O
beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife. Who more than self their country loved and
mercy more than life! America! America!
May God thy gold refine, till all success be nobleness and every gain divine! Katharine Lee Bates
It was almost Columbus Day before the two friends met. “Hey Sammy, how about a few cold ones after
work?” and so with a phone call, Archie Jefferson got his friend Sam Noble to
meet him at a watering hole off DuPont Circle in the District that Friday. Sam had a little farther to travel from his
office in Rosslyn than Archie coming from the Studebaker Institute on
Massachusetts Avenue, but the bar had easy access for the handicapped, making
it more convenient for Archie’s wheelchair.
Most of Washington, including Congress, had already shut down and the
“great men and women” had left town for the long holiday weekend. An unseasonably cold holiday weekend was
forecast, with predictions of snow flurries.
Unlike the Midwest where they were prepared to deal with snow, an inch
of snow in D.C. you’d think it was a blizzard what with all the traffic
problems it caused.
After a few beers and general bullshit conversation to break the ice,
Archie told Sam about a chance encounter, that a Studebaker Institute’s client
company was in book publishing and a vice president had visited a few weeks previously. Since this dude was a “black brother” and
showed empathy for Archie’s wheelchair-bound condition, they chatted briefly
and after one thing led to another, he mentioned to this brother, a Mr. Brown,
that a close friend of his was writing a book, and passed along to him some of
Sam’s work.
“No shit, you showed him my stuff, which chapters?” Sam asked Archie
very surprised.
“Well, I wasn’t sure, so I gave him pretty much everything,” Archie responded,
then continued. “So I’m thinking, why
even bother to tell Sam since I’ll probably never see this publisher dude again,
so guess what? He calls me yesterday,
says he’s sorry he took so long to get back to me, and wants to meet you
personally. Said he liked what he read. Says he’s in town on Monday and could I set
up a meeting between the two of you.”
“Fuck Archie, you should have told me before, this is important
shit! Did he mention money or anything
like that? What’s your cut anyway?” Not suspecting any skullduggery whatsoever,
Sam was half-kidding his old friend.
“Fuck you man, and the horse you rode in on! I ain’t getting shit out of this deal! I’m just trying to do you a favor. I’m the guy that gave you the idea to write
about a lot of the shit in your book in the first place, and you been telling
me for months over and over again how you don’t know how to finish it.
I figured, hell, this brother’s a professional in the business, maybe he
can take what you wrote, and you know, edit it and shit and put in commas and
semicolons and make what you wrote into a real book. And this is the thanks I get? This pans out for you, buy me a fifth of
bourbon and we’re even.” Archie looked
genuinely hurt at his friend’s impertinence.
“All right, all right, don’t get your nighty all knotted up. How do I contact this guy?” The telephone number Archie gave Sam was a
New York listing under a false-front publishing house, which when called
connected with a special mobile phone Mac Kopstein had given to Dr. R. Cinza
Brown.
#
When it rang the next day, Cinza was at his desk at the Studebaker
Institute working on a Saturday, lamenting the fact that the meeting between
Zack Greese and President Bo Hapgood had taken place ten days ago and he had
not received hardly any feedback. All
Cinza’s boss Buddy Peoples told him was, “The president said, ‘very
interesting’ according to our chairman.”
Greese was being his normal self, working twelve-hour days and not
saying a word while ensconced in his fourth floor office. Buddy said he had no idea when, if ever,
Operation GERDA would be approved, but he was optimistic. Those fucking bureaucrats at the White House
still hadn’t made a decision and the economy was getting worse every day, as
was the violence in Israel.
The last thing Cinza felt like doing was contacting Sam Noble, play-act
like a secret agent, and buy the rights to his “book,” but his boss Buddy Peoples
was feeling pressure and insisted he follow through with the charade because
the action was still an open item on the board’s agenda.
And Chairman Greese had ordered it get done, so that was the word of God. That’s why Mac Kopstein insisted Archie
Jefferson meet with his friend Noble face to face and tell him to call the
mobile number as soon as possible. But
part of Cinza was also curious about what Noble wrote and he still wanted to
get some answers, like the back story involving those metal clamps.
Sam thought long and hard before dialing up this Mr. Brown about where
to meet the guy. Sam, like all government
employees in Washington, had Monday off.
Archie told him the Studebaker Institute was out of the question because
he’d get his ass in trouble if they met there since this was not official SI
business. “You know,” Archie told Sam
using an excuse, “business governance and all that conflict of interest and
ethics bullshit.”
One of Sam’s favorite movies from the early nineties had been The
Firm based on John Grisham’s book of the same name. It had a great cast, not only Tom Cruise
as the protagonist Mitch McDeere, but playing his wife, Jeanne Tripplehorn, and
the other characters played by actors like Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Holly
Hunter, and Gary Busey.
There’s a scene from the movie where Harris’ character, FBI Agent Wayne
Tarrance, sets up a meeting between McDeere and FBI Director F. Denton Voyles, the
actor Steven Hill, during which the young lawyer is told that the law firm he
works for are a bunch of crooks helping Mafioso clients and his life, as he
knows it, is over. The meeting takes place
during winter, a sunny day but with snow piled on the ground.
The two men sit on a bench by the Reflecting Pool, near the Lincoln
Memorial and that’s where the Feds laid the hammer down on McDeere. “That’s where I’ll have Mr. Brown meet me,” Sam
thought, “there, by the Lincoln Memorial and we’ll sit and chat, just like in
the movies, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll make my book into a movie someday.” When Sam called Mr. Brown, he confirmed the
meeting.
#
“You cold?” Sam Noble asked Mr. Brown as they sat there
on the bench overlooking the Reflecting Pool, which had a thin frosty layer
around the water’s edge. It had warmed
up a bit but the cloudy day was still quite chilly. Sam insisted Mr. Brown call him by his first
name, while the latter had just used his last name when they made personal
introductions.
Cinza felt there was no need to change his name because the two of them
would likely never meet again as Sam was moving to Brazil soon. In addition, Cinza wanted plausible denial if
things went sideways so therefore didn’t want to use an illegal alias. Archie Jefferson had been told by Mac
Kopstein to only say “Mr. Brown” when passing the name along to his friend Sam
Noble.
“I’m good, kind of thought we’d meet some place warm and inside though,”
why the hell Noble picked this spot was beyond him. Fucking whack jobs all, he and his
friends.
The two men chatted all of twenty minutes, during which time Sam agreed
to accept $30,000 as a retainer for the chapters he had written thus far with
an implied promise from Mr. Brown’s “publishing company” that more royalties
would be forthcoming once the manuscript was refined and if published.
All Sam had to do was sign a non-disclosure agreement with Mr. Brown who
promised the money would be deposited into his checking account in the full
amount. He would be responsible for
paying income tax and IRS reporting at his own discretion.
He would also have to give to Mr. Brown all his handwritten notes and
files, plus any unfinished work, and promise not to write anything more on any
related topic in the future. When Mr.
Brown added that he would also need to have any digital or electronic files,
Sam politely queried, “What’s that?”
Sam signed the documents and agreed to all terms and conditions. After all, the $30,000 would go a long way in
Campo Dourado. All publishing rights and
legal ownership now belonged to Mr. Brown’s “publishing company.” But both Sam and Cinza knew the book would
never be published for different reasons.
The former, because he had no desire to finish it, he was burnt out and
wanted to retire from government and move on with his life; making a few bucks
from the shit he had written was just icing on the cake. Realistically, Sam never thought it was going
to be published anyway.
If the book was ever going to be finished, it was in the hands of Mr.
Brown now – Sam hadn’t written a single word in months. And he thought, “Let’s be honest, it’s not
that great in the first place.” He
figured in the end, now that it was all over, he wrote to pass the time and never
intended to finish. Approaching
retirement and looking at the world around him, he felt he no longer fit in
modern society, that the world had passed him by. In Brazil, the pace of life would be slower
and he could finally relax from all the bullshit closing in on him.
And the latter, Cinza, because any loose ends regarding Sam Noble’s “book”
and Archie Jefferson’s theft of “Atlantean Geodesy” documents could potentially
complicate the Studebaker Institute’s contractual agreement with the federal
government when and if Operation GERDA was approved.
At a minimum, the affair was something that could cause embarrassment
and questions regarding SI’s lack of internal security protecting government
classified documents. And how does one
explain all those overlapping coincidences between the “Atlantean Geodesy” and
Noble’s “book?”
In the extreme, it could lead to a Congressional inquiry into why
Studebaker was awarded a non-compete GERDA contract in the first place, and the
next thing you knew, bam! that contract is cancelled plus all future business
is put at risk as well. With millions if
not billions of dollars in potential revenues from government royalties, fees,
and commissions at stake over future years, no detail, no matter how small,
could be overlooked.
The senior Special Agent in charge from the FBI working with Mac
Kopstein on the Jefferson document theft and Noble affair was an old friend of
Mac’s from his former Bureau days, John Radwell, and he agreed to bury his
thick investigation file on the whole affair deep inside Bureau archives as a
favor. In Washington, there was an
implicit understanding that one good turn deserved another, so when the Special
Agent completed his twenty years in a couple of months and retired from the
FBI, he knew who to call for a lush private-sector job.
#
Once formalities were concluded, an informal conversation then ensued. “I really like this spot Mr. Brown. I have lunch here frequently, even when the
weather is a little cool. I go over
there to that food wagon and buy a hot dog and sodie. The lady who runs it is a naturalized
American citizen from Munich and I practice my rusty German with her,” Sam
pointed to his right in the direction of the Lincoln Memorial. Cinza wondered what the hell a “sodie” was.
Sam continued, “After lunch I like to walk up the steps and stare at
Lincoln’s statue and read those words over his head, ‘In this temple as in the
hearts of the people for whom he saved the Union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln
is enshrined forever,’ then stroll next door and walk the path past the Three
Soldiers Statue down to the Wall. Two of
my army buddies have their names engraved on that Wall.”
Sam didn’t realize it but he was beginning to ramble on, and Cinza was
becoming a little concerned, thinking perhaps this old white dude sitting next
to him was still the lunatic that had gone nuts in Tacoma back in the day. For some reason Cinza spoke up nervously, not
knowing why, and just blurted out, “My father was in Vietnam, he was a
Marine.” Sam didn’t comment right away
and then spoke up again.
“The Civil War, that was really something, the bravest bastards we ever
had on both sides. To them it was all about
duty. Lincoln raised the purpose of the
war to a higher plain, to slavery, because it was the right thing to do.” Cinza listened and had to agree.
“You know, Mr. Brown, it was the generals on both sides who finally made
the peace to end the Civil War, and not the politicians who caused the war in
the first place because they couldn’t compromise on States rights and the evils
of slavery. Professionals who fight the
wars, trained combat troops in the trenches, they know how awful wars are.”
Cinza thought this was a good
time to cut in and change the subject.
As Dr. Cinza Brown of Studebaker, he thought he knew the answers already
to many of the questions he was about to ask from reading the FBI files, but as
Mr. Brown the “publisher” he wanted to hear what Noble had to say.
#
“Just curious Sam, how did you come up with some of the ideas in your
book, say for example the first chapter where you talk about Alaska and
introduce the main character, Duke Mitchum?”
“Well Mr. Brown, an army buddy of mine, Pedro Campana, worked the Alaska
pipeline construction back in ’76 during the Bicentennial and told me all about
his experience during our reunions. The
stories were fascinating and I always liked the history behind America’s big
construction projects, like the Alaska pipeline and my personal favorite,
Hoover Dam.”
Cinza spoke up again and said, “That’s interesting Sam, my dad also
liked the big construction projects, and called Hoover Dam America’s Great
Pyramid.” “Why the hell am I talking
about this personal shit with a complete stranger?” Cinza thought as Sam
continued.
“I worked in the names of Pedro and the other guys from my old platoon
into the story as characters, including Archie Jefferson, the guy you met at
the Studebaker Institute and added a made-up character by the name of Duke
Mitchum.”
“That was my next question Sam, who exactly is Duke Mitchum?” Sam replied, “Oh, I used the names of my two
favorite actors, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum, who made two movies together.” Cinza thought, “Are you fucking kidding me?”
then he asked Sam another question, “And this whole thing about gold, seems to
be a central theme throughout your manuscript, where did that idea come from,
was it from your friend Archie like he told me?”
“Yes and no Mr. Brown. True, he
told me to write about gold when we were in a bar getting shitfaced last year,
but to be honest, I had thought of writing about gold way before then. Back in Kentucky when I was in high school I
played a trick on my relatives into believing there was lost Confederate gold during
a family get-together buried in the front yard.
But I guess my real interest in gold started back in ’76 when Pedro was
up in Alaska. I and my wife by
coincidence traveled to Brazil that same year for an extended period of time
and I remember the circumstances well.
We were going through a rough patch back then.” Cinza didn’t want to press the subject because
he knew that was when Sam lost his little girl.
Sam continued, “My wife is from a small town in Brazil, and while down
there I was able to travel around a remote Amazon River basin region exploring
a few artisan gold dig sites, pretty big ones as a matter of fact, with her two
brothers. What an eye opener that
was! The hardship the gold diggers went
through to acquire just a few grams of gold, the environmental pollution from
chemicals, the burning off of pristine jungle vegetation, the loss of wild
life, it was so overwhelming.”
“How then did you get interested in writing as a hobby Sam, when did
that start?” Cinza asked. “Again, I
think I would have to go back to my youth.
As a kid, me and some pals found what we thought was an Indian artifact
because it looked like the head of a war club.
I wrote a story for the school newsletter and after that, I studied
English at a community college. Since
then archaeology has been one of my passions.”
Cinza followed up with, “And Brazatlan, Atlantis, and the Jar of Manna,
how did you craft all that.” Sam told
him Atlantis first caught his attention when he saw the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth with
Pat Boone who found the lost city inside a volcano in Iceland. Sam once traveled to Reykjavik for his
courier job where he came up with the idea.
He changed Iceland to Antarctica for his book and called it Braz plus Atlan
which he then morphed into Brazil and Atlantis. The Jar of Manna had its own unique story.
“I got the idea for the Jar of Manna during that same trip to Brazil. I went into an old time pharmacy in my wife’s
hometown and saw this strange looking apothecary mortar and pestle sitting
there on the counter. It was beautiful,
a dark green color and was kind of heavy.
It had yellow specks running through it.
Sitting in the corner of the pharmacy was a small table with an assayer
gold scale, so I just put two and two together and made up the rest, except for
the fact that the Jar of Manna really did exist according to the Old
Testament. It was carried around by
Moses inside the Ark of the Covenant. The
Holy Grail wasn’t mentioned or written about by anyone until twelve centuries
after Jesus Christ died. I have to be
honest though, I loved reading books about lost civilizations like my favorite the
Chariots of the Gods. I must have read that book a dozen times.”
#
“Shit, Mac Kopstein and his FBI pals didn’t uncover any of this during
their investigation!” Cinza thought. “So
Sam, the parts of your book about Roland, Charlemagne, the Templar Knight
Rowland von Dahlgrün and the story about the Jar of Manna winding up in
Georgetown, where did all that come from?”
Actually Cinza was finding some of this quite interesting, much to his
chagrin.
“That whole section was initially inspired from my final year in the
army after I left Vietnam and got transferred to Germany. There was this little town and in the square
by the ancient church was a big statue of the Knight Roland, who I learned had
been killed in service of the Emperor Charlemagne. His descendant Rowland I just invented, as I
did Kyoto his sidekick as they searched for the Elixir of Life. Kyoto is my favorite city in Japan.
We used to call cold beer the elixir of life back in Nam. Anyway, Dahlgrün is just a German variation
of the name of an important family in Washington who my boss at State is
related to. He teaches history part time
at Georgetown University and I visited his Jesuit campus a few times as a
guest. The campus is very beautiful and
mysterious so that’s how I got the idea to hide the Jar of Manna in the
Dahlgren Chapel.
The part about the ‘Rosslyn Cut’ as Rollie Dahlgren’s trademark stone-cutting
style was a way to work in the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, famous in Templar
lore and legend. As far as the Knights
Templar and the Crusades are concerned, I’ve been to Jerusalem more times than
I can count in my courier job with the State Department and I’ve read tons of
material about that city and the Crusades.
I was also inspired by the Indiana Jones movies, which I consider some
of my favorite flicks of all time, like the Raiders
of the Lost Ark and Last Crusade.”
Cinza was trying to take all this in; actually the story behind the
story could be a whole new chapter in Sam’s unfinished book. The two men sat in silence for a few moments
and then Cinza spoke up again. “So I
take it Sam that your courier job provided you with a lot of the ideas you used
in your book, so in that sense life-long service as a federal government
employee was something you would consider worthwhile, correct?”
Sam thought for a minute and said, “Yes sir, I reckon I would. If not for my job with government I would
have probably worked the coal mines in Kentucky, and would have never met my beautiful
wife, and not seen all the things I’ve seen.
I traveled to almost every country on the planet and flew ten million
miles doing so. I’ve even been to McMurdo
Station in the Antarctic. I read a lot
of books along the way, saw lots movies.
The State Department is right over there you know,” as Sam pointed
northward towards the Truman Building.
“Every country, every city that I mention in my book I’ve traveled to,
many several times. You have time to
reflect on long flights, time to sort things out in your head. Of course I’m an old fart now and have met a
lot of hardworking ordinary folk along the highways and byways, some more
memorable than others, and I wanted to capture part of their lives in the
story, you know, for a small measure of immortality for the little guy.”
Then Cinza asked, “You speak of religion and gold’s allure as being
almost interchangeable in some respects.
How do you view religion? Would
you say your nom de plume Duke Mitchum is your vicarious alter ego?” Sam replied, “I’m religious in my own way,
and during the roughest patch in my life, I blasphemed and dismissed God
altogether, but have since reconciled somewhat.
But I respect all religions for what they are because they help us mere
mortals get through the rough times.
Duke my vicarious alter ego and pen name? Well sir, that
sounds very scholarly. I’m just a poor
Kentucky hillbilly so I’ll leave that one to you educated city slickers. As far as gold is concerned, I think its
allure might mean different things to different people as they journey down
life’s path.”
“Well Sam, if gold means things to different people, then what
does gold mean to you? What is Noble’s
gold?”
Sam was in deep thought for a few moments and then replied, “The one
constant thread I found during my travels is how similar people really are around
the world after you get to know them.
Things like skin color, gender, sexual persuasion, religious beliefs,
nationality, politics, and physical appearance - these things are totally
unimportant. You can’t judge people by
what group they belong to; you need to take them one human being at a time.
What is my gold you ask? What is my personal gold standard? To be
honest Mr. Brown, I’m not quite sure just yet; it’s still a work in progress. I suspect though that life isn’t really that
complicated. It has to be more than just
about things though. Maybe I can sort it
all out after I get to Brazil.”
#
It was just then that Cinza started to admire and respect this elderly gentleman
sitting next to him on the bench. They were from different worlds true, but it
didn’t matter. He realized that Mr.
Noble reminded him of his father. They
both had qualities hard to find these days: wisdom, honor, sense of duty,
patriotism, humility, loyalty, and genuine gratitude for being born an
American. Theirs was a generation soon
coming to the end of the trail, the baby boomers, the heirs of the greatest
generation. So thinking of his late dad
he said sincerely, “Hey Sam, why don’t you call me Randy.”
Then he said, “Sam, I need to ask one last question before I let you go
so I can work on getting you paid. Tell
me about those metal clamps you mention in your first chapter on Alaska, you
remember, the ones binding the stones together that you said looked like
bowties. Where did that idea come from?”
Sam said, “Well Randy, once again, it was during the Brazil trip
thirty-three years ago. As we were
departing my wife’s hometown to return to the United States, her elderly
nannies gifted me four of those clamps they called grampos for good luck, which they said had been in abundance when
they were young, easily found in the place where they all lived. They said the town was in a region rife with
legends of long lost civilizations where Jesuits and conquistadores once searched for gold. I read up about clamps like those. They were used in antiquity to construct stone
pyramids and temples all over the world.”
Sam added, “I’ll be retiring soon and moving to that town. It’s called Campo Dourado, about thirty miles
north of Porto Velho city in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Interestingly enough, in English the town’s
name translates to ‘golden field.’ If
you ever want to come down for a visit, please do. My wife’s a great cook and the beer is always
cold. We can go fishing and I can show
you where Teddy Roosevelt camped alongside the River of Doubt in 1914 during
his famous expedition.
Afterwards we can look for long lost civilizations and cities of gold,
and I can show you the apothecary mortar made from a meteorite, and you can
tell all your friends you actually saw the real Holy Grail!” “Hahaha,” both men laughed and the new
friends shook hands as they departed. Cinza
thought to himself, I might just take Sam up on that invitation one day. And he prayed Sam Noble and Archie Jefferson never
found out how close they came to being bumped off over the most ridiculous criminal
investigation in history.
#
There was a warning issued by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson to
President Harry S. Truman four months before two atomic bombs were dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945: “The future may see a time when such a weapon may be constructed in
secret and used suddenly and effectively with devastating power by a willful
nation or group, against an unsuspecting nation or group of much greater size
and material power.”
These were the first nuclear weapons ever used in warfare, and no atomic
bombs have since been detonated with the express purpose of taking human life. That was, until now. It was as if the Old
Testament was demanding once again there would have to be a sacrifice, but
instead of being spared at the last moment like Abraham’s son Isaac, God was
not so merciful this time around. It was
a bloody and violent act of terrorism. The
sacred city of Jerusalem would not be spared, the religious crossroads of the Holy
Land.
Operation GERDA – Gold Extraction and Relocation for Defense of America
– had been presented to the President on October 1, 2009 by Zachariah Greese of
the Studebaker Institute, and unbeknownst to Dr. R. Cinza Brown, Buddy Peoples,
and Zack Greese, it had been received with amazement by President Buchanan
Hapgood for its sheer audacity and imagination.
All indications internally by him to his inner circle were that his
administration would proceed to activate GERDA once it had time to conduct its
own scientific investigation, prepare a series of bills to be sent to Congress,
and finalize the drafting of an executive order for the president’s signature
returning America to the gold standard.
But current events intervened.
By Christmas Eve no official public announcements of any kind had been
forthcoming. True, the government leaked
like a sieve when it came to keeping things on the down-low, and there were
rumors floating inside the Beltway of some new incredible and grandiose
government program to get America out of its economic abyss, but still no
official word had as yet come from the Oval Office.
#
Soon after nuclear fission was discovered by German physicists Fritz
Strassman and Otto Hahn in 1939, it was determined that the enormous energy
released could be used to produce a nuclear explosion – and Nazi Germany came
much closer, possibly just a matter of weeks, than people realized to turning
the tide of World War II with the world’s first atomic bomb. There have been over 2,000 international
tests involving nuclear weapons, in addition to the two bombs dropped by the
United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These days
designs for bomb-making can be downloaded from the Internet.
The most remarkable thing about nuclear weapons is the small amount of
uranium-235 or plutonium-239 that is needed to produce a catastrophic explosion;
the critical mass of enriched plutonium required when a beryllium shell is
implemented into a bomb’s design is very small. Fourteen pounds of plutonium-239 can produce a bomb equivalent in power to
22,000 tons of TNT from a chunk about the size of a softball. This amount of explosive yield equates to a 22-kiloton
bomb, like the one nicknamed "Fat Man" that was dropped on Nagasaki.
It was later determined by experts that the nuclear device
that detonated in Jerusalem very early in the morning on Christmas Day 2009 had a yield of about three kilotons, and the stolen suitcase bomb
which originated from a military depot in one of the states of the former
Soviet Union had utilized a piece of enriched plutonium only the size of a golf ball.
The destructive force of the suitcase bomb was massive since it was set off
underground, in one of the many deep tunnels beneath the Temple Mount. In order to minimize the effects of
radiation, Hiroshima's “Little Boy” had been timed by the U.S. Army Air Force to detonate
at 1,900 feet over the city after being dropped from an altitude of 26,000 feet
– yet the blast area still had a radius of 1,200 feet and dug a six-foot deep
crater.
Jerusalem’s bomb was especially sinister in its design and detonation placement,
creating a vast crater that obliterated most of the ancient and venerated Old
City. A later investigation and
reconstruction of the events leading up to the blast concluded that the bomb’s
components somehow got past the world’s best airport security system, in Tel
Aviv, probably via a diplomatic courier pouch, and afterwards were reassembled.
The lethal area of heat incineration and damage from the explosion’s
epicenter fanned out in a radius of a quarter mile, and the direct effects of
radiation extended out to three miles.
The indirect effects of the radioactive fallout would eventually cover a
much larger area, some fifty-miles in all.
It was worse than Chernobyl. Minute
radioactive particles entering the atmosphere circulated the entire Earth due
to the height of the mushroom cloud reaching ten miles in altitude.
The heat and blast from the bomb caused fires and secondary explosions
from broken gas lines, gasoline in automobiles, petrol stations, and electrical
fires. Their intense heat toppled even
more buildings in the process; the fire continued burning out of control for
several days. Miraculously, preliminary
estimates put the casualty figure in the city of 700,000 people at much less than
one-percent but still enough to paralyze emergency services even though
countries worldwide flew in massive amounts of aid and personnel to help with
the horrendous scene of destruction.
There were considerable delays in helping people trapped in building and
temple rubble, and even for those not trapped it took significant time to get
rescuers re-oriented psychologically to be able to assist the injured. By sheer determination of first responders, a high proportion of the
seriously injured did get medical attention in time to save them.
The bomb had been purposefully salted with deadly isotopes of americium,
strontium, cesium, and extremely lethal cobalt.
Exploding below-ground maximized the size of the crater and effects of
radiation fallout from debris blasted upwards into the mushroom cloud, which
then drifted back to settle on Earth once again. Initial estimates were that due to intense radioactive
contamination of rubble leftover of what was once the Old City, that the entire
area would be closed to human habitation for at least a thousand years.
#
Stunned
at first, the world press was eerily silent, but soon everyone from Islamic Fundamentalists
to White Supremacists and every fanatical sect in between were blamed for the
destruction of the Old Testament’s city of prophets.
The Christian world lost its sacred shrines of the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher and Church of the Redeemer; Judaism lost the synagogues of Elijah the
Prophet and Yohanan Ben Zakkai, not to mention the Western Wall; and Islam lost
its Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock – built around the large stone on
which Abraham bound his son Isaac. This
was also the place where Muslim tradition holds Muhammad ascended to
heaven.
And the world lost the Temple Mount, now just a vast steaming crater
where the Holy of Holies and Solomon’s Temple once stood, and from which sprang
centuries of lore and legend about the Holy Grail and the lost Ark of the
Covenant. Each religion had believed
that theirs was the only true religion, their God the only true God, and the refusal
to love and respect their fellow men and follow the simple tenet of the golden
rule resulted in hatred so pernicious that it ultimately led to the destruction
of the world’s holiest city – the so called “place of peace.”
With the world’s largest economy only hanging on by a thread already,
the bombing of the world’s most contentious city since time immemorial produced
international economic panic even before the mushroom cloud had settled, on a
scale never before seen in the planet’s history.
After numerous emergency meetings with his Cabinet and members of U.S.
Congress, President Buchanan Hapgood announced on January 1, 2010 that the
United States, given the worst worldwide economic crisis and turmoil in modern
history, would take a series of extraordinary measures to stabilize the
situation – beginning with America’s immediate and unconditional return to the
gold standard. The price of gold was already
pushing $6,000 a troy ounce and trending upwards.
The President also outlined a bold new Mars exploration and permanent
settlement project with the express purpose of mining the Red Planet for
gold. Scientists at NASA had long suspected
gold existed there, but were recently able to produce unquestionable scientific
proof thanks to meteorite fragments found in the Antarctic whose origin was
traced back to Mars. NASA geologists
estimated that the quantity of gold buried beneath the Martian crust was
staggering, and immediately after issuing the press release, the price of gold
per troy ounce on Earth stabilized.
#
During a special emergency session of Congress the following evening,
President Hapgood stood at the podium and addressed the American people in a
speech televised throughout the entire world, excerpts of which included:
“My fellow Americans, this is not the time
for me to speak vaguely, but a time for honesty in the face of perhaps this country’s
most serious threat since our founding as a Republic. During a patch of similarly rough times, the
great President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke to the nation almost seven
decades ago the words that still ring true today ‘that the only thing we have
to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which
paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…’
I stand before you today and hereby affirm
that I will, with the help of Almighty God, spare no effort nor be pressured by
any source, foreign or domestic, to restore order in the American economy and
confidence in our free market system…
There will always be dissident voices heard
in this land and abroad, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding
fault and never favor, perceiving gloom at every turn and seeking influence
without responsibility…
Those voices are inevitable and represent a
view that vituperation is as good as bold action, and laying blame on someone
else is the world community’s only alternative.
I tell you this, your leadership in Washington will not shirk from its
duty to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, nor the
American people who have given us their trust…
To do less would be a tragic dishonor to all
the thousands of men and women throughout our history who have given their last
full measure of devotion, their last drop of life’s blood to defend our great
nation, and this government’s shame would be unfathomable…
I am confident that the normal balance of
executive and legislative responsibility will be adequate to meet the
unprecedented task before this government, but I am prepared under my
Constitutional duty to take any measure that this stricken nation in the midst
of this serious crisis requires be undertaken…
In the event that Congress shall fail to take
the necessary course of action required under this national emergency, I shall
not evade the clear course of my duty…
The citizens of the United States have not failed; it was their
collective elected leadership, the political class, who failed them, and I now call upon all
three branches of government to work together in passing a new amendment to the
United States Constitution requiring a balanced federal budget, and that every
man and woman who takes the oath of public office upon the Bible, the Torah, or
the Koran, invoking the name of God, shall never again allow our country to
become insolvent…
And henceforth, let every nation know,
whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden,
meet any hardship, support any friend, and oppose any foe, in order to assure
the safety and success of the United States of America… “
Two days later, the U.S. Congress voted unanimously to pass the New Gold
Reserve Act making it the law of the land, placing America once again
officially back on the gold standard.
Thereafter followed during a hundred-day period more legislation passed
by Congress in so short a time span since the Great Depression and FDR’s New
Deal. The Gold Extraction and Relocation
for Defense of America Act authorized the federal government to immediately
spend tax dollars on space flights to Mars and underwrite all costs for harvesting
gold on the Red Planet.
The GERDA Act called for the establishment of Fort Zachariah Greese,
named in honor of the newest recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Act declared the fort location shall be
the geographical center of the Red Planet along its Equator. A band of land around the entire planet, hugging
both sides of the Martian Equator north and south for a thousand miles in both
directions, henceforth shall be called Mars USA, and the full extent of this
extraterrestrial land is hereby declared sovereign American soil. The newly constructed Fort Greese shall become
the U.S. Treasury gold bullion depository on Mars, while Fort Knox retains its
role as the primary gold storage facility in the United States.
#
In addition, the Act created a new executive super-agency reporting to
the President called the Federal Gold Trust Corporation or FGTC, which would
bring together various independent agencies like NASA, the Environmental
Protection Agency, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, the
National Science Foundation, and dotted-line support from other federal
Departments and Bureaus, such as Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey, to oversee
America’s gold harvesting activities on Mars.
The FGTC’s mission was also to ensure that the Martian environment was
not harmed, and that any new technologies developed, such as alternatives to
internal combustion engine propulsion, would be shared with the world
scientific community for the betterment of Earth’s natural environment and the
survival of mankind. It promised that it
would only allow the use of clean and safe forms of thermonuclear energy for
the extraction and processing of gold from Martian soil.
Much the same way that FDR centralized America’s industrialization efforts
under the War Production Board and brought in a private-sector executive to
manage it, President Hapgood nominated for the new cabinet level position, as
the first chairman of the Federal Gold Trust Corporation, Bartholomew “Buddy” Peoples
from the prestigious Studebaker Institute of Washington, D.C.
“Few men I know have the vision and capability of Buddy Peoples,” the president
said, “and I can think of no one that I or the American people can trust more
than Mr. Peoples for this unbelievably important undertaking for the sake of
our nation.”
Chairman Peoples was unanimously approved by Congress for the new
position after testifying before the selection committee for slightly under ten
minutes, a new record, and then he promptly made three appointments to the FGTC
board of directors – eighty-three-year-old Alan Greenspan, retired chairman of
the Federal Reserve, as special economic advisor; and Dr. Benjamin Lemkau of
the U.S. Geological Survey, as special science advisor. His third appointment to the Federal Gold
Trust Corporation board came from the U.S. Department of Energy and its
director of the Human Genome Program, Dr. Gary Dickman, as special medical
advisor.
President Hapgood also announced that America would have a new top cop
to protect the nation against domestic terrorism. Also from the Studebaker Institute, Mr.
McKinley “Mac” Kopstein was appointed by the president and confirmed by the
Senate as the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Taking his place as the head of security at
Studebaker was recently retired ex-FBI Special Agent John Radwell.
On April 4, 2010 the Twenty-eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
was passed making it unlawful for the U.S. Congress and the Executive Branch
not to balance the federal budget. For one
full week beginning with President Bo Hapgood, 100 U.S. Senators, 435
Representatives, and 5 Delegates from the Territories stood before live
television cameras one at a time and retook their oath of office – the reason
it took so long was that every politician in Congress also took the opportunity
to make a long-winded speech in support of the new legislation and, except for
Bo Hapgood, lay blame for the country’s financial meltdown at the feet of their
predecessors.
The president simply said, “Never again will America be held hostage by debt.” Not to be outdone, all fifty states enacted
new balanced-budget legislation, and governors and local government officials
followed suit in retaking their oaths and making speeches. Across town, the finishing touches were being
put on the new wing of the venerable Studebaker Institute; more office space
was needed due to a major upswing in consulting business awards from new
government contracts.
The sweetest part of the deal for Studebaker was that all its federal
government consulting services henceforth would be awarded as non-compete
contracts, meaning they had a virtual blank check to establish whatever profit
level they desired. Funding came from
the U.S. Treasury and pocketbooks of American taxpayers.
#
Three of the board directors had recently retired and three new ones
from the former Republican administration had joined, making four new members
in all including the recently promoted executive director, Dr. R. Cinza Brown,
who had taken Mr. Peoples’ place. The
ancient chairman, Zachariah “Zack the
Knife” Greese, was still putting in twelve-hour days at his beloved Studebaker
Institute despite having been recently appointed as a fourth member to the
board of the newly established Federal Gold Trust Corporation, as special business
governance and ethics advisor.
In the meantime, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution
condemning the United States for bringing the world to the brink of
destruction, pretty much laying the responsibility for the nuclear bombing of
Jerusalem at Washington’s doorstep – and public opinion polls taken around the
world overwhelmingly supported this view in foreign country after country.
The resolution admonished America for a culmination of events which
began when the U.S. military invaded Iraq in early 2003, provoking world
instability and terrorism on a scale unimaginable beforehand. The resolution said the United States was
fundamentally to blame for the present day catastrophe of Jerusalem’s
destruction which all of mankind must now endure.
The Vatican reacted to the bombing by calling for immediate cessation of
violence in the region and the Holy Pontiff called for world peace, adding that
Christianity’s holiest sites would always live in our hearts, and that
Jerusalem, no matter how devastated, would always be a holy place for
Christians.
After the American President announced his country’s plans to return to
the gold standard and NASA began preparations for the colonization of Mars,
with the express purpose of harvesting vast amounts of the noble metal, the hue
and cry was even greater by the world community, calling these actions the
beginning of a new age of economic imperialism and ruthless subjugation of the
have-not nations.
But the criticisms soon died down, as every industrialized nation
beginning with the G8 countries returned to the gold standard themselves and
sought economic and military alliances with the United States, as America embarked
on its new golden age.
(This is a work of fiction. Although some real-world names,
organizations, historical settings, and situations are used to enhance the
authenticity of the story, any similarities to actual persons, organizations,
or situations are coincidental and all portrayals are purely the product of the
author’s imagination. This is the second
edition abridged version 2019. First
edition Copyright © 2006. All
rights reserved)
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