The Aisha Prophecy (11 page)

Stride thought him dead. Kessler had let her think so. Why? Nobody seems to know. But she was alive and Bourne’s people found her. She was living, quite openly, on Hilton Head Island. Quite brazenly, considering the price on her head. Maybe she continued to use her real name so that Kessler, on the chance that he was still alive, would be able to find her one day. Or maybe she had a death wish herself. Whatever her reason, Bourne wouldn’t have cared. He certainly didn’t care about the reward. All he did care about was having her as a hostage to make Martin Kessler play ball.

And he blew it. Or his thugs did. They went to her home, found two women there, snatched the one they believed to be Stride and left the other woman with her throat cut. They got her off the island bound and gagged. Too well bound. Too well gagged. The woman suffocated. Long story short, the world collapsed on Bourne’s head. Bourne, himself, was dead two days later, his house burned down around him, his empire in tatters. By whom? Kessler surely. And Elizabeth Stride. Aided by, one assumes, the Israeli Mossad and by Harry Whistler with his storied long reach.

There was more to the story. Actually much more. But to think those outside forces could do so much damage… and then slink away… as Stride has since done… probably plotting further revenge… answering to no one for what they had done. The injustice of it. The disproportionateness of it. Don’t we live in a nation of laws?

“Say, what?”

Okay, thought Haskell, some hypocrisy there. But the rest of us know that there can be a price. Kessler and his gang seem totally immune. And it’s not over, is it? How could anyone think it is? They surely intend additional mischief because one simply doesn’t do what they’ve done without a longer range purpose in mind. And yet they’re left alone. It’s insane, but there it is. Because of them, here we are, back working with the Saudis, reduced to subverting this moronic minor prince who can’t even control his own family.

Well, perhaps not much longer. He would rather have that disk. With the disk, the banker’s right, they’d have no need of the prince. The fly in the ointment, however, is Leland. Will he help or will he not? Or will Leland decide to grab that disk for himself? Let me sleep on it, he says. And he will. He’ll consider it. He’ll also consider the power he’d have if all those Saudi princes had to kiss his ass every time they need to make a withdrawal.

We’ll need a new plan. Plan A was a washout. Invite Leland here, say we’ll sponsor him for membership, ask a few simple favors of him in return – that Kessler business being just one - and assume that he’d be thrilled to comply. It had actually been the banker’s idea. Haskell had not been so sure.

He’d asked the banker, “What makes you think that he’ll go for it?”

“Of course he will. Do you know anyone who wouldn’t? He’d stand among the most powerful men in the world.”

“Um… he kind of does already, don’t you think?”

“Acting Secretary, Charles. The man is a temp. An appointed position at the pleasure of the White House.”

“Even so,” Haskell answered, “he’s no empty suit. Howard Leland has earned every stripe.”

“And he’s in a job that he’ll no longer have beyond the next election at the latest. He’ll join the lecture circuit for a year or two or be given a red sash and shipped off to some embassy. He’ll never have bonded the way we do here. He’ll never have awakened with the first rays of dawn realizing that he is the rarest of men. Realizing that he is a Bohemian.”

Haskell smiled. “I feel like bursting into song.”

“And with good reason,” said the banker. “This is no mere conceit. No club in the world is more exclusive than this one. No membership, anywhere, is more desperately sought.”

“Okay,” said Haskell. “I suppose it’s worth a shot.”

“Believe me,” said the banker, “he’ll jump at the chance. You couldn’t buy this sort of influence, this sort of prestige, if you had all the money in the world.”

Brilliant man, thought Haskell, but a bit of a twit. He makes his own kids, now full grown; call him “Sir.” You can’t touch him, however, when it comes to knowing how to build a fortune using other people’s money. Especially when they don’t know he’s doing it.

He’s right, however, about the club’s roster. Name a top CEO or any global financier and chances are he’s a member. Name an important federal government official and he’s either a member or he’s on the waiting list. And the wait for those willing to wait their turn has been averaging more than eight years. At least seven former presidents have been members as well, one of whom was holding court just two campfires away. Haskell avoided ex-presidents and such. They‘re inclined to be bores, still living in the past, too long out of the loop to have any real influence.

Truth is told, except for the networking aspect, this whole two-week retreat was a bore. “Weaving spiders come not here,” said a sign at the entrance. It meant that wheeling and dealing are discouraged. Of course it is widely ignored. So, to some extent, was the no-cell-phone rule, but you mustn’t be seen with one at your ear. Very bad form. You’d be asked to leave at once. And God help you if it were to start ringing during one of the rituals or lectures.

There were several scheduled lectures; they were called “lakeside talks.” They were given by prominent members and guests. They were almost never worth hearing. By the time the speakers spoke, what they said was old news to members who had even better sources. Some spoke of the future. Almost always up-beat. Our institutions will prevail. A new dawning for mankind. These were speakers who lived in guarded estates behind razor ribbon-topped walls. The only mankind most of them ever saw were men like his father, driving their cars, or women like his mother bringing their meals.

During the day it resembled a summer camp where rich old white men played at being boys again. Except that nobody slept in a tent or a lean-to. The so-called cabins, though rustic, were more like country inns. All were named for distinguished former members and guests. Theirs was named for Teddy Roosevelt. He’d been a member. He’d slept there. Each had a breakfast room on the first floor that doubled as a reading room or card room. Several, like his own, had a cozy little bar whose walls were covered with assorted old photos, some dating back more than a century. And the head of an elk and the pelt of a cougar, both shot by Teddy himself.

Most cabins had eight or ten bedrooms or suites and all were equipped with every comfort. Most had their own wet bars. Most bathrooms had Jacuzzis. The rooms had phones, but they were room-to-room phones. No outside calls made or taken. No locks on the doors either. Not on any of the rooms. Not even a latch on the door to one’s bathroom. The founders felt that locks were inimical to good fellowship. A little framed sign on the desk downstairs said so. Haskell had never felt especially chummy while taking a dump at six o’clock in the morning, but at least the bathrooms had doors.

There were lots of silly rituals, recitations of oaths, and another old custom involving bodily functions. They would gather around this huge statue of an owl that stood about twenty feet high. Some elder would recite some gem about wisdom and, on his signal, they’d all pull out their peckers and, in unison, piss. The urination was symbolic. You were purging your cares. The only members who actually partook in this, however, were those few who were able to produce a decent stream. Most couldn’t. Aging kidneys. They pissed in Morse code. They kept their cares to themselves.

On other nights, they’d put on plays. Men would dress up in drag. There were amateur nights and sing-along sessions and guided nature walks through the redwoods. Richard Nixon came once. He wasn’t impressed. Nor is Nixon fondly remembered after going back home and famously calling it, “The most faggy goddamned thing you could imagine.”

Good old Dick. A great man. Damn those tapes.

There was tennis and canoeing and fly fishing contests. There was an archery range and skeet and trap shooting, but they’d put an end to all wildlife shooting lest a member should take an errant bullet in the head. The attitude was, one can’t be too careful. This is, after all, the Bohemian Club. The rumor mill, almost surely, would assume that it was murder. The conspiracy theorists would not lose a moment. We’d hear that the victim had declined to play ball with one power-broker or another. An investigation, however impartial, would soon be labeled a cover-up. It’s all nonsense, of course. But it’s the price one pays. Secrecy always gives rise to gossip and this is, most assuredly, a secret society.

There was one death two years ago, but it wasn’t a member. It was one of the many maintenance workers, not a titan who would be missed. He was up on the roof of one of the cabins blowing pine needles out of the gutters. He slipped and got tangled in the cord of his blower. It looped around his neck as he slid off the eaves. The other end was snagged around a chimney. A senior member saw him up dangling, called the maintenance chief and said, “Could you clean that up quietly?”

And that was it. He was buried somewhere far out in the woods. Payroll records showed that he’d quit the week before and had said that he was going back to Mexico. It was the banker who’d told Haskell this story. He told it to illustrate the club’s preferred method of dealing with such inconveniences. When Haskell expressed doubt as to whether it was true, the banker said, “Believe it. We won’t mention any names. But the member who saw it is no stranger to us.” He then cocked his head toward the mogul.

He later asked the mogul why they’d bother with a cover-up for what was clearly an on-the-job accident. The mogul answered that it might have been perceived as something else. The gossip mill and all that. Besides, he was a Mexican, in the country illegally. It’s best treated as a housekeeping matter.

Haskell did enjoy some of the more colorful rumors. Tales of dark, cultish rituals worshiping Satan. Babies snatched from their cradles, burned alive as an offering. And orgies, off course, with smuggled-in whores who are, after use, ceremonially strangled, weighted down and dumped in the lake. What, you don’t believe it? How terribly naïve. Do you really think that such powerful men could go for two weeks without sexual release? Testosterone levels that high need an outlet. That must be why no women are allowed to be members. They’d be gang-raped before the first week was out and, well, you know women. They tattle.

Haskell chuckled to himself. He’d yet to meet anyone in this whole club who could overpower any woman he knew. Let alone someone like… well… someone like Stride. We’d see who ends up in the lake.

He’d reached the cabin. He glanced down toward his fire. The last log that he’d added had collapsed into embers. A fitting punctuation for the evening’s events. For now, though, thought Haskell, he could do with a scotch. A good single malt in a big brandy glass to sip and sniff as he pondered his next move.

ELEVEN 

At the bar, he scanned the faces of the others in the room. A few looked up and raised their glasses to salute him. Others kept their heads down, avoiding eye contact with him. He’d bonded with them all in one way or another. And there are all manner of bonds.

Yes, the banker was right about the value of membership. He was wrong though about what you can and can’t buy and with considerably less than all the money in the world. But even for Haskell, with all his connections, this club was no easy nut to crack. You couldn’t charm your way in. You couldn’t bribe your way in. You could, however, extort your way in if you were able to dig up the right kind of dirt on the members whom you needed to propose you. Not so hard. Or at least he’d thought so at the time. Not in a club with almost three thousand members. And as someone once wrote – it was Balzac, thought Haskell – behind every great fortune there lies a great crime. There should have been lots of crimes here to choose from. He’d put a team of researchers to work.

There were crimes, but most were old because the money was old. Far from embarrassing the eventual beneficiaries, they were proud of great-grandpa’s predations. New money, fortunes made through securities fraud, wasn’t a whole lot more fruitful. Anyone who’d cooked his company’s books only had to place calls to one or two other members and, presto, indictments were quashed. A dead end there. So much for crime.

There was a time, not long ago, when the threat to reveal drug use was enough to get the druggie’s attention. Now it’s no big deal. Found out, they go to rehab. Closet gays no longer seem to fear being outed. On the contrary, they’re encouraged, even admired. It’s fashionable, these days, to be supportive of gays as long as they don’t bring Armageddon upon us by trying to legally marry. Nor does the revelation of adulterous trysts earn anyone a scarlet letter anymore. The biggest factor there is probably Viagra. The older they are, the prouder they are to have bullets back in their guns.

All that was left in that quickly drying well was sexual deviance with children. That was and always will be a no-no. Kiddy porn, for example, found on their computers. Or chicken hawks trolling internet sites looking for a minor, same sex or otherwise, who’d be willing to meet them and gratify their needs in exchange for the price of a Sony Play Station or perhaps a shiny new mountain bike. Haskell never understood why anyone would do that. Making blind dates? On the internet? With children? The “child” was just as likely an FBI agent trying to get them to cross a state line.

His researchers were considerably more successful in this instance. They only found one member – a biggie - who’d actually made such a date, but they found a few more who’d trolled those sites as often as ten times a week. His associate, the mogul, took it from there. He’d tell some story about an informer who was out to discredit the member in question. Wanted it published. Had the evidence. All those logs. Not to worry, however. They’ve been safely locked away. Pending their final destruction, of course. And his good friend, Charles Haskell, at the mogul’s request, had encouraged the informer, now deceased, by the way, to purge his computer of any trace…

“Beg pardon? Deceased?” the member would ask.

“Suffice it to say that Charles Haskell is thorough. Just the sort of man we need in this club.”

“And these logs,” said the member. “You say that you’ve kept them?”

“Not me. Haskell has.”

“To what purpose?” asked the member.

“Oh, believe me, you have nothing to fear. He’ll destroy them once he’s in and is bound by our oath. Would you care to be one of his sponsors?”

His researchers had served him well on the whole. As they damned well should have for what they had cost him. Both of them had worked for the CIA. Not officially, though. As an alternative to prison. It seems that they’d hacked the CIA itself and gotten into the bowels of its more sensitive files. The CIA had them hacking almost everyone else including the Department of Defense. They’d hacked the FBI, but that was no great achievement. Any Boy Scout who’d earned a merit badge in computing could probably have done the same thing.

Their indenture ended with the proviso that they never go near a computer again. That’s like telling a bulimic to stop throwing up. He’d hired them and he gave them an unlimited budget to equip an electronic Disneyland. He ensconced them in a townhouse in Seattle. They almost never left the townhouse because they had no wish to. Compulsives are like that. They need no other lives. They sit at their keyboard 18 hours a day amassing data they care nothing about. The thrill is in the hack, not the use of it.

Haskell knew how to use it. Well, some of it anyway. A lot was in code or in some foreign language. He had linguists on his staff, but the volume was such that he’d have needed a hundred times their number. Even then, most of what they’d translate would be crap. Routine correspondence, inane chit-chat and such. Even jokes. Every culture, even the Muslims, told jokes. That shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did.

The only useful information that he got out of them came when he gave them specific instructions to hack a particular individual or competitor. They succeeded during his quest for sponsors and for members who might have blackballed him. They succeeded quite brilliantly in giving him the means to sabotage those Mideast production facilities. They’d failed, however, to penetrate the system of Saudi Overseas Charities. Hence the need to romance this ridiculous prince.

And they’d failed to get more than a foot in the door of the intricate system employed by the Mossad, or that of its stepchild, Harry Whistler’s.

It was one of them, probably, who’d told the mogul, that he seemed to have a“thing” for Elizabeth Stride. He’d wanted everything about her, no detail too small. Well, it isn’t a “thing.” It’s more like respect. He would pick that bone with them later.

He’d flown to Seattle only three days before the start of the Bohemian Club’s gathering. It would be his last chance to meet with his hackers. He’d wanted a progress report. Their reports, on the whole, were a mixture of bragging of their technical brilliance and a litany of their limitations.

One had said, “Look, you have to understand. We can get into the Whistler system. We can even get into Mossad. But those systems know we’re there within maybe five seconds and they turn on you and bite you in the ass.”

“Bite you how?” asked Haskell.

“They send a worm of their own. It penetrates us. The worm screws up our systems like you wouldn’t believe. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Does it tell them who you are? Where you are?” Haskell asked.

“I doubt it. We don’t leave many bread crumbs.”

“Well? Where are we? Can you crack them or not?”

“There’s gotta be a way. There always is.”

“You’ve been at this now for almost three months and you’ve given me nothing to show for it.”

“Not true,” said the hacker. “This should brighten your day. We might know where Kessler and Stride are.”

“Go on.”

“We were digging into Whistler through open sources. We got a list of all the companies he controls – or at least the ones that show his name on their reports – and a list of houses and apartments he owns. One of them is in a suburb of Washington, D.C. We know that Whistler’s not there. We know that he’s in Geneva. But someone’s using that house.”

“Someone?” he’d asked. “Why Kessler and Stride?”

“They needed a place. Harry Whistler had a place.” The hacker raised a hand before Haskell could respond. “Yeah, I know. That’s pretty thin. But whoever’s there, they’re sending out a lot of internet traffic. It goes out all over the Mideast.”

Haskell’s eyes narrowed. “Where Trans-Global does business?”

The hacker answered, “Well, yeah, but to other countries, too. Like Iran. You don’t do business in Iran. Like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, that whole Caspian area.”

“All oil-producing countries. So it is about oil.”

The hacker shook his head. “No, you can’t really say that. Jordan, too, for example. There’s no oil in Jordan. Egypt and Turkey. Not much oil there either.”

The hacker’s partner said, “Looks like some kind of slogan.” He had not turned his face from his screen. “Three words. Same three words every time.”

The first hacker said, “At least that’s what it look like. They’re encrypted in transit, but the codes look the same. Three words. We think English. Can’t be sure.”

“A slogan?” asked Haskell. “Or might it be a signal?”

“Too random for a signal. No pattern to who’s getting it. It seems to go to almost anyone, anywhere in that region, who sits down and boots up a computer. For all we know, it could even be a prayer.”

Haskell, with effort, held on to his temper. “A three-word prayer from Kessler’s Arabic speakers? What would make you think it’s a prayer?”

“Because Muslims send things like ‘God is great’ all the time. They’re supposed to pray to Allah five times a day. I bet a lot of them count that as a prayer. I know you think this must be more than that. But remember. It’s random. Think spam. There’s no more a discernable pattern to this than to the junk mail we see every day.”

Haskell stared at his man. “It isn’t junk mail.”

“If you say so.”

“If it’s coming from Kessler, it isn’t spam either. Unless he’s selling penile enlargements on-line, trust me; those three words are important.”

Another shrug. The hacker reached for a piece of note paper. “Here’s the address of that house that it comes from. Alexandria, Virginia. A section called Belle Haven. Big houses, big money, high security. I also wrote down the two email addresses that are sending almost all of these messages.”

“I traced those,” said the second hacker with pride. “Want to know how? It was really neat. First you have to…”

“Later,” said Haskell. He didn’t care how. He was looking at the Belle Haven address. He knew Belle Haven. Been there several times. A number of Bohemians kept homes there as well. He knew that the streets were heavily patrolled by local police and by private security. Harry Whistler would likely have considerable clout there. Good choice for a base. If it’s Kessler.

He saw the email addresses. One was Nikram102 using Hotmail as its server. The other was Handmaiden1 using Gmail.

He asked, “No identities? No names to go with these?”

“Nope. They’re blocked. It’s a hell of a system. If we tried to go in hard, like to bug it or cripple it…”

“They’d hit back in five seconds. I heard you.”

Handmaiden, thought Haskell? Could that be Stride? No, not likely. Handmaidens are submissive. Stride is anything but. He asked, “Nikram. A word? Or is that someone’s name?”

“Girl’s name. Shiite name. I looked it up. There’s your Arabic speaker, but that name’s mostly Iranian.”

“Looked it up? Why not ask her? You have these addresses. Why not try to get a friendly chat going?”

“We’re not stupid, Mr. Haskell. We tried that.”

“And?”

“Failure notice every time if they don’t know the sender. It protects against penetration.”

“And that’s just one way,” said his partner. “They got lots.” The first hacker said. “But we’re writing some code that we think might sneak in. It’s like what we did for those Saudi fields we bugged. But how deep can we get? Look, I’ve gotta be honest. What we need is someone there to make a mistake.”

“Of what sort?”

“There’s this lockout code they use, rotating numbers and characters, with five billion possible combinations. Oh, and their server…”

“Bottom line, if you please. Keep it simple.”

“It’s a code they punch in before they go on line. If they forget, they’re wide open until they go on again. Someone has to forget to enter that code.”

“How likely?” asked Haskell, drumming his fingers.

“They’re human. It could be an emergency. Or it could be someone new who’s not familiar with the system.”

“You’re telling me,” said Haskell, “that I shouldn’t hold my breath.”

I’m telling you were good, but so is the Mossad, and they’ve been at this a lot longer. We’ll keep at it. We’ll get in. You just have to be patient.”

“That is not among my virtues. Get it done. I’ve got to know what Kessler is up to.”

The hacker said, “Look, this is none of our business, but if this guy is such a problem, you’ve got goons by the truckload. Send them down to this house in Belle Haven. If Kessler and his broad are there, pull their plugs.”

“Don’t call Stride a broad. She’s a remarkable woman. Don’t use that sort of language when you speak of her.”

“Um… sorry.” The two hackers exchanged a what’s-with-him glance.

“Never mind,” said Haskell. He gathered himself. “One doesn’t go blasting in a place like Belle Haven. It upsets the neighbors and the media would notice.” Not to mention it leading to an all out war against Harry Whistler and his allies. “Whatever’s done must be done quietly.”

“Okay, so send someone to at least take a look. Whoever’s there doesn’t stay in that house all day long.”

“My thought exactly,” said Haskell.

Control yourself, Charles, he’d thought after that discussion. That “broad” thing was dumb. Unprofessional. Undetached. It’s one thing to have a private feeling about someone. It’s another to let it blurt out.