Atta Zimler waved a document in front of his victim. A copy of Roger’s email that he had posted to an antinuclear blog.
“So nice of you, Roger, to defend Joshua Jordan in this web posting; let’s see, how did you say it?—oh yes—‘a personal friend of my father-in-law, who is a former Pentagon general.’ So, I have some questions for you, Roger French. Questions about Joshua Jordan. He is a difficult man to reach, and it is very clear from this email that your father-in-law, General Bridger, may have confided certain information about Jordan to you. So you will tell me everything you know about him and his business, his family, everything.”
Zimler came down close to Roger’s face so he could deliver his sadistic warning in a quiet, calm voice. Zimler would make his victim understand that his body and his life, and everything about him was now in Zimler’s control. No use to struggle. No making plans of escape. Help would not come.
Zimler said, “So, now I am removing the tape. There, it’s off. You can breathe better now. Right? Okay. Now I will ask you the questions. And if I think that you are not telling me everything, then I will have to punish you with electricity. So, please tell me everything; don’t hold back as you answer my questions. Let’s begin with Jordan’s family.”
THIRTY-ONE
“Hanz, this is disastrous. Give me your take on this, will you? I’m looking at my screen right now, and the American dollar is sinking like a stone…”
Sean, a currency trader in a large brokerage house on Oxford Street in the heart of London was sitting in front of his computer. He was on the phone with the manager of the Munich branch of the same company.
“I was looking over my open positions at the close of the day. The dollar versus the Swiss franc. The dollar versus the yen. The dollar against the pound…”
From his office on Goethestrasse in Munich, Germany, Hanz blurted out, “Yah, we see it too. The dollar trend slipping. Every day. But this is bad…there’s still time for trades today. We’ll dump our positions in the dollar. We’re not waiting…”
The money traders in the Amsterdam office of the same trading house were also watching the debacle with the American currency, and the order went out to sell the U.S. dollar and sell fast. In recent days they had all been making a dizzying number of dollar-carry-trades because U.S. currency had been so cheap to obtain. But that was coming to a screeching halt. The dollar was now just too risky to carry.
It was early morning in Washington, D.C. The sun had not yet hit the top of the Washington monument. An irate federal official was making another call to the White House. This time the president’s chief of staff took the call personally.
“Sorry for the delays. I’m very familiar with the treasury secretary’s urgent matter. But with the president’s schedule, it’s been virtually impossible to arrange this earlier…”
The treasury official wasn’t going to be sandbagged this time. “Hank, the secretary has to see the president. Today. No more excuses. If we don’t do something quick, you’re going to see our nation experience a financial Chernobyl. And I’ll personally see to it that the whole world knows that Hank Strand, the president’s chief of staff, is the one responsible. You’ll make Bernie Madoff look like a Boy Scout.”
“I don’t like threats—”
“And I don’t like incompetence. Do your job. Make this happen—today.”
The assistant secretary of the treasury had called twice in the last two days to schedule a meeting between the treasury secretary and President Corland. But Strand had given orders for the meeting to be delayed. He knew Corland had been unable to make a decision on the issue. It was clear that once America headed down this road, there would be no turning back.
But time was running out. Today’s reports from the monetary markets showed the dollar was no longer treading water—it was drowning. Pretty soon it would be unable to compete even with the Mexican peso. American currency showed signs of a catastrophic failure, and everyone in the Corland administration knew it.
Whether it was because of the unpredictable devastation of U.S. agriculture, the oil crisis, spiraling unemployment, crippling federal taxes, or the gigantic debt that America owed to China and Russia—all of that seemed irrelevant now.
Hank Strand cut the telephone conversation short and told the second-in-command at treasury that he would personally deliver the message to the president.
Thirty minutes later, Strand was in the Oval Office with President Corland, who was on his feet and was pacing like a caged animal. The chairman of his board of economic advisors, who had been seated on the couch, made a gesture of rising to match the president’s position. But after a few seconds, Corland impulsively dumped himself back down into an upholstered chair. The chairman thought the president’s behavior had been increasingly odd of late. He looked over at Corland’s chief of staff, hoping to glean something from his expression. But he should have known better.
Hank Strand was a master of the blank poker face. He continued to sit, his hands open and relaxed on the arms of his chair. He had seen this all before. Corland was a smooth, steady communicator on television, but in moments of crisis, he was a man who couldn’t sit still. And then, as Strand knew full well, there was that other issue with the president.
Fewer than a handful of people knew anything about President Corland’s strange medical situation. Strand was one of them. He thought if he remained calm, paced and confident, around Corland, that one of the president’s “incidents” would be avoided.
The economic chairman finally spoke up.
“Mr. President, this is simply the next inevitable step. Another stage in America’s financial evolution.”
The president was trying to control his emotions. His face was frozen into a tight-faced grin—trying to look pleasant, but the resulting expression was almost ghoulish.
“I don’t want to be the one who goes down in history for…you know…killing the U.S. dollar. Washington’s face is still on the one dollar bill, remember? The American public is not going to like this—”
The chairman blurted out, “I think that what the American public wants is an economy that doesn’t look like Germany at the end of World War I.”
Corland turned to look at his chief of staff.
Hank Strand wanted to interject an attitude of calm. But he knew that the handwriting was on the wall, and so he added soothingly, “Mr. President, the secretary of the treasury wants you to give him the go-ahead for the U.S. to begin the monetary conversion process. It can be gradual, of course.”
“But not too gradual,” the chairman added. “We don’t want a meltdown of our markets, Mr. President.”
Corland was trying somehow to tie a rhetorical bow on the whole thing. Then his face lit up. He had it. “We can describe this as historic. An end of an epoch, perhaps, and yet the beginning of a new age of financial freedom…”
The chairman relaxed back in his chair when he saw the president coming around. “We’ve been in global markets since the end of the twentieth century, for heaven’s sake. Is it really so radical that we now become part of a unified global currency?”
“And the precedent you talked about?” Corland asked.
“Yes, the International Monetary Fund. Right. It’s a little known fact that the IMF’s had the authority for years to issue a financial form of paper called Special Drawing Rights—SDRs—as a global form of money.”
“And these SDRs—”
“They’re just like an international currency, Mr. President. So this move for the United States to join the rest of the major nations in adopting the new international currency—the Currency Regulation Drawing Order—the CReDO—as part of our national currency, well, that’s not that new after all. Besides, the CReDO is already a dualpurpose form of money. It’s being used in the paper version, yes, but it also is available as an electronic form. Like an international debit card. A major plus since the entire world will be going the way of cashless currency very shortly. Besides, Americans are
primed for this. They’ve been making more purchases with cards than they have with cash since 2007. So we are way overdue for this worldwide system of money.”
Corland looked at Hank Strand to help him through the politics of this one.
Strand smiled and said, “The Congress is with you on this. You’ve got them behind you, sir.”
“And the vice president?”
“Oh, Vice President Tulrude hasn’t ever wavered. She believes that the United States needs to become a more evolved international entity. More integrated in the world community. Yes, she is very excited about this.”
“Okay,” the president said, “get our press secretary working on this. A series of short announcements about a ‘monetary enhancement.’ Something vague. That we’ll still permit Americans to use the dollar. That sort of thing. But pretty soon, the American people will see their dollars are worthless but that they can use the CReDO, and suddenly they’ll be saying, hey, you know, I can buy more with the CReDO than with the old currency. Right?”
There were nods all the way around.
The secretary of the treasury was scheduled for a 3:30 meeting in the Oval Office. President Corland would give him the good news then. America was soon going to join the new form of global currency.
By 4:30, however, someone in the White House, no one ever found out who, leaked the information to an underground blogger who ran a website called the Barn Door.
At 4:48, the Barn Door reported that the president had approved the U.S. disbanding the dollar and changing America over to the CReDO.
Seventeen minutes later, the big telecom Internet server that hosted the Barn Door blogsite, fearing reprisals from the White House, without warning shut it down permanently. So the webmaster for the Barn Door blog immediately called all the major news networks to complain about it.
None of them reported it.
THIRTY-TWO
The suffocating stench of death permeated the room.
After years of investigating crimes of violence for the FBI, John Gallagher had developed the knack of picking up the pungent smell of decaying human flesh. He was known to have a nose like a corpsesniffing police dog.
But John Gallagher never really got used to the odor.
Ever.
Even with the organic vapor-filtering mask he was wearing, Gallagher cringed as the county medical examiner from Northern New York State used a heavy duty pair of scissors to cut away the soggy bag that contained the corpse. But the body wasn’t in one of those plastic contractor bags like an amateur criminal might use.
That was the first thing Gallagher noticed, after the smell, of course. The person who had dumped the body had used a burlap bag.
“The killer knew what he was doing,” Gallagher said, standing next to the body on the stainless-steel table in the coroner’s office. “Wrapped this poor guy in burlap, so the elements could start the decaying process sooner rather than later. Then added lime to the mix.”
The coroner opened the mouth of the cadaver to examine it. But he wasn’t prepared for what he saw there. Gallagher saw it too.
Then the coroner closed the victim’s mouth and said, “But the murderer made one mistake.”
“What’s that?”
“Dumped his victim into a swamp.”
“Go on…”
“Bogs like the one where they found this victim are high in tannic acid. Acts like a preservative. Sort of like a natural form of formaldehyde.”
Gallagher thought about that. So the killer wasn’t local and didn’t know much about peat bogs or swamps. Otherwise he would have known that.
Now the coroner was inspecting the neck of the victim.
“How’d they find him?”
“Talk to Red Yankley, the county deputy. He’s out there in the lobby grabbing a cup of coffee. He’d be able to tell you.”
After a minute or so of closer examination of the larynx, the coroner looked up at Gallagher with a strange smile that reflected some professional pride.
“I think he was strangled. I’ll be able to give you a definite by tomorrow after I do the full deal, lungs and all. But I will bet my bottom dollar that the ligature marks here on the neck were from a thin metal cable.”
Gallagher was trying to keep himself calm. Zimler particularly liked to polish off his victims close up, and usually with a garrote. And he was known to be in the States.
Gallagher excused himself and stepped out into the lobby. He stripped off his mask and then hunted down the deputy who was standing next to the coffee machine with a Styrofoam cup in his hand. “Deputy Yankley, I’m Special Agent Gallagher from the FBI.”
“What can I do for you? Is this some kind of federal matter?”
“Possibly. Wondering how the body was discovered.”
“A hunter. Had his bird dog out there in the bog. No rain for a couple days and things dried up. Dog found it right off.”
“Motive?”
“Well, we found tire tracks leading to and from the site. We think they were from the victim’s car. So right there you’ve got car theft.”
But Gallagher had the feeling in the center of his gut this was no simple stolen-auto case. He was trying not to get ahead of himself. Take it easy, John. Don’t jump to conclusions.
“So, Deputy, anything else of interest?”
“Let’s see…oh yeah. All of the victim’s ID was taken from his body. He was picked clean. I mean really. If you know what I mean. Maybe the killer was a dentist or something…”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Gallagher remarked. He’d seen that the murderer had broken all the teeth of the victim and removed them in order to prevent dental identification.
“Yeah, but not that smart. The killer left the victim with his fingers still on…finger prints.”
“We just got lucky,” said Gallagher. “If that dog hadn’t come across the body when he did, the prints would have pretty well dissolved with all the lime that he’d been packed in.”
“Well,” the deputy continued, “anyway, you’ve got to wonder. Yanking teeth from a dead man. What was going on with that?”
Gallagher didn’t need to wonder. The FBI veteran had figured that the killer couldn’t afford to leave any direct connection to the victim. So he wanted to make sure that the victim wouldn’t be immediately identified. This was one sadistic, calculating killer.
The deputy slurped down the last bit of coffee and laid the hunting magazine down; then he eased his hands down on both sides of his leather gun belt. “You got some thoughts on all this, Agent Gallagher?”
Gallagher smiled. “Yes,” he said. “I do.” But he made a point not to tell him what that was and instead turned and strolled back to the swinging doors leading back to the tile-floored autopsy room.
He swung the doors open. The coroner was still bending over the body and looked up.
“You have an ETD?” Gallagher asked.
“I think so…,” the medical examiner began.
But Gallagher raised a finger to stop him before he answered.
“No, let me guess. Six to ten hours.”
The coroner’s eyes widened and he wagged his head a little.
“Other than being maybe an hour or two off, you’re right on the money, Agent Gallagher. How’d you do that?”
“It’s a theory I’m working on,” Gallagher said with a sly smile. He turned and exited the autopsy room, cut through the lobby, and threw a quick wave to Deputy Yankley as he headed to the parking lot and toward the exquisite pleasure of fresh air.
John Gallagher had more than a theory. His instincts told him that the same man who killed the Yergi Banica in Bucharest was the same one who used the dead man’s passport to gain entrance into the United States at the Canada-New York State border. Also, it followed that the killer would need to exchange cars quickly once he entered the United States. The FBI special agent was betting that this assassin was a consummate professional. So he picked the car owner at random, killed him, and dumped the body in a way
that was designed to leave almost no trace. All because the killer needed to use the car for a day or two without being tracked, and then he would soon rid himself of that vehicle and steal another.
So Gallagher used the date and time that the man with the passport entered New York as the starting point, figured it was the same guy who killed this poor car owner. Presto. Time of death all figured out.
Now that the coroner agreed with his estimate, that meant that the odds were increasing that the killer of Dr. Banica was the user of the Romanian professor’s passport, and he was also the murderer of the owner of the car.
Now all he had to do was to determine whether his suspect, Atta Zimler, was the guy who strangled the professor in Romania. Back there is where the dominoes had started falling. Down deep, Gallagher just knew that Zimler was the man behind all of it, even though he couldn’t explain it in any terms that you could find inside an FBI investigation handbook.
Which led him to the much more frantic question. What was Zimler doing inside the United States?
Gallagher’s heart was pounding. His chest was tightening with the familiar burning, crushing sensation. He needed to find a quickie-stop gas station and pick up a carton of milk to soothe the pain. He thought that he had spotted one when he first drove into the sleepy little town after exiting Interstate 87.
Gallagher climbed into his car. He was hoping that there wouldn’t be more victims for a while and that maybe the stench of death was behind him. On the other hand, if he was right about Atta Zimler being in the States on business, well, that would put the chances of that at around zero to the tenth degree.
PART THREE
The Global Tower of Babel
Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.