A Hitlist of Plutocrats

 

Ian McKinley

 

Chapter 1: Jim

 

It was a perfect day in late summer as I strolled along the Hasliberg Panoramaweg, a path that provided a breath-taking view across the Rhone valley towards Rosenlaui, the Schynige Platte and the more distant mountain complex that included the Eiger, Jungfrau and Mönch. So perfectly Swiss, complete with cow bells in the distance, rustic wooden farmhouses and barns covered in flowers and, only occasionally, the distinctive smell of manure that has been recently sprayed on a field.

Mid-week, the walking trails were relatively quiet and the mountain bars even more so. Basking in the sun, ignoring the dangers of high altitude UV, I had spent an overly long lunch in the Bidmi Bärgbeizli before heading back to the basic mountain chalet that I had rented for a month of R&R away from the bustle of the real world. I was thus at least an hour behind my usual schedule when I turned the last bend and caught the first view of my rustic holiday abode. This was just in time to see it explode in a gigantic blast that, even at a distance of about a hundred of metres, knocked me flat onto my arse.

Because it’s what I do, the analysis of this attack was immediately running in the back of my brain. No sign of any aircraft, so probably a drone with some kind of thermobaric payload. The poor man’s cruise missile.

My ears were ringing but, regardless, I managed to detect the vibrations of an incoming SMS in the phone that nestled in a breast pocket of my walking waistcoat. The message was straight to the point: do not even think about fucking with us.

Strangely, this caused my initial shock to transform into cold determination. It was less than 24 hours since I had been contacted by an attaché from the British embassy in Bern, requesting me to help them respond to some potential terrorist threat to their nuclear facilities. I had asked for time to think about it and, in the interim, decided that I was too old for this kind of intelligence work. I had actually been mentally drafting a polite email to get me out of any commitments when I just missed being blown to shit.

As the phone was already in my hands, it was only a few seconds before I texted the guy in Bern: OK, I’m in.

I was still cautiously approaching the scattered remnants of what had been my holiday accommodation, aware that at present my possessions were only what I stood up in, when my phone rang.

“Hello, Jim, this is Phoebe. We’ve got a bit of time before the bad guys spot that you weren’t home when they blew your holiday digs to buggery.”

The very British enunciation made it clear that the embassy team, probably MI5 or some similar organisation, were already aware of what had happened. This was rather scary and made me wonder about the threatening SMS. “The attackers already know that they missed. I’m not sure if they were just trying to scare me or if the SMS that I received was to check if the attack had been successful. In any case, what do you propose?”

“Extraction is en route. If you can just head downhill towards the field beside that quaint wooden barn, it’ll make it easier for the chopper to pick you up.”

“You’ve got me on a satellite image?”

“We could, but the local webcams make that a bit superfluous.”

“So, I’m getting picked up by a helicopter…” I could already see a Swiss military machine approaching, “…and going where?”

“Canada.”

“Canada! What the hell’s that to do with the threat I heard about yesterday?”

“Absolutely fuck-all.” I could almost detect a smirk in the voice. “Which is exactly why you’re going there.”

 

***

 

Less than 24 hours later, I was sitting on the balcony of my hotel room in the Inn at Laurel Point, looking over Victoria harbour. I had actually visited Vancouver Island once before, when in my early twenties, but nothing at all looked familiar. The coming and going of large car ferries provided a strange contrast to those of seaplanes, which had a base just opposite my hotel. The former, a very efficient way of moving any kind of materials from one coastal location to another, seemed to reduce any need for the latter, which were faster, but much noisier and far less cost-effective. Nevertheless, a dozen or so planes left for every one ferry. Of course, the justification of moving so many large vehicles – the smaller ones mainly SUVs and the larger RVs – from one place to another was also questionable. From my perspective at least, this was as bizarre as European control of assault rifles would be to most of the Americans using these ferries.

I heard my room door open and wondered for a few seconds if I had forgotten to put up the do not disturb tag on my door. I then remembered that I certainly had and thus realised that this was not room service entering. There is something about terror that causes some to freeze, whereas, for others, it provides a jolt that switches the brain to overdrive. Luckily, I am one of the latter. I was wearing nothing but a hotel robe and was armed only with a cup of coffee from the Nespresso machine. However, I had the advantage of being on the terrace when the intruder would expect me to be in the bedroom.

Moving very slowly to ensure that the chair made no noise, I stood up and moved to a corner of the balcony that was out of direct view from the room. As I expected, the intruder moved to check the bathroom after finding the bedroom empty and then crept stealthily towards the open door leading onto the terrace. Very cautiously, a head slowly emerged from the room, just placed where I could fling the lukewarm coffee at it and follow this up with a jab to the throat that, ideally, would collapse the windpipe of my attacker.

In the days of my youth, that might have been game over. Unfortunately, neither my strength nor reflexes were what they once were. The coffee seemed to have done a good job but, nevertheless, my opponent managed to twist away so that my hand hit only the side of a short-cropped head – probably causing more pain to me than to my victim.

My body may be feeble but, at least, my mind was fast enough to recognise my limitations in any extended conflict. I could have used my fists, knees, elbows, feet – but a younger, faster fighter would inevitably kick seven shades of shit out of me. So, I grabbed a pair of ears and smashed my bald head directly into a face that I only then spotted to be female. I felt her nose break, which was, as planned, accompanied by a gush of blood that splashed over my scalp.

I came from a generation that learned, on pain of a thrashing from your mother, that a boy should never raise a hand against a girl. This is probably what delayed my follow-up, which would have finished her off with a classic upper-cut to her exposed jaw. My hesitation was enough to provide an opening for her to knee my groin, leaving me rolling on the floor in excruciating agony, unable even to breathe. My brain was still struggling to come up with a counter-attack when I blacked out.

 

***

 

Waking up was a process of going from unconsciousness to pain. The agony in my groin dominated everything else. There was only a growing disconnect between the recognition that I was still alive and the awareness that the intruder could have done anything she wanted to respond to the damage I had inflicted on her. I slowly opened my eyes to see a face glaring at me from very close proximity: well within what the woke-crowd would call my personal space.

Blood was dripping onto me from her shattered nose and, already, it was clear that she would have a couple of spectacular black eyes. Maybe one more hit to her nose…

“Don’t even think about it, you sad old git,” she growled, the impact of the threat lessened by a snort and a messy spit to keep blood from running down her throat. “I’m supposed to take you to meet my Mum, my boss that is,” she was clearly caught out saying too much. “Anyway, just do as I fucking tell you and maybe I won’t mash what’s left of your aged testicles.”

“Miriam,” I groaned, “don’t let it be fucking Miriam.”

“Fucking Miriam is probably what got you into this mess in the first place,” my nemesis smiled maliciously, “don’t you think so, Dad?”

Could it possibly be my daughter who was still staring into my eyes as she stabbed a hypodermic into my neck and I lapsed again into unconsciousness?

 

 

Chapter 2: Rachel

 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck!” How the bloody hell did that old bastard manage to break my fucking nose? Miriam had warned me that he was more dangerous than he looked, but my mom could rarely be trusted to be telling the truth about anything. I wondered yet again why I ever agreed to join her in her dubious national security operations. A little voice in the back of my head reminded me: lots of money, a glamorous lifestyle and regular opportunities to fuck-up bad guys. Yes, it has its positive aspects.

Anyway, instead of walking this ancient fart out of here, I now needed to move to plan B. I already knew where the chambermaids kept the trollies that they used for moving used towels and bedding to the basement for pick-up by a laundry service van and had the app to summon such a van already loaded. Fundamentally, this should be a fairly straightforward extraction, but it now required that I avoid anyone en route. The clothes that I wore would not look out of place for service staff, but my bloody visage would certainly attract attention.

I had a quick look in a mirror and saw that my nose was bent to the side. Supposed to let a doctor do this, but anyway…

“Shite!” I cursed aloud at the shock of pain when I pulled my nose straight. The flow of blood increased markedly and I bent forward to stop it running down my throat. I held just below the bridge of my nose between finger and thumb of my left hand and then hit the wrist hard with my right. Another excruciating jolt of pain, but the flow of blood decreased considerably.

I spent five minutes in the bathroom, stuffing torn tissue up my nostrils to stem the residual bleeding and then washed the blood from my face and neck. There was, however, nothing I could do about my rapidly-bruising face and the blood-stains on my white t-shirt.

A quick rummage through my victim’s luggage revealed a broad-brimmed hat and a grey cardigan, which was much too big but less noticeably so when the sleeves were rolled up. Not ideal, but maybe enough to get by.

Picking up a laundry trolley proved no problem, as the corridor outside the bedroom was presently empty and these were found at in a room beside the service elevator located at the end of the floor. Back in his room, all I had to do was lift my captive into the laundry sack. Unfortunately, in the process this revealed that the old bugger was nude below his bath robe. What a truly awful sight! Euthanasia should be compulsory when your body looks as bad as that.

As quickly as possible, I covered the body in a pile of bloody towels – hoping that these would divert attention from myself in case I bumped into anyone. As it transpired, this precaution was unnecessary. Finally a stroke of luck. My path to the service elevator and then through the basement to the waiting van was completely clear.

The van was autonomous and a simple hack redirected it to my extraction pick-up point, where Miriam would be waiting. It seemed that I was finally getting a break until I climbed into the back of the dusty van and sneezed. Blood immediately started to pour from my nose. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck!”

 

Chapter 3: Jim

 

The next couple of days were a drug-addled phantasmagoria. Firstly, I seemed to be somewhere remote on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where I could see a young bald eagle perched outside my window. Then I was moved to Vancouver itself, the sirens at night a regular disturbance that seemed typical of the centre of this fentanyl-zombie-infested city. Then a move to somewhere in the middle of fuck-all. Osoyoos, it was called. Rather idyllic in a bizarre manner, but still in the middle of fuck-all.

There I met Miriam. While I stared at her in shock, she casually handed me a glass filled with a vile green fluid. “Drink this! It’ll counter all the stuff that Rachel’s been pumping into you.”

I gulped the drink down and was amazed at how quickly the fog that I’d been living in for the last few days cleared. Miriam fucking Isaacs seems to have a daughter called Rachel: how fucking biblical. “Miriam – what the holy fuck’s going on here?”

Typically, the grey-haired Amazon rolled her eyes to express her disdain at my ignorance. “It seems that the Powers Above”, she provided emphasis with air quotes, “have decided that we need to work together to sort out one of their little problems.”

“Absolutely no way! Go directly to fuck and do not pass go. There is no possibility that…”

“Well, to tell the truth,” she grinned ferally while breaking into my tirade, “it’s actually a really fucking humungous problem. In such a case, opting out isn’t an option.”

“Jesus suffering Christ on a bike!” I rubbed my face as if it would help me to wake up from this nightmare. “I know that you’re linked into the alphabet soup that comprises international so-called intelligence, but I’m only a techy and retired to boot. So, you can just fuck off.”

“It doesn’t work that way. It’s like your UK Official Secrets Act. Once signed, it always applies.”

“It’s decades since I ever did anything for the Brits and, even then, I never signed the Act.”

“Ah, that’s the wonderful thing about that Act, it applies whether you’ve signed it or not.”

“Whatever, but don’t forget that I’m Swiss now. This means that you can stuff your Official Secrets up your well-used arse.”

“You’ve still got a UK passport, so it still works. And, anyway, you never had problems using my arse in the past.”

“Mum, for fuck’s sake, too much information!” Only then I realised that Rachel was sitting in a corner on the large sitting room.

For a moment I was shocked into silence. Then the surreal nature of this situation crashed in on me. “Yes, indeed, I remember that you had a very tight arse. But, whatever I got up to there could not possibly have resulted in a daughter.”

“He isn’t as thick as you said he was,” Rachel sniped.

“And,” I interrupted to prevent any further calumny, “the fact that I had a vasectomy at least a decade before our unfortunate encounter would suggest that your bastard offspring was fathered by other than moi, regardless of whatever else I might have gotten up to in my drunken state.”

“Moi, moi,” Rachel parroted. “Is this supposed to indicate that he’s polylingual?”

“Actually, he is polylingual,” Miriam smiled in her scary manner. “This doesn’t, of course, excuse him for being a cunt, in whatever language you want to choose. Chatte, fica, kisa, fitte… I’m sure he could add a few more obscure versions. But,” she glared at me, “your genetic contribution to your daughter is undeniable.”

“No way, no chance, not at all. Before and after you, I’ve had sex with hundreds of women…” I was distracted by her snort, but realised that my exaggeration might have been a bit obvious. “Well, dozens…” Another snort. “Whatever. Lots of women without any protection, other than STD prophylactics of course, and not a single resulting pregnancy. It was more likely to be a virgin birth in your case.”

“And the genetic evidence?”

“Which I haven’t seen and, in any case, couldn’t be obtained without my permission.” Rachel’s sneer made it clear that lack of consent wouldn’t be a consideration in their case.

“Does this mean you’re admitting there’s a chance?” Miriam smiled. “Can’t you see a little bit of yourself in your daughter?”

“Myself? You’ve got to be joking. This girl’s a nutcase. She broke into my hotel room and assaulted me.”

“Well, you did break her nose…”

I looked at Rachel and could see that she still had the traces of a couple of black eyes, even though her nose had been straightened. “She fucking deserved it! What the fuck was she doing in my room anyway?”

“Well, if you hadn’t been such a tosser, she’d have explained this to you and saved a lot of grief on both sides.”

I felt a cold shiver run down my spine. “Wait a minute, did you blow up my holiday place in Hasliberg?”

“Of course not,” Miriam grimaced. “That was the opposition and they’re the reason that we have to work with you in the first place.”

“Ah, so this wasn’t planned as a family-bonding experience?”

“If it was my choice, I’d bond the toe of my boot with your flabby arse.” Strangely, Miriam smiled as she said this. “Anyway, the three of us have a job to do.”

“The three of us? I know that you’re tough as nails, but why bring the child into it?”

“Fucking child! I’ll fucking child you…” Rachel erupted from her seat and flew towards me, exactly as I expected her to. I am old and I am slow, but a programmed reflex easily turned her attack into a throw that slammed her against the wall.

“As I said, why the child?”

“She’s a lot better than you think, just as I’m a lot better than you.”

Well, the latter was something I couldn’t disagree about if the topic was gratuitous violence and grievous bodily harm. “But why the fuck am I involved in the first place? You’re an aging spook and I’m an even older risk analyst. We worked together once, almost three decades ago, and that didn’t go well.”

“You identified the sources of materials that the IRA were using to build a dirty bomb and I neutralised the threat. It was a great success and the reason that I was fast-tracked into the Interpol anti-terrorist group.”

“You bombed the house of the husband and wife involved, killing them and their six children.”

“I did no such thing…”

“Okay, you provided the address to the UDF and implied that the bomb was targeted on Belfast Protestants rather than central London. The net effect was the same.”

“The bombers were scum and a lot more families would have died if we hadn’t stopped them in their tracks. In any case, the message was important. We had to show that any escalation of terrorist threats would be met by escalated responses. And it worked. They never attempted anything like that again.”

“That’s just when you had your wicked way with me, shagging me while the parents and kids were being murdered.”

Miriam shook her head, but did not attempt to rebut the accusations. “There are times when hard decisions need to be made. That’s what I do.”

“This has fuck-all to do with your decisions. You get turned on by violence, the more extreme the better. I still remember it: you were completely on fire. I was two-thirds pissed, but you still managed to shag my brains out. It’s burned into my mind. You know, I fell in love with you then, would have done anything for you.”

Further hyperbole was avoided by Rachel making gagging noises while she pretended to shove her fingers down her throat.

“Anyway, that didn’t last long. A couple of days later, I heard that you were shagging the UVF bastard who actually carried out the bombing. Of course, being the evil bitch that you are, you then betrayed him to the IRA and he was assassinated a week afterwards.”

“You actually weren’t supposed to know about that. But, anyway, it just tidied things up in a manner that both sides could live with. They may pretend to be adults, but the active members of these terrorist organisations are just kids having pissing contests in a sandpit. The grown-ups who run things behind the scenes are happy to manipulate them, but wouldn’t touch any of them with a bargepole in real life.”

“And you’re an adult? You’re a fucking psychopath!”

“Possibly so…” Now it was me snorting in response to her statement. “Probably so, but I do a job that needs to be done. I’d also much rather have it otherwise, but the best team for this option has been determined to be us and you.”

“Mother and daughter psychopaths and a pensioner: what could possibly go wrong?”

Miriam grinned. “This is actually the good news. You haven’t heard what our task is yet.”

 

***

 

After this preliminary romp through parts of my history that I would rather forget, Rachel dug out some beers and snacks before we got down to the nitty-gritty. I could see that my nemesis and the munchkin from hell were waiting for me to start, so I slowly began to tease out the details that they seemed loth to put on the table.

Rubbing my forehead and flying by the seat of my pants, I started with the obvious. “It’s terrorists again, with a nuclear component somewhere.”

Two pairs of eyebrows raised, so it was clear that there was a bit of a communication gap between the Yanks and the UK embassy staff who had initially contacted me. “Not dirty bombs, as you already know how to handle these,” I continued.

“Of course we do, Sherlock, you wrote the fucking book on those.” Rachel was clearly unimpressed.

“But nuclear and risks for sure. You wouldn’t have me here otherwise.”

Miriam grinned. “See, I told you, he’s not as fucking useless as he looks.”

Rachel grimaced. “Maybe not totally useless, but we actually need someone useful.”

“Yes, well, we’ll come to that. But let’s see what more he can deduce here.” Miriam smiled in a way that sent shivers down my spine. “Why don’t you outline the little problem that we’ve got to sort out?” She looked into my eyes and raised her eyebrows to emphasise the challenge.

“The Bern embassy crowd already mentioned nuclear threats, but I guess you’ve got some fuckwits targeting specific nuclear facilities. It was always going to happen, but that alone wouldn’t be enough to force you to work with me.” Rachel’s look of surprise was reassuring in exactly the way that Miriam’s smirk wasn’t.

“Fine, you’ve got a group of loonies that you think want to bugger-up something nuclear,” against my better judgement, I couldn’t stop myself from going further. “They’re not the usual terrorists, as you’d just fuck them over in your inimitable fashion.” My glare in Miriam’s direction had no discernible impact. “There are two options, therefore. Either you don’t know who they are or you actually are fully aware of the bad guys involved, but can’t touch them.”

I gave them my most annoyingly smug smile, which caused Rachel to give the game away. A simple squirm was enough. “Okay, it’s the latter. Why don’t you just drop all the rest of this spook, posturing rigmarole and tell me exactly what’s going on.”

Miriam turned to her daughter with a grin. “I told you, he’s the guy for this task.”

“But he’s too fucking old!”

“Old, yes, but he knows this stuff and age gives him decades of experience to draw on. And, by the way, he also just tossed your young, Marine-trained bod across the room.”

“A fluke! No chance he’d be able to do that again.”

“He also broke your nose…”

Rachel rubbed her face with her hands, clearly seeking a way out of her nightmare. “Two flukes…”

Miriam frowned. “Don’t underestimate this old codger. He may look like a feeble pensioner: actually, in fact, he is a pensioner with a host of medical issues. But he’s worked in the same counter-terrorist area that we do for his entire life. The fact that he’s lived long enough to get a pension speaks for itself.”

“Okay, ladies,” I interrupted, “this is all very well, but I want to get back home and away from you lunatics ASAP. This is especially important as, despite all these peregrinations in the backwoods of Canada, you first need to convince me that you’ve got your mole nailed down.”

“What mole?” Rachel sounded bewildered, although I noted that her mother did not seem in the slightest surprised.

I simply raised my eyebrows in Miriam’s direction. “Okay, we certainly have leaks from our team. There’s no way that you could have been targeted in Hasliberg otherwise. This is why there are now only the three of us involved here.”

“And, of course, that’s why you have me playing a critical role in this caper. An attack like that in Switzerland wouldn’t have been considered if I wasn’t a threat of some kind.”

Miriam closed her eyes and grimaced. “Yes, right, this indicates that we do actually seem to need you. You scare the opposition, which has got to be a good thing. Why this might be, I haven’t worked out as yet.”

“Why do we have to go through all these fucking mating dances? Just tell me who’s behind the threat. I can already guess that it’s a Yank. We’re in North America: not the US, but conveniently close to the border. So, it’s either a politician or one of the mega-rich.”

I laughed. “Miriam, you really shouldn’t have involved the child. I can read her like a book. It’s a mega-rich politician.” Rachel’s attack was so predictable that I had to do no more than twist to the side to allow her to barrel into her mother, with both of them ending up on the floor. “Do you want me to guess, or will you finally stop with these fucking mind games?”

She told me. My jaw dropped and the women burst into laughter. I really wouldn’t have guessed that, although the profile certainly fit my expectations.

 

***

 

The Vice-president has a strangely invisible role in the US political system. The media concentrate almost entirely on the President and, depending on the constellations involved, the leaders of Congress and the Senate. This contrasts with the potential of this role, which can catapult the incumbent into being the most powerful person in the world, at least as far as the majority of the US electorate are concerned.

Although all Miriam’s evidence was circumstantial, she had built up a strong case that Alice Beall was a woman with the ambition to go to the top, regardless of what the costs might be. Her political position was rather strange, being right-wing but strongly supportive of sustainable energy and rabidly anti-nuclear. She had, somehow or other, managed to make herself a poster-girl for green, tree-huggers. Of course, as always, there was a hidden agenda. Her family’s wealth, built up by surfing the environmentalist wave, was increasingly coming under threat as the negative fallout of rushing into sustainable-energy projects without full life-cycle analysis became obvious.

The crux seemed to be that, in order to prevent a backlash against sustainables, she had decided to support terrorists with radical anti-nuclear positions in the hope of removing backing for this other key source of carbon-free power.

I frowned as I thought through this story. “It seems barely credible that a woman with so much to lose would get involved with something as risky as this.”

“She’s got a hell of a lot to lose if she does nothing. There’s a class action going through the courts that could lead to legislation requiring that solar panels are at least 90% recyclable and also that costs for this are borne by the manufacturer – even retrospectively. This is going to be a huge financial hit for all those involved and, even if future costs are passed onto the purchaser, it’ll certainly price solar out of the market for many applications. This requirement for recycling will also hit some other alternative energy options, in particular wind, but have minimal impact for nuclear as the quantities of waste per unit power generated are trivial for most reactor designs”

“Okay, I can see that and I imagine that there are many other vested interests supporting her. But would the Veep really sponsor terrorists with the aim of causing another Fukushima or Chernobyl?”

Miriam shook her head, clearly disappointed by my naivety. “That bitch would nuke Washington DC if it would further her political ambitions.”

I smiled back at her. “It appears that you’re caught between a rock and a hard place. If this plot comes to light and you’ve done nothing about it, your head will roll as you’re where the buck stops in terms of anti-terrorist operations. However, if you’re spotted taking any action against her, VP Beall will have your head on a plate.”

“You don’t need to sound so happy about that. By now, however, it’s no longer just me: it’s us. We’re definitely caught between a truly massive rock and a really fucking hard place. As you spotted, my office is already compromised. Initially, I hadn’t even decided that I was going to bring you in on this: you were just one on a list of options. Actually, fairly far down the list, due to your age. But the Brits thought I should at least talk to you and the opposition evidently picked this up and considered you enough of a threat to justify extreme prejudice. This in Switzerland, of all bloody places.”

“And this tells you what?” I grinned in a manner that was sure to annoy her.

“That in terms of whatever action they’re thinking about, they consider you a particularly serious threat…”

“God only knows why,” Rachel contributed in a stage whisper.

“And that they have amazing resources at their beck and call,” I added, seeing that this was a point not yet noted by my nemesis.

Rachel clearly spotted that her mother had been forced into the defensive and piped up. “So, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to identify who we’re up against, what their targets are and neutralise them ASAP. Of course, in this case, refusal to accept is not an option,” she grinned in a distinctly evil manner.

“Not an easy job,” Miriam conceded. “But there is the incentive that, if you don’t get them first, they’ll certainly kill not only you, but also me and your daughter.”

“Me, I certainly don’t want killed. You, on the other hand? Do you really think I’d go out of my way to save your psycho arse? I’d help them, given the choice.”

“A bit harsh, but I can see where this is coming from.” The object of my vitriol was typically unperturbed. “But have you got no feeling at all for your daughter?”

“Firstly, I don’t believe that I have any genetic contribution to your bastard daughter. Even if I had, she must have 50% from you, so probably should have been drowned at birth for the betterment of humanity.”

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a shocked look on Rachel’s face and immediately felt like a complete arsehole. I hardly even knew the girl, but was saying things guaranteed to hurt her deeply. Despite the fact that she was clearly a total fruitloop, it was her mother to blame, not the girl. “Okay, right, whatever. I’ll help, as I really don’t seem to have any alternative. Give me a laptop with all the files that you have on this case and I’ll look through them.”

Miriam’s look of relief was unusually obvious, so I decided to take advantage of it. “I’ve just realised that I’m starving, so get room service to send me lunch. A huge steak, medium-rare, with all the trimmings and a bottle of their best red wine would be just right. Both of you can now fuck off while I’m working. Just toddle off and strangle rabbits or torture kittens; whatever you usually do with your spare time.”

I got a death stare from Rachel, but Miriam only smiled. “We’ve got connecting rooms, so we’ll go through to the other one and raid the mini-bar.” As she opened the connecting door, she turned and raised her eyebrows. “This is booked for a family: the parents’ room and a bedroom for the mature daughter. Why don’t you think about that?”

“Jesus Christ,” I groaned. “I’d jump into bed with my granny before I’d even consider another encounter with you.”

“Oh, so incest is your thing now. Should I bring in Rachel for a threesome?”

“My gran has been dead for a decade. So, if you think necrophilia might be my thing, you and your get are more than welcome to prepare for some action.”

Amazingly, Miriam had no response, but Rachel slammed the door with unnecessary violence.

 

***

 

Apparently, our hotel was located in the grounds of a top-level BC winery. The steak was very good, as expected in Canada, but the Bordeaux-blend wine was truly exceptional. I had no idea that the Rockies produced anything of this quality, but global warming was inevitably buggering-up all traditional ideas of viniculture. Many of the Old World classics were being wiped out and replaced by New World wonders like this. I peered at the bottle: Nk’Mip vineyard. I had no idea of even how to pronounce the name.

I read Miriam’s files while dining and a picture was emerging. This was helped considerably by the knowledge that our opponents were extremely worried about me being brought into the case. The attack on my humble abode in Hasliberg had been a major miscalculation on their part. If not for that, I would have simply refused to be drawn into anything that involved any sort of interaction with Miriam. This meant that, despite their mole in Miriam’s organisation, they certainly did not know our history in any kind of detail.

It would be easy to find out the old dirty-bomb story. Indeed, that would certainly be prominent in Miriam’s CV. For a terrorist with nuclear ambitions, picking up that she was considering me to support an investigation of whatever the Veep’s crowd were up to, must have rung alarm bells. However, the extreme over-reaction to this implied that they thought that I could be a serious threat.

I felt blocked for a moment, before the answer dawned on me. “Evil bitches! You’ve certainly got this room bugged, so get you arses in here now. I think I’ve got a lead. But, before anything else, order me another bottle of this wine along with a cheeseboard.”

 

***

 

Before Miriam could say a word, Rachel couldn’t contain herself. “What, you’ve worked it out already, over dinner? We’ve had an alpha team on that for weeks…”

“Calm down girl,” Miriam looked like a cat who had just hit the cream jackpot. “He’ll explain it to us in his typically annoying manner and then we can decide if he really has something or if his aged brain is no longer able to cut the mustard, as they put it in the land of his birth.”

“Well, it should have been clear to anyone of the meanest abilities that…” I ground to a halt as I happened to be looking out of the window onto the lake below us at this point. “Fuck! Does anyone else know that we’re here?”

The ladies jumped to my side, so my concern was clearly evident. “Unless my aged eyes betray me, that’s a military seaplane landing on the lake, which isn’t something I’d expect to happen in a place like this.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Miriam mumbled while she fumbled with an over-large mobile phone.

Rachel simply grabbed me and dragged me into the interconnected room, before pulling a huge kitbag from the side of the bed. “You can shoot, I assume.” A roll of her eyes conveyed that denial would have been laughable, while she pulled a wide assortment of weapons loose and threw them on the floor. “I’ll find something for you here.”

“I’m a pacifist and want nothing to do with the weapons of war,” I said just to annoy her. “However, this compact SAM whatsit might be just the very dab.”

“SAM means surface to air missile, you daft old tosser. Can’t you see that it’s already landed?”

“So what? It’s actually just a place-to-place missile and, as such, doesn’t give a fuck what medium the target is in.” I opened the door onto the balcony, pointed the device in roughly the right direction and pressed heat-seeker on the firing pad. This would have been the perfect put-down if the recoil from the ejection mechanism hadn’t knocked me backwards over a sun-lounger to send me crashing onto my backside. Luckily, the ladies were more intent on the missile’s trajectory and so their gasps as the seaplane exploded in a fireball covered my struggles to get back onto my feet.

“Fucking hell, that’s hardcore!” Rachel was clearly impressed.

“Christ on a bike! I hadn’t realised that there wasn’t a safety on that weapon,” I confessed. “I was just going to lock on the target so that I could check for any obvious electronic counter-measures. Anyway, can I assume that you’re sure that this was definitely full of bad guys?” I asked. “It could, potentially, have been a plane full of survivalist nutters who’ve purchased a military surplus machine.”

Rachel looked worried, but Miriam laughed aloud. “You know this isn’t the case and, even if it was, I can live with some collateral damage on this job. If it was the nutters that you mentioned, we have to fuck off ASAP before they start investigating what took out that plane. If it’s our opponents, we should have been away long before that, as they’ll inevitably have a satellite focused on us by now.”

“And if it really was bad guys, your entire network is more compromised than you thought. How do we even start to defend ourselves against the resources that the Veep can call on?”

“Not easy, but get your shit together and we’ll hit the road, heading north.”

“Isn’t that where the wildfires are at this time of year? Anybody leaving here who’s halfway sensible will head east, west or south.”

“Exactly, so we head north. The fires and smoke will make it a lot harder for them to track us.”

“These are the fires and smoke that’ll kill us if we get caught up in them,” I pointed out.

“Exactly! It’s a no-fly zone for anything but firefighters. So that’s where we’re going.” I was exposed to a commanding glare that I remembered well from the past.

“I’m not happy with this,” I tried my best glare back. “What good does it do to anyone if we end up as over-done barbeque along with the rest of the wildlife there?”

“Consider the options. I’m going north with your soon-to-be-beloved daughter. You can stay here, be captured and then be tortured to explain a plan that you don’t actually know. The end result is that you get shot in the back of the head and disappear to a hidden grave.”

“Or a pig farm,” Rachel grinned maliciously.

“In any case, it’s your choice.”

I glared at Miriam. “Fuck! I hate you all of the time, but even more when you’re correct! I’ll carry Rambo-junior’s hardware to the car that I assume that you have outside. As you know, beyond the clothes I’m wearing, I don’t have any other personal shit at the present moment.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist, Dad,” Rachel had to get in her penny’s worth. “This is what we do: the difficult immediately and the impossible takes only a little longer.”

“You may think that quote’s a West Point thing, but Lady Aberdeen initially used it to support prohibition. That actually did turn out to be impossible.”

“For fuck’s sake, stop the bon mot pissing contest and get your arses into the car,” Miriam ordered. “We’re out of here in ten.”

 

Chapter 4: Rachel

 

It was actually eight minutes later when we drove off in Miriam’s nondescript SUV. It had been parked beside an equally characterless panel van, which I had used to transport my kidnap- victim’s drugged-up bod. I was driving, Miriam shotgun, with the old coffin-dodger slumped in the back. I simply followed Miriam’s planned route, driving consistently 20 k above the posted speed limit, whatever it was. The route varied between dual carriageway, single roads with occasional overtaking lanes and simple roads where the overtaking option was indicated by broken central lines.

I just could not get my head around this Jim Forsyth guy. He manages to annoy me even more than my bitch mother does, and that was saying something. He also looked like a strong wind would blow him over and yet, after breaking my nose, managed to defend against a further two attacks that should have floored him. Of course, in retrospect, I could see that he had very deliberately provoked these attacks, but, even then…

Also taking out that seaplane. Was it really a mistake or was he actually trying to force us to run? If it had been loaded up with bad guys, then pre-emptive retaliation was a sensible move. But he couldn’t possibly know for sure. Like Mum, I could live with collateral damage, but I’d want a bit more evidence of a threat before wiping out a plane that could be full of civilians.

He clearly hates my mother, which seems completely understandable if what he was saying is true. I’ve heard a different take of things from Miriam, but I know that she lies as a matter of course, whether it actually serves any purpose or not. In any case, it would fit her profile to be shagging a colleague while her victims were being murdered – and also later screwing the murderer before he was, in turn, taken out.

Well, at least he seems to be good at this profiling, risk-assessment shit. With a bit of luck, he’ll find a way for us to re-can these worms and then we can get shot of him. Or shoot him, should that be required. I couldn’t help grinning at the thought.