Читать книгу The Knights Victorious - William Speir - Страница 10

Saturday, November 9, Afternoon

Paramaribo Presidential Palace

The President of Suriname was frustrated. He and the bulk of his Cabinet Ministers had been bound and guarded in his office for hours. No one was allowed to speak. One Minister had tried and was still drifting in and out of consciousness; a guard had hit the Minister in the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. The guards had provided water once an hour, but nothing else. The President hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and he was hungry.

Years in the military and in politics had made the President both a shrewd judge of character and an excellent observer of other people. He had spent most of the afternoon watching his captors closely, trying to assess their plans for him and his Cabinet Ministers. After a while, it became clear that their only orders were to detain the prisoners and nothing else. The President suspected that the guards didn’t know why they had been ordered to detain the prisoners – just that they were to hold the prisoners there until new orders came.

This made the President relax somewhat. If the guards were ordered to detain only, there was a chance that he and the others might be allowed to live through the transition of power – perhaps imprisoned or in exile, but still alive.

The President thought that this was strange. I would have killed the leaders of the existing government immediately. The last thing a rebel should want is for the previous government leaders to be left alive after a coup. Alive, they’re a threat – a symbol to rally the citizens and potentially overthrow the coup. Dead, they’re no longer a threat to anyone.

So why are we still alive? Then it struck him. They want something from us. But what?

After wrestling with this question for a while, the President thought back to when he had taken power several years earlier. As the incoming President of the country, he was briefed extensively on some of the secrets that only the highest members of the government were allowed to know – secrets that the leader of a coup would most certainly need to possess in order to give the appearance of a peaceful transition of power.

There were treaties that were binding on the country, regardless of who was in power at the moment. The rebel leader would need to know where these treaties were and the requirements they placed on the government before he could move forward with his plans. A treaty violation during the transition of power could invite an invasion by the other treaty signers, which would end the coup as quickly as it started.

There were communications codes that were used when leaders of one country contacted the leaders of other countries. These codes proved that the communicator was authorized to act on behalf of the country and that the communications were valid. The rebels would need these codes to announce the formation of the new government and to assure Suriname’s neighbors that the coup was a purely internal matter and not a prelude to any aggression against anyone else.

There were also codes required to access bank accounts, international lines of credit, aid, and other financial resources that the rebels would need in order to consolidate their power and legitimize their new government in the eyes of the rest of the world. The President knew that, without these codes, the new government would be cut off from its treasury, which was kept off-shore because of the frequency of political unrest in the past. The rebel leaders would need to have these codes, or they’d risk going bankrupt in a matter of weeks.

That must be why they’re keeping us here. They want to get the government secrets from us.

He knew he had to make sure that these secrets were kept out of the hands of the rebels, but he couldn’t talk to his Cabinet Ministers and warn them. The minute we give up those secrets, we’re dead.

At the rebels’ mobile command post just outside the capital, Francisco Emmanuel Baptista, self-appointed Field Marshall and leader of the rebel forces, received word that the capital was secured. “All senior members of the government have been located, arrested, and taken to the Presidential Palace as you ordered,” an aide reported.

“Very good,” Francisco replied with a smile. Turning to his brother, he said, “Give the orders to proceed to the Presidential Palace immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” his brother replied. Carlos Xavier Baptista, Francisco’s brother and a Major in the Suriname Liberation Army, gave orders for the mobile command post and the auxiliary forces to prepare to move out and enter the city.

“Your Legionnaires did their job magnificently,” Francisco said to the Legate. The Legate, who was not only the supreme military commander of the rebel army, was also the leader of Il Nona, a band of European mercenaries and arms dealers risen from the ashes of the Ninth Roman Legion after the bulk of the Legion had been destroyed by the Caledonian Tribes two thousand years earlier in what is now Scotland. Francisco had made arrangements to relocate the Legion to Suriname to help him seize power, and in return he had promised Il Nona the protection of a friendly government to carry out their own agenda of providing arms, military training, and troops to clients around the world who were willing to pay for what Il Nona could provide.

“Thank you,” the Legate replied. “Frankly, I’m amazed that it went off so well. Losses were minimal, and everything proceeded almost perfectly on schedule.”

“The key was your idea of luring the army away from the cities before the campaign began,” Francisco stated. “If that hadn’t happened, it could’ve taken days or weeks before we captured the capital, if at all.”

“We still have to take care of the army,” the Legate reminded Francisco.

“I know. When will you be ready to move out?”

“Not until morning. We know that the army redeployed, and the forces near Cottica aren’t sure where they went. We can’t afford to miss them in the night, so we’ll head out at first light.”

“Any idea why the army redeployed?”

“Not yet, but I suspect the forces at Cottica gave the appearance of being too well-prepared for the army’s arrival. That, coupled with the communications blackout, must have made the army commander suspicious.”

Francisco nodded silently. The plan had been a simple one. A rebel force was dispatched to Cottica to make the Suriname government think that there was a large uprising of local tribesmen along the eastern border. The army would be dispatched to put it down, the rebel forces would pin the army down, and the Legion would redeploy after the coastal cities were taken and crush the army completely.

A simple plan, but something had gone wrong. The army reached the rebels, found them better organized than expected, and had suddenly withdrawn. Now, neither the rebels near Cottica nor the Legion had any idea where the army was. That meant that a sizeable military force was still at large somewhere inside the Suriname borders, and while the rebel forces and the Legion outnumbered the army by a three-to-one margin, the element of surprise or a superior ground position could negate numerical superiority quickly. Plus, the army was completely loyal to the President, which made destroying the army even more imperative.

Francisco and the Legate felt the mobile command post begin moving, and they sat down for the short trip into the city. Less than an hour later, the mobile command post came to a stop, and Francisco and the Legate stepped outside to the sound of cheering troops. Waving to the soldiers, Francisco and the Legate entered the Presidential Palace with Carlos and a large honor guard following close behind.

The President heard the cheering and knew that he didn’t have long to wait to find out who his captors had been waiting for. Moments later, he saw three men enter the room. The first man who walked in was a stranger. The second man, a tall European, was also a stranger to the President. But the third man was someone the President recognized immediately. It was one of his former Finance Ministers – Carlos Baptista!

“You!” the President spat out as he realized Carlos was one of the rebels.

Carlos smiled. “You remember me, Mr. President? I’m flattered. I’d have thought that you’d forgotten me like you forgot everyone else you stepped on to become President.”

“I never stepped on you, you ungrateful rat, but I wish I had.” The President remembered Carlos being an excellent organizer, but he had felt that Carlos lacked leadership skills, so he named another man to be his chief Finance Minister several years earlier. Carlos always believed that the job should have been his and left government service soon after.

“Gentlemen,” the first man who walked into the room began, “as much as I enjoy reunions, we have business to discuss. Mr. President, my name is Francisco Baptista. My forces have seized the cities, mines, ports, and all other population and economic centers inside Suriname. We are now in complete control of this country.”

“What about the army?” the President asked.

“We’ve dealt with the army,” Francisco lied. “My forces outnumbered your little army many times over.”

Looking at the tall European, the President remembered reports of mercenaries entering South American through Brazil. “Are you part of the forces that slipped into Brazil?” he asked.

The Legate nodded curtly, but said nothing.

Turning back to Francisco, the President asked, “What do you want? What’s so important to you about controlling this tiny little country?”

Francisco smiled. “I’d love to lay it all out for you, but frankly, I just don’t have the time right now. Perhaps later, though. For now, I require some information from each of you. You have codes, account numbers, treaties, and other information vital for the transition of power to be completed quickly.”

The President realized that he had guessed correctly. “You’re not going to get any cooperation from us,” he said. “We give you those codes, and our lives are over.”

Francisco had expected the President to be defiant. “Actually, it’s more accurate to say that if you don’t give us what we want, your lives are over.”

Francisco drew out his pistol, pointed it at the Vice President, and pulled the trigger. A pink cloud burst out of the back of the Vice President’s head as he fell off his chair and onto the floor, dead.

“The same fate awaits anyone else who doesn’t give us what we want,” Francisco said, holstering his pistol and looking at the shocked and sickened faces of the remaining captives.

Turning to the guards, he ordered, “Take them to separate rooms and hold them so they can’t talk to each other.”

Turning back to the captives, he said, “I’m going to talk to each of you individually. Those who give me what I want will be taken to the processing area where the rest of the government officials are being held. Those who don’t will meet the same fate as the Vice President. It’s your choice.”

Francisco, the Legate, and Carlos left the room, and the guards came in to take the captives to separate holding areas. The President watched with a mixture of rage and sadness, as the sound of the gunshot that killed the Vice President continued ringing in his ears.