The Debt Collectors War

by Tess Mackenzie

  Then she looked at the others. “I’ll have to hit you,” she said. “I’ll have to put you down. I can’t hold two of you at once.”

  “We’re not doing anything,” the first man said, from beside Sameh, the calmest of the lot. “We just want to talk.”

  Ellie thought about that.

  “It would be easier if I wasn’t bent over like this,” the man said.

  Ellie said, “Let him go,” to Sameh.

  Sameh did. She might have twisted his arm a little as she released him. Ellie shoved the woman she was holding, so she stumbled forward, out of Ellie’s way, and took a few steps towards the man who Sameh had just let go.

  He watched her, then took out a gun and pointed it at her.

  “That’s close enough, I think,” he said.

  Ellie stopped, and thought about what to do now. He was obviously in charge, which meant he probably was allowed to shoot her, if he wanted to. Unlike his team of minions, who had been told to keep their weapons down.

  Ellie was unarmed, and too far away to reach him with her hands, and wasn’t wearing tactical armor, either. Australia was modern, civilized, and didn’t allow aircraft to land that hadn’t been screened properly. Ellie and Sameh had been screened at the border, and screened in the street, passing e-sniffer checkpoints too. They were scanned and inspected and made certain they were disease free.

  Disease-free, and weapon-free, and free of unserviced debt, as well.

  This man had a gun, and Ellie didn’t, and she didn’t have a hope of doing anything much to him from where she was standing.

  So she stopped where she was, and said, “I’m not moving.”

  “We need your help,” the man said.

  “I don’t think I want to help you.”

  “All the same,” he said. “You will.”

  “Why?”

  He held out a tablet so she could see the screen. It was Naomi, her kid, sitting in a room, on a bed, apparently watching something on a wall screen beside the camera. Naomi seemed unharmed. There was a trustlock id in the corner, with the date and time, confirming it was a live stream.

  Naomi was alive, just like the man had said.

  She was somewhere else, probably being held captive, Ellie assumed, but she was alive, right now.

  Naomi wasn’t dead.

  Ellie stood there, and to her surprise, she felt something. Some odd mix of relief and gratitude. She had been upset the kid was dead, although she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself. Upset enough to plan a revenge killing, she supposed, which must mean a little bit upset. She thought, and tried to work out her feelings. She didn’t want the kid harmed, she decided. She felt some kind of obligation to Naomi. She didn’t quite know why, when Naomi was obviously trouble and so ought to be able to take care of herself, but Ellie cared enough to try and help.

  She didn’t want the kid harmed, and that probably meant doing what this man wanted her to do.

  She would do what he wanted in the end, but she tried playing him first, just because she had to. He’d probably expect it, but she tried anyway.

  “I haven’t seen her in years,” Ellie said. “Why do I care?”

  “Because you’re here,” the man said. “For her funeral.”

  “It’s polite to turn up, that’s all.”

  “And yet, you’re still here. Interrupting an deployment. Losing field pay. And it’s the first time you’ve been back to Australia in years…”

  “I’m very polite,” Ellie said.

  “Or you care.”

  Ellie shrugged. She stood there. Sameh and the backup team were waiting too, all looking at Ellie and the man with the tablet, waiting to see if they all needed to try and kill each other.

  “Well, if that’s all you wanted…” Ellie said.

  The man waited.

  “I mean it,” Ellie said. “She means nothing to me.”

  The man nodded. He pretended to look regretful. He shrugged, probably copying Ellie. “All right then,” he said. “No problem. I understand.”

  Ellie suddenly felt suspicious. He was giving in too easily.

  “If your child is no hold over you,” the man said. “I suppose that can’t be helped. Our mistake, and we apologize for the unnecessary travel. I hope there’s no hard feelings, and I’ll let you be on your way.”

  “And kill the kid, right?” Ellie said.

  “Of course.”

  Ellie stood there for a moment, then sighed. “Don’t do that.”

  The man smiled.

  “Don’t do that,” Ellie said. “Just tell me what you want me to do.”

  *

  The man began to talk. He was John, a debt-recovery agent with one of the Chinese finance corporations.

  Sameh stopped listening right then. Ellie could see it on Sameh’s face, out the corner of her eye. Sameh was bored as soon as she heard finance corporation, and started fidgeting and looking around.

  Ellie listened anyway. She tried to stay out of debt-recovery work, and stick to chasing insurgents, but debt recovery was so widespread, so universal, that it was difficult to avoid completely.

  She listened, and tried to work out what was going on. From what John was saying, his corporation owned a company which owned Ellie’s employer, and going through their records they had found her, found her team, and decided they were best for this. John looked at Sameh when he said that, and seemed a little smug. Ellie’s team, meaning he had expected Sameh to come too, Ellie supposed.

  Sameh glanced up, and noticed John looking at her. She blinked, and then glared back. She was annoyed, was about to take a step towards him, and perhaps start everything again. Sameh was half an act, but sometimes such a good act that even Sameh forgot she was only pretending.

  Ellie cleared her throat, and shook her head, and Sameh smiled and relaxed.

  “If I work for you anyway,” Ellie said to John. “Why all this? Why not just tell me to do whatever you want done.”

  “Need to know,” John said.

  Ellie sighed. That particular phrase had come over from the old national governments and intelligence agencies and become the bane of people like her who were trying to actually get things done.

  “Just let me explain,” John said. “It’ll all become clear.”

  Ellie nodded, and John kept talking. He talked about demographics and skill sets and matches to niche task objectives. That part wasn’t useful, so Ellie stopped listening, the way she always did when people tried to give her instructions in corporate-speak. Eventually they would realize, and stop talking to themselves, and tell her what they actually wanted her to do in a way she would understand. Until then, she might as well stand there like Sameh was.

  There wasn’t really any point bothering to listen. Ellie glanced at Sameh, and grinned, and Sameh grinned back. Sameh was okay. Sameh was waiting, too.

  Since Sameh was okay, Ellie took the time to think.

  The kid wasn’t hurt. That was the important thing to concentrate on now. Later on, she might want to kill this guy John, for putting her through what he had, but she’d wait and see and have a think about that before she did. John was just following his orders, and she understood that completely. It wasn’t really his fault that they had done things this way. And besides, the kid wasn’t hurt. That was actually what mattered.

  Ellie thought, and while Ellie thought, John talked.

  *

  Once upon a time, at the end of the last century, the corporations that were now the largest lenders in the world had been small-scale plastics and electronics manufacturers. Those corporations had ended up making everything, absolutely everything in the world that anyone wanted to buy, and so had ended up owning all the money, too. Obviously, in hindsight, Ellie supposed, but that had happened before anyone quite noticed, and apparently before the manufacturing corporations had thought it all through as well.

  Their success caused a lot of problems, problems for them as well as everyone else. Suddenly the manufacturers had all the m
oney, and were making things that now no-one could afford to buy. In order to keep manufacturing, and keep having customers, the manufacturers had to begin lending their money back to their customers, so people could keep buying their products. It was a lot more complicated than that, and had all sorts of shades of nuance about Chinese domestic politics and globalizing foreign trade and the place of denationalized financial institutions in an interconnected world. It was all very complicated, but actually it wasn’t. The Chinese manufacturing corporations which had all the money lent it to their customers, and somewhere along the way became Chinese finance corporations, and ended up owning the world. And by the time anyone thought to care, nobody had armies any more, or at least, not armies they could afford to pay without Chinese finance corporations’ loans, or equip without Chinese manufacturing corporations’ weapons, and they barely had governments either because governments didn’t actually do anything useful any more, so suddenly the world was as it was, and there wasn’t a great deal anyone could do to change it.

  Everything had got a little tangled, but for most people it had actually been a good thing. Wars had stopped, mostly. Wars between real places, places with lawn sprinklers and fast-food chains and dishwashers in every kitchen. Those kind of places got peaceful and secure, and had better credit, and got all the gadgets they needed.

  Unless they made bad choices. Unless they took on more debt than they could handle.

  The price of a comfortable life and peace and lots of gadgets was that sometimes whole countries went bankrupt. They went bankrupt, and were foreclosed on, and the debt-recovery corporations took over their business. Australia still had a government, as did Switzerland and the Baltic Union and Japan and what was left of the EU. And China, obviously. Those places had governments, but very few others. Mostly, incorporated trusts ran regions, and everyone was happy.

  People were greedy, Ellie supposed. People always took more than they needed, or borrowed more than they could repay. They always did that, until eventually there hadn’t been very many governments left, not in any real sense, and that had made everything a lot simpler. And some governments had made terrible mistakes, too, which hadn’t helped. The Americans had made the worst of those. They had borrowed too much, and kept borrowing for too long, and then had agreed to allow debt-recovery on very unfavorable terms.

  That was what debt-recovery work meant for Ellie, going to places where you were hated, where everyone was an insurgent, and taking away anything valuable you could find. It was a complicated, legalistic, highly political business. Much, much worse than just chasing hajjis around the mountains.

  *

  “Have you ever been to Měi-guó?” John said, suddenly.

  “What?” Ellie said, hearing a question and shifting her attention back to him. “America?”

  “Yes, have you been to America?”

  “Fuck no,” Ellie said. “Why would I?”

  John shrugged. Something about his expression made Ellie think he agreed with her. “Why not?” he said anyway. “For a holiday. To see the monuments of a fallen civilization.”

  Ellie supposed he had a point. America wasn’t much fun any more, but people went all the same. A lot of people. Adventure tourism was about all the American economy was good for now.

  “I’ve seen documentaries,” Ellie said. “That’ll do me.”

  “We’d like you to go.”

  “All right,” Ellie said.

  John seemed surprised.

  “Of course I’ll go,” Ellie said. “You’re holding my kid hostage. So I’ll go.”

  “You don’t want to know what we’d like you to do?”

  “Not really. Because holding my kid hostage. Find someone or kill someone, I assume.”

  John seemed surprised again.

  “We’re a hunt team,” Ellie said, bored again. “For fuck’s sake. What else would you want me to do?”

  John seemed to accept that. He looked back to his tablet, and began flicking through pages. He cleared his throat, about to start talking again, and Ellie had a horrible feeling he was about to begin another long speech. She sighed, and held out her hand.

  John looked at her.

  “Just let me read,” Ellie said. “It’s quicker.”

  “Of course,” John said, and handed her the tablet.

  Ellie read. It was about what she’d expected. Not good, not bad, mostly just complicated. The son of a senior executive of their Shanghai parent corporation had gone missing. He was somewhere in the old United States, on his post-university gap year. He was touring the wonders of America, seeing Nashville and Detroit and Los Angeles, and somewhere along the way he had disappeared. There was no ransom demand, and no communication. Just his trackers and monitors had suddenly gone dead, the way they always did in tunnels and near the last remaining US government facilities, which still always had cell jammers. The trackers had gone dead, and then never restarted.

  That had been three days ago. Now the corporate headquarters was starting to panic.

  The company had made inquiries through diplomatic channels, and through their debt-recovery officials too, which Ellie would have expected to be more effective. Neither had done very much good. The file John had on his tablet detailed a great many unsuccessful attempts to do anything useful, including covert interviews with friends, a statistical analysis of the kid’s spending patterns, and reports from the corporate tech services division about their unsuccessful attempts to restart the trackers remotely. Ellie hadn’t realized that was possible, but it was quite useful to know it was.

  She kept reading, ignoring John’s tense expression as she flicked pages sideways on his tablet without bothering to ask. There were other reports, the best they could do she supposed, giving an approximate location based on satellite triangulation somewhere in the middle of the country and a little towards the north. This was confirmed by financial records and the locations of his last few bank transactions. There were attempts to contact the friends he had been travelling with, who still seemed to be New York. The group had separated weeks ago, and no-one had mentioned this to their respective parents until now.

  There were more memos. A lot of speculative, guesswork memos, the same kind as people in Shanghai wrote about Ellie’s operations in Afghanistan. Ellie read them anyway, but they didn’t tell her much. One of them, the most sensible, a background briefing document for second-tier managers, said quite calmly that the US was a shambles. A failing-state shambles of poverty and debt-slavery and complex tribal tensions, at war with itself as much as any actual rival. Probably the corporate son had been snatched by anti-debt terrorists and was going to be ransomed, or murdered. Or he’d been snatched by some faction seeking assistance from the corporation against a rival. Or by slavers. But probably one or the other of those. The person who had written the memo fairly obviously thought the corporate son was already dead, but made a point of not actually saying so.

  Ellie thought the corporate son was dead, too. Any sensible insurgent would have killed him and hidden the body as soon as they worked out who he was.

  She sighed. She thought about Naomi.

  It was a terrible waste of time bothering to do this, to go hunting for an already-dead heir. But she had to. The corporate parent would probably want the body back, if nothing else.

  “We’ll go,” Ellie said.

  John nodded.

  “I suppose there’s no point asking you to release my daughter, since I’ll do what you want anyway.”

  “There’s no point, no.”

  “I’ll kill you if you harm her.”

  “I assumed.”

  Ellie looked around, at the cameras on the backup team. Then she looked upwards. People always looked upwards, towards imaginary unseen cameras on the ceiling, even though the cameras were as likely to be on other people, or on the floor.

  She assumed she was being watched in Shanghai. Probably not by the kid’s parents, who most likely didn’t know the full details of this brillian
t plan, but by the kid’s parents’ close advisers, at least.

  “If anything happens to my daughter,” Ellie said. “I’ll kill you all. You know what I do. You know what I can do if I want to. If my daughter is hurt at all, even by accident, I’ll blame you and I’ll kill all of you.”

  John nodded as she spoke, as if he was listening on an earpiece. He probably was, Ellie thought.

  “They say they understand,” John said. “Your daughter won’t be hurt.”

  “Even if I fail? Even if I die?”

  “If you do your best, your daughter won’t be hurt.”

  Ellie nodded. That was as much as she could hope for. “We’ll need weapons,” she said. “And armor. Proper armor.”

  “I’ll arrange it.”

  Ellie nodded. She looked at Sameh. “Will you come? You don’t have to, but if you would, I’d be grateful.”

  Sameh shrugged. “Habibi. Of course.”

  “Thank you,” Ellie said to Sameh. Then she looked at John. “What are you standing there for?” she said to him. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 3

  Eventually, the United States had run out of money.

  This wasn’t unusual. Ellie had learned about it at school. Most of the nations still organized as nations ultimately did. Their costs were too high, with their grandparented-in welfare and healthcare expenses, so they were unable to survive as competitive business entities in a world made up primarily of business entities.

  At first, nations had some advantages over businesses. Nations controlled territory, and so could charge access fees, exclusive or otherwise, which they usually still called taxes. Nations had legacy armed forces, too, which could operate either as bill collectors or brigands and so supplement their income. Nations should have been able to compete, but they were stifled by their inherited expenses, and so most eventually reached one kind of financial crisis or another. Some survived their crisis, but many did not, and the worst affected were usually those still dependent on oil-based energy systems in a world rapidly switching to cheaply-manufactured wind-farm and solar plants. Nations dependent on oil, like the United States.