The Vision: A Novel of Time and Consciousness

CHAPTER ONE

7 August — Moscow —

The venerable Metropol Hotel’s elegant Tsarist lobby was crowded with people that early August mid-afternoon. Beneath the striking gilded bronze and crystal chandeliers, elegantly dressed men and women moved with purpose. Down the hall off the lobby, in front of one of the meeting rooms, a sign in an ornate brass frame read, International Society of Physicians – Protocol Committee. Inside a group of doctors of many races and ethnicities sat around a large conference table talking over each other, their voices rising and falling in intensity as they debated in heavily accented English, the common language of science.

I think we must assume that the World Health Organization is going to... a spade-bearded olive-complected man made his point, as much with his hands as his words, which were interrupted in any case.

I don’t think we can assume anything of the kind, Dr Kaparatis. It clearly …. a Norwegian doctor as solid as a block interjected, only to be himself interrupted.

I have discussed this with Herr Professor Schmidt, and he completely concurs that our position on the vaccine is the proper one…. A third physician spoke up expressing his disdain in a heavy French accent, while looking at Kaparatis.

Gentlemen, the chairman raised his voice to override them all. While this was getting sorted out, there was a knock on the door. An aide sitting near the entrance got up, opened it, listened for a moment, then turned and walked over to a handsome man in his thirties, obviously from the Middle East. On his suit jacket was pinned a plastic name plate, DR. DAOUD ABOU MABROOK. The aide leaned over to speak quietly in Mabrook’s ear, I’m sorry, doctor, there is someone … a man … he says it’s urgent.

Mabrook was not startled; he seemed to have expected what he was being told. Without a word he got up, made an excusing gesture, and left the conference room following the young aide who led him down the corridor through the marble lobby into a glorious dining room with a colored glass conservatory ceiling two stories above the tables.

He was nervous as he looked around the room. A thumb drive had given him a picture of the man he was to meet, but it was the first time in all his travels that he was doing something he knew to be, in some way that he didn’t understand but felt, surreptitious. He had agreed to the meeting when it was explained the option was damage to his sister’s shop, upon which sixteen of his family members depended.

Finally he saw his man seated at a table next to one of the brown marble pillars that lined the room’s sides. He was a small badly-shaven elderly man in an ill-fitting green suit. He had thick glasses held together by scotch tape, and looked very out of place amidst the couture-dressed women and their bespoke-tailored men.

Seeing him, the doctor looked quizzically at the aide. The picture he had been given was a headshot showing only the face without the glasses, like a passport photo, giving no hint as to his general appearance. This individual was not at all what had expected, and it threw him off balance. The elderly man in contrast seemed quite comfortable to be there and to have Mabrook coming over toward him. Before they got to the table the aide leaned in, saying softly, Do not let his appearance deceive you, doctor. Alexander Leonovich is very powerful. He handles certain matters for Putin, he is a serious man. We all know that.

As they approached, the elderly man stood up and extended his hand. Alexander Leonovich Vorontsov, a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Mabrook. After a pause he gestured to the table, Please join me.

Mabrook took the final step to the table and sat down. As soon as he did the waiter came over and handed both men menus.

I cannot be away that long, Mabrook said, waving the menu away. From a distance it all looked very ordinary, but Mabrook felt a deep tension, as if he were being watched by a cobra.

Perhaps just some tea, then. I’ll have some myself, Vorontsov said, sitting down.

Mabrook nodded his agreement and the waiter left, as did the aide. As soon as they were out of earshot Mabrook began to speak without preamble.

You know I do not ordinarily do this. I’m not quite sure what to say. The news is good? he asked as he looked at Vorontsov, who returned his attention with a quiet smile. Tilting his head he looked at the younger man through his thick glasses.

We have been very fortunate. Turkmenistan is ... confused. Recent developments .... The package you are inquiring about is going to be … misplaced. Happily, thanks to your organization’s generosity, we will be the ones to find it. You understand?

When.

I think within the week.

The waiter approached with the tea and served both men. As they took up their cups the tension relaxed. Their business was complete. Mabrook was glad it had been simple, and all he had to do was make a routine call to his sister.

CHAPTER TWO

12 August — Ashkhabad, Turkmenistan —

Five days later as business was ending, at an industrial installation outside of Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, two men in dark green jumpsuits were loading a truck with military green containers and barrels. Standing next to them in blue jumpers were the driver and his assistant. Everything seemed normal, yet the expressions on the faces of all the men made it clear it was not an ordinary day; everyone was on edge. As the last container moved up the ramp it almost fell off the handcart. Revealed on its side was the international nuclear symbol. The two plant men became very agitated as the container rocked on its dolly, as did the driver and his assistant. They rushed forward, and got it stabilized and into the two-and-a-half ton truck without further incident.

Once the plant men had everything on board and secured, the senior one handed a clipboard with the paperwork to the trucker who signed it and handed it back. The plant man tore off a copy and returned it to driver. As soon as he had the paperwork in his hands the driver and his assistant climbed into their truck, started it up, and pulled away, driving past the military guard post at the chain link fence.

Two days and eight hundred miles later, late at night near the Iran border, the truck pulled over onto the shoulder of the isolated highway curving around a bay. The driver and his assistant turned off the engine and got out. The assistant walked into the scrubby landscape to take a leak and was just coming back when another two-and-a-half ton truck came up the road. It pulled past them and backed up so that the two trucks were back to back. Two men in their twenties got out speaking Farsi. Through their truck’s open doors the cab, lit only by the glow from the instrument panel, revealed an interior decorated with garish colors. The plaintive wail of Islamic music coming out of the truck’s speakers filled the air.

Almost without a word the four men moved the container with the nuclear symbol from one truck to another. Then each truck turned and drove back the way it had come.

In the new truck the men shared a water bottle and settled in for the long drive back to the coastal town of Bandar Torkaman, Iran. Several hours into the drive they came up a hill and around a curve and saw an accident in front of them. One truck was aflame. It was a common road scene, and at first they thought nothing of it. Trucks drove without their lights, a hangover from war. Things happened.

The driver slowed to a stop, and as he did so a team of men, faces covered by traditional Islamic head scarves, leapt onto the truck’s running boards and garroted the two men in the cab. A pickup truck drove up, and the two killers and the truck driver off-loaded the nuclear container into the smaller truck. When that was completed, the original truck with the two dead bodies was rigged to drive full speed into the two already wrecked vehicles ahead. As it smashed into the pile-up, it also burst into flames, and the burning trucks lit up the night sky. The fire was reflected in the rearview mirror as one of the men in the truck now carrying the nuclear material unwrapped his head cloth revealing his face, which was Korean.

The truck crossed back into Turkmenistan and raced for the coast of the Caspian Sea. At the village of Serdar it turned left down an even smaller road, arriving at the coast a few hours later. There was nothing to see but sand, some driftwood, and waves. In spite of that the driver stopped, pulled off the road, parked and waited. Within an hour a small coastal freighter came into view. It stopped and lowered the ship’s tender, a dirty white open boat that came to shore and gently grounded on the beach as the truck moved forward to the water’s edge to meet it. Leaving one man with the boat, the three other crewmen who had made the crossing and the men from the truck opened the back of the pickup and slung the container with the nuclear symbol onto a web of canvas straps, and manhandled it out to the boat.

It took all of them to push the boat off the beach. When it was floating freely again the seamen got back in, turned on the engine and reversed out a hundred yards, then turned and steered to the freighter. By the time it got there the ship had lowered its boom cable with a cargo net. They maneuvered the container into the net and hoisted it aboard. Then they lifted the boat. On the beach the truck was already gone.

CHAPTER THREE

14 September — Libyan Desert —

A small barrel-chested heavily-bearded bald man, Basma El Farouk leaned over a toy train with intense concentration. Everything about him was very precise. The small machine was clearly hand made and a jewel of miniaturization. Slowly and carefully, looking through a magnifying glass, he fitted a final piece into place. There was a kind of leashed calm about him as he did this. Overhead the drone of a plane could be heard. Farouk took note of the sound and carefully put the small train engine back into the fitted foam compartment of an aluminum case and replaced his tools with equal deliberation.

He reached into his shirt and pulled out a lanyard, on the end of which was a ring of keys. He took the ring off the lanyard, selected a small key, locked the case, put the ring back on the lanyard, dropped it back inside his shirt, turned out the light and left the room, walking out of the converted forty-foot steel cargo container into the glaring sunlight of the desert. Other containers, all painted in camouflage desert tan, were clustered around the one he had just exited. On the hard desert floor to one side groups of men were engaged in training exercises: some were shooting at human shaped targets whose faces were those of Western leaders, others were running an obstacle course, still others sat on folding chairs under a camouflage canvas open-sided pavilion learning how to make suicide vests.

Farouk looked up, shielded his eyes, and watched a small twin engine plane land on a beaten earth airstrip a hundred yards off. As soon as its engines were cut, men rushed forward and off-loaded the container with the nuclear warning symbol, as well as some other supplies. The off-loading was directed by a younger bearded man, speaking Arabic. As Farouk walked up to where he was standing the man stopped speaking and deferentially turned to Farouk, who gestured for him to continue.

Be careful. Or you’ll be in pieces smaller than a sand flea, the young man said to the men trying to get the container out of the plane.

Don’t worry, Sameer, Farouk said, quietly, Until it is armed you’ve nothing to fear. Safe as a baby and not as much trouble. Have them take it to the lab.

The plane, freed of its cargo, started up again and began taxiing to take off. A pickup truck drove up to where the men with the container were standing and they loaded the container into its open back end. The truck drove just a few hundred yards to a metal barn-like structure bigger than the shipping containers but painted in the same colors. One of the men got out and pushed back the sliding doors, then went back to help the others bring the container into the building. Within the interior there was a smaller space defined by clear plastic sheeting walls to keep the desert dust out, and inside the enclosure two men in white protective technical suits were carrying out some kind of operation.

Farouk and Sameer walked into the building, passing through the outer plastic walls into a kind of foyer space where they put on white technical suits and slipped booties over their shoes, then passed through into the inner space. The building’s sliding door was closed, reducing the glaring light of the desert to the more tolerable level of electric lighting hanging down from the ceiling. Air conditioners hummed and a generator could be heard in the background. Two men brought the container into the outer space and left. Farouk, assisted by Sameer, used a little rolling electric crane to pick up the container and place it on a trolley which they wheeled into the walled-off inner room, where they opened it. Inside, nestled in foam, was a dull silvery metal cylinder with a spherical end. With the little crane they lifted the whole assemblage onto a stainless steel table. With Zen-like calm, Farouk took up a tool and began to open the cylinder and very deliberately take it apart.

CHAPTER FOUR

14 September — London —

Nancy Templeton, an elegant middle-aged woman, was the serving American Deputy Chief of Station and Coordinator of Intelligence in London, and was already having a bad day when Jason Bernstein, her opposite number in Operations, came into her office at the American Embassy.

Good afternoon, Nancy, Bernstein said as he entered. He was a man in his late thirties with an almost military-style haircut and a government managementlevel dark suit.

You look particularly grim this morning, Jason what now? Templeton asked, looking up from her computer and brushing her stylishly cut dark hair out of her face.

This just came in from Langley, he responded, handing her the cable print-out he was holding. Templeton read it and her expression radically changed.

Jason, a five kiloton theater nuclear warhead is loose in the international terrorist network, and there are several groups working together. God. Does anyone have any idea where it’s headed?

The Brits think there’s an ISIL connection, but that the Russians are somehow in the mix, as are the Iranians and North Koreans, can you believe it? But what really has them exercised is they are concerned it may be headed here for some local self-activated terror group in the city. You know, some group made up of apparently ordinary native-born citizens we’ve never heard of.

The nightmare, Templeton responded.

The nightmare, yes. We could be talking about taking London out, Bernstein said, sinking into the arm chair near Templeton’s desk.

Does the Prime Minister know yet?

Max is meeting with her as we speak.

It’s really going to happen, Templeton said, looking with great earnestness at Bernstein.

Killing a million of us in a heart beat… yeah.

Do we have any idea how it might come in? What the timing is?

As of half an hour ago both MI-5 and MI-6 are totally focused on it. So is everyone in the U.S. They are buttoning everything up. But… Bernstein made a face, there is some evidence something unplanned went on. We think the device was stolen when that installation in Turkmenistan was closing down a month ago. We have some evidence that the group that stole it were, themselves, hijacked. I went back through the file and saw some reports of a wreck involving the truck that was carrying it down near the Iranian border.

Some kind of intra-movement struggle? Templeton asked, coming around from her desk to sit in the chair across from Bernstein.

Yes. But exactly who or why we haven’t a clue.

Jesus, Jason. This is all getting very scary. It really is endless war.

Yeah. Listen, I just wanted to let you know. We’re going to put everything we can together and hold a briefing at fourteen hundred in the SKIF.

Alright. Let me pulse my net. I’ll let you know… Five kilotons. Do you think I should get my daughter out of the city?

I’m telling Janet to take ours and herself up to the Lake District. I figure that’s probably the safest place in the country.

Could she take Lily and her nanny? The kids know each other.

Sure, I’ll have Janet contact her school.

Here. Let me give you a note, Templeton said, taking a piece of her note stationery, writing out a sentence, then handing it to Bernstein. Thanks, I really appreciate this.

CHAPTER FIVE

16 September — Washington, D.C. —

The leaves