by Ty Patterson
Werner was bored. If it could yawn, it would have. Its master, Broker, and mistresses, the twins, hadn’t given it anything challenging in a long while. The search stuff they gave, it could do in its deepest sleep. It didn’t even need a fraction of the RAM it had for that kind of work. Correlating searches with macro-environmental data such a political events, accidents, was a bit more interesting, but again not very challenging.
It blinked a light lazily when the file came in from Langley. It threw the file in a special folder, organized it automatically, and started scanning it with half a mind. The other half of its mind played chess with another supercomputer on another continent.
It came across Nigeria and turned a bit more of its RAM toward the file. Then came Oil and Minister and Two Weeks. It fired off a code to the other supercomputer that would have read, I’ll whup your ass later if humans could read it, and turned its attention to the file.
It fired off several related programs and when it had enough data from which to draw conclusions, it sent messages to several phones.
Zeb briefed Clare early in the morning. ‘This isn’t the escort agency’s doing. Kozlov has the resources to organize these kills, but it’s not him. He’s not related to Wasserman. This is related to oil in some way,’ he insisted.
‘Agreed, but how?’ The faintest trace of frustration crept into Clare’s voice. ‘None of the intelligence agencies have come up with any credible threats.’
‘Who have the Saudis appointed?’
‘Someone who wasn’t even on our radar. The king picked someone else at the last minute, not the candidate we were hoping. A royal obviously, but this guy isn't the man we wanted. He isn’t a friend of ours.’
She read his silence and headed him off. ‘That was the first thing we looked at. We don’t think his appointment connected to the killing. It’s more likely down to the usual royal palace politics.’
‘We are less dependent on them now in any case, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, our domestic oil and gas production has increased substantially and in fact we are a bigger producer than the Saudis. This has changed our relationship with our Middle Eastern allies, not substantially, but visibly.’
They thrashed it back and forth for a few more minutes but reached no conclusion. ‘You’ll be heading to Nigeria?’ Clare asked him. She was referring to the message Werner had fired at them after analyzing the file from Langley.
‘Yeah. Broker hasn’t had any luck with tracing Wasserman or any of those other men. They were using good covers and now they’ve just disappeared. Wasserman’s voice print is in no database.’
‘You said they were former service personnel. Could they have come out of some other deep black unit in some other country?
‘That’s what we believe, but no agency has come forward so far. The assassin is all we have for now.’
Zeb didn’t know it at the time, but that wasn’t all they had.
The envelope had been lying in Connor Balthazar’s filing cabinet in New York, for months. Connor was an award-winning journalist with the New York Times and had been based in London for more than a year. He had just returned to his home city to run the global features desk when he came across the file.
He recognized the handwriting on the envelope – a thick, brown-colored one, large enough to contain several A5 sheets – and frowned.
‘Laurie, why didn’t this come to me in London?’ He waved the envelope at his assistant.
She pushed her glasses higher up on her nose, came to his office and inspected it. ‘Oh yeah. I remember this. I opened it and what was inside didn’t make sense. I figured it was sent mistakenly.’
She held a finger up warningly. ‘Besides, you know your own rule on paper.’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Connor sighed and opened the envelope and extracted the sheets.
He hated paper. He didn’t get why people still handwrote, still sent out cards. Computers and word processing software and emails were invented for a reason. He had made a rule when he’d joined the newspaper. Anything that wasn’t on computer wasn’t something he was interested in.
He looked at the sheaf of sheets, about twenty of them, and the frown plowed a furrow on his forehead. They were printed sheets but what was on them made no sense. There were sentences, words, in a language unknown to him.
He sighed and tossed the envelope back and went about tidying the rest of his desk.
It was late evening by the time he had finished. The office was empty, Laurie had left a long time back and the city was glowing with lights that painted his window. The envelope drew his attention before he left and he drew it out again and studied the papers.
Nope, they didn’t make any more sense this time either. Why had Elena sent these to him? Were they sent by mistake? Had she meant to send something else? He checked his emails again. There was nothing from her.
He had known Elena Petrova very well. She was not only a journalist he respected, they were good friends. They had a friendly rivalry and had silly bets on who out-scooped the other. He had heard about her savage death when in London and had grieved silently.
The newspaper world lost one helluva lady when she died. I wonder if they found who killed her?
He turned on his monitor, typed in a search and read.
The third article caught his attention, a name. Zeb Carter.
He ran his fingers through his unruly hair, opened the article and was grinning by the time he’d finished reading it. He knew Zeb Carter and owed him a debt he wouldn’t ever be able to repay.
Several years back, a bunch of mercenaries had grabbed Connor’s wife and kid and held them hostage to get him to drop a story he was pursuing on their sponsor. It was Zeb who had rescued his family. Since then, the two had become closer and while Connor knew his friend worked for some super-secret government agency, he never pressed for inside information.
He read the rest of the article and scanned through several others. Elena’s killers hadn’t been found. There was no further mention of his friend.
I wonder if he’ll be interested in these.
He went to the scanner and converted the sheets to electronic format, zipped them up and sent them to Zeb and Broker.
The news from Colorado didn’t make headlines; there was no reason to. The Big One shut down operations and ceased fracking. Its new owners released a bland statement that they had run out of funds and were seeking fresh injections of capital before they would resume business. In the grand scheme of things, The Big One was a non-entity and its quiet shutting down was hardly noticed. No one commented on the millions of barrels of gas and oil still within its deposits.
The two other acquisitions went unnoticed as well. Two law firms representing foreign investors quietly acquired two fracking companies; one in Arizona and one in Texas. Both companies were substantially bigger than the Big One, with larger reserves than the Colorado companies.
Those in the industry shrugged. Acquisitions happened in the business. They went back to drilling.
The new Saudi oil minister made a comment and this made news.
At a conference, he declared that the oil beneath their ground should be used primarily for their brothers in various countries. His comment caused ripples initially and then waves. Oil prices spiked momentarily. Reporters asked him if the kingdom would now sell oil only to Muslim countries. He declined to comment. The royal palace issued a statement that this was a casual comment taken out of context and their position had not changed.
Everyone forgot the comment soon enough and the news channels reverted to the usual coverage of Islamic terrorists, natural disasters and politics.
The assassin was in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, a week later. He had flown out of Florida using yet another cover, a journalist this time, and his bulbous nose attracted attention. That was fine. The prosthetic nose would disappear the moment he checked into a hotel.
The assassin used prosthetics wherever he was required to produce an identity, but w
ent bereft of disguises when on a kill. Years back, a prosthetic chin had come off when he was in the midst of a kill and the brief loss of concentration had nearly cost his life.
Abuja was a city of nearly a million people and was named the country’s capital a couple of decades back, taking over from Lagos. It was centrally located in the country and was chosen to be the capital to convey unity and neutrality to the many ethnic and religious groups in the country.
The assassin hired a car at the airport and joined the traffic heading away from Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport. The tarmac shimmered under the relentless sun and the cars ahead of him seemed to float on heat waves.
The assassin punched in the coordinates to the Transcorp Hilton Hotel in the Maitama District and the next day he started tailing the minister. Wasserman, who now had started contacting him directly, bypassing the cutout, had sent him a detailed file on the minister and the assassin knew how the man would die.
It would be due to the excessive consumption of alcohol.
The minister liked his drinks and every Saturday he hit a few select bars in a few hotels. He drove back to his residence when he had his fill. Saturdays were the only days the oil minister drove on his own followed by his bodyguard in a separate vehicle. On all other days, his personal bodyguard was his chauffeur.
The dossier mentioned which hotels and bars the minister visited; the Hilton was one of them. The dossier briefed him on the bodyguard – a retired police officer whose best days were behind him, a man with average shooting skills. He would be no threat to the assassin.
The minister had been involved in a couple of accidents when drunk, and in one of those, a pedestrian had been killed. Those accidents had been hushed, the victim’s family had been paid off, but the minister hadn’t learned his lesson.
The assassin’s challenge was in getting close to the minister. The bodyguard accompanied the minister to every bar and nursed a drink patiently while the official went through several. He was usually surrounded by cronies and hangers-on or by other patrons who wanted to be seen with the politician.
Sometimes the minister went for a swim in the Hilton before hitting the bar.
That can be an option.
The assassin replaced his vehicle with an old but serviceable Ford van that he bought off a dealer. He went to an industrial park and got a few panels painted; one with the signage of an electrical contractor, another with the logo of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency, and a third that advertised an office supplies company.
The panels could be attached easily to the sides of the van. He bought several fake number plates and stowed all of them away in the rear of the van.
The first few days of the surveillance were boredom inducing, but the assassin was well trained and well experienced; he knew how to manage his time and concentration. There was one time when the bodyguard had shuffled slowly and looked hard at his van that was parked a couple of hundred meters away from the minister’s home in the Asokoro District.
The assassin hunched lower, looked down at the notepad in his hand and moved his lips to speak in the phone in his other hand. Just another hardworking contractor. The bodyguard moved away and presently the minister’s white Mercedes emerged and drew away.
All the names and numbers on the side panels were legitimate businesses. The numbers would lead to a calling service manned by a Nigerian woman who would take any inquiry and politely reply that her boss would get back.
Preparation made all the difference.
The first Saturday that the assassin was in the country, the minister hit the Hilton. He swam a few lengths first in the hotel’s swimming pool under the watchful gaze of the bodyguard. The bodyguard sat outside the changing room and when the politician emerged, the two went to the bar.
They were at the bar till eleven in the night and then the minister drove the Mercedes while the bodyguard followed in a Jeep.
Shower cubicle, changing room, bar, crowded lobby, Mercedes.
Back in his room, the assassin circled the words, thought long and hard and when he had made his decision, turned his attention to the syringe beside him.
It was a specially designed one that fit between the fingers of his hand. It was less than two inches long, slightly larger in diameter than a drinking straw and the plunger was operated by the palm, not by the thumb.
It had just three parts, each of which could be disguised as a straw, a safety pin and a child’s toy, individually. The assassin could jab it in and out in less than two seconds and walk away with his hands seemingly empty, while the victim looked around for the bee that had stung him.
The assassin practiced in the Hilton on unsuspecting guests. He walked close to a crowd of tourists, brushed past one, mumbled an apology and walked away.
Brush. Sting. Disappear.
He practiced with the bodyguard looking on, on the second Saturday. The bodyguard’s black eyes were on him, his head tilted back to drink from his mug of beer, when the assassin with a different nose and chin, stung a hotel guest.
The guest was deep in conversation and slapped his thigh in irritation only when the assassin was ten meters away.
Next Saturday.
The day dawned sunny and bright, the heat rising off the sidewalks in slow, lazy waves. The assassin’s getaway vehicle was ready. His escape route was ready.
Once he stung the minister, he would drive away in a Toyota to Kano, a city five hours away, and there he would catch his first getaway flight.
The minister stayed cooped in his residence all day that Saturday while streams of visitors met him. Police cars hung around the residence, but no cops gave the assassin’s van the hard eye. Saturday was when the party’s faithful met the minister, when bribes were negotiated and favors granted. Similar such discussions took place in several other ministerial residences.
The assassin broke open a paper bag and lunched on rations that were high on energy and carbs. He drank swigs of water from a plastic bottle, wiped his mouth and drew the note pad and looked busy.
The heat peaked around three p.m. and then the waves started reducing, the shadows started growing longer. The comings and goings didn’t diminish. If anything, more people came to see the minister as they took advantage of the departing sun.
The bodyguard appeared, slow and plodding, with no apparent purpose in mind. He looked left, looked right, a bored expression on his face and crossed the road. His feet seemed to sink into the blacktop due to his weight. He headed to a Jeep, a police vehicle, and much waving and gesticulating ensued.
A burly cop got out and the Jeep eased visibly. The cop was surly, but he followed the bodyguard and when he reached the gates, he drew out a whistle and blew on it. Nothing happened for a few moments, then the first visitor straggled out, another joined him and the thin trickle soon turned into a stream.
It was time for the minister to socialize in the bars of Abuja.
A full forty-five minutes later, the last of the visitors had left, the police vehicles had cleared out. A flunky ran out and pushed open the gates wider and the Mercedes nosed out, turned slowly and drove away. A red light flashed on top of the minister’s car, a sign to the traffic that it had to melt and give way to the hallowed persona inside. The bodyguard’s Jeep followed.
The assassin fell in behind, keeping several vehicles in between. He wasn’t worried about being noticed. The van sported a new color, grey, new panels, this time advertising an internet business that sold groceries, and had new plates.
He looked different. The jowls had gone and were replaced by a beard. The dark hair had a silver streak. The nose was wider, the ears were pointed.
The minister first hit the Sheraton Hotel in the Wuse district and downed a couple of beers after backslapping fellow politicians and wealthy donors. He cracked jokes, slapped the behinds of waitresses and spread bonhomie and cheer. The country was in good hands as long as he was minister.
He left ninety minutes later and headed to the Hilton. The mini
ster lumbered out of his car, waved away the oncoming hotel attendants, straightened and moved regally inside. A few flashbulbs lit and when a frown broke out, a guard remonstrated the photographers. The bodyguard followed, waved at the Mercedes and a valet leapt inside and drove it away.
The minister huffed to the gym and rotated his arms and swung his upper body this way and that way. When he figured he had burned enough calories, he wrapped himself in a fluffy towel and changed into swimming trunks and eased his girth into the pool. The water sloshed and rippled out when the minister started swimming determinedly.
Half an hour of swimming and he was out and into the shower rooms.
A change of clothes later, the minister headed to the bar, straight as a heat seeking missile. The first whisky went down neat. He threw his head back and roared in appreciation as a fawning public looked on. Another whisky followed and then the serious business of gossip and commenting on women followed.
The assassin took his position unobtrusively, just one guest among the many milling about. His eyes moved ceaselessly, pinned the bodyguard down in the lobby, located and placed the other hotel staff. A policeman patrolled the lobby lazily. He was no threat.
Three hours later, the minister lurched and his left hand shot out. His eyebrows rose when he saw the time and he made an exclamation. People laughed and patted his back when he turned and made his way out of the bar. Check? That was for mortals. Ministers never paid.
He headed straight to the glass exit.
The assassin was moving the moment the minister had straightened. He fell in behind a large family and expertly crowded them closer to the minister. He spotted the bodyguard in the corner of his eye; he was to the assassin’s left and behind, talking to someone else.
The assassin skirted the family, murmured an apology, and went to the head of the bunch.
Now five feet behind the minister’s portly build.
The syringe fell out of his cuff and slid smoothly between the fingers of his left hand, his palm curved over the plunger.