LITMIR.BIZ

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first and second glance—just another among a seemingly endless list of financial services and investment companies. This one is headquartered in Germany, but Bear and his people have uncovered several backdoor ties to international interests. Those including rogue nations like Syria and Iran, countries that definitely do not have the interests of the Western industrialized world at heart.”

      “There has to be more.”

      “There is,” Brognola said. “Purchases of major German interests have gone mysteriously well for the Consortium. You might say they have miraculous corporate luck. If a local politician or businessman stands in the way of an acquisition, he either changes his mind quickly or has a perfectly explainable accident. No less than a dozen deaths, all officially classed as natural causes or freak misadventures, have been linked to chains of events that all ended in successful acquisitions by the Consortium.”

      “So you think they’re muscling their way in, quietly.”

      “And insidiously,” Brognola said. “More problematically, we theorize they have access to a potentially huge pool of foot soldiers, a dangerous group of people who are unpredictable. It’s a group called Eisen-Donner, or ‘Iron Thunder.’”

      “Never heard of it,” Bolan admitted. “Is it a gang?”

      “It’s a German cult, actually,” Brognola said, “and an underground one. The government is less tolerant than some others when it comes to these modern religious groups. You recall the uproar over there regarding that Hollywood actor and his religious ties, the one who wanted to film the World War II movie on site there.”

      “Vaguely,” Bolan said wryly. “I don’t have a lot of time to read the entertainment news.”

      “Iron Thunder is, from all we can uncover, a high-tech death cult. Their adherents use file-sharing technology to stay in touch and spread their nihilist, hedonist, death-to-the-world, free-yourself-from-earthly-pain message. They’ve grown remarkably in just the last two years, leveraging the popularity of worldwide video clip and social networking sites. Their leader, the Jim Jones to this happy little Internet Jonestown, is a man named Helmut Schribner. Schribner calls himself Dumar Eon.”

      “Anything on him?”

      “Not really,” Brognola said. “A few minor investigations for cybercrimes, bank fraud, that kind of thing. Nothing that stuck. One abortive investigation into production of pornography, a local obscenity rap that escalated because he was transmitting the material on the Web. No convictions. Schribner, or ‘Eon,’ is smart, technically savvy and very charismatic. He’s the Pied Piper here. If the online posts are any indication, his followers are devoted, and dangerously so.”

      “That sort of thing usually leads to worse, sooner or later,” Bolan said. “Like the skinhead in California who attacked that interracial couple. The group he said gave him the idea got sued into bankruptcy. This cult see anything like that?”

      “Nothing criminal,” Brognola said. “They’ve skirted the other side of the law a few times, officially, and been the target of at least one lawsuit in the United States because a high-school kid committed suicide after watching a bunch of their video clips. On the whole, though, nothing is traceable to them that would prompt more serious legal intervention.”

      “How are they tied to the Consortium?” Bolan asked.

      “One of the recent ‘accidents’ befell a man named Hermann Gruebner, owner and CEO of something called Arbeit Technopolitik. It’s a small company that makes printed circuit cards that eventually find their way into military equipment. Gruebner was supposedly mugged and strangled by a drug addict while jogging early one morning. Happened a couple of months ago. His mugger was stabbed in prison after a fast-track trial and conviction. The company, of course, was sold in the wake of his tragic death. We’ve traced the new owners to the Consortium.”

      “Tidy,” Bolan said.

      “Too tidy,” Brognola agreed. “Bear’s team ran a background check on the mugger, including known aliases off- and online, and they got a bunch of hits for videos uploaded to a popular video sharing and social networking site. All of them were Iron Thunder clips—proselytizing for the cult.”

      “So a member of a German underground techno-death-cult murdered this CEO for reasons unknown, and took those reasons to an early grave at the end of a shank.”

      “Exactly,” Brognola said. “Once we had that, and knew what to look for, we were able to turn up several more hits, some solid, some tenuous. Many of the accidents can be linked to persons with ties to Iron Thunder. It looks as if the Consortium is using the cult as street muscle to do the dirty work, clear the way for these strategic takeovers where necessary. Some purchases go down completely aboveboard. Some are problematic, and any obstacles are mysteriously and quickly removed, permanently. We figure they’re using a tried-and-true combination of bribery, influence peddling, intimidation and outright murder when needed.”

      “And so the Consortium gobbles up business after business.”

      “Yes,” Brognola said. “And that’s the problem. All the while it’s doing so, it’s trying to hide what’s going on. And that tells me, and the Man, that the Consortium is making a play for control of Germany’s strategic industries. Whether for pure profit, selling war matériel to the highest bidder, or out of some agenda to help hostile nations, we don’t know. The outcome is more or less the same. Whether terrorists or rogue nations that sponsor terrorists, Germany’s industries form key links in the global technology chain. If Germany falls behind the scenes, it puts the United States and the rest of the Western world in peril.”

      “Why me, then, Hal?” Bolan asked. “What is SOG’s interest in this? Sounds like a job for more…mainstream government agencies.”

      “It would be,” Brognola said, “if we had anything that the international law enforcement community would consider solid proof. We’ve got leads, correlations and damning circumstantial evidence, all of it turned up through mostly extralegal computer searches and traces run by Bear and his team. None of it is enough to convince the powers that be that official action is necessary.”

      “What about the German government?” Bolan asked.

      “As far as it’s concerned,” Brognola said, “this isn’t happening. The Consortium is a good domestic company and therefore trustworthy, officially. Whether the Germans are blind to what’s going on or just trying to cover their collective backsides, we don’t know. But they’re not happy that we’ve even raised the question. I spent several hours on the phone through channels, pulling strings and busting heads. They don’t like it, but they’ve reluctantly agreed to allow what is officially being considered an Interpol investigation.”

      “Interpol?” Bolan asked.

      “It gets us in the door,” Brognola said. “It doesn’t matter who they think we are, as long as you can get in and get it done. Basically, the Man wants you to go in and fix this problem. If you can get proof and we can secure further international cooperation, or direct cooperation with the Germans, that’s fine. If you can’t, you can still do what you do, burn them out and down, and put an end to this threat. Those are the President’s instructions.”

      “Why not simply go to the source, then? We eliminate the Consortium and its heads. Problem solved, except for some mop-up of the cult.”

      “Won’t work,” Brognola said. “The Consortium closely guards its membership rolls. We don’t know who they are, though we suspect in many cases. There are maybe three or four executives we could put you on, but that won’t begin to solve the problem. You need to find out who you’re dealing with, on the ground, by following the slime trails back to their source.”

      “I’m a soldier, not a detective, Hal.”

      “I’m not asking you to detect,” Brognola said. “I’m asking you to perform reconnaissance, then search and destroy.”

      “Understood.”

      “Let

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