The Zul Enigma (72 page)

‘He’s right on the money
there,’ Joseph grunted. ‘What else?’

Rachael thought back to
her conversations with Scott. ‘He thought someone else was behind the plan you
and Drew came up with to get my father out of UNO.’

‘Ha! And did you never
think it was odd Drew turning up on the very day Zul first contacted Carlos?’

‘It was coincidence. NI
investigated but they never found a connection.’

Joseph moved his head
from side to side. ‘Americans!’ he said, ‘can’t see what’s right under their
noses.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How long had Drew and
your father been friends? Huh? Twenty-eight years? He knew Carlos up and down
and inside out. He knew everything there was to know about him. Think about
it…’

‘You mean… it was Drew?’
Rachael exclaimed. ‘But who did he work for? The FBI? The CIA? If so, what was
he doing at NASA?’

‘Keep thinking.’

‘Hold on, Drew was
British. So he must have been with… what was it called? Scott said it the other
day… the Secret Intelligence Service, that’s it. And he hated my father because
of Elena. And it was Drew who came up with the escape plan from UNO.’

Joseph grunted again.
‘It was Erika who gave your father the drugs.’

‘She was a spy too? But
how did she…’ then Rachael gasped, ‘she put them in his coffee. Perhaps she was
passing information from Northrop Grumman to Drew in the old days. She betrayed
her country?’

‘False flags.’

‘What?’

‘Assets that lie to the
agents giving them information. They’re called false flags. They lie about
which agency they work for.’

‘You mean Drew pretended
to be FBI? But Northrop Grumman was an American company. Why would Erika think
they’d spy on themselves? Oh… wait a minute… they had a cooperative agreement
with Israel Aerospace Industries. He must have told her there were things about
IAI the Americans wanted to know, but really he was passing secrets to the
British.’

Joseph opened his mouth
to reply, but was overcome by a coughing spasm.

‘It all makes sense.
Erika was a single parent – she was struggling – she needed money.
Drew would have paid her well. And it explains why they were so close. And the
music magazines she brought for my father – I bet they’d bugged them so
Drew could trace him in case the plan to get him out of UNO didn’t work. And
Erika thought she was doing the right thing helping him to escape, because Drew
never told her he’d invented Zul and what the master plan was.’ Rachael got up
and began to pace the floor.

‘And the money,’ she
nodded her head, ‘that fits too. His aunt dying? She never left him a fortune.
That money he and Erika bought the big house with in Vienna? That was for doing
the job. And…’ she turned to look at Joseph, ‘he knew my father would be high
on the drugs when he sent in Astraea,’

‘Ah… Astraea…’ Joseph
said.

‘But wait a moment, Drew
would never have admitted to the affair with Elena, unless… unless he wanted to
break him down so he’d be more receptive when Zul appeared. Perhaps he even
lied about the affair. And that girlfriend he was seeing? She lived near UNO.
And that’s how he beamed in the lasers. From her roof garden… and… of course…
my mother worked it out.’ Rachael sunk back down into the armchair, shaking her
head in her hands. ‘It was Drew who set him up… his best friend.’

‘Nice try,’ Joseph
rasped, ‘but you’re wrong. Drew didn’t work for the Secret Intelligence
Service. He
was
an agent… but not the kind you think. He was what we
call in the business,’ and he lifted the first and middle fingers of both
hands, ‘an “unwitting agent”.’

‘You mean he didn’t know
what he was doing?’

Joseph nodded.
‘Exactly!’ he said.

‘So someone else was
manipulating him.’ It took her a split second to grasp it. Then she caught her
breath and felt every cell in her body flood with adrenaline. A deafening
buzzing filled her ears and without knowing how she got there she found herself
bent over the bed, her face inches away from Joseph’s.

‘It was you!’ she
hissed. ‘It was you all along.’

Then, just as suddenly
she felt faint and sick, and groping for the arm of her chair, she collapsed
back into it muttering. ‘You were always there lurking in the background.
Always whispering in someone’s ear. Drew, Erika, my father, Greg, my mother…
even NASA and the US military. You got Erika the job at Northrop Grumman
and
RUAG. She was passing secrets to
you
, not to Drew. You set her up
with that abusive boyfriend to get Drew to Vienna – you wanted him back
in touch with my father. You knew he’d tell Drew things he’d never tell you.’
She gasped. ‘Did you kill Drew’s aunt too?’

‘She was old and sick. I
did her a favour… and him!’

Rachael shuddered.
‘Neither Erika nor Drew had any idea how you were using them. If they’d
guessed, you’d have killed them too.’

‘When Drew confessed his
affair? I didn’t seen that coming.’

‘And you lost your main
informant. So you told Erika to get friendly with his secretary so you could
get information that way. I suppose you told her to get closer to Drew, too.’

‘No. She did that all on
her own.’

‘But you manipulated
Drew. Led him on. Made him think he’d come up with the plan to get my father to
Vienna and away from the Americans.’

‘And it was
you
,’
Rachael spat out the word as if it was poison, ‘
you
who told Erika to
give my father the drugs.’

‘I had to get him away
from the Americans. Hospital was the perfect place. I knew Carlos took sleeping
pills and amphetamines… I found them when I bugged his penthouse. That’s what
gave me the idea. And Erika told me he kept some at the office… the secretary
told her. Erika was good at getting secrets out of people. The secretary told
her everything.’

Rachael’s face was
ashen. But her mind was still whirring. ‘And the Americans thought you solved
how Zul got the communications in, when all along you’d come up with the idea
in the first place.’

‘That Barbara Lord… she
had her people sniffing round me, but NI never did do that stuff very well.
They were good on the technical side. It was the Brits who had surveillance off
pat.’

‘And my father played right
into your hands with his idea for the initiative.’

‘I knew he’d come up
with something. If he hadn’t… well… I’d have suggested it. Like I put the idea
into the Secretary-General’s mind to cover the launch on UN satellite TV. It
was the only way I could beam Zul all over the world at the same time.’

‘And you shamed him into
the Clean Up Plan… to give cover to the cabal. And you arranged the protective
custody’.

‘You’d have made a good
asset,’ Joseph rasped. ‘You’ve got a good logical mind. Like your mother. And
your father. He spotted the flaw in what that stupid actress said, although he
didn’t pick up on it till it was too late. Even if he’d challenged it at the
time, I could have talked him round. Fed him some baloney. After all, he’d
taken those drugs. He was very confused.’

Rachael sank her face in
her hands.

‘Mossad recruited me at
University. After the mission I had at NASA was canned, they moved me to
Northrop Grumman. Setting up a cooperative agreement with IAI was perfect
cover. It gave me legitimacy. Then IAI took me on and transferred me to Tel
Aviv, where they promoted me to head their MALAT Division. That’s where I
picked up the laser knowledge. I did business with all the militaries. I had
the highest security clearance in the US. They trusted me, the idiots.’

Rachael’s face was white
as she listened to the confession of the biggest mass murderer – ever.

‘After the cabal’s
intermediary contacted our Director, he picked me for the job,’ Joseph’s voice
was a croak, dry and brittle like a frog. ‘None of the other agencies could
have pulled it off. Not like we did. Not with just one controller and one
asset. We Mossad operatives were always the best. We weren’t just creative with
ideas, we incorporated developing technology into our creativity. We had an
edge none of the others had. And I was the best of the best. The other
agencies? They criticised us. Said in the Mossad twisted ideals prevailed. Said
we were fuelled with self-centred pragmatism, lust, greed and a total lack of
respect for human life. They were probably right… so what? We never failed.

‘When the Director
called me in, I couldn’t believe my luck. It was a dream job. I had
carte-blanche. But after all that preparation researching the evolution of
densities… coming up with Zul… setting up the technical side… distributing the
vitamins… getting all the players in place… clearing all the obstacles those
half-cocked Americans kept putting in my way… after your father came up with
the Global Consciousness initiative – the perfect vehicle to hook the
public – when everything was panning out like a dream,’ Joseph snorted,
‘just two weeks before E-Day the Director called me. To tell me they were
pulling the plug on the whole operation.’

Rachael jerked up her
head. ‘What?’

‘Lily-livered bastards.
So… the next day the Director met with a little accident,’ Joseph struggled up
onto his elbow, ‘and I went ahead alone.’ It was only then that Rachael
realised every time she thought he’d been grimacing, in fact he’d been
contorting his lips into a twisted version of a smile. She smelled his fetid
breath and it made her feel like vomiting.

‘You committed genocide,
killed six billion people… against orders? You vile diabolical man.’

He slid back down onto
the bed. ‘It was necessary. For the human race to survive. And trust me, that
secret group? They didn’t have the guts to give the green light, but it’s what
they wanted.’

‘How can you say that?
You didn’t even know who they were.’

‘I knew they were
cowards. The lot of them. They wanted the outcome, but they wanted to keep
their consciences clean.’ He snorted. ‘That conscience shit? That never
bothered me. Although the Director never disclosed the identity of their
representative, I’d known who it was for some time. When I contacted him after,
he asked me to head their intelligence agency.’

‘Global Intelligence?’

‘No,’ he rasped, ‘not GI
– they’re a bunch of amateurs – no, the agency that spies on GI.
I’d proved myself to them, they knew how good I was and they knew they could
trust me to get the job done.’

‘Did you ever find out
who they were?’

‘I could have. But why
bother?’

Rachael was overcome by
a great heaviness weighing her down. She felt wretched and weary. So weary.
‘And my parents?’

‘I planned for the
Tribunal to arrest your father but I would never have let them put him on
trial. Then when your mother plotted the line of sight from my office to his
office and his penthouse? Well… I had to kill her as well.’

‘
You
killed them?
What about that sniper?’

‘I paid him to take the
rap. Something that important? I had to do it myself.’

Rachael gasped. A tear
trickled down her cheek.

‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ he
went on, slowly twisting his head from side to side. ‘The way the world is now?
It’s what your father always wanted – low population, global unity, global
prosperity – it’s his dream. In fact it’s doubly ironic. He died for his
dream… he was a martyr, not a monster… thing was, no one knew it,’ and that
hideous smile contorted his lips again.

‘And the book?’ she
whispered.

Joseph wheezed out a
laugh. ‘Yes. I knew about that. Your mother was smart but very naïve. I started
hacking into her computer after she interviewed Anita Goodwin. And I kept her
under surveillance when she moved back to England. I knew everything she knew.
But she never had any hard data until she worked out I’d beamed the lasers from
my office in Vienna. She stored the coordinates in code on her computer but
never told anyone, so once I’d eliminated her I was safe.’

‘And you knew about me
all along.’

‘Of course, I knew about
you,’ and Rachael felt a chill of fear inch up her spine, ‘but you were a baby…
you were never a threat.’ He lifted his gnarled fingers off the bed for a split
second. ‘And as for now?’ He dropped them back down. ‘Now it’s too late. It
doesn’t matter who you tell or what you say. No one will ever believe you. And
in any case, no one cares.’

‘I care,’ she said,
overcome by a surge of violent rage, and sprang to her feet.

***

Hands thrust deep in her pockets, Rachael walked out of the hospital wing and
trudged through the driving sleet. She needed fresh, cold air to clear her
head.

She couldn’t get the
image of Joseph out of her mind. His despicable smile… his fetid breath… the
revelation that he, alone, had committed the grossest act of genocide ever.
He’d murdered six billion people not to mention her parents, without a single
shred of remorse. He’d made it possible for the secret group to take over the
world.