Friday, January 23, 2015
I shrugged off the bone-deep chill of the Welsh winter and entered the pub. I noticed the eyes of several men following me. One even cleared his throat to attract my attention, but I ignored them.
“Finally came in out of the cold,” the bartender said with a smile. He was big and shaved bald, with a formidable beard and several tribal-looking tattoos on his arms. “Yeah, I seen you out there, watching.”
“Woodford Reserve,” I said.
“Never ’eard of it.”
I scanned the Scotches on the back bar. “Oban, neat,” I said. “And a Bell’s for my friend.”
“Bloody ’ell,” Wildman said, eyeing my jungle green camouflage jacket, threadbare slacks, and the dockworker black-knit cap I’d taken to wearing everywhere, even before the weather turned cold. Even the thrift stores had cameras these days. But not this kind of bar.
“I see you had your eye on something specific,” the bartender said, sliding us our drinks. “But this one ain’t worth it, I can tell you from experience.”
“Fock you, Bruce,” Wildman snapped. “He’s a mate.”
Wildman pounded his shot, while I sipped my Oban. It was a smooth Scotch, light with some smoke, perfect for this type of weather.
“How’d you find me?” Wildman asked.
“I figured you’d come home to see your mum eventually,” I said. “You always were a momma’s boy.”
He snorted. “Too true.”
“I remembered you got in a fight outside this bar a half decade back, and eventually I put the pieces together.” Took me long enough, but I was a dumb-ass, and selfish, too. I’d started to know myself, though, and that had to be a good thing, right?
“You still like the work?” I asked Wildman.
“It’s all right,” Wildman said. “But you heard Apollo went belly-up, I assume. Got a new name, Executive Actions, new bosses, but it’s bollixed.”
They hadn’t gone belly-up. They’d changed the name, ousted a few directors loyal to Winters to try to shed the disaster with Abdulaziz, but it was the same company. They were probably blackballing Wildman because of his part in the Saudi affair, but no sense telling him that. It was better that way. At least they weren’t coming after him.
“You in touch with Boon?”
Wildman nodded and signaled for another shot from the leering bartender. “I know where to find him,” he said. “Why? You got an idea?”
I sipped my single malt. I could see men in the background, many built like Wildman and the bartender, checking us out. I didn’t like it, too public, but I had to trust them not to talk to the wrong people, or hopefully anyone at all. Gay bars were good for secrecy, though. Outside these walls, there was no incentive to talk.
“I’ve got a job,” I said. “My own operation this time, nobody to answer to.”
“It dangerous?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Borderline criminal, outside normal channels?”
“Of course.”
“So black my own mum would be ashamed to know about it?”
“I don’t know your mum, but it’s a safe assumption.”
He drank. “I assume there’s no money in it.”
“A bottle of whiskey or two at best.”
“Sounds perfect,” Wildman said, with a smile so big his missing teeth showed. “When do we start?”
Two hundred fifty kilometers and a world away, Sir Kabir Basrami-Heatherington was in his office late, writing at his antique desk. The desk had once belonged to Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth I, who had risen from obscurity in the 1500s to become the shadow sovereign of England, entrusted by the queen to guide foreign, domestic, and religious policy, and to manage her most sensitive affairs. Walsingham was the man who kept order in a disorderly kingdom, and later in life he had formed a secret consortium, the House of Walsingham, to preserve that order. Sir Basrami-Heatherington was not only dedicated to the man’s ideas, he was also a member of the consortium, and he trusted in the old spymaster’s ways, both large and small. He never sent an e-mail, for instance. His offices didn’t have computers. If orders had to be written, he preferred the security of pen, paper, and trusted courier.
The further we advance, he thought, the more we go backward toward the truth.
Behind him, a fire was lit, a Scotch was poured, and a large monitor showed silent news coverage of the Saudi coronation. The banker spun around in his antique chair to watch the new king and, more important, his son.
“We have big plans for you,” Kabir muttered to the new king’s son.
The new king was already old and ill. The young prince was in his early thirties, an infant by Saudi royal standards, ambitious and malleable. Kabir would convince him to break up Saudi Aramco, the massive state-owned oil company, even if it took the rest of his career. That was a snap of the fingers in the time line of the House of Walsingham, but it was long enough to change the Kingdom and thus the world.
The news camera panned across the doting audience. Kabir didn’t notice Prince Abdulaziz standing on the periphery, in the shadows. Even if he had, he wouldn’t have recognized his old business partner. The two had never met. That was Brad Winters’s job, and he botched it, royally.
Kabir pressed a button, and the monitor retracted behind the bookcases. The fire crackled. His protégé entered the office, as if by telepathic command.
“Yes sir,” the young man said.
“Courier these letters to Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and Istanbul. Immediately.”
“Very good, sir.” The young man retrieved the envelopes and walked out the pocket doors. Outside, he passed two burly men in suits and earpieces, each holding a Heckler & Koch MP5SD submachine gun with built-in silencer.
He walked down the hallway, passing two more sentries, then downstairs. Another armed man stood near the antique grandfather clock. The young banker-in-training nodded at him, but the guard remained as stone.
Two framed notices were posted in the staff room, where only guard-mercenaries like that man would see them. The first bore the headline apprehend immediately and showed two photographs of Brad Winters.
The second had the headline warning in red block letters. Beneath were two pictures of Tom Locke, a physical description, and the instructions kill on sight.