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

by C. J. Steinberg

  As he knelt down to open the safe, memories of his youth flooded his mind; not scenes of what was happening around him or what he was doing, but the blessed feeling of inner peace whenever he knelt down in front of a safe.

  He stuck an x-ray monitor where the gears were placed and watched the screen. The safe Patrick had installed would have locked up completely on a simple and single mistake, preserving all that was inside. If the safe was to be drilled of opened in any other forcible way, what was inside would incinerate. Patrick was sentimental like all humans, but he was was aware of it and careful like a man of his stature should be.

  Marcus took a deep breath and cleared his mind. He closed his eyes and kept breathing in a controlled manner. The noise of his thoughts had to disappear and his ears needed to become adjusted to absolute silence before he could carry on. He needed to not only watch the screen, but also listen to every click of the gears. He placed his hand on the safe and let his hands calm down as well.

  Then he felt peace.

  He moved the rotary with his right hand and prepared himself to crack the safe. He admired Patrick for owning a safe as old as time itself because he, like Marcus, knew that the newer technology was easier to beat because thieves had their own technology for that very purpose. Going for an old safe gave him an advantage because old thieves worked on touch; new generations don’t know what that means. The fingerprint scanner is easy to fool, and the keypad code easy to figure out, even if there are six or eight digits. This, however, required true skill. Marcus took another deep breath and began to rotate.

  Meanwhile, on the opposite side of town, Jack parked the van far away from the meeting spot. He looked around at the open plains, at one of the most vibrant cities of the world now ghostly, abandoned, as if stuck in some post-apocalyptic setting for a high-budget film. This won’t last for much longer, he thought. The world will resume.

  “Yes,” Jack answered the phone.

  “She arrived,” Chang said. “It all look good. Clear. You can come.”

  “Let’s wait a few more minutes, just to be sure.”

  Chang stayed on the line, Jack listening to his breathing. The setting all around him was weighing heavy on his mind and soul. For the purpose of gaining even more advantage than they were born with, these powerful and rich and entitled bastards had sacrificed not only America, but also the city Jack was born and breaded in, a city he loved and adored for its busyness and the accents and the culture. Now it was gone. Now it was a ruin. Now it was nothing.

  Jack opened the car door and told Chang that he was on the move. “I’ll stay on the line. You stay appraised.”

  There was no room to doubt anyone, especially not the people on his side. Come what may, he told himself and walked to the underpass decidedly, arrogantly even.

  The sight of Evelyn, though, made him angry. But he needed her. And he wasn’t an evil person by nature.

  “Hello, Evelyn,” he said ominously. The explosion he had survived echoed in his mind.

  “Jack,” she said.

  Is that doubt in her eyes, he wondered. Or maybe regret? He was gauging whether he could trust her, rely upon her and her information, and not really looking for a human angle to connect with her or forgive her. He didn’t want that. He just couldn’t trust her.

  “Do you have what I need,” Jack asked.

  Evelyn hesitated. “Jack, look,” she said. “What I did wasn’t—“

  Jack raised his hand. “Don’t bother. I really don’t want to hear this, Evelyn.”

  “I did what I had to do to survive, to stay where I am. I didn’t want to do it to you, Jack, you were my friend.”

  Jack’s head was pounding. All he could think about was vengeful violence.

  “I had no idea whether I can trust you with anything. It’s the corporate world. People say things they don’t mean or believe, they say opposite of what is true to them, and friendships are usually just work-related, like people with whom you can gossip and alleviate the pressure. What else was I supposed to do?”

  Jack couldn’t hold it in. “How about not blow me up? How about, at the very least, you show me some respect? You stand there, pretending that you care, pretending that you weren’t enjoying your position of power where you could deliberate over life and death with a phone call or a press of a button.” Jack hadn’t noticed it, but he had moved close to Evelyn, perhaps too close. “Then you tried to blow me up! You—with your ego and your pride—you, who was pretending to be my friend, sent a rocket to get rid of me!”

  Evelyn opened her mouth to say something.

  “You could not have known that I was out of the room, so don’t dare say that again. You couldn’t have known whether I would’ve survived or not. You just did it! And you did it because you could. Stop pretending like it ain’t so.”

  “Jack, I—“

  “Don’t you “Jack” me, bitch. Don’t you even dare. Don’t dare lie to my face and don’t dare pretend like you didn’t love the corporate world. You liked the power. You liked the respect! You never had it before, and then you did, so it consumed you. You say that you have done all the bad shit because you were driven by a noble cause, by the desire to rewrite the past and make the present more endurable. But it’s crap. And you know it is.”

  “You’re right,” Evelyn said quickly.

  “And then—“ Jack heard what Evelyn had said. His thoughts were interrupted, his sentences, unfinished, lingered in his mind. “What?”

  “You’re right,” Evelyn said again, her eyes tearing up. “I loved it. It was all I never had before right in front of me. Power, money, respect, control—all of it. It started with a noble cause but then it took a life of its own. Then it became something else, something different. I’m sorry.”

  Jack couldn’t believe his ears. She had actually admitted it to him. But his anger still hadn’t subsided. At all really. “You betrayed me, Evelyn. And no amount of remorse or regret or tears will ever change that. Not ever. And it’s not only me, it’s Marcus as well. You broke that man.”

  “He was already broken!” Evelyn screamed out. Her regret had grown into anger. There were things she was willing to accept, things that were truly her fault, but Marcus, though her actions pained her, was a man she could not trust or rely upon. “He was already broken,” she whispered. “He was caught up in his mind, lost in daydreaming about better days to come without giving any thought about me. Then he just disappeared. What was I supposed to think? What was I supposed to do? Are you telling that if you were a deep cover agent you wouldn’t have looked out for yourself first? Are you telling that you wouldn’t have pushed him down the stairs? It was necessary! I was in danger of being discovered because he just disappeared. So I picked a side. I picked a winning side, one that ensured my well-being and my mission.”

  Jack snickered. “Finally, the truth.”

  “Yes, finally! Enjoy it.”

  For some reason, listening to Evelyn open up, Jack felt like he could trust her. Did he force that thought upon himself because he knew he needed Evelyn, or was it actually true? Can he trust her? “Do you have what you promised?”

  Evelyn took a few seconds to let all her planned words run out in her mind, and handed Jack a thumbnail drive. “There is all the information you need to unmask Jim Morris.” She fumbled through her bag and pulled out a cigarette.

  “What is on this, Evelyn,” he asked.

  She blew away a smoke. “It’s all you need. Jim Morris was young and stupid like us all, but he is rich. So his crimes are bigger. And they will stick out so much in the public eye that will never look favorably on him ever again.”

  Evelyn’s plan was a good one, Jack had to admit to himself. She probably even saved their lives.

  “Make sure your friend in England gets that,” she said.

  “And what will you be doing in the meantime,” Jack asked.

  Evelyn huffed. “Nothing,” she said.

  “What you say?”

  Evelyn had
a look of resignation on her face, feeling weak and defeated. “These people are too powerful to be stopped. They are too connected. They know everything. What will happen with this, with me, you, I have no idea. But I don’t think we can win.”

  Jack’s suspicions were triggered again. “Evelyn,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, you asshole,” she said, tossing the cigarette on the ground and facing Jack. “I am here, right? I gave you the drive. I gave you what you needed and wanted. That’s it. I can’t make you trust me, but I am done trying.”

  You’re scared, Jack wanted to say. He realized then and there that Evelyn was no longer guided not by desire for vengeance or power, but by fear, by insecurity. Jack suddenly turned away from her and started walking toward his car without saying a word to Evelyn because he began to humanize her, and he couldn’t let that happen again. That girl is a predator, he thought. If she sees that you are going weaker, then she will surely turn to her instincts and betray you. That’s how it goes. He pressed the bud in his ear. “Chang, do you copy?”

  “All clear, boss.”

  “Meet me at the exit,” Jack said. Then he picked up his phone and called Arthur. “It’s time,” he simply said. “Run it all.”

  As Jack walked toward the van, Marcus was listening for the click. He was covered in sweat, wiping his hand constantly against his leg. He had gotten the first five digits, and it all laid upon getting the sixth number right. Jonathan had not only used an old safe, but he had added modern features to it, one of them being the inability to make a mistake with the code. If he gets the last number wrong, everything he had done so far will be for nothing. Cracking safes was a game of Risk; one wrong move, one miscalculation, and everything falls apart. Before, he worried about alarms, now he worried about losing what he came to get for all eternity. He moved the rotary one number at a time, looking for that ding, waiting for the last gear to grind into right place and the door to be opened. No, you can’t think about it, he said to himself. He pushed away the notion that the safe might be empty or that he might destroy the contents with one wrong move and focused on the task at hand.

  Then he heard the final click.

  He swallowed loudly, feeling afraid and ecstatic at the same time. He grabbed the wheel and turned it, then pulled the door opened. He put the flashlight in his mouth and took the documents from the top shelf. The files, in his mind, had a life of their own, a beating heart, leaving a large impression on him, making him fluster. He gently opened the first manilla folder then superficially went through the pages. The plans were laid bare, no redactions on the documents of any sort. Jonathan Burr, Patrick Don, Daniel Clarkson, Ellen Morris, Mark Cluttenberg, and the list went on. The rich, the powerful, the clever; they were all named and their games revealed. “Dear Mother of God,” Marcus said as he pulled the flashlight out of his mouth. It took him a couple of seconds to regain control over himself. “We did it,” he said. “We bloody did it, didn’t we.”

  “Marcus, do you copy,” Didier said on the wire. “Time to leave. People coming.”

  Marcus stuffed the documents into his satchel and replaced them in the safe with empty papers in manilla folders. Then he locked the safe and moved the rotary around before making a run for the car through the balcony and down the gutter.

  “We have it, Didier,” he said when the car set off. “We have it! We did it!” Then, somewhere from the depths of his body and soul, a scream came out. It was a roar of a man who was on top of the world, of a man who had completed his mission. Didier laughed heartily next to him, with a laugh of pure sincerity, a laugh that brings joy to everyone.

  Jack, too, as if in some perfect synchronization, laughed in the van with Chang while scrolling through the drive Evelyn had given him. Chang, who was always a quiet and distant individual, smiled, then broke into a laughter. “They are done,” Jack said. “They are going to fall. There is simply no coming back from this.” The laughter kept going. The hard work was done. Now, the Company will teether, perhaps even fall, and a new dawn will be shone upon society. Jack took his phone and went outside of the van. He dialed Marcus, looking up at the sky, happy for the first time in many, many years.

  “Yes, brother,” Marcus answered.

  “We did it, didn’t we,” Jack said. “We bloody did it.”

  Marcus laughed on the other end. Sometimes, things look the darkest before the dawn, and this dawn was going to change everything. Jack and Marcus talked about their sacrifices and their pains, they talked about being the few people that were able to topple an empire the one percent had so carefully cultivated. First the public will abandon Daniel’s side, and then the governments will have to react. Soon, the disastrous veil of oppression will be lifted and people free to walk the Earth as they were always meant to.

  “Alright, brother,” Jack said. “Let’s meet in the second safe house and get this done. We are so close to victory that we cannot allow ourselves to make this mistake. We have to push forward. We have to finish this. We did it, brother. We bloody did it.” With that, Jack hung up, and took a deep breath. “We did it,” he said with a satisfied smile.

  FIFTEEN

  A rthur realized when he hung up the phone that going forward everything will change forever. Whenever something similar had happened in history, such as the French Revolution or the Boston Tea Party, the impact of that on the decades and generations to come was so large and so powerful that things never even resembled what was. Arthur was not naive, though. He knew that whenever the ruling class was overturned, another one replaced it quickly and decidedly, in perpetuity creating a revolution, where one is replaced by another in different circumstances. But in his mind, this was the way to live life because when one ruling class stays in charge for too long the state of the Commonwealth, of the people, becomes unbearable.

  The sight of foggy London outside his window seemed perfect. The fog, as he saw it, represented the Company and the disease they had thrown upon the world—a vail of misery and dissatisfaction. But the sun always pushes away the fog and ushers in a new day, a bright day, a day filled with hope and possibilities.

  Arthur remembered his life up until a year before, when he was just starting out as a blogger, writing interesting pieces on the events of the world, on the machinations of the rich and the powerful, fancying himself a genius. He had hoped that he would become a real reporter, possibly for as noble an organization as OCCRP. He dreamt of it. He hoped for it. And then Marcus entered his life, changing it all. He made his world a better one. Arthur could afford good whiskey, high quality cigars, a swanky apartment, and a small newspaper organization comprised of people who wanted to change the world, people who wanted to show to everyone how the world really worked, to help people open their eyes and seize control over their lives. Arthur led them now in that noble quest, his dream a reality. Instead of working for someone else he had built something of his own. He had made something extraordinary. In a few decades, he theorized, he could have his own print or his own BuzzFeed; but he wouldn’t make clickbait articles; no, he will write real news about things that matter and make it available to billions of people across the globe.

  When Jack called him with the news about the directive to go after Daniel, Arthur was stunned. He could not decide if the prospect of living his dream frightened or excited him. That is what happens almost always to almost everyone whenever they get within arm’s reach of their dreams. Arthur resorted to a glass of whiskey to soothe his nerves before he leaps into the revelation of all that was true. He knew that the moment he does that, the news he would share with millions of his readers would go viral within hours, making him a priority target. If he already wasn’t one.

  The problem with glasses is that they have a bottom. Sooner or later, a man ends up sucking air out of a glass without the precious and calming feel of alcohol. Arthur looked to the bottle of whiskey on the little table, thinking about it, fantasizing about it, able to taste the liquor. No, he said to himself. There is no point. The
re were tasks that needed completing. He was glued to the chair, though, his body heavy and his mind slow. He was afraid to leap into what he was chasing for so long because for the first time since he began his adventure, he truly felt the gravity of the situation, realizing that he could actually win. There was no ambition, anger, or desire to cloud his judgment, to push aside all other thoughts and keep his target, his objective in sight. Now reality was sinking in.

  Eventually, of course, he went into the safe room, a place where he had written all his articles, laid out the entire truth, and the place no one could access without a code and a facial scan. He sat down and opened the first article he had crafted. It was styled like a daily print, with photos of the people involved, the headline “It was all a lie” looming large in the middle of the paper. It was an image he had created in hopes of reaching more people than his initial audience. He pressed send, but he didn’t confirm. Why aren’t I happy, he asked himself. But that is what being an adult means. That, in its essence, is what being a grown up, a man or a woman is—making hard decisions for the benefit of others. In the case of Arthur’s decision, it was for the benefit of the entire world, of generations crushed under the boot of the Company and the generations still to come.

  Arthur confirmed.

  The image went live.

  He leaned back. In the space of a few minutes, the image will become popular, and the exposition to follow, with documents attached, will make the world tremble in fear. It was a thorough summary of everything Daniel and his people wanted to do. It was a showpiece on how deep the conspiracy went into the US government and how high it went on the list of the wealthiest people in the globe. It spanned all seven continents and over thirty countries, all of them more powerful than the other. Not only did they want the world in utter state of obedience and compliance, but they wanted to destroy the world, break the little we have left. They wanted to start a war, a war between America, a country on its way down but still very strong, and China, the new global superpower. They said as much. The documents proved it. What he was saying and what he is going to say will not be the sole ramblings of a young and hungry young man, but fact in the common mind, the mind that was for so very long kept in the dark, a mind that was controlled and manipulated.