The Whole Truth

CHAPTER 93

AT ZERO HOURS UNIVERSAL TIME, Katie James appeared on a video released on the same Web site as Konstantin had been. It was not a coincidence.

The footage had been shot by Shaw in her hotel room.

Katie had returned to her natural blonde hair, though it was still spiky. She spoke clearly and firmly using no notes. “My name is Katie James and everything I wrote in my earlier story was wrong. I told my newspaper not to publish it but they did anyway without telling me. But I can tell you the truth now. The Chinese are not behind the Red Menace. And the Russians did not commit the London Massacre. My source, Aron Lesnik, lied.” She held up her injured arm. “I was almost killed by the people really responsible for all this.” She paused. “And who are they? A man named Richard Pender was one person behind it. He ran Pender amp; Associates, based in Virginia. He is or was a perception manager. He’s dead now, killed by whoever employed him to create the truth out of lies and make the world believe it. Konstantin was a lie. The tens of thousands of people we thought had been slaughtered by the Russian government was a lie. The ‘Tablet of Tragedies’ was a lie.

“This was all done for one reason: to bring Russia and China to the brink of war. Why? So that the world would rearm. Who would want that? Who would possibly benefit? Well, over a dozen governments, including Russia, China, the U.S., England, France, and Japan have recently placed orders for trillions of dollars in weapons with a number of defense contractors because of the events put in motion by the Red Menace. Someone is trying to create a new cold war where we all live in fear of annihilation. But that’s not going to happen because we won’t let it. So whoever is behind all this, here’s a little message from me.” She paused, “The real truth will come out. And trust me, you won’t like it when it does.”

Along with Katie’s statements on the video, leaks were made to all major news sources about Pender’s involvement and subsequent murder with details designed to make her fellow journalists do all they could to find out the truth. A list of defense contactors benefiting from the new rearmament fervor was posted on the Internet. Details of how it was discovered that Lesnik was lying and his murder were released to two dozen major blogger sites. To say these facts spread like a California wildfire would have been a bit of an understatement.

The global reaction was swift. It was said that skies around the world were filled with smoke from the burning of “Remember Konstantin” T-shirts. The Scribe newspaper scrambled to put a positive spin on what had been done with Katie’s story, found they really couldn’t and Kevin Gallagher, Katie’s editor, was sacked. The FBI started throwing thousands of assets at Richard Pender’s murder. And in London the same was done with the massacre and Aron Lesnik’s death.

All major defense contractors issued statements claiming they’d had no involvement in the Red Menace campaign. Much like the treatment of the Russians, few believed their denials.

Defense departments in every major country were ordered by their civilian leaders to suspend all contracts for new weaponry. Meanwhile, the Russian and Chinese governments ordered a stand-down in their near-war, and President Gorshkov and his counterpart in China agreed to meet at a neutral site to discuss their two countries’ future relations.

Yet the world wanted more. Much more. They wanted to know who had lied to them. They wanted the person or persons really behind it all. And they wanted them yesterday.