Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

“Hold on—”

He throws up his hands. “Fine. You caught me. I have dosed your beer with a deadly serum that was concocted by the Illuminati at a Bilderberg Group meeting at Sacred Oaks. All true billionaires know these secrets – it is the way we run the world. Now that I have told you, you must die.”

He reaches across and takes my beer from me, sipping from it. The slick bastard keeps eye contact the entire time. A crust of foam has settled on his top lip, and he wipes it off with his hand, not bothering to reach for the serviette on the armrest. “There. See? No poison. Unless, of course, I am immune, thanks to my daily infusions of infant blood.”

A smile creeps across my face before I can stop it.

“So. She is human after all,” he says. Schmidt passes my beer back, takes a sip of his own. Good thing too, because he doesn’t notice my slight shiver. If only you knew, dude .

“Now.” He leans forward elbows on his knees. “Perhaps you will tell me your name. Or a name. Something I must call you.”

“Jay.” It’s the first thing that comes to my mind, mostly because Jay Rock – one of the best LA rappers ever – has been doing rotations in my brain for the past three days. Plus, Jay can be a guy or a girl.

“And I am Jonas. A pleasure, truly. You are here for the list, yes?”

He doesn’t wait for my response, just nods to where the safe is. “It is not there. You would have done better to intercept my limousine on my way to the airport.”

“What are you talking about?”

He reaches inside his jacket, pulls out a neatly folded slip of paper. To my right, Mikhail tenses.

It doesn’t make sense. If Schmidt was going to sell the list, then having it on him while he negotiates with a buyer is about the dumbest thing I can think of. I’ve only known him for five minutes, and I can tell he’s smarter than that.

“You know what the most ironic thing is about technology?” It’s the first mispronunciation he’s made, twisting the first syllable of ironic , so it sounds like the vowel in hit . “Those of us who make our money from it do not trust it. It is not so easy to control. You see this everywhere. The CEO of a large social media company will not let his children join it. A programmer for a piece of software that handles Amazon payments will suddenly leave her position, talking to the media about data and privacy. But a piece of paper… it cannot be hacked, and it is hard to steal.”

He unfolds the list, flicks it with a finger. “Your assets in the Balkans. Moscow. Shanghai, Islamabad. I even have the name of the operatives you have in the Mossad. This list will be copied and placed in several secure locations across the world. If anything should happen to me—”

I’ve had enough. He can joke all he wants, offer me a drink and a comfy chair, but I shouldn’t forget what this asshole came to my city to do. Fortunately, I have a few tricks of my own, and not just ones that involve moving shit with my mind. You can’t hang around Moira Tanner for long without learning a thing or two.

I lean forward, look him dead in the eyes. “Cut the shit, Schmidt.”

OK, that sounded kind of stupid, but I don’t dare quit now. “We know about the list. We know you were in LA to sell it to the highest bidder. When you land in New York to refuel, my agency will board this plane and take you into custody. The only way you stop that happening is if you give me the list, and let me walk away. Maybe, just maybe, I convince my bosses to let you crawl back into your million-dollar mansion and never appear in public again.”

I expected defiance. Anger. Hell, I was hoping for fear. I would even have settled for slight discomfort. What I don’t expect is confusion.

“I do not understand,” he says.

“Do I need to spell it out for you? Do you need flashcards?”

“I was not in Los Angeles to sell the list.”

“Bullshit.”

“No.” Now he looks even more confused. “You did not know this? Jay, I came to Los Angeles to buy it.”

I blink at him. That can’t be right.

“It appears your agency does not have good intelligence all the time, hmm? But yes, I bought the list in Los Angeles. I will not tell you the name of the seller, of course – he is a good man, and I do not wish him harmed.”

If it’s true, then someone, somewhere got something wrong. I refuse to believe it’s Tanner, or Reggie – there’s no way they would make a fuck-up like this. The info must have been bad.

“I have no intention of releasing this list, unless I am forced to. Do you think I want your spies in these countries hurt? No – not unless there is no other option. I bought this list as an insurance policy, in the case of your government deciding that I am too dangerous.”

“Because putting down cash for a list of our deep-cover assets is a great way to stay off their radar? Seems logical to me.”

A sad smile creeps onto his lips. “I am already on their radar. There are things I have seen…”

“Oh, please.”

He stares out the window. The clouds have parted, and the LA sprawl is visible below us, stretching to the horizon.

“Did you know your government is engaged in a biological weapons research programme at several bases in the Arctic Circle?” he says. “Research that breaks a hundred different international treaties?”

“That’s not a—”

“Or that they help finance slave labour in West Africa, for the mining of uranium? And there is more still. I am aware, for instance, that they once engaged in a genetic research programme for persons with special abilities. There was a facility in Waco, in Texas, where they once tested a live subject who showed demonstrable ability to move objects without touching them.”

His words freeze me to my seat.

That’s impossible. He can’t know that.

Waco was the highest level of secrecy, minimal staff, absolutely zero contact with the outside world. I may not know everything, but I do know something about how government secrets work, and that one? That one they are very careful about.

If he really does know about Waco, then he knows about me. Did he mention it to unsettle me? See what I would do? Except: he’s not even looking at me. He’s still staring out the window, rattling off more things the US government has done. The Waco facility was just one thing on his list. It doesn’t matter how he found out; he has no idea that I was the person at that facility.

So why tell me? Why mention it at all? Either he’s pulling off a massive, triple-layer Jedi mind trick on me, or…

Or he’s telling the truth .

“Hang on,” I say. “If you know about all this stuff – and I’m not saying it is true, because it sounds pretty fucking far-fetched, to be honest – if you know about it, why not expose the government? Why keep it a secret?”

“These things are not so easy to prove. I do not have possession of the documents I have seen, or the whereabouts of the people I have spoken to. It is possible to prove them… but it is difficult. What your government is afraid of is that I may start speaking publicly about these things.

“No doubt they will paint me as a mad person. What is the word? A crackpot. But in these days we live in, people do not believe what is based on facts only. They believe what they want to believe. And so perhaps, they will start looking a bit closer at the things I have told them about. They could uncover… well, anything. You know the story of Pandora’s Box?”

“OK. So why don’t they just kill you?”

“I have survived several assassination attempts.” He says it like he’s mentioning he takes sugar in his coffee. “Including several incidents of tampering with my plane, or my cars. Fortunately, I pay my staff much more than they were offered to kill me, and they are very good at their jobs. Besides, I have somewhat of a high profile, even in the United States. Killing me is not so easy.” A shrug. “Perhaps they will try again soon. Maybe you were even sent here to kill me, after you retrieved the list.”