Preston Child - The Babylonian Mask

“Yes, sir.” She bit her lip, knowing full well where he was going with this, but refusing to provoke his wrath by interrupting. “He got into an Iraqi air base and stole a plane.”

“That’s right! And crashed into the C.I.T.E. Head Quarters creating the fuck-up now unfolding. As you know, the Middle East obviously sent someone to retaliate by rogering a German air base!” he exclaimed. “Now tell me again how the reckless and sharp Sam Cleave will not jump at the chance to get into this story.”

“Point taken,” she smiled coyly, feeling deeply uncomfortable at having to watch her boss produce threads of saliva while he spoke passionately about the nascent situation. “I should go. Who knows where he is these days? I’ll have to start calling around promptly.”

“That’s right!” Gradwell roared after her as she made a beeline for her small office. “Hurry and get Cleave to cover this for us before another anti-peace prick gets a boner for suicide and brings about World War III!”

Margaret did not even glance at her colleagues as she rushed past them, but she knew that they were all having a good laugh at the delightful phrases Duncan Gradwell spat out. His choice words were an office joke. Margaret usually laughed loudest when the veteran editor of six prior press offices started getting excited about the news, but now she did not dare. What if he saw her giggle at what he considered to be a seriously newsworthy assignment? Imagine what he would thunder if he saw her smirk reflected in the large glass panels of her office?

Margaret looked forward to speaking to young Sam again. Then again, he had not been young Sam for a while now. But to her, he would always be the wayward and over-zealous news snout out to expose injustice wherever he could. He had been Margaret’s understudy in the previous era of the Edinburgh Post, when the world was still in the chaos of liberalism and the conservatives wanted to tighten the very freedom of every individual. Things had swung around drastically since the World Unity Organization took over the political administration of several former EU countries and several South American territories had broken away from what had once been Third World governments.

Margaret was not a feminist by any reach, but the World Unity Organization being predominantly run by women had showed a considerable difference in how they governed and resolved political tension. War efforts no longer enjoyed the favor they’d once received from male-dominated governments. Now, achievements in problem solving, invention and the optimization of resources profited from international endowments and investment strategies.

At the head of the W.U.O. was the chair of what was instituted as the Council for International Tolerance Efforts, Professor Marta Sloane. She was a former Polish ambassador to England who had won the last election to run the new union of nations. The Council’s main objective was to eliminate war threats by engaging in treaties of mutual compromise instead of terrorism and military engagement. Trade was more important than political hostility, Prof. Sloane always imparted in her speeches. In fact, it became a principle associated with her in all media.

“Why do we have to lose our sons in their thousands to sate the greed of a handful of old men sitting in office where war will never affect them?” she was heard proclaiming only days before she was elected by a landslide victory. “Why do we have to cripple economies and destroy the hard work of architects and masons? Or destroy buildings and kill innocent people, while modern warlords profit from our heartbreak and the severing of our bloodlines? Youth sacrificed to serve the unending circle of destruction is madness, perpetuated by the feeble-minded leaders presiding over your future. Parents losing their children, spouses lost, brothers and sisters ripped from us because of the ineptitude of aged and bitter men at resolving conflict?”

With her dark hair taken back in a braid and her trademark velvet choker that matched whatever suit she wore, the petite, charismatic leader shook the world with her seemingly simple cures for the destructive practices practiced by religious and political systems. In fact, once she’d been ridiculed by her official opposition for claiming that the spirit of the Olympics had turned into nothing but another exuberant fiscal generator.

She insisted that it should have been employed for the same reasons it was begotten — peaceful competition by which the winner is determined without casualties. “Why can we not go to war on a chess board, or on a tennis court? Even an arm wrestling match between two countries could determine which gets their way, for goodness sake! It’s the very same idea, only without the billions spent on military material or the countless lives destroyed by casualties between foot soldiers who have nothing to do with the proximal cause. These people kill each other, having no reason other than orders to do so! If you, my friends, cannot walk up to someone in the street and shoot them in the head without regret or psychological trauma,” she asked from her podium in the city of Minsk a while ago, “why do you force your children and siblings and spouses to do it by voting for these old-fashioned tyrants that perpetuate this atrocity? Why?”

Margaret did not care if the new unions were criticized for what the opposition campaigns called the advent of feminist rule or the insidious coup by agents of the Anti-Christ . She would support any ruler who stood against the senseless mass murder of our own human race in the name of power, greed and corruption. In essence, Margaret Crosby supported Sloane because the world was less heavy since she’d come to power. Dark veils that had covered age-old feuds were now addressed outright, allowing a channel of communication between begrudged countries. If it were up to me, the dangerous and immoral constraints of religion would be relieved of their hypocrisy, and dogmas of terror and subjugation would be abolished. Individualism is pivotal in this new world. Uniformity is for formal attire. Rules are for scientific principles. Freedom is about the individual, about respect and personal discipline. These will enrich each one of us in mind and body and allow us to be more productive, to be better at the things we pursue. And as we get better at what we do, we will learn humility. From humility comes amity.

Marta Sloane’s speech played on Margaret’s office computer while she looked up the last number she’d for Sam Cleave. She was excited to speak to him again after all this time, and could not help but cackle a little as she dialed his number. As the tone clicked into the first ring, Margaret was distracted by the bobbing frame of a male colleague just outside her window wall. He was waving wildly to get her attention, pointing to his watch and the flat screen of her computer.

“What the hell are you on about?” she said, hoping his aptitude for lip reading surpassed his hand signal skills. “I’m on the phone!”

Sam Cleave’s phone went to voicemail, so Margaret stopped her call to open the door and hear what the clerk was on about. Jerking open the door with a hellish scowl, she snapped, “What in God’s name is so important, Gary? I’m trying to get hold of Sam Cleave.”

“That’s just it!” Gary crowed. “Check the News. He’s on the news, already in Germany, at the Heidelberg Hospital where the reporter said the fellow that crashed the German plane was!”

Margaret ran back into her office and switched the channel to SKY International. With eyes glued to the scenery on the screen, she sought between the strangers in the background to see if she could recognize her old colleague. Her focus was so fixed on this task that she hardly paid attention to the reporter’s commentary. Here and there a word would simmer through the concoction of facts, striking her brain in the just the right place to memorize the overall story.