Oily Waters

He read the documents for the next two days. His head had swollen with the information enclosed and never in his wildest dreams could he have conceptualized the existence of such a super organization. Here was what he had learnt. 

Disgruntled crusaders unhappy with the outcome of the crusades formed the ‘Knights of the Crusades Organization’ in 1213 A.D. in Rome. The members had believed that with superior organization and money they could equip an army that could easily retake the Holy Land and reestablish the Holy Roman Empire with Jerusalem as the capital. These men had found out early that talk was cheap and that raising the kind of money needed for the ambitious undertaking was no mean task. Their successors began to raise money through sea piracies and blackmail – kings, nobles, bishops and priests were the chief targets. It would take more than two hundred years before the wealth reached the level the original founders had dreamed of but by then the objectives as well as the name of the organization had changed. 

With their newfound wealth and power over kings and priests, the inheritors could not resist the temptation to dictate the direction of the world’s economic and political systems. Before long total domination of the world became their objective. With endowments to centers of learning, the organization was able to manage the direction of new knowledge in such diverse areas as astronomy, navigation, archaeology, medicine, and mathematics. However, it was in politics that the organization had excelled exceedingly; it bought popes, kings, nobles and emperors, and in some cases installed a few. 

The organization spread their tentacles to the new world right from the start, recruiting people and funding their trips to the Americas. It was during this period that the organization’s name changed from the ‘Knights of the Crusades Organization’ to the ‘New World Organization.’ Most of those the ‘New World Organization’ sponsored to the Americas ended up owning tobacco and cotton plantations. The organization made the most fortune during the transatlantic slave trade that lasted from the late 15^th century to the 19^th century. It owned most of the slave ships as well as those that transported cotton and tobacco from the new world to Europe, the factories that processed the raw materials from the new world, and the trading houses that sold finished goods in both Europe and the Americas. The organization also owned the arms factories that produced the guns the emigrants used to kill off the American aborigines whose lands they coveted as well those the slave traders supplied to corrupt African leaders engaged in sponsored tribal wars that provided the slaves for the American plantations.

By the early 19^th century, the ‘New World Organization’ had literally become bigger than the world. The members now decided who would be king, president, or leader in any country that interested them. They had a standing enforcement group that silenced or assassinated any leader or king that stepped out of line in any corner of the globe. The organization manipulated the genuine grievances of poor Russians in 1905 and helped direct the Russian revolution that brought their protégé to power in 1917. An agent of the organization assassinated the Archduke of Prussia and his wife in Sarajevo, thereby precipitating the First World War; a large-scale war had become necessary to test the new armaments its factories had produced. Putting pressures on governments and their leaders, the organization ensured that the Versailles treaty was very unfavorable to the Germans and so craftily planted the seed for the coming of the Third Reich and the eventual Second World War. The organization’s enterprises made so much money during the Second World War that it nearly lost its head in the sea of greed. Its enterprises were so busy developing new armaments for both sides and making so much money, that Hitler almost became too big for it to handle; the organization had not bargained for a psychopath who would slaughter more than six million Jews and thereby expose their companies to charges of complicity in genocide at the end of the war. It had taken so much ingenuity, blackmail, and money to stop the investigations into the activities of these international entities at the end of the war. Such investigation would have established the ownership and the level of cooperation between companies in Nazi Germany, Europe, and America during the war. More damningly, facts would have emerged that these companies were exchanging sensitive information that prolonged the war and thereby caused the loss of more millions of lives.   

The end of the Second World War brought new challenges as well as new opportunities for making more money. With the creation of the United Nations, the ‘New World Organization’ decided to acquire a total world outlook and a name change had become necessary. The ‘New World Organization’ changed its name to the ‘World Meet Organization’ and proceeded to stoke the fires created by the concepts of communism and capitalism through generous funding of the academics engaged in the propounding of those doctrines. Working on the United States and the Soviet Union the organization had been able to create a major divide that led eventually to the cold war. World Meet, with its contacts in the press in both countries, upped the ante by fanning old embers of hatred and lighting new fires of suspicion to keep the world on tenterhooks. The cold war battles had soon encompassed the whole world as the two superpowers now saw everything through the prism of capitalism and communism. The World Meet Organization had profited so immensely from their investments in the military-industrial complex as NATO and Warsaw Pact countries tried to outdo each other in the development and procurement of military hardware. No one had thought to find out the real owners of the companies, which made these stupendous profits from sales of highly sophisticated weapons, aircraft, warships, nuclear arsenal, submarines, and missiles. As the profits continued to roll in, the organization had gone into new ventures in oil, gas, banking, and finance.   

The organization was now more than an octopus. Its fingers were in every pie in every place under the sun. Yet, great secrecy shrouded its activities. The custodians were not household names even in their countries of origin. Their names featured occasionally in philanthropy and the arts. The seven members did not own the organization. They kept it in trust for the next generation that would keep it in trust for the next one after it. What they owned personally were their accumulated fortunes prior to their becoming members of the World Meet Organization. It was that fortune that they could leave to their children. Mr. Giovanni’s portion of the extensive World Meet fortune was now his to manage until he died. 

It was in volume five that he understood the actual reach of the organization. In 1966, there were only seven members – also called custodians – in the World Meet Organization. Each member of the World Meet was a Head of a territory called the