1 Manic Monday (11 page)

Jake prepared himself to lie.  The longer he did this,
the easier it became.  Not just to others.  It was easy to lie to
himself
as well.

“I didn’t know you had a son, Lars,” Jake said, trying to
sound gregarious.

“Yes you did,” Lars said.  He got into the SUV without
another word.

Jake followed suit.  He swallowed hard.  He was
not exactly scared, but he hated being caught in a lie.  Lars was a hard man
to work for, but he was not cruel.  He was more clever and shrewd than he
had a right to be.  Jake supposed that was why he was a Galbraith Alliance
Director and he was merely the trigger, the knife in the dark, the
operator.  So where did that leave Violet?

The inside of the vehicle was blessedly warm.  The
seats had warmers and he had the luxury of separate controls for the heat in
the back seat.  Violet sat in the front passenger seat.  She reached
around and handed him a laptop.

“Your passcode is your agent identification.  I suggest
changing the code immediately.  This is a long trip.  You can start
there,” she pointed at the laptop “and if you have any questions, we can get
you up to speed.”

Jake opened the laptop and typed in his passcode. 
Security protocols flashed and the obligatory hourglass turned and then he was
looking at a set of files titled “Operation
Aždaja
.” 

Jake looked up.  Violet was staring at him, a slim
smile on her glistening lips.  They were driving down a narrow two-lane
road lined by farms, small, white houses, and stark metal-sided
buildings.  He glanced at the instrument panel and saw they were heading
south, putting the wind and the snow to their backs.

“
Aždaja
?
 
What is that?” Jake asked, curious.

“A multi-headed ancient dragon of Russian
lore.
  St. George slayed one in a famous painting,”
  Violet
answered.  Her gaze was as smug as
ever.  Jake felt like she was challenging him even in this.

“I see.  That is who we work for, isn’t it?”  He
said, realizing the significance.  His head was beginning to hurt.

Violet smirked.

“You know nothing, Monday,” she said, turning back to face
the windshield.

“The dragon is you,” Lars said, his voice a low grumble,
barely distinguishable from the sound of the icy gravel under the tires of the
big SUV.

Confused, Jake looked down at the screen again and opened up
the file.  It contained several other folders and some media files. 
He double clicked on one and watched as the media player came to life. 

It was a video of a trial.

Jake watched Eilif testify before a judge.  There was
no jury. 
Eilif’s
lawyer was pacing, asking
questions Jake could barely hear.  The sound was terrible, but the video
was clear.  Jake was about to exit the program and check out another file—he
knew how this ended, so why watch it all?—when he recognized one of the people
in the audience.  It was Giselle.  He
paused
the player and looked for the tool to zoom the camera. 

It was her. She wore a brown suit jacket and her hair was
tied in a tight knot atop her head.  She looked scared.  She looked
pissed.

He realized he was being watched.  He looked up at
Violet in the front seat.  She was smiling that familiar smug,
self-satisfied smile.

“You know nothing, Monday,” She said.

“Giselle works for Eilif?”

She shook her head.

“His daughter,” she explained.

Jake could feel the headache come back.  He saw the red
capital letters burning into the back of his eyes.
VANITY.

“And Calvin—“

“Really works for us,” Violet finished.  Lars was
silent, but Jake watched as his jaw clenched and his fingers curled and flexed
on the steering wheel.

Jake stared out the window at the lines of trees along the
road.  The bucolic setting around him was strange after spending the last
few days surrounded by the choppy deep blue waters west of the Channel
Islands.  The wiper blades beat a rhythm, and emitted a high-pitched
squeal.  Jake lost himself in the noise and the movement of the
vehicle.  The pain in his temples and at the back of his head pushed cognitive
and analytical thought from his brain. 

“That whole thing was a setup?”  He didn’t know if he
was angry or just scared.

He watched Violet open a small black case in the front seat.

“Think of it as more of a test,” she said.

“A test?
 
Of
what?
 
My abilities?
  You called it a
test before.  What are you testing?  Who are you, really? 
Answer me, Lars.”  Jake put his hand on his shoulder.  Lars didn’t
flinch.

Violet shook her head.  She lunged, a syringe in her
hand.  Before he could pull his exposed hand back, she had plunged the
needle in between his thumb and finger at a shallow angle.  He felt a warm
sensation there as she pressed the plunger.  He yanked his hand, staring
at her with wild eyes.

“Not your abilities, Monday.  A test of your
programming,” Lars said.

“I don’t understand,” he said.  He watched as Violet
put the syringe in a packet and put it back in her purse.  She turned back
to the front, with a glimpse at Lars.

“Keep going through the files on the laptop, Monday. 
Go in order this time.  It will all fit together soon,” Lars
instructed.  Jake ignored him.

“Why did you do that?”  Jake asked Violet.  She
did not look at him.

“
Aždaja
.
 
Aždaja
.
 
Aždaja
,
” Violet said.  Her voice was
firm.  She said the words slowly.  Then, she turned and held out her
fist to him, palm down.

He looked at her quizzically, nursing the sting of his hand.

“Take it,” she ordered.

He held out his hand and she dropped a heavy coin in
it.  It was silver with deep etchings.  It looked ancient.  One
side held old Slavic writings.  He turned it over in his hand,
lazily.  On the opposite side was an engraving of a dragon, awful and
terrible with three heads.  He looked up at Violet gazing at him as if she
expected something.

The world around him narrowed to the interior of the
vehicle, the heat blowing on his face from the vent above his head, the glow of
the laptop as the daylight outside waned, and Violet’s eyes.  They seemed
black, her face like a harpy or a medusa.

Lars was right.  It was a long trip.

Quantum of Malice

“Do you think they told him?” Giselle asked, the slim
cigarette held delicately between her fingers.

“I suppose they must,” Clarence said.

“I presume he will hate me now,” she complained.

“He will not remember.”  Clarence sat facing her. 
He held a slender leather briefcase on his lap.  It had gold clasps.

“How long is our drive?”

“An hour.
  We will fly from
Syracuse.”

Giselle stared out the window glumly.

“I do so much hate snow.”

Clarence remained silent.  He was so polite. 
So professional.
  She hated him, too.  She watched
him through
slitted
eyes and white-grey smoke. 
She shook the ashes of her cigarette onto the floor of the SUV.  The
guards in front and back could not hear them through the glass that separated
the compartments. 
Bullet-proof and soundproof on all
sides.
  She felt like she was sentenced to prison.

“Will my father require me to quit my position at Sinegem?”

Clarence clucked his tongue, cleared his throat and then
sighed heavily.  He did not enjoy being questioned. 
Or perhaps he
hates me as much as I hate him,
she thought.  She had tried on
occasion to flirt with him, show him some leg, some cleavage,
breathe
on him huskily.  He was iron, cold and
distant. 
Or gay.
Or a eunuch.
 
She had literally no power over him other than the fact that her father paid
him handsomely for his services.

“Your father will undoubtedly want you to remain.  I
did not speak to him about this.  You should pose this concern to him
yourself.  I am merely here to retrieve you.”

She arched her eyebrows.

“I see.  You are a golden retriever and I am a
bone.  Is that it?”

He ignored her while staring directly at her.  He had a
talent for that. 
He reminds me of my brother,
Geirmund
,
Giselle thought wistfully
.

“Did Mr. Monday accept your offer?”  He asked
instead.  His decidedly British face and voice betrayed no emotion. 
It was as if he had an overdose of
botox
treatments
and a robot
voicebox
.

Giselle squirmed in the heated leather seat.  She still
wore the trench coat she had been given aboard the jet.  She liked the way
the wool scratched at her wrists.  It reminded her of the way the nicotine
felt as it entered her lungs.

“No.  But it does not matter.  Sinegem will hire
Galbraith Alliance to perform this.  And they will use Mr. Monday for this
assignment.  I will see to it.  The farce to which I was subjected
was performed for just such a reason as this.”

Clarence smirked and then nodded. 

“I bow to your wisdom and foresight, Ms. Giselle.” 

He was mocking her.  She felt her anger rise in her
throat.

“I did not spend three days at sea bundled up in a wool
sweater and rubber boots to have you mock my plans, Clarence,” she said as she
emphasized her point by stabbing the cigarette at him.

He blinked and raised his eyebrows.

“Actually, your plans are sound.  However, Mr.
Nicholaisen
will not be pleased to hear that the man who
was so instrumental to his incarceration is not closer at hand.”

She tried to temper her fear and her hatred long enough to
get an answer to a question that had bothered her for weeks.

“Have we discovered who hired Galbraith Alliance to
embarrass my father?”

Clarence looked quite pleased that she had asked that
question.  He smiled and splayed his fingers out across the dark leather
of the briefcase on his lap.  She did not know what to think.  She
had never seen him smile before.  His small, square teeth and short pink
tongue were exposed when he did, which might explain why he refrained.

“Why, Ms. Giselle, it was your esteemed employer, Sinegem.”

She furrowed her brow and extinguished the cigarette on the
seat beside her.  She could smell the burnt leather.

“What?  How?  Why?  Father is on the board of
six of their acquisitions.”

“Many questions.
  Good ones,
all of them,” Clarence said, tugging his right shirt sleeve out past his jacket
sleeve.  “It seems you are missing the best question of all. 
Who?  We know the what:  three murders were performed in his house
and staged to appear that Mr.
Nicholaisen
was to
blame.  We know the how:  someone hired the most expensive and sophisticated
terrorist and assassination group in the world to murder two of his guards and
to plant a body and a weapon to appear as though Eilif was the murderer. 
Of course, in the course of the investigation, many of
Eilif’s
white collar crimes came to light and therefore his sentence was an open and
shut case.  We even know the why.” 

She had never heard him talk so much since she had known
him.  Stunned, she had allowed him to continue.  He tugged on his
other sleeve.  Clarence was quite fastidious.  She suspected that he
even oiled and waxed his bald pate.

“Why, then?”
  She asked
impatiently.

“Mr.
Nicholaisen
has been buying
more shares of stock than some of the other stock holders are
comfortable.  Of course, Eilif could not accomplish this without using
other revenue streams.  Revenue that comes from some of his more, shall we
say,
illicit
profit centers.  We simply
have some who have become weary of
Eilif’s
propensity
for gain.”

She chuckled.

“They should have embarrassed you and sent you to jail,
then.  You are the master of
Eilif’s
coin.”

Clarence nodded.  His smile was thin, hiding his
Chiclet teeth.  He was quite proud of his prowess for increasing her
father’s fortunes.

“This is true, actually.  I regret that very few are
aware of my role in this.  But, that is not the point.  We knew all
the answers but the
who
. 
Until
yesterday.”

“Good.  I can kill him, then,” Giselle said.  The
venom in her voice was genuine. 

“Them,” Clarence corrected.

“More than one?
 
Who?”

“It seems that Eilif has angered someone who has a large
following.  Someone who has much more power than he deserves.”

“You are speaking in riddles, Clarence.”

“Some would say that
Eilif’s
enemy
would be untouchable.”

“I thought you said there was more than one.”

Clarence stopped smiling and turned the briefcase
around.  The clasps snapped open. He turned the briefcase around.  A
single folder sat inside.  She took it, impatient and irritated at
Clarence’s attempts to be an enigma.

She opened it and rifled through its contents.  She saw
numbers, and columns, names and corporations.  Without studying them
closely, she saw nothing that connected these with the
who
. 
Confused, she looked at Clarence and shrugged.

“What am I seeing here, Clarence? 
Stop
being diffident.”

Clarence cleared his throat again.  He was always
clearing his throat or sighing.  Giselle was sick of his pompous nature.