Burrowed deep beneath a small island, in a bunker forgotten and ignored by most of humanity, in a room bristling with electronic gear, sat a broad-shouldered man in his late forties. The politically correct sheep would call him “African American” or whatever was deemed acceptably au courant, but he had long ago learned to laugh at such silly distinctions as skin color. In fact, he despised the significance of melanin demanded by mountebank social activists. His name, when he had been part of the world erroneously called “real,” had been Captain Junius Sinclair, USN.
Now, he was known only as Sinclair, and he liked that just fine. He had just received an encrypted message from a division of a very powerful entity known only as the Guild.
It was brief, but intriguing: U-5001 found. See Datafile 2947-C. Action memo to follow.
While he waited for whatever might be coming through the pipeline, he used the time to access the datafiles on the U-5001. He began to read what turned out to be a fascinating story. Of course, he — like most people — had one of his own…
Captain Junius Sinclair’s recruitment into the Guild had been a familiar replay of the tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, spies, and techies who’d come before him. As it had been doing for an unknown number of centuries, the Guild sought out the disaffected, the outraged, the maligned, the unjustly accused, and even the crazy ideologues. The Guild had well-honed techniques for finding these kinds of people — those who had been misled or cheated or overlooked by their governments or their employers, those whose anger and need for revenge could never be quelled. The process, containing the elegance of both complexity and the obvious, had been successful for a long, long time for a variety of reasons.
But the main one was surely the inevitable ability of abusive power to piss off someone else.
Junius smiled as he mused over that simple truth.
The Guild had approached him while he was still in Special Ops for the Navy’s Deep Sea Rescue/Recovery Division. What made his job “special” had been the assignments nobody ever read about in the paper. If it had anything to do with the ocean, being under it, and bad guys, Junius had been involved.
He’d been a captain on the top secret Sea Viper, a DSR Vehicle that made the descent to oceans’ deepest ridge vents feel like a dip in the backyard pool. When the Kursk choked on one of its own torpedoes and sank in the Barents Sea, Junius had been lurking in the cold depths, close enough to watch the Russians botch their attempts to get twenty-three sailors to the surface. The U.S. had offered to do the job, but a spillover of Soviet self-delusion, pride, and fear by the Russian Admiralty nixed the deal.
He’d also been involved in too many other missions the details of which the public never knew — and never would. Junius had been very good at what he did, he liked his job, and back then, he liked his employer.
But all that changed one evening several years ago.
The details were too numerous and tedious to recount, but the distillate of Sinclair’s life-altering moment came when CIA intercepts revealed a terror attack planned against the Norfolk Navy Yard. Sinclair had been in charge of the underwater defense net. But when suicide scuba divers slipped through undetected to plant charges against the hull of the Atlantic Fleet’s flagship carrier, and even though the C-4 failed to detonate, the Navy needed a fall-guy in a hurry.
Before he could open the hatch on his SeaViper, Sinclair found himself holding a very short straw and feeling a lot like the Indianapolis Captain, Charles McVay III. Military court martial, demotion, big hit on his pension, and all the bad media they could muster. To suggest one man was responsible for the attack on a supercarrier in its own harbor was absurd, but the public and the Pentagon didn’t want to hear anything other than simple scapegoated excuses.
Sinclair’s sacrificial ashes were barely cool on the altar when he was contacted by a Guild op, who offered a path toward salvation. Like thousands who’d been shown the same path, Sinclair never hesitated. He wasn’t the kind of guy who needed to be mugged more than once before getting the message someone was out to get you.
When he thought about it, Sinclair could still recall most of the conversation with the tall, broad-shouldered man with Scottish accent who represented the Guild. When asked, he volunteered he’d once upon a time been one of the Royal Marines Special Boaters. Tough guys.
“My grandfather had been in one of Churchill’s original commando units,” he continued. “No. 9. The Black Hackles.”
“Is that why you wear the black feather in your beret?” Sinclair could not help notice the flamboyant addition.
“Kind of, I guess. But in general, a Scot wearing this means you’ve got an ongoing quarrel with someone.”
Sinclair didn’t want to know who that might be. But he was curious about this “Guild.”
“Sounds like the Bilderberg Group,” he said.
The op waved off the remark with a dismissive gesture. “Young amateurs! They haven’t even been around a hundred years… and we have infiltrated them so thoroughly they are just a puppet show.”
“So who or what is the Guild?”
“Not easy to explain them,” said the big Scot. “Began as a loosely structured subculture — bunch of craftsman and merchants who banded together during the Renaissance. They wanted to ensure the continuity and influence of men like themselves.”
“That long ago? It seems hard to believe.”
The op smirked through his heavy reddish mustache. “Not really. Enough of the bullshit. You interested?”
“Intrigued, at least. Go on.”
“All right, let’s see.” The Scot cleared his throat, continued. “Having been part of the mercantile process for centuries gave Guild members a certain leverage… Not only were they present at the inception of the industrial revolution, but they were definitely the first organized group to fully comprehend what it was.”
“Okay, I follow you,” said Sinclair. “And somehow they kept organized through all the wars, all the changes of power. Across the centuries and continents, right?”
The Scot harrumphed his assent. “Yes, and you have to figure it was probably a very hard thing to do — except for one thing.”
“Let me guess. They understood the power of money.”
“Spot on,” said the Scot. “Trade. Commerce. Other than religion, it was one of the only things that transcended national borders. Other than food, it was the only other item everyone needed to survive. The early leaders and organizers of the Guild understood this simple truth very, very well. Money not only became the glue that bound them together, but it became their most potent weapon as well.”
Sinclair nodded. “I can’t even imagine how many rulers and kings and emperors they had to deal with. All those years.…”
“True. But one fact is irrefutable — the Guild did it. It survived. And prospered… for a good reason. All those kings and emperors, and everybody else looking to conquer everybody else… they all needed two things: weapons and financing for their campaigns.”
“And the Guild filled these needs?” Sinclair frowned. “How?”
“Don’t forget where the original members of the Guild came from — not only tradesmen and bankers but also craftsmen. As time went on the Guild became manufacturers, or even better, the controlling interest behind the manufacturers. The great European and Asian families of arms merchants that rose up in the Eighteenth Century were all started with Guild investment capital.”
“These guys were the original opportunists.”