Chapter 67. Ransom
The White House, 8:00 p.m. EST, three days after the border lockdown.
Sheila Simms, Director of Homeland Security, walked briskly down the hall to the Situation Room, where President Anna Scall and other high-ranking officials were waiting.
“Madame President, we have had contact from the terrorists.” Simms took out a disk.
“How did you get the disk?” asked the President. “Was it mailed to the White House?”
Simms looked grim. “It’s on You Tube, Madame President. It already has over 500,000 hits and that is growing by the minute. This thing will be everywhere in the next hour. They obviously timed it so that it would get on the nightly news.” Simms put the disk in a laptop, and the image played on the gigantic flat screens in the Situation Room.
The video showed two good looking black-haired men wearing white lab coats, both seated at a table. Behind the men was a large flat screen television on a metal stand of some kind, and behind that was a black sheet, which blocked the rest of the background.
“Good evening, Madame President. A new airborne strain of the Ebola Virus is now in America, The Netherlands, and Brazil, and within the next few days, tens of millions of Americans, Dutch, and Brazilians will be infected and die, unless you meet our demands and take immediate action.
“My adopted name is Matteo Graciano, but my birth name is Gegic Gurdic. I am the son of Yuriy and Liliya Gurdic. I was born in Makarska, Croatia with my two brothers, Rkatsiteli and Debit, and my little sister Marastina. This is my twin brother Rkatsiteli.” The other brother nodded.
“You are probably asking yourselves, ‘Why are they doing this?’ And the answer, Madame President, is justice—justice for my father, my mother, and my sister—who died cruel and horrific deaths due to the apathy of the Americans, the cruelty of the Dutch, and the savagery of the Serbs. Most Americans know practically nothing about the Bosnian Conflict, but tonight, Americans will get an important history lesson, and they will not forget now what happened in the 1990s in Bosnia-Herzegovenia.”
Graciano then recounted the history of the Bosnian conflict, and his family’s history, from the tiny village in Makarska, to Sarajevo, and finally to the camps near Srebrenica.
“When your President Clinton was running for office in 1992, he criticized President Bush for not intervening in Bosnia. Yet, when Clinton became President in January 1993, he did virtually nothing for over two years. Despite well-publicized photographs and news journal articles showing the atrocities in Bosnia, very similar to the Nazi concentration camps, Clinton was slow to act. By the time he intervened in late 1995, my father was shot to death, my mother was raped, and my baby sister was bludgeoned by Serb soldiers. And while we were waiting for help from the Americans, we were supposedly protected by the U.N. peace-keepers from The Netherlands. Peace keepers? What a joke. The Dutch were as bad as the Serbs, standing by and laughing when our people were brutally murdered, shot, or raped; when thousands were buried in mass graves; when men and boys were taken out behind a barn and shot by firing squads, and when even babies were not safe from murderers and cutthroats. And so we condemn the Americans. We condemn President Clinton. We condemn the Dutch. And that is why we focused out attack at a soccer game between the Americans and the Dutch. And that is why your people will suffer from this virus, in the same way our family suffered at the hands of a virus which destroyed everything we had.” Graciano began tearing up, thinking of his family. He wiped his eyes and continued.
“This virus has a cure. From the cave bat which was the host for this Mackinac Ebola Virus, we have created a cure. There are thousands and thousands of syringes sitting in two warehouses somewhere in the world which can cure every man, woman and child affected by this virus. And we will give you the locations of these warehouses if you comply with our demands within 72 hours.”
Dominic Chastain then pulled out a list.
“Madame President, here is our first demand. This is a list of fifty-two Serbian and Dutch war criminals that we know of who are still alive today. We will provide those names to the FBI via a secure e-mail which we will provide. The top two names on the list are individuals directly responsible for the death of my father. Each of these men must be killed, and video confirmation of those killings must be sent to a secure website which we will provide. Our second demand is for President Bill Clinton to make a public apology, on YouTube, in which he apologizes to the victims of Bosnian genocide, and in which he takes full responsibility for the American delay in getting involved in the Bosnian conflict. Third, we want $25 billion wired to an account which we will send to you via a secured e-mail. This amount is not for us, but for an unnamed party who has assisted us with this Plan. The quicker you act, the greater chance Americans, Dutch, Brazilians, and other infected persons will be cured of the virus. If you fail to act within 72 hours, we will not provide the location of the cure, and tens of millions of your citizens will die. When our demands have been met, and justice has been achieved, we will surrender ourselves to the authorities for prosecution. Good night.”
President Scall was horrified.
“Has Bill Clinton seen this yet?” asked the President.
“Yes, Madame President,” said Simms. “He was in D.C. for a fundraiser for his wife. He and Hillary are on their way over to the White House as we speak. And we have added extra security for Chelsea.”
“Rudy, what do we have on these two terrorists?” asked the President.
Rudy Montana, Director of the FBI, addressed the President:
“Madame President. We know that both of the terrorists are working with Julio Cezanne, a Mexican drug dealer, and Davy Branco, his cousin. Cezanne is probably the unidentified person who wants to obtain the $25 billion they just mentioned. We know they recently left Brazilian airspace in a private jet. We know they are somewhere in the Caribbean, but we have not locked down a location yet. We are tracing the You Tube post now. You heard them explain their upbringing. Victims of the Bosnian conflict, they lost their father, mother, and sister, who were all killed in a concentration camp. They managed to escape, along with their older brother, and were placed with a Tennessee adoption agency. From there, Gegig Gurdic, also known as Matteo Graciano, was placed with a family in St. Louis. The adopted mother is a lawyer; adopted father is a doctor. Neither knew any of this, and they seem as surprised as anyone else. The other twin, Rkatsiteli Gurdic, known as Dominic Chastain, was adopted by a family in Cleveland. They relocated to Germany, and he went to work at Germany’s Level 4 Biohazard Lab. Again, the German parents knew nothing about the terrorism. We know of no other accomplices. It looks like Graciano obtained the virus in Tanzania, shipped it to Mexico, and then he and his brother cooked up the virus somewhere near Guadalajara. Cezanne provided security and all the testing labs. Presumably, this is where they also manufactured the cure, if you can believe them. The virus was distributed in water sprayers at the soccer game in Natal.”
“They made it sound like they were sure the virus was out in America. I thought we had that all locked down,” said the President.
“There were 112 Americans who made it through before the border lockdown. 109 of those are in quarantine and did not infect anyone else. There is one gentleman in Michigan…” An aide tapped the FBI Director on the wrist and whispered to him. “Excuse me, not Michigan, Minnesota. There is one gentleman in Minnesota who we missed by about an hour. He went to parts unknown with three of his fishing buddies to go fishing. The wife knows he is somewhere in Minnesota, but they do not have cell phones, and they have not used their credit cards. We hope to grab him tomorrow possibly. There are two other women from New Jersey who were scheduled for FBI pickup, when a group of gangsters murdered our team, and, posing as FBI operatives, kidnapped the two women. We do not know who kidnapped them, but it is important to note that, according to the DEA, Cezanne has a drug distribution network in New Jersey. Perhaps he instructed his men to kidnap these two women in order to spread the virus. We have a dragnet set up all over New Jersey to try and find these women, and we hope to have results for you soon. Other than that, everyone is accounted for.”
“It seems weird to me that they would act so cocky about the virus getting out, don’t you think? Are they bluffing?” asked the President. Montana nodded.
“Unless they are relying on the New Jersey women, it would seem to me, Madame President, that they are bluffing,” said Montana. “It is highly doubtful that they would know about the gentleman in Minnesota. Now it is definitely true that we are going to have problems in Brazil, and probably problems in The Netherlands. But I believe we are safe in America.”
“Has anyone gone through this list of supposed war criminals, Sheila?”
“Not yet, Madame President, but I have several teams working on it now. And we have Hank Armstrong from the CIA helping as well. We hope to have dossiers of each person on that list to you within 24 hours.”
“He only gave us 72 hours, so kick some people in the rear down there. We need this ASAP.”
The Secretary of Defense spoke next. “Madame President, have you given any thought as to whether you are going to sanction the elimination of these fifty-two targets? I know we do not make deals with terrorists, but if millions of American lives are at stake, I wouldn’t lose a lot of sleep over fifty dead Serbs.”
The President’s Chief of Staff was disgusted. “They are not targets, they are people, for crying out loud. The President is not going to sanction the murder of fifty-two innocent people.”
The President looked at her Chief of Staff, giving her the subtle look to be quiet. The President was definitely considering the elimination of those fifty-two people.
Hank Armstrong, the Director of the CIA, had an idea. “Madame President, if worse comes to worst, I could reach out to some of our friends in Hollywood. If we needed to simulate a death, without actually doing it, that might be an option. Graciano only said we had to post the video of the killings to a website. If we did it expertly enough, he might not ever know. That could buy us time to find him.” The President liked that idea and told Armstrong to look into it.
“What about President Clinton?” asked Simms.
“Have him come straight to the West Wing as soon as he hits the grounds. We need to talk. In the meantime, fellas, find these guys. Okay?”
The meeting with the President was adjourned. As she left the room, Sheila Simms wondered if her boss was really going to ask Bill Clinton to apologize on You Tube.