by David Berko
“I’d like that,” Desmond responded enthusiastically. Honestly, he was grateful to eat anything. Breakfast had long passed and they were approaching two in the afternoon.
“Think you can operate a microwave?” Heather teased. She walked ten feet over to a wall with a vending machine. “Actually, we have something a little less archaic than a microwave.”
“Oh? Radiation no longer a good way to zap food?”
She frowned. “No, nothing like that. Besides, you don’t honestly buy into that malarkey, do you?”
Desmond didn’t want to lie. He had attended an “Eat Healthy” expo ten years before and it was like his eyes had been opened to all the dark secrets of the food industry. “Actually, I do,” he said quietly. “But I’d like a pizza roll anyway,” he chuckled, rubbing his stomach a few times to punctuate his point. He was hungry.
“Good. Take your pick then. All you have to do is point at what you want and watch what happens.”
“Really?”
“M-hm!”
“Ok, I want…that one!” he excitedly jabbed at the picture of chunky pepperoni pockets with cheese oozing out the sides. A robotic claw grabbed the package and removed it from the ring it was clipped to. Ten seconds later a black tray exited the bottom portion of the brushed chrome contraption. A tantalizing pizza smell wafted through the air and excited the taste buds of anyone who could smell it.
Heather all of a sudden felt hungry. Pretty soon she found herself going through the same motions in front of the glass, demanding the machine to feed her.
“Couldn’t help yourself, eh? It looks scrumptious,” the programmer referred to the steaming container of food he held in his hand. He shuffled a few paces over and hoisted himself up onto a tall black stool. For the first time all day he felt tall. Desmond was the stereotypical nerd when it came to measurements: short, skinny, and light as a feather.
Presently Heather sat down with chicken salad. “If you need anything to drink, there’s beverages over there,” she pointed out.
“Thanks,” he paused. His voice inflected when he resumed, “I may need to get hydrated before I meet the Big Man.” Desmond strategically brought up the subject hoping to hear more about him from Heather.
“I’ll give you the shakedown on what you’ll need to know before you meet him,” she said.
Desmond leaned in. “Okay?”
“You need to give him a firm handshake. He IS a big man. Fish grips won’t impress him.”
Desmond chuckled. “I think I can do that. Anything else?”
Heather chewed on a green leaf with a light vinaigrette sauce dripping from it. She thought about it for a little longer. "He likes eye contact. Don’t be afraid to stare into his eyes. From personal experience, it can be a little intimidating. I still find it difficult at times.”
“Really?” Desmond filed it away in his memory.
“Yeah." Heather looked around as if she was getting ready to gossip. Her voice low and stern, she said, "He doesn’t like brown-nosers either.”
“Of course…obsequious behavior can’t be tolerated. No matter the craft.”
Heather watched him for a moment wondering what to make of his answers. “Don’t impress him with your vocab either. He’s a man with simple tastes and preferences. You won’t earn a spot in his heart using ‘obsequious’ in conversation.”
Desmond was a bit taken aback. He never thought of it like that. He was so used to the company of other nerds who played word games on their cell phones over lunch break. “I will try my best not to upset his balance.”
Heather nodded approvingly and crossed one leg over the other. She bit into a cherry tomato and made a face. It was too soft for her liking…one of the reasons she didn’t come to the eatery very often.
“When do I meet him?” Desmond asked, peering up from an empty tray.
The British woman examined her ornate silver watch that had jade stones embedded around the face. The second hand completed another circuit as it rounded twelve. “Very soon.”
--
Santa Monica, California
The surf crashed against the shore, washed up, foamed white, then retreated. Dolphins chirped and seagulls called to one another. It was in the evening and the sun was already on its way down. The private beach was a perfect backdrop to the home of the brilliant Christophe Gerard, chief scientist at Labia TestCorp and chairman of the board at Westover Ventures, a conglomerate owned by the billionaire Damion Westover.
Gerard’s wife, Kathy, pulled weeds in the garden behind the house where Christophe was planting Carnations of many different colors. He squatted down and grunted slightly. Massaging his tender thighs he murmured, “My body ain’t what it used to be.”
“What’s that, dear?” Kathy inquired. She was no more than ten feet away with her hands down in the thin soil, also like her husband, and in a squatting position, too.
Christophe cleared his throat to repeat himself before he was interrupted.
“Did you say, ‘ain’t’?” she said with concern growing in her voice.
“Oui?”
Kathy smiled broadly, shaking the dirt from the roots of a weed she had plucked from the earth. “Thirty years of marriage and I have never heard my little Frenchman speak like a native Southerner.” She dropped her weeding tool and got to her feet, patting the dirt off her legs.
“How do they say it here…can’t an old dog learn new tricks? No?” He blushed while he said it.
She got closer to him and that’s when he stood, too. “I don’t know,” her voice carried off with the evening breeze. Her index finger rested on his chest, her eyes looking up into his. “What do you think?”
“I think we should check on the grandkids,” he said suddenly changing topics.
Kathy blinked--a motherly look now occupying her brown eyes. She reached out to squeeze his hand with affection. “Let’s go down to the beach together.”
“Je suis d'accord, mademoiselle.”
His wife giggled and took her husband by the hand and away they went, over a grassy knoll and towards the beach.
Two little kids were the only ones besides the gulls on the shoreline of the private beach that stretched for miles. A little girl in a pink one-piece ran in a haphazard zigzag in the direction of the water and plunged in on her belly, squealing in delight. The skinny boy in red swim trunks paid no attention to his sister while he built sand castles.
“Children, children!” Kathy called out. “Are you doing alright?”
“We’re fine grandma!” nine-year-old Chelsea answered, her head bobbing with the waves.
“Well, okay then. It’s gonna be time to go in soon, you two,” Kathy said before she turned her attention back to the man standing next to her. It surprised her to see him with a phone held close to his ear and a troubled look on his face.
Christophe listened in breathless silence to the agitated voice rattle off a million things all at once on the other end.
Kathy almost slapped the phone out of his hand when she had the opportunity. “Put that down!” she said with a hip out and an expression that said you dare not cross me.
“Not now,” her husband said rapidly. Turning to leave, he repeated his first question back to the caller. Christophe gave one last look at Kathy and mouthed he was sorry. “…so what you’re telling me is the plans could be in jeopardy….I can’t tell you how upset this makes me. Not to mention what the top brass will do when they know. Any guesses though on who—” he had got cut off again.
“When was this, ah, Iris installed? Who did the job?….Yeah, do me a favor and send me the info on it right away….K, bye.”
Christophe bit his lip and stomped his foot hard enough on the ground that he injured himself in the process. Gerard needed someone to steady himself when he felt like he was going down, but Kathy had already gone back into the house with the grandkids. Twice that night the man had felt his age. At sixty-two, sometimes he felt like he was “gettin’ too old for this,” but it w
as that iron will of his that kept him going despite it all.
Occasionally he would hang his head and really feel the squeeze of always being the middleman bearing the brunt of unintended consequences. But it was Damion he had faith in. No matter what they had gone through, the billionaire showed pluck that just didn’t exist in most entrepreneurs.
It was Christophe who was willing to put his neck on the line for Damion’s nest egg. This egg in particular, the plans to a game-changer weapon? It falling into the wrong hands would almost spell certain doom to any sunshiny days for the people of the Free Republic of North America.
--
Anchorage, Alaska
“Sir, we just got an anonymous tipster saying we should stay grounded due to a possible attempt to be made on the president’s life.”
“Say again, agent Minsk?”
Alpha dog Dirk Simmons was doing the asking. He had to make sure the threat was credible. Then again, any and all threats were to be taken seriously, even though it meant going through a whole batch of them on any given day.
“Sir, let me patch you in on this call so you may speak to Demsky directly. I got it on line three.”
“Put him through,” Dirk relented.
“This is Alfred Demsky, Director of Sentinel. Is this line secure?”
Dirk blinked and blurted out, “You bet. What’d ya got?”
“We got an anonymous tip an hour ago that should put you on high alert. Our boys have worked hard to trace the source—with no luck—but what’s important is we believe you may have a couple of tangos to deal with in the sky and if it’s preventable, then don’t fly.”
“You mean to tell me someone out to do the president harm has a confrontational flight heading with his crosshairs on Alexander’s plane?”
“Yes.” Silence.
Dirk leaned on a post and hung the receiver over his forearm with his other arm barring his forehead. A great bead of sweat fell off his stubble chin and onto the floor. “That’s nuts.”
“This isn’t a drill. He (the president) cannot be allowed to even board. Am I understood?” Demsky thundered.
“Roger that.” Dirk Simmons hung up and relayed the message to the rest of the detail.
No one was going anywhere. Full lockdown.
Eventually the message went up the chain of command, winding up on the president’s desk. It was received with genuine disappointment and alarm. Disappointment because it was of utter necessity that Alexander Toporvsky fly in to Honolulu to attend a security council briefing and many other scheduled meetings; alarm, well, his life had just been threatened…again. But nonetheless, gratitude was expressed for the team’s efforts to keep their commander in chief safe and sound.
--
Chapter 15
Dreamland, Nevada
The conference room was a soundproof suspended glass bulb on floor twenty. It was one of the most impressive rooms in the tower, to be sure. It was built to host the many captivating summits Scorpion was bound to hold.
The dominating table in the room came in a circle with a circumference big enough to seat thirty. There appeared ample room in the middle of the circle for a raised dais and its accompanying minimalist carbon fiber ambo.
The defining feature of the room though was the floor. Most of it was frosted glass all throughout expect for below the table which housed a giant LPD (liquid phosphor display) that showcased the world and it’s grandeur from one of Scorpion’s satellites orbiting in outer space.
With one of the windows facing out the northeastern side of the tower, Tommy pressed his body up to the glass, his hot breath steaming it up. He stared out from the conference room down below into the nothingness. There was no sunny campus where the employees could enjoy a smoke break or a picnic lunch on the lawn. Instead, everyone was treated to the same old dank dark underworld setting which seemed to share something in common with Scorpion: both had a certain unnatural feeling of evil to them.
Tommy asked the computer in the room if it was time yet. “Your appointment isn’t for another ten minutes,” she replied promptly.
He nodded and got a far off look in his eyes. “Computer, get the program ready. Cue it up when our guest arrives, will you?”
“Not a problem.”
A minute later a small click echoed throughout the chamber. Tommy whirled to see Desmond walk in unaccompanied. The door thudded shut. The two men were alone in the room together. No more than twenty feet apart.
Still there was silence.
“You’re—early,” Tommy faltered.
Desmond didn’t say anything. His hands reached for the small of his back, feeling for something he didn’t wish for the Big Man to see.
Tommy moved away from his lookout and casually approached the other man. He didn’t sense anything out of the realm of normal, yet.
“It was nice to meet you,” Desmond spoke in the past tense.
"Wha—"
The Big Man then witnessed the thin, wiry programmer all of a sudden spread his feet in a wide shooter’s stance and level a white short-barreled pistol at him and squeeze the trigger. The slug left the muzzle with an explosion cutting through the air and exiting out the back of the now-dead director-general of Scorpion.
Desmond wasted no time in hurrying over to where Tommy lay motionless on the glass floor. Quickly and skillfully he frisked the corpse for a cell phone. When he had found one he immediately set to work at hacking into the conference room’s security feeds to replace the live image of the room with static. Desmond was a dead man, however. He knew it, too.
What Desmond didn’t know was Tommy’s Holter (heart) monitor transmitted an emergency signal when the man’s heart stopped beating. So even if the watch failed to notice on the monitor the actual assassination he would know through other means that Scorpion’s top guy had indeed been killed.
But even worse than deep-sixing the agency’s top guy, Desmond had managed to infect Scorpion’s entire network with a crippling virus that would devastate its computers for years to come. He would die an unsung martyr for the cause. No one had ever asked him to do this job or to be their eyes and ears at Scorpion. Desmond took it upon himself to use his skills and a plastic 3D printed gun as the tools for success.
…
Black commandos raced down the white space-age pentagonal-shaped corridors of the tower towards the conference room. They converged on their target from several directions. Two grenades were tossed at the entrance. A burst of fire and glass exploding in a thousand different directions were enough to incapacitate Desmond let alone the fusillade of tracer bullets that were fired at him. Lead ripped through his flesh and he was dead before his body had even collapsed on top of Tommy’s.
--
Santa Monica, California
Christophe stood still in his tracks, not moving a muscle. His gray curly hair blew with the breeze of the night air. He looked at his watch and then wistfully back at the house. Christophe set his jaw and dug into the sand, his right foot leading off.
The determined man beat a little path around the corner and up the slope over to where his transportation was housed. On the driveway where he stood was a discolored patch of cement. It was much lighter in shade than everywhere else and it formed a perfect little square. Both brown leather boat shoes touched down on the pad which set off a retinal scanner. A high pitch beep and the bolt releasing on the unassuming electronic door followed. The man stepped through like he had so many other times before. Tonight was a little more urgent than an ordinary night out in the city though.
Spotlights lit up the sky and a canopy roof retracted its steel door like a missile silo from the twentieth century. Parked where it always was sat the very distinguishable and striking Cruzer, Christophe's personal air taxi. It wasn't checkered yellow and black, but rather a shiny metallic. The exterior hatch swooshed open and gave him that new car smell with all the instrument panels chiming and flashing. Gerard lowered his weight down onto the chair nice and easy. He wasn't a bi
g man and that was very fortunate. The cockpit wasn't built for the obese.
His eyes meandered up to a switch which he promptly flipped, then the glass hatch closed to form an airtight seal all around him. He had both feet manning the pedals...but only thrusters were activated to escape the hangar. His stomach dropped out....It was still exhilarating. Dr. Gerard had only been flying his Cruzer for eighteen months. Even though it practically flew itself, he bought the model with manual overrides to bring back some of the fun in flying.
By car it might have taken half an hour or more to get to Beverly Hills taking the good old Santa Monica Boulevard, but with his air taxi Christophe was told by a charming computer voice the ETA would be two minutes. His right hand pulled back on the gamer-inspired joystick and up he rose into the night air en route to Damion's pad.
--
Area 51, Nevada
Howard had been on the phone speaking to a station chief when the building's emergency lights began to flash red. Sirens wailed, serving more like a death knell rather than an emergency warning system. The Old Man knew what was happening. His heart grew cold and his face taught.
Howard cursed into the phone and told Yuri he'd have to finish another time. The station chief from Section 3 was more worried than offended by the Old Man's most recent behavior. What could it mean?
Howard threw the glass phone at a wall and turned away just in time to miss the explosion. But he certainly heard it and smiled ever so slightly. He moved quickly out of the soundproof chamber he formerly occupied on floor seventeen to a bank of elevators. He could have taken the stairs but even in times like this he forced himself to keep his cool around others and not have moments like back in the chamber where he let his explosive temper rear its ugly head.