Cherry Picking

by Tim Heath

  The report went on to say how he was a wanted man and asked anyone who had any information on him to call the number displayed on the screen. A large reward was available to anyone with information that led to his capture. The report showed how posters and signs had appeared overnight on bus-stops and shops all across the city, making him one of the most wanted men in the country. Then it was said that he was a possible suspect in the terrorist attack on the police station in the city yesterday, an attack that had killed twenty-two people including three prisoners.

  Robert switched off the television. This was another hard blow to take and would mean his movements now would be seriously limited. It was unlikely though that anyone in the village would suspect anything and they were a tight-knit community anyway. The picture displayed on the television hadn’t been a great one so that also gave him some hope.

  Clearly he’d really rattled someone’s cage and now it was becoming a war even to stay alive. However, it only confirmed that Robert was onto him. The last couple of days had dealt him some tough hands and yet he knew that much worse would be certain to follow.

  **********

  Nigel Gamble had just finished eating when he was informed of the telephone calls not long ago received by Tommy Lawrence, Jessica Ponter and Brendan Charles. He immediately called his team, asking them for the location of the phone calls. They had been trying to work out that very thing for twenty minutes, having picked up on them and expecting Nigel’s call any moment. They had however, not been able to tell Nigel anything. Nigel let it pass, listened to all three conversations with interest and then hung up. If Robert had been able to make the calls and yet had not given his location away, it could only have meant that he had already known about the Genesis System and had therefore got himself the type of phone that could block its own ID. And if he had known about the Genesis System in order to have gone to the trouble of obtaining the phone, then he would also have known that his conversation would be picked up, recorded and listened to. Therefore — Nigel smiling at the thought — this was Robert playing with him. Nigel knew what he was now getting into and it was in many ways a great relief to finally be able to hear the voice of the man, this man, the one whom Nigel had been searching for and hiding from for such a long time.

  There was a danger though that things would get out of hand, or more to the point, out of Nigel’s own control. Robert hadn’t said much in any of the calls but what he had said would surely have put some questions into their minds. Nigel knew he had to speak to Brendan straight away, though he wouldn’t dare let on anything about the phone tap, it would only mean too many further questions and risk pushing Brendan further away from his trust. He’d have to make it sound natural. And he did. He called him up, Brendan being a little surprised at how frequently they both were now speaking, and they talked about business and other such things for a little while. Nigel then went on to ask about any further developments regarding Robert. Brendan said he hadn’t heard anything but said his team were working around the clock to find something. He said nothing of the conversation he’d had with the man himself just some ten or twenty minutes before, which slightly frustrated Nigel, though he kept his feelings to himself. Nigel warned him that Robert would say and do anything in order to find some answers. He warned him not to speak to him, or meet with him and that he was dangerous. He tried his best at downplaying this last bit but it only made Nigel sound like he was trying too hard. And of course this only made Brendan wonder more, having just had the phone call from Robert not half an hour ago. He couldn’t say anything to Nigel about this now though, having already deliberately stated that he had heard nothing. And if Nigel had heard the call then he’d already know that Brendan had kept it from him. But to speak like this so close after that call and having had Nigel warning him like he had, only made it seem too much of a coincidence. Brendan had already seen all the posters about Robert but he wasn’t sure who had leaked the link between Robert and the bombing to the press. Brendan of course knew the truth, but hadn’t been party to any of it and was shocked by how much damage it had done and the death toll it had caused.

  Brendan knew there was something that Nigel wasn’t telling him but in his heart of hearts he knew it had always been the case, the feeling of being in the dark, of not really knowing everything and at times it drove Brendan crazy. They continued their strange conversation, saying more to each other by what they didn’t say than by what they did.

  Nigel finished by warning him again not to meet with Robert before checking how things were going with Jessica and Tommy and instructing him to pull them both into line to make sure they really listened to him, otherwise Brendan would find he’d only have problems from them. Feeling more put out than ever, Brendan bit his lip hard so as not to say the wrong thing. He was angry that yet again Nigel was telling him how to do his job, a job he could do perfectly well without his interference. He was starting to loathe the day he’d first agreed to work for Nigel. At the time it had promised so much security for his family, that it was impossible to turn down. Now though he felt just like a puppet. Still, his family were happy, they were well and had everything they wanted. This had become Brendan’s only motivation now, though throughout he always felt somewhat of a fraud, which was the particular reason why he kept work life and home life so distinctly separate.

  Nigel put the telephone down a little more frustrated than when he had picked it up, feeling hurt by the obvious betrayal of confidence that his right hand man was now showing him after all that he’d done for him over the years. Nigel knew he also now needed to bring Brendan back in line and had exactly the right piece of information to do it. Sad that the day had come when he’d actually have to use this against someone so close to him, Nigel knew that now he had no alternative, for fear of losing Brendan altogether. If Robert managed to turn Brendan then Nigel would have a massive, but not fatal, set back. He wasn’t sure how much Brendan knew, but it was too risky to even think about. No, the time had definitely come to do what was needed and it gave Nigel that same feeling he’d always had for the last twenty years, the feeling of power that he got from knowing something about someone that would make them do anything for him.

  Chapter 15

  Nigel Gamble, as he had called himself back then, was only twenty-one when he’d first stumbled out through the door into the city life that lay before him. He loved everything about that new world and the opportunities it now offered him. He had taken his name from the successes which came quickly. His initial recklessness in gambling saw him make huge winnings and in the process he attracted the wrong sort of attention. Having made one million pounds within the first three weeks, he invested much of it in long term savings making it out into another name as the beneficiary; he was to draw on it later when it had made huge amounts of interest. He had purchased a number of gaming companies, adopting the name Gamble in the process, and turned his knowledge from just winning bets to making much larger profits from his businesses. Giving much more generous odds for some sure fire winners drew in lots of business and when things went wrong for the punter, as Nigel knew they would, it meant for him business was booming.

  After three years he decided to get out of the gambling industry altogether, not wanting to leave too much of a trail and sold up his now very successful companies for twenty-three million, quite a return on the relatively small investment he’d made not long before. Having done much research into people, companies and technologies, he went down the line of recruiting the best people, cherry picking them from where they currently were and allowing them to develop naturally. They now did that, however, within his growing empire.

  Within a few years he had established his own security agency, which had strong government links but which was totally self funded, as well as a head-hunting recruitment team to hire everyone he wanted. He’d also started purchasing some companies and at the time had lived in the centre of London, being fairly involved in things, though always keeping a low profile.
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  As the years went by, his wealth growing, Nigel became more concerned about losing everything and spent much of his time making himself disappear, having started to build a strong network of men and women, including Brendan Charles, who could be trusted to take control of the day to day running of his now huge group.

  He’d purchased Ample Tech and used them as his outlet for new breakthrough technologies which he continually made available to them. They became huge, taking over or closing down most of their rivals. It was also a convenient way of getting Jessica Ponter into the fold and Brendan had done well at the time doing everything required of him.

  Nigel was also always thinking about his own safety and it was as his own wealth shot through the billion pound bracket that he moved to his current estate, shifting everything with him and specifically building his own area of the house, which included the walled garden, to his own unique design so that he could be himself without fear of prying eyes. The builder he used had been great, doing a wonderful job. He had terminal cancer which made him the ideal candidate for Nigel’s private work. The cancer had killed the guy within three months of completion, a sudden shock to all concerned, apart from Nigel of course.

  After that, Nigel also got into state of the art weapons’ systems, which gave him strong and positive links with the military as well as into politics, though he himself stayed distant. By the time he had established a medical research institute and purchased two large oil companies, turning their unproductive sites into the last major oil fields left by finding huge amounts of previously undiscovered oil, he was the richest man on the planet. This was not, however, a known fact, as so much of the group was in different names and few knew of his involvement, which was just the way he wanted it.

  The Oil Company, as the two merged firms had become, was now the market leader in research into alternative fuels and had already found a workable solution for when the last amounts of oil dried up. They had everything ready for when the time would come, planning to announce their findings to the world, news that would cripple the rest of the oil industry and all but do away with their rivals’ businesses. The Oil Company was ready with all the answers to the world’s energy needs and on its own it was now worth around one trillion pounds, which would triple once the announcement was made in a few years. At present there was quite a lot of oil remaining in their own reserves.

  Nigel kept things moving along. For him profit came in short gains, hit-and-runs in which he got in, got as much profit in a short period as he could and then got out by selling up. It was using himself to his strengths but also made it an impossible maze for anyone trying to track him, due to the complex path of takeovers, mergers, more takeovers and then sales. It would take someone months to work through, only again getting to another set of mergers and takeovers.

  With the wealth in energy as well as the need for new technology and for medical breakthrough, these areas of Nigel’s empire were his key areas going forward, his mainstays, his regular and significant sources of income. There had been many short-term purchases along the way, such as the betting shops, but the purchase of Nottingham Forest had been something different altogether. He was partly looking to the long term with the youth policy he wanted put in place, but he was really just doing it for fun; little else carried much reward factor any more. So much of what he did, especially in the early days, was based on his knowledge of certain success. In essence though, Nigel Gamble, as he now was, was a thrill seeker at heart. He wasn’t the most business minded man, which is why using the skills of people like Brendan Charles was essential. Nigel had matured a lot from the kid that he once had been, throwing his money around like it was going out of fashion and drawing very mixed reactions from those around him. Sure, he could get women, but that had never been much of a problem before his wealth, though they never stayed around for long. He also drew a crowd of angry people around him, eager for a piece of his action which is when he decided to get out of gambling altogether. That time also made him realise the importance of his own anonymity.

  His childhood experiences were what had shaped him. Born in a tough inner city council estate, an only child, he was named Mark Smith after his father, who worked two jobs trying to provide enough for his family. Mark grew up fast, out and about on the streets, and was forced into a gang at the age of ten, the only way of avoiding being beaten up when walking around the area. At school he was bullied quite a bit as well and this made him retreat more and more.

  After a gang battle just after his fifteenth birthday in which he saw two young men bleed to death, he turned his back on all of it and with his family moving from the area anyway, he tried to put it all behind him. He had been doing well at school, despite all the problems, and was fast tracked in History and Science, taking these A-Levels a year early and getting top grades.

  His educational successes still got him into trouble with bullies and he regularly got into fights that he couldn’t have a chance of winning. His father wasn’t around to help him out as he was working all hours trying to pay the mortgage. His mother was sick and spent all her time in bed now, with some unresearched illness that doctors didn’t know how to treat, the drugs she was being given only seemingly making her worse with no obvious signs of any improvement to her health.

  Having been accepted into Oxford University to study Physics, Mark Smith left home with high hopes, though a slightly heavy heart. But he soon put the past behind him and expected things to be different at Oxford, which they were in many ways but still there was an isolation, this ‘non connection’ with people and before long he felt as emotionally bullied as he had been physically before.

  Until then he had got through his studies largely on the fact that he had a near photographic memory, which gave the impression of intelligence but without the lateral thinking. He was soon found out by some of his new university peers and this only added to his isolation. They all said they’d got there with hard work but he had done so with a ‘sly technique’.

  Physics at Oxford proved a lot more difficult for him than he had expected. Without that depth of knowledge that comes from genuine understanding of one’s subject, he was often caught out and this was not missed by his fellow students, nor by the lecturers. Mark knew he needed some help and he worked his way into an intellectual but socially inept group of young men. They too, on their own, had been subject to bullies but had grown close. Allowing Mark into their realm, they had the chance to learn how to attract girls, a skill Mark had offered to teach them.

  Mark retained his natural interest in History and opted for a course in the History of Science in his third year. It was in one of these lectures that he first came across the Wentworth brothers and he went away and read all he could on them. With their strong link into Physics, Mark Smith studied the two brothers in depth and was fascinated by them.

  He would entertain his new group of pals after Physics lectures with all the interesting facts he’d learnt about the brothers and between them they dreamed of knowing as much as the brothers did one day.

  But it wasn’t until Mark stumbled across something once written about the brothers that his pulse really started racing. He went away and did more research, scanning through the internet, looking for further clues as to what the article was talking about. He never did understand the science of it, he could only recite the facts to sound as if he did understand it. When one evening he shared everything with his group of scientist friends, they went through the night talking, hypothesising, dreaming about finishing the brothers’ work. Written in an unfinished set of notes before his tragic death, Christopher Wentworth, the oldest brother and double Nobel prize winner, had started to describe a doorway between two points, but not in the conventional sense, but between two points...in time. Written down were his own detailed workings of the first point, like an ‘anchor’ being dropped down to which you returned one day once you had worked out how. The work from Christopher remained unfinished and it wasn’t clear whether he knew if
it would be possible, but it was clear that he’d finished the first doorway and he detailed its position, time and location exactly.

  Mark was lost for words but felt excited. His friends just thought he understood and between them they talked of nothing else. They wanted to be the ones to work out the second doorway, constructing it themselves, in order to walk back out through that first one at some point. It seemed a distant and magical dream to Mark, but his friends, working along the same lines that Christopher Wentworth had started, got to work writing new equations never seen before. Mark Smith didn’t understand much of what they said. His mind, though, started to think about what he’d do if it could be achieved and he started to gather information together to give himself the best life possible. His friends focused only on the project and the world fame that would come with such a breakthrough. They left Mark to himself most of the time, not concerned with what he might or might not have been doing.

  It took three years and several failures to finally crack the science and start to build the technology needed to construct the second doorway. By now they were coming to the end of their studies and though their results wouldn’t be as good as they could have been, this breakthrough would put all those failings behind them once and for all. They had told no one about what they’d been working on all this time and because they never got invited to any parties, no one really cared what they were up to. By the end of things Mark Smith still knew no more about how it worked or why but the first test that they had done seemed to work, though it would need someone to actually go through the door, and then come back, to know if it really did work. Mark, being the one who first mentioned things, as well as the most vocal now, volunteered to go with John, another one of the group. The machine was fired up, a very simple process but still Mark watched every step to be sure of how to do it. There was some debate as to what they should use in order to test things out properly. They decided to just take with them some food items that would deteriorate over time but hopefully not smell or attract rats.