Terry Neale - Jo-el

“Jimmy, tell me again about the CIA woman.” They were talking about Pippa. One of the men at the table replied.

“We’re pretty sure she knows his real identity. But he must be protecting her, Oleg Verminov had three guys taken out last night, trying to get her.”

“Who’s Verminov?” asked the old man.

“Russian billionaire, he knows Yerchenkov.”

“How’d he get to them?” The old man asked.

“We don’t know. The driver didn’t see anyone, the three were brought out of the apartment in body-bags.”

“How’d Verminov know about the girl?”

“We don’t know.” Jimmy.

“So we need this woman?”

Heads nodded.

“ So, how the fuck do we get her?”

A different man, bald with a beaked nose. “I talked with Jerry Spiel last night, he has a guy in the CIA, they’re working that angle.”

“I fucking hate Spiel, we have to deal with that low-life?”

No-one said anything for a moment. Then the old man continued. “Okay, what’s this woman’s level?”

“Special agent,” came the reply from Jimmy.

“How come she knew?” Nobody answered. “Who else knows?”

Jimmy replied, “We assume there must be others, but we don’t know who they are. I’m calling around.”

The old man nodded his head, his silver hair was glued in place.

“Does this asshole have kids?”

“We don’t know.”

“Well he must have family somewhere. As soon as we get an id I want every fucking brother, sister, niece, nephew, aunt, uncle, the whole fucking lot. We grab them all.”

My mouth was dry, I watched the old man’s face closely, he meant business.

“Who is he, Sally?”

“Conrad Lietz, German, net worth, three plus billion, drugs mainly. But he has a chain of legitimate warehouses across Europe. They’re in Berlin right now.”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“British, ex-SAS, gone bad, in charge of security for Lietz.”

“Whack Lietz.” I said.

I watched Conrad Lietz double up and grab at his chest, the six guys jumped out of their chairs and tried to stop him from falling. They lowered him to the carpeted floor. Lietz took his last breath. I watched him die, it was wonderful. Piece of shit.

“Show me Spiel.” I told Sally.

The monitor went blank. I looked over at Sally.

“He has one of those nuclear bomb shelters, I can’t penetrate it. He’s out of reach for now.”

“Where is he?”

“New Jersey.”

“He’s American?”

“Sure is.”

“Do you know who his CIA mole is?”

“No, I’ll have to monitor every CIA agent and see if someone says something that gives them away.”

“Damn. This isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.”

“What about the Russian, Verminov?”

“Same problem, he flew to Israel yesterday, he has a bunker there.”

“Shit! Was he on the list of eighteen?”

“Yes.”

“How many can you access, right now?”

Sally was quiet for a while. “Nine.”

“Are they all the same as Lietz?”

“Basically, yes.”

“Well then, in your words, take them off the table.”

Sally smiled at me, she looked excited. “Done,” she said. God, it was that easy.

I paced around the suite for a while, pondering the mess I’d just unleashed. I wasn’t going to be able to hide from the aftermath. Ten crime bosses, dotted around the globe, fall dead of the same cause, all at the same instance, was like announcing it on Twitter. Still this could only be a good thing in the long run.

“Sally, did the President pick a time to meet?”

“Ten a.m. eastern time tomorrow.”

“Okay, good.” I’ll tell him everything, get the US on board. Maybe they could help me with these guys?

“How’s the market doing today?”

“It’s down, media says it’s fear.”

That’s normal, no one likes the unknown. “Sell the rest of my shares and put half my money into put options, say three months out. Weapon stocks, I’m going to eliminate the need for guns.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Maggie,” said Sally, “you want me to go?”

“No stay, she should meet you.”

I opened the door and Maggie strode in, past me, I could feel a tirade coming. She saw Sally, sitting on the sofa. “Who’s she?”

“That’s Sally, I told you I’d named my computer. She’s a holographic image created by the computer.”

“Why does she have to look like that?”

“That was my choice, Maggie. Why not a beautiful woman?”

“Why not mum, then?”

I decided to fight back. “I didn’t want the hurt, Maggie, do you understand that?”

“You’ve changed Dad. I’m not sure I know you anymore.”

“How could I not change, sweetie, look what’s happened.”

“Why Dad, why?” she cried out and then began crying. “Why did you have to take on the whole fucked-up world?” She sniveled and sat down, in an armchair, away from Sally. “Why couldn’t you just be a hero, I mean, what those alien people gave you made you incredible? Why spoil it and try and fix the whole world right off the bat?”

“Let me explain Maggie. There’s a reason I’m doing this.” Maggie wiped her eyes and turned her face toward me, expectantly. “I asked the same question. Why did these people from a planet, millions of light-years away, who have been monitoring us for hundreds of millions of years suddenly decide to contact us now? What triggered their involvement?” Maggie concentrated on my words. “The Cirion people are human, also. Their planet formed millions of years before earth and they developed technologies that we just dream about. They’ve told me that there are many ‘human’ planets at different levels of development. They also explained that they feel a bond with all those different human races. They have been reaching out to all of them to form a union of humans in the universe. I know it sounds like a science fiction novel. It sounds crazy, but we believe there’s other life in the universe and we’ve been sending out probes for years attempting to make contact. The people of Cirion have a policy of non-interference, unless certain circumstances exist. Isn’t that a similar policy that this country has with the rest of the world? I know, in the past there’s been world wars, but in the past fifty-plus years we started to change. It’s early days for us on Earth but we’re moving in the right direction, don’t you think?”

“Get to the point, Dad.”

“So the question is why are they now interfering?” I stopped talking, I hadn’t told anyone this so far and I realized it would be very difficult to accept and I was finding it difficult to say. “The answer is that the only criterion for interference is a possible annihilation of a human planet and extinction of its inhabitants.” Maggie’s mouth dropped open, her eyebrows rose.

“Are you telling me that the end of the world is coming?” I nodded. “And you believe them? Dad, people have been predicting the end of the world forever. I bet if I googled it now, there would be a list of nutcases predicting every possible reason why the world will end.”

“Maggie, this is different, think about it. I’m not just some nutcase, as you call them, standing on a soapbox, spouting on about the end of the world. Look at me! Look at what I can do; look at what I’m doing. Doesn’t that bring some validity to what I say.”

“How do you know you can believe them?”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t believe us?” exclaimed Sally.

We both looked over at her. “You haven’t proved it, Sally, you can’t prove it, can you?”