Oil & Corruption

by Gareth Flood

  He dived into an unused alley and stopped behind a large garbage container; before pulling open the satchel from off his back. Inside was his gym gear and a towel taken from the hotel. He realised he had to change his appearance as quickly as possible.

  He stripped off his jacket and shirt before stuffing them in the satchel, towelled himself dry as much as possible and put his white running T-Shirt on.

  Better than nothing. he thought.

  He left his hair messy in the vague hope it looked ‘tousled’ and different enough from his neatly combed office haircut. As he finished stuffing the towel back into the bag, a realization hit him.

  Did they have me followed from London? he thought. Or did they find me through the passport that the hotel swipes at check in? That means they have access to some kind of security services or Interpol or something like that. But if they have access to that, what the hell else do they have access to? And who the hell are they?

  Now was not the time for burdensome analysis. Now was the time for survival.

  Jonathan ran through a mental checklist of what he had left the hotel with. The comfortable bulk of his wallet and mobile phone was felt in each pocket.

  He knew what he had to do and was surprised at how calm he felt about things, considering highly efficient, well funded and connected killers had just attempted to vaporize his person and would probably try to do so again.

  The sun did not shine directly into the Parisian back streets he was criss-crossing.

  Everything was bathed in a soft grey light, on the surface, everything appeared as normal, shopkeepers stood scowling behind their tills, locals sat in the odd café with coffee and cigarettes.

  But everything was not normal.

  Jonathan could never look at anyone the same way until he knew he was safe. Anyone walking toward him with a baguette under the arm could be a merciless killer. As he walked he found himself quickly eyeing up everyone he saw - designating them as a potential threat.

  Eventually he saw what he was looking for, the subtle glow of promise surrounding a cash machine built into a wall. He withdrew as much cash as the machine would allow - eight hundred Euros. It would be the last time he used his card, if at all possible.

  He had watched enough spy movies to know that if they have access to banking systems, they would know immediately that someone was accessing his card at this location. It dawned on him while he was the machine that he had often wanted his life to be like a spy movie and have some excitement in it and now it seemed to be happening. The incident at the hotel scared him and he wasn’t sure if he wanted the change in his life to happen or if he just wanted it to stop.

  It doesn’t matter anyway, he thought, I’m already in too deep to stop it – I have to take this on if I want to stay alive.

  While walking away and stuffing the cash into his pockets, he hailed down a passing taxi. Jumping in, he ordered the driver to take him to an electronics store. Once there, he purchased a small device with a screen that made a backup of the memory card in his mobile phone. With this, he could scroll through numbers on the card without any communication waves being sent out. He knew that if he turned on his phone or put the card into another phone, they would pinpoint him again immediately.

  If they could access where his passport was being scanned, he was taking no chances. Just to make sure his phone was completely out of service, he removed the back cover and took the battery out. He put the powerless phone in one pocket and the battery in another.

  He would keep his phone with him, in pieces, but from now on, would only make calls from payphones. As he walked back into the city under a darkening sky, he wondered how long to make the calls for? Normally in the films it was something like two minutes. He would make it one minute.

  Jonathan had an idea.

  I can check with Harry!

  He walked until a payphone was found in a covered cowling against the wall of a small shopping centre. After making a purchase of a sweatshirt and scarf and asking for change in coins, Jonathan was soon at the phone with Harry’s mobile phone number on the screen of the backup up gizmo.

  An intermittent buzzing was heard as the receiving phone rang.

  ‘Hello?’ asked a tentative voice.

  ‘Harry! It’s me! Jonathan!’

  ‘Is there an emergency with the flat?’ Harry sounded truly alarmed.

  ‘No-’

  ‘I told you to only call this number in emergency.’ Harry sounded unashamedly annoyed.

  ‘It is a damn emergency you nitwit! How long before someone can trace a call if they have the resources do so?’

  ‘What? How the devil would I know?’

  ‘Because! Shmuck! You work in the secret service!’

  ‘No I don-’

  Jonathan lost his patience and yelled, ‘How long?’

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  ‘Call you back.’

  ‘Wha-’ Harry was cut off and Jonathan was immediately punching in his number again.

  The phone rang.

  The line connected

  ‘Have you gone completely and utterly mad?’ asked Harry.

  ‘Shut up and listen. I’m in deep shit. I need your help. You know the plane that blew up over Nigeria today?’

  ‘Yes, we-’

  ‘And of the bomb that went off in Paris a few hours ago?’ Jonathan asked

  ‘Yes, its-’

  ‘The first one killed my boss and the second was my hotel room!’

  ‘What?’ Harry exclaimed.

  ‘Call you back.’ Jonathan said, before hanging up the phone.

  More change went into the payphone. There was someone waiting behind him now. Jonathan could feel them there as a presence.

  He turned quickly to see a middle aged woman with a scarf wrapped around her head, she was tutting silently.

  He gave her his worst psychotic death stare. She stepped back, before slowly moving away.

  The phone rang.

  The line connected.

  ‘Someone is trying to kill me!’ Jonathan hissed into the phone.

  ‘Holy shit! You are involved in the Dalton case.’ Harry said, We’ve just been trying out figure out if they were connected.’

  ‘ Well they bloody well are, the connection is me! Dalton? You cannot be serious?’

  ‘Classified. What else do you know?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Nothing. Just that I seem to be being hunted like some bloody trophy animal.’

  ‘Alright. I think you may be suffering from some shock.’ Harry said, ‘Get to a cheap hotel and hole up for the night. Pay cash only. Call me tomorrow and I will inform upstairs. Where exactly are you now?’

  ‘Classified.’ Jonathan said, before hanging up the phone.

  It was not that he did not trust Harry. Sure it was not like they had broken bread while looking into the depths of each other’s eyes and feeling up their souls. But even if they had, the whole point of good spies was that you never knew who they really worked for.

  There would be no commitment to anyone until he had more information himself.

  He had to find out who was trying to kill him and more importantly, why? If he was going to die - he wanted to know the reason.

  He walked away from the phone and through the dusk lit streets until he found a small hotel with three green stars shining in neon promise over the evening pavement.

  Three stars in Europe meant one star in Britain. It would do.

  He paid the surly manager in cash for one night. Locked himself in a room on the first floor. All the loose furniture was dragged against the door. He smashed a water bottle and kept it next to his bed as a weapon.

  All night he tossed and turned - trying to block out the noise of explosions from his mind.

  12

  Paris

  Jonathan was angrily punching numbers into a payphone on the street.

  He had slept only fitfully last night, continually jerking awake at the slightest noise. When he did not get enough sleep he
became incredibly irritable.

  He had finally got out of bed at around six, left the hotel an hour later and started roaming the streets of the suburbs again, trying to figure what to do next.

  The feeling of shock that had partly shut his internal systems down the previous night had now abated. Replaced by fury that someone was trying to kill him.

  As he lay in the darkness hours before, he had had plenty of time to mull over it all.

  It was Falcus’ damn report that triggered all this. It was the only explanation. Falcus was always as loose as an old prostitute with confidential documents. Jonathan thought, Who knows who he sent it to in his quest for personal glory. It could have even gone outside of the company and then anybody could have gotten hold of it and identified me as the author. Meaning any number of organisations could be after me now.

  He was pissed off because he had just been doing his job - now someone was trying to kill him because of it.

  The phone he was calling started ringing and he drummed his fingers on top of the phone casing as he waited for the person to pick up.

  ‘Yesh?’ answered a deep Dutch voice.

  ‘It’s Marshall.’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Vhere de hell haf you been? You vere shupposhed to check in yeshterday.’

  Nice to speak to you too, Dutch Mentalist. thought Jonathan.

  The Dutch Mentalist was Jonathan’s current boss. The Dutch Mentalist was the name everyone called him, apart from to his face. He was a six foot five Dutchman with a brush cut and steely blue eyes. He personified a particular type of Dutchman that always got promoted in the organisation: tight fisted, mean, had no sense of humour and the people skills of an Iron Maiden.

  Jonathan was definitely not in the mood for any of his Dutch crap today. Almost being killed, he felt, gave one a sense of impunity against your bosses.

  ‘That analysis I did for Falcus. Where did it go?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked the Mentalist.

  ‘Who…did…it…go …to?’ Jonathan said slowly, as though explaining something to a child.

  There was sharp intake of breath down the other side of the line.

  The Mentalist did not get humour, irony or sarcasm but still did not like being spoken to in such a manner by an underling.

  ‘I didn’t see it myself,’ he answered defensively, ‘you know I don’t do that. It went to Mr. Willis on the top floor.’

  ‘You need to find out who it went to after that. And you need to do it quietly.’ Jonathan told him.

  A sharper intake of breath down the line.

  The Mentalist had had enough of this.

  ‘Marshall, what the hell are you on about?’ The Mentalist said, his voice rising.

  ‘You at your computer?’ Jonathan asked.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Pull up a news website. You see the story about an explosion in central Paris?’

  ‘Yes…’ The Mentalist answered, sounding unsure.

  ‘Well that was my hotel room! Twenty four hours after I sent that report off, Loader’s plane explodes over Nigeria and my hotel room explodes in Paris!’ Jonathan was almost yelling and made a conscious effort to calm himself down.

  ‘The only reason I was not in it was that I left for a run.’ Jonathan continued, ‘Now don’t try to tell me these things aren’t connected. Some pretty vicious wheels have been set in motion and we do not know who is involved. I’m guessing you are not. But I’m on the run here with a price on my head.’

  Jonathan knew he had gone over the thirty second limit in making calls but he was so worked up he did not care. He would take a taxi out of this neighbourhood as soon as he hung up the phone.

  He also knew or at least believed with certainty that the Mentalist was not involved in whatever was going on. He may have been the boss of the company unit Jonathan worked for, but he was still a minion. He had hit his limit of progression in the organisation. Everybody knew this would be his last assignment. Then they would put him out to pasture on ‘project’ work, or working on ‘divestment’ analysis for another couple of years, before palming him off with early retirement. Consultants working on projects knew more of what was going on in the company than The Mentalist.

  ‘No, no, this is ridiculous,’ The Mentalist said quickly after a space. ‘I’ve worked for this company for twenty-five years. Nothing like this would ever happen here.’

  Would it, hell! thought Jonathan, He hasn’t studied the company history too well: The Suez invasion, Iran deal, Libya deal. The company didn’t keep an office of ten in Washington DC so they could pick their feet. They were deal making and lobbying – involved at the highest levels in most countries and in the shadiest levels in others – idiot!

  ‘I believe you.’ Jonathan lied, ‘I also believe in the conviction of those trying kill me right now. All I’m asking is that you find out how widely the document was circulated. I’ll call you back soon.’

  He hung up the phone and started walking away briskly while looking around wildly for a taxi.

  An hour later, Jonathan was sipping coffee in an Internet café and scrolling through news websites. He broke this up by intermittently glancing out the window at the people walking by.

  Earlier he thought he had seen the same man in a dark blue coat walk past the window twice, while looking in. He wondered if he was becoming paranoid. This was Paris; there were a few million blue coats walking around the city at any time.

  He was on the other side of the city to where he had made the call this morning. Once he had hung up on the Dutch Mentalist, he had quickly found a cab and driven across the city while changing cabs twice. He had then taken a random bus before yet another cab. He doubted they could have found him that fast from the call or then tracked him across the city.

  Still, it was better to be paranoid than dead. he thought.

  There was no-one familiar at the window or in the store. He went back to flicking through news websites. There was not a lot on the plane blast over Nigeria. Mostly that officials were looking for wreckage on the ground and hoping to find the flight recorder. They eyewitness accounts varied: some locals on the ground said it ‘just exploded’, while others said it was trailing smoke and acting erratically for a time before it blew up.

  Jonathan knew this was a load of rubbish; Falcus had been cut off instantaneously.

  The villagers down there would tell you their father wore their mother’s underwear if you gave them a dollar.

  Reports on the Paris blast stated that early indications indicated it might be terrorist related.

  Surprise, surprise… thought Jonathan, as he scrolled through the screens.

  There were multiple pages of reporting, as it was a major event to happen in a European capital. Though they obviously had nothing concrete to relate.

  Jonathan slugged back the last of his coffee in disgust and checked everyone in the room again, before picking up his things to leave.

  As he walked out the door and tried to look surreptitiously up and down the street, he decided it was time to change his clothes. Then he had to find another cash accepting crappy French hotel, with delusions of two star adequacy. He felt it was wise to hole up again for another night.

  By tomorrow morning, everyone would have had a full day to discover more information on what was going on.

  First thing tomorrow, I’ll be back on the phone. he thought. And they better bloody have some answers!

  13

  Kazakhstan

  The mistral winds swept up large clouds of dust on the faraway golden plains of sun baked Kazakhstan. The vast expanse of the clear blue sky was suddenly shattered by the sonic booms of two brand new Sukhoi S-30K fighter jets cutting a scythe through the heavens.

  As the planes receded to dots in a matter of seconds, all the gathered dignitaries standing on the wooden stage below took their fingers out of their ears in one synchronized movement.

  The President of Russia and his Vice President took their seats on a stand within a b
rand new air force base in the complete middle of nowhere. It was a diplomatic as well as commercial visit.

  The Russians hated Kazakhstan, yet it was the size of Western Europe and resource rich so could not be ignored. Now that the Kazakhstan Government was beginning to clear oil revenue into its central coffers, it had embarked upon a social programme befitting the status of any new nation emerging onto the global stage – it started buying fighter planes.

  This was where the Russians came in.

  The SU-30K was the latest and greatest winged weapon of destruction from Mother Russia. It was also currently available for export on a “Three-for-two” price deal.

  Any customer was good and the Russians would be damned if American or European planes would be stationed anywhere near their vast borders.

  The Russians were whispering together and smiling at the Kazak President. The Kazak President was pleased with his planes and pleased that the Russians were pleased. The Russians were pleased as they had sold a billion dollars in planes and the little red Fez hat the Kazak President was wearing had added some humour into the deal for nothing. The Kazak President smiled and waved at them as he took the microphone at the front of the stage to begin addressing the paltry crowd of armed forces personnel of his new base in the middle of nowhere.

  The Russians waved back.

  ‘That’s it, keep smiling, you fucking peasant.’ the Russian President whispered through his best false smile. He leant over to his Vice-President, ‘Give me an update on the assassinations.’ he hissed.

  Anatoly Kirkov cleared his throat before whispering back. ‘We are following some leads. Chasing down some informants. Something will break soon.’

  ‘So you have nothing.’ whispered the President through gritted teeth as he smiled and waved again as all the flash the cameras in front of the stage lit up like a phosphorous fireworks display.

  ‘These things take time. We are pursue-’

  ‘Nothing!’ hissed the President again. ‘I want answers to this. I want you to get me answers on this. I will continue to lean on you and you will lean on FSB to get me answers. We have a G8 summit coming up that will be here before we know it. I will not stand there next to the rest of the world leaders feeling foolish, as well as looking foolish, in whatever local tribal garments they clothe me in. Do you understand?’