fortunate enough to be part of Sigma, perished. But the real motivation
was their larger vision: the West had to be united against a common foe,
or it would soften and succumb. And the hardening of its battlements
had to proceed with discretion and prudence. Too aggressive, too quick
a push could trigger a backlash. Reform had to be tit rated One
division focused on assassinations, removing thoughtful voices from the
left. Another forged–the word is appropriate–the sorts of extremist
groups, the Baader-Meinhofs and Red Brigades, that would be guaranteed
to antagonize any moderate sympathizers.
The Western world, and much of the rest, would respond to its
ministrations, and it would accept the cover stories that accompanied
them. In Italy, we created a network of twenty thousand “civic
committees,” channeling money to the Christian Democrats. The Marshall
Plan itself, like so much else, was hammered out by Sigma–very often
Sigma had devised the very language of the acts that would be submitted
to, and passed by the American Congress! All of the European recovery
programs, economic cooperation agencies, eventually even NATO itself
became organs of Sigma, which remained invisible–because it was
ubiquitous. Wheels within wheels–that was the way we worked. In every
textbook, you find boilerplate about the reconstruction of Europe
accompanied by a photograph of General Marshall. Yet every detail had
been outlined by us, mandated by us, long before.
It never crossed anyone’s mind that the West had fallen under the
administration of a hidden consortium. The notion would be
inconceivable. Because if true, it would mean that over half of the
planet was effectively a subsidiary of a single mega corporation
Sigma.
Over time, older moguls died and were replaced with younger proteges.
Sigma persisted, metamorphosing where necessary. We weren’t ideologues.
We were pragmatists. Sigma merely sought to remodel the whole of the
modern world. To claim nothing less than the ownership of history
itself.
And Sigma succeeded.
Trevor Griffiths squinted through the thermal imaging scope. The heavy
room-darkening drapes were optically opaque, but to the thermal scope,
they were a gauzy scrim. Human figures were hazy green forms, like
blobs of mercury, visibly changing shape as they moved around pillars
and objects of furniture. The seated figure would be his primary
target. The others would move away from the windows, thinking
themselves safe, and he would destroy them through the wall of brick
itself. One bullet would clear the way; the second would destroy his
target. The remaining shells would complete the job.
“If what you’re saying is true …” Ben began.
“Men lie, for the most part, in order to save face. You can see I no
longer have such motivation.” The slit that was Chardin’s mouth pulled
up at the sides, in what was either a grimace or a smile. “I warned you
that you were ill-equipped to understand what I had to say. Perhaps,
though, you may now understand the situation somewhat more clearly than
before. A great many powerful men everywhere–even today–have reason
to keep the truth buried. More so than ever, indeed. For Sigma has,
over the past several years, been moving in a new direction. In part,
it was the result of its own successes. Communism was no longer a
threat–it seemed pointless to continue to pour billions into the
orchestration of civil acts and political forces. Not when there might
be a more efficient way of achieving Sigma’s objectives.”
“Sigma’s objectives,” Ben echoed.
“Which is to say, stability. Tamping down dissent, ‘disappearing’
troublemakers and threats to the industrial state. When Gorbachev
proved troublesome, we arranged his ouster. When regimes in the Pacific
Rim proved balky, we arranged for an abrupt, massive flight of foreign
capital, plunging their economies into a recession. When Mexico’s
leaders proved less than cooperative, we arranged for a change in
government.”
“My God,” Ben said, his mouth dry. “Listen to what you’re saying …”
“Oh yes. A session would be convened, a decision rendered and, shortly
thereafter, executed. We were good at it, frankly–we could play the
governments of the world like a pipe organ. Nor did it hurt that Sigma
came to own an immense portfolio of companies, its ownership stakes
hidden through various private equity firms. But a small inner circle
came to believe that, in a new era, the answer wasn’t merely to tack to
the latest winds, cope with cyclical crises. It was to perpetuate a
stable leadership for the long run. And so in recent years, one very
special project of Sigma’s came to the fore. The prospect of its
success would revolutionize the nature of world control. No longer
would it be about the allocation of funds, the directing of resources.
It became, instead, a simple matter of who the ‘chosen’ would be. And I
fought this.”
“You had a falling out with Sigma,” Ben said. “You became a marked man.
And yet you kept its secrets.”
“I say it again: if ever the truth were to get out, about how many of
the major events of the postwar era were secretly manipulated, scripted
by this cabal, the reaction would be violent. There would be riots in
the streets.”
“Why the sudden escalation of activity you’re describing something that
has unfolded over a period of decades!” Ben said.
“Yes, but we are talking about days,” Chardin replied.
“And you know this?”
“You wonder that a recluse like me should keep abreast of what is going
on? You learn how to read the entrails. You learn, if you want to
survive. And then there is precious little else to occupy a shut-in’s
hours. Years among their company have taught me to detect signals in
what would sound to you like static, mere noise.” He gestured toward
the side of his head. Even through the cowl, Ben could tell that the
man’s external ear was completely absent, the auditory canal simply a
hole within an outgrowth of proud flesh.
“And this explains the sudden flurry of killings?”
“It is as I explained: Sigma has, of late, been undergoing one final
transformation. A change of management, if you will.”
“Which you resisted.”
“Long before most were attuned to it. Sigma always reserved the right
to ‘sanction’ any members whose absolute loyalty came into question. In
my arrogance, I did not realize that my exalted position conferred no
protection. Quite the contrary. But the cleansing, the purging of the
dissidents, only began in earnest in the last several weeks. Those who
were perceived as hostile to the new direction along with those who
worked for us were designated as disloyal. We were called the angeli re
belli rebel angels. If you recall that the original angeli re belli had
revolted against God Almighty himself, you grasp the sense of power and
entitlement of Sigma’s current overlords. Or, shall I say, overlord,
since the consortium has come under the direction of one… redoubtable
individual. In the event, Sigma has run out the clock, so to say.”
“What clock? Explain it to me,” Ben began. So many questions crowded
his mind.
“We’re talking about days,” Chardin repeated. “If that. What fools you
are, coming to me as if knowing the truth could help you anymore. Coming
to me when there is no time! Surely it is already too late.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s why I had assumed you’d been sent, at first. They know that they
are never more vulnerable than shortly before the final ascendancy. As
I’ve told you, now is a time for final mop-ups, for sterilization and
autoclaving, for eliminating any evidence that might point to them.”
“Again, I ask you, why now?”
Chardin took out the atomizer and misted his filmy gray eyes again.
There came a sudden explosion, bone-jarringly loud, which propelled
Chardin, in his chair, backward to the floor. Both Ben and Anna sprang
at once to their feet and saw with terror the two-inch round hole that
instantaneously appeared in the plaster wall opposite, as if somehow put
there by a large-bore drill.
“Move!” Anna screamed.
Where had this projectile it seemed far too big to be a mere gunshot
come from? Ben leaped to one side of the room as Anna jumped to the
other, and then he whirled around to look at the splayed body of the
legendary financier. Forcing himself to survey, once more, the horrible
ravines and crevices of scar tissue, he noticed Chardin’s eyes had
rolled back into his head, leaving only the whites visible.
A wisp of smoke arose from a charred segment of his cowl, and Ben
realized that an immense bullet had passed through Chardin’s skull. The
faceless man the man whose will to survive had enabled him to endure
years of indescribable agony was dead.
What had happened? How? Ben knew only that if they didn’t seek cover
immediately they would be killed next. But where could they move, how
could they escape an assault when they didn’t know where it came from?
He saw Anna race to the far side of the room, then swiftly lower herself