- "I am that worst of things: a necessary evil. I am the dark side of America's psyche."
- —Calderon on himself
Marius Calderon, also known as the Lord of Anarchy, is a CIA operative specialising in psychological warfare, who created the sham terrorist group known as the Army of Thieves.
History[]
Early History[]
Marius Calderon joined the CIA prior to the early 1980's, and became a "rising star" due to his intelligence and operational skills.
In 1982, Calderon authored a paper predicting the rise of China as a global superpower by the year 2010, one that would threaten the United States' position as the world's strongest economy.
In 1984, after he had been instructed to find solutions to counter this perceived threat, Calderon conceived Operation 'Dragonslayer'. Calderon arranged for plans to a prototype super weapon that could ignite the earth's atmosphere to be "stolen" by the Russians, planting false data to suggest that if the weapon were built on a Russian-owned island in the Arctic, the Tesla device would decimate the United States, however in reality it would destroy China and Europe, with very little of the U.S. being damaged.
During the late 1980's, Calderon served as an instructor at the School of the Americas, which provided military training to government personnel in US-allied Latin American nations. Calderon himself instructed the 12 Chilean men who were high-ranking members of the Comando de Vengadores de Mártires.
Around the same time, most of Calderon's predictions came true; the Soviets did indeed steal the plans for the Tesla device and build it on Ostrov Zmey (Dragon Island), only for the regime to fall a few years later. Because the plans for the Tesla device included plans for storing the red uranium spheres, Calderon became aware of where most of them were kept, and where a seventh one was stored.
Over the next several years, Calderon worked in almost every division of the CIA, spending most of his time in the psychological warfare division. In 2003 to 2004, he worked at CIA rendition centers in Egypt and Turkey, helping to torture information out of prisoners, including some at the behest of the Sudanese government. In 2005, rumours surfaced that Calderon was able to use subliminal methods to convert three Taliban prisoners before sending them back their villages, where upon hearing a certain message on the radio they went on shooting rampages before killing themselves.
Before Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves[]
Nearly thirty years after coming up with Dragonslayer, Calderon prepared to assemble the Army of Thieves, recruiting the disgraced former Ranger Typhon to act as his second-in-command. Calderon decided to take measures to protect his identity, and underwent plastic surgery to make it appear as though he had acid scars on his face, and took to wearing wide-lensed sunglasses and grey contact lenses. To prevent anyone from the Army from knowing his name, he decided to have them know him only through monikers such as the Lord of Anarchy.
For the first attack to get the attention of the world's intelligence agencies and make them appear to be a legitimate threat, Calderon had a small team of men attack the Valpaaiso prison and release 100 prisoners to recruit them into the Army of Thieves, including the 12 de Mártires men Calderon had trained personally, choosing four of them to be a part of his leadership circle, the "Sharks" White Tip, Mako, Hammerhead and Thresher.
Calderon used his experience in psychological warfare to instruct Typhon in how to brutally induct every one of the prisoners to ensure their loyalty. Typhon branded the men with the Army's signature and then had them drugged and forced to watch hours of horrific acts such as murder, rape and torture, and as a result, the men obeyed both the Lord of Anarchy and Typhon out of fear.
For the next three attacks, Calderon used intelligence gathered by the CIA to gather weapons, money and equipment; first the Russian cargo freighter the Okhotsk, which was secretly shipping weapons and military vehicles, was hijacked; a German plane carrying money intended to be used in Greece's latest financial bailout was crashed and the money stolen; and a U.S. Marine encampment was assaulted and some of the aircraft kept their stolen. For the Army's fifth attack, the Army of Thieves raided a temporary UN prison camp in Sudan and released another 102 prisoners to be conscripted into the Army, who were also inducted into the Army with the same brutal subliminal torture.
During this time, Calderon bribed the head of Dragon Island's current watch crew, Igor Kotsky, into giving him and his Army access to the facility. To distract the world's intelligence agencies, Calderon arranged the Army's sixth attack to be the bombing of a luxury apartment in Moscow, allowing the Army of Thieves to take Dragon Island unnoticed. Once all of the watch crew were eliminated (save for Kotsky), Calderon had the gasworks begin belching the special gases into the jetstream above the island so that the northern hemisphere would be contaminated, and had Kotsky begin priming the six red uranium spheres kept in the control tower, while also using his knowledge of the secret seventh sphere's location to begin priming it as well.
To keep up appearances as an up-and-coming threat and to continue distracting the world's intelligence agencies, Calderon had the Army kidnap a former U.S. Secretary of Defense (possibly because he was someone who knew of Calderon's plans and could expose him), and had him tortured and the Army's signature A carved into his chest. When he was eventually found, all the former Secretary would say was "Beware the Army of Thieves".
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves[]
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After Shane Schofield prevents Calderon's plans for igniting a firestorm that would devastate the northern hemisphere, Calderon escapes in a miniature submarine. According to the CIA, Calderon was found dead by a Norwegian fishing trawler, as the submarine was disabled by a nuclear explosion, and Calderon suffocated after being trapped on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. However, Schofield finds evidence that he survived, when he returns home to find the glasses that Calderon had taken from him are on his bed.
Personality[]
He is gifted with extraordinary foresight, and an expert in psychological warfare. Calderon claims to have "forgotten more about torture than [most] will ever know", and believes that the only effective way to encourage his victims to talk is to torture someone they care about in front of them. He further claims that this tactic has led to the prevention of six terrorist attacks "on the same scale of September 11". Calderon uses psychological indoctrination to commander absolute loyalty among his followers
Skills[]
- Genius-Level Intellect: Calderon's intellect is particularly high, possessing the ability to quickly process information (e.g., threat assessment) and rapidly respond to changing tactical situations. Calderon also possesses a vast knowledge of human psychology, allowing him to easily manipulate people into doing what he tells them or cause them certain reactions.
- Master Tactician: Calderon is a highly-skilled strategist, proving his skills since his earliest days in the CIA. Such talent did Calderon possess that he was able to predict the economic threat China would pose to the U.S. nearly 30 years into the future, and come up with a long-term plan to eventually wipe out the threat. His tactical and operational skills were recognised enough to qualify him to train military personnel in several Latin American countries, all with his own intention of using such persons in his own machinations.
- Master Psychologist: Having spent most of his years of service in the CIA within the agency's Psychological Warfare Division, Calderon has become a master of manipulating and torturing people in order to get the information he wants, as well as push people's buttons to make them react in certain ways. Calderon used his knowledge to have Typhon brutally induct every member of the Army of Thieves to ensure their loyalty, branding and drugging and forcing to watch hours of horrific acts such as murder, rape and torture, and using subliminal messaging to ensure that the Thieves obeyed through fear. Calderon also enjoyed using his skills to break his victim's spirits, such as forcing Schofield to watch his friends be tortured and bringing up the memories of his girlfriend's horrific death.
- Expert Spy: During his time in the CIA, Calderon utilised his skills to accumulate intelligence on various potential threats from foreign adversaries. He is also able to utilise this skill to uncover information on his own country's servicemen.
- Expert Marksman: Being an agent of the CIA, Calderon is an accurate marksman and capable of using a variety of different firearms.
- Expert Combatant: As a trained CIA agent, Calderon has likely been trained in hand-to-hand combat.
- Multilingual: During his time in the CIA, Calderon was apparently taught a variety of foreign languages in order to assist in his capacity as a spy. In addition to his natural English language skills, Calderon is known to be fluent in Russian, French and Spanish languages.
Equipment[]
Weapons[]
To Be Added: .
Vehicles[]
To Be Added: .
Other Equipment[]
- Tesla Device: .
Trivia[]
- If indeed Calderon is still alive, and returns, this would make him the first main antagonist (in the Scarecrow series) to appear more than once.
- Like most other the other villains in Reilly's novels, Calderon has a defining physical feature, in his case the acid-burned skin on his jaw.
- However, these scars are only surgical changes done for the sake of disguise, unlike the accidents that befell most of the other villains or birth defects of others.
- Calderon's acid scars, along with the other surgical alterations, are likely to have been removed following his supposed death.