Oil & Corruption

by Gareth Flood

  There was deep sigh down the phone from Pink. Jonathan could feel a panic feeling welling in his stomach. With the Mentalist removed from the source list, he was down to Pink and Harry.

  Harry he did not trust on the grounds he was a spineless whiner with as much general usefulness as a chocolate fireguard. If he lost Pink, he literally had no idea what he would do next.

  ‘I need to call you back.’ Jonathan said, checking watch. He hung up the phone and put the call through again as fast as he could while his mind was a blank of panic.

  ‘Right,’ Pink said as he answered the phone, ‘had a thought, there may be two people who can help. External people.’

  Jonathan perked up and quickly re-engaged his brain. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. You ever heard of The Nasty Arab and One Crazy Hebe?’

  ‘This is not the time for one of your twisted jokes, mate.’ Jonathan said, feeling defensive.

  ‘I am definitely not joking. I’ll take that as a “No” then. I came to know of them working on a project in the Nigerian compound. It’s a symbiotic relationship - the living together of two dissimilar organisms for the purpose of monetary mutualism. They are as their titles suggest, one is as an Arab- he really is quite nasty. The other is an Israeli; he is slightly crazy, in an Old Testament sense. He is also so intelligent he can hardly stand up. Basically, through each other, one side does business with the other’s people. The Israeli is the contact for the Arab to do well out of the Likud party. While the Arab is the contact for the Israeli for the important Hackkk tribes and of course, the house of Saud.’

  There was a pause. This always happened when Pink was about to enter “higher plane” mode.

  ‘They are setting an example,’ Pink continued, in a tone of one presenting in a lecture hall, ‘of how people who hate each other can be united through the love of money. It’s…it’s pure capitalism…’ Pink sniffed as he started to choke up with emotion.

  Jonathan leant his head against the cool metal of the front cover of the pay phone.

  ‘Give me strength.’ he whispered.

  ‘What’s that?’ Asked Pink.

  ‘I said, a story of some length.’

  ‘Ah, yes, well, these two are incredibly well connected in the oil industry. There is not much that goes down without these two having either a finger in it or at least an idea of it. Whatever is going down with you is related to what you uncovered. What you don’t know is who is behind it. These two could help, if you offer to trade them some information on what you found. They could possibly shed some insight into who could be behind it. Heard the other day from another project that they are currently in Madrid. They will be easy to find, they always take two rooms in the top floor of the best hotel. That’s about all I can suggest to help with for now, Look I’m going to have to go. The Mentalist is boring into me with his Manson lamps. Normally I would tell him to wipe his face before he gives me a dirty look - but not now. Let me know how you get on.’

  The line clicked dead.

  Jonathan replaced the receiver.

  ‘Great.’ he said to the pay phone, before turning back to Julie on the wall.

  Her hair was fluttering in the onshore breeze and Jonathan took a moment to realise that she looked quite lovely in the morning sunshine. The sea glittered out behind her and when she smiled, a feeling always welled up inside him that everything was going to be okay.

  ‘Good news?’ She asked as she hopped off the wall and skipped towards him.

  ‘Uh, kind of. Nothing new. Got a lead towards some people who may be able to help. We have to go to Madrid.’

  ‘Madrid? Okay, I am fine with that. Madrid is nice this time of year.’

  She hooked her arm through his and started pulling him up the path.

  ‘Come, we have time to see the Abbey before we go.’ Julie said.

  ‘Um, I’m not sure if we have the time. I’m not comfortable staying in one place for more than an hour.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ Julie smiled again and playfully poked him in the ribs. ‘But this is a big place, and since we are in France - we always have time.’

  The pace quickened as she pulled at his arm with gusto as they headed upwards on the winding cobblestone path.

  Not sure if the people chasing us are French though, Jonathan thought to himself.

  The dark figure in a black trench coat had been eyeing the crowd for forty minutes by the stone entrance to the complex, searching for his prey, all to no avail.

  From the time their car had arrived to the time he had arrived and set up station by the one route in and out, it had been over an hour. That meant they were not simply popping in for breakfast and quickly driving on. They were stupidly having a look around like every other stupid tourist.

  He cast his hawk eyes over the rising paths, walls and buildings, all the way up to the Abbey at the summit. Two people could easily spend all day in here.

  The best killers in the world were naturally instilled with the patience of mountains. It was a basic hallmark of a great hunter. He could easily wait here all day and night for his prey to appear.

  His employer, however, wanted an update at midday.

  Departing from protocol, he decided to go after them. If they had gone up to the Abbey and he moved now, he would either see them on a path a few levels ahead if they were still going up, or they would walk smack into death coming down.

  If the worst happened and they somehow got by him, it was not the end of the world. Even if they drove off, he could soon pick up the trail again. He levered off the wall he was leaning against and descended into the moving crowd.

  No-one touched him as he moved through the tourist mass. Mothers instinctively pulled young children closer as he went by.

  He checked his weapons under the black coat and picked up the pace.

  The large hands were itching to kill something.

  Jonathan did not feel any more relaxed after a walk through the cool and peaceful air of the Abbey. His mind was still on the phone calls and their next move. Still, it was a nice distraction that had given him time to think about the trip to Madrid while also spending time with Julie. He appreciated her efforts to try to bring his state of mind to a calmer place.

  ‘I’m glad we did that. Thank you for pulling me up here.’ he said, as they started the curving walk back down to the bottom.

  ‘Of course.’ Julie replied with a glint in her eyes. ‘We French may not have the best GDP growth rates, but when you see such places as this and merge it with a nice lifestyle – who cares? Who wants to be like the Americans, always so busy working they do not have time to even learn how to dress themselves; wearing only white sneakers and high socks with shorts - urgh, such awfulness.’

  ‘Yes, I’m beginning to see your point.’ Jonathan said with a smile.

  They followed the winding downward path for a while. Eventually a slight detour opened up off one of the stairwells to a small path that opened out onto a viewing balcony made of stone.

  They walked to edge of the balcony wall and looked down to see the tourist pilgrims wending their way up and down on the main path below.

  Julie turned and pulled a small compact make-up mirror out of her bag to begin touching up her make-up. Jonathan looked out over the sea again and was taken with a moment of inspiration.

  This is it! he thought, ‘When she puts that mirror away, I’m going to take her hand in mine. If that goes well, I’m going for the kiss!

  Twenty metres beneath them, on the winding path below, two darkened eyes of coal narrowed in on the two people on the viewing platform.

  This was his chance for a clean kill - both of them at once.

  He had them!

  The Tatar reached into the left side of his over coat with his right hand and tightly gripped the handle of his modified sawed off double barrel shotgun.

  The weapon of choice for killing or disabling prey at this distance.

  Julie closed the compact mirror and smiled at Jonathan as her hand
went to put it back in her bag. Jonathan started leaning forward for the kiss and it was at that point that things started to happen in car crash slow motion.

  Julie had not quite put the mirror inside the opening of her bag, it flipped over the edge of the bag as she moved and began tumbling towards the floor. Both he and Julie saw it starting to fall at the same time. They both instinctively dived downwards towards the floor after the mirror, trying to catch it before it shattered into a thousand shards on the cold stone.

  It was then the wall behind them exploded.

  Jonathan felt his cheek being cut by flying mortar and another larger piece of stone hit him directly on the side of the head. He felt his hair start to matt from blood. Julie had a cut on her forearm. Luckily they were near the ground and facing away from the wall as part of the shot hit the top of the wall and the rest flew over the top of their bent bodies. They were peppered with tiny stones and debris but it had not penetrated their clothes.

  They both collapsed against the inside of the wall.

  ‘Shit!’ Jonathan exclaimed in a panic, ‘Assassins!’

  ‘This way!’ Julie yelled as she started to turn.

  They crouched low and ran along the wall till it completed the square and got back onto a walled path going upwards again.

  The Tatar was bounding up the stairs a few levels below while re-loading the shotgun gun as well as pulling an Uzi out from the other side of his jacket.

  He could not believe the luck of these people!

  He was sure they had not seen him. How had they managed to duck the very moment he had fired? Nothing like it had been seen in his twenty years of professional slaughter.

  There were people screaming and running everywhere before him. All the streets were narrow and packed with tourists, it was hindering his progress up the steps.

  By now security guards had been called and the first one of them appeared at the bottom of the stairs as the Tatar reached the top of the current flight.

  The Tatar spun and discharged one barrel of the shotgun down the stairs into the chest of the guard. He spun back and could see the path above that the targets had disappeared on.

  There were traces of blood where the first shot had been.

  Tracking them will be easy. he thought.

  He set off at a run towards the path with a streak of blood above it.

  Jonathan and Julie were running for their lives on a path leading upwards.

  Jonathan stole a glance behind to see if anyone was behind them yet. He prayed not because if he could see someone else, then someone else could see him - someone else happy to destroy a world heritage site to kill him.

  As he looked back, he saw a streak of blood on the wall behind them where Julie’s arm grazed it. They continued running until they came to a fork where there were stairs leading downwards off the path they were currently on, while the other path continued on a trajectory upwards.

  Jonathan was desperately trying to think quickly about how to get away – he was struck with an idea, and pulled Julie to a stop at the fork.

  ‘Run down the stairs.’ he panted breathlessly, ‘And don’t put any blood on the walls. I will meet you at the bottom. Go!’ he said as he gave her gentle push.

  He continued to run up the path for a distance of about fifteen metres, smearing two patches of blood on the wall, which he took from the side of his head. He hoped it made it look like they are going in that direction.

  He turned to run back in the direction he had come from.

  It was going to be tight getting back down and past the killer.

  With lengthened downhill strides he pelted it back down the path and swung onto the stairs to take them three at a time, all the while trying to be careful not to put any more blood anywhere.

  As he reached the bottom of the stairs and turned the corner, he ran straight into the arms of Julie. She had been waiting for him.

  Another gunshot was heard higher up on the hill above them. They instinctively hugged together tightly out of fear.

  ‘He’s still not that close.’ Jonathan said, ‘He must be shooting at people getting in his way.’

  ‘We have to get out of here!’ Julie looked panicked. Her soft brown eyes were wide with terror and Jonathan could feel an unusual strength being transferred through her fingernails into his forearms where she was gripping him tightly.

  Her panic focussed his mind.

  ‘Listen to me Julie.’ he said with conviction in his voice. ‘He’s looking for two of us and has seen the clothes we’re in. We’ll split up here-’

  Her nails dug deeper into his skin.

  ‘-just for a moment. Go and grab a hat or jacket from a shop or someone lying on the floor so that you look different from a distance. Then walk down at the same pace as the crowd. When you get to the bottom, go straight out the front door and meet me at the end of the causeway. Do you understand?’

  Julie nodded mutely and he slowly turned her around. Jonathan leaned forward till he could smell her hair.

  ‘Go!’ he whispered urgently in her ear before giving her another soft push.

  She staggered a few steps and then set off with purpose without looking back.

  Good girl. Jonathan thought, Hopefully this will get us out of here alive.

  He started walking to the other side of the path to Julie so he could keep her in sight as she made her way through the crowd. As he did so, he unbuttoned and stripped off his light summer shirt. Underneath he had the typical English white T-shirt to keep him warm. The summer shirt went into a nearby rubbish bin as he started walking down.

  It was still chaos on the path before him.

  As the first shot had been heard at the bottom of the citadel, people had begun fleeing upwards. Then a later shot was heard higher up, so those higher up had begun to flee downwards.

  The net result was that the path, which was only ten feet across, had become clogged with people trying to flee in both directions. They had not accounted for mass evacuations in the design of fortress citadels in the thirteenth century. The only semblance of order among the melee was that the people trying to get down were mostly on the left side of the path while the people going up were mostly commandeering the right. Jonathan had made his way to the left and was now starting to move with the human tide downwards. As he did so he reached over to an American tourist heading up on the right hand side going up and whipped the Houston Astros baseball cap off his head.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled the Yank as he attempted to turn his fat neck to retrieve his sportswear. They were already separated do a depth of four to five people from their opposite flow of the human current. Jonathan shrunk down and then placed the cap on his head.

  Ahead, he could see Julie grab a large rounded hat and a tourist T-shirt from a shop she was passing on the far left of the path. She pulled the T-shirt on over her existing shirt and covered her lustrous auburn hair with the large rounded hat.

  It was a good move. From a higher vantage point, from where the killer would be looking, he would not be able to discern Julie at all.

  Semi-automatic gunfire was heard coming from halfway up the hill above them, followed by an explosion. Women on the packed path screamed and everybody started pushing.

  The urge to get out was greater than ever.

  Ahead he could see the path begin its final curve back towards the entrance courtyard. Julie’s large straw hat was visibly bouncing along in the distance.

  It’s going to be close. If he comes back down now he could still spot us.

  Higher up the hill, The Tatar was infuriated. The blood trail on the wall had run out and there was no sign of the targets. He would have outrun them to this distance. They had fooled him with one of the oldest tricks in the book. They had gone down the stairs at the fork.

  He set off running back down the hill and encountered small arms fire from the two police officers stationed at the site that were coming up the hill.

  He could see there were more security guards beh
ind the police officers as well.

  It would have been easy to kill the targets higher up, lose the trench coat and weapons and then calmly walk out as Tourist Tatar with the rest of the visitors.

  Now he had to fight his way out.

  So be it. he thought.

  He let rip with the automatic Uzi in his right hand and hurled a hand grenade with his left.

  ‘Eat my steely death - you filthy sons of motherless whores!’ he yelled in the dialect of Tatarstan.

  A second grenade appeared in his hairy hand with the pin removed.

  It was at the point of the second explosion that everyone on all the paths thought it better to go back down and towards the main entrance. This led to a few seconds of even more intense panic and yet more screaming, before everybody began moving in the same direction.

  This is great. Jonathan thought, We’re moving faster.

  He could see the entrance courtyard ahead with Julie at the edge of it.

  The only problem was that the courtyard was rammed full of people, due to a bottleneck of a few thousand tourists trying to get out of a stone entrance designed for a few hundred at maximum.

  The scariness of the moment seemed to pool Jonathan’s thoughts into a concentrate of lucidity.

  Disaster, We’ll never get through in time. The killer must be on his way back down now. Even if he reaches the one of the higher paths with a view, he could pick us off from there if he still recognises us. Or just he may just start mowing everyone down in the hope of killing us and clearing a path for his escape.

  Suddenly Julie’s head disappeared downward. Jonathan’s heart jumped in his chest.

  Had she been shot? He had not heard a shot close enough at the same time. Was she okay?

  No. Clever girl, she was obviously thinking of the same thing as me.

  The only way for them to get out through the stuck mass of humanity at the bottom was to go down on their hands and knees and crawl amongst people’s legs.