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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 130: Kondor 300
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Slade 293
As Kondor entered the building, the receptionist in the lobby waved him over. “Mister Kondor, I’ve been told to direct you to conference room 1026, tenth floor.”
“Thank you, Miss Jones.”
Cameron was already waiting, and asked, “What do we have?”
“Apparently a man expected to become the next U.N. Secretary General may be guilty of war crimes, and our source for this has video. I don’t know more than that, other than that someone with middle eastern connections definitely wants her silenced.”
The men took seats, and it was several minutes before Zeke entered with Amanda, and C was right behind them.
“So,” Amanda said, “The BBC is actually a secret spy organization working undercover.”
C smiled. “As appropriate as that might be,” he said, “we’re just borrowing one of their conference rooms. They have good video equipment.
Amanda nodded and walked over, and gave him a thumb drive. Cameron plugged it in to a console along the wall.
“So,” C continued, “as I understand it, we’re about to see evidence that the Saudi Ambassador to the United Nations is guilty of war crimes, and asked to take steps to prevent him from becoming the next Secretary General. This does put us in an awkward position.”
“How so, sir?” Zeke asked. C sat back and interlaced his fingers over his belly.
“Politicians being what they are, they always have skeletons in their closet. I recall a clever television show in which a member of the Cabinet blackmailed both leading candidates in his party to prevent them from accepting the nomination for Prime Minister and stepped into the position himself. If we were to reveal all the embarrassing secrets of everyone seeking public office, no candidates would remain.”
“But surely,” Kondor suggested, “there’s a line somewhere.”
“I expect there is. The problem is that we wind up making ourselves the judges of that line. Don’t get me wrong--I will take any necessary action to protect Great Britain and the Free World. I do not wish to be involved in deciding what the Free World does with that freedom. But let’s see what our video shows. Roll it?”
Cameron hit a few buttons. The room, which had no exterior windows, went dark, and a bank of large television screens lit up on one wall. Everyone silently watched two men in the lead of ten soldiers, who shouted commands at several dozen kneeling civilians, each gathered into what appeared to be family groups, in a red, dusty street. Everyone in the video was Black, except for the leader, who was a lighter shade.
The prisoners--it was clear that was what they were--cried, and some prayed holding small wooden painted crosses, as the leader and his right-hand man shouted at them more. Finally, the leader spoke, and his right-hand man, a huge Black man perhaps six and a half feet tall with massive shoulders below a block-shaped head with no neck and who appeared to have a delighted look of animal cruelty on his face, took an AK-47 from one of the soldiers and gave it to the leader.
The leader shouted once more, and all the soldiers pointed their guns. The firing was started by the leader, and all the rest of the men joined in on the slaughter immediately. Less than twenty seconds later the whole crowd of kneeling civilian prisoners were lying in pools of blood, dead. Their blood was soaking into the dry dirt underneath them.
Kondor took in a sudden breath. He had never seen anything so unjust.
C tapped a finger, and after a few seconds, perhaps consulting his memory, he spoke.
“Cameron, the file on Sheikh Fazli Naifeh, and on his chief of security, and oh, also the report on the Sheikh’s palace in Riyadh.”
C kept on considering things for several minutes, and Kondor forced himself to turn away from the still visible end of the video. He could see Zeke had his head bowed as if praying, and Amanda just looked less like a competent woman, and more like a wounded dove. He wrapped an arm around her, and she let him. C glanced up quickly, and gave him a short, approving nod before going back to whatever dark and labyrinthine contemplations went on inside the mind of a spymaster.
The image on one of the screens was suddenly replaced with a file on Fazli Naifeh, another with that of his chief of security, the giant brute with an animalistic love for destruction and pain, Lubanzi Imari. Reading the notes on both of them, Kondor decided that in the first case, the cover of the book was not the book. The Sheikh was a devout Muslim, and claimed to be a moderate who sought peace. His chief of security, however, was just the opposite. He was exactly what he looked like. The Sheikh defended employing him with the statement “I have many enemies among the jihadi, but they fear my Lubanzi.”
“I believe this is the picture you wanted, sir.” Cameron brought up another image on a fourth screen. C glanced at it, and agreed.
“Yes, several years back, one of our agents was able to secure an invite to a party at the Sheikh’s palace in Riyadh. In the man’s walkway to the gardens in easy view of the inevitable guests was this painting which the agent took a snap of because, as he put it, it wigged him out.”
The image showed a dozen people in ordinary clothes standing in a wheatfield with most of the wheat cut by a scythe. All of them faced the viewer with flat expressions on their faces. Looking closer, Kondor felt a twinge run down his spine. The eyes were painted so that at first glance, they were there, but a closer viewing showed that all the eyes had been shot out.
Tearing his eyes free, he looked back at the image in the video. The last dozen of the dead had been face up. Their faces were in the painting. The wheat had been harvested, all right, and looking closer, he saw drops of red on the scythe blade. Suddenly, he was letting Amanda go, for he felt sick. In a way, this painting was worse than the video. The video was the evil done, but the painting was lauding it, applauding it, praising it, bragging about it, and sneering to oneself about how you showed everyone your murders and they were all too stupid to see your dark heart behind the practiced smile. Lubanzi and Fazli were the same, in their hearts; they were both beasts, although Fazli had enough control to put on a fake smile.
C finally spoke. “Mister Kondor is correct; there must be a line. Mister Kondor, Mister Smith, Sheikh Fazli Naifeh is the most likely next United Nations Secretary General, in about six months. Your mission is to ensure that this does not happen. I must add that you two must not be captured, and this cannot be traced back to us in any way.”
“Am I now dead?” Amanda asked.
C sighed. “No, we don’t do that. We will not harm you in any way. In fact, we owe you for coming to us with this. However, I cannot guarantee your safety from Naifeh’s supporters. For your own safety you need to keep quiet about this, and particularly about your involvement.
Kondor said, “I agree to the mission, if Zeke--”
“I’m in, Captain.”
“We’re in, C. Let’s eliminate these villains.”
As to the old stories that have long been here:
