by Rufus Offor
“I’ve been thinking.” Said Ben
“Oh yeah, what’s on your mind?” said Jill, still grinning from the prospect of the millennium falcon being turned into a combine harvester.
“Well, it’s this Shoop Winkle character. He’s, well, he’s not a very nice man is he, and I’m a bit worried that he’ll cause you harm, I couldn’t stand seeing you hurt.”
“Oh don’t worry about me,” said Jill, “I’ll be just fine and dandy. Anything he manages to do to me can’t be worse than anything I’ve ever been through before, believe me.”
“Yeah, I know that, it’s just, I know that you’ve been around forever, but, well, I’ve only ever known you as Jill, the way you are now and I can’t help wanting you to stay the person that I know. You saved me. You took me from the depths of despair and gave me perspective. I suppose I’m just scared of loosing my perspective, to going back to being that lost little street dweller that you found all those years ago.” He looked genuinely worried and a little sad.
“Look at me.” Said Jill in a voice as soft as a swimming pool full of cushions and rang with the wisdom of ages past.
Ben looked at her, reluctantly at first, but when he did he became mesmerised with calm. Her eyes looked deep into him and massaged his soul. He felt his concern soften with the tranquil light that spilled from her eyes in a gentle flow. He felt himself calming. Once he was suitably relaxed, Jill continued.
“I don’t want you to worry, but..” at this Ben realised that he wasn’t going to worry, no matter what she was about to say, “This is what’s going to happen. Shoop is going to find me. I will probably be killed and Shoop will probably walk away. The Sphere of Influence will probably find out about me and seek to harness my powers, which is, quite frankly, a laughable thing for them to attempt! At the end of the day, none of it will matter. There are greater things afoot and deeper things to consider. The thing is though, you’ll eventually come to realise, deep down inside, that there IS no end to it all. Everything carries on and nothing can put a stop to the whirl of the spiralling universe and it’s alternates. Greater wills, greater powers, greater ethereal and monumentally massive energies move ever onwards, inwards and around us; things that I don’t even fully understand. I suppose what I’m trying to say is this; in the end, there is no end, a contradiction I know, but an essential truth. So chill out man, there’s nothing we can do but enjoy it all and as I always say. I’m sure everything will be fine.”
When ordinary people say things like “I’m sure everything will be fine.” It tends to sound a little peace-meal. It sounds like something that’s said to fend off impending panic, but no-one’s ever really completely sure that everything will be okay but when Jill said it, it meant more. She WAS sure, and because she was sure things tended to turn out fine. She was the master of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ben looked at her. She was calm, eternal, bemused yet still sure and wise. They started to smile. Ben’s fears dripped from him like water from an ice-cube in the desert, but nothing would truly rid him of the fear of his brother. He feared less having known Jill than he ever knew to be possible, but his brother always lurked somewhere in the darkest corners of his mind. His fear of him would never end. At least that was what he thought, Jill knew differently, but these were things to be pondered on later. A bridge to be crossed as they came to it, for the moment, everything was just peachy.
Before long they were all laughing again. Mike and Ben spent a bit of time having light-sabre fights with big bits of cardboard tubing that they’d found before they all wandered off to get ready for the evenings entertainments.
Shoop TV was exceptional, as usual, Cirque De Soleil were breath-taking and the DJ had them all bouncing into the early hours of the morning. Some even stayed up to watch the sun spatter it’s red rays over the snow covered vista and gaped in amazement at the sight. All cares were laid aside in one of the best Shoop TV nights any of them had had so far.
Chapter 16
The hunting of Shoop Winkle
The Boss put down his phone and grinned a vicious grin. It had been well over a month since Shoop had vanished in the courtyard of a petrol station on Slateford Road. He didn’t know if Shoop had involved the independents in whatever it was he was up to, but he’d just received news that made it a distinct possibility.
The independents were sometimes difficult to track down on an average day, since Shoop’s disappearance it seemed they too had vanished too. This didn’t mean that they were with Shoop; it just made it very likely. The news he’d just received, that Interpol in Singapore had picked up Carl, made The Boss think that Shoop wasn’t far away from him. For a start, he’d had an electronic tracker under his skin. It was damaged, but it had gone missing from the Sphere labs just before Shoop had vanished.
He still had no idea as to Shoop’s true intentions. He thought that he’d just wandered off to hide in the wilds for the rest of his life. The suspicion was that he was just trying to avoid being assassinated. Despite the Sphere’s wide reaching influence, there were still places in the world where Shoop could hide. It was feasible that The Boss may never have heard from him ever again. This would have concerned the Boss as he hated having loose ends hiding in dark places.
Shoop could’ve made himself invisible in many places in the world. Singapore wasn’t one of them.
“Why has he gone to Singapore?” thought the Boss to himself, “He could’ve disappeared into the wilds of a South American jungle never to be seen again. He could’ve vanished off the face of the planet; I don’t doubt that he has the ability. What’s he up to? No matter. I know where he is now and before long I’ll know what’s on his mind and I’ll be able to give him a terrible death.”
He tried to contact Justin Stain at the house in China-town, but got no reply, which was very odd. Mr Stain was extremely keen; he wanted desperately to do well in the Sphere and would drop everything for a call from the Boss.
“No matter,” thought the Boss, “there are others who can be roused.”
Shoop was powerful. The Boss hadn’t known just how powerful until he’d defeated the ninjas in his office. He had a better idea of his abilities now, but not a complete picture of them. This made the Boss cautious. From now on he would do everything he could not to underestimate his opponent again.
This wasn’t as easy as it sounded. There was no one in the world that matched Shoop’s talents. The Boss could still quite easily be underestimating Mr Winkle without knowing it. It was a tricky business to fathom. Shoop Winkle’s talents had no conceivable ceiling to them. It was like a blind rat trying to estimate the size of the labyrinth he was in.
He realised that there was only one thing to do; he had to call in the absolute best and hope that they could bring him down. It wasn’t much, but it was all he had.
The Boss wasn’t happy about the level of uncertainty that he was feeling. He was used to absolute control, nothing unpredictable or uncontrollable. With Shoop working for the Sphere he could maintain a level of authority over him. With Shoop A.W.O.L. the Bosses control was unacceptably compromised. It gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach but there was a bright side. At least, now, he had a lead to follow. He could still bring the situation back into his control. He could manage it. Hope was not lost.
He opened a drawer in the huge boardroom table in his office and pressed his thumb against a glass panel at the side of it. It read his finger print and a section of the wall off to his left popped open with hydraulic hissing and slid to the side revealing the inside of a safe. He got up, walked over to it and retrieved a small black address book. The book was a directory of the most dangerous and effective people in the world. He’d recently crossed out the six ninjas he’d hired to ambush Shoop and down graded them to his little blue book, which was one lower than his little red book but one higher than his little yellow book. He never, ever told anyone what his little pink book was for and I don’t think it would be wise for me to divulge its purpose to y
ou. It made me vomit for three hours and I’m still in therapy from the shock.
The independents were in his little black book, as was Shoop, but there were more. Many more. The independents represented some of the less malicious names in the book, not that they weren’t cruel, it was just that they did what they did because they’d been forced into it. They did it for the money. There were other names in it that did what they did for the love of the work, for the love of malice and cruelty. They were intrinsically evil and had not learnt the ability to be brutal as they’d been born with it. These were the names that he needed. These were the kind of men and women that owned the necessary unhindered evil required to carry out the tasks he needed to assign.
He took out a note-pad and made a list of the best candidates. Three names struck him as perfect for the hunting of Shoop Winkle and his men.
There was Cat.
Cat had spent most of her youth emotionally torturing anyone that crossed her path and in very devious ways. She brought people close to her, became their friends, got to know them, earned their trust and then dismantled them from the inside just for the pure love of the game. Her love and need for lies and deceit was never quenched. Scores of people through the years had fallen in despair, even death at her hand without even knowing that she was the deviser of their doom. In fact, as people’s lives fell apart around her they suspected so little of her involvement that that actually went to her for help and advice. She was a natural at deception, the queen of misdirection and manipulation. Years passed and she soon became an expert at undercover work and a killer of the highest order. She was subtle, quiet and evil to the core, sometimes taking perverse pleasure in the destruction of a human life. She loved to kill those who trusted her and she liked to do it slowly.
She was of Greek origin and had once been tall, dark skinned hook nosed, thin lipped and shallow chinned, but she’d been altered by the Sphere and was now blonde and luscious. She’d grown up with a cruel family in the ghetto’s of Melbourne Australia and had no perception of the word truth. To her it was a vague mist like substance that could be danced naked in. You could shift it with concentrated will and twist it when the need arose. Truth, to her, was a plaything to be warped, burned, wrung out, ripped apart and drowned.
She’d spent the majority of her mid twenties waving her thick webs of deceit without much care for turning her talents to financial gain. She just did it for the love of messing people up. Then, one day, she met an operative from MI6. She was completely unaware that he was involved with the intelligence agency, to her he was just a man in a bar who could be potentially victimised. She got talking to him and fast became aware that he was going to be a very tough nut to crack. Him being tough was the equivalent of waving a big red flag at a field full of particularly big and nasty bulls. She kept on at him, slowly but coolly weeding her way closer to him. She managed to get his number and slowly crawled into his life, befriending him inch by ever so tentative inch, being cautious, never giving her true intensions away.
He’d told her that he was an investment banker of some notoriety and for the first time in her malicious cold hearted career she pondered on the idea of getting a bit of money out of her efforts, so she set about grinding him down. When people were weak and affluent they could easily be asked for money.
“It’s terrible, my boyfriend was sleeping with my best friend and they’ve kicked me out of my flat, I’ve nowhere to go, but there’s this huge apartment that’s just become available in Kensington, it comes complete with maids and everything, which I need as I’m so weak from the pain of being so horribly treated by everyone I ever cared about. Thank god I’ve got you!”
Things like that are easily swallowed when you’re already mentally worn down.
MI6 agents are among the toughest, sneakiest, most well trained humans on the planet. Within six months, Cat had cleaned out his bank account and given him a nervous breakdown. She was ruthless.
To avoid spending the rest of her life in a deep dark prison, she made a deal with the MI6 to become an operative for life.
The man she’d tortured was never the same again. He tried to get back to work after his breakdown, but once you’ve been shown the weakest side of yourself, you’re never the same. He’d lost his edge, so he did an evening course in jewellery design and manufacture, met a very nice lady there and they both moved to Cornwall to live in peace and make one of the UK’s most desired jewellery ranges, sought by the rich and famous from all over the world. They had lots of children and died old and content, lying together in the same bed with all their family perched around them telling them how much they loved them. Both of their last breaths were taken in unison, tears of loss and joy spilling on the old wooden boards of the country cottage. In short, Cat did him a bit of a favour really!
Cat, meanwhile, was trapped in the MI6. There was no way out. She learnt everything that there was to know about covert operations, military strategy and assassination. Despite her cage she was, for a while, on cloud nine. She learned new ways to mess with people, more evil ways and even invented afew new ones, she realised that no matter how much she was enjoying herself, she was imprisoned. She hated being answerable to others and being ordered around. So she targeted the Prime minister, blackmailed him and got out of the MI6. She was a free agent again, but now she was infinitely more dangerous. A few words from her could topple men’s will.
She freelanced for dozens of organisations all over the world, she was her own boss and she fast became a legend. She loved doing jobs for the Sphere as they always had the nastiest sneakiest jobs. They gave her good beefy substance filled missions that never failed to tickle her.
She was a shadow, a ghost, a killer and was devilishly fiendish. She existed solely to make the world a more unsettling place to be. She spent any free time she had dreaming up schemes to cause universal discord, destruction and even death. One of her favourite achievements was quietly engineering the LA riots. She’d talked the policemen into beating Rodney King and had stood on the verge videoing the whole thing. A few choice words in the judge’s ear, spreading some hateful words around the black communities and bang, she’d almost destroyed a whole city. She was very proud of that one. She was pure evil.
Her name brought a wide smile to the Bosses face. If there was a weak link anywhere in the group, she’d find it and take advantage of it. If not, she was still a highly trained killer.
Before they could be destroyed, they had to be found. The Boss had to find someone that could trace their every move without being noticed. That wasn’t going to be easy as Shoop could smell a tail like flatulence in a lift. A name sprung to mind, or rather, a title. The man had no name that anyone was aware of, he was simply known as the Satellite. He was so named for his ability to track people, seemingly from the stratosphere. He was never seen, never sensed, always out-with the realms of physical perception. Nobody knew how he did it, nobody knew who’d taught him his craft, but he was stealth personified. Just like Cat, he’d been born a natural sneak.
He liked to tell stories of how his mother hadn’t noticed him sneaking out of the womb. He liked to say that he crept through the birth canal, fed on his mother’s breast milk, slunk through to his newly prepared bedroom, clambered into his previously unused in cot and went to sleep. All this without his mother waking up. She woke the next morning, in her own bed, a lot wetter, a lot lighter, with sore nipple and no idea what had happened.
Of course these were very tall tales but seeing him in action, or not seeing him in action as was usually the case, made the stories almost believable. The Satellite always swore that the birth story was true.
The man was mist when he decided to be. He was from Japan and had shamed his master’s ninjistu talents by the time he was 6 years old. He’d travelled to the jungles of the world to fine tune his tracking abilities, stealing as he went to fund his obsession with sneakiness. It was said that he could track a speck of dust in a tornado; he could pickpocket presidents and bef
uddle satellite surveillance. If anyone could track Shoop, he could. He could follow footprints on a busy concrete paved city street, he was a human bloodhound, he was the Satellite.
Lastly there was Tim. Tim had a small sounding name but the stature of atlas. He was downright huge. He was a tank of a man and stood six feet eleven inches tall with the build of a large bull on steroids. He boasted a gigantic barrelled chest, arms like swollen concrete pillars and legs as wide as an ancient oak tree. He was, quite frankly, terrifying to behold with a pronounced forehead that eclipsed the dark slits of his beady eyes. He didn’t have a nose so much as a series of distorted lumps that sat far too close to his eyes. There was a vast space between his nose and his permanently down-turned, thin lipped mouth. His mouth looked ridiculous, hovering as it did in the vastness of his square, breezeblock-like jaw. He looked like he could bring down a skyscraper simply by strolling clean through it.
His looks were deceiving though. To look at he was naught but brainless cast iron muscle, but he also wielded a fabulous intellect. He carefully considered every move he made, its effects, its consequences but above all, its ability to do harm. He was a smart bomb. The kind of missile that tracks it’s target down to its favourite restaurant, asks the waiter where he’s sitting, walks over to him, introduces himself and promptly explodes. Unlike a smart-bomb though, Tim always survived the blast.
Along with these attributes he was freakishly nimble. He defied natural law. Common sense would suggest that a man of his size would be slow, but he could punch out the passenger window of a car travelling at 180 miles per hour without getting the slightest of scratches.
Happy with his choices and happy that each of them joyfully accepted the mission of destroying Shoop, possibly the most dangerous man in the world, the Boss set his pieces in motion. His team were machines and once given a mission they would never back down.