by Dermot Davis
"I know, sweetheart but if you have me on speaker phone you're probably driving, so keep your eyes on the road, okay? We don't want any accidents."
"How is she? Where is she? Where did she go?" he asked quickly.
"She didn't go into too much detail but she's staying with a lady called Abigail—"
"Abigail?" Andrew repeated with a shout. "That's my boss! What's she doing with Abigail?" he asked, though it was more a question he was asking himself.
"Abigail was the one that found her, apparently. She got lost on one of her adventures or something and I don't know, she just wanted us to know that she was alright and not to worry."
"She wanted us to know, like you and me?" Andrew asked hopefully.
"I imagine that she assumed that I'd tell you," Angela said in an effort to include him.
"I see," he said, sounding a bit confused. "Well, I have a meeting with Abigail later today, so maybe she'll give me more of the details."
"The good news is that our prayers have been answered and Fiona is safe and sound."
"Yes, of course. Are you working today?"
"I'm on call but, yes, that pretty much means I'll be working. They called me in every day this week, they're so understaffed, it's ridiculous."
"Well, thanks for the good news, mom. You really did make my day!"
"Drive safely Andrew. I love you."
"Love you too, mom," he said as he disengaged.
Andrew spent the morning preparing for his meeting with Abigail. Using the new letter from Simon as his guide, Andrew studied numerous computer files and reviewed the history of the core fifteen. He wanted to be as sharp and informed as he could possibly present himself. Once he had accessed Simon's secret files and scanned a few names, and studied the corresponding evidence of wrong-doing, he knew that he had really hit the jackpot.
Along with each of their names, Simon had collected and collated hard evidence of their wrongdoings and infractions including emails and scanned documents such as invoices, legal contracts, typed and hand-written letters, all of it was attached; each document an indictment of the individual's transgressions against the law, the organization or its company policy, or even the Order of the Wise Serpents.
Perhaps it wasn't truly possible to serve an organization run on secrecy and stringent regimentation, such as this anal-retentive outfit, without slipping up once or more over decades of loyalty and service. Had Simon not been so observant and, let's face it, Andrew told himself, downright devious, then perhaps each of those named could have violated their terms of employment, or broken the law, without consequence or negative repercussions.
Although the file in question was mischievously called "Bloopers," it pretty much contained enough dirt on his fellow employees to secure Simon the upper hand, had he ever been threatened or felt intimidated by any of them. The file was basically Simon's insurance policy and, presumably, considering that he had been left to rot in exile, if there was ever a right time to cash these organization chips in, then there was no better timing than the present.
"So," Abigail announced grandly, when Andrew sat down before her in the board room, "what have you got for me? I assume that you double-checked that list of names and were found wanting," she said with a smile. Her look suggested that she was prepared for and wanted to see him adopt an attitude of regret and culpability. "Never mind," she said with a wave of her arm. "We've all made fools of ourselves at some point in our lives. No need to harp on the errors of the..." she said and stopped talking when he grinned hugely at her. She looked at him more closely, then frowned. Andrew‘s cocky attitude was out of keeping with her understanding and expectation of how the meeting would go.
"What have you got there?" Abigail asked when she realized that the young man was waiting for her to finish, before presenting the evidence, which he was holding. She could tell from his expression that he was about to make a case that might possibly contradict her statements.
"Uh, I did eventually manage to access Simon's secondary file, Abigail, the file that contained the evidence to back up the claims of—"
"Let me see," Abigail interrupted and swiped at the hard copies he had made and stacked neatly in a manila folder. "These are printouts… of actual files? From… his computer?" she asked, too annoyed and upset to mention Simon's name.
"Yes," Andrew said, deciding to stay quiet and let the hard evidence do the talking. He watched her face closely, as her eyes began to noticeably twitch the more she studied each of the documents. "Could it be possible that these could be forgeries?" she asked harshly.
"I don't—"
"You didn't consider that maybe he's setting you up? Setting us up and laughing his head off as he did so?"
"I didn't really—"
"You think that these are real?" she asked, having interrupted him, yet again.
"They could be," Andrew answered nervously. "I don't know. I'm merely presenting my findings. I'm as confused as you—"
"Oh, I'm not confused," she interjected strongly. "I know Simon. I know him only too well. I know what he's capable of."
"I see," Andrew said, looking at the folder in order to avoid her scary eyes which were looking more and more like sharp daggers.
"You don't see, at all," she snapped. "How could you, you're just an overgrown child."
Taken aback by her mini outburst, Andrew couldn't help but look stunned. His mouth fell open and, eyes wide, he goggled at her.
"My apologies," she said, when she saw his expression. She was so riled that she had to stand and walk to the credenza behind her. "That was mean, I'm sorry," she said as she poured some water into a glass.
"Okay," Andrew said, hoping to be relieved, yet not feeling calmer. "Not a problem."
"You know so little," she said as she took a sip of water. "You don't know that Simon and I are related, do you?"
"No, I didn't know that," Andrew confessed as he thought twice about asking any questions or even saying anything else that could prolong the meeting or possibly rile her any further.
"Simon is my little brother; well, I should say younger brother, but, then again, he's always acted like he's a little brother. He behaves just the way little brothers tend to act, selfishly, annoyingly," she said quickly and feverishly. "He's always been a little brat, always wanting attention and feeling hard done by. You have any little brothers?"
"Uh, no."
"Leave the documents with me," she said, not listening or caring about his answer. "We'll soon find out what's what," she said and looked at the glass of water in her hand and found that she didn't really want it.
Wondering when, and if, Abigail was going to mention something about Fiona, Andrew gathered his stuff in slow motion.
"There's something else?" Abigail asked, sensing his reticence to leave.
"I was wondering," he said and paused, "Have you heard anything about Fiona?"
"Oh, yes, as a matter of fact," she said, as if it were an afterthought. "Good news. Our people managed to locate her and she'll be staying with me for a little while. We've been bonding," she said, with a weird smile.
Andrew couldn't tell if she was being facetious or was genuinely excited about becoming close, like girlfriends, with Fiona. Or mother-daughter, perhaps? Then again, Abigail and Fiona were related.
"Wait a minute," Andrew meant to say to himself but instead he said it out loud.
"Yes?"
"That would make you her aunt?" he asked, trying to imagine such a connection.
"That's right," Abigail said, that weird smile adorning her face, once again. "I would be her aunt Abigail and she would be the niece that I never knew I had."
How weird, Andrew felt like saying aloud but he managed to restrain himself. "She's okay, then?" he asked, watching her face closely for tell-tale signs of possible deceit.
"She's in excellent health, thanks for asking. Anything else?" Abigail asked, like she had other business to attend to and wanted to conclude the meeting as soon as possible.
"I'd love to see her, come visit maybe," he said hopefully.
"Ah," she said heavily, like there was a problem. "She doesn't want to see you, actually," she said, looking him firmly in the eyes, like it was a warning? "At least not for the time being, I'm sure you understand," she said, returning her attention to some papers on the table, as if he were dismissed.
"She said that?" Andrew asked, hiding his pain. "That she didn't want to see me?"
"I thought that you knew that, Andrew," she said as if maybe he was being purposefully forgetful or foolish in some way. "Just because she has decided to stay with me for a time hasn't changed anything, I'm afraid. Her intentions and her convictions remain. I'll put in a good word for you, of course, but as you probably know by now matters of the heart can take some time to heal, more than we'd like, most often. You understand that, don't you?" she asked, again with that subtly threatening look in her eyes.
"Yes," Andrew answered, grabbing the last of his things and standing to depart. "Yes, of course. I'm really glad that she's okay. I'm sure you'll be a terrific aunt, I mean, that you are a terrific aunt," he said, his hurt and disappointment beginning to show.
"Good work," she said as he walked to the door and fumbled for the door handle. "I didn't mean to sound unappreciative, I am. You did good work and you found what you found. I didn't mean to take my irritation about Simon out upon you, my apologies, if that was the case."
"Not a problem," Andrew said as he finally managed to open the door and escape the room.
Deciding to pay a visit to Simon, to fill the man in on recent developments, and inform him of the good news about Fiona, Andrew waited patiently in the now too-familiar visiting room of the prison. "You're looking more cheerful today," Andrew remarked when a freshly-shaven, more optimistic Simon sat across from him. "You got a haircut, as well?" Andrew noticed. "Did you meet someone?" he joked, looking around at the scary dudes in their dirty prison garb.
"I had a hearing this morning," Simon said happily. "My legal team expect to have me out on bail in the very near future," he said with the smile of a child.
"That's great news," Andrew said with mixed feelings. It had been relatively easy to make the arrangements to transfer funds to a top-notch legal team and initiate proceedings.
"Don't worry, I won't be throwing you out of my house," Simon added when he noticed a look of concern in Andrew's eyes. "I think there's room enough for the two of us, wouldn't you say?"
"Sure, of course. I could put you up in my house, no problem," Andrew said with a smile. "Maybe have the grounds crew clear out the guest house for you."
"You gave Abigail the shit storm?" Simon asked, hoping to hear how devastating the revelations were for her.
"I did," Andrew said, his mind elsewhere, "but first things first," he said, like he had a list of things to discuss and, with their time constraint, he didn't want to miss any of them.
"Shoot," Simon said, secretly impressed by the boy's nicely-developing take-charge demeanor.
"Did you connect with Henry and set him up with your legal eagle team?"
"Yes and no," Simon answered and his head tilted sideways.
"What does that mean?"
"Yes, I contacted Henry… but he didn't want anything to do with me. In fact, he would never want to have anything to do with me in a million years, so really, that was a non-starter."
"Crap," Andrew said, genuinely disappointed. "Talk about being your own worst enemy."
"So, I made some calls," Simon continued, like he had some good news. "See, people like Henry…" he said and paused, "…they'll never be convinced out of their set ideas. The rich rule the world and it’s up to guys like him to fight them every inch of the way."
"Okay," Andrew said, wondering where he was going with the discussion.
"People like Henry consider themselves to be the tiny David fighting the giant Goliath."
"You have a point?" Andrew asked impatiently.
"So, I called a small non-profit legal outfit that gets off on cases like his because they too are thinking that they share the same noble fight. When I looked up his case and told them all of the rhetoric that he spewed at the judge, I could fairly hear them frothing at the mouth, getting excited, like they had finally found their mouthpiece, their cause celebre."
"They're taking his case?"
"Not so fast, old son," Simon cautioned, like it was his story and he didn't want to be rushed. "Just like him… they wear suspicion and paranoia on their sleeve. In fact, they eat that stuff up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They smelt a conspiracy afoot," her said with a smirk.
"And?" Andrew said, his patience stretched.
"They wanted to know what I was getting out of it. They didn't believe that I was an uninterested party because, in their world, there are no uninterested parties, which is fair enough, actually."
"And?"
"And so I offered… and they accepted… a generous donation to the cause because, at the end of the day, money does trump everything else."
"They're taking his case?" Andrew asked, hoping for a yes or no answer.
"They contacted him, told him that they were fighting all of the rich and powerful elite in the world and he took to them like a duck to water. It was a complete and utter mutual appreciation society, from the moment that they connected. Of course, in truth, the guy's an idiot. The judge clearly lost his rag and over-stretched, sentencing the bloke to something no other judge in the real world could ever truly get away with, but because he was representing himself, Henry's in jail for no other reason than he's a big-mouthed, short-sighted moron, no offense."
"None taken," Andrew said happily, believing that he knew the end of this story. He stared at Simon. It was almost pleasant to see how much Simon relished sharing his news.
"They expect to appeal, accuse the judge of discriminatory practice or some such, and shorten Henry’s sentence to less time than he has already served. In short, they expect they can have the guy walk that afternoon."
"O-kay," Andrew said approvingly. "Thank you!"
"No problem. Let's just say that I'm glad he wasn't in for manslaughter. What else you got?" he asked, looking happy. "You gave Abigail the backup evidence?"
"I did and she went ape shit. You never told me that Abigail was your sister… did you?" Andrew asked with a curious smile which soon vanished when he saw that Simon looked like he had frozen solid. The man’s eyes grew huge, his mouth a gash, with some emotion on his face that Andrew couldn’t readily identify. "What?" he asked, concerned for Simon's state of mind.
"She told you that?" he asked with in a very grave tone. "Abigail said that I was her brother?"
"Yes, why?" Andrew asked intently and waited as Simon looked like his brain was sifting bits of information at a million miles an hour. "She said that you were related," Andrew said, trying to be clear. "You're not?"
"Yes, of course we are, but she must have a reason for telling you that," Simon said with a seriously troubled facial expression. "She hasn't told a living soul that we were family for years. For years and years, in fact. She tells you, casually, in passing?" he asked, like it was a conundrum, a troubling conundrum. "It means she's up to something."
"Like what?"
"What were you talking about at the time?"
"The list of names, the evidence. She, like, turned white with rage when she saw the printouts of the incriminating evidence. Said that you were devious and maybe setting her up; that the evidence couldn't be trusted because you couldn't be trusted."
"Hmm," Simon grunted, still looking unconvinced. "I still don't know why she would reveal what she did to you, that part doesn't make sense. Why would she want to convince you of anything? You're just an insignificant cog in her complex machine. In the scheme of things, you’re as unimportant as an insect. Again, no offense."
"Well, actually, there is something else," Andrew offered, remembering the strange meeting and Abigail’s anger and her revelation about Fiona,
wondering its significance. "Remember I told you that Fiona may have gone missing? Abigail's people found her and now Fiona is staying with her, in her hotel, I guess, temporarily."
Again, Simon's face froze into an expression of utmost concern. Andrew stared at Simon. The man’s face was a mask of mixed emotion. "Fiona staying with Abigail?" he repeated, like it was the worst news that he had ever heard in his life.
"Temporarily, since they found her," Andrew added weakly.
Taking a series of deep breaths, Simon finally let out one almighty sigh. "What have you told Abigail, about Fiona?" he asked as he stared sternly into Andrew's faltering eyes.
"How do you mean?" Andrew asked, worried that he might say the wrong thing.
"Has Fiona ever told you about her birth, for instance?" Simon then asked.
"That it was special?" Andrew asked, wondering if that was what Simon had in mind.
"She told you that? That her birth was special?"
"Yes," Andrew answered, shuffling uneasily in his seat. "She said she was a Moon—"
"Don't finish that," Simon quickly interrupted and he frowned and rubbed his forehead as if he now had a serious issue on his hands. Andrew felt anxious as Simon appeared to break out into a cold sweat. "Have you mentioned that to Abigail?" the man asked pointedly, the muscles in his neck bulging with barely restrained emotion.
"No," Andrew answered, shaking his head adamantly.
"Think, man, think!" Simon demanded, his face reddening. "You must have said something!"
"No, I swear. I never… I wouldn't have told her that. I never told anyone that, I don't think," he then added, his brain scrambling for memories. "I may have mentioned it to Professor Dowling once, possibly, but I'm not sure," Andrew said, his mind now making a belated connection. The young man felt sick when he realized that he probably had shared that specific information with the older man.
"What?" Simon asked urgently when he saw a look of recognition in Andrew's eyes.
"Professor Dowling and Abigail..." Andrew said and paused, realizing the mess-up.
"What?" Simon asked, more urgently.
"Have been… dating, sort of… maybe. They used to be married, are married, I don't know, everything's so mixed up," the young man said with confusion.