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Page 41.
Scene 17. Dr. Moriarty Saves Face
 Within twenty-four hours of the discovery that both their Castor and Pollux satellite control modules had been stolen by unknown forces, Global Anaconda's Chief Executive Officer called an all-hands meeting of his corporate board. Damage control was in full swing.
In a 100 story skyscraper overlooking a modern metropolis, members of the Global Anaconda Board of Directors met in emergency session. Framing them in their bench-like auditorium seats were high-level aides and executive secretaries.
The several dozen men and women, all in tasteful business attire, filled a small auditorium under a roof of greenish glass. In the filtered light, while storms raged in the clouds outside, the leaders of the world's second most powerful corporation had gathered to hear their Chairman, Director, and CEO speak.
Dr. James Moriarty was a balding man with brooding eyes and a slight stoop. He preferred conservative colors in his dress—shirts always white, never starched; three piece suit in black or charcoal; dark red or blue or brown tie his only concession to color. He had a wide, almost bulbous forehead, ringed with thinning white hair that had lost all pigmentation. When he talked, he tended to pace with his hands folded behind his back. Sometimes he turned to face his audience, but most of the time he spoke down into his collar mike, while looking down at the floor. If you happened to actually be in his audience, you tended to think he was talking to an invisible crowd on the floor below.
"Something new and dangerous is stirring in the world," said Dr. Moriarty. "I, and men and women like me, have spent my lifetime straightening out the mess left by messy democracy and the fools who ran it. We live in a new, corporate world order, a new and better econarchy, dominated by free-range capitalism. There are those who say that capitalism and free enterprise are polar opposites, which tend to attack each other in the market place, but I differ on that. My point of view is that, yes, capital kills off competition, but the way monopolies achieve their dominance is by wiping out inefficiency. I did not, however, call you here today to lecture about political or economic theory."
Moriarty, they all knew, had his Ph.D. in Economics from the Stanford University. He had published many learned papers in a variety of related fields, and was an unabashed champion of laissez-faire capitalism—no manmade rules or regulations, no interference in the natural order of the markets. Anything goes, as long as the profit margin gets nourished at the expense of all weak, sentimental motives. Let the chips fall where they may, for the greater public good. If the sick and the lame died along the way, that was best for them and best for the greater good of the human race. It was the true way of nature—the glorious rule of the wolf pack, for those like Moriarty and his board members, who were the alpha wolves. It wasn’t about unions or protections. It was about fundamental, unchanging laws of nature. If a low-end wolf fell back, or lost nerve, or was injured, the alpha would turn the entire pack—male and female—against that member. Killed quickly and efficiently, the deceased became food for the greater benefit of the pack. There was no fooling Mother Nature. In consortium theology, lowly workers could not be trusted to handle an excess of freedom. They were not good at making effective moral or financial choices. Given the opportunity to make sound moral or economic choices, most would squander whatever was given to them, and live in lives of debt or negative-wealth sin that led to disease, poverty, and crime. In Dr. Moriarty's view, the new world order of corponations had brought about a new golden age of peace. Now it was being threatened by some dark, as yet unknown force for anarchy and destruction. This must not stand!
"I have asked you to come together for this impromptu meeting to tell you of a new threat in the world, which we and our corporate rivals must learn to master. A few days ago, two key components of Project David were stolen from under our noses. The paramilitary operation that accomplished this astonishing feat. Despite our security measures, it cannot be traced back to any of our corporate rivals. Instead, I announce to you today that Global Anaconda Consortium's internal security company, Delta, has confirmed the existence of this new threat. We know its name, but we know little else about it. It is called Black Umbrella, or BLUM. That is pronounced bloom, like a hideous flower in some grotesque, murky underworld spring time. More like a flowering of pale, deadly mushrooms of evil."
A murmur rumbled through the hall. As Moriarty paced on the sunken, D-shaped floor, the stands above and around him rustled with agitation.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are at war with an unseen enemy. For now, we will keep this news within the four walls of our corporate boardroom secrecy. News must not get out, for fear of panicking lesser corporations or, worse yet, the unwashed masses. A rising monster threatens the new world order in which we pride ourselves. We do not know this Black Umbrella—which seems not to be a corporation in any form we would understand—but Delta tells us BLUM has tentacles around the world. It is not a legitimate cartel or monopoly, registered with any wholly owned, subsidiary territorial legal system such as the world has become used to. BLUM wields economic and military power like a growing corponation—and yet it is not an organization like ours at all. If anything, it is the anti-consortium. It has no respect for either national or corporate pedigrees. Call it a brokerage. That's what we are dealing with—a very powerful and secretive brokerage." He paused for effect. “It is a global terrorism brokerage.”
Another collective gasp swept around the lecture all. It almost seemed as if the light in the room had grown darker—and in fact, dark rain clouds were roiling around the sky scraper as if to choke it and bring it down.
"Ladies and gentlemen, at its heart, we are dealing with a worldwide terrorism brokerage. If you are a petty criminal in Scotland, a bandit in Sicily, a thug in India, an assassin in Persia, a mafioso in Chicago, a tong leader in Shanghai, a Yakuza in Tokyo…the world is replete with such murderous guilds and recruits for their ranks…then you can buy the services of Black Umbrella.
"You may be an insurrectionist anywhere, from Africa to South America or beyond, in need of a sniper killing. Black Umbrella will cheerfully and impersonally provide you with the expert, top-notch services of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Finnish marksman, or an armorer from Peru, or a Communist from the Philippine jungles. You see what Black Umbrella has already done, under our noses, before we had a clue anything was going on? They have united all of the world's assassins, revolutionaries, separatists, and other disaffected souls into one massive killing and destroying machine.
"Where we value corporate and legal rule of law, they favor chaos, democracy, and murder. Under their notion of statehood, the mobs in the street can voice their opinions and sway their leaders. They must be stopped at all costs.”
The entire corporate board rose in unison and clapped avidly. Many cheered for Dr. Moriarty, while others praised his leadership.
“It is a setback, but not a defeat,” Moriarty told the board of directors who had elected him, and who could remove him just as swiftly. If there was desperation in his voice, he hid it well.
“Project Capricorn is in orbit, and performing normally,” Moriarty told them. “We have only the matter of the control systems on earth to worry about—Castor and Pollux. We will recover Castor and Pollux somehow, once we can triangulate where they have been taken—but in the meantime, we must focus on damage control.”
What Moriarty did not know was that Anaconda now only had nominal control of the orbiter.
With the Castor and Pollux control units in hand, Dr. Night could at any moment seize stealthy control of the orbiting Capricorn death delivery vehicle—a kind of space shuttle with a dozen or more OST ‘bullets’ shaped like small submarines as reentry vehicles.
The net was almost complete, weaving tightly around its victims, and Capricorn was a tender victim indeed, exposing its fair neck for the victor to take. The end game already had BLUM written all over it.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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