13

Zanzibar, Tanzania

From his yacht, the Intrepid , Jonathan Beckwith watched the full-motion video provided by his satellite downlink from one of his dozens of orbiting satellites. On the large plasma screen, he watched Amanda Garrett, the two African boys, and an unknown white kid pick their way through the Serengeti. In much the same way he had monitored the document thief’s actions two years ago, he followed this four-person crew.

He turned away from the video, knowing the race had just begun. He sat comfortably in the leather chair of the command center in his 127-foot Benetti Yacht powered by two Caterpillar engines that boasted 2,760 horsepower.

He swilled a half-filled glass of 1966 Louis XIV Cognac in his long, slender fingers, his nails perfectly manicured. Catching his reflection in a blank television screen, he sucked in his cheeks and smacked his lips. He admired his perfectly preened gray mane that rode in a soft wave over his ears and ended just above his collar. Parted on the right-hand side, just like JFK, his hair was what he called his best feature. Bone-white, really, his thick shock matched his often-bleached teeth. Set against a permanent bronze tan, his handsomeness was not so much captured in any single asset but in their collective portrayal.

Attractive men were everywhere, and he knew his wealth and power were what made him project his handsomeness with such authority. He was magnetic. Perhaps when he’d bought his first radio station at the age of eighteen, he could have predicted he would one day be sitting on this sailing yacht with electronic, carbon fiber sails that automatically deployed and set their own tack and trim.

That radio station had evolved into a television station and then, given his knack for leveraging assets and keeping his money in the game, the minor media footprint he had established had begun to expand like a South California wildfire. He’d rapidly built the corporate infrastructure to accommodate the requirements of the Internal Revenue Service and the exponential demand for his unique brand of content: websites that followed television and radio. His best move had been hiring some young-gun Internet geniuses about fifteen years before to parlay his legacy web systems into future cash-flow machines.

Beckwith had started his own finance channel that was broadcast worldwide and outperformed Bloomberg, CNN Finance, Fox Business, and CNBC. He’d hired young, hip prognosticators who were plugged into the tech and venture capital worlds, could smell the prevailing winds before they began blowing, and would provide him with useful analysis the way a seasoned military intelligence analyst advised a commander. He was constantly shifting his team to analyze and acquire what he believed would be the next big idea. Accordingly, he was able to visualize emerging markets in the same fashion Napoleon’s coup d’oeil had helped him win the Austerlitz campaign. At a glance . Beckwith saw, he understood, and he acted. No hesitation.

And for Beckwith, it was always about the money or the sport. No exceptions.

As Beckwith stared into the caramel pool of cognac, he looked up at his carbon fiber sails as they adjusted his position in the Indian Ocean. Alternative energy , he thought to himself. Not those red herrings of ethanol or solar, but something truly transforming. Wind power was okay, but expensive and often impractical. Solar seemed to be able to provide steady power in certain locales, but it was a niche market, at best. Oil and coal were going away; at least they needed to. Not particularly wedded to patriotism, he had no overarching altruistic goal to rid the world of Muslim extremism. No, he was somewhat of a financial slut. He smiled at the thought.

He had some ideas but needed to chew on them a bit before acting on them. While the United States had put a moratorium on the best source of energy the world would ever see, nuclear power, his multinational corporation had not. His primary challenge, and he loved a good challenge, was to be able to transport this energy worldwide.

He was visualizing autonomous vehicles powered by nuclear energy cells the size of car batteries. Watching his carbon fiber sails, he understood that he would be able to use transformative materials to contain the radiation to the extent that it would be harmful, which he doubted. Vehicle accidents might break open a nuclear cell, but his tests had shown the radiation would be nothing more than a dental x-ray. Gas stations would also become highly regulated nuclear cell recharging stations. This idea was so bold, so transformational, he had to smile.

He stepped from the command center and walked to the fore of the ship. He stood at the far stanchion looking over the azure sea beneath and beyond. He thought briefly about standing on the rail and spreading his arms, shouting, “I’m king of the world!”

But it had already been done. And Jonathan Beckwith was an original.

Which was how he’d come up with the idea that currently intrigued him and against which he was applying most of his excess research and development funds. His play money.

“Satellites and Bluetooth,” he whispered. “Who would have thunk it?”

He exited the command center and stepped past the bridge of his yacht as he considered his robust satellite dish array. Could he really do this?

He descended a small ladder and entered a new room on his yacht. This was a twenty-foot-by-twenty-foot room. He shivered as he closed the door behind him. Each wall of the room was stuffed with state-of-the-art electronic equipment to include computers, monitors, electronic jamming devices, receivers, and radar. The equipment ran twenty-four hours per day and pulled a significant amount of power, which created a heat problem. Beckwith, once he had embarked on this course, had had the room retrofitted with air conditioning to prevent short-circuiting of his hardware. The room was like a refrigerator.

In the middle of the room was Styve Rachman, the Internet genius who, two years before, had plucked the Aktar email containing the Book of Catalyst. From that point forward, Rachman had been promoted to work in Beckwith Media headquarters and then ultimately as the primary communications operator for the travel team.

When Beckwith had first offered the promotion, Rachman had replied, “Whatever. It beats sitting in a basement and eating Little Debbie bars.” Plus, the half-million-dollar salary had seemed incentive enough.

This evening, Rachman was wearing a hoodie sweatshirt, flannel pajama bottoms, and unlaced hiking boots. His fingers crawled across the keyboard that was connected to several large monitors with binary code scrolling across the screen. He had dyed his hair an orange and yellow mixture that escaped from the hoodie in tangled, random knots, and now he sported two earrings in each ear. None in the nose, thank God, Beckwith thought. Rachman’s sweatshirt had the word Peace written on it in five different languages. Salam (Arabic), Paix (French), Paz (Spanish), Dan (Chinese), and Peace (English). The words were splashed across the black hoodie in pastel colors of pink, chartreuse, mauve, bright yellow, and light blue.

Beckwith shook his head and smiled. “Hey, whack job,” he asked, “what have you figured out?” Of course, Rachman didn’t respond as he was probably cranking to Dr. Dre or some other artist Beckwith didn’t know. Beckwith pulled down the hood and saw the earbuds plugged deeply into Rachman’s head. The young man immediately pulled the earbuds out and spun around in his chair.

“Hey, boss.” Rachman flashed newly whitened teeth at him. Freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose belying the man’s twenty-five years.

“What are you listening to, Snoop Doggy?”

Rachman laughed. “Snoop Dogg,” he corrected. “And no. Jethro Tull’s ‘Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day.’ Classic. Always motivates me. Very deep.”

“Great. Now what have we got?”

Rachman punched a bunch of buttons on the computer and said, “It’s really pretty easy and not that time intensive. I’ve developed a protocol where I can send a signal to each satellite, essentially going into the satellite’s operating system through a hole in the security. Each company’s satellite constellation has different vulnerabilities, but I found that once you figure out one in the constellation, they are all the same. I’ve discreetly probed and entered each constellation you’ve asked about. There will be no problem loading the Bluetooth software.”

“And the master satellites?”

“Man, you own those. They are easy.” Rachman laughed. “Just steer those babies where you want them to go. No problemo.”

“You’re sure?”

“Book of Catalyst?” Rachman said in a teasing voice, which was his code for, “I’m a genius, so trust me.”

“Okay, we’ll probably want to go hot in the next twenty-four hours based on what I’m seeing on the news. This whole Garrett thing is pretty interesting,” Beckwith said.

“Man, she’s smoking hot,” Rachman said, looking at a closeup shot of Amanda Garrett on the full-motion video display in his refrigerated room.

“Her husband’s an Army paratrooper.” Beckwith eyed their movement on the screen.

Rachman frowned as if he’d really been on the verge of landing Amanda Garrett and the opportunity had just been snatched from his grasp.

“Man, that sucks,” he said, scratching his chin. “How do you know all this shit?”

By now the screen savers on all three large screen monitors had activated. Each one looked similar to Rachman’s shirt with funky sayings or words scrolling across the screen. One was simply the same words as his shirt, peace written in different languages. Another had sayings such as Love not War , and another had the famous Saturday Night Live skit quote from Hans and Franz made famous by Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon, Listen to me now and hear me forever .

“We’re in the information business,” Beckwith chuckled. “Okay, Hans and Franz? Seriously?”

“Hey, Carvey and Nealon are my favorite even if it is your generation. Besides, you lock me down here, and I get bored, okay?” Rachman laughed defensively.

Beckwith smiled and shook his head. As he climbed the ladder out of the The Cooler, as they called the room, he shook his head.

Beckwith walked to the rear of the vessel and looked over the chrome stanchion. The calm waters reflected the golden hues of the setting sun. He pulled the secure satellite phone from his pocket and dialed his good friend Jack Venzetti, or Jack Johnson, owner of Jack Johnson Laboratories. JJL was on the verge of delivering a drug that would delay the onset of AIDS in patients with HIV, perhaps forever. Beckwith had invested in the lab and was a member of their board of directors.

Beckwith was not an impatient man and considered himself a professional, but he needed an update. Certainly he expected goods to be delivered in accordance with an established timeline. He understood that there was little in-transit visibility, as his logisticians called it, on this particular operation. That was to be expected on a mission that was taking place across vast stretches of a country, if not a continent.

“Jackie V,” he said into his satellite phone. “Did I wake you?”

Johnson’s voice was gruff, as if he was either drinking or emerging from a deep sleep. Then again, it was evening in the Indian Ocean, Beckwith had just watched a beautiful sunset, which made it about noon in Suffolk, Virginia.

“Beck, what do you need?” Johnson asked.

“Just wondering about our endeavor.”

“I’ll call you when I’ve got something,” Johnson said. “He just got there today.”

“I was hoping for more than that,” Beckwith said, his voice smooth. His criticism was not in his tone; rather, it was implied.

“He’s a young guy. He knows this girl. He’ll get the job done,” Johnson said.

Beckwith remembered the full-motion video of the four fugitives crossing the Serengeti. Could the white kid be Johnson’s guy?

“Let’s hope he’s good,” Beckwith said and hung up.

His partnership with Jack Venzetti Johnson had been born thirty-five years earlier at Fordham University. Venzetti had met his match in Beckwith, an equally enterprising entrepreneur who not only had a radio station but also competed with him in the bookmaking department. Beckwith had beaten Jack Venzetti in a million-dollar bet on the Army-Navy game. Venzetti, abandoned by his Mafia connections after the loss, hadn’t been able to pay the entire tab. As part of his payment, Venzetti had turned over to Beckwith the deed for a defunct aspirin-making facility. Over time, Beckwith had enslaved and then mentored Venzetti from hapless ex-Mafia kid on the run to a rising star in the pharmaceutical business.

Beckwith had told him, “Lose the name. Get something normal, like Johnson.” So Jack Venzetti had become Jack Johnson, and Beckwith had created a legitimate drug-making enterprise in the process with his indentured servant as its leader.

Standing on the bow of his ship, Beckwith looked out at the blue-green sea that spread before him like a fluttering sheet in the wind and thought about that day. He had taken that opportunity and parlayed it all into what he was doing right now. Everything else he had achieved would appear meaningless next to this. Immediately after Rachman had identified the Book of Catalyst email, he’d had his private contractors kill Aktar and, later, Akunsada in Egypt. His severe disappointment had been that the men had not returned with the original document.

Yet the copies had served him well, and with the help of interpreters and cultural anthropologists, all sworn to secrecy on binding nondisclosure statements, he finally understood the meaning of the fabled Book of Catalyst.

Standing there, stiff wind pushing against his face, the air was pungent with the smell of the sea. Questions ran through his mind. What is it that everyone seeks ? What is it that captures the imagination of all of mankind? He visualized the four-person party racing across the Serengeti Plain toward the Olduvai Gorge with a cooler full of Ebola and HIV cures and vaccines.

His hands formed a temple under his chin, and he whispered into the wind, “To live forever.”

And he believed the Book of Catalyst and Amanda Garrett would soon show him how to achieve that goal.