The Complete SF Collection

by Morgan, Richard

  Chris couldn’t decide, but he thought he saw a faint distaste rising in Notley’s eyes. Or maybe it was just the energy again.

  ‘Now. You transfer that idea, not just for trainees but for everyone. Think about the times. The domino recessions are scratching at the door, you’ve got to do something. Most investment houses and major corporations are waterlogged with top-end personnel. Ex-politicians on sinecure non-executive directorships, useless executive directors shipped around on the old-boy network from golden handshake to golden handshake, headhunted bright young things staying the obligatory two years then shipping out for the next move up on rep vapour and nothing else, because I ask you what, in two years, have you really achieved in a corporate post? And that’s just how we were fucking things up at the anglo end of the cultural scale. Elsewhere, you’ve got fuckwit younger sons and daughters being cut in on Daddy’s pie straight out blatantly, because in those cultures who’s going to tell Daddy otherwise? And all of this is teetering on the brink as the dominos start to fall. Something has to be done, at a minimum something has to be seen to be done. Something harsh.

  ‘So what do you do? You go right back to that eight-trainee section with seven desks, and you extrapolate. Late to work, you don’t lose your desk. You lose your job. At a time when you had a dozen identically qualified people for every real executive post, why not? It was as real as any other measure. You sure as hell couldn’t depend on sales figures or productivity, not with a global economy in tailspin. And since no one could afford to lose a job at a time like that, you got some pretty fierce driving. Some genuine road rage. But back then,’ Notley produced another of his smiles, wintry this time. ‘Back then, it was still enough to just get there first. Have you got anything to drink in here?’

  ‘Uh.’ Chris gestured across at Mike Bryant’s brushed steel, fitted drinks cabinet. ‘I don’t know, it’s Mike’s office. He’ll have some stuff in there.’

  ‘I imagine so.’ Notley hulked to his feet and wandered over to the cabinet. ‘You want anything?’

  ‘I, uh, I’ve got to—’ He nodded at the datadown. ‘You know, finalise. The, uh—’

  An impatient wave. ‘So finalise it. I’ll make you a drink in the meantime. What do you want?’

  ‘Uh, whisky. Laphroaig, if it’s there.’ He knew Mike kept that around; he produced it with a flourish every time they ended up in the office late. Chess juice, he’d taken to calling it. ‘Just a small one. No ice.’

  Notley grunted. ‘Think I’ll join you. I’m a gin man, myself, but I’m buggered if I can see any in here.’

  Chris bent to the datadown. Nailed the explosives along with the cheap Russian machine pistols he’d already selected and thumbed it all down to issuing, tagged with Mike’s notification code. Notley placed a brimming tumbler at his elbow, swallowed some of his own drink and glanced over the on-screen detail.

  ‘You done? Good. So put on a tolerant expression and listen to the old man’s story.’ He went back to the seat and hunched forward over his drink. ‘Let’s see, I was working at Calders UK, I would have been what, twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that. Younger than you, anyway. About as stupid, though.’

  No smile with that. Notley took another chunk off his drink.

  ‘I had this promotion playoff. Not the first I’d driven, not even one of the first, but it was the first time I’d thought I might be in trouble. Barnes, the other analyst, was my age, good rep, on the road and off, and he drove this flame-red Ferrari roadster. Very fast, but very lightweight. Nothing like the ones they make now. I was on Audis at the time, no choice back then, it was what I could afford. Good wagon, in its own way, but heavy, very heavy.’

  ‘No change there, then.’ For the first time in the conversation, Chris felt he was on familiar ground.

  Notley shrugged carelessly. ‘Armouring is what they do. Same with BMW. Maybe it’s a German thing. Look, I knew if I could just get in front of Barnes, I could hold him off all the way there. Nothing that little roadster could do to my back end that wouldn’t straighten out in the shop. Back then it was the rule, everybody knew. You didn’t have to kill anyone, you just had to get to work first. So, that was it. Get ahead, stay ahead. Block and cover. And I had Barnes like that, every mile ’til the last. Then the little cunt slipped past me.’

  He raised his eyebrows, maybe at his own sudden profanity.

  ‘To this day, I still don’t know how he did it. Maybe I was too confident. Maybe it was a gear change I left too loose, do that on a heavy wagon, you know how it is, suddenly you’re underpowered.’

  Chris nodded. ‘Happened to me a couple of times, before I got the Saab.’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve got that spaced armouring now, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He wasn’t sure if it was the whisky, or just the slide after the hours of tension and the rollercoaster ride of facing Notley’s gun, but Chris could feel himself starting to relax. ‘Works like a dream. I hear BMW are trying to get past the patents and do their own version.’

  ‘Quite possibly.’ Notley stared into his glass. ‘But we were talking about Barnes. Barnes, and that last bend on the overhead as you come into the Eleven off-ramp. It used to be a lot narrower then, barely even a double lane. We hit it with Barnes ahead, and I knew there was no way past him. And the way I remember it, there was no Roberto Sanchez making headlines then, no Harry Rice either. Could be it was just still under wraps, all denial and cover-up until Calders decided what needed to go into the shredder and what they could get away with. But I don’t remember any precedent, I just remember fury. Fury that I was going to lose by a couple of fucking metres.’

  He took another mouthful of whisky and held onto it. Swallowed, grimaced.

  ‘So. I pushed him off. Down a gear, pedal flat, revs up to the red on that last bend. Into the back of that little roadster as if I was giving it one up the arse. It went through the crash barrier like a fist through tissue paper, right over and nose first into the Calders car park. Hit another car and one of the tanks blew, then the other one. By the time I got down there, it was all over. But they showed me security-camera footage later.’

  Notley looked up and gave Chris a grin that slipped just a little.

  ‘He tried to get out. Was almost out, when the tank went. There was this two-minute sequence of Roger Barnes lit up in flame, still tangled in the belt. He tore free, he was screaming, screaming all the way. It must have been the pain that got him out, finally. He ran about a dozen steps on fire, and then he just seemed to . . . melt. Collapsed and folded over himself there on the asphalt, and stopped screaming.

  ‘And the next time I checked, I was a pin-up. Magazine covers, car ads, introduced to the CEO of Calders in Chicago. It was out in the open all of a sudden. It was precedent, Chris, it was legal, and Calders were the new field leaders. Pointing the way out of the domino trap. Turn up with blood on your wheels, or don’t turn up at all. It was the new ethic, and we were the new breed. Jack Notley, Roberto Sanchez, transatlantic mirror images of the same new brutalist dynamic. Worth our body weight in platinum.’

  Notley seemed to have coasted to a halt. He looked up at Chris again.

  ‘Precedent, Chris. That’s what counts. Remember Webb Ellis. In the elite, you don’t get punished for breaking the rules. Not if it works. If it works, you get elevated and the rules get changed in your wake. Now. Tell me Barranco is going to work.’

  Chris cleared his throat.

  ‘It’ll work. The NAME’s a special place. We’re talking about the radical restructuring of a regime that’s been in place almost since the beginning of the century. It’s time for that change. Echevarria was just a, a—’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, a bag of pus waiting to be. I remember. Go on.’

  ‘With Barranco, we can build a whole new monitored economy. He believes in things, he believes in change, and he can get other people to believe. That’s a power we can harness. We can use it to build something out there that no one in this fucking business has ever seen
before. Something that gives people—’

  It was the whisky. He clamped shut.

  Notley watched him, features shrewd and attentive. He nodded, set his whisky on the edge of the desk and got up. Abruptly the Nemex was in his hand again, but gripped flat in his upheld palm.

  ‘Careful,’ he said, enunciating the word as if to demonstrate its meaning. ‘I like you, Chris. If I didn’t, make no mistake about this, they’d be taking you out of here in plastic. I think you’ve got what not one Shorn exec in ten has got, what we can’t ever get enough of round here, and that’s the ability to create. To build new models in your head without even realising you’re doing it. You’re a changemaker. And we have to have the guts to let you be what you are, to take the risk that you may fuck up, and to trust that you won’t. But you need to be clear on what we’re about here, Chris.

  ‘Shorn exists to make money. For our shareholders, for our investors and for ourselves. In that order. We’re not some last-century, bleeding-heart NGO pissing funds into a hole in the ground. We’re part of a global management system that works. Forty years ago, we dismantled OPEC. Now the Middle East does as we tell it. Twenty years ago we dismantled China, and East Asia got in line as well. We’re down to micro-management and the market now, Chris. We let them fight their mindless little wars, we rewrite the deals and the debt, and it works. Conflict Investment is about making global stupidity work for the benefit of Western investors. That’s it, that’s the whole story. We’re not going to lose our grip again like last time.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Yes, you did. And it’s natural to feel that way sometimes, above all when you’re rubbing up against someone like Barranco. You said it yourself, he can make other people believe. Do you think, just because you wear a suit and drive a car, that you’re immune to that?’ Notley shook his head. ‘Hope is the human condition, Chris. Belief in a better day. For yourself, and if they really get to you, for the whole fucking world. Give Barranco time and he’ll have you believing in that. A world where the resources get magically shared out like some global birthday tea for well-behaved kids. A world where everyone’s beaming content with a life of hard work, modest rewards and simple pleasures. I mean, think about it Chris. Is that a likely outcome? A likely human outcome?’

  Chris licked his lips, watching the gun. ‘No, of course not. I just meant that Barranco is—’

  But Notley wasn’t listening. He was lit up with the whisky and something else that Chris couldn’t get a fix on. Something that looked like desperation but wore an industrial-wattage grin.

  ‘Do you really think we can afford to have the developing world develop? You think we could have survived the rise of a modern, articulated Chinese superpower twenty years ago? You think we could manage an Africa full of countries run by intelligent, uncorrupted democrats? Or a Latin America run by men like Barranco? Just imagine it for a moment. Whole populations getting educated, and healthy, and secure, and aspirational. Women’s rights, for Christ’s sake. We can’t afford these things to happen, Chris. Who’s going to soak up our subsidised food surplus for us? Who’s going to make our shoes and shirts? Who’s going to supply us with cheap labour and cheap raw materials? Who’s going to store our nuclear waste, balance out our CO2 misdemeanours? Who’s going to buy our arms?’

  He gestured angrily.

  ‘An educated middle class doesn’t want to spend eleven hours a day bent over a stitching machine. They aren’t going to work the seaweed farms and the paddy fields ’til their feet rot. They aren’t going to live next door to a fuel-rod dump and shut up about it. They’re going to want prosperity, Chris. Just like they’ve seen it on TV for the last hundred years. City lives and domestic appliances and electronic game platforms for their kids. And cars. And holidays, and places to go to spend their holidays. And planes to get them there. That’s development, Chris. Ring any bells? Remember what happened when we told our people they couldn’t have their cars any more? When we told them they couldn’t fly. Why do you think anybody else is going to react any differently out there?’

  ‘I don’t.’ Chris spread his hands. He couldn’t work out how things had got back up to this pitch. ‘I know this stuff. I don’t need convincing, Jack.’

  Notley stopped abruptly. He drew a deep breath and let it out, hard. He seemed to become aware of the Nemex in his hand for the first time. He grimaced and put it away.

  ‘My apologies. Shouldn’t touch the hard stuff this early.’ He picked up his glass from the edge of the desk and drained it. ‘So. Getting back to practicalities. You’ve got the disposal handled.’

  ‘Yeah. We pin the rap on the CE—, I mean CA—, uh—’ Chris gave up and gestured at the screen. ‘These guys. Mike’s down sorting out the limo and the logistics, but basically we’re all set.’

  ‘Louise tells me there’s another body. Echevarria had an adjutant? Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘And I understand you battered him too, in the same rather impulsive fashion you took care of Echevarria.’

  ‘Yes. He, uh, he got in the way.’

  Notley raised an eyebrow. ‘That was inconsiderate of him. So, is he dead?’

  ‘No, not yet.’ Chris hurried into explanation. ‘But that’s okay. Sickbay have got him on life support, sedated until we’re ready. In fact, that’s one of the strengths of the way we’ve set this up. If I can just show you the—’

  ‘No, that won’t be necessary. As I said before, this is about having the guts to let you run with the ball.’ A faint smile. ‘Just like our old friend Webb Ellis. Illustrious company you find yourself in, Chris Faulkner. Maybe they’ll put up a plaque for you too, one day.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  He caught it on the radio as he drove home. Some general news reporter from the scene, a woman but not—

  Cut that out.

  ‘—were shocked by this terrorist attack in the heart of London’s West End. I’m standing outside the famous Brown’s Hotel, only a few metres from the spot where less than an hour ago visiting head of state, General Hernan Echevarria and his aide, Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Carrasco, were fired upon by masked gunmen. Details aren’t clear as yet, but it seems two men opened fire with machine pistols as General Echevarria was brought to his hotel in a Shorn Associates limousine. The general’s aide and an unnamed Shorn executive were both hit by machine-gun fire as they exited the vehicle ahead of the general. The terrorists then threw some kind of anti-personnel grenade into the interior and made their escape on a motorcycle. All three men and the driver of the limousine have been rushed to intensive care at—’

  He turned it off. He knew the rest. Michael Bryant, thrown miraculously clear of the explosion, recovers from gunshot wounds in hospital. The limo driver, protected by the armoured partition, gets off with burns, abrasions and shock. General Echevarria and his aide go home in body bags, scorched and shell- and shrapnel-riddled beyond useful autopsy. State funeral, full military honours. Rifles volley, women weep. Closed caskets. Everybody in black.

  In the highlands, Barranco’s insurgents stir to freshly-equipped life.

  You’re a changemaker, Chris.

  He felt it rising in him, stirring like the hard-eyed men and women in the NAME jungle. He saw himself. Embodied purpose, rushing over asphalt in the darkness, carving a path with the Saab’s high beams like some furious avatar of the forces he was setting in motion on the other side of the globe. Riding the quiet power of the engine across the night, face masked in the soft backwash of dashboard light. Bulletproof, careproof, unstoppable.

  He called Barranco at the Hilton.

  ‘You heard?’

  ‘Yes, it’s on the TV. I’m watching it now.’ For the first time that Chris could remember, Barranco’s voice sounded unsure. ‘You are okay?’

  Chris grinned in the dark. ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’

  ‘I, would not have believed. Something like that. To do something like that. In front of your colle
agues. In your situation. I did not expect—’

  ‘Skip it, Vicente. The old fuck had it coming.’

  Barranco was silent. ‘Yes. That is true.’

  And more silence across the connection, like snow drifting to the ground on the other side of the world. For a beat, Chris could feel the cold out there, like something alive. Like something looking for him.

  ‘I saw him die,’ said Barranco.

  Chris shook himself. ‘I, uh. Good. I hope that was worth something to you, Vicente. I hope you feel. Avenged.’

  ‘Yes. It is good to know he is dead.’

  When the Colombian showed no further sign of speaking, Chris cleared his throat.

  ‘Listen, Vicente. Get some rest. With what’s coming down in the next few weeks, you’re going to need it. Plane’s not ’til noon, so sleep in. Lopez’ll get you up in plenty of time.’

  Silence, sifting down.

  ‘Chris?’

  ‘Yeah. Still here.’

  ‘They aren’t going to punish you for this?’

  ‘No one’s going to punish me for anything, Vicente. Everything’s under control, and you and I are going right to the top of this thing, together. I give it six months before you’re in the streets of Bogotá. Now get some sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  He waited for a reply. When there was none, he shrugged, cut the connection and gave himself to the driving.

  changemaker!

  He got off at the Elsenham ramp, and picked up the road east, pushing the Saab faster than was smart. The car jolted in potholes and the engine grew shrill as he dropped gears late on the bends. Trees stood at the roadside, sudden and dusty-looking in the glare of the Saab’s lights. When he got to Hawkspur Green, he shed some of his speed, but he was still rolling too fast. The car snarled angrily to itself as he took the turn into the driveway, and he had to lean on the brakes.