Chapter XXXII: Deals with Devils.

1430hrs, 9 October 2013, Marunouchi, Tokyo, Japan

"And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine." Luke 4:5-6.

"The infernal serpent; he it was whose guile, Stirr'd up with envy and revenge, deceived, The mother of mankind." John Milton, Paradise Lost.

"Thank you all for being here."

Beryl's voice rang out in the oversized conference room at the top of the Nakanishi headquarters. They had bought out several buildings in the area, and now they towered over everything after some creative renovations, dominating the skyline with their glass windows, stainless steel and reinforced concrete. The room itself was again, extremely large for just having one table, five chairs and a projector that came down from the ceiling.

"I know that you all have been busy with our operations overseas, but I wanted to call this meeting together to…discuss our upcoming plans concerning our future business."

"Beryl, you don't have to use euphemisms," Zoisite said. "We all know what we're doing, so let's cut the bullshit and get to it."

"Zoisite, don't be rude now," she said to him. "But you and Kunzite over there have been dragging your feet on this. Perhaps if you spent less time in the bedroom, and more time out in the field…"

Jadeite snickered at that.

"Got a problem with that?" Kunzite asked him.

"Oh no, not at all," Jadeite replied slyly. "I just never had the experience of having…"

"Enough," Beryl interrupted. "We're here to talk about control of the markets, not what we do in the bedroom."

Kunzite and Jadeite glared at each other, then swiveled their chairs to face Beryl again.

"Anyway, we've had record profits ever since the SAILOR team has been dealing with our competitors. Practically all of the people who've been attacked by them think that it's the North Koreans, or terrorist groups, or just plain accidents. Some are getting suspicious though."

Beryl pulled up a picture of some CEOs and board of directors. "These people are starting to band together and create a network of security that allows for better protection and communication between protection professionals and themselves."

"So, we need to be more judicious in picking out targets then," Kunzite said. "In the post attack world, it might even be tougher to get at these people."

"That's the next point I wanted to get at," Beryl said. She brought up more slides of the world, and each of the four company officers' assigned districts.

"How is progress in the last stage of our operation?" She looked around the room.

"Well, I know that Jadeite is doing well." She smiled at him. "He's the only person in this room who checks up with me all the time. Maybe you should learn take an example from him."

"Ass kisser," Kunzite muttered.

"What was that?" Beryl asked.

"Nothing, nothing."

"Maybe you could give us a report on how things are holding up in the Middle East?"

Kunzite sighed.

"As you well know, the Middle East is not that hard to plan attack in. But the Suez Canal operation…that's been a bit of a challenge. But it's doable, and I have all the pieces in place, ready to go."

"And it will go," Beryl said, confidently.

"Yes, of course. I will have some ships from contracted companies destroyed in the Canal. They will be packed with explosives, and under the guise of normal weapons trafficking between countries, they will be exploded in the Canal area, taking other ships with them and stopping commercial traffic through the area." He read coldly from his tablet computer, looking over the specs of the plan.

"Very good. You had other things as well?"

"Besides the increased piracy off of Somalia, the insurgency in Iraq, the continued unrest in Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, the destabilization of the democratically elected government in Egypt? No, I have nothing else that I'm working on at the moment. I'm also working on some plans for the oil in the Sudan that we discussed earlier, but I don't know if that's good enough for you."

"Uh." Jadeite raised his hand.

"What is it?" asked Kunzite in a frustrated tone.

"If you block off the Suez Canal, won't the pirates off of Somalia have nothing to do because…"

"Yes, I know that!" he snapped back. "I'm fully aware that it's a pointless operation after we seal up the Suez, but for now, it's a nice distraction to keep NATO and other nations busy there and away from our operation in Socotra."

Jadeite raised both his hands now in mock surrender. "Sorry for asking such questions," he said.

"Nephrite, how are your plans coming along?" Beryl now moved on to the next important phase in the operation.

"They've been going actually quite well. The Americans have replaced some of the Capitol Police with our security firm, and that will allow for more movement within the capitol. We have moved the equipment and arms to the processing plants that we've purchased, and with all the attention focused on finding missing Russian warheads, we can freely move material in the United States with the transportation companies we've purchased in the last couple of months."

"Excellent, and the nuclear material will be placed…?" Beryl knew most of this information anyway, but having it repeated again made sure that she knew that everyone was on the same page.

"We've hired several companies, or simply bought them out if they didn't comply, to transport this material all over the United States in our special, uh, 'meat processing' plants that we've acquired in the last year or so. Again, all of the nuclear material will be inert, except for the one in Washington and New York. The yield on both weapons is very low, at five kilotons each, but that's more than enough to destroy a good part of those cities. We don't need to destroy all of them, just enough." Nephrite noted that it was ironic, seeing that their country was the one that had suffered the wrath of nuclear warfare some seventy years prior. And it would "only" be five kilotons. Enough to kill thousands of people, contaminate a region for years, and cause enough misery and suffering for everyone unfortunate enough to not be vaporized or killed outright by the blast.

"And they're timed for the session before Congress dismisses for the winter break?" Beryl was pacing up and down the room now, looking all the while at Nephrite, her heels clacking on the marble floor. Nephrite stared back, unperturbed. He was still thinking about the irony of the entire situation.

"Precisely, we actually made the congressmembers we control call this session and take it up with the president. All of our targets will be in one place, at one time. The lobbyists have made sure that they have kept up the pressure."

"Very…very…very good," Beryl said. She was impressed with Nephrite's operation; his was probably the most complex out of all of the four operations going on at the time. Even if it did fail, it would cause a massive scare across the United States, throwing the nation into chaos, not to mention the other attacks in the world. She would like the mission to succeed, and there was a high probability that it would, but you never know…

"By the way, how are those two trouble makers doing?" Beryl asked, stopping back the front of the table.

"You mean Representative O'Conner and Representative Clemens?"

"Yes."

"I'm sure they won't be giving us much trouble. They tried again to alert the president due to information from our…friend in India, but he won't be giving them much trouble any more. And if the president does get word through them, the VP is all ready to go, just in case."

Beryl nodded approvingly of Nephrite. "Thank you."

Zoisite raised his hand.

"Yes, Zoisite?" Beryl replied, annoyed. She quickly recovered though.

"What purpose does killing off all our representatives in Congress do for our mission?" he asked inquisitively. "I mean, no offence to Nephrite here…" he looked at him, and by his glance, he meant "In all offence to your bollocks plan…"

"It might be a short term loss," Nephrite replied, ignoring Zoisite's slight. "But there is only so much we can do with the existing members. They all have their own concerns, ambitions, and ideals; with them, our influence is merely a tool for their own interests. If we wipe them all out, we can start anew, building a nation in the form that would benefit us without actually having to do all the work of administering a large nation such as the United States. Or Japan, for that matter."

Zoisite nodded, somewhat satisfied by his answer. Seeing that there were no more questions, Beryl moved on.

She turned her attention to Jadeite.

"Jadeite, I know you've been busy here in Asia, and I know most of your operations, but please enlighten your less communicative comrades." Jadeite had been politely sitting in the back of the table, and was taking a sip of tea from the ornate china that had been placed out for them.

"I have organized several fringe groups in several nations in Asia, including North and South Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippians and India to carry out multiple attacks just before Nephrites' operation takes place in the United States. Targets include major industrial centers, political institutions, hospitals, universities, police stations, data centers, military bases and especially overseas American ones, overseas corporate headquarters, and several ports."
"What kind of specific groups have you organized?" Zoisite asked him. He wasn't convinced of Jadeite's plan…it was way too ambitious, with too many people and equipment involved. Somebody might figure out the trail and point it back to them.

"Like I said before, fringe groups, such as the Japanese Red Army…"

"I thought they disbanded," Nephrite interrupted.

"They haven't, trust me," Jadeite replied, somewhat annoyed. "I had a meeting with the successor to the JRA, the Movement Rentai, and they're all set to go here."

"Does it involve attacks on our buildings and personnel?" Kunzite asked.

"It has to, otherwise people start getting suspicious." Jadeite wiped his head with a handkerchief. It seemed like it was above thirty degrees in the room, and wearing this stupid business suit didn't help either. Plus, he seemed to get all the questions nowadays, and that was making him nervous.

"I see," Kunzite replied, content with that answer. "Please, continue."

"Like I was saying, other groups I have been in contact with include North Korean Special Operations Agents, South Korean Nationalists, Tibetan Nationalists, disaffected mobsters, Naxalites, former LTTE personnel, radical labour movements, environmental extremists, and if all else fails, I just pay some local hoodlums to make trouble when I send an SMS to them."

"How did you get environmentalists to work with nationalists?" Zoisite said, scratching his head in confusion. "I wouldn't think that would work out very well."

"I keep them in separate cells, isolated from each other. It serves as a two-fold safety net; if a cell gets exposed, the other one stays safe, and they can't get at each other if they have ideological differences since they don't know where the other cells are."

"That's…good." Zoisite STILL didn't look very convinced, but there was nothing that Jadeite could do to convince his European counterpart of the logic of his plan.

"I think that's enough questions for now," Beryl said, sensing that Jadeite was coming under increasing scrutiny from the rest of the people at the table. "Let's take a break, and then Kunzite can give an update on his sector. I have to make a couple of phone calls anyway. We'll meet back here in ten minutes."

She walked out of the room, heels still clacking, leaving the four men standing there, staring at each other.

"Well, this is coming along quite swimmingly," Kunzite said, shooting a look at Jadeite. "I'm going to get a smoke, Zoisite, care to join me?"

"Certainly." Zoisite and Kunzite left the room arm in arm to the designated smoking lounge right outside the conference room. Jadeite didn't really mind Kunzite and Zoisite being gay, it was just that Kunzite had it in for him or something like that.

That just left Nephrite and Jadeite in the room now.

"How's America treating you?" Jadeite asked Nephrite, picking up his tea cup again. "I can tell you for sure, America is so much better than India. God, it fucking stinks all the time there."
"I know, I know," Nephrite said, poking at his Blackberry. "We all had to do a stint with the Asia division, and India is probably the worst out of all of them. You probably got the short straw on that one though since India is expanding their economy and such."

Jadeite shrugged. "I'll put up with it, so long as this operation gets us a huge fat profit. Then, I'm going to help open up the South American division when we can, and I'm never leaving the Caribbean after that."

"The Caribbean is in North America," Nephrite pointed out, still pressing buttons on that infernal machine.

"Oh…" Jadeite sat back in his chair. "Then I'll just spend all my time in Rio de Janeiro. I know Spanish, and it's the capitol of Brazil, so no problem there."

"They speak Portuguese in Brazil, and the capitol is Brasilia," Nephrite said again, shooting down Jadeite's dreams.

"Ah…" That left Jadeite speechless for a second. "Maybe setting up the South American division would be a bad idea anyway." He struggled for a moment to find something else to say; he was not the stereotypical Japanese who would let things be silent for a long while.

"How's that girl of yours…uh…Molly…?"

"Molly Baker, I'm actually talking to her right now." Nephrite poked out a couple more words on his keypad in English, then sent the message to her.

"What time is it over there?"

"It's about 0130."

"That's pretty late."

"Not if you're in love," Nephrite said, with a smile. "We've been going pretty steady actually, ever since she graduated from school in Japan and came over to the states."

"How did you meet her?"

"She applied for an administrative assistant job at our HQ in Delaware, and she did a pretty good job working for the lobbyist division, so I picked her up for dinner one night and the rest is history."

"That's so romantic," Jadeite joked, pretending to swoon with love.

"Really now…" Nephrite smiled back. "I…she's special."

"They all are," Jadeite said, jadedly.

"You don't understand," Nephrite replied in protest. "There's something between her and me that…that binds us together. Every time we make love, every time we see each other, every time we talk…" He trailed off for a second, glancing at the projector in the middle of the ceiling. "There's just something there, and it's crazy, I know."

"You are crazy," Jadeite smirked. "My advice? Dump her, she's only in it for your money and power, and you certainly don't need that load right now."

Nephrite sighed at Jadeite's comment. He was still young, and getting tied down with a romantic relationship was far from his mind at the moment. "Whatever Jadeite."
"Your loss."

Kunzite and Zoisite came back into the room, still arm in arm, chatting loudly and smelling of cigarette smoke.

"Hey guys," Kunzite said. "Get any good gossip about us while we were gone?"

"Shut the fuck up," Jadeite shot back. "We were just discussing personal business."

"Hey, that reminds me," Kunzite continued. "You're the only one in this room that doesn't have a relationship yet."

"I think Beryl's free, if you're interested," Zoisite said, sitting back down in his chair and taking a biscuit from the tray in the middle of the table.

"That's not funny," Jadeite replied. "I don't…"

"…Like women? Join the club," Zoisite said. "Oh wait, you're not like us, you just think women should be in the kitchen all day. So what do you think about Beryl running the show here?"

"She's different."

"Is she?" Kunzite approached him threateningly. "Oh right, you would know."

"Look, she's the boss and…"

"Well lookie here, we've got ourselves a class A case of displacement theory," Kunzite retorted sarcastically.

"That's enough boys." Beryl's click-clacking of her heels brought them back to the meeting at hand. They all sat back down in their chairs, with Beryl taking her place at the front of the table. "Zoisite, I am single. But Jadeite's not really my type," she said causally. Zoisite and Kunzite looked at each other, somewhat embarrassed.

"Alright then, Zoisite, you're last."

"Well…" Zoisite looked a bit uneasy now. And he gives me trouble about my plan, Jadeite thought to himself. That arrogant bastard.

"Beryl, there's been a slight deviation of plans," he said, rubbing his hands together out of anxiety.

"And these would be…?" Beryl had a stormy look on her face now. If it wasn't for his high standing, she would have probably killed him at some point. But COOs were hard to replace, and especially good ones like Zoisite.

"Well, getting groups organized in Europe has been, how should I put it, problematic."

"How problematic?"

"The only major place I've got terrorist cells organized is in the UK, and that's only in England proper. I've got single cells in France, Germany and Italy, but Beryl, the security services there are extremely diligent about terrorist activity, even more so than the United States."

"Dammit," Beryl said. "I knew that this would be a problem," she said.

"I do have part of a solution, but it involves getting into the other sectors of operation."

"Let me hear it."

"You know about the software that we developed for the government and the corporate sector? The one that ties into all of their databases and such?"

"Yes, I remember. There's a backdoor in several of the programs that allows for remote access."

"Correct, I have a couple of computer programmers who work for me. They're the ones who developed the software and can remotely shut down the software from anywhere in the world, disrupting the response time to the terrorist attacks that will occur."

"There's a catch to all of this, isn't there," Beryl noted sourly.

Zoisite sighed. "Yes, there is. If we use the backdoor for this purpose, then we'll most certainly be found out. We can hide our involvement with terrorist and insurgent groups, but once we shut down the software, everyone and their mum will know who did it, considering that our programs make up almost fifty percent of government and corporate use."

Beryl tossed the pen she was holding down on the table in front of her, giving a groan in frustration. She knew that the European operation was going to be difficult, but seeing that the EU was one of the largest economies in the world, it would be stupid not to disrupt their economy to Nakanishi's favor.

"But."

Beryl looked up from her notes on the meeting. "But what?"

"I can ask the team to do a limited strike on the Ministry of Defense in the UK, most of the US Information Warfare Network in the US Military, or the integrated combat network of NATO."

"So that's an either/or statement then," Beryl scowled.

"Anything more than that will draw red flags. I can do it, but even one of those attacks will require…a significant cost. As in, we would lose the people doing the attacking."

"How so?"

"We would have to take a major reputation hit, since it would involve a massive cyberattack on systems we have software for. It wouldn't be linked to us, but the authorities would definitely be wary of using some of our security services in the near future."

Beryl paced around for a second, thinking over the options. Taking a reputation hit would be bad, but maybe they could shunt blame to the DOD, which would be under fire from all sides (literally, in some cases) for their poor handling in the wave of terrorist attacks that would sweep America. And plus, with Nakanishi in the best position to recover post-attack, they would have to go with them.

"Who are these hackers?" she asked.

"Anne and Alan. You remember them."

Beryl glared at Zoisite, gripping the cold marble table with her hands. Those two. They didn't even do much; they just sat around, bitched and whined about being tired all the time and then went home to have a marathon round of sex. And there were rumors that they were actually brother and sister. Now that was just…wrong.

"Yeah, they got into my personal email one time…and you promoted them," she snarled.

"That's the way it goes in the computer world," Zoisite said. He scratched his ear, wondering if this could get any more complicated.

"Fine, have them attack the US Network then. That'll slow down the response time anyway. Is there anything else in Europe that you can dredge up?"

"I can try to incite riots, and get local activist groups all riled up," Zoisite replied, looking at his notes. "France is always had a tense relationship with its immigrants, as well as many of the other European nations, so maybe that could cause some trouble."

"Zoisite, that's not what we need," Beryl replied, becoming more agitated by the minute. "I need real and direct action on valuable targets, not rioting or civil unrest." But she realized that there was nothing that she could do about that, again, the security services were difficult to get past.

"Just try to get more groups organized in Europe," she said. Beryl played with a pen on the table, wondering if Europe was the straw that was going to break their back.

"Is that it?" Beryl asked the entire table. "Did I miss anything?"

Everyone shook their head no.

"Fine. There's another thing."

Kunzite looked at her, confused. "And…what would that be?"

"We don't have a name for this operation."

"What, N-Day wasn't good enough?" Jadeite scoffed.

"I would like something better than that," Beryl replied. "Maybe something with some more punch to it."

The entire group sat back in their chairs, wondering what to call the massive operation ahead of them.

"I've got an idea," Jadeite said after a couple of minutes.

"What is it?" Beryl asked.

"Operation Take Hold."

Even Zoisite was impressed. "That's nice and simple," he said. "Kind of like you, Jadeite."

"Thank you, Zoisite," Beryl interrupted, trying to prevent her company officers from going at each other's throats. "Alright then, this operation will be called: Operation Take Hold, or OTH. Sound good?"

There were nods in agreement.

"There is one last thing we must discuss," Beryl then stated, switching slides on the projector.

"The performance of the SAILOR Team."

"Well, they've seemed to be doing a great job," Zoisite said. "I wish that we could use them to take out all of our opponents like that."

"And that's why we have an operation like this," Beryl replied. "Regionally, we're doing much better. But we need to be on a global scale, hence Operation Take Hold. Anyway, back to the SAILOR Team."

"Is there something wrong with them?" Kunzite asked.

"There's going to be something wrong," Beryl said. "Uh…I was certain that this was a foolproof operation, ever since Chung…Zhong…whatever his name is went missing. So far, he hasn't caused any trouble, but that operation near Hikawa temple was not something I was expecting. The girls have been doing well, but a source inside the research department tells me that they won't last until the end of the year."

"What's going wrong?" Jadeite asked.

"They retain everything, that's what," Beryl said, looking at some of the email correspondence with her contact. "The microchips increase their performance, but at the expense of their mental wellbeing. By December, they'll be drooling zombies."

"So why did we ask the PM to go ahead with this project?!" Jadeite asked, somewhat annoyed. He loosened his tie, trying to remain comfortable in the room that seemed to be getting hotter all the while.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Beryl snapped back. "The way that Dr. Kawasaki and Dr. Kobayashi presented the project made it like they were going to be invincible super soldiers or something like that. Now, Kobayashi is having second thoughts and Kawasaki is complaining to Col. Iwasaki about not being able to perform more surgeries on them to ensure that this does not happen."

"Get rid of Kobayashi then," Kunzite said.

"It's not that simple. The COS of the JASDF knows Kobayashi. So does the PM. And the PM is having massive doubts of his own on this project as well. So, I can't really do anything about it until this operation commences, and the scale of the SAILOR missions will have to be limited to what I gave the PM earlier this year. Only after this operation, we can have some leverage over the PM, over Kobayashi, the JSDF, and the politicians we have in our pockets right now."

"That sounds complicated," Zoisite mocked, imitating Jadeite's voice.

"Yes, it is complicated," Beryl shot back. "Well, that wraps up that part. Any more questions?"

There were none. The four men at the table stared blankly back at her, waiting to get out of there.

"Very good then," Beryl said, snapping her binder that held her notes together. "You know the start date, 1730hrs on 16 December 2013 on the East Coast of the US. Do not fail me. The company's success depends solely on you four, and if we fail…the consequences are too great to contemplate."

"What about Yamada?" Kunsite asked.

"I will deal with the CEO of this company personally, when the time comes. He's too coked out of his mind to do anything right now, so we can operate however we want. Thank you gentlemen, have a nice day."

With that, she walked out of the room, heels click-clacking on the floor.