what
they
had accomplished, filled him with a sense of incredible pride. He would soon be the most powerful man in the world. Nations would do his bidding.

He set the pencil down on his desk and looked at Alexandra. “Are you ready for your part in this?” he asked.

With heartfelt zeal she replied, “I have been dreaming of this opportunity my whole life. We are really going to make a difference in the world. Just like you promised.”

Alexandra noticed Darius’s normally unemotional face give a fleeting smile. It almost seemed as if it was mocking. Was it her imagination, or was there something dark in his expression? Involuntarily, she felt goosebumps rise along her skin. This was the first time she had ever felt uncomfortable in his presence. Her overexcited imagination must be playing tricks on her.

She stood up. “Is there anything else we need to discuss before I go?”

Standing and walking around the table, he placed his hand on her shoulder as he said, “Two weeks from now you will be the wealthiest and most powerful woman in the world. I know you will be able to make a difference for the benefit of all mankind. With this power, we will have a responsibility to do what we think is right for the greater good of all.” Darius walked with her to the door. “Let’s schedule one more team meeting on the eleventh so we are all on the same page before we set this in motion. Things will really begin to move fast now.”

She agreed aloud, wishing she could shake the small premonition she had felt when she saw him smile. Preoccupied, she walked slowly back to her office.

Darius closed the door behind her. “The greater good of all” had been part of the philosophy of the Order for several hundred years. Now he was in a position to put his own version of that philosophy into practice in a spectacular fashion. Only, the Order would be on the receiving end of the idea this time. It was his duty, Darius had convinced himself—for the benefit of all mankind.

Sitting back down at his desk, he turned on his computer and opened a file named Sizdah-bedar. He thought of this file affectionately as File 13. Sizdah-bedar was a Persian festival celebrated on the thirteenth of Nowruz. Nowruz, literally “New Light,” was the first month of the Persian calendar. Sizdah-bedar literally meant getting rid of thirteen (
bedar—
getting rid of;
sizdah—
thirteen). In some Persian traditions, the holiday commemorated the victory of the Angel of Rain over the Demon of Drought. The first twelve days of Nowruz were a national holiday. Getting past the thirteenth day was considered a good omen.

Darius considered the symbolism fitting. He, the water man of Aquarius Elemental Solutions, battling the Order and their Demons of Drought. If he had his way, he would expose them and their secret.

After finding his first mention of the secret in the London library many years ago, compiling and perusing File 13 had become a weekly ritual. Since that day over ten years ago, he had been accumulating every piece of evidence he could find.

It had all started when he found the handwritten note in an old manuscript he was reading about the Knights Templar—no, really, it had begun a little further back, in college. In his first year, Darius had joined one of the many fraternities. It was his first introduction into the world of secrets and symbolism. After leaving college, Darius joined the Brotherhood of Freemasons. When he moved to London, he joined the Four Crowns Research Lodge No. 2013. He did not understand the implications at the time, but the Four Crowns Lodge had been established in 1886 for the purpose of gathering in one place all the teachings, history, and writings associated with Masonry. The founding documents required that a group of forty of the most prestigious members of the lodge in England be the governing council.

The following year, the Correspondence Circle was added to the lodge. Any member in good standing was allowed to become a part of this effort. In the first ten years, the Circle printed a fifty-volume encyclopedia on the esoteric teachings of the world’s mystery religions. This encyclopedia they called the
Ars Quaruor Coronatorum.
The knowledge gained by their efforts gave rise to sub- or clandestine lodges. These so-called irregular lodges put into practice the occult knowledge accumulated by the mother research lodge. They quickly became some of the most infamous secret societies in the world. Stella Matutina, the Society of the Golden Dawn, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), the Thule Society, and the Order of the Temple of the East all had their roots in the discoveries of the Four Crowns Research Lodge. Some of the greatest monsters in history were nurtured on their teachings.

Darius had joined the Circle of Correspondence with a genuine interest in symbols and symbology. It was after joining the Circle that Darius first learned of the Order, a group of men and women chosen from the highest levels of the secret societies of the world. Their motto: “Enlightenment is the end which justifies our means.”

His investigations led to the discovery of this group’s influence in subverting the independence of his homeland, Persia. Their activities, in conjunction with Briti
sh intelligence and the CIA,
led to the overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Persia, Mohammad Mosaddegh, in 1953. Mosaddegh’s great sin was his desire to nationalize the oil industry of Iran and renegotiate the terms of their oil contracts. From the early 1900s through both World Wars and into the early 1950s, England was almost entirely dependent on Iranian oil. An independent Iran was not acceptable to the Order’s plan for the Middle East. Their destabilizing efforts continued, and it was these efforts which Darius believed had ultimately led to the death of his father. With this newfound information, Darius secretly vowed revenge against the Order. He became obsessed with uncovering their activities through their various corporate, political, and social associations.

One night in the Four Crowns research library, his efforts took a new direction. Darius found a small, torn piece of handwritten note in an ancient manuscript on the Knights Templar. It read, “. . . knowledge of the 13
th
Enumeration.” Darius, curious of the meaning of the scrap, had approached one of the senior members of the research lodge. He could tell by the man’s poorly veiled surprise that he had found something important. He was informed that it would be looked into. Later, when Darius followed up on the note, he was told that there were no records of any so-called “13
th
Enumeration.” Still curious but now also cautious, Darius dropped the subject and began a clandestine effort to learn the truth.

After that night, Darius was never left alone in the Four Crowns research library again. And from that ni
ght to the present, Darius had pursued the secret.

Over the intervening years, Darius had learned much tradition and superstition, but little tangible evidence surrounded the prominence of the number thirteen in history. He searched for every bit of knowledge on the history of thirteen in the cultures of the world, hoping it would provide him clues to the meaning of the 13
th
Enumeration. He knew from the subsequent information he gathered that the 13
th
Enumeration was the great secret of the Order. He had been astounded to learn that the knowledge of this secret was also the Order’s greatest fear. Every time information surfaced that even hinted at its possible discovery, it was quickly destroyed. When it could not be destroyed, the Order employed deception and superstition to cover the truth. They had been so effective that after all these years, Darius still did not know the exact nature of that which he sought. He had often wondered if the keepers of the secret even knew the exact nature of their fear.

All the research Darius had gathered was in File 13 in front of him. He read down the list of people and events and chose one to review. Often when he reviewed the files, he gleaned new information. Information which led him to the next clue. Tonight he chose the Frishmuth file.

William Frishmuth was born in 1830 in Coburg, Germany. He attended Gymnasium Ernestium in Gotha, Germany, after which he spent a year learning from Fredrick Wohler, the famous German chemist. It was Fredrick Wohler who isolated aluminum in 1827. After studying as a chemist, William Frishmuth traveled through South America, the Caribbean, and the United States. In 1855, he settled in Philadelphia and became a US citizen.

In 1860, he spoke vehemently in support of the abolitionist cause. He was a staunch supporter of the emancipation efforts of Abraham Lincoln during his 1860 presidential campaign, and he became a close acquaintance of President Lincoln. At the start of the Civil War, Lincoln requested that the secretary of war appoint William Frishmuth as a secret agent. Frishmuth’s activities during the war reportedly earned him two hundred dollars from President Lincoln’s private purse. Later, during the war, Frishmuth was granted permission by Lincoln to raise a regiment in the Pennsylvania 12
th
Cavalry. With the confirming sanction of Pennsylvania’s governor, he raised the 113
th
Regiment and was commissioned a colonel. His service lasted only a short time before he resigned.

Darius well knew that it could be argued that the presidency of Abraham Lincoln was born out of the Morgan Affair and the anti-Masonic movement that saw Masonry go from fifty thousand members to five thousand in a short period of time. The Anti-Masonic Party (the first third party in America) joined with the Whigs in the New Republican Party and nominated Abraham Lincoln as their presidential candidate. After his election, President Lincoln’s push for an amendment to the constitution for the abolishment of slavery was a double insult to the South.

At the time of the Civil War, Charleston, South Carolina, was the headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry. South Carolina was the first state to secede from the union. In all, eleven states were considered to have officially seceded from the Union—but to those who understood the symbolic nature of the struggle, the thirteen stars on the secessionist flag told the tale of the Templars’ infiltration into Masonry.
             
P.T. Beauregard, on April 12, 1861, ordered the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, which was acknowledged as the first shot fired in the Civil War. Beauregard, a Freemason and member of the Knights of the Golden Circle, was praised throughout the South as the “South’s first Paladin.” Jesse James and John Wilkes Booth were also purported members of the Knights of the Golden Circle. After the war, due to the publicity of the conspiracy trials surrounding Lincoln’s assassination, Albert Pike and several others met and decided to change the name of the Knights of the Golden Circle to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Their new name was taken from the Greek term
Kuklos,
or “circle.”

President Lincoln’s push for the thirteen amendment was a direct affront to the South both economically and symbolically. Economically, the thirteenth amendment undermined the ability of the South to compete—much of the wealth of the South was built upon the efforts of their slaves. Symbolically, the South, as a stronghold of Templar Masonry, saw the thirteenth amendment as an insult to these institutions as well.

After the death of Lincoln, Frishmuth became interested in law. He also served for some time as a colonel in the Pennsylvania National Guard. Later, in the 1870s, he returned to his interest in chemistry and for several years was one of the few producers of pure aluminum in the United States. He sought and was awarded many patents for his process of chemical separation of aluminum. An article in
The New York Times
on November 25, 1884, indicated the backers for his patents were “foreign capitalists . . . Their intentions . . . similar to the policy pursued by the Rothchilds.” These “English capitalists,” Darius knew, were the same capitalists who only twenty-five years later sought to control the oil
resources
of his homeland, Persia. Every time Darius read over this file, his blood boiled.