It was early morning.
We’d flown back to Bangkok on the last flight to leave Singapore and
checked into my usual hotel. Anna had gone out – something to do with the bar – and I was planning to check on something Caroline had said about John Chua.
I had just logged on to the internet when Colin texted a message to phone Clive Tasker in Cyprus. I called him.
“I called a friend in Amman last night,” Clive said. “It seems your friend Mohamed Kader is expanding. According to my contact, he has been importing scientific equipment into Jordan, as if it’s for a laboratory but then re-exporting it. It might be going to Cairo, so I’m trying to find out. There’s nothing wrong with importing and re-exporting, of course, so perhaps he’s only doing what he said he do -
set up a research facility somewhere.”
That produced a hunch. Could it be going to Kenya? I hadn’t forgotten the name I’d been given by the Livingstone guys at the exhibition. Luther Jasman’s phone number in Nairobi was still there.
All I’d need was some appropriate bullshit to call him.
Clive was still talking. “There’s something else,” he said. “Kader has been interesting the intelligence agencies, the CIA and MI6. He’s been travelling a lot to Egypt, Pakistan, Nigeria, and Kenya. I assume it’s to do with possible links to radical Islamic groups, but in my opinion, they’re barking up the wrong tree. He’s not like that. There
may be nothing in it, of course, but he’s still a man of mystery with a very complicated business.”
I didn’t need telling how complicated it was, but I thanked Clive.
“Very useful,” I said. “I’m sorry I can’t divulge much more from my side except to say I’m also dealing with some missing medical research scientists - three to be precise. No one knows where they’re gone, but it did cross my mind that Mohamed Kader or someone within the spiders’ web of companies might know something.”
Clive then revealed more, “Missing scientists?” he said. “The University in Amman lost two microbiology technicians last year and a French-owned pharmaceutical factory in Beirut lost their French production engineer. Also, the head of a government-run supplier of sterile fluids in Syria departed. He said he’d been offered a job in Saudi Arabia, but we know he didn’t turn up. He disappeared.”
Somehow this no longer looked like coincidence and I returned to thinking about Caroline, her comment about John Chua and something called Singapore 2100.
I found a United Nations report predicting that Singapore’s population would hit ten million by 2100 and a crazy cartoon showing cars packed one on top of the other and people fighting for space and falling from high rise apartment.
There was much more on world population growth that distracted me.
There were forecasts of numbers growing to around eleven billion by 2100 with most of the growth due to increasing numbers of old people and high birth rates in the developing world. Africa’s population was projected to hit 2.5 billion by 2050 and 4.2 billion by 2100. The forecast for Nigeria alone was for its population to increase to 400
million in just thirty years.
I then came across a Straits Times report about the arrest of three Chinese men for ‘ plotting to undermine the government’s policy on population control, but there were no names and no details of the plot.
Scrolling down, I then found links to something called the Malthus Society and, at last, Singapore 2100. The Singapore 2100 link failed to open but when I clicked on the Malthus Society, up came a big website with an ancient picture of Thomas Malthus on its front page.
This site was laden with facts and figures on human population, links to books, papers, and reports about Thomas Malthus, Paul Ehrlich, and others. It was neatly divided into topics, as if inviting serious and sensible debate on the effect of human overpopulation on the environment, water shortages, food shortages, unemployment, civil disorder, health, and economic migration. There was a section on fertility and IVF treatment that had sparked a lively debate with someone called Thalmus, who was calling for it to be made illegal.
The posting was long, much longer than most.
I then found that I could become a member with no questions asked about who I was or where I was, so I joined as Dan Dare and started checking the message board. This was an eye-opener.
Comments recommending mass murder and ethnic cleansing by annihilation of entire cities made the hair at the back of my neck rise.
Indeed, the site opened up a whole new insight into the mindset of some of my fellow citizens, all of whom hid their identity behind code names. Precious time passed as I read about ideas to poison whole populations by contaminating water supplies and starving them by infecting cereal crops and sterilising them by spraying chemicals.
Time paused at a post by someone called Day-Owl highlighting a lecture in Boston, Massachusetts on drought in Sub-Saharan Africa.
This seemingly useful piece of information had then been spoiled by Day-Owl’s final comment: “Let there be drought.”
Time slowed again when I then found a reply from someone called Solomon. “African drought insoluble, but the day of reckoning is fast approaching.” Day-Owl had then cottoned on to this with, “Good news, Solomon,” as if he knew what Solomon was up to.
Beneath that came other posts that slowly diluted what I’d interpreted as a chilling message by Solomon, but who was Solomon? Was he or she using their real name? Could it be that Solomon?
Time then came to a grinding halt when I scrolled down and came to another post by Thalmus. Thalmus appeared everywhere, often with calming, more rational responses to the more outrageous suggestions, but this post made me stop altogether. “Anyone know anything about an outbreak of fatal disease in Nigeria?”
For the first time in a week, I had a feeling I was on to something but from a completely different angle.
I looked at the name Thalmus and realised it was an anagram of Malthus. Was Thalmus the moderator? Was Thalmus the one who started the main topics? Did Thalmus, in fact, own the site and monitor its content lest someone else started asking too many questions, or was the group put under surveillance or put out of action just like Singapore 2100?
I returned to the introduction right at the beginning. Could Thalmus have written this?
They want everything - all the food they can eat; nice, clean, well-paid jobs; big houses; TVs; computers; all the gadgets; education; healthcare; welfare protection; unemployment benefit. They even expect the state to provide solutions to their own infertility.
Governments should stop this never-ending pandering to the whining rich. One minute, they complain there aren’t any jobs for themselves or their kids; next minute, they want to bring more kids into the world, even when nature clearly intended that they’d already had enough.
Someone needs to start accepting responsibility and introduce strict population control methods aimed at a reduction in world population by 2100.
So how had Thalmus picked up on the Nigerian cases?
I was still pondering on Thalmus when Anna returned with plastic bags containing our breakfast.