by Greg Krojac
The doors flew open and Wolzenik hurried in. Jones nodded at the trolley and then looked at Wolzenik.
“I hope you put the baby out of its misery properly.”
“Course I did. I grew up on a cattle-farm.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
08:59 WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER 2051
Maurice was feeling quite settled now. He’d been with the resistance for about eight months and he felt safe. He was doing something that he was good at – accounting – and he was actually feeling fitter thanks to the compulsory physical training he undertook four days a week. That was a whole new experience for him, he’d never been one for working out, and if he’d had a choice he’d still have found an excuse to avoid it. In the beginning, muscles ached that he didn’t even know he had, but now he’d become accustomed to the regime and was actually feeling the benefit; he felt healthier than he had for a long time.
There was a knock on the door of his room.
“Maurice?”
“Just a minute, Tony.”
Maurice stopped preening himself in the full-length mirror that was attached to the inside of the wardrobe door.
“Hurry up, Maurice. The boss wants to see us – now!”
Maurice wondered why the boss wanted to see him. Which boss? The Businessman? He hoped not. The two hadn’t spoken since the accidental death of the footballer and his short stay at the big-headed man’s hotel. If it was the Businessman, he must want something from Maurice.
He put on a pair of jeans, a green T-shirt which celebrated the nearly completed Crazy Horse Memorial in North Dakota, USA, and a pair of trainers, before trotting downstairs to the study where he found the three brothers grouped together drinking their morning coffees. He waited a couple of seconds and then took a seat in an armchair in front of the TV monitor on the wall. For a moment his mind drifted off towards memories of his wife and children, but the voice of the Businessman wrenched him back to reality as his silhouetted figure came to life on the screen.
“Roberto, Antonio, Miguel, Maurice… good morning. I hope you are all well.”
The four responded in a disorderly fashion that they were.
“Gentlemen, let’s get right to the point. I have been informed by SIMPs that the Illuminati has succeeded in transferring a soul from a dead human into a live baby. I know it’s hard to believe but my sources are extremely reliable. The bad news is that one of these sources is believed to have been compromised. I need you to go to a small town, New Milton, just outside Bournemouth. I want you to meet up with one of the SIMPs, a man called Wolzenik. He’ll have with him a new-born baby. Be aware that the baby is premature and being incubated. I want you to extract the pair of them and take them to Bournemouth Airport where a plane with full medical facilities will take them to a safe hospital at an undisclosed location.”
Tony cut in,
“Should we expect any resistance, sir?”
“Hopefully not. Wolzenik has been keeping as low a profile as possible, but we believe that he may be being watched. Maurice, I want you to go along as well.”
“Me? But I’m just an accountant.”
“Yes Maurice, you’re an accountant. But I want an extra pair of eyes on this one. Don’t worry, I’m not going to send you in to take part in the actual extraction. We all know what happened last time you got involved in something other than number-crunching. You’d probably shoot the baby or something. All you have to do is to look out for the boys and warn them if anyone unexpected arrives on the scene.”
Maurice breathed an audible sigh of relief, although he was a little hurt by the inference that he would mess things up again. The Businessman continued.
“OK. I’ll contact Wolzenik and tell him to expect you around 8 pm.”
The image disappeared and the three brothers all looked at Maurice. Roberto was the first to speak.
“Well, Maurie boy… looks like you’re going to see some action.”
“The Businessman said I was just there to watch.”
“Well, technically, yes. But if you need to get involved… well… you might have to get a bit physical. Still, at least now you know why we’ve been making you work out so much.”
Maurice hoped that he’d be able to get through the night without getting involved. He didn’t want a repetition of the cock-up at the footballer’s house. If they gave him a pulse-gun tonight he’d make damned sure it was set to stun. He’d already killed one more human than he ever wanted to kill.
Whilst the rest of the group spent the rest of their day prepping themselves for that night’s mission, Maurice decided to occupy his time with some light reading. He’d several ebooks on his tablet and wished he could download some more. However, Miguel had blocked internet and Wi-Fi access to all but essential services.
***
Maurice read for a couple of hours, and after lunch took a nap for another two hours, as he wanted to be fresh and alert for his lookout duties later on. A loud knock on his door woke him up.
“Come on sleepyhead. Departure in sixty.”
“Sixty?”
“Sixty minutes. One hour. Three thousand six hundred seconds. You’ve got one hour to get ready.”
Maurice took a shower to wake himself up properly. He left the shower cubicle, wrapped a towel around his waist and trotted back to his bedroom where he found a black jumpsuit and what looked like a chainmail ski-mask, laying on his bed.
“What’s this?” he called out.
“It’s your kit for tonight.”
“This ski-mask looks a bit heavy!”
“Pick it up…”
Maurice picked up the mask and was astonished how deceptively light it was. Its weight hardly registered as he draped it over his hand and it began to slither off. Roberto laughed.
“New issue. Very flexible, very light. Try it on.”
Maurice held the mask in both hands and pulled it over his head. It was really very comfortable. Roberto, Tony and Miguel came into the room. They didn’t want to miss this. Suddenly Maurice yelped and the three brothers collapsed into a giggling heap. The mask had developed a life of its own and was gripping Maurice’s face. It felt like it was trying to suck his face off. Tony somehow managed to stop laughing.
“Don’t worry Maurice. It’s supposed to do that. It means it’s almost impossible for someone to rip it off and see your face.”
“You could’ve warned me. It’s bloody uncomfortable. I feel like I’m suffocating. Plus I must look like I’m wearing a gimp suit. ”
“Yep. You do.”
“It’s really uncomfortable.”
“Everybody feels like that at first. You’ll soon get used to it.”
“How do I get it off?”
“Easy. Just pinch the material at the back of your head between your finger and thumb, and the mask releases its grip. Anyone trying to take your mask off won’t normally be so gentle. It’s a bit like a stinging nettle. Except it’s the opposite really. So it isn’t. If you grasp a nettle tightly it won’t sting you but if you’re gentle with it, it will sting. You do the opposite with this; grasp it tightly it’ll intensify its grip on you. Be gentle – finger and thumb at the right place – and it comes off real easy.”
Maurice followed Tony’s instructions. The mask did indeed just slide off his head back into his hand.
***
At 7 pm the garage door opened and the SUV pulled out into the road. As the garage door closed, Tony put more weight onto the accelerator pedal and the car powered off into the distance. The journey didn’t take long – not with Tony at the wheel – and just before 8 pm, the vehicle pulled into the driveway of a rather unremarkable semi-detached house. The three brothers got out of the car and rang the doorbell. The front door opened and the brothers went inside the house. Maurice wondered why they weren’t wearing masks like he was.
Maurice felt uncomfortable. He was alone in the back seat of the car and didn’t know what was going on in the house. What if they needed him? Should he go and
knock on the door? Why had they not put their masks on, but insisted that he should put his on? He decided that he should probably do as he was ordered – stay in the car and keep watch.
A knock on the car window startled him.
“’Ere mate, what are you up to? You’re not from around ‘ere.”
Maurice tried to shush the stranger away, much as one might try to shush away an over-attentive stray dog.
“Oi! I said, what are you up to?”
Maurice mouthed at the man to go away. The man pulled on the door handle and the back door of the car swung open. Maurice was mortified. He thought that he’d locked the door. Obviously, he hadn’t. The man reached inside and grabbed Maurice.
“What are you doing with that mask on? This looks very dodgy this does.”
Maurice tried to push the man out of the car, but he was surprisingly quick and grabbed the mask.
“Let’s see who you are then, mate!”
Maurice felt secure in the knowledge that the mask would stay glued to his head but was shocked when the man pinched the back of the mask between his finger and thumb and the mask just fell away from Maurice’s head, landing on the floor of the car. He lashed out, fist clenched and caught the man squarely on the chin. The man staggered back and collapsed onto the ground in a crumpled heap, just as the brothers, Wolzenik, and the baby came out of the front door of the house. They looked silently at the unconscious man by the car. Roberto turned to Maurice.
“You’re a bloody walking disaster aren’t you Maurice? No mask too. Let’s hope he didn’t get a good look at your face.”
“I think he probably did. He looked me right in the eye so I punched him.”
“We’ll have to deal with this later. Our priority is to get this baby and Wolzenik to that plane, pronto.”
Tony opened the tailgate of the car and tossed two large bags into the boot area.
“Maurice, get in the back here – we have to make room for our friend here and the baby.”
“I have to get in the boot?”
“Yes, in the boot. Even with the bags, there’s plenty of room for you. You’re not suggesting we should put the baby in the boot, are you?”
“No, of course not.”
Maurice clambered into the luggage area of the vehicle and Tony slammed the tailgate shut.
Then the four men got into the SUV, Wolzenik in the middle of the back seat, with the baby safe inside a light-weight portable incubator.
Maurice was less than impressed. He was sure that there was plenty of room for him in the back seat.
“Right gang, brace yourselves.”
Tony threw the car into gear and sped off down the road as if he were being pursued by a dozen police cars.
***
As the rear lights of the car disappeared into the distance, the recipient of Maurice’s punch stood up and brushed the dirt off his trousers, chuckling to himself.
“That baby’s probably got a stronger punch than the accountant,”
He went over to the front door of Wolzenik’s house, turned a key in the lock and went inside. He walked into the living room, sat down on the sofa, and pulled a mobile phone out of his trouser pocket. He dialled a number and waited for the call to be answered. The ringing tone was replaced by a familiar voice
“Done?”
“Done.”
The man took the battery out of the phone, stood up, and stomped his foot down hard on it, breaking it into four irregular pieces. He opened the back door of the house and lobbed the pieces into the stream that ran behind the house.
***
Roberto took the battery out of his mobile phone, opened his car window and threw it forward into the path of the SUV. Tony expertly guided the front nearside wheel of the speeding car over the phone, crushing it beyond recognition, before continuing the short journey to Bournemouth airport.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
07:00 THURSDAY 9 NOVEMBER 2051
“Maurice? Maurice! Wake up!”
Maurice slowly opened his eyes to see Roberto leaning over him.
“What’s up? What time is it?”
“It’s seven o’clock. We have to go downstairs. There’s someone here to see you.”
“Who?”
“Nobody you know, but it’s important to get a move on. I’ll tell him you’ll be down in five minutes.”
“Tell who?”
“You’ll find out.”
Four and a half minutes later Maurice entered the front room and saw the three brothers with a stranger who offered his hand to the accountant.
“Mr Boone? Pleased to meet you. My name is Takahiro Nakata and I’m a senior aide to the Businessman. Please take a seat, Mr Boone.”
Maurice sat down on the sofa and looked up at the visitor, worried that he was going to be reprimanded for the previous night’s mistake.
“Mr Boone. It has come to our attention that your identity was compromised last night. Is this correct?”
Maurice turned red and felt like a naughty schoolboy about to be scolded by the headmaster.
“Yes. I guess so. I mean I know so. This guy came over from across the street and started asking questions.”
“Questions?”
“Yes. Questions.”
“And then?”
“And then he opened the car door and tried to pull me out of the car.”
“Wasn’t the door locked?”
“I thought it was, but obviously it wasn’t”
“So what happened when he tried to pull you out of the car?”
“He tried to take my ski-mask off.”
“And he succeeded?”
“Yes. I don’t know how, but he managed to take it off. It was supposed to stay on. But it didn’t.”
“I see. And then what happened?”
“Then I punched him and he fell out of the car onto the driveway of the house, unconscious.”
“I see. And did you dispose of the man or leave him there?”
“We left him there. Roberto said we didn’t have time to do anything else.”
“So, we can assume that he saw you and will report that fact back to his overlords.”
“I suppose so.”
“Well, Mr Boone. This faux-pas of yours will have repercussions.”
This was what Maurice was worried about. He had a history of cocking things up recently. He wondered what punishment was in store for him, bracing himself for the worst.
“Mr Boone. The team will be going on another important mission tonight, and you will accompany them.
Maurice thought he was hearing things. Hadn’t they noticed that he wasn’t exactly good at this cloak and dagger stuff?
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m deadly serious Mr Boone. I wish I could leave you behind, I truly do, but your inclusion is mandatory. Your identity and relationship to the resistance movement will have been noted by the Illuminati. The fact that you’re supposed to be dead will be of additional interest to them. They will use your family as a bargaining tool in the hope that you’ll defect to them or at least give them information. Admittedly you have been deliberately kept on the peripheral but this won’t stop them from getting any information they can from you. And you will talk; they can be very persuasive. To avoid that possibility, we’ll be extracting your wife and daughters so they have no bargaining collateral. You leave in fifteen minutes.”
“My wife and daughters? But they think I’m dead.”
“Then they’ll have a pleasant surprise then, won’t they? Goodbye.”
Takahiro Nakata turned on his heels and went back to his car,
“Am I really going to see Karen and the girls, Tony?” asked Maurice.
“Only if you get a move on. That fifteen minutes is about twelve minutes now. We’ll be taking two cars.”
“Two cars? I thought we only had one.”
“Well, now we have two.”
***
An hour later the two SUVs pulled up outside Maurice’s old
house.
“Let’s hope your missus hasn’t changed the locks,” said Roberto. Maurice placed the palm of his hand upon a glass control panel and the imprint that it left when he removed his hand glowed green. Karen hadn’t removed her husband from the access security database, even though she knew that there was no point in leaving it there.
“So far, so good,” Maurice mumbled to himself as the door clicked open.
The brothers crept into the house and Maurice followed them. He felt very nervous about this; he didn’t want to give his wife a heart attack. Did women have heart attacks? Maurice didn’t know, but he didn’t want to take the risk and so he hung back whilst the brothers went into the living room. Karen was watching TV, heard a noise and was shocked to see three strangers standing in the room. She grabbed the closest weapon to hand – a cushion – having no idea what she was going to do with it but felt slightly more comfortable having something in her hands with which to defend herself, however useless it was. In the shadows, Maurice also wondered what she expected to achieve with the cushion; she should have picked up the table lamp.
“Mrs Boone? My name is Roberto and these are my brothers Tony and Miguel.”
“Who are you? Some kind of Spanish Mafia? How do you know my name? What do you want?”
Roberto smiled at the thought of them being Spanish Mafia.
“We’re not here to hurt you, Mrs Boone. But we do need you to come with us.”
“Are you the police?”
“No, we’re not the police.”
“Then I’m not going anywhere. You’d better get out of here. My husband has only popped out to buy some milk, and he’ll be back any minute. If he finds you here I hate to think what he’ll do to you. He’s a black belt at karate.”
Roberto had to bite his lip to prevent himself from laughing out loud.
“No, he’s not, Mrs Boone. He couldn’t even punch his way out of a paper bag.”
Maurice felt a little hurt by this last remark. Hadn’t he recently knocked a man unconscious with one punch?