No conclusion reached, the Board Meeting adjourned with a vague verdict stating; “extreme and unfortunate incompatibility of subject to content.”
It had only been in the early hours of the following morning when, back at Ken’s mansion, Ken and Craig could finally come to blows over the true cause of the afternoon’s debacle.
“Yes, fuckit… YES!” Ken boomed as he paced back and forth, shades of Athens looming again on their mutual horizons, “there are risks in everything… you don’t have to waste time with the obvious. Stop fucking whining about the outcome for this asshole; I don’t give a shit other than if he croaks, they’ll stick their probe up our ass till their elbow’s gone. Let me explain something…” he was suddenly calm—too calm, “You are going to fix this, and you’re going to fix it quickly. You’re administering the antidote, and I don’t care if that hasn’t been tested and I don’t care about its effects; you just get this prick down to earth and walking out of there in more or less lucid fashion. We’re about to go with the PR campaign and I don’t need your fuckups and shortcomings derailing this… understand?”
Ken’s mood was inflamed by an evil hangover—a legacy of the previous night’s indulgence with Miss Catherine Kaplan.
“For all of these problems, my other plans are very nicely on track,” he’d consoled himself.
He’d ensured that Nancy Mitford, his Personal Assistant, had dispatched a floral arrangement to Catherine at Kaplan Advertising & PR. In it he’d thanked her for her spectacular efforts in creating the commercials; it was more than the retrospective thanks, and she’d smiled knowingly when they’d arrived.
“Worst case scenario,” Ken continued, pacing like a caged tiger bordering on dementia, “If this fucker kicks it, what will an autopsy uncover?”
“The lab chimps have consistently showed nothing… not a trace. Zero. I went down that avenue a hundred times. I must have overdosed a zoo full of other primates, nothing has ever showed!”
Craig was an emotional wreck, falling apart under the stress, “This could be murder! The panic was rising. What if they start digging and discover Athens? Interpol will have my prints from the site… Christ, I’ve got a child to think of. How the hell did I let Ken drag me in so deep again?
The terror racing through his exhausted mind pushing him ever closer to nervous breakdown.
“Primates?…. Fucking PRIMATES, not humans?” Ken thundered in a murderous rage.
Craig cringed away from the beast that had suddenly gripped the man. He’d never seen such a savage switch before, and he recoiled. “Jesus! You’re not serious?”
Craig’s illusion of Ken was splintering, the delusion of his blind respect for the man ripped away. He had always held Ken in the highest esteem, rationalizing Ken’s vicious history as a symptom of an Alpha personality.
What raged before him now revolted and shook Craig to his core.
“You’re FUCKING RIGHT I’m serious you dumb cunt!” Ken thundered, “I told you that we needed a terminal test before we went commercial.”
He’d said it before, but Craig had never thought he’d meant it literally; now as the angry throbbing vein snaked across the thinning hair of Ken’s forehead, there was no doubt.
It dredged back the shocking memory of Ken pushing for this outcome; too late now, Craig realized he should never have glossed over it at the time;
Lounged in a fashionable nightspot near the city’s center, Ken had casually broached connecting an unsuspecting drifter to test the drug to expiry.
Then, as had been the case too many times before, Craig’s next recollection had been connecting a hastily befriended stranger up to the contraption.
It had been the early hours and the facility was unusually deserted. Ken had persuaded Craig to administer a dose of his new serum to the homeless man that far exceeded the understood limits.
The hard-life out on the street seemed to have steeled the man’s metabolism, making him impervious to their dose. Insisting on a reaction, Ken had driven on, pushing up the dosage, but the night had slipped rapidly by, Craig delaying as best he could until the day-staff were due to arrive, forcing an end to the experiment.
By the time the unfortunate was dumped up a dirty alley; at Craig’s insistence, a block from the hospital; the sun had been rising. The man had been breathing—barely breathing—but Craig had convinced himself that he’d pull through.
Now, being honest with himself, Craig wasn’t that confident.
“If you’d FUCKING WELL LISTENED…” Ken was still ranting, charging himself into a frenzy. He picked up an ivory handled, six-inch, sterling silver antique letter opener and was brandishing it, hacking away with it at invisible demons.
Craig was terror-struck, mortified by what he knew Ken was capable of and might do next; they were two men reduced to their wild state; Ken out of control with rage, Craig blind with terror; he began inching toward the door—studying Ken, timing his dash to coincide with Ken at the furthermost point away in his pacing.
They were in the banquet area of Ken’s mansion and Craig’s car was a corridor, two doors and a flight of six steps away when he bolted.
The gulf to his car was an infinite span ahead of him, time slowing and the distance stretching ahead with surreal elasticity. His timing was perfect and he caught Ken off-guard enough to put another dozen paces between them before Ken gave chase.
As he ran, Craig fumbled with his keys for the ignition fob. He dived into the driver’s seat, slapped the electronic fob into its recess and hit the “Start” button. The Maserati’s engine roared to life. He stood on the accelerator and the engine bellowed mightily, the back end drifted wide with the tires spinning on the spot, trying to grip the surface; Ken slammed into the driver’s window as they bit and the car slapped him aside, taking off on a shrieking, snaking, plummet down the driveway, careening out of control toward the locked cast-iron gates at the exit onto the street.
With a deafening crash and a shower of sparks, the vehicle burst through the barrier, shearing the hinges off at the gateposts.
Chapter 4
Police investigators reckoned the mangled wreck was beyond freeway speeds at its point of impact. The steep descent of the driveway had helped the car flirt with the limits of its acceleration.
Evidence of Craig making any attempt to slow or avoid the stone retaining wall across the street was nil. Speculation had it that his neck was snapped by the initial impact with the gate. The car had run headlong across double lanes and concertinaed the chassis against the stonework, flaccid airbags hung like oversized spent condoms from every panel.
The coroner on scene disagreed with the police assessment. Craig’s neck displayed a lateral force break from his right side, an inconsistent fracture with the head-on impact; a fact that, though noted on file, was put aside as a strange curiosity. The police were more interested in the events that had led up to the catastrophe.
“We argued, yes Colonel… Another cup?” Ken, the high-ranking police officer and his Lieutenant were alone in Ken’s breakfast room; the staff clearly shaken was keeping to themselves in the scullery.
Twenty-four sleepless hours; among the worst in Ken’s memory; had soaked his energy. He knew that it would be many more hours before he could hope for shuteye—he was running on caffeine and other self-medications.
The Colonel, called as he had been from bed at Ken’s insistence, had personally taken over the scene. He was conducting the report in a friendly and efficient manner. As a police Colonel he naturally had LifeGames certification; he owed his career to the company, and so considered himself very fortunate to be in the presence of the man who had made his rise through the ranks possible.
He’d sped through the motions of the exercise without pushing for more answers than were plainly obvious to even a layperson; he had no intention of finding fault in a man he considered to be something of a personal hero.
Ken could sense the man’s sentiments and felt comfortable now, confident that
the incident was going no further than this report. He was more concerned with three major problems arising:
With Craig dead, the potential security risks of leaking the nature and function of the pharmaceuticals were eliminated. There was now the question of tweaking the chemical formula to avoid further reactions.
Ken had worked as closely as possible with Craig during the development phase so that he had a working knowledge of the active chemistry. He’d also taken the precaution of video recording all-important developments; these were stored in his private vault. He could have new chemical batches re-synthesized to the existing specs; it was engineering the unknown problems the Pentagon man was suffering from that might prove impossible with Craig gone.
Fortunately, he thought, a lab in China was on a secret payroll for just such an eventuality—and further developments could proceed there without too much fuss or ethical squint.
Secondly, the fact that Craig had died under these circumstances; at the mansion and during the early hours of the very morning following the unresolved catastrophe at work; would be bound to raise eyebrows.
It didn’t hold risk for Ken; he’d just rather not set tongues to wagging.
He put the worry aside; he’d work on a story to out-maneuver any possibility of gossip later, after some sleep.
And finally, the General’s life still hung in the balance and along with it Ken and LifeGames’ reputation. If the man were to die, he would take them a long way down with him.
It was going to take finesse and a spot of luck to get out of this quandary, he thought.
The Colonel finished his questioning before he and his Lieutenant departed to inform Craig’s estranged wife, Pat, and son of the tragedy.
After the man had left, Ken phoned through to the hospital where the General who had suffered meltdown was being treated; he desperately needed some positive news on the man’s recovery;
“Yes Sir, he’s stabilizing. Would you like to speak to anyone in particular? The gentleman’s family is down the corridor…” The nursing Sister had a pretty voice, brimming with compassion.
“Not to worry Sister, I’ll call back later,” Ken hung up before she could ask him any more questions.
“Good,” He spoke out aloud to himself, “one down, two to go,”
He went directly down to the server room in his basement—it was 9am—it would be midnight in China so he’d have to handle that last.
He keyed into a numeric touch pad on the wall and it slid back revealing a hand-print reader onto which he placed his palm and fingers; above it a hidden mask flipped and swooshed forward—he placed his forehead against the pad and stared into the mechanism; his eye pattern matching the database, a section of wall clicked and hinged open.
He walked through and the door closed behind him. Inside was a console encircled by several screens—this was his private secure communications room; from it all communications were 128-bit encrypted for maximum confidentiality.
He’d planned to put it aside till he could get some sleep first, but his mind wouldn’t pipe down in its searching for a plausible story; “Why was Craig at my house?” The question repeated laboriously in the echo chamber of his exhaustion.
The scenario was falling into place, so he dialed through to Nancy’s private line, “Hi, Nance. I’ve got some dreadful news I’m afraid. You do need to sit down…” he paused for a moment and she confirmed that she was ready, “…Craig’s been involved in an accident.”
“Was it serious?” Nancy’s voice quavered in reply.
“Very, I’m afraid. It’s… Uhhmm… fatal.”
“What? How? Where did it happen…? When?”
“At the bottom of my driveway… last night.”
She peppered him with a flurry of questions, staggered by his coolness, but betraying nothing of any unspoken thoughts that attacked her. She’d become very fond of Craig; a little too fond, Ken thought.
“With yesterday’s problems… neither of us were going to get sleep so we went to my place for a nightcap.” Ken could hear her tugs of breath as the reality set in and her sobbing began in earnest, “He had so many personal problems… just wanted a good friend, I guess. He hit the bottle a bit hard.”
Ken knew without any doubt that the investigation would be quashed, so he reasoned that nobody at the office would ever know for sure what was in the police report. He figured he could pretty much say whatever suited him.
After a parade of condolences had been traded, Ken proceeded discussing the business of the day.
“I won’t be in today so do update me with the General’s situation and anything else that I should know about. And, oh yes; set up a Board Review of the advertising campaign and PR review. Any time from tomorrow will do. Also get hold of Catherine and make sure that she has the recordings ready.”
He signed off with Nancy.
With the mundane business wrapped up, the big problem could be attacked.
By late afternoon Ken had been thinking about using China to prepare an urgent intervention, and the more he thought about it, the worse the idea became. The Chinese government were already working on a competing program to LifeGames’ option. One wrong meeting behind the bamboo curtain, and he’d be paying for their fast track to overtake him.
No… he needed somewhere less competitive, somewhere he could control and eliminate anyone fool enough to leak it.
From his private vault he took out a well-worn address book bound in calfskin and thumbed through to the “D’s”.
“Kenny, Kenny… me old mucker… let’s get something straight here, if you’ve got a nutritional problem you’d go to Nestle. You’ve only come to me because you’ve got a narcotics problem… True?”
Ken could hear David Karcher smiling gleefully, and counting a big payday.
There was a long and suspenseful silence; each man could hear the other’s breathing as it puffed through the handset’s mouthpiece. Ken began to sweat as his mind raced for a way out of the dead end David was so good at snaring him into. He tried a few angles.
David let Ken stumble on with a bunch of poor explanations before he decided to brake the deadlock and let Ken off of the hook;
“If you tell me about it Kenny, I’ll put you onto the right people, otherwise let’s stick to pleasantries.”
Ken had forgotten how the beach bum attitude that David portrayed could instantly snap about, becoming a steel thrust.
“Ok, all that I’ve told you was half true,” Ken admitted. “This is an idea that I’ve been having since we started heating our subjects up a little too much with the virtual reality; I’m looking for something to make their transition back to reality… gentler.”
Ken was a bath of perspiration; David always had a way of doing this to him, the acrid sweet smell reeked of fear as he skirted the precipice of truth.
Ken had claimed his internet Skype camera was malfunctioning, so that David could not view him in his unsettled state; he might be able to fake confidence in his voice, but David was a master in neuro-linguistic programming; having taught Ken all that Ken now knew about the technique; and David would instantly have had him at a vast disadvantage if he had a visual bead on him. Ken took refuge in invisibility today.
There is proverbial honor that exists amongst thieves; the trust between these two men extended beyond that and on to a mutual gun held to each other’s head; both knew the details of dirty dealings that would put the other into a deep dark place for a long-long time.
“This must be bigger than I thought, old son!” David was enjoying his turn to rub in the advantage, “Still so guarded, Kenny…”
Ken was desperately seeking a way of breaking David’s grip. He guessed that humor, even weak humor stolen from Catherine would buy him time to think.
“I trust you to keep the secret Dave; it’s the people that you tell that I don’t trust!”
“Always the joker under pressure, eh? You’ve got to work on it, boy’o,” David let the pregnant silence last
for a torturously long period. “Ok, I’ll allow you some privacy, what’s your email? I’ll pop some options over and asterisk the really wicked outfits; they’re probably the ones you’ll want to use… but it’s five times the usual rate.”
“Five times!”
“Bitcoin please.”
“That’s outrageous!”
“I was thinking twenty times would be outrageous. How about ten times the rate then?”
“Fuck’s sake…”
“I’ll still do five if you like…”
They settled on five times the already exorbitant rate for information and silence, and signed off.
An hour later the email was in. There were six options, five of which were third-world dictatorships infamous for their narcotic exports. One of the six immediately stood out, one of the two that had been asterisked. Paris
“Which way to go?” Ken began a monologue with himself, his nerves still frayed and jangling from the conversation with David.
“Paris is bound to be more sophisticated… and discrete if everything goes right… but if anything goes wrong it’ll be near impossible to keep the lid on it there.”
“Backwaters,” he thought, “they’re so much more convenient… you can pay-off or bump-off dissenters,” and it made him smile, seeing the options narrow.
He began to loose concentration. It was time for a line of powdered-inspiration.
Moments later Ken felt invincible, Colombia, the other asterisked option had his attention
“I know the lingo… hmm… and if anybody could, they can certainly be persuaded to keep mouths shut.”
He paced… pondering it, back and forth, and then went back to the screen and stared at the list until a decision whispered itself into his head.
“Ok… Colombia… if their lab’s up to the task… this time they will run a human….” He didn’t finish the sentence to himself.
His plan cementing in his mind—he’d take a short trip to make sure things were followed through and bodies were properly disposed of.
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