Lost Children

by Willa Bergman

  George asks me why I’m telling him all this. I tell him I want Geoffrey Webb, but I don’t have enough evidence to prove any of this yet; I need to catch the man he hired to attack me. I tell George I’m going to get Geoffrey’s thug to attack me again. He looks at me, not sure if he’s heard correctly. I add that this time will be different, this time George and his team will be waiting there to stop him.

  “You want to use yourself as bait?” he says with genuine concern. “Yes”, I reply with increasing confidence.

  “I would strongly advise against it. It’s an unnecessarily dangerous strategy.”

  “No you’re wrong, it’s necessary. Right now all I have is Kim. I’ll deal with her tomorrow but it will be her word against Geoffrey’s and his lawyers will be able to beat that. I need his thug too, then I’ve got him.”

  George sits back to process everything I’ve just told him. It feels like an age before he says anything, and when he finally does it’s slow and considered. He tells me he needs to speak to his team and if they’re okay with it then we can talk more, discuss how we might actually try to do this. That’s good enough for now, but I need an answer quickly, time isn’t on my side. I tell him I’m coming back tomorrow morning for an answer, otherwise I’m going elsewhere.

  And with that I’m done, there’s nothing else I can do here tonight. I bid George good night and head home. I make sure to take a taxi all the way to the front door.

  Morning comes quickly. I wake up early and I’m buzzing, it’s going to be a big day. I’m dressed and out the door by seven. I decide to take another taxi into the office just to be safe.

  George is already there at the door when I get there, these guys work long hours. I walk straight up to him and ask if he’s made his decision. He ushers me into the room behind the front desk so we can talk in private. He looks at me sternly, then he tells me in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but he’ll help me. I smile a broad smile and thank him. He says he figures if I’m going ahead with this either way, he’ll feel better if he knew his team was covering me.

  I want to begin planning straight away, but I have to deal with Kim first. She’s usually in early so I agree with George that if she’s there now I’m going to call her into my office. George will come up with me and watch our meeting at a distance through the glass walls of my office in case Kim reacts badly to what I have to say. We agree a signal if I want him to join us.

  The lift ride up seems to take an age. I’m twitching with nervous energy, I’ve never done anything like this before.

  As soon as we get out I can see Kim is at her desk. George makes his way discretely to a spot on the other side of the floor with a straight line of sight into my office and starts talking casually with one of the team there. I make my way over to Kim and ask her to join me in my office. She gets up and follows me with a perky smile on her face, her false charms still firmly in place, completely unaware of what’s about to happen.

  “How was the party last night?” she asks. I tell her Yuliya wasn’t any help on the painting. She gives me an update on what she’s been doing, it’s all very diligent. She asks me if I want to go through the work for the Kandinsky commission, I tell her not now.

  “You didn’t tell anyone else about the new commission did you?” I ask.

  “Of course not, you told me not to.” Good girl.

  “Geoffrey Webb was there at the party last night. He knew about the new commission.”

  “What? How?”

  “Well that’s what I’ve been wondering. To tell you the truth I’ve been wondering it for a little while now, how he always manages to be one step ahead of us, always seems to have the inside track.”

  “He’s got a big team and they’re all connected. They can’t expect us to compete with that.”

  She’s playing her part well, but I haven’t the time to drag this out. “I know it was you who told him.”

  “What?” Her shock and denial is immediate. She does a pretty decent job of it too. Absent the certain knowledge and proof that I have I’d be convinced she was telling the truth.

  “Why do you think it’s me? It could have been anyone in the office.”

  “No it couldn’t have Kim. I lied about the Kandinsky commission, there isn’t one. The London office haven’t spoken to anyone about it because there wasn’t anything to speak about. The only people who knew about it were you and I, unless you told anyone else. And like you just said, you didn’t tell anyone.”

  It’s called a barium meal test. You give someone you suspect a piece of information, a secret that isn’t otherwise known, and then wait to see whether it’s leaked. It’s a genuine technique that spies use.

  George has been watching us through the glass. I signal for him to join us. Kim looks at him as he enters, then back at me. For a moment we all stand in silence. Then as if a release button is pressed in her somewhere she seems to deflate.

  “I guess there’s no point in denying it.” Kim looks down to the ground, she moves to take a seat and runs her hands over her face and through her hair.

  “How long has this been going on?” I ask her.

  She takes a deep breath, resigning herself to the fact that she’s been caught and is going to have to tell me everything.

  “He approached me about a year ago, it was just after last year’s Summer Launch party. He said he’d heard I wasn’t happy at Roth and wondered if there was a way he could help.”

  “Why did you do it Kim?”

  “I never had anything against you Elle, I promise. You were always nice to me.”

  “If you weren’t happy you could have left, gone somewhere else.”

  “I wanted to. Two years ago I’d finally had enough and I told Victoria I was going to leave, but she said she wouldn’t give me any reference and would tell everyone in the business I was impossible to work with. So when Geoffrey approached me I saw it as my way to hurt her. When Victoria left I told him I didn’t want any more part of it. But he’s got some fixation with you. He said no, he needed me to keep feeding him information and if I didn’t do it he’d tell you what I’d done. I didn’t have any choice.”

  I’m suddenly struck by the realisation that Kim’s corporate espionage, let’s just call it what it is, may very well have been the reason that Victoria lost her job; the reason that the others in the team lost their jobs too. If Victoria had played on an even playing field with Geoffrey then maybe her numbers wouldn’t have been what they were. I also suddenly feel somehow complicit in all this, I’ve benefitted from this too. This underhand dealing is how I’ve ended up getting promoted. I didn’t get here on my own merits. I try to push that ugly thought out of my mind and bring this back to Kim and what she’s done.

  “What have you told Geoffrey about the Lost Child?”

  “I told him you thought it was in New York.” She tells me, her voice racked with guilt.

  “Did Geoffrey hire the man who attacked me?

  She hesitates. I push her again. She tells me she doesn’t know but she’s cracking and too easy to read now. She knows something. I push her again.

  “I’m telling you, honestly I don’t know. But it’s possible.”

  “What do you mean ‘it’s possible’?”

  “He wanted to know where you were staying and what your movements were, when you were leaving the office. But he never said anything about having someone attack you.”

  ‘Why would he?’ I scream in my head. As she says the words she can hear how it sounds. She’s tried to bury her head in the sand to deny her complicity in it but she can’t escape it in the cold reality.

  “You tell yourself that if it makes you sleep better at night. That man held a knife to my throat. I thought he was going to kill me.”

  She knows it’s true. She begins to sob quietly into her hands. Through her fingers she stutters, “What are you going to do with me?”

  I have to play this carefully. I tell her to be in doubt of how much tro
uble she’s in. I’m gearing up to really lay it on thick, that if the company chooses to pursue it she’s facing a custodial sentence and so on, but I can already see there’s no need. I tell her that the choices she makes now will determine how she comes out of all this, if she’s willing to help me. She swallows and nods in acquiescence. I tell her I need her to help me catch the man Geoffrey hired to attack me. She immediately starts to blubber that she doesn’t know anything about him but I stop her before she can continue. I tell her I know that, but what I need her to do is get Geoffrey to attack me again. This time it’s Kim’s turn to look at me, unsure she’s heard me correctly. After a little pause for dramatic effect (I’m starting to enjoy this) I add that this time will be different, this time George and his team will be waiting there to stop him.

  Kim takes out her phone and shows me that Geoffrey messaged her straight after my little tête-à-tête with him at Yuliya’s asking for details of my plans for the next couple of days. She tells me she hasn’t responded yet though. I get her to message him details that I will be leaving the office tonight for a client meeting on the Upper West side at eight o’clock, a location selected by George, which she dutifully does. I then escort her into a room with no phone or computer to be watched by one of the security guards for the rest of the day. I don’t need her having a change of heart and deciding to tip-off Geoffrey.

  The rest of the day seems to take an age. I don’t even try to get any work done, all I can think about is tonight. I speak with someone in the in-house legal team on what’s needed to put away a hypothetical competitor engaging in corporate espionage and assault.

  George insists on walking me through the plan for tonight to the point where I’m questioning my sanity, but I know it’s the right thing to do. For all my excitement about stopping Geoffrey, I know this plan is putting me in a lot of danger.

  The clock finally hits seven and it’s time to leave. I expected the nerves would kick in as we approached this moment and sure enough they arrive in force, I’m shaking when George comes into my office and tells me it’s time.

  The rest of George’s team for tonight’s operation already left the office a little while ago, so as not to draw any attention to themselves. George walks out the front entrance ahead of me and starts walking the opposite way to me, all part of the choreographed plan; he’ll cross paths with me a little later. Two of his team have eyes on me now as I walk to the subway.

  The subway is quiet and the carriage I’m in only has a handful of people in it. I’m no expert but none of them look like any kind of threat. I get out of the subway at 96th Street per George’s instructions and start walking west. It’s nearly eight and starting to get dark. If my plan is to succeed, I need to draw Geoffrey’s thug out to attack me at close range like he did before. I don’t know when or even if he is going to come at me. Every step I take feels like I’m winding up this twisted jack in the box another notch. I’m suddenly acutely aware of how dangerous this plan is and I can feel my heart beating through my top. I try to reassure myself that it’s not like last time, this time it’s different, this time I’m on the lookout for him. I’m also wearing a Bluetooth earphone in my left ear which is linked up to George who is following with his team of four others from a short perimeter around me. As I walk along the street I can see what’s in front of me and to my sides but it’s George’s reassuring voice of god in my ear, telling me exactly what’s going on that gives me enough confidence that I’m safe.

  I walk for five minutes without incident. There’s less than another five before I reach the fake location I’m supposed to be heading to. I stop at a junction where the traffic lights are red. A couple of other people stand next to me waiting also. Cars race pass in front of us trying to beat the lights. Through the blurring mirage of the cars flashing past me I see a man in a black hoodie on the other side of the street. He’s half hidden by a couple of college girls standing just in front of him. I try to get a better look at him. He’s hard to see but then one of the girls in front of him nudges the other while they talk opening up a gap between them. And I can see it’s him.

  The shock of seeing him catches me momentarily off guard. I panic and forget what I’m supposed to do. I turn around and begin walking in the opposite direction as quickly as I can. I try to control it but the rush of fear overwhelms me and I start running as fast as I can, I just want to get as far away from him as possible. George is saying something in my ear but it’s drowned out by my breathing and racing heart. For a moment I look around and I can see the lights have turned to green and the man is starting to run after me. I look around desperately for George or anyone from his team but they’re nowhere in sight.

  I hurtle down the street as fast as I can. I can feel my legs weakening, I can’t keep running this fast much longer, this isn’t part of the plan. I keep running, desperately trying to work out where to go. I run into a side street hoping I can lose him in the twists and turns of the narrow corridors. I keep going for as long as I can but after another hundred metres I have to stop. I see a small gap in the wall, I look around and don’t see anyone. As a last resort I throw myself into it in the hope that he won’t be able to find me.

  I am absolutely still. I hold my breath. I listen. A moment passes, then another and another. I hear nothing. Just when my head is letting me have a sliver of hope that I’ve lost him, I hear the slow and terrible sound of calm, deliberate footsteps from the street beside me. Every step is deafening. Each step I hear is nearer to me than the last. If he finds me here I have no exit, he has me boxed in.

  Every second seems to take an age. I’m frozen with fear. The footsteps stop. Terrified, I look up from my huddled corner and I see the black outline of a hoodie emerge in front of me. I’m about to scream but before I can, before this visage can fully take shape, it’s suddenly thrust to the side of me uncontrollably and smashes into the wall. Dazed and hunched over but still standing I see him draw a gun from his belt, but before he can raise it the shape of George’s enormous frame has crashed down on him. He falls to the floor still clinging to the gun while George unleashes a sea of horrific violence down on him. He pounds the man’s head into the ground over and over. When he finally stops what’s left on the ground is a bloodied and broken wreck, but he’s still conscious. George sweeps the gun off the floor and then quickly searches the man for any other weapons he might be hiding and finds a large knife, quite possibly the one he held to my throat the last time we met.

  I can feel my lungs burning and I’m regretting all the times I laughed at the idiots going to the gym every night of the week, I should be in much better shape than this. Exhausted from running and nauseous from the bloody sight in front of me I wretch, I’m not built for this. George asks me why I ran. I apologise, I tell him I panicked. He says he was shouting down the phone line to stay on the main road, apparently I’d managed to run directly away from him. I thank him for stopping the man. I’m grateful for what he’s just done but I’m also horrified by it.

  The rest of George’s team start to arrive. One is carrying a bag that George dropped a couple of streets back when he was chasing us. George uses his knee to press down on the man’s back. He takes a thin plastic cable tie from his bag and ties the man’s hands behind his back. Then he sits him up against the wall, douses the man’s face with a few splashes of water from his bottle and gives him a few swigs to clean out his bloodied mouth.

  A van with blacked out windows appears at the end of the street and from it steps another one of George’s team. George hooks his arm under the arm of my attacker hoisting him onto his feet and begins walking him to the van.

  “You gave our friend quite a scare. Now we need to hand you over to the police for what you just did, but before we do that we’ve got a few little questions of our own we want to ask you, so first we’re going to go and find ourselves a nice quiet place where we won’t be disturbed and we can have a little chat.” The man makes some last efforts to resist but he’s too weak to esc
ape George’s grip and he’s resoundingly thrust into the back of the van.

  I sit with George in the front. The rest of the team is in the back watching over our prisoner who lies silent and motionless, prostrate across the floor. We drive North over Harlem River and into the Bronx. After a while we come to a stop at a disused warehouse in an industrial looking area, no one’s going to bother us here.

  They drive the van into the open doors of the warehouse and drag the man out onto the dirty floor. I let George do the interrogating, it doesn’t feel like it’s his first time. He asks the man his name. The man tries to say nothing but George knows what he’s doing and it doesn’t take him long to start talking. His first words are screamed through gritted teeth: Andrei Lapikov.

  “Who hired you?”

  “I don’t know his name.” His Eastern European accent seems thicker now.

  “I don’t believe you. Who hired you?”

  George applies more pressure to the man’s arm.

  “I’m telling you I don’t know who he is. We don’t deal in names, it’s all anonymised. Guns for hire. They contacted me through the darkweb and gave me details. I get paid in crypto, no way to trace where it comes from.”

  I believe him when he says he doesn’t know, but it doesn’t matter, I already know who hired him. But without any evidence except what Kim’s told me I haven’t got much to work with to get Geoffrey arrested for the attack.

  “He didn’t want me to kill the girl. He just wanted me to scare her.” He stutters.

  “You did that the last time.” I reply.

  “He said slap you around a bit, maybe break your arm. That would be enough for you to get the message.”

  “What’s the gun for then?” George asks, twisting his arm as he does so.

  “Just to scare. I would never use it.” He says in twisted agony.

  “It’s got real bullets in. Why do you think I should believe that when you’ve given me no other reason to believe you? What were you supposed to do afterwards?”