by Blake Banner
“No. See, we have a theory. We believe that we can…” I looked around. “Can I speak in confidence? Are you recording this conversation?”
He smiled in a way you could only describe as indulgent. “Yes, of course you can, and no, we are not recording this conversation, Mr. Franklin.”
“We believe that with movies and TV shows, if you make them right, with the advice of psychologists, on purpose, you can manipulate the thinking and the behaviour of the public at large. Now, that has gotta be useful, not just for marketing, right? But also for getting the right president elected, getting approval for some kind of policy, legislation, all kinds a stuff.”
He crossed one long leg over another and smiled at it like it was a surprisingly nice leg. “Well, that’s a pretty tall order, Mr. Franklin…”
“I know. But the consortium believe it’s worth spending a few bucks on R and D, and they figure your company is the company to carry out that R and D. What do you think?”
He didn’t look at me. Now he frowned at his leg, like it had let him down after he thought it was so nice. “What is this film you want to make?”
I made an elaborate shrug, then spread my hands. “Doesn’t have to be a movie. Could be a TV series. Maybe that would be better. But the idea is, we have a group of people, facing problems in life, just like real people, but these characters are designed, by psychologists, to be role models, targeted at different demographic groups, you follow me? And the patterns of behaviour and opinions to those demographic groups will be manipulated through those role models. Then you monitor how those groups respond. Am I explaining this right? You understand me?”
“Yes, you are explaining it admirably…”
“But, we would need psychologists from Harvard, or Stanford—the best—supervising the program and helping design it. You see what I’m saying? I mean, would this be in line with what you do? I think it would be perfect for your company.”
He stared at me for a long moment while I waited for him to answer. Finally he seemed to snap out of a trance and said, “Mr. Franklin, this is a very unusual proposal...”
“It’s also a very unusual sum of money I’m offering you. But hey, if I made a mistake, I can go elsewhere.”
He raised a hand and shook his head. “I am not saying that, at all, and I am flattered that you have chosen us. But what I am saying is that I will need to discuss this in some depth with my partners.”
I narrowed my eyes and smiled with what I hoped looked like shrewd cunning. “I’m getting the feeling that I am treading on somebody’s toes…”
He shook his head again. “No, no. Not exactly. What you are proposing is not a million miles from research that has been proposed… um… elsewhere…”
“Hey! If it’s more money you need we can talk about that. All we are saying is we want to get in there before the Chinese or the fuckin’ Russians. You hear what I’m saying? You gotta keep ahead of the game. Am I right? We got Hollywood, we got the best damn TV networks in the world. We can use this kind of research. It’d be a damn shame if some fuckin’ foreign power beat us to the punch. You understand me?”
He sighed and nodded. “I understand you better than you realize, but I can’t say any more at this stage. Look, is there a number where I can reach you?”
“Wait a minute…” I shrugged, spread my hands and looked around again, like there was an invisible audience there watching us. “What is this? ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you?’ You fobbing me off?”
“No, no! Not at all! I simply need to consult with my partners. Yours is a very unusual proposal and, frankly, we need to discuss it in depth and examine its implications. I can’t make a decision without them.”
“I’m trying to give you money here.”
“And I am very grateful, but I still need to…”
“Listen to me, pal…” I pointed at him. “The people I represent don’t like to be told ‘no’, and they don’t like to be given the run around. Don’t upset me. You talk to your partners, and I wanna hear from you by tomorrow afternoon. If I don’t hear from you I’m gonna call you!”
His face hardened, but I could tell he was worried. “Mr. Franklin, there is nothing to be gained from threats. Yours is a very interesting proposal and all I am saying is that we need to discuss it and I will, definitely, be in touch very shortly to arrange a meeting with my other partners.”
I pointed at him again. “Do. I’ll be waiting for your call. Time is money. Don’t make me wait.”
I gave him my number, he showed me out to the elevator and I made my way back to the lobby, scratching my chin and wondering if I had over done the Goodfellas act. Maybe I had, maybe I hadn’t. Maybe I didn’t give a damn. One way or another I was certain I had piqued his curiosity, and he’d be calling his pals for a meeting right about now. Maybe he’d be calling Fenninger too.
Outside the building I crossed the road to the parking lot and climbed into the Zombie. I grabbed my laptop from the back seat and switched it on. Then I opened the listening device and heard Ahmed Musa’s voice. He sounded confused.
“Aaron, listen, get back to me as soon as you get this, will you? Something very odd has just happened. We need to discuss it, soon.”
I smiled. “You sure do,” I said. “As soon as possible.”
Five
I called Ted Wallace from the car.
“Yeah.”
“You at the house or at your office?”
“I took over at the house just after I spoke to you.”
“Has he left yet?”
“Nope. He’s still in there.”
“If he comes out, follow him. I want to know three things: where he goes, what vehicle he uses and whether he rolls down the window. You got that?”
There was a pause. “Where he goes, what vehicle he uses and… if he rolls down the window?”
“And contact me as soon as he makes a move.”
“…Roger that.”
With nothing left to do but wait I drove back to the parking structure on Jefferson Boulevard, changed back into my dirty jeans and sweatshirt, locked up the Zombie and returned to the Silverado with my laptop. Next time I used the Zombie, it would be to carry out the execution. As I thought about that, I remembered Ted Wallace telling me that the only interesting thing that had happened was that Fenninger’s wife and kids had walked down the road, hand in hand, to visit a neighbor. Aaron Fenninger, Epsilon, was a man like any other, a human being, with a wife and kids, a family, and I was planning to assassinate him—murder him—deprive his wife and kids of husband and father with the same dispassionate, cold-blooded lack of compassion that I despised in Omega. It was an ugly, nauseating feeling.
But if he lived, my family died. And they died not because they were guilty of any crime, but simply because they were my weak spot, and Omega knew it. But, on the other hand, if he and his cabal died, seven and a half billion other people got a chance: a chance not just to live, but to be whole, to be free. To be human. Omega had named the game. I was just playing it, the only way I knew how.
I climbed into the truck and slammed the door. It made a dark echo that reverberated deep into the shadows of the parking garage. For a moment it transported me back, over a decade. It was just before my first kill. After all the drilling and the training, and the endless repetition, it was now. Now, I was going to kill somebody. I had felt sick, my head had been thrumming, a mortar had just gone off. The guys were impassive. The Brits see emotion as an impediment to efficiency. It’s something you hang up with your street clothes before you put your uniform on. The mortar had exploded, maybe fifteen yards away, and somebody, it might have been Bat Hayes, had said, “Gawd bli’me, Jones! You been at them beans again?” Everybody had laughed, but I had felt sick, knowing what was coming, what I was going to do. Then the big Kiwi, Sergeant Bradley, had said, “All right, lads, we all want to go home, don’t we? So let’s go an’ kill these buggers.”
And we had gone in, and we had killed them.
All of them.
So that’s what you do when you want to go home. You go in, and you kill the buggers.
I drove nice and steady through the Los Angeles sunshine back to Sunset Boulevard, and parked in the Jack in the Box parking lot. There I settled to listen to whatever the bugs picked up, and to wait for Fenninger to show.
The software Gantrie had given me with the bugs enabled the laptop to act as a cell phone and receive calls from the bugs, which were voice activated. Once the bugs heard somebody start talking, they instantly dialed my laptop and started to record whatever was being said. That recording was then automatically saved into a file on the hard drive, designated by an ID number, a time and a date.
Fenninger’s bugs had not dialed in yet, but there was already a number of files saved from Intelligent Imaging Consultants. The first was within a minute of my having left and it was the call Musa had made to Fenninger. The next was to Elena Sanchez.
“Elena, listen, I have just had a very strange visit from a man who claims to represent interests in New York.” There was a brief pause, then, “Well, that’s the thing, he implied very heavily that his principals were Mafia. Now, unless there has been a change of policy somewhere along the line and I didn’t get the memo, we should not be doing business with the Mafia and they know that. Is this a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand… I agree. This is something we need to discuss in person and not over the phone.”
There was another silence, then he sighed. “There was something distinctly odd about him, but then he was from New York!” He laughed. “I got the impression he wasn’t bluffing, he definitely was linked with the Mafia. I can’t say exactly why, but he felt… dangerous. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, Elena, let’s cut this short and I’ll see you at, say, three? I’ll call the others.”
Two more calls followed, to Izamu Suzuki and Erick Dunbar. He repeated pretty much what he’d said to Elena, but to Dunbar he said, “What do you suggest I do with regard to Aaron? Should I inform him?” There was a pause and when he spoke again he sounded irritated. “Yes, I know he’s just a consultant, Erick, but we both also know he is a damn sight more than that in reality. If the New York Mob is trying to muscle in on us it means something has gone arse over tits up the line and he needs to know about it.”
I smiled at the expression. In my mind’s eye I could see Dunbar scratching his head. I laughed out loud when Musa said, “For God’s sake! It’s an English expression, Erick! It means… well just imagine it and you’ll get the idea! Yes, arse is ass and tits are tits… Yes, awry will do. Can we get back on topic now?”
He was quiet again for a while, then took a deep breath. “OK, I take your point. I’ll have a private meeting with him and see what he says. Meanwhile we need to talk this through and decide what to do. I’ve arranged to meet the others here at three.”
Shortly after that, my pay as you go rang. It was Ted.
“He’s on the move. I’m following him. He’s turning east onto the highway. You want me to stay with him?”
“Yes. He’s probably headed for his office on Sunset Boulevard. If he stops there, just turn around and go back. Has he got his window open?”
“Yup. Why didn’t he take the 101, through Cornell? He’d save ten minutes.”
“He’s a writer. He likes the sea.”
I heard the shrug in his voice. “OK.”
Fifty minutes later he pulled up in front of his office and I watched Ted Wallace cruise past in his Buick. My phone rang.
“He’s at the office. I’m going back to the house.”
“OK. I’ll talk to you later.”
Ten minutes after that, Fenninger’s bugs kicked in and I was surprised to hear Musa with him in the office. I realized it was the first time I’d heard Fenninger’s voice. It didn’t sound like the voice of one of the most powerful men in the world. It sounded thin and lightweight. He told somebody to bring coffee, then his voice got louder. I figured he’d sat at the coffee table.
“What’s going on, Ahmed? You sounded worried on the phone.”
There was a moment’s silence, then, “Aaron, have your people authorized the Mafia to invest directly in our company?”
Another prolonged silence. “What? No! Of course not!”
“I got a visit.”
“What kind of visit?”
“A man from New York. He said he represented interests in New York and New Jersey who wanted to invest twenty million dollars in our company. He suggested, quite strongly, that those interests were the Mafia.” He paused. Fenninger didn’t answer. Musa went on, “Now, it was my understanding that your people were going to manage the funds we received, and that none of it was going to be traceable either to the cartels or to the Mafia. So, why has this guy turned up unannounced, on my doorstep, making me an offer I can’t refuse?”
“He threatened you?”
“There was a heavy threat implicit at the end, just before he left.” There was an audible hesitation from Musa then.
Fenninger said, “What? What is it?”
“I’m pretty good at reading people, Aaron, and I noticed two things about this man. One, he was putting on an act for me. Maybe that’s something the Mafioso do, I don’t know. I have no experience of dealing with Mafiosos. The other thing, which leads me to believe he was what he said he was, he was dangerous. That man was a killer. You could see it in his eyes.”
“Twenty million bucks, huh?”
“And more if the partnership was successful.”
You could almost hear Fenninger narrowing his eyes. “Define successful? What were his terms?”
“Yeah, that’s where it became interesting. He knew what we were about.”
“He knew? How?”
“I don’t know how he knew! He just knew!”
“Didn’t you ask him?”
“Of course not, Aaron! I wasn’t going to show him he’d fazed me! I wanted him off his guard. I told him I needed to consult with my partners. I needed to back up, take some time out and discuss this with you.”
“OK, point taken. How much did he know?”
“In general terms he knew that we had a program in place to manipulate public opinion and create role models to shape behavior and thinking. He knew we were conducting research in that field and he wanted to invest in that research.”
“Holy shit…”
“So you ask me to define success, and I’m not sure I know how to. He’s not looking for a return on his money, he is seeking to do what you are seeking to do, standardize and manipulate public thinking and behavior. He was talking about ensuring the election of presidents, making legislation popular…”
Fenninger said again, “Holy shit, holy shit…”
“Who is this guy? How does he know about us?”
“Get out. I need to talk to some people. Do nothing. I’ll be in touch in a while and I’ll tell you how to proceed. What have you arranged with him?”
“I told him we’d be in touch by tomorrow. That was when he threatened me. He thought I was giving him the old ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’ routine.”
“OK, go back to the office. I’ll be in touch before the end of the day and tell you what to do.”
Musa hesitated again. “Aaron, there is a rather worrying possibility.”
“What?”
“That he is FMW. You saw what they did to UBC in New York.”
There was another protracted silence, then Fenninger’s voice. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s a possibility. I’ll be in touch, Ahmed.”
I heard the door close. There was some movement, the chink of ice and the splash and gurgle of a drink being poured. A moment and then the clunk of heavy crystal on wood. Then Fenninger’s voice again.
“Beta, this is Epsilon. We have a problem. It could be a big problem. Somebody from New York just tried to buy in to Intelligent Imaging Consultants.” A few seconds of silence, then, “I have no idea who, that’s why I’m calling you on the secure line. He knew, at
least in general terms, what the company did. And he wanted to invest in that and take a controlling share. He implied he was from the Mob. I thought you had those guys under control.”
He was quiet for a long while. Then he said, “You’re certain he’s not Mob? Ahmed said he was pretty sure he was.”
Another silence. “Well if he’s not Mob, who the hell is he? Is he FMW? We need to find out and we need to find out fast. We are under attack, William, and we do not know who the hell from... No, I will not calm down! We have an unknown actor with twenty million bucks to spare, claiming there is plenty more where that came from, and he knows about the IIC program. I don’t think I should calm down, and frankly I would like to see you a little more excited.”
He listened for a couple of minutes, then said, “I’m going to give Ahmed the go ahead to arrange a meeting with this guy. I have not decided yet whether to be present. And listen, William, there’s something else. There have been a couple of paparazzi parked outside my house for the last day or so… I need a drink, I’m going to put you on speaker.”
Beta, William, had a soft, quiet drawl. “Epsilon, stop using my name. If you panic, you stop thinking and then you are no use to yourself, or to anybody else. I am going to talk to Pro Levy, get him to put out feelers in Jersey and in New York. I’ll tell him to keep it quiet. Maybe this is a small, independent operation and they don’t know what they’re getting into. Twenty million dollars isn’t exactly big money. After that he’ll talk to the Capos, ask them if they’ve decided to make an approach without our approval. If both those inquiries come back negative, then we’ll know we have something a little deeper going on.”
Fenninger sounded like William’s unflappable tones were getting on his nerves. He sighed. “OK, that’s fine, but just speculate with me for a moment, will you? Let’s assume that your inquiries out east draw a blank. Who the hell has this kind of information about us?”
“You know the answer to that as well as I do, Epsilon. It could be a play by Gibbons. I think MFW are nothing more than a bunch of rednecks with too much fertilizer on their hands. But if they are in bed with Gibbons they maybe it’s them. But the only way we are going to find that out is for you to arrange a meeting with this character. And you need to be present, as Aaron Fenninger, and you need to be very interested in what he has to offer. Draw him out. We need to know who sent him and what they are after.”