The Simpatico Series Box Set (3 books in 1)

by Dermot Davis

  “Sounded like what? Like, I didn’t know what I was talking about?” she challenged.

  “Looks like it’s working,” he then said, noticing the color returning to Lily’s cheeks. “It got hairy there for a second.”

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she?” Fiona asked in a neutral tone.

  Looking at Fiona in an attempt to read her thoughts, Andrew hesitated in answering. “She’s kinda cute, I guess,” he answered, like he never really noticed.

  “Yeah,” Fiona said sarcastically. “She kinda is.”

  “So, what’s happening in the hotel room?” Andrew asked with greater urgency. “We should get back there.”

  “You should get back there,” Fiona replied, sounding a tad miffed. “I’ll look after cutesy-pie here, make sure that she’s really okay. Wouldn’t want her to die of a severe headache or something.”

  “Okay,” Andrew said, looking ahead as if he was thinking about everything. “Yeah, I’ll get back to the hotel and see what’s going on,” he said, sounding like he really didn’t want to leave.

  “It’s your grand plan, after all,” Fiona said but he couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not.

  “Yeah,” he then said, like that’s the plan. “Let’s touch base later,” he said as he kissed her quickly and left.

  Chapter 19

  Sitting together on the hotel sofa, Dowling and Abigail enjoyed sharing a lovely pot of English breakfast tea and a tray of assorted petite sandwiches. “I know that it sounds absolutely horrendous now, all these years later, but at the time…” Abigail said and paused. “They were different times, Gus, you must agree.”

  “Yes, of course,” Dowling agreed, sounding like he wasn’t holding any grudges against her.

  “The transition of the cold war into something else, entirely; the first gulf war and the ending of the era of Maggie Thatcher,” she said, thoughtfully.

  “Yes,” Dowling agreed, although secretly wondering what it had to do with their relationship.

  “I only married you, officially, in order to secure a green card,” she said in a tone suggesting that she wasn’t proud. “It wasn’t that I didn’t have feelings for you, I did, it’s just that I was under some pressure, from different forces that I won’t go into…” she said, her mind trying to remember the circumstances all those years ago. “I was meant to stay on, in America, you see.”

  “Yes,” Dowling said, not wanting to interrupt her voluntary explanation with questions.

  “But there was a development in the UK; a death, that caused an unexpected vacancy and I was appointed to fill it, totally unexpected, believe me. I had no idea I’d end up where I’ve ended up, no idea at the time, whatsoever. Such is life, you know?”

  “Yes,” again, Dowling agreed, helping himself to another sandwich.

  “You must hate me. I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest.”

  “I… I had no idea you were so high up?”

  “Oh, I wasn’t at the time, oh, no. You know how secretive they were; they are…”

  “Yes.”

  “I was given my orders and that was that. Hush, hush and all that. Once I said yes, well, things happened so fast. I got whisked back to the UK and before I knew it, I was organizing districts and making big decisions that I had no business making, or real understanding of, all by myself. Out of my depth completely and things just seemed to go faster and I didn’t understand it till later but things at that level never really settle down; there’s always a crisis and fires breaking out all over the place. Not to say that I wasn’t good at my job, I was very good, the best. But still,” she said and didn’t finish as she topped up her tea. “More tea?”

  “Yes, please, thank you.”

  When the door opened, both their heads turned to see Andrew enter. “Hi,” he said as casually as if he had just popped out for some milk.

  “Hi,” Dowling answered, rising to his feet to greet him properly with a man hug. “I’d like you to meet Abigail, my,” he said and stopped himself, “old friend,” he then finished.

  “Yes, we’ve met,” Abigail said, standing and extending her hand. “So good to see you again,” she said, sounding like she meant it.

  “Don’t let me interrupt anything,” Andrew said, taking off his jacket and looking around for somewhere to put it. “I see you finally got some tea.”

  “Yes,” Abigail said with a grin. “It took some time because the first time they sent it to the wrong room.”

  “Oh,” Andrew said, realizing an explanation was in order.

  “But we finally managed to figure out that this is your room and not mine, which looks eerily similar, I must say.”

  “Yes, I booked this room because, what with Simon being otherwise engaged, I thought that I’d stay closer to your room in case, I didn’t want to screw up, I guess. Mess up,” he then said, correcting himself.

  “Would you mind if I talked shop with our young friend for a few minutes?” Abigail asked Dowling.

  “Oh, not at all,” he said, looking around for his coat.

  “I don’t want you to leave, if that’s okay with you, I’m enjoying your company and I’d hope to spend a bit more time with you,” she said to Dowling and smiled when he smiled.

  “Yes, of course, I’m enjoying you too, I mean, your company, yes I’ll be in the other room,” he said, looking as nervous as a teenager.

  “Better still, why don’t you wait for me in room 405,” she said, rooting into her purse to find the room key. “I’ll be along shortly.”

  “I’ll check up on my emails,” he said, holding aloft his new smart phone as he left the room.

  “Come, sit,” Abigail beckoned a nervous-looking Andrew. “Some tea? I took the liberty of requesting an extra cup.”

  “Uh, yeah, sure, why not?” he said as he sat opposite. “You have a headache?” he asked, noticing that her bottle of aspirin sat beside her on the table.

  “Oh, no, not so much,” she said as she poured the tea. “These aren’t really aspirin, as a matter of fact. I carry these around with me because they come in handy at initiations. Very simple ingredients, potassium, magnesium and so on but they act like an antidote to the initiation ambrosia that the initiates take. You’re familiar with that?” she asked innocently.

  “Uh, yes, just had one, an initiation, recently.”

  “Yes, sometimes an initiate suffers a negative reaction or fails to wake up afterwards. Some milk?”

  “Uh, yes, please.”

  “These little marvels wake them right up in a jiffy!” she said brightly.

  “Good to know,” Andrew said, taking a sip of the tea that he didn’t really want. Was she awake the whole time?

  “So, let me ask you, Andrew,” she said and stopped.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want?”

  “What do I want?”

  “What do you want?” she repeated.

  “I’m not sure I understand the question.”

  “You must want something. Everybody wants something. What is it that you want?”

  “You mean in general, specifically as it relates to work?” he asked.

  “What do you want?” she asked again and stared coldly at him as if that was her final attempt at the question.

  Andrew nodded his head like he understood that what she wanted was the whole enchilada: the big question of the day. “I want out,” he then said. “I want out of the organization and the order.”

  “Wonderful,” she said, as if he had just told her that he wanted world peace. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  “Okay,” he said, his body relaxing.

  “If you want out, then why don’t you leave?” she asked like it was that simple.

  “Because,” he said and paused, looking at her like it was a trick question, “the organization doesn’t allow anyone to leave.”

  “Oh, what nonsense,” she said like it was the most ridiculous thing. “Who told you a lie like that?”

  Looking at
her with a questioning look, Andrew wondered if she was playing some game or was maybe so far away from the organization hierarchy that she was out of the loop.

  “You can leave any time that you want. Watch, I’ll show you,” she said and jumping up from the armchair she ran to the door and opened it wide. “See, you can leave.”

  “But they told me…” he said, looking from her to the open door.

  “Who told you what?”

  “Simon,” he said, sure that what he heard him say was correct.

  “Oh, Simon,” she said, like she was discounting the man as an idiot. “It’s no accident he lied himself all the way into a prison cell, is it?”

  Unsure what to think or believe, Andrew sat with a perplexed look on his face.

  “You don’t really want to leave, do you?” she then asked. “Not really.”

  “I, uh,” Andrew hesitated.

  “You’ve been bitten by the bug, haven’t you?” she asked with a gleeful expression on her face. “I can see it written all over you. You walk out of this hotel room, into the street and then what?” she asked but he didn’t have an answer. “You get a job at Burger King? Perhaps they’ll make you manager some day? If you work hard enough and you behave very friendly to all the customers?”

  “I can just walk?” Andrew said, standing up.

  “Yes, of course,” she said, her hand still on the doorknob, holding it open.

  “And if I stay?” he asked.

  “Ah,” she said, like that was a very interesting question. “If you stay, then things can get very interesting, can’t they?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Are you staying?” she asked, her body position suggesting that she was about to shut the door.

  “I, uh,” Andrew said, paralyzed through indecision.

  “Let me tell you why we like people to stay,” she then said in a more serious tone. “People that stay make more loyal and happier employees. Staff turnover is a serious problem in every industry, you know. It negatively affects company morale and apart from the expense and effort to constantly train in new people every time there’s a vacancy, every time someone leaves, it’s like we lose a part of our family, don’t you think?”

  “I guess,” Andrew answered, like it sounded pretty reasonable.

  “We had a situation with an employee on the other side of the pond. He was an accountant with us for years and years. He came to the board and, just like you, he said that he wanted to leave. Why do you want to leave, they asked him, after all those many years of excellent service? I don’t want to be an accountant anymore, he told them. I want to follow my life-long dream and be a writer. Well, then, they said, why didn’t you say so? They transferred him right out of the accountancy department and posted him in one of our sister companies, a media corporation. Happy as Larry, he’s been writing up a storm ever since!”

  “I see,” Andrew said, looking impressed.

  “So,” Abigail said, closing the door and sitting down opposite as Andrew sat back down. “I’ll ask you again: what do you want?”

  “I want to do something that I’m good at and make a ton of money doing,” Andrew answered.

  “By not mentioning what you’re good at, I’m assuming that you don’t really know; which is acceptable and quite common at your young age, correct?”

  “I guess,” Andrew said, thinking. “What did you mean when you said that Simon lied himself all the way into prison?”

  “Well, let me share something with you and, as a matter of fact, this might be an area where we could actually help each other out,” Abigail said, like she may have an answer. “In any organization and most particularly in larger organizations, people naturally begin forming groups within it. Some groupings are founded on shared interests or philosophical beliefs and so on but very often these groups, over time, may find themselves at odds with the principles of the organization at large. They exist to serve themselves rather than the organization as a whole. Let’s call them rogue groups.”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, nodding his head like he fully understood.

  “We have identified Simon as being a member of such a group,” she continued.

  “Ah,” Andrew said, like it made perfect sense. “He lied to me, all the time.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Abigail said, shaking her head as if it were a terrible shame. “What kind of lies did he tell you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know; there were so many. Like with Quanta Systems, for instance. He said that the CEO was destroying the planet’s oceans with his invention and he had to be disposed with,” Andrew said, like the lie was so preposterous, it would make you laugh.

  “Oh, well, you see that is very true,” Abigail said as she pulled a folder from her purse. “These are pictures of the “collateral damage” that his invention was having on the oceans,” she said as she displayed multiple photos before him that showed huge ecological damage: dead fish and birds floating in a darkened and polluted ocean, etc.

  “Wow,” Andrew said, wincing at the destruction of life in each of them.

  “I don’t understand the psychics of it but apparently his device can harness some kind of energy from the sea. Amazing, yes. But at what price, you ask?”

  “Wow,” Andrew said again as each photo seemed more devastating than the last.

  “And this is the result of using the device with greater ecological consideration,” she said, displaying a new set of photos that showed idyllic scenes of clean, pure and vibrant ocean life. “You see the difference?”

  “Pretty shocking difference, yeah,” Andrew said, clearly impressed.

  “You see, that’s the work that we do, Andrew. One of our business concerns is to look for opportunities such as this and by our influence we change the way that people do business: from doing harm to doing good. We want to make this planet healthy and prosperous for all, not just the greedy few.”

  “Wow,” Andrew said again, liking what he was hearing.

  “Of course we do make a profit; we’re not a charitable organization but we operate by a set of ethics and principles that most businesses would consider unnecessary or too costly to the bottom line, you see?”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, looking at the dramatic before and after photos one more time. “So, if Simon didn’t lie about this company, then…”

  “Oh, he lied about many other things,” Abigail quickly interjected. “That’s the thing about lies and the people that are good at telling them. When they mix in a few lies with the truth, how can you tell which is which?”

  “Right.”

  “Which is why it’s very challenging to isolate and identify individual members of these groups. It can be very difficult, indeed, very… time consuming and painstaking.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not to mention very demoralizing to every diligent hard worker in the entire organization.”

  “I could see that, yes.”

  “Which is where you could come in; a man of your obvious intelligence and skills,” she said in a flattering tone.

  “What would I do?” Andrew asked, rising to the challenge.

  “We shall take our time to consider where best to place your skillset within the organization but right away I can see that you can help us with information gathering.”

  “Okay,” Andrew said, liking the concept.

  “We might consider for you for a position in Tactical Affairs, perhaps?” she said it like a question. “You’re familiar with the workings of the CIA or its equivalent in Britain, MI5?”

  “Yes,” Andrew said, encouragingly.

  “Do you have an abode?” she then asked.

  “No,” Andrew answered, unsure of her question. “I’m staying with my mom, temporarily.”

  “How would you like to move into Simon’s house?”

  “In the Palisades?”

  “Yes. I call it Simon’s house but it’s not actually his. It belongs to the business; he’s merely a lodger, basically. His choice, of cours
e. He preferred to keep all his money in the bank and other investments. It’s now yours. If you’d like.”

  “Uh, yeah, sure. I love that house.” Andrew said like he just won the lottery.

  “Very good,” Abigail said and standing up, extended her hand to seal the deal.

  Andrew also stood. He took a few seconds to consider as he looked at her outstretched hand. Unable to stop himself, he reached out, took her hand and with a broad grin on his face, shook it firmly.

  Fiona and Lily didn’t exactly hit it off, in the beginning or at all. Checking in on Lily every now and again, Fiona would merely ask her how she was doing and did not encourage further discussion. Delighted to hear the front door bell finally ring, she rushed to meet Andrew and threw her arms around him as soon as she opened the door. “I missed you so much,” she said.

  “How is Lily doing?” was the first question that he asked as he quickly broke away from his demoralized girlfriend.

  “She didn’t die,” Fiona said drily as Andrew passed to quickly get to the booth and see for himself.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked Lily who remained seated on the floor of the enclosure.

  “Much better, thank you,” she answered. “Hungry.”

  “Do you think she could leave the booth and get something to eat?” Andrew asked Fiona.

  “I think she needs to stay inside,” Fiona said, making it sound like they shouldn’t take any chances. “Until the morning. What do you think?” she asked her boyfriend.

  “Are you okay with that, Lily?” he asked.

  “Better not to take any chances, I guess,” Lily answered.

  “Andrew will make you some food,” Fiona said, secretly smiling. “What would you like?”

  “I don’t know,” Lily considered. “What can you make?” she asked Andrew.

  “Yeah, what can you make?” Fiona looked up at him and repeated.

  “I’ll see what’s in the kitchen, I guess,” he answered like he really wanted someone else to volunteer.

  “I don’t think that would be very courteous to Professor Dowling,” Fiona suggested. “You should get something in the store. Then bring it back and cook it up. For Lily.”