All the Company Men: Marcus Grimshaw #2 (The Secret State)

by C. J. Steinberg

  Evelyn nodded. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” he tried, but Evelyn was already at the drink stand, lifting the bottle. Power-plays never bothered Jack, though he truly disliked them. That is why he never wanted a managerial position, content to stay on the field where he isn’t reduced to cheap tricks to feel powerful. There were some lines he wasn’t willing to cross.

  Evelyn handed him the glass and sat on the table. Jack took a sip.

  “And, what do you think?”

  “Good,” Jack answered.

  “It’s Japanese,” she said proudly.

  “Good stuff.”

  “You remember the last time you were here,” Evelyn asked. Jack felt a sting in his stomach. Her eyes focused on him, urging him to respond right away.

  “Yeah,” he ultimately said. “Except you were standing here next to me, instead of being over there, behind that big ass Coco Bolo desk.”

  Evelyn smirked and sat into her armchair, gracious like a lady of the court. Jack didn’t know what she was implying with that smirk. His instincts were completely off that day thanks to the fear and anxiety he was suffering from.

  “That would be the only change, wouldn’t it?”

  “And Thoros being very dead, sure,” he said.

  “He was an asshole,” Evelyn cooly said. “He deserved what was coming to him.”

  “How does one deserve a heart attack?”

  Evelyn cackled. “Yeah, how does one deserve a heart attack,” she leaned on the table, smirking at Jack.

  “By being an asshole,” Jack quipped to diffuse the situation. “To the wrong people.”

  Evelyn laughed heartily. “I have missed you, my old friend. I truly have. No matter how I feel or what is going on, you Jack, always find a way to make me laugh. It’s incredible.”

  Jack said nothing in response, taking a sip of his gin; the drink wasn’t to his taste at all.

  “I always wanted this, you know,” she said. “I really, really did. I can no longer hide in the garage and sneak cigarettes with a friend, but there is a price for everything.”

  “There sure is.”

  “I have no regrets, though.”

  What about Marcus, Jack wanted to say. What about your betrayal? “Oh, really,” he said instead.

  Evelyn gave him a merciless stare. “I had to do it, Jack,” she said. “Marcus was going to fail in the end,. It would’ve left me in trouble. Again. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “I see that,” Jack said. “I see how he failed.”

  Evelyn sighed. “Look, Jack, I knew for a while that you’ve known about me and Marcus. I know that you, too, had your doubts about this hunt for him.”

  “I never said that.” Jack realized what Evelyn was after.

  “What I mean is that sometimes a choice doesn’t exist,” she said.

  “You could’ve at least made sure he stays locked up. You knew, better than anyone, how good he was. That man was a magician, better than us all. You should’ve put a bullet in his skull and finished it.”

  “I wanted to,” she defended herself. “He was lost, anyway,” she stood up from her chair and went to the window, attempting to look firm and strong. “He was looking for a way out of this mess. Out of life, I mean. And going after Thoros was his way of achieving it.”

  “So why didn’t you,” Jack said. “Did you feel overwhelmed with emotions of love for dear Markie?” He knew he was crossing the line, but his anger had become too great to control.

  “Thoros didn’t allow it,” Evelyn snapped. “He wanted to put Marcus through hell! He wanted to torture him. He wanted to make him suffer. It wasn’t my fault!”

  Jack finished his drink and abruptly stood up. He had felt Evelyn’s pain, and he knew that it was honest. What she was saying to him in that conversation was not the usual corporate talk or her way of fishing out information by lulling him into false security. Jack, however, had to play the game harder than ever before. “Will that be all, Miss Evelyn,” he coldly said.

  “No,” she said. From a drawer in her desk she pulled out a classified file and threw it on the desk. “Sit down, Jack.”

  Evelyn stopped being friendly, allowing that corporate beast out for a meal. Jack saw that it was no time to joke around, so he obeyed.

  “That is your new mission,” Evelyn said.

  Jack opened the folder.

  “His name is George Morrow. He is an important link in the highest echelons of high society. He provides a certain kind of service for the one percent, the billionaires, the puppet masters. Recently, however, he has become a problem. The direction of the new government isn’t to his liking anymore, as he and Jim Morris have had a past. Now, as you can see, he hides in his mansion, surrounded by guards at all times. The brass is considering him an itch, one you have to scratch.”

  “Assassination?” Jack was professional again.

  “No... Well, yes, but before you pull the trigger, find out everything you can. Find out who he has been talking to, find out if there are others he has been working with and if there others working to undermine the new US government. See what it’s all about. Then collect any evidence you can find on the spot and bring it with you.”

  “Are you sure that fear is the way to go in this matter? In the past, the best strategies were to place agents close to these people and have them deliver first-hand intel.”

  “We have no time for that.”

  “And what happens if he decides not to talk? What if he is some religious kook who can’t wait to reunite with his Lord and Savior?”

  “This is no time to be joking, Jack,” Evelyn said.

  “I am not joking. What if he refuses to talk?”

  Evelyn sighed and took a seat on her chair. “We have already tried buying him, but the man won’t budge. We placed an asset close to him—a younger male, if you know what I mean—but the poor boy fell in love and told George everything; we found him in a ditch two weeks ago.”

  Jack browsed the file, memorizing all the information as fast as he could, while listening to Evelyn and soaking in all that she was saying.

  “So you see that this is the only way left for us to try and fix this problem.”

  Jack looked up from the file, processing the situation, listening to Evelyn, sifting through the files in his mind, looking for an angle. “But why kill him,” Jack asked.

  Evelyn looked at him scornfully. She was irritated. She was angry. Jack was crossing the line with his questions. “Because those are you orders,” she said coldly.

  Why not take him in and question him here, Jack wondered. It didn’t make any sense to kill a man if your foremost objective is intel gathering. “Alright, I’ll make it happen,” Jack said. “I’ll have everything ready by tomorrow.”

  “Jack,” Evelyn became nice again. “I need you to handle this personally.”

  Jack was taken aback. “What do you mean?”

  Again nice and friendly, sly as a fox, Evelyn spoke in a soft tone. “The sensitivity of this information cannot spread too far. The bosses want this contained and handled.”

  “Sure, sure,” Jack said. He remembered seeing those mood shifts before, but in a different man. Evelyn stared at him, her eyes bright and shiny like the rest of her, inviting, warm. Could it be this position that makes them like this, he wondered.

  “Go to the basement,” Evelyn spoke again. “They have everything ready for you. Oh! Jack, you’ll love the toys,” she said cheerily.

  Jack nodded and left her office, walking at the same pace, with the same posture as he walked in with, entering the elevator. He needed privacy to take a deep breath and calm down, but he couldn’t do it in the elevator. He couldn’t do it in the hallway. Could he do it anywhere? One thing became clear and that is the fact that Evelyn was surely spying on him. Where were the microphones and cameras? Is he being followed? His friend was no longer his friend, she wasn’t even a human being anymore. And now she was forcing him to kill for the Company again.
Why is she putting me in the field after all this time?

  Sweat was forming on his brow. His finger tapped the file. Relentlessly as always, the elevator kept taking him down... But toward what?

  FOUR

  M arcus got tired of lying in bed, feeling useless and thrown away like a broken toy. His wounds were severe and they still ached, yet he couldn’t live with the fact that he was out of commission, if only temporarily. He needed to be up and about, to move, to restore the full use of his limbs because his muscles were slowly withering away.

  When he left the bathroom, the bright day outside blinded him. He had a great fortune to wake up on a sunny day in the middle of November, in the outskirts of New York, to witness the bright rays of sun cut through the naked trees. There was beauty in it that he had not witnessed in a long a time. And to think that I almost never saw any of it again, he thought.

  The main room though was completely the opposite; it was as if he had entered the Twilight Zone. The light was peering in from the cracks in the boarded up windows, the door was strengthened by a plate of metal, and dust covered all. It completely fit the atmosphere and the nature of who he was and what his friends were planning. Whatever they decide to do, Marcus thought, the end result will be the same as it always has been. The determination he had felt only a few days ago was all but gone from him.

  Marcus pulled a chair out and sat down. I’m not supposed to be here, he thought. I should be with my parents. He sighed and opened his eyes, noticing that the table, the floor in close proximity to it, and the credenza across from him were the only places that weren’t dusty. There was a direct path to the kitchen, as if a dirt road in the wild. For whatever reason, the filth angered Marcus. He went to the bathroom and took the cleaning supplies he found there, a broom, and a mop; he was going to make everything look just right.

  Thought still a dark and damp place, the little house had started to look like an actual house as soon as he began cleaning. He stopped to rest a while, leaning on the broom’s handle. The clock showed two in the afternoon, and Marcus squashed the worrisome thought that perhaps Jack was never coming back. He put the broom to the side and went to the kitchen to make himself some coffee; surprisingly, the kitchen was almost spotless.

  The coffee cup was steaming when he put it on the table next to a heap of papers scattered all over. Arranging the paperwork was his last task toward making the house clean and orderly. His wounds were itching under the bandages, though they failed to hinder his ability to clean and calm his nerves. Marcus found that the most menial of tasks helped calm the mind and focus it on what’s right in front of him.

  As he combed through the papers, documents, and financial reports, Marcus paid no mind to the contents, making sure only to create sensible and organized piles based on superficial information in the upper right corner. He had no intention of prying into the documents or even joining the fight.

  But there are things humans can never change, and those are the deep-seated habits we develop through the years, be they for relaxation or for work. As Marcus was looking at the headlines, his brain was registering data that came after it down the page. It wasn’t his intention to read through them, just to organize them, yet his brain had different plans entirely. The data was being registered and processed without Marcus’ knowledge, just as he was trained to do whenever on the field, assessing people’s reactions, words, intonations, and body language, determining the true meaning behind their words and their truest desires, memorizing license plates, picking up on small words in conversations all in the background. His mind was thinking of Evelyn and the mission they had undertaken, when he remembered something Evelyn had said.

  A sort of deja-vu feeling set upon his mind, the information echoing back to him from somewhere distant, an event he went through but forgot all about. It was like a fierce itch. What he wanted to drown now came at him full tilt—curiosity. He needed to know more.

  Sitting down and taking the last sip of his coffee, Marcus made the connection. He leapt from his seat, excited, the he felt the pain of his wounds. The initial shock passed and he continued, slowly, to do what he was intending to do. His hands went through the papers, making the old mess he had worked so hard to organize, searching for a financial report with a name in mind. He took the marker on his right and circled the bank accounts that popped up more than once, moving his requirements to three, then five, and ultimately nine appearances, leaving only one bank account that was trusted with billions in resources over the course of the last decade.

  The left pile held all the documents and names and profiles related to the conspiracy, and Marcus browsed through, now focused on the data, processing it all. He pulled one paper, then five out of the pile and put them on the chair. He was working, determined, hungry, efficient, like he had always been through the many, many years he served as a lethal weapon for Dark Forrest. The last paper in the file matched his bank account to a name he was looking for all along.

  “I’ll be damned,” Marcus said aloud, comparing the bank number on the profile and that on the financial report, making sure he doesn’t miss a single digit. Then he smiled. A wave of satisfaction came over him.

  With the discovery, his mind sprung into action, following the same pattern as before through the rest of the papers; he would look for repetitions in the financial reports collected by Jack then look for that number in the other two piles. Time flew by as more and more bank accounts got flagged, their owners discovered and known, soon to be apparent to the whole world.

  He looked at the wall behind him where the photographs of the men responsible for all the ills of the world were arranged in a diorama by Chang, connected by threads and facts. Marcus took a pen and wrote the bank accounts he had flagged to each of the men, all the way up to Daniel Clarkson. He and his cronies had developed a relationship many years before, their dummy corporations sharing the same men in charge and the same parent companies, a network tangled in itself. What these four men were doing that most people could not do is that they were sharing the CEOs and the parent companies with each other; if anyone tried to prove that either company was dirty, they would be lost in a web of false information, owners, investors, parent and sister companies, never reaching either of the main players. Not even the people on top of the dummy corporations could point their finger at anyone in particular no matter the circumstances. “Because they have no idea who they’re working for,” Marcus said. The brilliant simplicity of what they were doing stunned Marcus, yet it was the following conclusion that left him breathless—they are all involved in a vast conspiracy because they trusted each other. Marcus knew from his experience in countless battlefields and organizations that the only way more than two people can keep a secret is if they share a common goal larger than themselves. Which is whatever they have planned.

  What saddened him was the fact that his discoveries could not be used as evidence of any wrong doing or proof of a conspiracy due to the deep entanglement and the shadowy world of billionaire finances.

  Then again, he never did intend to alert the authorities.

  He intended to destroy the Company.

  And now he knew where they all parked their money.

  Marcus took the paper with the name and account number of the man who was in charge of their entire network and stuck it in the middle, his new diorama connecting that new man with everyone else.

  “Mr. George Morrow, I presume,” Marcus said. He was Thoros’ meeting before Evelyn that day in front of the Ritz Bar and Lounge, when he was one pull of the trigger of eliminating Thoros. Marcus sighed. How simple everything would’ve been if I killed him then. I would’ve even had a happy ending. Maybe.

  He was the one with the Rolls, Marcus’ brain moved him back on track. He was the one Thoros put in his schedule before the gala. Marcus had initially thought that George was Thoros’ lover, but now he realized that, for all intents and purposes, George was the money of the conspiracy that almost killed Marcus.

&n
bsp; He was almost proud to be going after such a strong and clever opponent as the Company, someone so organized. What made him the happiest was the fact that he was undertaking his morally correct mission to replace them and remove them from the world, to end the suffering of the people. Suddenly he realized that he wanted to be a part of it. Whatever he can do to stop them, he will do. That was his decision.

  His hand went over his chest. His heart was beating like it wanted to pop out of his chest, to bounce about the world freely and without restraint, making Marcus feel alive for the first time since waking up from his coma. Now they had a real shot at stopping The Company.

  Not only does he now know where the money is hidden, but they have the man responsible for hiding it, which means that if they get to him, they will get to the entire organization and bring it down. George must know what the Company is planning and if they truly have a president in their pocket. There was one remaining bank account Marcus had flagged but couldn’t attach it to anyone. Is it the Democratic candidate or one of his cabinet holders, apart from the soon-to-be Attorney General, Mr. Patrick Don? “What are you playing at, Daniel,” Marcus said, staring deep into the eyes on the photograph of Daniel Clarkson.

  Moments later, as Marcus brain ground the information searching for clues, his eyes strayed to the clock, revealing that he had spent almost seven hours working through the information and Jack hadn’t come home yet. Suddenly his mind felt rushed.

  Marcus walked frantically across the room to all the windows, peering through the cracks between the boards on the windows. Fog had set upon the trees and the grass outside, obscuring everything more than his paranoid mind could hope to handle. He grabbed a pistol from the desk and put the extra magazine in his pocket. He turned off the lights in the whole house and sat by the door, letting his ears get used to silence, turning on his innate predatory instincts. If anyone is coming, he will be ready. If they had put Jack in the box with Joe, he realized, then he would’ve surely talked, which means they were converging on his location right now. He trusted Jack, but everyone, no matter how strong or clever, talks in the box.