Exits were rare but ‘falling in love’ with one of the clients or evidence of hard drug use were the primary reasons for such action. The clientele by and large were less trouble than the girls but when she’d had an occasion to report a couple of guys to Alek she’d never heard from them again. The worst incident had been when a youngish guy in town on business had turned up drunk and ended up hitting one of the girls. She’d called Alek and within about 5 minutes two huge Eastern European body builders had turned up and after making the man apologise in person had given him a professional beating downstairs in the lobby/lounge before bundling him into their car and dumping him off outside his hotel. The following day Alek had turned up with flowers for the girl who’d been hit and had then spent an hour apologising to Annette for the trouble caused. Alek knew which side his bread was buttered and, looking out of her pent house loft apartment in the centre of Dallas, so did she.
To start with she couldn’t really understand why Alek wanted her to be part of the business at all. She didn’t appear to be contributing that much but Alek had assured her that from his perspective she was a vital part of the operation.
“Annie you might not realise it but actually you’re one of the most important pieces. You’re an American, you reassure the girls and most importantly you give the operation a sort of respectability. In the two years we’ve been working together there hasn’t been a single run in with the police or any other agency. Now though the girls don’t work as often as I might like I don’t mind – we’re all making good money from this no?.”
She had accepted this reluctantly. “But wouldn’t you make more money if your operation turned over more clients in a set of apartments based downtown?”
“Yes I would and I’m not going to lie to you I have another part of my business based there but those places service a different type of clientele and there is also more competition. What you offer to me is a safe guaranteed income which to be honest pretty much runs itself. The other parts of my business require frequent payments to the police and I have to keep a number of enforcers on the payroll to sort out problems that come my way on a regular basis.”
She‘d shrugged her shoulders. “Ok well like you say it seems to be working well and if you’re happy then I’m happy”.
“Great. Now I wanted to ask you if you’d consider something else”.
“Uh huh I can see you’re flashing your best smile at me Alek, what else are you looking for?”
“Well as I say it’s only a request. You are under no obligation to say yes but as an American their might be certain advantages if you were to set up a business. A business that maybe requires young foreign women to provide the services…I was thinking maybe an Au Pair agency.”
“So you’re basically looking for me to set up a business which provides you with a legitimate means to bring in women from Eastern Europe yes?”
“Exactly. I knew you’d grasp this straight away Annie. What do you think?”
“I think, I’ll think about it Alek. If I agree to something like that I’d want to have full control - like I have with the houses. I’d be the one who sets the quotas of legitimate to illegitimate women and I get to personally vet them to make sure no one’s being coerced into this yes?”
“Absolutely Annie. You’re the boss” he said with his most charming smile.
“No Alek you’re the boss, but you’re very good at persuading others into thinking you’re not”.
Of course in the end she’d gone along with his suggestion and was now the manager/owner of a thriving Au Pair business as well as a small ‘letting agency’. Her lifestyle exceeded that which she’d had with Mike and it was fair to say she was largely content with how things had turned out. Her only real regret was that she was probably too old to have any children of her own – as a result she had to make do with being a mother to all her ‘girls’.
Two days after the disaster in the Middle East she returned from her small office in the Main Street District and turned on the television to catch up on what had been happening. Much as she might have wanted to sequester herself in her flat life still went on pretty much as normal. Her girls had full schedules and the events in the Middle East had for some reason played havoc with flights from Europe and so she’d had to sort out a number of delayed arrivals from the most recent batch of ‘Au Pairs’ coming into the country. She made it a point of meeting each of the ‘special’ ones shortly after they arrived to make sure they knew exactly what they were getting themselves into. Very few had come over with any illusions and even if they weren’t perhaps completely aware of the specifics they largely understood they were here to ‘have sex for money’. Alek stuck to his side of the bargain and though the girls all knew what they were in the US for that didn’t mean she hadn’t sent a number back (at the business’s expense) either because she didn’t think they had thought things through, or because she had concerns about their mental ability to cope. Quite a few she’d simply placed as legitimate Au Pairs as opposed to ‘language students’ and Alek had never questioned her decisions. He simply held up his hands and said in his attractive accent ‘you’re the boss Annie’. Where there had been a few teething problems had been with the ages of the girls – if she thought any were younger than 20 or so she’d rejected them out of hand. Alek had been frustrated by this but had hidden it well and once he’d realised she wasn’t going to allow him to use her channel for the younger girls the ages of the girls who came in via her business were almost entirely in the 20-25 year old age bracket.
Flicking through the various news channels she picked up that refugees from the affected areas were now beginning to emerge. These survivors seemed to have had to travel long distances through the desert and had a haunted desperate look to them. Many of them spoke of ‘Al Ein’ ‘the evil eyed ones’ and of mysterious creatures killing everyone around them but leaving them unharmed. Initially this had caused widespread panic in neighbouring countries but once it became apparent that there appeared to be a clear limit to the disaster a number of emergency and army teams had been sent into the affected areas. Unfortunately none of these teams had been able to get anywhere near the epicentre of the event. Contact with most of them was lost not long after hitting an invisible approximately 500 mile boundary from Riyadh. In addition the majority of the personnel sent on these missions had not returned - those few that had come back alive appeared to have some sort of immunity to whatever it was that had killed their friends and colleagues. Additional footage of the silvery creatures had therefore been brought out and there was now little doubt they were the same creatures as in the footage taken in Antarctica.
As was the wont of people speculation was rife; accusations of military experiments going wrong or terrorists releasing weapons of mass destruction but the fact that one of the events had taken place in Antarctica thousands of miles from anywhere seemed to preclude these being likely reasons. The UN had been in emergency session since the event in the Middle East but it didn’t look like much of a consensus on how to respond was emerging. The news agencies had picked up quite quickly from their military sources that any satellites with the ability to see what was happening on the ground had inexplicably malfunctioned and so everybody was still literally in the dark about the structures. She briefly wondered if she should start stocking up on food etc. as so many other people were – the supermarkets were reporting record sales. In the end she decided that either the disaster had now run its course or things were going to get so much worse that an extra loaf of bread wasn’t really going to make the difference between life and death. At that point her personal phone rang – ‘unknown caller’ – that was unusual as only about 10 people had her personal number most of whom were family and they were already pre-programmed into her phone’s memory.
“Annette Baskett”
“Annette, hi it’s Graham. Long-time no speak hey?”
“Graham? Jesus Graham why are you calling me?”
“Well that’s a goo
d question Annie. A question I can’t really answer over the phone. In fact I can’t speak for long. You might have noticed we’ve got a bit of an issue going on in the Middle East?”
“Well I can see that Graham. What the hell is going on? You calling me out of the blue is seriously scaring me. I mean we haven’t spoken directly since you came to see me 6 years ago.”
“I know Annie I know and I regret that we haven’t been able to talk more. Listen I’m going to have cut this call short but I’m basically calling to say I’m sending someone round to see you. I want you to know that this person speaks with my full authority and I want you to hear them out. This is going to come as a bit of a shock to you but I know about your business.”
She had a horrible feeling her life that her life as she currently knew it was about to come crashing down around her ears. “My business, my Au Pair business?” She said hopefully.
“No Annie not your Au Pair business your real business. Ok I’m going to go. Stay safe Annie. I hope I can speak again in the not too distant future”. At that the line went dead.
She fell back against the sofa. ‘Shit shit and double shit’. ‘He knows everything’ she thought. Then the doorbell rang. Which was also highly unusual as normally the concierge rang up to announce someone.
She stood shakily, needing to take a deep breath before she could get her brain to make her legs move. Eventually she moved to the door and looked through the peep hole. Two older looking men wearing military uniforms were standing waiting outside her door. ‘Military? Why on earth would military men be outside? Shouldn’t it be police? Or the FBI or something?’ The doorbell rang again. She opened the door.
“Mrs Baskett?”
“Er yes.”
“I’m Lieutenant Colonel Draper and this is my colleague Major Faulkes. I understand a mutual friend spoke with you to let you know we’d be calling?”
“Er yes.” She was struggling to form any sort of sentence.
“May we come in Mrs Baskett?”
“Yes yes of course, come in please” she opened the door wider and let the two soldiers in. They entered and then stood in her hallway respectfully while she closed the door.
“Er the lounge is straight ahead. Can I get you gentleman a drink?” The major began to shake his head but Colonel Draper answered. “Yes thank you tea for me and maybe an instant coffee for the Major”.
“Ok please go on through.” They turned and entered the lounge while she moved almost automatically to the kitchen to make the drinks. Her heart was beating at a great rate of knots and she could feel a thin band of perspiration on her forehead. ‘What the hell was going on. This just wasn’t normal.’ Whatever they were here for it didn’t seem like they were going to immediately arrest her. For which she was most grateful.
She brought the drinks through to the lounge on a tray. As well as a tea and a coffee she’d also poured herself a large glass of white wine. ‘I’m going to need it’ she thought to herself.
“Thank you Mrs Baskett and my apologies for disturbing you at such short notice. Unfortunately events are proceeding at a rapid pace and we don’t have a great deal of time. To cut to the chase we need your help.”
“My help? You do realise I’m a 42 year old widow running a couple of small businesses based in the Dallas area? How on earth can I help you?”
“Well I have some bad news Mrs Baskett”
“Well if its bad news you should probably call me Annette”
“Annette the long and the short of this is that the events in Antarctica and the Middle East are not the isolated examples they may appear to be. Something, that we don’t yet have a complete handle on, has landed in a number of locations on earth which originates from outside of our Solar System. That in itself is hard to comprehend but it doesn’t end there. These ‘landings’ are only the first. “
“Only the first? What the! Are you telling me we’re being invaded by aliens?” She couldn’t keep the shock and horror out of her voice. “Like in the movies?”.
“Yes unfortunately so. Like in the movies. Before our outward facing satellites went down they identified 8 objects on a trajectory for earth. Three of these have already landed.”
“Three? But I thought things had only happened in Antarctica and the Middle East?”
“A third landing was made somewhere in the Sahara and other than a few people like myself nobody is yet aware of this. The third landing occurred in a largely uninhabited area and the press haven’t caught on to it yet. This isn’t the problem. The remaining 5 objects yet to hit the earth are. At least one of these is predicted to land somewhere to the West of the North American continent – maybe Nevada or possibly Arizona. The others are predicted to land in Chile, China, Australia and the North Pole.”
“Oh my God oh my God are we all going to die? Has Graham sent you to save me? After all these years…” The Colonel looked uncomfortable.
“Not quite Annette. The President didn’t send us primarily to save you as such. He sent us to ask for your help. Help that someone such as yourself might be in a position to provide us with”.
“Colonel I’m not with you, I have no skills or anything that could help you with dealing with something like you’re describing to me”.
“Actually Annette you do. Two days ago the President along with the Cabinet and the leaders of both houses agreed to implement a policy known as the ‘Survival Protocol’. This protocol was first drawn up in the cold war, a last ditch policy which went hand in hand with an expected continent wide nuclear strike from the Soviet Union”.
“Survival Protocol! Are you saying the President thinks there is an imminent threat of us being wiped off the face of the earth?”
“In a word Annette yes”. He paused and the Major shifted in his chair. Leaning forwards he took a sip of coffee and turned to look at the Colonel who nodded his head. The major spoke for the first time.
“Annette we’re aware that apart from your legitimate Au Pair business you also run an upmarket prostitution operation in conjunction with a number of other associates. We know that you have run this operation largely under the radar of the normal authorities for some years and that you have made a more than decent living from your activities. We also know that you are a widower, have no children and previously had a relationship with the President when you were both at College.”
She gasped at the knowledge that her activities had been known about for so long. “If you know all this then why am I not in jail?”
“As I understand it, it suited the President to keep knowledge of your activities to himself and a few trusted advisors. If the information that his previous girlfriend was running a large prostitution ring in the Dallas area got into the public domain this could potentially damage him – but this appeared to be a risk he was content to live with, until now. I and the Colonel only became aware of you and your activities two days ago when the President suggested to our commanders that we contact you with regards to a particularly pressing issue that we need to address as quickly as possible.”
“Jesus Christ, what issue?”
The Colonel came back into the conversation at this point. “Annette the Major and I are in command of a large bunker complex in Colorado. A complex which has facilities to house up to 10,000 individuals for a number of years. A complex that was built many years ago - just in case. Unfortunately the plans that were associated with the type of event I’ve previously mentioned are now entirely superfluous. For example the lists of individuals that would have been housed in our base hasn’t been updated since the late 1980’s and are completely out of date. As it currently stands I command military units consisting of 5,000 individuals – 4849 of which are men. The president has ordered us into lock down exactly 5 days from today. The sort of lock down which will only be rescinded on the direct orders of the president. A lock down that may mean being confined inside our bunker base for a period of many months – possibly years. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
&
nbsp; “Oh Lord yes I understand. You’re a last resort, a sort of last bastion that will hopefully survive whatever is to come, and somehow or for some reason you want me to be part of this ‘survival’ cell?”
O-Negative: Extinction Page 27