Competition would be bad. The Operation likes its subsidiaries to maintain a supply-side monopoly and goes to some lengths to keep it that way, even tolerating competition between local franchisee storefronts—it’s a significant opportunity cost, but deterring interlopers from entering the market in the first place is cheaper than dislodging them once they’re dug in.
Scotland is a mess. Word came down from the very top: Someone needs to go into the field and fix things. It’s not just a matter of repairing the existing franchise, but of evaluating new market opportunities and if necessary taking the over-the-hill cash cow to the slaughterhouse, then bootstrapping a new clean-room start-up to replace it. Scotland is a small but significant market. As an entrepreneur backed by the Operation’s training, guidance, and investor confidence, you can seize the opportunity to make your mark without pissing on the gate-posts of any of the big incumbents. So you raise your virtual hand, volunteer for the job, and pull on the green wellies to wade out into the sticks and take control.
Contrary to what you told the swithering fuckwad on the hotel front desk, it is not your habit to fly everywhere business class. In fact, you avoid flying wherever possible. You have gone to great lengths to maintain a clean identity, using all the tools the Operation has made available to you. Airports are surveillance choke points, and the ubiquitous camera networks have AI behavioural monitors these days. Your unfortunate medical condition has certain side-effects—nobody say “Voight-Kampff test” or you’ll rip their fucking lungs out and shit down their windpipe—and if someone’s told them to look for members of an organization that pursues an enlightened policy of positive discrimination with respect to people with certain neurological disabilities, you’d have nowhere to run. (It’s outrageous—blatant discrimination—but it seems there’s one rule for the neurotypical, and another for people like you.)
So you travel by train and ship. Freighter from Anchorage to Vladivostok, trans-Siberian express to Moscow, more tedious railway time-table shite until you arrived in the Schengen zone, then finally some blessed modernity. Two fucking weeks, and all because you’re a persecuted minority.
The shiny new shinkansen blasted through the English countryside at over three hundred kilometres per hour, but you couldn’t help noticing that not even Japan Rail could fix the English public-service disease. You reflected on the issue at length—perhaps if they made their train managers chop off a finger joint every time they were five minutes late or ran out of coffee in first class—but on reflection, you decided the health-and-safety busybodies would have a cow. And so you glared stonily at the refreshments manager before you went back to refactoring the structure of the regional business unit that the Operation sent you to kill or cure.
There are numerous obstacles to progress.
Your predecessor in Scotland, the man who established the Operation’s subsidiary in that country, died unexpectedly two years ago—of high blood pressure, not low treachery. He was a knuckle-dragging gangster of the old school, a veteran of the underground wars that thrashed the siloviki revenants out of the EU a decade ago. A street warrior, not a theoretician, in other words—and his business philosophy reflected his background. But he understood the basics.
All the Operation’s subsidiaries and start-ups operate on the principle of making dreams come true: recondite or frightening and illegal dreams, true, but dreams nonetheless. They require a marketing operation to bring the wares to the attention of the buying public, a fulfilment arm to get the goods to the punters, and a collection arm to pay for it all. So far, so good.
Violence is a regrettable but necessary overhead on the balance sheets of the Operation’s start-ups. Like any enterprise that operates beyond the boundaries delineated by governments—with their self-proclaimed monopoly on the use of violence and their hypocritical attitude towards the legitimacy of certain markets—they must provide for their own defence. To the Operation’s way of thinking, there is much to be said for the rule of fist and baseball bat: By keeping the beatings sub-lethal, costs are constrained—and the threat of escalation remains in reserve. Blood is a big expense, as the man said. Bodies are costly, warfare is capital-intensive, and if you have to dig out the machine-guns and start hiring soldiers, your profit margin is about to go into a power dive.
Your predecessor, despite resembling a rabid silverback gorilla in both physical appearance and personal hygiene, understood this instinctively: He ran a tight ship and maintained credit control in a drastically hands-on manner. He had a rep for tittering unnervingly as he stroked his baseball bat and stared at his debtors’ knee-caps. Almost everybody paid up on the spot: Nobody wanted to find out just what he was laughing at.
Unfortunately you lack the physical presence and instinctive sense of the theatrical to make this strategy work. Moreover, since the Gorilla went to monkey heaven, the franchisees and street-level clients have become unduly frisky. Getting a handle on the major defaulters is proving tedious although there are plenty of small fry to make an example of and opportunities for profit along the way: Thanks to the Organization, you are in a position to outsource enforcement to contractors in the budget-medical-supplies business.
But you don’t want to waste your time playing hands-on godfather to a slumful of nitwitted glue sniffers. It’s a lousy business model, with no scope for exponential scaling and monetization of the sweat equity you’re going to have to inject to make any headway. The outputs from the Gorilla’s franchise scale linearly with the human inputs, because criminal retailing is labour-intensive. And while the Gorilla was content to weed his patch in person, you have higher ambitions than a lifetime of stoop labour.
The first thing they teach you in VC school is to pick a business model with scope for non-linear growth. Consequently, you have concluded that it would be far better to trash the Gorilla’s operation completely and establish a new one of your own design (“leveraging best-practice agile methodologies to maximize return on stakeholder investment in accordance with the Operation’s total start-up commitment protocols,” as your funding pitch puts it) than to try to nurse the emphysemic mafia hold-over out of its intensive care bed and back into a wheelchair.
So you drew up your plans and pitched them at the Operation, talked through the cash flow and gained their grudging assent—and more importantly, the first round of stakeholder equity to bootstrap the new business, on condition you keep the old cash cow pumping for the time being. And now you need to recruit an executive team for the start-up.
You’re about to go Gangster 2.0 . . .
One of the disadvantages of the virtual corporate lifestyle is that it keeps you too busy for the local health clubs and dojos. In response, you’ve developed a number of ad hoc work-out substitutes. One of them is that you never catch a bus or a taxi if you can rent a bicycle or walk. Another—which also happens to be good COMSEC practice—is never to contact clients via the networks if you can visit them in person without being observed. So when you walk out of the Hilton, your first stop is the Lothian Bike railing outside.
You always plan to turn up on a client’s doorstep spick and span, unexpected as a hangman. To this end you buy lightweight business suits that are impregnated with a magic nanotech fabric treatment that sheds sweat and body odours, not to mention dirt flung up from road surfaces. Before you start pedalling, you fire up a nifty (and highly illegal) applet that makes the jailbroken disposaphone you’re carrying emulate a cluster of zombie GPS transmitters: You tell it to send your rented bicycle’s tiny mind on a random tour of the Old Town. (It’s all for the best if nobody can interrogate the bike about your movements later.)
Once you’re on the bike lane, the lack of wireless access leaves you blind—but it’s a welcome, familiar feeling, like having your own personal cloaking field. It’s a good palliative against the anxiety you feel for your missing luggage. The police INDECT networks might still be able to track you if they were watching right now, but the rich data they depend on is so bandwidth-inte
nsive that it isn’t routinely archived: In another twenty-four hours, there’ll be no trace that you ever came this way. Before you set off, you downloaded a map and memorized a series of left/right branches and waypoints—it’s an archaic skill called “orienteering”—so you make good time, despite the lack of navaids.
You review Number One Client’s background yet again as you pedal along beneath the trees that line Dean Park Crescent (all the crescents here are tree-lined these days, legacy of a government scheme to roll back urban warming), giving your thighs as thorough a work-out as any stationary cycling machine.
Number One Client has been of interest to the Operation for some time. He has a number of technical aptitudes that have brought him to prominence in the employment database, and to your personal attention as a candidate for head-hunting. In particular, he’s been of use in the past for organizing medium-scale redistribution of grey-market fabber feedstock. He’s proficient in highly scalable network-mediated marketing operations with high-yield outputs, and has a proven record of organizing wholesale-supply-chain ventures that include unmonitored cross-border trade, central multi-carrier dispatch of bespoke custom products, and VAT evasion. Which, all in all, is a pretty good match for what you’re looking for in a chief operations officer.
The Gorilla didn’t see any reason to employ someone with Number One Client’s characteristics, but you’ve already established his operational shortcomings. The Gorilla’s idea of how to sell this particular product was straight out of the nineteenth-century arts and crafts movement. Whereas Number One Client’s business experience is a comfortably close approximation to the enterprise you intend to bootstrap; the only question remaining is, is Number One Client suitable management material? Especially at the level you’re planning to grow the business to.
Number One Client is not, alas, a flawless ruby in the dust. He has a criminal conviction and has served a stretch in prison—that, on its own, is sufficient to disqualify him from executive progression within the Operation. But failure to obey the eleventh commandment is no obstacle to a management post, under suitable governance, and you need somebody with Number One Client’s aptitudes and (equally importantly) local connections. A preliminary interview is indicated.
And so you turn into an avenue of big stone houses and dismount at the kerb beside Number One Client’s town house, lock the bicycle, walk up to the front door, and (careful not to touch it with your bare skin) ring Michael Blair’s doorbell.
LIZ: Black Swans
You’re out of the office early (flexitime is one of the perks of the back-office inspector’s rank these days) and go home to get changed for your date with Dorothy. Not that you’re flustered or anything: If your life was a house, she’d merely be the unexploded bomb ticking away in the wreckage of your cellar, capable of blowing you all the way to Oz at any moment.
You rush home and:
• dive into the kitchen for a glass of wine, only to stare in dismay at the dirty plates in the kitchen sink,
• dive into the bathroom for a quick shower, only to stare in dismay at your haystack hair in the mirror,
• dive into the bedroom for a fresh outfit, only to stare in dismay at the contents of the wardrobe (two stale party frocks, various jeans and tees, and at least eight neatly laundered business suits and accompanying blouses).
This is your life, and there’s no rug big enough to sweep it all under—at least not in the half-hour you’ve allowed yourself for doing the Clark Kent/Superman phone-booth thing before you rush out again. So you compromise on:
• a glass of water,
• your hair savagely brushed and tied back to conceal the creeping anarchy and split ends,
• a different trouser suit,
• earrings and a necklace that’d get you sent home from the station in disgrace if you wore them on shift (just to remind you that you’re off duty).
Before you go out, you stare at the bathroom unit uncertainly, reflecting. You’ve spent twenty minutes rushing around like a schoolgirl on a first date, and to what end? It’s not like Dorothy doesn’t know what you are—faking soft edges will cut no ice. The thought’s meant to count, isn’t it? Or the gesture. You’re dressing up for her, or not dressing up for her—you’re old enough that you ought to know your own mind. You’ve been kicked in the teeth by love often enough that you should have figured out who you are by now. But you’ve fallen into an existential trap with this vocation of yours, haven’t you? It’s easy to know how you’re meant to function when you wear a uniform: You do the job and follow the procedures, and everyone knows what you’re meant to be doing. What you wear dictates how you behave.
. . . But there’s no uniform for a date with Dorothy.
You panic and get changed again, and in the end you make yourself late enough that you end up calling a taxi, sitting twitchily on the edge of the grey-and-orange seat as it grumbles uphill towards George Street. It bumps across the guided busway that bisects Queen Street and chugs up Dundas Street, wheezing to a halt at the corner: You pay up and climb out, and a trio of miniskirted girls nearly stab you to death with their stilettos as they stampede to get in. Just another night out on the tiles in Auld Reekie, nothing to see here but a single thirtysomething woman in sensible shoes walking towards a wine bar full of braying bankers.
Dorothy has found a stool at the bar and is sitting with her back to you, nursing a caipirinha and keeping a quiet watch on the huge mirror behind the bar. Stylish as ever, she makes you feel like a gawky schoolgirl just by existing. You make eye contact through the looking glass, and she gives a little wave of invitation as you walk towards her, a flick of the wrist. Then she’s turning, smiling, and you embrace self-consciously. She smells of lavender water. “Hey, darling, you’re looking gorgeous! How are you keeping?”
“I’m good. Yourself?” You step back, find there’s a gap in the row of bar-stools—but the next one over is already occupied by a bloke who’s the spitting image of a kiddie-fiddler you helped put away ten years ago. (Only ten years younger, of course.) You turn away from him hastily as Dorothy’s smile opens up like the sun, and she waves past you, attracting the barman’s hypnotized gaze.
“I’m in town for the next two weeks”—she runs a hand through her hair, which is a deeper chestnut red than it was last time you saw her, and about ten centimetres longer—“visiting the Cage out at Gogarburn for an ongoing evaluation at the bank: Then I’ve got a spot evaluation on some American company’s local operation.” The Cage is the secure zone within the National Bank of Scotland campus: Dorothy is an auditor, the kind who gets to travel a lot. Her little black dress is more boardroom than cocktail bar—doubtless her brief-case and jacket are waiting in the cloakroom—but with her string of pearls and porcelain complexion, she could make it work anywhere. “They’ve stuck me in a tedious hotel in the West End, Julian is in Moscow this month, so of course . . .” She raises a meticulously stencilled eyebrow at you.
“We can see about that.” The barman pauses in front of you. “White wine spritzer, please,” you tell him, and flash your ID badge before he can card you. You wait until he delivers before continuing: “Have you eaten yet?”
“No. But there’s a place round the corner that’s been getting good reviews.” She looks at you speculatively.
“Do you have any plans? Outside of work?” You can’t help yourself: You have to ask.
“I don’t know yet.” For a moment she looks uncertain. “This is an odd one.” You catch the warning before she continues. “I may have to put in lots of overtime. I was hoping we could catch up if the job permits.”
Dorothy’s always like this. Babs accused you of being married to the job (and she wasn’t wrong), but Dorothy makes you look like a slacker. That alone would be enough to make your relationship with her an on-again off-again thing: And that’s before you get round to thinking about Julian, her primary.
So you nod, hesitantly. “I don’t have a lot on in the evenings this week. And
I’m free Saturday and Monday. Is there anything particular you want to do? Theatre, music—”
“I was hoping we could start by finding somewhere for dinner?” She bites her lip. “And then I’d like to pick your brains about a little problem I’ve got at work . . .”
Dorothy is indeed staying in a boring business hotel in the West End. You end up in the bar around midnight, by way of a sushi restaurant and a couple of rounds of margaritas. You’re not sure whether you’re meant to play predator or prey here—it’s been months since the last time your paths intersected—but you’ve got a plushly padded booth to yourselves, and you catch her stealing sly glances at you in the mirror while she’s at the bar ordering a round. “I can’t stay too late—I’m on shift tomorrow,” you tell her regretfully, as she sits down opposite and bends forward to peel off her pumps.
She curls her lower lip, pointedly not pouting. “That’s a shame,” she says. You freeze, outwardly expressionless as her unshod left foot comes into contact with the inside of your right calf. Question answered. “Didn’t you say you’re free Saturday?”
You catch your breath: “Yes, I am.” Actually, clearing weekend leave usually takes advance notice, but you’re on weekday office hours right now: You can swing Saturday and Monday if you need to. Maybe even swap Sunday for Monday . . . Her stockinged foot caresses your ankle. It’s smooth, muscular (all those hours in hotel health clubs), reminding you, rubbing. “That’s assuming I don’t get roped into the latest mess.”
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