Scion

by Murray Mcdonald

  “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” asked Scott.

  “I didn’t know what your father left for you. I didn’t want to spoil what may have been a wonderful moment for you. I’m sorry I would have told you as soon as you came back but you ordered us out of the room.”

  Scott could see Herr Meyer was being sincere not only in his answer but also in his concern for what had happened to his father.

  “I’m sorry Herr Meyer and on behalf of my family I thank you for at least caring enough to try,” replied Scott warmly. “You may be able to help us however. We have the name of the bank that transferred funds to my father business, it’s in Zurich. UBZ.”

  Herr Meyer and Krauss exchanged knowing glances, Herr Krauss answered.

  “Hmm, a rather unsavoury member of the Swiss banking fraternity I’m afraid. We have few dealings with them but I can perhaps arrange a meeting with their Chairman. However, I’m afraid they are known for their dealings with the world’s less savoury individuals and as such hide much more than is appropriate behind our banking laws.”

  “Herr Krauss as a current banking board member is being kind. They are a bunch of crooks,” interrupted Herr Meyer, unable to hide his disgust.

  “So are we wasting our time?” asked Scott.

  “No, not at all. If a woman,” Herr Meyer turned to face Ashley. “Of such exceptional beauty as yours Madame, cannot get information out of him, nobody can.” He turned back towards Scott and smiled mischievously. Obviously the Chairman of UBZ had a weakness for women.

  ***

  “Dernier appel pour monsieur David Thomas, vol Air France pour London City. Dernier appel, merci,” boomed the public tannoy system.

  Scott heard the final call for him as he rushed through the baggage check. The flight was ready to go and with no baggage in the hold, they would not wait long for him. It was touch and go whether he’d make the 13.40 flight but the next flight at 14.00 was into Heathrow whose security checks he’d rather avoid. The next flight to Luton was in another 3 hours and that was too late for a couple of the leads he wanted to chase down. He wanted to be finished in London that night and back in Geneva with Ashley first thing the following morning.

  With seconds to spare, he made the flight and with 90 minutes to kill before landing, retrieved the letter again from his inside pocket. Scott laid the papers in front of him and worked through each page methodically just to be sure there was nothing he had missed. However, other than the three leads and the reference to ‘a dear friend’, nothing more than the despair in his father’s voice could be gleaned. With each reading, Scott became more frustrated and felt more useless. He knew of course that he couldn’t change the past but it didn’t stop him wishing he could.

  As the plane began to dive for the airport runway, Scott put the letter away and looked out over the London skyline dominated by Canary Wharf. One thing he was sure of was that there were some people down there who were going to wish they had never fucked with his father.

  Chapter 58

  The assassins had ensured that no tails had followed them to their designated meeting point and only after a thorough check that this was the case, were they given their final destination. By 5 p.m. the last assassin had been checked through the staging location as per Mike Hunter’s instructions and had arrived at the safe house in Pimlico, central London, a stone’s throw from Downing Street. As each had arrived, the rather uncomfortable realisation that the operation involved a number of their counterparts hit home. However, with a payday of $2.5 million each, the protestations were short lived.

  A presentation over an encrypted video conference was then set up and the plan laid out in detail to them by one of The Unit’s top planners who had, in a previous life, been responsible for stopping exactly what he was in the process of explaining. The identity of the assassins and the planner were protected as each sat in a darkened room. However, as the presentation progressed, a number of suggestions from the highly skilled killers resulted in a few small changes. It seemed the assassins were more capable than the planner had given them credit for. However with none having less than 15 years experience with some of the world’s toughest regimes, these individuals were second to none. The initial plan had suggested a four minute assault. The assassins were confident three would be more than enough.

  As the conference call ended, the assassins made their way down to the basement and selected the weapons they would need to carry out the mission. The array of weapons had been carefully selected to ensure that each of the assassin’s preferred weapons were available to them. The selection covered just about every manufacturer of weapons and assault equipment and left nothing to chance. From knives, to night vision goggles, to anti tank and stinger missiles, every eventuality had been considered.

  Hunter had sat behind the camera during the video conference and watched as the planner had taken the group through the plan in intricate detail. As the system closed down, he stood up and approached the planner.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “I’m glad they’re working for us,” replied the planner. “They know their stuff. I’d say by midnight we’ll be looking for a new PM.”

  “Excellent. Well, I’m off. There’s every chance this country will get shut down and as much as I love you Brits, a couple of days here would drive me nuts.”

  With that, he shook the planner’s hand and was gone. A booking on the 19.25 BA flight from Heathrow to JFK would have him home just as the news of the tragic terrorist attack in the UK was breaking.

  ***

  The Blackberry device buzzing in her pocket elicited little reaction. She was in the zone monitoring the comings and goings. So far, nothing out of the ordinary. Her hand slipped down and retrieved the device and pressed the button on the side to retrieve the new message.

  11 p.m. was all it said.

  Chapter 59

  The Hummers came from the South and East and arrived at exactly the same time. Two stopped on 14th Street and two stopped on Irving St. Each held four men and within seconds, four had secured the fire exit while the others made their way into the bar, guns drawn. The patrons of the bar were not unaccustomed to the sight of authorities with guns and took little notice as the men swept through the bar. The barman put up the weakest protest but with twelve large armed men bearing down on him, he knew he was wasting his breath.

  After a complete search returned nothing more than the phone that had been used earlier, the commander of the Unit stormed across the bar to the barman and grabbing him roughly, slammed his upper torso on top of the bar.

  “Where the fuck is he?” he asked pushing the gun to the barman’s throat.

  The barman had been in Washington for more than twenty years and had had more than a few scrapes with the DC police.

  “You, you can’t do this! I’ve done nothing wrong! Let me go! I’ll have my lawyer sue the ass off you!”

  The unit commander laughed as he realised the barman thought they were cops.

  “I’m not a cop you dumb fuck. Tell me what I want know or I’ll blow your fucking brains all over that mirror,” he said menacingly. Noting a movement in the mirror, he watched and noticed one of the patrons shifting nervously. They knew something, he thought.

  The barman knew nothing, the boss had gone out. It wasn’t his job to keep tabs on him.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  The Unit commander caught his eye and shook his head very slightly, just enough for the barman to know that was not the right answer. He pulled the trigger and sent most of the barman’s head into the mirror.

  “The guy in the blue baseball cap, bring him here,” instructed the commander as though he had eyes in the back of his head.

  Two of his men spotted the cap and immediately grabbed its wearer, thrusting him through the now quivering patrons and depositing him on the bar unceremoniously in front of the commander.

  “Where is he?” he asked, the tone suggesting only one answer was acceptable.
>
  “Metro, ten minutes ago,” he replied, the fear in his face told the commander that he was telling the truth.

  The commander tapped him lightly on the face. “Well done, good answer.”

  He turned to his men. “Right, let’s go.”

  Within ten seconds, they were gone. Had it not been for the headless corpse of the barman, most would have struggled to believe the last minute had actually been real.

  Even though a violent murder had been committed in front of a bar full of people, it took over an hour for the DC Police to respond. When they did, it was a significantly more senior officer than would normally work the streets and after a half-hearted interview of the patrons, logging details of the licence plates and description of the killer and his eleven accomplices, he left and filed the tragic gang shooting by hooded thugs. Case closed. His retirement fund had just swelled by a cool $50,000 and all he had to do was ensure the streets around 14th and Irving were a no go for an hour or so and cover the killing of some two bit spic who was probably an illegal anyway.

  The commander saw the two Metro station entrances as he walked out of the bar and ordered eight of his men into the stations before calling in to the operations centre.

  “Hi, they’re in the Metro,” he told the operations supervisor who immediately and with the help of the NSA took control of the CCTV network that covered the Metro and tying it up with his facial recognition software, waited for a hit. It was pointless looking themselves, the computers could see and check every face in micro seconds. If Ramirez were still in the Metro they’d get a hit as soon as he left the train and stepped onto a platform.

  ***

  As Francisco had opened the envelope containing the documents, Vic had caught sight of the name and immediately gripped Francisco by the scruff of the neck, grabbed a gun and fled. Vic had sent his three bodyguards into the street first and only when they said it was clear, did he follow with Francisco, shielding his new boss as best he could. They abandoned the car and Vic instructed his guards to go down into the metro, again waiting for the all clear. He then followed with a now totally bewildered Francisco who had barely recognised the name he had read although it had sounded familiar. Sam Baker meant little to a young man from Paraguana but to a crime boss in Washington it meant that unless some miracle struck, it was not a matter of if they were killed but when. The documents in Francisco’s hands were as good as a death warrant certified by the President of the United States himself. Vic knew allegiances were already swinging towards the new president and realised that whoever they approached would gain instant power by turning them over to Baker. They would not be able to trust anyone, save for one man, the current President. But what chance would a bunch of Venezuelan crime bosses have of seeing him? That left only one option, to disappear and that’s exactly what Vic Garcia planned to do.

  Less than a minute before The Unit had taken control of the CCTV system on the Metro, Vic, Francisco and their henchmen had exited the station in Anacostia, the crime capital of Washington D.C.. Almost exclusively black and Hispanic, the area had once been a buzzing middle-class suburb. However, the development of I-295, blocking access to the waterfront in the 50’s and the building of a number of public housing apartment complexes, drove the middle classes out and plunged the area into decades of neglect. Vic Garcia, born and raised in Anacostia, knew the area better than anyone. If there were one place in the world he knew they could hide from the government, it was in the deprivation of Anacostia. White men stood out a mile and white government types even more than that. With his network of pimps, prostitutes, dealers and landlords on the look out, he’d always be one step ahead.

  Francisco couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was supposed to be in America, the richest and most powerful country in the world but he’d struggle to find worse looking areas in Caracas. A gunshot rang out in the distance as they walked into a building with more windows boarded than not. As they entered the stairwell, the smell of stale urine and faeces hit Francisco like a hammer in the stomach causing him to wretch. Stepping over a down and out and a dead rat, they made it to the third floor and entered what a real estate agent would struggle to describe as a grotty two bed sparsely furnished dump. Francisco looked at Vic who smiled back.

  “What the fuck is this?” asked Francisco, as a cockroach scuttled across the kitchen surface.

  “Safe,” replied Vic losing the smile. “At least for a few days, then we’ll move.”

  ***

  The Metro system had 86 stations along its 106 miles of track and within half an hour it became obvious that Ramirez was not in any of them. A quick review of earlier recordings also failed to show any results for the young Venezuelan. With the realisation that it seemed they had lost him, it was left to the supervisor at The Unit’s operation centre to report back to Max Ernst.

  “Wait!” shouted his colleague as he was about to dial. “I’ve got something. Look here!” he added, pointing to his screen.

  At the bottom of the screen four men could be seen shrouding a younger man. All wore baseball caps and from the angle of their heads were obviously avoiding the CCTV cameras. Facial recognition software could do many things but without a view of the face to compare against its target it was useless.

  “I’ll bet that’s him, the timing is bang on,” stated the operator confidently.

  The supervisor agreed and reading the station name, called Ernst to update him. Ramirez was in Anacostia.

  Chapter 60

  As the plane taxied to the arrival gate, Scott pressed the power button on the phone and realised how fundamentally his life had changed. Only four days ago, the thought of letting somebody know that he had arrived safely was as alien a concept as he could have conceived. Scott worked alone and the only person who knew whether he was alive, dead or exactly where he was, was himself. Now he was sending a text to Ashley telling her he had arrived safely and in so doing telling her exactly where he was. After committing that cardinal sin, he exited the plane and after a short wait at the immigration desk while the immigration officer checked his Canadian passport, he was out of the terminal and boarding the DLR to Canning Town and London’s Underground network.

  An underground network that carried almost a billion passengers every year, between its 275 stations which meant, that, on average, during every hour of its operation over 150,000 people were being ferried within its confines. However, with over 8,300 cameras scanning every face that entered and exited, Scott was not taking any chances and had a baseball cap sitting firmly over his head with as wide a peak as possible. There was also no better way to travel around London.

  After one stop, he changed from the Jubilee Line to the Hammersmith and City Line heading West and exited at the Barbican, in the heart of London’s financial district, most commonly referred to as the City. Home to the FTSE, the Bank of England and numerous members of the banking elite, the area was also a mecca for some of the world’s most prestigious corporate law firms. One of which was the particularly prestigious, Foxon Gerard and Smythe, of whom one of their most illustrious partners was John Butler-Jones, the former lawyer of Mr James Kennedy Esq. (deceased).

  As Scott approached the building, a twinge of nervousness ran through his body. This man was partly responsible for the death of his father and Ashley’s parents, as an absolute minimum. Scott dealt with these kind of men all the time but he didn’t need to talk to them first.

  The receptionist smiled warmly as Scott walked towards her. Even in a bizarre outfit of suit plus baseball cap, he cut a dashing figure. Catching his reflection in the mirror, he quickly removed the cap and received an approving wink from the receptionist, much better.

  “Hi.” Scott flashed his best smile and donned an American accent with just enough drawl to suggest Southern state and certainly explain away the baseball cap faux pas.

  As she smiled back, Scott could see her pupils grow in size, a good sign. He leaned forward conspiratorially.

  “I hope you c
an help?”

  “Of course,” she replied eagerly nodding her head.

  “I’ve really messed up, I’ve got this really important document to deliver to Mr John Butler-Jones.”

  “I’m really sorry but he’s not in today, he’s working from home.”

  Scott had to stop himself from smiling, the news couldn’t have been better and thinking quickly.

  “Yes I know that and that’s where I’ve to take these very important papers but somebody’s just pinched my blackberry which had his address on it.”

  “That’s no problem,” she replied smiling, “I’ll just get his secretary,” she added picking up her phone.

  Scott placed his hand tenderly on the back of the receptionist’s. “No, please don’t. My boss will find out and kill me for losing the blackberry. You see it’s my third in three months and if I lose another one, he’ll fire me.” Scott leaned in closer almost whispering, “Is there any way you could just give me the address. That way, no one needs to know I lost the blackberry which I’ll replace before they know it’s gone.”

  The receptionist was about to say that she wouldn’t know the address but it was obvious from the pile of packages behind her desk that she dealt with the couriers and mail for the company.

  “Please,” pleaded Scott. “Nobody will ever know.”

  The receptionist looked around to check nobody was watching. “Oh all right, but just this once and you didn’t get it from me, OK?” She quickly scribbled down the address and handed it to Scott. “Before you get it, name and law firm, please,” she demanded.