SYNOPSIS

For 60 years, the “Founders” have been secretly infiltrating every aspect of the American government, law enforcement, military and judiciary, influencing government policy and biding their time for the day they can seize power, in the chaos that has followed the Covid Pandemic, the Founders believe that day has come…

Little did the Cranes know they would be brutally tortured and murdered by calculated killers. FBI Special Agent Dexter Quills is flown in from another state to investigate the crime and find out the truth behind it – was it an unprovoked crime perpetrated by outsiders, or was there a deeper, more insidious secret hiding closer to home…?

The fate of millions of Americans and the free world itself is in their hands, and in a violent race against time to prevent the greatest tragedy in American history, they must learn to overcome their personal weaknesses if they’re to succeed…

The only surviving witness, Adam Crane, the youngest of the family, is in a deep coma. Dexter meets his Aunt, British SAS Colonel Elizabeth Brooks, quickly realising she knows more than she initially lets on… She informs him of a secret technology John Crane was developing, and that his treacherous eldest son, Richard. Armed with her insight into the case and steely attitude, they embark on a quest to find out the connection between the Crane Murders and a nuclear weapon which was covertly transported to Mexico eight years ago.

Once there, they find much more than they’d bargained for, with agents from all over the world on their tail, driven by greed and desperate to silence Dexter and Elizabeth, as well as get their hands on John Crane’s invention. The plot thickens when they realise the terrorists’ scheme has devastating national implications, and things begin to get personal, culminating in both Dexter’s and Elizabeth’s children being dragged into their clutches.

Sample Chapter.

BE AWARE THIS MAY CONTAIN PROFANITY:

The Twisted Maze

By

Chris Black

Copyright © by Chris Black

Book design and layout copyright © by Harry Westwood

This book is a work of fiction, names, characters and places are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to people living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional.

All Rights reserved

PART ONE

Fifth Column

ONE

How to Buy a Nuke

London, England, June 10, 2014

Raymond Galois was sitting on the couch with his legs crossed, nursing a dainty cup and saucer in his lap, sipping Earl Grey. How he enjoyed his petty bourgeois indulgencies. It reminded him of Lara Rose and those fine ol’ summer afternoons on the porch in the shade, his mother sipping fine English breakfast tea from fine English bone china. “Manners maketh the man,” Daddy always said, “Godliness maketh his soul. And money maketh the world go around and around and around…” He smiled to himself. How right Daddy was, he thought as he nonchalantly watched Gascoigne and Denbigh, nervous tension oozing from them like sweat off a spit-roast. He could understand it in Denbigh; he was more used to kissing asses in DC than having clandestine meetings with the Russian mob. But Gascoigne on the other hand – He was an old hand at this sort of thing. A kick-ass professional; but they were both jittery. ‘Y’all look as jumpy as a sack o’ frogs,’ he said in his flowing Mississippi brogue. ‘Ain’t nudding but a day at the office.’

Sonny looked at his watch. The Russians were late. That’s what was making him uneasy. He paced about in front of the window like a caged animal looking for a way out, his hands shoved tightly in his pants pockets, his fists clenched tight as vices. He looked out the window, where the views of London and the Thames were impressive. But views were the last thing on his mind. He was in too deep now, there was no going back, nobody backed out of something like this – only in a body bag, and he was under no illusion that his chance to get out had come and gone two years ago, when they’d first discussed this crazy idea. And as crazy ideas went, this one was the craziest idea in the history of crazy ideas. It was so crazy in fact, he thought it would never happen; but here he was and it was happening, and he was scared shitless. He didn’t mind admitting it. Not scared of the deal, but scared of what terrible things lay ahead, not just for his country, but for mankind itself, because what they planned to do would change everything forever.

Kevin Denbigh was wringing his hands. The Senator had sent him to oversee the transaction. To make sure everything went smoothly. He had the account passes. If he didn’t like the way it was going, then it was no deal.

‘They’re over half an hour late,’ Sonny said, looking at his watch again. He looked at Slaski standing by the door in his drab gray suit, looking as out of place as a monkey at a royal banquet.

‘They’ll be here,’ Raymond said. ‘They got sixty million reasons to show up. Have some tea, it’s dang tootin.’

Kevin Denbigh turned into the room.

‘Tea? Jesus Christ,’ Sonny huffed.

‘Please y’self, but stop clod-hoppin’ around, you’re wearing a hole in the rug.’ He picked his cup up daintily, his pinkie extended as he raised it delicately to his mouth and sipped. If sophistication had a flavor, it was Earl Grey tea, he thought.

Knuckles rapped at the door.

‘There now,’ Raymond gestured to Slaski to open the door.

Slaski turned to the door and opened it…

‘This is it.’ Denbigh moved centrally into the room. He looked at the laptop on the desk, booted up and online, ready to make the deposit transfers once the deal was agreed. Suddenly, he was so nervous he thought he had forgotten the account numbers and encryptions. There’d be hell to pay if he had. He felt the rise of panic inside, his heart beating fast in his throat as he struggled to recall those damn numbers…

Raymond knew the big broad Russian. Vladimir Gorokhov. Formerly a major in the GRU. Now he was an oligarch with his corrupt fingers in many pies, well connected in Moscow and beyond.

The short, fat man with the small, squashed nose and thick bovine lips along with arching Neanderthal brows, standing slope shouldered on Vladimir’s right, was Ivan Mirov. “Ivan the Terrible” to some. He looked more like a dockside thug than a former high-ranking Russian Air Force officer. He was a big name in Siberian oil these days, but fifteen years ago, he was a braded General. He had made millions of dollars selling misappropriated Russian weapons after the collapse of the Soviet Union back in the Eighties and Nineties, when the Russian arsenal became every despot’s thrift store. Some of his best clients were some of the world’s bloodiest terrorists and tyrants. The Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, South American drug cartels, Mexican kingpins, African revolutionaries. He had sold weapons to just about everyone in the who’s who of dirt-bags. One needed a couple of MIGS or missiles, or a few tanks or helicopter gunships, or just a few thousand AK’s. In the good old days of new free enterprise Russian style, Ivan Mirov was the go-to man.

The third man in this crooked trio of amoral scumbags, standing on Vladimir’s left, was taller, leaner and much younger than Mirov and Gorokhov, barely thirty-five, suave and handsome in a square cut sort of way. He was Major Ilyich Usoyev, a serving officer in the Fourth Air Defense Forces Command, Southern Military District.

Raymond greeted them with warm insincere smiles and handshakes.

The Russians looked suspiciously around the suite, regarding the Americans with deep mistrust, the sort of mistrust which came from old enemies when they came together, wading through generational enmity. Probing and looking for lies and tricks. Was it a trick? Was this a CIA sting? 

The three Russians sat down.

‘Can Ah get you some tea? Coffee? Or something stronger?’ Raymond asked.

‘Whisky with ice,’ said Vladimir.

‘Wodka,’ said Ivan Mirov, his voice deep and slightly nasally.

‘Whisky,’ said Ilyich Usoyev.

Raymond looked round at Slaski, and he went to the cocktail bar to start preparing their drinks.

Kevin Denbigh and Sonny Gascoigne sat in their armchairs, as tense as coiled springs, trying to look relaxed and doing a bad job of it.

‘Well, ain’t this nice?’ Raymond smiled like a cat. ‘Just like détente.’

Vladimir put his attaché case down on the floor beside his chair. ‘Raymond, this is nothing like détente,’ he said in word perfect English with barely a trace of an accent.

‘You have money,’ Ivan Mirov asked in broken English.

Raymond chuckled. ‘Well it’s not in mah luggage if that’s what you mean. But iffin y’all have the item we want, then hell yeah, we have money and it can be in your accounts in a shake of an alligator’s tail.’ He smiled.

It was clear from their faces that Mirov and Usoyev hardly understood a word of what Raymond had said. But they understood “we have money” clear enough, and that was all they were interested in.

Slaski brought their drinks and set them down on the table in the correct order, placing the vodka nearest to Ivan Mirov.

‘Yes, yes. Warhead,’ Ilyich Usoyev said as he sipped his whisky. ‘You get warhead, in lead lin-ed tankeer of ferti-lizer for Señor Javier DaSilva, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Is as agree-ed in St. Petersburg. Everything ready as you ask-ed. You pay half. In thirty hours, shipment loads on ship. You pay today, thirty million American. When you collect in Mexico, you pay thirty million more. We give arming code.’

‘Do the transfer,’ Raymond ordered, looking at Denbigh.

Suddenly the numbers were there in Denbigh’s head, relief flooding through him. He looked at the Russians. ‘I’ll need the recipient accounts. Thirty million divided over three accounts, right?’ Denbigh looked at the Russians. ‘But first I need proof you actually have the merchandise?’

‘Proof? What is you want for proof?’ Usoyev said incredulously. ‘You want us bring in luggage?’ he said, throwing Raymond’s sarcasm back in his face. ‘You saw in St. Petersburg. That is proof.’

‘Just do the goddam transfers,’ Sonny said with an impatient snap in his voice. He wanted to get this over with so they could get the hell out of there,

Vladimir Gorokhov handed him another sheet of paper from his case. ‘Send the money to these accounts. Ten million into each account.’

Denbigh took the slip of paper and inputted the information.

Sonny sipped his drink, watching the Russians like a hawk.

‘Done,’ Denbigh said, turning back to them.

Ivan Mirov nodded, spoke again to the moneyman on the phone and then disconnected the call without saying another word. He nodded to Vladimir.

Ilyich Usoyev now took his phone out of his pocket and made a call. ‘Da,’ he said, then disconnected the call and looked at Raymond. ‘R-9 on way.’ He took his cellphone apart, removed the chip and threw the battery into a trash can beside the writing table behind him and bent the chip several times until it snapped in half. He slipped the two halves into his pocket with the phone to dispose of elsewhere.

After the Russians left, Denbigh asked: ‘Can we trust them?’

Raymond looked at him. ‘Would you trust a viper with you mamma, Kevin? But if you asking will they deliver the merchandahse? They will.’ He looked intently into Denbigh’s eyes, beaming like a 4^th July Parade. ‘But y’all don’t need ta go a-worrying y’self bout that. They’ll deliver.’ He went to the bar, where Slaski was pouring fresh drinks into clean glasses.

‘Is that it? Did we just buy ourselves a nuke in less time than it takes to buy a Big Mac in the drive-thru?’

‘Ah believe we did, Sonny. Ah believe we did.’ Raymond’s eyes lit up again.

Denbigh’s hand trembled as he raised his glass to his mouth. ‘Now all we have to do is get the goddam thing into the States from Mexico.’ He looked steadily at Raymond. ‘Any ideas how we can pull that rabbit out of the hat?’

Raymond calmly sipped his drink, ice clinked in his glass. Sonny thought he had ice in his veins too; the man hardly broke a sweat about anything. ‘Y’all let me worry bout that.’

SAMPLE CHAPTER

PART ONE

The Recruit

… Then I saw when the Lamb broke one of the Seven Seals and I heard one of the four living creatures saying as with a voice of thunder, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer…

Revelations

One

Berlin

1^st November, 1926

The little man was under no illusion; this was not going to be a walk in the park. Berlin wasn’t Munich. Munich had been a bubbling cauldron of political extremists since the end of the war. Berlin was a hotbed of Communists. Turning the Reds to nationalism was going to take some considered planning. Berlin was the Red Capital of Europe this side of Moscow. The daunting prospect sent shivers down his spine. It was a big responsibility and a demonstration of the trust to get the job done that the Führer had placed in him. Failure was not an option. If he failed here, he would never be given a second chance.

Carrot and stick, he told himself as his train pulled under the great glass arches of the Anhalter. He was filled with both trepidation and excitement. He knew that if the Party was going to survive and fully enter the national political arena from the slippery fringes of the political flux, in any meaningful way, Berlin needed to become Brown.

Not only would they have to conquer Berlin and its Red heart; they would have to woo the bourgeoisie with kid gloves and a lot of sweet talk. It might take a few years, but he was sure he could do it and the Führer will enter Berlin with garlands of flowers instead of walls of lead. The great capital, one of the greatest capitals of the world was a cherry he intended to ripen through means of revolution, negotiation and carefully formulated propaganda. The Jewish backed Bolsheviks were the true enemy. Not big business and industry, they, he recognised, had to be made their allies and supporters. Without them, the Party will only have limited appeal. They didn’t need a dozen seats in the Reichstag, they needed hundreds of seats, they needed to dominate national politics, not fractious regional protest votes, but grass roots loyalty. The Party needed to be the guiding light of the entire nation and nothing less would do. To make the dream a reality, they needed money; they needed the money and support of the very establishment they despised.   

He stepped off the train into a drift of steam from the locomotive, infused with the bright winter sunshine falling through the great glass and iron roof.

A mild looking man wearing a grey suit approached him. ‘Herr Doktor Goebbels?’  

Joseph turned to the speaker. The man was smiling pleasantly at him.

‘Hans Steiger.’ He proffered his hand. ‘Welcome to Berlin, Herr Doktor.’

Goebbels looked down at the proffered hand as if it were a squid’s tentacle. Finally, he shook Steiger’s hand. ‘Good Morning, Herr Steiger.’

‘I have a taxi waiting, Herr Doktor.’ He reached for Goebbels’s suitcase and lifted it.

‘I wasn’t expecting to be met.’

‘Oh? I couldn’t allow that, Herr Doktor. No, no…’ He gestured. ‘Please, it’s this way, Herr Doktor.’

__________

‘Well. Here we are, my boy,’ Papa Kaufmann said as they alighted the taxicab.

Kurt felt like he had a nest of bees in his belly, flying and buzzing around inside him as the anxiety of saying goodbye to the people he loved crept up on him. He always felt like this when he was going back to gymnasium. He had only been back four days, for Aunt Hesta’s funeral. It had been very sudden and unexpected. Aunt Hesta was only 43 after all. St. Hedwig’s granted him leave to attend the funeral.

Dagma had walked to the bahnhof from the mietskaserne with baby Peter in his perambulator. She hugged her little brother, though not so little any more. Just 15 and he was already taller than she was. Oh, and so handsome too, if she did think so herself.  

‘There’s really no need for all of this,’ he said. ‘I can see my own way from here. You know how I hate goodbyes.’ He looked at his sister. Dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, still grieving for Aunt Hesta. Now it was just Kurt, Hesta and the baby and there the bloodline ended.

Kurt felt like a little kid who couldn’t look after himself and he couldn’t wait to get away from them and onto the train. He was 15 – a man in his own opinion, if not theirs.

‘We’ll just see you inside,’ Papa Kaufmann said. Mama Kaufmann smiled maternally at him; her eyes watery with tears.

Why do these Auf Wiedersehens always feel like a departure to the afterlife? Kurt asked himself. Dagma had always been the emotional and melodramatic type. The Kaufmanns were far more reserved than to give way to public displays of emotion. The old Major was the archetypal Prussian officer. ‘I’ll be home in a few weeks for Christmas,’ he said, trying to soothe his sister.

Mama Kaufmann took Dagma’s hand in hers with remarkable patience. ‘There, there, Dagma. You mustn’t take on so. Kurt will be back before we know it. It’s been such a difficult time for you both with poor Hesta.’

Papa Kaufmann led Kurt away to impart a few wise words of fatherly advice.

Dagma dabbed her eyes and nodded reassured. ‘I know. I know, Fräu Kaufmann. I still can’t believe she’s gone. I just wish mama and papa were still here…’

Mama Kaufmann understood that feeling of loss. ‘You’ve been a mother to the boy, Dagma. And now,’ she said, looking into the perambulator at baby Peter, sound asleep, warm and snug under his blankets, ‘you have to be a mother to this little one. And you’ll be a fine mother, Dagma. You know whatever we can do, we shall. You and Kurt have brought such joy to our lives. You’ll never know.’

Dagma smiled. ‘I think that’s more Kurt than I, Fräu Kaufmann. He loves you both so very much.’

Had it not been for the Kaufmanns, Kurt would have been put in an orphanage and God knows what would have become of Dagma. They had been the kindest and most generous and selfless people in the entire world, from Dagma’s perspective; and they had taken to Kurt from the day they met him as a small boy whose heart was filled with sadness for the loss of his parents. And the Kaufmanns’ hearts were equally broken for the loss of their only child, killed in action on the Eastern front in 1915. They had mended one another, and they had welcomed Kurt and Dagma into their lives and cherished them both.

And now here Kurt was, a gymnasium boy, having the finest education at one of the country’s finest gymnasiums. The Kaufmanns had made it all possible.

It was busy in the huge expanse of the Anhalter, it was always busy, the broad concourse a bustling hive of pedestrians, commuters and travellers, hurrying purposefully to their destinations. Kurt’s heart raced along with them, feeling the pull of movement and purpose. He felt like a wild horse fettered to a tree, wanting to gallop away.

Mama Kaufmann framed Kurt’s face in her gentle hands and gave him a kiss on each cheek and tucked thirty marks secretly into his hand so Papa Kaufmann and Dagma didn’t see, just as she always did.

‘No, Mama Kaufmann. I can’t. I have enough. You gave me money after the Summer holiday.’

‘You might need new shoes,’ she said, adding. ‘Our little secret.’

Papa Kaufmann gave him a hug and some more wise words of that he didn’t really listen to, when maybe, in later years, he’d wish he had. ‘There is a difference between being a young man and a young gentleman, Kurt. You must forever strive to be a gentleman. Especially if you hope to become an officer of the Reichswehr. And you are as fine a young gentleman as ever I’ve met, my dear boy.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ It was all Kurt ever wanted, to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a soldier, and in Papa Kaufmann’s to become an officer and nothing would make the old major prouder; and Kurt would be the first officer in the Eichhorn family, just as he was the first to go to gymnasium.

‘You must concentrate on your studies, Kurt. Be fastidious and mindful and conscientious. Now, more than ever, because you’re no longer a child, but a young gentleman. Good marks, good conduct and a good character. That’s the ticket, my dear boy. That’s the key.’ He patted Kurt on the shoulder.

Kurt nodded his head and smiled. ‘I will make you proud, Papa Kaufmann.’

‘Bda. I’m already proud of you.’ He proffered his hand. Gentlemen always shake hands. He pressed sixty marks into Kurt’s palm. ‘For your books, you understand. For your learning, not for cheap schnapps and misadventures with country fräuleins…’

Kurt went red in the face and smiled.

‘Oh yes, I was your age once.’ He gave Kurt a knowing smile.

‘Yes, sir. And I’ll write every week as I always do. To you all.’ He hugged Dagma and kissed baby Peter, then, without any further dallying, he picked up his suitcase and hurried away, into the bahnhof, before he started crying too, and he felt like crying. It was as if his heart was being squeezed by a big invisible hand. These goodbyes were so difficult and they never got any easier.

As he hurried across the concourse towards the platforms, Kurt ran slap into a short gentleman who was walking, or rather stalking briskly across the concourse; albeit with a limp he was trying his best to hide. A man following behind, carrying a suitcase looked horrified and was about to give the clumsy boy a piece of his mind.

‘Excuse me, sir. I’m very sorry,’ Kurt said humbly as he shuffled to one side with his heavy case.

Dr Joseph Goebbels gave the boy a vague smile. ‘That’s quite alright. No harm done.’ He hurried on without further ado.

Boris kept his distance from Dr Goebbels; he was wearing civilian clothes, looking like an office worker, blending into the crowd as he followed the little limping man outside, where he and Steiger got into a waiting taxicab and drove off into Berlin traffic. Boris loped to his own waiting car, where Leutnant Spellmeyer was sat behind the steering wheel. Boris got into the front passenger seat. ‘Follow them.’

Spellmeyer pulled out slowly and as he did, Boris spotted a familiar face. Major Kaufmann and his wife coming out of the bahnhof with a younger woman pushing a baby carriage. ‘Major Kaufmann. Small world,’ he mumbled as they drove past.

Spellmeyer glanced at him. ‘Herr Hauptmann?’

‘Nothing. I just saw someone I knew during the war, that’s all.’

The Berlin headquarters of the NSDAP in the basement of Potsdamer Strasse 109 was more like a dungeon. Dark, damp and unkempt; the smell of stale sweat, tobacco and beer seemed to linger like a bierkeller at midnight. It was dark, untidy and there was barely room to swing a mouse, never mind a cat.

‘We call it the opium den,’ Steiger said with a smile.

Goebbels didn’t speak; he just looked disdainfully around the room. A couple of desks, a typewriter, and a couple of old chairs fit for nothing but the fire. No, no, this will never do. He looked at Steiger. ‘It’s like a toilet down here. Get the place cleaned up and get rid of those beer bottles. This is unsatisfactory. Very unsatisfactory. No. it won’t do, Herr Steiger. It won’t do at all. This is the face of the National Socialist German Workers Party, not a dosshouse.’

‘It’s all we can afford, Herr Doktor.’

Goebbels turned a dismissive look on him. ‘I want the membership list, financial records and details of our donors and fundraising activities. Bring me everything. It seems to me that there’s a lot of dead wood around here, Herr Steiger. And dead wood’s no good for anyone. Bring everything you have on the local Communist leaders, their meeting places, their homes, their Arian or no-Arian status and the neighbourhoods they dominate.’

‘Of course. And what is the intention?’

‘The intention, Herr Steiger, is to make an impact that will mark our determination. This is serious politics now. National politics. We are going to let Berlin know that we are the blood enemies of Bolsheviks and Bolshevism. It’s time for the people of Berlin to decide whose side they’re on. Germany’s? Or Russia’s? I want to meet all our big donors, and wealthy individuals, industrialists, bankers and the like, who might be swayed to supporting the Party. I want to meet these people too. But first, make this place presentable, and start looking for better premises. Somewhere we can be seen.’

Outside, Boris and Spellmeyer sat in the car, shivering in their overcoats, watching the building long enough to smoke a couple of cigarettes.

‘Alright, Leutnant, I’ve seen enough. Let’s go back to the office and do some real work.’

Spellmeyer didn’t need telling twice.