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

by C. J. Steinberg

  Marcus wasn’t ready to die anymore. He was ready to fight for what is right. He didn’t want to run from the location because he could be wrong about his assessment. Or was that just another excuse he had made up for himself?

  FIVE

  T he airplane shivered in the air. Jack paid it no mind, staying focused on the blotch of paper the flashlight in his right hand was illuminating. Evelyn surprised him with his mission, sending him out into the field after almost a year of no activity, but as he went through the folder he was given with no information redacted, Jack realized why he had to carry out the deed himself.

  George Morrow was a finance guy for the wealthy, the famous, and the powerful. He made the vast majority of the funds of the elite one percent appear, disappear, and re-appear at will, moving it through the banking Meccas of Curacao, Caymans, and Panama. The shell companies this man created were serious businesses on paper, real enterprises that employed hundreds of real human beings, sometimes even turning a profit for real-life investors. It was meticulously executed. Jack hadn’t seen Fortune 500 companies set up so well.

  The file went on to describe George Morrow himself, listing his habits, likes, and dislikes, arousing suspicion in Jack’s mind that perhaps this man was innocent of any wrong-doing, which bore the question: why would Evelyn want this man gone?

  The soldier next to him tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the cargo door; soon, Jack realized, it will be time for his jump. He felt a sudden burst of anxiety in his entire body as he hadn’t performed such fool-hardy endeavors in a very long time, fearing that his instincts and his knowledge are all but gone. He always loved the field more than anything, but corporations have a way of convincing a person that something is true even when they know, deep down in their soul, that it is false. For years, his duties were running ops across the globe instead of actually participating. And now, after almost a year of no real field activity, he was parachuting from a plane.

  He packed the file into his rucksack, next to the weapons he was given for this mission. The equipment in the back awakened that young and confident operative that made nations fall and rise, allowing him to ignore his initial fears and anxieties.

  The soldier tapped him on the shoulder again, and Jack secured his sack tightly, right below the reserve chute and grabbed the handle above his head tightly and firmly. There was no more time for doubts, no more space in his head for questions. There was only the mission. There was only this moment.

  The soldier grabbed the rail as the trap door of the plane opened and the pressurized, cold air blew in. The soldier raised his hand with three fingers outstretched, closing the first, the second, and then the third.

  In his mind, he wasn’t jumping from eight thousand feet into an unknown territory; he was at the Olympics, jumping for gold, and in that fashion he spread his arms and straightened his body. His weight made him perform a summer salt before he was able to open his chute and let gravity draw him close down.

  His heart was pumping, his suit drenched in sweat; it was all natural, part of the process. For Jack, the adrenaline rush was the best part of the job as doing stunt-like things was what everyone in the game dreamt of, what everyone imagines when they sign up for espionage; no one ever truly does it for patriotism. He once believed in his country, fought for it, ultimately realizing that the country was only an excuse to do what he loved doing, a way for him to keep his conscience clean. Then he realized that he never really cared. That set him on the path of becoming one of the greatest agents in the Company’s history.

  Beneath Jack stretched an abyss of sorts, a pitch-black darkness that was drawing him in, nearer and nearer. Mr. Morrow was smart enough to buy himself a private island, a place in which to hide when things get hard. With every second, Jack was closer to the only source of light in that abyss, a white house with a blue pool. Why people who lived next to the ocean installed pools always perplexed Jack, the only plausible reason being because they could. Perhaps is was a statement of wealth.

  On the waters between the coast and the opposite side of the island the fireworks kicked off on a cruiser. They were big, loud, flamboyant, and distracting. One thing he always loved about the Company was the organization, the level of commitment, the thoughtfulness that went into making every aspect of the mission. Those fireworks will surely distract the men patrolling the estate, if only in their minds instead of physically, pushing them to imagine the better lives of others, lives they could one day have. Which meant an opportunity for Jack. Which meant that he had a window all to himself, and the ground was approaching him quickly.

  “This is it,” he said aloud as his descending appeared to have sped up as he got closer to the ground, creating a sort of tunnel vision. Before he even realized it, he was already unbuckling his parachute and rolling forward. The motion allowed him to absorb all the pressure and stand up without an issue. He opened his ruck sack and pulled out a device as he squatted. He pulled out a device given to him from the gadget department. On the screen he saw the outline of the house and red dots all around the outlined estate. Somehow, by some means, the Company was able to put RFID trackers on all the men working on the island, allowing Jack to observe their movement in real time. There were days when Jack was hiding in a nest with a pair of binoculars, pinning down the enemy, using his instincts to assume their potential movement. He had to chuckle at that.

  Seeing that no one was converging on his location, Jack went back and packed up the parachute. He loved the stealth chutes more than all the trackers, gadgets, and toys. It was, in his mind, one of the greatest weapons inventions in history. He packed it up quickly and left the backpack by the support wall that separated the garden from the house, looking over it at the guard on the corner. His eyes quickly went over the cameras on every corner of the house. With the money George Morrow possessed, Jack assumed that there were no dead angles whatsoever. “Okay, Jack, you can do this,” he said to himself. “Think, think.”

  Jack nodded to himself in the cover of darkness and crouched along the wall, slowing down to almost a stand-still when he was passing the guard on that corner. His rucksack had answers to the question of the guard, yet none whatsoever about the camera above the man. If he is to be discovered, George will run away. Or raise the alarm. In that moment he asked himself why hadn’t Evelyn sent someone else, at least another person with him. There were many more than capable operatives for a black ops mission, good and firm men that could be trusted. Whatever her reasons, Jack couldn’t worry over that now. He had to carry on.

  His device showed that he was in the clear, so he scaled the wall and the shrubbery, then ran across a patch of grass. His eyes went up, seeing that Mr. Morrow was fast asleep. Good, he thought. He opened his rucksack and pulled out a military grade laser, pointing it at the cameras for ten seconds each.

  He grabbed his rucksack and moved quickly the way he came, to the same spot where the guard was moments before. He aimed his laser at the cameras on that spot and ran the opposite direction. The dots on his device were scrambling, all converging on the spots where he had disabled the cameras. As a last touch for safety, he disabled two more cameras before he ran to the gutter he had picked out on the floor plan before his flight.

  When he reached the balcony, he had another floor to climb to reach the target’s bedroom. He pulled a small EMP device from his rucksack and fired it, disabling all electricity within a radius of three hundred yards. He had hoped that would cover all the electricity in the house, but he made sure that his gun was at hand in case his calculations were off.

  He jimmied the balcony door open and stepped inside the house, trying to recall all the positions of guards his device had shown him inside the house before he fired the EMP. He walked slowly past the piano in the main room and kept walking toward the stairs in the other room, when all of a sudden a man appeared in front of him. Both of them were frozen for a second, staring at each other in absolute silence. The guard screamed in that moment and pulled
out his gun. Jack lunged forward and hit the guard’s hand just as the shot popped off, the gun falling to the floor.

  The two men exchanged punches, each blocking the other in an attempt to overpower the other, to win, to survive. Hand-to-hand combat is something no training can really prepare for, as it is a battle of nerves; the first person to make the slightest mistake or miscalculation is the one that dies. There was no room to think or to strategize, but only to react, to trust your instincts.

  When the guard thought he had a clear path to land a proper punch, Jack lunged to the side and grabbed him in a chokehold. The guard was a strong, muscular individual, but after a few seconds his body gave in, and Jack snapped his neck. The sound of bone cracking was muffled by Jack’s groan and the footsteps coming up the stairs. Quickly recollecting himself, Jack hid behind the wall, estimating that about a half dozen men were converging on his location. Their footsteps subsided, coming in slow taps as they carefully threaded around the room, trying to find the alien in their midst. Their flashlights danced in the darkness, the steady streams of light moving about as if they were there for a movie premiere. One stream focused straight, the man behind it heading into the room where Jack was hiding. He slowly slid down against the wall and pulled a corner bending rifle from his rucksack and put it to the side. He stood up in the same slow fashion, waiting for the man to come into the room. Then he jumped on him and put him in a chokehold, but before he could even grasp properly, the men in the first room let the bullets fly, killing their colleague. Jack dropped the body and grabbed his rifle. He checked that the gun was loaded, cocked it, and bent it around the corner. His EMP had fried the technology needed to operate the gun, but in his mind he knew where the men stood as he assumed that they were well-trained professionals.

  He extended his arm, aiming at the right side of the wall and let the bullets fly. He heard groans and he heard the bullets fired back at him. He dropped the rifle and grabbed the pistol, the flashlight over it, and he stepped from behind the wall, aiming his pistol at the heads, dropping down one, two, then three men, each with one bullet. As he switched his cover, someone shot at him, revealing that someone from the right side of the room was still very much alive.

  “Hey, you, in the room,” Jack said. “Take your gun, take your dick, and get out of here. I am not here for you, but for your boss. I am just asking you to go, nothing more.” Nothing came in response. Jack knew that it was very much a long shot to try and talk to the man, yet he had to do it.

  “Do you hear me,” Jack tried again. Because the man hadn’t responded, Jack knew that he was frightened, lacking confidence, and that his attempt to give the guard a way out had made him look weak in the guard’s eyes. There was no alternative.

  He switched his cover again letting out a shot and lighting the whole room, seeing no sign of anyone. He stepped from behind the wall and lingered there, shining a light on the elegant leather sofa and a beautiful rug under a lovely glass table. In that moment, he heard shouts from the floor below, realizing that he had one last option. He pulled the pin from the grenade and waited, pressing the handle hard. The men were moving up the stairs fast, coming closer. He released the safety handle and counted. One, two, and then he threw the grenade. The very moment the men came into the room, screaming out for blood, they vanished in a fiery explosion.

  Jack moved into the room after a few seconds and aimed his flashlight over every body there. He had no room for error even though he was in a hurry. One man was on his last breath. Jack moved close to him, aimed the pistol at his head, and pulled the trigger. Brutality in the world of espionage is not brutality but a way of life. Sometimes it made him feel bad.

  Jack rose his pistol and crossed his flashlight over it, climbing the stairs to the last floor. As things had quieted down, he felt that he was growing angry. Evelyn should’ve sent at least one more person with him on this mission. There were too many guards on the property, too much risk too carry out a quiet, stealthy operation by only one man. And then there was the man that wasn’t even registered by the gadget. Why would she do that? Why would she sent him into the wolves’ den without back up? This is just wrong, he thought.

  Simultaneously spinning the floor plan in his head, as he tried to fight off his frustration, Jack knew the way to George Morrow’s bedroom by heart. He didn’t know what waited for him inside considering that the whole mission was a bust, leaving him alone and stranded and without any gadgets to make his job easier.

  The bedroom door was ajar. Peering his light inside the room, he pushed the door wide open with his foot. Here we go, he thought, but the room was empty. He heard a scrape of a foot behind him, feeling that the end had come, that Lady Death will finally embrace him. His throat dried and his body stiffened as the barrel pressed against his head. Did he want to die? Was this always his desire in life? Why else would he have put himself in this situation?

  The shot never came. And the clock kept spinning.

  In that moment, Jack answered his own question. He rapidly moved his elbow backward and lunged to his left, moving the gun out of the way. A shot went off. Then the butt of the gun moved to his face and knocked him to the floor.

  As he was falling down, Jack extended his left leg and kicked George’s ankle, knocking him down to the floor. The chubby man was slow to react, and a second was all Jack needed to get up and take control of the situation.

  His knee was pressing George’s chest and his pistol was aimed at his face.

  “Do it,” George said in a last bid of defiance, “do it, you piece of—“

  Jack hit him with the silencer in the forehead. George whined in response. “Stay right where you are and don’t tell me what to do,” Jack calmly said.

  “Who are you,” George asked. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

  “I know that it’s confusing, Mr. Morrow, but I have some questions first. So let’s begin, please.”

  “I am not telling you anything!”

  “Yes, you actually are. It is in you interest to talk to me.”

  “Oh, what, are you going to let me live if I talk?”

  Jack stared into his defiant and determined eyes, feeling tremendous respect for the man. “In all honesty, it will vastly depend on your answers.”

  George stared back at him. “Who are you?”

  “Why does Evelyn want you dead,” Jack asked bluntly.

  George let out a laugh. “That bitch,” he commented.

  “Focus, Mr. Morrow. Focus.”

  “You hate her, don’t you,” George said. “And she sent you to kill me.” He sighed.

  “Tell me why.”

  George paused for a moment. “Alright. I’ll tell you.”

  His eyes were sincere, his voice even, his body relaxed. Jack lifted his knee off the man and stepped back. “Get up and walk into that room.” He kept his gun half-way raised, his eyes fixated on George, watching him walk into the room and flick the light switch.

  “That’s not going to work,” Jack said when nothing happened.

  George sweared. “I need a drink.”

  The flashlight clicked, illuminating George’s way to the decanter in the far corner of the room. He poured a glass of whiskey and bottomed it before pouring another one. “One for the nerves, one for goodbye,” George said.

  Jack’s mind was made up—he was not going to kill the brilliant businessman in front of him. “Tell me why Evelyn wants you dead.”

  “Uh, where do I begin,” George said. “I am assuming you are familiar with what I do, right?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Right, well, I have done a lot of that for a lot of people. I made their wealth appear and disappear at will, like magic—now you see it, now you don’t. I never asked any questions, never complained, just did what I was supposed to do.” George sipped his whiskey. The sweat on Jack’s brow was intensifying. The guards on the island were all but gone and the night was dragging on and on, giving Jack a reason to worry. As if he wasn’t having enou
gh of that already.

  “Then what happened,” he asked.

  “Then I asked a question I never should’ve asked. See, young man, I am a homosexual. I like men. But most homosexuals are either too aggressive and want just a quick thing, or they are confused men who can’t admit to themselves that they like men. But then, amidst all of that, enters this one person. Out of the blue, you feel the it. Do you know what I mean?”

  Jack knew very well but he said nothing.

  “Well, all the same, this it changes you and your entire life. Turns it upside down really. Then, when you lose that someone, you suffer. You feel their absence when you wake and when you go to bed at night. You feel that they are no longer with you, and always on the little things. The night cap, the brunch, that time of the night you wake to relieve yourself and come back to an empty bed. God damn it all to hell,” George stood up and poured himself another glass of whiskey. “I knew who he was and what he was doing. Hell, I laundered most of the Company’s money. Then, when he... When he passed... I wondered why and who. I asked around, stuck my nose where it didn’t belong, and now you’re here to kill me. Which means that I was right. It was Evelyn who took Thoros away from me.”

  “Yes,” Jack said, his gun still at the ready.

  George seemed a little disappointed by the answer. “That bitch.”

  “Listen, George. We can bring her down. You hear me? You can help us make sense of the financials to figure out what the game plan here is, okay?”

  George cackled. “You can’t stop the Company by going after the money.”

  “Then tell me how to stop them.”

  “The elections are coming up.”

  “So what? What about the elections? Do they have the president in their pocket?”

  George shook his head. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. It can be anybody. Daniel was supposed to reveal everything in two days—the man, the plan, and the game.”