Sealed With A Death

by James Silvester

  The speaker opening the event was a woman in her late thirties, dressed similarly impeccably, but possessed of a natural charm and authority of a type bereft from most others around the table. Her tone was professional but lively enough to hold her audience’s interest as she explained the purpose and schedule for the day. They were all there, she recounted, to learn more about the Red Mako, and to pitch for a position on the new PSL.

  “What’s a PSL?” Lucie whispered to Monika.

  “Preferred Supplier List,” came the hushed answer. “The industry’s taken a battering since the Brexit vote and everyone’s desperate for a piece of the action. The company want to keep the number of agencies recruiting for them to a minimum, so they invite us all here and let us fight it out in front of them. It’s like gladiator combat for young professionals.”

  The woman, who had introduced herself as Julie Woodlock, the HR Director, but whom Monika referred to somewhat cryptically as ‘the Gatekeeper’, went on to introduce a short video on the project. The lights were dimmed as a montage of CGI shots of the Red Mako itself played across the screen, accompanied by a sickeningly corporate musical backing track, over which a confident male voice extolled the project’s virtues. All around the room, pens were furiously scribbling and brows furrowing in exaggerated intensity, though precious little of anything of any technical value was revealed in the short, which culminated in a shot of the lauded new boat speeding towards the camera.

  The promo ended and the lights were raised, while some of the more sycophantic of the room’s occupants attempted a round of applause that remained ignored by the rest of the attendees. Rather than Julie returning to her feet, a grey haired and bespectacled man rose from his chair at the end of the horseshoe and addressed the group, barely disguising the distaste in his voice.

  “I’m Richard Wineheart, the Programme Director, alongside me is Dr Rigson, the Technical Manager. The video you’ve just seen should be enough for you to sell the project to your candidates,” he said in gruff tones. “Technical specifics and requirements have all been written by Dr Rigson and will be provided in individual job adverts for those of you who make the list. I don’t expect to meet or speak with any of you again, and be warned that anyone who tries to reach me directly will find their candidates disqualified and their company removed from the PSL. I shall leave the judging of your pitches to Julie and I would suggest a comfort break before you begin, I know only too well how people in your industry can talk. Thank you and good morning.”

  With that, he nodded to Julie, who seemed completely unfazed by his conduct, and exited the room. Julie immediately rose to her feet and passed a stack of glossy brochures to Monika, who took one and passed them down the table.

  “I’m sending round the latest marketing information aimed at recruitment and HR,” she said. “Inside you’ll find details of the type of roles we’ll be recruiting for to help you start looking at your candidate pools. Now, I think Richard’s idea is the best one; let’s have a comfort break before we start the pitches. For those who need them, toilets are down the corridor, Gents to the right, Ladies to the left. Back in ten minutes please everybody.”

  The room immediately filled with intense murmuring and movement as chairs were pushed back and people began heading for the door, their conversations growing louder as they pushed through and headed down the corridor. After the flurry of the first few seconds, only Monika and Lucie remained at the table, the recruiter studying the brochure with interest.

  “Wineheart’s an unfriendly bugger, isn’t he?” Lucie opined, Monika laughing in response.

  “You get used to it,” she answered.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, fuck yes, employers hate us, particularly huge companies like this. Recruitment’s a dirty business; every other person in the industry will try and get one over on his competitors by kissing the hiring manager’s arse and hoping that’ll put their candidate at the top of the interview schedule. Wineheart’s just letting people know he won’t put up with any shit, it’s all part of the game. In truth if I ring him directly on a Friday with the perfect candidate and he can’t fault me on the brief, they’ll be starting the job on the Monday. Believe me, they’d much rather do all their recruitment themselves and not have to deal with people like us at all, but that just isn’t practical for an organisation this size, so they outsource it to us and let us do the leg work, while cursing us every time we get on the phone.”

  “I knew recruiters weren’t exactly loved but I never knew they were so hated,” Lucie laughed.

  “That’s putting it politely,” Monika replied. “Everyone hates recruitment consultants. Now this is interesting…”

  “What is?”

  “The job roles in the brochure. They’re looking for project managers, software specialists, engineers, systems designers, everything you’d expect in a massive project like this, except for…”

  “Except for what?” Lucie pressed as her colleague’s voice tailed off and she flicked through the rest of the brochure, her frown increasing with each turn of the page.

  “No weapons.”

  “What, none at all?”

  “Nope. Not a single advertised role for weapons specialists, missile engineers, defensive systems quality technicians, nothing. That’s bloody odd. And it’s a shame too; we can charge big fees for good weapons people.”

  “Could the weapons be part of another contract?”

  “They’re not supposed to be. As far as we’re aware the contract is wholly owned by the WaterWhyte umbrella. Bloody odd… anyway, excuse me a moment, I’m running to the ladies.”

  As Monika stood up and left the room, Lucie seized her chance, taking out her specialised flashdrive and clicking it into place in the laptop the HR Director, Julie, had left at her place before going to fend off unsolicited ‘off the record’ questions in the Ladies’. An L.E.D on the stick glowed a dull green as the virus inside it did its work and Lucie kept an ear and an eye out for signs of movement on the corridor outside. Footsteps began to draw closer and Lucie placed her hand on the device, ready to pull and pocket it, but wary of withdrawing it too soon before it had its chance to draw all the information it could contain.

  The slap of hard soles against a tiled floor grew closer still, and Lucie slipped the stick from the port, dropping it into her suit pocket in one movement, just as Julie Woodlock returned, flashing a professionally plastic smile towards her. As she sat down and began shuffling papers, Lucie ignored the twinge in her own bladder and picked up the brochure in front of her, flicking through and feigning a professional interest.

  “Excuse me, Julie?” She began, the HR Director raising an eyebrow in response, her weariness at ‘off the record’ conversations with recruiters evident upon her face.

  “I’ve been going through the brochure and I noticed there’s no weapons related jobs available.”

  “Well spotted,” came Julie’s response, her inflection ambiguous enough for Lucie to wonder if she were being sarcastic or sincere.

  “It just seems a little odd for a project of this nature,” Lucie continued, mimicking Monika’s curiosity. “I thought WaterWhyte was responsible for delivering the entire product.”

  “And so we are,” Julie answered, this time with a touch of indignance. “At least, all aspects of the product that were open to tender.”

  “Some weren’t?”

  “As it happens, no.” Julie’s voice had now moved through indignancy and into defensiveness. “The Saudis removed weapons systems and munitions from the contract; they’re content to handle that side of development themselves. Not that you should worry, there are other roles galore for you to fill your boots with. If you make the PSL that is.”

  Her last words were spoken sternly, and Lucie knew they were a warning not to probe further lest she abandon any notion of making the cut. Though her curiosity was unsatiated, Lucie opted to stay quiet and not damage her new contact’s chances of making the fortune that could save he
r from the impending Brexit chaos, instead smiling in gratitude at the rigid Woodlock and returning her gaze to the brochure.

  ⌖

  After what felt like several lifetimes, Lucie and Monika stepped out from the building and breathed in glorious lungfuls of cold, fresh air as they stretched their joints and headed back towards Monika’s car, shaking their senses back to life after the dullest couple of hours either could remember. Pitch upon pitch from the well-dressed if nauseatingly cocky salespeople, all bragging about the size of their databases and the sincerity of their desire to listen to their customers, had nearly led to Lucie nodding off at the table, were it not for a well-timed kick from Monika.

  As they breathed life back into themselves, Lucie replayed Julie’s explanation about the weapons systems in her mind, before voicing them to Monika as they reached her car.

  “I spoke with Julie while you were out of the room,” she said as Monika searched in her bag for her key. “About the weapon systems.”

  “Oh, shit, you didn’t piss her off, did you? I need the commission from these jobs…”

  “Are you kidding? You gave the only decent pitch in the room, you’ll be top of the list guaranteed. No, she said the weapons systems and munitions were never part of the contract; that the Saudis had explicitly taken that part out of the deal. Does that sound normal to you?”

  Monika’s features twisted in puzzlement, as she located the keys and de-activated the alarm.

  “You know the more I think about that it just feels odd,” she answered. “I’ve recruited for a lot of Naval defence projects - the Type 45 Destroyer, the Astute class Submarine - weapons tech was a crucial requirement for all of them. And the defence industry is a pretty incestuous creature, the same engineers can always be sure of finding work on the next project that comes along, whoever wins the tender, that’s why so may of them do contract work; they know they’ll always be in demand and they can charge big bucks for their time. And even if they want to build those parts in Saudi Arabia, we do international recruitment all the time; these kind of professionals go all over the world to work… there’ll be a few people pretty pissed off at missing out on something as high profile as this, that’s for sure.”

  The women opened the doors and climbed inside, Monika turning the key and setting the car moving.

  “Missing out…” mused Lucie, almost under her breath.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking out loud.”

  “What about?”

  “Nothing really, it’s just…” She stopped herself finishing the sentence, which only succeeded in further peaking Monika’s interest.

  “Nothing’s ‘nothing’,” the recruiter grinned. “What is it?”

  “Just something you said just now; that there’ll be lots of defence professionals pissed off at missing out on the contract.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was just wondering whether it was more than that.”

  “More than that? What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Lucie mused as the car pulled out onto the road and began the journey back into London, “if the industry is as incestuous as you say, and all the weapons and munitions engineers have worked on every other Naval defence project since the dawn of time, then maybe it’s not as simple as them ‘missing out’ on the Red Mako.”

  “Go on.”

  “Maybe it’s more like they’re being kept out.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “I must admit,” sighed a smiling Ismail the next morning in the coffee shop, “when you texted me about this ‘big weapon theory’ I had something more intimate than coffee in mind.”

  “Behave yourself,” laughed Lucie, her cheeks flashing a momentary pink.

  “If I must,” he laughed back.

  Arriving back in London the previous afternoon from her sojourn with Monika, Lucie’s mind had been racing with possibilities, robbing her of any desire to be sociable, and so after Monika had dropped her off, she nervously contemplated whether to follow through with her plan to call Ismail and discuss findings over a drink. Standing outside the door to his flat, her knuckles poised to rap, she finally dropped her arm and instead posted the flashdrive through his letterbox, sending him a text explaining its presence and her latest theories, before cursing herself for the missed opportunity as she headed quickly back home. While her regret may have followed her into the morning, she at least had the work to focus her attention.

  “So, what is this theory of yours?” Ismail quizzed.

  Lucie recounted the events of the previous day with feverish intensity, detailing her ‘business trip’ with what could only be described as a pack of other recruiters, Monika’s curiosity at the absence of weapons and munitions vacancies and Woodlock’s defensiveness when pressed on the matter.

  “Why should that be sinister?” Ismail queried as she paused to draw breath. “Why should it matter if the Saudis want to build certain parts themselves, or if they want to paint the bridge green and put a TV screen in the back of every chair? Contracts can be weird things to ordinary mortals like us.”

  “No, it’s more than just the usual bollocks,” Lucie insisted, “I can feel it. Monika said the defence industry is incestuous, everybody knows each other and that’s especially true of the weapons bods.”

  “Not literally, I hope.”

  “Hey,” Lucie chastised, forcing back the return of her strangely bashful smile, “I won’t tell you again.”

  “Sorry,” he answered with playful sheepishness.

  “Think about it though,” Lucie pushed, steering him back to the subject. “The Red Mako isn’t just another paper promise from the Brexshitters, it’s a massively high profile, state-of-the-art sea- based interception vehicle. The Saudis have almost as much riding on its success as our government do. Now, if you were in charge of building a new ship to help your country win a war, and there was a pool of massively experienced weapons specialists immediately available and itching for the chance to get on board, why the hell wouldn’t you use them?”

  Ismail’s smile had gone, and his eyes had narrowed as he focussed on her words.

  “Go on.”

  “Because whatever weapons you’re planning to fire from your sparkly new boat, either rely on a technology entirely different to that used by all the major aerospace & defence companies for the past few decades…”

  “Which is pretty unlikely.”

  “Or whatever it is you want to fire at your enemy isn’t the kind of thing those engineers would have the stomach for.”

  Ismail absorbed the words like a blow to the head, and he sat back for a moment in a silence Lucie mirrored; the implications of her theory sounding all the worse when spoken out loud. After a moment, Ismail picked up his coffee and drew a deep sip before leaning across the table and lowering his voice, somewhat needlessly in the otherwise empty establishment.

  “You realise what you’re saying of course?” he asked.

  “That our government is complicit in facilitating chemical weapons attacks on Yemen.”

  Ismail exhaled and pressed his palms to his face, murmuring behind them for a moment before dropping them back to the table and sighing once more.

  “Lucie,” he began, “that’s quite a statement, not to mention quite a leap. I mean, I’ve no love for this shower of shit in government, but you’re talking about war crimes…”

  “Would it be the first time?”

  “Dodgy dossiers are one thing, but this?”

  “Maybe they don’t know,” Lucie conceded, “and maybe they do. But my gut is telling me I’m right on this. There’s something not right about this project. Kasper was on to them and it landed him in hospital, put there by a bunch of fucking yellow vests employed as security for WaterWhyte!”

  “Healey worked for WaterWhyte,” Ismail cautioned. “There were a dozen or more people on that video attacking Algers, of all shapes and sizes, most pretty clearly physically unsuited to security work for a Blue Chip company; maybe a han
dful out of the crowd were Healey’s colleagues.”

  “A handful is enough for it not to be coincidence in my book,” Lucie replied, breathing slowly to calm herself.

  “Maybe so, but it won’t be enough for a court. Trust me, I know.”

  “I’m not interested in courts,” Lucie answered, darkly, Ismail straightening up in response.

  “Oh, really?” he said, their earlier roles of chastiser and chastised now reversed. “And what happened to the woman who prayed at the side of the guy she killed? What happened to the woman who fought back tears, insisting she wasn’t a murderer? Because it sounds pretty clear to me that’s what you’re intending here.”

  He spoke the words sternly but calmly and without drama, and that was what made Lucie pay heed and catch herself before she allowed the clouds to regather. Ismail was right. She hadn’t slept a wink after the events of the other night, instead spending the dark hours sat cross-legged on the floor in her living room, promising an atonement to God that she didn’t know how to make and welcoming the stiffness and cold her position invited, reasoning that comfort was the very last thing she deserved. Though the instinctive desire to defend her remark flirted momentarily across her mind, it was quickly supressed, and Lucie instead offered a warm smile to the man who had very quickly become her friend. He was still so new to this world and she suspected he would always at heart be a police officer, honouring a system he found flawed and often corrupt, but which still represented to him the safety barrier that prevented justice falling into the hands of the mob.

  “You’re right,” she said softly, allowing the smile to grow. “Sorry, I’m just… just pissed off.”

  “I understand,” Ismail reassured her, reaching across the table and putting his hand nervously atop her own. Lucie hesitated for a moment and almost withdrew, but the warmth and softness of his touch felt so natural to her that she was content to sit in silence for a moment and simply enjoy it. The crash of a dropped mug from behind the counter pulled her from the moment and she quickly sat back upright, snapping her hand to her side as Ismail’s expression dropped slightly in disappointment.