Cyclops Conspiracy: An Adam Weldon Thriller Read online

  So, all the while wondering if it would be the last thing he ever did, he moved forward and back, forward and back, each time rotating a little more counterclockwise. At last, Dream Voyager completed a 180° fairway turn. Then, willing his heartbeat to return to normal, he accelerated through Kalimaki’s labyrinth of fairways toward the seawall exit and out onto the Saronic Gulf.

  “Thank you, Captain,” Sophia said with a broad smile. “You handled that beautifully.”

  Adam grinned and stood a little taller.

  “Who the hell was that back there?” Tripnee demanded, looking at Sophia. “Until you came aboard, everything was fine.”

  “I wish I knew,” Sophia answered. “Things here are tense, explosive. I’ll fill you in. But right now, I need to go below.”

  The wind was dead calm, the temperature still around 90ºF, and the water a brilliant, cobalt blue. Motoring eastward at 12 knots, Adam anticipated making Sounion Bay, their intended overnight anchorage, before dark. This would put them in position to make Finikas Harbor on Syros early the next day. As Athens fell away behind them, even as they kept a wary eye out for threats, Adam and Tripnee marveled again at the ever-amazing sight of the receding Parthenon glowing atop the Acropolis high above the city.

  To welcome Sophia aboard and give her a feel for the ship, Adam invited her, when she came back on deck, to take the wheel. “Just maintain our current speed and heading. All of us will keep a lookout for other boats.”

  As he gave her the helm, he practiced the useful naval ritual of saying, “Hands off,” and was pleased when she knew to reply, “Hands on.”

  As Sophia took the wheel, she looked around and sighted over the bow into the distance, seeming to fix their course in her mind.

  Meanwhile, Tripnee disappeared below and after a while returned with her prized five-foot-long Barrett M82 sniper rifle. The three of them settled in. Adam got out gel-coat materials and patched the Uzi bullet holes in the cabin bulkhead. Tripnee sat at the cockpit table breaking down, cleaning, and resembling her hefty, lethal, matt-black weapon. And Sophia stood at the wheel doing occasional 360º scans but mostly peering forward at the horizon.

  After a while, the Interpol agent said, “So, the situation here in Greece. First some background.”

  Adam glanced her way and listened up. Tripnee rolled her eyes and remained focused on her M82.

  Sophia said, “Greece, which is orthodox Christian, was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. The empire was Islamic. Greece fought for and won its independence from the empire in eighteen twenty-one, and ever since, the Greeks have exacted systematic revenge against Muslims because they were so pissed at the Ottoman rule.”

  Tripnee’s expression hardened as she hefted her newly reassembled rifle and sighted through its telescopic scope at a point on the Greek coastline a mile or so away, a distance well within the gun’s range.

  “Muslims,” Sophia continued, “have lived in Greece since before the fourteenth century, but are under tremendous threat. They feel Greek policies shame them and destroy their identity.”

  “Now wait one minute,” Tripnee interrupted as she turned, rifle in hand, toward Sophia. “Ottoman rule was no picnic. The Ottoman Turks fined non-Muslims and tried to stuff Islam down Greek throats. The Greeks fought long and hard for their independence, and once they gained their freedom they had every right to assert and reclaim their own culture and their own religion: Orthodox Christianity.”

  Fire sparked in Sophia’s eyes. “The Greeks limit the building of mosques—forcing Muslims to pray in unmarked, makeshift, degrading places, such as converted underground garages. They bulldoze Muslim graves. They restrict the way Muslims can educate their kids. They fine Muslim leaders, the muftis and imams. They even stripped sixty thousand Muslims of their Greek citizenship—an action criticized by the European Human Rights Commission.”

  Tripnee leapt up. With her feet spread wide on the cockpit bench and her gnarly Barrett M82 at port arms, she towered over Sophia. “Greece has to hold the line against millions and millions of restless Muslims next door in Turkey and just across the water in the Middle East and Africa. If Greeks don’t defend their culture—which has contributed so much to the world—it’ll get swallowed.”

  Sophia Katopodis maintained outward calm, but her long, lithe body vibrated with tension as she replied: “Greece treats Muslims like second-class citizens. Muslims in Greece can be both Muslim and loyal Greeks at the same time. Most want nothing more than to peacefully practice their religion.”

  Adam made a palms-down calming gesture, and said, “How about we agree to disagree?”

  It was sweltering hot and Sophia was still fully dressed in a long-sleeved shirt, long pants, and a light, stylish jacket. She seemed to notice for the first time that Tripnee and Adam had changed into laid-back sailor attire: Tripnee wore shorts and halter top and Adam his well-worn shorts and t-shirt. Excusing herself, and returning the helm to Adam, she went below.

  After a while, she returned in a two-piece aquamarine pareo wrap that made the blue-green of her eyes pop. She twirled on her tiptoes at the top of the companionway. The spin seemed oddly girlish, even vulnerable, for this serious woman.

  Tripnee’s eyes narrowed at the sight. But for Adam the effect was mesmerizing. He had to look away.

  Sophia said, “The problem is that a small group of Muslims have turned to fanatical jihad and linked up with ISIS, al Qaeda, and Iran. Spread through the Greek islands, these terrorists are constantly evolving and adapting. Doing everything they can to mess with, corrupt, disrupt, and destroy life in Greece and the West. What’s weird is that some of them have developed a taste for a wild, over-the-top, Western lifestyle: yachting, partying, carousing, and snorting drugs. Having their seventy-two virgins right here in this life. To finance themselves—and to wreak havoc—they traffic in antiquities, drugs, humans.”

  “You know for a fact they have suitcase nukes?” Adam asked.

  “Thirteen,” Sophia said. “In shielded cases that block radiation, making normal Geiger counters useless.”

  “Locations?”

  “Strung out across the west Aegean,” Sophia said. “A slew of terrorist sailboats getting ready to launch a full-blown, hell-on-earth, jihad holocaust.”

  * * *

  They dropped anchor in Sounion Bay as, just to their east, the setting sun’s last rays lit the majestic Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion. Once the anchor was set, first Adam, then Sophia, then Tripnee hit the water, which was a comfortable 77ºF. After swimming several laps around the boat, Adam, with Tripnee close behind, climbed back aboard, and headed down to the galley to prepare dinner.

  Up in the warm night air in the cockpit, the two served dinner: a feast of spaghetti, meatballs, a huge Greek salad and a smooth red wine. Sophia, who had been puttering in her forward cabin, appeared in her same pareo. Now, however, she also wore glasses and an unusual watch on her left wrist.

  “A toast,” Adam said, “to this spectacular setting.”

  They lifted their glasses.

  As the trio ate, a small drone like the one in Athens circled the cockpit three times, then darted away.

  Tripnee said to Sophia, “Okay, we get it, you’re a drone pilot.”

  “Not just a drone pilot,” Sophia said. “A drone falconer. Not just one drone at a time, drone swarms.”

  Tripnee looked nonplused, while Adam nodded approvingly.

  “Watch this,” Sophia said as she moved her hands through the air as though operating an invisible control board. Four drones flew out of the balmy night in single file, circled the cockpit, then deftly landed one-by-one on the ship’s rear deck.

  “Very impressive,” Adam said. “How’d you do that?”

  “AR, augmented reality. These glasses and this wrist device are a set that allow me to fly an entire drone swarm. While you two do the old-fashioned, actual, physical stuff, my drones, with facial recognition software and more, can identify people and monitor everything they
do, including voice and electronic communications.”

  “Sounds like science fiction,” Adam said.

  “Oh, it’s real all right,” Sophia said. “Lots of intelligence agencies and corporations and NGOs are using this same stuff.”

  Tripnee rolled her eyes, looking unimpressed.

  “Think about it,” Adam said to Tripnee. “If these devices work, first, Sophia can help us identify people in this jamaat conspiracy. Then her drone eavesdropping could give us a crucial edge, almost like reading minds.”

  Tripnee nodded slowly, her lips pressed into a straight line.

  “Drone falconer,” Adam said, turning back to Sophia. “Where did you come up with that?”

  Tripnee said, “There was a time when royal households had flocks of trained hunting falcons. The person who tended and controlled them was called the falconer.”

  Sophia said, “That’s right.”

  “How’d you become so adept with drones?” Adam asked.

  “By spending too much time with ’em.”

  “Too much time?”

  “Yeah, and maybe not enough with people.”

  Chapter 4

  Cyclops: My Eye

  M y eye. My eye. My missing eye.

  I burn like it was yesterday, like it was five minutes ago. But it was long ago.

  Poor Papa. He suffered so much. More than me. He told me so. The bomb had to be built. It had to be. Allah willed it.

  The kids in Hamburg, then the Greeks on Syros, recoiled from the dark hole in my face, from me. All except Papa. My dear, wonderful papa, who loved me so much. My papa, my Muhammad, may peace and blessings be upon him as he walks and lives.

  My papa, my universe, my everything. And I his. He was my shelter, my refuge, and even back then, so long ago, with me so small, I learned to be the same for him.

  His pain, his humiliation. He came to Germany as a penniless migrant. Taught himself German and studied computers. Became a brilliant computer scientist. And, praise Allah, he’s so charismatic, with incredible, wonderful powers over people. And with such light skin.

  Still, the humiliation. Small of stature and Muslim. They shunned him, passed him over. Even when he found a position, he was the last to get promoted and the first to be let go. A slow death by a thousand cuts—to the skin, to the heart, to the eyes.

  And then the bomb. I was so small and so proud that he let me help him build it. Who could have known that it would explode and put out my eye! But poor Papa. He cried and cried and screamed because it wasn’t possible to take me to the hospital. After all, we had to keep the bomb secret.

  The ugly hole in my face—and the unending pain! At first it was so horrible. But what a gift. A gift from Allah. My wound makes me strong. I learned. I understand. Life is pain. Life is sacrifice and submission. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  And then back to Papa’s family home on Syros where life only got harder—at the hands of the Orthodox Christian Greeks.

  Ah, Mama. How she hated life on Syros! A nineteen-year-old rebel beauty angry at her wealthy, conservative father when she met Papa. But deep down, a German do-gooder Christian who took pity on Papa and me. Out of that pity that little Ramzi was conceived. How we hated her pity.

  Papa taught me and Ramzi tech, and it was me who loved it, not so much Ramzi. I am Papa’s tech genius. Back then Papa and Mama fought… and fought and fought. Mama was so unhappy. And so was Papa.

  But we will get even. Papa, me, my brother Ramzi, our people, Allah. We will be avenged and we will triumph. The infidels will pay. So, so, so dearly. Allah willing, peace and blessings be upon him.

  Chapter 5

  Finikas Harbor

  E arly the next morning, Dream Voyager weighed anchor and slid past the Temple of Poseidon high on Cape Sounion. Poseidon, the god of the sea and Zeus’ brother, was to the ancient Greeks an awe-inspiring and capricious god who at times smashed their long, narrow oar- and sail-powered triremes on the rocks, at times swallowed them whole, and at times provided wonderful smooth sailing. This massive temple, perched on this craggy cape at the southeast corner of continental Europe, built in 444 BC at great sacrifice, no doubt represented a plaintive appeal for that third outcome, the smooth sailing.

  For Adam, Tripnee, and Sophia, as they jumped off from mainland Greece and Europe into the Aegean, heading southeast into the fabled Cyclades Islands, the heart of ancient maritime Greece, the cradle of Western civilization, the way was smooth. They glided over a windless and glassy translucent-blue Aegean, through Stenon Kithnou, the strait between the islands of Kea and Kithnos.

  The mainland behind them and these islands, with their sparse vegetation and stark grandeur, bore a striking similarity to the lower reaches of California’s semi-arid, ruggedly beautiful Kern River Valley. Herodotus himself, Adam reflected, laughing, would have noted the similarity had he been more widely traveled.

  They passed a fleet of kaikis, small rough-hewn wooden fishing boats, near the northern end of Kithnos. Each had a line or two in the water, but none seemed to be catching much. Adam was reminded that the whole Mediterranean, in a sad downward spiral caused by centuries of over-fishing, had long produced ever diminishing catches of smaller and smaller fish.

  As they motored along over the glassy water, Adam figured this was as good a time as any to get better acquainted with their enigmatic new team member and her drones. He turned the helm over to Tripnee and as he headed down to Sophia’s cabin, Tripnee gave him a dagger look that could kill. Women.

  Now in a skin-tight yoga outfit, Sophia sat on the floor of her cabin doing stretches and yoga poses. She welcomed Adam in, lighting up with a big smile. Stacks upon stacks of drones and high-tech spyware were piled high against every wall of her stateroom.

  Adam surveyed the room. “Look at all this gear.”

  “Yes. Some very cool stuff.”

  Intrigued, Adam said, “Yeah? Show me.”

  Rising from the floor, Sophia slipped a pair of drone control glasses onto his head and a wrist device onto his left arm, and patiently explained their use. As she resumed doing yoga postures, he started practicing with an apparently indestructible little rubber drone the size of a thimble. He crashed it over and over at first. But gradually he got the hang of it enough to fly the tiny device back and forth from one end of the cabin to the other.

  “Amazing, these glasses. I’m literally looking out through the drone’s camera eyes.”

  Still down on the floor, Sophia hiked a leg straight up in a gymnast’s stretch. “Each drone is a GPS tracking device. You can see what they see, listen, and also track ’em.”

  “Nice. But what about wind? Can these tiny things fly in strong winds?”

  “Believe me, they are amazing. This is the latest generation of UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicles. They can fly in just about any weather they’re so aerodynamic and powerful.”

  “Can you really control an entire swarm at once?”

  Lowering one leg and raising the other, she cracked a sheepish smile. “Okay, last night I got carried away and was boasting a little. The full answer to that is slightly complicated: They mimic flocks of birds or schools of fish with collision avoidance sensors and bio-mimicry software, so I really can pilot any number of drones. But in tight spaces, it’s usually best to fly just one at a time.”

  Sophia lowered her leg, leaned back on the cabin floor, and rose up in a deep back bend and with hands and feet on the deck, she walked fingers toward her toes until her lithe body was in an impossible upside down U-shape.

  With pelvis and stupendous chest jutting skyward, and blond hair cascading to the floor, she said, “An exception is when you entrain them. In that case, I pilot the first drone and the others follow one-by-one. And I can position any number of drones in multiple locations to track and spy on boats, people, you name it.”

  “When you’re flying near people, how do you avoid being seen?”

  “That’s where years of practice come in.”

 
“I’m impressed.” He gestured toward the stacks of drones lining the cabin. “I look forward to seeing these little choppers in action.”

  Sophia came out of her pose. Her posture was amazing, and her aquamarine eyes so hypnotizing he again had to look away.

  * * *

  Tripnee saw the southwestern point of Syros in the distance a little before noon. They steamed into Finikas, a picturesque bay lined with classic Greek whitewashed, blue-trimmed houses, about half an hour later, just as a light wind picked up, and all three were on deck.

  Adam performed a Med-mooring by turning Dream Voyager stern-to a stone quay, dropping anchor, and backing into a gap in a row of motley boats. Adam and Tripnee extended the power gangplank from the stern to the quay, plugged in the electric cord, topped off water tanks, and squared away the boat.

  Meanwhile, Sophia went below. Soon, nearly invisible drones the size of bumble bees shot up from the open hatch over her cabin.

  As Adam and Tripnee set off to explore the place, she slipped her arm through his. Unlike the vast fleet of gleaming, high-end yachts at Kalimaki, the boats here were mostly smaller and humbler. Among a sprinkling of luxury yachts were scores of lateen-rigged dhows, small kaiki fishing boats, and trehantiris. Double-ended with sharp bow and stern, and known as the donkeys of the sea, trehantiris were slow, but good in rough weather.

  As they walked the quays of Finikas, Adam and Tripnee stopped to admire a variety of vessels and briefly chat up the people onboard. One powerboat that caught their attention was a magnificent, eighty-foot karavoskara. Traditional Greek deep-sea trading vessels, karavoskaras had the graceful, sweeping lines of the ancient, fabled two- and three-masted caravels that once plied the Mediterranean and far beyond.