The Rozabal Line Part 15

Hubei Province, China, 2012 The Three Gorges Dam spanned the Yangtze River at Sandouping, Yichang and Hubei. Construction of the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, more than five times the size of the Hoover Dam, had begun in 1993. The dam had become fully operational in 2009. The reservoir now held 39.3 billion cubic metres of water. The twenty-six power generators had a combined generating capacity of 18.2 GW.

The Three Gorges Dam was strong enough to resist terrorist attacks-China had enough manpower and equipment to guard the important parts, such as the dam itself, power plants and the lock of the Three Gorges.

What could not be guarded was the cargo aboard the s.h.i.+ps that went through the ma.s.sive s.h.i.+p lift. The s.h.i.+p lift at the Three Gorges Dam had been designed to lift s.h.i.+ps of up to 3,000 tonnes displacement through a vertical distance of 113 metres. The size of the basin through which s.h.i.+ps would ascend or descend was a ma.s.sive 120 by 18 by 3.5 metres. Each s.h.i.+p would take around thirty minutes to go up or down.

The 3,000-tonne s.h.i.+p Daiyang had done this route several times before. No one could have guessed the presence of ammonium nitrate in the diesel. The technical grade ammonium nitrate granules mixed with diesel were extremely porous, resulting in better fuel absorption and thus significantly higher reactivity.

The s.h.i.+p's crew was aware of their cargo. They were all Uighurs ready to die for their leader, Faris Kadeer. The sudden heat application created a reaction: The combination with the diesel resulted in a detonation rate of around 914 metres per second. The dam was strong enough to resist the explosion, but the lift and locks were not.

Some 39.3 billion cubic metres of water began to flow on 21 March 2012 as the manmade mountain, the Three Gorges Dam, was cast into the frothy sea. The death toll was over a thousand people.

Faris was not there. He was on an Air China flight to London. From there he boarded a flight headed for Baltimore-Was.h.i.+ngton International Airport. This got him to his appointment in Frederick County on time.

And the second angel sounded, and a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea . . .

English Channel, Dover, 2012 The accident happened around 1.3 kilometres north of the Dover coast on 21 April 2012. It resulted in a hole measuring 15 by 4 metres in the side of the Panama-registered tanker, the Gulf Princess. The tanker had been carrying 3,00,000 tonnes of oil from the Middle East to Dover, when the English fis.h.i.+ng boat collided with it.

It was one of the worst oil spills in history. More than 2,39,000 metric tonnes of oil poured into the English Channel. The next two months would be h.e.l.l-putting out oil fires, bringing all s.h.i.+pping through the channel to a virtual halt and pulling out thousands of dead fish from the ocean.

Subsequent enquiries revealed that the English fis.h.i.+ng boat that had caused the collision, the Wilson Flyer, had been sold for 16,005 by its previous owner in East Suss.e.x through a broker, Powertech Marine, to a wealthy boat enthusiast only the previous week. The money had been transferred electronically to the seller from an account in Guernsey belonging to the Isabel Madonna trust.

Fouad al-Noor had done his job well. He had personally trained his men to do the job of steering the fis.h.i.+ng boat into the hull of the tanker. Fouad was now on a British Midland flight headed for the United States. His diary indicated an appointment in Frederick County.

One-third of the sea became blood. One-third of life in the sea died.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2012 The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur used to be the world's tallest buildings until they were surpa.s.sed by the Taipei-101 in 2004. The twin towers had one very striking feature, though-a sky bridge between the two towers on the forty-first and forty-second floors. The bridge lay 170 metres off the ground. The sky bridge was strategically located on the podium floor because visitors wanting to travel to higher floors necessarily had to change elevators on that floor.

The bridge was open to all visitors but the 1,400 pa.s.ses that were rationed out each day were only available on a first-come first-served basis. Tau'am Zin Ha.s.san and his men from the Darul Islam had managed to secure over thirty pa.s.ses that day. Each one of them went up to the bridge and placed a small strip of what looked like modelling clay into the grooves that formed the design element of the supporting pillars. The modelling clay was actually C-4, a deadly military plastic explosive containing RDX. Each little strip had a small NEC credit card-size cellphone hanging from it. Once all the strips were in place, the thirty visitors congregated together at Kuala Lumpur International airport. All thirty of them pressed the speed dial keys on their phones that had been pre-set on the letter 'A'. Each cellphone was calling its partner phone inside the Petronas sky bridge.

As the miniphone rang inside the bridge, a small electrical current was sent to the speaker of each phone. However, none of the thirty phones inside the sky bridge rang. The phone wires to the speakers had been disconnected and then reconnected instead to small transistors that could be turned on by a mild electrical current. Each transistor, in turn, activated a detonator.

At exactly 5:03 pm on 21 May 2012, the sky bridge of the Petronas Towers exploded in a ball of fire. The inferno eventually came cras.h.i.+ng down to earth. There were over a hundred visitors on the bridge when it exploded. It came cras.h.i.+ng down on fifty-four onlookers.

Tau'am did not wait to see the press coverage. He was on a Singapore Airlines flight that took him to the west coast of the United States. From Los Angeles, he took a United flight to reach his destination at Frederick County.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from the heavens, burning as if it were a lamp.

Katra, Jammu & Kashmir, India, 2012 Nearly five-and-a-half million devotees paid homage to the G.o.ddess in 2003: an average of 14,794 visits each day of the year. A pilgrimage to the holy shrine of Vaishno Devi was considered to be one of the holiest pilgrimages by one billion Hindus in the world. The holy cave of the divine G.o.ddess was situated at an alt.i.tude of 5,200 feet. The pilgrims had to trek around twelve kilometres uphill from the base camp at Katra in order to reach the shrine.

A virtual sea of humanity would make the trek during the holiest period of the year, Navratri, or the Festival of Nine Nights. The nine days were divided into three sets of three days each. Each set of three days would be used to wors.h.i.+p three different manifestations of the Supreme Mother.

On the first three days, the G.o.ddess would be wors.h.i.+pped as the nurturer and the provider of spiritual and material wealth, Lakshmi. The next three days would be spent wors.h.i.+pping the divine feminine as Saraswati, the G.o.ddess of wisdom. Finally, the divine Mother would be wors.h.i.+pped as the force of destruc-tion, Kali.

A s.h.i.+va temple was located about fifteen kilometres away from Katra. A spring ran from the rocks in a wooded grove and flowed into a holy rivulet that eventually merged with the Chenab river.

The truck-mounted water tank was one among hundreds that supplied drinking water to pilgrims. This one, however, was different. Instead of water, it contained a deadly c.o.c.ktail consisting of cyanide, a.r.s.enic, mercury, parathion, sodium fluoroacetate, cadmium, sarin, sulphur mustard and dieldrin.

The accident was perfectly targeted-at the mouth of the river. It resulted in the immediate death of the driver. Kali was about to manifest her awesome powers of destruction that day on 21 June 2012. More than 500 pilgrims were killed and over 2,000 lay sick or critical in various hospitals due to the poisoned river water.

Bin Fadan was neither sick nor dead. He headed for the Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi from where he caught a KLM flight through Amsterdam to New York. He then drove to Frederick County in an Avis rental car.

. . .it fell upon one-third of the rivers, which became undrinkable and killed many.

Baghdad, Iraq, 2012 Camp War Eagle, initially used by the 1st Squadron, 2nd Cavalry Regiment, was located in the Tisa Nissan district of Baghdad. Conditions at Camp War Eagle had improved dramatically over the years of occupation by American forces. Air-conditioners and generators hummed all over the place. A spanking new basketball court stood in the centre of the camp. Payphones allowed the men to be in direct touch with their families. New barracks were continuously being erected to accommodate additional men.

Unfortunately, these things did not help keep the men safe. Almost all the residents of the camp had already had close encounters with incoming explosives. Thousands of soldiers had been injured in the sixty-acre camp, mostly when they were walking towards the mess room. Luckily, there had been no fatalities; not till today anyway.

They could not have envisioned Kader al-Zarqawi's men launching rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices at Bayji, Daura and Basra in simultaneous and coordinated attacks.

At the same time, multiple cargo containers at various ports, including Al Faw, Khawr Al Amaya, Mina Al Bakr, Umm Qasr, and Al Basraha, exploded. Four of these s.h.i.+ps contained flammable liquids. Two of the flaming boats contained resins and coatings including isocyanates, nitriles, and epoxy resins. Winds began carrying thick black smoke and releasing toxic chemicals and metals into the air.

The soldiers used to joke that the appropriate epitaph for anyone serving at the camp would be: 'And when he gets to heaven/To Saint Peter he will tell/ "Just another soldier reporting, sir, I've done my time in h.e.l.l!"'

Two hundred and thirty soldiers and more than a thousand civilians reported to Saint Peter on 21 July 2012. Job done, Kader al-Zarqawi left Baghdad by road in order to board a flight out of Istanbul. He had been told not to be late for the conference in Frederick County.

And a fourth angel sounded, and one-third of the sun, moon and stars was darkened so that one-third of the day became dark.

Wyoming, USA, 2012 Shamoon Idris was dressed as a garbage-collector. In front of him was a large dustbin that could be rolled forward on a set of wheels. A close observer would have noticed that he was not collecting any garbage. The dustbin remained tightly shut. What exactly was he doing inside the Yellowstone National Park?

America's best-known national park was the centre of the tourist circuit as it was home to a large variety of wildlife including grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk. The most important attraction, of course, was the 'Old Faithful' and a collection of the world's most extraordinary geysers and hot springs. Why was Shamoon here?

Some minutes later, Shamoon rolled the dustbin onto a boat as it sped into the centre of Yellowstone Lake. Having reached the pre-determined point, Shamoon donned a diving suit and threw the dustbin overboard. Instead of floating, the dustbin submerged itself and came to rest on the lakebed.

Scientific studies of volcanic activity at Yellowstone National Park had shown the existence of a ma.s.sive volcanic bulge at the bottom of the lake.Shamoon needed to ensure that the dustbin was correctly positioned on the hump and detonated before currents could move it elsewhere. Accuracy was the key.

The powerful bomb that exploded on top of the hump ruptured the bulge on the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and set in motion a chain reaction that tore apart the underground magma chamber. As the magma chamber erupted, the ground shook as portions of the park imploded into the caldera underneath and then exploded in a ma.s.sive eruption of lava, embers, dust and soot.

21 August 2012. One thousand seven hundred and twelve dead and countless injured. Shamoon wasn't around. He had already reached Bozeman, Montana, from where he travelled to Hagerstown Regional Airport. He needed to be in Frederick County on time.

And the fifth angel sounded, and a star fell from heaven unto the earth and to him was given the key of a bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke like that of a great furnace and the atmosphere became black.

Jakarta, Indonesia, 2012 The Bung Karno Stadium, one of the world's largest, had been built in 1962. The stadium had a registered capacity of 100,000, but at times the audience could swell to over 120,000. Named after Sukarno, Indonesia's first President, the stadium was undergoing a huge renovation exercise to host the next Asia Cup. The Football a.s.sociation of Indonesia, in the meantime, had reintroduced a national cup compet.i.tion featuring seventy-four clubs within the country. The first match of the series was on 21 September 2012.

Unfortunately, since half the stadium was under renovation, the fans who turned up for the match that day were herded together like cattle into the remaining usable half of the stadium. There was an air of excitement in the usable half of the stadium but cement-mixers lay silently in the area of the stadium under renovation.

As half-time was announced, the crowds started moving towards the toilets, which was when the mixers were mysteriously turned on. The anthrax spores were transported by aerosol delivery through a special spraying device built into the mixers.As the spraying continued, bacilli anthracis were inhaled by thousands of spectators in the stadium. Hundreds died over the next few days.

The contracting firm providing the mixers was a small outfit called Bermis Bakti PT Mohammed Yusif, the owner of the contracting firm, held 100 per cent of the equity shares of his company; however, all his equipment had been procured on leases. The leases for the equipment were held by Samba, the Saudi-American Bank. The future cash flows from the leases had been discounted and securitised. The securities had been sold to a small investment trust in the British Virgin Islands called the Isabel Madonna trust.

Yaqub Islamuddin was on a Garuda flight, musing, 'It's quite amazing, the things one can plan when one has time inside prison. But it's nice to be out. This conference in Frederick County will do me good.'

. . . and out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth . . .

New South Wales, Australia, 2012 The plains of New South Wales were quiet and meditative. The vast fields of wheat and cotton stretched endlessly and the population density was extremely low.

The quiet was about to be broken by a deafening buzzing. An isolated swamp created by the previous year's rains had been well cultivated by Adil Afrose. As he detonated a bomb in the centre of the swamp, the gra.s.shoppers formed swarms that would travel more than 500 kilometres searching for food.

Weeks later, the Australian Plague Locust Commission reported that a single swarm over just one square kilometre had contained over fifty million locusts and had consumed eleven tonnes of vegetation every twenty-four hours. Tens of millions of dollars in damage had been done to crops, pastures, orchards, gardens and sports fields in a single day.21 October 2012. Adil was also flying, like the locusts. He was on a Qantas flight; desti-nation Frederick County.

. . . and unto the locusts was given the power to hurt men that did not have the seal of G.o.d upon their foreheads.

Grozny, Chechnya, Russia, 2012 Yahya was in Argun Mosque coordinating efforts centrally. Soon, from 2,000 mosques across Chechnya, a battle cry was heard: 'Miyarsh Noxchi Che! Long Live Free Chechnya!' Coinciding with the war cry, hundreds of Chechen rebels mounted their horses and charged upon the Russian base near Vedeno in the south of Chechnya led by Yahya Ali. A hundred and twelve Russian soldiers were killed. This was just the beginning.

On 21 November 2012, the Vnukovo Airlines flight bound for Moscow from Grozny was completely full. The plane, a Tupolev 154, took off at 8:40 am from Grozny and was scheduled to land in Moscow three hours later. Immediately prior to landing, Yahya and his two men took over the aircraft and diverted it to Istanbul. In Istanbul, they were joined by another colleague, Kader al-Zarqawi, who had arrived by road from Baghdad. They were provided pa.s.sage to Prince Mohammed-bin-Abdel Aziz airport in Medina, Saudi Arabia.

When the flight arrived in Saudi Arabia, the four men held the 128 pa.s.sengers hostage till a getaway vehicle was provided. As they sped away, they remote-triggered the device that had been stored in the overhead luggage rack of one the seats. Ninety-three dead, thirty-five injured.

The getaway vehicle took them to Kuwait, where they separated. Yahya switched ident.i.ties and took an Emirates flight to the United States. He had done his job well. He deserved some rest in Frederick County.

And the sixth angel sounded, and was asked to let loose two hundred thousand hors.e.m.e.n to kill one-third of humanity.

Waziristan, PakistanAfghanistan border, 2012 The Sheikh's Master, the beneficiary of the Isabel Madonna trust, was busy recording a DVD. He was seated on his rug, wearing his trademark camouflage jacket. The DVD would be released to the world on 21 December, in the midst of universal turmoil. The Sheikh watched his Master as he recorded his statement.

Praise be to Allah, who created the universe for his wors.h.i.+ppers and commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind. To proceed . . . peace be upon he who follows the guidance.

What has already transpired is merely a forerunner. The destruction of the Vallee Blanche glacier in France; the burning down of millions of dollars worth of natural resources in Bolivia; the destruction and devastation caused to the Three Gorges Dam in China; the ma.s.sive oil spills in the English Channel; the blast at the Petronas Towers in Malaysia; the poisoning of river waters in India; the dramatic explosions of oil a.s.sets in Iraq; the volcanic eruptions in Wyoming; the anthrax attack in Jakarta; the plague of locusts in Australia; and the hijacking and blowing up of a Russian pa.s.senger plane that was headed out of Chechnya . . . these were mere appetisers. If you think that these events were h.e.l.l, you have not yet seen the wrath of G.o.d. The main course is yet to come!

I say to all of you, accept the will of Allah and prevent your destruction. Give Muslims their rights, their lands, their oil, and their political power, otherwise we shall continue to rain fire and chaos upon you. Your security is in your own hands. And every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security. And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian or Helper. All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance. Be on your guard, for Armageddon is finally here!

Click. The Sheikh, who was behind the camera, shut it off and pulled out the recordable DVD. He efficiently sealed it in a 3M-Scotch cus.h.i.+oned envelope so that it could be delivered to Al-Jazeera television at the appropriate time. The Sheikh was wondering how he would meet his end of the deal. Commitments made within the Crux Decussata Permuta were not to be taken lightly. It was these commitments that had ensured the spread and growth of the two largest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam. He knew that his Master did not think the same way.

Chapter Nineteen.

Goa, India, 2012 Vincent and Martha fell instantly in love with Goa. The place was filled with famous churches, including the Se Cathedral, the Church of St Anne at Talaulim llhas, the ruins of the Church of St Augustine, the Reis Magos Church built on the banks of the Mandovi river, the Basilica of Bom Jesus, the St Cajetan Church, the Church of St Paul, the Church of Mary Immaculate Concep-tion, and the Church of St Francis of a.s.sissi.

Vincent was pained to note that Goa's magnificent temples of Christianity were pretty much a legacy of ruthless Portuguese colonisation. Christianity had been forced upon the local population with religious zeal by the Portuguese, particularly during the Inquisition. This had involved a ma.s.sive pogrom to destroy Muslim mosques and Hindu temples and had continued till the end of the Inquisition in 1812. Unfortunately, many of Goa's beautiful churches had been built on sites of former temples and mosques. The lands had been forcibly taken over by the Church.

Which wasn't surprising, thought Vincent. After all, Pope Leo X had said to King Manoel of Portugal in 1515, 'Receive this warlike sword in your always victorious and warlike hands . . . use your force, strength, and power against the fury of the infidels!'

The first step Vincent and Martha decided to take was to attempt to decipher the doc.u.ment handed over by Terry to Vincent. The doc.u.ment said: It is enough, O Lord, it is enough, the two angels said. Mastrilli, without doubt, made the best silver bed. But to carefully guard a secret of the dead, Ignatius's gold cup is better than a silver bed. The city is located between 1548' and 1453'54' north and between 7420' and 7340' east.

The problem lay in the lat.i.tude and longitude provided. It covered almost the whole of Goa. Hence this could mean almost any church in Goa.

Then it struck Vincent! The envelope in which Terry had handed over the doc.u.ments to him had the words 'Bom Jesus' scrawled on it by Terry. Furthermore, the Church of Bom Jesus contained the tomb of the Spanish missionary, Saint Francis Xavier. It was claimed that the body remained in a permanent state of preservation within a silver casket constructed by Mastrilli. The reference to Mastrilli meant that the doc.u.ment they were searching for must have been stored in the Basilica of Bom Jesus. They needed to get to the Basilica immediately.

It was past 9 pm when Vincent and Martha arrived at the Basilica. The church was located in old Goa, which had been largely abandoned after the fall of Portuguese rule. All that remained were a few churches, a monastery and a convent. In the quiet of the night, they made their way inside the church. In the dim candlelight they together gasped at the beauty of the gilded altar, the extravagant frescoes and the intricate inlay work.

To the south of the church stood an airtight gla.s.s coffin ensconced in a silver casket designed and executed by a Florentine craftsman of the seventeenth century. The embalmed body of St Francis Xavier lay within. Under the casket was a pair of stone angels holding a message, 'Satis est, Domine, Satis est!' Translated, it meant, 'It is enough, O Lord, it is enough!'

They began to look beneath the casket. 'Are you looking for this old parchment?' the voice resonated. They froze. It was a nun. Her feet shuffled along the marble floor as she walked towards them. 'You are searching for the doc.u.ments hidden here by Alphonso de Castro, aren't you? Here, I have them,' she said as she threw the doc.u.ment in Vincent's face.

It was only when she was right beside him that he noticed the j.a.panese

face and felt the cool hardness of the metal nub of a 9-mm pistol pressed against his ribs.

Martha looked on helplessly as Swakilki led Vincent out of the church

and into a waiting car. The woman had been quietly firm: 'One false move and I'll kill him.'

After a few minutes of remaining frozen, Martha sprang into action. Swakilki had obviously known that they were after the original of the doc.u.ment handed over by Terry Acton to Vincent. She also had a copy of it in her possession. This meant that someone besides Terry had known of its existence. Moreover, Swakilki had followed them to Goa. There was only one person who had known why Vincent and Martha were in Goa-Thomas Manning! Vincent should never have trusted him!

This was a bigger conspiracy than they could handle. The local police would be of little help in this. Who could she turn to? Swakilki was a dangerous foe. 'For heaven's sake! Who can help me save Vincent?' muttered Martha under her breath. She then recalled her conversation with Terry Acton a couple of days before his death.

While it had been a well-known fact that Terry was researching various religions and was deeply involved in past-life therapy, what had generally not been known was that his research was sponsored by the Illuminati. Terry had been convinced that modern-day Christianity, as taught by the Roman Catholic Church, was far removed from the Gnostic spirituality of Christ. The Illuminati had believed that the findings from Terry's research could possibly neutralise the power of their primary foe-the Roman Catholic Church. Terry had revealed to Martha that his Rhodes Scholars.h.i.+p and Skull & Bones connections had led him to the Illuminati; after all, the origin of Skull & Bones itself lay in the Bavarian Illuminati. And the contact point had been Terry's close friend from his Yale days-Stephen Elliot.

Martha remembered Stephen because he had visited Terry in London several times after the death of Terry's wife, Susan. Stephen had even asked Martha to help pick out a gift from Harrods for his fiance, Alissa. She needed to get in touch with Elliot. She wondered how Alissa would react to these developments, but she realised that she had very little choice in the matter.

It was as she was racing towards the church door that she saw the doc.u.ment the nun had flung in Vincent's face before abducting him. It was lazily stretched out on the cool marble floor, not in the least bit concerned about the chaos that it had just caused.

New Delhi, India, 2012 RAW. The name sounded earthy and rough. That's because it was. RAW stood for 'Research and a.n.a.lysis Wing' and was India's premier intelligence agency, which had over 12,000 agents operating around the world. The chief of RAW held the rather meek t.i.tle of 'Secretary (R)' in the Cabinet Secretariat, which was part of the Indian Prime Minister's office. RAW's primary responsibility was that of gathering external intelligence. This role was complementary to that of its cousin, the Intelligence Bureau, which was responsible for gathering and a.n.a.lysing internal intelligence. The two organisations were meant to jointly report to the National Security Council, headed by the Prime Minister.

Secretary (R) General Prithviraj Singh was pondering over the tip-off that he had received from his old friend in the SAS, Stephen Elliot. Prithviraj was among the old-guard elitists within the security apparatus of India. Educated at Eton, with a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale, the white-moustached, bow-tie wearing, Montecristo-smoking veteran was a gentleman in every sense of the word, except for his intellect, which was razor-sharp.

As a Yallie, he had excelled in Game Theory. He had delighted himself by not answering exam questions-he would instead write detailed and well-reasoned explanations on why there were inherent flaws in the framing of the questions. His intellectual arrogance had been a source of lively debate on the Yale campus.

He stared at his friend from Mossad, Zvi Yatom. Yatom had been involved

in some of the Israeli intelligence agency's most successful operations. In 1981 he had spearheaded the destruction of Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor. Some years later, Yatom had masterminded the a.s.sa.s.sination of Abu Jihad, Ya.s.ser Arafat's most loyal aide within the Fatah party.Zvi had flown down to New Delhi from Tel Aviv to a.s.sist Prithviraj in figuring out exactly where the bomb could be headed.