OMEGA SERIES BOX SET: Books 5-8

by Banner, Blake

  “I wouldn’t do that. Aaron doesn’t know it, but he’s on his way out.”

  His eyes went wide. “Aaron?”

  “He’s fucked up one too many times.” I raised an eyebrow and seemed to study him for a moment. “I’ve been studying your career for a while, Ahmed. I have liked the steps you have taken. I have liked the fact that you have known what to leave behind. I also like the fact that you are ruthless.” I pulled a Camel from my pocket and lit it with my old, brass Zippo. I inhaled deep and blew the smoke at the ceiling. “Aaron has gone soft. Did you know he’d become a multi-billionaire? On the strength of our help and guidance. But as soon as that happened—the mansion in Malibu, the wife and kids, the office on Sunset Boulevard…” I chuckled. “He went soft, he lost his edge. Omega is a club for killers, not for nice daddies.” I raised my eyebrow again. “Are you a killer, Ahmed? I had you down as a killer. Was I wrong?”

  He gave his head several short, rapid shakes. “No. You were not wrong.”

  I nodded. “I was not wrong. That’s because I am always right.”

  “Yes.”

  “Contact your broker, Ahmed, set it up and tell him what you are planning to do. Then we’ll get Elena’s confirmation when she arrives.”

  “Shouldn’t I wait…?”

  “You want her to take the initiative?”

  “No! No, I’ll see to it right away.”

  He rose and hurried to his desk. He pressed a button, a computer terminal rose out of the desktop and he began to type. I stood and walked over to him. I pulled a white envelope from my pocket and held it up for him to see. “This, right here, is probably the most valuable information available on the planet at this moment. What is contained in here is worth tens of billions of dollars, and I am giving it to you. I hope, once I hand this over, that I can count on your loyalty, Ahmed.”

  He stared at the envelope like it might explode. Then his big brown eyes shifted to mine. There was unfathomable greed in them. “Yes,” he said.

  I handed it to him and he took it. I didn’t let go. “Understand this, Ahmed. You will become a billionaire, but from the moment I let go, you give yourself to Omega. Are you prepared to do that?”

  Again the big-eyed stare. “Yes.”

  I nodded and let go. In that moment I could have told him to leap out the window and he would have done it. He opened the envelope and took out the single sheet of A4 it contained. His fingers were trembling. He studied the list, glanced at me and clicked the mouse. I heard a ringing tone from the computer, then a voice said, “Ahmed, working late?”

  “I’m sorry Lenny, something pretty urgent came up and I need to make a few large capital investments straight away. There’s a lot riding on this.”

  “Sure, no problem. It’s my wife’s birthday, but they can spare me for a while. What’s it about?”

  Ahmed stared at the list again, then at me, then back at the screen. I want to put everything we have spread equally over the following…”

  “Everything, Ahmed?”

  “Everything. Sell whatever you can sell and reinvest it in this. Trust me, my advice is good. Ready…? Thai Rice Futures, for November. Ukrainian wheat, September, Spanish grapes…”

  The list went on. It would have been obvious to any man not blinded by greed that they were all crops that were going to fail in the drought. He knew it, he could see it, but he had committed himself, sold himself to Omega, and he told himself he must be wrong and he must have faith.

  Lenny’s voice came from the computer. He sounded skeptical. “These are futures. You’re buying at today’s price, whatever their value may be in September, October or November...”

  “Yes, that’s correct.”

  There was a frown in Lenny’s voice. “I’m at a bit of a loss here, Ahmed. There is nothing very remarkable about these investments. You might win a bit or lose a bit, but I could recommend a hundred different…”

  I was shaking my head and Ahmed interrupted him. “I appreciate what you’re saying, Lenny. But I have reason to believe the market will change soon, in our favor.”

  “You’re the boss. I’ll need the OK from Elena.”

  “She’s on her way. I just wanted to get it set up. She’ll give you a call in about ten minutes. Is that OK?”

  “Of course.”

  He hung up and Ahmed sat staring at me. I held his eye and blinked slowly. “Have we ever let you down in the past, Ahmed?”

  He shook his head. Then his gaze traveled past me and I heard the door open. I turned and Elena Sanchez was standing in the open doorway, looking at us. She said, “What’s going on?”

  I said, “Come in, Elena. You need to hear this.”

  “Who are you?”

  I looked her hard in the eye and said, “I am Aaron’s boss. Please come and sit down.”

  She glanced past me at Ahmed. He must have given her a nod, because she closed the door and came to the coffee table, where she sat on the sofa. I said, “Can I offer you a drink?”

  “A dry sherry, thank you.”

  I turned and looked at Ahmed. He rose from the desk and went to pour her wine. I sat.

  “Elena, the information I am about to share with you is need to know only. If you share this with anyone outside this room, the consequences will be severe. Please don’t ask me what that means, because we really don’t want to go there.”

  She frowned, looking alarmed. Ahmed handed her her drink and I kept talking.

  “There are some things that, as of now, you need to know. Your company belongs to an organization called Omega. Aaron Fenninger has been acting as the liaison between Omega and yourselves, and it is Omega who has given you the information to guide your investments until now. The purpose for all this is far more complex than you can hope to understand, but to put it at its simplest, we need the research that you do.”

  She was still frowning. “Aaron had told us some of this, not quite in those terms, but the general gist. He never used the name Omega…”

  “Now, there are two things I have to tell you.” I held up a finger. “One, Aaron is being axed. He has fucked up once too often. So we now have two openings in what we like to call the cabal. We have been observing Ahmed for some time, and also you, Elena.” I raised two fingers in the peace sign. “Two, the second thing I have to tell you: as you already know, we are about to experience a very severe, global drought. There will be widespread famine and the Middle East will become seriously destabilized. We will go to war and that war will spread. This will be an opportunity for people with foresight and, above all, foreknowledge, to make vast fortunes. Now, Elena, the choices you make in the next fifteen minutes will determine whether you become one of those people or not, and whether we offer you a permanent position in Omega.”

  Her breathing had quickened. Her cheeks had flushed and her eyes were bright. I picked up my glass and observed it a moment. It was empty. I handed it to Ahmed without looking at him, keeping my eyes on Elena’s, smiling at her. He hurried away and refilled my glass, then brought it back.

  She stared at Ahmed a moment. He told her with his face that he was in. She turned back to me, shaking her head. “What was all that bullshit about the Mafia?”

  I offered her a lopsided smile and nodded. “Good. That had nothing to do with you. That was about Aaron. And needless to say, he failed. He cracked under pressure—again. Like I said, this is need to know only. You don’t need to know about that. What you do need to know is that I have given Ahmed a list of investments to make in futures that we are going to protect so that they go through the roof when the drought bites. The proceeds from those investments will then be put into armaments and munitions just before war is declared. In a matter of a few months, your personal fortunes will be beyond your wildest dreams. The investments are set up. All you need to do is give Lenny the OK.”

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “This is crazy.”

  I laughed. “Is it?”

  She opened her eyes and looked at me.
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br />   “You’ve known this was the game you were in from the start. Aaron told you. But Aaron didn’t involve you because he’s a pussy. He played it safe, to protect himself, and as a result a company that we were relying on to manage the biggest crisis since the second world war is barely in a position to make any difference at all.” I pulled another cigarette from my pack and lit up. “Now I’m giving you a stake. I’m involving you and showing you just how much money and power you can have if you play the game.”

  Her breathing had grown deeper and faster. What I’d said had struck a chord. She was trying to suppress a smile and failing. I raised an eyebrow and smiled at her like I was about to drag her off to bed. I said, “Call Lenny. Give him the go ahead.”

  She fumbled in her bag, pulled out her cell, pressed the speed dial and after a moment she said, “Lenny, hi, it’s Elena… Oh, wish her a happy birthday from me, will you? Listen, I believe Ahmed has already been in touch…” She laughed. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, Lenny. Have we ever made an investment that didn’t pay dividends? Yes, we receive good advice, you can take that to the bank, believe me! I just wanted to give you the green light. You’ll take care of it? Excellent. You have a lovely evening.”

  She hung up, closed her eyes and heaved a huge sigh. When she opened them again we raised our glasses to each other. I said, “Here’s to obscene wealth, inequality and injustice. Long may it reign!”

  We all laughed heartily. I took a long pull and settled back in my chair.

  “Well, now, we are almost done. While Lenny goes away to make you both astonishingly rich, there is one more thing we need to do before we call it a night.”

  Ahmed was still smiling at my joke. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “I need you to call Izamu Suzuki and Erick Dunbar, and tell them to get their asses over here double quick.”

  He glanced at his watch.

  I said, “I don’t give a good goddamn what time it is, Ahmed. I want them here in less than half an hour. We have only just begun. We have some very important work to do tonight. And I need them here to do it.” I pointed at him. “Call Izamu.” I pointed at Elena. “Call Erick. Do it now.”

  Elena stood and walked away with her phone, holding it to her ear. She was alive, enthusiastic, keen. Ahmed stood and walked toward his desk, holding his phone to his ear. He was also enthusiastic and keen, but there was a servile quality to his enthusiasm. He was a man who wanted to hold power, but he wanted to hold it for somebody else.

  I watched them talking eagerly, persuading their partners that they had to come now to the office because what was happening next was of momentous importance. And, as I watched them, I wondered at the capacity of the human mind to build a fantasy for itself out of nothing but another man’s apparent conviction, and its own desire for that conviction to be true; to completely beguile itself and believe its own fabrications. I had offered them the feeblest of circumstantial evidence, and they had turned it into proof positive that I was a major player in Omega. And now they were lending me their own authority within their company to prove it to their colleagues. Within twenty minutes I would have all the senior partners of Intelligent Imaging Consultants sitting there with me, at my mercy, believing I owned them.

  This, I told myself, is how empires are built.

  Eight

  “Forgive me if I am a little blunt.” It was Dunbar. He was a big, barrel-chested man with a long, blond beard and Buffalo Bill hair. He was wearing a two thousand dollar gray suit and a bootlace tie. “I’ve never been good at keeping my mouth shut, and it ain’t something I aim to learn any time soon. Would somebody mind telling me what in hell is going on?”

  We were all five seated around the coffee table. Ahmed raised a placatory hand and said, “Erick, there have been some rather unexpected changes…”

  “Says who?” He pointed a finger at me and said, “And who in hell is this? No offence, mister, but who in blazes are you and why are you privy to this conversation?”

  Ahmed raised both hands and made placating motions. “If you will just give us a chance we will explain…”

  “Who’s ‘us’?”

  Izamu, a slim man who could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty, sighed, looked at the floor and muttered what sounded like, “Kora! Boke kuso!” Then he smiled at Dunbar without feeling and said, “Maybe if we give them a chance to speak, Erick, we will get the answers to our questions.”

  Ahmed nodded. “Thank you, Izamu, always the voice of reason.” He gestured to me with his open hand and said, “This is…” Then he paused, realizing he didn’t know my name.

  I pulled my pack of Camels from my pocket and spoke as I pulled out a cigarette and lit it. “You may as well get used to calling me Gamma, because that is the only name you will ever know me by. I control your funds and I represent the organization that, de facto, owns your company. Aaron Fenninger is as good as dead and you will not be seeing him again. I am taking over his role and you can expect a much more hands on style.” I paused to smile at Elena and saw her cheeks color. “And you can also expect to be a lot more involved personally, yourselves, in the real purpose of this company.” I looked at Dunbar, who was frowning at me like I had two heads. “Let me get right to the point. You are going to make a lot more money—a lot more. The company is going to make a lot more money, and so are you. But—I want a lot more commitment from you in return.”

  Izamu said, “What does that mean, in real terms?”

  “In real terms? Let me give you a real example and we’ll take it from there. As you already know, our climate experts have reported that we are approaching a tipping point in climate change and, within a few months, we are going to have spiraling temperatures and drought spreading around the globe in a broad band roughly either side of the thirty-seventh parallel. Let me be brutal about this. This will mean tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of women and children dying of hunger and thirst.”

  I paused to study their faces. They all held my eye. I went on.

  “It will mean crop failures, from Kansas, through southern Europe, the Middle East, Pakistan, China and Japan. It will have a major impact on staple foodstuffs like wheat, corn and rice, and animal feed, sending the prices of those commodities through the roof.” I saw Ahmed and Elena exchange a glance. I ignored them and plowed on. “This, in turn, is going to severely destabilize a region which is already a powder keg—the Middle East—and we are going to seize this opportunity to trigger a war, a war like we haven’t seen since World War II. We will invade Saudi Arabia and Iran, and we fully expect Russia and the EU to oppose us, perhaps with military force. The body count will be very high, and we will make vast fortunes off the suffering, the hunger and the destitution of millions of people. That is what we do, and it is your job not to sell that to the people, but to make them want it.”

  I paused, scrutinizing their faces, searching for a glimmer of unease or discomfort. I didn’t find any, so I went on.

  “It is time to start applying that research that has been going on for so long. I want to see the people out there.” I pointed toward the window and laughed. “I want to see them and hear them bleating! Like sheep!” They loved it. They laughed. “I don’t want to hear them saying, ‘baaaa,’ I want to hear them saying, ‘waaar!’”

  That was hilarious. They fell about. They were going to enjoy working with me. I was a real gas. Elena spoke up.

  “So far we have found that a deep-core shaping of the personality occurs in early childhood and during puberty and adolescence. We have a raft of proposed programs that we can present to the networks that will instill a more actively aggressive approach toward enemies of the U.S.A., but that is going to take about ten years to feed through.”

  Izamu was shaking his head. “With respect, Elena, that does not take account of the preparatory work that has already been done. With a series of well placed programs, especially documentaries and news, according to the research that my team has been doing, we can
swing public opinion in favor of a war within a week. But there is a problem.”

  I sipped my drink. “What’s that?”

  “We need to be able to depend on the networks. There is a powerful anti-war, pro-Islam bias in the news. Everybody wants to believe Islam is a religion of peace. As long as they are buying into that, they will not support a war. We can provide you with the programming, but you need to guarantee that we can air it.”

  Ahmed snorted. “I dare say that will change as soon as the administration realizes they are no longer dependent on the Saudi royal family for oil.”

  There was more laughter. I raised a hand. “Let me just get something very clear. None of you has any objection to this work on moral or ethical grounds?”

  They all looked at each other, smiled, shrugged and shook their heads. I laughed quietly to myself and stood. I moved behind my chair and leaned on the back with my hands. “Not a single one of you cares about the children who will starve to death?”

  Elena raised an eyebrow. “Is this a trick question? The final hurdle we have to overcome to join Omega, or some shit like that? I think I speak for all of us when I say that if the money is as good as you say it is, I don’t give a damn!”

  I grinned at her and chuckled. “It’s not.”

  She held the smile in place. “What…?”

  “The investments you instructed your broker to make. They are all crops that are going to fail in the drought. You have bought millions of dollars worth of dead crops. You are de facto bankrupt.” I looked from face to staring face. “But don’t worry about it.”

  Dunbar exploded, “What the hell do you mean, don’t worry about it?”

  “Before those futures are realized, you’ll all be dead.”

  I had Elena at nine o’clock on my left, Dunbar at twelve o’clock and Izamu at three, on the sofa. Ahmed was right next to me, craning around to look up into my face. I pulled the Maxim and shot Elena, Dunbar and Izamu in the head. The 9 mm rounds were subsonic, so there was practically no sound. They were so astonished they just sat there and allowed themselves to be shot. Ahmed was staring at them with his mouth open, trying to make sense of what had happened. I smashed the butt of the automatic into his head and knocked him out cold. Then I gripped the gun with his hand and pulled off another round into each of them and dropped the gun on the floor.