“That’s why it wasn’t listed in our printouts.” Joey said.
“We agree that Raffey was set up and the Arab security guard tripped over the attempted abduction and was killed for his trouble. Juth then escaped his kidnappers so they counter-moved, or were planning all along to take his sister and niece, who are in all likelihood being held by someone who wants Raffey to do something at the collider.” Brooke paused to see if Bill had any questions.
“Seems like it fits the facts; go on,” Bill said.
“Now, here’s where Joey and I part opinions. I think they are going to get him to do something major against the facility.”
“And I think, and Janice touched on this, he’s not an action player; they may just be using him to gain access or let in the real perpetrators who will wreak havoc,” Joey said.
“Either way, both of you are saying the collider is the target and whether it’s Raffey pulling the trigger or unlocking the door, this is your plot. So who’s pulling his strings? The Architect? The Engineer? What do you think, Parnell?” Bill sat back to hear his answer.
“I turn it around but it comes out the same, I have it as the Arab was an enforcer in the plot, probably emanating out of a Wahabi Saudi sect. Raffey gets lucky and kills Abrim. They counter and take his family so it’s all for naught and he settles down into the pattern.”
Bill stopped listening when he heard the word ‘Wahabi.’ If this was an extremist Muslim plot, then there was not necessarily a rationale to the attack. In that, it would not be an attack to leverage against another country or a statement made to cower the world. Fanatics of any religion, who believe that they are doing their God’s work, have no limits. This whole plan could be to trigger Armageddon.
“Bill. Bill?” Joey tapped the table. “Where did you go, buddy?”
“Parnell, why were the Knights so interested in this?”
“We protect the rings, the ring or crown of thorns. And by extension all first class artifacts of Christianity,” Sicard said.
“No, Parnell, why does the Vatican and, by extension, you, have an interest in these rings, the rings of science, in your cross hairs?”
“You don’t know?” Sicard said.
“I am afraid that I do know. In fact, I am scared out of my wits that I know,” Bill said.
“Wanna clue the rest of us in?” Joey held his palms up.
“Dead-enders, of the extremist variety.”
“Okay, so what is their end game?” Brooke asked.
“The end is their game. The end of everything,” Parnell added.
“So it isn’t blow up the rings to strike a blow against modernism or European Society. It’s ‘get the rings to trigger a black hole,’” Joey reasoned out. He looked over to Bill, his best friend since second grade. The emotions that passed between them at that moment suspended time. The look was a mixture of ‘I told you so!’ mixed with ‘Oh God, what do we do?’
For Bill’s part, his expression was one of extreme intensity; his mind working it’s hardest to crunch the problem down to its basic components. Then, in an instant, he looked at his wife, but what he saw was his son in her arms, and the reasoned calculus of the previous second dissolved into a primal need to ward off the predator that endangered them.
So pronounced was the impact of Bill’s deliberation that it mesmerized everyone in the room. All fell to silence as the downward force from the weight of what they now faced compressed their spines and increased their blood pressure.
After a few moments, Joey broke the stillness. “If Raffey is the key, we take him out of the equation. They lose their operational ability.”
“If we move on Juth, we may spook them back under their rocks; we’ll never find them,” Parnell said.
“I think through a massive police effort we could smoke ’em out, but removing Raffey may not end this,” Brooke said.
“How so?” Bill asked.
“What if Raffey is just one of many?”
“Good point; once we alert them, if they have redundant capability, all we may accomplish is accelerating their time line,” Bill said.
“Yet, this isn’t a fish that you give a lot of line to, and if you lose him, all you have is a ‘one that got away’ story. I say shutting them down is paramount to the world’s survival. If we try to accomplish too much police work, we increase our chances of miscalculation, with the most unthinkable consequences,” Parnell said.
“But what if he isn’t a pawn and we are reading these tea leaves wrong? What if he’s the chess master; he’s the total threat? He dispatches his family because everyone’s going to die anyway, and having them around could only betray his plans. What if he is the one and only bad guy here?” Joey said.
“In that case, every minute we delay allows him more time to act,” Parnell added.
Bill considered the arguments before him. He encouraged out-of-the-box thinking; it had been the cornerstone of his strategy in defeating every major terror event he and his team had faced. But here, all the theories were just different paths within the same box. The outcome was the same for each connection of facts and intuition. Maybe I should call the president? But that would only delay everything.
Besides, when compared to the extinguishing of the known universe and every life form in it, the president’s mere U.S. constitutionally defined authority was so parochial as to make it a non-issue. The leader of the free world would have no better handle on this than that of any other human who was facing extinction. And Bill had a room full of humans right now. He doubted the president would add anything new. No, he was going to have to make this call. Raffey could be counting down to turning the universe into a null void as they spoke. On the other hand, if he was just a cog in the plan, his handlers might have protected against losing him by having others in a similar position, as Brooke had pointed out. That would be the military or intelligence communities’ way of mounting such an operation. He looked one more time to Janice. He was deciding for her and Richie as well.
He tried to elevate his thinking to a higher perspective so as not to be emotionally swayed, but in the end, it was all about them. At that moment, the actual weight of history was on his shoulders. Then a thought snapped all into alignment and he had his way through the maze of the known and unknown.
“Okay, here’s how I see it; if you disagree, now is the time. There is no reason for Raffey or his controllers to delay his plan if it is to detonate the collider. The optimum time would be when the machine goes operational at the sub-sub atomic level running the Landau Protocols in two days.”
“The search for the God Particle!” Parnell said.
“Or the splitting of it.” Joey said.
“Exactly. Our government is lobbying the council at CERN to delay this line of research, in no small part because of my recommendation to the president that there aren’t enough safeguards as yet to avoid exactly what we are fearing now.”
“Although the notion of sabotage certainly bodes well to shut it down,” Brooke said.
“The council meets to consider our proposal at ten. I am going to them and bringing what we know; maybe we can make this a non-event,” Bill said.
“What about, Raffey’s family? What if they are hostages? Do we sacrifice them?” Brooke was emphatic.
Bill looked to Joey and jutted his chin toward him, “Your call Joey.”
“Brooke, you’ll continue electronic and human surveillance; if you get any actionable intelligence, we’ll move to rescue.”
XXX. WORLDWIDE CONCERN