Chapter 1

Harare, Zimbabwe, Africa

On the morning of September 11th, 2011, Kina had ridden the blue line from O’Hare into downtown Chicago.  Thinking back to that day, the scene and all its details were remarkably clear in her mind.  The morning had been particularly humid – the air heavy, still and stale.  Ten years to the day since the terrorist attacks in New York, yet if there was any tension from the echo of that tragic day, it was only in her mind.  Occasionally her eyes lifted from the newspaper bearing the famous fiery image of the second tower to quickly survey the other passengers in the train.  Most of the morning commuters and business travelers were plugged into a portable music device, a laptop, or cell phone or a carefully balanced combination.  Kina wondered how it was possible for so many people to be tuned in while simultaneously so oblivious.  Since childhood she’d had a penchant for conjuring visual analogies based on the current moment, especially during situations that wouldn’t allow for a quick escape.  

Looking around at the jacked-in passengers, she concentrated on the picture forming in her mind.  Within seconds the image of a gymnasium full of school children flashed into her mind’s eye.  Her mind surveyed the ethereal scene, slowly panning to and fro.  Each of the basketball hoops had been retracted and hung precariously above the floor at odd angles.  The room was bare and Spartan.  All of the athletic equipment was crammed into the long rectangular room near the main entrance.  The children, seated Indian style on the floor, sat facing a massive white screen that had been erected on the stage.  

Projected onto the screen were random images depicting the quintessential storybook American lifestyle.  Financial wealth, gross materialism and physical beauty were the underlying themes.  Faint, random splashes of color flashed across the entranced faces of the children as images of slender runway models, sleek expensive cars and motorized watercraft, tropical beaches and credit cards came and went in rapid succession.  Half-shaved men in sleek casual black suits and thick silver watches smiled confidently as they walked hand-in-hand with beautiful women endowed with long flowing, lustrous, commercial-ready hair.  Then came the cocktail party aboard the mammoth gray and white yacht, the Cinderella ball and a champagne toast.  A sleek black helicopter with dark-tinted windows circled the tallest building in the city.  On the roof was a party populated by black and white tuxedos, elegant evening gowns, and sparkling crystal glasses filled with golden wine poured by obedient servants in pressed white coats.  Ten-foot tall animal-shaped ice sculptures encircled the soiree.  In every direction there were tables piled high with artistically carved fruits and vegetables, platters of exotic foods from around the globe, and shiny silver fountains filled with dark, liquid chocolate – all being casually consumed by voluptuous women adorned with gold and diamonds and men with the look and commanding presence of James Bond.  This was the grand party to end all parties and was being held to celebrate a new world order.  Somehow Kina was sure the mesmerized children understood that.  

The image of the high-rise party melted away and was replaced with simpler scenes.  Graduations with friends and family, smiling faces, birthdays with balloons and clowns, teenagers in a whimsical, light-hearted school play, a rough and tumble hockey game, the winning football team carrying the quarterback on their shoulders, the ROTC.  Back to football and hockey.  The focus now seemed to be on the hitting, the pushing, the jarring collisions, the lone player running into the end zone, the train wreck of players out of focus in the background.  Boxing.  Ultimate fighting.  Self defense.  Martial arts and hand-to-hand combat.  American soldiers marching.

Mug shots of unsmiling Arab men in bright orange shirts with numbers stitched on the left breast.  Grainy news footage of men with white turbans that covered everything but their eyes as they knelt on one knee and fired automatic weapons.  Buildings exploding, the concrete turning to dust.  The birthday party again.  The clown with something deep and sinister in his eyes, staring earnestly into the camera.  There was a menacing message behind those dark eyes that would frighten most adults.  And still the children sat unmoving on the hard wood floor, reticent and absorbed, with their mouths hanging half open.  Kina could see them clearly in her mind.  But there was something she hadn’t noticed until now.  Every child had a single, white wire hanging from each ear.  They were all plugged in.  They were listening intently to something, but she could not hear what it was.  The screen continued flashing between images of the life of privilege and wealth, to contact sports and war, as if to ask, “To control, or be controlled…that is the question.”  

Kina remembered taking another look at the other passengers.  Something was different on second glance.  Of course.  Here they were.  These were the children from the gymnasium.  They’d all grown up.  Mortgages, jobs, car payments, credit cards, student loans, doctor’s bills, nights spent blindly consuming alcohol, days spent dealing with fear and envy.  Yes, they’d grown up.  But they were still plugged in.  They were still quiet and obedient and striving to fill their lives with the spoils and promises the television had tempted them with their entire lives, only now it came via high-definition flat panel screens as far as the eye could see.  Five days a week they made the exodus, consciously ignoring the nagging barrier of reality in hopes of taking just one more step up on the long, arduous climb to the middle.  Just one more step.  

Most of them sensed the gross inequities in the world.  They knew a great many things were wrong, and yet the pursuit was all that mattered now.  Every person bouncing around on this train was like a greyhound – forever damned to chase the fake rabbit around and around the track of life, never quite able to grab hold, but always striving to reach it.  The greyhounds never gave up.  They never chose to accept reality and let the shiny carrot go.  Nor did they ever choose to go after real carrots, the kind that could be caught and consumed.  The prize was always just one step away.  

The screeching, metallic noise of the train’s brakes engaging stirred her from the daydream.  When she’d looked up again, Kina had made eye contact with a portly man standing thirty feet away at the other end of the train car.  He wore a dark gray business suit and a white shirt, both of which needed to be ironed.  Though she couldn’t recall his face now, she did remember it had been pudgy, round, and unusually pale.  One of several chins had been forced outside the tight collar and rested uneasily above the wide Windsor knot of a bright red tie.  The skin on his cheeks and jaws bore scattered pockmarks she’d guessed were the remnants of a particularly bad acne problem.  His slick, thinning hair had been combed back and looked as though he’d cemented it to his large scalp with a clear epoxy.  The large man stood reading the morning paper.  His right arm was curled around one of the vertical bars to help maintain balance.  He had been staring down at his paper when his eyes shifted and met hers.  Kina was used to having men stare at her, but this was different.  

For a brief moment she thought the man had read her thoughts – that he’d caught a glimpse of the imagery flashing through her mind, that he understood the despair and pessimism that had consumed her thoughts for the past few years.  The look in his eyes seemed to say, “I know where you’re going, and I understand why.”  It was the reassuring and knowing expression a loving father might give his son before he said, “I was young once, too, and I know exactly how you feel.”

Kina had held the man’s stare for a few moments, her face remaining blank.  The corners of her eyes wrinkled slightly as she tried to read his expression.  Thinking back now, she realized she had been vaguely hoping for some epiphany, some sign the stranger truly understood.  Perhaps he really did know where she was going.  Could he know about The Aenamaia?  She had desperately wanted to tell someone about her decision: the commitment, the oath, the training.  Could he have known?  Was he one of them, sent to make sure she went through with it?

Social norms had forced her to break the stare.  She never knew whether there had been something there or whether he had just been admiring her.  Looking back, she suspected it was the latter.  Gray, who had been her first contact with The Aenamaia, had advised her to always present a public appearance that exploited her good looks, athletic body and long auburn hair.  He’d said, “Beautiful women are suspicious on many levels, but none that would ever point to your real agenda or to us.  They’ll stare at you and imagine you’re everything that you are not, and that’s the way we want it.  You never want your enemies to see beyond the flesh.  This can be accomplished consistently with the right kind of armor.”

The lesson had stuck with her all these years.  Even today, sitting on a rickety antiquated bus heading away from Harare International Airport, she still dressed the part.  Dark green slacks, matching pumps, and a white silk blouse had replaced her stylish business suit, along with a pair of rectangular glasses and a thin silver watch.  Around her neck hung a circular gold locket engraved with the yin-yang symbol.  Gray had given her the necklace on that first day of training in Chicago.  He’d said it was the type of thing astronauts took into space and that she should never take it off.  It was only after she’d finished her training that he’d shown her the secret to opening it and explained the lethal function of the two white tablets hidden inside.

A half hour after leaving the Harare city limits the outdated old bus passed through a small shanty village.  The dirt and gravel road ahead was in a sad state of disrepair and the bus was forced to slow to a crawl.  The driver did his best to avoid the large potholes that reminded Kina of miniature meteor craters filled with dirty brown water.  Despite the driver’s best efforts, the front right tire dipped into a deep hole causing the small bus to lurch from side to side.  Instinctively Kina threw her hand up to the overhead rack to prevent the shiny metal briefcase from sliding off.  The case was heavy and could injure someone.  The last thing she needed was to spend the next day explaining why she was transporting a high-powered rifle, scope and rounds to the small town of Mutare.  She pulled the case down and placed it squarely on her lap.  “Better safe than imprisoned,” she thought.

After a few minutes, the bus reached the end of the village and was back up to cruising speed.  A small green sign indicated Mutare was thirty-four kilometers ahead.  Kina guessed the driver was averaging around eighty kilometers per hour.  Running the calculations in her mind, accounting for a few more small towns, she estimated it would take another thirty minutes or so to reach Mutare.  She looked at her watch.  It was almost noon.  The drive from the airport in Harare had already taken up more of her morning than she’d expected.  She had wanted to rent a car, but Gray had advised against it.  Just getting her into the country and arranging to have someone meet her outside the airport with the weapon had been risky enough.  Putting her assumed name and passport information into another computer was not worth the additional risk.  The Aenamaia worked diligently to keep their people and activities off the grid as much as possible.  They could never afford to forget: Always watching, always listening, ready to bring violence, ready to forever silence.  It was therefore decided that Ms. Celeste Angela Tullah of Toronto, Canada and her silver rifle case would make use of the antiquated Zimbabwean public transit system.

The heavy, smooth metal case pressed down on Kina’s thighs.  The pressure was greater than could be attributed to the actual weight of the object and she knew it.  The emotional sum of the last three years seemed to be contained within, sitting restlessly next to the dismantled weapon.  It was waiting to get out, to accomplish its goal – to spend the currency that had accrued in the account she’d started that afternoon in Chicago.  If the assignment went according to plan, if she returned safely to Harare on this same bus, the weight of the case would be reduced by only a few rounds, but Kina knew both she and the case would feel as light as a feather.

Kennebunkport, Maine

“What time was it in Mashhad?” he wondered, staring at the antique clock on the wall.  It was just before seven a.m. here.  “Eight hours ahead,” he thought.  “Three o’clock.  The ambitious little prick will be done soon.”  TB, the abbreviated nickname his eldest son had given the man, never hung around to socialize after deal-making.  Not anymore.  The intel thus far showed he always left alone.  The word he’d gotten over the last few days from his agents was TB had brokered a dozen lucrative deals while overseas.  The further things progressed with these new business ventures, the more complicated the situation would become.

  Despite the adroitness TB had demonstrated thus far in avoiding inquiries, both legal and media-driven, in the end, the little opportunist would undoubtedly be forced to testify.  Federal prosecutors would offer up the usual little-fish deal: full immunity for all past transgressions and a hands-off attitude on the deals he was brokering right at this moment – or prison.  Loyal or not, TB was no fool.  The choice would be simple.  After that, their world would be consumed by flames fanned by an ungrateful nation of whiners and rubberneckers and the media that never stopped whoring to them.  The carnage would be everywhere, caught in high definition audio and video.  Clips of interviews with turncoat friends and family would be on every news station.  All of his son’s greatest hits would be revived and polished.  Internet video would see an unprecedented surge in downloads.  His family name, already irrevocably charred over the last decade, would wind up in a dank and dark corner in the annals of history. “No!” he thought. He could not allow this to happen – not on his watch.

He glanced at the clock again.  A decision would have to be made – several decisions.  He’d been putting off action for over a week now, hoping a better option would emerge.  Many sleepless nights had been spent trying to divine a solution.  The aggravation was all too familiar, like chronic chest pains that come and go, but are mysteriously incurable.  How many times over the years had he found himself in this position?  How many messes had he cleaned up to protect the family?  How much cumulative pain had wrenched at his being?  Though he knew the number was high and the pain great, all of his eldest son’s past transgressions paled in comparison to the current crisis.  No one doubted that, except maybe his clueless first-born son.

…