Shadow Masters: An International Network of Governments and Secret-Service Agencies Working Together with Drugs Dealers and Terrorists for Mutual Benefit and Profit by Daniel Estulin

Author:Daniel Estulin [Estulin, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781936296736
Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
Published: 2010-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

NUCLEAR

GAMESMANSHIP

A few days before I was supposed to go to print, I received a call from one of my sources. “Call me back from a pay phone. I will send you the number with the usual encryption.” He hung up.

It might sound like an easy task, but pay phones are hard to come by in Thailand. I was imagining Jason Bourne or James Bond running around Bangkok, trying to find a payphone? Did I say running around? I meant sitting around in a taxi, stuck in a monstrous traffic jam.

“I need to use your phone,” I told a taxi driver. He shook his head, pretending not to understand. I pulled out 500 Bahts, an equivalent of $15, a twentieth of the local average monthly salary. “Now!” I said. The man grabbed the money and handed me his beat-up cell phone.

“Where are you calling me from?” my source asked inquisitively.

“A taxi. Did you know there are only six payphones for fifteen million Bangkok residents?” I added.

“Let me talk to the driver,” my source requested coldly, maybe concerned I was kidnapped and held at gunpoint.

I passed a puzzled driver his phone. After several quick questions the taxi driver bobbed his head affirmatively up and down and gave me back his phone.

“I didn’t know you spoke Thai?” I told my source half mockingly.

“There are lots of things you still don’t know about me, sweetheart.”

“So …” My question hung in the air for a split second before dissolving into the muggy Bangkok early-morning air.

“You know what was the first question DEA agents asked Victor Bout?”

“No,” I replied. “Do you?” A fire truck went by, the wail of its sirens drowning out every other noise around us.

He paused. “They asked him the name of the cruise missiles he had sold to Iran.”

I bolted forward, in the process bumping my head against the windshield.

“Why would they ask him that? What’s their game?” I asked, my mind working at a thousand revolutions per second.

“This is a big-boys game.”

Bout was being set up, the ground cleared, the markers fixed.

“X-55!” I blurted out, realizing instantaneously the monstrosity of the gambit being run from behind the scenes.

“That’s right. Cruise missiles, nuclear warheads,” came a low-pitched voice from the other end of the line. A moment later the line went dead.

I needed time to figure this out. Then I winced, suddenly remembering last night’s short message from my publisher: “We are supposed to be going to print in three days. What’s up?”

There was no going back. Publishing a book is like assembling a car. The book itself is not the car, but a small piece of the car, say an engine. Once the date is set, the ghost in the machine responsible for the entire operation becomes insatiable. Distributors prepare the delivery trucks, stores prepare book-shelf space, radio stations book interviews and build their programs around your title, graphic designers at local and national newspapers work diligently at making your advertising campaign look the best possible, online stores such as amazon.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.