Deadlock || ᴠᴍɪɴ

Chapter 14

“You didn’t sleep last night, did you?” Rob said as he brought a piece of bacon to his mouth. They were eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant. “I saw you standing by the window at dawn. Did I keep you up because of what I said?”

“—I’m grateful for it, Rob,” Jimin said, putting down his coffee cup and smiling. “It’s a good opportunity, so I thought I would think long and hard about it.”

“Did you arrive at an answer?”

“Yeah. I managed to.”

“I see,” Rob nodded and continued his meal. He probably didn’t ask what the answer was because he already knew. There was something about Jimin that looked refreshed, like he had come to terms with something.

“Oh, right, I forgot to tell you. Yesterday, I talked with a friend who’s knowledgeable about the munitions industry. He told me that President Egan of Smith-Backs Company is the nephew of the president of General Mars. This was news to me, too, so I was surprised.”

“Keeping the management in the family, huh?”

“And to add to that, the daughter of the president of General Mars is Bill Manning’s wife.”

“You mean the vice-presidential candidate, Manning?”

“Yeah, and that’s not it. The Manning family is lining their pockets with their family business in the oil industry. They have deep ties with countries in the Middle East. Inevitably, they have ties to the munitions industry as well.”

It was widely rumoured that the munitions industry and oil capital were constant presences behind the government. The cozy relationship between the government and munitions corporations was a famous example. Many people pointed out that the bloated munitions conglomerates were the cause behind increased military interference by the United States in other countries.

Rob glanced around and made sure that there were no other customers close by before speaking.

“Jimin. I can’t help but think that White Heaven has ties of some sort with the government, though at this point, I have no idea what they might be. You know about the Iran-Contra affair, right?”

“Yeah, of course. The political scandal in the 1980s, right?”

The American government had been secretly selling weapons to Iran, its enemy in war at the time, and had been passing the proceeds to the Contras, an anti-government group, for them to buy weapons. The discovery of the arrangement had led to the scandal.

“America was supporting the anti-Communist Contras, but the CIA created the Contras in the first place. The CIA backed them fully and made them engage in guerilla activities, causing civil unrest. Outwardly, the American government puts on a show of declaring they will stamp out terrorism, but the CIA has always pulled the strings in every coup d’etat in Latin America. Terrorism is one of America’s specialties.”

Jimin lapsed into thought again as he listened to Rob. Rob wasn’t wrong. In the past, the United States had certainly interfered unjustly in the politics in Latin America. But White Heaven’s targets were domestic. It was hard to imagine that they had connections to a political conspiracy.

When Jimin voiced his thoughts, Rob gave him a sardonic smile.

“Have you heard of Operation Northwoods, proposed by the military and CIA in 1962? To justify a military invasion, the Operation proposed, among other things, to set off terror bombings in parts of America and make it seem like they were done by Cubans, or disguising a military aircraft as a civilian one, blowing it up, and announcing that we’d been attacked by Cubans. President Kennedy rejected this one and it never happened, but there are countless other examples of American setups. Take Pearl Harbour. America knew that the koreans were going to attack, but they didn’t prevent it. At the time, America was unable to join the war because the majority of its citizens were against it. But after the attack on Pearl Harbour, societal opinion shifted greatly in favour of war.”