commentators explained that although the incident was bad, circumstances had made the meltdown and release of radiation far less disastrous than the Three Mile Island incident more than three decades ago, and especially less disastrous than the more recent Chernobyl accident.
A National Nuclear Security Administration official was the first to use the term
Which, of course, led to even more intense speculation about the safety of the other 100-plus nuclear power stations in the U.S., and the call for more security, and it reminded Anne Marie of the hue and cry over airport security in the wake of the 9/11 disaster.
Then early this morning she received a telephone call at the same encrypted number Gunther regularly used, this one from her friend and longtime heavy investor from as far back as the dot-com boom, that a situation in Caracas had been successfully handled.
“I wasn’t aware that there was a situation,” she’d told him. And Octavio had chuckled, his voice low and in her estimation his accented English very sexy.
“I didn’t want to bother you with something you could do nothing about, or until things began to get out of control.”
She’d been alarmed, this call coming so soon after the Hutchinson Island business. “Tell me.”
So he had explained about the CIA’s chief of station who’d been snooping around him and his business dealings, presumably involving not only there in Venezuela but elsewhere, which would have included Anne Marie. “I was told that she had chartered a private jet to fly her to Washington.” And the timing on the heels of a certain event in Florida was enough for him to take action.
She’d been afraid at that moment, because Octavio was talking about the assassination of an important CIA officer, an act that U.S. authorities would investigate with extreme vigor, but also because he’d made some sort of a connection to her and Hutchinson Island.
“How could you have been sure that the CIA was investigating you?” she’d asked, almost using the pronoun
“I wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but after reading the documents that she meant to carry to Washington, I was glad that I followed my instincts,” Octavio said. “And you should be glad of it as well, because not only were you and I linked, but the woman was making a case for a connection between you and me and the Florida business.”
“Me, by name?” Anne Marie had asked.
“Yes,” Octavio said. “But my security people assure me that this connection may have only been speculation,
“No,” Anne Marie had assured him, and afterwards she had called Gunther to alert him of the possibility and he too had assured her he’d detected no increase in interest.
“Did you admit anything to Miguel?” Wolfhardt had asked sharply.
“No.”
“He didn’t press you about Hutchinson Island?”
“No.”
“Good.”
And finally her encrypted phone chimed again less than one hour ago, and Jeremiah Thaddeus Schlagel was practically shouting like he did in his sermons. “If I’m reading this right, it’s about time,” he’d bellowed. “I’m here, at the Raffles. Meet me in that whorehouse of a bar upstairs at eight.”
She’d gotten dressed in a simple black Versace pantsuit and a plain white silk blouse, and riding over now to Dubai’s newest and most famous hotel in the back of her Mercedes Maybach. Some of the fear she’d felt after Octavio’s call had begun to fade, because the next phase of her operation for al-Naimi and the Saudi royals was about to begin.
About time indeed. Fourteen months ago after she’d set Wolfhardt on the task of creating a nuclear power station meltdown, proving nuclear energy was far too vulnerable to attack and far too dangerous a method with which to generate electricity, she’d contacted one of her largest investors back in the States and invited him to come over to Dubai to talk.
“Money’s getting a bit tight, darlin’,” he’d told her in his fake rural Kansas drawl. “Unless you got something interesting. Something I could set my teeth into.”
“You’re an ambitious man, Jerry,” she’d told him.
“Yes, I am, I admit it.”
“And you would make a fine president.”
For the first time since she’d known the man he’d had nothing to say.
“But you would need a cause. Something you could get behind on your television and radio networks. Something the religious right, your flock, could become enthused about. Wildly enthused, enough to push you to the top.”
“I’m listening,” Schlagel had said that day, his Kansas drawl replaced by his flat Midwest accent. He’d been born and raised in Milwaukee, and whenever something unexpected overtook him, the Wisconsin in him came back.
“Not yet. But when it happens it’ll be deadly, with a promise of more to come unless the right man is there to lead the charge.”
“Something like al-Quaeda? Another nine/eleven?”
“Bigger,” she’d promised.
“When?”
“This’ll take a bit of work, so I want you to remain patient. But I also want you to get your organization geared up to be ready to move at a moment’s notice. Tell them you had a revelation that something stupendous is in the wind. God spoke to you, and commanded you to get your flock ready, because they’d be needed.”
Schlagel had chucked. “Not bad, darlin’,” he’d drawled. “Not bad at all.”
Her chauffeur dropped her off in front of the hotel built in the style of an ancient Egyptian pyramid in glass and steel instead of limestone, with the apex completely sheathed in windows so patrons of the city’s most famous drinking establishment, the China Moon Champagne Bar, could see the entire city right out to the edge of the desert.
Inside the mammoth lobby one of the white-gloved attendants scurried over and escorted her to the elevators, a service the hotel provided for everyone who walked through the doors.
It was a weeknight, but Dubai was a business city, so the lobby was bustling, a half-dozen people riding up in the elevator with her, at least two of them speaking with German accents, and another speaking French with a Chinese woman and an Arab male dressed casually in jeans, an open-collar shirt, and a khaki jacket.
Schlagel was seated in a high-backed red upholstered chair at a low table in the far corner of the large room, and when he spotted Anne Marie coming over he got to his feet, a big grin on what she’d always considered was a broad peasant’s face, perpetually filled with cunning and deceit. And except for his crudeness, almost total lack of manners or social graces, he was an extremely bright man, a good judge of human nature, and a shrewd investor, who at her last financial reckoning was worth at least two billion dollars, much of that hidden in offshore banks, including the UAEIBC here in Dubai, against the inevitable day his empire collapsed and he had to run.
“No way I’m going to end up like Brother Jim Bakker,” he’d told her once. “Just hedging my bets like you and your old man before you.” He’d done his homework on her as she had on him before she took any of his money.
Finding out about him, the real man behind the public image, hadn’t been easy because he’d been very good at covering his tracks and inventing a new persona for himself, but Gunther had put the right people on the project about eight years ago and slowly most of the pieces came together.
His real name was Donald Deutsch, and he’d been born to a working-class family from the wrong side of
