“No links. No witnesses. Nothing. But what concerns me most is that we’re talking about a secret stockpile that may have been hidden inside this chamber that belonged to Abesh Faruk, who we both know was a major arms dealer who profited from terrorist acts.”
Another nod from Bosshart, who then added, “Since the room was not on the blueprints, it obviously means that someone close to Faruk knew about the area. Someone he trusted.” He turned to Hess. “I can’t imagine that Faruk’s orbit was sizeable in any way, given his broad circle of enemies. People like him are surrounded by armed personnel due to his distrust of outsiders, which proved him right in the end with his assassination.”
Hess stepped closer to the bodies whose flesh had become ashen and mottled. Eyes had dulled over with a glaze to them, and bloated tongues were beginning to push themselves through slightly parted lips. As a confirmation of the process of death, flies began to alight on their flesh in what was the first and natural stage of breaking down the carcass.
“Then that’s what we do,” Bosshart said as he continued to stare at the bodies. “We dig deep into Faruk’s biographical records and see who he was in league with—maybe come up with a person or two of interest.”
“We’ll need to move fast and set our sights on a viable target before the assassin has a chance to utilize whatever it was that he came back for,” Hess returned. “We both know that whatever it is that’s now in his possession is not good. And we also have to conclude that he seized a potential weapon with a specific purpose in mind.”
Bosshart sighed through his nostrils. A hidden weapon was also a hidden treasure to some, usually WMDs that could have a colossal death toll attached to it when applied. Their task was to investigate the scene of the murders, not to explore the dimensions of possible terrorist activity, which this could possibly be. That paygrade of examination belonged to the Counter Terrorism Group, or the CTG, which is a unified counterterrorist organization from thirty European countries that was founded in 2001. Of those thirty nations, twenty-seven belonged to the European Union, which also included Switzerland. People like Hess and Bosshart always did the preliminary work. But the heavy lifting belonged to those within the CTG. Once the rudimentary information had been gathered and bucked up to the CTG operatives, Hess and Bosshart would become mere afterthoughts.
In the days to come, they would contact the CTG of their findings—that an object or objects of interest had been removed from an undiscovered chamber belonging to an arms dealer—with four men having been killed in the process in what was believed to be a matter of ‘tying up loose ends.’ Since Faruk Abesh was believed to have provided weaponry to extremist organizations, it could also be determined that said object, or objects, could also be tied to possible terrorist activity.
Knowing their stations in the scheme of things, Hess and Bosshart had followed the chain of command to get the ball rolling. They had dug deep and had come up with a single name, a Bangladeshi, that of Amal Purakayastha. The rest of Faruk’s team, however, had been terminated along with Faruk on the day of his assassination months ago. Purakayastha, however, remained at large and was deemed to have been a confidant of Faruk and someone who had a glaring backstory. Since the Bangladeshi’s background was that of a killer for hire, he became the primary person of interest who had more than a dozen confirmed kills to his name as a hired gun.
With the information of Purakayastha’s biographical history having been provided to the operators of the CTG, the case would immediately be considered as a potential terrorist operation with WMD probabilities attached. Finding the assassin would soon become paramount within the organization. Purakayastha would not only become a figure for discovery, but due to his lethal abilities and extremist ties, he had been labeled as a targeted killing, meaning that he was to be terminated with extreme prejudice in order to neutralize all current and future threats that Purakayastha could advance.
There would be no court proceedings at The Hague.
There would be no deportations or under-the-spotlight interrogations.
The man was a viable threat to the security of all nations; therefore, his death had all been legitimized. ‘Shoot now and ask no questions later.’
Now that Amal Purakayastha was within the sights of CTG technicians, locating him would prove difficult, if not impossible. For the man who was an elite terrorist that was about to set off a likely campaign of mass destruction, he was also a man of many faces. Like all chameleons, Amal Purakayastha, who now walked in league with the Unholy Trinity, would blend in with his background to become entirely invisible. And from the confines of the shadows, he would open up his Pandora’s Box to unleash the horrors of three demons—that of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet.
Darkness was about to reign.
CHAPTER
FOUR
Paris, France
One Week Later
Two months after Abesh Faruk had been assassinated, Amal Purakayastha had gone into hiding and discovered Paris to be his ‘Land of Enchantment.’ The architecture, the language, and the makeup of its people had delighted him. But he often found himself always looking over his shoulder trying to spy that moving shadow he believed was always giving chase. It was that cloak-and-dagger feeling of paranoia that something dangerous was always close by. So, he altered his appearance by having his nose reshaped to be thinner, sharper and with a flare to his nostrils. He had his cheekbones lifted and rounded, which gave him more of an Asiatic look. And he had his eyes redesigned as well—to be more almond-shaped. The man he was several months ago in the mirror was now somebody completely different. His makeover was so extreme that facial recognition software would be
