The Game Players of Meridien

by Robert I. Katz

  “Is he alive?”

  She shrugged. “Barely.”

  The neurotoxin interfered with transmission across neuromuscular junctions. It was a derivative of curare. The dose had been calibrated to make the subject barely able to breathe, but of course, it’s not entirely possible to calibrate for subjects whose size and weight are only estimates. Sometimes, it killed. Not a pleasant way to die.

  I looked down at my two victims. Their breath came in fits and starts, their faces purple in the moonlight. Their arms and legs twitched. “It will wear off, soon,” I told them. I smiled. “And then you can answer some questions.”

  Chapter 19

  “How is Graham Reid?” I asked.

  “Happy,” Curtis replied warily. “Why?”

  “No reason,” I said. “No reason at all.” He wouldn’t be happy for long, I thought. The thought warmed me, all the way down to my toes, and I smiled.

  “Oh, shit,” Curtis muttered.

  Our three attackers were all ex-military, in the employ of Eric Strauss, as I had surmised. They had been given their orders by Johan Bergstrom, Eric Strauss’ second-in-command. Nothing fancy. Find me, kill me. Send a message. The mighty Strauss is not to be trifled with. They had taken a private airship direct to Lodi and were waiting for us when we arrived.

  I shook my head. Eric Strauss ran a relatively small criminal organization in a very small and generally peaceful country. He had an inflated opinion of his own position.

  In the end, all three lived and we turned them over to the Captain, who was not exactly pleased with either the situation or with us. “This may cause trouble with the government of Avalon,” he grumbled.

  “No,” I said. “It won’t.”

  He seemed unconvinced but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He took them into custody and they were marched off under guard at Parma, our next destination. Jennifer and I stood on our balcony and toasted them with glasses of wine as they were escorted off the ship in handcuffs. All three pretended not to see us.

  The rest of the trip proceeded without further incident and we arrived home in Aphelion three days later.

  The next morning, Guild Master Anderson requested my presence.

  “You’re already deeply involved,” he said. The Guild Master had received my report while we were still in the air and he perused the letter from the Avalon authorities with great interest as I sat in front of him, though I had already informed him of what it said. He put down the letter and frowned for a moment, then looked at me. “My colleagues and I have come up with a plan.” He gave me a wintery smile. “I think you’ll like it.”

  I listened without comment while he explained. The plan carried risk, but I did like it. In the end, I liked it quite a lot.

  “We could approach the problem in a number of different ways but Oliver Enterprises has a reason to declare challenge that nobody will think to question.” The Guild Master finished his explanation and waited calmly for my reply.

  “I’m the bait,” I said.

  Guild Master Anderson did not try to deny it. “Yes,” he said.

  “Why should I go along with this?”

  The Guild Master knew that I would ask that question. He would have been disappointed with me if I had not. He gave me an approving nod and smiled. “The gratitude of the Council could open many doors for you in the future. Preferential terms on future loans, reduced tariffs…” He waved a hand. “After all, the very reason for the Guild’s existence is to support and enhance the economic well-being of its members.”

  I looked at him. “Strange,” I said. “I thought that the reason for the Guild’s existence was to maximize the profits of the Guild.”

  He looked back at me with narrowed eyes and gave a small laugh. “Profit is not the end,” he said gently. “Profit is the means. When the Guild makes a profit, all of its members benefit.”

  A noble sentiment, indeed. I shrugged. “Put it in writing,” I said.

  He smiled. “Of course. I would expect nothing less.”

  I found Graham Reid at the Guild hall, sitting at a table with three young women and two other men. One of the women was Laura. Reid was tall and slim, with curling black hair and deep blue eyes. He was a swift. His features were arresting and he had an air of command. I wondered if he practiced that expression in the mirror. Though the other two women were obviously with the two men, both seemed to pay more attention to Reid than to their companions. One of the men was amused by this. The other obviously resented it. His date, a voluptuous blonde, hung on every word out of Reid’s mouth. Laura seemed subdued. She sat on the opposite side of the table from Reid, who was paying her no attention at all. Laura’s time in the spotlight seemed to be almost over. I wondered if she was smart enough to realize it.

  I could see that Reid was aware of my presence as soon as I walked in, though he pretended not to notice me. I walked up to him and smiled. “Graham,” I said. “How are you?” I could see the nearby diners observing this, all with great interest.

  He dragged his eyes away from the young woman at his side and squinted, as if uncertain who I might be. “Excellent,” he said, his voice cold. “Just trying to enjoy an evening out with my friends.”

  “Well, I won’t disturb you.” I gave him a lopsided grin and dropped a sealed letter on the table in front of him. “This is for you. Have a nice night.”

  Laura stared at me the whole time I stood there, her lips twisted, her hands slowly, perhaps unconsciously tearing a paper napkin to shreds.

  Graham Reid looked down at the letter, his expression blank, but I could see his aura churning. I smiled, turned around and walked out of the club.

  No, I thought, not happy at all.

  This is what made the game worthwhile, the old zing, the heady charge of competition while you drive another man into the dust and make him confront the total futility of his worthless, stinking existence. I almost laughed.

  I had announced my intention to buy all outstanding shares in Clarion Enterprises and to take the company private. Graham Reid, under the proposed plan, was to retire. Unlike the challenge that Reid had made to me, all those years ago, I wasn’t offering a premium. The offer was contingent upon the stock price at the end of each day, which could work against me if the price rose in expectation of a bidding war, but it could also work in my favor, as the violence of any ensuing contest diminished the value of Clarion’s shares.

  Graham Reid was no longer new to the game. He had lost to me once and won a second time, though his role in that contest was not public knowledge and in fact, was still unclear. Still, Graham Reid knew me well enough to know that a challenge from me would be dangerous.

  This competition was different from most, though Reid did not know it yet. As the Guild Master had said, I was bait. I wasn’t really trying to expand my corporation by taking over another, though that would be a nice bonus. This time, with the backing of the Guild Council, I was attempting to goad Graham Reid, and his mysterious backers, into revealing themselves. If we had to destroy Clarion in order to do so, well, from my point of view that was not a problem and being able to play with somebody else’s money—in this case, the resources of the Guild Council—made it all the sweeter. I had nothing to lose. Except, my life, of course, but that was an entirely different issue.

  I shouldn’t take it personally, I knew that. It was business, but what fun is the game if you don’t care about the outcome? I really didn’t like Graham Reid.

  My offer was published and a few of the stockholders, wary of what this all might mean to their holdings, approached me about buying their shares. Within a week, I owned three percent of Clarion Enterprises. I was also purchasing stock on the open market, which resulted in a steady trickle of shares.

  At the same time, I did my best to seduce his suppliers. A few contracts for delivery of merchandise were cancelled. A few shipments did not arrive on time. Some penalties were assessed, nothing too serious, but they added up. Graham Reid’s costs were ris
ing. Clarion’s profit margins began to shrink. The price of the stock slowly began to fall and as it did so, I stepped up my buying.

  “He won’t stand for this,” Curtis said. “You know that.”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  Curtis looked at me, his eyes narrowed. “We don’t need Clarion. We’re doing fine on our own.”

  Curtis did not know about my arrangement with Guild Master Anderson. Nobody did, except presumably the other members of the Council, and I wasn’t too sure about them.

  “It’s time to send a message,” I said. “Nobody fucks with me and gets away with it.”

  “You shouldn’t let Graham Reid get to you this way. It’s a mistake.” Curtis said flatly. He was right, of course, but I wasn’t playing the game that Curtis thought I was.

  I shrugged. “I’ll take it any way that I want. It’s my company.” This was the simple truth; it was my company. Unlike Clarion, Oliver Enterprises had never gone public. I had a few private investors, foremost among them the Guild, but all of these together comprised no more than eighteen percent of the corporation. Oliver Enterprises could not be bought unless I wanted to sell. The same could not be said of Clarion.

  “DeLaney was one thing. Graham Reid is quite another. He’ll fight back. You know that.”

  I grinned. “I’m counting on it.”

  Curtis shook his head, frustrated, and I couldn’t really fault him. He sighed and walked away.

  Over the next few weeks the tension grew. My men didn’t know what was going on, but they knew that they didn’t like it. A few of them quit. It’s one thing to provide security, quite another to deliberately walk into an armed conflict when there’s nothing at stake but a salary. I didn’t blame the ones who left. In their place, I might have done the same.

  Two nights later, I woke up from a sound sleep. I wasn’t certain what had awakened me but something felt…wrong. The room was dark but not too dark for me to see…but there was nothing to see. I lay still, listening. The air hushed almost silently through the vents. Somewhere in the building, I could sense relays and capacitors switching on and off. Tiny red lines and patches glowed in the walls, tracing the heat given off by wires and electrical outlets. All perfectly normal. I reached out and pressed a button set into the wall next to my head, then pressed another button next to the first and a panel slid open. I reached in and pulled out a small, loaded gun.

  Jennifer had gone to dinner with some friends and afterward had returned to her own place downtown. I was suddenly glad of that.

  Ten minutes passed. Nothing seemed unusual or out of place but I waited. Alerted by the alarm, my men would be checking security cameras. By now, at least three would be on guard in the hallway outside my door and two more would be down in the lobby, interfacing with the building’s own security. Like all the tenants and owners here, I paid a lot for that security. None of them worked for me directly, but I had reviewed the background and credentials of them all. They were solid.

  Maybe I was just jumpy. Imagination can play tricks, after all, but I wasn’t quite ready to concede that.

  Finally, I heard it again, the sound that had awakened me, a tiny scrape across the glass door that opened out onto the balcony. A soft hiss, a faint, acrid smell from across the room. Acid, eating away at the lock. Somebody was out on the balcony, trying to get in.

  The balcony was seventeen stories up. The walls of the building were smooth. I sighed. Probably rappelled down from the roof. At least now I knew where they were. Hopefully, not too many of them. I shook my head. No point in sticking around to find out. I padded across the dark room and slid the bedroom door shut behind me. All the doors in this apartment, and the walls as well, contained reinforced steel. I looked out through the camera into the hallway. Curtis was there himself, with two other men. I opened the door.

  “The balcony,” I said.

  “How many?”

  “No idea.”

  A loud crack sounded from the bedroom. A puff of black smoke issued from under the door.

  “Glad I’m not in there,” I said.

  A voice issued from a tiny speaker pinned to Curtis’ jacket. “Three of them. They’re wearing night-suits.” The cameras that I had activated would be displaying images from all over the apartment, visible in the monitoring stations on the First Floor. “We’re sending up reinforcements.”

  Night-suits were pitch black and skin-tight, almost impossible to see in the dark. Not much use in daylight or a lit room, but the good ones also contain adamantium webbing. They would be bullet resistant and well-protected.

  Stay or go? There were only three of them but their armament was unknown and might include machine guns, poison gas or more explosives. Prudence said run for it, before they could break through the door.

  The voice spoke again from the microphone. “They realize you weren’t in the bedroom. They’re retreating.”

  To where? By now, my men would be up on the roof and clustered on the street below. They had nowhere to go.

  A different voice spoke a few seconds later. “They had ultra-lights already set up on the balcony. They’re gone. These guys are pros.”

  No shit, I thought.

  There was no sense trying to get back to sleep. By now, I had too much adrenaline, and my bedroom was a mess, the chemical tang of explosives thick in the room.

  No way to tell what their orders had been, but considering that they had tried to enter the apartment silently, when they could have just planted some nice, big bombs out on the balcony and blown up half the building from a distance, they were presumably intending to either take me alive or kill me in some slow, gruesome way. The explosives were probably a second option.

  “No idea where they came from?”

  Curtis shook his head. “They flew off to the Northeast.” He shrugged.

  Ultra-lights were little more than kites with small motors. They had a limited range and were unstable in heavy winds. Nobody in their right mind would fly them either very high or very far. They had to have landed somewhere on the island, or possibly on a ship in the harbor, but that didn’t help us. The island of Aphelion is almost twenty kilometers long by twelve kilometers wide, with plenty of parks and open spaces. By morning, they could be anywhere.

  “And no idea who they were?”

  Curtis looked grim. He shook his head.

  “Where was Graham Reid, tonight?” I asked.

  Curtis consulted his interface. “He attended a party, accompanied by his latest mistress.”

  “Blonde?”

  He looked at me. “How did you know?”

  Poor Laura, I thought. “I figured.”

  It didn’t have to be Graham Reid, of course. He did have an alibi, and I have rivals other than Graham Reid. Still, he was the most obvious choice.

  “It worries me that we had no warning of this,” I said. We had three people in place within Graham Reid’s organization. We would have been told if any of them had known.

  “He’s keeping his cards close to his vest.” Curtis said. He grinned weakly. “Or it may not be him.”

  What to do?

  I pondered that question, for quite awhile. I was bait. I had volunteered for the job. Nothing to do but continue to do what I was doing. Keep up the pressure, and be bait.

  Things continued as they had for another three days. Clarion’s price stabilized a bit, then a rumor came out that Reid was having trouble obtaining credit. The price dropped again and I picked up another two percent of his corporation.

  I was enjoying this, I realized. I was beginning to understand why some of my colleagues preferred to take rather than to build, to be a predator rather than prey.

  And for those three days, it was quiet. I knew it wouldn’t last, though, and when Graham Reid struck again, he struck hard.

  “We’re being tailed,” Curtis said.

  “How many?” I asked.

  He looked out the window of the limousine. “Two cars.” He frowned. “Maybe four.”
>
  I nodded. I already knew this. It was four. They weren’t hard to spot, armored limousines very similar to our own. The two in front were slightly more subtle about it, keeping a bit more distance. Still, they were very slowly closing in on our convoy.

  Four cars. I pondered this. I also had four cars, plus the limousine we were driving. Four had seemed sufficient. “What do you recommend?” I asked.

  Curtis shook his head. He looked grim. “Very bad timing,” he said.

  Bad for us but good for them. We were surrounded by traffic and about to enter a tunnel beneath the river. We were past the last exit and there was no place to go but straight ahead. If we were stopped inside the tunnel there would be nowhere to run.

  The road behind us suddenly erupted in flame. Two of my cars rose into the air and crashed into the embankment. One of them rolled over. The other lay on its side, its wheels spinning.

  No longer being subtle, then.

  We entered the tunnel just as the two cars in front suddenly braked and the two behind sped up. Within seconds, we were passing through a gauntlet. Bullets rattled into both sides of the car. The limousine’s armor would protect us, from bullets at least, and the tires were solid rubber, covered by metal plates. The bullets couldn’t reach them. Still, with a hail of ammunition splattering against the windshield, the driver could barely see the road. Our car slowed, hit the concrete divider and crashed over it. The seatbelt wrenched me to the side. Suddenly, the front of the car was suspended above the divider, its wheels spinning.

  Curtis pursed his lips, opened a cabinet above the window and took out a shotgun. He handed it to me, along with half a dozen shells, and took another for himself.

  Our remaining escort drove around our assailants and raked them with fire. The two limos in front of us suddenly spun around and rammed my cars, pinning them against the tunnel walls. The doors of all four cars opened and sixteen men dressed in armor poured out, exchanging fire at point blank range.