Transition

by Ethan Arkwright

  The ‘El Rancho’ hotel in Madrid had two stars on its sign, both forged. Its manager was studying the topless shots in yesterday’s tabloid newspaper when a shadow fell across his grimy desk. As his dirty hair started to move from the lifting of his head, he suddenly found his air supply cut off as a behemoth of a hand came from nowhere to crush his throat in a vice-like grip.

  The man was lifted clean out of his seat to find himself dangling in the air and looking into the face of a huge man the like of which he had never seen and would never see again.

  He gasped for air as he scratched ineffectually against the arms of his assailant. The Cajun was at least seven foot tall fully erect, and seemed almost half as broad again. He held the squirming Spaniard with ease.

  The Cajun brought the man close to his face and the manager, through his rapidly dimming vision, still managed to notice the huge scar that traversed the massive face, that his attacker’s skin looked like leather, the eyes slightly reptilian.

  The Cajun sniffed the man and his face screwed up in disgust. The other huge hand appeared from nowhere and was held just in front of his victim’s eyes. Protruding from each knuckle looked like a blade at least an inch long, from a knuckle duster buried in the thick flesh.

  ‘The French and Englishhhhh,’ The Cajun hissed in the Spaniard’s face. ‘Owners of Renault car outside. Where now?’ The hand on the throat was released slightly and the man gasped for air.

  The other hand of The Cajun brought the blades closer to the eyes.

  The eyes bulged.

  ‘G-g-gone,’ the hapless man eventually got out. ‘Checked out … this … morning.’

  The hand around the throat constricted once more, even tighter this time.

  The eyes bulged almost to the point of bursting.

  ‘What room?’ The Cajun hissed, before releasing his prey slightly once more so that the man could speak.

  ‘Six … teen.’

  The Cajun’s arm holding the man swung slightly before the hotel manager was hurled clean across the counter and into the opposing wall. He smashed into a picture, glass shattering everywhere before falling onto and through a small coffee table below. The Spaniard was knocked clean out.

  The Cajun sniffed the air again before making his way to the room Jonathan and Julie had stayed in the night before. The car in the back had already been checked through. He would find what he needed in the hotel room to continue the search. He had been a day behind them in France and was half a day behind them now. With a scent as fresh as this ... he would find them in hours.

  He would catch his prey. He always did.

  31

  Madrid

  The Dichotomy were silent as they looked at each other on the gold couch.

  Jonathan had told them everything that had happened, and given them all the information he knew. He still felt that these people, even if they were slightly insane, offered the best chance of helping him to stay alive and find out why assassins were trying to kill him.

  The two men in front of Jonathan were united in a silent bond that was greater than culture or religion: they could sense the presence of vast amounts of money to be made.

  ‘Yes,’ stated the small Jewish man. ‘Very interesting. We have been tracking various events since the murders in Russia. Now the connections are becoming clearer. What is, of course, missing from your story is some form of substantiation.’

  ‘I don’t have anything solid,’ Jonathan replied. ‘I don’t have my laptop with the original analysis, as it was blown up in Paris. The rest of the files are sitting on company servers. If I log onto the system they will immediately know where I am. There are severely paranoid people out there without much of a conscience. The only proof I have now is a trail of bodies, bullets and explosions that has followed me and others who also witnessed those.’

  This wasn’t entirely true. Jonathan, like all good consultants, sent backups of his files to anonymous internet email accounts. But this was the last ace up his sleeve, which he wasn’t prepared to play unless he absolutely had to.

  ‘Jarg,’ spat the Arab. ‘That stuff follows us all the time. The question now, of course, is how we can profit from this. The Russians can be tricky. Nothing is what it seems in that country, but these people are the future as far as oil and gas goes. We need to get engaged. Take a drink my friend.’ He directed his words at Jonathan while motioning to the nearby tea set. ‘Let’s order up some room service, and talk at more length about the nature of things.’

  32

  London

  Within the curved columned building that was the headquarters of the largest oil company in the world, half of the office space on the twelfth floor was taken up by a department simply described as ‘Portfolio’.

  Jobs in this department were never advertised. Nobody ever saw requests for data coming out of the department, yet somehow any analysis that emerged from within its closeted walls contained all the latest company and industry information.

  The work done by the department was top secret within the organisation, yet the outcomes of its analysis were the catalyst for many of the projects that rippled out around the world, affecting more than two hundred thousand employees directly, and millions of people indirectly, through what Portfolio spreadsheets told them was a good idea.

  The people who worked in that section of the twelfth floor undertook all the divesting, market entry, merger and acquisition work that kept many people around the globe busy.

  If anything big and scary was going down within the galaxy of the organisation, someone in the Portfolio room knew about it.

  A few floors below, Jorge Armando was banging away on his computer keyboard within the organisation’s internal consultancy. Jorge was a slick- haired, goateed Colombian who generally yelled and butchered the English language as a matter of course. He always had Know Your Enemy by Rage Against The Machine playing on his laptop as he worked on projects. In ‘coaching’ by senior management he had been advised that this was an odd thing to be doing while working for the largest oil company in the world. Since they did not actually tell him to stop doing it, however, and since many of his un-British tendencies resulted from the revolutionary tendencies in his Latino blood, he persisted.

  He was, after all, a very good internal consultant.

  He was also a mole for MI6.

  The unknown fact about Jorge was that he had a British father who had remained patriotic to Britain even after living in Colombia for the remainder of his life. His British patriotism remained, even after changing his name to match his wife’s noble family name, and raising his family in Colombia. His father had instilled in the young Jorge a sense of the inherent greatness of Britain, and the conviction that Her Majesty’s Government needed to be served and defended by every member of future generations of their family.

  Through his contacts in the British civil service, his father had also been able to get Jorge selected as a youth recruit into the network of British intelligence services that still covered the globe. Jorge’s graduation from university with a Masters degree in economics coincided nicely with a recruitment drive in MI6 to bring in more agents who were loyal to Britain but did not look or sound remotely British.

  Five years later, he was one of their best moles among those stationed within the global multinationals. Ironically, his ‘foreignness’ as a Colombian actually made it easier for him to be recruited through the usual channels into the British-based oil company. It helped them fulfil their workplace diversity quota.

  Jorge had been surreptitiously monitoring the Portfolio department for weeks now. While the people in the office around him thought he was working on spreadsheets, he had hacked into the building’s closed-circuit camera system, and was monitoring suspects who appeared in little video screens on his laptop.

  He was sure that the second lead MI6 had on the Dalton case, apart from Jonathan Marshall, the other person from within the organisation trying to contact the intelligence services with claims of
information, was someone in that room on the twelfth floor.

  In the last week he had quietly put his efforts into trying to find out who the people in the Portfolio department were. There were also agents planted outside the building at all hours to monitor people going in and out – looking for anything or anyone strange.

  Jorge had narrowed the list of names to ten possibilities. Two of these were internal consultants within the department he worked in who had been seconded to projects within Portfolio. On his laptop screen, he chose two security cameras to watch these suspects all day.

  As he furiously banged away on his laptop to the screaming sounds of Know Your Enemy, he was thinking that one of the names on his list knew what this was all about. He was thinking that one of them had better crack soon – before many more people died.

  33

  London

  Warren Tarrant poured himself a soda water, reclining in his plush leather chair inside the latest of the company’s corporate Lear jets parked on the runway at London’s City Airport. A black limousine with tinted windows pulled up alongside the sleek white jet.

  A well-built man with short cropped hair in a black suit and tie got out of the driver’s door to walk briskly toward the waiting steps that led to the interior of the aircraft. The man took the steps two at a time with ease, revealing his dedication to his fitness and strength training. As he disappeared into the dimly lit interior, the plane door shut behind him. Inside the aircraft, once his eyes had adjusted to the light, the man walked straight towards Warren Tarrant and sat in a plush cream leather seat directly opposite him.

  ‘The plane was swept for bugs an hour ago. It’s clean,’ asserted the man in the suit. He had a monotone voice that carried a tone of military instruction.

  ‘Good. Thanks, Derek,’ Tarrant replied, with an approving nod.

  The man in the black suit was Derek Munro, not a limo driver at all but the head of the company’s secret security, as was his father before him.

  His father had been involved in all the good times of the last century, getting the company in and out of Iran, the Suez incident, the Mexican nationalization, and the Bolivian revolution. He had regaled his young son with swashbuckling tales of entries and exits from countries, removal of troublesome politicians and installation of all sorts of prominent figures. So the son had dutifully done his time in the army and in private security firms before joining his dad’s firm. The swashbuckling days that had tacit government approval were sadly long over. The present action was all about how covert you could be in the interests of business. Only the highest decision- makers knew of the existence of Derek and his cadre of black-suited men.

  Derek had become slightly tense since sitting down. It was immediately apparent that Tarrant was perturbed about something.

  This was not a good sign.

  Tarrant was very perturbed.

  Things were not turning out as they were supposed to for him. He had two loose cannons of knowledge running around on the continent talking to God knows who, there were a few botched assassination attempts that had left a mess in a few cities, and to top it all off, his partner in the east was suddenly acting very strangely.

  If the truth ever came out, he knew he could kiss his grand ambitions goodbye. The idea behind all this was to become ridiculously wealthy and powerful. That was his destiny. If the deal did not come off, then he would only be modestly wealthy and powerful. Sure, that would sting, but it would definitely be better than going to prison and thereafter having to slum it with the common man again.

  Yet the real motivation for Warren Tarrant was power. For him, the whole kick out of this was power.

  It was all going so smoothly, but after the last few days he suddenly felt uneasy about everything. It was as though his grip of control on the situation was loosening.

  He needed backup plans in case the whole thing threatened to become public.

  Plausible deniability was what he needed, and as little evidence as possible connecting any of the messy events to him.

  ‘Thanks for coming so quickly, Derek,’ Tarrant began, as he fished a manila folder out of his leather briefcase.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ Munro replied. ‘Always ready to serve the organisation.’

  Tarrant smiled. ‘Yes, your father would be proud.’

  Munro granted himself an inner smile. That was what made his sometimes nefarious deeds worthwhile.

  ‘Here’s the situation,’ continued Tarrant. ‘Someone wrote a report that could have some negative implications for the organisation and some of our partners. It may potentially be leaked. A minor information spill is occurring. I’d like you to clean it up.’ Tarrant reached into the folder and pulled out a couple of pictures, which he slid across the small glass drinks table.

  Munro picked them up and studied the faces of a man and a woman.

  ‘Last seen in France,’ Tarrant continued. ‘They are traitorous employees of the organisation. Their full details are in this file. Mission one is to have them permanently “outsourced”.’

  ‘Understood,’ Munro confirmed.

  ‘Good,’ Tarrant said. ‘I would have asked you to do this sooner, but I left it up to a business partner to sort out and he’s let me down – so it’s now a matter of urgency. I also want you to put watches on the entire Portfolio team on the twelfth floor of head office. If any of them starts acting in even a remotely strange manner – I want to know about it. Any more potential leaks about a large project we’re working on will come from them. For mission two, I’d like you to set up an operation to also permanently outsource this individual.’

  Tarrant slipped another photo across the table. ‘I want you to get your men mobilized as soon as possible.’

  Munro’s eyes widened involuntarily as he looked at the picture on the table. He let out a long, slow whistle.

  After a few moments’ silence, he looked up. ‘Is this who I think it is?’

  ‘It is. Your father would be proud,’ Tarrant said, with a face of stone.

  Derek Munro looked down at the photo again.

  He was holding a picture of the new vice president of the Russian Federation.

  34

  Madrid

  Jonathans meeting with The Dichotomy had been going for some time now. They could not seem to get enough detail on everything he described. When he had run out of things to say, they had lapsed into silence again as the two men seemed to commune once more on key points.

  The Arab eventually split the silence. ‘The interesting part is that you are not trying to profit from all this.’

  Jonathan’s throat and eyes felt dry from being under a quasi-interrogation for so long. He cleared his throat before he started speaking. ‘My motivation is that the sooner I can get the truth out there, and the more people know it, the sooner it eliminates the motivation to kill just me. The focus will go elsewhere.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the Jewish partner reflected, before his eyes eventually shifted to the Arab. ‘Most of our business has always been in the Middle East, but we’re looking to expand. Some of our Chinese partners are looking for the same thing. This could be the way to do it. But there are some pieces missing. We can put together a deal in Russia, but we need to first find out the entire story, and then pull in someone who has connections in that part of the world.’

  He went silent as he looked to the Arab for a response.

  Eventually the Arab turned to make eye contact with him. ‘Not him,’ he said with surprise. ‘You cannot be serious. Besides, he does not like us.’

  ‘He will like us if we bring him this deal.’

  The Arab went silent again, considering. ‘Yes, for you are right. He is the only one who can stitch it all together – like a fine tapestry.’

  ‘You must leave tonight,’ the Jewish partner said to Jonathan. ‘I give you my best man, Avi the Giant, to protect you.’

  ‘And I,’ the Arab said grandly. ‘Give you Hakkan, with his Desert Falcon to guide you.’

&nbs
p; One of the largest of the white-garbed Arab guards stepped forward from the wall.

  Next to him was a hooded bird of prey on a stand. The man took a leather glove that came up to the elbow, and pushed his left hand into it before holding it in front of the bird. The winged carnivore obediently stepped up and gripped the glove when it was brought near. The guard bowed, ready to serve.

  While Jonathan was still digesting this sight, he became distracted and turned. A large shadow was cast over him as a giant of a man in a grey suit materialized behind him.

  Jonathan almost gasped aloud.

  It was the largest Jewish man he had ever seen. Avi must have been at least seven and a half feet tall, and filled out his oversized suit well with a bulk of muscle.

  The Dichotomy clapped their hands get everyone’s attention. ‘This thing will all be resolved for better or worse in a couple of days. You must go now.’ The Arab said.

  Both the guards started moving toward the hotel room door and motioned for Jonathan to join them.

  Julie is not going to believe this, Jonathan thought, as he got up to walk out.

  35

  London

  Deep within the headquarters of MI6, a meeting was being held to update William Gladstone on the progress of the case.

  Once again, Harry Shaftsbury sat quivering before the head of the secret service and a few of his pinstriped, black-suited deputies.

  The only difference between this meeting and the last one that Harry attended, was the disembodied voice of someone with a Spanish accent called ‘Jorge’ occasionally floating over the proceedings from a speakerphone.

  One of the senior agents on the case had just finished a PowerPoint presentation showing the latest mind maps of scenario-planning for what could happen in the next few days. Gladstone leered at the screen over his china teacup. He hated all this modern rubbish of presenting everything on ‘slides’. He sometimes felt some of these modern agents couldn’t take a crap unless a bullet point flying in from the left of the screen said it was okay.