9. Deception
Wherein we discover what happened to V├нhaan,
how and why V├нhaan developed The Schedule,
the events of the copy shop,
the secret patron,
the fate of Aaron,
the secret missions of Vihaan,
why V├нhaan cannot trust anyone,
and the origin of Hydra.
While Selma was considering ways to stop Gillian
both for professional and for strong personal motives,
while the Remnant was searching for how to rescue
Aaron,
and Hut├бn calculated how he would find Carina,
when a large number of Hydra’s own militia pointed
their weapons at Dvorak’s group, and Remnant agents
were
waiting for Fisha to arrive, an event occurred that
none of these strategists—Hut├бn, Selma, or Gillian—
anticipated, though, in hindsight, they could have if
they
had asked themselves a few questions, such as: How did
a man
such as V├нhaan, an apparently hermit-type techie
with a love of art, who seemingly had no connections
to any covert service or confidential records,
create a system like The Schedule that could find,
collate,
and understand so much information, and not only
display it in many ways, but also masterfully
use it to forecast with a high degree of success what
might happen if a certain person or event was dropped
into a mishmash of possibilities? How did this
quiet and introspective fellow create a worldly,
insightful, intuitive, and powerful program linked
with the Internet, other world networks, and numerous
secret communication programs, as well as every
media and data source in the world, without someone
noticing him doing it or bothering to question
or research his background? And equally important,
where
did this unassuming fellow obtain the funds for such
an expensive enterprise, one that would require such
top
secret links as well as access to so many records?
And the simple albeit vague implication of these
and other questions, without knowing the how, why, and
when,
would be that V├нhaan and The Schedule were not what
they seemed.
Dvorak and the Remnant were understandably more
interested in the consequences of The Schedule
than its origins or its inventor and could be duped
more easily, which also leads one to ask: How did they
know The Schedule even worked? To answer them we must
turn
to the first unknown, untested, and experimental
release of The Schedule at a small Mumbai hotel room
with a few groups, including Udaki for the Remnant,
Gillian with MI6, Leonard for Dvorak, Selma for
the CIA, and several others from various
agencies. Yet according to Udaki there was no
one from Hydra; and her observation was accurate,
there was no representative from Hydra, because
at that point the focus and thrall weren’t on the
inventor
but on The Schedule and the show explaining The
Schedule.
Yet V├нhaan Rickteshvara wasn’t just an inventor
working by himself in a lonely lab without support.
He was a young and poor inventor funded by Hydra,
though he couldn’t admit to such backing. He had to
seem
independent of any group or nation, creating
a program that he claimed had the much more limited
use
of predicting hurricanes, catastrophes, and the like,
a lie that Hydra required him to voice by
contract—when he,
of course, invented a program far greater—and agreed
to offer, also by contract, selected insights
to Hydra from The Schedule—insights verified only
by V├нhaan, since no one at Hydra, or anyone else
in the world, understood how the Schedule operated
or how to interpret its unique code—so that Hydra
could capture, interrogate, or find the location of
key
agents of Dvorak, the Remnant, and the nation-states.
Some of these deductions or at least a few suspicions
about him might have arisen if anyone researched
Hydra and its history and not only its present
activities. Yet, to be fair, it’s a forgivable
oversight of the Remnant and Dvorak—weathering
a storm must come first before analyzing how the storm
arose—and Udaki, Hut├бn and Carina had been
in the midst of a storm long before the Schedule
became
their target. That indeed, in a way, was the hope or
more
the expectation of V├нhaan when he used the Schedule—
keeping Dvorak and Remnant busy with locating
The Schedule and protecting V├нhaan—while he was busy
with three missions: First, finishing his contract
with Hydra,
which he now had done by identifying the motives
and movements of crucial Dvorak and Remnant agents.
Second, finishing a mission he wanted to handle
without interference involving a terrorist group
anxious to cause a disaster in Kolkata and make
a crisis The Schedule had picked up needing attention
immediately and which he could only trust himself
to prevent because he couldn’t trust the nation-states
lack
of efficiency or the bumbling NGO groups
or their lack of useful expertise about India—
The Schedule had watched them botch so many
operations—
and the electronic signs of the terrorist group’s
activity were
such that only The Schedule could notice them. But
V├нhaan worried
that their agents might see something on the ground
unless they
were distracted, so he hoped the Remnant and Dvorak
would pursue him and The Schedule to keep their
attention
away from any signs of a no-name terrorist group
that was planning on bombing Kolkata if a certain
person wasn’t elected in India, an event
that not only meant disaster for India but could
be used as a tactic in other vulnerable states;
and Third, the objective closest to his heart and the
most
important reason he created The Schedule, unknown
to all, was to locate his missing sister Anika.
All three missions making one point clear: his
undertakings
were lone wolf operations based on the analysis
from The Schedule to divert the notice of
nation-states,
the Remnant, and Dvorak because, in choosing partners
who wouldn’t interfere, V├нhaan avoided nation-states—
too massive a bureaucracy—had little faith in those
disliked by The Schedule, like Dvorak, because people
like Nicholas made choices by impulse, ego, revenge
or through an ideology, choices sometimes valid,
sometimes not, but overall, too uncertain for V├нhaan.
The Schedule said the Remnant eschewed extreme
approaches,
as well as violence, with a bias for democracies,
yet hating popularism, dictatorship and fascism
and wouldn’t make the harsh choices quickly enough for
him.
Yet about Hydra’s method there were also question
marks:
its decentralized approach he had seen first-hand and
thought
it couldn’t work in this kind of crisis, plus its
special
self-serving attitude might hesitate too long if it
couldn’t see how it would profit. Hydra’s ways had one
point
in its favor and the main reason he selected it
as his first patron: its abhorrence of terrorism—
even though its many victims called Hydra terrorists—
but Hydra had fought terrorism from its beginning,
battling to make a world safe for the individual
and small entrepreneur, not a world of frightened
people
or gangs preying on or threatening each other with
bombs
or weapons, because in that world each citizen must
join
a gang to survive, a world where Hydra would not
exist.
Hydra would say: Is there crime if judges are
criminals?
So terrorism didn’t benefit the little guy
or his enterprise; and if a terrorist party grew
too powerful or threatening, Hydra itself would have
to morph into a terrorist group or covert body
like Dvorak, the Remnant, or an international
cartel, with professional soldiers, spies, a
government,
or a bureaucracy to fight them, like a nation-state,
though The Schedule believed a nation-state would lose
fighting
terrorism and V├нhaan too hated the consequences
of terrorism because then the individualism
that Hydra so much prized, despite a few questionable
practices, would disappear and they would have much
less time
for V├нhaan’s inventions and advanced scientific work.
Hydra promised him he would have time for his work and
full
control of The Schedule, raising two salient points:
the Remnant and Dvorak didn’t realize: V├нhaan
had a key beyond the key they knew, and no one, no
group,
could fully acquire it without V├нhaan being alive.
The other point: Who else would have ever signed up
V├нhaan
with such limited qualifications? A fair question
with a simple answer. Hydra was a decentralized
operation, million
random changing pieces of one
puzzle (as Hut├бn once phrased it), each piece of the puzzle
important to the whole, each with its own power, each
piece
able to function on its own or in a harmony
with the whole. Yet how does Hydra find each of its pieces?
Selma certainly didn’t go to some central office
to be interviewed; she received an unsolicited
“invitation” from a “member” unknown to her living
in Turkey. Someone in India invited V├нhaan.
Neither called themselves by or ever used the name
“Hydra.”
No one in Hydra or other groups knew its origin
because there was no person, headquarters, town,
tradition,
or thing named “Hydra.” It wasn’t an acronym Hydra
gave itself, according to The Schedule, but a title
its enemies labeled it after the creature in Greek
mythology. The Schedule alone uncovered the first
time someone gave it the name Hydra, an isolated event
by someone in the service of a nation-state
to describe an organization he wasn’t very
sure but suspected existed, a thing with so many
heads that no one could possibly control or defeat it,
its name soon so polysemous to its adversaries
that no secret service, government, police, or any
other authority could pinpoint a single mission
or leader, which explains Udaki’s comment to Aaron
that the Remnant never expected to eliminate
Hydra, only to anticipate its path; for Hydra
was constantly shifting, randomly acting and thinking,
all of which perhaps indicates why other groups
ignored
the origins of Hydra and the background of V├нhaan
and instead preferred to focus only on The Schedule,
because the great effort to decipher the beginnings
or the processes of Hydra Udaki had shelved long
ago, concluding it was like capturing mercury,
identical pieces splaying everywhere, each deadly,
its processes too slippery, random, and anarchic
for anyone to grasp; but if something could grasp
Hydra,
it would be The Schedule, which had tracked Hydra long
before
V├нhaan agreed to help them and claimed—though even he
knew
it seemed impossible—that it had mapped every movement
of every organized group and had tapped into the files
of every decision and process on earth, allowing
it to know the origin of Hydra; and due to this
knowledge Hydra became his patron and because he knew
Hydra he built respect within Hydra and even some
independence, though by no means general leadership
or authority, and just one small piece of the riddle
but enough to execute his own rogue operations
and particularly keep his independence—he had
learned the hard way in the cardboard slums of Mumbai,
where he
would read Goethe, who wrote independence is the
greatest
of blessings.
But if someone would have asked him—which no one
ever did—how the organization, not the title,
Hydra arose, he knew the answer: the farmer Rogish
Fenterara and his farm. But before that tale is told,
let us think about the effort of V├нhaan to exclude
the nation-states, the Remnant, and Dvorak from
knowing
about this serious terrorist threat on India,
how he delayed, deceived, and distracted them from
learning
about the threat until there were no noticeable signs.
How could no one but V├нhaan and his Schedule have
knowledge
of this terrorist threat? In asking such a key
question
clarifies why The Schedule had such value. To others,
such as nation-states, the terrorists behind this
crisis
were new and unknown—like the garage businesses that
no
one knew before they became Silicon Valley—unknown
to nation-states, Dvorak, and the Remnant, not unknown
to The Schedule, which had an ever-watchful eye that
feasts
on minutia and lives to extract, compile, analyze,
and conclude from information exchanged across diverse
electronic, electrical, and digital lines plus
many other sources, and offer answers long before
others could detect it, if they could detect it at
all,
then make from the analysis of that information
reasonably accurate predictions, a simple tool
with sophistication far beyond any information-
gathering tools of others, making it impossible
for any known person, organization, or machine
to give this information and its interpretations
more quickly, if at all. But an additional motive
for V├нhaan in deceiving the Remnant and Dvorak
concerning The Schedule—he knew that, even without his
tactics, it was unlikely that any of them would have
seen the signs—was his conviction, due to the fiascos
caused so often by the nation-states and Dvorak when
crises arose, that if others found out about this
threat,
they might handle it poorly—he had seen this happen
in several crises and he didn’t want his homeland,
India, to suffer from their incompetence—whereas
he knew precisely what to do because The Schedule
would
guide him. It knew about the terrorist plan and
because
he had done several minor operations and each
case was successful and, as Hydra asked, anonymous
with no loss to Hydra or its resources, like many
rogue operations of Hydra members—a reason why
V├нhaan preferred Hydra, at least in the short
term—Hydra
supported him with materials, a lab, and money.
V├нhaan also knew Hydra’s origins from The Schedule,
which also influenced his decision to work with them.
Hydra began with Rogish
Fenterara and his farm,
a farm engulfed by conglomerates and monopolies
that sabotaged his crops and their delivery,
threatened
his daughter, isolated his family and gave Rogish
a huge, thick, and deep scar on his back from an
“accident.”
To The Schedule Rogish’s story was a “phenomenon,”
an incident in which a solo event involving
individuals or small groups wouldn’t be swallowed by
a larger event or body—like a corporation,
a government, or an institution—phenomena
appearing as a red blip, and The Schedule knew
throughout
the earth where these blips happened. These
individuals
and small groups, often private groups of farmers and
single
entrepreneurs, not so coincidentally became
acquainted with each other through the efforts of
Rogish
on a web page—a link that the Schedule’s eye couldn’t
miss—
and decided to meet one time in a conference called
“Spanking”—an intentionally misleading name to make
others believe the conference was about something else
to hide attendees harassed for years by monopolies
and conglomerates—where they sat down and tried to
find
a solution with help from a rabble rouser, Janak
Waverly, a pseudonym (his real name was Josiah
Jeffries) so that his enemies, of which he had many,
couldn’t follow him or know about his presence, a man
whose speeches and activities The Schedule had
unearthed
and categorized as inflammatory and wild as
a Robin Hood con man, even when he helped those
oppressed
and forgotten by illegally cheating or robbing
the big corporations and others. Yet soon, according
to The Schedule, from this group of law-abiding,
religious
and moral but desperate, frustrated, angry and quite
revengeful farmers, a group one day to be named Hydra
was born, whose purpose at first was to use
tactics—many
of them from the hired provocateur Janak Waverly—
to attack the monopolies and the conglomerates
by threatening and deceiving their leaders, employees,
and their families, one at a time; and they did this
kind
of harassment for a while—just ordinary people
working from their homes all over the globe—many
others
soon joining the group who had the same problems,
until this
international group ballooned into a massive list
inside every organization, including major
corporations, governments, and police forces who would
contribute if needed, most of them because they
approved
the basic principle of Hydra—to protect the small
entrepreneurs and the independent businesses,
as well as the individual—and a few because
they were frightened that Hydra would harm or threaten
their lives
and families. But in time its tactics changed,
expanded
into activities that the original group would
perhaps never have considered, “perhaps” because the
first
members in their quest for retribution were ruthless
to their enemies and had no hesitation using
threats of death, rape, home attacks, and physical
beatings—no
threats or actions exceeding what conglomerates had
done
to their own family members for many years prior
to Hydra’s founding—the difference being that the
Hydra
of today, after many battles, had more jaded views
and a hatred of authority added to their old
founding principles. Fearing no person, no tradition,
and no institution, regardless how large, the Hydra
of today had grown beyond the simple family farmer
and entrepreneur to include anyone or any
group that was threatened by an unwieldy authority,
though rarely did it stray from individualistic
and paranoid attitudes, maintaining its amorphous
and decentralized core yet spreading its substantial
wealth
and resources so broadly throughout the world that
even
nation-states and powerful corporations such as banks
couldn’t debilitate it once it disseminated
its wealth among many small and local financial sites—
Hydra wouldn’t invest in any large institutions
and corporations, a sign of its early beginnings
with anonymous little people and small businesses—
yet any “member” could hire or extend a membership
to someone to work for Hydra, though the need or
reason
was always obvious to more than one member, such as
the case of V├нhaan and Selma, both of whom were
noticed
by Hydra members and were “patronized,” and in this
way
Hydra acquired several benefits of The Schedule
without total control, as already mentioned before,
a situation that never irked Hydra since a piece
of the pie was good enough for now, as long as they
knew
the rest of the pie still existed and no one had it.
Betraying Hydra, members all knew well, was suicide,
working under its umbrella was a life-long sentence;
which returns us to the confrontation outside the
print
shop, an event similar for Hut├бn to the breaking
of the vase by Prince Myshkin,
an event where the forces
of Dvorak and Hydra were at a stalemate, Hut├бn
was waiting for them to produce Fisha and free Aaron.
V├нhaan at this moment, with his own agenda and time
frame and his need to know in person the people
involved,
decided the deceit had to end, The Schedule bringing
out of the fog people from Dvorak and the Remnant
Hydra had to know better, V├нhaan very confident
there was no way now either Dvorak or the Remnant,
and certainly not any of the nation-states on their
own, if ever—their opportunity had passed, based on
The Schedule—would obtain the sensitive information
about the terrorists without him or The Schedule
there,
thus allowing him—having fulfilled the Hydra contract
and able to proceed on his own to prevent the scheme
of the terrorists—to turn around and quickly walk back
into the print shop, an action that of course did
startle
and confuse Gillian, Selma, Hut├бn, and Mustfarris,
who would have stopped him but were cautious from the
reaction
of those with guns, notably from Hydra or Dvorak.
Dvorak’s forces momentarily froze, waiting on
a clear command from Gillian, while Selma’s militia—
who knew V├нhaan was with Hydra—stopped, leaving
Gillian,
Mustfarris, and Hut├бn facing each other, then rushing
together into the print shop. They discovered V├нhaan
wasn’t there, the first assumptions being somehow he
had
escaped out the back or hidden away by Hydra
again; and that impression might have remained if
Hut├бn,
dubious as ever about either events that he
didn’t anticipate, events akin to The Schedule’s
“phenomena,” or events he didn’t grasp their causes,
because doubt implied he had missed some event in the
past
that would explain it. Only one recent event seemed
out
of line—V├нhaan’s suicide attempt—so Hut├бn, using
George, examined the pill that V├нhaan had tried to
swallow
and upon examination noted that the pill was
not deadly, at which point Hut├бn demanded the return
of Fisha and as he did, a door suddenly opened
from another shop and Fisha was wheeled out, seemingly
in good health and spirits, leading to several evident
but sobering conclusions: the chase after The Schedule
and the need to abduct V├нhaan to obtain the key
were not only wild goose chases, but V├нhaan and Hydra
seemed to induce them to rescue V├нhaan on the island,
a clever, albeit dangerous ruse and way to waste
time for V├нhaan. But for Hydra the thought that Hut├бn
had
The Schedule—V├нhaan did deceive Hydra—when he did not,
because it appeared now that Hydra had the chance to
use
The Schedule within V├нhaan’ restrictions, and that
this fact
explained why to some extent Hydra was always one step
ahead of the Remnant and why Dvorak was anxious
to steal it, the whole series of events disappointing
for Dvorak and Gillian, who turned and left the shop
with their squadron, calculating how they would
justify
to Nicholas why this opportunity to obtain
The Schedule or V├нhaan had passed, since V├нhaan
clearly was
connected to Hydra, forcing Gillian to suggest
to Nicholas that they continue on the same path
they had taken for the last years. For not even
Hydra’s
connection to V├нhaan and The Schedule had as yet
stopped
Dvorak’s world operations, and more often than not
Dvorak still succeeded, because more often than not
Hydra had little interest in what Dvorak was
doing. Nonetheless this failure of Dvorak did please
Hut├бn despite his own miscalculations as he walked
away from the copy shop and set in motion the next
scheme,
wherein Mustfarris was watching Gillian’s group depart
the copy shop for their cars and had positioned a van
near to her car so that when she appeared, his team
fought the bodyguards around her, shot her with a
taser
and abducted her in the van, a large sticker placed on
her window, “Aaron for Gillian,” and within an hour
Dvorak released Aaron, who joined his compatriots
on the boat back to home base on the Andaman Islands
where they met with Udaki and this narrative began.
But the imminent actions of Aaron and V├нhaan nagged
at Hut├бn’s mind, First, Aaron, whom he was certain
wouldn’t rest
until he confronted Hydra for abducting Fisha;
Second, V├нhaan, who planned for that one moment to
vanish—
though, as master of The Schedule, The Schedule must
have helped
him plan the deceit so that others’ timeline would
close now.
And who knew why he would choose to play his game of
delay
with the Remnant and Dvorak as well as trick Hydra?
Aaron and V├нhaan in his mind urged Hut├бn to begin
strategizing and calculating because he knew that
Aaron would be impatient for his own form of revenge
and V├нhaan would have had a serious reason to play
such a game with the forces of Dvorak and Hydra,
even if deceit can have at times an end quite worthy,
a text ringing in his head from a favorite poet:
“Although
deceit is mostly disapproved,
seeming
to show a mind malevolent,
many
a time it brings, as has been proved,
advantages
that are self-evident,
and mortal
threats and dangers has removed.”
In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-├╢stlicher
Divan (1819).
In Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), The
Idiot (1869), Part Four,
Chapter 7.
From Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), Orlando
Furioso, Canto IV, trans. Barbara Reynolds.
