“I heard the Vanicek girl’s going to go . . . missing soon as well?”
Wilhelm’s fixed smile remained inviolate. His eyes flashed annoyance.
“You ‘heard’ that, did you?”
“I told you, Ernest, I don’t . . . I don’t care as much as I want to live,” he replied. “I know what you’re up to, outside the wire, and this. . . .” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Team-building exercises, maybe you’d call them?”
“The loyalties I am building will ensure we survive this winter,” Wilhelm answered hotly. “This is a new world. Maybe not a better one. Do not judge me. Be . . . glad, instead.”
Ben-Gurion oddly snickered then, motioning down to himself, his cane.
“I’m not exactly able to keep up with your other ‘advisors’.”
Wilhelm gave away nothing except a lot of nostril flares. Ben-Gurion wrestled with his own shame, slumping back into the wheelchair with his hands as if mangled in his lap.
“So?”
“Her name’s Lilianna,” Abe said, hesitant. “I thought. . . .”
“No, forget about it,” Wilhelm answered at once. “Sincere apologies. She is already . . . You will not be able to involve yourself in Vanicek’s daughter’s fate.”
Wilhelm fought a sudden weird giggle, as if plotting some kind of Shakespearean marriage farce and not something far more sinister.
The engineer’s eyes fell into his lap and he slumped. He needed a blanket. Wilhelm studied Ben-Gurion like a specimen in the lab – in the morgue already, perhaps.
“Tom Vanicek is a threat to us,” Wilhelm said. “There, I said it. It pleases me no more than you, Abraham.”
“And Lowenstein?”
“Dead weight.”
“And your own vendetta,” the software engineer replied.
“We have never seen eye to eye,” Wilhelm said almost casually. “And I wondered often, through those years, what it would be like to hunt her down and take her final moments.”
Ben-Gurion gave a pained sigh and he wiped his eyes.
“And?”
“And now I know.”
*
“I JUST DON’T like it,” Denny Greerson said as the black, bald-pated Councilor stood there as implacable as ever, mirroring the Safety Chief’s arms-folded pose and not doing quite the same job of being irate. Wilhelm kept betraying the slightest smirk – the same one with the habit of irritating people, including his subordinates, which also secretly delighted him.
“After everything else, I did not think you would be so bothered, Chief,” he said.
“I said don’t call me ‘Chief,’ Ernest,” the other man snapped.
Wilhelm’s face deepened into a scowl. His arms dropped heavily to his sides.
“And you can call me Councilor, in turn,” he said. “You are in charge of Safety now, Greerson. People need to know it, too. If you do not want the job, I can easily find someone else.”
“What, like one of those guys?”
Greerson motioned to the next room. Wilhelm scoffed, though it looked more like a pout.
“There are still more than fifty thousand survivors sheltering with us, Greerson,” he said. “We cannot manage them all, or it will be chaos. Like last winter. We need those communities to control themselves.”
“Is that who they are, community leaders?”
“Select community leaders, yes.”
“Insiders,” Denny offered. Wilhelm scowled.
“The Brotherhood will be answering to you, Greerson,” he said, then added, “Chief,” to reinforce his earlier point.
“They don’t have the training . . . or the discipline,” the Safety Chief replied.
Wilhelm studied him for half a second, fingers stroking across his own close-shaved chin.
“You remind me of the man who wants to get in the elevator, Denny, but does not want to go down,” the Councilor said. “You were happy enough to learn about our . . . ‘team-building exercises’, correct? You can play nice with the Brotherhood. We need Sandler and his men, understood?”
“You don’t find them. . . ?”
“What?”
“A little bit, uh, racist?” Greerson said. He quickly held his hands up. “I know you forget you’re black sometimes, Wilhelm, but they never will.”
“The Brotherhood aren’t racists, Greerson.”
“Coulda fooled me,” the Chief replied. “They fell out with that Vegas guy and his Black Panther wannabes.”
Wilhelm only snorted. Greerson raised an eyebrow.
“What?”
“Sandler is a Jew,” the Councilor said. “There are no ‘races’ anymore, Greerson – only the hunters and their prey. We need their numbers. At least for now. And that is why you need to control them.”
Greerson blew his cheeks out and looked away. Wilhelm’s expression hardened again.
“I have work to do, Chief, and you are going to have that little Vanicek whore soon enough,” he snarled. “I would expect a touch more gratitude.”
Greerson’s mouth moved agape like he was about to cluck, but the taste of it didn’t sit well with him, leaving him open-mouthed and displeased and ashamed and guilty as all get out.
“Yeah,” he answered eventually. “I’ve got things to do too.”
“Then I will leave you to it,” the Councilor said.
He turned his shoulders as if to the exit in not much of a subtle hint.
Greerson raised one pale eyebrow.
“Er, see you over there, then?” he asked.
“Yes,” the Councilor said. “I will meet you there, when it is all done.”
“Cool,” Greerson said. “I can find my own way out.”
Wilhelm nodded, eyes hooded, and waited until the troop commander was gone before moving across to the richly-paneled sliding wooden doors he now drew apart to reveal a long table with three men sitting impatiently waiting for him. The air hung with smoke, instantly setting off another of Wilhelm’s scowls.
“Who on Earth said you could smoke in here?” he snapped as he entered. “Put it out.”
One of the men with Sandler sat up as if busted by an angry parent, and he looked around apishly with no ashtray in sight, which only angered their host further because all of that ash now spotted the expensive carpet.
“Fool.”
He swept in and plucked the hand-rolled cigarette from the Latino’s hand, then stabbed the burning tip into the shoulder fabric of the man’s shirt. Romano remained too startled to react at first, looking down as the skinny cigarette crushed into him, then registering the faint pain of the lit end buffered by his shirt. He batted Wilhelm’s hand away, and Wilhelm let him do it, circling back around while gray-bearded Zardoz only snickered, and Aaron Sandler kept his eyes on him, trying hard, as he always did, to look too cool for school.
It wasn’t a convincing act. Sandler had a weak build and his attempts at swagger were worse. He sat slumped, insouciant, failing to channel the spirit of a young James Dean as he flicked his eyes across to his other henchman with a look of annoyance, as if he hadn’t also sat through ten minutes of Romano’s smoking before Wilhelm finished his confab with their departed Safety Chief.
Wilhelm took heavily to his chair at the end of the oval table.
“Are we ready?” Sandler asked him. Trying to cool the air.
“We are waiting on one more person,” Wilhelm said.
They seemed disturbed the elegant-looking Councilor now looked completely unflustered.
“But before he arrives,” Wilhelm said, “do I need to impress on you, yet again, the nature of our agreement? It matters nothing to me that you killed Burroughs, but if you cross me, I have the entire City Administration at my disposal.”
“Save your threats,” Sandler said. He kept flicking his eyes to Zardoz beside him, over-reliant on the tough older man’s dangerous aura. “Already told you, we’re a part of that Administration too. Half our men are City workers, one way or the other.”
�
�And there will be more work in the days to come,” Wilhelm assured him. “I never saw snow until they stationed me in Ohio,” he added, almost as if it were now just a pleasant conversation. “I thought my first winter was long, but it was nothing like last year. We need each other.”
Zardoz betrayed a snicker. Wilhelm’s eyes darted to him, ready to crack down on dissent. The disturbing glaze in the old trucker’s eyes urged caution instead, which meant the Councilor’s gaze just hung there, as if granting him permission to speak.
“Just remember you don’t cross us too,” Zardoz wheezed and bared ursine teeth. “I lived on human flesh before. We’ll eat you too, if we have to, to live. You got that?”
Wilhelm exhaled and sensed as much as noted the shadows moving through the sitting room outside. Romano and Sandler held their breaths as if waiting for the return threat.
“I am going to show you what loyalty brings,” the Councilor said. He broke into a startling white smile. “And I think you are going to like it, too.”
*
FINNEGAN LOCKE LOOKED more comfortable than any of them in the plush Councilor’s apartment – apart from maybe Wilhelm, of course. Locke entered alone, trailed by one of the staunch members of the Councilor’s security detail, bolstered with fresh and loyal recruits now the idiot Amsterdam had embarked on the doomed Greenland mission. The twin troopers – dubbed “Milo & Otis” by someone other than him – waited for Wilhelm’s dismissal like a pair of trained Dobermans, which was just the way he liked it.
“You can wait outside,” he told them.
The Kansas farm boys nodded and left. They were remarkably short on words, which the Council man also appreciated. Amsterdam asked too many damned questions anyway, so maybe his exit was just as well.
“Where are we going?”
Sandler grunted the question before Wilhelm even greeted Locke like the genial host he pretended to be, though the Brotherhood man’s voice pitched somewhat high as always. Hard to ignore. Wilhelm did it anyway, favoring the newcomer instead with a smile he hoped was welcoming without looking too much a fool. Despite his expensive suit, Finnegan Locke – apparently known to others as Fagin now – looked every bit the predator. He stepped into the meeting room with athletic grace, handsome with the silver flecking his beard matched in the fabric of his suit and not at all detracted by the gruesome scar cutting a trail through the stubble from his mouth to his neck.
They shook hands.
“Good of you to come,” Wilhelm said.
“I didn’t expect an invitation.”
Locke looked towards the three shabbily-dressed men each hunched around the table, and for an odd moment, Wilhelm thought the newcomer might explode in violence. The Councilor’s cock hardened. He fought his grin, motioning towards the table instead as he sat again, adjusted his black combat pants, and rested his elbow on the table turning his discomforted grimace on the others.
“I thought it was time we met,” the Councilor said to the late arrival. “You came at a good time. These men are here, like you, to consider an offer from the City.”
“From the City, or from you?” Locke asked.
Wilhelm sighed as he mimed depression.
“The truth is, it could be said I am the City right now,” he said. “After the chaos wrought by Madeline Plume, the Fury attack on the Council, and the difficulty we have had reigning in the chaos since then. . . .”
He motioned open-handedly, and turned the gesture towards his three Brotherhood guests.
“Sandler, Zardoz, and Mr Romano and I were just discussing an extension of the City’s security arrangements, and the need for loyal men.”
“That sure makes me wonder what the hell I’m doing here then,” Locke said. He didn’t looked fazed by it – more like a shark, awaiting the meal he knew would come.
“I think you have a part to play, Mr Locke.”
Sandler sensed the pause in the conversation and mistook it as his cue to assert some kind of dominance. He nudged a belligerent chin towards the newcomer, unaware what little threat was in it.
“You’re the dude with all those kids,” he said.
Surprisingly, Locke favored Sandler with an engaging smile, though it was a little too American Psycho for Wilhelm’s taste.
“They call me Fagin,” Locke said. “You’d be surprised the places kids can go, us adults can’t.”
“Exactly why I wanted you here, Mr Locke,” Wilhelm said to interrupt any other reply. “I hope you will excuse me that I resist calling you ‘Fagin’. It is a little derivative, right?”
Locke shrugged. “Not many kids left reading Dickens.”
Wilhelm nodded, and dropped his hands flat on the table and opened his palms because he read an article online once saying it was a trustworthiness cue inherited from mankind’s primate ancestors. Locke merely sniffed in his direction as the Councilor spoke.
“The Brotherhood has agreed to support the City’s efforts to maintain order in any way possible, and I am making the same offer to you, Mr Locke.”
“It’s an offer, is it?” the suited man said. “It sounds like a request.”
Wilhelm smiled as if Locke said exactly what was scripted for him in this encounter he’d planned.
“Certainly, it is a mutual agreement,” Wilhelm said. “But I think you will see quite quickly, once I have explained, there is more here for you and your ‘Urchins’ than I will get in return.”
Shark-like, Locke only furled an eyebrow.
“You are a . . . niche provider, Mr Locke,” Wilhelm said. “I respect a businessman. You saw a unique opportunity, and you went with it. How many of these children do you control?”
“I don’t ‘control’ anybody, Councilor –”
“Oh please don’t talk nonsense,” Wilhelm cut in. “If these Urchins are not under your control, then maybe there is no point in any discussion after all. Winter is coming, Mr Locke.”
Wilhelm winced at the cliché coming unbidden from his lips, and raised a hand he didn’t need to, as if to stop Locke writing a mean tweet. But the self-styled Fagin only watched him with a bemused, yet somehow unamused expression.
“It really is coming,” Wilhelm said. “You were not here last year. How do you propose to feed all those little mouths once the Citizens learn we are restricting the Rations supply?”
“‘Restrict’?”
“The ambitious project of the City is in a shambles, Mr Locke.”
“Call me Fagin, for fuck’s sake.”
Wilhelm nodded, smiling like a Buddha.
“We stumbled through last winter, and it got very difficult,” the Councilor said. “We no longer have anything like the stability or goodwill we enjoyed a year ago. Forager teams, and disruption and loss of life among workers in a number of agricultural projects, mean we cannot possibly feed everyone through the winter. We cannot magic up supplies that do not exist.”
He felt the steel of Zardoz’s gaze on him and refused to look – though he couldn’t fight off a flashback to the man’s cannibalistic remarks of only a few minutes before.
“You’re offering supply?” Locke asked.
“Oh, I am offering a lot more than that,” Wilhelm said. “That is the reason for today’s little bus tour.”
He smoothed down his pants and stood as Sandler and the other Brotherhood men only now noticed he was dressed for the outdoors. The Councilor caught the look and smiled disarmingly.
“Oh no, I have some other urgent business,” he said and smiled again to reassure them. “My household guard will drive you.”
“Drive us where?” Sandler asked.
“I would say it is a surprise, but you probably still cannot believe I have your best interests at heart,” the Councilor said as if it wounded him.
He gave a little downcast look, then brightened, playacting at best, and playful enough now to let the others see it, like he might be a fun boss to have around after all.
“It is a present – part of what I am offering to you,
” he said. “Now that our talk today is finished.” To Sandler in particular, he added, “You will liaise on logistical support directly with my Safety Chief Denny Greerson, understood?”
Sandler nodded slow. Beside him, thin but rangy-looking Romano asked, “What about uniforms or somethin’? When we were backin’ trooper patrols under Burroughs, we had armbands.”
“I think it will be better for everyone if your support is a little more low key than that.”
Wilhelm smiled, hoping he didn’t need to elaborate. Before they could ruin his fantasy, he motioned towards Finnegan Locke.
“I just need a word now in private, with Mr . . . with Finnegan, here,” Wilhelm said. “You will find my men waiting at the front door of the chambers. I will talk with the three of you tomorrow, after your tour . . . and you can tell me what you think of my hospitality then, OK?”
Bewildered, the three Brotherhood men shuffled out as asked. Wilhelm swiveled back to Fagin, who’d never ceased watching him the whole time with cat-like suspense.
“I have some whiskey,” the Councilor said politely. “But I am short on time.”
“Whiskey and not wasting my time are two of my favorite things,” Locke replied.
“Good.” Wilhelm almost steepled his hands, though they were standing, which gave him nowhere to rest his elbows. “I think we are going to get along famously. Please, come back in.”
He re-entered the meeting room and only then noticed the lounging Brotherhood had also drained his meager liquor cabinet as well as stubbing their cigarettes out on the floor.
*
LOCKE SETTLED INTO the chair he’d not taken during their previous chat, and though shortness of time was on his mind, Wilhelm gratefully took his seat as well. Under the table, he massaged his aching thighs and tried not to translate it into a pained look as he politely grimaced at the vagabond gentleman opposite.
“Our ‘friends’ helped themselves to the remaining whiskey,” he said weakly.
“Broken promises already, Councilor,” Locke said. “Not a good look.”
“These are not the times they once were,” Wilhelm said. “But a little booze is the least I hope to offer you, Mr Locke.”
After The Apocalypse Season 2 Box Set [Books 4-6] Page 47