Epilogue
In the unlikely event the historical record of humankind breaks from tradition and reflects the truth, it would note that by the close of 2001 the Fifth Column had achieved its aim of directly manipulating governments and, indirectly, proxy governments. The organization had spent the next decade stripping basic freedoms from supreme law. To turn governments against their citizens, citizens against their governments.
The record would go on to state that terrorism—the use of violence to coerce political change—was used during the first two decades of the twenty-first century with overwhelming success by the Fifth Column and the operatives at its disposal, chiefly through deception and carefully managed campaigns. That the Fifth Column itself was, paradoxically, the terrorist. The
