by Asher, Adele
“I hope I’m more than your associate mister.”
“What would you prefer?”
“Partner.”
“That sounds like we are in a same sex relationship.”
“Hmmph.”
“First floor,” the receptionist replied as the door buzzed open.
Nick opened the door and ushered me to go in. We went up the stairs to the reception where the frosty receptionist sat with a look on her face that indicated her hobby was sucking lemons.
“You don’t have an appointment,” she told us looking down her list.
“No. We don’t do appointments,” I told her.
“To see Mr. Reuben you need to have an appointment. He’s a very busy man.”
“I’m sure he is,” I replied. “Busy defrauding other people I should imagine.”
“Excuse me?”
“What kind of shyster operation are you fronting here you snotty bitch?” I asked her.
She looked shocked.
“You will have to make an appointment then leave.”
“I don’t think so,” I said as I pulled Nick’s gun from under his jacket and put it to her head. She squealed in shock. “I’m going to give you exactly thirty seconds to tell me where Reuben is then I’m going to decorate what little brains you have all over the Wilton.” The receptionist picked up the phone. I cocked the pistol’s hammer to reinforce the point. “And no funny business.”
“Mr. Reuben. I have an urgent visitor for you…no, they really can’t wait I think you need to see them now.” the receptionist gestured at the office door. “You can go through,” she told us nervously.
Nick gave me his now standard disapproving look. I shrugged my shoulders not seeing what the problem was. He walked around the back of the receptionist and took a temporary plastic handcuff binding out of his pocket.
“Arms behind your back please,” he told her.
“We don’t have any money here,” she told me.
“I’m not after your money. I’m after mine,” I told her.
Nick bound her hands behind her chair, picked up a roll of parcel tape from her desk and tore a strip off and stuck it over her mouth. We headed through to Reuben’s office.
Reuben was an overweight man in his fifties wearing a pinstripe suit and pink shirt. He was on the phone when we walked in. I walked straight over to him and put the gun to his head.
“Tell them you’ll call them back,” I told him.
“I’ll have to call you back, I have a urgent matter,” he said with a nervous stammer before putting the phone down.
Nick sat down calmly and lit a cigarette.
“We don’t have any money,” said Reuben.
“You have my money.” I told him and sat down next to Nick and put my feet up on Reuben’s repro Victorian desk.
“Who are you?” Reuben asked with his hands in the air.
“Put your hands down. This isn’t the wild west,” I said. Reuben complied.
“This is a non-smoking office,” he told Nick.
“Sue me,” replied Nick.
Reuben probably would.
“What do you want?”
“Johnny Van Sant,” said Nick.
“Never heard of him,” replied Reuben, obviously lying.
“I’ll ask again then I’m going to shoot you in the knee. Johnny Van Sant.”
“He is a client. What about him?”
“Well Mister Reuben. It seems you have been complicit in helping Mister Van Sant fraudulently steal all my property and trust fund assets,” I said.
“I’m sure that’s not the case,” he protested.
“Well it is the case, and have one guess why I’m here.”
“You want them back?”
“Clever chap.”
“Terribly sorry Miss…but that’s just not going to be possible.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that Mister Reuben. In that case you are no use, and if you are no use I’m going to have to kill you.”
“Wait! Look it’s really not my fault. His credentials seemed perfectly acceptable. As far as I was concerned he had full authority to make the transfers.”
“He didn’t.”
“Well that’s a problem isn’t it?” said Reuben.
“No that’s your problem,” I corrected him.
“Look, here’s how it is. I don’t know where the money and property is now.I can’t transfer it back because I don’t know where it is. You will need to speak to Mister Van Sant.”
“I intend to.”
“If I knew where it was that would be a different matter.”
“But you did the transfer?”
“To an intermediate holding company. Then Mister Van Sant transferred it to another company.”
“Paperwork. I want the paperwork,” I said.
“Of course…of course.” Reuben got up and opened his cabinet and rifled through some papers before he pulled out an old revolver and pointed it at me. Without stopping to react I squeezed the trigger of my Beretta and shot him in the chest. Unfortunately for Reuben the old fashioned nature of his revolver meant he hadn’t cocked it in time to be able to fire it. He slumped to the floor. Nick stubbed out his cigarette and grabbed the pistol off me and walked around to him and kicked away the revolver. Reuben was struggling to breathe.
“You have no idea what you are getting into,” Reuben spluttered.
Nick put the gun to his forehead.
“Now why would you want to shoot us Mister Reuben?” Nick asked.
Reuben coughed and laughed.
“You will never get away with this! Our organisation will see to that.”
“Who are you?” Nick asked grabbing him by the scruff of the neck.
“You won’t get your money back,” Reuben protested.
Nick got up and rifled through the filing cabinet. He took out a bunch of files then aimed the gun at Reuben and shot him through the head. He looked at me.
“How was that my fault! He had a gun!” I protested. “Why the hell would a lawyer have a gun in his filing cabinet!”
Nick handed me the files.
“We have to get out of here,” he told me and headed for the door. On the way through the reception Nick shot the receptionist twice in the forehead.
“What did she do?” I asked.
“Do you want to leave a witness?”
Nick grabbed my hand and hurried me out the door and down the back fire escape. Outside a small crowd was gathering in front of the building alerted by the gunshots. We hurried back to the car and got in. Nick started the Range Rover and drove away casually as I flicked through the files.
“What’s in them?”
I read through the piles of paperwork most of which seemed to be transfer documents between offshore corporations and banks.
“Lots of asset movement between shell companies in the Bahamas, the Caymans and a bank in Luxembourg. The same bank was listed on all the transfers. “It’s all the same bank. Looks like money laundering of some sort.”
“Who is the beneficiary?” Nick asked.
I shook my head.
“No name, it’s just a numbered account and a reference. There’s a name for the transfer agent at the bank though…Erik Sorenssen,” I said as I found the paperwork relating to my asset trust fund. “Here is my transfer. They transferred everything through a Bahamas shell corporation using the same bank as intermediary.” I showed Nick the papers. “Why would Reuben say that? Our organisation. What organisation?”
“I’m guessing whoever these guys are. Probably the same guys Johnny works for and the people who organised all those hits.”
“And who are they?”
“If you hadn’t shot Reuben we could have asked him.”
“You can’t blame that on me. I just disabled him…you finished him off.”
“In either case we can’t ask him any more questions now.”
“That didn’t really go to plan did it?”
“Not really.”
“So what now?”
“Geneva. We need Johnny to explain himself.”
“Are you going to get in trouble for this?”
“Probably.”
“Sorry.”
Nick looked at me and just gave me a gentle accepting smile.
“Stop by my place. I might have something for you,” I told him.
We drove back over to Chelsea. I directed Nick to the small mews behind Cadogan Square where I kept a garage. We got out and I unlocked the garage door. To my delight in his desire to escape the country as quickly as possible Johnny hadn’t been as thorough as he should have been in liquidating my assets, no doubt feeling content I would be safely incarcerated for the next several months. Sat in its lair was the Quantum Grey Aston Martin DBS.
“What’s this?” asked Nick.
“It’s your thank you present,” I told him kissing him.
I went round the back of the garage and found the keys in their cabinet and tossed them across to him.
“For what?”
“For being my hero,” I smiled.
I popped the boot and lifted the tailored carpet to reveal the gun safe. “See…I’ve got one of those too,” I told him. “And, well, if we are going to Geneva we aren’t going in your tractor. A girl’s got to travel in style.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. I kissed Nick again.
He was like a small boy at Christmas. I opened the gun safe and helped Nick load the boot of the DBS with his deadly arms cache. Nick fired up the Aston’s raucous V12 engine and reversed it out of the garage, it’s exhausts spitting angrily. I drove Nick’s Range Rover into the empty space and locked the garage behind me then got into the DBS with him and gave him a big smile. He prodded the accelerator and lit up the rear tyres as they struggled for grip on the uneven cobbles of the mews.
We headed back towards Tower Bridge and Nick’s apartment through the late evening traffic.
“We need to keep him alive to talk. You know that?”
“Sure,” I replied. “The question is if he’s transferred everything via this Luxembourg mob how are we going to get it back?”
“The first thing is to work out who they are.”
“Who do you think they are? I mean who would your best guess be?”
Nick looked thoughtful for a while.
“Probably private security contractors, they have taken out targets across political boundaries so they don’t seem to be affiliated with any one state organisation. That means they are more likely to be private. That’s where it gets muddy.”
“Muddy?”
“If they are contractors then it’s not a question of who they are but who they are working on behalf of. Given their nature these kind of organisations don’t generally give up their client lists easily.”
“Well I know you have your job to do. Personally as long as I get my money back and stay out of prison I couldn’t care less who they are.”
“Doesn’t it bother you? These people had Johnny con you into killing those people. You aren’t at all curious why?”
“No, not really. It was something to do. I didn’t think much about it,” I said. Nick shook his head. “It bothers you?” I asked.
“Of course. That’s why I do my job. Catch the bad guys.”
“Come on Nick. They are all the bad guys. Same team different shirts. They think you are the bad guys. That’s why it doesn’t matter who the bad guys are as long as they end up dead and you don’t.”
“That’s a very simple way of looking at things.”
“That’s the only way of looking things. All those people died. We don’t know why, maybe they do know why, maybe we will find out and not really care because the truth generally isn’t that interesting.”
“What is interesting?” Nick asked.
“You’re interesting.”
“So if someone killed me wouldn’t you want to know why?”
“No. I’d just kill them,” I replied coldly. “I don’t need to know why. People are always asking why. Why doesn’t he love me, why is life so shit, why does it always rain. Things just are the way they are. We are participants not directors.”
“Have you ever thought if you asked Johnny why then you wouldn’t be in this mess?”
“Maybe, but if I had asked Johnny why then I wouldn’t be here with you.”
“So you believe in fate?”
“Of course. The minute you pick up a gun you should believe in fate. Because there is very little you can control once you pull the trigger.”
“This whole mess doesn’t bother you?”
“It bothers me in so far as Johnny has won and I don’t like losing therefore I want a rematch on my terms to even the score. Beyond that? No.It doesn’t bother me. Johnny’s actions put my life on a different more acceptable path that has resulted in a greater degree of happiness than I would have otherwise experienced. I should thank him. Of course I won’t thank him. I’m going to blow his fucking brains out but that’s for other matters.”
“What about the rapper? You don’t feel bad about that?”
“Not especially. He was an oxygen thief. The world is a better place without him.”
“Fair enough,” said Nick.
“Besides. If I had asked why you wouldn’t have an Aston Martin DBS. So you should stop asking why and just do.”
Nick nodded.
I had concluded Nick was probably victim of the modern nanny state that dictated every time he fired his gun he had to spend several hours in therapy with a liberal lesbian social worker to talk about his feelings and the value of life.
At some point in our history, probably due to the media, it had become unpalatable to acknowledge that people might actually enjoy killing other people. Whilst committed fundamentalist terrorists were allowed to be portrayed as bloodthirsty maniacs our own dear soldiers had to spend endless hours with the padre asking why and if it’s right to kill when in reality they most likely would admit they got the same thrill as a thirteen year old wading into an xbox battle on Call of Duty.
For me life and death were very simple ends of the same equation. I no more had to mourn the rappers death than he would have mourned mine. My victims almost universally had other people’s blood stained on their hands so it wasn’t as if I was going round killing kitten-loving schoolgirls.
“I appreciate my work doesn’t have your legitimacy but we’re in the same business. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a government, shadow corporation or deranged despot who orders someone to be killed. One reason is pretty much as good as another. Everyone is equally right and equally wrong,” I said.
“You’re not just a pretty face are you?” Nick replied saliently.
“It long ago occurred to me I was mostly doing people a favour. Their lives were so meaningless they were better off out of it and lacking the courage to do it themselves so they should be happy I was prepared to speed their exit,” I told him. He looked quite shocked as well he might before I bit my lip with a teasing smile. He just shook his head. “You are too easy,” I told him with a wink.
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, does it bother you what you do?” I asked him.
“Sometimes.”
“Then why do you do it?”
“Because I don’t really know what else to do.”
“We could run away together. Get a house on a beach. Have six kids.”
“Wouldn’t you get bored?”
“I think I’ve had enough excitement for one lifetime.”
“It’s not over yet. We still have to catch your man.”
“I’ve already caught my man,” I said smiling demurely.
We arrived back at Nick’s apartment and parked outside.
“You pack. I’ll fax these over to the office and see if I can get us some more answers. Then Geneva,” Nick said.
“Our first holiday together. We can have dinner, see the sights and beat the living shit out of my ex-boyfriend.”
“The
perfect romantic break.”
Back in the apartment I packed my cases for several days away and selected a suitable wardrobe for Nick while he was busy with the secure fax sending all the banking documents to some secret minions of state.
Probably at GCHQ who would no doubt just Google the results.
I was quite excited at the prospect of our trip together. Not just because Johnny would get the shock of his life when I eventually turned up but the whole notion of racing across Europe alongside my new beau in his Aston with a boot full of guns was far more exciting than a day at the races. I had a growing appreciation for Nick’s way of doing things. He just got on with it. The fact he asked questions reassured me he was at least quite straight forward in comparison to the devious Johnny. Of course I was curious about Nick’s intentions, however much I might wish to believe it was merely my feminine charm and allure in the bedroom that was enough to cause him to go off reservation on his jaunt to help a damsel in distress he clearly had another motivation, either personal or state-sponsored for catching up with Johnny. I was more probably an attractive sideshow to his main purpose and perhaps he thought he was merely a sideshow to my main purpose. A relationship of mutual benefits. I’m sure he was expected to utilise assets such as myself and tell us whatever we wanted to hear to achieve his objectives.
Secretly I hoped if I plied him with enough honey he would find me much more than a sideshow. Having finished packing I found Nick typing on a laptop.
“All packed,” I told him and sat down on a stool opposite him resting my head on my hands.
“Nearly done,” he told me.
“Reporting to M?” I asked casually.
“Something like that,” he replied.
“Can I ask you a question?” I asked him.
“Sure,” he replied a little too certain that suggested he would answer anything even if it involved lying.
“If it was a choice between duty to Queen and Country and duty to me, which would you choose?” I asked.
He just smiled.
“What makes you think they aren’t just the same thing?”
“Explain.”
“You’re a British citizen. Serve and protect.”
I smiled at him.
“Oh I like that. Serve and protect. So I’m master now precious.”
