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The World of NEW WORLD ORDER
The
suspenseful stories that make up NEW WORLD ORDER are set across the
globe, recounting the experiences and adventures of a wide range of
characters in very different locations.
But the people and places share a common link: Mason Group
Worldwide, a fictional corporation, secretive and far-reaching, with
operations in every corner of the world.
“It’s this huge thing,” says one character,
“this monstrous---thing
with tentacles that reach all over the world. It touches thousands,
probably millions of people.”
The book’s
characters and the company are purely fictional, but the locations of
each of the stories are drawn from actual places.
The stories are set in Iraq,
the United States, Brazil, the United
Arab Emirates, South
Africa,
Australia, Mexico, Thailand,
Venezuela, and on an airplane
somewhere over the Pacific Ocean.
The book takes
readers on a wild ride—and rolling over the locations marked on the map
above will show a story location. Click the
location or scroll down for excerpts from the book.
But beware: it’s a
harsh world out there, full of adventure and danger, romance and terror
and loneliness.
Maybe the world of NEW WORLD ORDER is best captured in the words of the
great traveler and author, Saki, that appear at the front of the book:
“After all, life teems with things that have no earthly reason".
Excerpts
THE TERMS OF THE DEAL—Green
Zone, Baghdad
The Green Zone was an American bubble, four square miles surrounded by
razor wire and blast-proof walls in the middle of a ruined city. The
area had been the seat of government, a place where the wealthy and
well-connected had lived in villas beside manmade lakes and green parks,
where military parades were held every other weekend, and man-eating
lions were kept as pets. After the statue of Saddam had fallen, there
was a scramble to occupy the buildings that hadn’t been destroyed.
Central Command was set up in the Royal Palace, villas were converted to
barracks. The gracious mansions of dead Baathist party members had
become offices for the huge American contractors—Halliburton, KBR,
Mason—and fancy homes for their executives. A coalition of the billing,
ran the joke. And it was true: there was more money to be made on the
frontlines than anyone could imagine.
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CULTURAL AWARENESS—USA
Patrick Pierce was special and he knew it. He was twenty-six, charming
in a way that made people, men and women both, give him things he
wanted. He held a Stanford MBA, spoke fluent Spanish and French learned
from a series of live-in nannies, had spent the year between college and
B-school backpacking across Europe and Australia. Patrick’s father was a
retired Mason Group Worldwide executive officer and his great
grandfather had been a hunting buddy of Walter H. Mason, the company’s
enigmatic founder. One day Mason Group would merge with a military
contractor and an energy company to form one of the largest companies in
the world, and Patrick truly believed he could be that company’s
president. He looked forward to the approaching years—three abroad and
the bright career beyond—as a birthright: a time to be filled with
honor, power, riches, fame, and the love of women.
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BLOOD MONEY—United Arab Emirates, near the Saudi border
Back outside wind shrieked over me and sand pelted my skin like tiny
needles. I found Carolyn’s hut and she let me in without a sound. The
camp generator had been shut down for the evening. There was no light to
be had and no heat. The darkness was absolute. My hands went to
Carolyn’s body. I could hear her breathing. I touched her face. The wind
outside now seemed like small rain. In the dark I thought of Carolyn’s
face with its thin tapering nose, the dusting of freckles, her blue
eyes. It was a craving I felt for her as if for food or water—a
consuming desire that seemed to communicate itself to her through some
subtle chemistry of nerve or sinew.
It was cold. The blankets and rugs were rough and smelled of desert. It
was difficult after a while in the darkness to tell which way was up or
down; the small room became a mile wide. I cupped my hand over Carolyn’s
mouth. I choked my own voice against her throat. We lay there together
without sound in the dark and desert cold.
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JOHNSON THE DRIVER—Johannesburg,
South Africa
“Johnson, we run a serious business around here, an important business—a
business based on mutual trust and openness. We don’t tolerate certain
things among the staff, Johnson—not even the
appearance of certain
things—and one of those is stealing.”
The old man looked as if I’d spat. I’d been dreading the inevitable
groveling but what happened next surprised me. Johnson drew himself
upright and said, “I have never stolen anything in my life.” He said
this with dignity and in a tone that had the effect of making me feel
like a small and peevish man. “Don’t call me a thief, sir.”
“I haven’t called you a thief, Johnson. I said I’m investigating
‘performance issues.’”
“If people have complaints they should come forward and ask me
directly.”
Johnson’s job perhaps saved him from poverty and it took guts for him to
stand up to me. I had called him into my office to fire him but now
found myself admiring the man. The fact that I agreed entirely with his
point didn’t help matters much. I sighed. I decided then to stall for
time.
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SAMBA—Sao
Paulo, Brazil
In bed his heart raced.
Ellis was in the room, insulting him, ordering him to do humiliating
tasks: polish his golf balls, press his wrinkly slacks.
The African woman was there too.
She had thrown off her skirt and straddled Heeber, her great
breasts in his face, the cracked soles of her feet beneath his calves.
The bed rocked and groaned as they made love to pulsing jungle
music. Ellis, squatting in
the corner obscenely, wagged his tongue, taunting them.
The music grew louder and more frantic.
Heeber smelled blood and heard the panicked beating of wings.
There were flashes of light, like bulbs exploding in his face.
Someone cackled with laughter; someone else screamed.
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ROAD TRAIN—Western
Australia Outback
Reese saw that the skin on Blackie’s arm had been shaved as if with a
wood plane. From the bottom knuckle of his small finger, along the meaty
side of his hand and over the knob of his wrist-bone the skin was gone,
in places down to a white flash of bone. A blister the size and color of
a plum was forming at the heel of his hand. Dirt and packing grease were
streaked into the shredded meat, a nasty-looking wound.
“Ah, fuck, I don’t feel so good.” Blackie’s face had gone ashy. Big
jewels of sweat had grown on his forehead.
One of the Asians led him away.
Cuz chuckled as they headed back out toward the trucks. “Blackie,” he
said. “Clumsy bastard’s always getting hurt.”
“Jesus,” Reese said. “That looked pretty bad.”
“What, that scrape? Nah, that ain’t bad.” Cuz thrust forward his large
left hand. Reese noticed for the first time that the pinky and ring
finger, each from just below the second knuckle, were missing. Cuz
wiggled the stubs. “That’s bad.”
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JAVIER’S SILENCE—Sierra Madre Occidental, Mexico
I heard growling and turned my head. A
pair of black dogs reeled from the darkness, snapping viciously at each
other’s throats. From the junkyard a third dog charged toward me. I
froze in place, mesmerized by the sight of its bared fangs. How utterly
absurd, I thought, to be attacked by a mad dog in a dusty Mexican
junkyard!
Suddenly a heavy stone flew from behind me and struck the animal’s
snout. The beast yelped and fell headlong into the gravel. It shrieked
in a human voice as the other dogs tore into it with flashing teeth.
A few feet away the bus driver waited, another jagged stone in his hand.
He leered with alcoholic eyes. “You should be more careful,” he said.
“In this place, even the dogs are evil.”
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THE PLEASURE THING—Bangkok,
Thailand
Keller wandered out onto the main avenue.
An unsettling cacophony poured from the doors of bars and
restaurants: Khmer rock-and-roll, American top forty.
Thai women in spangled dresses teetered on heels, dangling like
jewelry from the arms of Russian mobsters who looked silly and murderous
in disco suits.
He turned into a side street.
At the end of the alley the Thai boy was pulling a chain, trying
to get the elephant from earlier to move.
Behind, another boy struck its legs savagely with a bamboo pole.
A group of men squatted around a large
metal tub filled with beer cans.
They fell silent as Keller blundered into the alley.
The harsh angular faces glowed with the sinister light of a
dream. He stumbled and went
down to one knee. There was
laughter. He righted himself
and found himself walking quickly, then running.
The laughter went on, a phantom chasing him down the alleyway.
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THE DANGEROUS SEASON—Caracas,
Venezuela
I had a cheap apartment near Parque Central with a broken
air-conditioner and a hot-plate kitchen. But there was a small balcony
with a decent view of the park.
I stepped out. It was
hot, the kind of clinging heat that was going to last until morning.
The park below was unlit and looked inky from here.
You could hear kids shouting to each other from the darkness.
Further out the lights from the shanty-towns glowed in the hills.
I thought about life in those neighborhoods—short and brutal.
This got me feeling depressed.
I went back inside and paced.
I was drunk. I tried
to remember what the hell I was doing in Caracas. I picked up the
telephone and then put it back in its cradle.
If I had owned a TV I would have watched it.
I picked up the phone again, dialed the country code for the U.S.
and then the number,
A woman’s voice answered, groggy with
sleep, my ex-wife, Karen.
When she heard my voice, she said,
“Jack? What time is it? Is
everything all right?”
I said, “Yeah, everything is fine.”
Then I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“That’s good.” There was a
silence. “Are you sure
everything’s all right?”
“I was just standing here, you know?”
I fought to keep my words from slurring.
“I got to thinking of you.
I felt like calling.
I guess I didn’t bother to check the time.”
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MACHO—Mexico
City
He left her in San José, in the noisy square where pickpockets and
fire-eaters plied their trades.
Men prowled a row of porno theaters.
Tonight, he told her, she would walk the street like a whore
until he picked her up. She
felt a thrill course her body as she moved with the crowd in the tawdry
streets. She walked for a
long time before turning right at
Calle Hidalgo with its food stands and beggars.
In the distance rose the
Monumento de la Revolución and the lights of the
Gran Meliá. Tonight a cool
breeze brought the threat of rain but once again none came.
Eyes devoured her short skirt and bare legs with animal greed.
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ALMOST HOME—somewhere over the Pacific Ocean
Denise Pierce was held up in Bangkok because of an August storm in the
Philippines and so nearly missed her connection from Taipei to Los
Angeles. This was how things
worked at the beginning of the new century.
She struggled down the aisle of the plane.
The L.A. flight was always completely full, a misery.
But she was flying business class so they’d held her spot.
Run, they told her at the gate, and she had, up the weirdly
sloping concourses at Chiang Kai-Shek Air-port, wheelie bags in tow,
barely making the flight. Now she
was slick with sweat, wet like something drowned.
Behind her a flight attendant closed the forward door.
A vacuum–hiss sealed them in.
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