All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘Seventeen,’ Parrier said. ‘This must be the only place we’re not wishing to see it again.’ The voice was low and confident, lightly accented French.

  Jane took a breath, preparing herself to look him in the eye, this man who wanted her son dead, who had unleashed hired killers upon her grandchildren. Ca’ canny, she advised herself.

  She forced a thin smile, one that was politely indulgent of the interjection but let him know he was still a long way off making a good impression. He was younger than the others, around mid-fifties, though maybe it was just that his better looks and air of cockiness made him appear so. He had the arrogance of a man who had not been told to fuck off anything like enough in his life, and yet something about his expression suggested he wasn’t quite so sure of himself as he’d been a few seconds ago. She’d noticed it almost as soon as their eyes met, this tiny change in his features like he’d composed his best chat-up face, then hadn’t quite seen what he was expecting when she turned around.

  Conflicted as she was, she found it hard to believe he was truly ruffled by any suppressed contempt he’d detected in her coolness. This was something else.

  She went back to her game, the croupier dealing him in this time. He threw down some chips and picked up his cards, but she could tell he was looking at her more closely than he was his hand.

  ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’ he asked.

  ‘Is that your best line?’ she replied, not meeting his eyes, but her tone sufficiently playful as to suggest he was being invited to improve.

  ‘It’s not a line. We’ve met, but I can’t place you. You have the advantage of me, Miss …?’

  Jane turned again slowly, sipping at her drink, buying time as her mind raced. It wasn’t a line. He’d seen her photograph: he’d have seen photographs of her whole family, proof of how deep he was in, how much he knew of what was being done on his behalf. That was what had derailed his casual chat-up: when he got to see her properly, he realised he knew her face, though she’d wager he’d never place it in a million years. She wanted to crush him, wanted to spit in his face, but knew she had to mask her anger, use her hatred, channel it into the game, the better to leave him defeated in the end.

  She smiled again.

  ‘Bell,’ she said. ‘Jane Bell.’

  ‘And I am … none the wiser.’

  ‘That is because we haven’t met before,’ she informed him, her tone demure but enigmatic. ‘We have seen each other, but not met. I’ve thus far been too careful to allow it … Monsieur Parrier.‘

  She returned her attention to the table, letting him chew on that one for a moment.

  ‘Allow it?’

  ‘Bad for my reputation to be consorting with someone of yours.’

  Parrier took a beat to recompose himself, looked like he was sorting through faces for a safe one to wear. He opted for a knowingly bashful visage, brazenly aware he was fooling nobody.

  ‘And what reputation do I have?’

  Jane played her hand, found herself looking at seventeen again, the house holding nineteen, Parrier eighteen.

  ‘You’re a rogue, Monsieur Parrier,’ she said, smiling but not looking at him. She didn’t have to to tell he loved it.

  He stuck, too intent on her to be bothered with the game. She transferred his attention to the table by putting down all her chips, by this point back to around two grand, and indicating she wanted another card.

  The croupier turned over the top card. It came up four of diamonds. Jane’s expression betrayed nothing.

  ‘You like to live dangerously,’ Parrier said approvingly.

  ‘I like risk,’ she replied. ‘But not games of chance. I’d rather be betting on myself than on sheer fortune. Besides, the stakes here are too low to be genuinely exciting. Good evening, Monsieur,’ she concluded, getting to her feet and walking away.

  Parrier called after her. ‘What about your winnings?’

  Jane turned around and picked a single chip from the pile, lifting it with her right hand, the plastic wafer of a bug between two fingers. She placed the token in Parrier’s outside breast pocket, pressing the bug into the interior lining.

  ‘Buy yourself a drink,’ she said. ‘The croupier can have the rest as a tip.’

  And with that, she did leave, the faint sound of Bett’s applause pitter-pattering in her ears.

  They had been on the autoroute only a few minutes when Nuno checked the right-side wing mirror for the umpteenth time and announced: ‘We have a tail.’

  ‘A tail? How exciting.’

  ‘Call it a vote of confidence in your performance. Somebody’s intrigued. Dispatched a drone to check you out, wants to know where you go after the lights go down.’

  Jane looked in her rear-view.

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Three cars back. Toyota SUV.’

  ‘Poor choice,’ she said with a grin. Nuno laughed and checked his seat belt, knowing what was coming next.

  ‘The car in front is a Lamborghini,’ she said.

  Further G-forces ensued.

  The house looked all but deserted as Jane guided the Diablo carefully up the drive. Travelling slowly along the gravel felt like the final stretch of a rollercoaster ride, after the swoops and turns; still in the carriage, still moving, but you know the fun’s over. It had been quite a ride, and she didn’t just mean the motor. She let Nuno put it back in the garage, concerned she might clip a wing mirror on the doorframe, or super-calamity, prang it off of some other equally exquisite vehicle inside.

  She walked on alone through the front door, all but the vestibule in darkness, no sounds echoing around the hallways. The place appeared sleepy and tranquil, but she knew it to be anything but. She made her way downstairs to the basement level, where the corridor lights were on. She turned right, opposite the entrance to the shooting range. Still there were no voices, but she could hear the clack-clack of a keyboard from the open door of Bett’s operations centre.

  Inside was like the control room of a TV studio. There were two banks of monitors, each arrayed in two rows of eight, hanging from the ceiling on black aluminium frames. The banks were angled slightly downwards and set at about a hundred and twenty degrees from each other, presenting two aspects to the long central desk at which Bett, Armand and Rebekah sat, each wearing headphones. The desk itself was flanked by multi-tiered electronic fascias, signal lights and LEDs blinking and flickering, and between these towers sat a control deck that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Cape Canaveral. In front of each seat was a keyboard, mouse and flat-screen monitor, presenting a user interface considerably less intimidating than the prospect of messing about with the NASA knock-off in the middle.

  The monitors showed a plethora of images from inside the Reine d’Azur, frequently changing as Bett, Armand or Rebekah switched to a different view. Some showed only orange-yellow blobs, infrared traces recognisable as human only when they walked across the screen. One of the penthouses didn’t have its blinds drawn, affording a nightscape view to the CMK chief as he lay back on a sofa and enjoyed a blow job. His obliviousness of being watched was reassuring, but Jane felt bad for the girl, and thus it served as a reminder of the intrusive nature of what they were about.

  Separate from the main desk, Alexis sat at a smaller console, five computer monitors arced around her field of vision, her fingers playing busily back and forth across three different keyboards. Jane saw screeds and screeds of code scrolling up the central screen, occasionally slowed down by a movement of Alexis’s hand on a mouse, after which a click or a key press would cause an email or text document to appear on one of the peripheral monitors.

  Jane stood in the doorway a moment, not wanting to interrupt. No one seemed to notice her, she thought, but after a few seconds Bett beckoned her inside without taking his eyes off the monitors. She approached the empty chair next to him and sat down, looking up at what was holding his attention. She could just make out one of the execs she’d bugged, sitting at a bureau in hi
s suite, talking on the phone. He hung up, at which point Bett took off his cans and finally turned around.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, his voice little above a whisper.

  ‘Where’s Som?’ she asked, for the sake of something to say, feeling a little self-conscious for the first time that day.

  ‘Grabbing some kip. He’ll be doing the late session, when most of our subjects are asleep. Good job, by the way,’ he added. ‘You put in quite a shift.’

  ‘Thanks. So what next?’

  ‘Next? This. We look, we listen.’

  ‘I’m not going back?’ she asked, trying to keep the disappointment from her voice.

  Bett shook his head.

  ‘But didn’t you say the best source of intelligence is just getting people to talk? I’m sure I could get more out of those people.’

  ‘It’s a risk/benefit issue. You did well today, played it smart, sat back and let the subjects make all the moves. But your cover story won’t hold up under deep scrutiny. You get too close, and they’ll start to get suspicious very quickly.’

  It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but she knew he was right. He was always bloody right.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ she asked.

  Bett nodded towards a pair of headphones and then showed her how to alter the channels using the computer. An information panel appeared with each change, denoting whether the source was a bug, a directional mike or a phone-tap, as well as stating the name of the company or individual it had been applied to.

  ‘That red bar flashes underneath the panel if someone else is already listening to the channel,’ Bett informed her, before placing his cans back on and leaving her to it.

  She toggled through a babble of voices, a Babel of languages. She eventually found someone speaking English, one side of a conversation, and deduced that it was the subject talking on a mobile. Mobile traffic was, Bett had explained, too prolific to tap, with no way of identifying worthwhile signals amid the hundreds emanating from just the hotel. More importantly, none of the people they were surveilling would be daft enough to say anything indiscreet over such an easily monitored medium.

  She listened for a while, inconsequential business talk. Figures and jargon. Speculation about some board-level vacancy. Chat about football. She barely knew what to be listening for, only that she wasn’t hearing it. So much noise, so much static. Low-bandwidth conversations, as she’d heard Alexis disparage such inconsequential discussion. What were they ever going to deduce from it?

  Her expression must have betrayed her, because Bett leaned across and gently tugged the headphones away from her ears.

  ‘You have to pan a lot of muddy water before you find any gold,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a long day. Get some sleep.’

  She didn’t argue.

  Jane rose early and grabbed a croissant and a mug of coffee to take down to the basement. When she arrived, she found she was the last on the scene, though not the first to bring breakfast.

  ‘Anything … come up?’ she asked Bett nervously.

  He nodded but didn’t elaborate, merely wheeled his chair along to make space by way of inviting her to take her place. She pulled on her cans and got comfortable in the free seat.

  Hours passed. The river flowed, fast and muddy. Dross threatened to engulf them, but surely and gradually, the gold did accumulate, often in precious little specks that came perilously close to being missed; and occasionally in jaw-dropping chunks.

  By early afternoon, they knew of four bidders: Ordinance Systems Europe, British Defence Engineering, Gieselcorp and a Dutch/Belgian firm named Industries Arutech. There would be others, it was fair to assume. They knew the auction floor was set at fourteen million euros, and that two of the parties – Gieselcorp and Arutech – were prepared to go to at least twenty. The bidding would be conducted by video-conference at eleven o’clock the day after next, with only the winner’s connection retained after completion, meaning none of the losers would know who won.

  They knew that the vendor would be arriving in Cap Andreus later today, with proof of what he held, and that bidders wishing to examine it would be picked up by car and taken, alone, to an unspecified location to do so. They knew also that the vendor would be accompanied by a formidable personal security staff and was taking various measures to prevent any attempts on the part of the bidders to discover where they might more directly acquire their target.

  But crucially, they still didn’t know the one thing they needed most: the name of who was selling. Nobody had referred to anything more specific than various languages’ equivalents of ‘the vendor’, seemingly just as cagey about identifying him as they were about what they were bidding on, which was itself usually alluded to only in euphemistic terms.

  ‘Do you think they don’t know?’ Alexis asked, voicing a fear Jane had been too scared of to enquire herself. ‘Like, he’s concealed who he is somehow?’

  ‘No,’ Bett said, much to her relief. ‘He needs credibility to make the pitch. You can’t just phone up and say, “Hey, you don’t know me and I’m not telling you my name, but I’ve got Ross Fleming and I’m open to offers.” They’d need to know they were dealing with someone of reputation before they took it seriously, and my guess is that his reputation is taken very seriously. Seriously enough that you don’t go dropping his name all over the place because you never know who’s listening and you don’t want it common knowledge that you’re doing business with him.’

  ‘In which case we’re wasting our time,’ Jane argued. ‘Ross’s time.’

  ‘Nobody’s that discreet,’ Alexis offered in an attempt at reassurance. ‘Someone will let it slip eventually.’

  ‘We don’t have until eventually,’ Bett said. ‘We have less than a day, and after the auction we’re into injury time. So …’ He turned to Jane, who was, for once, ahead of him.

  ‘So the risk-benefit ratio has changed,’ she stated.

  ‘The ratio, not the risk.’

  Jane switched to her English accent.

  ‘I like risk,’ she reprised.

  Oil and water

  Ross feared that Dad might take some convincing, either of the viability of his plan or of the wisdom of pissing these people off, but, in retrospect, Ross was overestimating the comforts of the saloon bridge even for a seasoned couch-potato like him. Travelling to hell first class might have its perks, but that didn’t mean he wanted to reach his destination. Ross told him what to do and he nodded eagerly, it uncharitably flashing through Ross’s mind that being told what to do was pretty much always how Dad liked it. Besides, the plan entailed Ross doing the improvisational stuff, and even required Dad to sit on his arse and watch the telly for a while, thus harnessing what each was best at.

  With no indication of how much or how little time they might have, they went for it that same night, after dinner, which Ross opted to have in his cabin so as to conceal how little of it he was eating. He flushed the rest, then made his way to the saloon bridge where his dad had, as ordered, cued up Die Hard on the DVD player. As ever they were helping themselves to drinks, Dad slowly sipping a bottle of San Miguel while Ross made more frequent trips to the bar, reaching each time for a bottle of vodka but pouring mineral water into his glass below the gantry, out of sight of Guillaume and Kurt, the two guards present. He became gradually more belligerent with each round, starting by mouthing derisory comments about his dad’s choice of film, and working his slurred way up towards more bitter mutterings about Dad’s role in bringing him to this station in life. This provided a reason for Dad repeatedly jacking up the volume on the plasma TV, and culminated in a stand-up argument in which he was roundly told he’d had his last drink and ought to go sleep it off. Dad even gave an appealing glance to Kurt, who stepped forward to escort Ross away, but didn’t get there before Ross beat his own staggering retreat. He kept up his pretence all the way to the cabin, unsure who might be looking on, even sounding out a plausible volley of retching noises from the toilet. The dry-boak complete, he went to b
ed and killed the lights, waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to a darkness that would still obscure his subsequent activities if there really was a concealed camera. As he lay there, he could hear Ode to Joy ringing triumphantly out into the moonlit maritime night, beneath it a voice unintelligible from this distance, but Ross knew from memory whose it was and what was being said.

  ‘You ask for miracles, Theo. I give you the F … B … I.’

  It was almost time.

  Ross unstrapped the small but solid fire extinguisher that was fixed to the cabin wall at knee-height near the door. He placed a few personal effects and a rolled-up T-shirt inside a ziplock plastic bag salvaged from the galley, and stuffed it into his underpants across the top of his buttocks. Then he took position beside the window and waited, barefoot like Bruce Willis would be right then on the plasma screen. Very soon Alan Rickman was conveying this detail to Alexander Godunov and thus heralding the loudest sequence of an already noisy soundtrack. This was his cue. Ross drove the fire extinguisher into the thick, sealed pane as, upstairs, the faux-German hijackers unloaded thousands of rounds into glass office partitions to create their own miniature Kristallnacht.

  It took four good wallops, but when it went, it turned out to be shatterproof, turning into a pliable opaque sheet that could be pushed right out and into the drink below.

  Ross squeezed out after it, having to manoeuvre head-first through the narrow gap, his arms pinned at his sides. He inched forward, face-down, and realised, as anticipated, that the point when his arms would be free would come only at the same moment as his centre of balance passed the edge. He delayed there a second, psyching himself, then took a breath and wriggled that last decisive few inches.

  He was in free fall for about half a second, just long enough to extend his arms and palm his hands above his head to break the water. It would take him deeper under, but it would also lessen the splash. Ross felt a convulsive shock rip through his entire body, the shuddering most violent about his trunk, as the temperature of the water bit through his skin. He’d never felt cold like it. He had looked at the sea temperature read-out, but had either failed to acknowledge what it was telling him or merely blanked it out as something he couldn’t afford to worry about. The physical jolt of the cold cleared his mind of all other thought, including his spatial orientation, which was potentially disastrous. He’d closed his eyes out of instinct as he broke the surface, but opening them made no difference, except admitting the sting of the salt water. Now he was floating in blackness, unsure which way was up, and fast running out of time to reach the surface.