Kill Chain by J Robert Kennedy Page B

loved.
    The panel slid shut. Nancy
looked about the truck, noticing none of the translators or support staff with
them. She turned to the Canadian, the last to arrive. “Where’s everyone else?”
    The woman shook her head.
“I don’t know. No one was behind me.”
    Nancy took her seat as
the truck’s engine roared to life. “What do you think they’ll do to them?”
    The question went
unanswered, no one daring to contemplate.
     
     

36

    Embassy
of the United States Seoul
32
Sejongno Street, Seoul, Republic of Korea
     
    “What is
it you want?”
    “To change the world.”
    Starling’s eyebrows shot
up. “Excuse me?”
    “Mr. President, I am
contacting you and you alone, for obvious reasons. I have your
daughter. For everyone else, I have their wives. I have no way of knowing
whether or not they actually love their wives, hate their wives, or care in the
least what happens to them either way, however a father loves his daughter.
Always. Your attention, I have.”
    Starling exchanged a
quick glance with Red, the man a father as well, and he could tell they both
agreed their opponent was right. A parent would do anything for their child,
and a husband would do anything for the woman he loved, but from his own
briefings on his counterparts, he knew at least a few of the “happy couples”
weren’t so happy in reality.
    The man was right.
    He was the only one who
could be counted on absolutely to cooperate.
    “If you tell any of your
fellow leaders about our conversation, or the true motive behind what is
happening, I will kill your daughter immediately. If your actions give any
indication that what the outside world believes is the truth, isn’t, your
daughter dies. Understood?”
    Starling’s chest filled
with rage and horror, the desire to reach through the phone’s speaker and into
the man’s throat so he could tear his heart out, almost irresistible.
    But this man controlled
his daughter’s fate, so he had to cooperate, to remain calm.
    “Yes.”
     “Very well. Mr.
President, your record on environmental protection is pathetic. We represent
the people of this planet, the one planet we know is capable of
sustaining life, and we are sick and tired of platitudes from our leaders.”
    Starling’s eyes shot wide
open. The environment? These were eco-terrorists? He had expected North
Koreans, perhaps Chinese, even Islamic extremists, but not eco-terrorists. The
very idea was almost preposterous, yet here they were, the loved ones of the
most powerful nations in the world held hostage so those in power would do the
bidding of the nutbars on the other end of this phone call.
    “It is time our planet
came before the politicians that control our lives and the corporations
that control them. It is time our planet was first on the agenda, rather
than last. When climate control treaties exempt the worst polluters, when they
leave the ambitious yet necessary and difficult targets off the table, then
they are not worth the paper they are written on. The world needs a reset, Mr.
President, and together, we’re going to change the future. Together, we’re
going to give our planet, our species, a fighting chance.”
    Starling sat shaking his
head. He had never bought into global warming and climate change, at least not
the manmade variety. After all, if man’s use of fossil fuels was behind all of
the planet’s problems, how did you explain other recent warming periods, including
the Medieval Warm Period that had allowed the Vikings to settle and grow crops
in Greenland for centuries? There were no cars filling the streets, no homes
heated by natural gas.
    And he was a
champion for the environment. Actual proven problems. He never understood why
the real problem of pollution had been abandoned by those who purported in some
instances to love their planet more than their own lives, for the questionable
assumption of carbon-based global warming. Tackle pollution, and by extension,
much of the carbon-based