~ ~ ~
"Damn it, damn it all! Why the bloody hell was Mrs. Levin killed? Because they were childless, by killing her we've lost the only possible leverage that we had to use against him."
"I'm unclear as to the specifics. It is my understanding that getting both her and Dr. Levin out of the resort, then safely here, was a field decision considered too risky. Given their age and declining health, combined with the rainy conditions that prevailed last night, he was the priority, while she was considered a liability to be dealt with. We couldn't wait another night as they were leaving early the next morning."
The only other person in the room beside Miriam and Levin was the MI6 medical doctor in charge of monitoring vitals. It was he who answered her question, though he wasn't sure if it was rhetorical or actually directed at him.
He was taken aback by the fact that she was having this conversation with him, loudly, in the presence of the hostage. "This person should never have been cleared for field work, let alone hostage interrogation!" He thought to himself.
Angrily, Miriam made her way to the Communications Room. She barked out, "Recall the helicopter, I'm returning."
"Yes Agent Northup. What about Dr. Levin?"
"He's of no use to us. Terminate him. Make it quick and painless. I don't want him to suffer."
"Ma'am?"
"You heard me. Who was the agent in charge when Mrs. Levin was killed?"
"That would be Agent Hampton. I believe you met him when you came on board."
"Have that bloody fool dump Levin's body in the ocean once you're at least 200 kilometers of landfall. Nothing is to be traced back to this ship."
"Don't you think that's a bit extreme? There surely must be a better approach to all of this."
"No, it is not too extreme. He will never talk, especially given the fact that his wife was murdered. Bloody fools. If anybody, especially the Israelis, intercept us while Levin is being held captive in the ship everything is over. We can't extract any information from him, and keeping him here makes us far too vulnerable. I don't think I need to spell out to you the greater risk of letting him live and exposing all of us. He knows who I am. It wouldn't be difficult for authorities to put the pieces of this puzzle together, tracing me back to England."
As the helicopter transported her back to the Rio airport, Agent Northup filed her report with Six headquarters in London. A footnote in that report suggested that Hampton be dismissed from service with the intelligence agency. She muttered silently to herself that he hopefully would never find employment outside a fast food joint.
She looked forward to getting back to scientific work. Much as she resented the faux Jewish state's supreme arrogance in keeping such an astonishing breakthrough to themselves, she really enjoyed her work with The Project.
Her initial assignment in Israel, with its humble beginnings as a research assistant in a nano biotech company founded by Dr. Aharon Shmu'el, proved to be an unexpected and incredible break for England. When he invited her to become a part of his facility within The Project, it opened the door into a venture that both the CIA and Six suspected Israeli advancements, but were unable to breach.
The British intelligence agency kept knowledge of the facilities, with their ultimate purpose, from the annoyingly prying eyes of the CIA and other countries with which they were partners in the "War on Terror." At least partners on paper anyway.
GCHQ, as well as the British Prime Minister, had been astounded at the revelatory flow of information coming from their spy, and what the State of Israel had accomplished. If England could harness this power, she could position herself to be the world superpower.
At a time when petroleum reserves were diminishing, and oil producing countries in Venezuela and the Middle East were dealing poorly with internal and external crisis situations, it was critical that England manipulate energy output and military supremacy to benefit the United Kingdom - perhaps again become the global empire that it once was.
During the flight back to Europe, Miriam found herself looking forward to seeing her friends at her facility. They had been through a lot together, forming a close camaraderie which transcended nationality and political views. She wondered how they'd react if they were to learn that she had ordered the idolized Dr. Levin killed and consigned to a watery grave. She also wondered how MI6 planned to get the information they needed to complete their own Project now that Levin was, quite literally, a dead end.
Table of Contents
2. Threat Assessment
“. . . so shalt thou put away the evil from the midst of thee." - Holy Bible, Deuteronomy 13:6
Phase One: Who Controls Time
Jerusalem, Office of the Prime Minister, State of Israel
The Israeli newspaper, Ma'ariv, posted a report regarding the American President's televised broadcast to his nation about the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons on its own population; a desperate bid to thwart the rebel overthrow of the government. What had started as a localized rebellion against the government grew into a groundswell, engulfing the entire nation, while heightening the alert level of the region.
The Israeli government had, more than once, sent jets to bomb chemical weapons destined for transfer to terror groups such as the Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and the Hamas in Palestinian territories.
The civil war in Syria, one of the two northern border neighbors of Israel, was a problem that required daily scrutiny.
Isser Shiloah, the chief of the Israeli foreign security service, the Mossad, was more acutely aware than most of his fellow countrymen of the catastrophic outcome if Syrian chemical weapons fell into the hands of any of Israel's sworn enemies - especially organizations such as the Hamas and the Hezbollah, not to mention a host of other organizations and even nations whose sole, openly stated, goal was to destroy the small Jewish nation - by any means necessary.
Though Syria wasn't an overall superpower such as the United States and China, or even a diminishing semi-superpower like Russia, they were a globally acknowledged, super chemical weapons power.
Every imaginable chemical weapon that could be used for the purpose of fixed and mobile delivery methods, assuring maximum casualties, was available in Syria. These weapons were not merely in the research and development stage, but already weaponized and loaded in warheads, as well as a wide variety of other deployment systems.
That the Syrian leadership and military had no compunctions about using chemical weapons such as Sarin Gas to kill hundreds of their own people - not discriminating between rebels, women, and children - was an indicator as to how easily they would rain chemical hell down on the heads of the Israeli population. It's unlikely the Syrian leadership would have any qualms about killing the Palestinian populations, as long as they could guarantee bragging rights of the elimination of the Jewish state.
Isser lived through the near annihilation of the entire planet not long ago, even as this current crisis was escalating. Remembering the timeline where Israel was totally decimated, while other countries launched nuclear weapons in a futile attempt to save themselves from the biological extermination, he considered their current reality.
What his country currently faced wasn't very different in some respects, though conversely vastly different in others. In the previous timeline, they only had to see to it that two terrorists, acting on their own, were never born in order to put an end to the disaster that had been so narrowly averted by time manipulation. The end result being the changing of history itself, which allowed the tiny Jewish nation yet another day of survival.
The potential ripple effects of changing the histories of two families' pasts were considerable, yet the possibility of negative effects versus the destruction of the State of Israel made it an acceptable risk, one that proved to be the correct course of action.
In the current situation, for Israel to alter space-time by changing the entire history and course of another nation; well, that invited any
number of disasters in the here-and-now which could not be foreseen by any computer model running the most sophisticated of predictive algorithms.
His undercover agents in Damascus, one a high-ranking official in the Syrian government, warned that the leader of the nation and his top military advisors were considering more than simply selling off their chemical arsenal in an effort to diffuse tensions with the United States.
In the wake of the Russian leader's call to have United Nations inspectors come in to dismantle the weapons, the military and civil leaders felt it best to allow this to happen, avoiding air strikes by the Americans while appeasing their Russian benefactors at the same time.
Duplicity, however; was to reign supreme in this plan. They would indeed open their chemical plants, their storage facilities, and their military compounds to United Nations inspectors. Even as the investigators were filing glowing reports with United Nations about how open and transparent the Syrian government was with regard to their weapons, a significant amount of chemical weapons, especially nerve agents, were to be transported to remote areas of the country, as well as to a neighboring nation that was more than friendly to their cause.
These transports were to be carried out in small quantities, using civilian vehicles so as not to arouse suspicions of analysts reviewing feeds from satellite, drone, human, or other forms of surveillance.
The report from the undercover agent in Damascus included the detail that the primary method of transport would involve Red Crescent ambulances; the equivalent of Red Cross and the Israeli Red Magen David emergency vehicles.
As well as ambulances, transports would heavily rely upon the favored method; children's school buses. Where the buses were concerned, they would only convey the deadly chemicals while unsuspecting school children were on the buses, with the expectation of avoiding any air strike should their plan be uncovered.
"Director Shiloah, everyone has arrived and is about to assemble, if you'll please follow me."