by Blake Banner
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.
“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.
Finally, I went to the window and opened it. Then I dragged Ahmed over and, with considerable difficulty, I dragged him up and kind of folded him out through the gap. As I watched him slip and fall, I wondered if he’d wake up on the way down. Then I decided that, like him and Elena, and the rest of them, I didn’t give a damn. After a couple of seconds there was a sickening thud and several shouts. I walked away from the window.
The Maxim was unregistered, so they would not trace it to me. I left it there, on the floor, where the boys from the LAPD would find it and deduce that Ahmed had dropped it on his way to jump out the window, after murdering his colleagues. They’d never know why he did it, but they would guess it had something to do with the disastrous investments they had made on his recommendation.
I stepped out of the office, rode the elevator down to the parking garage and exited unnoticed on foot.
I sat in the Zombie drumming my fingers on the wheel, listening to the sirens and thinking. I knew I had probably blown my chance of hitting Fenninger on the highway the next day because he would now be not only changing his routine, but also alert. Maybe I hadn’t been as smart as I ought to have been, but I figured it was a fair price to pay for sinking Intelligent Imaging Consultants. Besides which, I was kind of curious to see how long it would take the news to reach Fenninger, and which way he would jump come morning. My guess was they would assume it was the work of the FMW, which was fine by me.
My next steps were clear. I had to go and find the Mercenary and take him out of the equation one way or another. After that I had to go to Malibu and sit on Fenninger’s house. It wouldn’t be long before the cops had identified Ahmed and got into the offices of Intelligent Imaging Consultants. Their first step then would be to notify the families and senior management, and it wouldn’t be long after that that Fenninger got to hear about it. It could be anything from a couple of hours to sometime in the morning.
When he did, when he and Omega learned that Intelligent Imaging Consultants had been wiped out, one of two things was going to happen: Fenninger was going to drive to his office as he did every morning, or he was going to sound the alarm and take some form of defensive action.
If he drove to the office, I would take him out en route. Then I would go home and start making plans for Beta and Alpha.
If he took some defensive action, that would either be to barricade himself inside his house while Omega took care of the threat, or he would be transported to some secure location. It was impossible to predict what they would do on the information I had available, but the Mercenary might be able to help.
I was about to hit the ignition when something caught my eye. It was a guy walking into the parking lot and heading toward me. He was about six foot six, but he hadn’t the muscle strength to keep his skeleton straight, so he looked like an animated ‘S’ with stooped shoulders and rubbery legs. He was swearing a woolen coat two sizes too small for him and a colorless wool hat pulled down on his head, and he was walking straight toward me. I eased out my Sig and cocked it. When he’d drawn level with my car he stooped down and stared through the passenger window, with his face creased up, showing his top teeth and his gums. He tried the door, I unlocked it and he pulled it open.
“Hi.” He pulled some strands of limp blond hair from his face and I caught the smell of stale sweat and onions. “My name is Njal? I em from Norvay? Can I come in?”
“No. I’m just leaving. What do you want, Njal?”
“Oh, yah! I can come wiz you. I em hoping ve ken be friends. Ve heff de same enemies. I sink.”
I sighed. “Can the accent. What enemies? What are you talking about?”
He took that as an invitation and climbed in, slamming the door behind him. When he spoke his accent was less exaggerated, but it was still there. “You have been watching Aaron Fenninger. You have followed him to the IIC, and shortly after you go up…” He smiled with dry, Scandinavian wit. “Ahmed Musa comes down. Meanwhile Elena Sanchez, Erick Dunbar and Izamu Suzuki also have gone up, but they are not coming down. Only when the police bring them in the gurneys, yuh?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. How about you get to the point?”
He fingered some fine strands of platinum hair away from his face. “The point? The point is not so easy. I am a Free Mind Warrior. You know what this means?”
“I know what it means.”
“I think yo
u also are a Free Mind Warrior.”
“You’re wrong. I’m not.”
He gave a small laugh that suggested I had potential but I was still in my intellectual infancy. “You think we are an organization. But that, if you are looking for a point, is a point. We are not an organization. We are not even ‘we’. We are individuals, chaotic in many creative ways, who are united in only one thing.” He held up a very long index finger. “That thing is our hatred of the organizations that are seeking to take possession…” He stared at me as he clenched a huge fist in a graphic illustration of taking possession. “…of our minds.” He pointed at me and shook his head. “Whatever you say, you are a Free Mind Warrior. I know this.”
I rubbed my face with my palms, telling myself that this I did not need. I shook loose a Camel and offered it to him.
He grinned and nodded elaborately. “Oh, uh-huh, yuh…” He took it and I took another myself. I flipped my Zippo and we lit up. He filled his lungs with a deep drag and blew smoke at the roof of the car.
“Look, Njal, I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. And, to be honest, I haven’t got time for this.” I spread my hands. “If you are a member, or a ‘not-a-member’ of the FMW then, so long as you are not killing innocent people, I have some sympathy with you. But I am not a…”
He raised a very mobile eyebrow on a very mobile face. He finished for me and there was a hell of a lot of irony in his voice. He said, “What? A warrior? You are going to tell me that you are not a warrior?” He chuckled, and like the rest of him, his chuckle dwarfed the car. “We actually know quite a lot about you. You would be surprised.” He took another drag and I noticed that the cigarette looked dwarfed in his hand. “Let me save you some time. We are not a bunch of hysterical maniacs who believe we are going to go to some kind of fucking heaven if we die for the right cause. We are all intelligent, well educated professionals and we all have skills we bring to the enterprise. I would not be here, sitting in this car with you, if I did not know who you are. We should stop wasting time and move on to the next, more interesting, step.”