Project Itoh - Genocidal Organ

“They needed to get the word out one way or another. The world needed to know that the fighting in Somalia was over, and that Somalia was now a progressive, forward-looking country with massive potential that just happened to be desperately poor at the moment. And that’s when Ahmed made the decision to hire a former PR man as press advisor to the Somalian government,” explained the USD.

He didn’t need to say any more—I could see what was coming next. “John Paul, of course,” I said out loud.

The whole room seemed to swivel toward me. I hadn’t particularly intended—or expected—to draw focus, but apparently everyone was surprised at my prescience.

“Exactly. And I’m sure, Captain Shepherd, that you know exactly what happened next after John Paul entered Somalia.”

Think of a murder case. Except the murderer is a country.

A reporter interviews the next-door neighbor for a sound bite. “He was a quiet type,” Mrs. Smith (56) says. “His lawn was neat and trimmed, and he always took the trash out on time. Never in a million years would we have imagined him doing a thing like this. It’s such a shock to the entire neighborhood …”

That was the best analogy they could give us. I nodded, listening to the USD’s words. “Yes, in other words, that’s where we are now. The country was plunged back into chaos in a heartbeat. A Hobbesian war of all against all. Chaos. Lines were drawn: the killers and the killed. And then—”

“—the famous scenes on the beaches of the Black Sea with the thousands of corpses like so many beached whales.” Williams finished the story. The room was heavy with silence.

John Paul.

It was pretty clear now that he wasn’t just some tourist with a bizarre penchant for seeing civil war zones. Well, it had been clear from the start to those at HQ who had given us the command to assassinate him; this was just the first time anyone had properly explained the situation to us.

This man who we’d tried and failed to kill on numerous occasions had somehow been a catalyst for genocide in locations throughout the world.

For some reason, when this man went into a country, it plunged into chaos.

For some reason, when this man went into a country, the blood of innocents would pour forth.

“The time span for all of this was a mere six months,” the USD continued. “Now, the silver lining was that these countries that attracted nothing but the world’s indifference when they were peaceful did at least manage to capture the world’s attention when the massacres were as graphic and vivid as they were. With public opinion being what it was and with a presidential election looming, the US’s response was all but inevitable. The problem was, the US Army was already massively overcommitted, thanks to all the existing civil wars and terrorist cells and ethnic conflicts around the world, and was in danger of spreading itself too thin to be effective. That’s how, for the first time in modern warfare, outsourcing on a massive scale became the norm.”

“The US forces are being worked to the bone,” interjected one of the Congressmen. “This sudden escalation in overseas conflicts is simply unnatural, that’s what it is. All these countries that have pulled themselves away from their violent pasts and were looking forward to bright futures suddenly seemed to collapse. It’s one step forward, ten steps back! Even countries with absolutely no history of racial tension suddenly find their citizens at one another’s throats. We’ve commissioned all the major think tanks to analyze the situation to come up with some sort of explanation, but so far they’ve been firing blanks.”

“And yet you’ve all known the answer from the start, haven’t you?” I asked. “From before I received orders to assassinate John Paul?”

Nobody said a word.

I didn’t move. My eyes were fixed on the men and women around the table.

The sea of faces also remained motionless, except for almost imperceptible twitches. Who could be used as the scapegoat? None of them wanted to be the first to speak in response to my question, lest a wrong answer cost them their job. Such were the dynamics of Washington.

Eventually a woman in a navy blue suit broke the abstruse Washingtonian silence. “That’s right. We attempted to capture John Paul a number of times prior to issuing the assassination order.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” Williams asked bluntly, pointing a finger at the woman’s face. The woman was visibly taken aback by his bluntness and lack of respect but said nothing to object—neither did Boss or the undersecretary of defense.

“CIA. Overseas is our territory after all,” the woman in the blue suit replied.

“No it’s not. It’s not your ‘territory.’ The world is what it is, a giant mess of a place full of confusion and chaos. Thinking that it’s somehow ‘your territory’ is what’s caused this whole clusterfuck in the first place.”

Despite the extraordinary words that were coming from his mouth, Williams was absolutely calm. He wasn’t riled up or trying to pick a fight, particularly. He just had no time for amateurs.

Colonel Rockwell had to rein him in. “Watch your tongue, Captain.”

“Apologies, sir. I take my words back fully, although not the sentiment behind them. If there’s anyone who’s being rude here, it’s the lady over there. Calling the world her territory is disrespectful to the rest of the world and disrespectful to us.” Williams seemed to accept his reprimand but showed no remorse for his outspokenness. We were the ones who had been fighting for the US abroad after all, unlike the CIA, who basically played teddy bears’ picnic with their “paramilitary” activities. What right did they have to call the world their territory? I could figure what Williams was thinking.

The USD urged the CIA woman to continue, and she did so without changing her blank expression.

“As you say, we did indeed fail on a number of occasions to capture John Paul. In our defense, it hadn’t yet been established at that stage that he was instrumental in fanning the flames of conflict around the world. There was a correlation, but there were numerous factors involved at that stage, and all we could say for sure was that he seemed to be cropping up in the shadows quite a lot whenever there was some sort of atrocity. It was only when the level of the atrocities started intensifying exponentially that we started receiving reliable intel confirming that John Paul was at the heart of all this.”

I wondered how many innocent people had been murdered in John Paul’s wars and atrocities in the time it had taken the CIA lady to explain this to us with her arms folded in front of her.

Just one single man, traveling around the world, leaving a bloodbath in his wake. He seemed to find his way to the heart of power—government or insurgency forces, it didn’t seem to matter to him, so long as he could whisper his seductive spell into the ears of those who had the power; and then, as if by magic, piles of dead bodies would start appearing.

Was that a credible explanation of events?

I thought back. Two years ago, when I had killed the ex-brigadier general. Why? Why? Why has my country ended up like this? The former brigadier general hadn’t been asking a hypothetical question born of regret, he’d been genuinely trying to work out what had happened. I remembered his expression when I confronted him; even though he knew what his motives were, what he was trying to achieve by causing those atrocious scenes of mass murder, he didn’t know why .

I remembered that expression and I saw it now, on a different face, right in front of me: the trembling face of Ahmed Salaad projected onto the wall.