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

by C. J. Steinberg

  “You boys have been misbehaving,” Evelyn said, her smile unwavering. “Now I hear that you are planning a presidential assassination,” she made a clicking sound with her lips and waved her finger in the air. “We don’t do that here.”

  Marcus could feel Jack’s desire to indulge his homicidal tendency. It was radiating from him, becoming contagious because Marcus could see that Evelyn knew they wouldn’t kill her, and she always thought that she was the smartest person in the world. Killing her now would prove her wrong, Marcus reasoned. Though it would do nothing more than to boost Marcus’ ego, it would be worth it just to wipe that smile off her face.

  “What are you doing here, Evelyn,” Jack asked through his teeth. “What do you want?”

  Evelyn’s face changed. Marcus could now see that she was scared, realizing perhaps that her audacious plan was a bit too forward, too arrogant, putting her in a precarious position. “I get your anger. I did put you in that house and did what I had done. If I were you, I would pull that trigger.” Her voice was changing. “But I want you to hear me out because I can help you,” she said. “I want to stop that bastard myself because he deserves it.”

  “The last time you made a proposal to do the right thing, Markie here went to Neverland. Twice. Why—in the hell—would we ever trust anything that comes out of your little pricy mouth?”

  Evelyn was staring at Marcus, focused, thinking, her insecurity and fear now palpable. “First things first—I give you Didier back. That way you put your guns down and we talk.”

  Jack and Marcus both stared at her, saying nothing. Evelyn swallowed a ball, her movement somewhat obstructed, like sort of a twitch. She moved the phone in front of her face and hung it up with her left hand. Jack and Marcus jerked a step forward both and pointed their guns more vigorously at her head, fighting the desire to pull the trigger and see her brains all over the walls with every atom of their strength. That woman has cost them both so much, betrayed them so many times, and put them in too many dangerous positions that were best avoided. She deserved to be riddled with bullets. And Evelyn knew it.

  After she hung up the phone Jack screamed at her. “What did you just do?!” And her body stiffened, her face lost color, becoming ghostly pale. She was dealing with the fact that she might be living her last moments on Earth, awaiting judgment. She was expecting it. Marcus hoped that she knew it would be well deserved.

  Evelyn’s phone rang and she answered, putting it on speakerphone so everyone can hear Didier’s voice. Marcus relaxed somewhat, though not completely because he knew how crafty she really was.

  “There,” she said. “Didier is alright.”

  “You can’t cause a problem and then pretend like you’re Virgin Mary after you solve it, you manipulative bitch.”

  “I know—“

  “You tried to blow me up!” Jack screamed, the spit from his mouth flying all over, his face turning red. Marcus could see Evelyn shot and laying dead on the floor. Judging by Evelyn’s face, she could picture the same thing.

  “If I had come to you alone, without any leverage, then I wouldn’t have survived five minutes. And I need to talk to you.”

  “We are way past talking,” Jack sneered.

  “I have a proposal for you. And you need to hear me out,” Evelyn said, her voice breaking.

  Marcus wanted to interject, to say that maybe they should listen to her because their original plan was not a smart one. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t because Evelyn, in his mind, was no longer a human being but an archetype of misery. She was looming high in his head, stronger and more powerful than anything and everything else in his head. Because of it, he could not speak. He could not even pull the trigger. On reflex, he had pulled out his gun, and kept it there for ceremony, knowing that he could not pull the trigger if the need for it arose. He was frozen in space and time, the situation completely out of his hands.

  Jack also kept quiet. Then he groaned, screamed, and turned his back on Evelyn in a fit of rage, walking in a small circle, cursing, and then pointing his gun at her again. Then the gun went down before Jack kicked the table over.

  Evelyn’s eyes focused on Marcus, moving from his eyes to the gun and back. “Marcus, I am sorry. I am so very sorry for what I have done to you. But you have to understand my side. Let me explain my reasoning. Let me tell you why all that happened had to happen.”

  Marcus was in emotional turmoil. His posture and body language, his face and his look bore true animosity toward Evelyn, creating a perfect facade for the outside world, when, in reality, he still could not even speak.

  Evelyn swallowed hard, appearing resigned. “When you and I made our plans, you were not in the right place. I did not use you to get a better position, Marcus. I wanted us to work together. But you weren’t in the right place. You were questioning everything, living in some fantasy world of yours. It wasn’t some revenge for abandoning me all those years ago. It was just a pragmatic decision for the future because Daniel has to go. He has to go from this world for all the evil that he has done to so many people. And all the evil he is planning on doing. The Company simply has to fall.”

  “Cut the shit, Evelyn,” he burst suddenly. Where the strength for it came, he had no idea.

  “I am not lying, Marcus. You have to believe me, please. I did it because of what I told you on that faithful evening—you can do more damage from the inside.”

  “Oh, please,” Jack interrupted. “What damage? What have you done that was so dramatically important? What have you done that justifies blowing me up,” Jack screamed. “How can you stand there and explain yourself when you know full-well that you have burned us both more—far more!—than your reasons could ever justify.”

  “Who do you think made sure that the security footage disappears on the floor,” Evelyn calmly said. “Who do you think made sure that the search for you comes up empty? I have known your location for a long time now, but I said nothing. I have known your movements for a long time, too. You guys forget whom your dealing with—the Company has eyes and ears everywhere, with all the resources anyone can ever dream of. The only reason you aren’t dead is because I covered for you.”

  “She lying,” Chang said. Marcus, however, didn’t agree with his friend’s assessment, and Jack’s silence confirmed that he was right and not blinded by his emotions.

  “I am not lying,” Evelyn snapped back. “I am telling you the truth. I did what I had to do to make sure I survive. As his right hand, I can make sure that Daniel and the Company eventually fall from grace and leap into destruction. My mistake was thinking that I could do it alone. I can’t. And I’m sorry about that.”

  “Are you seriously asking for our help,” Jack asked.

  “I do deserve it,” Evelyn said.

  “What?”

  “What was that?”

  Evelyn watched the two men firing up in disbelief to what she had just told them. Their hands grasped the pistols in their hands, toying with the deadly idea from before. Evelyn quickly spun to search for the right words; the wrong ones could very well be her last. “Neither of you died,” she said with a shaky voice. “I turned you both into ghosts.” She paused, as if waiting to see if she’ll be given another opportunity to speak. “No one knows where you are and no one knows what you’re up to. I know, though. I knew all along. I knew that you went to the gala and I know when. I know—I knew back then as well—that George Morrow gave you information that will be crucial to this. I was expecting that. By the time the rocket went in, I had hoped that you would both be out. I wanted to give you anonymity.”

  Marcus was doubtful that she ever had that much control and knowledge over the situation. In that silence between the four of them Marcus could hear a phone vibrating somewhere in the house. For some reason, it was all his mind could focus on.

  “So what do you propose,” Jack said.

  “I propose a plan.”

  Jack snickered. “You expect us to trust you again? To share our plans with you
and hope you won’t do us in as you have multiple times thus far?”

  “Trust me? No. But we need to work together if you really want to see him fall. I don’t have a clue as to what he has planned, but a week or two ago he had a meeting with the President-elect’s wife and the CIA Director. They spoke privately, and shared a moment of affection. I caught a glimpse of it from the door. Whatever is happening, it’s coming soon. And it’s going to be bad.”

  Marcus looked at Jack and their eyes met. He hated himself for even thinking about working with Evelyn again but the woman had a point—in order to stop Daniel, they need help.

  “A presidential assassination is not the way to move forward,” Evelyn continued. “We don’t even know the full extent of Daniel’s plan, and maybe there is more to it than Jim Morris or maybe he is the center-piece—who can say? Is he the center-piece—maybe. But killing him—even if it could be done—is not the way to go. It is absolutely not the way to go.”

  “So what do you propose,” Jack said. He was not calm, just more controlled.

  “You are not serious about this,” Chang interjected.

  Marcus looked at him without saying a word; his face a picture of doubt and worry, and Chang could see it. Marcus hated entertaining the idea of working with Evelyn again or even sharing the same breathable space with her, but there was no alternative at that moment. There were no options. She was right—they needed her.

  “I have inside information about almost everything that happens in America. I have access. I have resources. With that said, I have full insight into campaign reports. Which means that I know exactly where all the money to elect Jim Morris has come from. More importantly, I know everything about his money before his election,” Evelyn turned to Jack. “The goal of your mission was not only to get to George Morrow, but to create a segue for information extraction; Jim Morris has made many questionable investments into companies that are less than popular, companies that have taken lives and destroyed rivers, land, and families, companies that continue to do so. He has also laundered much of his money through the services of George Morrow; apparently he has a taste for rare art. And,” Evelyn paused. “He has a taste for underaged girls.”

  “Can you prove any of it?”

  Evelyn hesitated. “No,” she said. “Not as of yet. But I have a way of getting that information.”

  The clock on the wall was ticking. A phone somewhere was vibrating. The silence was heavy.

  “And that is why you need us,” Jack said. “To do the grunt work.”

  “The one-percent has been ruling this world since the dawn of time,” Evelyn said. “No one could ever touch them. Even when information leaked to the public, they still persisted, unwavering in their position of power, their ambition insatiable. They take without pardon, then they keep taking and taking, destroying everything and everyone in their way. We have a chance to stop that. We have a chance to obstruct it at least. Not many people get that opportunity.

  “And we have to take ours. Not only for what we have lost so far, but for what we are going to lose. We have to take this chance to save countless lives and to make he world a better place, a world free of people who pry into your social media accounts, who listen to your conversations, and people who tap into your microphones just so they can target their ads better. They not only know everything but they control it. Instead of making the world a better place, they are using it to their personal benefit, leaving it in shambles afterwards, devouring it one piece at a time.”

  Marcus hadn’t notice it, but his gun had lowered almost all the way down. “Why do you care so much,” he asked.

  Evelyn closed her eyes and then sighed. Her head went down. “Because,” she said, her voice breaking apart. “Because they killed my father. They took my father away from me. Now it is famous as the perfect crime, and people love it... They love the mystery of my father’s death.”

  “What are you talking about,” Jack asked.

  “Rohwedder,” she said with a heavy voice, one burdened by tears. “He was my father.”

  “Wait, what,” Marcus said.

  “Detlev, the business magnate of East Germany? That was your father?”

  “He and my mother were in love,” Evelyn continued. “Or maybe they were just casual—I cannot say. All the same, I was the result of their passion. When they killed him, my mother took me to New York City, hoping that our lives would be good. We were religiously following the reports on his death, blaming the RAF like everyone else. All of us in this room know that all these separatist movements fighting for the betterment of the world are controlled by their respective governments. We know it. Shit,” she smiled sourly, “we did it. We know that even terrorists networks are well-known and used to the benefit of the highest bidder. I didn’t know it so many years ago. T

  Back then, I hated the separatists,” she leaned on the chair. “Can I take a seat,” she asked.

  After a fashion, Marcus stepped back and pointed his gun at Evelyn again, feeling the full weight of the metal in his hand, unsure if he would be able to pull the trigger. He could feel every word Evelyn had uttered, relating to her pain in the fullest extent.

  “Sure,” Jack said, his voice unemotional.

  Evelyn sat down in the chair and put her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her hand. “When I joined the Academy, it was to get a sort-of poetic justice for my father, to make sure that kind of shit never happened to anyone else. Secretly I hoped that I would find my father’s real killers. And now I think I have.”

  “So, what, all of a sudden you decided that you will just kill them? Did the truth come to you in a dream, maybe?”

  In that moment, Marcus understood the true importance of friendship. Your failings are masked and made up for by the people around you; where his own objectivity was lacking, where his intuition was cheating him, Jack stayed sharp.

  Evelyn rapidly looked up at him, insulted. “No,” she said. Then her mask of sternness dropped, probably realizing that she had said too much already. There was no point in stopping there. She sighed. “When I started proving myself in the Academy, I was approached by a shady man. He told me that he knew my father. He told me that he knew exactly what had happened to him. Then he told me that it was the Stasi, and not the RAF. It made no sense to me. Why would an intelligence service that was soon to be gone do such a thing? I kept asking myself that question night in and night out, unable to sleep. Then he told me that to find answers, I would have to become trusted by the Company, become their key operative. That’s what I did. And then I learned that the Company had direct ties to my father’s death. From what I understand, they did it as a favor to the German government, to help them unite the two countries into a proper Federation, into a Bundesrepublik.”

  Jack cackled. “Oh my God,” he said in disbelief.

  “I am not lying,” Evelyn said.

  “Either you are, in fact, lying, or your telling the truth. And the latter is much worse. Because if the latter is true, then you, Evelyn, are a lie. Your identity, your life, your history—it is all a lie.”

  Her wounded eyes turned to Marcus. “You believe me, though, right?” Marcus said nothing in response. “You have to understand how I feel about this. You, more than anyone else.”

  Inside of Marcus a battle was brewing since Evelyn came into the room. Fear, anxiety, love, hate, empathy, and anger all danced together in a ball for the ages, a ball led by Mozart and Tchaikovsky, working in perfect harmony to create chaos, to seed more discord between Marcus and the real world. All the memories and all the experiences of his life, especially those with Evelyn, came to his mind, and he felt close to exploding. There was no more subjectivity nor objectivity. There was everything and nothing at the same time—the fourth dimension personified.

  “It doesn’t matter, Evelyn,” Jack said. “You can’t be trusted. I think that not even you know who you are or what you want after all these years of lies, deceit, and manipulation. I don’t trust you.”


  “Just give us what you have, Evelyn,” Marcus said, hoping the shakiness wasn’t apparent in his voice.

  Evelyn’s jaw popped out, and her muscles twitched. “I still haven’t given you Didier,” she said.

  “He’s a dead man anyway,” Jack replied.

  “But there will be no one to protect you,” she said.

  “Evelyn,” Jack calmly said. “You came here, as you put it, with honest intentions. You came here, as you put it, to make sure Daniel falls and never sees the light of day ever again. You came here knowing that it might be the very last thing you do. If your story is true, then give us what you have. As you put it, it is the most important thing now.”

  It was a check-mate position. Evelyn had no scheme or tactic to squirm her way out of what she had coming, out of what was inevitable. Marcus could see her hesitation. He could feel her frustration. She had put herself in that position. And though he could empathize with her, he forced his brain to keep one crucial thing in focus—it was all a game. Even when people are honest and sincere, it is almost always as a move to court other people for their cause. Jack was there as his bedrock, as his supporting pillar, helping him stay on track. What can happen will happen, says Murphy’s law; and in this case, what has to be done will be done.

  With a resigned sigh, Evelyn leaned back into the chair. She was looking at the boarded up window, perhaps realizing the gravity of her situation, the inevitability of her immediate future. Evelyn closed her eyes and shook her head. “So close,” she whispered. “So close.” She fell into a sullen silence for a minute. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. But Daniel is such a good opponent. He is so smart, so capable. I mean, to manage an operation this big and this important... It is truly impressive. The way to bring him down is to go after his number two—Patrick Don. That man has secrets. All the secrets. Though he is working for Daniel, and with Daniel in pursuing their common goal, he is still looking our for himself more than anything else. You need to go after him. And the best way to do it is to go after his driver—a Venezuelan of the name Jose Andres. He has been Don’s driver for a long, long time, but Don has done some things to him that the man can’t forgive. So he’s working against him. And he is your way into Patrick Don’s life. That little animal will definitely provide you with what you need to get rid of Jim Morris in the smart way.”