Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves (26 page)

‘No shit . . .’

‘So I looked up his record,’ Retter said. ‘In addition to all that other stuff, Calderon has spent the bulk of his career in the Agency’s Psychological Warfare division. He’s an expert in, and I quote from his file: “the retrieval of mission-critical information from unwilling enemy combatants through unrestrained psychological interrogation”.’

‘Torture,’ Dave said.

‘
Psychological
torture. For the last twenty-odd years, Marius Calderon has been the CIA’s foremost expert in psy-ops and non-invasive torture, and these days non-invasive torture is back in fashion. Calderon’s methods are standard practice at Gitmo and other rendition sites.

‘His theory is that you can get a man to
do
anything or
reveal
anything by ruthlessly attacking his mind.

‘It’s said that in Afghanistan in 2005, he “turned” three captured Taliban troops using subliminal methods—he stapled their eyes open and bombarded them for six days straight with videos of violence, sadism, live amputations and bestiality, while beating them relentlessly and overwhelming them with loud music and the cries of other people being tortured. Those Taliban troops were then released and sent back to their villages, where they became ticking psychological time bombs, ready to explode when Calderon gave the word. After the CIA broadcast a certain radio message, all three of them went on shooting rampages in their home villages, killing over thirty people before turning their guns on themselves.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Back in the early 1980s, Calderon was the wunderkind of the CIA, the boy genius. In 1983, at the age of 27, he conceived and coordinated the little-known
Able Archer 83
exercise—a simulation of a NATO nuclear attack on the USSR that involved the participation of
real
heads of state. The Soviets, as Calderon had predicted they would, thought it was real and readied their nuclear arsenal . . . while every American military and intelligence agency observed them closely. For the rest of the 1980s, we knew
all
the Soviets’ moves before they did. Reagan loved it. He gave Calderon the Intelligence Medal for it.

‘Impressed by his work on
Able Archer 83
, the CIA used Calderon for all sorts of geopolitical analyses—Russia, China, Central and South America. But most of all, they used him as a
predictor
, an analyst of enemy intent, a forecaster of how America’s enemies would react in certain scenarios, just like in
Able Archer
.

‘Calderon was such a good reader of people and their motivations, their emotions and their intentions, that he was often able to predict what they would do. For instance, Calderon predicted every one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s internal stratagems, from his rise to General Secretary of the Politburo in 1985 to glasnost and perestroika. Anytime Reagan met Gorbachev, the President was briefed personally by Calderon beforehand. Reagan would say it was like seeing all of Gorbachev’s cards before playing poker with him.’

Retter said, ‘I actually found one old report that Calderon wrote about China back in 1982, with some predictions he made back then.’

Retter still had her briefcase with her, filled with the files and notes she’d been taking to the White House. She opened it, pulled out a printed document and handed it to Dave.

It was titled:

‘Nice title,’ Dave said. ‘Very alarmist.’

Retter said, ‘The Communist Party called China’s economic reforms “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” but we would just call it free-market capitalism with a brutal government. The reforms began in 1978 and were slow to take hold. It wasn’t until the late 1990s and 2000s that China’s economy became the powerhouse we know it to be today. But in 1982, it was still a dump, an agrarian economy with collective farms and useless state-owned industries. Nobody took China seriously back then . . . except Marius Calderon. Read some of the highlighted paragraphs and remember that Calderon wrote them
back in 1982
.’

Dave scanned the document, glancing at the paragraphs Retter had marked with highlighter. They included:

‘Jesus,’ Dave said. ‘This guy foresaw China’s double-digit growth back in 1982.’

‘Read on,’ Retter said.

Dave found the next highlighted passage:

Dave looked up from the document. ‘This guy was good.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ Retter said. ‘He goes on to predict that China will bid for and win the Olympic Games in the first decade of the 21st century and use the Games to showcase China to the world.’

‘Okay. So where is he now?’ Dave asked.

Retter raised her palms. ‘I asked around at both DIA and CIA, but either no-one knows or they aren’t telling. He’s still with the Agency. He did some deep black stuff in its special forces paramilitary unit in 2002—did you know that the Agency owns and operates three Sturgeon-class submarines for clandestine insertions? Then he did some time at US “rendition stations” in Egypt and Turkey from 2003 to 2004. As for where he’s been stationed for the last year or so, and what he’s been doing, no-one’s saying.’

‘You think Calderon is connected with the Army of Thieves?’ Dave asked.

‘He personally trained the twelve Chileans who were sprung from the Valparaiso prison. They know him and they know his methods; they’d be a perfect officer corps for a renegade army. And there’s something else: I mentioned that Calderon worked at the CIA’s rendition stations in Egypt and Turkey—nasty remote compounds where we tortured prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq. But at the rendition centre in Egypt, the CIA helped certain African governments extract information from
their
captured enemies, and one of our customers was the rather unpleasant government of the Sudan that was later brought down.’

Dave said, ‘The second breakout was of a hundred Sudanese soldiers from a UN prison in the Sudan. Wait. Are you saying that this Calderon guy, a CIA agent,
put together
the Army of Thieves? Got the officers from Chile and the infantry from the Sudan?’

‘Yes. I have another theory, too, but you’ll think it’s nuts.’

‘Try me.’

Retter hesitated. ‘I can’t prove it but . . . well . . .’ She took a quick breath. ‘The leader of the Army of Thieves is smart, bold and totally brazen, yet he always covers his face. Why would you do that if you were an anarchist? I think he does it
because he doesn’t
want anyone to recognise him
. He
needs
to keep his identity a secret. I think it’s entirely possible that Marius Calderon, a top CIA agent, is the
leader
of the Army of Thieves.’

‘But why would this Calderon guy want to create a rogue army?’ Dave said.

‘That, Mr Fairfax, is not the question. Calderon is old-school CIA. The real question is: why would
the CIA
want to create a rogue army?’

‘Maybe asking that question is the reason why they just tried to abduct you outside the Pentagon.’

‘Indeed.’ Retter nodded at the screen. ‘So what’s
this
document, then, this one Calderon wrote about Dragon Island in 1984 called “
POSSIBLE LOCATIONS:
Geographical options for Operation ‘Dragonslayer’”? I haven’t seen it.’ She gave Dave a look. ‘I didn’t have the clearance. What’s Operation “Dragonslayer”?’

‘Let’s find out.’ Dave clicked on it and typed in a few very illegal passwords.

A warning screen appeared, declaring: ‘
THE DOCUMENT YOU ARE ABOUT TO OPEN IS LOCATION PROTECTED
.’

‘What’s that mean?’ Retter said.

‘It means, once we open it, this computer and its location will be digitally tagged by the owner of the document. They’ll know we opened it and they’ll know where from. If we want to read this, we have to read it fast and then move. You still game?’

‘I want to know. You?’

‘Hell yeah,’ Dave said. He clicked ‘
OPEN DOCUMENT
’.

A new window opened. Immediately, a blinking timecoded box appeared in the top right corner of the screen, warning: ‘
DOCUMENT OPENING RECORDED. SENDING USER IDENTIFICATION
.’

Dave ignored it. He scanned the document quickly.

It was a PDF of an old typewritten document, date-stamped August 1984 and headed:

It was short, just three pages long.

And in the café of that bookstore in suburban Virginia, with their computer’s digital signature being sent who-knew-where, Dave Fairfax and Marianne Retter read it.

When they were done, they both looked at each other in horror.

‘Oh, fuck . . .’ Dave breathed. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. No wonder the CIA tried to snatch you. We are in so much trouble.’

Dave went to switch off his laptop’s wi-fi link—he could keep the computer, he could just never link it to the Internet again, otherwise they could keep following him from place to place.

But he stopped himself short.

There was one more thing he needed to do.

So he did it: he sent the document he had just read off into cyberspace.

‘Cut the connection, flyboy. We have to go,’ Retter said.

Dave cut it and they bolted from the bookstore.

DRAGON ISLAND 4 APRIL, 1135 HOURS

The Lord of Anarchy—a man known in other circles as Marius Calderon—arrived at the end of the runway, where he was met by Typhon and Big Jesus.

Surrounded by the men of the Army of Thieves, the three of them looked down at the spot where the Antonov had disappeared under the ocean’s surface.

‘Schofield took four of the spheres over the waterfall with him,’ Typhon reported. ‘But before the plane went over the waterfall, three of his people were spotted leaving the plane with a case containing two spheres—they landed on the southern side of the river but one of our Strelas blocked them from reaching the cliffs.’

‘They’re on foot?’

‘They are now, yes.’

‘And they still have the spheres?’

‘So far as we can tell. I just sent Bad Willy and his team across the river in a couple of Strelas to pursue them.’

The Lord of Anarchy gazed at the river: it snaked back up into the mountainous southern half of Dragon. There was a small quarry-mine in there, some dirt roads, but otherwise few places where someone could hide.

‘Hunt them down, kill them, and bring me those spheres,’ he said. ‘We have time but not an endless amount of it.’

‘We also found this,’ Big Jesus said, stepping aside as two of his men threw a limp figure to the ground at the Lord of Anarchy’s feet.