Twilight Visitor

By Réal Laplaine

Mateus Cordozo has just returned to his hometown of Afife, Portugal, a short vacation where he hopes to reconcile his midlife crisis - far from his "normal" life as a bio-engineer back in Sweden. With two bottles of wine, some fine local cheese and freshly baked-bread, he finds a secluded spot on a blustery and cold beach, where he is certain that no one will interrupt his soul-searching. Half way into his first glass he spots a figure approaching, and finally, a strange woman steps up to him. They engage a stimulating conversation, wherein she reveals her true agenda; telling him that a nuclear debacle is about to ensue in the wake of an energy-desperate Chinese invasion of Iran to commandeer Iran's oil fields. Mateus, having abandoned his phone in his hotel, is clueless about on-going events in the world, particularly news of this invasion. She goes on to explain that there are only two outcomes to this war; do nothing and watch the inevitable crisis escalate into a nuclear war, or, using the technology that he and his team back in Sweden have developed, offer the Chinese an alternative to their energy-crisis. Cordozo dismisses her claims as ridiculous and refuses to continue the dialogue. As China effectively overcomes the Iranian defenses and moves close to taking Tehran, Mateus finds himself walking a tightrope between truth and denial and a barrage of overwhelming questions assaulting him: does Iran have the nuclear capacity to do such a thing; and would they; and if so, would China reciprocate with nukes of their own? Moreover, is his strange twilight visitor right, can he actually put the pin back in the grenade before it explodes into a global meltdown?
A geopolitical and speculative thriller that haunts the mind.

"This is a fast paced read but the plot contains complex ideas which adds a depth to the book. Full of action and real life scenarios this is one of those books you can spend hours reading without realizing where the time has gone. There are plenty of surprises and twists. This book will appeal to crime and science fiction fans. And will also interest those intrigued by geopolitical themes."
The Portugal News

"The story races along with pace of a Tom Clancy thriller but the depth of the plot is rich in complexities philosophical ideas. Highly recommended for readers who like fast paced thrillers but with an ingenious twist."
Book-Reviewer.com

"I definitely recommend Twilight Visitor by Real Laplaine as a five star read to all audiences fond of international political thrillers. It has an awesome, suspenseful plot that can be described as an out of this world political intrigue!"
BlogCritics.org

“... a high concept thriller that is comparable with the best of Dan Brown or Jack Higgins.”
Novelist, David Luddington

• Language: English
• Publisher: Réal Laplaine
• Release date: Mar 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370296453

Réal Laplaine

I write in several genres; crime thrillers, speculative fiction thrillers (some would call it sci-fi but I prefer speculative fiction because my themes are more possible than not) and geopolitical thrillers.I have written a few books which classify as literary fiction - novels with an inspirational edge.My focus has always been on writing very contemporary novels, which, while entertaining, pull no punches on the state of the world we live in, or the potential futures facing us, thus, the speculative fiction aspect of my works.In the bookstore at www.reallaplaine.com you will find my books in eBook formats (ePub/PDF) which are instantly downloadable to your computer, smartphone or other device. Links are provided for each book if you prefer to order Kindle, Nook, paperback or other formats from other book retailers.You will also find a number of my short stories which are cost-free.Some of my titles are now in audio book format - more are coming.Abolishing nuclear weapons:In 2014 I published a book, Twilight Visitor, a geopolitical thriller about China invading Iran for its oil, wherein Iran retaliates by firing a nuclear warhead at Beijing. The book has garnered tremendous reviews, comparing it to the best of Dan Brown and other similar authors, but what is important is that the story impresses on the reader that nuclear war is just a button away. In several of my subsequent geopolitical thrillers this thread also weaves through the stories, to help raise awareness on this existential threat to the future of our kids.Please take a moment to visit the page entitled B.A.N. or Ban All Nukes at www.reallaplaine.comRéal LaplaineAuthor of Break Out Bookswww.reallaplaine.com

Book preview

TWILIGHT VISITOR

Eight minutes is all it takes to set the world on fire

by Réal Laplaine

Copyright © 2014 by Réal Laplaine

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission of the author. Excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

First edition: 2014

Any reference to real names and places is purely fictional and are constructs of the author. Any offence the references produce is unintentional and in no way reflects the reality of any locations or people involved.

Other books by Réal Laplaine

The Buffalo Kid

Finding Agnetha

Intrusion: A Keeno Crime Thriller

Quantum Assault: A Keeno Crime Thriller

The One: A Keeno Crime Thriller

See Me Not

Deception People

Dead but not gone

Earth Escape

Woman EX

The Other

L.I.N.

When Gods Roar: The Awakening

For more information about the author and his books go to:

www.reallaplaine.com

Dedication

To Nelson Mandela

For inspiring us all

The lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.

Aldous Huxley

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:5

Foreword

"There is no mechanical explanation for how or why we can accomplish the impossible feats that we do from one end of this universe to the other.

It boils down to our singular passion to wave our wands and to create and animate life and to see our dreams come true.

Testimony to this is the fact that despite its enormity, the universe can do little else than succumb to the power which we wield; the indefatigable yet often forgotten quintessential god-like capacity for creation within all beings."

The Visitor

1

Fort Belvoir, VA. USA

The facility, comprised of three levels above ground and two more below, was fortified behind one of the most secure structures in the world. The massive semi-circle-shaped building, viewed from above, appeared like a giant eagle with its wings sweeping forward. Whether intended by its designers, or not, the aerial perspective was certainly much more impressive than when viewed at ground level.

Despite its prodigious size, and outward appearance, the interior lacked any sense of artistic or aesthetic appeal whatsoever, with its clinically beige-colored walls and endless rows of fluorescent lights arranged with mind-numbing symmetry; added to which were the regiments of fire sprinklers, like tiny soldiers standing at attention, poking obtrusively from every other ceiling panel.

On the top floor, the central hub itself, stood banks of computers – hundreds of them – stretching as far as the eye could see along each curved wing of the complex.

On the inner wall, a series of massive screens had been erected, twenty feet high and wide, extending like a seamless theater along the curved surface.

It had been entirely designed with a military view in mind; functionality was king, and every detail bespoke of that ambience. There were no niceties, no soothing color arrangements, in fact, nothing to appeal to the higher senses. Its creators had been given the mandate to produce a distraction-free environment, and one which imbued a Spartan-like work-ethic, whereby the occupants could do little else than focus on the job at hand.

The integrated computer system worked tirelessly, analyzing, evaluating, and cross-referencing every piece of information fed into it, in real-time, from around the globe and through a system of satellites watching the Earth from their space-bound orbits.

To stand there, one might easily feel daunted by this monumental edifice, as if confronted by the great pyramid of Giza, or another worldly wonder. But to those who worked there, its magnificence had lost its awe, replaced by the ever-present sense of onerous duty and vigilance required and demanded of them.

There was a tangible background noise, the subtle yet permeating buzz of hundreds of computers, speaking to one another in a language which to the human ear was simply indecipherable.

The only occupant of this multi-story mega-structure was in fact the Missile Defense Agency or MDA; America’s high-tech watchdog, protecting the nation’s airspace from foreign incursions and attacks.

Corporal Sanchez, having just started his graveyard shift, was enjoying a fresh cup of coffee as he oriented himself once again to the elaborate triad in front of him – a system of computer screens which provided real-time movements of foreign objects in the airspace stretching from Iraq to the very western border of China. It was not enough that America watched its own borders, the MDA maintained a network of satellites positioned hundreds of miles above the earth, watching, reporting on, and constantly alerting to unidentified objects which could pose a threat from as far away as China, North Korea, the Middle East and even Russia.

Sanchez leaned back into his chair, raising the fresh cup of coffee to his lips, when the vociferous alert sounded and flashed RED on his screen; a shocking discordance which shattered the sublime quietude of his surroundings.

For a brief instant he was gripped by a subconscious impulse which fought back against the conscious reality of what he was seeing. It was a natural reflexive impulse experienced by most anyone when faced with something shocking, terrifying, or even heralding incipient death – a vague parallel between reality and illusion as the senses reaffirmed their input.

His consternation quickly lapsed, for this was precisely what he had been trained and conditioned to respond to. The months of rigorous indoctrination, the testing, the simulations, trials, emergency drills and each time, the psychological evaluations and profiling to ensure that his mental equanimity could not been shaken in the face of a global crisis.

He pressed a button and spoke, his voice resonating throughout the voluminous facility.

‘We have a Sparrow Alert. I repeat, we have a Sparrow Alert – this is a Code Red.’

The heads of those staffing their own Geo-Tracking stations, watching their portion of the globe, looked up at the large wall screen as the satellite relayed footage of the intruder. It was a mere flash, a prism of green light moving across the face of the earth as viewed from the space-bound satellite.

The Senior Watch Officer, a hardened veteran of war, who had earned his stripes and had been entrusted as one of three shift-commanders for the MDA, felt a sudden and irrepressible shock go through his entire body. Not in his entire seventeen years working in this realm had there ever been a single SaS – or Sparrow-alert-Sighting, a coded term for an ICBM launch, from anywhere on the planet. Unilateral reduction of nuclear weapons in most every nation, except of course North Korea who refused to cooperate on the matter, and even China which maintained a veil of secrecy about their stockpile, had precluded such an instance from ever occurring – or so it was believed.

He sprinted to the station where the technician sat staring at his screen with a steeled look chiseled into his face.

‘Is it confirmed?’

‘Yes, Sir – it is a Sparrow.

‘Bearing?’

‘Point of impact is the eastern coast of China; probable target - Beijing.’

‘How long before it impacts?’

‘At its current speed - eight or nine minutes, at most.’

The Watch-Officer groaned as a ponderous dread consumed him. He picked up the emergency line to the Pentagon, all the while thinking that someone may have just started World War III.

2

Afife, Portugal

As I recall, and my memory of those early years is fuzzier as time passes, I was ten years old when the nightmare first began.

For whatever reason, this specter, this ghostly haunting, would visit itself upon me several times a week during sleep. One moment, it seemed at least, I would be restfully sleeping, the next, I was suddenly falling away from my body, as if I had just been dropped from the top of a mountain into the deep dark abyss of endless space below. As always, there was this overwhelming consternation as I tried to hold onto the world falling away from me; futilely grasping for something as I fell and as my body disappeared from my view, like a snowflake in a swirling storm.

I could never tell how long it lasted, and never, not ever, had I determined a destination.

Each time I simply disappeared into the maws of indeterminate darkness and when it seemed intolerable, if not even horrifying to me, I would awake, my heart pounding, my body covered in sweat and my breaths coming stertorously.

Each time, with indefatigability, that nightmare would leave me feeling helplessly out of control – as if there was nothing, I could do to prevent myself from falling away, like a rock tumbling into a bottomless pit of dark murk.

Even now, lying in my bed in the hotel where I am vacationing, this ghost still accosts me – having just awakened once again with its terrifying images trailing off into my subconscious domain.

I reach for a cigarette and light it up; doubtless that it has any value to my health, but the numbing effect of the nicotine and the countless chemicals imbibed, seems to calm my nerves, irrespective of the fact that I am an addicted smoker.

Why the dream began, I cannot say. Why it clutches to me like a poltergeist, night after night, for forty-four years now, I also cannot answer. I have tried to understand the significance of it, and the more I think about it, the more my anxiety simply grows. Attention seems only to feed and fuel it, like a voracious beast lurking in the dark recesses of my mind – vexing and taunting me.

I have lived with this underpinning of anxiety, a subtle yet tangible sense of foreboding that at any moment something might happen to me; that an ill-defined destiny might take power over my conscious control, like a car suddenly taking control from the driver, and to what end I can only dread. It is not death that I fear, it is the unknown, the fact that I am not entirely the master of my own mental domain and this damn nightmare pokes and prods my very soul – constantly reminding me that I am its slave and it my master.

So here I lie with a thin film of sweat over my entire body – the result of my nighttime haunting, smoking a cigarette and staring out the window at the distant sea. The sky has already begun its transformation from black to a deep blue-violet, as the distant curvature of earth rolls forward, once again, to welcome the sun to our part of the world.

I came to Afife, Portugal, for a break. In fact, Afife is my hometown, and somehow, I envisioned using this time to reconnect with my roots in the hopes of coming to grips with this riddle which vexes me.

Do not get me wrong – I am a successful professional. But that is a relative term, because success and happiness are not necessarily parallel dynamics. I know people who are tremendously successful, wealthy in fact, who claim little happiness in their life. I too am successful, but I am far from happy – as paradoxical as that may sound. And if anything, my career is the one stable thing left in my life, the very anchor which keeps my ship from floating aimlessly out into a turbulent sea.

I am fifty-four years of age, and my life is defined by the same parameters which I set into motion thirty years before. I work the same job, with the same people. I have lived in the same apartment now for ten years, following a marital break-up which left me more cynical than free. I spend most nights alone, reading and drinking wine, and on occasion I can be found in local cafes, of which Stockholm, where I live, provides an abundance of.

I am good at my job; I have stable work associates and money is never an issue. But that said, I am a lonely man. I have grown skeptical – something I never expected to have happen to me. And ever since my divorce, I have also failed miserably at every attempted relationship since.

I do not believe in fate – although I my nighttime haunting suggest that fate believes in me. I also do not put stock in things which I cannot measure with a ruler, which I cannot formulize or fit within the parameters of engineering principles; a field, perforce, which operates on known quantities only, a field which seemed to fit my state of mind and one which I have engaged for the last three decades.

As I move about my small hotel room, I notice a mass of thick angry clouds pressing down in the dim light of a pre-dawn illumination. The Portuguese sun is not planning to grace us with an appearance on this day. But that is no surprise to me – for I grew up on these very shores, and I know that the winter months are not the most popular time for visitors.

After a long shower I made my way to a small café next to the hotel, whereupon I imbibed half a loaf of freshly baked bread along with copious amounts of butter and black-currant jam, and of course, two cups of coffee.

As I sat looking out at the coast, at a turbulent sea, with its whitecaps cascading into the shore and with the shriek of a blistery wind on the other side of the window, I became distinctly aware of yet another feeling which had moved in, like that of a misty haze over my soul. It was a premonition that something was going to happen to me on this very day. And considering my state of mind, a mind which perceives the world in terms of nuts and bolts, black and white, explicable, or not, such a premonition had to be quite strong to cut through my mental mediocrity.

I had no special plans today. In fact, it was with malice and forethought that I had scheduled my trip here, in the hopes of finding answers to my disappointing existence. Ironically, the term mid-life crisis, which I had formerly assigned to others, was now my very nemesis – and it rested on my shoulders to either resolve my sense of failure as an individual, or to live with the monkey on my back – alone, disappointed, and as always, anxious about something which I could never define.

It was mid-morning when I finally stepped from the cozy warmth of the café and was instantly accosted by a militant wind. It slapped me in the face like the sting of a sergeant’s hand slapping a new conscript under his command. With a thick turtle-neck sweater covering my upper body and a wind breaker over that, I was shielded from the angry torrent of air which charged in from the ocean. As I gazed out to the Atlantic, the horizon was a foreboding wall of dark ashen clouds, like the billowing smoke of a massive fire spreading over the sea.

I decided to take advantage of the desolate beach nearby. With a hint of enthusiasm and looking forward to a day of complete solitude, I went to a nearby shop, one which I had known as a child and which still stood there, like a relic from a distant time. There, I purchased two bottles of local wine, a block of cheese and a loaf of steamy hot bread made at a nearby bakery. And of course, my one inseparable addiction and one which I have long decided would follow me to the grave - cigarettes.

Following a narrow rocky path which began at the edge of town, I snaked my way along a winding stony tendril which sloped steeply downward, eventually arriving to a small, protected patch of sand. An outcropping, a sharp angular block of black stone protected me from an indignant wind which coursed the shoreline, while a sandy ridge behind offered privacy from those who might look down to this spot.

Before me was an unbroken panorama of ocean which stretched endlessly and a shoreline which curved lazily into the mid-morning mist. All around me the wind shrieked, and yet, in my small nook, there was relative calm.

An old wooden table, its paint dulled and worn by the coursing winds, sand, and rain, leaned against the stony outcrop, appearing as creaky and stiff as that of an old man who had lost his balance and had been left there for good. Two canvas beach-chairs lay half covered in sand at its feet. I balanced the small table and then brushed the sand from one